The Rose Field, page 11
“How would we know?” he said.
“We’d have to…I suppose we’d need an instrument that didn’t exist yet. Or a process.”
“Or just look in different way.”
“What sort of way? What would your friend the Indian holy man say?”
“He would say you are very curious, Miss Silver. Never in all his life he meet someone so curious. He also say we have answer to many things before we know what question is. We just have to find the best way to see it.”
“That makes it sound very easy.”
“No, is not easy, but you can do it. You ask me once about something you call the secret commonwealth. You remember?”
“Yes, I do. You said you’d never heard of it.”
“Yes. Then you explain, and I recognize it.”
“You didn’t say so.”
“No, I understand. I know the thing you talk about. What you say just now, about fields—suppose it is a field, your secret commonwealth. Like gravitational field, which is everywhere, and no one knew about it till Mr. Lord Newton see an apple fall and wonder why it go down and not up.”
“Wait a minute. The secret commonwealth is a field…”
“Yes.”
“And that’s your different way of looking at it?”
“Yes. It’s good, no?”
She laughed. So did he.
“But…” she said.
“Another example for you. Like calculating pi. You could go on forever. A hundred digits, a thousand, a million billion, you never come to the end, never exactly right, always an approximation. People take a lifetime and go mad doing it. But like this…”
He bent forward and traced a circle in the gravel with his finger, and then drew a line across the middle.
“How long that take? Two seconds? And there it is, perfect picture of pi. Of the idea of pi. The ratio between this line and that line. You see it, you understand. Not approximate. Exact.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Yes. All right.”
“Same thing, different way of seeing it.”
“So if I saw the secret commonwealth as a field instead of…however I used to see it…”
“Might be clearer.” He looked at her watching him, and yet another expression came into his eyes, as if he were assessing her in some way. “Nothing is empty,” he said more slowly. “You can’t see nothing in this cup or that box or that room with nothing in it, but they are all full of fields. Of every kind. Some we know about, some we don’t, and some we don’t even think are fields at all. Consciousness…”
But he stopped, as if he’d said too much.
“Consciousness is a field? Is it?” she said.
“Yes.” He looked uneasy.
“The Rusakov field? D’you mean that?”
He found a scrap of smokeweed on his tongue, and worked it to his lips, and spat it out. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s possible.”
“I’ll think about that. It’s interesting.”
He pinched out the burning end of his cigarette with finger and thumb. Lyra flinched, but Ionides didn’t seem to feel anything.
He said, “Now another question, Miss Silver. This time something I want to know.”
“What?”
“Where we go. You say Karamakan. Well, by God, that is a damn big place. Full of sand. Where exactly you want to go?”
“A place called Tashbulak, near the edge of a lake called Lop Nor. There was a botanical research station there. Within a few days’ journey of that there is a red building in the desert, and that’s where I want to go.”
“Why? They don’t let you in. They don’t let nobody in.”
“How do you know that?”
“Abdel Ionides, he know everything.”
“Oh, of course. Well, I think there’s something I have to do when I get inside. I think it’s something only I can do. And it’s important because it reminds me…The atmosphere of it…The feeling I get when I think about it…Once a long time ago I stood on a mountain in the Arctic and I saw another world opening in the sky. The feeling I had then…I think the red building in the desert is like that.”
“So you got something important to do in the red building. I wait outside, guide you back. Same price. No extra charge. Now, Miss Silver, what Mustafa Bey say to you?”
“Many interesting things. He knew who you are.”
“No,” he said calmly. “He think he know, but he know little bits of things, no more than that. What else he say?”
“He gave me a—a passport, I suppose you could say. And he asked me to send him reports at each stage of the journey.”
“A passport?”
“Or a laissez-passer.” She took out the letter and showed him. He read it and whistled quietly.
“Do those other languages say the same thing as the English?” she said.
Ionides nodded. “The same in all three. You know how valuable this is? Look after this very very close. Very well, Miss Silver, I arrange everything for journey. Now I must make myself look like a real sorcier particulier for Queen Tatiana.”
He stood up and bowed before handing her back the letter and sauntering away.
Lyra looked around; the little garden was empty but for a mother and child sitting on the grass some way off. She could see their dæmons playing together, and hear the mother’s voice and the child’s laughter and the soft purring call of a turtledove; but the streets and squares beyond the tree-shaded buildings were hushed, as if the city were holding its breath.
* * *
—
Marcel Delamare, in Constantinople on Magisterial business, stood for a carefully timed moment at the spot where St. Simeon Papadakis had been martyred. His head was bowed, his eyes were closed, his lips were moving in prayer.
Then with a visible sigh he moved on towards the Council Chamber, where the bloodstains were protected by plate glass in low wooden frames. Here he knelt in prayer. Prominent among those who joined him on their knees was a bright-eyed young monk in the robes of a senior subdeacon. The newly promoted Brother Mercurius was more than usually assiduous in the care and attention he showed to the visitor, but this visitor was more than usually important, and Brother Mercurius’s response to the nearness of power was not unlike that of a needle in the presence of a magnet.
