Corben listened to the noise coming from Ramez’s phone. It sounded like fabric rubbing against the phone’s mike, as if the phone was in someone’s pocket. In the background, some distant voices were barely audible.
“Can’t you boost the voices?”
“I tried. The distortion’s across the range. I can’t isolate them.” He shrugged at Corben. “This is as good as it gets right now.”
RAMEZ COULDN’T STOP SHIVERING. His chafed wrists pulsed against the plastic straps, the constant movement generating an irritating, burning sensation. At least, that’s what he imagined was happening. He couldn’t see out of the burlap sack covering his head.
They’d shoved it on seconds after stuffing him into their car, then—not that he’d resisted—they’d sadistically thrown in a couple of heavy punches to his face for good measure before pushing him down to the footwells of the backseat and pressing down on him with their shoes to keep him there.
The ride hadn’t taken that long, and although being in that car—with his head covered in that stinking sack, the occasional stomp to the ribs, and the muffled sounds of the city wafting by—was horrific enough, he would have preferred it to drag on if it meant delaying his current situation.
They’d dragged him out of the car, into an echoey building and down some stairs, then thrown him into the chair and strapped him in. The maniac with the concrete knuckles couldn’t resist landing another blow, which was all the more terrifying as, like those before it, it came unannounced, exploding onto his face through the stifling darkness of the sack.
He could hear occasional movement, footsteps around him, and there were voices a bit farther off, men’s voices. The accent was unquestionably Syrian, which didn’t bode well—not that anything else did. His mouth quivered as he tasted the sweat that trickled down his bruised face and mixed with the blood from his cut lip. The sack, which reeked of what smelled like an ungodly combination of rotten fruit and engine grease, wasn’t entirely opaque. A few tiny pinpricks of light found their way in, not enough to see anything, just taunting him with a hint of the outside world without allowing him any advance warning of the occasional incoming blow that his captors seemed to enjoy randomly inflicting upon him.
His body went rigid as he heard footsteps coming right up to him. He could feel someone’s presence, inches away, studying him. The silent shadow blocked out any light from outside, making Ramez’s world even darker.
The man didn’t say anything for a few maddening seconds. Ramez shut his eyes and tensed up, expecting another blow. The shivering wouldn’t be cowed. Instead, it increased, and with it the burning in his wrists.
But the blow didn’t come.
Instead, the man finally spoke.
“Someone’s going to be calling you on your phone, in a couple of hours’ time. A man from Iraq who came to see you yesterday. True?”
Dread flooded his senses. How could they know this? I didn’t tell anyone. I only called the police.
The realization hit him like an anvil. They have contacts in the police station. Which means no one’s going to come looking for me. It was a false hope anyway. In all of the city’s grisly history, no kidnap victim had ever forcibly been rescued. They were either released or—in most cases—they weren’t.
He didn’t have any time to mull the bleak prospect as he felt the man grab his left hand and hold it firmly in place. His grip was rock solid. Ramez froze.
“I want you to tell him exactly what I tell you to say.” The man’s voice was unnervingly threatening, despite his calm tone. “I need you to convince him that everything’s okay. He needs to believe you. He needs to believe everything’s okay. If you do that for us, you can go home. We have no quarrel with you. But this is very, very important for us. I need you to understand how important it is. And to do that, I need you to know that if you don’t convince him, this—”
With a startling suddenness, the man snapped Ramez’s middle finger back, all the way back, ripping the bone off its cartilage until the finger touched the back of his hand.
Tears burst out of Ramez’s eyes as he recoiled against the straps and howled with pain, almost blacking out despite the endorphins’ hopeless rush, but the man was unmoved. He just held it there, pressed firmly backwards, and kept talking.
“—is what you can expect a lot more of before we allow you to die.”
OLSHANSKY ALMOST JUMPED out of his skin when the scream burst through the speakers of his system.
