Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West

by Ian Watson

  Time, that Walid had so unstintingly devoted to Abigail’s little quest!

  “Time,” said Kamal almost telepathically, “which was tragically to be cut so short. Walid simply expressed his admiration for your work and said you’d uncovered something important and puzzling.”

  To this kindly man, Abigail said, “You must still be very busy. I don’t want to use up your precious time.” Another reason why he’d arrived at her door so early, yet had the courtesy not to mention.

  “I have,” replied Kamal with evident sincerity, “absolutely as much time for you, as Walid himself had.”

  Southern Ethiopia: August 1158

  The scrawny, scabbed, suppurating Igwe had survived for a month in the cage, the object of jibes and sharp jabs. Hakim refrained from speculation about how he himself might have fared there, and peered studiously. To his surprise, the youth suddenly scrabbled to his feet and staggered towards the doctor, a baleful rage burning in his eyes. Monkeys leapt up the bamboo poles, screaming and chattering. Collapsing upon the container of dirty water near the bars, the Igwe immersed his forehead, then lapped like a beast. Moments later, the prisoner turned aside and vomited. Blood issued from the Igwe’s nostrils and one of his ears, as though his head was trying to burst.

  Hakim spied a rash of purple spots amid the dirt and sores on the Igwe’s dark chest. And surely the youth’s neck was swollen too.

  The signs of plague! Which could only have been caught in the monkey cage! Caught from a monkey! No villager showed such signs, nor had come closer to the prisoner than a spear’s length.

  An amazed Hakim rejoiced. Despite all the setbacks, his planning and patience had not been in vain. Here was his first reward. Praise God! At least one of the monkeys in the cage must carry the seed of plague within it, without itself dying. To that extent, Arwe was proved right! Yet the mechanism of transference couldn’t be from ingesting the blood or tears of a weeping monkey. Was it from biting? The Igwe had several monkey bites upon his flesh. Yet if so, why did Arwe have Hakim drink blood in the protection ceremony?

  Hakim’s mind raced like a steed, then he hurried to find Yaqob. Whatever the explanation, they must alert the villagers at once, claiming credit for the event.

  The villagers danced ecstatically, hooting and jeering as they witnessed the mounting agony and bizarre delirium of the Igwe, horribly tortured by his own body.

  By noon the next day the prisoner was dead, a disgusting bag of flesh upon the floor of the cage. Black boils protruded in his groin and armpits, like toads trying to burst through the skin. Orange spots infested his thighs like beetles. When a warrior speared one of those boils in the groin, a foul-smelling liquid spilled out. Sniffing suspiciously, the monkeys had drawn as far back from the corpse as they could.

  Only the very next day, a hunter brought into the village a small monkey tethered to a pole, a young monkey, whose hair was grey.

  “Oh!” effused Hakim to Yaqob, to God, to anyone who would hear, “this is most excellent indeed!”

  Scarcely a week passed after the death of the prisoner than a young warrior displaying unmistakable tokens of plague staggered into Hakim and Yaqob’s hut. Swaying and dizzy, he demanded that this foreign Priest-Witch cure him.

  This was all that Yaqob translated before he made an urgent excuse and darted from the hut, leaving Hakim no option but to behave as a charlatan, making passes with his hands and chanting verses from the Qu’ran as though those were magic spells. After pacifying the doomed man somewhat, Hakim hustled his ‘patient’ to the thorny corral for cattle at the edge of the village.

  Women and children, some men too, had followed Hakim and his unsteady charge, curious or anxious. Opening the bamboo gate to the cattle compound, Hakim half-carried the plague victim inside, then began waving his arms and shouting to expel all the skinny humpbacked cows.

  This was all that he could think of by way of quarantine, as recommended by some Arab physicians. Isolation seemed instinctively the best course of action. Hakim’s mind worked furiously. Centuries earlier, Procopius had stated that contact with people already displaying symptoms wasn’t dangerous. The dangerous time was the dormant period, while the seed of plague grew in a man before its harvest of symptoms came forth; as Arwe indeed had known.

