Counterplay

12

Kane stabbed for Samira Azzam’s chest. But she parried the blow with her Bantay-Kamay, or guardian hand, and then countered with a slicing backhand that narrowly missed his eyes.

“Careful, Samira, my love,” he hissed. “Wouldn’t want to ruin this fine work by Dr. Buchwald, now would we?” He dropped to a knee and slashed at her thigh, but she’d anticipated the move and spun backward, delivering a kick to the side of his head.

The blow was glancing but still enough to daze him for a moment, so his mind didn’t quite follow the classic Lipat-Palit technique of an unexpected flip of her knife from right hand to left. It left him open for the fatal blow, the point of her knife pressed against the carotid artery in his neck. She wanted to plunge the knife in and feel his hot red blood gush over her hand. But now is not the time, she reminded herself, and probably never would be unless the al Qaeda leaders tired of the insane infidel and allowed her to go forward with “the plan” without him.

Samira felt something tickle her and looked down. Kane’s knife was poised with its tip ready to plunge into her crotch. “Hardly a lethal blow, as mine would have been.” She smiled sweetly.

“Ah, but nevertheless, you would have been worthless as a whore.” He was smiling, too, but the look in his eyes was cold, sneering. He withdrew his knife and backed away from her blade. “Of course, you know that if you had used yours, your next order would have been to blow yourself up in some meaningless little attack on a kibbutz that wouldn’t rate three inches in the newspapers.”

Samira kept the smile on her face though she seethed at the insulting insinuation that she was nothing but a whore to be used by al Qaeda. “I look forward to dying for Allah and Palestine in any way I am called upon,” she said. “Perhaps, you will martyr yourself with me…my love.”

Kane laughed. “I love it that you hate me so much, my dangerous little bitch,” he said. “It makes fucking you that much more pleasurable for me.”

Indeed, Samira wanted to kill him so much at that moment that tears came to her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. But she still kept up the pretense and pouted, “You say such cruel things.”

Again, Kane mocked her. “Ah, such a perfect assassin, but a lousy actress. You’re here doing whatever I say because your masters want to keep me happy and for some perverse reason, I’m sure, using you like a piece of meat gives me great pleasure and relieves the stresses of such a…pressure-filled life. It is so much fun watching you choke on the words you’d like to say.”

Samira studied his face, wishing she could carve it with her knife. He didn’t look like the Andrew Kane she’d first met, not anymore. Even she had to admit that the work of Dr. Buchwald, a plastic surgeon, was amazing. Gone was the formerly, rather effete-looking blond with the pale blue eyes. He’d been replaced by a more rugged-looking man with a cleft in his rounder chin, wider cheeks and fuller lips, as well as larger, crooked nose-presumably from some old injury. The hair was now chestnut; the eyes no longer blue but brown, thanks to contact lens. He even had a thin white scar beneath his right eye, evidence of a traffic accident that never happened…at least not to Andrew Kane.

Still, she knew that the real Andrew Kane had never been what she’d seen on the outside. In her mind, the real Kane merely wore the physical characteristics of a man as a disguise or cloak. He reminded her of childhood stories her parents had told her from Arabian folklore and the Quran regarding the jinn.

Allah created man from sounding clay like the clay of pottery, her father would begin, gathering his children around on cold winter nights in Palestine. And the jinn He created from a smokeless flame of fire.

The jinn were spirits-sometimes formless, sometimes inhabiting the bodies of men and animals-and there were different sorts. Some were essentially harmless, even helpful. But others were evil and dedicated to tormenting humans-deceiving and guiding them away from the true path.

The worst are called shayateen, her father had whispered, looking around and over his shoulder as though leery of eavesdroppers in the shadows. His children followed his gaze, half-expecting to see some furtive movement in the dark corners or a shadow pass across a doorway. They serve Iblis, the Evil One, and the strongest among them are called afreet.

