Empire of Lies

48

The darkness was a boon, but they didn’t need to remain hidden anymore. Any observer would simply assume the two humbly dressed figures walking along the edge of the unpaved road were husband and wife or brother and sister. There was nothing remarkable or noteworthy about them as they exchanged polite greetings with those they encountered on their way to the river’s edge.

The docks of the town of Fontainebleau weren’t far from the old palace. Kamal had a strong feeling they’d find what they needed there. He knew that the Seine, which snaked into the old town before winding its way to Paris and, beyond, to the port of Le Havre and the English Channel, was a busy transport artery, perhaps even more so back then, before trucks were ubiquitous. Barges plied its waters continuously, ferrying goods back and forth across the breadth of the French province. It was a reasonably safe and inconspicuous way to reach Paris.

After a few cautious inquiries, they came across a captain who wasn’t overly inquisitive and agreed to give them free passage. They settled onto a small, clear section of deck at the bow of the river barge, their backs resting against a tarpaulin that covered some pallets of roof tiles. The temperature had dropped considerably now that the sun was long gone, with the air on the river much cooler than it was on land regardless. But the skies had cleared, and it didn’t look like more rain was on its way.

Kamal and Nisreen huddled close together under a blinking canopy of countless stars as the barge set off into the night.

For a long while, neither of them said a word. They just stared into the distance, lost in their own thoughts.

It was Nisreen who eventually broke the silence. “What happens now?” she asked. “What’s going to happen to us? What if we can’t get back to our time?”

He inhaled deeply and let out a tired sigh. “I don’t know. This wasn’t something I saw coming.”

He watched her as her eyes roamed the infinite darkness overhead, as if looking for a sign, a signal, a message from the unknown. “It’s insane, isn’t it? We wake up every day, thinking it’s just going to be another normal day, oblivious to how lucky we are, unaware about how damn vulnerable we are. And then, in one moment, it’s all taken away. Everything falls apart. Everything you hold dear, your whole life, is just cruelly wrenched away from you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just gone. Just like that.” She stared deeper into nothingness. “What kind of a God allows that to happen?”

“I don’t have an answer for you, Nisreen. But if I ever do meet Him, we’re going to have a very unpleasant chat.”

She went silent again.

After a while, she said, “I feel like I’m in prison. The worst kind of prison. A prison without walls, one that I’ve put myself in. And I know I’ll never be freed.”

Kamal didn’t reply. He knew her mind would be prey to a poisonous darkness for some time. He wanted to hug her tightly, to find some way to comfort her, to tell her things would get better, to give her some clichéd line about how time would heal her. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that, not with her, not given what had happened.

He was in that same prison himself.

“We’re here now,” he finally offered. “We’re here, we’re safe, we have each other, and we have this thing, this incredible, scary, horrible ability to go where or when we like. Maybe we need to give ourselves some time to catch our breath and think things through and figure out what’s best.”

“I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

“Me too,” he said.

She went quiet, then said, “We haven’t even been born yet. In this time. We don’t exist yet.”

“And yet here we are.”

She shrugged. “So what if there was a way to leave a message for ourselves—for our future selves?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if we could leave ourselves a message about what happened—about what will happen? A warning for Ramazan to stay away from a tattooed patient who might show up at the hospital, to not go anywhere near him. Then maybe none of this will happen. We wouldn’t know anything. They wouldn’t come after us.” Her voice cracked as she added, “Ramazan, Tarek, and Noor wouldn’t have to die.”

She choked on those last words, her lower lip taking on a small quiver, her damp eyes visibly holding back tears just as they moved off him—then failing and succumbing to the overwhelming sadness.

Kamal felt his heart shatter.

He considered her words as he gave her time for the tears and the sobs to subside.

“Maybe,” he said. “But if we did that, how would it work in terms of us being here now? What would happen to us?”

She wiped her face with her sleeve. “I don’t know.”

“We wouldn’t have a reason to travel back. We wouldn’t even know about it. Which means if we saved our future selves, we’d still be there. Another version of us, I suppose. But we can’t be in two places at the same time, can we?”

“He said we can’t. It’s one of the rules. It doesn’t allow it.” She went silent for a moment as she wondered about it. “I suppose we’d need to die here. In this time. To make room for our future selves.” She gave Kamal a weary, uncertain shrug. “I don’t know, Kamal. It all sounds so crazy.”

