Empire of Lies

53

“Can I interest you in a little something about the siege of Vienna?”

Nisreen came back to the reading table loaded with books—a dozen of them, all dealing with one of two subjects: the conquest of Vienna and the life of Ayman Rasheed Pasha.

Kamal took the books off her hands and set them down on the table, perusing their covers. “I traveled back in time to get stuck with a mountain of homework?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said as she took a seat next to him. “I hope you’re a fast reader. We need to learn everything we can about this and we need to do it quickly.”

He looked at the books skeptically. “History was never my forte.”

Nisreen shrugged her shoulders and gave him a sheepish grimace. “Well, now’s your chance to change that.”

They were on the Left Bank, directly across the river from the Louvre, in the main reading room of the Sultan Majid Imperial Library. The magnificent domed building was the largest public library in France and had been a temple of learning for centuries, ever since Louis XIII’s infamous cardinal, Mazarin, had founded it to house his enormous collection of books. Under the Ottomans, the Bibliothèque Mazarine had expanded to take over most of the adjacent buildings of the old Institute of France, among which it had pride of place, until even those weren’t big enough to house its collections. The new public library, the one Nisreen had spent countless hours in as a student and lawyer, was still decades away from being built, but she’d visited this old building a few times after it had been converted into a museum.

They had to move fast. Taymoor was still out there looking for them. They’d debated jumping back to a safer time, when Taymoor wouldn’t be around. It seemed like the obvious safe move. If they left no trace, no record of how many moons they’d jumped back, he wouldn’t be able to follow them. Even a hop as short as a week back would do it, assuming that was long enough for them to complete their research. But they weighed that against the risks of making another jump back in time. If they did so, they would be landing there in unknown circumstances, with no clothes and no money again, and there were no guarantees that their arrival wouldn’t be noticed and have some record of it kept, a record that Taymoor might find in the time they were currently in and use to follow them back.

There were too many unknowns, and they finally decided that, on balance, they were probably safe enough staying put, provided they kept a low profile. Which was why they chose to travel separately to the library and back to the inn. They couldn’t check out any books, since they lacked the ID required to fill out the registration forms, which was just as well: they wouldn’t leave any written trace of their presence or what they were looking into.

And so they dove into their research. They read, made notes, discussed their findings, and then read some more. It was long, tiring work to which they were wholly committed, their attention laser-focused on the most minute detail. Their lives, to say nothing of their world-altering objective, depended on it.

By the end of the first day, they’d read enough for their plans to begin to take shape. But the way they were shaping up wasn’t ideal.

Kamal closed the book he’d been reading, a recent biography of Rasheed. “It’s amazing,” he said as he pushed it away with a huff of frustration. “There’s so much about what he did after they took Vienna—the march across Europe, taking Rome, Paris, all that. His inventions, his weapons, and his tactics; his ideas about society and politics and technology; his visions for the future—”

“A future he’d come from,” Nisreen added. “He didn’t foresee or invent any of them. He was a fraud.”

“Agreed… but, regardless, there’s hardly anything about him before Vienna.”

“Because there was no him before Vienna. And whatever there is about that is unreliable,” Nisreen commented. “We can’t use any of it. He made it all up. A past that never existed.”

“We’ve got to keep digging. We have to find a way to get to him before the army leaves Istanbul.”

“But how? We don’t have reliable information of how to get to him.”

“Yes, but after they set off, it’ll be much harder to stop him. He’ll be at the head of the biggest army in history.”

“We might not have a choice.”

Kamal frowned. “No. We have to keep looking. It would be a hell of a lot safer for us to find a way to get to him before the siege. We know he was in Istanbul before the army began its march to Vienna. That’s where he first appeared. Maybe we should just go there and wait to hear about his appearance.”

“We won’t hear about it. It’s not something that will be publicized in any way. And the sultan would have kept him close, so he was probably staying inside the palace, under some kind of watch. I’m sure the palace was as heavily guarded then as it is now. Not exactly an easy target.”

Kamal’s frown deepened.

