Empire of Lies

by Raymond Khoury

“So what was the plan? To kill me there?”

  “No. Our orders were just to take you there. Nothing else. I swear.”

  “So someone was meeting you there?”

  The man nodded.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kamal accepted it. The man was under too much duress to be lying to him. Which meant he might even answer the next question without losing another limb.

  “Who ordered it?” He had to ask, even though he already knew the answer.

  A new level of fear lit up the man’s eyes.

  Kamal returned a look of cold inevitability as he moved the gun to the man’s groin.

  He didn’t even have to ask again.

  “Kuzey Pasha,” the maimed intruder winced.

  Kamal felt any remnant of color drain from his face.

  There it was. Confirmation. Fehmi Kuzey. Celaleddin’s top lieutenant, the head of the Z Directorate.

  Why?

  There was one way to find out.

  “Where is this place?”

  “Southwest of the city. Beyond Versailles. I can show you. It’s on my phone.”

  Kamal pressed the gun against the man’s groin while he rummaged through his pockets. “Don’t try anything.”

  He pulled out his phone.

  Through badly shaking fingers, the man was able to pull up a map page that showed a forest on the outskirts of Paris, west and slightly south of Versailles. A red pin marked a spot inside its eastern perimeter.

  “Okay.”

  Kamal took the phone from him. Then he raised the gun and swung it down, hard, across the man’s head. The man thudded against the floor and didn’t move anymore.

  Kamal acted fast. He tied him up, found the intruders’ car keys, and relieved them of guns and badges. He then got dressed.

  He flew down the stairs, two steps at a time. He was slipping across the landing one floor down when, from the corner of his eye, he noticed that the door to the apartment below his was cracked open, a hint of light from inside breaking out from behind a dark silhouette and a furtive eye that was peeping through the crack. Kamal knew who it belonged to: his neighbor, a successful restaurant owner. Kamal stopped and approached the door.

  The restaurateur pulled the door a bit wider. He looked scared.

  “I heard noise,” he told Kamal, a shake in his voice. “I was going to call the—”

  “It’s all under control,” Kamal said calmly. “You don’t need to worry about it. Go back to bed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Go back to bed. I’m sorry it woke you. We have it under control.” Emphasis on the “we.” He gave him a firm, reassuring nod.

  Time was pressing. He was wasting precious seconds.

  His neighbor nodded hesitantly, then slipped back into the darkness.

  Kamal didn’t wait for him to close the door.

  He was soon blasting across the dark, deserted streets in the intruders’ unmarked sedan, headed toward the red pin on their map, his heart jackhammering in his chest as he wondered who he would find there and whether he’d manage to get there before it was too late.

  39

  Dawn was still far off when the medieval castle appeared in the distance, a skulking mass that occupied a small hill and ruled over of a sea of blackness. It would have been invisible but for the big, gibbous moon that made its silhouette stand out against the backlit sky and gave it an ethereal shimmer that belied the grim reality of what Kamal had been told it was being used for.

  He dimmed the lights of the car as he entered the forest. The smooth asphalt of the main road gave way to a rough, unpaved track that wove its way through dense woodlands of beech and oak. The rough, uninhabited landscape didn’t seem like it had changed much since the days when it hosted the main pilgrimage and trade route between Paris and Chartres. Then, a couple of fersahs later, the ruins of the castle came into view: two squat, round towers, one topped by a turret; a taller, boxlike keep that was missing most of its slanted roof; and a fortified wall, big chunks of its crenelated ramparts having long since crumbled away like missing teeth. After centuries of disuse, it was a pale reflection of its past glorious self, when, as Kamal had picked up when running a quick, frantic search of his target, it had been a bustling and highly lucrative tollbooth for pilgrims and traders crisscrossing the land. No one seemed to be beating a path to its gatehouse anymore. Those who did, Kamal suspected, never left.

  With the car’s lights switched off completely, he guided the car by the light of the moon, gliding slowly through the thick forest until he could see the castle walls looming up ahead. Keeping a safe distance away, he stopped, backed the car into a small clearing, and killed the engine.

  He opened the glove compartment and took out the standard-issue flashlight, which he checked with a quick flick while covering its lens. Then he drew his handgun, slid the safety off, and climbed out.

  He advanced toward the fortification.

  Around him, all was deathly still, but Kamal knew that kind of forest well enough to know it was anything but lifeless. Deer and wild boar would be roaming abundantly, but mostly during the day. A horrific thought reared up inside him, of bodies left out for the animals to feed on. The forest was huge and remote, an ideal place to get rid of meddlers and troublemakers—which he had unwittingly become.

  He reached the castle walls. The moat around the fortifications was dry and overgrowing with ferns and shrubbery, but the old wooden bridge that spanned it was still standing. He crossed it cautiously, making sure his footsteps didn’t generate any sounds that might alert whoever was inside to his approach.

  The inner courtyard was still. No one around, no lights on anywhere. It looked long abandoned except for the black Kartal SUV—standard issue at the Hafiye—parked outside the entrance to the keep. At least it was on its own. He hoped that meant he wouldn’t have too many men to deal with.

