Prayers for the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  Now, two years after the cease-fire that had ended the civil war, they should have been celebrating their success. State Security had stymied major terrorist attacks and forced the remnants of the Christian underground to flee to the Bible Belt. Civil liberties had been curtailed, but after the chaos that had marked the transition from the former regime, complaints were few. Except from the fundamentalists. The right-wing clerics had called for James’s ouster for his refusal to stone unbelievers, denouncing the brothers as converts in name only, soft on doctrine, soft on sin.

  Redbeard wanted to strike back, but James said the government might not survive such internal dissension. Besides, it was better to save their ammunition for when the hour was truly perilous. Timing, Thomas, he had said, this is the lesson you must learn, then turned away any resentment Redbeard might have felt in being so schooled by taking off the watch around his wrist, their father’s watch, and giving it to him. Redbeard had protested, but James had kissed him on both cheeks and told him that no man had been so blessed as he, to be given such a loyal brother.

  “You’re staring at your watch, Thomas. We still have a few minutes, don’t we?”

  Redbeard nodded, unable to speak. The numbers on the clockface were familiar…the hands in position, but try as he might, he couldn’t tell the time.

  “Senator Simpson assures me he has the votes to defeat the hard-liners’ latest amendment,” said James. “Fine work. You’ve kept the Black Robes so busy fighting among themselves that they haven’t been able to rally support.”

  “We’ve got other problems. One of my operatives in San Francisco has gone silent. One of my best men.” Redbeard hesitated. “He’s noticed some…disturbing activity in his sector. What with Ramadan approaching, I’m concerned.”

  James moved closer, moved so quickly that he seemed to cross the office instantaneously, an old Sufi trick that Redbeard had never mastered. “Mormons? Or dead-enders?”

  Redbeard shook his head “That’s what bothers me. The activity doesn’t seem connected to any group we’ve dealt with before. It’s a totally unfamiliar signature. My man said he had to dig in, and I haven’t heard from him since. It’s been three days. He was worried when last we spoke. He was frightened, and this is not someone who frightens easily.”

  “Operatives are always worried, and the good ones are always frightened.” James was smiling again, but Redbeard knew him too well to believe it. James plucked at his mustache, serious now. “Do you have a name? A target?”

  Redbeard shook his head. “My man wasn’t even sure there is a threat. He just said he felt there were too many coincidences. Accidental deaths and disappearances, people suddenly deciding to retire or relocate, and none of the traditional players seem to benefit from these events. It’s as unsettling as an empty chair at a dinner party—not what’s seen, but what’s not seen that gives one pause. I wish I had more to tell you.”

  James nodded, distracted.

  Redbeard stared at his brother. “What’s going on?”

  The intercom on the desk crackled. “Director? We’re finishing the check on your car.”

  James crossed to the window. Through the one-way glass he noted the armored limousine parked out front. One of his security men slid along the undercarriage, his uniform streaked with road grime. Another slowly walked a German shepherd around the vehicle.

  Redbeard joined his brother. “You knew we had a new player in the game.”

  James rested his hands on the windowsill. “He’s not new, he’s been in the game a long time. A very long time.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Look at me, James.”

  James turned to him. “I only had suspicions, but I have proof now, Thomas, proof enough, but I can’t act. Not yet. This is a time for caution. When I come back from Chicago, we can move against him then.”

  “Director, your car is ready,” crackled the intercom.

  “Check it again,” Redbeard barked at the intercom, not taking his eyes off his brother. They stood side by side at the window, as the dog handler made another slow circuit. A buzzing was in Redbeard’s head, as though his skull were filled with wasps. If he could only remember…“Who is our enemy, James?”

  “We’ll talk when I get back. Trust me, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  Redbeard bit his lips shut. “As you wish, Director.”

  “I had to keep my own counsel on this, even from you. I just…I thought we had more time.” James squeezed Redbeard’s massive shoulder. “You’ll understand my reticence when I show you the information I’ve gathered. We’ll have to tread lightly.”

