“Enough! Do not presume to tell me how to lead my men.”
“Then do not drain my treasury. I have had to expand the border patrols to keep out the Franks.”
“Gold.” Gamal made it sound dirty. “That is what you’re here for. You will have your taxes soon enough. There was no need for this interruption.”
Odo finally got around to his purpose here. “Your taxes have doubled.”
The chieftain’s eyes narrowed, but he kept his anger in check. He knew, and knew that Odo knew, the protection of Aquitania was essential to his operations. “Then your taxes will take that much more effort to gather. Leave me so that I can tend to it. I have important work to do in Iberia, and much to make ready before I go.” Gamal slammed his office door, leaving Odo outside with the puzzled sentries.
All in all, the count thought, Gamal took that very well.
Abdul Faisel called out in Arabic. Warriors came in and untied Harry and Terrence. Before any feeling could return to their numb hands, each was bound to his chair. Loops of rope around their chests pinned their arms to their sides at the elbows.
They went through a surreal round of introductions—Faisel insisting upon being called Gamal—after which they were offered dates and hot, sweetened milk. “It is the traditional Bedouin fare of hospitality, and the least that I can do for men as brave as you obviously are.”
“I could use a cold Coke,” Harry said. He nibbled on a date, hampered by his ropes.
Faisel laughed. “If I had one, I would not waste it on you.”
“So, what do you propose to do with us?” Harry asked.
“You obviously came back after me. That makes you a threat to my plans. What would you expect me to do?”
“What are your plans?” Beside him, Terrence sighed.
Faisel popped a date into his mouth. He chewed leisurely before answering. “There’s no harm in telling you. You won’t live to leave this room.
“According to history as we know it, a climactic battle is coming, a battle to decide whether Christians or Moslems will rule Europe. In our history, you Christians won that battle.
“This time, things will be different. This time, the armies of Christendom will molder in the field like so much garbage. Your whole, evil, Western civilization shall be wiped out, shall never even come to pass. This time, Allah shall prevail.
“You see, I brought an atomic bomb back with me.”
Gamal watched the color drain from the prisoners’ faces, as though their worst nightmares were being realized—as, perhaps, they were. The American’s flagon fell from suddenly nerveless fingers to clank noisily on the terrazzo floor.
Good, they understood. “Would you care for your cup back? There is more milk.”
Ambling recovered first. “At least I understand your alias. Gamal Abdul, as in Nasser of Egypt. I wish you all the success that he had. The Israelis had so much fun taking the Sinai from him in ’56, that they gave it back just for the joy of retaking it. The second time, they chewed up his army in just six days.”
Gamal squeezed his lips in anger. “In your situation, I would not poke fun.”
Ambling ignored the warning. “Now Salah-ad-Din, there was a warrior. Vanquisher of Richard Coeur de Lion, the Lion-Hearted. Liberator of Jerusalem. He, indeed, is a fine role model for a champion of Islam.”
“Indeed.”
Then Terrence sneered. “Saladin was honorable. In the highest praise of the time, the very Crusaders he defeated called him chivalrous. Once beaten, he accepted their paroles and returned them for ransom. What you propose goes beyond even genocide.
“May the spirit of Salah-ad-Din, who now shall never be, curse you, and your pig-kissing mother, and the day of your birth.”
Gamal screamed with inarticulate rage, his head beating like a drum. The sentries burst in. They stood, transfixed, their eyes round. With a shaky hand he unsheathed his scimitar. It whistled toward Ambling’s neck—
But beheading was too quick and painless.
Gamal twisted the sword just before it struck. The flat of the blade smacked against Ambling’s head. Blood spurted from a large gash.
Gamal’s mind whirled. What would be horrible enough? Anything appropriately slowwww must await his return from Iberia. He turned to his shocked sentries. “Remove these Firanji swine from my sight. Guard them well.
“They will learn, before the end, to beg for the mercy of death.”