He nodded. Then he asked, “But… would you?”

“What?”

“Want to die here? In this world?”

“If it meant they could live? If it meant I could be with them again? Of course.”

“But it would be a different you. Not this you.”

“If I can be with them again—this me, or any other me—I’d die here for that.” She paused, studying him. “Would you?”

He hesitated for the briefest moment, but before he could answer, she added, “I’m sorry. It’s not fair of me to ask you that.”

“There’s nothing unfair about it.” He took her hands in his. “Of course, I would. I’d give anything to undo all that’s happened. To give you back your family. Our family. No hesitation. But I want it to be for ‘this’ you. And ‘this’ me.”

“But that’s not possible.”

“I know.” He shrugged and looked away. “Maybe we should do that. Maybe I need to send myself a message, too.”

“What would you tell yourself?”

“To be more aware. To warn myself about getting swept up by the wrong ideas and taken in by the lies, to be aware about what was happening in our world. Maybe I’d try to change things before they went too far.”

This visibly surprised Nisreen. “You’d want to change things?”

“I could try… knowing what we know, having lived through these last few years. I could try.” The thought bloomed across his mind. “That’s what Rasheed did, right? He went back and changed his world. Maybe that’s something I could do, too. Maybe there’s a way to avoid how it all turned out—not just for us. For everybody. I mean, look at this world, this time we’ve landed in. We haven’t seen much of it, but from what we know about it, it was a better place, wasn’t it?”

“Things were different then—now,” she corrected herself, evidently still having a hard time adjusting to the new reality. “Bayezid was a noble man. Things were good. The Arabians hadn’t yet started their attacks, and the Americans hadn’t killed our economy. People felt safe and weren’t worried about ending up in a jail cell for saying the wrong thing or some nut blowing himself up next to them.” She tilted her head back and stared up at the heavens. “It was a better time to be alive, to be sure.”

He watched her, studying the lines of her face, every feature that he’d memorized and fallen in love with back in their earlier incarnations—and felt a savage, primal rage at the pain she’d been made to suffer.

“It’s just a shame we couldn’t all be here together,” she added before turning away. “I mean, if only we could travel into the future, we could go get them—before any of it happens. Bring them all back here. Start a new life.” She sighed heavily. “It’s all so… hopeless.”

Kamal could only watch in muted frustration as she curled into herself, as if in defense against an unspeakably cruel world, and her silence turned to quiet sobs and shudders.

He hesitated, an epic, gut-wrenching battle going on inside him. Then, carefully, slowly, like he was reaching for something incalculably fragile and precious, he slid his arms around her.

She didn’t move at first; then, without raising her head, she melted into his brotherly embrace, her head tucked into his shoulder, her sobs now unleashed into a torrent of agony.

Taymoor felt apprehensive as he entered Celaleddin’s office.

He’d never been inside the darkened room before and didn’t know what to expect. A lot had happened lately that he didn’t understand. He’d been kept in the dark about things and he needed answers.

“Come in, Taymoor Agha, come in.” Celaleddin welcomed him, rising from behind his desk and ushering him to the divan to his right. “It seems you’ve had quite a day.”

“Evet, my pasha,” he agreed as he angled toward the seating area.

The office’s size, location, lighting, furniture, and finishings—everything about it projected power and was designed to intimidate. Through the blinds, Taymoor glimpsed the ancient turrets of the castle and, beyond, the city’s lit minarets and domes. Even from that limited perspective, the view was awe-inspiring. He could only guess how impressive it had to be in full view, with the blinds open, or from the balcony, perhaps at sundown, when the city was basking in golden glory.

It had been a hell of a day. He’d been awakened in the middle of the night and ordered to lead an emergency manhunt for his partner. He’d discovered the dead bodies of four of his agency brethren in some godforsaken ruins in the middle of nowhere. He’d been shot at by his partner’s sister-in-law, who had then, it was claimed, vanished into thin air. Then he’d been summoned to the pasha’s inner sanctum. A hell of a day, indeed. And it didn’t feel like the onset of night was going to bring any respite.

Celaleddin folded his tall frame into the plush seat across from the agent. He raised his hand and gestured breezily in Taymoor’s general direction with two slim fingers. “I understand you were shot?”

Taymoor reflexively gave his head a gentle rub. “It’s just a graze, pasha. I was lucky. Thank you for asking.”