  “Stay here, then. We can get started—”

  James shook his head. “I’m meeting the president in Chicago. I have to talk to him in person.” He looked in pain. “I’m sorry, Thomas.”

  “I’ll ride with you to the airport.”

  James picked up his gym bag. “I need you to go to the hospital and wait with Katherine.”

  “I thought Sarah was being released today.”

  “Damn pneumonia’s resistant…she’s had a relapse. The doctors want to keep her a few more days. The hospital is secure, but Katherine could use a friendly face.”

  Redbeard smiled awkwardly. “Since when does Katherine consider me good company?”

  “Take care of them for me, Thomas.” James touched the intercom. “I’m leaving now.” He keyed a number on his cell. “Go.” Through the window, he watched as his double strode out the front door of the villa and into the limo, his face half hidden in a burnoose.

  The brothers stood beside each other, watching the limo accelerate down the winding driveway. Watched the gate swing up as it approached. Even after the limo was lost in the distance, the two of them stood at the window, half-expecting to see a flash of orange light, and the rumble of an explosion.

  “The delivery van is waiting at the loading dock,” Redbeard said at last. “My bodyguard, Miller, will drive you to the airport.”

  James slung the gym bag over his shoulder, eager now.

  There was a light rap on the door, then two more.

  Redbeard checked the peephole before unlocking the door.

  Miller stepped inside rather than waiting in the doorway, and Redbeard knew. Miller brushed past him. “Let me help you, Director,” he said, his right arm reaching for something in his spotless white deliveryman’s jacket.

  James rummaged around the couch. “I left my reading glasses somewhere.”

  Redbeard tried to move, but his body was filled with concrete.

  The room echoed with gunshots, and the sound seemed to break Redbeard free of his immobility. He grappled with the bodyguard. More gunshots, the sound muffled now, the gun pressed against him. Miller, who had been with them from the beginning, sneered up at him. Redbeard could see that the man’s eyes had been snipped out, replaced by images of James’s body lying in state under the Capitol dome. Sarah was holding on to the casket, but where was Katherine?

  “My master sends greetings to you both,” said Miller. Another gunshot, but Redbeard had a grip on the man’s wrist and the bullet went wide, hit the wall. Miller tried to wrench free, fired again, and Redbeard felt the heat, his clothes smoldering from the muzzle blast. Redbeard broke the man’s wrist. Heard the gun hit the carpet.

  Redbeard had his hands around Miller’s throat now. Redbeard had weak knees, it had cost him a national wrestling championship, but he had strong hands. Miller kicked and struggled, but Redbeard ignored the pain, ignored the blood oozing from his wounds as he slowly crushed the man’s windpipe.

  “Thomas,” James called. “Don’t kill him. You will need what he can tell you.”

  Redbeard watched the photos fade in the bodyguard’s eyes. The man’s arms were at his side now, twitching, but Redbeard kept squeezing.

  “Thomas,” James gasped.

  Redbeard threw Miller to the floor.

  Someone was beating on the door to the office.

  Redbeard cradled James in his arms.
His brother’s running suit smelled of smoke, and the blue nylon was singed smooth where the bullets had entered. No blood, though. Not a drop. “Don’t move,” said Redbeard. “You’re going to be all right.”

  James patted Redbeard’s cheek. “Ah, Thomas…who would have ever suspected you of being an optimist?”

  Redbeard was slumped over his desk, weeping, when Angelina finally shook him awake. He clung to her, pressed his face into her flesh while she stroked his hair. “I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save my own brother.”

  “Let me help you to bed,” said Angelina. “You have fever.”

  “I’m afraid to sleep.”

  “Shhhh.” Angelina helped him up.

  “If I couldn’t even save my brother, how can I save my country?”

  Angelina braced herself against him as they walked. He was like this more and more lately, delirious, racked with nightmares and riven by doubt.

