Author: James R. Hannibal
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/james-r-hannibal/page,9,59578-shadow_maker.html
A crowd of terrified pedestrians huddled beneath the main arch of the tower gate. A young man pointed at the gun in Nick’s hand and shouted to the others. Nick ignored him. To the left of the crowd he spied an ancient wooden door, slightly ajar, and pushed through into a stone stairwell. The gunfire above stopped. The shooter was reloading again. Nick raced up the steps.
At the top of the stairs, he kicked open the door and leveled his Beretta. No one. The ledge that faced the research facility was directly ahead, but the sniper had abandoned his perch. Then Nick heard the crunch of a footstep to his right. The shooter struck before he could bring his gun around, knocking him off his feet and knocking the Beretta from his hand.
Nick hit the gravel rooftop hard, but he rolled backward over his shoulder and came up facing his attacker. The man wore the same black cloak as the killer in the security video. The face under the wide hood looked Turkish, with a thin black mustache and beard, not much more than stubble. His hands were open, ready to fight, and his right palm bore a black marking similar to the tattoo on the driver in Budapest, a geometric shape within a circle.
In the distance, Nick could hear the rescue helicopter approaching. He circled the shooter, muttering a command to Drake. “Nightmare Two, I’m keeping our sniper busy. Move now. Get the kid to the roof and get him on that chopper.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
The shooter lunged. Nick caught him by the lapels of his cloak and fell backward, twisting mid-fall, slamming him to the ground. Usually that maneuver knocked the wind from an opponent, but the impact did not faze this enemy at all. With terrifying strength, the shooter rolled Nick onto his back and came up on top. The two of them bumped against the low lip of the tower roof, and Nick felt the eerie threat of four stories of empty space.
Nick threw a left-and-right combination, connecting with the left before the shooter reared up, out of range. As if by magic, a knife appeared in his hand, an ornate curved hilt with two black blades on either end, forming a crescent. He grinned and slashed down at Nick’s throat.
Nick caught the wide sleeve of the cloak and redirected the shooter’s momentum rather than blocking it, pulling his arm across his body. The first blade missed his neck by an inch. The tip of the second blade missed it by a millimeter. After the knife cleared his throat, he kept pulling in an arc, stretching his arm back above his head to pull the shooter forward and off balance. At the same time he bumped upward with his hips and twisted right. The lip of the roof acted as a stop, blocking his opponent’s knee. The shooter’s eyes widened and he toppled over the edge.
After taking a moment to catch his breath, Nick stood and peered over the side, expecting to see the sniper’s broken body lying on the pavement below and a crowd of students gathering around it. There was no one, no onlookers, no shooter, not even a scrap of cloak or a spot of blood.
Across the campus, the rescue chopper lifted off from the research center and nosed forward to rush Quinn to the hospital. Nick’s phone chimed, a message from his chess app. The ivory text read, TheEmissary has taken your knight. Your move.
CHAPTER 19
A search of the roof revealed no weapon and no shell casings. The sniper had to have ditched his rifle before Nick made it up the stairs. Then a flash of gold caught his eye. The shooter’s strange knife lay on the lip of the roof.
Nick retrieved it and turned it over in his hand. Its workmanship was beautiful. Gold and silver arabesque inlays formed an intricate pattern of vines with heart-shaped leaves, weaving in and out of eight-pointed stars—all set into a dark alloy that he could not identify. The shooter must have dropped the knife when he went over the edge, though he managed to retract the blades. Nick could not figure out how to get them out again.
The woven designs on one side of the hilt surrounded a small silver inlay circle, enclosing two crescent moons set back-to-back, the same symbol tattooed on the sniper’s right palm. Lacing through the vines on the other side of the hilt was a phrase in flowing gold calligraphy. Nick understood the Arabic words, but he was not certain of their meaning.
“Nightmare One, did you get him?” asked Drake over the comm link.
“Negative. What about Three?”
“He looked bad when I put him on the chopper, no color at all. Lighthouse scrambled a C-17 out of Incirlik with a surgical team. The colonel doesn’t trust Turkish hospitals.”
The crowd filtered out from below the tower. Some of the young men stared up at the Western intruder. Nick could see blame in their eyes. “We need to get out of here. Get the gear from the car and see if Romeo Seven can arrange some transpo.”
“Back to the hotel?”
“Yeah. And then the market.” Nick glanced down at the ornate knife in his hand. “I need to talk to an old friend.”
Two hours later, Nick and Drake parked a new rental in a metered spot along the outer wall of Istanbul’s Old City. That morning they had been Interpol agents, now they were tourists. Nick wore jeans and a Columbia jacket. Drake wore khakis with a Walking Dead T-shirt under a windbreaker.
While they waited in the car for their appointment, Nick’s phone buzzed. He pressed it to his ear. “What’ve you got, CJ?”
“More than I want and not enough,” replied the FBI agent.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that while you’re running around, terrorizing Turkish college kids, I’m getting nowhere. I keep coming up with dead ends.”
“Don’t kid, CJ,” said Nick. “The Emissary sent out another move. You were watching the coffee shop. You should have bagged him by now.”
