Touchstone (Meridian Series) (23 page)

       “Helping
them is perhaps not the right way to think of it,” said LeGrand. “After
Palma
,
the proverbial gloves have come off, Miss Lindford. Think of it like your 9/11
event in
New York
. That certainly catalyzed the American
government. ”

       “With
disastrous consequences,” Maeve put in quickly. “Don’t you think all that
trouble in
Iraq
had something to do with the plans made by
this Husan al Din?”

       “It
probably spawned a hundred such plans, many you have yet to live through, I’m
afraid. The worst was Palma, but we fixed that.”

       “And
it undoubtedly created a few more problems at the same time,” said Maeve.

       LeGrand
did not answer immediately, a troubled expression on his face. “If you must
know, things have taken a turn for the worse in recent years. They’ve
discovered how to travel in time as well.”

       “Yes,
we know, and now they have a mind to meddle in your affairs, just as you seem
set on meddling in theirs.”

       “That’s
about the size of it. A bothersome lot, these Arabs. The Turks weren’t nearly
so bad. Oh, I suppose it wouldn’t matter if they were all living in
Africa
or huddled on some island continent like
Australia
. But the simple fact of the matter is that
the whole of the Islamic Crescent sits atop 90% of the world’s oil and gas.”

       “How
inconvenient,” said Maeve.

       “To
be sure, madam. The West needs that oil throughout the twenty-first century…
until alternative energy sources can be properly developed.”

       “Rubbish,”
said Maeve. “We have the ability to develop and deploy hydrogen based fuel
systems even in my day. The only reason we don’t is the enormous profit
involved in the sale of a diminishing resource like oil.”

       “True,”
said LeGrand. “No argument here. Still, facts are facts. Whether the West needs
the oil or not, the powers that be have
decided
they need it, and that
makes for some particularly troublesome times in the storied conflict of
Western nations with the Islamic world. It starts with freedom fighters in
Afghanistan
and becomes airplanes crashing into the
World
Trade
Center, and worse...” He seemed to catch
himself, realizing he might reveal the course of future events to these people,
and somehow alter them. “Well we all know how it ends, don’t we? It ends with
Palma
.
After that, we simply decided we had to put stop to it, once and for all.”

       “Oh,
that much is obvious,” said Maeve. “Let’s call it what it is Doctor, war.”

       “They
call it that.” LeGrand came back at her quickly. “I believe the word is
Jihad.”

       “Nonsense,”
said Maeve, folding her arms abruptly—a very bad sign as far as Nordhausen was
concerned. The conversation was becoming more and more heated, and he was
considering what he might say to cool tempers down.

       Maeve
started in again: “It’s true that the Islamic world is far behind the West in
terms of social equity and justice. But it is equally true that Western powers
have never really had any noble interest in dealing with that. They’re
motivated by political and economic reasons—like this expedition by Napoleon.
He wanted to campaign through the Middle East to isolate
Britain
from her colony in
India
.”

       “And
he disarmed the peasant rabble,” LeGrand cut in. “He broke the back of the
Mamluk hegemony, established new political systems, built hospitals to curb
disease—“

       “Carried
in the plague,” Maeve raised her chin, unwilling to allow her host to serve
these facts unchallenged. “He massacred hundreds of prisoners in
Palestine
, put down the
Cairo
insurrection with ritual beheadings, then
tried to cart off virtually anything he could find of interest. Thankfully, he
loses. The British win and so
they
decide set up shop in
Egypt
until well into the twentieth century. Got to keep a close eye on
Suez
,
you see.”

       “Well,”
said LeGrand, a bit disconcerted. “It’s been my experience that the British
usually leave things better off than they find them.”

       “Chin,
chin old boy,” Maeve winked at him, unyielding. “Yes, when the natives get
restless there was always the Martini & Henry rifle and a bayonet to set
things right.
England
created the situation that led to unrest
and division in the
Middle East
for decades. The Sykes-Picot agreement just
drew arbitrary lines in the sand here after the First World War, irrespective
of cultural and ethnic differences. It created pacific little countries like
Iraq
,
a gross conglomerate of Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and Turkomen tribes, and all the
misery that has resulted. Then, seeing the mess they’d made, Britain calmly
withdrew ‘East of Suez’ and left it all to their new friend to sort out—the
good old U.S.A. Now, don’t get me started on how
that
turned out.”

       “Oh,
I know exactly how it turns out, madam. You forget, it’s all history to me.”

       “Spare
me the details,” said Maeve, realizing she could not fight in that corner. “I
can see where it’s heading quite well, thank you.”

       “Come,
come,” said LeGrand, trying to diffuse the situation. “If I didn’t know better
I would have to ask myself who’s side you are on here.”

       Maeve
fixed him with a riveting stare, but LeGrand met her gaze with heavy lids, a
look of suspicion settling  into his fleshy features.

       “Well,
Doctor,” she said with an air of finality. “You didn’t invite us to tea to
quibble over politics. Suppose you tell us what your
real
mission is
here, and why you were warned to be on the lookout for two Americans on the
road west of the city? Be quick about it, sir. The morning is wearing thin.”

17

Le
Grand
seemed taken aback by
Maeve’s remark. The fire in her eyes seemed to surprise him, and he took a
guarded posture, eying Nordhausen as though to see where he came down in the
argument that had been unfolding. “Madame,” he said at last, “you make it sound
as though there is some nefarious plot in the works.”

       “You
said it yourself, Doctor,” Maeve went on. “You received a message telling you
to be on the lookout for two Americans on the road. You were kind enough to
return my purse, but you, and your people, have had a good long look at my
notes in the bargain, and this Order you speak of certainly knew what we were
about here.”