  “If James were here, he would have known what to do. James had allies…James had friends. You…you’re the only one I can trust.” He staggered against her and Angelina almost fell. “Rakkim…I was counting on him and he joins the Fedayeen.”

  “You drove him away,” said Angelina.

  “I should have died that day, not James.”

  “Are you God? Then do not question that which He has brought about.”

  Redbeard broke free of her. Was she his wife to speak like that to him? He shuffled forward, head bowed, so weary his very bones ached. He had barely slept these last weeks, and when he did, he found no peace. It was too much for one man. Angelina was right, he had driven Rakkim away. Had driven Sarah away too. His brother’s only child and the son he had never had. Gone. Angelina was right. She was always right.

  He staggered down the hallway and into his bedroom. Left the lights off. The darkness cool on his smoldering skin. He shrugged off his robe and left it in a heap on the floor. The mattress groaned under him like the beams of a sailing ship. Just a chance to close his eyes, that’s all he wanted. No sleep. No dreams. Just to close his eyes for a moment.

  It was so hard to maintain the impression of strength. To appear resolute and confident at all times. Redbeard kicked off the sheets, sweating. The world seized on the first hint of weakness. His so-called allies would turn on him in an instant. The Old One was waiting. Always he was waiting. Where did such patience come from? It wasn’t faith that kept the Old One in the shadows, it was devilry. Yet…such devilry was succeeding. The president was sick. Redbeard had seen the private medical records. When the president died…

  The bedroom door opened. Angelina sat on the bed, laid a cool cloth across his forehead.

  Redbeard covered his nakedness with the sheet. “I don’t need babying—”

  Angelina slapped his hand away as he tried to remove the cloth. “If the fever isn’t broken by noon prayers, I’m calling your doctor.”

  Redbeard waved her away. He waited until the door closed behind her, started to toss aside the damp cloth, then thought better of it. The coolness of it felt good. He would rest his eyes. He would give himself time to recover his strength. Sleep was the answer. Sleep the balm to the thoughts boiling in his brain. If only James were here. Twenty-five years dead and gone. Redbeard’s head lolled against the pillow, pulled the darkness closer. The Old One preoccupied his waking moments, but at times like this, drifting deeper, he thought of James…and Katherine. Both gone.

  Katherine…the name he never spoke aloud. The face he saw when he closed his eyes. Forgive me, Brother, for the thoughts I had. The desires I harbored. He had hidden such thoughts from his brother, but Katherine had sensed them. Must have sensed them. To abandon her daughter…to flee without a word after hearing of James’s death. She was a rare woman to hold her husband’s honor so dear. Forgive me, James.

  CHAPTER 31

  Before dawn prayers

  Rakkim got back into the car, soaked, water dripping off his goatee. “You have a choice.”

  Sarah looked out through the windows. The men surrounded the car, axes and clubs resting on their shoulders.

  “You can stay here with the squatters—”

  “No.”

  Rakkim held up a hand. “They owe me a debt. You’ll be safe. If my plan for the assassin works out, I’ll come back for you. If it doesn’t…they’ll get you back to the city.”

  “Why not have them help you kill him?”

  “It’s my responsibility.”

  Sarah’s eyes glinted in the red lights of the instrument panel. “Mine too.”

  Rakkim started the car. Switched on the lights. The men had disappeared back into the darkness.

  “What have you got planned?”

  Rakkim kept his eyes on the road. It was raining harder now, and he had to keep his speed to thirty-five. He took an abrupt right turn onto a single-lane cutoff, one of the many unmarked roads. Lightning flashed at the base of the nearby mountains, a photo flash of the bad road. “You ever heard of the term werewolves?”

  “Horror movies from before the transition. Full moon, hair and fangs—”

  “Not that kind. Those werewolves are made up. The ones I’m talking about are real.” The headlights barely illuminated the darkness, the wipers making little headway. “Werewolves…that’s what the squatters call the ultraviolent predators who live out here. Packs of drug maniacs, rapists, and thrill killers—”

  “Why haven’t I ever heard of them?”

