Empire of Lies

68

The man standing before Nisreen looked very different from the ailing man who had riveted her with his story from his hospital bed in Paris.

It was Ayman Rasheed, of course. Of that she had no doubt. But this Ayman Rasheed was a younger, slimmer, fitter version of the man she’d met. It wasn’t just his appearance that was dramatically different. This man was in the full prime of his life. Contrary to the drugged, vulnerable patient she’d met, he exuded a chilling sense of power and confidence.

A power that, she fully realized, would allow him to take away her life with a snap of his fingers.

She tried to remain calm and keep her fear in check, despite the fact that everything about the scene was deeply intimidating. Kamal was to her immediate right, then Kolschitzky. Behind each of them stood one of the guards, beefy men standing at full attention and coiled to strike at an instant’s notice. Rasheed had the janissary captain by his side.

His question hung in the air for a moment; then Rasheed pressed on. “You told those men you were my spies. You claimed to be working for me, inside Vienna. We both know that’s not true. So I ask you… who are you?”

She hesitated about replying, then glanced across at Kamal just as he spoke.

Kamal had never met Rasheed before in person. All he had to go on were the portraits of him he’d seen in the books at the library, images of lavish oil paintings capturing a hero of the empire at his peak.

The Rasheed facing him was very much that man. And he required answers.

During the ride over to the camp, Kamal had fretted over what was to come. He’d used the time to think about what he might do and how things might play out, running the various scenarios through his mental grinder.

Now was the time to go with the gambit he’d cooked up on that ride. He knew it wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could come up with.

“Please forgive the deception, pasha,” he told him in a respectful, calm tone, “but we had to say it to be brought to you.”

“And here you are,” Rasheed replied. “It still doesn’t answer my question.”

“My name is Kamal Arslan Agha, and these are my companions. We’re travelers. Just like you.”

The reply caused Rasheed’s face to crease with curiosity. “Oh?”

“Yes. What you discovered in Palmyra, the words that were carved into a wall? They’re what brought us here, too.”

The curiosity gave way to surprise. Rasheed obviously hadn’t expected it, and yet he seemed to be controlling his outward reaction expertly. He glanced across at the captain standing beside him, then spoke.

“Interesting,” he said. “So you must have made quite a journey to get here. A risky one at that.”

“Indeed.”

“And what made you take that risk? What did you need to see me about?”

Kamal drew on his experience to keep his breathing level and his eyes unruffled. “We came here to warn you, pasha. Others know about the secret, too. And they’re going to use it to come here to try to kill you.”

Kolschitzky had been watching silently, and his expression morphed from confusion to anger. “What?” he roared. “You lying son of a bitch. You tricked me—”

The guard next to him flicked his hand up and gave him a hard slap to the side of his head, cutting short his outburst.

“Do behave,” Rasheed told the Pole. “I’m struggling to find a reason to keep you alive as it is.” He paused for a breath, waiting to make sure his point and his glare sank in, then turned to Kamal. “These travelers… why would they want to kill me?”

Kamal focused on maintaining his composure and avoided looking at Kolschitzky. “To stop you from doing what you’ve set out to do. To stop you from changing history.”

He couldn’t resist glancing at the Pole. Kolschitzky was seething with rage.

“That’s odd,” Rasheed replied calmly. “Because that’s exactly what he claimed, too.”

It was Kamal’s turn to feel bewildered. He gave Nisreen a quick sideways glance. Her expression was still inscrutable, but Kamal detected a crack of concern she couldn’t conceal.

Before he could ask him whom he was talking about, Rasheed nodded to the captain standing beside him. “Bring him in,” he ordered.

Kamal felt his pulse rocket as the janissary left the tent, then came back in with another prisoner, with a fourth guard escorting him as well.

It was Taymoor.

His mouth was gagged, his beard was unkempt, and he looked haggard and disheveled. He’d evidently been there for quite a while, and not as a cosseted guest. He was also missing his left leg at the knee, and was using a long stick as a makeshift crutch.

Taymoor’s eyes flared wide as he spotted his old partner and Nisreen.