  This sick hunter must have been carried plague for a long time unawares. Mixing and mingling. Could he somehow have passed the seed on already? Was it far too late for quarantine?

  The man displaying the deadly tokens had prodded the Igwe prisoner with his spear on at least two occasions witnessed by Hakim, and, yes, he’d then licked the bloody tip of his spear, sneering.

  Blood on the spear had somehow transferred seeds of plague in its infancy to the owner’s body.

  But how? By ingestion? Or had the young warrior perhaps nicked his lips or tongue on the sharp point…?

  With the shafting clarity of lightning in the night, and the vision of a bloodied spearhead between parted lips dazzling his inner mind, Hakim understood exactly why his experiments hadn’t succeeded – and how Arwe had cunningly protected him.

  Forcing the previous prisoners to consume blood and organs from weeping monkeys had failed to give them plague, because the seeds had no way to enter their own blood, only their gut! And those three Igwe mustn’t have had any cuts or wounds in their mouths.

  The essence of plague harboured in either monkey or man, Hakim realised, must enter the bloodstream directly in order to take hold! And invulnerability to plague must be subject to this same rule. There’d been an open wound in his mouth on that evening of the protection ceremony. Arwe had seen to that by knocking out the tooth; an acute observer, he’d probably been aware of the condition for weeks. No doubt the cunning Priest-Witch would otherwise have resorted to an alternate plan, maybe nicking Hakim’s lips with a sharp edge of the monkey skull.

  Right now Hakim couldn’t concentrate on this realisation. Some women and older children were taking charge of the expelled cattle to stop them from wandering off. All other eyes were upon him. He shut the bamboo gate, then spied Yaqob at the edge of the crowd.

  “Come here at once!” Hakim bellowed.

  Sheepishly Yaqob pushed his way forward.

  “You dog, you deserted me!” Immediately Hakim regretted his hotly spat words, and contrived a smile. “If you had gone from me, as dear Sadiq went from me, I would have been inconsolable. Oh I feared you had run from the village.”

  Yaqob looked shamefaced. “I beg forgiveness. I was overcome by fear. But bands of Igwe scouts are lurking in the forest. I realized that my place is here, so that we may protect one another.”

  “So then, good Yaqob,” replied Hakim. “Which is the greater fear? Of possible disease here, or almost certain capture and torture? Come now, we must organise our hosts to protect themselves.” Now at least he could issue instructions that would be understood.

  Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts: May

  Jack Turner shut off the phone, then threw it across the room. He swore, then felt guilty as the Reverend Collins was staring intently at him from the wide-screen TV. He restarted the inspirational sermon, yet only seconds later halted the DVD again. He couldn’t concentrate, and the familiar order of his Swedish-style flat was little comfort. It was bad enough to be roasted by his boss; to get roasted at home, on a Sunday of all days, was unprecedented and deeply unsettling. Very little passed unnoticed by the chief of the Investigations Division of Boston ICE, apparently even when he’d just returned from vacation. Yet ultimately, it was all Mam’zelle Leclaire’s fault.

  Jack stroked his chin thoughtfully. Leclaire had given the mosque story to Paul Summers, but no reporter would’ve published it without confirmation. From who? Grunty Hogan of the Intelligence Division, most likely. For three hundred bucks in a plain envelope, either out of Summer’s own pocket or more likely reimbursed afterwards by the Globe. Hogan did have his uses in other regards, which is why Jack tolerated the man; he was a channel for information or dis
information that Jack wanted leaked, and Hogan knew not to overstep certain bounds. In this case though, Hogan must have thought that watching a mosque where foreigners gathered was a routine precaution, which any sensible mosque should probably expect; besides, if a reporter already had wind of ICE surveillance, it wouldn’t stay much of a secret for long…

  Now, to add insult to injury, he’d been told in no uncertain terms to lay off her. Daughter of Leclaire Enterprises, eh? Whatever Daddy’s goddam little empire was called in French. And he’d already lost two days physical watch on her because handling the critical Afghan passport scam had eaten all his resource. For all he knew, she could be consorting with terrorists right now!

