Heart of the Assassin

CHAPTER 2

Rakkim saw the fire as he left the mosque, a greasy red glow rising over the darkened buildings of New Fallujah like a sunrise in hell. Imam Jenkins stood outlined against the glow for a moment, then started up the cobblestone streets toward the blaze, his robe a billow of coarse, black fabric in the wind. Rakkim joined the faithful as they followed the cleric, and the faithful, seeing Rakkim's green jihadi headband, lowered their eyes and gave him room, fearful of incurring his wrath. He didn't blame them.

Jihadis were unstable cowards drunk with death, suicide bombers waiting for the call to heaven, eager to prove their devotion to the Grand Mullah. Last month a jihadi had blown himself up in a packed movie theater in Los Angeles, killed over a hundred Christians watching a new Brazilian romantic comedy. A second bomber detonated himself as the ambulances arrived. You'd think that Allah loved loud noises. If so, God was going to be disappointed, because the jihadi that Rakkim took the headband from got his ticket to Paradise punched without making a sound.

Jenkins increased his pace, his long garments flapping in the storm, dust swirling around his scrawny frame. Head shaved, his beard gone to gray, he was part of the Grand Mullah's inner circle, a Black Robe, one of those grim guardians of public virtue who dominated the fundamentalist stronghold once known as San Francisco.

No cars allowed on the streets after late-night prayers, no stores or cafes open, no satellite dishes on the roofs. Just the faithful. And Rakkim. A deep-cover agent for the moderates who governed the Islamic Republic, he was thirty-four years old, lean and tautly muscled, poised as a tightrope walker in loose-fitting pants and a thin jacket. Like the other men from the mosque his dark hair was cut short, his beard no longer than a fist. Unlike the rest of them, he wasn't out of breath as he climbed the hill. Rakkim moved effortlessly up the steep slope…just like Jenkins.

Rakkim stepped over the rusted cable car tracks and spotted a data chip peeking out from under the rails in the dim light. He bent down quickly, pulled it free. The crowd parted around him, flowed on either side, no one daring to make contact.

The chip gleamed in the moonlight. Must have dated from around the transition forty years ago, a thin black plastic rectangle with a platinum edge. Maximum limit. The hologram of the owner's face was faded, but she had been beautiful, with long, black hair, her head cocked playfully. No idea why he had used the past tense in speaking of the woman, but she had hidden the chip away for safekeeping and not come back for it in thirty years. Jewish, maybe, or accused of witchcraft…or just too proud to stay silent when silence was called for. Whatever her supposed crime, she was gone, the chip and the hope for escape it contained long since abandoned. Rakkim lightly touched her holographic face, whispered a prayer for her soul, then tucked the chip back under the rail. Maybe someone else would retrieve it someday and find out who she was, and what had happened to her. Someone in a more peaceful time. He hurried on through the crowd, moving through them with gentle touches on shoulders and hips, a shadow warrior technique, men giving him room without them even being aware of it.

Two lower-ranking Black Robes watched the crowd pass from a side street-they bowed to Jenkins but made no move to join the throng. Black Robes patrolled the city day and night, alert for signs of sin: a careless profanity or the sound of singing from inside a home, a woman with an improperly fitted burqa, or children playing too enthusiastically. So many sins to keep track of, so many punishments to mete out.

Rakkim heard sirens in the distance, fire trucks approaching from the opposite direction. Two trucks…one about ten blocks ahead of the other, driving faster, the engine misfiring. He could smell the fire now, burning wood and plaster and many coats of paint. An old building. They burned hot and fast. No one around him reacted, oblivious, their senses dull in comparison with his.

Put Rakkim in a small, dark room, not a speck of light, put him there alone in the dark except for four scorpions scattered about, four pale yellow scorpions from the North African desert. Androctonus australis, highly aggressive and deadly as a cobra. Put Rakkim in that room and tell him to find the scorpions before they found him. You had to know how to listen to survive in that room. You had to know exactly where you were in space without any reference points. Most of all, you had to be patient, to wait for the scorpions to move. Without patience you'd never get out alive. Rakkim was in that room eleven hours before he killed all four of them. He was already a Fedayeen when he walked into the room, first in his class…he was a shadow warrior when he walked out.

