"Where would you make your assault?"
Amir examined the hologram, noting the access routes into the city, and the choke points where any Belt counterattack would bog down. A koi leaped out of the pond, landed with a splash, but Amir didn't react. He tapped a finger in the northeast quadrant where a new freeway system offered eight lanes into the heart of the city. "Here."
"Easy to get in," said Hussein, "but what happens when they slam the door after you?"
"My tanks would make short work--"
"Your tanks will sacrifice their mobility once they leave the main streets."
Amir reconsidered the problem. "This old irrigation canal is undefended. We can attack from the north as a diversion, then send the tank force up the canal and cut the city in half. Before they can shift their heavy weaponry we'll wipe them out."
"What if the enemy has mined the canal?"
"I'd send a reconnaissance team."
"If they were spotted, your element of surprise would be lost."
Amir slid a hand across his shaved head. "I'd take the chance."
Hussein patted his shoulder. "Boldness is a virtue in a warrior," he said, blue eyes flashing, "but in this case, your attack would have stalled. The canal was mined. The Belt commander was very good, well-schooled and disciplined."
There were some in the Fedayeen who thought that Hussein should have been appointed supreme commander of the Fedayeen, but Kidd's defense of Newark had galvanized the nation and, even more important, Kidd had the support of President Kingsley. Politically more astute, Kidd was gracious in victory, personally guaranteeing that captured rebels were humanely treated. By contrast, Hussein torched whole cities, poisoning water sources and showing no mercy. When Hussein was severely injured during the assault on Dallas, Kidd appointed his adjutant to take over the Third Army. The adjutant, unwilling to use the brutalities employed by Hussein, gave ground to the Texans' relentless counterattacks, retreating back to the border. Three months later, when Hussein was released from the hospital, the war was over.
Left with one arm, two prosthetic legs and the nation's highest military decoration, Hussein challenged the adjutant to a death match. In the chill of November, the two of them circled each other in the outdoor combat ring at the academy, went round and round, knives flashing as they waited for an opening. It was over within the first minute; Hussein eviscerated the adjutant, left him staring at his guts steaming on the sand.
There had been some grumbling at the manner of death, the adjutant deemed worthy of a heart strike rather than being gutted like a fish, but Kidd had stood quietly from the gallery, acknowledged Hussein as the victor and declared that Allah had spoken. Hussein served another ten years before retiring to his estate on Vashon, one of the small islands just offshore from Seattle. From time to time he tutored the best and brightest from the academy, schooling them in his own slashing techniques of attack and counterattack. Amir had been coming to his home for seven years now, ever since his first term at the academy. Amir's success against the Mormons last year was considered an adaptation of Hussein's feint and strike maneuvers against the Belt forces. It was only in the last year that Amir realized his education was secondary to his recruitment.
"How...how did you take Amarillo?" said Amir.
Hussein beckoned and his youngest wife appeared from the house bearing tea and sweet cakes, stuffed dates and dried apricots.
Amir watched her pour tea for them, head bowed, a soft smile on her face. Such tiny hands, and such long, slender fingers. She backed away and out of sight.
Hussein sipped his tea. "Do you find her lovely?"
"If she is lovely, it is for the glory of Allah and her husband," said Amir.
"A diplomatic answer." Hussein popped a date into his mouth. "There are times you are too much like your father."
"I respect you, Hussein," Amir said quietly, "but you should be careful not to underestimate me. I'm the only person who has the ear of both my father and the president. The Old One recognizes my value. You should do the same."
Hussein set his teacup down.
"Now tell me, how did you take the city?"
Hussein picked among the dried apricots. "I called for a meeting with the Belt commander. Offered to meet him on his own turf. Accompanied only by two officers, I approached the city in an open vehicle, passed through their lines staring straight ahead." He pointed at the display. "We met there...at a lovely Catholic church. I'm sure the commander intended to unnerve me, but I was raised Catholic, did you know that?"
"No...I didn't."