  Well, Jack wasn’t going to let go. A big bad fish was moving somewhere just under the surface, he could sense it, and Mam’zelle was his only line to the critter. Yet maybe he could even turn this situation to advantage? He retrieved the phone, fortunately unbroken, and called Grunty Hogan at home.

  “Grunty, Jack Turner here…. Yeah, right, not a social call. You’ve been a naughty boy, confirming the mosque surveillance to that Globe reporter… Come on, I know it was you. And there’s heat coming down on account of it… Yeah, on me… But you can make things right instead…You’re damn right you’ll have to! What I want you to do is contact that Globe guy, Summers. Say you have something else of interest for him, meet him wherever you do. Tell him, sell him, same thing in your case, that the boss has cancelled surveillance of the mosque. Yes, I know… but here’s the bit where you need to box clever. I want you to let slip that all surveillance of a female professor at Radcliffe Ladies College… no, I know it isn’t called that… okay okay, just say Harvard, has been cancelled. Yeah, that’s the assignment number, I see you’re over-informed as usual, but don’t mention her name. Yeah, she’s into medieval research. There’s no need to give a reason… just mention she has heavyweight connections. Yeah, like it’s just chatter. Do you think you can manage that? Good.”

  Jack hung up.

  And now, though this needed to be done in a black way, unauthorised, Paul Fucking Summers’ phones would be bugged. Confident that Mam’zelle herself wasn’t bugged, Summers would have no reason to suspect that he himself was. That way, clever Jack could follow part of the story at least. With luck, he ought to be able to work out what Mam’zelle was up to, as long as she trusted Summers, told him stuff, which seemed to be the case. And maybe, just maybe, she’d let something slip if she thought the heat was off. In a week or so, he’d quietly restore the taps on her landlines too; theoretically at least official buildings required lesser approval and, stretching a point or two, the university was official.

  Dan Siegel was the guy to call next; a little dull but loyal and reliable, codename Chronicles. Not that Jack would be using a codename when calling the guy at home during the day that should be set aside for rest and prayer.

  “Sorry to spoil your Sunday, Dan, if indeed I’m spoiling it… Glad to hear not… This business about Abigail Leclaire… we need to stop following her around right now, and I’ve already seen to that, but I need to have a little chat with you about Press guys who abuse their freedom, and about phones…”

  Two minutes later Jack hung up again, and sighed heavily. All this was definitely spoiling his Sunday.

  Southern Ethiopia: September 1158

  The village descended into chaos, yet Hakim’s thought was consumed more by intricate puzzles about transference of plague than by the plight of the villagers. All the old writings agreed as regards rampant contagion – and the devastating progress of plague through nations, with its virtual erasure of entire cities, is what made the disease so attractive as the ultimate weapon against unbelief. Hakim was now convinced that the bloodstream must become seeded. Yet the villagers were certainly not biting each other, nor transferring bodily fluids into the veins of others by a different route. A paradox!

  At first Hakim’s authority was sufficient that he could tour the village constantly, inspecting for signs of plague and, if found, ordering the afflicted person to proceed forthwith to the former cattle corral, or in some cases be carried there. He had the corral guarded, and its occupants supplied with food and water. Believing himself protected, Hakim shirked no contact, often carrying or tending to victims himself.

  Yet, as the weeks went by and the corral became a place of hideous death, the terrified villagers began to disobey him and abuse him. Manifestly, the foreign Priest-Witch was failing to save them. Malevolent monkey spirits must be to blame, maybe offended at having been confined with the Igwe for so long. Or angry at being confined in the first place.

  Hakim kept meticulous records of the whole event, down to every date and symptom and individual and hut location. Hence, reading these back by the wavering light of an oil-lamp, he realised that the spread was primarily through family lines, with cousins or cross-matings connecting the leap of sickness between huts. Somehow, somehow, without bites or scratches or even in most cases sexual coupling, the infant seeds of plague were finding their way into the blood of those closest to the victim. Clearly this was possible between people, if not between men and monkeys even when trapped in the same cage. He ordered all contact between each hut to cease, with each obtaining their own water and grain independently. But it was too late; the villagers ignored him.

