Prayers for the assassin

CHAPTER 51

“Sorry, mister, I’m still not seeing anything.”

Rakkim stood with his arms outstretched in front of the MRI screen. “Run it again. Maximum sensitivity.”

The tech looked at Sarah. “It’s already maxed.”

“Just do it.” Sarah watched over the tech’s shoulder as the scan progressed. She turned to Rakkim, shook her head.

Rakkim let his arms drop. He should be happy. He had been certain the Old One would have implanted some sort of tracking device inside him during surgery, but the MRI body scan showed nothing. Nothing metallic. Nothing of a foreign or nonbiologic nature. Neither had Sarah’s watch registered any electronic signature. They had run a full-spectrum check with it before going to the MRI lab of the hospital. He watched Sarah pay off the tech. It wouldn’t have been hard for the Old One. Fedayeen tracking devices were as small as a poppy seed, and his wounds offered easy access for implantation. He had plenty of old scars that could have hidden the insertion point. So why had the Old One passed on the opportunity?

Sarah and Rakkim eased out the side door and into the stairwell. It had been three days since he’d woken up in the hospital and had his halting conversation with the Old One. Rakkim was dressed in some new clothes she had bought in downtown Las Vegas, ugly clothes he wouldn’t have been seen in back in Seattle-Spanish-style, black trousers with little balls running up the side seams, and a yoked Western shirt with red parrots embroidered on the chest. In a city of tourists, dress like a tourist. He still hated looking in the mirror. Her clothes were typically modern-blue leather, knee-length skirt and a short-sleeved comfort sweater that adjusted its weave depending on the ambient temperature.

“Why am I dressed like a matador?” said Rakkim.

“I thought it would cheer you up.”

“You thought it would cheer you up.”

“That too.” She squeezed his hand. “How are you really feeling?”

Rakkim started up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Sarah was right behind him. They stopped at the eighteenth landing, the top floor, both of them panting. Rakkim gave it a count of five, then started back down. When they got to the bottom, they did it again.

“That’s enough,” Sarah gasped, back at the eighteenth-floor landing. “After lunch. We can run up Mount Everest. Or swim. Swim the Pacific.”

Rakkim bent slightly forward, rested his hands on his knees. He spit into the dusty corner. There was a tiny spot of blood in it.

They walked down the stairs and out the door on the main level. Stepped out into the morning sunshine. Eighty-six degrees and no humidity. Hot-air balloons drifted in the distance, not the dull security blimps that ringed Seattle, but brightly colored balloons from which tourists could appreciate the landscape.

“I still don’t understand why we’re still alive,” said Sarah as they cut across the green lawn to the sidewalk. “Why didn’t the assassin just kill us? If Fancy had any proof of her father’s part in planting the fourth bomb, it’s gone now.”

Rakkim glanced around as they walked. He hadn’t been outside since he was shot and the open air smelled clean. Vegas was beautiful-the air crystalline, the Spring Mountains to the west set in high relief against the deep, cobalt blue sky. Rakkim had never seen such clear skies, either at home or in the Bible Belt. If anything, the Bible Belt was more polluted than the Islamic Republic, due to their dependency on coal. He looked back at the hospital, shielding his eyes. There was no way to appreciate how big it was from the inside. Open too, with plenty of glass and a lobby that faced the street. He had never seen a hospital without protective barriers around it to guard against truck bombs.

“So what does the Old One hope to gain by keeping us alive?” persisted Sarah.

“He’s keeping us alive now for the same reason he didn’t kill us before-he’s using us to find his vulnerabilities. Things he missed. Things that could implicate him.” Rakkim took in the cars and buses cruising past, hydrogen-fueled and almost silent. Voice-activated too, the steering wheel an anachronism. “If Fatima Abdullah was a threat to him before, she’s no threat now. The Old One must think there are other loose ends. Someone else who knows too much.”

“Like my mother. She’s the one he really wants to find.”

“I still don’t understand why the Old One didn’t implant a tracker.”

“Darwin didn’t need a tracker to find us in Disneyland. He did it the old-fashioned way.”

Rakkim kept silent. It was true, but he didn’t have to like it.

They walked on, both of them picking up the pace, glad to leave the hospital behind. Casinos loomed before them as they reached the edge of the Strip, a cascade of neon laser light and fanciful designs. Arabian Nights. Renaissance Italy. Star Wars. Mandarin China. Dinosaurs and musketeers. The two of them were still mostly alone on the sidewalk, tourists from the nearby hotels preferring the elevated moving sidewalks that took them from casino to casino. Tourists from the Bible Belt and the Islamic Republic, plenty of Asians and Europeans too. Even a few Dutch fundamentalists-even stricter doctrinally than the Black Robes-haranguing other Muslims for their sins.

“We should contact Redbeard, let him know we’re here,” said Sarah. “We should warn Colarusso too.”

“The last thing we want is Redbeard coming here to rescue us, and even if Darwin was telling the truth about using Colarusso’s informant, it’s too late for a call to do any good.”

“So we do nothing?”

“For now, the Old One is giving free rein. No guards. No chaperones. For the time being, we should assume that anything that’s easy to do is what the Old One wants us to do. So we don’t run the first chance we get. We don’t call Redbeard. We wait. We act on our timetable, not his.”

