Assassins - Ian Watson & Andy West

by Ian Watson

  Occasionally Hakim came across Hasan meditating or praying alone in the garden, staring at the sky, his features immobile, as though of fine wood, his eyes glassy and unblinking. Hasan would acknowledge Hakim, and even talk with him though, unlike Sinan, Hasan did not exactly invite intimacy.

  The heir to Alamut was a shining enigma, a being of divine intensity, a force at the centre of things, surrounded by an aura of danger and demand and worship. Often Hasan’s eyes were focussed far away, yet he could touch a heart directly and fill it with leaping inspiration. Men would do anything to feel that touch again. As would Hakim himself.

  Hasan might speak of the path to Allah, of the fountainhead of knowledge, in an unpredictable yet profound way such that Hakim found his own mind racing to keep up. Yet always Hasan steered away from plague and the application of Hakim’s theories.

  “All things must wait for their time,” was all Hasan would say.

  Indeed, all Alamut seemed to be waiting, seemed to be holding its breath, for just as within the castle of Kahf in Syria, and yet more so, change seemed ready to crystallise straight out of the clear mountain air. Old men, senior da’is, came and went on the bidding of Hasan’s father, but Hasan himself was revered and all the community felt his time approaching.

  And when finally the Master died and Hasan automatically ascended to this position, news spread through the community, indeed all the communities of the Ismailis around the Caspian, like a fire through drifts of dry leaves. From Adharbayjan, Khurasan, Quhistan and further, islands of Ismailis both open and hidden within the sea of Sunnis sent their acknowledgements and devotion.

  Only one week after Hasan’s accession, a message arrived from far to the west, from Syria. The spirit of Abu Muhammad had left the physical domain, and Sinan now led all the Ismailis in that part of the world, subject to the guidance of Alamut.

  “The miraculous start of a new spiritual cycle,” announced Hasan at a celebratory meal, “a cycle of change!”

  Two days later, Hakim was called to a private audience in the new Master’s rooms.

  “I am aware of your impatience to serve our cause,” Hasan began, “but have you added to your knowledge in the meantime, and has our faith sustained you?”

  Hakim acknowledged both these; and this was true.

  “You may speak in detail.”

  Rejoicing, Hakim did not try to hide the expense involved, nor the long distance both medically and physically he would need to travel, with a sizable company too.

  “A journey is a quest for true knowledge,” concluded Hakim. Hasan nodded, his focus seemingly elsewhere. “To travel is a spiritual as well as a physical process, such that the traveller finally discovers the innermost secrets of existence. Is that not so, my Lord?”

  “A journey towards… Resurrection,” mused Hasan. “Towards the transforming moment. You speak with insight, Doctor. Human existence consists of several cumulative phases. Each phase reaches its zenith, only to be replaced by another phase of a higher order, possessing greater potency.”

  Hakim cleared his throat, which was dry. This moment was so important. Every phrase carried a hidden meaning. Hasan was speaking both of the esoteric process of initiation through the Nizari hierarchy, towards becoming one of the super-elite, and of the quest of discovery for power over plague, and therefore over mankind.

  “I have completed one cycle of my journey,” Hakim continued. “Now a new cycle would indeed bring great potency. The inner secrets of physical existence await me in Africa, which in the esoteric world will bring overwhelming power, and triumph, to our faith.”

  “I see this exactly,” replied Hasan.

  Hearing this, Hakim’s heart rose like a nightingale. Then Hasan gazed directly at him, for the first time ever, and Hakim trembled both with adoration and responsibility.

  “Yet for now you will still need patience, Hakim. We await other great matters, that will confer all the… freedoms we will need for ultimate triumph.”

  Hakim bowed, out of his depth, and not wishing to show his lack of understanding.

  “Leave me now.”

  Hakim proceeded to the door, joy thrumming through his every fibre. He could accommodate more waiting, more patience, now he knew that the Master would sanction his mission. Then Hasan called after him.

  “You may well be the sword of the time, Doctor.”

  Hakim turned. “Only,” he replied, “if I follow the commands of the Lord of the time.”

