Prayers for the assassin

CHAPTER 2

They came for him just before midnight, Redbeard’s men, two of them slipping into the Blue Moon club with the rest of the boozy Super Bowl revelers. Rakkim might have spotted them sooner but he was distracted, sprawled beside Mardi in her big bed, spent and lost in the aftermath. He watched the cigarette smoke drift against the ceiling and thought about Sarah.

“God, I needed that,” said Mardi, her head propped on the pillow. “Been a long time. A long, long time.” She dragged on the cigarette, her eyes shiny in the candlelight. “I should have ordered more beer.” She tapped ashes onto the floor. “I thought forty kegs would be enough.”

Rakkim felt her heat where their bodies touched, the long border of their thighs. The breeze through the window stirred the smoke, chilled the sweat along his arms and legs, but he made no attempt to cover himself. Neither did she, the two of them prickling each other with goose bumps, hot and steamy and a million miles apart.

“You’re quiet. Something happen at the game?” said Mardi.

“No.”

She leaned over, breasts swaying, made the sign of the cross on his forehead with her thumb.

He rubbed away the sign, annoyed. He had told her that he didn’t like her doing that, but it had only encouraged her.

Mardi kissed him, slipped out of bed. “I don’t remember you being so angry. Not that I’m complaining. I appreciate an angry fuck. Do I have your little Muslim princess to thank?”

“Don’t call her that.” He watched her walk across the bedroom, push aside the curtains. She stood there overlooking the street, one hip cocked, defiant in her nudity. She was thirty-eight, hard and blond and wanton.

Music filtered through the floor from the club below…yet another cover version of one of Nirvana’s grunge classics from fifty years ago. Mardi must have seen his expression. “You don’t like the music? Enjoy it, Rakkim, that’s the sound of money in our pockets.”

“Is that what it is?”

“Tourists come to L.A. for chicken mole and mariachi. They come to Seattle for a tour of the Capitol building, a good cry at the Hall of Martyrs, and to listen to grunge.”

Rakkim didn’t want to argue. He was the minority partner in the Blue Moon, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he held the 80 percent share, and she had 20. Mardi knew what she was doing. She knew the proper configuration of the dance floor to insure maximum profits, and who had the best wholesale prices for beer and khat infusion. She knew whom to hire and whom to fire. Mardi needed Rakkim for his underground contacts and to keep things smooth with the police and protection gangs, but she could have paid him a straight fee for much less than cutting him in for a percentage. An interesting oversight for someone focused on the bottom line.

Rakkim checked the wall of security screens opposite the bed, watched the revelers packed in below. The club was busy most nights, but after a Super Bowl every hot spot in the Zone jumped, the sidewalks filled with revelers in various stages of euphoria. The dining room had a two-hour waiting list, the dance floor was shoulder to shoulder, and the bar stacked three-deep with rowdy Warlords fans.

The Blue Moon was located in the Zone, officially called the Christian Quarter, a thirty-or forty-block section of the city where nightclubs and coffeehouses flourished, where cybergame parlors and movie theaters operated largely free of censorship. The Zone was loud and raucous, the streets littered, the buildings marred by graffiti, a morals-free fire area open to everyone-Christian, Muslim, modern, tech, freak, whomever or whatever. Untamed, innovative, and off-the-books, the Zone celebrated dangerous pursuits.

Every major city had an area like the Zone, a safety valve for a population whose previous cultural tradition had been based on extreme notions of freedom, and individuality. The police rotated their uniformed officers out of the Zone after two years, hoping to minimize corruption, but two years was usually enough for beat cops to buy vacation homes in Canada or Hawaii, safe from the prying eyes of Internal Affairs.

Mardi stood at the open window, and the cool breeze blew the curtains against her. The sound of rain filled the room. Still slick with sweat, her body glistened in the red neon glow from outside. She swayed to the music and the rainstorm, and he could see her nipples harden in the soft red light. It made him think of Sarah.

He had stopped seeing Mardi when Sarah had first contacted him a year and a half ago. Now that Sarah and he were over, he had gone running back. Cowardice and resentment, a lethal combination. He was glad he couldn’t see his own face. He would have cut his throat. Taking Mardi to bed…letting her take him…either way, it had been a mistake. He watched her dance, hair lank around her shoulders, and he wondered where Sarah was, and what she was doing, why she hadn’t shown up today.

