Prayers for the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  “My stars, this place stinks of Jews,” said the Black Robe, his voice reedy. “Would that they were still here, Tarriq.”

  The largest enforcer hung his head.

  “How many years have we been searching for this Jew?” said the Black Robe. “How long has this…Spider bedeviled us?”

  “In all due respect, Mullah, we don’t know for sure that Spider exists.”

  “We won’t get a chance to find out now, will we?” The Black Robe kicked aside a browning head of lettuce, sent it rolling across the floor. “I had hoped to parade this Jew for the cameras. To show the people that we have succeeded where Redbeard had failed. To prove that he has allowed the enemies of Islam to burrow deep within our cities. Now we have nothing.” He glared at the enforcer as they circled the room. “Your informant failed us, Tarriq. All we did was send the vermin scuttling off to another nest.”

  “We…we were close, my lord,” rasped the enforcer.

  “Ah, close,” said the Black Robe. “That changes everything.” He threw wide his arms, his hands skeletal from the sleeves of his robe. “See? My wrath has dissipated like dew in the glory of dawn.”

  Rakkim glanced at the bed, but there was no sign of Sarah. He wondered if the mullah was Ibn Azziz. Redbeard said the new leader of the Black Robes was a zealot, but this man seemed too young to have achieved such power.

  “The informant had been watching the waitress for weeks trying to find out where she disappeared to,” said the enforcer. “He didn’t know if she was a Jew or if she just lived in one of the abandoned warehouses. There’s plenty of that. It was his own good instincts that kept him after her, and when he saw her duck into the hidden tunnel, he notified us. He took a chance and he was right, Mullah. We launched our raid an hour after his call, but there was no way to know where she had gone, and she…she must have sensed that she had been observed. By the time we finally found this room, they were gone.”

  “What do we owe this informant?” said the Black Robe. “What do we owe this man who allowed himself to be…sensed by a female?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars. Standard bounty for valid information. Plus, ten thousand apiece for every Jew we captured, but of course, that doesn’t apply here.”

  “Thank you for pointing that out to me.”

  “We’ll find them, Mullah. They’re on the run now.”

  Rakkim held the knife loosely as they got closer. And closer. Six armed men and the Black Robe. It depended on how they were bunched…and the level of their training. He had the element of surprise, but if he waited until he was spotted to attack, he would lose that advantage. The biggest danger was that Sarah would get involved—there was no way he could use his speed to full effect while defending her.

  “Look at this filth,” said the Black Robe. He sounded as if he was on the opposite side of the carpet. “See the scientific devilry these foul Jews use to teach their brood?” He walked right past Rakkim’s hiding spot—were he to have turned his head, he would have seen him—walked right past and stood before the periodic table. He was close enough to where Sarah was hiding to kick her. The Black Robe reared back and spat on the center of the mural, a fat gob sliding down the wall.

  The enforcers laughed.

  Rakkim was motionless. The Black Robe would die first. Then the others.

  The Black Robe turned on his heel, walked past Rakkim. “Pay your informant. Pay him in small bills and shove them down his throat. Fill his gullet. Make him choke on his money. Let him learn the price of failure.”

  Their footsteps faded. The lights went out. The door closed. Rakkim found Sarah in the dark.

  CHAPTER 38

  Before sunset prayers

  “It’s me,” said Rakkim.

  “Let me speak to Sarah,” said Redbeard.

  “What did the werewolves say about the assassin?”

  “Let me speak to her. Now.”