Finally Delamare began to stand up, and there was a friendly hand ready to help.
“Don’t touch me,” said the President, clearly enough for everyone present to hear, and Brother Mercurius let go with a modest smile of apology.
Delamare went out in the company of a handful of officials, leaving the young subdeacon not in the least abashed. Had not the Lord Himself said those exact words to St. Mary of Magdala?
“This corridor is to be closed,” Delamare said, and the senior official took a note. “Have the floor taken up and framed in gold and hung in a place of honor in the Chamber. Lay another floor here, tiled this time, and then reopen the corridor. Now show me to the Patriarch’s apartment.”
The suite of rooms where the Patriarch had lived was small, modest, even shabby, Delamare noted with approval. It would all be preserved exactly as it was, as a testimony to the sanctity of the late occupant.
But it was not suitable as a place to receive visitors. His offices, on the other hand, where he was shown next, were large, comfortable, and anonymous, as if they’d been designed by an architect specializing in hotels for wealthy business travelers.
“This will do,” said the President to the official who was showing him around. “Bring my visitors up here as soon as they arrive.”
“I believe I can see their car now, Your Holi…Mr. Pres…sir,” said the young man, looking down into the courtyard and wishing they’d decided how the President was to be addressed.
“ ‘Sir’ will do,” said Delamare, who on the whole preferred not to make his staff uncomfortable. “Show them directly up here, and have some refreshments available.”
The young man was not part of Delamare’s Geneva staff; he belonged to the Constantinople secretariat, but he was not ordained, as most of them were. Delamare liked the look of him. His dæmon was a sparrow, who perched on his shoulder, head cocked, calm and curious.
“By the way,” Delamare said as the young man opened the door, “what is your name?”
“Felix Murad, sir.”
Delamare nodded, and the door quietly closed.
The President was expecting three guests: that was all the Patriarchate staff knew. This was the first time that most of the clergy there had met him, and his ostensible reason for visiting Constantinople, as well as to pay homage at the place of St. Simeon’s martyrdom, was to attend the consecration of the next Patriarch, who had already been chosen, but whose identity mattered very little.
He had explained that he was expecting these visitors, so the great engine of the Patriarchate smoothly and silently changed gear, and immediately arranged everything to make the visit go well.
Delamare took some papers out of his briefcase and spread them on the desk, and waited. Quite soon there was a knock at the door, and Felix Murad opened it and showed the visitors in.
Delamare stood to greet them. Two men and one woman, in western dress, though they looked Persian or Iraqi; a decade or so younger than Delamare, which put them in their mid- to late thirties; one man heavily bearded, the other clean-shaven but deeply pockmarked; the woman slender, apparently delicate and frail, until she moved. Then it was clear that she’d had some athletic training, and her grip was powerful, as Delamare discovered.
“Monsieur le Président,” said the bearded man in French, “I present Dr. Leila Pervani, and this gentleman is Mr. Zafar Sayadov. I am Mr. Omar Husain.”
Delamare shook their hands, offered them comfortable chairs, and sat with them rather than behind his desk. The staff were well trained; no sooner were the guests seated than Felix Murad knocked again and let in attendants who carried trays with tea, coffee, water, and honey cakes. While this was going on, Delamare watched the pockmarked Zafar Sayadov quite openly. He was mild-mannered, modestly dressed, slightly balding, about middle height, with a soft handshake, and he looked like a minor civil servant. The bearded man, Husain, seemed much more formidable, and yet Delamare could see that both he and the woman deferred to Sayadov with great care.
When the attendants had gone, and tea and coffee had been poured, Delamare said, “I am most grateful to you for calling on me. I shall not be in Constantinople for long. So, Monsieur Sayadov, you are the leader of these men from the mountains?”
“That is wrong, Monsieur le Président. We have a collective leadership. I am a representative, not a director.”
“Thank you for clarifying that. And Dr. Pervani? Are you a representative also?”
“That is correct.”
Her voice was low and quiet. Her dæmon was a small desert-brown snake with emerald zigzag markings. Delamare found himself impressed by the beauty of her eyes, but he allowed nothing of that to show in his expression, which remained bland and courteous.
“May I ask what name you yourselves have for your organization?” he said. “You are known as ‘the men from the mountains,’ but is that a name of your choice?”
“No,” said Leila Pervani, “because it is inaccurate. Among ourselves we say simply ‘us’ and ‘we.’ ”
“Of course. Now, I’m interested to learn about your relations with Thuringia Potash. Let me tell you why: it is because the Magisterium is in the course of discussing a contract with that company, and because I know that you have had dealings with them. I may say that I am less impressed with them than I am with what I have heard about you. It might be to our mutual advantage to explore ways in which we could deal with one another directly and not through the cumbersome bureaucracy of a large company.”
