Prime

  PRIME

  A Jack Sigler Thriller

  By Jeremy Robinson

  and Sean Ellis

  Summary:

  America’s best soldiers are about to discover the deadly secret behind one of history’s greatest mysteries.…

  When a raid on an insurgent safehouse reveals a clue to decoding the world’s most mysterious manuscript—and possibly a recipe for creating the ultimate weapon of mass destruction—Delta operator Jack Sigler must forge a new black ops team to avert catastrophe; a team of deadly warriors with dangerous secrets—the Chess Team.

  But nothing is what is seems…and no one can be trusted. As the search for the truth about the manuscript moves across Asia and into the darkest reaches of human history, the Chess Team will have to battle enemies beyond comprehension—nightmare creatures of myth and perverse creations of science—in order to preserve a secret as old as life itself.

  In 2009, bestselling novelist Jeremy Robinson launched the adventures of Jack Sigler and Chess Team. Now, learn how it all began!

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  Copyright ©2013 by Jeremy Robinson

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Jeremy Robinson at: [email protected].

  Cover design copyright ©2013 by Jeremy Robinson

  Visit Jeremy Robinson on the World Wide Web at:

  www.jeremyrobinsononline.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Project Nemesis by Jeremy Robinson - Novel Sample

  Fortune Favors by Sean Ellis - Novel Sample

  About the Authors

  Also by Jeremy Robinson

  Also by Sean Ellis

  PROLOGUE: ZERO

  Baghdad, 656 A.H. (1258 A.D.)

  The most beautiful city in the world was dying.

  Nasir al-Tusi sat astride his horse at the edge of the River Tigris and wept.

  As an advisor to the Great Hulagu Khan, he should have rejoiced at this victory, but he felt only bitter sadness in his heart.

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing—not just the horror of the city’s destruction, the smoke and the blood, and the absolute ruin everywhere he looked, but what defied belief was that this had been allowed to happen in the first place. The Khan’s quarrel was with the rogue Nizari Muslims, not the Abbasid Caliphate. Yet, seemingly against all reason, Caliph Al-Musta’sim had refused to pay tribute, in the form of military support, to the Mongol ruler. As a result, he had also become the Khan’s enemy.

  The Caliph had bragged that if the Khan tried to attack Baghdad, the women of his city would drive the Khan off. Indeed, when the Mongol army arrived at Baghdad, they found a city barely ready to repel an invasion. No army had been summoned. The walls had not been fortified to withstand the Mongol artillery. Even when Hulagu deployed his forces on both banks of the Tigris River and began preparations for the siege, the Caliph barely took note.

  Too late to accomplish anything, the Abbasid ruler eventually sent out 20,000 horsemen to engage the enemy. Hulagu’s forces, led by the cunning Chinese general Guo Kan, had destroyed several dikes, flooding the plain and drowning the cavalrymen, obliterating the Caliph’s forces in a matter of hours. Instead of sending a fraction of his military force and paying a token tribute to the Khan, the Caliph had chosen instead to sacrifice his entire army in a futile display of arrogance.

  The siege had been brutal and brief. The Mongols encircled the city with a palisade and commenced an artillery assault that shattered the city walls. Thirteen days after the Mongol army assembled on the banks of the Tigris, the Caliph signaled his surrender.

  Hulagu was in no mood to negotiate. “Now that I have beaten him, the fool wishes to make peace? His treasury overflows with gold, yet he did not spend even a dinar to defend it. I will shut the fool up in his treasury. If he prizes his gold so highly, let him eat it.”

  As a scholar, al-Tusi cared nothing for the fate of the Caliph or his wealth, but there was something of inestimable value inside the walls of the defeated city that did interest him. Baghdad’s greatest treasure was not its gold, but rather its scholars and its libraries, foremost of which was the House of Wisdom.

  “You rule all the Earth now, Great Khan,” al-Tusi had told Hulagu as the siege began. “With the knowledge in the House of Wisdom, you and your sons will rule Heaven and Earth for a thousand years…no, a thousand times a thousand years. You must preserve it.”

  Hulagu however had been unmoved. “Knowledge is like anything else that may be lost and found again. The Caliph’s arrogance cannot be excused, and if it means the destruction of every book in the city, then so it will be.”

  Al-Tusi knew better than to argue with the Khan, though he knew of one book kept in the House of Wisdom that could never be replaced.

  “However,” Hulagu had continued, “there is truth in what you say. I appoint you, Nasir al-Tusi, as the protector of this great trove of learning. When the city falls, you will gather whatever remains, and then use it to establish a new House of Wisdom.”

