Midnight At The Oasis

by Justin Gustainis

  In 2007, Tamwar made his way to Paris, in the hope of joining a jihadist organization there. Finding no such entity in the French capital, he had tried to start one among the city’s more radical Arab students. This effort brought him to the attention of the French security forces, and consequently he spent two years in Clairvaux Prison on sedition charges.

  When Nasiri found him in 2010, Tamwar had been living in a Paris slum, broke and near-starving. Since that time, Jawad Tamwar’s fortunes had improved considerably.

  When he was certain that the waiter was out of earshot, Nasiri said, “So, my brother, what news do you bring me concerning our mutual... project?”

  Tamwar put down his half-empty cup and said “I can report success in some aspects – but, I regret, only in some.”

  Nasiri’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

  “First, I can tell you that the account we had from our source in Kabul was true, despite the doubts that both of us had.”

  “I had assumed that was the case,” Nasiri said archly. “Otherwise, nothing else you had to tell me could have been considered a ‘success.’”

  Tamwar bobbed his head. “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “So, the old man actually did it – he managed to capture an afreet.”

  “This I can say with certainty,” Tamwar said, “for I have seen it with my very eyes.”

  “There are many clever so-called ‘magicians’ in that part of the world,” Nasiri said. “Are you quite certain you were not taken in by some clever conjuring trick?”

  “Absolutely certain, my brother. Not only did the djinn come forth from the lamp when Hosni summoned him, but –”

  “Wait!” Nasiri said, slapping the table lightly. “Are you saying that this creature actually resides in a lamp? As was related in the Thousand and One Nights?” He gave Tamwar a very direct look. “I will not insult you, my brother, by asking if you are making sport with me.”

  Nasiri was asking precisely that – and if he did not like the answer, the consequences were likely to be severe.

  “I am aware of how ridiculous it sounds,” Tamwar said. “And I asked the old man a question very similar to the one you just asked – or rather, did not ask – me.”

  “Yes – and?” Nasiri’s look of impending doom was still very much in place.

  “The choice of vessel was Hosni’s idea of a joke. He thought it would be amusing to confine the creature in an old oil lamp, like the one described in the story of Aladdin. He said he wished to show respect for what he called ‘literary tradition.’”

  Nasiri made a derisive sound. “He is a fool.”

  “In some respects, yes,” Tamwar said. “But the fool has nonetheless captured an afreet, and I swear to you that it is genuine.”

  “And how did you establish that?”

  “First, as I began to relate, I saw the thing issue forth from the lamp as smoke or fog, and then assume an aspect quite marvelous to behold.”

  “Describe this aspect.”

  “It had the shape of a man,” Tamwar said, “but taller – by at least three meters.”

  “So, about five meters in all?”

  “So I would estimate, my brother.”

  “What else?”

  “He had great horns issuing from his head. They curved back upon themselves, like those of a ram.”

  “Indeed,” Nasiri said. “And were there any other features of note?”

  “Just one more – the afreet was made completely of fire.”

  That caused Nasiri’s eyebrows to rise. “Fire? Truly?”

  “Indeed. It was difficult to look upon without sunglasses. Fortunately, I had a pair with me.”

  Nasiri nodded slowly. “It makes a certain amount of sense. The Holy Qur’an tells us that the djinn were made of smokeless fire.”

  “A fair description, brother. Although the thing was made of flames, no smoke issued forth from it.”

  Nasiri stroked his beard. “I suppose there is no possibility that the old man somehow hypnotized you into believing you saw a horned creature made of fire?”

  “I had prepared for that possibility,” Tamwar said. He reached for the suitcase that sat next to his chair and pulled it into his lap. He clicked the latches, reached in, and removed an oddly-shaped object, which he put on the table between himself and Nasiri.

  It was an irregularly-shaped lump of metal, about the size of a large apple. Nasiri took it from the table and examined it closely for nearly a minute before looking up. “And what is this you have brought me, brother?”

  “It may be more useful,” Tamwar said, “to tell you what it once was – a steel bar, about half a meter in length.”

  Nasiri peered again at the object in his hands. “It looks as if it has been put through a blast furnace.”

  “In a sense, it has,” Tamwar told him. “I told Hosni that I wished the afreet to melt it for me, and he bid the creature to do so.” He gestured toward the hard, shapeless blob. “That took, perhaps, five seconds.”

  “Five seconds,” Nasiri said. “Allah be praised.”

  “I thought that, given our ultimate purpose, it would be useful to see how the afreet’s power could affect steel. I grant this is a much smaller quantity than we have in mind to subject to the creature’s power, but I found it an impressive demonstration, even so.”

  “Even so,” Nasiri agreed. “We must have this power at our disposal. I assume you have taken the appropriate steps to obtain it.”

  Tamwar shifted in his chair. “That is where matters become... complicated,” he said. He did not meet the other man’s gaze.

  Slowly and with great deliberation, Nasiri placed the chunk of melted steel back on the table. “Explain.”

  “I offered Hosni a great deal of money for the vessel containing the afreet,” Tamwar said. “Money that, under certain circumstances, I might even have been willing to pay. But he would have none of it.”

