Author: James R. Hannibal
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/james-r-hannibal/page,14,59578-shadow_maker.html
“Oh, he had help, love.” The receptionist’s eyes drifted and she smiled to herself. “Tall, dark, and handsome help—with a bit of a prison vibe, but the kind a girl likes if you know wha’ I mean.” She winked and poked Nick in the arm with a press-on nail.
“No, ma’am. I don’t know what you mean.”
“He had a tattoo, love. Right here.” She pointed to her pasty white forearm. “But not a cheesy set of flames like the boys at the pub have.” She looked around again and lowered her voice. “It was a proper marking. You could tell it meant some’n serious.”
Nick flipped over the paper between them and drew the circle with the crescent and star. As soon as he finished, the receptionist jabbed her finger at the paper. “That’s it, love. That’s the one.”
“Are you certain?”
“Do I look like I’m blind? ’Course I’m certain.”
Nick glanced up at the security camera behind the desk. This might be the break he needed. He tucked his badge into his coat. “Thank you, ma’am. You’ve been most helpful.”
“Have I?” asked the receptionist, her cheeks beginning to flush.
“Yes, but remember, our conversation here was strictly classified.”
She waved her hand in a slow arc, fluttering her fingers. “You were never here, love.”
—
On the elevator back down to the lobby, Chaya tugged at Nick’s elbow. “How could you know to draw that tattoo unless you already knew who took my father?”
Nick watched the red numbers tick by above the elevator door. “I didn’t know, I suspected. We’ve been tracking a terrorist group with similar tattoos since the bombing in Washington, DC.” There was a loud ding and the doors slid open. He stepped out into the lobby at a quick pace.
Chaya was right on his heels. “And when were you planning to tell me that the people who bombed your capital had my father?”
“I’m telling you now.” Nick reached the security desk and loudly slapped the polished concrete surface, startling the college dropout behind it nearly out of his chair. He flashed his badge. “I need to see yesterday’s video files.”
CHAPTER 31
In one hundred meters, turn left on Lensfield Road.”
“This one?” asked Drake, putting on his blinker.
“No. Keep going. That one was thirty meters. I said one hundred meters to Lensfield.”
“There are no street signs. How do these people find anything?”
“You’re there. Turn now!”
Drake missed the turn.
Scott exhaled loudly into the comm link. “Stand by. I’m recalculating.”
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m upset because you’ve taken one of the most brilliant technical minds of our time and reduced him to a TomTom. Make the next available U-turn.”
Drake followed Scott’s directions deeper into the Cambridge University campus, crossing from modern to old to Old World. He stared up at the brownstone faces of the long renaissance buildings as if he might enter the maze within and never find his way out again. He hated the endless dusty halls of academia, and Nick knew it. Yet Nick had sent him up here anyway.
“CJ’s databases won’t have anything on a terrorist group that’s been dormant for eight hundred years,” Nick had explained as he peeled Drake away from Chaya and stuffed him into the Peugeot. “I need you to go up to Cambridge and consult Rami.”
“What kind of database is Rami?”
“Rami isn’t a database. He’s a professor—my professor. Dr. Rami Fuad taught Middle Eastern Studies at the Air Force Academy. A few years after I graduated, he abandoned that program as a lost cause and moved to Pembroke College, at Cambridge.”
The interior of the college was as nightmarish as Drake had feared. Long, echoing halls, stairwells that only led down when he needed to go up, room numbers with no decipherable pattern to their order. He made several wrong turns and backtracks before he finally stumbled upon a half-open door with a frosted glass pane that read: DR. RAMI FUAD, MIDDLE EAST HISTORY, EGYPTOLOGY.
Drake rapped lightly on the glass and then pushed the door open and peered inside. He heard voices, but he saw no sign of the professor, only a narrow L-shaped room that might have once been Shakespeare’s broom closet. The leg of the room ahead of him was lined with books, most on shelves, some in precarious stacks on the floor. What he could see of the back wall sloped downward with the roof, except for a recessed window where sunlight held the dust of centuries past suspended in a thin beam.
