“What suggestion?” he asked.
“She’s an ordinary PLO courier, not a very good one and in her present state dangerous and a possible threat - easy to be subverted by Jews or CIAs and used against us. Like good farmers we should plant seeds where we can to reap a future crop.” Suliman smiled. “You’re a wise farmer, Excellency. My suggestion is I tell her it’s time to go back to Beirut, that we, the two of us who caught her in her harlotry, now want her to work for us there. We let her overhear us talking privately-and we pretend to be part of a cell of Christian militiamen from southern Lebanon, acting under Israeli orders for their CIA masters.” The man laughed quietly, seeing his employer’s surprise. “And then?”
“What would turn a lukewarm, anti-Israeli, Palestinian Copt into a permanent, fanatic hellcat bent on vengeance?” Hashemi looked at him. “What?”
“Say some of these same ‘Christian militiamen, acting under Israeli orders for their CIA masters,’ maliciously, openly hurt her child, hurt him badly, the day before she arrived back, then vanished - wouldn’t that make her a fiendish enemy of our enemies?” Hashemi lit a cigarette to hide his disgust. “I agree only that her usefulness is over,” he said and saw a flash of irritation.
“What value has her child, and what future?” Suliman said scornfully. “With such a mother and living with Christian relatives he will remain Christian and go to hell.”
“Israel is our ally. Stay out of Middle Eastern affairs or they will eat you up. It’s forbidden!”
“If you say it is forbidden it is forbidden, Master.” Suliman bowed and nodded agreement. “On the head of my children.”
“Good. You did very well today. Thank you.” He went to the safe and took a bundle of used dollars off the stacks there. He saw Suliman’s face light up. “Here’s a bonus for you and your men.”
“Thank you, thank you, Excellency, God protect you! The man Armstrong may be considered dead.” Very gratefully, Suliman bowed again and left. Now that he was alone Hashemi unlocked a drawer and poured himself a whisky. A thousand dollars is a fortune to Suliman and his three men, but a wise investment, he thought contentedly. Oh, yes. Glad I decided about Robert. Robert knows too much, suspects too much - wasn’t it he who named my teams ? “Group Four teams must be used for good and not evil, Hashemi,” he had said in that know-all voice of his. “I just caution you, their power could be heady and backfire on you. Remember the Old Man of the Mountains. Eh?” Hashemi had laughed to cover his shock that Armstrong had read his most secret heart. “What have al-Sabbah and his assassins to do with me? We’re living in the twentieth century and I’m not a religious fanatic. More important, Robert, I don’t have a Castle Alamut!”
“There’s still hashish - and better.”
“I don’t want addicts or assassins, just men I can trust.” Assassin was derived from hashshashin, they who take hashish. Legend told that in the eleventh century at Alamut - Hasan ibn al-Sabbah’s impregnable fortress in the mountains near Qazvin - he had had secret gardens made just like the Gardens of Paradise described in the Koran, where wine and honey flowed from fountains and beautiful, compliant maidens lay. Here hashish-drugged devotees would be secretly introduced and given a foretaste of the promised, eternal, and erotic bliss that awaited them in Paradise after death. Then, in a day or two or three, the “Blessed One” would be brought “back to earth,” to be guaranteed quick passage back - in return for absolute obedience to his will.
From Alamut, Hasan ibn al-Sabbah’s fanatical band of simpleminded, hashish-taking zealots - the Assassins - terrorized Persia, soon to reach into most of the Middle East. This continued for almost two centuries. Until 1256. Then a grandson of Genghiz Khan, Hulugu Khan, came down into Persia and set his hordes against Alamut, tore it stone by stone from its mountain peaks, and stamped the Assassins into the dust.
Hashemi’s lips were in a thin line. Ah, Robert, how did you pierce the veil to see my secret plan: to modernize al-Sabbah’s idea, so easy to do now that the Shah has gone and the land’s in ferment. So easy with psychedelic drugs, hallucinogens, and a never-ending pool of simpleminded zealots already imbued with the wish for martyrdom, who just have to be guided and pointed in the right direction - to remove whomever I choose. Like Janan and Talbot. Like you!
But what carrion I have to deal with for the greater glory of my fief. How can people be so cruel? How can they openly enjoy such wanton cruelty, like cutting off that man’s genitals, like contemplating hurting a child? Is it just because they’re of the Middle East, live in the Middle East, and belong nowhere else? How terrible that they can’t learn from us, can’t benefit from our ancient civilization. The Empire of Cyrus and Darius must come to pass again, by God - in that the Shah was right. My assassins will lead the way, even to Jerusalem.
He sipped his whisky, very pleased with his day’s work. It tasted very good. He preferred it without ice.
Thursday - March 1
Chapter 55
IN THE VILLAGE NEAR THE NORTH BORDER: 5:30 A.M. In the light of false dawn, Erikki pulled on his boots. Now on with his flight jacket, the soft, well-worn leather rustling, knife out of the scabbard and into his sleeve. He eased the hut door open. The village was sleeping under its snow coverlet. No guards that he could see. The chopper’s lean-to was also quiet but he knew she would still be too well guarded to try. Various times during the day and night he had experimented. Each time the cabin and cockpit guards had just smiled at him, alert and polite. No way he could fight through the three of them and take off. His only chance by foot, and he had been planning it ever since he had had the confrontation with Sheik Bayazid the day before yesterday.
His senses reached out into the darkness. The stars were hidden by thin clouds. Now! Surefooted he slid out of the door and along the line of huts, making for the trees, and then he was enmeshed in the net that seemed to appear out of the sky and he was fighting for his life.
Four tribesmen were on the ends of the net used for trapping and curbing wild goats. Skillfully they wound it around him tighter and tighter, and though he bellowed with rage and his immense strength ripped some of the ropes asunder, soon he was helplessly thrashing in the snow. For a moment he lay there panting, then again tried to break his bonds, the feeling of impotence making him howl. But the more he fought the ropes, the more they seemed to knot tighter. Finally he stopped fighting and lay back, trying to catch his breath, and looked around. He was surrounded. All the village was awake, dressed, and armed. Obviously they had been waiting for him. Never had he seen or felt so much hatred.
It took five men to lift him and half carry, half drag him into the meeting hut and throw him roughly on the dirt floor in front of the Sheik Bayazid who sat cross-legged on skins in his place of honor near the fire. The hut was large, smoke blackened, and filled with tribesmen.
“So,” the Sheik said. “So you dare to disobey me?” Erikki lay still, gathering his strength. What was there to say? “In the night one of my men came back from the Khan.” Bayazid was shaking with fury. “Yesterday afternoon, on the Khan’s orders, my messenger’s throat was cut against all the laws of chivalry! What do you say to mat? His throat cut like a dog! Like a dog!”
“I… I can’t believe the Khan would do that,” Erikki said helplessly. “I can’t believe it.”