Prayers for the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  Ibn Azziz had not seen the general look over at him. “I find myself wondering how your men perform their devotions in such a state,” he said evenly.

  “These recruits have been in the field for three months. Three months of sleeping outside in the sun and rain and snow, and never for more than an hour or two at a time. Three months without a bath or a hot meal or a change of clothes. Three months of hand-to-hand combat and cat and mouse, of hiding under brush and brambles, three months of pain and fear. We started out with four hundred select recruits. One hundred twenty-seven made it through.” General Kidd gazed at Ibn Azziz. “When my men have time to make their prayers, they do so with the assurance that Allah sees past their soiled exterior to the radiance within.”

  “Yes…well, I shall be happy to give them my blessing.”

  General Kidd stared at him with dark, liquid eyes.

  Ibn Azziz offered his prayers to the men below, who ignored him. He watched as they sprawled on the ground, tearing into rations with their dirty hands, laughing and swearing. A raucous mob. “The reason I’m here—”

  “My condolences on the death of Mullah Oxley,” said General Kidd. “A most untimely event. He was a great friend of the Fedayeen.”

  “The Black Robes continue to support the Fedayeen, the most faithful of warriors. You are truly the thorny rose of Islam.”

  “A sudden heart attack…did Oxley truly get no warning?”

  “It was as if Allah swept him up to Paradise.”

  “Oxley had a prodigious appetite. Perhaps there is a lesson there.” The general smiled at Ibn Azziz, and his teeth were stark white. “You are thin as a wire, Ibn Azziz. Evidently Paradise is going to have to wait for you.”

  “My passion is not for food, dear general,” said Ibn Azziz, annoyed. “My passion is for Allah, and for the purity of our nation. That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.” He moved closer. “We are under attack from all sides. Jews, gypsies, atheists, Bible Belters…and most dangerous of all, the moderns and Catholics who live among us, the moral rot within.”

  General Kidd watched his men. He seemed barely aware of Ibn Azziz.

  “I have taken steps against the Catholics—”

  “I know. Monasteries burned, houses of worship vandalized…some say you are overreaching. A particularly risky course from one so recently elevated to leadership.”

  “Moral offenses are within the purview of the Black Robes,” said Ibn Azziz, unable to take the rough edge from his tone. “Catholics eat swine. They drown themselves in alcohol. They keep dogs in their homes so when they walk among us we must brush against the hairs of the beasts.” Spit flew from his mouth as he warmed to the subject. “Catholics don’t shave under their arms, or their pubic regions like good Muslims, so their sweat collects in these places with the most revolting stench. The nation would be better off without them.”

  “The Black Robes have jurisdiction over fundamentalist Muslims—”

  “True Muslims,” hissed Ibn Azziz.

  “The nation can ill afford further dividing its people.” General Kidd adjusted his immaculate blue uniform. “Come with me, you’ll learn something.” He started down the stairs that led from the balcony, and Ibn Azziz was compelled to accompany him. The exhausted Fedayeen got hastily to their feet, brushing off their filthy rags. They were scrawny as ravening wolves, sunburned, scratched and bloody, eyes swollen, their beards matted. “Look around you, Mullah Ibn Azziz, before you start burning churches. Many of those men were Catholics before converting.”

  “False conversions, as you well know,” said Ibn Azziz, tagging along beside him as the general waded into the crowd. Ibn Azziz did his best not to touch any of them. “Conversions made only to be accepted in the Fedayeen.”

  General Kidd embraced one of the Fedayeen, the man wild-eyed, lips cracked, ferocious in his gratitude. The general’s spotless uniform was dirty when they separated. He kissed another man on the cheek, had his hand kissed by others as they clustered around him, looking for his approval, his acknowledgment, croaking out his name. He moved deeper into the mass of recruits, nodding, patting them on the back—his uniform was filthy now, smeared with mud and blood, studded with burrs.

  “We must be on guard against such falsifiers of faith,” insisted Ibn Azziz.

  “I do not have the ability to look within their souls. Nor do I care to look.” General Kidd lightly tugged at the torn earlobe of one of his Fedayeen, turned to Ibn Azziz. “Besides, is it not Redbeard’s job to keep the nation safe from its own citizens? That is a matter for State Security, not Fedayeen.”