  Redbeard would be happy to go back and forth as long as Rakkim wanted to keep it up—the longer they talked, the better chance Redbeard had to pinpoint their position. Rakkim didn’t take the bait. He passed the phone to Sarah. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Hello, Uncle.” Sarah looked past Rakkim, toward the ferry slowly crossing Baraka Bay, the water rusty in the setting sun. She was wearing a new, pink-camouflage hooded sweatshirt, and baggy, matching sweatpants. The anonymous retro-jock look that was all the rage among moderns. The two of them were sitting on a bench with a panoramic view of the waterfront. A relief to be out in the open air after the dark claustrophobia of the tunnels. “I’m fine…I said, I’m fine. I’m twenty-six years old; I’m capable of making my own decisions.” She chewed her lower lip, listening. “Shame is not really an effective strategy at this point, Uncle.” A glance at Rakkim. “That’s not possible…No. I love you, but I’m not about to do that. Tell Angelina that I’m well. Tell her I’m saying my prayers.” She stuck her tongue out at Rakkim, handed the phone back to him.

  Rakkim watched the trolley roll along tracks paralleling the waterfront. A short run, back and forth, the trolley packed with tourists. “Your turn.”

  “There were no werewolves at the site,” said Redbeard.

  “Did you go to the right place?”

  “I found the wreckage of the car, just as you described, but there were no werewolves. None to ask, anyway.”

  Rakkim was silent for a moment. “How many?”

  “My men found seventeen bodies scattered around the site. All werewolves. If there were any survivors, they were gone by the time we got there. Fled into the woods, probably, because their cars and goods were still at the encampment. Boxes full of watches and eyeglasses and sporting equipment. I helicoptered in myself when I got the first report. A quick walk-through and I could see that one of their cars was missing. A four-by-four. There were tire tracks dug through the mud getting up the embankment. Quite a mess around the burned-out vehicle. Seventeen werewolves…even for a Fedayeen assassin, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

  “Maybe the Old One will pin a medal on him.” Silence from Redbeard. Rakkim watched the trolley start back on the return trip. Heard the faint clang of the bell.

  “You should bring Sarah home. Leave the Old One to me,” said Redbeard. “I’ve kept him at bay this long—”

  “You can’t stop him anymore.”

  Redbeard chuckled. “Don’t tell me what I can do, boy.”

  “You don’t have the men for the job, and the ones you do have, you can’t trust. If you could stop the Old One, you wouldn’t have needed me to find Sarah for you.”

  “Come home.”

  “I saw Ibn Azziz. At least I think I did. He’s young.” Rakkim watched three cars pull up alongside the trolley. A fourth car pulled onto the tracks ahead, forcing the trolley to a screeching stop. Men jumped out of the cars and into the trolley. Others covered the rear exit. One of them looked like the arrogant dandy who had fetched him the evening of the Super Bowl, but Rakkim was too far away to be sure. He hoped it was him. “You better watch yourself, Uncle. I think Ibn Azziz has already declared war on you.”

  “Better him than Oxley.”

  Rakkim had picked up a signature transmitter in the Zone, bought it an hour ago from the same electronics wizard who had bought Redbeard’s tracking device from Sarah. A major felony for all concerned. The transmitter sent a cell signature to a small unit he had secreted in the trolley, the same signature as the cell he was using, only more powerful. He watched the tourists filing out of the trolley under the eyes of Redbeard’s agents. “I’ll get in touch with you again when I know more.”

  “You can’t outwit the Old One. Not by yourself.”

  Rakkim could see the passengers being marched out of the trolley. “Don’t be so sure. You’re smarter than the Old One and I just outwitted you.” He broke the connection.

  The setting sun glinted off the tips of Sarah’s hair as the muezzin’s call to pray undulated from the Grand Mosque, summoning the devout. They stayed where they
were, watching Redbeard’s men tearing through the trolley. Unnecessary roughness. A sign of weakness.

  Rakkim stared up at the new Jihad Cola sign while Mardi’s private number rang. Sarah was beside him, equally entranced.

  There must have been five thousand people in Pioneer Square for the great unveiling, the crowd spilling over into the side streets. They were packed in so tightly that it had been no problem for Rakkim to lift the cell from the inside pocket of a young modern. Zebraskin interactive, the latest model.