“It’s not that easy. If we roll in before pinpointing the exact customer, we’ll violate the civil rights of every legitimate caffeine addict in the joint. We can’t do that. Not in this girl’s America.”
“Have you made a list of regulars who were around when the moves were made?”
“Of course, but I need more data so I can rule more of them out. I need you to keep playing.”
“Roger that.” Nick heard voices and laughter. Drake was watching a YouTube video on his phone. He slapped the big operative’s arm with the back of his hand and gestured for him to keep an eye on the street. Drake frowned at him and rolled a finger in the air, signaling him to move the conversation along. Had he been born to another generation, Nick was certain his teammate would have been one of those ADD kids. He returned his attention to CJ. “I have something new for you to chew on.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Scott has been digging deeper into the scraps of code we found on Grendel’s servers. They are definitely part of a virus.”
“You have specifics?”
“Some.” He explained that the fragments resembled Stuxnet, the virus the NSA sent into Iran to wreak havoc on their nuclear centrifuges in 2010. Stuxnet was a very specific and very powerful program. It had no effect on the computers it passed through, but when it reached its target, it became the first virus to enter through Windows and cross-talk to an industrial control system. On the upside, Stuxnet spun the Iranian centrifuges out of control, doing as much damage as a gaggle of bunker busters. On the downside, it left copies of itself on millions of computers, becoming a blueprint for hackers worldwide.
“It was only a matter of time until one of these bozos found a way to adapt it,” said CJ. “What does Grendel’s version do?”
“We don’t know, but Scott is convinced that the virus and the messages to the suicide bomber are linked because they were kept on the same section of the server. I’ll have him send you a summary. For now, that’s all I’ve got.”
“You haven’t asked about the ‘more than I want.’”
Nick rolled his eyes. CJ could never just spit things out. She had to play games, a sign of the control freak inside. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did you mean by ‘more than I want’?”
> “I’m so glad you asked. I’ve had more attention than I want from a certain Mr. Cartwright, the senator from Virginia—a lot more. It seems one of his staffers was injured in the bombing on the Mall, and a first responder refused to treat him. Ring any bells?”
“Not yet.”
“Tall guy. Lawyer. Claims that the first responder not only refused to treat his eye, he also punched him in the chest.”
Nick cringed. “Oh, yeah. That was me.”
There was a pause. In his mind’s eye, Nick could see CJ’s head cocking to one side, her free hand going to her hip. “Are you insane?”
“The guy had it coming. I had to get to people with more serious injuries, and he wouldn’t leave me alone. He got physical. I returned the favor.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Keep the senator at bay, CJ. We don’t need interference from power-hungry politicians.”
“What’s it worth to you?”
Nick closed his eyes. “Dinner?”
“He’s a U.S. senator.”
“Fine. A nice dinner. An expensive one. Whatever you want.”
“Tell you what, I’ll plead ignorance as long as I can, but if he keeps digging, he’s going to turn something up. He has the ear of the president. These days there’s no defense against that.”
Drake tapped Nick’s shoulder and pointed to his watch.
Nick acknowledged the signal with a nod. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Sure you do,” said CJ. Then her voice became distant, like she was holding the phone in front of her face. “Dinner, Nick Baron. A very expensive dinner.”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER 20
The Grand Bazaar was a sprawling labyrinth of roofed-in streets, all hopelessly narrow, all packed with rugs and hookahs and knickknacks, and all echoing with the shouts of merchants and the buzz of more than three hundred thousand daily visitors. It was a claustrophobic man’s nightmare and a covert operative’s dream.
Drake sniffed the air and grinned. “I love this place. Why have you never brought me here before?”
“I’ve never had a reason, dear.”
Nick had not been to the Grand Bazaar in years, but he found his way through the maze with little trouble, mostly by following his nose. Hadad liked to meet at a favorite tea shop, and all of the tea, coffee, and spice shops in the bazaar were concentrated into one long row—the same row that had housed them for more than half a millennium.
In this section of the bazaar, shop was a loose term. Bay would be better. The cafés amounted to little more than shallow caves lining the covered street. The kitchens took up most of the space, while the patron seating—painted iron chairs and little round tables—spilled out into the narrow street. Nick and Drake each ordered a mint tea from Hadad’s chosen shop and took a seat at the edge of the bay.
“He should be here,” said Drake, checking his watch.
Nick raised a tiny glass to his lips. “This is Turkey,” he said before taking a sip. “Any appointment time comes with an implied ‘ish’ at the end. Besides, he’s already here. He has protection posted.” With a subtle movement of his elbow, Nick indicated a waiter that haunted the opposite corner of the bay. His grim expression contrasted sharply with his bright red jacket and fez.
Drake brushed a hand through the hair on the back of his head, a pretext to get a look at the sentry. “That guy could play for the Patriots,” he said when he turned back.
“He’s scoping us out. Hadad will show up in his own time.” Nick took another sip of tea and then drew the shooter’s knife from the pocket of his coat. He held it with both hands, running his thumb across the gold calligraphy. “Ana al-muftaah,” he read out loud.
“Say again.”
“It’s Arabic. It means, ‘I am the key.’”