Fedayeen were the elite warriors of the Islamic Republic, genetically altered to be stronger and faster, go days without sleep and recover from injuries that would kill a normal man. Only one in a thousand qualified for Fedayeen, and only one in a thousand Fedayeen qualified to be a shadow warrior, men able to blend into any social environment, from the Bible Belt to the Mormon territories, to a Black Robe stronghold like New Fallujah. Hard work to stay invisible. The wrong accent, the wrong shoes or simply holding a fork in an improper manner could draw attention, and attention could bring death.

Wind whipped through the narrow streets, howling like a wounded ghost, the smell of smoke stronger now. The city always had lousy weather, but the storms were getting worse, part of a global climate change. The monsoons had shifted, China was in the tenth year of drought and Europe had the worst flash floods in history. If the wind was right, there were days when the West Coast from L.A. to Seattle was cloaked in smog from the firestorms burning up Australia. Sarah said New Orleans sinking was a warning of things to come, then got mad at him when he shrugged and said he'd buy her a boat.

The crowd trudged on, past boarded-up storefronts and apartment buildings where the residents peeked out from behind closed curtains. Most of the men around Rakkim were tech workers from nearby factories, sullen men in plain overalls and cheap, down-filled jackets. They worked twelve-hour shifts churning out cheap parts for Chinese nanocomputers, dangerous work, the fumes toxic but a steady source of hard currency. Rakkim made his way near the front of the moving throng, close enough to see the age spots on the back of Jenkins's bald head. The women from the mosque lumbered behind, slowed by their voluminous black burqas, barely able to see out of the eye slits.

Rakkim remembered Jenkins's sermon an hour ago, haranguing the believers to remain morally ruthless. A woman who does not fear her husband is already a harlot in her dreams, her husband already a pimp by his weakness! Jenkins had shouted, voice echoing off the dome of the mosque. Kneeling on their prayer rugs, the men nodded in agreement. From the other side of the mosque, half hidden behind a decorative grate, many of the women had nodded too.

He hated New Fallujah. Christians in the Belt were all over each other, skin to skin, sweating and cursing so easily it was part of the environment, like the humidity and gardenia blooms perfuming the air. He came back from a mission in the Belt, all he wanted to do was make love with Sarah, rest his cheek against the heat of her belly afterward, then make love some more. When he came back from New Fallujah…he was just going to play with Michael, listen to his three-year-old son giggle and try to forget all the ugly things fundamentalists did to each other in the name of God.

Rats skittered underfoot, darting among the crowd, but Rakkim seemed to be the only one who noticed.

Rakkim lived in Seattle, the capital of the Republic, a bastion of moderate Islam, where even Catholics could get an education. You heard music in Seattle, saw women in public with their heads bare and couples holding hands. New Fallujah was a city without bright colors or laughter, just the tightening vise of piety squeezing the life out of people.

Ibn-Azziz, Grand Mullah of the Black Robes, considered Seattle a non-Islamic cesspool. There were Black Robe senators in the congress, and what they lacked in numbers they made up for in intensity. President Brandt had been in office barely a year and already ibn-Azziz was demanding Shar'ia law be extended throughout the nation. His demand had been rejected…for now. The president thought the matter was settled, but he was naive. The Fedayeen commander, General Kidd, knew better. That's why he had sent Rakkim into New Fallujah.

Rakkim saw the fire now-the Ayman al-Zawahiri madrassa, a girls' boarding school housed in the former St. Regis Hotel, was ablaze. Flames shot fifty feet into the air, gray smoke boiling up into the night, driven higher and higher by the wind roaring off the bay. He heard the whoosh of burning lumber, paint bubbling off the outside of the building and the screams. Fire engines idled nearby, but the water pressure in the aging underground pipes was weak, the firefighters' trucks ineffectually shooting water onto the flames. The spray drifted across the yellow streetlights…gleaming in the moonlight.

