Empire of Lies

by Raymond Khoury

  He was digging a hand into his pocket to retrieve his motorbike’s keys when his fingers fell on something else: Nisreen’s phone. He pulled it out and stared at it, debating whether to fire it up, which would activate its tracker. He thought about the risks involved. He was still by the Citadel. If they were aware that they’d missed taking it, if they were looking for it, seeing it light up at the Hafiye headquarters was probably as good a place as any to have it appear. They might conclude that it was sitting innocuously in an agency car or tucked away in an evidence box somewhere in the department, waiting to be claimed by the agents working the case. Firing it up would not necessarily be a great help in discovering what happened to them. The phone was probably locked with a passcode that he had little chance of figuring out.

  He decided to try anyway. He put the battery back in and switched the phone on. The screen went through its motions, then lit up with a picture of Tarek and Noor, smiling half-mischievously into the camera. He lingered on it for a long moment, staring at their little faces, the picture awakening a painful reminder of all the good times he must have missed out on since he and his brother’s family had drifted apart, times he’d never get back. He wondered if things would ever return to the way they were. Right now, he’d more than settle with just knowing they were all safe and well.

  He thought about what numbers to key in and felt embarrassed at how much he had to concentrate to remember the children’s birthdays. Still, he managed it and made a few attempts using various combinations of the dates, which he knew wouldn’t work. Sure enough, they didn’t. Nisreen was too clever to use something so easy to crack. He decided to give up for now, pulling the battery and pocketing it again.

  He headed for his bike, trying to rein in his fears and convince himself that nothing disastrous would happen that first night. It might all be cleared by the morning, and maybe he’d wake up to find out everything was back to normal.

  That hopeful notion lasted all of three seconds before his instincts and experience booted it to oblivion.

  Something very bad was going down, and right now he was helpless to stop it.

  37

  Sitting on the edge of the thin mattress in the windowless cell, Nisreen was struggling to stay awake.

  She was beyond exhausted. More than her body, it was her mind that was spiraling toward a total shutdown. The events of the last forty-eight hours alone would have depleted the hardiest of souls. The way they’d ended had demolished her. Being locked up in this muggy, desolate cell without her children, not being able to comfort them and not knowing where they were or who they were with was like a slow-coursing poison that was killing her off, cell by cell.

  Facing her on the other cot in the small room was Ramazan. He was hunched over, cradling his head in his hands, silent and shivering. They’d said all that needed to be said. All they could do now was wait—and hope.

  Paralyzed by worry and without much else to contemplate, she found herself replaying the last couple of days’ events over and over in her mind’s eye, reliving each step, haunted by regret at having allowed herself to be swept up by that irresistible lure. She chided herself that she should have resisted. She should have known that digging into Rasheed’s secret was terribly dangerous territory, and she should have pulled away before it sucked her and Ramazan in and destroyed them. Because Nisreen was under no illusion what the inevitable outcome of all this was: destruction. Annihilation. She and Ramazan would never be allowed to walk out of there with that secret. Their fate was sealed. As was—she trembled—the fate of the children.

  For a few delirious, hopeful seconds, she wondered if her disastrous foray into the world of the incantation might have a silver lining, if it might present an escape. She’d spent so much time researching it that she thought she might have memorized it, but she couldn’t be sure. It was long, and in a completely foreign language, and her notebook was now in her captors’ hands. Still, she imagined them all using it to travel back to a safer time, to a place where no one would know them or threaten them. She thought she would have risked using it, too, if Tarek and Noor were with them, but they weren’t, which made any notion of escape impossible. It was also probably why their captors were still keeping them apart.

  She would have preferred to keep it from them, to hang on to it as a guarantee of her and Ramazan’s continued usefulness, to use it as their life preserver, however temporary. But she hadn’t been able to. Not even close. Not when her children were in the hands of those murderous brutes. Not when they were locked in a room with someone who had been proudly introduced as a psychotic butcher.

  Another inkling of hope arose from the pit of despair into which she had sunk.

  She thought of Kamal.

  She imagined him out there searching for them, fighting to get to them. Despite everything, something she sensed in him when he appeared at the children’s bus stop the day before made her think he would. And as she slid back against the wall and curled into a ball, her arms tight around her knees in an effort to block the tremors that were rocking her, she held on to that thought for as long as she could.

  * * *

  Alone in his vast office, Huseyin Celaleddin Pasha had some major decisions to make.

  He was standing at the picture window, looking out, lost in thought, his mind cosseted by the narcotic array of spotlit turrets, minarets, and domes that spread out before him and shimmered in the torrid humidity of the night.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been as consumed by a troubling situation. There had been crises of late, to be sure. The empire had been enduring some rocky times, and, as the head of the secret police, he had been at the epicenter of most of them. But this crisis had the potential to dwarf them all. If what he’d heard in that interview room was true, it was nothing less than a full-blown existential threat to the empire, one that could, at the whisper of a few words by the wrong person, lead to its being wiped off the pages of history.

