Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the assassin

Marian hesitated. “She decided to write another book. She wouldn’t tell me what it was about though. She said it was too dangerous.”

“Sarah’s already outraged half the country. Is she trying for the other half now?”

“She was frightened. When was the last time you saw Sarah scared?”

Rakkim stopped smiling.

“She was worried about me too. Taking cabs when she came by, asking me not to call her. We always left notes for each other-”

“You have no idea what the new book was about?”

“She refused to tell me.” Marian clasped her hands. The inside of her right middle finger was indented from writing with a pen. A traditionalist. “I don’t know if it will help, but one of the reasons Sarah came to visit these last months was to use my library. I have some specialized volumes. They’re my father’s books, actually. His books and journals.”

“Your father was a historian?”

“He was a geological engineer.” Marian held her head high. “My father was very bullheaded, but he was a fine engineer. He built dams and bridges and sports stadiums all over the world.”

Rakkim remembered the map in Sarah’s room, the pinhole on the Yangtze. “Did your father work in China?”

“Yes, for many years.”

“The Three Gorges Dam?”

“How did you know?” Marian didn’t expect an answer. “Three Gorges is the biggest dam in the world. My father was only part of the engineering team, and not the project chief, but he was very proud of the work he did. They started preliminary studies long before the transition, 1992, I believe, but even after it was completed, his team went back every other year to check the construction. The Yangtze is highly unpredictable, and the engineers needed to monitor the river flow.”

“So…Sarah’s new book was about China?”

“I asked her that. She said it was just a small part of the book, but she wouldn’t go into detail. I always thought she’d tell me when the time was right. Is that why she’s disappeared? Was it this book she was working on?”

Rakkim stroked his goatee. “Did you and Sarah talk much about your father? Was she curious about his work…his politics?”

“Not really. My father was a very private man. In most ways, I barely knew him. I think Sarah was more interested in his books than anything else. She was a brilliant researcher. The best historians are, you know.”

“Then, I guess I should look at your father’s library. If you don’t mind?”

“Of course, but I hope you’re not easily bored. After my father died, I went through his journals. He always kept them locked away, so I imagined they contained some dark secret, some profound insight into his soul.” Marian shook her head. “I loved my father, but I could barely get through the first volume. There were no insights, just a vast laundry list of banal observations.” She smoothed her sea green chador. “I have no idea what Sarah found so compelling in those pages, but she kept at it, week after week.”

“I’d like to see them.”

Marian didn’t seem to have heard him. “You’re just as Sarah described you. A warrior with warm eyes. She’s very much in love with you. I was envious.” Marian’s cheeks colored.

“Wait until you get to know me…you won’t be envious.”

Marian smiled. “Sarah said the house she grew up in was quiet until you showed up, and then there was noise and laughter. She said you were the only one who wasn’t afraid of Redbeard. Other than her.”

“The only way to survive Redbeard is not to be afraid of him. Not to show it, anyway.”

“You’re a survivor, I can see that.” Marian idly tapped her teacup. “I’m not much of a survivor. I’ve never really been tested…I’ve just been lucky. There was my family, and the income, and the university. It all just rolls along. You were an orphan, living on the streets. I can’t imagine what that was like.”

“Let’s just say you learn not to linger over your food.”

“Why did you join the Fedayeen?”

“I wanted to be my own man. I couldn’t have done that if I stayed in that house.”

“But you left the Fedayeen?”

Rakkim smiled. “Maybe I didn’t like the man I had become.”

Marian didn’t return the smile. “I doubt that.”

If Rakkim had known how perceptive she was, he might have kept silent. Then again, maybe Marian didn’t need conversation to know who he was. As if they had known each other for years, that’s how Marian had described her first meeting with Sarah. It would take longer for them, but maybe someday Rakkim and Marian could be friends too.

“Do you believe that each of us has only one true love, Mr. Epps?” Marian played with the spoon again. “One person we’re meant to share our life with?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m absolutely certain of it. Sarah is too.” A sudden breeze rippled Marian’s chador, and for an instant, before she held down the fabric, it looked as if she were flying. Just an instant, but the impression remained that she was not fully bound to the earth. “I found my true love when I was twenty-two. He was a computer programmer, an honorable Muslim, but my father had other suitors in mind. He would not yield, nor would I. There was a standoff in our house for several years while my love and I met surreptitiously, just as you and Sarah did. I hoped to wear my father down, but then the Zionists upended the world. My love was on holiday in Washington, D.C., when the bomb exploded. I had planned to join him there, but I backed out at the last minute.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Not a day goes by that I don’t regret that he went on holiday to that particular city, on that particular date…not a day goes by that I don’t wish that I had gone with him.”

Rakkim touched her hand.

She pulled away. “Find her, Mr. Epps.”

“It’s a promise.”

The Wise Old One was getting his blood cleansed when Ibrahim walked into the restoration room. His eldest son was dour today, his eyes hooded. “What bad news do you bring?”

Ibrahim hesitated. “Our brother Oxley is dead. He supposedly had a heart attack, but-”

“He was murdered. Ibn Azziz strangled Oxley himself.”

“I…I only just got word of his death,” said Ibrahim, the faintest edge of annoyance in his voice. He stayed still, lean and dark as his long-gone Arab mother. He always seemed ill at ease in the restoration room, but that was to be expected-he was only fifty-three, with the confidence in the natural scheme of things reserved for the young.

The Old One listened to the humming and the hissing of the machines around him, watching the plastic tubes in his veins pulsing with his own freshened blood. Oxley’s assassination couldn’t have come at a worse time, but the Old One kept silent. Ibrahim was prone to see the hand of Allah in the falling of a dry leaf, the chirping of a sparrow. He was already unnerved by the death of their cat’s-paw Oxley. If he sensed the Old One’s concern, fear would spread through the family like a virus. “Oxley shall be missed, but he has already served his purpose. There is no cause for alarm.”

“I should not have disturbed you, Father.”

The Old One waved him silent. “Nothing to forgive, my son. All is well.”

The restoration room was completely white-floor, walls, ceiling, the machines themselves white enamel. It made the space seem limitless. In this world of infinite white, the Old One’s blood appeared even redder through the clear plastic. Bright red blood, heated to kill any toxins, then cooled back to 98.6. Hyperoxygenated blood for increased energy. Additional blood added to his own, blood from John, the blond-bearded acolyte with the creamy white skin. His son. Blood of his blood. Returning the favor of life.