Of course back then, in better times, such bedtime tales would end with her father jumping up with a shout to startle his boys and girl, who would shriek, then laugh and never seemed to grow tired of the game. The memory stirred a rare longing in Azzam, who blinked back the tears. She wondered if her father knew that the jinn were real and inhabited men like Andrew Kane. “Audhu billah,” she muttered.

“What was that, my darling?” Kane asked. “Did you say ‘I seek refuge in Allah’? Isn’t that something you superstitious desert folk say to ward off evil?”

“It is just a saying,” Azzam replied. “Like ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes.”

“Hmmm…could have sworn it was a little stronger than that,” Kane said, and then chuckled. “But I am doing rather well with my language lessons, don’t you think? Good thing, as it looks like I may have to spend some time in your part of the world after we’ve accomplished our task in New York.”

“Yes, you are learning quickly,” Azzam replied. And yes, she thought, it will be difficult for anyone to recognize this Andrew Kane. The scars from the surgery were mostly healed and one had to look close to see them. Even his body had changed. Although reasonably fit in the manner of a wealthy New York lawyer who visited the gym a few days a week to work out and talk business when she first met him, ever since his escape, he’d trained religiously until there was tight definition to his muscles and more speed and coordination in his movement.

The training included working out almost daily in martial arts with Samira, who was teaching him the Filipino knife-fighting techniques of Kali. Kane had proved an apt student there, too. The cold and efficient nature of using a knife as a weapon suited his personality. He was now sparring with her nearly at full speed. She always won the encounters easily if she concentrated and went all out, but he was progressing rapidly and was growing more difficult to beat if she wasn’t on her game.

The practice session ended when several large Arab men entered the room, half-dragging, half-pushing a blindfolded prisoner. Behind them, smiling uneasily, walked Dr. Buchwald and Bandar Al-Aziz bin Saud, the minor Saudi prince whose home they were using as a base of operations while Kane healed from his surgeries and set his plan in motion.

“Ah, Agent Vic Hodges of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” Kane said to the blindfolded man.

“What the hell is going on here?” Hodges replied angrily. “And what do you mean ‘Agent.’ I ain’t no goddamn federal agent. I’m just a redneck nigger hater trying to make a buck and screw the U.S. government at the same time. Now, are we going to talk guns and money or play this little game?”

“ ‘I’m just a redneck nigger hater,’” Kane mimicked, doing a passable imitation of his prisoner’s Deep South accent. “No, Agent Hodges, we will not be doing any business, except the business that I’m about to propose. So let’s drop the bullshit, which by the way, you are neck deep in right now.”

Kane nodded to one of the guards. “Remove the blindfold so Agent Hodges can see who he’s talking to.”

When the blindfold was pulled off, Hodges stood blinking in the sunny room as his eyes adjusted and his mind raced to find a way out of the fix he was in. His cover was that of an Aryan Nations gun dealer-that’s how he’d been introduced to Azzam, who’d been looking for a half dozen Colt M4 assault rifles and enough C4 plastic explosives to bring down a good-sized building. He didn’t like the idea of selling terrorists such a lethal arsenal, but his superior, Assistant Director Jon Ellis, had assured him that they were tracking Azzam’s every move and would know where the weapons were at all times. When they had a positive idea of what the target was going to be, they’d swoop in and catch the terrorists red-handed.

It was risky business, but then that was the nature of war. And make no mistake, there was a war going on beneath the American public’s radar that guys like him-a former agent with the U.S. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who’d volunteered for reassignment with Homeland Security after 9/11-had better win or Americans were going to have to get used to praying on their knees while facing east.

Besides, the arms deal had been the only way to get to the big prize-Andrew Kane, who was planning some major event with Islamic terrorists. The idea was for him to meet and win Kane’s trust, then, like a worm in an apple, destroy the plot from the inside out.

The meeting with Kane had finally been arranged. He’d been taken to a private airfield in Dade County, Florida, where he’d boarded a Learjet. But that’s when his predicament began. After he was seated next to Azzam, he’d suddenly been grabbed from behind, his arms pinned back, and she’d produced a hypodermic needle that she stuck in his thigh.

