"You're just flattering me, Lester Gravenholtz, and you don't have to--"
"I mean it."
Karla Jean stared at him in the dim light. "I believe you." She touched his face with her small, slender hands, felt him flinch. "What is it?"
"I don't like you eyeballing me...I'm ugly."
She slapped his chest. "You most certainly are not."
Gravenholtz shook his head. "I got a face like a pig's ass."
"You're strong-looking. Determined. Not like the weaklings and pretty boys I see every day. You're a man who knows what he wants and is not about to let anyone stop him. What woman wouldn't be attracted to that?"
Gravenholtz nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
"You want a drink?" said Karla Jean. "I got beer...bourbon--"
"Do you need a drink?"
"No." Her eyes were certain. "No, Lester, I don't."
"Me neither."
She kissed him again, lightly brushed her lips against his, and there was nothing else in the world but her at this moment, no one but the two of them in this little house on the edge of town, no past, no future...just now.
Karla Jean stepped away from him, trailing a hand across him as she moved away, as though she couldn't bear to part. "Take off your clothes," she said softly.
Gravenholtz blinked.
She unbuttoned the top button of her dress. "Please?"
Gravenholtz tried to speak. It was easier with a hooker. You paid them and did what you wanted and then you left. Even easier when you raped a random woman...not because you didn't have to pay--Gravenholtz didn't care about money--but the passion of the act...their rage and disgust made it better. This, though...when you cared about the woman, when she cared about you...there was so much to lose.
"Please, Lester." Her fingers toyed with the next button. "I have to see you. Really see you." Her lower lip trembled. "My parts...my female parts are tiny as the rest of me. I got to make sure you don't hurt me."
"I told you...I'd die before I hurt you."
Karla Jean sat on the bed. "I won't ask you again."
Gravenholtz kicked off his boots. Peeled off his pants and underwear, left them in a heap. He pulled off his shirt without unbuttoning it, stood there before her naked. He was breathing so hard you would have thought he had run a race.
Karla Jean stared at him from the bed.
"What? You look surprised."
"I am a little." Karla Jean pulled a pistol out from under her pillow. Centered it on his chest. "I thought you'd have on some bulletproof vest or something. I heard you been shot a hundred times and never died. Everyone said you had some kind of...special protection." She pulled back the hammer of the gun. "I guess you left it at home tonight."
Gravenholtz covered his penis with both hands.
"I couldn't believe it when I saw you in church. I thought, Just maybe there is a God."
She switched on the photo display with a remote. An image appeared of Karla Jean in a white wedding dress, a skinny young man in a badly fitting suit beside her. The young man was looking at her with the same expression Gravenholtz had got when he'd thought about Karla Jean these last few days--like how did he get so lucky? And maybe...maybe everything that had gone before could change now. Karla Jean and the young man were dancing inside a small church now, round and round, dizzy with a secret joy.
"You recognize him now?" said Karla Jean.
"Should I?"
"I guess you killed too many men to remember them all. Well, I remember him. His name was Bryce Lee Johnson and you killed him three years ago outside of Harrisburg. He was a gunsmith, traveling the back roads to save money so we could start a family. Way I heard it, you wanted his personal weapon, the one he used to show off the quality of his work, and he didn't want to sell it. So you snapped his neck like a chicken bone and tossed him aside."
Gravenholtz still didn't remember him, but he remembered the gun, a beautiful .41-caliber Colt with an etched barrel, silver inlays and a soft trigger pull.
The pistol never wavered. "It's coming back to you now, isn't it?"
"Karla Jean...I'm sorry about your husband."
"I bet you are."
"Shooting me won't bring him back. If you can forgive me, maybe the two of us--"
"The two of us?" She stepped closer, snarling. "The two of us?" She fired the pistol and he staggered backward, feeling like he had been punched in the heart. She advanced, fired again and again and again, each shot knocking the breath out of him, the house echoing with the sound.
She fired again, just inches from him, and Gravenholtz saw her gasp, put her hand to her neck. In the dimness, something black was leaking through her fingers.
"Karla Jean?"
She wobbled, sat down heavily.