It went on for a few agonizing seconds before turning into a whimper and finally dying out. It even startled Corben, though he’d been expecting something like it. He knew what they would want from Ramez, and he knew they’d have to make sure he was scared enough to put in a convincing performance.
“Jesus Christ,” Olshansky muttered. “What the hell did they do to him?”
“You probably don’t want to know.” Corben frowned. He heaved a frustrated sigh, imagining the scene unfurling in some underground rat hole.
The scream and the whimper were now gone, replaced by the same, annoying ruffle. Olshansky rubbed his face, shaking his head. He looked clearly shaken.
Corben let him have a moment of quiet. “What about the location?” he then asked, turning to the screen to his right. It showed a map of Beirut, overlaid by the boundaries of the different cell zones covering the city.
Olshansky collected his thoughts. “They’re in this cell here,” he said, pointing at the map. Cell-phone usage in Beirut was heavy, and each cell in the crowded city only covered an area of just under one square mile. But even with the enhanced triangulation at Olshansky’s disposal, the hundred-meter diameter of the target zone was still a pretty big haystack in which to find the assistant professor.
Corben frowned. Ramez was in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah territory. A definite no-go area for a lot of Lebanese. Virtually a whole different planet for an American, especially one with the dubious job title of “economic counselor.” It was the one area where he didn’t have a local contact.
“At least we know where they’ll be coming from when the call comes in,” Corben noted. He checked his watch again. He’d need to get back to the city pretty soon. He got up to leave. “Keep me posted if you get anything clear?”
“You bet,” Olshansky confirmed without taking his eyes off the screen. “What time’s that call coming in?”
“Noon. I’ve asked Leila to come up,” Corben added, referring to one of the translators on the payroll, “for when you manage to get something clear.”
“Okay,” Olshansky said in a hollow voice.
Corben was headed for the door when Olshansky remembered something. “By the way. Your caller with the stage fright? He’s Swiss.”
Corben stopped. “What?”
Olshansky still looked haunted. “The call on Evelyn Bishop’s cell that came in without an ID that you asked me about?”
Corben had forgotten about the phone call he’d asked Olshansky to trace, the one that Baumhoff had taken on Evelyn’s phone that night, at the police station.
“It came from Geneva,” Olshansky continued.
Which surprised Corben.
“And check this out,” Olshansky added. “Whoever was calling really values his privacy. The call was routed through nine international servers, each one hiding behind a mother of a firewall.”
“But nothing that can resist your subtle ways, right?” Massaging Olshansky’s überhacker ego was never a bad idea.
“Not this baby,” Olshansky said glumly. “I managed to track it back to the Geneva server, but that’s it. This is heavy-duty code we’re talking about. I can’t get in. Which means I can’t pinpoint it any closer than that.”
“Geneva.”
“That’s it.” Olshansky shrugged.
“Well, let me know if you can narrow it down to something slightly more manageable,” Corben replied flatly. “Might be tough to put the entire city under surveillance.”
And with that, he walk
ed out, the assistant professor’s howl still ringing in his ears.
Chapter 38
T he project supervisor at the foundation sounded mortified as Mia related what had happened. He apologized profusely, as if his own family were responsible for the attacks, and assured her that he fully understood her position and would support any decision she took.
She hung up, and her eyes settled on the computer screen before her. She realized she’d been in e-mail exile since having drinks with Evelyn. Corben had asked a secretary to log her into the press office’s system, but as Mia reached for the keyboard, she decided she’d extend the exile a little longer.
She was, quite simply, overwhelmed. She glanced out the window at the lush forested hills behind the embassy, sorting out the confused, frantic scenes unfurling in her mind’s eye, and inviting some of the tranquillity outside the window to seep into her. All she got instead was a recall of the Ouroboros, which she soon found herself doodling on the writing pad in front of her.