  Just two days later, an old warrior and some younger companions freed all the monkeys, even the precious grey one that was kept separately. When Hakim tried to intervene, he was threatened by spears, although no one went so far as to prick him. The day might not be far off, Hakim realised, when they would do so! Order had almost collapsed. Infected people decamped deliriously into the forest, despite the nightly whooping cries of hyenas. In daylight, uninfected people fled the village too, leaving even less of the able-bodied to cope.

  And then Yaqob succumbed. Hakim offered what aid he could, which was useless, so he observed carefully until the end. This came quickly, for the first paroxysm proved fatal. Now there was no way to communicate, nor achieve anything more. Taking only what he could easily carry, Hakim slipped out of the village just before dawn. The Igwe scouts had hopefully been scared away long before, but he couldn’t go anywhere near their territory. Nor anywhere he might be recognized by previous visitors to the village during its time of glory as a monkey Mecca, for word of the plague had undoubtedly spread and he would almost certainly be killed out of hand. He struck out into unknown woodland.

  Downtown Boston, Massachusetts: May

  Paul emerged from Haymarket station and cut across the vastness of City Hall Plaza, paved with nearly two million dull red bricks. He headed for the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, which rose up as a blunt statement of modernity, twin high-rise towers of concrete and glass joined at right angles to one another, their bands of windows rounding at the corners, plus a lower four-storey building, its vicinity blessed by the only trees and shrubs in sight. This was home to the IRS and other government agencies, including the various divisions of ICE.

  Paul walked on by, towards the curve of Cambridge Street and Center Plaza, which resembled a matching curved skyscraper on its side. Grunty Hogan favoured the Kinsale Irish Pub there. Being mid-afternoon by now, the enthusiastic lunch trade should all have departed back to their business and government offices.

  Grunty had said he had interesting news about a certain matter.

  Presently Paul was seated on a high bar stool at a table-top curving around a wooden pillar, which disappeared into the likeness of a hooped barrel below. A glass of the dark stuff was before him, and a cracked-open paperback history of the Middle Ages, since that was Abigail’s thing. The bar area was hardly quarter-full. A particularly authentic Irish pub, the Kinsale, having been manufactured in Ireland and shipped over in crates.

  Grunty entered, somewhat podgy and red-faced, wearing a lightweight grey suit, though he’d loosened his green tie and opened his top shirt button. After a minute’s chat with the barman, he steered towards Paul, glass in
hand, and mounted the neighbouring stool.

  “Unk,” he expressed, “your very good health, young man.”

  Paul had never been quite sure whether Grunty habitually cleared the back of a stuffed-up nose with an unk, or whether the tic was his version of hmm or um.

  “So what do you have to tell me about the matter?”

  “And what would you be having, unk, for me?”

  Paul slid a flat envelope from his pocket, although he kept his hand resting upon the offering.

  “It’s like this. All surveillance of the mosque has been called off.”

  “As a direct result of my piece in the Globe? Or due to complaints received?”

  “I’d say, unk, there have been certain enquiries.”

  He’d say… but was that a fact?

  “I’d say, Grunty, that what you’re telling me is a bit predictable. I don’t think it really merits…” Paul’s hand pressed more firmly upon the envelope.

  Grunty looked aggrieved. “Here was me thinking you’d be pleased to hear. Grateful.”

  “I am for the confirmation in the first place, but we already cleared that slate.”

  “What else am I supposed to tell you about surveillances, or cancelled ones? Ain’t much. Some prof woman at Harvard cancelled, some Afghans ongoing but you’d better not print that. Neither print nor hint. I thought you’d be glad to hear about the mosque.”

  “What’s that about Harvard?” asked Paul.

  “Some foreign research female, unk, with heavyweight connections. British… No, Canadian. Investigation office had to lay off, no following her, no messing with her phones, whatever for. Getting back, unk, to the mosque cancellation, I’d say I deserve an acknowledgement.”

  Oh richly deserve. Though not for that.

  Judiciously Paul pulled the envelope towards him, slipped it open, extracted two bills which he pocketed, then thrust the remaining acknowledgement Grunty’s way.