“ ‘With one another’?” said Sayadov. “You mean us with the Magisterium, and you with us?”
“That is what I mean, yes.”
“Does TP know you are talking to us?”
“No.”
“So you would deceive them?”
“My principal object is the well-being of my organization, not the well-being of Thuringia Potash.”
Sayadov nodded. The other two remained inscrutable.
“Please continue,” said Sayadov.
“I am curious to know your overall aim,” said Delamare easily. “The actions of yours that I know about, those that have been publicized in the west, for example: Would you have done those things, or similar things, if Thuringia Potash had not paid you to do them? Did they have an ideological aspect for you, or were they purely commercial transactions?”
This time it was the woman who replied. “Nothing is pure,” she said, “not even the thoughts of the angels. We do not lift a finger, Monsieur le Président, without the impulse of a hundred different motives. But yes, we were in agreement with the aims of Thuringia Potash in the actions you mention.”
“What aims do you have, then, in the matter of the building in the Karamakan desert?”
“It is a source of evil,” said Omar Husain. “So naturally we want to destroy it.”
“And you?” said Sayadov. “What do you want with that building?”
“We want to control the traffic that goes through it,” said Delamare. “The trade in rose products. That means first understanding it, and then gaining control of it, and then if necessary closing it down. We share the view of its nature that Monsieur Husain has just expressed—”
“That it is evil?” said Husain.
“Yes. But we consider that if we destroy it without understanding, we would leave open the possibility of its resurgence in another form. Hence the need to do it in the way we intend.”
“You have gathered a large force already. Why do you need our help?”
“Because you can move swiftly and silently, as a large force cannot. You have shown that you can strike without warning in any spot from Constantinople to the western frontier of Cathay. Because you are skillful and imaginative; your use of those TP vehicles in the Tashbulak affair was very well managed. Thuringia Potash is, to my mind, not at all well governed, whereas it seems to me that however your collective leadership works, it is more effective and much less cumbersome. I am offering you the chance to ally yourselves with an organization bigger, richer, and much more influential than any commercial enterprise. I think we have a basis for discussion.”
“A basis, possibly,” said Zafar Sayadov. “But we have clashed with the Magisterium in the past. We would need assurances that persecution of our organization will cease.”
“Of course. And I need assurances from you. I can tell you that the preparations taking place all over Europe and beyond, the gathering of troops, the making of alliances, the agreements and treaties we have been assiduously working to bring about are part of the necessary diplomatic underpinning of a holy war, with the aim of capturing and destroying this fountain of evil in the Karamakan desert. I would like to announce that the agreement whose skeleton form we are discussing now is very much part of that. But to do so, you understand, I shall have to name you, and it would help to establish a publicly known identity—a brand, one might almost say—by which you can be known to the faithful all over the world. I believe that in one instance at least one branch of your movement has called itself the Brotherhood of the Holy Purpose. I might mention that the body in Geneva that I headed before assuming the Presidency of the new High Council is called the League for the Instauration of the Holy Purpose. I think that a title containing those words would be both accurate and inspiring.”
The three visitors looked at one another. Delamare couldn’t read their expressions, but at least they hadn’t rejected the idea outright.
Zafar Sayadov turned back to him. “Let us continue to talk,” he said.
When a date for further talks had been agreed upon, and after the visitors had gone, Delamare sent for his private secretary.
“A woman who calls herself Leila Pervani,” he said. “Late thirties, perhaps forty. Average height, or a shade less. Slender and athletic. Black hair. Possibly Persian, possibly Kurdish. Apparently once an academic. Find out everything you can about her.”
Six
Eagle Works Terrier 1500
Timur Ghazarian said, “This is where we leave the car.”
Malcolm, fully awake but stiff and aching, said, “Where are we?”
It was early morning. Ghazarian had brought a change of clothes for Malcolm, who now looked like a respectable traveler. They were somewhere in the western outskirts of Aleppo, on a wide road lined with small factories, wholesale furniture distributors, occasional dusty market gardens, and car repair shops.
“As soon as we see a bus stop we’ll put the car out of sight and join the commuters,” Ghazarian said.
They had crossed the frontier with no difficulty. The guards were sufficiently impressed by Ghazarian’s uniform and Malcolm’s papers to put aside any misgivings. Malcolm thought that the officer in charge seemed preoccupied by some bigger anxiety, and Ghazarian agreed.
“The problem for them is that their senior command has no idea of what side they should be on in case of a conflict with the Magisterium. You can see why that makes them anxious.”
“I can…Timur, can you pull in at the next set of gates on the right?”
Ghazarian did so, checking the road ahead and behind. There was no sign that they were being followed; the traffic was already beginning to build up, but it was flowing easily. While the car came to a halt, Malcolm, sorting through his wallet, took out a business card and tucked it into his top pocket.
“My name is George Hanson,” he said.
“As you wish,” said Ghazarian, looking at the building behind the locked gates. “But why here? Oh, I see. TP…Them again?”