She gave up trying to duck it. She pulled a number off her cell phone and dialed it. Mike Boustany, the historian she’d been working with on the project, answered after the fourth ring, his dulcet tones replaced by urgent, heartfelt concern. He hadn’t heard of Ramez’s kidnapping yet, and it took him by surprise. He was even more shocked to hear that Mia was present at both.
He asked what was going on. Mia didn’t feel compelled to hide anything from him. He stayed silent through most of it, clearly stunned by her experience.
“Maybe there’s something you can help me with, Mike,” she concluded. “What do you know about the Ouroboros?”
“The tail-eater? We’ve got some carvings of it, on some Phoenician temples. Is that what you mean?”
“No. The one I’m interested in is much more recent. Tenth century, maybe.” She filled him in about its appearance in the underground chambers and on the book.
He knew a lot about the Brethren of Purity, but couldn’t see a connection there to the Ouroboros. She wanted to go further, but felt she should avoid mentioning the hakeem and his house of horrors. Instead, she told Boustany about being a bit confused as to the symbol’s significance and brought up what she’d read about the Arab and Persian scientists of the era.
Which was something he knew a lot about.
“What I don’t get is this,” she concluded. “Someone’s willing to shed a lot of blood to get his hands on this book, but there’s nothing sinister about what these scientists were trying to achieve. So what’s in this book?”
Boustany chuckled softly. “Must be the ikseer.”
“The what? What are you talking about?”
“Man’s oldest craving. See, you’re just looking at it from a rational point of view.”
She frowned. “So I’m told.”
“You’ve been reading up about the achievements of these scientist-philosophers that are easily demonstrable. But, as you know, they didn’t limit themselves to one discipline. They were interested in everything known to man, they wanted to master the mysterious forces of nature and become the leading lights in all of the sciences. So they studied medicine, physics, astronomy, geology…their minds were hungry, and there was a lot to discover. They dissected bodies, postulated about how the solar system operates…And sooner or later, the one thing that hogged their attention was alchemy.”
“Alchemy? These guys were scientists, not quacks.”
Boustany’s voice came back tranquil as a lake. “Alchemy was a science. We’d still be rubbing sticks for fire without it.”
And with that, he took her back to the earliest days of the uneasy relationship between science and religion, and to the origins of alchemy.
Boustany explained how the ancient Greeks had separated science—which, at the time, consisted mostly of studies of astronomy and explorations of khemeia, which meant “the mixing together” of substances—from religion, to great effect.
“Science flourished as a rational vocation of academics and thinkers,” Boustany told her. “This all changed when one of Alexander the Great’s generals, Ptolemy, established his kingdom in Egypt. Alexandria—the city that had been founded by and took its name from the great conqueror—became a center of advanced learning, as exemplified by its legendary library. The invaders were impressed by the Egyptian mastery of khemeia, even though it was fused with their religion and their obsession with the afterlife. And so the Greeks absorbed both the science and the religion. Khemeia became intertwined with mysticism, and its practitioners were viewed as shady adepts of dark secrets. Practitioners of khemeia and astrologers became as feared as priests. They soon embraced that perception, reveling in their newfound status of sorcerers and magicians, and closed ranks, retreating behind a veil of secrecy. In an effort to feed their own myth, they shrouded their writings in a symbolism only initiates could understand.”
Science and magic became indistinguishable.
And, as a result, science—serious science—floundered. This mind-set led to scientists working apart and not sharing their discoveries—or their failures. Even worse, it attracted quacks and charlatans, who dragged science further into disrepute. The allure of the ultimate chemical challenge—changing base metals into gold—became prevalent. It all spiraled out of control until two forces all but smothered science in Europe: the Roman emperor Diocletian’s fear of cheap gold undermining his rule, which led to his ordering the burning of all known writings of khemeia; and the rise of Christianity, which ruthlessly stamped out heretical, pagan learning. The Christian Roman empire was thus cleansed of Greek learning. The East, however, would take up the mantle and run with it.