Gravenholtz bent down beside her, moved her hand and clamped his own over the wound. A bullet fragment had ricocheted off his subdural body armor and nicked her carotid artery.
She clutched at his bloody shirt. "Why...why didn't you die?"
"Don't talk." Gravenholtz tried to apply pressure on the artery, but his hand was slippery.
"I shot you. You should...you should be dead."
"You didn't know what you were doing. You were just angry, that's all."
Her eyes looked sleepy.
"Please...please don't go," said Gravenholtz, losing his grip on her neck. Her body jerked, blood spurting. "I...I forgive you, Karla Jean."
She turned her head away.
Gravenholtz thought she was trying to avoid looking at him, then realized she didn't even know he was there anymore. She was trying to get one last glimpse of her husband.
CHAPTER 27
Rakkim gritted his teeth as Marie Colarusso cleaned his wounds. He lay on a white sheet covering the sofa in their living room, his leather jacket in bloody tatters on the floor. "It's not as bad as it looks."
"It's bad enough." Marie, a middle-aged woman with a doughy middle and gray roots showing in her reddish hair, reached for a piece of fresh gauze. "I'm so tired of tough guys."
"You're lucky Leo called me," said Colarusso, his uniform unbuttoned. "Got me on my private number..." The chief of detectives glanced at Leo. "Someday you're going to have to tell me how you did that."
"You wouldn't understand," said Leo.
Colarusso belched into his meaty fist. "He always like this?" he said to Rakkim.
"Pretty much," said Rakkim. "You should have seen him in the Belt. Half the folks thought he was retarded, the other half wanted to hit him with something."
"Sit still," ordered Marie, bending over the gash in his side. She tenderly dabbed at the wound. "Big brave Fedayeen," she snorted.
"You keep up this attitude, I'm not bringing you any more of my business, Marie," said Rakkim.
"Figured I better bring you here instead of a hospital," said Colarusso. "Too many questions, and too much paperwork there. Four dead men, one with his head cut clean off..." He shook his head. "Never a cop around when you need one."
"Thanks, Anthony," said Rakkim.
"What about me?" said Leo. "I saved your life."
Rakkim winced, shifted slightly on the couch. "Thank you, Leo."
"You're welcome." Leo grinned. "I could get used to this hero stuff."
Colarusso rolled his eyes. "Kid brains a miscreant and wants a medal."
"You told me the triplets were as dangerous as anybody in the city," said Marie, still bent over Rakkim. "You said they were implicated in dozens of murders."
"Well...yes," said Colarusso.
"Killed even Fedayeen, that's what you said." Marie sprayed antibiotic on the open cuts.
Colarusso pretended not to hear.
"So that would indicate to me that if this young man wants a medal for braining one of the triplets, he certainly deserves one." Marie pursed her lips. "Anthony?"
Colarusso walked over to where Leo waited. He moistened his thumb, quickly made the sign of the cross on Leo's forehead. "Happy now?"
"No." L
eo wiped his forehead. "That's disgusting. What is it with you people?"
"Who's hungry?" Maryellen, one of the Colarusso girls, stood in the doorway with a plate of sandwiches. She was curvy like her mother, with pale white skin and sandy hair. "I made the roast beef with horseradish, just like you asked for, Leo."
Leo took three of them.
"A healthy appetite is a sign of virility," said Marie.
"Don't get any ideas, Marie," said Colarusso.
Marie checked Rakkim's body, crisscrossed with welts and cuts. "I still think you should let me stitch you up. Some of those are deep."
"Just the zip clamps are fine," said Rakkim. "They'll close up by tomorrow."
Marie shook her head. "Anthony Junior heals overnight too. Now, at least. Those Fedayeen injections...I worry about what they'll do to him in twenty or thirty years. Give him cancer or something."
"Don't worry, most Fedayeen don't live that long," said Rakkim.
"Well, I'm glad Anthony Junior is done with it," huffed Marie. "I thought having a Fedayeen in the family would bring more suitors for the girls, but--"
"Mother," said Maryellen.
"I'm...I'm engaged, Mrs. Colarusso." Leo looked at Maryellen. "Sorry."
"No skin off my nose." Maryellen set down the plate of sandwiches with a clatter.