“Short of knowing exactly where to find him there and on what specific day or night,” Nisreen added, “we’d more than likely get caught. I don’t see it as any less risky than Vienna. Plus we’d have to get to Istanbul now, in this time, before jumping back. Without papers, without money… and with slower transportation.” Which was true. They’d traveled back to an era of rail travel. The jet engine had yet to be invented. Planes were still propeller-driven, slow, and rickety. The concept of passenger air travel was in its infancy.

“Vienna will be easier to reach, for sure. But we’d be diving headfirst into a war zone. That’s what I’m trying to avoid.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled by it either,” Nisreen countered. “But that’s where we know we’ll definitely find him. I don’t think we have any choice.” She shrugged, mirroring his discomfort. “Look, we won’t be diving blind. We have stacks of information about it.” Which was also true. The siege was a pivotal moment in Ottoman history, and historians had dissected it in countless tomes. “Reliable information. Which means we’ll be well prepared.” She picked up one of the books from the unread pile, spun it playfully in front of Kamal, and then arched an eyebrow at him. “And which is why it’s time you got back to reading.”

“We need to find another way.”

“I’m not holding my breath. I think the die’s been cast on that one. And it’s not one of your legendary du sheshs,” she joked, using the Turkish word for double six, a powerful throw of the dice in backgammon.

Kamal considered her for a moment. It felt good to see her looking relaxed and lighthearted for a change, even briefly. Beyond being necessary for their plans, the research was also providing a welcome, if temporary, distraction from the darkness that engulfed her.

He grudgingly pulled the book closer and glanced at its cover. “Seriously,” he said with a grin as he tapped the book. “Reliving the least favorite part of my youth, right here.”

“With a much harsher grading curve,” Nisreen replied, her expression taking on a serious tinge. “A failing mark is definitely not an option.”

“No argument there,” he said before opening the book and plowing into it.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the conclusion they’d been dreading.

The best option available to them, the clearest line of attack, the only one that they could base on reliable information, was also the most dangerous one.

The key event, the decisive intervention of Rasheed that had changed the outcome of the siege and delivered Vienna to the Ottomans, was the suicide bombing that had taken place at the ceremonial review of the Christian army at Tulln, twenty miles west of Vienna.

That’s what they needed to change.

Rasheed had bragged about it to Ramazan, who had then told Nisreen about it that night at their apartment. It had been Rasheed’s master stroke, and he hadn’t held back in describing it.

The history books and biographies covered it painstakingly. The epic, illustrious military victory for the Ottomans was a bold, cunning move that harkened back to the exploits of one of the most notorious tacticians in Islamic history, the Old Man of the Mountain, leader of the infamous Order of Assassins.

On that fateful day, Rasheed’s explosive-laden envoys had taken out the entire leadership of the pope’s army. The various contingents of Christian troops had massed on the north bank of the Danube and had spent the previous few days waiting to cross the river. Their engineers had built pontoon bridges across it, but days of heavy autumn rain had raised the level and flow of the river, causing damage and delays. The bridges had needed rebuilding several times. Two days before the review, however, the rain stopped, and the troops were finally able to cross. Once on the southern bank, they had massed before the town of Tulln, behind a defensive timber palisade that would shield them from roaming Ottoman ghazi warriors and their Tartar allies. That was where the review would take place before the final push east, to the plains around Vienna, where the Ottoman army was camped out and where the battle for the city would take place.

The best military commanders in Christendom, battle-hardened legends like John III Sobieski, the King of Poland, and Charles, the Duke of Lorraine, had been wiped out in one devilish strike. The Ottoman army that charged in right after the bombing had taken their men by surprise. Forty thousand infidels had been wiped out that day, leaving the besieged and starving people of Vienna at the mercy of the invaders and exposing the rest of western Europe to their remorseless advance.

It was clear that this bombing had to be stopped and the army saved. Sobieski and the others had to be warned, and the ambush had to be turned to their advantage.

But that wouldn’t be enough.

Rasheed had to be killed so that he couldn’t simply travel back in time and try again.

Kamal and Nisreen needed to make sure both things happened. One on its own wouldn’t suffice. And they both had to happen more or less simultaneously, before Rasheed realized he’d failed and made a time jump back to reset the clock and try again.

