Prayers for the assassin

CHAPTER 16

“Do you know what this is about?” Rakkim followed Elroy through the alley. “I heard Spider lives under the bus tunnel. Is that where we’re going?”

Elroy took an abrupt right turn, squeezed through a narrow space in the wire fencing, and kept going, not looking back.

Rakkim tore his jacket getting through the opening, hurrying to keep up as they rushed through the twilight. It was past sunset now and this part of downtown was poorly lit, lined with flophouses and abandoned buildings. Rakkim had lived in this general area after his father had died, lived here until Redbeard had brought him home. The maze of alleys gave way to gravel footpaths, then a succession of worn stone steps. At one point they scuttled through a long, corrugated-metal pipe strewn with garbage, broken eggs crunching underfoot, and he knew by the growing stink of rotting vegetables that they were getting closer to the waterfront under the Public Market. At the last minute, they veered away from the market and toward Pioneer Square, the oldest part of the city.

Elroy quickly ran a microwave scanner across Rakkim. “You’re clean,” he said, putting it back into his sweatshirt. He pressed a hand against a seemingly solid brick wall and a section swung aside. He waited until Rakkim squeezed through, then closed it behind them. A latch snapped into place. They were in total darkness, the air cold and damp.

Rakkim waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, but it was still pitch-black.

“This way,” said Elroy.

Rakkim walked toward the sound of his voice, hands out.

“Keep coming,” said Elroy, ahead of him. “There’s a turn coming up.”

Rakkim stumbled, heard Elroy snicker. “Elroy?” His voice echoed. “Put a light on.”

“I don’t need a light,” sniffed Elroy, his voice farther away. “I know where I am.”

Rakkim moved quickly, hands waving. He snagged Elroy’s shirt, but the kid pulled away.

“Touch me again and I’ll leave you here. A few days of banging into things and the cats and rats will be fighting over you.”

“Take me to Spider. That’s what you were told to do.” No answer. Rakkim stepped toward where his voice had been, hit his head on something, cursing now.

“You’re not getting scared are you?” said Elroy.

Rakkim didn’t move. He had excellent night vision, but there was no light anywhere, and he couldn’t be sure the direction he had come from. The darkness smelled mossy.

Elroy’s laughter echoed.

Rakkim stayed where he was. He heard Elroy moving closer, the kid barely making a sound. He waited, trying not to breathe, then reached out and grabbed something, a skinny arm. He hung on as the kid slapped at him, tried to twist away, but there was no way Rakkim would let go, and Elroy finally stopped struggling.

“Good for you,” gasped Elroy. “I bet you’re proud of yourself.”

“Take me to Spider,” said Rakkim, still hanging on to him.

“If I wanted to ditch you, I would have already done it. Wouldn’t be the first time.” Elroy wriggled but couldn’t pull free. “Hands off, okay? I don’t like being touched. Please?”

Rakkim let him go, then waited for him to leave him alone in the dark.

“I bet you thought I was going to run off,” said Elroy.

“Not at all.”

“Liar.” Elroy sniffed. “Stick your right hand out until you find the wall. Did you do it? Okay, keep your hand on the wall as we walk. I’ll tell you when to turn.”

They made good progress, maintained a slow but steady pace for the next half hour. Rakkim kept count of his steps and turns, making a mental map. Forty-seven steps, right turn, two hundred and eighteen steps, left…They seemed to be on a slight downward spiral, and he was sure that Elroy was doubling back from time to time, trying to confuse him. Sometimes Rakkim heard the rumble of a subway in the distance, felt the vibration through the stone floor. Twice they splashed through pools of cold water. Rakkim bumped his head three or four times, tripped once. He almost lost his count when he fell, but he repeated the numbers and turns in his head, reestablishing the pattern. He heard things run past on the floor, claws skittering. Never a glimmer of light.

“We’re here,” said Elroy.

Rakkim hadn’t realized how loudly his heart was beating until they stopped. He blinked as Elroy opened a door, the boy standing there in the light. Rakkim followed him inside.

They were in a storage room of some kind, a small space with a sink and towels. Elroy was already washing up, soaping his hands and face, splashing water everywhere. He quickly put on a pair of oversize clean coveralls from a hook on the wall, tossed a pair to Rakkim, and removed his shoes. The water from the tap was icy, but Rakkim was grateful for the chance to wash the grime off. Blood was on the towel when he dried his face, and the mirror showed a gash in his forehead.

“I’m Spider,” said the man waiting for them, a barefoot gnome with a dark, luxuriant beard and a black skullcap. He shifted from one foot to the other. “Pleasure to finally meet you.” Rakkim offered his hand, but Spider turned away and started walking. Elroy hurried beside his father, the two of them talking as Rakkim followed.

