"Are you getting those headaches again?" Sarah said, stepping around a section of collapsed sidewalk. "Spider says he can hear you crying in the middle of the night."
"I'm fine. That's not it."
Last year Leo and Rakkim had gone on a mission into the Belt and barely made it back alive. Leo's arrogance and lack of social skills had been a constant problem, and his falling in love with a local girl, Leanne, only made things worse. Still, the kid was necessary equipment, that remarkable brain of his, at any rate. State-of-the-art cerebral cortex, but Spider and a team of underground neuroscientists had added a few non-factory options. Leo was smarter than ever, and getting smarter all the time, but sometimes he was blinded by details and his naivete left him vulnerable.
Sarah could see homemade signal-jamming devices silhouetted on every rooftop, awkward contraptions of circuit boards and aluminum designed to block eavesdropping from the government. "Do any of those things actually work?"
"They work a lot better now," said Leo. "I gave a few suggestions to a couple of the brighter local kids, showed them how to tweak the grid."
The houses were bigger in this part of the district, three or four families sharing the space. A garden in every backyard, covered now with mulch to protect against the autumn frost. Cooking smells drifted from the kitchens, fried potatoes, green beans...bacon. Her stomach growled. She spotted a lookout hidden along the main access road leading to the rest of the city; a teenager in a hooded sweatshirt sporting night-vision goggles. Leo gave a hand signal as they passed, the teenager returning the sign.
"You made yourself at home here fast," said Sarah.
"I learned that from Rakkim." Leo sniffled, wiped his nose. "You should have seen him in the Belt. Some redneck would be fumbling for change to pay for cigarettes and Rakkim would toss a silver dollar onto the counter. Next thing you know, we're invited to dinner and hearing all about his job at the filling station and all the government people who've been stopping for gas the last few days."
They reached the base of an unused water tower covered in faded graffiti--SEAHAWKS and GO KANGS! and REPENT and LWHS CLASS OF 2009, crude drawings of frogs and a husky dog, dozens of hearts with initials in them. Leo eased into the shadows, looked around, then scrambled up the rusty metal ladder along one side. Sarah was stunned. Before he left for the Belt with Rakkim, Leo had been afraid of heights, afraid of cramped spaces, afraid of bugs and loud noises. She followed him up the ladder.
Leo waited for her at the top. Held out a hand.
She ignored the offer, pulled herself up onto the catwalk. She kept one hand on the metal railing and tried not to look down. It was windier up here. From this vantage point, Sarah could see the tail section of a jetliner sticking out of Elliott Bay, the result of a failed suicide attack on the city twenty years earlier by a renegade Christian sect. The wreckage had been left untouched as a reminder to the citizens to remain alert.
Leo surveyed the sky, head thrown back as he took in the security blimps ringing the city, a shifting grid of low-flying airships designed to shield the city from satellite surveillance and scramble the electronics of any attacker. "They made a mistake."
"Who did?" said Sarah.
"Whoever programmed the blimps." Leo pointed. "See? Northeast quadrant. They left a gap in the coverage."
"I'm sure it doesn't matter--"
"It's a mistake. Somebody didn't do a proper vector analysis. You don't see it, do you?"
"I don't." Sarah tickled him, made him squirm. "You must feel sorry for the rest of us."
"It's like being surrounded by sleepwalkers, but...sometimes I think maybe you're the lucky ones." Leo rubbed his forehead, caught himself. "I get so lonely."
"Have you spoken with Leanne?"
"Yeah, I have a secure channel set up."
"You're not lonely when you talk with her, are you?"
"That...that's what I wanted to talk with you about." More than ever, Leo looked like an enormous infant, smooth and soft, his features unformed. "Leanne...she says I sound different now."
"It's hard being apart," said Sarah. "Sometimes when Rikki comes home from a mission it takes a while for us to get back to where we were before he left. It doesn't mean we don't still love each other." She patted his hand. "Give Leanne a chance to adjust. You were only together for a few days."
