Assassin's Code

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Your work?” I asked.

  He nodded. “A hobby. I hope to retire from this work and concentrate on photography.” He leaned on the word “work.”

  “You have an incredible eye,” I said, and I wasn’t joking. Each of the pictures was a small masterpiece of composition. Not just a flower, but an angle that showed light caressing the striations on a delicate petal in a way that cast it as an alien landscape. Not merely a photo of a child with a kitten, but a glimpse into the wonder in that child’s eyes and the trust in the body language of the kitten. Each piece was a statement filled with visual poetry that betrayed a deep understanding of the connection between the physical world and the spiritual. “These are really quite beautiful.”

  He made a modest sound of dismissal.

  “No,” I said, crossing to stand in front of one picture in particular, “you have the gift.”

  Jamsheed came and stood next to me, trying to see the picture through my eyes—a foreigner, a soldier, a non-Muslim, a stranger. The image that caught me, that riveted me, was of a chain-link fence beyond which a group of kids played soccer in a deserted parking lot. Beyond the skill of the composition, the story it told struck me to the heart. A bunch of kids totally absorbed in their game. At that distance and with a gentle softening of the focus, he made the children nonspecific. It no longer mattered if they were preteens or teens, if they were boys or girls, or if they were Muslim or Christian. What mattered, what shone through, was that they were innocent and at peace with the fun they were having. That picture might have been taken anywhere. England or Uruguay, Alabama or here in Iran. There were so many lessons implied in the simple grace of those children, and it had been perfectly captured by this man’s camera.

  He waited out my long silence, then asked, “What does it say to you?”

  “Lots,” I said. “But I guess … two things most of all.”

  “Oh?”

  “Everybody has kids,” I said, “and everybody loves their kids.”

  Jamsheed touched the edge of the frame near the image of a little girl who was no more than a happy blur as she ran after a ball. “Yes.”

  “And … this is why we do what we do.”

  I turned to him and saw a mix of thoughtful expressions play across his face. “It’s funny,” he said, “but I would have thought you would say something like, ‘this is why we fight.’”

  “I know. That occurred to me,” I admitted, “but it isn’t the right way to say it. I’m not in this business to fight. Seeing these pictures … I don’t think you are, either. It’s not about the conflict. It’s about what it preserves and what it allows.”

  Jamsheed nodded and went over to a tiny kitchenette and began filling a teapot with water. “I once knew a Sufi who said that anyone who goes to war is crazy. But … I don’t think he was exactly correct. I believe it is more accurate to say that anyone who wants to go to war is crazy.”

  “That says it,” I agreed.

  He put the kettle on the burner, then fetched a first aid kit and helped me clean and dress my wounds. He had to pick some window glass and wood splinters out of my scalp and back from when I had crashed out of my hotel room and onto the balcony while waltzing with the knight.

  “You have a lot of scars already,” he said as he worked, “so these should blend in.”

  “Hazards of the job.”

  “Mm.”

  I caught Jamsheed sniffing a few times as he worked, and it took me a moment to make the connection.

  “Garlic,” I said.

  “Yes.” He didn’t ask, though he clearly wanted to.

  “Long, weird story. Probably best if I don’t share.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I understand.”

  “Do you do field work?” I asked.

  “Not anymore.” He considered for a moment and then unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and pulled the cloth apart to reveal two scars. Bullet holes. “Souvenirs of an adventurous youth.”

  I noticed that he had other scars. More than his share. Around his eyes, around his fingernails. He’d been beaten and very likely tortured at some point. He noticed me looking and offered the smallest of shrugs, but he didn’t comment.

  When he was done picking out the last of the splinters, he showed me the bathroom and even turned on the shower for me. Before I closed the bathroom door, I asked, “Why don’t you retire? The world needs more artists.”

  He shrugged. “The time isn’t right yet.”

  It was a simple statement, but a sad one, and it stayed with me while I showered, dried, and changed into clean clothes. Jamsheed was a lot smaller than me, but he was well stocked. When I came out of the bathroom I found several choices of clothes in extra-large. I dressed in khakis and a white dress shirt. Jamsheed also left me a makeup kit and a hot cup of tea. I sipped the tea as I touched up the dye job Khalid had given me before we rescued the hikers. My tan only needed a mild olive tint. Jamsheed didn’t have brown contact lenses, but there were plenty of blue-eyed people in the Middle East.

  When I came out, Jamsheed inspected the work and nodded approval. Ghost had come in from the storeroom and lay sprawled in front of an oscillating fan, twitching every now and then as he dreamed.

  Jamsheed set out plates of food and we ate a lunch of chelo kabab—steamed saffron basmati rice and grilled chunks of goat, accompanied by pomegranate soup. He apologized for it being leftovers, but I didn’t care. It was delicious and I cleaned my plate. When Ghost woke up and saw that my plate was empty, he looked truly wounded. However, Jamsheed fetched a bowl of leftover khoresht beh, a lamb stew thick with rice and vegetables. Ghost nearly fell on him and wept. Jamsheed watched with some amusement as Ghost attacked the food.

