Rakkim touched her hand.
She pulled away. “Find her, Mr. Epps.”
“It’s a promise.”
CHAPTER 12
Before midafternoon prayers
The Wise Old One was getting his blood cleansed when Ibrahim walked into the restoration room. His eldest son was dour today, his eyes hooded. “What bad news do you bring?”
Ibrahim hesitated. “Our brother Oxley is dead. He supposedly had a heart attack, but—”
“He was murdered. Ibn Azziz strangled Oxley himself.”
“I…I only just got word of his death,” said Ibrahim, the faintest edge of annoyance in his voice. He stayed still, lean and dark as his long-gone Arab mother. He always seemed ill at ease in the restoration room, but that was to be expected—he was only fifty-three, with the confidence in the natural scheme of things reserved for the young.
The Old One listened to the humming and the hissing of the machines around him, watching the plastic tubes in his veins pulsing with his own freshened blood. Oxley’s assassination couldn’t have come at a worse time, but the Old One kept silent. Ibrahim was prone to see the hand of Allah in the falling of a dry leaf, the chirping of a sparrow. He was already unnerved by the death of their cat’s-paw Oxley. If he sensed the Old One’s concern, fear would spread through the family like a virus. “Oxley shall be missed, but he has already served his purpose. There is no cause for alarm.”
“I should not have disturbed you, Father.”
The Old One waved him silent. “Nothing to forgive, my son. All is well.”
The restoration room was completely white—floor, walls, ceiling, the machines themselves white enamel. It made the space seem limitless. In this world of infinite white, the Old One’s blood appeared even redder through the clear plastic. Bright red blood, heated to kill any toxins, then cooled back to 98.6. Hyperoxygenated blood for increased energy. Additional blood added to his own, blood from John, the blond-bearded acolyte with the creamy white skin. His son. Blood of his blood. Returning the favor of life.
The Old One had hoped his airy dismissal of Oxley’s murder would be a cue for Ibrahim to leave, but he stayed where he was, hands clasped behind his back—a posture he had picked up from his days at the London School of Economics. Ibrahim was clearly disturbed, but the Old One detected something more. A failure on the part of the Old One was an opportunity for Ibrahim. The burden of an eldest son. The frustration of a chief adviser whose counsel had not been headed. “Speak, Ibrahim.”
“Father…Mahdi…it took us years to secure Oxley’s cooperation, even longer for Oxley to ingratiate himself with the Fedayeen commander. How can he be replaced?”
“Brother Oxley dwells now in paradise, it is Ibn Azziz we must concern ourselves with.”
“Can you not task Darwin with killing Ibn Azziz?” pleaded Ibrahim. “Surely you can orchestrate a more compliant successor to Oxley than this wild child.”
“Darwin is engaged in more pressing matters,” said the Old One, enjoying Ibrahim’s distress. “Don’t worry, all men are alike, lost in a maze of needs and desires. Seducing Oxley called for certain…inducements, seducing Ibn Azziz will merely require different methods. Our challenge will be to discern those methods and then implement them.”
“But the time, Father, we have no time—”
The Old One jabbed a hand at his son, the tubes thrashing. “Don’t speak to me of time.”
Ibrahim lowered his eyes for a moment, but no longer. Three years ago Ibrahim had argued against selecting Ibn Azziz for the upper echelon of the Black Robes. Ibrahim was smart enough not to bring it up now. Smart enough to know he didn’t need to.
The three doctors in the room might as well have been deaf. They paid attention only to the devices they monitored, making minute adjustments as required.
“Take heart. Oxley was docile…but overcautious,” said the Old One. “Ibn Azziz is hot-tempered and harder to control, but when we bring him to heel, he will be infinitely more useful than his predecessor.”
“As you say, Mahdi,” murmured Ibrahim. His dark eyes lingered on the tubes running into the Old One, but his expression remained unreadable.
