Robert Ferrigno - Heart of the Assassin

"I prefer you."

Rakkim picked up Michael, reached out with his other hand to draw Sarah to him, squeezed her close. He buried his face in her hair, the three of them wrapped up while the crowd broke around them, clucking their disapproval. Leave it to a modern to marry a Catholic; probably did it to torment her poor parents. Rakkim clutched them even tighter.

"New Fallujah was that bad?" Sarah whispered in his ear.

Rakkim held her, unable to speak.

Women in black burqas walked past, cursed them, their voices muffled, calling Sarah a whore who would roast in hell along with her bastard.

Sarah gently disengaged from him, took Michael's hand, the three of them strolling toward the entrance of the war museum.

"Did I see you talking with someone?" said Rakkim. "I was pretty far away…"

"Yes." Sarah touched her hair. "You'll never guess who I ran into. Robert Legault."

"He still doing the weather?"

"No, he's actually at the network now. Senior producer."

"I didn't like him," said Michael.

"I hope you gave Robert my regards," said Rakkim.

"Yes…of course."

Rakkim offered his blessing to the veterans stationed beside the entrance, while Sarah covered her head with a scarf she took from her purse and pushed down her sleeves.

The tone inside the war museum was hushed and respectful, the only sound the shuffle of feet across the marble floor and the buzz of soft voices. A baby cried and was quickly comforted. Taking photographs inside the House of Martyrs was forbidden. This was sacred ground, open to all, regardless of religion. The museum was never closed, never empty. Sarah said in the old days, before the transition, the graveyards for the nation's war dead had been overgrown and untended. Military parades had played to empty streets, or worse, the color guard had faced catcalls from those whose freedom had been paid for with others' blood. A terrible time for heroes.

"St. Louis, Kansas City, Youngstown," said Michael, pointing out the Midwest cities on the holographic battle display. Michael knew every one of them, could recount the names of the commanders and the outcome. The images scrolled past as they watched. Chicago, still smoldering. Detroit's auto works gutted. Denver. The St. Louis arch collapsed. Newark, the deepest penetration into the Islamic states by the Christian armies. Newark, fought for block by block, until Islamic reinforcements, most of them still in high school, had finally stopped the Belt advance. Bloody Newark. As many times as he had seen it, the scenes still made Rakkim tear up.

As always, there was a crowd around the display at the very center of the museum, the true heart of the memorial. The three of them waited their turn, hearing a steady murmur of "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," over and over until they finally stood before the marble stand holding up a simple Arabic edition of the Quran. No bulletproof plastic or nitrogen-rich bubble was necessary to protect it. The book had been recovered from the ruins of Washington, D.C., found surrounded by broken glass and twisted girders, the holy relic untouched by the atomic blast, the cover pristine, its pages shiny and white.

Rakkim lowered his eyes. He kept seeing Sarah and Robert Legault…how the breeze caught her dress, the hem grazing Legault's leg.

They stayed a few moments, then moved on from the Quran, passed a group of men in traditional garb praying before a mural of the triumph of Newark, the turning point of the war. They stopped in front of a large photo taken at the armistice between the two nations, President Kingsley and the Belt president, Andrew Fullerton, shaking hands, both of them looking exhausted.

"I bet they were glad," whispered Michael.

Rakkim played with Michael's hair. " Everyone was glad."

Above the photo of the two presidents were two aerial shots of Washington, D.C. One photo portrayed a majestic city, filled with cars, monuments gleaming in the sun. The other photo, taken a day after the dirty bomb exploded, was one long expanse of rubble and twisted metal, the great monuments fallen, streets bubbled from the intense heat.

Rakkim hated both images, the one because it showed the glory that had been lost, the other because it immortalized the extent of the destruction. The Zionist betrayal, that's what the nuke attack on the capital had been called, the Israeli Mossad blamed for decapitating the previous regime. A lie. The great lie. The Jews weren't responsible, it was the Old One. Sarah had proved that. She had a mind that could follow the twists and turns of that evil bastard, a mind attuned to deception. Rakkim looked over at her, but, though she had seen them a thousand times, the photos of D.C. had her full attention.

"Can we go see the Defense of Detroit exhibit?" said Michael.

Sarah didn't move.

"Sarah?"

Sarah stayed looking up at the ruins, then finally wiped her eyes and walked away from the dead city, walking so quickly that Rakkim and Michael had to hurry to catch up.

The Old One watched Gravenholtz from the command center of his pleasure yacht, watched the redheaded brute pace the hundred-year-old Tabriz in the main salon, undoubtedly aware that he was being observed but unable to hide his restlessness. A beast barely able to restrain itself carried a risk to its master, but the Old One had worked with beasts before. Back and forth Gravenholtz walked, but he avoided the large glass-bottomed area of the cabin offering a view of the ocean depths below.

It had been three days since Gravenholtz killed the oil minister, and the Old One had let him stew in a cabin belowdecks, without any contact or acknowledgment of what had occurred, letting time do the work for him, unsettling the creature, poking and prodding him like a sharpened stick through the bars of his cage. Patience was alien to Gravenholtz. Patience, the most useful of tools…but ever since his conversation with his personal physician, the Old One realized that there were limits to such virtues. Tickety-tock…that's what Darwin used to say, smiling, that most jovial assassin. Tickety-tock, tickety-tock. The Old One was not amused.

Baby stood beside him, resplendent in a flowery yellow sundress that bared her tanned shoulders and legs. She smelled of summer.

He could see desalinization plants a mile offshore through the main windows of the control center, dozens of them strung all along the coast, new ones being built all the time to keep up with the ever-increasing demand. On the outer decks sixty or so revelers danced in the late-afternoon sun, half naked most of them, bronzed and beautiful as they bumped to the afro-salsa beat. The Old One's white-jacketed aides roamed through the crowd carrying aloft silver trays of tiger prawns and octopus. The sweet life, which was the name of the Old One's yacht, La Dolce Vita , a sleek, 240-foot party boat flying a pina colada flag. The last place anyone would be looking for him.

In his white jacket and white linen trousers with gold piping, the Old One looked like a weekend commodore out for a cruise. The faux-nautical trappings were pure camouflage, as much a part of the charade as the music and the dancers. The World Court had cleared him of responsibility in the nuke attacks on the U.S. and Mecca, but he had learned caution over the years.

"Father?"

The Old One looked at Ibrahim, his oldest son and counselor.

Ibrahim tapped his earpiece. "John Moseby received a transmission two days ago from Seattle."

"Moseby is contacted regularly, is he not?" said the Old One. "I have other things to concern myself with."

"Moseby evidently left shortly after receiving the most recent one," said Ibrahim.

The Old One glared at him.

"Our…our men on the scene didn't realize Moseby's absence until moments ago," said Ibrahim.