“I miss him,” Mardi said softly.

Rakkim didn’t need to ask whom she was talking about. “So do I.”

“You remind me of him. Not in looks…it’s the confidence. Self-assurance…it was like a scent he gave off.” The wind whipped the curtains, rain splattering the floor, but she didn’t move. “Most men spend their whole life afraid, but not him. Not you either.”

Mardi always talked about Tariq afterward. Sometimes she talked about the first time they had met, or the last time they had been together, but Tariq was always part of their intimate moments. As though she was trying to explain to herself why she had just made love to his best friend. It didn’t bother Rakkim. They were both standing in for someone else, someone better than whom they were with, someone out of reach.

“I cost him a promotion.” The curtains billowed around her. “I wouldn’t convert. He was told to divorce me, marry a Muslim girl…but he wouldn’t.” She shook her head. “I should have converted.” Her laugh was hollow. “It’s not as if I’m a good Catholic.”

“A promotion wouldn’t have saved him.”

“He would have been a staff officer, safe behind the lines. He would have-”

“He was a warrior. He died the way he wanted to. He just died too soon.”

“You’re a warrior-”

“Not anymore.”

“No, that’s right. You were always smarter than he was. He was braver, but you were smarter.” Her face was stretched tight as she turned to him. “I wish it had been you,” she whispered. The breeze blew the candles, sent shadows scurrying across the walls. “I wish it had been you who had gotten killed.”

“I know.”

“You should get married,” she said.

“You should get married.”

She fumbled for her pack of cigarettes, hastily lit another one. The ancient Zippo snapped shut. Tariq’s lighter. “I am married.”

Rakkim didn’t mind the smoke; it seemed to calm her, the routine as much as the nicotine, the slow, steady inhalations and exhalations, the glowing ember at the tip, a beacon in the darkness. He didn’t even mind the smell. The raw Turkish tobacco was more acrid than that from the old days, but Virginia and the Carolinas were part of the breakaway Bible Belt, and the embargo was still in effect.

“My grocer was beaten by the Black Robes yesterday,” Mardi said, dragging on the cigarette. She must have been waiting for the right moment. “They were waiting for him outside his shop when he arrived before dawn. They broke him up, broke up his store too. He had converted, of course, converted right after the transition. He was just a child but he knew what was good for him. Conversion was good enough before, but not anymore. Now he’s just a Jew.” Another drag. “I’ve been buying fruits and vegetables from him for as long as I can remember. He taught me how to tell when a pineapple is ripe. Funny the things you remember.” She stubbed the cigarette out.

Rakkim didn’t respond. He knew what was coming.

Redbeard had done many terrible things as chief of State Security, but in the early years of the republic, he had insisted that any Jews who converted to Islam must be spared. Though Zionists had been blamed for the assassination of his brother, he refused to initiate a pogrom, had instead cited verses in the Holy Qur’an that said converts were to be welcomed, and none of the Black Robes or politicians had the will to overrule him. Redbeard had been able to insure the lives of the converts, but no one had been able to insure their treatment. Now, things were getting worse.

“Can you help them, Rakkim? The grocer and his family…they have to get out.”

One of the surveillance screens showed four women seated in one of the side booths of the dining area. College students probably, keeping their purses close, nursing their brightly colored frothies. Each wore a tiny hajib on her head, the latest style among freethinking Muslim women. A head covering in name only.

“The passes are snowed in,” said Rakkim. “The southern routes have roadblocks.”

“They’ll take the chance.”

“I won’t.”

Mardi crossed her arms across her breasts.

“Tell the grocer when the spring thaw hits, we’ll go,” said Rakkim. “The border patrols will be in their bivouacs, too worried about avalanches to venture out.”

“Thank you.”