“Ibn Azziz’s ascetic nature might even appeal more to the Fedayeen commander than Oxley’s excesses,” said the Old One. “General Kidd is devout. Even with the grand ayatollah’s blessing of Oxley, he found the man distasteful. No, my son, in years to come, you shall see that the ascension of Ibn Azziz was a manifestation of the will of Allah, the all-knowing, with whom all things are possible.”
Ibrahim held his open hands high, offered his blessing.
“Now go, consult with our brothers among the Black Robes. Find the way into the heart of Ibn Azziz, that we may act accordingly.”
Ibrahim backed slowly out of the restoration room.
The Old One lay back on the table. Would that it were so simple. Oxley’s murder was a disaster, just as Ibrahim had said. Oxley was profane and corrupt, but a master politician, able to insinuate himself into the halls of Congress, giving their allies the cover of his religiosity, and condemning enemies from every mosque. Now he was dead. The Old One had underestimated Ibn Azziz, thinking him merely another of the fiery young clerics attracted to the Black Robes. Not anticipating Ibn Azziz’s boldness was a failure on his part. He had been distracted these last few months, but that was no excuse.
A doctor checked the Old One’s cuticles, then made a notation in his chart.
The Old One hated the sight of his feet and hands on the examination table. Steroids and genetic infusions kept him vital, organ transplants kept pace with the passing years, but his extremities were beyond treatment. Reedy and translucent, his hands and feet allowed a glimpse of his true age, gave hope to those looking for infirmity. He glanced toward the door. Ibrahim was restless. The Old One took a risk in ceding a measure of power to him. Without a degree of autonomy, Ibrahim’s sizable talents would be denied to the Old One, but too much power would ignite the boy’s ambition. That was why the Old One kept his own network of spies, both in Las Vegas, and in the Islamic Republic. The Old One needed to know what was happening and needed to know it first. Ibrahim would bear closer scrutiny in the weeks ahead.
The Old One flexed his fingers, made a fist. He might minimize the consequences of Oxley’s murder to Ibrahim, but not to himself. Losing Oxley’s influence over Congress was bad enough, jeopardizing the relationship with the Fedayeen was infinitely worse. General Kidd had been repelled by Oxley’s excesses, but the Old One’s covert intercession with Kidd’s imam had slowly overcome his disgust. It had taken years, but when the moment of truth came, General Kidd would send his troops to serve the Mahdi rather than the president.
The army remained loyal to the president, but that was surmountable—though far fewer in number, the Fedayeen were infinitely superior militarily. In a confrontation, the army would quickly capitulate. The problem was that Oxley was the only direct contact between General Kidd and the Old One. His death shook a shaky alliance. If the Fedayeen held back when called upon, if General Kidd harbored any doubts…there would be no way the Old One’s plan could succeed.
A doctor leaned over the Old One. “Your new kidneys are still functioning perfectly. No sign of rejection, thanks be to Allah.”
The Old One ignored him. He was on his fourth set of kidneys. The doctors always emphasized the miraculous over the science, hoping to gain his favor with their flattery.
It was because of the Fedayeen that the Old One hadn’t sent Darwin to kill Ibn Azziz. The Black Robes would spread the tale of Oxley’s unfortunate heart attack, but General Kidd would find out the truth soon enough. Assassinating Ibn Azziz would cause too much turmoil among the Black Robes and diminish their authority. They might lose General Kidd’s support altogether.
The Old One felt his cheeks and fingertips tingling, part of his vast reawakening that signaled the end of his weekly treatment. His vision seemed more acute, his hearing sharper, and there was a fullness in
his private parts too, a hunger beyond flesh. He slowly sat up, rubbed his hands together as though he might give off sparks.
It would take time to turn Ibn Azziz, to bend him, but the Old One had no doubt that the young zealot would align himself with him. The Old One was chosen by Allah for this historical mission, the restoration of the caliphate. If Ibn Azziz was truly led of God, he would see that. The youngster just needed guidance. First though, Darwin needed to find the girl. Find her and follow her. A cancer was at the heart of the Old One’s plan, and only Darwin had the knife sharp enough to cut it out without causing harm. First find the girl, then the Old One would contact Ibn Azziz. If that didn’t work, if the boy refused to accept his dominion, the Old One would reach out to General Kidd directly.