Worshipers from the mosque joined the onlookers, neighbors and family of the children inside the school pressing against the police cordon that surrounded the burning madrassa. Women watched from behind their eye slits, flames reflected in their steady gaze. Firefighters dashed into the building, retreated as the wind kicked the blaze higher, then charged up the stairs again. Voices muffled, the girls' mothers wailed, the sound seeming to float in the air, while the police stood silently, blue uniforms covered in ash.

Cheers erupted, mothers ululating with joy as two firefighters ran out of the madrassa, each carrying a couple of small girls over their shoulders. Mothers rushed the firemen, grabbed their children, sobbing, the children coughing into their mothers' necks.

Jenkins pushed past the police, pulled a long, flexible flail from under his robes and began whipping the women, the girls screaming as their mothers turned, taking the lashing on their backs.

"Return them to where they came!" demanded Jenkins.

The women clutched their children.

"Would you consign your daughters to the darkest pit of hell?" Jenkins shouted, veins bulging in his scrawny neck. "Would you prefer a child steeped in wickedness or a child raised among the blessed in Paradise?"

"Save their honor," said one of the fathers, eyes downcast. "I…I have other daughters, imam."

"No, save them!" A woman broke from the crowd, confronted Jenkins, her voice booming through the burqa. "Let Allah decide who is virtuous and who is wicked-"

Jenkins cuffed the woman to the ground. "The world has enough whores."

"Allahu Akbar!" called other voices in the crowd, other women, other parents kicking at the woman, shouting their agreement. "Allahu Akbar!"

The upper windows of the madrassa blew out, glass shimmering as it fell through the air. Five girls clustered on the outer balcony, far above the street, raising their arms to the sky, howling, their white night clothes billowing up past their knees. Rakkim felt sick. Jenkins had decided it was better that the girls burn than be exposed in their underclothes. Better to burn than be seen by men not of their family, their reputation destroyed and along with it, the good name of their relatives.

Rats scurried from the burning building, their tails on fire.

Three teenagers leaped through a ground-floor window, sprawled on the ground for a moment, bleeding, then ran toward their parents. Jenkins intercepted them, whipped them back, the tips of his beard smoldering, pinpricks of red light surrounding his face as the flail rose and fell. Police joined in, pushing the girls back into the flames.

Rakkim worked his way around to the opposite side of the building, the east side where the smoke was thickest. No crowd here, no security cameras, just a few women huddled in the shadows, wailing and fingering prayer beads, and two burly policemen, their eyes watering from the smoke. An eight-foot chain-link fence surrounded this side of the madrassa, the links glowing in the heat.

A blond girl stumbled out of one of the lower windows, her nightgown smoldering. She sprang onto the fence, but fell back, hands scorched. She spit on her palms, started climbing again, ignoring the pain, her bare legs golden in the firelight. She had almost made it to the top when one of the cops ambled over, zapped her with his stun-stick. She fell back inside the fence, twitching.

Rakkim killed the cop with a single blow to the base of his skull, dropped him like a bag of wet cement. The other cop charged, but Rakkim dodged the stun-stick, crushed the man's windpipe with a thrust of his hand and kept moving. Rakkim walked into the oily black smoke, slashed the fence with his Fedayeen knife, the carbon-polymer blade slicing through the metal links as though they were cobwebs. Rakkim slipped through the gap, grabbed the blond girl and carried her through, the girl clutching at his chest, still dazed. She smelled of smoke and pine tar soap. Rakkim set the blond girl down, then rushed back for the others, who were staggering out of the madrassa.

He gathered up three of them like a bouquet of flowers, brought them through the fence. Women beckoned from the shadows, and the girls ran to them, disappeared into the night. He was going back for the others when the madrassa groaned as though it were alive, one whole side erupting in a ball of blue fire.