  “There’s plenty you haven’t heard of. A week ago I thought the Zionist Betrayal was a historical fact.”

  “Why doesn’t the government send the army in to wipe them out? The squatters aren’t a danger to the public, but these werewolves sound—”

  “The government uses the werewolves. Look around. You think any good Muslims are on this road? Any good Catholics? This is a free-fire zone. The only people passing through are smugglers on their way into the capital, and Jews and apostates on their way out. The werewolves intercept them and loot the vehicles. They ransom the survivors or turn them over to the Black Robes.” His fingers tightened on the wheel. “Sometimes they don’t bother.”

  “So what are we doing here?”

  “The werewolves move around so their presence doesn’t become well-known. The squatters told me there’s a nest of them about ten miles down this road.”

  The wind whipped tree branches overhead, scraping the roof and sides of the car. “You expect the werewolves to kill the assassin?”

  “Something like that.”

  “They won’t kill us? You can talk to them?”

  Rakkim laughed. “No, I can’t talk to them. I know how to use them though.” His hair was still dripping. He wiped his face with his forearm. “Last year I was doing a run. Family needed to flee to Canada. Muslim family, two kids, an eight-year-old daughter and a fifteen-year-old boy. The son was gay. Nobody’s business, but they had a neighbor…Maybe they didn’t cut the grass short enough, or maybe the daughter listened to music. For whatever reason, the neighbor went to the local imam. The family didn’t wait for the edict.” Rakkim steered to the left, one tire bouncing in a pothole, jarring his teeth. He slowed. A flat tire now…He felt Sarah watching him. “I drove their car. It was fall, the roads not snowed in. Three nights should have done it. Three nights to get us down through Washington and then up into Canada. There’s a border crossing where the guards go home for dinner every evening. Weather was perfect when we left. Clear night, quarter moon. I didn’t even need to use my headlights most of the time. There was an accident on a logging road I usually use, police cars and ambulances with lights flashing, and I got worried. The police sometimes set up a fake accident to catch smugglers…so I took another route.” He wiped his face again. “We hit a werewolf trap.”

  “You never told me.”

  “Werewolves had dug out the roadbed. Covered it with a thin sheet of plastic and sprinkled gravel over the top. I was driving faster than I should have…carried away by the moonlight, trying to make up the time
we had lost.” Rakkim checked the odometer. The squatters had given him an estimate of where the werewolves were camped, but he didn’t know how accurate it was. “The car hit the trap going about forty-five, snapped an axle, and started rolling. Ended upside down in a ditch. Everyone screaming. We were all hurt…the eight-year-old daughter was unconscious. By the time I got everyone out, the werewolves were all over us.”

  Sarah caressed his neck. “What happened?”

  Rakkim cleared the condensation on the windshield with a sweep of his hand. “Hard to talk about.”

  “Try.”

  “I had hit my head when the car rolled over, and my knee was banged up, but I had my knife.” Rakkim could barely hear his own voice. “They had torches, and bats wrapped in barbed wire, and crowbars, and this one guy, this big, fat, hairy bastard, he had a golf club. What do they call those ones…? A driver. He had a titanium driver. Expensive club. Must have taken it off some rich tourist who got lost, taken it off him and beaten him to death with it probably. He swung at my head, grinning, just missed me. Had to be at least twenty of them, screaming and singing, so happy, like they had been waiting for us and now the party could begin.” He swept the windshield again. It didn’t need it, but he did it anyway. “I killed a couple of them fast, slashed their throats so they’d make a mess and maybe make the others back off.” He shook his head. “It only excited them more. I kept backing the family into the woods, trying to protect our flanks, but the father was carrying the eight-year-old, and he kept tripping in the underbrush. It was dark in the woods, and he had city eyes. Every time the werewolves made a rush at us, I would kill a few more, but there was so many of them. They didn’t have training, but they knew the terrain, and they were maniacs, painted up and howling. I half expected them to lope on all fours. I was scared. I had it under control, but I could taste it.”