"A few days was all I needed."
"Women need more."
"That's what Rakkim said." Leo watched the stars over the city, the blinking lights from airplanes making their approach, cataloging it all. "Rakkim...don't tell him, but he's my only friend. It's kind of stupid, because shadow warriors, their job is to make you like them...but even knowing that, I still think that we're friends."
"You are friends, Leo."
Leo blushed.
Sarah watched the stars. Wondered if Rakkim was watching them too.
"I don't think Leanne's father...I don't think Mr. Moseby likes me," said Leo. "Maybe I intimidate him. I do that to people."
"From what Rakkim's told me about him, I rather doubt that."
"I asked Leanne to marry me, but that didn't work out so great. She said she loves me, but she didn't want to rush things."
"Good for her. You've got time."
"What if we don't?" Leo's voice cracked. "What if those few days were all we had?"
"Then act like you've got forever. Be brave. Fake it if you have to."
"Fake it." Leo chewed it over. "I could do that." He cleared his throat. "Thank you."
"Glad I could help."
In the distance, the Grand Abdullah mosque dominated First Hill and the darkened fundamentalist district. Sarah turned away, preferred watching the ferries chugging across the water, their wake lit by moonlight.
"You ever think about leaving?" said Leo.
"No."
"Never? You're always talking about how we're falling apart."
"The Republic is being nibbled to death," said Sarah. "Aztlan wants the Southwest back, Canada wants the Great Lakes and the Mormon territories are already gone. China and India own half of our heavy industries, Russia floats our bonds. The Belt is in even worse shape. That's no reason to run away. We're weak because we're divided. The only way the two nations are going to survive is to become one nation again."
"Good luck with that." Leo spit over the railing. "Nothing wrong with running away. No more Republic, no more Belt, just grab Leanne and go. Start over someplace new. Someplace safe."
"There's no such place, Leo." Sarah looked across the bay, stared at the red warning lights blinking on the tail section of the downed plane. "So...do you think you can find that secure room in D.C. for me?"
"You don't give up."
"No. I don't."
"You want my help finding a piece of Jesus' cross...." Leo massaged his gums with a forefinger. "You do remember Spider and I are Jewish, right?"
"So was Jesus."
Leo shrugged.
"Here's a story that may interest you--it certainly made me curious the first time I heard it," said Sarah. "Shortly after taking communion, on January 28, 814, the Emperor Charlemagne died and was buried in a cathedral in Germany. This was a man who had conquered most of Europe, and forcefully converted more people to Christianity than anyone before or since; the epitome of the holy warrior." She leaned closer to Leo. "Two hundred years later, Count Otto of Lomello secretly entered the cathedral shortly after midnight, accompanied only by the bishop and two of the count's trusted retainers. The bishop led them down a winding flight of stairs deep into the catacombs under the church, the four of them moving silently through the darkness, candles glinting on the bones stacked against the narrow passageway. After what seemed like hours, they finally broke through a false wall, and discovered the emperor's true resting place, a marble tomb sheathed in frost." She smiled. "So of course they pried open the door."
"And the tomb was empty," sneered Leo.
Sarah slowly shook her head. "No, Charlemagne was there, seated on a throne
of gold, a crown on his head, but though his fine robes had rotted away...his flesh showed no sign of decay, his face so peaceful that he might as well have been asleep. The duke, a veteran of many wars, dropped his candle, the bishop muttering prayers as the darkness closed in."
Leo shivered. "You...you said it was cold in the tomb."
"Not that cold," said Sarah. "Clutched in the emperor's hand was a small, rough piece of wood. When the duke overcame his fear and pried the emperor's fingers away from it...the emperor crumbled to dust."
Leo stared at her. "That's...a good story, but people can say anything."