  “Indeed.” Ibn Azziz bowed his head, clutched his robe tightly around himself. Not a hint of his joy was revealed. The general had fallen into his trap. “The question I pose to you, General, is whether Redbeard is doing his job.”

  The general took a morsel of food from the crusted hands of one of the recruits, thanked him for it, and put it in his mouth. “We have had no major terrorist attacks in three years.” He smacked his lips, smiled broadly at his men. “Terrorist cells are regularly broken up, and the guilty executed. It would seem State Security is functioning admirably.”

  “Redbeard’s niece is a whore and an apostate. Bad enough she wrote a book that minimized the will of Allah in the founding of our nation, now she has run away from her home. She lives free from the restraints of faith and tradition, a mockery to the ideals of pious womanhood. How can we trust Redbeard to guard our nation, when he can’t even guard his niece from sin?”

  General Kidd saluted his troops. The recruits returned the salute, shouting his name, their voices cracking, a deafening, horrible sound. You would have thought it was the chanting of angels by the look on General Kidd’s face.

  “I need your help to find the slut,” said Ibn Azziz. “You have men skilled in the shadow arts. It will be no great effort for them—”

  “I don’t send my men to chase women.” The general beamed at his recruits. “Tell your Black Robes to get off their flabby asses if you want to find her so badly.”

  Ibn Azziz wanted to grab him, wanted to shake him until he realized the opportunity they had been given…but, the general was too soiled to touch. “General? Please, General? We must talk privately.”

  General Kidd led them out of the crowd and back up the steps. Ibn Azziz was going to have to spend hours in the baths. He was going to have to burn his robe. The filth would never be cleansed.

  General Kidd waved to the recruits from the balcony, his face streaked with dirt. Their shouts were even louder now.

  “You may not see the connection between Redbeard’s private and his official failings, but others will,” promised Ibn Azziz. “I have friends at the state television networks who would be only too glad to help. Do not be fooled by my youth, General. As you did in Philadelphia, I too know how to seize the initiative. This is an opportunity for both the Fedayeen and the Black Robes. Surely you can see that?”

  General Kidd finally looked at him and Ibn Azziz shivered.

  Ibn Azziz piously folded his hands in front of him, angry with himself for showing weakness. The body was treacherous. The body was an open door to the devil. “We have a mutuality of interest, that is all that I am saying. I have been told that there was a certain…understanding between the Black Robes and Fedayeen high command. A recognition that Redbeard has outlived his usefulness.”

  General Kidd turned back to his cheering recruits. “Any understanding that existed was between me and Oxley. If you can bring him back from the dead, we will have something to talk about.”

  Ibn Azziz turned on his heel, fuming. Omar, his bodyguard, was beside him again.

  The Fedayeen stayed beside the door to the balcony, leaving them unescorted. Another insult. Their voices echoed down the corridor, garrulous as Jews’.

  Let them laugh. Ibn Azziz had been mocked before, but the dead no longer laughed. His head pounded, though from the effects of his fast or his anger he could not tell. Regardless of the general’s
lack of cooperation, Redbeard’s niece would be found. No matter what it took. No matter what it cost. The whore would be brought in, shown in all her debased squalor on television, perhaps even made to confess her uncle’s role in her fall into sin. Yes. Help from the Fedayeen would have been a blessing, but Ibn Azziz had learned not to rely on anyone but himself…and Allah.

  Ibn Azziz felt excitement course through him. The niece was said to be obstinate, but there were men in his employ skilled in the arts of persuasion. Given enough time, they could get the niece to confess to anything.

  At great cost, Ibn Azziz had purchased a photograph of the niece and distributed it to every Black Robe in the country. The photo was several years old, taken on campus while she hurried to class, but her features were clear, as was the supple harlotry of her limbs. Word had come that Redbeard had enlisted his orphan to help him find his niece…Rakkim Epps. Another Fedayeen renegade. The photo of him was equally out-of-date, but his face showed the serene insolence that marked so many of the Fedayeen. Perhaps when Ibn Azziz was finished with Redbeard, he would start working on the transformation of the warrior elite.