The next thing he knew, he was waking up with an intense headache, blindfolded with his wrists and ankles tied together, in what was a small dark room or closet. There he’d been kept for what he estimated to be several days-his only company, rough guards who entered on occasion to give him a drink of water and stuff a few handfuls of tasteless rice in his mouth.

Finally, he’d been dragged from the room, after which his soiled clothes had been cut from him, as had his bonds-though he was warned not to remove the blindfold-and allowed to shower and dress in sweat clothes. His guards had refused to answer any of his questions or talk at all except to give him curt orders in broken English.

Now, as his eyes got used to the first light since his abduction, he tried to focus on the features of the man in front of him. A confused look crossed his face. He closed his eyes and shook his head. The knockout drug must be causing hallucinations, he told himself. But when he looked again, he realized that what he had seen was real.

“What the hell,” he said as boldly as he could muster, knowing that for all intents and purposes, his life was over. “You look like me.”

“Very observant, Agent Hodges,” Kane replied. “Yes, thanks to Dr. Buchwald, the little gnomish man standing behind you, I am nearly the spitting image of you. I do have to compliment the good doctor…” he said, turning to the doctor, “…for working from nothing but photographs, you did an incredible job.”

“Thank you,” the doctor said nearly bowing in delight at the rare compliment. “I am rather-”

“Shut the fuck up, Buchwald,” Kane said mildly. “Nobody cares what you think.”

The doctor stopped and shut his mouth while trying to manage a smile to let everyone know that he understood that everybody was just a little tense. Hodges, however, still wanted answers. “What’s this all about?”

“Tut, tut, Vic…may I call you Vic?” Kane said as he circled around his prisoner, noting the cleft in the chin, the broken nose, the thin, white scar below the brown eye. “That’s need-to-know information, and you don’t need to know. However, I do need to know some things from you-such as everything about you and your job. Your code words, how the Homeland Security operates, your contacts with the agency. That sort of thing.”

Hodges knew he was doomed, but tried to talk his way out of it anyway. “I don’t know what your bullshit is about, punk,” he bluffed. “But if you don’t let me go, my boys back in Mississippi will kick your ass.”

Kane laughed and slapped Hodges in the back of his head. “When I told the boys in Mississippi that you were a federal agent and had been spying on them for years, they begged me to ship you back to them so that they could…let’s see how’d that moron who leads the group put it…‘skin that asshole alive and then use an acetylene torch on him.’ Sounded absolutely painful, so I’m sure you’ll be willing to help me in exchange for keeping you right here. So what about it, Agent Hodges? You going to tell me what I need to know?”

The agent hung his head. “Go fuck yourself, Kane.”

Sighing, Kane walked over to the desk and picked up a remote control for the big-screen television in the bookcase. He turned the television on and then pressed a button on the desk intercom and said, “Barak, would you please get me the satellite feed now?” He turned to Hodges and said, “I’m really sorry that it’s come to this, but since you insist on being difficult, you leave me no choice.”

The picture on the television screen was fuzzy at first, but then it cleared. Someone was videotaping a woman and a little girl walking some distance in front of the photographer at a shopping mall. Hodges gasped audibly.

“So you recognize your wife and darling daughter?” Kane giggled. The agent gave no reply so his tormentor went on. “Looks like they’re out spending some of that meager civil service pay, Agent Hodges. Girls can be such drains on the old bank account. Isn’t that right, Samira?”

Hodges glanced over at the young woman. She stared back with a look in her eyes that told him there would be no mercy shown here.

“Anyway, Vic, see that man walking about ten feet behind your lovely family? Oops, now that was poor directing, he looked right back at our cameraman,” Kane said. “I’m afraid he’s not a very nice man, and certainly not one you’d want following your wife and daughter. His name is Liam, and he used to be a Catholic priest until some spoilsport teenager reported him for raping her at a church camp. Turned out, he’d raped quite a few women and little girls, the younger the better, in the neighborhood around his parish, so I had to help him out of the mess he’d made. Now he works for me-putting his, how shall we say it, ‘passions,’ to use when I need to persuade someone like you. Oh, and I regret to inform you that he’s been getting more brutal…his last young victim didn’t survive his attentions.”

