Ansel I

Alone, Vlad took a sip from the hookah, and then tilted his head back as he blew the smoke up into the air. The sky was dark and full of stars. Only a hint of morning light painted the Eastern horizon.
The café patio was deserted. Vlad took another draft of smoke from the hookah as he mulled over his feelings of contempt for this particular city. The country, even. He knew its history better than anyone. He was only here to fulfill a favor; then he’d be leaving.

The black silhouette of a mosque stood imposingly against the fading stars. Vlad regarded the spear-shaped minaret towers that surrounded the mosque. He knew that the muezzin who called the prayers from the tower was blind, but Vlad also knew that he was being watched from one of the towers.

Perhaps the city still regarded him with contempt.

A dark figure approached the café from the street. He was clothed entirely in black, save for the tan and black checkered shemagh scarf thrown loosely about his neck. Though the figure was neither bald nor tonsured, his luxuriant blond hair somehow reminded Vlad of a monk from Europe’s middle ages.

“Anselm, welcome to Istanbul,” Vlad said.
“I’ve been here before,” Ansel said, “Once”, he added.
“League business?” Vlad asked.
Ansel said nothing to Vlad’s query.
Vlad brushed his fingertips through his own slicked back, black hair.
“You were always so impassive,” Vlad said.

Enough banter, Ansel thought.
“Any progress with the name?” Ansel asked.

Vlad replaced the hose on the hookah, then reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a manila envelope.

“Mehmed al-Shehhi,” Vlad said as he passed the envelope to Ansel.
Ansel opened the envelope and scrutinized the picture it had contained.

“I’ve kept tabs on him…” Vlad said, “he bounces around Eastern Europe- Romania, Bosnia, Serbia, before returning here to Turkey and disappearing for weeks at a time.”

“He’s here now?” Ansel asked.
Vlad nodded.
“Any minute now he’ll be saying his prayers”, Vlad said as he glanced at the mosque and its towering minarets.

The Eastern sky had grown brighter since the conversation had started. Sunlight glinted from the gold ornamentation at the top of one of the minarets.

“We’re being watched,” Vlad said, rising from his seat.
An orange flash of sunlight was caught and reflected by a pair of binoculars in the minaret’s gallery, Ansel knew then that Vlad had meant watched from the tower.

An Arabic voice was heard wailing from the minaret, calling the faithful to prayer.
Ansel and Vlad both knew Arabic.
“I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except for Allah,” echoed over and throughout the city.

Vlad shook his head.
“Not the Muezzin,” Vlad said, “he’s blind. Someone else is in the tower.”

Vlad put dark sunglasses over his eyes, Ansel did likewise.

“What does the League want with a smuggler?” Vlad asked.
“Join us and find out,” Ansel said.
“You know that I cannot,” Vlad carefully annunciated, “I have a ship to catch. Goodbye, Anselm.”

Vlad left Ansel at the café.
Ansel took the shemagh that had been around his neck and tightly wrapped it around his head, then tucked the remainder into the collar of his trench coat. When he had finished, every inch of skin had been concealed, revealing only the black glint from the lenses of his sunglasses.

Ansel started toward the mosque to begin his hunt.
The throng of faithful Turks had finished their prayers in the courtyard when Ansel had arrived.
Among the crowd of Muslims, Ansel saw his target, Mehmed al-Shehhi, speaking with an Imam.

The courtyard was awash with morning light. He watched as the two men talked together and walked inside the mosque. Ansel smiled underneath his shemagh and followed them in from a distance.

Once inside, Ansel unwrapped the shemagh from around his head. No one had objected to the boots he was wearing inside the mosque, as Ansel’s feet were concealed beneath his black, floor-length coat.
Ansel took in the sight of the mosque’s interior as he put his sunglasses away. Majestic granite and marble arches supported a gigantic dome that seemed as big as the sky itself.

Ansel hadn’t been inside a church since his… “conversion” wasn’t a wrong word, but it certainly wasn’t the right one for the context. Ansel felt a pang of jealousy for the faithful God-worshipers around him. He could not for the death of him remember the last time he had been to the Kirke of his home.

He watched Mehmed walk with the Imam to a door at a far wall. Feeling watched, Ansel kept his distance. The Imam opened a door for Mehmed then shut it behind him and stood by, waiting.
The Imam passed a glance in Ansel’s direction. Ansel looked away.

Kafir, Ansel heard the Imam think, “Infidel”.

Ansel didn’t know if he’d just been discovered by the Imam, or if his thoughts referred to Mehmed as an infidel. Ansel reached into one of the pockets in his coat as he looked up the gigantic dome and the semi-domes of the mosque’s ceiling. His fingers passed over the rosary he had concealed, and considered saying a prayer, then thought better of it. There would be time later, he thought.

A moment later, Mehmed had emerged from the door. Ansel put his sunglasses back on and watched furtively as Mehmed made his way back across the mosque’s interior. The man had passed precariously close to Ansel on his way out of the mosque, passing him a cautious glance, perhaps wondering what a pale, blond-haired European man wearing a trench coat was doing in a Turkish mosque. Catholic Vampire probably hadn’t crossed his mind.

Ansel deftly rewrapped the tan shemagh around his head and followed Mehmed outside.
It was fully light out now, and the street was clogged with the morning’s usual pedestrian traffic. Ansel maneuvered through the crowds easily enough as he followed his quarry.

In his mind’s eye, it became easier to see through the sea of souls before him, to pick out which was Mehmed; his soul was the darkest. His had had previous contact with Ansel’s kind.

Mehmed disappeared into an alley. Ansel broke from the crowd and follow him through the maze of dumpsters and gutter pipes.

Isolated, Ansel saw clearly into Mehmed’s heart, he knew he was being followed. Ansel followed him to a dead end. The sound of the city life was muffled here.

“Mehmed al-Shehhi,” Ansel began in Arabic, “we have much to discuss.”
“What are you- CIA? International-police?” Mehmed asked in Arabic.
“No…” Ansel said continuing his approach.
“What do you want? Show your face!” Mehmed shouted.
“No,” Ansel replied, “Where is he?”

Mehmed responded by pulling out a pistol and aiming it at Ansel’s chest.
Ansel approached, and with his first footfall, Mehmed fired a round through Ansel’s chest.
Undeterred from having been shot, Ansel continued his advance.

With his left hand Ansel clutched Mehmed’s firing hand and pistol, then twisted and crushed them both together with the sound of crumpling metal and the snapping of all of the little bones in his hand. Mehmed shrieked from the pain. Ansel’s right hand grabbed Mehmed’s face and smashed the back of his head against the brickwork. Mehmed fell silent.

His face still wrapped tightly in the shemagh, Ansel leaned in and bit into Mehmed’s neck, sucking in thick, warm blood through cloth. As Ansel swallowed the blood rushing in to fill his mouth, he felt the thud thud thud thud thud of the man’s panicked heart, and through the pounding he heard a thin steady stream of Mehmed’s thoughts.

Ansel searched Mehmed’s thoughts, seeing flashing images of Eastern European cities. Tents in the desert. Villages nestled between craggy mountains. Baghdad. Beirut. Damascus. Ansel’s eyes suddenly grew wide and he felt Mehmed’s fear renewed as they both saw the face of the one he was truly looking for. The weathered, yellowed skull face with red eyes. Cabal.

Mehmed whimpered and died in Ansel’s arms. Ansel finished drinking and let the man’s body slump to the pavement.

Damascus. Cabal. Ansel thought.

Ansel felt a buzz from his meal, his mind serene. He reentered the streets with a conspicuous blood stain on the shemagh still wrapped around his head.