“Help me do this,” he reminded Kirkwood, “and I’ll help you get Evelyn out, you have my word on that.”
Kirkwood didn’t seem mollified. “It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?”
“You want this too,” Corben reiterated. “Let’s find it. We can figure out the rest later.”
Kirkwood shrugged and nodded. Corben knew Kirkwood was right in that he didn’t have much of a choice. He also knew the lure of what they might find in that village was pretty hard to resist.
He freed Kirkwood’s wrist, and they headed into the village.
Nerva Zhori was a small, forgotten settlement, nestling safely in a cleft in the steep mountainside. Low stone walls, interrupted by the occasional rusty metal gate, lined both sides of the central, dusty alley; behind small courtyards littered with wheelbarrows and building material, low mudbrick houses squatted among scattered poplar trees, one side of them backing up against the rising mountain, the other looking down at the drop of the hill and the forest below. Mud was the material of choice in these mountains; even the reed roofs were covered by a thick blanket of dried earth. A few pickup trucks, old and weathered, dotted the lane. A row of ducks waddled across the lane while cows and horses grazed in wild fields behind the houses, picking at patches of tall grass in the otherwise barren soil. The harvests were long gone, and the harsh mountain winter was approaching.
As the two men advanced into the village, a few local faces stared at them. A couple of children and an old woman stopped what they were doing to watch them pass. They didn’t get many visitors up here, but the Yazidis were known for their mild, accepting manners and their hospitality. The two men acknowledged their hosts with small, friendly nods that were cautiously returned. Corben studied the faces of the villagers who eyed them somewhat nervously, then picked out a young boy.
“Do you speak English?” he asked.
The youth shook his head.
“Aawiz itkallam maa il mokhtar”—I need to talk to the chief—Corben told him, hoping the boy understood some Arabic. The Yazidis were Kurds and spoke the northern, Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. He assisted the translation by reaching out to the boy’s hand and stuffing a hundred-dollar bill in it, reiterating, “Mokhtar.”
The youth hesitated, then nodded apprehensively. He stuffed the bill in the back pocket of his pants, then gestured for them to follow him.
Corben gave Kirkwood a triumphant nod and followed their local guide.
A BURNING SENSATION blazed across Mia’s back and legs as the silent convoy snaked its way up the winding trail. They’d mounted the mules hours earlier, and despite trudging on without a respite, she didn’t feel they were getting any closer.
They’d come across rifle-bearing shepherds, guarding their flocks of sheep and goats from roaming packs of wolves and hyenas—the thought of which only added to her discomfort—and armed smugglers who led cigarette-laden donkeys up the mountain, acknowledging each other’s presence with grunts and vigilant, silent stares.
The mountains were riddled with trails, and it was impossible for the authorities on either side to cover all of them, so they had simply given up. The border was porous, but getting across required a level of commitment and fitness that Mia was only just beginning to understand.
The landscape around them was markedly different from the flat wastelands they’d left behind. Deep valleys filled with rushing water cleaved through the dramatic ranges that towered above them. Pistachio forests and clusters of tall poplars dotted the otherwise inhospitable terrain, all of it crisscrossed by a maze of hidden paths.
“How much further?” Mia asked.
Abu Barzan conveyed her question to one of his men, then replied, “One hour. Maybe more.”
Mia breathed out despondently, then steeled herself and straightened up. She soldiered on, driven by the anger at being deceived, the need to find out the truth about her father, and the desperate need to rescue her mother.
THE BOY LED CORBEN and Kirkwood past a battered Toyota pickup and into a dusty front yard. The low house that nestled against the hill was no different from any of the others. Not exactly Gracie Mansion, Corben mused, as he followed the boy up to the front door.
The boy pushed it open and announced their presence. A gruff voice bellowed out from deeper in the house. The boy took off his shoes and placed them alongside other, tattered shoes. Corben followed suit, as did Kirkwood.
