Heart of the Assassin (6 page)

"What can we do about it?"

Sarah could see what Leo was talking about now--the blimps around the palace
had
shifted slightly. She started down the ladder, feet banging onto the steps in her haste.

"Wait!" said Leo.

"I have to get back to Michael."

"Wait up!"

She was on the ground now, walking fast, trying not to panic. The houses with their late-night music and laughter no longer seemed an indicator of the inhabitants' freedom, but of their ignorance. What had Leo called them? Sleepwalkers.

"Can you
please
slow down?" Leo called after her.

Sarah started running.

Something was wrong, the Old One sensed it. He should have been pleased--earlier today, Lester Gravenholtz had killed the Aztlan oil minister, the first step in his plan to reshape the geopolitical landscape. In New Fallujah, ibn-Azziz's loyalty remained unquestioned, and with him, control of the Black Robes. Both the Republic and the Belt had fractious populations and weaklings governing them. The time for a strong man to appear was close at hand, and yet...

The Old One felt rested, but the excitement, the heat, the erotic tingle at his nerve ends was missing. Sex was always his first instinct after a session.
Always.
He tilted his chair to the upright position, took a few more unhurried breaths of pure oxygen before beckoning Massakar to remove the mask.

"Are you feeling better, Mahdi?" asked Massakar, his chief physician, a short Pakistani with tiny, delicate hands and bags under his eyes.

The Old One examined his reflection in the mirrored wall of the recovery room, tapped under his chin. His skin was taut, his eyes clear. His steel gray hair had regained its shine, and his upper lip had lost the indentations that so vexed him. He felt better after his rejuvenation treatment, better than he had felt in weeks, his blood cleansed of impurities, his lungs ionized, his system restored to its natural vigor by Massakar's technicians and their miraculous machines, may Allah be praised. He stood up, naked and unashamed before his own critical gaze. No, something was wrong.

After all these years, the Old One knew his body intimately; he sensed every heartbeat, every pulse, every sag and ripple in his flesh.... He stretched...and felt a slight heaviness in his limbs, a weariness. This is what dying feels like, thought the Old One, the first glimpse of the yawning abyss, a whisper that would slowly grow to a scream.

"Mahdi?" Massakar steepled his fingertips like a merchant fearful of losing a sale.

The Old One stared at Massakar.

Massakar lowered his eyes, trembling.

"What did you do to me?" asked the Old One, not raising his voice.

"My b-best, as always, master."

The Old One held out his hands. There was the faintest hint of yellow at the base of his cuticles. He plucked the thin skin on the back of his hand, released it...watched how long it took to smooth out. He looked up at Massakar. "Your treatments have not fully restored me."

"Yes...I know."

"Did you think I would not notice?"

"After last month's session, I thought...perhaps the instruments needed to be recalibrated." Massakar licked his thin lips. "But this time...I knew they were accurate."

"So my decline began
last
month?"

Massakar rubbed his small hands together as though washing them. "The decline only became statistically relevant last month. I first noticed certain...anomalies in the readings three months ago."

The Old One watched Massakar squirm. "What sort of anomalies?"

Massakar smoothed his white tunic. "A slight decline in liver function and renal output. A minute loss of cardiac elasticity."

"So replace my liver and kidneys, swap out this heart for a new one. You've done that before. What's different now?"

Massakar stiffened. "It's not...organ failure we're dealing with, Mahdi. It's a systemic breakdown. Deterioration at the
cellular
level. My skills are inadequate to reverse this. Perhaps another doctor, a better doctor--"

The old one waved him silent. "No, you are the best...as was your father before you, and your grandfather." He reached out, wiped away the doctor's tears. "I remember you when you were a child...and the other boys would tease you. You would cry even as you beat them, so fierce you were, and weeping all the time."

Massakar hung his head. "Forgive me, Mahdi."

The Old One stared straight ahead, trying to compose himself. It took every bit of his courage. The only sound in the room was the faint hum of the air-filtration unit. So this is how it ends, he thought, imagining his cells huffing and puffing like cartoon slaves building a pyramid, growing more fatigued by the moment, until finally..."How long?"

Massakar looked up, blinking. "Master?"

"How
long
do I have?"

"I...I can't--"

"Make an educated guess,
Doctor.
"

Massakar seemed to draw strength from being addressed by his professional title. "Three or four years, if the rate of decline continues uniformly. Less if there is a cascade effect on the major organs, which is...possible." He tugged at his lower lip. "Increasing your rejuvenation sessions to twice a month may help, but--"

"Thank you for your assessment."

