Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

“Who’s Samira Azzam?” Dugan asked.

“The black queen, I suspect-a Palestinian terrorist, linked to al Qaeda and now apparently working with Kane.”

“Is that all? I thought maybe she was dangerous or something.” Dugan chuckled, then sobered at the thought of the dead police officers. “I feel for their families-leave home to go to work, and someone shoots them dead because a terrorist wants to kill some old priest. I’ll pay my respects as soon as I get out of here…. So maybe the white knights are cops, like Fulton, or one of the attorneys who works for Butch?”

“Maybe,” Marlene said. “But he’s already had a whack at Fulton and seems to have moved on. However, you could be right, and Guma played a role in Kane’s downfall, so did V.T. But somehow I think it’s more dramatic than that.”

“Who then? Lucy? Tran?”

“Beats me. But Lucy doesn’t seem to fit the knight mold, and I don’t know that Kane is aware of Tran-he sort of showed up in the proverbial nick of time after Kane nabbed me and then disappeared back into the woodwork. He wasn’t mentioned in the newspapers or the police reports. But it does make me think that if I was planning on coming after Butch and me, I’d want to make sure John Jojola and Ned Blanchet were out of the way first. Now, there’s a couple of knights, right out of the Le Morte d’Arthur or at least Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage. ”

“Maybe you should warn them, then,” Dugan said.

“Yeah, in fact, I’m out of here, Father Mike,” Marlene said patting him gently on his forehead as she stood to leave. “I don’t have Jojola’s cell phone number with me, and Lucy refuses to carry one, so I better scoot.” She looked at her watch. “Ooh, and I’m running late for picking up the twins. They’re taking the subway home and I want to meet them at the station. They’ve been messing with the bodyguards, playing a game by trying to ditch them. Normally, Butch would be with them, too, but he’s helping Guma dig up some body, literally, on the Upper West Side. So I want to make sure they’re okay.”

Marlene left, pausing at the door to admonish the police officers sitting outside the door to “watch out for the old geezer for me.” Dugan had finally forced Alejandro to go back to his apartment at St. Malachy’s to sleep, but he had done so complaining that the cops couldn’t be trusted to stay alert. However, this pair was on edge and angry after what had happened, and she knew they wouldn’t be caught napping.

It was getting dark, and as Marlene got out of the cab at Houston and Crosby she spotted the twins exiting the subway station across the street. She started to call out to them but froze.

The twins had turned for an instant to look back at a tall man wearing a brown hooded sweatshirt who was walking directly behind them. It was hard to see their expressions in the failing light, but he obviously said something to them, and they turned back around and kept walking. She noticed that the man’s hands were in the front pocket of the sweatshirt. He’s got a gun, she thought and started to run south on Crosby. She wanted to get ahead of them, cross the street, and then meet them coming the other way.

As she ran, Marlene reached inside her purse for her gun. When she was almost to the intersection with Spring Street, she paused and looked back. The situation was worse than she thought. There weren’t many pedestrians on the sidewalks, and she immediately spotted the two men she’d seen selling purses on the sidewalk across Grand. They were tagging along behind her sons and their captor, trying not to look obvious. He’s got backup, she thought.

Marlene raced ahead and crossed Crosby at Broome Street and headed back toward her boys. She saw the twins again just as they reached the mouth of an alley halfway up the block. The man in the sweatshirt said something and the boys turned and went into the alley as the man followed.

Fearing that her children were about to be slaughtered, Marlene began to sprint, pulling the gun from her purse as surprised pedestrians made small exclamations of fear and surprise as they moved to get out of her way. Although they apparently had not seen her, the two purse sellers also broke into a run, reaching the alley thirty feet ahead of her. They hesitated at the entrance to the alley, then pulling their guns they plunged in.

Marlene arrived and looked into the shadows. She thought that she saw figures moving in the dark and heard sounds of a struggle. She shouted for the twins to lie down and charged in, nearly stumbling over a body lying ten feet into the gloom. She looked down and could just make out the features of one of the purse sellers. His throat appeared to have been slashed, and he lay in a large pool of blood. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice spoke from the dark only two feet to her side.

“Good evening, Marlene…. Please don’t shoot, the twins are safe.”

“David? David Grale?” she asked as one shadow separated itself from the darker shades behind it and touched her on the arm.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said.

She realized that he was the man in the hooded sweatshirt. “Where are the boys?”

“I sent them out the other end of the alley to circle around and wait for you at the Housing Works Bookstore. It’s a well-lit wholesome place; they should be safe for the moment.”

Marlene looked down at the corpse. “Is the other one in the same condition?”

“No, though perhaps not feeling quite up to snuff,” Grale replied. He raised his hand and several more shadows stepped forward and threw the other purse seller to the ground. “I thought you might want to ask him a few questions before I allowed my people to ‘escort’ him to his new home.”

Marlene shuddered. She had been down into the bowels of the city where Grale and the Mole People lived and still had nightmares about being lost in the dark as thin, translucent hands reached out of damp holes for her. “Who sent you?” she asked the man on the ground.

The man spat and looked straight ahead. Grale moved instantly and stomped a heavy-booted foot down on the man’s hand. He screamed. “Allah, curse you, shaytan. ”

“Were you going to kill my sons?” Marlene asked.

The man again refused to answer as he held his crushed hand. Grale moved again, a blade flashed and the man howled with pain as he grabbed his wounded cheek. “I’ll carve the flesh right off of you and leave you here for the rats if you don’t start talking,” he said.

“No, no, they were not targets…not tonight,” the man cried. “We were just supposed to follow them…learn their habits.”

“So you could kill them some other day, right?”

The man nodded. “In sha’ Allah.”

“God willing? Murder two little boys? I don’t think that has anything to do with God, you cowardly piece of shit,” Marlene said in disgust. “But if you weren’t supposed to kill them tonight, who are the two white knights?”

The man looked puzzled. “White knights? I know nothing of this.” He hazarded a look at Grale and added. “As Allah is my witness.”

Marlene looked at Grale. “I don’t think this scumbag knows much of anything,” she said. “Kane probably hasn’t let him in on ‘the game.’ He’s all yours.”

Grale nodded. “We’ll see how much he knows when we take him to our home sweet home and have the time to whittle it away from him…so to speak.” He raised his hand again and the shadows stepped forward and became people-emaciated with half-mad, glittering eyes, but people, not monsters. Four picked up the dead body and hauled it off into the dark. Several others grabbed the man on the ground and pulled him roughly to his feet.