Leo watched her hips as she left.
"Did you call Sarah?" asked Rakkim.
"She's on her way now, her and the boy," said Colarusso.
Rakkim sat up on the sofa, held his side. "It's late, Anthony."
"You try talking Sarah out of something she wants to do," said Colarusso. "I sent an unmarked car for them. The detective's a good Catholic, knows to keep his trap shut. I'll take you all back home when you're ready to travel."
"I'm ready now," said Rakkim.
Marie gathered up her first aid supplies. "I'll leave you men to your shop talk. Leo, if you want to come into the kitchen, Maryellen's got a fresh cherry pie just aching to be cut."
Amir looked up from the holographic re-creation of the sweeping cavalry attack of the Northern Alliance fighters and U.S. Special Forces that had crushed the Taliban in 2001. "Are you going to tell me what is gnawing at you?"
Hussein glared at him, unmoving in the evening.
Amir went back to the battle display, repositioning the Allied forces, light infantry, armed with swords and rifles. As always, his attention was drawn to American CIA agent Mike Spann, who fought on horseback beside the Northern Alliance as they charged dug-in Taliban equipped with Russian T-55 tanks and mortars. Amir watched as the Taliban forces fled, leaving their weapons behind. Spann was a kaffir, but he was a warrior above all else, a warrior who had died in battle for what he believed in, died in combat against great odds, and Amir admired him.
"You were right, Amir. Something does eat at me." Hussein sat cross-legged in the garden at the rear of his villa, an iron-haired Fedayeen, one of the heroes of the war against the Belt. The empty left sleeve of his uniform was folded back to his shoulder, his posture rigid. "I have painful news."
The holographic display disappeared with a wave of Amir's hand.
"Your father...your father has made a secret recording to be released only in the event of his death," said Hussein. "The Old One used all his wiles to get a copy."
Amir waited. For Hussein, the most merciless of the early Fedayeen commanders, to be so shaken...
"Yes." Hussein turned his gaze on the orange and yellow koi gliding slowly back and forth in the pond beside them. Metallic green flies darted across the surface of the water. He looked at Amir. "Your father has passed you over."
Amir didn't react. He already knew the answer but he asked the question anyway. "Who has my father favored over me?"
"Rakkim."
Amir nodded.
"So much for your hope that you can convince your father to join us."
Amir felt the ache in his heart radiating out to the rest of him.
"You know what you're going to have to do, sooner or later." Hussein gripped his shoulder, squeezed. "I'm sorry."
Amir looked past Hussein, past the high walls of his villa, past the years.... He was a child again, no more than five or six, walking besidehis father, and everyone they passed lowered their eyes, blessed his father, feared him. Amir had slipped his hand into his father's as they walked, taking in his strength, promising himself that he would be just like him when he grew up. His father had seemed so tall in those days, his skin a deep black, pure black, his voice like thunder--Amir had grown even taller than his father, but in his mind he was always reaching up for his father's hand.
"Amir? Have you not been listening?" said Hussein. "I said, the Old One says you must take action to minimize the damage of your father's last request."
"Tell our master not to worry," said Amir. "I'll gladly kill Rakkim."
"No," said Hussein. "That has been expressly forbidden."
"Does our master also favor Rakkim over me?"
"Lower your voice," said Hussein. "I am not privy to our master's deepest thoughts, I am only telling you what he has told me. He wants Rakkim alive."
"Then what am I to do?"
"Your father's statement is a request for his successor, and a request only." Hussein snatched a fly out of the air with his good hand, shook it back and forth in his fist. "Trust me, young one, the dead do not have nearly the authority they think." He released the fly, tossed it toward the pond, the insect disoriented, its flight erratic. A golden koi leaped high and snapped it up.
Colarusso watched Leo follow Marie out, then sat down on the sofa next to Rakkim. "Interesting playmates you got, troop. Leo said it was ibn-Azziz sent the triplets, which is bad enough, but I recognized the fella got his head chopped off--that's Senator Chambers's bodyguard."
"Ibn-Azziz had his heart set on Chambers being defense secretary," said Rakkim, "but it's the Old One who's pulling the strings."