Massakar fell to his knees, kissed the Old One's hand.

The Old One beckoned him to rise. "This information...it must be our secret. Not all of my subjects are as steadfast as you."

Massakar wiped his eyes. "Shall I send in the Abyssinian to dress you?"

"No, I think today...I shall dress myself." The Old One waited until Massakar backed out of the recovery room and closed the door behind him before slipping on his clothes. He took his time. Buttoning his white cotton shirt. Zipping his trousers, the gray summer wool English trousers from the cramped shop on Savile Road that smelled of pipe tobacco. Tucking in the shirt, his abdomen still firm. Slipping the titanium cuff links through the fabric with a faint sound, the click of the bezel. The silk necktie slid through his fingers as he tied a perfect Windsor knot, his thumb pressing a dimple. He pulled on his socks with their pattern of tiny clocks...ironic now. Wiggled his toes in his handmade leather shoes. Every sensation was suddenly heightened by Massakar's diagnosis. A blessing, he told himself. Allah has given me a blessing. First he gave me time. Then he gave me an ending. Yes, a great blessing.

He didn't believe that for an instant.

His reflection in the mirror showed a healthy, vigorous man in his sixties, although he was over 150. He was still almost six feet tall, his stature undiminished by the years. Smooth-shaven to allay suspicion. A strong, prominent nose. Dark eyes, alert as ever. Thin lips, a sign of cruelty, an elder in his tribe had noted long ago, but the Old One was not cruel, not at all. He was
clear.
He was certain. The elder was dust now, all of them dust.

The Old One stepped briskly through the door into an anteroom, and then through the private door into his suite...found Ibrahim, his eldest son and chief advisor, waiting. And Baby. The two of them glaring at each other.

Baby was twenty-three, slim and high-breasted, the poisonous flower of Southern womanhood. A daughter he had forgotten until a year ago, one of the many seeds planted across the earth, beautiful girls raised among the kaffirs in the Belt and Russia and China, raised among the faithful in Arabia and Europe. Most he never even saw, just occasionally read reports of their marriages to powerful men, and the steady stream of information they fed back to him. The power of the marital bed. Baby had shown up at his Miami compound last year without an invitation, along with a human killing machine named Lester Gravenholtz. Gravenholtz offered some unique possibilities, but it was Baby who was the true prize. No wonder Ibrahim hated her.

"Father," said Ibrahim, bowing.

"Father," said Baby, voice sultry with promise. Her dress rustled around her long legs as she bowed, her honey blond hair falling onto her bare shoulders. She wore a simple, brightly colored silk dress cut high up one thigh in the contemporary Cuban style, the spoils of one of her many shopping trips with his concubines. She looked up at him as she rose, her mouth ripe and wanton as a plum.

Ibrahim straightened, taller than the Old One, hard and stern as a knotty stick. "I
told
this creature that you and I had private matters to discuss."

"You're up late, child," the Old One said to Baby. "It's almost dawn."

"I was restless," drawled Baby, hazel eyes playful. She walked slowly toward him, hips swaying. "Thought I'd come by and see if you wanted company."

"Her spies told her that I was on my way to see you," said Ibrahim. "She can't bear to think that I--"

"Her
spies
?" The Old One looked at Baby. "Barely a year in our company, and already she has cultivated a network of informants. What a remarkable woman."

Baby curtsied.

"I don't find her nearly as amusing as you do, Father," Ibrahim said tightly.

"You don't find anything amusing." The Old One flung open the double doors and stepped out onto the veranda of his penthouse on the fortieth floor of the Grande Hotel, Miami. One of his many corporations owned the hotel, the Old One keeping the top seven floors for himself and his retinue. "Leave me, both of you."

"But, Father," said Ibrahim, "we have to talk about--"

"Are you still here, boy?" Old One leaned against the pink marble railing, watching the Atlantic roll in. He stayed immobile until he heard the door to the suite close behind them, then allowed himself a small sigh. He slowly closed his fists lest they start to shake and undo his confidence. Best to survey the world that Allah had laid out for him, rather than linger on his own sudden mortality.