He handed the knife to Drake, who held one end up to his eye, trying to look down inside. “How do you open it?”
“I don’t know, but I assume each blade comes out like a spring stiletto, so I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“That’s good advice.” Thin and cracked with age, the voice came from close by Nick’s left shoulder. He had not heard the old man’s approach, despite the fact that he walked with a cane. Nick smiled, but he did not turn. “It has been too long, my friend. God’s peace be upon you.”
“And upon you, Nicholas, though it never seems to stick.” Hadad placed a withered hand on Nick’s shoulder and lowered himself into the chair between the two operatives. He was small, shrunken by his many years, which Nick figured to be at least ninety. He rested a cane with a gilded head between his knees and then, without asking, he reached out and took the knife from Drake. “What an exquisite piece,” he said, wrapping his gnarled fingers around the hilt. The two blades shot out from the sides with a metallic ring. “And it is functional. Remarkable. I presume you are looking for a trade? I’ve been working on a new shoulder-launched missile that you might like.”
“Easy, Hadad. We just need information. We need to know where the knife came from.”
The blades retracted as quickly as they had shot out. “I see.” Hadad gently laid the knife on the table and smacked his lips, pushing a tobacco-stained tongue off the roof of his mouth. “I am thirsty, Nicholas. And too much talk dries out an old throat. Perhaps some tea might strengthen my voice.” He raised a hand, and the grim waiter in the red jacket and fez came over with a glass of tea and plate of sweet halva wafers on a tray.
Nick knew the drill. He slipped the waiter a small stack of bills, much more than tea and wafers were worth. The waiter left the refreshments and returned to his post.
Hadad sipped his tea in silence for a while, watching the tourists passing by. Finally, he set down his glass and picked up the knife again. He pressed his thumb against the back of his cane and the tip of the gold head swung open, revealing a set of bifocals. These he put on before examining the hilt, slowly rotating it with his fingers.
“How did you get it to open?” asked Drake, losing patience with the old man’s silence.
Hadad grinned at the big operative, exposing an uneven row of yellowed teeth. “It is an ancient design using cogs and springs. You could call it clockwork. The switch is hidden. Look here.” He flipped the hilt to the side with the silver circle and crescent moons and pressed the symbol inward with his thumb. The blades shot out. As soon as he released it, they retracted again.
“That explains why they retracted when the shooter dropped it,” said Nick, but Hadad did not seem to hear him. The old man had fixated on the symbol. He adjusted his bifocals and brought the weapon to within an inch of his nose. “Did you say that you fought a man who wielded this knife?”
Nick nodded. “He had the same symbol tattooed on the palm of his hand, the circle with the crescent moons.”
Hadad removed his glasses and looked up, dropping the quaint, dotard expression he had maintained since he arrived. He was suddenly alert, and very grave. “The man with the tattoo. Did you kill him?”
“I threw him off a roof.”
“But did you kill him?”
Nick found the urgency in the old man’s voice perplexing. “No. He disappeared.”
Hadad pushed the hilt into Nick’s hand and leaned on his cane to stand. “I have told you all that I can. Thank you for the tea.”
Nick took hold of his arm to keep him at the table. “You saw something on that hilt. What was it?”
“It was nothing. Let me go.” Hadad pulled against Nick’s grasp. The Turkish linebacker started toward them. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Drake reaching for his Beretta. This meet was going sideways, fast, but he needed answers. “Please, Hadad. For an old friend.”
Hadad hesitated for a moment longer and then settled back down in his chair. He motioned for his protector to back off. Drake withdrew his hand from his jacket.
&nbs
p; “Only for you, Nicholas,” said Hadad as he set his cane between his knees again. He lowered his voice so that Nick could barely hear him over the echo of the crowd. “At first, I thought you had brought me an artifact. The design is centuries old. So are the symbol and the motto on the hilt. They all belong to an ancient order.”
“Which ancient order?” asked Nick.
Hadad glanced up and down the street as if his answer might bring enemies flying from the shadows. “The Hashashin,” he whispered.
“The society of killers from the Middle Ages?” asked Drake, sitting back and folding his arms.
The old man winced and motioned for him to keep his voice down. “Not killers. Assassins.”
“The Hashashin died out eight hundred years ago,” said Nick. “What are you so afraid of?”
“This weapon is newly fashioned.”
“So? It’s a fake, then.”
“You don’t understand. This is not one of the trinkets we sell to the tourists. Its construction requires methods and materials forgotten to history.” Hadad handed Nick his bifocals. “I have only known one smith who still retains these skills. His family was rumored to have served the Hashashin as armorers.” He slowly tapped the hilt at the bottom of the silver circle. “That man’s name was Ayan Ashaq.”
Nick held one lens of the bifocals like a magnifying glass over the spot that Hadad indicated. There he saw a blacksmith’s touchmark etched into the hilt in Latin letters—the initials AA.
Hadad retrieved his bifocals and returned them to their place in the head of his cane. “Ayan’s family once had a smithy in the Ankara Citadel. I trust you have the resources to find it, if it is still there, but I must caution you. The Hashashin are not as dead as the world believes. The man you fought today is proof of it. The wisest course is to leave them be.”