“It’s unfortunate that they were able to escape,” Celaleddin added.

Taymoor thought he detected a tinge of accusation in his boss’s tone. “He got the jump on me. It was a shameful failure on my part. One I’ll redress if you were to grace me with the chance to do so.”

“Oh, I intend to do more than give you a chance, Taymoor. I’m going to need you to do something very, very important for us. We need you. The empire needs you. Your sultan needs you. You see, your history with Kamal Agha, your closeness to him, your knowledge about how he thinks—these make you the ideal candidate for this mission. But it’s going to require a lot of discretion on your part, and sacrifices. Sacrifices that could well turn out to be… permanent.”

Celaleddin went silent, leaving the question implied but not voiced.

Taymoor didn’t disappoint him. His brow twitched, but he tried to conceal any sign of confusion—or doubt. “My life is at the sultan’s disposal, for him to do with as he pleases, pasha.”

“I expected nothing less of you, Taymoor.” Celaleddin nodded. “But this sacrifice also requires you to use extreme prejudice in a way that you might find… conflicting.”

“There is no conflict when it comes to my duty to my sultan and to the empire, pasha.”

“Even when it comes to your partner?”

Taymoor’s hand instinctively pressed a bit harder against his wound. “There is no conflict, my pasha.”

Celaleddin studied the young agent.

He’d had a long discussion with Kuzey and with Taymoor’s direct superior only moments earlier. The impression he’d been given was clear: yes, they were partners; yes, they were close and had each other’s backs when threatened. But there was a growing fault line in their outlook on the security situation facing the empire, one that must have widened after Kamal’s sister-in-law took a shot at him. Taymoor’s profile was ideal for the task at hand. He had the operational skills, and there was no one else who knew Kamal Agha as well as he did, who could think like him and second-guess his actions. And he was single, with no known emotional ties to anyone. He was the best man for the job. A job that, after much deliberation, Celaleddin had decided to entrust to a task force of one single man.

The risks of doing otherwise were too great and too uncontrollable.

He’d entrust it to a single man… for now. He knew he would always have the option of sending someone else, another task force, back to the same time and place if this approach failed. In fact, if what he believed was correct, he could do that as many times as he liked. Until it worked. At this point, though, it was all guessing. Until he tried it himself, he wasn’t sure about anything. But he had to try.

He also realized he might never know if Taymoor succeeded in his task. He’d come up with a way for Taymoor to let him know, to send him a message from the past he would be stuck in, but he wasn’t sure it would work. He knew he was still far from fully understanding how this incredible machination worked.

“Let me ask you… Kamal Agha. What do you know of what’s become of him and of his sister-in-law?”

“Nothing, pasha.”

“Nothing at all?”

“I have no explanation for their escape, for which I accept full responsibility.”

“I’m not looking to assign any blame, Taymoor.”

“Regardless, I should not have let it happen. But I still can’t explain it. No one saw anything.”

“No one?”

“No. The men on the scene can’t explain it. We have nothing apart from the ridiculous ramblings of a couple of deviants we picked up at the scene, but they don’t make any sense. I’ll get to the bottom of it though, pasha. I will find them.”

Celaleddin considered him for a moment. Then he rose and crossed over to his desk. “I know you will, Taymoor. In fact, I’m going to give you the information you need to be able to do that. But we’re going to have to move fast. While the trail is still warm.”

He picked up some things off the desk and came back to the divan. As he sat down, he placed them on the large table that separated them.

Taymoor leaned forward for a closer look. There was a small plastic evidence bag, along with a stack of printouts. In the bag were two busted-up mobile phones.

“You recognize these, of course?” Celaleddin asked, tapping the bag.

The phones were the ones his divers had recovered only hours earlier from the bed of the lake.

He nodded. “Yes.”

Celaleddin leaned forward and studied him intently. “This mission needs to be undertaken in the utmost secrecy. No one can know about it. And if you accept it, your life will change irreversibly. There will be no going back.”

Taymoor knew that Celaleddin had left out the flip side to his statement: that if he balked at carrying out the assignment once he knew what it entailed, he would not be allowed to live.

Taymoor didn’t flinch. Instead, he just reiterated his loyalty in the same solemn tone.

“My life is at the sultan’s feet, pasha,” he told the commander. “For him to do with as he pleases.”