The man stood and made the sign of the zero over his heart with his thumb and forefinger.
“Nothing will prevail,” he said.
“The Cipher does not sleep,” replied Colonel Battersea, returning the salute.
The man produced a black revolver and handed it over discreetly. “I thought you might be wanting a replacement for your Webley,” he said with an easy smile. “Try not to lose it this time.”
Maxine tugged on her grandfather’s sleeve. “Grandpa,” she said, whispering behind her hand, “who is he?”
“Pardon me, my dear,” he replied. “Sufjin, let me introduce you to my grandchildren—Maxine Campbell and William Battersea.”
“Tasharrafna,” said the man, addressing the cousins with a low bow. “I believe we met once before. If the story the colonel has told me on the telephone is to be believed, the Sons of the Cipher owe you both a debt of gratitude.”
The cousins blushed, suddenly bashful.
“Sufjin is an old friend,” said Grandpa. “Saved my life on more than one occasion and won’t let me forget it, the scoundrel.”
“Ah, effendi,” said the Cafara, “your gray head would forget your own name if you did not have me to remind you.”
That evening Sufjin joined the Battersea family for supper on the back porch of the inn, overlooking the lake. The widow who owned the lodge, a woman who had long ago lost her sense of humor but not her prodigious sense of hospitality, brought fried catfish and corn bread and buttered turnips and beans with bacon until William and Maxine were set to burst, and then, on top of all the rest, she brought a banana cream pie, and they found room for that, too.
At last, tipping his chair back from the table, Grandpa looked squarely at the cousins. “Now that you’ve been sufficiently reprovisioned,” he said, casually plying his molars with a toothpick, “perhaps we might hear about your adventures in a bit more detail.”
And so they told it all, start to finish—Cleopatra’s Needle and their encounter with Nura under the bushes, and the shoot-out in Binny Benedetti’s hideout, and the begoggled Pigeon, and the theft of the Rafiq’s keys. And if in the telling the cousins painted themselves in a slightly pluckier, more intrepid light than they had displayed in the midst of it all, then perhaps they might be forgiven—the experience had already begun to assume a romantic luster in their imaginations even as the events faded into memory.
Sufjin and Colonel Battersea listened with inscrutable expressions, only periodically remembering to blink, until Maxine and William paused at last. Grandpa shook his head and let out a chuckle that swelled into a deep, ringing guffaw.
“What a fool I’ve been!” he said. “Sending you to dodge bullets and wander about in darkened cemeteries. It seems you’ve squeezed more peril into the last three days than most people manage in a lifetime. Are you sure you didn’t leave anything out?”
“There is one thing,” said William. “The brawl in the temple. I’ve never seen anything like it. You were amazing. You didn’t tell us you knew how to handle a sword like that.”
Grandpa chuckled and gave him a wink. “I did say I had a few secrets, didn’t I?”
He gingerly lifted his arm, which was bandaged now and wrapped in a sling. “The truth is, I’m getting old, my boy,” he said. “Past my prime. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
“Do not believe a word of it,” said Sufjin. “Where I am from, we say, ‘Old dogs know the most tricks’—and you will find that your grandfather has learned more than a few over the years. He is as stubborn as a donkey, most assuredly, but a little smarter, and there is no one you would rather have at your side when you are in a scrape.
“Beyond that,” he added, looking over the old colonel’s ragged appearance, “Horatius Battersea is the only man I know capable of holding off a temple full of Hashashin in dress shoes and a flannel suit.”
The sun was buried now behind the horizon, and the still lake was a perfect mirror beneath a dark crown of trees silhouetted against the day’s last light. The two men and the two young cousins sat with full stomachs and heavy thoughts, while up in the eaves of the porch a gray spider slipped down a thread of silk and dangled above them, twisting slowly. No one spoke, but they all lifted their eyes, and as they watched, the spider began to spin.