“Bastard,” said Hodges, as his mind screamed, How? How did Kane find them? Even the Aryans, who’d checked out his undercover identity, had not.

“I’ve been called worse,” Kane laughed. “But there’s no reason for this to go any further. You cooperate and that bad man doesn’t rape your daughter in front of your wife. Oh, and I’m sure we can provide a videotape of his antics for your viewing pleasure.”

Defeated, Hodges asked, “What do you want?”

“Like I said, I need to know everything you do,” Kane said. “Believe it or not, but I want to be just like Mike. And we don’t have much time so we better get busy.”

Hodges lunged for Kane but was slammed to the floor by his guards. At Kane’s command the guards picked the agent up.

Kane leaned forward until his lips were just inches from Hodges’s ear. “You are a dead man,” he said. “Your mind knows it. Accept it. However, make this easy and your ugly little wife can look forward to whatever miserly survivor’s pension your grateful but cheap government provides her and your brat. Make it tough, and you’ll still die, but not before you watch your family go through hell. So what’s it going to be?”

Hodges knew that he should refuse-that many people, not just himself and his family might die if he cooperated-but he didn’t know or love those people. “I’ll do what you ask,” he said.

“That’s wonderful.” Kane beamed. Another weakling, he thought. No wonder the West will lose this War on Terrorism. They don’t have the stomach for what it’s going to take to defeat religious fanatics like Samira, who will stop at nothing and aren’t afraid to die.

Things were going so well. In the months he spent in jail since his arrest the previous August and his escape in February, Kane had hatched a plan that was part revenge and part the beginning of his “new career,” as he’d taken to thinking about it.

The plan was brilliant and efficient because it fit both his own purposes and those of al Qaeda. Through his lawyers, he’d managed to convey the general outline of the plan to the group; Kane’s requirement was that they first had to help him escape and then allow him to accomplish his personal goals regarding Karp et al.

The risky escape while en route to the psychiatric hospital had become necessary when his original idea to have himself declared legally insane had been thwarted by the state’s psychiatrists. Their examination had been a loathsome experience, but he’d put up with it for his greater good.

Without admitting anything regarding the charges against him, he’d answered most of their other questions quite truthfully, including that his father had screwed his daughter, which is how baby Andrew had been conceived. His sister/mother had been sent away to give birth; after which, his father/grandfather, through bribes and “donations,” had arranged with the adoption agency run by the Archdiocese of New York to “adopt” the bastard child. Kane had learned the truth as a teenager from his sister/mother shortly before she killed herself.

A rather disconcerting event at a vulnerable age, Kane told the psychiatrists. By that he meant the circumstances of his birth; however, they thought he was talking about his mother’s suicide, until he corrected them. That didn’t really bother me all that much, he said. She was a slut. I caught her screwing the old man one day when I came home from school early, you know.

Kane left out the part about blackmailing “the old man” into blowing his brains out in the family library. Otherwise, his purpose in being honest with the state’s psychiatrists was to engender their sympathy, after which they would, of course, declare him legally insane. That would have meant a short stint at a nice psychiatric hospital where, at worst, he’d sit around with a bunch of wackos talking about their dysfunctional childhoods, playing the game, and arrange a relatively easy escape. Ship off to a country with no extradition treaty and resume his master plan.

Only it didn’t go the way he wanted. The bastards had issued their report: while he suffered from several personality disorders as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the shrinks’ bible on such things, he was legally sane. More specifically, he knew right from wrong at the time of the crimes-as demonstrated by his elaborate schemes to cover up his actions. He knew the nature of the charges against him and was capable of assisting in his defense. He was therefore deemed both legally responsible and competent to stand trial.

Someday Kane planned to have the state shrinks brutally dismembered, but for the time being they were quite a ways down on his list of people targeted for vengeance. First, Karp and his bunch.