  Jamsheed was not a talkative man. Perhaps it was because he did not want to know anything about who I was or why I was in Iran. He may have been our local contact, but it did not change the fact that he was Iranian. I wondered what conflicts warred inside his artist’s mind. What was it about his government that made him want to side with people like Church? I’d met a few people like him before, and they ranged from traitors whose souls could be bought to idealists who believed that change for their country was necessary.

  Then I saw him cutting quick looks at me and twice he opened his mouth to say something then changed his mind. I set my fork down.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Jamsheed furrowed his brow. “The incident last night. The young Americans.”

  I waited.

  “Was that you? Is that why you’re here?”

  I sat back and dabbed my mouth with a napkin.

  Jamsheed looked uneasy. “I know, I know—I shouldn’t be asking such questions.”

  “Then why are you?”

  He got up and walked over to the picture of the children playing soccer. He stared at it for a long time. “We are a warlike people. I don’t mean just us Iranians. I mean all people. Humans. The veneer of civilization is very thin.”

  “At times,” I said. “Not always.”

  He conceded with only a small nod. “No, not always. But too often it is true. War is a disease and we are all infected. And, like carriers, we pass it along to our children.” He touched the picture. “Sometimes, we even involve our children. That is against God. No matter what faith you are, no matter how devoutly you pray, it is an affront to God.”

  “Yes it is,” I said.

  He turned to me. “Not everyone in my country’s government is corrupt. Not everyone is in love with war. There are good people here.”

  I nodded. “I know that. I can say the same about my government, or any government. There are always heroes and villains. And there are people who do bad things because they think it’s right. Depends on the viewpoint they’ve come to believe in. Some are misled, some come from a tradition of intolerance. Look how long it took my country to free its slaves and give everyone the vote. As far as I know, no one country holds the patent on moral perfection.”

  Jamsheed sighed. �
��This was not the first time my government kidnapped young people and called them spies. Ever since we began our nuclear program, it has become unofficial policy to use these kinds of tactics. It gets into the world press, and even though we are condemned for it, there is just enough room for doubt to stall the process of releasing them. It is…” He fished for a word, waving his hand as if he could snatch it out of the air. The word he came up with was “dishonorable.”

  “Yes it damn well is.”

  “To use children is…” He wanted another word, a worse word. But what word was really adequate?

  We looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. There were all kinds of things being said without either of us having to say another word. Eventually, though, I did say one word.

  “Evil.”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “It is the worst face of evil.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  The Warehouse

  Baltimore, Maryland

  June 15, 6:55 a.m. EST

  “Hey, docs!” Bug called. Circe and Rudy glanced up and saw him waving to them on the big monitor.

  “What have you got?” asked Circe.

  “Weird, weird stuff,” he said, tapping the main screen on which were dozens of overlapping windows and text boxes. “I’ve been going through the field notes and even with most of the stuff corrupted there are hundreds of pages of stuff. I had MindReader index the words, and I hit a few I didn’t know. One in particular came up and I tried to translate it from Arabic or Persian, but it’s neither of those languages. Turns out its Russian.”

  Rudy bent close to turn and make sense of the data on Bug’s screen, but there was too much that he didn’t know. “What’s the word?”

  “Upierczi.”

  “That’s the same word Joe heard from the Greek man, Krystos,” said Rudy.

  Circe nodded. “Right. It’s the Russian word for vampires.”

  “Ouch,” breathed Rudy. “Joe won’t like that.”

  “What’s the context, Bug?”

  Bug grinned. “That’s the part he really won’t like. According to Rasouli’s field agent, the Upierczi are high on the list of groups suspected of having planted the bombs.”

  They looked at each other for several moments.

  “Okay,” said Bug, “I found this stuff out, I forwarded it to the Big Boss, Auntie, and Joe, but I have no idea where to go with it, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” admitted Rudy. “We can all say the word ‘vampire,’ and speculate about whether they are real or not, but that doesn’t connect us to the actual phenomenon. There are people involved in this case who other people believe to be vampires. The point is, what do we believe?”

  “We can’t begin to answer that, Rudy,” said Circe. She chewed her lip for a moment. “I think we need an expert.”

  “Who?” mused Bug. “Stephen King?”

  “Close enough.” Circe looked at the wall clock. “God, it’s almost seven in the morning. Have we really been here all night?”

  Very quickly, Rudy said, “At least last night ended well.”

  Even though Bug could not hear the comment, Circe turned away to hide her flushed checks. She dug her cell phone out of her purse and searched for the number of Professor Jonathan Corbiel-Newton.

  “This is her day off. She always sleeps in on Sundays.” Circe murmured as she listened to the rings. “She’s going to kill me.”

  Rudy snorted. “She’ll get over it. Maybe Mr. Church will bring her inside his ‘circle of trust’ as the permanent DMS vampire expert.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  Interlude Nine

  Jerusalem

  March 3, 1229 C.E.

  “It is as cold as the grave in here.”

  The young nun, Sister Sophia, scolded the old priest with her disapproving stare as she hustled around the room to pull closed the shutters and draw the heavy drapes.

  Father Esteban, a hawk-nosed man of seventy, raised his head from the letter he was writing and watched her with mingled annoyance and amusement.