In the seventh century, armies of Arab tribes united and, driven by a new religion, emerged from the Arabian Peninsula and fanned out across Asia, Europe, and Africa. When they conquered Persia, they discovered the surviving remnants of Greek science. The writings intrigued them. Khemeia became al-kheemia, the Arabic prefix al meaning “the.” Fate had entrusted Greco-Egyptian alchemy to Arab scientists. It would remain in their care for the next five hundred years.
And they would serve it well, embracing the knowledge handed down to them and greatly advancing it.
That golden age would wither away under the invasions of the barbaric Mongols and Turks. Eventually, the Crusaders would bring the remnants of Arabic scientific knowledge back to Europe. The Christians of the Iberian Peninsula, in particular, would spearhead the return of the lost Greek knowledge back to its European home as they reclaimed the lands of Spain and Portugal from the Moors. Through the efforts of translators working in Toledo and in other centers of learning there, the scientific advances of the East would find a new life in the West.
Al-kheemia would become alchemy, and centuries later, it would take on the more respectable name of chemistry.
“These philosopher-scientists achieved great things in the field we now call chemistry,” Boustany informed her. “They created acids, mixed metals, and synthesized new substances. But one substance, in particular, was the most sought after for centuries.”
“Gold,” Mia said flatly.
“Of course. The tantalizing possibility of manufacturing gold never failed to seduce even the most levelheaded of these scientists. At some point in their careers, every one of them became obsessed with the one thing that their patrons, the caliphs and the imams, were most interested in: turning base metals into gold.”
Mia mulled his words. She’d skimmed a brief bio of Jabir ibn Hayyan—whom the Europeans would later refer to as Geber—at Corben’s apartment. His writings, cloaked in an unreadable code, were thought to be at the root of the term gibberish. He had been able to prepare strong acids, but he’d also worked extensively, and with success, on the transmutation of metals. Mia hadn’t given it much attention since, even if it were remotely possible, not that she thought it was, she didn’t think that it was, to use Corben’s pet adjective, relevant, given the discoveries in the hakeem’s lab.
“I don’t think that’s what
this is about,” she said.
“Why not?”
“There’s something I haven’t mentioned,” she added somewhat hesitantly. “There’s a guy out there who we think may be behind all this. He…he was running some weird medical experiments.”
Boustany’s voice disappeared for a beat. “On humans?”
“Yep.”
Boustany went quiet, weighing her response. “So maybe this guy really is after the ikseer.”
“Again with the ikseer. What the hell are you talking about?”
“An obsession as old as time itself. The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is one of the oldest written stories in recorded history, is about this.” In the brief time she’d known him, the historian had developed this habit of teasing her. It was often endearing. Right now, she needed to know.
Boustany explained how for Avicenna and the other philosopher-scientists, the missing piece of the puzzle was the trigger, the catalyst that would stimulate the right mix of the base metals. Ancient tradition led them to believe the catalyst was a dry powder. The Greeks had called it xerion, which meant dry. The word became al-ikseer in Arabic. Hundreds of years later, the Europeans would refer to the undiscovered al-ikseer as the elixir. And, since scientists of the era were referred to as philosophers, and because it was believed to come from the earth, it also became known as the philosopher’s stone.
“This mythical substance was believed to be so wondrous that these alchemists soon assigned other powers to it as well,” Boustany added. “Aside from being the catalyst that would help create untold wealth, they also attributed to it the power to heal all illnesses. Eventually, conferring immortality was also believed to be within its powers. And so the notion of a potential al-ikseer of life—an elixir of life—took hold, and al-kheemia became a double-pronged quest for two intimately related goals: gold and eternal life.”
The two became intimately linked in the alchemists’ minds. Gold itself was incorruptible: It didn’t age. Some scientists even found ways to ingest it as an elixir itself—usually in powdered form—and gold became more sought after for its perceived antiaging powers than for its timeless beauty or for its monetary value.