A flustered student marched around the corner, clutching a heavy stack of loose pages and sending the dust flying in wild swirls. As the young man brushed past Drake and fled into the hall, a Middle Eastern voice called out from the inner sanctum in impeccably articulated English. “Next! And be quick about it. I have an important meeting.”
With trepidation that his subconscious dragged up from his Notre Dame years, Drake crept around the corner. There, he found an aging Egyptian with neatly trimmed gray hair seated behind a desk cluttered with papers and more stacks of books. If there was a computer, Drake could not see it. The professor’s eyes, partially hidden behind square-rimmed glasses, remained buried in a thick volume. “What do you need?”
“Dr. Fuad . . . um . . . ahem.” Drake tried to banish the twenty-year-old student from his voice. “My name is Drake Merigold. Nick Baron sent me.”
Rami abruptly looked up. His stern expression melted into a warm smile. “Ah, Mr. Merigold. I apologize. You are the important meeting.” He stood and took Drake’s offered hand, pumping it up and down. “Welcome to my castle.”
Drake had to bend forward to accommodate the handshake. The professor’s head barely came up to his chest. The rapid change in the Egyptian’s demeanor left him off balance. “Um . . . was I interrupting something?”
“Hmm? Oh, you mean the student.” Rami flicked a thick hand at the door as if he were shooing away a mosquito. “I just gave Mr. Wentworth my review of his dissertation. He still has a lot of work to do.” He gestured to a wooden chair in front of his desk. “Please, sit down and tell me your tale. Nicholas did not give me much information over the phone.”
Drake unlocked the screen of a tablet computer and passed the device over the stacks of books into Rami’s hands. “Nick took these photos in what we believe to be a Hashashin catacombs,” he said as he settled into the chair, “under the Ankara Citadel.”
“There is nothing under the Ankara Citadel,” argued Rami, taking the tablet. “Over the years, the Turkish National Museum has pelted that hill with enough sonar to raise a Russian submarine. They find it is solid rock every time.”
“We beg to differ. In light of our recent intelligence, I’d say the museum was bought off.” Drake shook his head. “But that’s beside the point. Professor, those symbols may be the key to stopping a terrorist group planning to release a bioweapon. Can you identify them?”
Rami squinted at the screen in his hands, flipping back and forth through the photos. “You are certain these were taken beneath the citadel?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“If that is true, then you’ve made a discovery of historic proportions. I must go and see it for myself.”
Drake grimaced. “Not advisable. Not all the Hashashin in that tunnel are dead.” He forced a smile. “The symbols? Please, professor.”
“Right. Of course.” Rami glanced through photos one more time and then handed the tablet back across his books with a definitive nod. “Yes. You can tell Nicholas that these are, in my opinion, Hashashin.”
“Is that all you can tell me about them?”
“Oh, no.” The professor stood and pressed himself against the sloped ceiling to get out from behind his desk. He gave Drake an excited grin. “There is more, my boy. Much, much more.”
CHAPTER 32
Rami walked the perimeter of his office, bobbing up and down at random, pulling books from shelves above his head and lifting them from the stacks on the floor. None of them seemed to satisfy him, and he kept putting them back, rarely in the place where he had found them.
“Doc, we’re in a bit of a hurry, here,” urged Drake.
“Shh.” Rami held out a quieting hand and continued scanning his shelves. “You cannot rush knowledge.”
Drake shook his head and left the professor to his searching, wandering impatiently around the small office. Amid the clutter and books, he saw the artifacts and memorabilia one would expect in the den of a professor of antiquities—fragments of pottery, blocks of hieroglyphics and cuneiform script. Then he came across an old Bible with dog-eared pages, lying open on a stand. He leaned closer to the Bible. It was open to the tenth chapter of Romans. Faded orange highlighting covered the thirteenth verse. For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
“Not all Middle Eastern people are Muslims, Mr. Merigold,” said Rami, suddenly standing right next to him. “That is especially true in Egypt.”
