Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

Corben cast a glance across the house as they made their way past a small kitchen and through a doorway into a low-ceiling corridor. His eyes dropped to the floor as he reached the door to another room, and as he stepped in, something that didn’t fit registered at the threshold of his consciousness. Faint traces of bootprints were on the tiled floor just inside the room. He tensed up subconsciously, but it was too late. A shaft of hard steel was prodding him in the back.

Before he could turn, he spotted the slim, familiar figure, sitting cross-legged in the faint light, his silvery hair slicked back, watching him with ice-cold, detached eyes. He was seated on the floor — there was no furniture in the room, nothing but cushions scattered around its perimeter — and had his small medical bag by his side. He still had the needle in his hand. Beside him was a heavily armed bruiser whose thick arms were clasped on the shoulders of a terrified-looking local. Corben guessed it had to be the mokhtar. The man was sweating profusely and rubbing his forearm.

The rest of the room quickly fell into focus. A TV flickered silently in a corner. A small fire crackled in the tin fireplace. Next to it, three heavily armed men held a woman and four children — a boy in his late teens, and three girls — at gunpoint.

“Glad you could join us,” the hakeem announced drily. “We’ve just been having the most illuminating chat.”

Corben spun around quickly, his arms lashing out to grab the gun digging into his back, but he wasn’t quick enough. His opponent swung his arms up with lightning speed, hammering Corben with the butt of his Kalashnikov and catching him squarely in the jaw. Corben thudded to the ground, his skull seared with agony.

His eyes struggling to regain focus, he turned to see the hakeem push himself to his feet and take a couple of steps towards him. Curiously, the man didn’t seem interested in Corben. He bypassed him to home in on Kirkwood.

“So this is our mysterious buyer,” he intoned, his eyes moving over Kirkwood’s face with undisguised fascination. “And you are…?” He left the question hanging.

Kirkwood just stood there and watched him, without replying.

The hakeem gave a brief chortle, then, without taking his eyes off him, raised the needle he was holding and said to Corben, “Would you be so kind as to educate our guest as to my persuasive powers?”

Corben groaned as he lifted himself off the ground. “Tell him what he wants to know,” he complied grudgingly. “Believe me, it’ll save you some pain.”

The hakeem’s eyes remained locked on Kirkwood, his expression now tinged with smugness.

Kirkwood looked at the man the hakeem had been working on. The mokhtar, who was dressed in traditional, local garb, seemed to be drowning in pain and, Kirkwood somehow thought, in shame. “Kirkwood. Bill Kirkwood,” he flatly informed the man circling him.

“Any other names you’d care to add to that?” the hakeem teased. “No?” He paused, studying his prey. “Very well. We’ll leave that for now.” A puzzled look played across his face. “I don’t see the book anywhere. Where is it?”

“I don’t have it,” Kirkwood replied crisply.

The hakeem arched a skeptical eyebrow.

“He doesn’t have it,” Corben interjected. “He gave it to Evelyn Bishop’s daughter. She’s probably being escorted to our embassy by now.”

The hakeem brooded over the information, then shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. It didn’t contain the formula anyway, did it? I mean, you said so yourself. And there was no reason for you to lie.” He scrutinized Kirkwood, then added, “Not to Miss Bishop. You wouldn’t lie to her, now, would you?

Kirkwood felt his blood turn to ice. He realized the hakeem must have been listening in. His mind raced to remember exactly what he had said in that room.

“And yet, you still rushed here,” the hakeem continued. “To speak with this man.” He aimed an elegant finger at his seated victim. “What were you hoping to find out from him?”

Kirkwood stayed quiet.

“Perhaps you were hoping to find out what happened to your ancestor? And, with a bit of luck, find out what he discovered?” The hakeem moved to the window and stared out. “Fascinating man, your ancestor. A man of many talents. And many names,” he mocked. “Sebastian Guerreiro. The Marquis of Montferrat. The Comte de St. Germain. Sebastian Botelho. And those are just the ones we know about. But then, I suppose, he lived a very full life, didn’t he?”

Each of the names dropped into Kirkwood’s stomach like a pallet of bricks. There was no point in dissembling. The man was clearly well-informed. “How do you know all this?”

“Well, if you know anything about your ancestor,” the hakeem replied haughtily, “you’re bound to have across a mention of one of mine. Perhaps the name rings a bell. Raimondo di Sangro?”

The bricks had just turned to acid.

Kirkwood knew the name well.

The hakeem edged right up to Kirkwood, his eyes brimming with grim interest. “Brings a whole new meaning to the term full circle , don’t you think?”

His expression grew more serious. “I’ll save us all some time. As I said, our gracious host and I”—the hakeem nodded dismissively at the mokhtar —“were having a lovely little chat just now. And if anything, it confirmed to me that generational memories run deep in remote places like this.” He pointed to the walls of the room.

Kirkwood looked around the room and saw what he meant. Faded portraits of the mokhtar’s ancestors loomed down from behind weathered glass. They held a place of honor on the main wall of the room.

“People don’t have video games and cable television to keep them entertained,” the hakeem went on. “Instead, they gather around fireplaces and tell each other stories, passing on their life experiences. And the Yazidis, in particular, have a phenomenally strong oral tradition, one that was perhaps founded by necessity, given that their most sacred writings are gone.” The Yazidis’ holy book, the Mashaf Rash —the Black Book — was long lost. The common belief among them was that it was taken by the British, and that it was currently sequestered in a museum somewhere in England. In its stead, they had a tradition of talkers, who could recite the entire lost book from memory. “And it seems that this dear man’s grandfather once told him about a man who came down from the mountain, a sheikh no less. The man was delirious with a horrible fever — typhoid or cholera would be my guess — and in his final hours, he spoke in many different languages, languages they’d never heard. He created something of a stir, which is understandable.”

“He died here?” Kirkwood asked.

“So it would seem,” the hakeem confirmed sardonically. “We were about to go out and have a look at his grave. You want to see it?”

Sebastian rode away from the docks with a feeling of profound contentment. On clear, golden evenings like this, Lisbon was truly a magnificent city, and he was glad to be back.

It had been far too long.

He’d fretted about moving back to the country, let alone the city, of his birth, but the choice had proven fortuitous. Like the city, he was experiencing a rebirth, a reinvention that was — for both — a marked improvement over their previous incarnations.

The city had been devastated by a massive earthquake on the morning of November 1, 1755, on All Saints’ Day. The churches were crowded with worshippers honoring the dead when the first shock struck. A second jolt followed forty minutes later. The waters of the Tagus River rose and thundered through the city, wiping out most of it. Fires took care of the rest. By the end of that day, the city was a smoldering wasteland. Over thirty thousand of its citizens were dead, most of the rest homeless.