Cobwebs are a common enough thing, of course, found in barns and tree branches and dusty attics everywhere, but the making—the web craft—is a mostly private affair, seldom witnessed and often overlooked. On this evening, however, four pairs of eyes watched, transfixed, as the spider went about her work.
She moved with grace and dexterity against the bluing sky, never hesitating, never perplexed by any riddle of engineering or architecture, as she crossed and recrossed her handiwork, tracing a memory.
“Who taught you how, little one?” murmured Grandpa as he watched. “When did God whisper the steps in your ear?”
Beside him Maxine stirred. Balling her fists, she snatched a napkin from the table and swept the web away.
“Hey, what’d you do that for?” said William.
Grandpa sat forward in his chair and frowned. “I was wondering the same thing.”
Maxine sniffed and turned her back on them. “What’s the difference?” she snapped. “It was just an ugly old spider.”
“I thought it was rather charming,” said Sufjin, but Maxine was too distraught to hear.
“Grandpa, you don’t really believe God cares about spiders, do you?” she said, looking back at him with a kind of hopeless desperation.
“Maxine, come here,” he said, and she went to him and he held her. “What is it, my dear?”
The tears came suddenly, and between her sobs she blurted out, “Why did it have to be Nura? When I saw her fall from the horse, I begged for God to save her.”
Grandpa sighed, comprehending now, fathoming her emotion, but he hugged her close and let her cry.
“I understand, my dear,” he said. “I know something of loss myself.”
“We promised Nura we wouldn’t leave without her,” Maxine said. “But in the end we just let her go. We didn’t do a thing to save her.”
“There are circumstances in life beyond our control, Maxine. Monsters that we never knew existed. What happened to Nura was not your fault.”
But Maxine shook her head with a sob. “No,” she said. “We left her there alone, and now we’ve lost her.”
“You haven’t lost her, Blossom,” said Grandpa. “You carry her in your heart.”
Maxine glanced up at him, taken aback. “Why—why did you call me that?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, my dear. It’s a name I used to call your mother when she was very small. An old habit, I suppose.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “Now I know where she got it. For just a second it felt like she was here.”
Grandpa nodded and took her hand in his. “The answer to your question is yes, my dear,” he said. “Yes, God cares about spiders, and sparrows…and he cares about Nura. It is too early to give up on the young girl, I believe. While hope remains, hold fast.”
Maxine sniffled and wiped her eyes, and her expression changed.
“She’s not just any young girl, is she, Grandpa?”
Colonel Battersea hesitated, reading his granddaughter’s face. “No, my dear. She’s not,” he said at last. “Why do you ask?”
“Just before she left us, she said, ‘You are my family.’ She called us flesh and blood.”
“She wasn’t talking sense,” William said. “She was practically hysterical.”
“Hysterical?” replied Grandpa. “Perhaps. Though I believe you know perfectly well she spoke the truth.”
Maxine shook her head. “But how? How can it be?” she stammered. “She talks with an accent, and her skin is dark—”
“Surely you’re not basing your judgment on the color of her skin? It has nothing to say about the question. It’s neither here nor there.”
“More riddles,” said
William with frustration.
Grandpa nodded wearily. “As the two of you are learning, I have many secrets,” he replied. “Not all of them are entirely admirable.”
He paused, as if he needed to work up the courage for what came next. Sufjin looked away uncomfortably, and Grandpa continued:
“Your parents—your mother, Maxine, and William, your father—they are not my only children. I have an older son, whom I have not seen these twenty years and more. The last I knew, he was living somewhere in Turkey or Syria, with a wife of Eastern descent.”
Maxine backed away from Grandpa and slumped in her chair, her head swimming, and William squinted as if he were working out a difficult sum. “So that means…,” he said, “that means Nura—”
“Nura is our cousin,” Maxine murmured, “your granddaughter.”
“Yes,” said Grandpa. “Though I assure you I knew nothing of her existence until last night.”
Maxine took off her mother’s hat and found the yellowed photo of the teenage boy with the suitcase, standing on the steps of Battersea Manor. She handed it to Grandpa.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, startled.
