O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [138]
“You’ve lost, Karim Bey,” said Holmes.
“Who are you?” the false monk demanded, his voice imperious and shrill with fury.
“Russell, do you have your gun on him?”
“I do,” I replied, although the most dangerous weapon I possessed was my throwing knife, and Bey was both too far away and on the wrong side. The man’s head jerked at the sound of my voice, and his hand went slowly away from the front of his habit. I heard noises behind me, and ducked my head to see first Ali, then Mahmoud tumble into the tunnel and begin to run in our direction, only to slow when their torches picked me out, my hand raised in warning. The three of us moved around the corner to stand behind Holmes’ prostrate form.
Bey held his lamp up higher, and narrowed his eyes at Ali and me, whom he had never seen before. He similarly dismissed Mahmoud and was returning to Holmes when with a jolt his gaze flew back to the older man at my shoulder. I watched his wide, cruel mouth relax from the surprise of recognition into a smile distressingly close to intimacy, even affection. I could feel both of the men beside me react to that smile; I thought Ali would shoot him then and there, but Mahmoud seized his partner’s arm and the gun stayed down. The man in the habit, still smiling, allowed his attention to return to Holmes, who lay unmoving, his gun pointing unwaveringly at the man’s chest. Bey squinted down against the light of the torches, and then his eyes went wide and he took a step back.
“You!”
“I,” replied Holmes.
Silence fell, silence aside from the strained breathing of several people, which ended when Karim Bey seemed to make up his mind about something and gave an almost imperceptible nod. We all braced ourselves and Ali’s gun went up again, but the man moved only his eyes, first to look at Mahmoud, then Ali and me, and finally at Holmes. He held his gaze there for a long moment, studying his escaped victim, then lifted his eyes to a point over all our heads, raised his right fist, and swung it in towards his chest. I thought for a startled instant that Bey was giving some archaic form of salute until Holmes shouted “No!” and started to scramble to his feet, but he was too late. When Bey’s fist made contact with the front of his robe there was a muffled thump—not a big noise, but Bey flew backwards as if he’d been kicked by a horse. His lamp crashed to the floor and burst into flames, sending a great billow of burning paraffin down the tunnel towards us, but even as we flung ourselves around the corner, we could see the man in the monk’s robes, crumpled against the wall of the tunnel, thrown there by the force of the spare detonator he had carried in his breast.
* * *
TWENTY-EIGHT
ى
Scholars are, of all people, those least acquainted with the methods of politics.
—THE Muqaddimah OF IBN KHALDÛN
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We climbed out of the depths like four wraiths leaving a tomb, every bit as dirty and nearly as lifeless. Once we had lifted ourselves up into the derelict house in the Souk el-Qattanin, we collapsed to the floor with our backs against the walls, staring unseeing at the hole at our feet. Ali cursed monotonously, in Arabic and at least two other languages, and for once I was in full agreement. It was a victory, but not a clean one, and far from complete. Holmes, I knew, might look as if he was about to fall asleep, but his brain would already be worrying away at the sizeable question