"I was a good Irish Catholic with a bleeding crucifix tattooed on my left bicep," said Hussein. "I had it lasered off when I converted to the truth faith, but you could still see it...then Allah in his mercy chose to have it blown away with a rocket blast." He lifted the empty sleeve, let it drop. "A blessing. Now I can enter Paradise unsullied."
Amir watched the blue fabric ripple in the breeze. "Is that why you never had a prosthetic arm attached?"
"Seemed like the least I could do to show my gratitude." Hussein slowly chewed the apricot. "The rebels live-casted my meeting with their commander--Major Tom Muzilla, a tough old Texan with a wad of chaw in his cheek. We talked football and old movies and the way things used to be. The way things might be again, if politicians got their heads out of their asses and realized we were all Americans. He said he was in no hurry to fight with us, but if it was a battle we wanted, we best be prepared to die." Hussein looked at Amir. "I said I'd think about it. Said I was going to go back and pray for guidance. He said, 'Sir, take as much time as you need,' and we shook hands. His hands were rough as cactus, but it was a good, solid handshake."
Amir remembered his father's hands holding the glass of khat infusion this afternoon. When he was a child he felt he could curl up and go to sleep in the palm of his father's hand, sleep forever in safety and peace.
Hussein pointed to a spot near the eastern edge of the city, "That's the main natural gas delivery system. Guarded like it was Fort Knox. But here..." He tapped a point closer to the center. "And here, and here." More taps. "These are the primary intersections where all that gas feeds into the city...and those spots weren't guarded at all." He narrowed his eyes. "While most of Amarillo was watching their commander and me talk, I activated a squad I had sent into the city a couple of weeks earlier, and these men blew the gas feeds with incendiaries. Within ten minutes the whole city was ablaze, the streets filled with people on fire." He chewed, grinding away at the apricot, turning it to paste. "You could hear the screams from a mile away. Their security perimeter collapsed, volunteers throwing down their weapons in their haste to flee." He spit the apricot pit into the display, the hologram shimmering for an instant before regaining its structure. "Next morning the smoldering city smelled like bad barbecue, and we headed toward San Antonio to join up with the rest of our force."
"I...I never read anything about that," said Amir.
"It wasn't something that President Kingsley was proud of," said Hussein. "To be honest, it wasn't something I was proud of either. That Belt commander...he and I, we could have been friends if he wasn't an infidel dog." He glared at Amir. "You may have the ear of this coward they call the president, but never forget who put you in position to whisper your soothing words into his ear." He swept the holographic city into oblivion with a wave of his hand. "The secret of victory is to find the point of maximum vulnerability and then strike. No matter your feelings. No matter how much you respect the enemy. So when the moment comes for your father to choose sides, you best be ready to do what is required of you. If that means you have to kill him, then do it. Afterwards you can shed salty tears at his funeral like a good son."
CHAPTER 14
Spider curled in the armchair of his study, watching Sarah. The noise of the Catholic sector seeped through the security windows. "Have you told Rakkim what your zombie found in D.C.?"
"Her zombie?" Rakkim pulled the blanket up around Spider where it had slipp
ed off. "Yeah, she showed me."
"Rakkim is...skeptical." Sarah looked at Leo. "Did you find where the safe room is?"
"Not exactly." Leo loudly blew his nose. His allergies had kicked in. Probably a dust storm in Tibet or somebody on Mars had a new kitten. "Not yet."
Spider dimmed the lights, the wallscreen flickering. "We cleaned up the original, increased the resolution."
The D.C. rubble bobbed onscreen, bones littering the sidewalk, the American flag in the gutter. A quick pan of the collapsed Capitol dome as the zombie gave his voice-over sales pitch, his breathing moist and heavy through the decon suit, boots kicking up cinders and dead newspapers. The cameraman's emaciated face was reflected for a moment in a sheet of glass, his sunken cheeks behind the plexi-hood, damp hair plastered across his scalp.