“I found it in the nursery closet, back at the mansion.”
Grandpa stared at the photo, deeply affected. “This was my son,” he said at last. “Your uncle David.”
“But our parents never even mentioned him,” said William with a puzzled expression.
“No, I’m not surprised.”
“ ‘Keep the secret, never tell…,’ ” Maxine muttered, her thoughts returning to the echoing hallways of Battersea Manor.
“Eh, what’s that?” asked Grandpa.
“I don’t know, really,” she answered. “Just something I saw scratched inside the closet where I found the photo. ‘Keep the secret, never tell, unless you want your throat to swell.’ ”
Grandpa’s shoulders sagged as if the scrap of rhyme had saddled him with a heavy burden.
“My son and I had a falling-out, as fathers and sons sometimes do. He ran away and swore never to return. From that day forward I did not permit David’s name to be mentioned in our house. It was a tyrannical thing to do, but then again, playing the tyrant was not an entirely unknown role to me.”
“You made them pretend he never existed?” exclaimed Maxine. “How horrible!”
“Horrible?” said Grandpa. “Yes, I suppose that’s true enough. My bitterness was not your mother’s, Maxine, or your father’s, William, but I managed to force my own misery upon them. Their brother’s memory became a dark secret, the stuff of superstition and sinister nursery rhymes.”
“Well, I guess when they were all grown up and out of your house, they could have talked about him,” William said.
“Sometimes the burdens we lay on others’ shoulders remain long after they are free to drop them, my boy. I’m afraid that is your parents’ case. I hope a day will come when they might forgive their stubborn father and speak openly of David and remember him fondly.”
Grandpa eyed his bewildered grandchildren, and his brow was creased and careworn.
“Beyond that,” he said, “I hope against hope that a day will come when they may look upon his face again. If it is in my power, I would see it happen.”
The cousins settled into soft pillows that night, under clean, cool sheets and chenille spreads, but before sleep took them, Grandpa entered the room. He set the Eye of Midnight on the nightstand and pulled a chair between their beds.
“The time has come to talk about what happens next,” he said. “I find myself, as the saying goes, on the horns of a dilemma. The fact is, we cannot stay here, any of us, as we are all in grave danger.
“Thanks to the two of you, and to Nura, the threat of the Hashashin on these shores is crippled now. The Rafiq is dead, and the fida’i are scattered; the hidden lair is reduced to a charred ruin, and the Old Man’s sinister plot lies in shambles. But even though the danger to the city has passed, our own peril is still very real. Our enemy knows that we possess the mirror he covets, and now he grows desperate, and his killers will no longer proceed with caution. The Old Man will send more of his fida’i, and he will strike down anyone who stands between him and his treasure, though he risks much in doing so in a far land of whose customs and laws he knows little.”
“So what can we do?” Maxine asked bleakly.
Grandpa hesitated. “I intend to return the Eye of Midnight to the Old Man,” he said.
“What?” cried William.
“After all that?” said Maxine. “After everything we’ve been through? You’d just hand it over to the Hashashin without a fight?”
“Hand it over? Not exactly. I plan to take it to the Old Man in person. I will go to his fortress in the desert and bring his precious trophy to him. It is of no worth to me, but he has something there that I value very much.”
“Uncle David,” said William.
Grandpa nodded gravely. “The Old Man’s fortress is far from here, across three seas,” he said. “Two of water, one of sand. It will be heavy work.”
“And what will you do with us?” asked Maxine.
“I haven’t decided,” said Grandpa slowly. “I could put you on a train back to your homes tomorrow. You could stay with neighbors, perhaps.” His eyes dropped and he smoothed the crease of his trousers with his forefinger. “Perhaps you would be safe there,” he added, “if the Hashashin believed you no longer had the mirror.”
“You wouldn’t just leave us, would you?” said Maxine, begging him with her eyes.
Grandpa didn’t answer but sat silent with his thoughts.