The Old One tore the tubes from his arms, flung them aside, blood dripping onto that pure white floor as he slid off the table.
CHAPTER 13
After late-evening prayers
Rakkim eased out the side door of the Blue Moon, right behind a noisy foursome of oil workers fresh from the offshore rigs, the riggers drunk, staggering as they elbowed their way through the crowd outside. The wind off the Sound made him shiver, but the riggers were in jeans and T-shirts with the sleeves rolled, flashing their muscles to the moderns, who gave them room. Rakkim stayed with the riggers, close enough to smell the petroleum in their shaggy hair, then peeled off into one of the Zone’s cobblestone alleys.
He had stopped at the Blue Moon after spending a fruitless afternoon in Marian’s library. He and Mardi had had dinner and she’d given him his share of the week’s receipts, the part that they didn’t report to the tax authorities. She went on about some incredible bourbon the new salesman had let her sample, then asked him again if he could help the grocer and his family escape to Canada. He told her again it would be spring. Maybe when he found Sarah, he would take them all to Canada. Winter or no winter, he would find a way.
Rakkim had gotten quiet after that, and Mardi knew him well enough not to try to engage him in conversation. He ate beef stew and thought of geology and earthquakes and load-bearing trusses. Marian’s father, Richard Warriq, had hundreds of textbooks in the library, but Marian said it was his journals that Sarah had been interested in. Warriq had traveled to China for over forty years, before and after the transition, one of the few Americans who had such access. Sarah had been looking for something in his journals. She must not have found it, because Marian said Sarah was supposed to visit and do more research last Saturday, the day after she had disappeared.
Three jocks in college letterman sweaters trudged down the alley toward him, half-slipping on the slick stones, wispy beards hanging from their chins like dirty icicles. The wind sent fast-food papers tumbling. Rakkim gave the jocks plenty of room, but they barely noticed him, arms around each other’s shoulders, singing some rah-rah song. He increased his pace as he zigzagged through the maze of alleys, the nearby tech shops shuttered this time of night.
Rakkim had no idea what Sarah was researching. Plenty of topics would be dangerous to write about, even for the niece of Redbeard. Any examination of the legal authority of the Black Robes could lead to trouble, and no publisher would dare print an exposé of the finances of the congressional leaders or the army high command. Rakkim kept coming back to Sarah’s interest in China and Miriam’s father’s work on the Three Gorges Dam—that was the only connection he had.
Although Russia had given refuge to the Zionists, China, the richest and most dynamic nation, had aroused the greatest concern among the Islamic high command. General Kidd, the Fedayeen commander, had been the most bellicose, particularly when he had a cheek full of fresh khat. Most Westerners preferred the distillation of the euphoric stimulant, but Kidd preferred the herb itself, flying it in daily from Yemen. In private, Kidd had stated that if the Chinese ever signed a pact with the Russian Bloc, or attacked nearby Muslim countries for their oil, he had a list of prime targets ripe for destruction. He had never named them, but the Three Gorges Dam had to be high on the list; six hundred feet high, it allowed ships direct access from the ocean to the interior. Its destruction would flood millions of acres and cripple the Chinese economy overnight.
If Sarah was writing a critical book on the Fedayeen, that qualified as dangerous, since most of their covert actions were in violation of the cease-fire with the Bible Belt. The pushpin in Sarah’s map would have been a visual cue for Sarah, one she had removed after she’d decided that Redbeard might see it and ask questions.
Rakkim had hoped to find evidence in Warriq’s journals, some indication that he was feeding the Fedayeen information about China, taking notes for a future attack, or some potential sabotage. Unfortunately, the journals were as impenetrable as the textbooks, Warriq’s handwriting neat but cramped, the words pressed together with barely a break. One shelf of the library was given to his private journals, thirty-eight of which were devoted to his work in China. Rakkim had barely skimmed two volumes this afternoon, before his eyes gave out.