  The threat had a less monumental, less earth-shattering aspect to it that was no less dangerous. It had to do with the very being of the empire. The empire’s core religious tenet was the surrender to the will of God. This submission was the definition of its name, and the sultan, as caliph, was the defender of that faith. But if what Celaleddin had heard was true, it would mean that the empire’s glorious conquests weren’t due to the will of God. They weren’t part of a divine plan. Instead, they were simply the result of the machinations of one man, the ruse of a cunning time traveler, the ploy of a trickster. They were a cheat of history, and that revelation, if it were ever to come out, could cause an upheaval that might be impossible to contain.

  Either way, the risks—of someone traveling into the past to undo what had been achieved or of the truth about how the empire had steamrolled its way across Europe coming out—were too great to ignore. This threat needed to be wiped out quickly, absolutely, and permanently.

  He knew the anesthesiologist and his wife had told him the truth, the whole truth. He’d witnessed their terrorized reaction to the threat facing their children, and he had enough experience with prisoners to know that there was no chance they had held anything back. They had told him everything.

  Which made them disposable.

  There was no room for anything less than extreme prejudice toward anyone who had been exposed to it, and it had to be done now.

  Tonight.

  Everything—his entire world—depended on it.

  38

  Kamal was never the heaviest of sleepers.

  And given his state of mind, given the hurricane that was whipping through him tonight, he hadn’t even dipped a toe into the shallow end of sleep. Which was why he bolted upright at the barely audible clicks of someone tampering with the lock to his front door the instant they began.

  Stark naked, he sprang out of bed, quietly, but he was already too late. He heard the telltale sound of the last pin falling into place and the pained squeal of the door opening before he could mak
e it into the living room. Which posed a problem for two reasons.

  One, he would have preferred to benefit from the element of surprise. The intruders—assuming there was more than one—were professionals, to be sure. His lock had way more self-respect than to allow itself to be defiled so easily by anything less. Surprise would have been useful.

  Two, his gun was in the front hall, by the door. Which meant he was confined to the bedroom area and naked in both senses of the word. Hardly ideal from a tactical point of view, but there was little use stewing over it.

  He slipped back to the bedroom and quickly arranged his bedding to make it look like he was still curled up under the covers. Then he slinked across to the bedroom door and took up position behind it.

  There was nothing within reach that he could use as a weapon. He would have to rely on his bare hands.

  He heard stealthy footfalls approaching. More than one intruder, he was certain, but perhaps no more than two. No words were exchanged. Just a slow, cautious advance into the apartment, with second-long pauses to take stock of their surroundings. Kamal couldn’t see any shadows from flashlight beams dancing across the darkened walls either. The pale glow of the city lights was probably enough to guide them. Otherwise, they were using night-vision goggles.

  Not that it mattered.

  They had reached his bedroom door.

  His body coiled tight, readying himself to lash out, and he held his breath as he watched intently through the crack between the door and the wall. Blackened silhouettes were gliding forward slowly, in absolute silence, barely discernible from their dark surroundings. He could see two of them. One mere inches away from him, on the other side of the door crack; the other now coming through the door.

  Led by the noise suppressor of a handgun.

  He went iron-rigid.

  He needed them both inside the room before he could act.

  One interminable, torturous second after another, waiting, holding back, watching as the lead ghost inched toward the bed and keeping an eye on the position of the second ghost, who finally stepped forward and was now directly on the other side of the door from Kamal.

  Perfect.

  Kamal unleashed all the pent-up strength in his body at the door, flinging it at the man behind it with all the fury he could muster. It slammed into him like a battering ram, its thunderous punch catching him unawares. He let out a loud grunt as he flew sideways and crashed against the wall.

  Kamal knew he had a split-second advantage and didn’t even pause to check on the result of his ambush. He was already launching himself on the lead man, whom Kamal reached just as the man spun around and half faced him. Both of Kamal’s hands had their individual missions: his left hand rocketed forward at the gun, clasping the intruder’s wrist and pushing it away before the man could fire, while his right hand was already balled tight and slicing the air in a beeline to the man’s face.

  He was partly successful. He managed to push the gun out of contention, but in the darkness and the frenzy, his strike landed slightly off target and slid off the edge of the intruder’s chin. The man recoiled and retaliated with a ferocious knee kick that caught Kamal in the gut. Kamal felt the air explode out of his lungs as he doubled over, and from the edge of perception he heard movement behind him, a hissed curse, a slither of fabric, legs clambering back to life, shoes finding purchase. He needed to move fast—he was a second or two away from having two of them to deal with.

  He spun around counterclockwise and raised his left arm, cocking his elbow as he rammed it backward and slammed it into the head of the lead intruder, who was now behind him. This time, the strike landed on target and caused the man to falter enough for his grip on his gun to loosen. Kamal grabbed the man’s gun hand with both of his, aimed the weapon at the second intruder who was charging right at him, inches from reach, and pushed against the trigger repeatedly. The gun belched out four silenced rounds that brought the man rag-dolling down to the ground and crumpling messily at Kamal’s feet. Not that Kamal was taking note. He was already spinning around again, this time clockwise, pushing the gun out of contention while ramming his balled fist backward into the center of the first intruder’s face, driving the back of his hand hard into the man’s nose. Cartilage, bone, and tissue exploded in a bloody mess as the man lost his footing and tumbled to the ground.