“What makes you think he’ll be so eager to trade?” she asked. “Out there in the desert surrounded by all his killers, why will he bargain civilly with you?”
“Yes, well, this is a matter which may require some finesse,” Grandpa admitted, “or perhaps the opposite of finesse, whatever that may be. My plan is still being formulated and by the nature of the situation must be somewhat extemporaneous.”
The cousins looked skeptical.
“Come, come!” he said with an injured scowl. “I’m not exactly a novice in these matters. I know the desert like the back of my hand. I understand every subtlety of the Hashashin mind. I speak their language and dialects fluently. Rest assured, I am equal to the challenge.”
It seemed there was nothing more to discuss. Grandpa was clearly resolved.
“So when are you leaving?” asked William at last.
“The ship sails day after tomorrow.”
“Don’t go,” whispered Maxine.
“Sleep now,” said Grandpa, rising from his chair. “We can worry about tomorrow when it comes.”
The lights went out, the door closed behind him, and William and Maxine were alone. They were beyond tired, in mind and body, but their thoughts were churning, and despite their exhaustion, they found sleep impossible. A low murmur settled over the darkened room: the faucet dripping in the bath, a chorus of lovesick crickets outside their window, and in the next room a confidential conversation not quite loud enough to decipher.
Something in the tone of Grandpa’s and Sufjin’s voices lured William from his bed. He took a glass from the bedside table, gulped down the contents, and crept across the room. Warily he pressed the glass to the door and leaned against it. Maxine, disapproving greatly, found her own glass and did the same. The discussion in the next room became audible.
“Do you hear yourself?” said Sufjin. “It is impossible. They barely survived the city.”
“They were alone. This would be different. They would be under my supervision.”
“Ah yes, well, we may all rest easy then.”
“Easy? Not easy, perhaps. Cautiously optimistic.”
There was a long silence.
“And what do you suppose their parents would have to say about it?”
“The parents, as you well know, are unavailable for consultation.”
“Yes, but perhaps we might make some guess
regarding their opinion.”
“If pressed on the point, their parents would undoubtedly want the children wherever they are safest.”
“And that would be halfway around the world in the middle of the desert, to your way of thinking? The influence of the Hashashin on these shores is a tithe of what you will find across the Mediterranean. You know that better than I.”
“The strength of the Cafara is greater there as well. Here they would be unprotected. Vulnerable.”
“Then why go? Stay and protect the children. Surely this errand can wait a few weeks.”
Silence again.
“You know the answer. What was lost has been found, what I have squandered lies hostage beneath the fortress of Alamut in the Dungeons of Paradise, and now the old jackal loses patience. I must not arrive too late and miss my only chance to mend what I have broken.”
William’s ear had started to ache from leaning against the water glass. As he shifted his weight the floorboards made a faint creak beneath him. The voices in the next room halted, and the cousins caught their breath and stood stock-still. Before there was even a moment to dive back to their beds, the knob turned and the door sprang open, and William and Maxine sprawled out onto the floor.
“Eavesdropping is thirsty work,” said Grandpa. “May I refill your glasses?”
The cousins picked themselves up, and Grandpa folded his arms across his chest. “What did you hear?”
“Not much, really,” said William.
“All of it, then, eh?”
They gave him a guilty nod.
“I guessed as much,” said Grandpa. He studied them thoughtfully. “So how about it?”
Sufjin shook his head in reproach and turned toward the window.
“How about what?” asked William.
“Are you coming along?” said Grandpa. “I’m offering you the chance to join me on my journey. It seems to me the wisest course. So I ask you again, how about it?”
William cleared his throat uncomfortably. “It sounds pretty dangerous,” he said finally.
“Possibly. Though no more dangerous than the alternatives, I suspect. If you stay behind, there is a strong chance the Hashashin will find you eventually, wherever you may be. Persistence is one of their stronger suits. They know your value to me and will use you as pawns to get what they want. And once you have served their purposes…”
The Eye of Midnight Page 16