  “What is this man,” Nasiri asked, “an ascetic? He has no interest in money?”

  “On the contrary, he likes money very much – likes it to the point of greed.”

  “He wanted you to pay more?”

  “No, he did not wish to sell it at all. He said he would be happy to direct the creature to do our bidding – for the right price. But he insisted on retaining ownership.”

  “This is unacceptable,” Nahiri said. “You know as much.”

  “I do, yes. That is why I returned the next night, and brought Mujab Rahim with me.”

  “Ah, Mujab, excellent. He has a way of... cutting through difficulties.”

  “It was my intent to have him cut through the difficulty posed by the old man’s throat, as soon as I had secured two items. One of these, the lamp containing the afreet, was obtained without difficulty – it was in the same place the old man had showed me the night before.”

  “You had the lamp, yes? What else did you want of Hosni?”

  “The means to command the lamp’s inhabitant.”

  Nasiri frowned. “I thought whoever held the lamp was in control of the afreet.”

  Tamwar shook his head. “I regret to say that what was written in the Thousand and One Nights does not always apply in this world where we live. But Hosni had already showed me what he used to control the afreet – a small piece of the Seal of Suleiman.”

  Suleiman is the Arab name for Solomon the Great, king of ancient Israel.

  “It is said that Suleiman was able to command many djinn to obey him,” Nasiri said musingly. “There is even an account of an afreet who strove to win Suleiman’s favor by fetching for him the throne of the Queen of Sheba, which he did in the twinkling of an eye.”

  “Hosni told me that the great Suleiman once imprisoned an evil djinn in a bottle whose seal was stamped with the image on his ring,” Tamwar said. “I do not know whether this is true, but I saw Hosni command the afreet by holding a small fragment of what he assured me was the King’s Seal.”

  “It must be very old,” Nasiri said. “
Three thousand years, or more. I am surprised that there are any still extant.”

  “The old man said that he knew of several more, in the hands of private collectors or museums.”

  “How large was this fragment?” Nasiri asked him.

  “About the size of a man’s thumbnail. But he said one must be a wizard in order to compel the afreet with it.”

  “We have a wizard,” Nasiri said. “Sharaf Uthman is well accomplished in the black arts. What we do not have, as I understand it, is that piece of Suleiman’s Seal, and I want to know why we do not have it!”

  Tamwar spread his hands apologetically. “It was my intent to obtain both the lamp and the Seal when Mujab and I returned to Hosni’s dwelling place. We overpowered the old man easily enough, and the lamp was exactly where it had been on my prior visit. But of the fragment of the Seal there was no sign.”

  “The old man must have hidden it. Did it occur to you to ask him?” Nasiri’s scorn could have curdled milk.

  “Of course we asked him, brother. And when he refused to tell us the location of the fragment, we stripped him and tied him splayed out on the top of his dining table. Then Mujab went to work with his knife.”

  “Mujab can be very persuasive,” Nasiri said. “Do you mean to say that he failed to break this old man?”

  “He never had the chance,” Tamwar said. “After perhaps five minutes of Mujab’s ministrations, Hosni expired.”

  “He died?” The scorn in Nasiri’s voice was replaced with disgust. “What happened – did that fool Mujab let his knife slip?”

  “No, brother. He was not even working near a vital organ when Hosni stopped breathing.” Tamwar shrugged. “Unless one considers the penis a vital organ. In my opinion, the old man suffered a heart attack. We attempted to revive him, but...” He made a helpless gesture.

  Nasiri seemed to be controlling himself with an effort. “You searched his dwelling?”

  “With great thoroughness. We found neither the fragment nor any sign of where it might be hidden.”

  “You said this fragment was quite small. He might have swallowed it, or stuck it up his ass. Did you check?”

  “Yes, brother, we did.” Tamwar made a face, as if certain unwelcome images were coming back to him. “Nothing.”

  Nasiri nodded. He spent perhaps half a minute staring into his empty cup before declaring, “We need more tea.”

  When the waiter had come and gone once again, Nasiri said, “You have done well, brother. I do not mean to suggest otherwise. You have delivered into our hands a weapon that will make the crusaders’ women weep.”

  Nasiri drank some tea then said, “The trigger of this grand weapon is a fragment of Suleiman’s Seal. The one that Hosni possessed is apparently lost to us.”

  Tamwar started to apologize, but Nasiri stopped him with a raised hand. “This simply means that it is up to us to find another.”

  Seven

  The present day

  THE FBI’S BEHAVIORAL Science Unit is located in the basement of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Perhaps unconsciously reflecting the problems with which the unit deals, the halls of Behavioral Science constitute a maze of corridors and passageways that seemingly follow neither rhyme nor reason. One of the more innocuous jokes about the building goes, “Whenever the rats in the Psych Department at UVA get too smart for the mazes, they send ’em over here.”

  Some of the office doors down in Behavioral Science have signs; others have name plates. But the majority of the offices, conference rooms and labs are identified only by a number. One such room is 0138, the office shared by Special Agents Colleen O’Donnell and Dale Fenton. The anonymous door looks no different from any of the others, except someone has applied to it a sticker about the size of a silver dollar that reads, “What would Mulder and Scully do?”

