Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (16 page)

       Tonight he hoped to have his answer, and his
eyes brightened to see the dark wings of the birds wheel and swoop above the
horned tower, until one came to rest at last on the stony ledge of the window,
calling out a
welcome, like the
trilling
  voice of the wind that carried it.

       Gingerly, the Sami extended his arm, his
hand holding out a sweetened date in reward. The sleek bird cocked its head to
one side and hopped through the embrasure of the tower lancet. Its gray
feathers gleamed in the torchlight as it entered, and the Sami cooed in
greeting, a smile pulling the sallow lines of his bearded face. He spied the
silver circlet on the bird’s right leg. Tonight he would have his answer from
Alamut.

       Eagerly he removed the message ring and
carried it to a high table beneath the guttering torch that lit this solitary
room. His breath quickened as he unlatched the ringlet and pried out the thin
strip of cut cloth that would contain his message. He unrolled it slowly, his
eyes hoping to find the stain of blood that would sanction him to take matters
into his own hands here. The cloth was clear and unblemished. He stared at it,
unwilling to believe his eyes. He turned it over and over, as if the message he
sought was merely hidden from him by a trick of the light.

       The cloth was unstained.

       Bitterly, he grasped the tiny strip in his
clenched fist, angry and frustrated. Perhaps this was not the final order, he
chanced. Perhaps this message was meant for another. The Kadi will have birds
aloft as well. This bird may have been meant for him.

       He went to the window, expecting to see more
dark winged messengers wheeling about the tower. He called out, his voice
shrill and demanding, but no bird came. The flock had passed on to the west, as
they did each night. Only this one gave pause here.

       He turned from the window and struck the
high table with his balled fist, startling the courier in a flutter of beating
wings. The Sheikh had spoken. The cloth was pure and unstained. Perhaps his
silence speaks louder than any command he might give. He chooses not to speak
on the matter. It could only mean that he wishes to come to this man himself,
so that the stranger might pass the discernment of a more careful eye.

       Then a thought occurred to the Sami that
gave him pause. Exactly! This is exactly what he should have expected; what the
Kadi might presume as well. Why else would he threaten the intervention of the
Sheikh to stay my hand in this matter? The Kadi knew that the Sheikh would bend
his curiosity around this man, and draw nigh to place him beneath his eye. If
this man was sent here as an agent of the Order, how better to draw his victim
close!

       The Sami paced the dusty stone floor of the
Eyrie, his voice muttering his thoughts aloud as they gathered shape in his
mind. The stranger was an enemy. He has defiled the Well of Souls, sent here by
the Order to work some mischief. Now Sinan comes riding home, and right into
the web this man must be weaving. It could not be allowed!

       With each step he took his restless spirit
infected the messenger that had brought him these tidings. The bird’s wings
fluttered and beat the still airs of the room. Then it leapt to the lancet
window and was gone, soaring up from the high tower to seek the dry winds and
the night.

       The Sami’s mind seemed to soar with it,
spiraling into the darkness overhead. Thoughts came to him on the wind, plans,
strategies, strong measures that seemed more imperative to him now than ever.
He knew what he must do, but the Kadi would not heed him. The Kadi would not
see the danger. He would sweeten this stranger with apricots and dates and
honeyed mead. He would soften him with the touch of the chambermaids and hope
to loosen his tongue with the likes of Jabr Ali  S’ad. He did not perceive the
danger. The man has already found the Well, what more might he learn?  This
stranger was yet another wolf in the fold, but the Kadi thought only to milk
him like a goat.

       Plans came to him; dark ideas gathered shape
and form in his mind. He knew what he must do. For the stranger, he would now
take measures into his own hands. He could not expose the Sheikh to this man’s
ire and evil eye! He would use the chambermaid for she could bring his wrath to
the stranger’s very bedchamber. That would be his simplest task. But the Kadi
presented yet another problem. He sought to shame and berate. He was weak, and
soft, wavering in his thought. He was no longer rightly guided. For the Kadi’s
death, he would have to  first prepare the way and sway the minds and hearts of
the initiates. There were still too many men in the castle who would bend their
knee at the Kadi’s hem. They would need strong argument—persuasion.

       He was decided.

       He looked at the swatch of cloth in his
clenched palm, and then set it lightly upon the high table. Without a moment’s
hesitation he drew out the dagger from his sash and pricked the tip of his
thumb. He waited until the blood welled there, and deftly used the point of his
dagger to dab two small drops on the unstained cloth.  He smiled, for this was
now the very message he expected! What else could he do but obey?

       Yet others would not be so easily persuaded.
There was a room at the base of the high tower that would serve his need well.
He had dug there a deep pit, just wide enough for a man to stand upright so
that his head would protrude from the cavity in the hard stone floor. Now he
knew what he should do.

       First the woman!

       Without another thought he rushed to the
arched doorway of the keep and opened the bolt with a dry scrape. Two guards
would be waiting for him at the base of the winding stair. They were two of his
most loyal servants, sworn to fealty, even unto death, his faithful
Fedayeen.
He rushed down the stair, his robes rustling over the smooth steps as he
went.

       “Bring me the harlot!” he ordered. “You will
find her  in the chamber of greeting. The one called Samirah. Then go to the
initiates where they sleep and seek a man yea high. His head will just reach
your shoulder. Go quickly! Time flees, and danger has come upon us all.”