“Leave us,” Rasheed told the captain in a matter-of-fact tone. The janissary gave the prisoners a once-over, then left the tent. Rasheed turned to Taymoor’s guard and flicked him a hand signal. The guard pulled out a yataghan and held its blade right up against Taymoor’s throat while using his other hand to loosen and pull down the piece of cloth that had been preventing Taymoor from speaking.

Rasheed gave Taymoor a stern warning finger. “You know the drill. Be very careful.” He waited until Taymoor returned a reluctant nod; then he turned to Kamal and Nisreen. “The same applies to you both,” he announced before issuing a clipped, terse nod at the men who were guarding Kamal, Nisreen, and Kolschitzky. The guards pulled out their yataghans and held them against their prisoners’ throats. “We can speak freely now. These eunuchs are dilsiz,” he said, referring to the deaf mutes that were frequently used by sultans in their palaces. Their usefulness wasn’t limited to not being able to hear or betray secrets; as executioners, they also couldn’t hear the condemned’s final pleas.

“They will be watching me like hawks,” he added. “Should one of you even begin to utter the incantation, I only need to raise a finger and they’ll slit your throat instantly.” He smiled. “I just think it would be excessively rude for one of you to leave in the middle of our chat, don’t you agree?”

Rasheed held there for a moment, then moved in closer. He ran his eyes over them, checking them out, first Kolschitzky, then Kamal, then Nisreen. He hovered in front of her, then, calmly, he reached down and took her arm. Keeping his gaze locked on hers, he pulled up her sleeve, revealing her tattoos.

He studied the markings, then looked up at Nisreen. “My men did say you had curious markings on your arms.” Then he smiled at her. “It looks like you did learn a lot from me—or, rather, that you will.”

The comment threw Kamal, then he realized that Taymoor must have told Rasheed about everything that had happened. He glared at his partner, who held his gaze defiantly.

Looking at Nisreen, Rasheed asked, “So… when is it you come from?”

Nisreen said, “1438.”

Rasheed nodded, like the date impressed him somehow. “Over three hundred years. And you’re speaking our language, so clearly our empire is still around.”

Kamal decided to step in. “It is.”

Rasheed swiveled his head to address Taymoor. “So you weren’t lying about that.” He shrugged, his skepticism clear. He turned back to Kamal and Nisreen. “He told me my grand design worked, you see. He told me that more than three centuries later, the empire is still around, bigger and more powerful than ever.”

Kamal nodded. “It is.”

Rasheed looked pensive. “So why are you really here? Is it really to warn me? You see, Taymoor Agha and I have had plenty of time to chat since he arrived. He told me this incredible story about, well, me—the future me. Not just me, but us, all of us. How we all met, how it played itself out, right up to the moment you pushed him off the train, a fall that damaged your partner’s leg so badly that it couldn’t be saved.” He paused, studying Kamal, as if to read his reaction. “He said that on that train, you told him you were coming here to get the forward version of the gift from Palmyra. But I can see that you already have it.” He gestured dismissively at Nisreen’s arm. “So it’s clear you were hiding your true intentions from him. You’re here for something else. And given what he’s told me about your research, and your wanting revenge on the empire that you blame for the deaths of your family, I can only imagine you really are here to do what you claim to be warning me about. You’re here to kill me; that much is clear. The question is… why?”

No one replied, leaving the question hanging heavily in the air.

Rasheed eyed Nisreen, then Kamal, and then he swung his gaze back at her. “This silence is so tiresome. Perhaps you’ll be more talkative if we start chopping off some fingers… for a start?” He gave the guard behind Kamal a crude hand signal that didn’t require a trained mind to understand.

The guard grabbed Kamal’s hand and brought the blade of his yataghan down so that its tip rested between Kamal’s thumb and index finger.

Rasheed stared at Nisreen calmly; then, just as he flicked a nod to the guard, she blurted, “No, stop. Don’t. Please… don’t.”

Rasheed gave the guard a halting gesture, then turned to Nisreen expectantly.

She dropped her head grudgingly. “It’s true. That’s why we’re here.”

“To kill me?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“To stop you from succeeding. To put an end to all this,” she replied, clearly trying to repress the quiver in her voice.

“To end the siege?”

“To stop the conquest of Europe.”