He stood there, marveling as the moonlight turned the peaks of the waves silver. Raised in the desert, he still found the ocean overwhelming in its beauty, the sea air clean and bracing. Ibrahim disapproved of his being outside, had ordered digital chaff generators built into the walls to prevent eavesdropping, and stationed heavily armed fishing boats offshore to protect him from missile attack. Foolishness. Well-intentioned, but foolishness just the same.
Anyone
could be killed. Ask Darwin. The Old One's expression twisted at the memory of his prized assassin, dead now over four years. Such a loss. Darwin specialized in killing those who could not be killed. The rich and powerful surrounded by bodyguards, politicians hidden away behind high walls and vast armies, protected by rings of elaborate technology. All had died at the Old One's command. Now Darwin too was dead, and the Old One could still not understand how it had happened.

The breeze shifted, brought the smell of ripe decay to the Old One's nostrils, as though some vast leviathan had been slain in the deep, and only now had risen to the surface, stinking in the moonlight.

Just before dawn, barely an hour after he left the Bridge of Skulls, Rakkim approached the sentries on one of the main checkpoints out of New Fallujah. Jenkins might have given him up and issued an alert, but Rakkim didn't break stride as the sentries hefted their weapons, muttering to each other.

"I need a vehicle," Rakkim demanded, his green kaffiyeh flapping in the wind.

The lead sentry, a haggard man with a curling beard, bowed to him, pointed at a sedan nearby. "Take my car,
shahid,
and may Allah bless you on your path to martyrdom." The other sentries bowed, muttered their own blessings, afraid to meet his gaze.

Rakkim ignored them as he got into the car and drove off.

Shahid.
Martyr for God. One who found eternal life through blowing himself to pieces, sending the infidel to hell as he himself ascended.
Shahid,
high praise in New Fallujah, praise wrapped in fear.

Rakkim was no
shahid,
but what was he? Jenkins had been right, Rakkim was no shadow warrior, not anymore. An assassin can only be killed by God or another assassin...that's what Jenkins had told him. So, how had Rakkim killed Darwin five years ago? How was such a thing possible? Rakkim had asked himself that question more times than he could count.

Darwin was the superior warrior, faster, more agile, unburdened by conscience, the greatest assassin the Fedayeen had ever turned out. It should have been Rakkim who died that day, bleeding from a hundred cuts as Darwin taunted him...until Rakkim threw his knife into Darwin's laughing mouth. An impossible throw but he had made it. He still saw Darwin's lips working around the hilt of the knife, trying to speak, his last words inaudible to anyone but God. That should have been the end of Darwin, but it seemed that both heaven and hell had rejected the master assassin.

Rakkim bumped down the road toward the second gated checkpoint, keeping his speed steady as the machine guns swiveled toward him. A huge security agent stood in the center of the road, one hand upraised. Rakkim kept driving. The man stepped aside at the last minute, shouted
"Allahu Akbar!"
The gate rose slowly, scraping the roof of Rakkim's car as he drove past.

For months after killing Darwin, Rakkim had felt...different. His reflexes were faster and his combat skills improved dramatically--he killed instinctively now, killed in ways he had no training in, and he took a pleasure in it that he never had before. Even his dreams had changed, like rummaging around in someone else's memories, and most unsettling of all, Sarah seemed even more attracted to him, their lovemaking raw and uninhibited.

Rakkim veered around a huge crater in the unlit road. A gigantic electrical tower canted in the distance, one of its supporting legs demolished, wires drooping. The hillsides around the city had been stripped bare of trees, houses bulldozed, businesses burned to the ground. The Grand Mullah had wanted everything around New Fallujah destroyed, all modern conveyances ruined, forcing the residents into the city, and under his control.

El Presidente Argusto, supreme ruler of the Aztlan Empire, strode across the command center of his hacienda, his silver-heeled boots clacking on the marble floor, one hand on the ornate hilt of his sword. He listened to the rhythmic echo of his footsteps, and it was all he could do to stop himself from drawing the sword and slashing at the air in frustration.

Hector Morales, his secretary of state, stood nearby, dressed all in black, head crested with a skullcap of blue-green hummingbird feathers, waiting to be recognized.

Argusto walked right past him. Let him wait.

Lean and graceful, Argusto was as vain as he was handsome, his beard a thin line running along his jaw, his dark hair carefully curled and oiled. He had trained to be a matador before becoming a pilot, and he still had an appreciation for pageantry, his clothes tailored to emphasize his lean waist and powerful physique. On days honoring Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, el presidente entered the Tenochtitlan arena and killed the fiercest black bull available. The applause from the crowd had sounded like thunder.