“You’re a Copt. Nick didn’t tell me.”
“As well he shouldn’t. It is not for him to tell.” The professor held up a book bound in blue leather with both hands, one index finger holding a place in the text. “Come, I have found the information we need.”
Drake eyed the weighty volume. “Doc, I don’t have time for a history lesson.”
“Trust me, you’ll want to make time for this one.” As if to emphasize the point, the professor made Drake wait while he squeezed back behind his desk and cleared the space between them.
“These are the writings of Hulegu Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan,” he said finally. “Hulegu sacked the Hashahin stronghold of Alamut in Persia and spent many hours in their library. In this book, he recounts the story of a splinter group that left Alamut a century before he arrived in the region. Scholars have always dismissed it as pure fiction.”
“Why should they dismiss it?” asked Drake.
“Because there was no archaeological evidence to support it.” Rami’s thin lips spread into a conspiratorial smile. “At least, not until you stepped into my office with those pictures.” He laid the book on the desk and opened it to the place he held with his finger. At the center of the page, beneath flowing silver script, was a hand-drawn illustration of the same five symbols that Nick had photographed in the tunnel.
The professor’s eyes shone behind his square lenses. “What do you know about the Hashashin?”
“They were assassins,” said Drake. “Everyone knows that. But Nick said they were pragmatic killers, not apocalyptic zealots like the terrorists we’re chasing.”
Rami gave a dubious nod. “Nicholas was half-right. The Hashashin leader, Hassan, used his assassins to consolidate power for his Ismaili cousins. He killed far more Muslims than Crusaders and was, indeed, a pragmatist. But”—the professor raised a finger—“his foot soldiers were the quintessential apocalyptic zealots.”
Rami swept backward through the text until he came to a tinted illustration of a lush garden, lit by a radiant sun. Four bearded men in long robes stood in a half circle, happily conversing.
“Where are the seventy virgins?” asked Drake.
“I am sure that many retired suicide bombers have asked the same question,” said Rami, sitting back in his chair. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “The heavenly harem is a more recent invention. Hassan did not promise his followers postmortem sex. He promised them an earthly paradise instead.”
“An earthly paradise?” repeated Drake, furrowing his brow.
Rami nodded. “Hassan promised his soldiers an eternal age called the Qiyamah, a final peace brought on by the return of the twelfth imam, the Mahdi. He convinced them that he was the Qaim, the ambassador who could speak to the Mahdi across the veil between worlds, and that all these assassinations were preparing the Earth for the Mahdi’s return.” The professor shrugged. “The great Hassan was nothing more than a charlatan, and every charlatan has his comeuppance. That is where Hulegu’s splinter group comes in.”
He sat forward and flipped through the pages again, coming to rest on a picture of two cloaked men in peaked helmets. They carried curved scimitars and glared at each other with their pointed beards nearly touching. “Hulegu tells us that in the year 1120, Hassan reached the precarious pinnacle of his career. His society of assassins had hundreds of murders to its credit—”
“But still no Mahdi,” interrupted Drake.
Rami smiled. “High marks for you, Mr. Merigold.” He placed his elbows on the desk on either side of the text and steepled his fingers. “Hassan’s only option was to fabricate a Mahdi. He paraded a child around his mountain stronghold as the incarnation of the twelfth imam and then hid him away and declared the Qiyamah had begun.” The Egyptian grinned like a car salesman and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to paradise! Now get back to work. Of course, Hassan remained the Qaim, the assassinations continued, and no one ever saw the child again.”
“Great story,” said Drake, growing impatient again, “but what does that have to do with our Hashashin terrorists?”