A final brutal shove crashed Terrence into the back wall of the basement storage room. He just barely twisted enough to take the punishing blow on his shoulder.
Harry fell to the floor nearby, a bit less clumsily. Of course, Harry had not been slapped on the head with a heavy sword.
The ringing in Terrence’s ears almost masked the clanging finality with which the door slammed shut. He sat up, groaning. “All things considered, I think that went rather well.”
“What!?”
Terrence’s stomach heaved. Sour-smelling milk and bits of date splashed on the stone floor. The wrenching spasms made the throbbing in his head even worse. He inventoried his complaints: headache, weakness, ringing in the ears, and nausea. A concussion, he presumed.
He repeated, “I said, ‘That went rather well.’ ”
Their cell contained a pitcher of water. Harry dipped his handkerchief in it, then offered the damp cloth to Terrence. “What are you talking about?”
“Ten minutes ago, we weren’t going to live to leave Faisel’s office. Now we’re safe till he returns from Spain. That’s one hell of an improvement.” Despite everything, he laughed at Harry’s bewildered expression. “Learn to eavesdrop. You never know when you’ll hear something useful.”
“You goaded Faisel on purpose?”
Terrence lay back gingerly on the cold floor. The damp cloth made his head feel marginally better. “Yes. Now, are you ready to hear the rest of my cunning plan?”
“Somehow, Terrence, I don’t think I’m going to like this.”
“I don’t see why not—this is your turn to shine. You see, this is where we escape using the superweapon you build out of chewing gum and baling wire.”
CHICAGO, 2009
The packers worked swiftly, crating up dozens of Julia’s prized paintings. A lifetime’s work to be sold . . . but what choice did she have with Harry’s income gone?
Harry’s income. Odd, but she still could not think of Harry as being gone. Away, yes, oh so very far away. He had not been found in the ruins of the rebuilt Rothschild Institute, so he—and Terrence—must somehow have followed Faisel. But surely Harry wasn’t gone.
Two of the packers were wrestling her “self-portrait” into a large box. Harry had insisted on keeping it over their mantel, a keepsake of their first meeting. Even now, she had to smile. It was a joke, for God’s sake, something for a stupid class. The idiot teacher had given her an A.
She felt every blow as the workers pounded the nails into the crate. “I’ve changed my mind. That one stays.” Grumbling, they took a pry bar to reopen the case.
That hideous painting was too much of her past, their past, to ever let go. Her mind flitted about, recalling the moments of their life together.
Like their first trip together to France . . .
THE VOSGES MOUNTAINS, 1988
Julia prodded the bushes with the fallen branch she had taken to using as a walking stick. “I tell you, the sounds I heard came from back here. You know, like wind whistling through a constriction. Maybe there’s a cave behind the bushes.”
Her new groom crowded behind her. She thought, momentarily, that he was peering over her shoulder. Uh-uh: He was groping her. Again.
“Quit that.”
“This is our honeymoon. Certain things are traditional.”
She patted his hand lovingly, then brushed it off. “This is romantic, too. Imagine if we found ou
r own cave.” She kept poking through the greenery with her stick. The unseen end went tap, tap, tap against the overgrown rocky escarpment.
Until one thrust met only air. Surprised, she let the branch slide out of her grasp. It clattered onto an unseen rocky surface. “There is a cave back there!”
“Great!” Harry wormed by her. He used his broad male shoulders (now quit that, Julia!) to hold aside the dense undergrowth. “See anything now?”
She squatted for a better look, and there it was. The dark opening beckoned her onward. Who knew what wonders waited inside?
Days earlier they had visited the museum at Lascaux, the Cro-Magnon cave renowned for its wall art. The cave itself was closed to the public, even to adoring artists. She had spent hours in the museum admiring photographs of the real paintings. After all the uncounted centuries, the pigments remained rich and earthy.
What she wouldn’t give to crawl through those dark passages, to see in situ the actual renderings of Stone Age hunters and prey. To commune with those who might have been mankind’s first artists.
