but were merely to be looked at and inspected like some inert lump, a faceless prisoner or a slave, then he would give no man the satisfaction of seeing him as submissive, and so he squared his shoulders and gazed stonily back into the cold, basilisk stare of the man watching him. The face was flat and close to featureless, almost completely concealed by a heavy, full beard of wiry iron-gray hair with wide, white streaks running from the outside edges of the nose to come together beneath the chin. Beneath twin, pointed tangles of coarse gray eyebrows, glassy, opaque eyes stared at him emptily, expressionless and unreadable. They reminded him of serpents’ eyes, utterly lacking in humanity or warmth, and he held their gaze resolutely, refusing even to blink as he mentally detailed the impressions this man had already made on him without speaking a word or offering a hint of recognition.
Arrogance was there, above and before all else, clearly discernible in the way al-Din held his head and even in the way in which the trailing ends of his black turban hung down to frame his face, as though positioned by someone who sought to achieve precisely the effect that he had captured. Intolerance was there as well, in the curl of the lip and the dead dullness of the sagging bags beneath the expressionless, unyielding eyes. Pride was there, too, he knew, although he could detect no overt sign of it, and so were monstrous vanity—denied and disavowed, no doubt, but there beneath the facade of faceless humility nonetheless— and sneering disdain for any but himself. Andre St. Clair decided then and there that he did not like Rashid al-Din Sinan, the Assassins’ Old Man of the Mountain, and that he had no wish to have any dealing with him on any pretext, even in obedience to the Council of the Order of Sion. And as that thought entered his mind, the other man slowly turned and stalked back inside the doors, the guards closing them reverentially and with evident relief at his back.
ALEC EMERGED FROM THE MEETING HOUSE about an hour later, frowning to himself as he tracked down Andre, who was warming himself by the fire the guards had built in the courtyard, and his first question, asked in French, was about Rashid al-Din. “He came outside to look at you when I told him who you are. Did you see him?”
“How could I fail to? He stood less than five paces from me, staring right at me.”
“And what did you think?”
Andre looked around him. There were more than a score of people in the courtyard now, and about half of them had gathered around the fire. “Do any of these people speak French?”
“Not that I know of. It is highly unlikely.”
“No more unlikely, surely, than that we should speak Arabic?”
Alec’s answering grin was tiny and brief, accompanied by a shake of the head. “Different thing, Cousin, believe me. You and I learned their language so that we could converse with them for our own purposes. These people have no such incentive. They are simple and unlettered, for the most part, seldom leaving these heights, and atop all that they are zealots. They despise us and everything we represent. They see us as godless infidels, damned eternally for our refusal to accept Allah and His Prophet. Why would they wish to sully themselves by speaking our foul infidel tongue? These men do not speak or understand French, upon my oath.”
“Then I shall tell you what I thought of your Old Man of the Mountain. I thought he was one of your perfect men of God. He is a zealot, but he is also a fanatic on the scale of a Nero or a Tiberius, consumed by self-love and convinced that only through his personal intercession can men ever hope to achieve salvation, and therefore he will do all in his power to foment war for his own purposes and to his own ends. He is filled up with self- righteousness and intolerance and hatred. He preaches bigotry and slaughter in the name of God. He is insane with the need to make other men insane in fighting for their gods and his own ambitions. I loathed him at first sight, and the mere prospect of having to treat with him at any time, for any purpose, makes me want to vomit. Apart from that, I found him quite impressive, in a flat-faced, inhuman kind of way.”
Alec quirked one eyebrow. “Well, he certainly seems to have made an impression on you. I wonder what thoughts you inspired in him.”
Andre tried unsuccessfully to cover a quick grin. “I believe in first impressions, Cousin, and they seldom lead me astray. As for what he thought of me, I could not care less. What did you and he talk about?”