  Panning his gun left and right in slow sweeps, he was moving cautiously across the courtyard toward the keep’s entrance when a scream sliced through the stillness. A woman’s angry, pleading scream of “no” coming from his left, echoing out from inside a blocklike tower that had a single door and no windows.

  Nisreen.

  He was sure of it.

  He had never heard her scream like that, but he was dead certain that it was her.

  The sound exploded inside his head, and he bolted toward it instantly, sprinting across the open space as fast as he could.

  He burst through the doorway to the tower and immediately spotted a faint light coming from an opening to the right, down a narrow passageway, just as she yelled again. He then heard what sounded like a savage slap, followed by a man’s voice cursing loudly and the sound of cloth being ripped apart. Kamal wanted to yell out for her, wanted desperately to shout out to let her know he was there, but he held back as he flew down the passage, his pulse kicking loudly in his ears.

  He charged into the room at full pace. His eyes had a split second to register what they saw: Nisreen, on the ground, half-naked, straddled across the knees by a man whose face Kamal couldn’t see, the whole ghastly scene illuminated by the faint light of a gas lantern. The man had both of Nisreen’s wrists clasped in his left hand while his right hand was pulling down his trousers.

  “Stop moving, you bitch,” the man raged, “or I swear I’ll—”

  He didn’t finish his sentence, nor did he even see Kamal before Kamal ploughed into him, hard, shoving him off Nisreen before pummeling his head ferociously with the butt of his gun until the man was still and virtually unrecognizable.

  He turned to Nisreen and scampered over to her. She was sobbing in between sharp breaths, her shaky fingers pulling up the edges of shredded clothing to cover her exposed body.

  Kamal took her in his arms and hugged her tightly. “You’re okay, Nisreen. You’re okay.”

  She went limp for no more than a second, then a frantic urgency swept across her, and she pushed him ba
ck. Her face was drawn in abject terror.

  “Ramazan, the children,” she gasped, a desperate, pained whimper in her voice. “They’re here. They’ve got them.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. They put hoods over our heads. But they’re here. They brought us all here.”

  A sudden dread gripped him so fiercely he could barely draw breath.

  “Stay here,” he ordered her as he scrambled out of the chamber.

  He ran as fast as he could, down the hallway, out into the courtyard, toward the parked SUV and the entrance to the keep, a short distance that felt endless, his body at full stretch, his mind trying and failing to push away worst-case scenarios, horrific thoughts, pressure mounting in his chest and choking him, hoping against hope that he’d get there on time, that he wasn’t too late, and just as he cleared the back of the SUV and reached the door to the keep, a figure appeared in the doorway, moving casually, heading out.

  The man froze at the sight of Kamal hurtling toward him. The dim moonlight masked the man’s features, but there was enough of it to expose his arm reaching for his weapon.

  Kamal didn’t hesitate and pumped three rounds into his chest at full stride.

  The man thudded to the ground, just outside the doorway.

  Kamal slowed and moved forward cautiously, his weapon leveled ahead, his senses on high alert for any other threat.

  He heard nothing at first. A portentous stillness crushed the entire hill. Then, from the edge of perception, he heard hesitant, weary footfalls behind him. He turned. Nisreen had followed him out and was now crossing the courtyard, moving slowly.

  He swiveled his gaze at the darkened doorway to the keep in front of him, his senses tingling, then back at her.

  “Stop.”

  She kept walking.

  “Nisreen. Listen to me. Stop.”

  Her pace slowed. Then she stopped moving.

  He looked at her, his hand half-raised, softly, in a stilling gesture.

  “Wait here. Please.”

  She stared at him blankly. He met her gaze, tried to telegraph something reassuring, something that more words couldn’t convey, but couldn’t come up with anything besides another “Please.”

  She returned a small, dazed nod.

  He turned away, stepped over the fallen man, and entered the keep.

  The doorway led to a small low-ceiling foyer that had two door openings leading deeper into the keep, one to the left and the other to the right.

  There was some faint light coming from the door to his left.

  It drew him in.

  The room, vast and high-ceilinged, was lit by another gas lantern. A monumental stone fireplace dominated the far wall, but otherwise the room was devoid of any kind of furnishing, but that wasn’t what Kamal first noticed.

  It was the barely illuminated human-shaped mounds lying on the floor by the wall to his right.

  He felt his insides hollow out, felt his legs about to give, but he managed to remain upright and, inch by inch, crept toward them.

  There were three figures. One of them was adult-sized, male judging by his clothing.

  The other two were smaller.

  Children.

  Their heads were all shrouded by black hoods.

  None of them were moving.

  His legs ignored the crippling fear that had engulfed him and kept him advancing, trancelike, until he reached them.

  He bent down by one of the smaller bodies. He set the gun down on the floor and watched his arm lengthen, watched his trembling fingers reach out and touch the black hood covering the still figure’s head.

  Watched them pull it back, gently.

  It was Tarek. Staring back at him with wide eyes, a look of eternal fear etched across his small features.

  His neck was covered with dark bruises.

  Kamal’s eyes sheeted over with tears. He felt the inside of his mouth go sickeningly dry, felt his gut rushing up to his throat, but he managed to hold it back as he moved his fingers softly to the boy’s neck and, delicately, desperately, searched for a sign of life that he knew he wouldn’t find.