"You know that for sure?"
"Chambers told me."
"I bet that was an interesting conversation," said Colarusso.
"It would have been more interesting if Chambers knew who suggested his name to the president," said Rakkim.
"President gets lots of advice," said Colarusso.
"He only listened to one person in this case," said Rakkim.
"You're certain Chambers didn't know?" said Colarusso.
"I'm certain."
"Yeah, got to believe a man with his pecker in the wind..." Colarusso pressed his finger to his earlobe, listening. "When?" He nodded. "Who's on-scene?" He looked at Rakkim. "Keep me posted. I'll expect a full report in the morning." He released the com-link set to his ear. "Senator Chambers was found dead at his country house an hour ago. Looks like suicide, which is bullshit, of course."
"What about his family?"
"They're safe. On holiday, according to the servants. Grand Canyon." Colarusso picked at a tooth with his pinkie nail, wiped it on his necktie. "Always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. Probably should do it sooner rather than later, before it's part of Aztlan."
Rakkim heard a car coming down the street.
A few seconds later, Colarusso heard it too. He glanced at the security screen above the fireplace, saw a car pull up out front.
"Thanks again, Anthony."
"No problem, troop." Colarusso watched Sarah and a plainclothes cop walking up the front drive, Sarah carrying Michael in her arms. "How soon until you leave for New Fallujah?"
"You can read minds now?"
Colarusso shrugged. "Just basic police work. You can't kill the Old One; you don't even know where he is. So you'll have to settle for killing ibn-Azziz, right?" He lumbered to the front door. "Besides, maybe ibn-Azziz knows who put the bug in the president's ear." He looked at Rakkim. "So, when are you leaving?"
"Tomorrow."
Colarusso opened the door. "Sarah, come on in. You look beautiful. Who's that big boy with you?"
CHAPTER 28
The Old One had a cold. He
sat in an oceanside cabana in Miami, watching the young couple playing on the sand with their toddler, and he hated them for their smooth, healthy pinkness. He wanted to drown the three of them in the shallows, hold their heads under while they thrashed, hold them under until their mouths stopped moving.
The Old One sneezed. The worst possible time to catch something. Ibrahim would be waiting for him inside the suite, wanting to watch the festivities in the Gulf with him, but the Old One didn't want to move. He wrapped his thick terry-cloth robe around himself, pulled the hood lower. The sun beat down on the cabana as he shivered, feeling ice form in his marrow. For the first time in decades, the Old One was sick...and the sickness was a sign of the change that had befallen him.
When his personal physician had first told him that he was dying, the Old One had been stoic at first, then oddly elated, toying with his new-found mortality, the delicious friction of risk. It didn't last. He felt every passing day, every waning moment as a subtraction, a loss. After all these years to finally be this close to success, and have it taken from him...
The Old One coughed, set off a rattling in his chest. He gently touched his cheek, felt the roughness where the shotgun blast at Malcolm Crews's mansion had scorched his skin. That pimply kaffir had almost killed him, ended his life in that overheated, run-down mansion with flies buzzing against the screens and garbage strewn on the lawn. So close to death...as though Allah had taunted him, given him a reminder of the muddy end men came to. The Old One tasted mucus in his mouth, a slimy lozenge that disgusted him.
The toddler in her frilly yellow bathing suit frolicked along the tideline, splashing as the waves trickled toward her. Her hair was as yellow as her bathing suit, a mass of tight curls like a sunflower. Her whole life lay before her, all those endless possibilities, while the Old One's life was winding down. Every breath she took, every joyous coo and tumble, was an insult to him.
The Old One rubbed his arms, trying to bring the blood to the surface, to get warm. It didn't help. He had caught the cold right after the near miss at Crews's mansion. The Old One had risked death before, dozens of times, but this was different. None of those other brushes with death had frightened him. If anything they had affirmed his identity as Allah's chosen one, the Mahdi. All gone now. Catching a cold, a common cold, was just a harbinger of things to come. Worse was on the way, age and infirmity riding toward him across the sands, a pale rider urging his mount on, faster, faster, faster. The Old One felt his cells slowly breaking down, toxins building up, his luck running out.
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