by Tom Hunter
“I see what you’re saying, but do you really need us all to go to the library?” Josh asked. “Basile’s still not 100% and it’s not as though I’m any good at research. If anything, I’ll slow you down. Wouldn’t it make more sense for some of us to stay behind?”
“I agree with Josh,” Waleed added. “I’m sure that I would be much more use staying here to guard everyone’s things than going down to look at dusty old books.”
“I’m sure you could be helpful if you tried,” Akhenaton observed, glaring at Waleed.
“Of course, I’d like to help in whatever way the team think is best.”
“Research really isn’t as difficult or as scary as you might think,” Shafira told them. “It becomes quite therapeutic after a while, scanning through texts looking for certain key phrases. This place probably hasn’t got around to digitizing the texts yet, so there’s no search engine to help. Nobody’s asking you to understand what you’re reading, but the more of us that can look through books for any mention of St. Augustine’s library, the faster we can get through the material. After all, we have no idea how many texts we’ll have to work through. As Samuel said, we have no idea what the Bruard are doing with the headdress. We have to assume that they’re working as fast as they can, which means that we have to do the same.”
“Shafira’s right,” agreed Samuel. “It’s all hands on deck from now on, I’m afraid. We’ll go to the library now and stay until they kick us out. After that, dinner’s on me.”
Everyone nodded their assent and headed back out to where Raoul was dozing in the front seat of the cab. Just before Samuel reached out to shake him awake, Waleed stopped him.
“Is it just me, or does something feel off?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.” Samuel frowned. “Why?”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but in my line of work, you learn to develop a sixth sense,” Waleed explained. “I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching us.”
Shafira glanced round anxiously, trying to see if she could spot who might be following them.
“I think you’re paranoid,” shrugged Josh, climbing into the back of the cab as Samuel woke up the driver.
“Maybe, but being paranoid has kept me alive all these years,” muttered Waleed as Raoul fired up the engine and took off in the direction of the library.
Thirty-Six
Pin laid back in his recliner, his eyes closed as he moaned in ecstasy.
“The power. Oh, the intoxicating power,” he murmured, reaching up to take the headdress off, but thinking better of it, as his fingers caressed the embroidery, reminding him of how empty he’d felt before he’d first put it on. Just the feel of the rich texture against his skin was enough to send a thrill through his body, as he caught a slight glimpse of all the possibilities St. Augustine’s secret could bring to him, if he could only unlock its full potential.
Letting his hand fall back down again, he sighed as he tried to open himself up to everything the mysterious artifact had to offer. The world was there for his taking, if he could only master the powerful tool. He’d lost track of how long he’d been sitting there, but time had ceased to have any meaning. All that mattered was developing a strong connection with St. Augustine’s cap.
His desk phone rang, the shrill ringtone destroying Pin’s calm. He sighed and tutted. What would happen if he answered the phone while he was still wearing the headdress? Would he be able to influence the person on the other end of the line? Not yet, Pin decided reluctantly, finally forcing himself to remove the hat. There would be a time for that kind of experimentation soon enough.
Placing it reverently on the desk, Pin finally reached over and answered the call.
“Make this important,” he warned as a welcome.
“Boss?” Gord’s panicked tone made Pin sit up and take notice. “You’re not going to believe what I’ve just seen.”
“Well?” demanded Pin. “Don’t play guessing games with me. Just tell me and stop wasting my time.”
“I just saw that archaeologist who was supposed to be buried in that chamber,” Gord told him. “Along with his French friend, that woman from the Ministry who was digging around in our business, one of those weirdoes in robes who attacked us at the cave and a couple of others from the dig site. And it wasn’t just a random sighting either–they were checking into the same motel I’m staying at.”
“Is that right? Don’t tell me that they’re all too cheap to pay for a decent hotel room?” Pin used humor to cover up his disquiet, as the significance of what Gord had told him sank in.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty certain that the Bruard wouldn’t be happy to know that McCarthy was walking around, knowing what he does about our mission. If they’re here under Ministry command, we’re screwed.”
“Not necessarily.” Pin stroked his chin as he sat back in his chair. “The Ministry isn’t exactly known for its competence–or its generosity. If that motel is the best they can afford, it’s entirely possible that the Ministry is funding them and if that’s the case, their money will run out long before they catch up to us. What concerns me more is how badly your men messed up when they laid the Semtex. There’s no way that Samuel should have been able to escape that explosion. Would you like to offer an explanation for your failure?”
“Don’t blame me!” protested Gord. “We packed that place with enough explosives to blow them to Kingdom Come. We did our best to abide by your stupid command not to kill them directly. If it were down to me, I would have shot them in the head, just to be sure. If I hadn’t been acting under your direct instruction, I would have made damned sure that nobody left that cave alive if they weren’t one of us.”
“Are you criticizing me?” Although Pin spoke calmly, there was no mistaking the menace in his tone.
“I would never do that,” replied Gord smoothly. “But you can’t deny that if the situation had been handled differently, we wouldn’t be facing another complication in the mission. Anyone who opposes the Bruard should be squashed like a bug–and Samuel is proving himself to be a cockroach with his ability to survive.”