The interior room was softly lit, and the size of a small warehouse. Thick carpets covered the floor, museum-quality Persians in reds and blues, and silk ornamentals in subtle shades of pink and yellow, so delicate that he didn’t want to walk on them. The room was warm and clean, the air fresh, smelling faintly of garlic and roasted chicken. Not a hint of the dampness of the stone corridor that had brought them there. The walls were hung with rich tapestries, dozens and dozens of them. He had been in wealthy households with Redbeard, homes of senators and business leaders-just one of these tapestries would have occupied a place of honor. Rakkim was looking around so often that he fell behind and had to hurry to catch up. At last, Spider pushed aside some embroidered curtains and stepped into a small office. He waited for Rakkim to sit on a pile of purple cushions, then sat across from him. Elroy stayed outside.

Spider was an intense ball of tics, his skin white as a pearl. He wore black silk pajamas, his hands and feet knobby. His beard was long, his graying hair plaited into a single braid that fell past his shoulders, and, just as Rakkim had heard, his nose was an imperial beak. It was hard to gauge his age as he had been out of the sun for so long, but he didn’t look older than forty. “My son said you did well on the trip through the tunnels.”

Rakkim glanced around. The office was bare, except for shelves along the back wall containing rows and rows of glass snow globes. Pretransition tourist items. He saw the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hollywood sign, the Space Needle, Santa Claus and his sleigh…even the Twin Towers. From another part of the warehouse, he could hear women’s voices, and the sound of a baby crying. “How far underground are we?”

Spider didn’t respond. Another baby was crying now, a regular howling chorus, but Spider didn’t seem to notice, intent on Rakkim. The pupils of his eyes were hugely dilated. Given the whiteness of his skin, the only spots of color on his face were his black pupils tracking Rakkim. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. Did you know that the Blue Moon is the only club in the Zone that doesn’t pay protection?”

“That’s fascinating, but why am I here? What did you find on the-”

“You don’t even pay off the police. You give gifts to the officers. Birthday presents for their wives and sweethearts, graduation gifts for their children. Generous gifts, but no bribes.” Spider blinked. “They must appreciate not being treated as thieves in uniform.”

“What did you find on the computer cores?”

“When you first started the club, I was curious to see what would happen when the local goons showed up.” Spider twisted his neck from side to side. “The Hammer Trio were the first to call…and the last. Vicious bastards. Those three left a trail of cripples all over the Zone. Not anymore though, right?” His smile jerked. “Two former army special forces and a retired Fedayeen-”

“He wasn’t Fedayeen. He washed out the first month.”

“Really? Everyone said…” Spider nodded. “Not that it matters anymore. The three of them came around…and then they were gone.” He blinked at Rakkim. “Is it true you left their hammers on the bar for a week afterwards? Three ball-peen hammers?” Rakkim shrugged. “I deplore violence, but no one tried to collect from you again, did they?”

A couple of Spider’s children, twin girls about eight years old, burst through the curtains, giggling. They pointed at Rakkim, whispered to each other, laughing now.

Rakkim waited until the children had darted away. “How many kids do you have?”

“Not enough,” said Spider, completely serious.

“What am I doing here, Spider?”

“Yes. Of course.” Spider blinked. “The core from the university computer had nothing of interest on it, but the one from Sarah’s home unit contained a very ingenious security system.” He folded his arms around himself. “I’d love to know where she got it.”

“I’ll ask her when I find her.”

Spider’s fingers twitched. “There was a dual memory on her personal core. One was readable to anyone able to crack her access code, which was no great difficulty, but behind that primary memory was a second, a ghost memory much more difficult to penetrate. Even more interesting, the ghost memory had an autodestruct timer. If a code word wasn’t typed in every seventy-two hours, a virus would tear through the files, but leave the primary memory intact. So, someone examining the core would find it filled with nothing but the usual academic clutter. No one would even know that there had been anything to delete. Impressive. I have no idea who created it, but it’s not Russian, or Chinese, or Swiss. None of the usual suspects for top-flight code. It was an individual. An individual using backwater code…but with a very high-level intelligence. Just like me.” His fingers fluttered. “Maybe that’s why I was able to crack it.”

“You cracked the ghost memory?”

Spider’s smile jerked.

“Could you tell if anyone else had read the files?”

“Like Redbeard?” Spider snorted. “No, I was the first to pop them.” He pulled at his lip, flashed nubs of white teeth. “If you had been able to get the core to me sooner, I could tell you a lot more. The virus wiped out most of the files, but there was enough left for me to reconstruct certain parts. I saved the prologue of a book she was working on. It must have been one of the last things she entered. First in, first wiped, that’s the way the virus worked.” A tic started under his right eye, lifting his cheek several times before subsiding. He leaned forward, stared at Rakkim as he recited:

“‘The Zionist Betrayal was the pivot point of modern history, the axis on which the world shifted. The story is taught to every schoolchild, marked by a moment of silence at noon on the anniversary of the attack. We all know that on that terrible day, renegade elements of the Israeli government struck targets in the United States, and the holy city of Mecca, attempting to blame the actions on radical jihadis and discredit all of Islam. We all know that their plan was discovered, Israel itself overrun, while the forces of Islam spread their beneficence across the globe. And yet…what if all that we know of these attacks was wrong? What if the Zionists were not behind the Zionist Betrayal?’”

Rakkim shrugged. “I’ve heard dozens of conspiracy theories about the Zionist attack. Did she have any evidence?”