"The duke wrote it all down," said Sarah. "Wrote it in his own blood. I've read it myself. His Latin was atrocious, but I believed every word of it." Music drifted up from one of the nearby houses, and she nodded her head to the beat. "I read his account three years ago in a small monastery outside the city of Leipzig. The duke...the piece of the cross didn't do what he expected it to do. Not for him. The bishop committed suicide shortly after they violated the tomb, a mortal sin piled on mortal sin. The duke's retainers went mad. The duke, terrified, entered the monastery, handed over the piece of the cross to the abbot and wrote the story of the theft as a confession. He lived in a stone cell in the monastery for another forty years, and never spoke a word."
Leo looked out over the city, using its familiar geometry to ground himself. "So...okay, maybe there is a piece of the cross with magical powers, but that doesn't mean this...zombie found it under D.C."
Sarah took his hand. "The sacred relic stayed hidden away in the monastery for hundreds of years, until it was stolen around 1646, during the chaos of the Thirty Years War."
The night was quiet except for the sound of Leo's teeth chattering as they stood atop the tower. He watched her out of the corner of his eyes and she was beautiful, dark hair stark against her face, her expression totally aware, free and fearless.
"Rumors of the cross occur for the next hundred years," continued Sarah, still holding his hand in her warm grip. "A town cured of smallpox by a wandering tinsmith, a mountain village saved from an avalanche that roared all around it, a strange white light spotted in the hills of southern France at Easter. Some say it was finally brought to Louis XIV, that the cross was responsible for the grandeur and glory of Paris during his reign. If he truly had it, the relic didn't stay with him--it was gone by the time of the Revolution and Louis XVI's date with the guillotine, perhaps sold by the last king of France to pay his mounting debts." She released him, her voice softer now, like petting a cat. "The story I heard, the one I like best, is that Louis XVI lost the piece of the cross at cards to one of the visiting American patriots, Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Paine, and they brought it back to the Colonies." She looked at Leo. "The New Jerusalem, that's what they called the new nation. There's actually a coded reference to winning the cross in the Federalist Papers."
"You really think that piece of wood in D.C. is part of the true cross?" said Leo.
Sarah turned away from him, eyes half closed in the breeze. "Well, Leo, we're never going to know unless you find that room."
Leo hesitated, nodded. "I'll do my best...."
"In case your best isn't good enough, I need you to contact Leanne's father on that secure channel of yours. Ask Moseby to leave for northern Virginia as soon as possible."
"You expect Mr. Moseby to wander around D.C.?"
"No, not yet," said Sarah. "I want him to go to zombie country and contact Eldon Harrison's wife. See if she knows anything. I'll have a Fedayeen radiation suit waiting en route--no sense adding to his rad count before he goes into the city."
"I told you I'd locate the safe room. Just give me more time."
"Leo. Contact Moseby tonight. Please?"
"Sure." Leo squinted at the presidential palace. "That's odd." He pointed at the sky. "Look at the blimps. They've altered the aerial security configuration."
Sarah couldn't see anything different. "Maybe someone in authority just realized--"
"Hang on." Leo pressed a finger to one ear. Nodded. "Okay, Pop." He pulled a hand-link out of his pocket, flipped up the screen. "A squadron of Aztlan aircraft entered airspace over Nevada twenty minutes ago. Probably just a navigational mix-up..."
"It's a provocation, Leo, a reaction to the Aztlan oil minister's assassination in Miami this afternoon. They don't know who's responsible. Aztlan's probably doing the same thing over the Belt."
"What can we do about it?"
Sarah could see what Leo was talking about now--the blimps around the palace had shifted slightly. She started down the ladder, feet banging onto the steps in her haste.
"Wait!" said Leo.
"I have to get back to Michael."
"Wait up!"
She was on the ground now, walking fast, trying not to panic. The houses with their late-night music and laughter no longer seemed an indicator of the inhabitants' freedom, but of their ignorance. What had Leo called them? Sleepwalkers.
"Can you please slow down?" Leo called after her.
Sarah started running.