  “It’s me,” said Rakkim as Mardi answered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Moderns in the crowd cheered, applauded, gasped as the sign lit up—a three-story-tall hologram that seemed deep as infinity. The fundamentalists swayed, lips moving as they prayed, ecstatic in their approval. Even Sarah was openmouthed with delight.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Mardi.

  It wasn’t the hologram that the crowd was cheering—holographic advertising had been common for twenty years. It was the ad itself. Islam didn’t approve of representations of the human face or form, so signs in the new republic were forced to use a simple photo of the product, counting on vibrant colors and elaborate typefaces to get their message across. A poor substitute for image, and yet another reason for the economic doldrums.

  “I can hardly hear you,” said Mardi.

  “You need to get out of the Blue Moon.”

  The new Jihad Cola sign portrayed a healthy young Muslim couple drinking a JC in the park, their chaperone discreetly in the background. What was unique about the ad was that it wasn’t just holographic, but mosaic, the images formed from careful layering of Arabic text from the Holy Qur’an. Not only did the use of script circumvent the strictures against graven images, Arabic script itself, particularly script from the Holy Qur’an, was believed to possess a unique and mystical power. An added value to the brand. The computer program used to create the ad had taken three years to write, but the mosaic process was certain to revolutionize advertising. The launch was in the capital, but subsequent unveilings were planned in Los Angeles, Chicago, New Detroit, Denver, and other major cities. Mullah Oxley had given the technique the Black Robes’ approval, but Rakkim wondered how Ibn Azziz felt about it.

  “Where are you?” asked Mardi.

  Rakkim turned away from the crowd, sheltering the phone from the worst of the noise. “You have to get out of the Blue Moon. You have to leave now. The liquor salesman you were so charmed by…he’s a Fedayeen assassin.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Take the money from the safe and go. Call Riggs from the airport and tell him he’s going to manage the club for a month. He can handle it for a few weeks.”

  “He’ll steal us blind.”

  “Consider it the cost of staying alive.” Rakkim lowered his voice, trying to reach her. “Take a vacation, partner. You’ve already got more money than you can spend. Just leave. Don’t even go home to pack. Just leave. Call the club in a month and ask to speak to me. If I’m not back yet, then stay gone for another month and call again.”

  “It’s really that bad?”

  “Worse.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Before noon prayers

  “I had to jump though hoops to get this for you,” Colarusso straightened the collar on Rakkim’s jacket, dropped the data chip into his pocket. “It’s illegal what I done.”

  “Bet it was the first time you ever broke the law too,” said Rakkim.

  Colarusso stifled a smile as he leaned back against the railing of the roller rink. He watched Anthony Jr. and Sarah circle the rink, holding hands, Anthony Jr. clomping along, a little unsteady. “They make a nice couple, don’t they?”

  “Fuck you.”

  The indoor rink was filled with moderns and Catholics, plenty of moderates in posh hajibs too, the skating rink one of the few places where they could have physical contact with the opposite sex under the eye of their chaperone. “I just think if a man puts his career on the line for a friend, the friend should tell him what’s going on, that’s all.”

  “Sarah’s working on a book that could bring her a lot of trouble. Safar Abdullah is part of her research. I’m along to make sure she eats right and gets a good night’s sleep. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Abdullah’s been dead for twenty-five years, so you’re not going to get much conversation out of him.” Colarusso sucked his teeth. “Engineers must be the dullest people in the world. Who dies of natural causes at forty-three? Probably died of boredom.” Colarusso hitched up his pants. “I’ve always been curious. If I hadn’t gone into police work, I would have probably been a Peeping Thomas.”

  “I don’t think Abdullah died of natural causes. Feel better now?”

  “A little bit.” Colarusso rocked on his heels. “Hope you’re not planning to exhume the body, because somebody beat you to it. That’s kind of odd, isn’t it? Him being a devout Muslim and yet his family allows him to be dug up a week after burial. Dug him up and cremated him. The wife signed off on it, but the cemetery sure made a fuss. Martyrs of Fallujah Cemetery, Los Angeles. Best Muslim boneyard in the city from what I read. I got a copy of their angry letter to the wife in the file. You should read it. Another one from the poor woman’s imam that’s a real classic. Threatened her with the flames of hell. Her and her dead hubby. Leave it to a holy man to know how to twist the knife.”