Killing Rasheed was likely to be the more difficult part of the plan. Kamal insisted that the task was his and his alone. There was no way he would risk letting Nisreen accompany him while trying to infiltrate the Ottoman camp. Which meant that, at some point, they would have to be separated, something that didn’t appeal to either of them. But there didn’t seem to be a way around that. Getting to Rasheed and killing him in time would be tricky enough for Kamal to pull off without having Nisreen to worry about.

With that strategy in place, their research became more focused. They had a wealth of sources to draw on, and, over the course of a week, they were able to gather enough information to map out what felt like a coherent, reasonable plan.

Kamal and Nisreen knew the many risks and tried to minimize them and stack the odds in their favor by educating themselves about every foreseeable complication. They also read about life in that time, notably from the collected writings of a famous Ottoman traveler of the period, Evliya Celebi, who had been to Vienna a few years before the siege. But at some point the amount of reading became overwhelming.

The time to bite that bullet and make the jump was rushing in at them.

By the end of it, two things remained.

One was to calculate the exact number of moons they would jump back and translate it into Palmyrene, the language of the incantation.

Choosing when to jump back to was a balancing act: too long before the suicide bombing, and they risked opening up too much room for the unexpected. Too soon, and they might not have enough time to get it done. After much deliberation, they decided to jump back two days before the ceremonial review outside Tulln. This would give them forty-eight hours to get to the Christian army’s commanders and warn them of the fate that awaited them and to give Kamal time to kill Rasheed in the Ottoman encampment.

The other issue required a leap of faith.

Ramazan hadn’t been able to ask Rasheed for the rest of the incantation—the version for traveling into the future. Kamal and Nisreen had discussed how important it was to have it, and, although using it was not crucial to their plan, they had agreed that they’d be better off knowing it. If things went wrong, they might need it.

Hoping that it was simply a matter of substituting a word in the incantation and not needing an entirely different one to jump forward in time, Nisreen spent an entire afternoon studying it. She analyzed the words, comparing them to the Palmyrene source material she could find, translating them one by one, but there was no evident solution. Palmyrene was an obscure, ancient language that hadn’t been extensively studied; few ancient texts written in it had survived, and from what she could make out, none of the words in the incantation were Palmyrene for “past” or future” or for “backward” or “forward.”

One of its words, however, did intrigue her. According to the documentation she had access to, it was the Palmyrene word for “light.” She considered it and wondered if she hadn’t misinterpreted it. The word came after the number of moons one wanted to travel across was specified and seemed out of place. This was the incantation for traveling back in time, and it seemed counterintuitive to Nisreen that traveling back across a number of moons would be associated with light; she would have expected it to be related to darkness.

But then she considered it some more and decided that perhaps it did make sense.

Traveling into the past was traveling to a time that was known, a time that wasn’t mysterious: hence, into the light. And following that logic, perhaps traveling forward in time, which would be going to an uncertain future, might be associated with darkness, the darkness of the unknown.

She studied the incantation again and again and couldn’t see any other possibility for what the variant for past or future might be. It had to be that word: “light.” With no better option, she looked up the Palmyrene word for “dark” and “darkness,” and from what she could see, both words gave the same result, the same word. She decided that was all she could do. Substituting that word was her best guess for traveling forward in time. Then there was the question of how to get the pronunciation right. It was a lot of guesswork, but at least it was educated guesswork. But perhaps they wouldn’t need the guesswork. If all went well, they’d get the forward-travel incantation from Rasheed before getting caught in a tricky situation where they would need to put her guesswork to the test.

Before they could go, they needed to have something else done. They needed to make sure they didn’t lose the incantation or the possible reverse spell. They’d try to memorize them, of course. But memory wasn’t totally reliable. The obvious solution was to have them tattooed on their bodies, but tattoos weren’t common in Ottoman society at that time. The only Muslim Ottomans to have any were men who were part of the military or law enforcement and who, like Kamal, had their unit’s symbol and their individual identifying number tattooed on their right arm and leg. Muslim women were never tattooed. Women who had markings were usually from conquered Christian communities. They put tattoos of crosses and ancient cultural symbols on themselves and on their children as a defense against forced conversion or as a form of passive resistance to it, a practice more common in the Balkans than in France.