      
“That
you were about here,” LeGrand corrected. “Yes, we knew that much. The
Touchstone database also indicated that there was a variation concerning the
Rosetta stone as well. To put it bluntly, it was lost, as far as history was
concerned. It’s significance as a key to the hieroglyphics was completely
undone. We assumed you were interested, even as we were, but we did not know
why.”

       The
ire in Maeve’s eye had not diminished. “Really? Even with a century or more to
think it over? Don’t be coy, Doctor. From your perspective in the future this
Order of the Temporal Knights knows very well what we are about—and why. If you
will not at least grant me the courtesy of honesty, then I’m afraid I will have
to insist that we leave here at once. We’ll find our way to the discovery site
on our own.”

       “Now,
Maeve…” Robert touched her shoulder.

       “Be
quiet, Robert.” The tone of her voice made it quite plain that she was in no
mood for compromise.

       LeGrand
squinted and pursed his lips, deciding. “Very well,” he said. “I forget who I’m
dealing with: Maeve Lindford, head of Outcomes & Consequences, and the bane
of research for…” he caught himself briefly, “an eternity,” he concluded.

       “And
what outcome will we have here, Doctor?” Maeve waited, chin up, eyes
unyielding.

       “Yes,”
LeGrand said slowly. “We knew you were coming. We’ve had time enough to
determine that much. The clues in that purse you dropped made the research
easy. And I must warn you, Madam—warn you both.” He looked at Nordhausen as
well.
“They
know you are here as well—the other side. You know who they
are. Your friend, Mr. Dorland, made their acquaintance in Castle Massiaf. What
a stroke of luck that was—a perfect example of his Pushpoint theory.  Oh,
Research predicted that you would try and retrieve your Ammonite fossil,
Professor. Still, that little affair in Wadi Rumm was quite interesting. It’s
amazing that you stumbled on the well like that.”

       “You
mean to say you knew about the well all along?”

       “Quite
the opposite,” said LeGrand. “We knew nothing at all. They set the Oklo
reaction up with great secrecy, and used it sparingly so as not to reveal its
location to our sensors. You see, Time war is a rather delicate business. You
don’t fight any battles. There are no sweeping maneuvers and heavy blows
against the enemy. It’s all subtlety, subterfuge, misdirection. It’s the little
things that count, after all, the Pushpoints. So you can imagine our concern when
we got a variation alert just as you were trying to slip out of
Jordan
for your surreptitious rendezvous with the
Arabesque.
”

       “You
knew about that?” Nordhausen seemed a bit flustered. “But I took the greatest
care to conceal my plans. Why, not even Paul knew what I was up to until I had
him in the helo over Wadi Rumm! How did you learn about the ship?”

       “That’s
irrelevant,” LeGrand waved him off. “The point is, we were caught off guard by
a hidden Pushpoint at the edge of that well. When Mr. Dorland stumbled in the
dark, and took his fall, it set off quite a stir back in operations. We had a
mission into the very same milieu where he manifested—a rather delicate
mission—and he upset the proverbial apple cart with his arrival at Castle
Massiaf.”

       Maeve
smiled. “Let me guess,” she said with a slight edge of sarcasm. “The Horns of
Hattin…”

       LeGrand
gave her a penetrating look. “Indeed, Madam. Do you think we would allow
something like that to stand if we could prevent it? The entire Christian army
was slaughtered. A hundred Templars were lined up and beheaded, one by one,
with that Moslem flair for the dramatic.”

       “The
hostage executions were all over the Internet during the second war in
Iraq
,”
said Maeve.

       “Then
you can understand our motives easily enough. The battle of Hattin set back
Christian plans in the
Middle
East
for generations. It undid
ninety years of painful consolidation in the
kingdom
of
Outrémere
, and caused a great deal of misery and suffering for decades
thereafter.”

       “Yes,”
said Maeve. “The third Crusade was the answer, but Richard The Lion Heart
failed to deliver
Jerusalem
and met an unseemly end in a German prison.
The Fourth Crusade gets diverted to
Constantinople
by greedy Venetian Merchants. Lots of pain
and suffering there, I suppose.”

       “We
had our reasons,” said LeGrand, then caught himself, realizing that he had said
a bit too much. “But in the matter of Mr. Dorland’s visit to Massiaf, we could
not quite figure out if you were running a deliberate mission or if it was mere
happenstance.”

       “Yes,”
said Maeve, “there are always reasons…” she let the phrase dangle, looking
LeGrand square in the eye. “Tell me, Doctor. Were you trying to kill Reginald?”

       LeGrand
jumped at the accusation, then narrowed his gaze, somewhat determined. “That
would be quite unseemly,” he said. “Did we want him dead? Certainly. Did we
think we could be so bold as to…assassinate him? Absolutely not. There are
rules in the game, my dear. Violations are severe. Reginald was a Prime, as you
well know. Without his headstrong influence, poor Guy never takes the crown
from
Baldwin
’s daughter. Without his lust for vengeance
and his greed, Saladin is never provoked to muster the Moslem armies. Without
his brazen insults and bullying ways, the Christian army never sorties out to
confront Saladin at Hattin, and things turn out… quite differently.”

       “I
can imagine,” said Maeve. “So what were you up to, Doctor? And how did we upset
your little scheme?”

       “We
let it be someone
else’s
little scheme,” said LeGrand. “We were trying
to arrange it so
they
killed Reginald. After all—the word assassin dates
from that very milieu. There were experts in the mountains of
Syria
who could do the job well enough. All we had to do was make certain Reginald gave
them sufficient reason. Our adversaries were not sleeping, however. They must
have been on to us—or so we thought. It took us some time before we realized
they were running couriers into Massiaf to their agent in place at that
location.”