The college girls kept glancing over at the nearby clusters of young men, but didn’t accept their offered drinks. They were just dipping a toe into the alluring nastiness of the Zone, the four of them beautiful in their innocence. Enjoy yourselves, ladies, enjoy the visit to the monkey house and take back some tales to the dorm. Let the memory bring a flush to your necks for years to come. There were plenty of other clubs in the Zone, meat racks and psychedelic joints without bodyguards or bouncers, but Rakkim imposed his own rules on the clientele. No narcotics, no fights, no rape rooms. He knew what the human animal was capable of. Pleasure worked best on a leash.

“Mardi…what happened tonight was wrong.”

She laughed. “That’s why it felt so good.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I’ll survive.” Mardi’s mouth tightened. “You’re a romantic, Rakkim, that’s your problem.”

“I’ll add that to the list.” Rakkim started to get dressed, then stopped, staring at the surveillance screen. Nothing specific gave the two of them away; they were well trained. Both were medium height, with modified blockhead haircuts and earrings. Total moderns. One wore a Warlords jersey like half the other men in the place; the other had on one of those flex-metal jackets popular with the high-tech types. Just a couple of guys out on the town, looking for action at the Blue Moon club. Like the neon sign over the bar asked: R U Having Fun Yet?

They were State Security though. There was an aspect to their posture, a certain arrogance. Small giveaways, but enough. Redbeard, the head of State Security, had trained Rakkim himself. Raised him from the age of nine, schooled him and tested him constantly. They never walked through a crowd that Redbeard hadn’t kept up a quiet commentary, teaching Rakkim to read a face and a gesture, to learn from a hastily knotted necktie or the wrong shoes. Redbeard had been furious when Rakkim had joined the Fedayeen instead of State Security, but in time he’d accepted the rejection. What he could not forgive was Rakkim and his niece, Sarah, falling in love.

“What’s wrong?” asked Mardi.

Rakkim pointed at the screen. “Those two…they’re State Security.”

“Here?” She squinted at the screen. “You’re sure?”

“Redbeard sent them.” Rakkim watched the agents at the bar. “See how their bodies move?”

“No.”

“They’re mimicking the flow of the room. They don’t even know it. It’s called active observation.” Rakkim was used to official attention; everyone from local cops to liberal clerics to small-time politicos ended up at the Blue Moon sooner or later. Not State Security. State Security didn’t ask, didn’t bargain, and didn’t give warnings. These two were here for a pickup. He scanned the screens, looking for other agents. There had to be more. “Don’t worry, they’re here for me.”

“I thought you and Redbeard weren’t speaking.”

“I guess he decided to change the rules.”

The band finished the song, the dancers clinging to each other in the red and yellow houselights. The lead singer toasted the crowd with a flute of khat champagne, finished it in one long swallow, and threw the empty glass onto the floor. Her fans followed suit. Mardi was going to have to bump up the price to maintain a profit. A spotlight drifted across the crowd and Rakkim tapped the screen with a forefinger. “There you are.”

Another agent leaned against the back wall, watching the dancers. Rakkim had only glimpsed him for a moment in the spotlight, but it was long enough. The third agent was a slim, pockmarked dandy in red toreador pants, with a cruel face and a pencil mustache. The dandy would have come in earlier; he would have checked out the basement, ambled into the back rooms, pretending to be lost. Now he was waiting for Rakkim to show himself, or try to escape.

“Slip out my private exit,” said Mardi. “I’ll tell Redbeard’s men that I haven’t seen you.”

Maybe that’s why Sarah hadn’t met him at the Super Bowl this afternoon. It was almost a relief to think that it was Redbeard who had stopped her, not her better judgment. He wasn’t worried about Sarah. Redbeard would be angry with her for disobeying him, but his anger would only go so far. Rakkim had no illusions about his own privileged status. He might call Redbeard his uncle, but that was only a sign of respect. Sarah was the daughter of Redbeard’s only brother. She was blood, Rakkim was not. He considered taking Mardi’s offer; there were a dozen places he could hide in the Zone without fear of being found. He could meet Redbeard at a time of his choosing.

The houselights came up. The pockmarked dandy watched a pretty girl walking across the room. He looked up suddenly, stared at the hidden security camera.

“Get out of here,” said Mardi.

Rakkim thought of Sarah. No telling the things Redbeard was saying to her. He headed for the door.