  The Master of Alamut gazed through the window into a dusty distance, perhaps seeing a stretch of time and not of space.

  “I am not that person, exactly. Merely a servant of the Hidden One.”

  “As are we all,” agreed Hakim. “Yet certainly you are chief among the servants of Allah. Not just master of our brotherhood, but the very source of our light.” An inspiration struck Hakim. “Only the hand of power may wield the ultimate sword.”

  Hasan smiled. “I shall raise your rank, Doctor, as befits one with such knowledge and understanding of our faith.”

  Qazvin to Alamut, Iran: May

  Eight a.m., and the light was dull, the sun hidden.

  The house benefited from Wi-Fi, so, in between tooth-brushing and hair-drying, Abigail fired up her lap-top and checked on her messages via web-mail. From Paul:

  Hi Abigail. Where are you now?

  Something weird. I found out through a guy who owes me at BPD that ICE grabbed all the case details for Walid’s hit and run. But all other sources are tight shut. My journalist’s nose smells something bad, I just don’t know what.

  Still trying to dig up clues on your medieval mystery. Pulled in some favours and have a couple of European ex-colleagues on the case, searching records and stuff. Impressive huh? A lordly knight like Guy must have left some echoes behind. Any luck your end?

  Paul XX.

  She dashed off an answer:

  Paul, the bad smell is probably Jack – he’ll be thrashing around. Be careful of riling him. Nothing worthwhile here on the medieval front so far. Dark hints about the Assassins, but more legend than fact. Maybe a different slant to legends in the West though: potions, power over death, a physician guy called al-Hakim.

  Anyhow, off to Alamut itself today. Stayed in a heavenly house in Qazvin overnight. Kamal cooked dinner. He’s suuuch a gentleman!

  Btw, came across an alternative name interpretation: Alamut = Al-maut = ‘the death’. Scary huh? Abi.

  And to her old friend Jen, whom she’d been keeping up to date on romantic progress with Kamal, she merely wrote:

  Hi Jen, teetering on the brink. Stay tuned.

  Love Abi.

  Kamal had hugged her warmly earlier, but their conversation in the car was light, avoiding any mention of the previous evening’s romantic contact. The consequent void was filled with a kind of tight confusion that made Abigail feel like a shy girl on her first date.

  With Qazvin some distance behind and heading upwards on winding mountain roads, they met a bank of pale grey rolling downwards and became cocooned within, tightening the atmosphere in the car still further. Given such poor visibility, it was almost impossible to pass elderly coaches and the overloaded and straining light trucks. They endured two hours of this before more of the road became visible and the grey walls surrounding them became less substantial. Sullen hills lurked behind thinning veils and occasional buttresses of rock leaned over the road. Higher still, and hazy light forced its way through from above, placing them in the midst of pearly luminescence. Then the white veils shredded to tattered banners and blew away. A flood of sunlight illuminated buff scarps and lush green slopes dotted with hosts of mountain flowers. Distant peaks protruded into rich blue.

  “Oh Kamal, it’s beautiful!”

  Kamal reached out and patted Abigail’s knee. “I think Lake Evan will be very pleasant after all.”

  And so the lake proved to be; a rich sapphire in an emerald setting, jealously guarded by hills all around, its waters shining with an inner radia
nce that fired the imagination.

  “It’s almost as though there’s a secret treasure beneath,” breathed Abigail excitedly. “A jewel of light that the depth of water can’t mask!”

  “A blue treasure,” murmured Kamal. “Perhaps a key to power. There are several legends of magical objects placed for safety in Evan’s sacred waters. Whether these things are still there or not, maybe the water remembers them.”

  Scattered groups of locals gazed out at the hypnotic surface of the lake, or wandered around its grassy fringes. Further back, a couple of purple tents huddled up to some poplar trees. There were twisted fruit trees too, cherry or apple maybe, and willows sipping the still water that was such a gift at this altitude. Two men in black seemed a little out of place. One had binoculars and both seemed to be scanning the nearby area rather than the water or the hilltops, almost as though they were checking out the people. Maybe they were bird watchers.

