Robert Ferrigno - Heart of the Assassin

"You've done well," Rakkim said soothingly. "You've done better than anyone could have expected, but now it's time-"

"It's the small sins that save you," counseled Jenkins, "that's how you survive when all around you are getting their heads sawed off. Ibn-Azziz hates tobacco. The Quran says nothing about it, but he hates it and that's good enough for most of them. Me, I'll sometimes smoke a cigarette before meeting with him. His nose wrinkles and he'll chastise me, sometimes…harshly, but it's a form of insurance. I don't try to be perfect. It's the perfect ones that attract suspicion. No, ibn-Azziz hates my tobacco addiction, but he knows a spy wouldn't draw attention to himself like that."

"I'll remember."

"Don't patronize me," sputtered Jenkins. "I know who you are. I know why you're really here." He backed up to the very end of the bridge where the concrete crumbled into the bay, and the steel beams twisted like rusty fingers.

"Take it easy," said Rakkim, following him.

Jenkins clung to the railing as the waves crashed. "Go…go ahead," he said, eyes wide. "Go ahead, kill me. That's why you've been sent, isn't it?" The cold spray drenched him. "I should be honored that Kidd sent an assassin-"

"There are no assassins anymore," Rakkim said gently. "Hardly any shadow warriors either. We're more trouble than we're worth. Haven't you heard?"

"No more assassins?" Jenkins cocked his head in disbelief.

"None."

"That…that's a mistake. Tell General Kidd we need men like that now more than ever."

"You tell him."

"You…you walk like an assassin. Do you realize that?"

Rakkim looked into the darkness. The hills in the distance were shrouded in mist, the small towns across the bay long since abandoned.

"Nothing to be ashamed of…I wanted to be an assassin myself," said Jenkins. "You didn't know that, did you?"

Rakkim shook his head.

"Over eight hundred Fedayeen in my class at the academy and only two of us accepted into the assassin program." Jenkins's laugh was raw. "I thought I was a natural-born killer, but I didn't last a week. This other fellow, though, Darwin, I heard he completed the training without any problem at all, completed it so easily he scared his superiors. Afraid he might shrug off the leash and then where would we be?" He glared at Rakkim. "You and Darwin…you have the same walk."

"If you say so."

"About four years ago a police patrol found the body of a man in an abandoned church," said Jenkins. "Nothing unique about that. You'd be surprised where the dead turn up, but this man…he was all slashed up, blood everywhere, a regular slaughterhouse." A gust of wind caught him, sent him close to the edge. "Police thought it was a sadist at work, some serial killer, but I knew better…because I recognized the dead man. I hadn't seen Darwin since I washed out, but you don't forget a man like him. Even in death, his face had this mocking expression, like a particularly funny joke had been played on him."

Waves crashed against the bridge, the whole structure groaning. If Rakkim had been able to, he would have hidden Darwin's body that day, buried him under a mound of rubble in the church, anything to erase the assassin from the sight of man or God. Bleeding from a hundred cuts, Rakkim barely had the strength to walk, let alone cover the dead.

"Somebody drove a knife through Darwin's mouth and severed his brain stem," said Jenkins. "Nasty work. I had no idea who was capable of such a thing." The dim light from the stars didn't reach his eyes. "Then tonight, I saw you strolling ahead of me…even stepping on the dead, you hardly made a sound." He lost his balance; bits of concrete crumbled into the water and he grabbed Rakkim's hand. "A predator's walk…it's subtle. I'm sure assassins aren't even aware of doing it, but shadow warriors, we notice everything, don't we?" His fingers dug into the back of Rakkim's hand. "What I…what I want to know, Rakkim…is how…how you killed an assassin?"

Rakkim pulled him to safety.

"Only Allah or another assassin can kill an assassin…that's what they say," hissed Jenkins, still hanging on to him. "So tell me…how did you do it?"

"Let me take you home," said Rakkim.

"Home?" Jenkins brayed. "Too late for that. Shadow warriors, the best of the best, that's what they called us. Look at me now. Look at you. " Jenkins picked up a skull from the railing, ran a thumb across one of the eye sockets. "You know, there's been times…times I've doubted the existence of God." He glanced up at Rakkim and his crooked grin matched the expression on the skull "But there's never been a moment, not one single moment, when I doubted the existence of hell."

Rakkim knew exactly what he was talking about.

Jenkins cupped the skull behind one ear. "Go long!" He gave a little hop and passed it, a long ball back toward the city. The skull shattered on the roadway.

Rakkim didn't move.

"That…that's one of the things I miss the most about Seattle," Jenkins said softly. "A football game in Khomeini Stadium on a crisp autumn day, barbecued goat sandwiches…nothing better in the world. You still go to the games?"

"Sometimes. The Stallions are having a lousy season."

"Always next year." Jenkins's robe billowed in the wind. "What about the Zone? Do the Egyptian women still dance at the Orion Club?"

"It's called the Python Lounge now, but yeah, the Egyptians still dance."

"They used to darken their nipples with henna, but that…that was a long time ago."

"It's going to be daylight soon," said Rakkim. "Let me extract you. I'll take you home."

"Extract me? You make me sound like a rotting tooth." Jenkins shook his head. "Pity from an assassin…" He started back toward the city. "I am home."

"What did you want to talk about?" said Sarah as they walked through the Catholic neighborhood, the streetlights out and never replaced.

"Personal stuff," said Leo. "Normally I'd ask Rakkim, but…he's not here."

"Okay…are you going to ask me?"

"Not yet," sniffed Leo. "I'm kind of still deciding."

People sat on their porches, smoking and talking, listening to music as Sarah and Leo strolled past. A couple of men waved to Leo. Dogs howled, or trotted along the broken sidewalks as though they belonged there. They did, at least in this sector. Muslims thought them unclean beasts, as dirty as pigs, but Christians loved their mutts. She heard laughter from inside the houses. A woman swung in a hammock, singing a modern version of an old blues melody, a paean to lost love. Christians never seemed to sleep, or worry that what they were doing was against God's law. They just lived. Anthony Colarusso, a good Catholic cop and one of Rakkim's closest friends, used to say if you were Catholic on a Saturday night, you'd never go to mosque again.

"Are you getting those headaches again?" Sarah said, stepping around a section of collapsed sidewalk. "Spider says he can hear you crying in the middle of the night."

"I'm fine. That's not it."

Last year Leo and Rakkim had gone on a mission into the Belt and barely made it back alive. Leo's arrogance and lack of social skills had been a constant problem, and his falling in love with a local girl, Leanne, only made things worse. Still, the kid was necessary equipment, that remarkable brain of his, at any rate. State-of-the-art cerebral cortex, but Spider and a team of underground neuroscientists had added a few non-factory options. Leo was smarter than ever, and getting smarter all the time, but sometimes he was blinded by details and his naivete left him vulnerable.

Sarah could see homemade signal-jamming devices silhouetted on every rooftop, awkward contraptions of circuit boards and aluminum designed to block eavesdropping from the government. "Do any of those things actually work?"