Static onscreen, then a dimly lit tunnel, the ceiling half collapsed, the zombie cursing as he squeezed his way through. His decon suit scraped against the sides as he scooted forward on his belly. This...this here's something special. The laser torch popped on and he started cutting away at the hatch to the access tunnel. Moments later a clang as the access hatch fell into darkness. Dust shimmered as the light from the camera poked through the opening.
The zombie grunted, tried to work his way through the narrow opening. He stopped, panting. Tried again. Still too tight. Gonna have to come back with a hand jack. He swept the room: the wooden globe with the continents oddly shaped...a red rose in its vase...a couple of flintlock pistols...a yellowed document under armored glass. A man lay behind the desk, only his skeletal hand visible, sticking out of the sleeve of his blue suit.
The image wobbled as the zombie tried to squeeze into the room. A curse hissed into the darkness. The zombie turned the camera light on his arm, saw a tear in the shoulder of the decon suit. He slapped on a quick-patch, but the tear spread, the material weakened from years of toxic exposure. He looked into the camera, blinking, and even across time and space you could tell that he knew. Sorry...I'm sorry. His hand bumped the edge of the opening and he dropped the camera. The image bounced, stabilized for an instant, long enough to see the red rose on the desk collapse, petals shattering to dust.... The screen went black. Faint sound of thezombie sobbing before Spider stopped the recording.
"Why does he say he's sorry?" said Rakkim.
"It's a much clearer recording," said Sarah, "I just wish you could have located where--"
"Nobody can track a signal out of D.C.," said Rakkim. "The soup's too thick."
The wallscreen flared and the safe room was in sharp focus, the angle tilted.
"What...?" said Sarah.
"Leo couldn't pinpoint the safe room," said Spider, "but Leo did succeed in walking back the signal sent to the zombie's Web site. We thought the camera had gone dead, but it's still operating. You missed it, Sarah, and so did we at first. It only broadcasts a five-second burst every twenty-four hours. Leo's managed to retrieve three of the bursts, spanning the last week. We've attached them on the main recording."
"Showtime," said Leo.
A flash of light illuminated the safe room. Low angle. More of the dead man visible now, his suit in rags, one shoe off...metacarpals gleaming through his tattered sock.
"There's no way you can triangulate the room's position from the signal?" said Sarah.
"Do you even know what that means?" said Leo.
"It wasn't possible, Sarah," soothed Spider. "We've been trying. The only way Leo was able to snatch the five-second bursts was because they had the same digital signature as the original data packet. What Leo did...it's really quite remarkable."
"Yeah, a little appreciation might be nice," said Leo.
"Something...something was different between the original recording and the five-second bursts," said Rakkim.
Spider froze the image. Turned to Leo. "I told you he would notice."
Leo rolled his eyes.
"What's different?" said Sarah.
The wallscreen jumped, the angle canted so that the desk looked as if it were about to fall over. "One of the things we were able to do when we cleaned up the image was to add a holographic component," said Spider, manipulating the remote. "Now we can see everything in the room."
Spider shifted the angle on the freeze frame...he ran across the smallest oil painting, the cleric's eyes cold and remote...the dueling pistols in their felt-lined box, each flake of rust highlighted on the striker...across the empty case...to the parchment under armored glass. The parchment was hard to read until Spider adjusted the focus...the parchment was an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, with a mention of "Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" that didn't appear in the final version.
The image onscreen shifted again, moved slowly over the skeletal man curled on the floor, one bony hand outstretched...past the hand...to what lay just out of reach, the small, flat piece of wood...dappled now with tiny white flowers.
"My God," Sarah said softly.
"Those flowers...they weren't there before," said Rakkim.
"No shit," said Leo.
"Are they blooming?" said Rakkim.
Spider nodded. "Rather interesting, wouldn't you say?"
"More than interesting, it's impossible," said Rakkim. "There's been nothing alive in D.C. for the last forty years. Even the cockroaches died."
"Blooming in total darkness," whispered Sarah, still watching the screen. "Eldon really did it. I didn't believe him. I thought he was just trying to get more money out of me."