Face stinging, Rakkim ran forward, snatched the remaining two girls off the ground. He looked behind him, saw more girls stumbling down the stairs, fire everywhere, and then the whole madrassa collapsed-sparks erupted like fireflies rising up into the night, followed by a wall of heat that blistered the back of his neck. He turned as he fell, protected the girls from the worst of it, then passed them on to the women…who took care not to touch him, this man who was not part of their family. He watched them go. The women would hide the girls as best they could, but it wouldn't be enough. Rakkim hadn't really saved them, merely postponed their fate. The girls were still breathing, but they were already dead, condemned by the imam's decree.

He glimpsed the crescent moon low over the city, bloodred through the haze, which probably meant something, but he didn't know what, or care, either. Omens, signs and portents…that was for weaklings looking for some sort of edge. Like Allah was signaling his intentions in code, with only the initiated privy to his will. No…God didn't play games. He wasn't a co-conspirator. God either hit you hard and fast, and that was that, or he sat back and watched things spool out, laughing all the way.

Rakkim dragged the bodies of the two dead policemen to the gutter, pushed them into the sewer below. Then he circled the site, knife nestled in his hand, rage in his heart. He eased through the crowd, barely stirring their awareness, until he stood beside Imam Jenkins, stood right there on his left side, a half step behind. A blind spot.

Jenkins watched the burning madrassa as Rakkim stepped forward, his knife cutting through the coarse material of Jenkins's robe, sliding just under the imam's armpit. A gentle stroke would sever the man's brachial artery, bleed him out onto the cobblestones in a gush. Rakkim felt the imam shiver against the blade, but the man didn't shout for help or try to escape.

"The molten torments of hell await the one who harms a servant of Allah," Jenkins said quietly, looking straight ahead.

"I'll take my chances." Rakkim stepped closer, blocking anyone's view as the knife caressed the man's flesh. "How about you?"

"You smell of fire…and the soap used in the madrassa," whispered Jenkins.

"Your senses are sharp as ever. It's a burden sometimes, isn't it?"

"Rakkim?"

Rakkim's lips brushed the man's ear. "You're going to give new orders, old friend. You're going to declare the girls who escaped the flames innocent of immorality."

"Why…why are you doing this?"

Rakkim twisted the blade ever so slightly.

Jenkins kept his gaze on the burning embers. "So my choice is to be murdered by you…or executed by the Grand Mullah for encouraging lust?"

"Not at all," murmured Rakkim. "Wonder of wonders, imam, it was the grace of Allah that led them through the fire. Is this not a clear sign of God's intention?" He felt Jenkins tremble, a trickle of blood running warm across Rakkim's fingers. "The Grand Mullah will applaud your decision, imam. Think of the babies these girls will someday present to Allah, the future warriors and wives of warriors."

"You don't know the Grand Mullah."

"A man of your talents," said Rakkim, "you could convince the stones to sing."

Firefighters hosed down the wreckage, steam rising, red in the firelight.

"Give the proclamation," said Rakkim, the blade cutting deeper with every beat of Jenkins's heart. "Declare the girls innocent."

"Hear me!" Jenkins's voice echoed across the site, the command voice that cut through outside noise and reached directly to believers.

Rakkim listened as the imam spoke of the girls spared from the flames and the infinite mercy of Allah. Listened as the crowd blessed this news, women weeping with joy, men falling to their knees. The firefighters continued to spray down the embers.

Jenkins remained standing as the crowd dispersed, letting the night close in around them before he turned to Rakkim. "A shadow warrior who brings attention to himself," said Jenkins, as the wreckage popped and hissed. "Threatening me…playing the hero…and for what? Schoolgirls." His mouth twisted. "You're a disgrace to the Fedayeen."

Rakkim slipped the knife free, wiped Jenkins's blood on his black robe, the stain shiny in the moonlight. "Alas, I had a poor teacher."