Rami brought his hands together with a startling clap. “I’m so glad you asked!” He laid a finger on one of the bearded men in the illustration. “This is General Insar, a foot soldier who survived too many suicide missions. He didn’t buy Hassan’s lies and started squawking about it among the faithful. When Hassan tried to arrange his death, Insar challenged him and killed him and then fled with his followers to another mountain fortress.”
“The Ankara Citadel,” said Drake.
Rami abruptly looked up from the book. “High marks again, Mr. Merigold! You’re much smarter than Nicholas gives you credit for.”
Drake opened his mouth to respond, but the professor kept going before any words came to him.
“Insar formed an unsteady alliance with one of the late Hassan’s rivals, the Sultan of Rum—sort of an enemy-of-my-enemy arrangement. His splinter group of Hashashin, the Insari, lived and thrived at Ankara for a hundred years, making their living openly as assassins and blacksmiths and waiting for the return of the real Mahdi.”
“Who, once again, never came.”
The professor raised a pair of bushy eyebrows. “They never got the chance to find out. The whole group was wiped out in 1242. The new sultan saw them as a threat and sent a huge army to Ankara in a preemptive strike.” He closed the book and sat back again, removing his glasses. “According to Hulegu, the sultan’s army finished off the Insari Hashashin, but at great cost. Five thousand men marched on Ankara. Only two hundred returned.”
Drake narrowed his eyes. “If the sultan wiped out the Hashashin in the thirteenth century,” he asked, “then who did we fight in those catacombs last night?”
Rami shrugged. “Why should we trust the word of the sultan’s men? Perhaps a remnant of the Hashashin survived at Ankara, living in secret all this time as assassins for hire. There are rumors of it all throughout history. Can every one of them be false?”
“That would mean the Insari Hashashin are remarkably adept at keeping to the shadows, even in the modern world. They’ve purposefully stepped out into the light. Why now, after eight centuries? What changed?”
The professor pressed one stem of his glasses to his chin, his face clouded in thought. After several seconds, his eyes focused again, and he shook the glasses at Drake. “They must have found another Qaim, another Hassan more convincing than the original.”
The word Qaim stuck in Drake’s brain. “You mentioned Hassan pretending to be the Qaim before. What did you say it meant?”
“Al-Qaim,” said the professor, slipping his glasses back on. “In English, ‘the ambassador.’” He seated his frames and looked across the desk at Drake. “Or perhaps more accurately, ‘the emissary.’”
CHAPTER 33
British food had always mystified Nick. How could the nation credited with the invention of the sandwich be utterly incapable of producing a basic ham and cheese? He dumped the caramelized onions off a dubious adaptation of a chicken club and then considered dipping the sandwich in his Americano. That might at least soften the hard roll, which promised to go down like broken glass.
Across the table, Chaya drummed the Formica with manicured nails and stared out the café window at the Strand. “You said the IBE security video was a major breakthrough.”
“It was.”
“Then what are you doing?”
Nick slowly chewed a bite of sandwich, grinding the stiff crust between his teeth until it was safe to swallow. “I’m eating.”
Chaya muttered something in Hindi and pounded the table with her fist, sending a spatter of Nick’s coffee onto the sleeve of his overcoat. He leisurely dabbed it away with a napkin.
Behind the stolid expression, Nick was just as impatient as she was. The security video from IBE showed Kattan’s face from multiple angles, their biggest lead yet. Now they had a complete digital profile along with fixed points in time and space to feed into London’s public-camera system, the largest Big Brother network in the world. Finding Kattan was only a matter of time, but Nick couldn’t go back to the hotel to prepare to go after him—not yet, not with the lawyer in tow.
As he struggled to masticate his third bite of sandwich, Nick’s comm unit finally crackled to life. “Are you there, One?”
Nick raised the phone to his ear to conceal that he was talking through the earpiece. “I’m here,” he said to Scott. “Did you get it?”
“I hope you know how many international laws I had to break.”
“Which makes this no different than any other day. Where to?”
“Take the Piccadilly Line from Holborn. Head for Piccadilly Circus.”