  Despite the concession, al-Tusi had not expected the siege to end so quickly or so dramatically. Already, Guo Kan had led his forces into the city to ‘prepare’ for the Khan’s arrival.

  Al-Tusi wiped the tears from his eyes and urged his mount to continue toward the ravaged shell of Baghdad. The Tigris was running red with spilled blood, but there were pools of a black, oily substance on its surface, which al-Tusi recognized immediately. It was ink, the ink of thousands of scrolls and books that had been thrown into the river by the marauding invaders.

  The destruction of the House of Wisdom had already begun.


  I’m too late, he thought, and the tears began flowing again. But perhaps they haven’t found the Book yet.

  In his despair, he thought he could hear his father’s voice, echoing from out of Paradise. Inshallah, my son. If Allah wills it, you will save the Book. If it has been destroyed, then it is because Allah does not will you to possess it again.

  The sentiment brought him no comfort.

  As he reached the city gate, the vast destruction became almost too much to bear. He wrapped his turban tightly around his nose and ears, a futile attempt to keep out the stench of death and muffle the screams of the dying. The streets were slick with blood, and the marketplaces that lined them were filled with what looked like heaping mounds of meat, swarming with black flies. In the distance, bands of infantrymen were methodically searching houses, a process which seemed to involve tearing them down to their foundations.

  Al-Tusi felt a growing apprehension. The Khan had assigned an arav—ten horsemen—to serve as his escort, but in the mayhem and in the grip of bloodlust, it might be difficult for the marauders to distinguish friend from foe. After more than an hour of negotiating the ruins and circumventing the larger concentrations of victorious invaders, al-Tusi reached his destination.

  Even from a distance, he could see that the House had not escaped harm. Pillars of smoke ascended from its courtyards. Soldiers stood on its open terraces, pitching manuscripts into the river, competing with each other to see who could throw them the furthest. Fighting an urge to shout at them, al-Tusi rode right up to the main entrance, where he was confronted by a group of Turkish soldiers.

  “Let me pass,” he ordered. His voice was weak, barely audible through the cloth he’d bound over his face. “The Khan commands that this place be spared.”

  “We don’t take orders from you, Persian,” the leader of the group sneered at him. Then the man cocked his head sideways as if contemplating something humorous. “But General Guo is waiting for you inside.”

  Guo Kan is waiting for me?

  The Chinese general was aware that Hulagu had ordered al-Tusi to preserve the House of Wisdom, so why was he there, in the House, personally overseeing its destruction?

  The Turk led him inside, following a route that seemed purposefully designed to make al-Tusi bear witness to the cruelty of the victorious army. Everywhere he looked, there was blood and ruin. Scores of scholars and scientists, the most learned men in the Islamic world, had been pinned with lances to the walls of the enormous reading rooms. The tables, where these men had read, translated and copied the scrolls in the House’s collection, had been hacked apart to make a path for mounted archers, who were taking turns riding up and down the halls using the impaled men, some of whom were still alive, for target practice.

  At last, he was brought to the highest tower of the House. He recognized this place, one of the many observatories where astronomers studied the heavens and mapped the stars. Although the din of the city’s destruction was still audible, the observatory was, for the moment at least, still untouched. Shelves of scrolls and books lined the walls, all arranged according to the orderly filing system employed by the House’s librarians. Tables, with every manner of machine and scientific apparatus, had been arranged in a ring around the center of the circular room. Guo Kan waited there, casually inspecting the devices as if they were wares in the marketplace.

  “Ah, Persian. Come to pick the bones of the dead?”

  Al-Tusi bit back a retort. He could ill afford to offend Guo Kan. The Chinese general was highly regarded by the Khan, and if Guo Kan decided to simply execute al-Tusi on the spot, Hulagu would probably not even take notice. Instead, al-Tusi simply inclined his head in a gesture of deference. “The Khan has ordered me to preserve as much of the library as is possible.”

  “The Khan is very wise.” Guo offered a cryptic smile and gestured to the tables. “The treasures in this place are greater than anything in the Caliph’s vaults.”

  Al-Tusi chose his reply carefully. “Unfortunately, ink and parchment is not so durable as gold. I fear much has already been lost.”

  The general seemed not to have heard. “With enough gold, one man can buy an army of ten thousand, but with knowledge…ah, with knowledge, one man can destroy an army. You are a man of learning, Persian. Tell me, what do you see here?”

  “These are scientific instruments for taking the measure of the heavens.” Though his answer had been immediate, reflexive, al-Tusi now scrutinized the machines and devices arrayed on the tables. Some were quite familiar—astrolabes, clocks and planetary models—but many of the others had nothing at all to do with astronomy.