  Neither Fenton or O’Donnell had put the sticker there – but they hadn’t removed it, either.

  Fenton arrived for work a little after 9:00 to find his partner already in their office, absorbed in something displayed on the screen of her laptop. He said, “Hey, Colleen,” and received a distracted-sounding “Hey” in return.

  Fenton hung up his coat, sat down behind his cluttered desk, and looked again at his partner. “What’s so interesting?” he asked. “Something to do with work, or are you looking at lesbian porn movies again?”

  “I never watch that stuff at work anymore – I told you that,” she said absently. It was one of several running jokes they had between them.

  Colleen sat back in her chair, closed her eyes, and rubbed them gently. “Somebody hit the Oriental Institute a couple of nights ago.”

  “Oriental Institute? Sounds like someplace where they study kabuki theatre and karate,” Fenton said.

  “In this case, ‘oriental’ refers to the Middle East,” she said. “I guess it’s the original usage of the term. The Oriental Institute is a museum and research center attached to the University of Chicago.”

  “Okay, so person or persons unknown broke into some museum in Chicago. Why should we care?”

  “Because of what they stole and the way they stole it,” she told him.

  “I’m sure you’re gonna elucidate that for me, but before you do, tell me one thing – how do you even know about this? It doesn’t sound like something the Chicago field office would be investigating.”

  “They’re not, far as I know,” she said. “But the Chicago police are, and a member of the Sisterhood is fairly high up in the city government out there. She heard a few things about the break-in, got a copy of the Chicago P.D.’s file on the case, and sent it to me.”

  Colleen O’Donnell was a white witch.

  “If the Sisterhood’s interested, must be something spooky about this break-in,” Fenton said.

  “It’s no third-rate burglary,” she said. “Pace Richard Nixon.”

  Fenton grinned. “Sounds like our kind of case,” he said. “Maybe you’d better tell me about it.”

  Colleen glanced at her laptop’s screen. “One interesting feature was the way the thief or thieves gained access to the building.”

  “What’s interesting about that?”

  “Nobody can figure out how they did it,” she said. “No windows or doors smashed, no locks jimmied, no breach of the roof or basement.”

  Fenton nodded slowly. “You’re thinking it was magic.”

  “That’s one explanation,” she said. “Or it could just be a master thief who’s so good, he can get in and out without a trace. If that was the only interesting feature, I doubt that Greta would have bothered to contact me.”

  “Greta’s the Sister in Chicago.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So, what else about the case is bothering her?”

  “The thief or thieves ignored some very valuable artifacts, including a bunch of diamond-encrusted jewelry dating back to the Caliphate period. They headed straight for the” – she checked her computer monitor again – “Archaeological Iron Storage Research Project, which is located in the basement. Once again, they got past a couple of good locks and an expensive alarm system, without leaving any sign of how they did it.”

  Fenton frowned at her. “This Archaeological Storage Project –”

  “Archaeological Iron Storage Research Project,” she said.

  “Whatever. It doesn’t sound all that sexy, you know? Not like the kind of place somebody would go to a lot of trouble to rip off.”

  “I’d tend to agree with you,” Colleen said, “if I didn’t know that the thieves took just one item, and what that item was.”

  “Stop milking it for suspense, Colleen. What’d they get?”

  “The only thing missing was a single piece of metal,” she said. “Very, very old. Greta says there’s been some disagreement among the experts at the Institute as to what it is, but the majority opinion seems to be that it’s a fragment of the Seal of Solomon.”

  Fenton stood up slowly and walked the few paces to where Colleen was sitting. He we
nt behind her chair and bent over so that he could read the screen of her laptop along with her. For his benefit, she went back to the top of the report and slowly scrolled down. Then she showed him the long e-mail she’d received from her sister witch in Chicago.

  Fenton straightened up, his back creaking a little, and went over to lean against the door, next to the shelf containing Colleen’s collection of Buffy action figures.

  “That business about the Seal of Solomon kinda fits in with the security briefing we got a couple of weeks ago, doesn’t it?” he said.

  “Yeah.” She gave him a fleeting smile. “Kinda.”

  Fenton studied the tops of his highly-polished black wingtips for a few moments. “You didn’t say anything about those two security guards,” he said mildly.

  “I was getting to them,” Colleen said.

  “Throats cut, ear-to-ear. They probably bled out in less than a minute.” He shook his head slowly. “Seems to me that somebody who’s good enough with magic to get past all those security precautions should have been able to deal with a couple of guards without killing them.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Sounds like somebody enjoys using a knife a little too much. And there’s this.”

  She scrolled through the report some more, then stopped. “The blood spatter analysis. Their tech, some guy named Morgan, is pretty good. He figured out from the blood smears that both bodies had been moved slightly after death, as if they were being repositioned.”

  “Repositioned how? You mean he posed them?”

  “No, the only thing it accomplished, apparently, was to change the way they were lying on the floor. Morgan doesn’t know if it means anything, but when the perp was done, both bodies were facing east.”

  “East?” Fenton pulled at his right ear a couple of times. “You mean, toward the sunrise?”