by David Lender
The crack of automatic weapons awakened Prince Yassar. He reached for his telephone, but there was no one to call, so he placed the receiver back in its cradle. Over the next five minutes he alternately sat and waited for someone to come, then got up and took a few halting steps toward the door to his outer suite, uncharacteristically uncertain. Should he fling the door open into the corridor and investigate for himself? Then a stiffly formal sergeant knocked sharply and entered the room. Prince Yassar observed the sergeant’s stony face. He expected bad news and felt as if the weight of it were pulling his jowls toward the floor. He stroked his forehead. Sweaty.
“Prince Yassar, sir,” the sergeant said expressionlessly, staring as he said the words, “Your son, Prince Ibrahim, has been murdered.”
Yassar felt the words burst in his chest like a hollow-point round. He closed his eyes, knowing already that it was true. She tried to warn me. His sigh emerged as a moan.
Yassar glanced from side to side as if to find a way to escape. He hung his head in resignation, then glared up at the sergeant. Why are you telling me what I already know? What I already have imagined in my worst fears? He felt that he wanted to strike the little man.
“There were no other civilian casualties,” the sergeant continued, still with no expression in his voice, on his face. Only that vacant stare. And the measured tones. “But five guards were killed in the corridor only meters from Prince Ibrahim’s chamber, and three of the provocateurs”—Yassar noted with rising anger the ridiculously mispronounced French word—“were killed in the corridor. That, and twenty-three other soldiers are dead in the courtyard, most from the explosion. Everyone else is accounted for and safe, except one of the prince’s concubines.”
Yassar opened his eyes. They felt like black pools of moist agony. And rage. He realized the strength had been sucked from his limbs and now tried to move his arms, wanting to strike at this pompous man. But all he did was motion for the soldier to continue. “It is Sasha. She is gone,” the sergeant said, “and we found a disabled microswitch on the window used to thwart the alarm, as well as an electromagnet and a grappling hook and rope. It would appear the death squad had help gaining access to the palace.”
Yassar tried to stand and still could not. His legs trembled and he placed his hands on his knees to steady them, leaned forward, then slumped backward onto the bed.
“We found a gun on the bed. We found footprints in blood leading into the bedroom and then out again,” the unbearable fool continued. “And we did not find Sasha.”
Yassar felt the words like the twist of a knife in an already mortal wound. He closed his eyes again. Sasha? How could Sasha do such a thing? He felt his face contort. He raised his head and looked at the man, this man who would say such things, feeling the conflict of his anger against what he knew in his heart to be true. Sasha, whom he had taken under his patronage, treated like a daughter, and who had honored him like a father. Sasha, who had heeded his need for her to both minister to and keep his beloved, yet wayward, son in line. This cannot be true. But his shoulders curled over.
The sergeant continued his unemotional droning as if he were pushing through a checklist. “The perimeter of the palace is now secure and no intruders are believed left inside. Except for the three who were killed, the remainder of the assassination team appears to have escaped.”
How can this mechanic, this mere functionary defile the memory of my son with his prattle? Yassar felt his strength returning as his anger rose. He sighed, then lifted himself from the bed, seeming to bear the weight of his dead son as he did so. He wanted to crush the man’s head like a melon for having the audacity to bring such a message with such methodical reserve. The sergeant reached out and put a hand on Yassar’s shoulder. Anger boiled in Yassar at the touch. He whirled, all the strength that had been drained from him in the last quarter hour focused in a single fist that he lashed toward the sergeant’s face. A roar emerged from his breast, the single word, “No!” And then with the same ferocity of effort he stopped the blow just inches from the man’s face. He hung his head so the man could not see the tears he knew he could not stop. He reached forward blindly, unclenched his fist and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. He squeezed it and pushed the sergeant toward the door. “Go. Please, go,” he whispered. He heard the sergeant back out and shut the door.
Yassar turned back into the room. Then a dark sensation rose in him, one he had never felt before in all his years of adherence to the faith in his pursuit of the path of Allah: newborn hatred. I will avenge this act. I will find out who has done this and chase them down. And Sasha. I will find her and destroy her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photograph by Manette Loudon, 2007
David Lender is a former investment banker who spent twenty-five years on Wall Street. After earning his MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, he went on to work in mergers and acquisitions for Merrill Lynch, Rothschild and Bank of America. His first three novels—Trojan Horse, The Gravy Train, and Bull Street—turned Lender into an e-book sensation. He lives in northern New Jersey with his family and a pitbull named Styles.