Part V

Tempting Fate

“The Fates lead the
willing—and drag the unwilling”

 Ad Lucilium CVII
– Seneca

13

Nordhausen was more shocked
than hurt by the blow. The
leader of the Arab band still fixed him with a darkly threatening stare, his
eyes searching, as though trying to decide what to do with him now that he had
trespassed upon this secret lair in Wadi Rumm. What was so important about this
place? There were a hundred caves like this scoring the striated flanks of the
canyon walls. What was so special about this one?  Perhaps these men had
secreted away a cache of weapons. Before the professor could react the man
strode forward and snatched up the flashlight.

       “Move,” he said curtly. “Inside!”

       Now what, thought Nordhausen? Does he mean
to get us neatly out of sight so he can do us in? Given the circumstances,
however, it seemed wise to comply. He needed to ascertain Paul’s whereabouts
and status. The unaccountable silence in the cave was disturbing, and he
wondered what could have happened to his friend. No doubt the Arabs were
wondering the same. The first guard had returned with a shrug, so it was clear
that Paul had not been found. Perhaps he had sized up the situation and was
hiding in some darkened nook of the cave, waiting for an opportunity to do
something.

       They worked their way back into the throat
of the cave, with the leader close behind the professor and the two guards
hugging the walls. “If you value your life, and that of your friend,” he said
“then you will convince him to show himself—and quickly!” His voice seemed very
edgy, almost rattled. Why should he be so upset about this, Nordhausen
wondered?

       He called out for Paul again, but to no
avail. Either he was stubbornly hiding, or something had happened to him. Could
he have wandered off into another series of caverns? Nordhausen turned to his
captor with a look on his face that was half apologetic and half bemused.

       “He was just through that cleft,” he
pointed. “We heard water and I went back for my canteen.”

       The revelation did little to ease the
tension. The Arab seemed even more disconcerted when he saw where the professor
was pointing. He shouted orders to the two guards, and they came up to
Nordhausen, seizing him roughly while the leader edged his way to the cleft
Paul had found. The man spoke to the gap in the rock now, his voice slipping
through in a hollow echo, carefully controlled, yet laden with emotion.

       “Look here,” he said. “We have your friend.
If you wish him well you will show yourself.”

       The echo rebounded to silence.

       The faint sound of water washing over stone
was all they could hear, a distant, forlorn resonance in the shadowy cave,
bereft of the promise of relief that Nordhausen had first heard in it. The
leader set the flashlight down and approached the cleft cautiously. He slipped
through and it seemed an interminable lapse before he returned, muttering angry
words in Arabic as he came.

       “You followed the water?” The man came up to
Nordhausen, eyes wide, his face a livid mask of shadow in the subdued light of
the cave. “You are certain this was the way you came?”

       “Yes, he was just there,” said the
professor. “Look, what is so important about all this?”

       “You fool!” the man went to strike Robert
again, but he held his hand at bay, his lips pressed tight, anger flaring in
his eyes. “You saw the water?” He asked the question with an unaccountable
urgency.

       “Yes, but it didn’t look drinkable, so we
probed a bit deeper into the passage and—“

       “Not drinkable? What do you mean?” Again,
the urgency, as if the man was pulling an answer from the professor that he
already knew, but did not wish to hear.

       “Why, it had this odd greenish glow about
it, and a touch of—“ A sudden thought occurred to Nordhausen. The radiation!
Paul had been going on and on about that Oklo reaction the French had
discovered in Africa, but now Nordhausen began to suspect something else.
Suppose these men were members of some terrorist cell. What if they were
secreting away a nuke in this cave? That could account for the low level
readings that activated Paul’s dosimeter. But that strange glow in the water,
and the eerie milky phosphorescence in the stream just didn’t make sense.

       “You say it was green,” the Arab leader
seized on the remark and pulled hard. “With such a glow that you could make
your way in the dark, yes?”

       “Well…yes.”

       The man spoke harshly to the guards, and
they quickly produced a length of twine and roughly bound Nordhausen’s hands
behind his back. When they had finished they ran off, each taking a separate
passage as though intent on searching the whole network of caves to be certain
Paul was not hiding.

       Nordhausen’s assumption piled up in his head
and began to finally generate some real anxiety for him. If these were
terrorists, then the situation took a very dark turn. “Look,” he  tried to
reason with the leader now. “We mean no harm here, and we haven’t seen a thing.
There’s bad water here. So what’s the harm in that? Hopefully your men will
find my friend and we’ll be happily on our way to Akaba and leave you all in
peace.”

       “Hopefully…” The man took off his pith
helmet and revealed a dark stringy mane of hair. “But if your friend went in
there, there’s no telling where he will end up. The moon is not yet full!” He
gestured to the opening of the cave. “It will not be up for hours yet. The
timing was all wrong! Don’t you see?” The man spent his anger letting it 
dissipate into a sullen resignation, as if some die had been cast and there was
nothing to be done. Yet Nordhausen could still not
discern
what he meant.

       “Who are you?” The leader asked the question
with newfound suspicion. “How did you find this place? Tell me, before I have
my men slit your throat for what you have done here today.”

       The second death threat was not lost on Nordhausen. 
He cleared his throat and swallowed hard, realizing that by arguing he might be
tempting fate with this man. But what else was there to say but the truth?
“I’ve told you,” he said. “We were trying to remove a fossil from a dig. Now
I’ll grant you that we were working the dig without proper permits and all, but
that’s hardly a mortal offense. We stumbled in here to escape the heat, and for
no other reason, I assure you. As for your green water, I know nothing about
it, and I don’t care to know anything about it. We were supposed to be on a
ship in the Red Sea by now. That damned helo pilot lost his nerve and dropped
our cargo, and us along with it, here in the middle of nowhere. Now, that’s it!
That’s all there is to say about it. Then you come along  with your ill
manners, accusations and death threats. And here I sit.”