  “There’ll be more people later, as it warms up,” explained Kamal. “It’s a popular place for picnics. But we should push on for Alamut.”

  They drove back to the main road and then headed east for Gazorkhan, the village below Alamut. For an hour and a half the car climbed still more.

  From a distance Gazorkhan was a cluster of tiny rectangles, the miniscule handiwork of man sheltering inside one hollow out of hundreds within the rugged immensity of nature’s carvings. Nearer to, the village appeared shabby and weather-beaten, although screens of dwarf trees protected some aspects. They nosed their way through, pausing for frail old men in black skull-caps, shapeless black bundles with the tanned faces of women, darting motor-bikes and careless, colourfully dressed children.

  Outside the village, Kamal found a good place to pull over so they could look across and upwards to Alamut itself. The fortress was perfectly located, on a massive promontory of rock with a single steep access. A guard of majestic peaks marched around it, blue-grey with distance and clad in misty robes. Kamal smiled. Abigail’s hand found his, and in silence they drank in the view. Seeing this place, so physically close to the roof of the world, so spiritually high for the Nizaris during their first 166 years, Abigail at last began to realise what extreme defences the Order had needed to survive against great odds. What a spirit of persistence, of self-discipline and self-inspiration they must have developed! She wondered whether they had bequeathed this down the ages to the modern Ismaili community, still a tiny minority in the often hostile sea of Islam.

  “I’m amazed that even the Mongols could take this place,” she commented.

  Kamal frowned. “In fact they didn’t. The Nizari leader at the time was Rukn al-Din. He was naïve and insecure, so he didn’t believe anyone or anything could battle the mighty Mongol war-machine. No one could make a deal with them either, but Rukn tried. He killed his own father to claim leadership. Ala al-Din would have struck severely disabling blows against the enemy, but his traitorous son ordered a surrender before any major conflict happened. The majority of Nizaris simply walked away from their many castles in this area, and most walked straight into betrayal and death. A couple of sites disobeyed Rukn al-Din, resisting right until the end. One fortress held out for fourteen years.”

  Abigail whistled softly. “Now that’s what I call will-power!”

  She opened her window. Though it was late May, the mountain atmosphere that flooded their car was chill, smelling clean, of rock and herbs with a metallic edge like the scent of snow, though no snow was visible and Kamal said that even on the tops it would have melted away a few weeks back. The sun was hot on her arm.

  A road to a car park just a few minutes from the castle made the old exposed winding trail unnecessary. After sandwiches, they assaulted Alamut more easily than any Mongol could have dreamed.

  Alamut was so well-crafted to the contours of the natural rock, it seemed like an expression of the land itself, a clenched fist of resistance. Kamal brushed his hand reverently along a rimy wall.

  “I haven’t been here for many years,” he commented. “I’d forgotten how magical it is.”

  Abigail smiled warmly back, but in truth she was rather disappointed. Only roots of stone showed where much of the castle had been, and some sections of the surviving walls were covered in scaffolding. Yet the view from the remaining battlements was awesome. Only a handful of visitors were present, seeming subdued, perhaps spell-bound. The peaks were thunderously silent. It would be easy to feel equal to God here, thought Abigail, or at least far above other religions; breathing thin air and Gnostic poetry, wrapped often in cloud and always in secret knowledge.

  Kamal picked up a handful of fine dirt and let it stream out of his fist on the breeze as he recited:

  “My God, what difference can it make

  between my good and my bad

  if both are as grains of dust to You?”

  “Not the good Kamal al-Mustafa Abu al-Bashir I think, so who are you quoting?”

  Kamal smirked. “Hasan as-Sabah, the visionary founder of the Nizari Ismailis, the man who took this castle and made it their home.”

  Abigail’s disappointment was ebbing away, as the mood of the place seeped into her.

  “Just think, we’re standing in the very place where Hasan the Second declared qiyama, instructing the Nizaris to turn their backs to Mecca, to turn their backs on Shari’ah law.”