“You said now,” said Sarah, stopping to look at one of the storefront souvenir stands. Small plastic sci-fi robots did a preprogrammed ballet, excusing themselves in five languages as they banged into each other. “You said we do nothing now.”

“There was a busboy at the Blue Moon that I helped out once. Peter. He had ambitions, but there were…obstacles because of his bloodline.”

“He was Jewish?”

“His grandmother was. That was enough. We had a regular customer who flew into the capital a couple times a year to visit family. Supervisor at the China Doll Hotel and Casino. I introduced them. Called in a favor. Peter has been working there for a couple years now. He’s already a pit boss. Peter Bowen.” Rakkim picked up a miniature Vegas skyline enclosed in clear plastic, intricately detailed, diodes flashing to mirror the laser show of the real thing. $2.99. The plastic skylines were the modern analog of the antique snow globes that Spider collected. Rakkim could still see the shattered World Trade Center on the floor of the deserted underground lair, and he wondered if Spider was safe. If he and his family had escaped the Black Robes.

“What’s wrong?” said Sarah.

Rakkim put the skyline back. “You should go on a shopping spree. Hit all the sites. Follow all the usual procedures. Somewhere along the line you should stop in at the China Doll and say hello to Peter. He told me once that the border of the Nevada Free State was a semipermeable membrane. Easy to get in, but hard to get out. Undetected, anyway, but I’m sure Peter considers that more of an opportunity than an obstacle. Tell him we want to get across the border. Let him know that there’s a very powerful local who’s got his eyes on us, so he’s going to have to factor that in. Tell him we’ll pay whatever it costs. Knowing Peter, he won’t charge us a thing. Make the offer anyway.”

“Why don’t I just offer him oral?” Sarah said brightly as she riffled through a rack of souvenir T-shirts. “It’s a beautiful day, maybe I should suggest the full gulp.”

Rakkim stared at her. “I was being patronizing?”

“Follow all the usual procedures? Peter won’t charge us, but make the offer anyway? Just a micro patronizing.”

“Look, use your own judgment in dealing with Peter. Just tell him we want to get to Seattle as soon as possible.”

“Why aren’t we going back to Southern California? We should try to locate any of Safar Abdullah’s former coworkers, see if they have any information.”

“We’re out of our element in California. The only contact I had betrayed us. No, we go home. We’ll talk with Redbeard. See if he’s willing to help. Things haven’t been going very well for him either. Maybe he’s ready to take a chance.”

“Why do you get to decide?”

“Fine. You decide. Consider the assets we have in California. The access to data. Consider our familiarity with the city. The degree of back-channel communication we have with the local authorities. Consider our chances of finding people who worked with Abdullah twenty-five years ago. People who probably had nothing to do with his trip to China. Factor in that the Black Robes are on alert now. Go on, you make the call.”

Sarah pretended to examine a T-shirt. “We’ll go to Seattle.” She slapped the T-shirt back on the rack, the hanger banging against the metal. “I just hate giving up.”

“It’s called a strategic retreat. That’s what you do when you’re getting your asses kicked and you want to regroup and try again.”

Sarah fluffed her hair. “I think I’m going to do that shopping we talked about. Do you want me to walk you back to the hospital?”

“I got a card today from Darwin.” Rakkim stared at the enormous black pyramid in the distance. The Luxor. Oldest casino on the Strip. “It was on my bedstand when I woke up this morning.”

“What did it say?”

“‘Please convey my apologies to Miss Dougan. I was a little overheated on the flight from Disneyland. I’m sure you understand.’” Rakkim kept his eyes on the Luxor. His doctor said it was scheduled for demolition next year. “What does Darwin have to apologize for? I asked you what had happened after I passed out, and you said you barely spoke on the flight.”

“He’s trying to upset you.”

“It’s working.”

“What did he mean, ‘I’m sure you understand’?” Her eyes flashed. “You see, I could ask the same kind of questions you do. That’s what he wants.” She faced him. “Darwin tried to scare me, and he did scare me, for a moment anyway. Mostly he repulsed me. The strangest thing though…when I think about the conversation now, I think Darwin made a mistake talking to me.” She waved at the brightly clad tourists on the skybridge. “Darwin kept asking me questions, pretending to know more than he does. He has no idea what we’re looking for. The Old One doesn’t trust him with the whole picture, and it bothers Darwin. He feels insulted.”

Rakkim smiled and she smiled back at him. Eager. From the pleasure she took in her insight, Darwin must have done more than try to scare her.

Sarah was serious again. “When you first meet Darwin, he’s so mild and amenable that it’s as if there’s no one there. He’s just so…still. Later though, when you get a really good look at him, you see that there’s this massive ego at the center of him. An ego that can never be filled, never be satisfied. Most of us are defined by an emotional interaction. You can tell who we are by who we’re responsible for. Who we care about. Who we love. Darwin, though…he’s a universe unto himself. The one and only. That’s why he seems so still, because there’s nothing but him as far as his eye can see.” She brushed her lips across Rakkim’s. “Do you want to know a secret?” She bit his earlobe. “If I were the Old One…I’d be scared of Darwin.”

“Let’s go to your hotel,” said Rakkim. “I can go back to the hospital later.”

“Do you think you’re well enough?”

“I’ll just have to stay horizontal. No rough stuff.”

Sarah showed the tip of her tongue. “Where’s the fun in that?”