Plan B had required that his lawyer win the motion to have him tested by a private psychiatrist at a hospital in upstate New York. Kane’s firm had once defended the doctor from a malpractice suit in which he’d been accused of sexually molesting several of his patients. They’d won mostly by painting the women as nutcases suffering from mass delusions. The man could be counted on to say Kane was nuts. The private psychiatrist was just a last resort if something went wrong with the escape plan he worked out with Azzam.

He’d first met Azzam when she accompanied his lawyer to the Tombs, posing as a legal assistant. During subsequent visits he’d discussed the master plan-making sure she understood that it could not be done without his help-including his escape. I want what happens to the guards and any “spectators” to be as brutal as possible, he whispered to her out of the hearing of even his lawyer. I want them insane with anger-with their minds set on recapturing me and bringing us all to “justice,” they won’t be anticipating us to strike such a blow that they’ll wish they’d never heard of Andrew Kane.

Or al Qaeda, she’d reminded him.

Yes, yes, al Qaeda. He’d smiled.

Kane had been attracted to the young Palestinian woman’s cold-blooded nature. Her arrogance and disdain for him made him want to subjugate her to his sexual whims. Again through his attorney, he’d conveyed his wishes to her handlers, who’d responded by ordering her to make herself available to him when he was free. He was aware how much she despised him the first time he took her, and it had just excited him more. He also knew about her lesbian lover, Ajmaani, and had gone out of his way to demean Azzam in front of her. He’d hoped to evoke some hint of jealousy but was disappointed when the woman didn’t react.

After escaping, Kane had been quickly and quietly transported to Aspen and the home on Red Mountain of the Saudi prince, Bandar. The facial reconstruction surgery by Dr. Buchwald had been performed in the house. Meanwhile, Bandar’s family was told that the visitor was a distant relative who had a fatal, and contagious, disease and wasn’t to be disturbed or talked about with their friends in town. Bandar’s self-involved wife and children had shrugged at the information and paid little attention to the comings and goings at the guesthouse.

As Kane healed, he dreamed of taking revenge against those who’d ruined not only his bid to become the mayor of New York City but also, given his malevolent grandiosity, taking up residence in the White House. Then he would have been among the wealthiest men in the world and the most powerful man in the world.

There was no telling what he might accomplish as president. He could use his influence with al Qaeda to terrorize the American public into being willing to accept the “temporary” relaxing of certain parts of the Constitution, including the number of terms a president could serve. Hell, when they see you tame the terrorists, who will have been bought off in exchange for his cooperation with establishing the caliphate in the Middle East, he thought, and bring Pax Americanus to the Western world…my world…they’ll make me president for life…emperor.

Along the way, he would destroy the Catholic Church in the United States. He blamed the church for having gone along with his father/grandfather to keep the shameful secret of his conception. They’d all let him think that he was the bastard son of some trashy whore who’d given him up for adoption like one might throw out spoiled milk. Every day of his young life, he’d had to live with being told how lucky he was that his adoptive “father” had “rescued” him from a life of waste and drudgery.

Of course, all the blue-blood sons at the boarding schools he’d been packed off to had laughed at him both behind his back and to his face. They’d called him “the bastard” and spread rumors, such as his mother had been a prostitute. It got worse after his sister/mother swallowed a medicine cabinet full of pills and then slit her wrists in the bathtub while he was home on vacation. Then the rumor became that he’d been “porkin’ ” her and that was the reason she killed herself.

He’d hated them. But the talk in front of his face had largely disappeared when he castrated the bully who’d been raping him in the dormitory. It had been a good lesson in how to deal with difficult people. Cut their balls off, figuratively or literally, whichever did the job.

And until Karp stuck his Jew nose where it didn’t belong, he had been setting up the Archdiocese of New York. He had just been biding his time before leaking to certain friends in the media that the archbishop and other church officials had been protecting rapists, child molesters, and even murderers. It would make the sex scandals that had rocked the Boston archdiocese pale in comparison.