  There was none.

  Then a scream shattered the silence, a scream that Kamal would never forget—a hoarse, piercing wail that rose out of unimaginable pain and shredded the air of the cavernous room.

  Kamal spun his gaze around.

  Nisreen was by the door, staggering into the room, her hands raised, her fingers splayed wide, her eyes ablaze with horror, her mouth agape in a scream that was now silent.

  “No,” Kamal rasped as he sprang to his feet and flew to her.

  He caught her midstep and swept her into his arms, blocking her advance, clasping her tightly against him while she fought him back and swatted him with desperate, weakening arms.

  “Let me go,” she screamed, tears flooding her face. “Let me go to—”

  “No,” Kamal whispered, struggling to keep hold of her. “No.”

  “Let me go,” she sobbed.

  Her body convulsed in his grip as she fought to free herself, her arms flailing against him, her legs kicking, her eyes drenched in tears, her mouth gasping between frenzied breaths and repeating “no” over and over and over. Then the last vestiges of strength seeped away, and together they slid down to the cold, stone floor, one of his arms still clamped tight around her, the other cradling the back of her head and pressing her into his chest while waves of pain crashed over them both.

  They didn’t move.

  Not for minutes. Not for an hour, perhaps.

  All sense of time and place just disappeared, swept away by a tsunami of anguish and sorrow.

  Throughout, she kept repeating the same word: “no.”

  An eternity later, when her shaking had slowed and when her sobs had somewhat subsided, he finally, slowly pulled away. Softly, carefully, he released his grip, and without exchanging a word, he watched her rise up and stumble deeper into the room.

  There, she knelt before the lifeless bodies and gently, hesitantly, she continued what he had begun.

  40

  They had been strangled.

  All of them.

  Ramazan, Tarek, and Noor.

  In a far corner of the chamber, Kamal found the bodies of two other men, whom he recognized: the two agents he’d spoken to outside the hospital, the ones who were part of the detail that got caught up in the shooting.

  That was a question for later.

  Right now, neither Kamal nor Nisreen gave a damn about them, about what they were doing there or why they’d been killed.

  They had the inconceivable to process.

  Interminable minutes stretched endlessly as they sat there, Nisreen cross-legged and hunched over on the cold stone floor, her head bowed as she rocked back and forth gently while hugging her dead children and nuzzling their heads. Kamal, close by on the floor, next to his brother’s body, a helpless witness, listening to her barely audible whimpers and her supplications to God, staring at the back of her head, then off into nothingness, then back at her, then away again, numb, speechless, lost in what felt like a surreal out-of-body experience in a temple of pain from which he knew there was no escape.

  His brother. His little nephew. His adored niece.

  Three of the four people who mattered most to him in the world—perhaps the only ones who mattered to him—were dead, brutally, savagely, barbarically murdered. And the fourth was, like him, destroyed and suffering a pain without compare.

  He was no stranger to death, no novice to people losing their lives to terrorism or to state-sanctioned executions. With each new death, he’d grown more immune to its brutal finality and gained strength and renewed resolve to do his best to stop the loss of innocent lives.

  Any strength and immunity were vaporized at the sight of his dead loved ones, his insides obliterated and turned into a cold, barren wasteland.

  * * *

  It was Kamal who finally broke through the silence.

  He didn’t know ho
w much time had passed, but as far as he could tell, it was still dark outside. Dawn, however, couldn’t be too far off. Which meant his fury and his questions would have to wait. More urgent decisions needed to be made.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said softly. “It’s not safe.”

  Nisreen didn’t reply at first. She was still on the floor, hunched over while holding her dead children tight against her.

  He shuffled over and, slowly, very hesitantly, reached out to place a hand on her shoulder.

  She flinched and pulled away the instant it brushed her.

  “Don’t.” She spoke without turning to face him. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Nisreen…”

  She went silent for a few breaths.

  “Did you know about this place?” she finally asked without looking at him. Her tone was calm, but hard and bitter and clearly accusing.

  He felt the earth crumble under his feet. “No. Of course not—”

  “Did you ever come here and…” She couldn’t complete the question.

  “Nisreen, listen to me. I swear to you—I never … You know me, for God’s sake. You think I would ever do something like this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do. Of course you do. You know me,” he insisted.

  She nodded, barely, but didn’t reply. She lowered her head so she was nuzzling Tarek’s head and went silent, the only sound a new burst of low sobs.

  After a few minutes, she quieted down, then mumbled, “These bastards … the ones who brought us here, the ones you killed … did you know them?”

  “No.”

  “But they were agents. Like you.”

  “Nisreen, please—”

  “They were following your boss’s orders. Your boss.”

  “I didn’t know them,” he protested, his voice cracking. “They were Z Directorate. And just so you know … the reason I’m here? It’s because they sent two others to my place. They wanted to kill me, too. That’s what led me here.”

  She went silent for a moment. “Did you kill them?”

  “Yes. One of them. The other … he’s had better days.”

  “Good.” She still hadn’t looked at him. “Why would they want you dead?”