Corben cast a glance across the house as they made their way past a small kitchen and through a doorway into a low-ceiling corridor. His eyes dropped to the floor as he reached the door to another room, and as he stepped in, something that didn’t fit registered at the threshold of his consciousness. Faint traces of bootprints were on the tiled floor just inside the room. He tensed up subconsciously, but it was too late. A shaft of hard steel was prodding him in the back.
Before he could turn, he spotted the slim, familiar figure, sitting cross-legged in the faint light, his silvery hair slicked back, watching him with ice-cold, detached eyes. He was seated on the floor—there was no furniture in the room, nothing but cushions scattered around its perimeter—and had his small medical bag by his side. He still had the needle in his hand. Beside him was a heavily armed bruiser whose thick arms were clasped on the shoulders of a terrified-looking local. Corben guessed it had to be the mokhtar. The man was sweating profusely and rubbing his forearm.
The rest of the room quickly fell into focus. A TV flickered silently in a corner. A small fire crackled in the tin fireplace. Next to it, three heavily armed men held a woman and four children—a boy in his late teens, and three girls—at gunpoint.
“Glad you could join us,” the hakeem announced drily. “We’ve just been having the most illuminating chat.”
Chapter 64
C orben spun around quickly, his arms lashing out to grab the gun digging into his back, but he wasn’t quick enough. His opponent swung his arms up with lightning speed, hammering Corben with the butt of his Kalashnikov and catching him squarely in the jaw. Corben thudded to the ground, his skull seared with agony.
His eyes struggling to regain focus, he turned to see the hakeem push himself to his feet and take a couple of steps towards him. Curiously, the man didn’t seem interested in Corben. He bypassed him to home in on Kirkwood.
“So this is our mysterious buyer,” he intoned, his eyes moving over Kirkwood’s face with undisguised fascination. “And you are…?” He left the question hanging.
Kirkwood just stood there and watched him, without replying.
The hakeem gave a brief chortle, then, without taking his eyes off him, raised the needle he was holding and said to Corben, “Would you be so kind as to educate our guest as to my persuasive powers?”
Corben groaned as he lifted himself off the ground. “Tell him what he wants to know,” he complied grudgingly. “Believe me, it’ll save you some pain.”
The hakeem’s eyes remained locked on Kirkwood, his expression now tinged with smugness.
Kirkwood looked at the man the hakeem had been working on. The mokhtar, who was dressed in traditional, local garb, seemed to be drowning in pain and, Kirkwood somehow thought, in shame. “Kirkwood. Bill Kirkwood,” he flatly informed the man circling him.
“Any other names you’d care to add to that?” the hakeem teased. “No?” He paused, studying his prey. “Very well. We’ll leave that for now.” A puzzled look played across his face. “I don’t see the book anywhere. Where is it?”
“I don’t have it,” Kirkwood replied crisply.
The hakeem arched a skeptical eyebrow.
“He doesn’t have it,” Corben interjected. “He gave it to Evelyn Bishop’s daughter. She’s probably being escorted to our embassy by now.”
The hakeem brooded over the information, then shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. It didn’t contain the formula anyway, did it? I mean, you said so yourself. And there was no reason for you to lie.” He scrutinized Kirkwood, then added, “Not to Miss Bi
shop. You wouldn’t lie to her, now, would you?
Kirkwood felt his blood turn to ice. He realized the hakeem must have been listening in. His mind raced to remember exactly what he had said in that room.
“And yet, you still rushed here,” the hakeem continued. “To speak with this man.” He aimed an elegant finger at his seated victim. “What were you hoping to find out from him?”
Kirkwood stayed quiet.
“Perhaps you were hoping to find out what happened to your ancestor? And, with a bit of luck, find out what he discovered?” The hakeem moved to the window and stared out. “Fascinating man, your ancestor. A man of many talents. And many names,” he mocked. “Sebastian Guerreiro. The Marquis of Montferrat. The Comte de St. Germain. Sebastian Botelho. And those are just the ones we know about. But then, I suppose, he lived a very full life, didn’t he?”