Rasheed looked bewildered. He took a few steps, a pensive frown creasing his forehead. “You want to stop me from achieving this great victory—the victory you owe your entire existence to?” he hissed, a quiet anger unmistakably unfurling itself. “Why? You blame me for the deaths of your family—is that it? You blame the empire? They were nothing. They weren’t even a footnote in history.”

Nisreen stiffened at their mention and at his dismissal of them. She stood taller, as if he had unleashed a fount of strength inside her. “No one is a footnote in history. That’s the problem with you, with everything you stand for.”

“Oh, please,” he scoffed, brushing her off with a dismissive gesture.

He turned away, but Nisreen wasn’t done.

“You cheated history,” she declared forcefully.

Rasheed let out a mocking laugh. “I cheated? That’s your problem?” He looked genuinely bemused. “I gave you an empire that outlived all others in human history. I don’t know what it’s like in your time: I can’t go there yet to see for myself; I haven’t changed it yet, but from what he’s told me”—he nodded toward Taymoor contemptuously—“it sounds like it was well worth the cheat. And yet you want to do away with it? You want to bring back the world I came from, a world you know nothing about, a world you never lived in?”

“I know enough to know that it was a world where men and women were free to choose how they want to live.” Her face was like a hurricane. “You took that liberty away, and instead you imposed on them, on us, one ruler. A tyrant. One man who gets to dictate his terms to us for life.”

“You need tyrants,” Rasheed shot back. “People love tyrants. They were voting them in back where I came from.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I lie?” He smiled benignly. “It’s the truth. You see, hanum, you give people too much credit. You seem to have this romantic delusion about democracy,” he chortled. “But democracy is just another word for mob rule. A wise man from my world, a man who didn’t exist in yours, once said, ‘Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.’ How do you think that turned out?”

Nisreen was stunned, her mouth having difficulty forming words.

“Democracy is a delusion,” Rasheed continued. “A fallacy. It’s the tyranny of the majority. And it doesn’t work. Democracies always commit suicide. It happened in Ancient Greece, and the same thing was happening around the world in my time, too. They tried it out for a couple of hundred years, and by the time I left, it was on its way out. You know why? They die when they become too democratic. Because if you let ordinary people choose their rulers, they’re ultimately going to choose badly. They’ll make a terrible, terrible choice for the simple reason that they’ll choose someone like them, someone who’s a reflection of who they really are. And, let’s face it, we’re not exactly the most noble of species. We’re actually pretty awful. We’re selfish, greedy, cruel, and racist. Did I forget something? Oh, yes, ignorant. For the most part. You see, people don’t want to be talked down to by some high-minded, brainy statesman. They don’t want someone who makes them feel inferior or ashamed. They want to be ruled by someone like them. And at some point, these mobs of gullible fools will end up choosing a crafty manipulator who makes them feel like he’s one of them, who tells them they’re the only ones who matter, who amplifies their blaming of outsiders for whatever they think is wrong with their lives. Someone who celebrates the worst of humanity and is just in it for himself, for power and money and nothing else. No great vision of their nation’s place in history, no burning desire to make lives better. It’s just greed and ego. And these power-hungry narcissists will lead their nations down a road to ruin. That’s where your great ideal of democracy has reached in many, many countries back in my world. That’s where it always ends.”

“Maybe things were as you say in your world,” she countered. “But at least the people made their choice. And I can’t believe that they won’t choose a better way once they see their mistake.”

“You’re assuming that luxury won’t be taken away from them. It always is.”

Nisreen was stunned, her mouth having difficulty forming words. “So you made that choice for us? For all of us? And we’re supposed to be grateful? I’m supposed to feel grateful that you stole our history?” Rage was blazing through her. “That your glorious empire killed my family?”

“No, hanum. In your case, I know that’ll never be possible. Which is a shame, really. I’m sure there are plenty of fascinating things you could have told me about. But then again”—he smiled—“I suppose it’ll be more interesting to see what happens without, as you so quaintly put it, cheating.”

And with that, he angled his gaze off her and gave the guards a couple of quick, disdainful hand signals.

Their meaning was alarmingly clear.

The first meant, “Take them away.”

The second: “Bring me back their heads.”