  He pushed past Omar, threw wide the doors to the outside. The wind buffeted them, sent his robes flapping. There had been good news this morning. A nest of Zionist vipers discovered. He had intended to invite General Kidd to the festivities. His loss. Ibn Azziz held his head high, barely aware of the cold. Last night he had dreamed for the third time of the city transformed. The streets of the capital like sheets of beaten copper, the gutters running red with blood. White doves flew overhead, a vast flock of doves, their wings beating like thunder. Ibn Azziz had awakened, weeping with joy.

  CHAPTER 37

  After noon prayers

  “What was that comic book you used to talk about?” Rakkim’s hand ached from Sarah’s gripping him so tightly. He kept talking, anything to keep her mind off where they were. “The man who was half bat. He’d be right at home here.”

  “He wasn’t half bat.”

  Rakkim felt her stumble in the utter darkness, kept her from falling. She had almost refused when he’d told her they were going to have to enter the tunnel without any kind of light. He had formed a mental map of the path to Spider’s underground lair, a map formed in darkness. Light would only confuse him. Sarah had taken a few steps inside, but when he’d closed the door to the outside, she had clawed at him. He had sat down with her on the stone floor, let her get used to the darkness, the cool air of the tunnels, the sounds. It hadn’t worked. She was still terrified of the dark, just as when she was a kid, but she didn’t let it stop her. “This man-bat, he could see in the dark, though, right?”

  “His name was Batman.” Sarah’s voice trembled, her nails digging into him. “And, no, he couldn’t see in the dark. He just wore a costume so he looked like a bat.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could he fly?’

  “No, he just had the costume.” Sarah stifled a cry as something skittered away in the distance. “There…there was another one, though. Superman. He could fly.”

  Rakkim felt for the wall, found the intersection, and took the right-hand tunnel. “They had a lot of gods in the old regime.”

  “They weren’t gods. Not exactly. Movie stars were more like their gods.”

  “You want to go back to that?”

  “No,” snapped Sarah, voice echoing, and Rakkim was glad that she couldn’t see his smile. “I want to go back to freedom to travel, to study and explore, to share information, to improve on what we have. I want to go back to making mistakes and trying again. Islam has nothing to fear from new ideas.”

  “Don’t say that in the Grand Ali Mosque, you might get your tongue cut out.”

  “Ayatollah al-Hamrabi is an ass who doesn’t know his Qur’an.”

  “Definitely going to get your tongue cut out.”

  Sarah laughed, swinging hands as if they were children on a walk in the park. They splashed through a puddle where water had seeped in. “Marian and I…”

  “What?”

  “Marian and I used to discuss the fact that the nation is coasting on the intellectual capital amassed by the previous regime, and we’re running low on reserves. Islam dominated western intellectual thought for three hundred years, a period when Muslims were most open to the contributions of other faiths. This is the caliphate that should be restored, not some military-political autocracy like the Old One envisions.”

  The floor of the tunnel gradually sloped downward. Another 312 paces and they would turn left into another, even more narrow tunnel. Sarah was squeezing his hand again.

  “Once the power of the fundamentalists is broken, once the Old One has retreated back to wherever he’s hiding, then maybe we can build a nation that reveres innovation and intellectual inquiry. Faith-driven inquiry, but intellectually rigorous.”

  “I’d settle for loud music, cold beer, and coed beaches.”

  Sarah’s laugh bounced off the stone walls of the tunnel. “I’ll make sure we include that in the new constitution.”

  Rakkim made another turn, pulling her along. “It’s not much further.”

  “You sure Spider won’t mind me showing up unannounced?”

  “No more than he’s going to mind me showing up unannounced.” Rakkim had tried to give Spider warning. He had gone by the restaurant where Spider’s daughter Carla worked, but the manager said she had called in sick.

  “Why have we stopped?”

  “I’m feeling for something.” Rakkim ran his hands around the door-frame set into the tunnel, trying to find a latch. There was a click and the door swung open. It was just as dark. He led Sarah into the storage room that served as a transition area. “Spider! It’s Rakkim!” No response. He fumbled along the wall, found a light switch. The two of them blinked in the sudden glare.