Each of the names dropped into Kirkwood’s stomach like a pallet of bricks. There was no point in dissembling. The man was clearly well-informed. “How do you know all this?”
“Well, if you know anything about your ancestor,” the hakeem replied haughtily, “you’re bound to have across a mention of one of mine. Perhaps the name rings a bell. Raimondo di Sangro?”
The bricks had just turned to acid.
Kirkwood knew the name well.
The hakeem edged right up to Kirkwood, his eyes brimming with grim interest. “Brings a whole new meaning to the term full circle, don’t you think?”
His expression grew more serious. “I’ll save us all some time. As I said, our gracious host and I”—the hakeem nodded dismissively at the mokhtar —“were having a lovely little chat just now. And if anything, it confirmed to me that generational memories run deep in remote places like this.” He pointed to the walls of the room.
Kirkwood looked around the room and saw what he meant. Faded portraits of the mokhtar’s ancestors loomed down from behind weathered glass. They held a place of honor on the main wall of the room.
“People don’t have video games and cable television to keep them entertained,” the hakeem went on. “Instead, they gather around fireplaces and tell each other stories, passing on their life experiences. And the Yazidis, in particular, have a phenomenally strong oral tradition, one that was perhaps founded by necessity, given that their most sacred writings are gone.” The Yazidis’ holy book, the Mashaf Rash—the Black Book—was long lost. The common belief among them was that it was taken by the British, and that it was currently sequestered in a museum somewhere in England. In its stead, they had a tradition of talkers, who could recite the entire lost book from memory. “And it seems that this dear man’s grandfather once told him about a man who came down from the mountain, a sheikh no less. The man was delirious with a horrible fever—typhoid or cholera would be my guess—and in his final hours, he spoke in many different languages, languages they’d never heard. He created something of a stir, which is understandable.”
“He died here?” Kirkwood asked.
“So it would seem,” the hakeem confirmed sardonically. “We were about to go out and have a look at his grave. You want to see it?”
Chapter 65
Lisbon, Portugal—March 1765
S ebastian rode away from the docks with a feeling of profound contentment. On clear, golden evenings like this, Lisbon was truly a magnificent city, and he was glad to be back.
It had been far too long.
He’d fretted about moving back to the country, let alone the city, of his birth, but the choice had proven fortuitous. Like the city, he was experiencing a rebirth, a reinvention that was—for both—a marked improvement over their previous incarnations.
The city had been devastated by a massive earthquake on the morning of November 1, 1755, on All Saints’ Day. The churches were crowded with worshippers honoring the dead when the first shock struck. A second jolt followed forty minutes later. The waters of the Tagus River rose and thundered through the city, wiping out most of it. Fires took care of the rest. By the end of that day, the city was a smoldering wasteland. Over thirty thousand of its citizens were dead, most of the rest homeless.
The Marques de Pombal, the effective ruler of Portugal, handled the disaster with exemplary care and efficiency. Shelters and hospitals were hastily improvised, and troops were summoned to deliver supplies to the needy. He also drafted visionary architects, who quickly refashioned the old, medieval city into a stunning European capital.
The city’s rebirth wasn’t just physical. Pombal’s enhanced prestige, due to his handling of the disaster, allowed him to rid the country of influences he had long fought against. Of particular relevance to Sebastian was that Pombal had dissolved the Jesuit order, expelled its members, and turned its headquarters into a hospital. The Palace of the Inquisition, flattened by the earthquake, was never rebuilt.
Sebastian and Thérésia had arrived in Lisbon in the midst of the reconstruction. The lack of records and the infectious optimism he found there both suited him well. Anyone who knew him from his days as an inquisitor was long since dead. And with the expulsion of the Jesuits, any lingering ghosts from his darkest days were finally swept away.
And so the Comte de St. Germain had retaken the first name his parents had bestowed on him, Sebastian. As a precaution, he’d given up his original surname, electing to use his mother’s surname instead, Botelho. He’d invested in a small sugar refinery in the Alfama district, converting the raw cane from the colonies in Brazil into the kitchen staple that he exported across Europe. Sebastian’s business was flourishing, as was his home. He’d married Thérésia in a small ceremony that was held in a church in Tomar, and their son, Miguel, was born two years later.
