Sins of the Assassin

Chapter 22

Coming here today might have been a mistake, but Sarah’s mother needed a break from their apartment, and Michael needed some fresh air. Best place to hide was in a crowd, that’s what Rakkim said. Sarah wished he were here. She would have felt safer.

“Your father loved the Saint Sebastian Day street fair,” Katherine Dougan said to Sarah as the merrymakers eddied around them. “Even after we converted, we always used to sneak out to one of the smaller fairs for chili dogs and beer. He said he liked them better than the elaborate ones, but I think he also thought they were safer-not so many prying eyes. A man in his position…he was supposed to be a moral example, but he had too much life in him for that.”

Maybe a thousand people milled around the intersection in the middle of the Ravenna district, one of the many Catholic neighborhoods in Seattle-the festival was a chance for Christians, moderates, and moderns to mingle, one of the few instances outside the Zone where such social interaction was accepted. Sarah watched the juggler in the old Uncle Sam suit walk past, tossing a cantaloupe, a banana, a ball-peen hammer, and a large kitchen knife in the air, the four items fountaining round and round.

Michael, perched on Sarah’s shoulders, clapped his hands at the juggler, cried out, “Faster, faster.”

Sarah and Katherine were dressed as moderns, in head scarves and brightly colored veils, but wearing baggy trousers and athletic shoes in case they had to make a run for it. The only people looking for Sarah would be the Old One’s spies, but anyone with a long memory might recognize Katherine, and that would be a real problem. President Kingsley had quietly removed her from the most-wanted list a couple years ago, and Spider had hacked the central computer system, expunging her biometric profile along with Sarah’s and Rakkim’s, but that merely protected against surveillance cameras and border-control checks. Idle curiosity could still be disastrous. Sarah rearranged her own veil, made sure her features were obscured.

Relax, Sarah; the only police in evidence were a couple of Catholic patrolmen wandering around, stuffing their faces with sweets and smiling at the women. A lone Black Robe elbowed his way through the revelers. Relax, Sarah, enjoy the day. Moderns were beneath the notice of the Black Robes, considered already damned.

Michael chirped happily, as though reading her thoughts.

The streets were lined with booths selling sausages, burgers, ravioli, deep-dish apple pie, cotton candy, pecan rolls, ascension candy, and other treats, plus games of chance like balloon darts and random-access bingo. Under the counter, homemade beer and wine, flags of the old USA, and satellite decoders were available. Forbidden-image vendors and magicians milled among the gawkers, local musicians playing on every corner. Dogs ran wild. The fair was loud and raucous-unstructured, uninhibited, and slightly wicked fun.

Above the throng floated banners picturing Saint Sebastian himself, a handsome youth, naked except for a white loincloth, his perfect body pierced by arrows. One of the most popular treats at the festival were Holy Blood Drops, hot cinnamon candy blessed by one of the priests in attendance. A rotund vendor offered a bag of the cinnamon drops to the Black Robe, who cursed him, threatened him with a flail. The vendor laughed and the crowd laughed with him, some of them chanting the rosary, and the Black Robe pushed on to harass someone else.

Katherine lifted an edge of her pale green veil, nibbled at a huge ball of pink cotton candy. Her hijab had been pushed back in the insouciant modern style, exposing her lustrous red hair, shot with silver. “I’m so glad you suggested we come here today. The people, the music, the dancing…” She looked around. “It’s…almost perfect.”

“You’re still thinking of Daddy, aren’t you?” Sarah felt Michael playing with her hair.

“We used to bring you here,” said Katherine. “You rode on his shoulders just like Michael is riding on yours.”

“I…I have a vague memory of that,” said Sarah.

“You could see the whole world from his shoulders,” said Katherine. “That’s what you used to say.”

Sarah’s father, James Dougan, had been the first chief of State Security in the new Islamic Republic. A fine, handsome man, a former Olympic athlete, his moderation and good looks did much to assuage the Christians during the transition. When he promised to safeguard their liberty, just like that of other citizens, they believed him. When the fundamentalists demanded that idolaters and homosexuals be hung from lampposts, Dougan stepped in, arrested the troublemakers, and threatened to jail the leadership of the Black Robes if they didn’t rein in their followers. Safeguarding the home front from enemies domestic and foreign had been equally challenging.

A hijacked jumbo jet still jutted out of Elliott Bay twenty-five years later, a near miss on the Presidential Palace by a group of rabid Christians. The Space Needle had been toppled in a terrorist attack. The Mormons had continued to make mischief, carpeting the outlying areas of their territory with IEDs. The successes of State Security had been rarely touted for fear of inflaming the populace-three attempts on the president’s life thwarted, a plan to blow the Grand Coulee Dam broken up, an incendiary attack on the main gas refinery in Los Angeles averted. Still a young man and wildly popular, Dougan had been talked about as the next president, when Kingsley decided to step down.