The notion made her spine tingle.
The cave at Lascaux had been lost for millennia. A sign at the museum said that the cave had been rediscovered in 1940 when boys rescued their dog, who had fallen through a hidden opening to the caverns.
Maybe their cave would yield as fabulous a treasure. Julia grabbed a flashlight from her backpack and plunged ahead.
“Wait, dammit. There could be wild animals in there. I promised always to take care of you, but you don’t make it easy.” Harry quickly joined her with their camp lantern.
Beyond its two-foot-tall entrance, the cave widened into a broad, flat—and featureless—expanse. Her high hopes were dashed. Shadows danced around the grotto from the flickering of the kerosene lantern. The only sound was the soft hiss of the flame. “Nothing.”
“Think positively,” Harry said. “Isn’t there something we can salvage from this experience?”
“Right.” She turned to leave. “Like what?”
“Well, I, for one, have never done it underground.”
Why not? They spread their jackets on the cold stone floor and made love slowly, passionately—pausing only when Harry accidentally plunged his foot into a narrow crevasse hidden in the shadows.
He limped for the reminder of their honeymoon. On the positive side, it didn’t seem to bother him when he was horizontal.
Yes, Harry sure knew how to take care of a girl.
TOLEDO, IBERIA (SPAIN), 730
Abd-ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, emir of the Islamic forces in Iberia, strode briskly down the line of troops. The garrison here at Tulaytulah (Toledo) provided many of the shock forces of his army. The men were all veterans: warlike Bedouin like himself, and fierce Berbers. Performing inspection was both his privilege and a deep satisfaction.
These men held Iberia securely for the Caliph in distant Damascus. Their fathers had won this great and wealthy land in the first place. The small expeditionary force of Tariq ibn-Sayid had swept across the peninsula like the desert winds across the broad Sahara. The local remnants of the Roman civilization had found the newcomers more to their liking than the barbaric Visigoths the Moslems sought to replace. Many a fortress had thrown itself open to the Moslems, or been betrayed to them, in open rebellion against Roderick, the former king. The Christians were allowed to worship as they wished, subject only to a small tax for the error of their ways. Muhammad had taught that the Jews and Christians were to be respected.
These musings brought a recent, much less pleasant association to mind. al-Ghafiqi’s men had skirmished for years with the Franks across the Pyrenees. These were only probing attacks, feints, tests of the barbarians’ mettle. The real battle would come soon. He had hoped that many in Francia would side with his troops, just as the ex-Roman colonists had in Iberia.
Instead, al-Ghafiqi now expected the Gallo-Romans to fight with the barbarians. Against him. A bloodthirsty Moslem renegade was operating on his own across the mountains. Francia, Burgundia, Gasconia—all had turned hostile to Islam because of the predations of this madman. The coming campaign would be much the harder for the hostility this fool had raised.
This Salah-ad-Din, thought al-Ghafiqi, would do well never to fall into my hands.
NORTHERN AQUITAINIA, 730
The storeroom that served as their prison was devoid of both chewing gum and baling wire. Harry prowled its narrow confines in search of less traditional components and alternative inspiration.
The sounds from outside their cell provided plenty of motivation. All day long, Harry and Terrence heard the thuds of beatings, the screams of pain, the splash of water flung to revive the victims. Yes, they wanted to be long gone when Gamal returned from his mission.
Lesser weeping and beatings all too often filled the nights, from down the hall where the sounds suggested a woman prisoner was kept. From the boastful shouts, it seemed that the poor woman was being repeatedly raped. Harry swore to rescue her if ever they escaped themselves.
It seemed a vain hope.
The war party made camp a half day’s march north of the border with Aquitania. Bertchramm sent a squad back into Francia for reinforcements, then set up a schedule of patrols.
The damned Saracens would return, someday, headed north on another raid. When they did, they were in for a very unpleasant surprise.