Marian was right—her father’s journals were a laundry list, a travelogue of useless information. Warriq cataloged every meal, noted every landmark, accounted for every hour of his schedule. Page after page, the man’s disposition was uniformly foul. The meat was of poor quality, the tomatoes tasteless, the soup cold. His bed was too hard. Or too soft. Proper hygiene for his prayers was difficult. The roads were poorly designed. The weather was not to his liking. His descriptions of his Chinese employers were equally critical: they were dismissed as “ignoramuses,” “atheists,” “eaters of pigs and dogs.” His superiors fared no better, and the accounts of his engineering work yielded nothing of particular interest. Rakkim found no evidence that the man was a spy, but ample reason to conclude he was a supercilious pain in the ass. Rakkim had asked Marian if he might take a few volumes home, but she had politely refused, said she never let them out of her keeping, but invited him back at his leisure to spend more time in the stacks.
An aluminum can clattered across the alley behind him. Rakkim turned, but no one was there. He listened, but there was only the faint hum of cars on the freeways. He waited for another minute, immobile, then started walking. He was being followed, but whoever it was, wasn’t particularly adept. Accidents happened when shadowing someone. You were tempted to hurry so as not to be outdistanced, but in your haste you stumbled or knocked something over. It happened. The secret was not to go silent, but to make a great show of noise afterward, cursing to the moon, howling that you had hurt yourself. The one being followed would actually take comfort in the racket, consider you harmless, and go on his way. Silence was certain to rouse suspicion.
Rakkim could easily escape his pursuer; he knew every twist and turn of these alleys, every loose cobblestone and open manhole, but he waited. Knife in hand. A Fedayeen knife was a technological wonder, a carbon-polymer alloy infused with the DNA of its owner. At a half-inch thick, it was unbreakable, sharper than surgical steel, invisible to metallic and biological scans. Literally part of the fighter.
Two thugs in black trench coats scurried around the corner behind him, stopped when they saw him.
Rakkim beckoned them closer, then turned, hearing motion in the alley ahead of him.
Anthony Jr. and another kid, also in trench coats, slid down a fire escape, putting Rakkim between the four of them. Anthony Jr. wore a headset. He must have been following Rakkim from the roofs, where the light was better, coordinating the movements of the other two. Not bad.
“You shouldn’t have taken my goods at the Super Bowl.” Anthony Jr. slipped off the headset. “That ain’t kosher.”
Rakkim smiled. The kid was a lousy thief, but he had his father’s sense of humor.
All four of them took baseball bats from the slings inside their trench coats.
“Nice choreography,” said Rakkim. “I like the matching coats too. Whose idea was that?”
“That was Anthony,” said the one beside Anthony Jr. “Not bad, huh?”
“Shut up,” said Anthony Jr.
The first two closed in. They looked like brothers, overgrown hyenas with stringy blond hair and narrow, protruding foreheads. They tapped their bats on the stones as they approached. The tapping was probably supposed to scare Rakkim, but they looked like blind men testing the terrain with their canes.
Anthony Jr. assumed a batter’s stance about ten feet away and took a few practice swings. Rakkim felt the breeze on his face.
“You sure you want to do this, Anthony?” said Rakkim.
“Fuck yes,” said Anthony Jr.
Rakkim stood relaxed, watching them close in. If there had been only two of them, he might have kept a wall at his back, but in this kind of situation, he preferred mobility.
“He got a blade,” said the first hyena.
“You got us really terrified, mister,” snickered the one beside Anthony Jr., a bandy-legged punk missing a couple of front teeth. He blew balls of spit when he talked. “We took down some soldier boys last month. They had knives too. Lot bigger than that little bitty thing of yours.”
“Careful of this guy,” warned Anthony Jr. “He’s not like the other ones.”
“I hit a home run on one of them soldier boys,” said the first hyena. “Blew out his kneecap and he practically begged us to take his gear.” He held up his left wrist. “This here’s his watch. What time you got, mister?”
“You can keep your watch, Rakkim,” said Anthony Jr. “My father thinks you’re hot shit and that counts for something. You want to hand over your wallet, we’ll call it even.”
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