“The book’s unfinished, and I was just able to retrieve bits of it, but her conclusion is obvious. The Zionist Betrayal was another blood libel against the Jews. The worst yet.”

“Obvious to you. No evidence, but the Jews are innocent. How convenient.” Rakkim saw he had hurt the man’s feelings. “Who did Sarah think was really behind the attacks?”

“Her r-r-research,” Spider stuttered, “her research wasn’t definitive. She mentions an unnamed Saudi or a Yemeni…maybe a Pakistani. He’s referred to usually as the Old One. She doesn’t even know if he’s still alive. He was evidently in his sixties at the time of the attack, which would make him in his nineties today, but-”

“The terrorists confessed. They were born and raised and trained in Israel, and they confessed on live TV. You’ve seen it. The whole world has seen it.”

“The man works on an incredibly long-range time frame. He must have spent twenty or thirty years putting the operation into place.” Spider’s hands flapped from the sleeves of his pajamas. “According to Sarah, he seeded his operatives into Israel as Jewish immigrants. It was the children of these deep sleepers, raised and educated in Israel, who rose within the political and military establishment-”

“The terrorists were executed. You think their parents raised them, loved them, knowing the whole time they were going to be sacrificed? And the children agreed?”

“I know, I know, but the Old One occupied some sort of cultural and religious sweet spot. The devotion he inspired…” Spider’s fingers wriggled. “He’s taken on the mantle of a Muslim figure of antiquity, the old man of the mountains, an eleventh-century mystic-”

“Yeah, Hassan-i-Sabah. I’ve read the story. He supposedly inspired such loyalty that his followers willingly threw themselves off cliffs if he merely beckoned.”

“The stories are true. Hassan-i-Sabah believed that God had anointed him to unite all Muslims, and he acted on that belief. His acolytes assassinated dozens of Muslim monarchs in his day, including the caliph of Baghdad.”

Rakkim remained skeptical. “So the Jews are blamed for the attacks, and Damon Kingsley becomes president-for-life of the new Islamic Republic. You think he was part of the deception? Sorry, but Kingsley is no extremist.”

“Yes, Kingsley is a moderate, a grave sin to a true believer. In fact, if the Old One is anything like the original old man of the mountains, he’s as hostile to other Muslims as he is to Jews. Kingsley’s election means that the Old One didn’t completely achieve his goal.” Spider twitched. “But that doesn’t mean the plan isn’t still going forward, whether or not the Old One is still alive.”

“Why didn’t Sarah tell Redbeard about this?”

“Maybe she didn’t trust him to help her…or maybe she knew he didn’t have the power to do anything about it.” Spider blinked. “I cracked the congressional budget code eight years ago. Follow the money, and you’ll find the truth.” He blinked faster. “In the last three years, Redbeard’s budget has been cut forty percent. Recruitment and training have been crippled. The money is going to the army and the religious authorities…Fedayeen, of course. No one outside the Select Committee knows. I thought it was the Black Robes outmaneuvering him with Congress. Now I wonder.”

“You see a lot from bits and pieces.”

“That’s what I do. That’s what you do too, Fedayeen.” Spider watched Rakkim trying to process the new information. “Hard work to reimagine the world, isn’t it? It’s kept me busy too.” He handed Rakkim a flash-memory wafer. “This is everything I pulled off the core so far.”

Rakkim slid the wafer into the port of his watch. “Who contacted Sarah at the Mecca Café? Did you find out who she’s working with?”

Spider shook his head. “It was sent through a feed in Las Vegas, but that doesn’t help. Vegas is a hub. There are so many satellite uplinks over that city that the sender could be anywhere in the world.” A baby was crying again. “So many of us killed. Homes burned. Businesses looted. Civil war…and it was all a lie.” His tics were like mild electric shocks. “You were lucky, Rakkim. Being an orphan allows for certain…opportunities.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“All those records lost during the transition. Databases infected…I couldn’t find you anywhere. Just another displaced person. Who could blame you for rewriting your own history?”

“I’m a Muslim.”

“A Muslim who risks his life to save Jews? I’ve never met such a creature.”

“Jews and homosexuals, apostates and witches too-I’ve led them all to the promised land. Does that make me Moses?”

“It makes you too good to be true.”

Rakkim ignored it. “Any mention of China on the core? Or the Three Gorges Dam?”

“No, why?”

“How much do I owe you?”

“We’ll settle when I’m done.” Spider’s expression smoothed out. Serene almost. “What did you think of my daughter?”

“Carla? She seemed…” Rakkim laughed. “I wondered why you didn’t just have Elroy bring me here right off. I didn’t need to go to the restaurant. You could have told me everything she did. I’m flattered, Spider, but you didn’t need to run your daughter past for my approval-”

“Your approval?” Spider’s face crinkled with restrained laughter. “I sent you to the restaurant to see if you met with her approval.”

“She can do better.” Rakkim stood up. “Ask Elroy to take me back.” He didn’t need help, but there was no need to advertise it. “Keep working on the core.”

“Shalom, Rakkim.”

“Salaam alaikum.”