* * * *
The physicist studied his small pile of materials. They didn’t look like components for a superweapon. Still, this was the best Harry could come up with using only the odds and ends in this storage room.
Items: a small-mouthed pottery vessel with a heavy metallic glaze, some bark from a cork oak, a short iron nail, a scrap of old fur, and the stem from a broken glass flagon. Oh yes, and drinking water from a pottery ewer.
He slowly scraped the pot’s mouth against a rough spot on the wall, sanding the glaze off the lip. He studied his work. He wanted glaze layers inside and out, but they could not touch. Foil liners would be much better than metallic glaze, of course, but—
Quit that! Harry told himself. You have only what you have.
The glass stem was too short to make a useful dagger. Harry nonetheless filed one end against the rough stone wall. He used the sharpened edge to shape a piece of cork into a stopper for the clay pot. Once the stopper was fashioned, he drilled a small hole through the cork. The nail fit snugly into the hole. He unstoppered the pot, filled it with water, and replaced the impaled cork. The tip of the nail dipped into the water.
Terrence looked on, dubiously. “You say that’s a battery?”
“An early one, yeah. It’s called a Leyden jar. It’s supposed to be invented in about a thousand years at the University of Leiden.” Harry didn’t care to think about the unlikelihood of that discovery still happening.
Harry picked up the fur and the glass rod. He rubbed the glass vigorously with the fur, back and forth and back and forth until he thought his arm would fall off. Then he touched the end of the rod to the tip of the nail that emerged from the Leyden jar. There was an electric crackle as the charge transferred. That’s one. Harry took fur to rod again. Each stroke charged the glass rod, an insulator, with a tiny bit more static electricity.
When Harry’s arms could no longer maintain the repetitive motion, Terrence took over. They took turns for what the motion of sunbeam through their tiny window suggested was at least an hour.
Harry took a deep breath. “Are you ready, my guinea pig?”
“No, but go ahead.”
Harry lifted the crude charge-storage device. With a sudden motion, he poked the electrode—the protruding nail—at Terrence’s hand. A spark flashed, and Terrence twitched. “Well, what do you think?”
Terrence smiled grimly. “If that’s the best we can do, I suggest that you challenge Faisel to a chess tournament.”
TOLEDO, 730
The singsong of the muezzin still echoed in al-Ghafiqi’s ears as he rolled up his prayer rug. Afternoon worship, as always, had calmed the general’s soul, distanced him momentarily from the tempest of the day.
He returned his thoughts to his officers and their plans. The probing attacks across the mountains continued to find weakness. It was time to prepare for the final campaign.
Squabbling below his open window broke his concentration. He looked out to the street where a ragged Berber with a package stood arguing with his sentinels. The wind carried away many of the words, but al-Ghafiqi heard enough to learn that the package was a gift for him. He shouted an order to show the man inside.
If the courier felt any unease among so many strangers, he did not show it. Quite the opposite, it appeared; al-Ghafiqi found the intruder’s bearing mildly offensive. Well, he had only admitted the man to have done with the ruckus in the street. This should be quick.
“Friend, I am al-Ghafiqi. What can I do for you?”
The courier bowed. Upon straightening, he offered his package. “I am Jabir. My master bid me to deliver this gift to you.”
“And who is your master?”
“I am to tell you that everything that you need know is in the package.”
The bundle was wrapped in fine silk and held together with strong twine. Curious despite himself, the general drew his dagger and slit the cord. The box inside was sealed with red wax; the blob of wax bore the imprint of an unknown signet. Inside the box were a letter and a claylike mass the size of his head. Several small, unidentifiable objects clung to the malleable material.
al-Ghafiqi cracked a second wax seal to open the letter. The flowing Arabic script was the handiwork of an educated man. He started to read with interest.
“Can you read?” he asked the messenger.
“No.”
“I thought not.” He turned to the guards who had brought the man upstairs. “Seize him. His master directs us to a demonstration.”
NORTHERN AQUITAINIA, 730
Countdown to Armageddon Page 10