Alec was quiet for several moments, as if deliberating whether or not he wanted to challenge Andre’s opinions, but then he shrugged and answered the question in a voice filled with disgust. “More than I wanted to talk about. First thing I found out was that I had stepped into a mess I didn’t even know was there. I didn’t do what any fool knows you have to do—I did not check my understanding against reality before jumping into the action, and placed myself at a disadvantage by not knowing everything I should have known. And, as it always will, that failure undid me when the last thing I needed was to be undone. Damnation! I’m still angry, but the truth is there’s no one to blame but myself.”
“Like what? I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Conrad and the Templars … De Montferrat and de Ridefort. I thought to distance them from each other, for my own purposes, one of them now being dead, but as soon as I brought the matter up, Sinan became incensed, and I knew I had missed something. Sure enough, he told me all about it, and I was taken completely by surprise. It mattered nothing that I was still a prisoner of war when all of it took place, because I am a dealer in information first and foremost and should know better than to make such errors.”
“I still don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I know. I know you don’t … But I don’t want to discuss it right at this moment. I’m hungry and I can smell roasting goat. Let’s find some food and a place where we can sit and eat it and talk privately, and then I’ll tell you all about the debacle.”
A short time later, fortified by roasted goat and freshly baked bread, washed down with cold water from a nearby stream, the two Franks settled themselves by the side of a dying fire and stirred it into life. No one paid them any attention at all, and eventually Alec Sinclair sat up straighter and brushed crumbs from the front of his robe before starting to speak.
“What I found out was that Conrad crossed Rashid badly, months ago before I was released from my captivity. Rashid is still so angry about it that he would not even allow Conrad’s name to be mentioned, and I ended up looking like a fool. Apparently one of Sinan’s ships, laden with treasures of various kind, was forced to seek sanctuary in Tyre from a violent winter storm early in this new year. I am told there are protocols governing such situations, and that the laws of sanctuary offered by harbors to visiting ships are quite as stringent as those offered to sinners by churches, but for a variety of reasons on this occasion the laws were suspended by Conrad. He had opted some time before, for reasons of his own, to shun the call to arms sent out by Richard of England to all the knights and men of Outremer. We all knew that, but somehow failed to pay it the attention it deserved, for Conrad is German, kin to Barbarossa, and newly named but not yet solidly established as the Count of Tyre.
“The Templars had left Tyre long before this happened, to lay siege to Acre with de Lusignan, and they had taken their war chest with them, which meant that Conrad had lost his largest and most ready source of funds. He was courting the good opinion of Philip of France at the time, too, and that was not an inexpensive endeavor. But he knew there was no love lost between the English and French Kings and he sought to turn that to his own advantage. The primary import of all that at the time, however, was that Conrad was almost bankrupt, and the Arab ship in his harbor was heavily laden with goods and cargo of great value. And so he impounded the vessel and killed its captain.
“Well, when Rashid al-Din learned of what had happened, he sent envoys to Conrad, explaining who he was—a Shi’a prince—and requesting the return of his ship and its cargo and crew on the old basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Conrad refused, and the messengers were sent home with fleas in their ears. And needless to say, nothing was ever restored to Sinan.
“It was a loss of great magnitude to the Assassins and they would have gone to great lengths to make sure that no hint of their discomfiture would ever filter back to amuse Saladin. By the time I was released, the story of the captured ship had long since been overshadowed by other events. But I should have known about it nonetheless. I was lazy, and I did not dig deeply enough before committing myself to a course of action I would regret.”
“But what could you have discovered, and how would you have known where to look?”
“I would have looked where I ought to have looked before doing anything else. I would have looked among our own Brethren of Sion here, the few who deal with such matters. And had I done that, I would have found out everything about the episode.”
“So … Apart from the damage to your pride, if what I am hearing is correct, there had been no great setback to what you have been asked to do. Am I correct?”
“Oh yes. Conrad is a dead man. He merely does not know it yet. No one makes a mortal enemy of Rashid