  Kamal yanked the gun out of his hand, then grabbed him by the neck and threw him back against the wall by the side of the bed. Without taking his eyes off the man, he reached across and hit the bedside light switch.

  The man had puffy eyes and was cradling his nose with both hands. Blood streamed through his fingers and down his clothes.

  Kamal turned to check on the other intruder. The man evidently wasn’t going to pose a threat, not to anyone, ever. Kamal turned back to his captive and yanked his head back by his hair to take a closer look at him. He didn’t recognize him.

  “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”

  Dazed eyes greeted Kamal’s question. Then the daze turned into an angry glare. Kamal rebutted it with a hard swing of the gun to the man’s left temple, which snapped his head sideways and caused him to grunt heavily from the added pain.

  “Answer my questions,” Kamal insisted. “Who sent you?”

  The man spat out some blood as he straightened up, but he remained silent, a scowl of contempt burning the air between them.

  Kamal reached out with his left hand and clasped his fingers tightly against the intruder’s neck, pinning it in place and partly choking him. Then he moved his gun hand down so that it was now vertical, with the noise suppressor pressed downward against the man’s left knee.

  “I won’t ask again. And you’ll never walk right again. Your choice.”

  No answer.

  Kamal squeezed the trigger.

  The man screamed out and convulsed as the insides of his knee exploded outward and a volcano of pain erupted across his body.

  Kamal held him firmly in his grip, keeping his head upright and facing Kamal, forcing him to maintain eye contact. The man was writhing with pain, shaking his head violently left and right.

  Kamal brought the gun back up so it was now inches from the man’s mouth.

  “I’m not going to kill you. But I’ll make sure you won’t ever be able to so much as take a piss again without needing someone’s help. So I’ll ask again. Who are you? Who sent you?”

  The man was barely conscious. He was shaking violently, and rivulets of sweat were running down his face and mixing in with the mess of blood and spittle around his mouth.

  Kamal moved the gun pointedly away from the man’s face and brought it down to his other leg when the man broke.

  “Don’t,” he muttered. “Don’t.”

  Kamal stopped, studied him, then brought the gun back so it rested against the man’s gut. “Talk.”

  The man spat out another big glob of blood. “I’m Z Directorate.” He was glaring at Kamal as he said it, his eyes narrow and hard.

  The intruder’s words were like a spear through Kamal’s gut. “Why did they send you? Why do they want me dead?”

  “We weren’t here to kill you. We were ordered to take you away.”

  Kamal couldn’t make sense of this. “Why?”

  The man cleared his throat. It looked painful. “I don’t know.”

  “Let me guess. They think I’m White Rose, too?”

  A mocking snort managed to break through the man’s tortured face. Which Kamal caught—and didn’t understand.

  “What?” Kamal barked.

  The man didn’t respond, but the hint of a taunt was definitely there.

  Kamal slapped it off his face. “What?”

  The man swallowed something hard, and then, almost as if gaining strength from Kamal’s frustration, he looked at him with clear contempt. “You have no idea, do you?”

  Kamal shoved the gun harder against his gut, making him wince. “I’m about to.”

  The contempt turne
d to a self-satisfied sneer. It looked like what he was holding back was giving him a last, desperate grasp of an upper hand. “There is no White Rose, you fool.”

  Kamal’s breath seized. “What?”

  The man eyed him with visible gratification. “We made it up. The whole thing. And you, all of you … you just lapped it up.” He snorted again, a sputter of blood spilling down his lower lip.

  Kamal felt his guts cave in as his mind furiously processed what that meant. The immediate avatars that Kamal couldn’t duck were names that charged back into his consciousness: the professor, Azmi, and the playwright, Sinasi. And, obviously, Nisreen.

  You need to wake up, Kamal.

  A sudden urgency about her flooded through him.

  “My brother, Ramazan Hekim. His wife, Nisreen. You have them, don’t you?”

  The man didn’t reply. He looked as if he was enjoying the power shift.

  Kamal pressed the gun against his surviving knee. “I won’t ask again.”

  The power shift evaporated. “I don’t know,” the man blurted grudgingly. “I don’t know anything about them.”

  Kamal thought fast. “Where were you supposed to take me? Back to the Citadel?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Where then?”

  The man went mute. Kamal pressed the gun harder. “Where?”

  “Out of the city. A place in the Chevreuse Forest. The Madeleine Castle.”

  Kamal had never heard of it. “What’s out there?”

  The man clammed up.

  “What’s out there?”

  “Nothing … It’s just some old ruins. In the middle of the forest.”

  “So why there?”

  The man hesitated, then said, “It’s where we take people sometimes.”

  Where they take people?

  Kamal felt the spear twist deeper.