Then Karp had fucked it up-him and that bitch wife, Marlene Ciampi, and their disgusting mongrel horde of family and friends. Should have killed Ciampi when I had her last fall, he thought. She’s the hardest to predict. Then he smiled, remembering what he’d told Detective Fulton before Samira shot him in the knees. There’s that stupid movie thing again. Kill them quickly when you can, or it will just come back to bite you in the butt.

The thought crossed his mind that he should now kill Karp and the others as soon as possible. But what fun would that be? No, he wanted to make them suffer and to be afraid…very afraid…before he finished them. And so he’d plotted out the moves of his “game” with Karp and the others, as part of the larger plan with al Qaeda.

He had to admit that the plot was a bit complex, like a chess game, and, as in chess, there were many plays and counterplays. The plan had taken more than just al Qaeda’s eager acceptance; it had required certain other parties in the United States and Russia to cooperate, each according to their own schemes.

Then when he was ready, he’d made his first move. The Escape. The authorities had reacted as he expected and launched a massive manhunt. Shooting Fulton had ensured that Karp would take it all personally. The next move had been to have Fey located and strangled. The man was a weak-spined traitor. Also, Kane wanted to keep Karp’s attention and build toward the feeling that his own doom was approaching.

Each step took him closer to his goal. The plastic surgery. The capture. And now reduction of Agent Hodges.

“Take him away,” Kane said to the guards. “But I want him watched 24/7. He better not escape or manage to kill himself. And Agent Hodges, just so you know, if you choose either route, I will make sure your wife and child pay for it.”

When the guards and their prisoner left the room, Kane turned to Dr. Buchwald. “Have you ever practiced martial arts, Dr. B?”

The man smiled nervously, wondering where this bit of insanity was going. “Uh, no, no, never had the time or inclination,” he said and laughed as heartily as he could under the circumstances. “Medical school and all that-there’s not much time for anything else.”

“Too bad,” Kane said. “I could have used the practice against someone with some skill. But you’ll have to do. Samira, would you loan your knife to the good doctor, please.”

“What do you mean?” the doctor cried, his voice cracking into a squeak like a nail being pulled from a board. “I’d rather not.” He attempted to wave off Samira who offered her blade. “Uh, no thanks…sit this one out.”

“I’m afraid you have no choice,” Kane said. “I can’t let you live; you might have a couple of belts down at the Hotel Jerome and start blabbing. Next thing you know, the FBI’s all over the place. Loose lips, sink ships, you know.”

“I wouldn’t, no, doctor-client privilege,” Buchwald cried. “I can keep secrets.”

“Take the knife, Doctor,” Kane urged. “I’ve never killed anyone with a knife so this is as good a time as any. Besides, you might get lucky and stick me a good one. If that happens, Samira, let the good doctor go free, would you?”

“Whatever you say,” she replied in a manner that told Buchwald he was never leaving the house alive. Still, he had no choice but to take the knife and thought, Maybe I can fight my way out of here.

“Good, good,” Kane said assuming the on-guard thrust position unique to Kali. “Now, do your best for as long as you can.”

The two men circled each other, the doctor holding his knife out in front of him while he blubbered and wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his other arm. Prince Bandar started to protest. “Gentlemen, there is no need for this,” he said in a calm and reasonable voice. “I’m sure Dr. Buchwald can be trusted to keep a secret.”

“Shut up, Bandar, or take Dr. B’s place,” Kane said.

Bandar ceased his complaints immediately. He sank with a sigh into one of the overstuffed chairs to watch the duel.

As he circled, Kane lectured the doctor on the art of Kali. “Note the smoothness of Saksak-Hatak, the classic thrust and cut,” he said, executing the move, which resulted in a small slice on the doctor’s arm. The man began crying as Kane continued his lesson.

“By constantly keeping the blade and point toward the opponent, the strategic positioning of the knife’s edge is never lost even when”-he sliced the doctor again, this time above his right eyebrow-“reversing from a backward to forward cut.”