Hiding out deep in the Christian ghetto of Montmartre, they managed to find an old cobbler who was also a tattoo artist. The man knew better than to ask too many questions; having a tattoo was not something one discussed openly. And so he kept his questions to himself as he got to work on Nisreen’s forearm. She had him mark it with the words to the incantation, with a phonetic version of the Palmyrene number of moons they would need to jump back to find Rasheed, calculated from the day the train they planned to be on arrived in Vienna. She also had the forward-jump word and some other Palmyrene numbers tattooed on as well, in case they needed them—one, ten, and a hundred.

Nisreen told Kamal she thought he should also have them tattooed on his arm.

He demurred. “I don’t need it.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“Don’t be silly,” she insisted. “You might need to. For both our sakes.”

“I’ve memorized it.”

“You’re absolutely sure of that? With all the extra words for changing the number of days?”

Kamal’s face scrunched inward sheepishly. “Kind of.”

“Kind of isn’t good enough. You’re not scared of a little needle, are you?”

Needless to say, he got the tattoos.

They were the same as hers, to add to the Hafiye markings he already had on his arm and leg. He didn’t need the cobbler to see those, and he made sure to present his other arm for the tattoo of the incantation.

They were finally ready to go.

They spent their last night before leaving Paris in a small restaurant they hadn’t been to before, maintaining their practice of not returning to the same place twice. Dinner was subdued, with both of them trying to ignore the nervous anticipation and fear of what they were about to do.

They finished the meal with calming cups of anise tea and a long bout of silence.

“The moment of truth,” Kamal finally said. “You’re still sure of this?”

Nisreen finished her sip, set her cup down, and cast her eyes on it. After a brief, pensive pause, she looked up at Kamal. “I won’t lie to you and say I’m not scared. I’m actually terrified. It’s so far from anything I’ve ever done. But I’m still absolutely convinced that it needs to be done.”

Kamal nodded solemnly. “If it’s any consolation, it’s way beyond anything I’ve ever done. Maybe anyone’s done.”

“Apart from Rasheed.”

“Apart from him, yes.”

Nisreen nodded. “So we can be terrified together?”

Kamal gave it a brief chortle. “We’ll shiver and rattle our teeth in unison.”

She smiled at that—a melancholy, sad smile. The memory of the horrors was never far from her eyes.

Kamal drank in the moment, unsettled by thoughts of the journey they were about to embark on. He joked about it, but wasn’t immune to feeling anxious or fearful. Simply put, he did not look forward to it, but believed in it and was committed to getting it done. And if there was an upside, it was that preparing for the journey, spending all those days consumed by research and planning, being completely focused on the momentous task ahead, had steered Nisreen’s thoughts away from the tragedy that had befallen her. She was a different woman from the one he’d jumped across time with. He never doubted that the pain was still there. He still felt it, too. He had heard her light sobs late in the night, when she should have been mentally drained and fast asleep. But during the days, the darkness in her eyes had gradually lifted, replaced by an animated sparkle. She was brought back to life, however temporarily.

Maybe, he thought, she might find happiness again. Maybe in that unwritten, uncharted future, she might meet someone who could give her a new beginning and, eventually, replace the pain of her past with a better present.

Maybe.

If we survive this.

His expression shifted, turning more serious. “Once we do it, if we manage to change things… there’s no going back to the life we knew. It’ll all be wiped out.”

“I know.”

“Everyone we knew, everything about our old lives… it’ll all be gone forever.”

“That doesn’t scare me. I wouldn’t ever want to go back. There’s nothing there for me.” She paused, then asked, “What about you? You still want to do this with me?”

He let it sit for a moment. “Are you kidding?” he then said. “I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t.”

He caught her by surprise. Her face relaxed, and she flicked him a dubious raised eyebrow, which he deflected with an appeasing open hand. “I mean… yes. Absolutely.”

A delicate warmth suffused her face. “Thank you.” Then she reached across the table and cupped his hands with hers.