The Blood Oath

Chapter 9

The room was windowless, tucked beneath a crumbling apartment block in Saida’s old quarter, far from any tourist path. The walls were concrete, stained with mildew and old ash. No cameras. No neighbors. Just Kabri and the fire.

He stood barefoot, stripped to his undershirt, hands covered in soot. His coat, still damp from the sea wind, lay folded beside him on a rusted cot. The silence around him wasn’t comforting—it was thick, like judgment. As if the shadows themselves were waiting to see what he would do next.

The table in front of him was littered with fragments of two lives: his real one, and the one he wore in London like a costume.

The Syrian passport: Kabri al-Hussein, issued in Damascus, expired but real.

The forged British ID: “Kam Barron,” a name Fred gave him to blend into Canary Wharf.

The fake Interpol security pass from the Manchester drop.

His student visa from twenty years ago, back when he still dreamed of becoming an engineer.

He held each item like a relic, flipping it in his hand, remembering the weight of the years tied to it.

Then, one by one, he dropped them into the steel basin in front of him and lit the match.

The fire was slow to catch at first. The damp room fought against it. But Kabri was patient.

He watched the blue flame lick the corners of the plastic IDs, curl the laminated surface of the Interpol pass. When the documents shrank into black curls, he fed in more: paper receipts from hotel jobs, SIM cards wrapped in foil, scraps of Jamil’s handwriting—some notes, some codes they’d shared only between them.

He hesitated when he reached the old photograph.

It was the two of them—Jamil with his arm over Kabri’s shoulder, both of them covered in oil and dust after the arms job in Tripoli. Laughing. Careless.

That was the last time they’d truly been free.

He looked at it for a long while, then slipped it into a small steel lockbox in the corner. He wouldn’t burn that. Not yet.

Not until the blood was paid for.

The last thing to go was the cell phone.

Kabri stripped the casing, pulled the board, melted the chip with acid he’d bought earlier from a chemical vendor on the street. When the phone hissed and cracked, he buried the mess in sand and flushed the remains into the drain outside the bunker.

He returned, lit incense to mask the smell, and sat down on the cot.

Flashback.

Four years earlier.

Fred’s voice was sharp, amused, but layered with menace. They were in the smoking lounge beneath his East London manor—a relic of empire hidden behind a Jamaican grocery store.

“You ever heard of disappearing ink?” Fred asked, holding a contract in his hands. “Looks solid at first, but in a few days—poof—gone.”

Kabri raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Fred blew smoke from his nose. “Every job, every alias, every record—I want it to be just like that. If you two get caught, I was never here. You were never born.”

Jamil had laughed. Kabri hadn’t.

That lesson stuck.

Now, as the last curl of smoke twisted up into the cold air of the underground room, Kabri finished wiping down the table with ammonia. No prints. No dust. No evidence of existence.

Only one thing remained.

A folded envelope, crisp and sealed in wax.

On the outside, in Jamil’s hand: “If I Die Before You.”

Kabri had found it stuffed inside the heel of one of Jamil’s boots—hidden during the final Manchester job.

He hadn’t opened it yet.

Now, with everything else reduced to ash, he broke the seal.

Inside were two sheets. One was a note, handwritten, hurried.

If you’re reading this, I’m either dead or worse. I think Fred knows I found something. The stash we buried in Black Vale—remember the oak with the three stones? It’s all there. Names. Deals. Koffman. The Turkish job. If Fred ever gets wind of that list, he’ll kill everyone involved. Including us.

I never told you because I knew you’d go after him. And I needed you alive.

But if you’re still breathing, brother—burn the whole damn empire down.

Jamil.

The second sheet was a hand-drawn map.

Coordinates. A crude sketch of a tree. Landmarks. Hidden cache.

Kabri stared at the paper, heart thudding with a slow, dangerous rhythm.

Black Vale was an abandoned private estate near Sheffield. Off-grid. Forgotten.

It was where they used to test weapons in the early days, under Fred’s watch. The perfect place to hide something no one was supposed to find.

And now, it would be where Kabri lit the first real match.

He folded the letter carefully, placed it in his breast pocket, and stood.

He picked up a new passport from the table. This one read: Haidar Saif. Lebanese. Stateless.

New prints. New face.

He put it in his coat, then slid a knife into his boot and checked the FN pistol one last time.

Outside, the morning haze over Saida had thickened. Streets were beginning to fill. Men shouted in Arabic at corner shops. Women in headscarves bought flatbread. Children kicked plastic bottles across cobbled paths.

To them, Kabri was just another face in the fog.

No one would know that a war was being born.

A war fueled not by gold or power—

—but by the ink that wouldn’t disappear.