  “Indeed! Though he probably did so from the courtyard over there.” Kamal jabbed a finger. “There’s a lot of clever engineering here, you know.”

  He proceeded to explain the Alamut water system in great detail, identifying the catchment scoops in the mountain slopes above the castle. Abigail managed to repress a girlish grin, but felt warm inside. He was so handsome when animated like this! A boyish look came into his distinguished features; the best of both worlds. He pointed to where excavations had taken place a few years earlier by the north gate, with some artefacts unearthed.

  Descending to the base of the walls, they edged carefully down a steep slope half carpeted with hardy grass. Kamal was looking for evidence of the huge underground water-storage chambers. Finding a faint and somewhat more level girdle on the hill, they followed it until they came face to face with a guard.

  The man smiled, but barred their way and spoke firmly. His uniform was dishevelled; grey hair protruded from under a casually placed cap. Beyond were scaffolding and platforms, piles of earth and stones, a muddy wheelbarrow, shovels and small trowels, wooden crates. Above these was an intriguing dark hole in the hillside.

  Kamal answered the man smoothly and cheerfully in his fluent Farsi, following up with something that seemed like a question. The guard shrugged. Then Kamal pulled out a hip-flask and offered the guard a drink. A hip-flask! Clearly she still had a lot to learn about Kamal. His seemed to be a good call though, as, despite Iran’s official ban on alcohol, the guard grinned and gladly accepted. In under a minute he was chatting amiably, while Abigail was becoming frustrated at not knowing what was going on. While the guard took a second pull on the flask, Kamal hurriedly flung some words at her.

  “Yet another dig! It’s almost as if they’re looking for something specific. I had no idea about this one. Apparently the dig team are all down in Tehran, showing off some of their finds and begging for funding. I’m trying to get us a look inside.”

  The conversation in Farsi changed tone; hands were waved. Abigail willed Kamal to succeed; it would be so exciting to enter the dark mystery of that hole, to peer into Nizari history. Eventually Kamal handed over some banknotes; she couldn’t see how much value. The guarded turned and headed away past the scaffolding.

  “He said it isn’t his fault if he needs a pee. We have ten minutes!”

  Abigail squealed with delight. “How clever you are! Let’s hurry!”

  They scrambled up to the entrance. A short passage led through the skin of the mountain into a large hollow within the rock. Only a couple of metres in it was too dark to see much at all, but Kamal found a switch beside a stack of car batteries.
A string of small bulbs warmed into modest illumination.

  The space they entered was perhaps a natural cave that had been enlarged. Under dirt and debris was evidence of trimmed rock, carved pillars, even some tile-work. Piles of rubble showed where much of the ceiling had collapsed. To one side were big iron cages resembling cells or secure storage, still fairly intact. An unpleasant, musty odour caught hold of Abigail’s nose. She imagined that fossilised excrement might smell so.

  One cage door was open, a floodlight strung to the bars, not in use. Kamal and Abigail crouched and peered into shadows. He pointed. Half excavated, were two skulls and a scattering of bones. Children! Had the Nizaris kept child slaves? But the proportions of the skulls were wrong, the brow ridges too prominent.

  “They’re monkeys!”

  Kamal’s normal composure seemed to have deserted him. His shoulders were hunched and he muttered a string of words in Arabic, no doubt forgetting that Abigail couldn’t understand. He rose and moved towards the back of the space, perhaps searching for a passage up to the castle proper. Abigail spotted a worktable on which were a lamp and a bowl, along with brushes and tools for removing grime. A stained cloth on the table clearly covered something. Immediately curious, she moved over and lifted the edge of the cloth, revealing a broken bottle and three odd but identical items of bone.

  It took some time to figure this out. Each of the three items was a snake’s upper jawbone, complete with vicious-looking fangs. Assembling the pieces of bottle in her mind, she realised it was exactly the same as those she’d seen in the museum at Qazvin.

  Of a sudden the snake fangs jumped towards her fingers. Her knees buckled even as she registered shocked surprise. Curtains of dirt cascaded from the roof.