Basim Ibn Ishaq

A street thief of Anbar haunted by a 'jinni' only he could see, Basim wanted more than the alleys — and the Hidden Ones gave it to him: Roshan's training, Alamut's discipline, Baghdad's Order of the Ancients as a proving ground. He was the bureau's most gifted graduate and its most compromised, because the jinni was no metaphor: Basim is the ninth-century reincarnation of the Isu Loki, and the buried half of him — personified as his friend Nehal — was patiently digging itself out. His mortal story (Mirage) and his mythic one (Valhalla) are the same story told from either side of the vault door beneath Alamut.