Spider zoomed in on the piece of wood. The flowers were clearly rooted in the wood itself, a chunk of dark, pitted pine six or seven inches long, maybe four inches thick.
"Those are white anemones, according to the botanical index, by the way," said Spider. "A very archaic form of the modern flower."
Rakkim looked at Sarah.
"I told Eldon I was interested in something important." She reached out, grazed the flowers onscreen with her fingertips. "Not just historically significant, something that would get everyone's attention. That would change...everything." She trembled in the light from the wallscreen. "He'd been looking for two years, said he finally had a lead. Bigger than big, bigger than I could imagine, that's what he said."
"What is it?" said Rakkim.
"I...I could see the way things were going," said Sarah, lip quivering, unable to turn away from the screen. "Even...even before President Kingsley was killed it was clear that the whole country was unraveling."
Rakkim was beside her. "You've been saying that for as long as I've known you." He held her but she pulled away. "We're doing as well as the Belt."
"Exactly," said Sarah. "They're a failed nation just like we are, poor and weak."
"Here we go again," said Rakkim. "Reunification's a fine idea, as long as you get rid of all the people that go to sleep at night praying that God strikes the other side dead."
"There's not that many zealots," said Sarah, "they're just louder than the rest of us. We need something to bring us together, something greater than the things that divide us."
"Yeah, a bunch of posies on a chunk of wood are going to make us all love each other," snorted Leo. He dabbed at his nose with a tissue.
Spider zoomed in, the piece of wood filling the wall, a dull black stain in high relief.
"The cross?" Rakkim looked at Sarah. "Come on."
"You've heard the stories," said Sarah.
"Everyone in the Belt's heard the stories," said Rakkim. "Most of them believe it too; the secret behind the glory of the USA was that the founders were devout Christians, keepers of a piece of the true cross, the most sacred relic of all."
"Maybe it's true," said Sarah.
"Rikki, your people believe the black stone in the Kaaba in Mecca dates from the time of Adam and Eve," said Spider. "They consider it a source of great power."
"The black stone is real," said Rakkim.
"So is the cross." Sarah pointed at the screen. "Flowers, Rikki. Flowers blooming in a dead city..." Tears shimmered i
n her eyes, and Rakkim could see the blooms reflected in them. "People need symbols, something greater than their own lives. Remember...remember at the war museum last week? After the truce was signed, both sides sent search teams into the ruins of D.C. It was a suicide mission, but they had ten times the volunteers they needed. The men from the Republic found the immaculate Quran and put it in the museum...the team from the Belt brought out the statue of Abraham Lincoln, brought it out in pieces and reassembled it in Atlanta. It was a healing moment for both nations, a sense that they had done the right thing in fighting for their faith, but Rikki...Rikki, what would have happened if President Kingsley had given the Quran to the Belt, let them put it on display? And what if the Belt president had returned the honor, given us the statue of Lincoln?"
"Government isn't about religion or signs or symbols," said Rakkim. "It's about power and control and...Tell her, Spider."
"I gave up trying to tell Sarah anything a long time ago," said Spider.
"All this talk about a hunk of magic wood may get you all excited, but not me," said Leo. "What I want to know is where does it leave the Jews?"
"Where we always are, on the outside looking in and hoping for the best," said Spider. "Judaism is the wellspring for both Christianity and Islam. I'll leave it for others to decide if they've improved on the original source."
"It's a beautiful idea, Sarah, and I wish the world worked that way," said Rakkim, "but we don't even know where this...thing is."
"Not yet," said Sarah.
"Not yet." Rakkim looked around. "Have you thought that Leo might not be the only person who can walk back the data packet from the Web site?"
"I am the only one who could do it," sniffed Leo, a twist of tissue hanging from his nostril.
"No, you're not," said Rakkim. "You might be the smartest person in the world, but the second-smartest person will just need a little more time to do it."
Heart of the Assassin Page 11