Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

Samira felt something tickle her and looked down. Kane’s knife was poised with its tip ready to plunge into her crotch. “Hardly a lethal blow, as mine would have been.” She smiled sweetly.

“Ah, but nevertheless, you would have been worthless as a whore.” He was smiling, too, but the look in his eyes was cold, sneering. He withdrew his knife and backed away from her blade. “Of course, you know that if you had used yours, your next order would have been to blow yourself up in some meaningless little attack on a kibbutz that wouldn’t rate three inches in the newspapers.”

Samira kept the smile on her face though she seethed at the insulting insinuation that she was nothing but a whore to be used by al Qaeda. “I look forward to dying for Allah and Palestine in any way I am called upon,” she said. “Perhaps, you will martyr yourself with me…my love.”

Kane laughed. “I love it that you hate me so much, my dangerous little bitch,” he said. “It makes fucking you that much more pleasurable for me.”

Indeed, Samira wanted to kill him so much at that moment that tears came to her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. But she still kept up the pretense and pouted, “You say such cruel things.”

Again, Kane mocked her. “Ah, such a perfect assassin, but a lousy actress. You’re here doing whatever I say because your masters want to keep me happy and for some perverse reason, I’m sure, using you like a piece of meat gives me great pleasure and relieves the stresses of such a…pressure-filled life. It is so much fun watching you choke on the words you’d like to say.”

Samira studied his face, wishing she could carve it with her knife. He didn’t look like the Andrew Kane she’d first met, not anymore. Even she had to admit that the work of Dr. Buchwald, a plastic surgeon, was amazing. Gone was the formerly, rather effete-looking blond with the pale blue eyes. He’d been replaced by a more rugged-looking man with a cleft in his rounder chin, wider cheeks and fuller lips, as well as larger, crooked nose-presumably from some old injury. The hair was now chestnut; the eyes no longer blue but brown, thanks to contact lens. He even had a thin white scar beneath his right eye, evidence of a traffic accident that never happened…at least not to Andrew Kane.

Still, she knew that the real Andrew Kane had never been what she’d seen on the outside. In her mind, the real Kane merely wore the physical characteristics of a man as a disguise or cloak. He reminded her of childhood stories her parents had told her from Arabian folklore and the Quran regarding the jinn.

Allah created man from sounding clay like the clay of pottery, her father would begin, gathering his children around on cold winter nights in Palestine. And the jinn He created from a smokeless flame of fire.

The jinn were spirits-sometimes formless, sometimes inhabiting the bodies of men and animals-and there were different sorts. Some were essentially harmless, even helpful. But others were evil and dedicated to tormenting humans-deceiving and guiding them away from the true path.

The worst are called shayateen, her father had whispered, looking around and over his shoulder as though leery of eavesdroppers in the shadows. His children followed his gaze, half-expecting to see some furtive movement in the dark corners or a shadow pass across a doorway. They serve Iblis, the Evil One, and the strongest among them are called afreet.

Of course back then, in better times, such bedtime tales would end with her father jumping up with a shout to startle his boys and girl, who would shriek, then laugh and never seemed to grow tired of the game. The memory stirred a rare longing in Azzam, who blinked back the tears. She wondered if her father knew that the jinn were real and inhabited men like Andrew Kane. “Audhu billah,” she muttered.

“What was that, my darling?” Kane asked. “Did you say ‘I seek refuge in Allah’? Isn’t that something you superstitious desert folk say to ward off evil?”

“It is just a saying,” Azzam replied. “Like ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes.”

“Hmmm…could have sworn it was a little stronger than that,” Kane said, and then chuckled. “But I am doing rather well with my language lessons, don’t you think? Good thing, as it looks like I may have to spend some time in your part of the world after we’ve accomplished our task in New York.”

“Yes, you are learning quickly,” Azzam replied. And yes, she thought, it will be difficult for anyone to recognize this Andrew Kane. The scars from the surgery were mostly healed and one had to look close to see them. Even his body had changed. Although reasonably fit in the manner of a wealthy New York lawyer who visited the gym a few days a week to work out and talk business when she first met him, ever since his escape, he’d trained religiously until there was tight definition to his muscles and more speed and coordination in his movement.

The training included working out almost daily in martial arts with Samira, who was teaching him the Filipino knife-fighting techniques of Kali. Kane had proved an apt student there, too. The cold and efficient nature of using a knife as a weapon suited his personality. He was now sparring with her nearly at full speed. She always won the encounters easily if she concentrated and went all out, but he was progressing rapidly and was growing more difficult to beat if she wasn’t on her game.

The practice session ended when several large Arab men entered the room, half-dragging, half-pushing a blindfolded prisoner. Behind them, smiling uneasily, walked Dr. Buchwald and Bandar Al-Aziz bin Saud, the minor Saudi prince whose home they were using as a base of operations while Kane healed from his surgeries and set his plan in motion.

“Ah, Agent Vic Hodges of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” Kane said to the blindfolded man.

“What the hell is going on here?” Hodges replied angrily. “And what do you mean ‘Agent.’ I ain’t no goddamn federal agent. I’m just a redneck nigger hater trying to make a buck and screw the U.S. government at the same time. Now, are we going to talk guns and money or play this little game?”

“ ‘I’m just a redneck nigger hater,’” Kane mimicked, doing a passable imitation of his prisoner’s Deep South accent. “No, Agent Hodges, we will not be doing any business, except the business that I’m about to propose. So let’s drop the bullshit, which by the way, you are neck deep in right now.”

Kane nodded to one of the guards. “Remove the blindfold so Agent Hodges can see who he’s talking to.”

When the blindfold was pulled off, Hodges stood blinking in the sunny room as his eyes adjusted and his mind raced to find a way out of the fix he was in. His cover was that of an Aryan Nations gun dealer-that’s how he’d been introduced to Azzam, who’d been looking for a half dozen Colt M4 assault rifles and enough C4 plastic explosives to bring down a good-sized building. He didn’t like the idea of selling terrorists such a lethal arsenal, but his superior, Assistant Director Jon Ellis, had assured him that they were tracking Azzam’s every move and would know where the weapons were at all times. When they had a positive idea of what the target was going to be, they’d swoop in and catch the terrorists red-handed.

It was risky business, but then that was the nature of war. And make no mistake, there was a war going on beneath the American public’s radar that guys like him-a former agent with the U.S. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who’d volunteered for reassignment with Homeland Security after 9/11-had better win or Americans were going to have to get used to praying on their knees while facing east.