“Everything is progressing as it should,” Pin told him. “McCarthy is but a minor irritation in the grand scheme of things. It won’t be long before we recover the psychic, and then it doesn’t matter how resilient he is. All will bow before my might.”
“Yes, the Bruard will be unstoppable once our mission has succeeded,” Gord agreed, seeming not to notice Pin’s slip. “But still, I don’t like the thought of letting the archaeologist run around unchecked. He’s too slippery for my liking. I think it’s best if I go and pay him and his friends a visit tonight. If they never see another morning, it’ll be too soon.”
“Much as I commend you on your initiative, I think you are placing far too much importance on this McCarthy’s abilities,” Pin told him. “If we slaughter all those people in cold blood, it will draw unwanted attention on our presence and right now, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile. One death is an accident; six is a mass crime that’s likely to attract international attention. It is simply not worth the risk, not for one man. No, you need to remain focused on the mission at hand and not allow yourself to become distracted. Do not let McCarthy be the reason you fail again.”
“When did I fail?” blustered Gord.
“Do I need to remind you about the mess you made in disposing of Director Haisam?” said Pin sharply. “Your performance has been less then exemplary recently. If you were only to follow orders, there would have been far fewer mistakes on this mission. You are to avoid detection by Samuel and his cronies while you track down Fatima and bring her here. That’s final.”
“Not all the mistakes have been mine,” Gord pointed out. “I think you’re making another one if you leave Samuel free to run around Annaba. I can do it discretely, make it look like an accident.”
“Enough, Gord!” barked Pin. “I will not have my orders countermanded like this. You are hired for your
muscles, not your brain, so don’t kid yourself that you can think. Find the psychic, bring her to me and forget about Samuel. Those are your orders and I will not accept any deviance from your mission, do you understand? Don’t think you can’t be replaced by someone even more brutal? I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what their first assignment would be.”
There was a pause. “All right. I’ll push Valentina to work faster,” Gord said at last, ending the call.
Pin replaced the handset, turning back to St. Augustine’s headdress. Picking it up, he caressed the braid running around the base of the hat.
“So our friend Samuel McCarthy survived after all,” Pin mused. “I suppose he must have had help. I saw the rockslide. No one would have been able to dig their way out of it without equipment and there was nothing like that in the catacombs. Still, no matter. He’s not important.” He stroked the hat as if it were a pet as he slowly swiveled from side to side in his chair. “Nevertheless, there is always the chance that allowing Samuel to live will prove to be problematic. I can’t afford to make any more mistakes. What do you think? If Samuel gets in our way, do you think you’d be able to make Gord think that letting him go was all his responsibility?”
He closed his eyes, holding the hat up to his ear as if it were speaking to him.
“You’re right,” Pin continued. “If I am to turn Gord into my fall guy, I should practice first. I can tell that you and I are going to become incredibly close. The more we can work together, the more effective we’ll be.”
Pin placed the headdress on his head, smiling in glee when he felt it connect with his psyche.
Pressing a button on his intercom, he opened up a line to the room where the mercenaries were resting.
“Could one of you come and join me in my chambers?” he requested. “I have something I would like to discuss, and a soldier’s input would be invaluable.”
“Coming right away, sir,” came the reply.
Pin sat back, closing his eyes once more as he tried to tune into the whispered messages he could sense coming from the hat. They might be too indistinct for him to make out at the moment, but he was certain the relic was trying to tell him something important, something of immense weight, that would have huge implications for the world.
Thirty-Seven
Samuel and his companions climbed the stairs towards a clean, crisp, white building. Two stories high, large glass windows almost completely covered the frontage, suggesting that the interior would be just as light and breezy. A wide archway over the entrance had lettering on it that told visitors that they were approaching the Bibliothèque Centrale.
Going into the reception area, they headed straight to the nearest desk. Shafira stepped forward, smiling broadly.
“Tab masayika. Hal sayakun min almmkn 'iijra' bed albhwth?” she greeted the man who came over to help them, requesting permission for them to carry out some research in the archives.
“'Ana asif. La 'atahadath allughat alearabiati.” The librarian shrugged apologetically.
“What is he saying?” asked Samuel. “He’s not refusing us access, is he?”
“Not necessarily,” replied Shafira. “But he doesn’t speak Arabic, so he can’t understand me.”
“Let me try.” Waleed stepped forward and rattled off a few fluent phrases. A few minutes later, the librarian was waving them through to the main part of the library.
Waleed turned and grinned at the others. “Amazigh,” he explained.
“Thanks, Waleed,” said Samuel. “Without you, we’d be stuck sitting on the library stairs wondering whether we could sneak in behind someone.”
“It was nothing,” replied Waleed modestly. “Akhenaton could have sorted it out just as easily. He speaks Amazigh too, remember?”
“I heard what you said to him.” Akhenaton shook his head. “He wasn’t going to let us in initially, since we’re tourists, but you convinced him that we weren’t a threat to his precious books. You have a silver tongue that is a world away from anything I could come up with. I can guarantee that if I’d attempted to sweet talk him, we would be sitting on the library steps outside right now pondering how we could break in to access the records we need.”