  As Sister Sophia wheeled on him with a fierce scowl. “And look at you! By the blessed virgin you are positively blue with cold. What could you be thinking to let yourself get into such a state?”

  “I’m sorry,” said the priest, his voice thick with fatigue, “I have been very busy.”

  “You’ll be less busy if you get sick again, Father Esteban. You know what the doctor advised.” Sister Sophia was many years younger than the priest and ostensibly his servant during his retreat; however, Father Esteban knew that he had no authority in her presence. Not unless there was a third person present, at which point she would play the role of the dutiful bride of Christ and pad around him with quiet deference. But that was all an act. Sister Sophia had been charged by her mother superior—a harpy of mythic ferocity—to nurse Esteban back to health and prevent him from doing exactly what he had just done: work himself to the point of exhaustion while ignoring the needs of the body.

  Father Esteban muttered some apologies as he accepted a cup of hot wine. He sipped the wine and peered through the steam to the last lines he had written. The report was the latest in a series of such missives he had prepared for the Holy Father in Rome. Reports on the murders of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem, of churches burned, of nuns raped and sodomized. Saracens at their worst. From eyewitness accounts to blasphemous passages of the Koran written in feces or blood upon church walls. Two months ago the tone of his letters had changed, and these recent letters included accounts of retaliation by Knights Hospitaller and other remnants of the crusaders. Retribution was swift and it was brutal. Mosques were burned. Families of suspected Saracen raiders were tortured and put to the sword. Imam were skinned alive or burned at the stake. Father Esteban did not approve of such harsh actions, but he understood their purpose. To respond in kind and with greater ferocity to show that the children of God were not lambs for the sacrifice of heathens. After his most recent journey to collect reports, his latest letter had yet another flavor.

  The last week has been without incident. The pilgrim road is now under the protection of the Knights Hospitaller and the senior knight, Sir Guy LaRoque, assures me that the Saracens have been dissuaded from further attacks upon the children of God. However, I remain unconvinced that the threat has so easily been resolved after …

  There was a clang behind him and he flinched as he realized what it was. Sister Sophia had raised the metal cover of his dinner tray and then slammed it down again as she saw the uneaten dinner.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God…”

  If it had been anyone else, Father Esteban would have admonished her for swearing, but he knew better. It was more than his peace of mind—and perhaps his life—was worth to duel with Sophia when she held the moral high ground.

  Before Sister Sophia could get to full gallop, however, there was a sharp sound at the window.

  “What was that?” asked the young nun, her voice suddenly hushed.

  “Perhaps a bird flew into the shutters,” suggested Father Esteban.

  “Perhaps,” said Sister Sophia dubiously, and she took a reflexive step forward as if to stand between Father Esteban and harm.

  They listened for several moments, but all they heard from outside was the fierce desert wind blowing across the endless wastes.

  “A bird, then,” conceded Sister Sophia, though she did not open the window to confirm this. Both of them had heard the stories about this desert. About the jinni and other unholy demons who haunted the Arabian sands. Lost souls who lured travelers to oases and then feasted on them, flesh and bone.

  Then the sound came again. A blow upon the casement, sharp and hard.

  The nun crossed herself.

  Father Esteban did not. Though a priest and investigator for the church, he privately regarded himself as a political cleric rather than a man of deep faith. It was not true to say that he had entirely lost his faith, because
he had never entirely had it. He was the youngest son of his family and, as was traditional among the nobility, after his oldest brother began to manage the estates and his middle brother went to war, Esteban had gone into the priesthood. It had been expected of him, and gainsaying the policies of a thousand years of tradition and the iron will of his widowed mother had been impossible options.

  Father Esteban slid his hand under a sheaf of old parchments to touch the handle of the thin-bladed knife he used to cut the tapes on official documents. It was not much, but it was better than prayer, at least in his experience.

  Sister Sophia crept to the window and leaned an ear toward the drapes, listening. Her right fist was clutched so tightly around her rosary that her knuckles were white and her lips moved in a soundless prayer to the Virgin.

  They waited. A minute. Two.

  Five.

  Silence was all they heard. Father Esteban let out a breath and uncurled his fingers from the knife.

  Finally the nun began to relax, her cramped attitude of listening yielding first to conditional relief and then to rueful humor as she caught the eye of the priest.

  “And here, look at us, cringing at sounds like children sent to bed on a moonless night. What a picture we are.”

  Suddenly there was a tremendous crash as the shutters exploded inward, tearing the drapes from their rings and showering the nun with a storm of jagged splinters. The fierce impact staggered Sister Sophia, but she did not fall. Instead something dark lashed out and clamped around her throat, catching her, lifting her to her toes, choking off her screams. A bulky figure stepped through the shattered window, its face covered in a dark red mask, its body hidden beneath a cloak the color of old blood.

  “Sophia!” screamed Father Esteban as he leapt to his feet and stared in uncomprehending horror at what he was seeing. The masked intruder held the nun with one hand. Sister Sophia twisted and writhed in the grip, beating at the hand with her small fist; and then the man did the impossible—he lifted the nun even higher until her toes barely touched the floor, and then higher still so that she hung inches above the stone.