It might have happened too, but twenty-four years ago, James Dougan had been assassinated by members of his own security detail on orders from the Old One. Dougan’s second in command, his brother Redbeard, had narrowly escaped death himself. After assuming control of State Security, Redbeard ruthlessly hunted down the perpetrators, rolling up much of the Old One’s network. Many innocents were killed in the hunt, many falsely accused. Katherine, framed by the Old One as a conspirator in the murder of her husband, had been forced to flee. Sarah, still a toddler, had been left behind and reared by Redbeard. Raised a Muslim, Sarah remained a Muslim, but in her twenty-year exile in a nunnery, Katherine had converted back to Catholicism, a reconversion that in and of itself would have warranted a death sentence for apostasy.

A man on stilts dressed as the pope walked unsteadily through the crowd, trailing incense in his wake. Michael reached up for him and the man blessed him, pretended to pull a chocolate out of Michael’s ear and gave it to him. Michael stared at him, then popped it in his mouth, applauding.

“Great thing about being Catholic is that you’re allowed to make fun of everyone,” Katherine whispered to Sarah, the noise and bustle around them shielding their words from any listening ears. “Paupers to pope, we’re all equal in God’s sight, all of us equally sinful and foolish.” She blessed the man on stilts with her half-eaten cotton candy, using it as a miter. “Try doing that with one of your ayatollahs.”

A young Catholic couple walked past, holding hands, feeding each other rolled crepes filled with strawberry jam. Sarah watched them out of the corner of her eye and missed Rakkim even more.

“A good Muslim woman should avoid passion or desire,” recited Katherine. “Isn’t that right? A good Muslim woman does not make her own decisions. Her goal is to become quiet on the inside.”

“I don’t want to talk about religion, Mom,” said Sarah.

“Do you feel quiet on the inside, Sarah? I never did; even when I wanted to believe, I never felt quiet,” said Katherine. “A woman like you, smart and strong and independent…don’t you find even your moderate Islam suffocating?”

“Did you? No one forced you to embrace Islam. Yet you did.”

“Things were different then,” said Katherine. “We were suffocating in something worse…a false liberalism in which nothing was a sin, and everything was tolerated.”

“I’ve studied the prewar days, Mother-”

“You’ve studied, but you weren’t there,” said Katherine, green eyes flashing. “You don’t know what it was really like. They made movies in those days, movies that were shown in every town and shopping center, movies in which women were hung upside down, tortured with power drills, saws, and blowtorches, and the strangest thing of all, people were not ashamed to be seen walking into the theater. No one was ashamed. Shame itself was the only thing shameful.”

“Mother?” Sarah indicated Michael listening from atop her shoulders.

“I’m just saying”-Katherine slipped her arm into Sarah’s-“after what we were living with, Islam seemed like an answer to prayer. The pope was a ditherer, and the Protestants…Your father used to say, When a religion loses sight of what true evil is, it’s no longer a religion, it’s a bowling league. Islam offered the clarity of right and wrong, good and bad, and I embraced it eagerly. I make no excuses…” She squeezed Sarah’s arm as the Black Robe pushed his way through the crowd, a tall, scrawny man with a sharp nose and a mouth full of crooked teeth. “We were happy to trade away a little freedom for the comfort of a clear set of rules.” She eased them out of the path of the approaching Black Robe, a tall, scrawny ascetic. “We just didn’t count on who would be setting the rules.”

Sarah slightly inclined her gaze as the Black Robe passed, as did her mother.

“Aii!” shrieked the Black Robe, clutching his bare head.

Michael giggled, shook the black turban that he had snatched from the Black Robe.

“Insolent bastard!” barked the Black Robe, snatching his turban back, the fabric unrolling onto the ground.

Michael laughed, clapped his hands.

The Black Robe raised his flail, whipped the long, flexible wooden rod back and forth, then swung at Michael.

Sarah caught the blow on her raised arm, gasping at the pain. She clawed at the Black Robe’s eyes and he hit her even harder, enraged now.

“Give me the brat, you harlot!” the Black Robe sputtered, flailing at her.

Sarah stumbled to the ground, shielding Michael with her body, taking the blows that rained down on her back. Everyone around them made room, silenced by the Black Robe’s fury, unwilling to try and stop him. Christians did not lay hands on a Muslim cleric. Ever. She cried out as the Black Robe’s whip lashed across her kidneys. Her stunner was in her pocket, a palm-size device with enough juice to zap the Black Robe or anyone else into unconsciousness. Illegal for a woman to possess, of course. She reached for the stunner, felt it, but the Black Robe’s flail kept thrashing her. Like being stung by a swarm of wasps…

“Mercy!” Katherine approached the Black Robe, palms pressed together in supplication. “In the name of Allah the Merciful!”

The Black Robe spat in her face, raised his arm to strike Sarah again, and Katherine kneed him in the groin, the force of her knee lifting him off the ground, his robes fluttering around him like the petals of a black lily.

The Black Robe collapsed, lay there groaning beside a crushed snow-cone cup, his mouth making feeble movements as he tried to breathe.

Katherine pulled Sarah to her feet. Sarah’s veil had come undone.

Clutching Michael to her, Sarah ran through the crowd, Katherine right behind her.

“S-stop them!” The Black Robe stood partway, then fell back down, clutching himself. “Stop them!”

The crowd closed ranks after Sarah and Katherine, so that the fleeing women and child were lost from the Black Robe’s sight.