Blood flowed into Buchwald’s eye. He wiped at it with his free hand, then made a desperate lunge at what had appeared to be Kane’s exposed chest. But his opponent dodged sideways and parried the thrust with his own knife.

Kane slashed down, opening a deep cut on the doctor’s wrist. The blow caused Buchwald to drop his knife and cry out in terror and pain. “Pick it up,” Kane insisted.

“No, no, no…please, stop this. Don’t kill me,” the doctor begged. “I’ll do anything.”

“Pick it up or I’m going to let one of the guards gut you like a pig and then let the dog pull your intestines out while you watch,” Kane snarled.

Buchwald had seen the dog Kane spoke of-a snarling, piebald pit bull that he was quite sure would be happy to eat him alive. Hardly able to see through the blood and tears, the doctor leaned over and picked up the knife. He felt light-headed and nearly passed out.

“It might interest you to know that what I’m doing here is known as the Palis-Tusok,” Kane said, “which essentially means making a lot of small cuts to bleed you. Gradually, you’ll weaken until you will be unable to defend yourself.”

Buchwald swung his knife wildly at his tormentor’s face. But Kane dropped to a knee beneath the blow, the same move he’d tried on Samira, and slashed open the muscle of the doctor’s thigh. The man howled in pain.

As he staggered around to continue facing Kane, Buchwald recognized the proximity of death. But as men and beasts will sometimes do when cornered, he found a small reservoir of courage. He stopped crying and his face grew grim. He gripped the bloody handle of the knife and charged, stabbing for Kane’s chest.

This time Kane stepped to the side and parried the knife. But instead of slashing down at the exposed arm again, his blade continued its circular path until Buchwald’s neck was open to his thrust. The blade sunk into the man’s throat and continued up, piercing the skull and into the brain.

Kane gave the knife a violent twist and then withdrew the blade, stepping back from the falling body. The air was filled with the sweet coppery smell of blood.

Bandar moaned from his chair. “My rug, my beautiful rug,” he complained and pointed at the growing pool of blood beneath the twitching body of Dr. Buchwald. “That is a five-hundred-year-old Persian original. Now it’s ruined.”

Kane looked at the prince and shrugged. “I guess you shouldn’t have had it on the floor if you didn’t want people to walk or bleed on it.” He started laughing at his joke, and then laughed louder when the prince got up and rushed from the room in a huff.

Kane turned to look at Samira, who was standing over by the chessboard. “So how’d I do?” he asked.

“You talk too much and take stupid chances,” she said. “If you’re going to kill a man, kill him…don’t give him the motivation or time to kill you first. That’s why I don’t like this game you want to play. It is not a necessary part of the plan.”

Kane formed his face into a pout. “Darn, I’d hoped I’d made you proud,” he said. “But it is important to me, and that means, it’s important to you…or your chance at martyrdom won’t be granted, at least not in the grand way you anticipate…. And by the way, have we made another move?”

“Bishop to black knight?” she said.

“Perfect,” Kane said, clapping with delight.

Fifteen hundred miles away in a segregation cell at the Rikers Island prison, former NYPD detective Michael Flanagan looked up from his steel-framed bed when the guard opened the door to take him to the chapel to receive Holy Communion. He closed the Bible he read constantly and got up with a sigh.

Prison had aged him. Raised a good Catholic who’d followed in the footsteps of several generations of Flanagans and joined the New York Police Department, he’d considered himself a good cop, even when he started going after scumbags and sinners the regular application of the law seemed to overlook. He saw it as just helping an overcrowded justice system. When he first started taking orders from Kane, he thought they actually came down from the Archbishop of New York. After all, the world was a better place for Christian men and women when sinners were sent to the fiery pit…albeit a bit earlier than planned.

It had been devastating to realize that the only master he was serving was the evil one, Andrew Kane. Like Fey, he wanted to live only to testify against Kane, and then if some inmate wanted to shank him in the prison yard, he was ready. He’d been doing his best to prepare to meet his Maker and ask for forgiveness by reading his Bible and attending mass and confessing as frequently as the guards would let him. When Kane escaped, he felt as though he’d been robbed of a chance at partial redemption.

