“I’m serious, Captain.”
“Don’t worry, if I see another scary bad man I’ll run away screaming like a nine-year-old girl.”
He sighed. “See that you do. Call me from the safe house.”
The line went dead.
I looked at the phone. “Kiss my ass,” I said again.
But his words had made cold sweat break out all over my body.
Interlude One
Near the City of Acre
May 17, 1191 C.E.
A cold wind blew out of the desert, stirring the thousands of banners and flags that rose like a forest of silk above the camp. Hundreds of cooking fires set the night ablaze and the air was filled with laughter and songs and conversation. The fragile quiet of the night-time desert recoiled back from this rude intrusion, and overhead the stars seemed to turn shyly away from the firelight below.
Sir Guy LaRoque sat astride his horse and watched as his king, Philip II, walked toward the command tent with a phalanx of advisors around him. The whole camp was on fire with excitement. The kings of Europe were coming to the Crusade. Philip was there first, as was only right, bringing eight thousand men in one hundred ships and enough provisions to mount a countersiege against Saladin. By June, Richard the Lionheart of England would be here, and more crusaders would flood into the Holy Land in his wake. After a weary siege and inconclusive battles, the tide was turning.
The energy crackled like lightning in the air, and Sir Guy smiled. This was how it should be. This was what served God. Still smiling, Sir Guy tugged on the reins to turn his horse away from the camp, kicked it into a light canter, and set out into the darkest part of the surrounding desert. The standard-bearer, an old and trusted family servant, spurred his mount and followed. They rode in the general direction of the coast, but once there were hills between them and the camp, Sir Guy turned his horse away from the smell of salt water and headed toward the deep desert. A half an hour’s easy gallop brought them to an outcrop of rock that rose like a cathedral from the shifting sands. Sir Guy stopped on a ridge and ordered his companion to unfurl the white flag.
After a full minute, a small light appeared at the base of the tall rock. A lamp was unshielded for a moment and then covered again. Sir Guy waited until this action was performed again, and again.
“Stay here,” he told his servant. “Stay alert and sober.”
With that, Sir Guy dismounted and walked down the sloping sand toward the rock. When he was ten yards away he called out in perfect Arabic.
“ As-salamu ‘alaykum.”
“ Wa-laikum as-salam,” replied a voice from within the featureless shadows at the foot of the rock. There was movement and the lamp was once more unshielded, revealing in its glow the thin and ascetic face of a bearded Saracen. Sir Guy went forward to meet the other man and they shook hands warmly.
“Come, my friend,” said the Saracen, “I have food and a warm fire inside.”
Together they passed beyond the tapestry and entered a cave which cut nearly to the heart of the towering rock. Inside, the cave was comfortable, furnished with a rug for the floor, pillows, a low brass tray piled high with cooked meats and dried fruits, and a tall pitcher of clean water.
“You look well, Ibrahim,” said Sir Guy as he warmed his hands over the flame.
Ibrahim al-Asiri was a tall thin man with a hawk nose that had been broken and badly set, giving him a villainous look that was at odds with his role as diplomat and counselor to Salah-ed-Din Ayyubi. Like Sir Guy, his counterpart in the politics of the wars here in the Holy Land, Ibrahim was a scholar, but, unlike the Frenchman, the Arab was also a mathematician of some note and the author of complex books on engineering, geometry, and algebra.
While they ate, the two men picked up the thread of a conversation that had occupied them over many previous secret meetings.
“I am taking the matter to a priest,” said Sir Guy. “One of the Hospitallers of my order. An old friend of the family. He is a wise and subtle man, and I think he will see the logic of our plan.”
Ibrahim frowned. “What will happen if he does not agree with us? What will he do?”
“Do?” laughed Sir Guy. “He would denounce me and I would be lucky to escape being publically whipped to death. My lands and fortune would be seized and I would be excommunicated.” The Frenchman waved a hand at the expression of alarm on Ibrahim’s face. “No, no, my friend, that’s what could happen, but I do not think that it will happen. I know this man.”
“So far,” Ibrahim said, “this has all been nothing but an intellectual exercise, a discourse of a philosophical nature. Once you speak to this priest, it becomes something else.”
“I know. With the first words I say to the priest it becomes treason and heresy.”
They thought about that for several moments, each of them staring through the flickering fire at the future.
“We could turn back,” suggested Ibrahim. “Now, I mean. We could finish our meal and you could ride back to your camp and I to mine, and we could never speak of this again.”
“We could,” agreed Sir Guy.
“If we do not, then we are irrevocably set on a course that will wash the world in blood and pain and destruction from now until the ending of time.”
“Yes.”
“We must be sure.”
“I am sure,” said Sir Guy. “If you were not a heathen of a Saracen then we would drink wine together to seal the bargain.”
“And if you were not an infidel deserving of a jackal’s death we would spit on our palms and shake upon it.”
They smiled at each other.
“Let us do this, then,” proposed Sir Guy. He sat forward and took a knife and held the edge of the blade in the heat of the fire. The steel grew hot very quickly. “Since flame and steel and blood are the things with which we will prove our allegiance to God and with which we will preserve His holy name here on earth, then let it be with flame and steel and blood that we seal our agreement.”
“Our Holy Agreement,” corrected Ibrahim.
Their eyes met across the flame.
“Our Holy Agreement,” said Sir Guy.
He removed the smoking blade from the fire and opened his left hand. “The Crusades and the armies of the church are the right hand of God. We will be His left hand.”
He cocked an amused eye at Ibrahim, “And don’t tell me that your left is the hand you wipe your ass with, for I know that. No one will look there for proof of your fealty. And every time I see it I’ll laugh.”
“You are a whore’s son and the grandson of a leper,” replied Ibrahim, but he was laughing aloud as he said it.
Their laughter and smiles ebbed away as the edge of the blade turned from flat gray to a hellish red gold.
“Swear it, my brother,” said Ibrahim, nodding to the blade.
“I swear to defend the church, and to preserve it, and insure that it will endure forever. By my heart, by my hand, by my honor, and by my blood I so swear.” He set his teeth and pressed the flat of the blade into his palm. The glowing blade melted his flesh with a hiss and a curl of smoke. Sir Guy growled out in agony and then turned his cry into a ferocious prayer. “By God I swear!”
Gasping, gray-faced, he pulled the knife away and handed it to Ibrahim, then slumped back against the pillows. Ibrahim held the blade in the flames until the fading glow flared again. Then he, too, swore by his faith and on his God as he burned his promise into his skin. Then he dropped the knife into the heart of the fire where it would eventually melt into nothingness.
The smell of burning meat filled the tent.
The faces of the two diplomats were greasy with sweat.
Ibrahim held out his burned hand to his friend. “The left hand of God,” he said.
Sir Guy grunted and leaned forward, reaching out to clasp hand to hand.