  Rakkim watched the skaters in bright colors barrel past. In the old days the rinks supposedly played music too, but the rolling wheels made music of their own.

  “Now, why would a good Muslim woman allow her husband to be back-hoed up in the middle of the night?” said Colarusso. “I got the order from the mortuary that did the work. Two A.M. is when they did the deed. Mortuary had to pay their workmen double time.” He leaned closer to Rakkim. “You can see why it got my attention.”

  Rakkim took in the spectators in the bleachers, the chaperones, and the skaters taking a time-out. All those faces, but none caught his attention. Sometimes the Black Robes would show up, just to cause trouble, but the rink donated to the local mosque. “Were you able to locate the wife?”

  “She died a couple of years after the mister. Got planted in the al-Aqua Cemetery in Van Nuys. Not quite the pedigree of Martyrs of Fallujah.”

  “Children? Relatives?”

  “One daughter. Fatima. It’s all in the data chip. Let’s just say it might be a good thing that her parents aren’t alive to see what she turned out like.”

  Rakkim watched three middle-aged women nearby. Three chaperones in dark chadors talking rapidly to each other while focused on the three young women they were responsible for. “Thank you, Anthony.”

  “I don’t care about being thanked,” grumbled Colarusso. “You’re chasing after dead people. I’d like to know why.”

  “This is probably a good time for you to step back and work another case.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job. It makes me want to forget we’re friends.”

  “Okay.” Rakkim looked past Colarusso, keeping watch. “The assassin who drowned Marian Warriq…the one who swapped heads with her servants, he’s following Sarah and me.” He saw Colarusso resist the impulse to look around. “We gave him the slip a few nights ago, but he’s not going to quit. When he gets desperate to find us, he’s going to start tapping anyone we’re connected to.”

  “You think he’d go after a police detective or his family?”

  “I think he’d go after the president himself if he got the order.”

  “Who’s giving him the orders?”

  Rakkim had fallen into the trap. “How about this…how about when the time comes, I’ll tell you everything. I won’t hold anything back. For now though, I want to keep you out of the loop as much as possible. Out of harm’s way. Then if I need you, you’ll be alive and well and able to help me.”

  “How about this…how about you and I find this assassin and kill him? You said you couldn’t beat him yourself. Let’
s do it together. I’ll take care of the paperwork. Like you said, wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “We’d just get in each other’s way.”

  “You think I’d slow you down?” Colarusso lost his good nature. “I’m strapped with a full-auto Wesson and I score expert on the firing range. I’ve killed five men in the line of duty and never lost a minute’s sleep over it. You think I’m worried about your assassin?”

  Rakkim watched a father holding his daughter up on the rink, teaching her how to skate as the other skaters streamed around them. “Three nights ago the assassin got ambushed in the badlands by werewolves. He killed seventeen of them, then drove away in one of their vehicles.”

  “That…that’s some serious shooting.”

  “He used a blade.”

  “Seventeen werewolves with a knife? You got bad information there.”

  “Fedayeen assassins don’t even need a knife. They just enjoy using it.” Rakkim watched the father and daughter. She was starting to get it, lengthening her stride, but the father hovered over her, ready to catch her. “I thought the car crash would kill him. Or mess him up so bad that the werewolves would be fighting over the pieces.”

  “Seventeen?”

  They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, watching the skaters go round and round. Rakkim wished he could have seen the assassin’s face when his tires blew. The assassin had fought himself clear, but falling into Rakkim’s trap would have stung. Sometimes a love tap hurt a guy like that worse than a hammer.

  “You need any help getting to Los Angeles? This assassin probably got eyes at the airport. I might be able to do something for you.”

  “I’d be happy to hear anything you’ve got.”