He’d also banished another lingering ghost from his past the day he and Thérésia had left Paris together.
Her radiant face drifted into his mind as he rode past the arcaded buildings of Commerce Square and headed home. The day’s business had been successful, the contract satisfactorily concluded. He nudged his horse into a full gallop, relishing the brisk, salty air as he skirted the burnished waters of the Mar de Palha—the inland “sea of straw”—before heading north into the low, rolling hills that hugged the city.
An intangible sense of dread ambushed him the minute he was told that Miguel was still out riding with Thérésia. He’d recently bought him his first pony, and Thérésia enjoyed putting their son astride its small saddle and walking him around the estate’s lake. Sebastian knew they never stayed out this late, not at this time of year, not when the sun was already melting into the surrounding hills and surrendering to the rapidly encroaching chill of night.
He didn’t bother with his horse and headed down the sloping meadow, his strides gathering pace until he was tearing through the olive and lemon groves. His heart froze as he burst out from the trees and spotted the pony, grazing innocuously and very much alone. He hurried over to it, scanning the edge of the lake with panicked eyes, and spotted Thérésia, lying prone on the ground, a hundred yards farther down the shore. Miguel was nearby on a rocky outcropping, sitting next to a man whose brooding deportment Sebastian recognized even from that distance.
The man pushed himself to his feet, his fingers firmly clasped around the boy’s little hand, as Sebastian rushed to Thérésia’s aide. Mercifully, she was still breathing. He couldn’t see any blood, any cuts or wounds. She was just dazed. Sebastian guessed di Sangro must have struck her and knocked her down before wresting control of their son.
“Miguel,” she muttered worriedly as she stirred at Sebastian’s touch.
He nodded to her as he flung off his overcoat and tucked it under her head before standing up to face his tormentor.
Di Sangro’s face and posture bore witness to the decade of grief and frustration that he’d lived through since their last encounter in Paris. His shoulders were drooped, his hair now a shock of gray, his skin shriveled and pallid. The tall, lithe, ravenous principe of Naples was gone. In his place stood his decaying shell, frittered away by t
ime and by his own obsession. Only the seething hunger in his eyes hadn’t dimmed.
“Let go of the boy,” Sebastian raged.
Di Sangro held firm. “You owe me, marquese. Occhio per occhio, dente per dente.” An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. He pulled out a dagger from under his belt and held it close to the boy’s cheek.
Sebastian understood. Di Sangro’s son hadn’t survived the wound he’d inflicted on him that night on the Île de la Cité.
“You came after me,” Sebastian said fiercely as he stabbed a finger at the prince, trying to keep his anger in check and failing. “You put him in danger.”
“Just as you put your own son in danger by refusing me,” di Sangro shot back.
Sebastian took a step forward, but di Sangro quickly tightened his grip on the boy and nudged the blade against his neck.
“Tranquillo, marquese,” he warned him. “That’s far enough.”
Sebastian stopped and raised his open hands in a calming gesture. “I’m sorry about your son,” he said with genuine regret, keeping his eyes fixed on di Sangro. “Let him go. It’s me you want.”
“I have no use for you,” di Sangro rasped angrily. “I only want what you know. Tell me the truth now and perhaps I just might consider it soldi di sangue.” Blood money. “Perhaps that way,” he added ruefully, “my son won’t have died in vain.”
“You still believe I have what you seek,” Sebastian said calmingly, keeping his hands out in front of him, taking careful, measured steps towards the prince.
“I know you do—” di Sangro started, then his voice suddenly wavered. Sebastian was now five yards or so from him, and with each step, something changed in the prince’s expression. Confusion flickered across his weary eyes as he scrutinized Sebastian’s face.
His mouth dropped slightly. “You’ve…you’ve aged?” he asked, loosening his grip on the boy slightly, his gaze still fixated on Sebastian.
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