As he made his way down to the chapel, he felt tired, and his legs heavy; he attributed it to having fasted since midnight in preparation for receiving the Blessed Eucharist.

Because of his “status” as a segregated prisoner, kept away from the general population who might just want to kill an ex-cop for the fun of it, he was alone when he entered the chapel. He walked to the railing at the front where he dropped to his knees to accept communion.

After a few minutes, he was aware of the rustle of robes. He looked up at the scarred face of the priest, a big man with sad eyes. Must be new…wonder where Father Woodard is today? he thought as the priest began the rite of communion.

When Flanagan accepted the wafer representing the body of Christ into his mouth, he noticed an unpleasant metallic taste. It was there even stronger after he drank the wine representing Christ’s blood.

The poison in the wafer was powerful but slow acting. Slow enough to allow the priest who fed it to Flanagan to check out of the prison for his drive back to Manhattan where he was the caretaker of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The priest did not enjoy killing. He hated Andrew Kane for sending him on these missions and hated himself for creating the circumstances that had doomed his immortal soul. Even if those circumstances had evolved from love.

All of his young life since entering puberty, he’d been taunted for the acne that had ravaged his face. No girls would have anything to do with him, even when he starred on the football field. A freak, they called him, Freddy Krueger. Even his own family seemed repulsed; his parents had urged him to go into the priesthood “since no decent woman will marry you.”

So he’d committed himself to God, a young priest known for his compassion and love of children, which is what had drawn her to him. She was not what others would have called pretty, either, though as he got to know her, he thought she was the most beautiful of all women. The mutual attraction had led to love, which had led to sex-not only forbidden by his vows, but illegal in the eyes of the law because she was only seventeen. She’d become pregnant and given birth to their child, and suddenly he had two people who loved him unconditionally.

However, when the girl’s parents, who had never cared much about her before, discovered who the father of the child was, they threatened to sue the church and go to the law. But Andrew Kane had settled with the parents and recommended against prosecution to the DAO. Then he called the young priest into his office.

So you love this woman and child? Kane had asked.

Yes, he’d said enthusiastically, hoping this attorney would understand that such was his motivation. I am prepared to leave the priesthood to be with them.

Oh no, you misunderstand, Kane said. I don’t want you to leave the priesthood. In fact, I am going to get you a special appointment to serve the Archbishop of New York, but really you’ll be working for me.

I don’t understand, the priest said.

Kane grinned-a wolfish look, the priest would later recall, his blue eyes predatory and mean. I’ve had your little whore and brat “relocated,” Kane said. But don’t worry; they’re safe as long as you do what I ask.

And what if I don’t? he asked.

I’ll send them back to you in pieces, Kane replied and grinned again.

The priest had never seen the young woman or his child in person since. Every once in a while, Kane gave him a photograph of a small blond girl who looked like a cross between the priest and her mother as she grew older. And so he had been corrupted, turned into a spy, a heretic, and eventually a killer. He lost his faith in a God who would allow such a thing-not for himself, he accepted that he had sinned with the young woman, but for her sake and the child’s. Whether they knew it or not, they lived at the whim of a madman. The archbishop had been just one of many victims, and now the police detective.

An hour after returning Michael Flanagan to his cell, a guard walked past on a routine welfare check and noticed the former police detective was lying on the floor curled into the fetal position. When the prisoner did not respond to verbal commands to get up, the guard entered the cell and rolled Flanagan over onto his back.

“Jesus Christ!” the guard exclaimed and threw up.

Flanagan’s face was difficult to look at; his eyes were bugging out of his head, the whites turned bright red from burst blood vessels. White foam was caked around his mouth, and his swollen tongue protruded from between purple lips. His face was stretched into a mask of intense pain.

“Holy shit!” the guard later told his colleagues during a coffee break. “Whatever fragged that asshole must have hurt like hell!”