  “Thank, God,” said Sarah, basking in the light.

  Rakkim hugged her. “You did good.”

  “I’ve been fighting back a scream the whole way.”

  Rakkim washed his hands in the sink, took off his shoes. He waited while she did the same, then opened the door to the main room. “Spi—” He clipped off his greeting, walked inside, looking around.

  The room was empty. Worse than empty. It was a mess. Tables were overturned, carpets half-rolled, museum-quality tapestries hanging unevenly, as though someone had thought of taking them and decided at the last minute against it. The bank of computers had been stripped, memory cores removed and the sides hammered in. Cardboard boxes had been filled to overflowing with clothes and then abandoned. Beds had been overturned, drawers hung out of dressers. Toys were scattered about—a stuffed rhinoceros, a baseball, a single chess piece…a black knight. The two refrigerators were wide-open, discarded food lying in a puddle of spilled milk. No blood, though. No blood. Spider and his family had left in haste, but they had gotten away unharmed.

  “What happened to him?” said Sarah, right beside Rakkim. She bent down, picked up the stuffed rhinoceros. There’s a…bootprint on this. We took off our shoes. Spider must have followed the same procedure. So who stepped on this?”

  Rakkim took the rhino. Without speaking, they both put their shoes back on.

  “The assassin wouldn’t have done this, would he?”

  “No. This isn’t his style.” Rakkim looked around, not rushing, trying to see something that whoever had trashed the place might have missed.

  “All these beds and cribs…how many people lived here?” asked Sarah.

  “He had a lot of kids. I saw five or six the time I was here. Heard more. There were others too, older ones. Spider didn’t like to go out, but he liked company.”

  Sarah wrapped her arms around herself. It wasn’t cold, but she was probably feeling the weight of earth and concrete around them. Imagining what it would be like to be trapped down here. “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know.” Rakkim reached under a chair. One of Spider�
��s antique snow globes lay shattered, New York City’s Twin Towers crumpled among the shards of glass. Souvenir stands all over the capital sold similar versions, only with the towers in flames. This one was pretransition.

  “We should go.”

  “We will.”

  “Are we going to have to use Redbeard to find Safar Abdullah now? Rakkim?”

  Rakkim tossed the Twin Towers aside. “No, I’ve got…” He cocked his head, listened. Grabbed Sarah by the arm.

  Sarah didn’t resist, didn’t protest. She couldn’t hear them, but she knew Rakkim.

  Rakkim led her into what had been the children’s room, eased Sarah under a mattress that had been half pulled off the bed. Had her curl up out of sight. Checked it from several angles to make sure she couldn’t be seen. A brightly colored mural of the periodic table of elements had been painted on the wall facing the beds. Voices echoed from the tunnel outside, loud enough for her to hear. She shrank deeper into the shadows. He bent down, kissed her. “I love you.”

  “Now, I know we’re in trouble.”

  Rakkim moved away. The voices were louder now as he slipped behind a large, rolled carpet that leaned against a support wall. It wasn’t the perfect hiding place, but he needed to see who was in the room and to put himself between them and Sarah. He needed to be able to move quickly, to spring out in a rush. His knife rested in his hand, and as always, it comforted him.

  “Who left the light on?” A voice like sandpaper.

  “Don’t blame me.”

  Rakkim peered through a crack between the carpet and the wall, saw two beefy men in the doorway, hands on their hips. Two more were already inside the room, checking things out. Black nylon jackets, loose pants, daggers on their belts, neatly trimmed beards. Enforcers for the Black Robes.

  The two in the doorway bowed as another man strode into the room, evidently a senior Black Robe. Two other bodyguards followed him. The Black Robe was younger than he expected, his beard scraggly, the skinniest man Rakkim had seen outside of prison. Dead white skin and red-rimmed eyes. He looked like a rabid dog Rakkim had killed in the Carolinas. A hollowed-out mongrel that had bitten two men, torn their legs open, and kept lunging at Rakkim even after he pinned it with a hay rake.