CHAPTER 6
Something was wrong, the Old One sensed it. He should have been pleased--earlier today, Lester Gravenholtz had killed the Aztlan oil minister, the first step in his plan to reshape the geopolitical landscape. In New Fallujah, ibn-Azziz's loyalty remained unquestioned, and with him, control of the Black Robes. Both the Republic and the Belt had fractious populations and weaklings governing them. The time for a strong man to appear was close at hand, and yet...
The Old One felt rested, but the excitement, the heat, the erotic tingle at his nerve ends was missing. Sex was always his first instinct after a session. Always. He tilted his chair to the upright position, took a few more unhurried breaths of pure oxygen before beckoning Massakar to remove the mask.
"Are you feeling better, Mahdi?" asked Massakar, his chief physician, a short Pakistani with tiny, delicate hands and bags under his eyes.
The Old One examined his reflection in the mirrored wall of the recovery room, tapped under his chin. His skin was taut, his eyes clear. His steel gray hair had regained its shine, and his upper lip had lost the indentations that so vexed him. He felt better after his rejuvenation treatment, better than he had felt in weeks, his blood cleansed of impurities, his lungs ionized, his system restored to its natural vigor by Massakar's technicians and their miraculous machines, may Allah be praised. He stood up, naked and unashamed before his own critical gaze. No, something was wrong.
After all these years, the Old One knew his body intimately; he sensed every heartbeat, every pulse, every sag and ripple in his flesh.... He stretched...and felt a slight heaviness in his limbs, a weariness. This is what dying feels like, thought the Old One, the first glimpse of the yawning abyss, a whisper that would slowly grow to a scream.
"Mahdi?" Massakar steepled his fingertips like a merchant fearful of losing a sale.
The Old One stared at Massakar.
Massakar lowered his eyes, trembling.
"What did you do to me?" asked the Old One, not raising his voice.
"My b-best, as always, master."
The Old One held out his hands. There was the faintest hint of yellow at the base of his cuticles. He plucked the thin skin on the back of his hand, released it...watched how long it took to smooth out. He looked up at Massakar. "Your treatments have not fully restored me."
"Yes...I know."
"Did you think I would not notice?"
"After last month's session, I thought...perhaps the instruments needed to be recalibrated." Massakar licked his thin lips. "But this time...I knew they were accurate."
"So my decline began last month?"
Massakar rubbed his small hands together as though washing them. "The decline only became statistically relevant last month. I first noticed certain...anomalies in the readings three months ago."
The Old One watched Massakar squirm. "What sort of anomalies?"
Massakar smoothed his white tunic. "A slight de
cline in liver function and renal output. A minute loss of cardiac elasticity."
"So replace my liver and kidneys, swap out this heart for a new one. You've done that before. What's different now?"
Massakar stiffened. "It's not...organ failure we're dealing with, Mahdi. It's a systemic breakdown. Deterioration at the cellular level. My skills are inadequate to reverse this. Perhaps another doctor, a better doctor--"
The old one waved him silent. "No, you are the best...as was your father before you, and your grandfather." He reached out, wiped away the doctor's tears. "I remember you when you were a child...and the other boys would tease you. You would cry even as you beat them, so fierce you were, and weeping all the time."
Massakar hung his head. "Forgive me, Mahdi."
The Old One stared straight ahead, trying to compose himself. It took every bit of his courage. The only sound in the room was the faint hum of the air-filtration unit. So this is how it ends, he thought, imagining his cells huffing and puffing like cartoon slaves building a pyramid, growing more fatigued by the moment, until finally..."How long?"
Massakar looked up, blinking. "Master?"
"How long do I have?"
"I...I can't--"
"Make an educated guess, Doctor."
Massakar seemed to draw strength from being addressed by his professional title. "Three or four years, if the rate of decline continues uniformly. Less if there is a cascade effect on the major organs, which is...possible." He tugged at his lower lip. "Increasing your rejuvenation sessions to twice a month may help, but--"
"Thank you for your assessment."
Heart of the Assassin Page 5