Morning light edged through the windows of the hacienda, dew glistening on the green lawns. His beloved jet interceptors flew guard overhead, left contrails in the dawn. As always, he wished he were flying, rather than forced to attend to matters of state.

Morales cleared his throat.

Argusto had been many things in his life: the youngest air ace in the war against the Yucatan, the youngest chief of staff of the Aztlan air force and now the youngest president of the nation, the conqueror who had annexed all of former Central America and the traditional lands of the north. More to come,
yanquis,
more to come. At Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, Mexico had been forced to cede over one hundred million square miles of its land to the United States. The whole American Southwest offered to the
yanqui
invader on bended knee, turned over for the princely sum of $15 million. Insult added to injury. He tapped the hilt of his sword with his thumb. The payback had just begun.

Argusto listened to the roar of the jets overhead, inhaled the power of their passing. In seven years, he had sliced the army in half, while fully modernizing the air force, tripling the number of planes until his air command was second to none in the world. The army generals had complained bitterly, howling at the loss of their budgets and their men, but his vision had prevailed. Air power was Aztlan's destiny, particularly after nuclear weapons had been outlawed. Land armies were sloppy and killed too many people, but with their laser-targeted munitions his planes could cripple the infrastructure of any nation and leave the population intact. The Aztec empire had been built on slave labor. Aztlan, the reborn empire, would do the same.

First, though, this...atrocity in Miami had to be dealt with. His brother-in-law, the oil minister, slaughtered like a cow. The indignity to Argusto and the nation must be avenged. Venezuela was the most likely culprit, furious with Aztlan for doubling the tolls for their ships to traverse the Canal. Or perhaps Brazil was responsible, a veiled warning against Argusto's territorial ambitions.

Argusto's boot heels clicked along the floor as he turned the problem over in his mind. Sooner or later he would find out the guilty party, and then his great silvery birds would wreck vengeance from the sky. A grand day was coming.

Rakkim turned off his headlights, driving by starlight now, invisible to anyone who might be watching. He bounced along the winding road with nothing but the sound of the wind to keep him company. Being alone didn't stop him from listening for Darwin's voice, or looking to see him capering by the side of the road, but there was no one there...not this time.

Killing Darwin had changed him, but a mission to the Belt a year ago had made Rakkim realize to what degree he was no longer himself. Captured by some murderous hillbillies, Rakkim had been hauled off to a clapboard shanty, forced to drink moonshine laced with turpentine and handle snakes as a test of his faith. Bitten by a timber rattler, Rakkim writhed on the floor of the church, dying. In his hour of need, Darwin had appeared to him, mocking his weakness, contemptuous as ever.

Hey, dumbass. You just going to lie there and die?

"Leave me alone," Rakkim had said. "You're dead. I killed you."

I was playing with you and you got lucky. That'll teach me a lesson.

"What do you want?"

I want to be alive.

"I'd just kill you again."

Darwin smiled.

"What's so funny?"

You.

Rakkim watched the timber rattler that had bit him slide toward him across the wood floor. The snake stopped, triangular head flicking side to side, then retreated.

Rakkim felt himself drifting, barely able to keep his eyes open. "Go away. I got no time for ghosts."

Ghost? Oh, I'm a lot more than that.
Darwin moved closer.
You don't look so good, Rikki.

Rakkim tried to get to his feet. Sat back down.

Don't try and stand. Just relax and slow your heart down. You need time to metabolize the venom. Slower. You can do that, can't you?

"I don't need your help."

You need something.
Darwin shook his head.
I still can't believe you killed me. It's embarrassing.

"I killed two men in Seattle last month. Bodyguards for a Black Robe. Good fighters, ex-Fedayeen, and I killed them so fast...so very fast. I'm not even sure how I did it."

All that blood.
Darwin's laugh sounded like wasps buzzing.
Kind of intoxicating, isn't it?

"I'm not like you."

Don't worry. You're getting there.

It had been a year now and Rakkim hadn't seen Darwin again. Hadn't sensed his presence, not even in his nightmares. He still had Darwin's killing skills, but he was alone again inside his skin, and grateful for it. A brown rabbit darted across the road, practically ran under the wheels of the car before it scooted into the brush on the other side. Rakkim accelerated, happy to have avoided crushing it. That was something.