  “Are they indeed?” Guo watched him carefully for some hint of duplicity. “There is a scroll here that purports to hold the secret of Greek Fire. Over there—”

  He gestured across to a table, upon which lay several enormous dome-shaped objects that looked like the lids of cooking pots. “Polished mirrors that can focus the rays of the sun and start fires, even at a great distance. I think these scientists—” Guo spat the word like a curse, “were trying to give the Caliph the victory of which he boasted.”

  Then he smiled again. “But, I am no scholar. I might be mistaken. Some of these machines do, indeed, appear harmless. Take this one, for example.”

  Al-Tusi’s breath caught in his throat as he saw the apparatus Guo was inspecting. It looked at first glance, like a large basket or a pot—al-Tusi reckoned he could not have encircled its circumference with his arms. Instead of clay or woven straw, it was constructed of lacquered wood, a flawless joining of curved panels that resembled the shape of a gourd, resting on a rectangular base from which sprouted a number of metal levers, each engraved with a distinctive symbol—symbols al-Tusi himself had created, and which only a handful of other men had ever seen.

  By all that is holy, they actually built it.

  Now he understood why the Caliph had been so defiant.

  Six years earlier, al-Tusi had been part of an unparalleled scholarly experiment. A group of intellectuals, scientists and visionaries from every part of the civilized world had set out on a quest to discover the source of life. They had originally thought to name the object of their search after the paradise described in the holy writings of the Jews and Christians, but their goal did not lie in Mesopotamia, where Eden was thought to have existed. Besides, even if the sacred writings were to be taken literally—something that none of the scholars truly believed—scripture explicitly stated that God planted his garden after the Creation was complete. Life could have begun anywhere. Instead, they named the thing they sought prima materia, the name Aristotle had used in antiquity, and the place where they eventually found it, they had called ‘the Prime.’

  For more than two years, they studied the Prime, unlocking its secrets and recording their discoveries in a book—The Book—written in a language of al-Tusi’s devising. They knew the world was not ready for what they had learned. The Christian kingdoms lived in perpetual fear of scientific learning; the possession of knowledge was a dangerous thing, an affront to God, and anyone possessing such a book would be labeled a heretic and summarily executed. Even in the enlightened Islamic world, possession of such information was dangerous, but the men had agreed that the House of Wisdom, which had endured for nearly five hundred years, would be the best place to safeguard the Book. Al-Tusi himself had borne the manuscript, along with a second document, a parchment roll that contained instructions on how to unlock the secrets of the Book, to Baghdad, en route to his home in Persia. When he had entrusted it to the keeper of the House, he had given the man explicit instructions to keep the Book secret until the world was ready for such profound knowledge.

  The fools, al-Tusi thought. These discoveries were never meant to be used as a weapon; they cannot be used that way. It is an impossibility.

  He felt the general’s eyes upon him, and he knew that he’d already given too much away by his reaction. He did his best to affect an expression of indifference, as he pret
ended to study the device. “It is an urghan. A musical instrument.”

  Guo pressed one of the levers experimentally, and a low note resonated from the wooden body of the urghan. The sound continued to echo in the room for a moment after he released the lever. “How does it work?”

  Al-Tusi laid a hand on the wooden body of the instrument. He saw that several bowls also occupied the tabletop, each of them containing lumps of powder—ash, sulfur, salt and other substances that he did not immediately recognize. All of them were arranged in a circle around the urghan, just as he and his fellow scientists had done years before, along with leaves of vellum and paper, the latter inscribed with diagrams and notations in Arabic. Then he saw something else on the table. It was the parchment he himself had written, which explained, among other things, how to construct and use the machine. It lay unrolled and open for all to see.

  But where is the Book? Surely they would be together.

  Through a supreme effort of will, he maintained his neutral demeanor. “There is a bladder of air inside. It is filled with a bellows.” He indicated another lever, which he began pumping with the heel of his hand. “There is a ney inside—a hollow reed with many different holes—and when you press one of these levers, it releases the air and covers one of the holes.”

  He demonstrated its operation with a few random notes, finishing with a discordant combination that, he noted with some satisfaction, caused the general to wince. “Not very useful as a weapon,” al-Tusi continued. “I suppose with several of these you could make the enemy drop their swords and cover their ears.”

  “A musical instrument? It is nothing more than that?” Guo continued to watch him, as if he could read in al-Tusi’s eyes the truth about the device. “I shall take it with me then. Perhaps I will learn its mysteries.”

  Al-Tusi shrugged, but this time he wasn’t trying to hide anxiety. Guo had overestimated the urghan’s importance.

  Now if he will just get out of the way, I can find the real prize.