Waleed shrugged modestly, before going over to consult a map of the library that was up on the wall.
“Religious history is in this section here,” he told the others, pointing to an area at the back of the ground floor, “while the geography department is upstairs.”
“Okay, so we’ll need to split up,” Samuel decided. “I’ll take Waleed and Shafira with me to check out religious history while the rest of you should go to geography. That way we’ve got an Amazigh speaker in both groups. Basile and Josh, if you could focus on any maps you find that contain any interesting information, or anything that seems out of place, that would be really helpful. If anyone can understand the random squiggles on the pages, you two can, and you’re not as reliant on needing to read Arabic or Amazigh when looking at a map. It’s probably worth comparing ancient maps to modern ones for clues. If you see anything, anything at all that looks suspicious or promising, bring the documents down to us in religious history. Meanwhile, we’ll see what references we can find to St. Augustine in the books. I’ll jump onto one of the library’s computers and go online to see if I can find translations of any contemporary records, while Waleed and Shafira, I want you two to search the stacks for more details of St. Augustine’s activities in the area.”
“Got it.” Akhenaton and his group nodded their acknowledgment of Samuel’s instructions and the two teams hurried off to their respective areas.
Samuel found a computer station close to the religious history section and logged onto the online international archaeological archive, looking for documents that had been scanned in that he could translate automatically if need be. Meanwhile, Waleed and Shafira took a shelf each, scanning the books for titles that looked like they might be useful.
At last, they both took a seat near to Samuel, dumping a large stack of books in front of them.
“I never worked this hard at my studies when I was at school,” quipped Waleed, opening a meaty tome that had to be at least 1,000 pages long. “This is fun!”
“Yeah, well, let’s see if you still think that when you’re on your hundredth book,” laughed Shafira as she started scanning the index of the book she’d selected for any references for Annaba around the time of St. Augustine.
Minutes melted into hours, as the six adventurers lost themselves in the ancient past. Eventually, Akhenaton, Josh and Basile came to join the other three, bringing with them a number of maps they thought might be useful.
“Alright, everyone,” said Samuel, as they gathered around a large table. “Let’s pool what we’ve found. Shafira, do you want to start?”
“Sure.” Shafira cleared her throat, consulting the notes she’d made. “Back in 430, Annaba was under siege from the Vandals, who were on a major expansion drive. St. Augustine became seriously ill with what was to be his final sickness, because the grains couldn’t be harvested thanks to the siege. Allegedly, during this period, Augustine performed one of his few miracles, when he healed a man. If we can find the site where this happened, that’s potentially one of our leads. I mean, although he was strongly associated with academia and philosophy, perhaps it’s worth looking into the association with health and medicine as well, given that’s what would have been a major consideration for him in the final months of his life.”
“Good point,” agreed Samuel. “Let’s flag that as something to investigate further. I also found that he spent the final few days of his life with his fellow monks praying that God would help lift the siege and prevent the invaders conquering Hippo for fear of death or conversion to Arianism, which they saw as an even worse fate. On top of that, he went out of his way to ensure that the church library in Hippo and all its knowledge would be protected, which I’m assuming is when he set up the Knights of the Spring Dream. He died on 28 August 430 AD,
and it would have seemed that his prayers had been answered, since the Vandals lifted the siege. However, it was only a temporary relief, since they came back soon after, burning the city. Interestingly, the cathedral and library were left unharmed. The Vandals then took the city as their first capital until the Carthaginians took it over in 439. What about you, Waleed? Anything interesting to add?”
“Oh yes,” beamed Waleed, clearly proud to be able to hold his own amongst the academic heavyweights. “In one of the smaller books written in Amazigh, I found a first-hand account of someone describing what appeared to be a secret society of knights. They talk about seeing seven men dressed in armor with an unfamiliar coat of arms on their shields. They were carrying four symbols of power, one of which was described as being similar to a papal hat.”
“A hat?” gasped Shafira as the others sat up straighter at this first clear sign that they were onto something. “Did the book say anything about the other artifacts the knights were carrying?”
“Not in any great detail,” Waleed replied, “but it did say that while six of the knights left the city, somehow managing to escape the siege. One of them remained behind, promising to codify the order’s laws beneath the shadow of Vandal rule. In fact…” He scrabbled around, looking for the text that had mentioned the knights. Flicking through the pages, he turned the book around to show everyone the picture that had accompanied the anecdote. “Does that look familiar, Akhenaton?”
Akhenaton nodded slowly when he saw the simple crest. “That’s the emblem of my Order,” he confirmed.
“Well done, Waleed.” Josh clapped him on the back.
“Yes, well done,” echoed Samuel. “That’s a really solid lead. Did the book mention where this meeting took place?”
“No,” Waleed told him, having another quick look through the account in case he’d missed something. “But there was mention of a harbor which the knights used to carry the relics away to keep them safe from the Vandals, so maybe that’s another lead to check out?”
