Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the assassin

Darwin let the men pass him around, his head ringing from their blows, his knife dancing among them as though looking for a partner. When they finally realized what was happening, when the mud was thick with them, Darwin threw back his head, rain beating against his face and laughed at the little trick that Rakkim had played on him. It had been a long time since he had been fooled so badly.

The men stopped for an instant, looking at each other. Filthy men. Bleeding. Hair matted. Beards full of dirt and leaves. Dead men. They raised their weapons, hefted their bats and chains and clubs and knives. They screamed and cursed, and they charged.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Sarah shielded her eyes from the rain with her hand. Pointed at the lights flickering in the distance. “The werewolves got him.” She sounded giddy.

Rakkim hefted the tracking device he had removed from the undercarriage of the car, sailed it into the night. “Maybe.”

Sarah looked at him. “You said the crash alone would probably kill him.”

“The car didn’t explode. The gas tank should have gone up. Even in the rain, there should have been a fireball…something big enough to set the trees ablaze.” Rakkim watched the torches bob in the night. Torches up and down the ravine. If Rakkim were alone, he would drive back and see for himself if the assassin had survived the crash. And if he had survived, see if he had survived the werewolves. Rakkim wasn’t alone though.

“Let’s go back and make sure,” said Sarah. “What’s so funny?”

“I love you, that’s-”

There was a blast of light brighter than all the torches as the gas tank exploded.

Rakkim counted the seconds until the echo reached them. About four miles away. In that instant when the gas tank blew, Rakkim thought he had seen bodies flying through the air. The fire was shrinking, going out in the downpour. There were still torches, but they were fewer and scattered now. Two or three pine trees around the site crackled, their lower branches going up.

Sarah stood beside him, the two of them holding hands as though they were watching fireworks at their wedding. “You did it, Rikki. You killed him.”

Rakkim watched the trees burning in the rain.

“Can we go now?” said Sarah. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Rakkim kissed her, felt the warmth of her lips. “We can go now.”

Watching Sarah sleep in the morning light…a pleasure he had thought he had lost. Her face was half covered by her dark hair, tangled ringlets damp with sweat. Even with the curtains pulled, he could see her skin glowing from their groaning lovemaking, beyond words. Locked together afterward, eyes closed, still seeing the fireball as the assassin’s car exploded in the rain. Candy and flowers were fine, but fear was the ultimate aphrodisiac. Rakkim watched her breathe, fascinated by the way her lips parted, the shape of her mouth-the gate to heaven and hell. Ripe with promise.

For all their talk of fire and brimstone, the Christian vision of Hades was a pale reflection of the Muslim’s hell. Those who rejected Allah were burned alive throughout eternity, their skin instantly replaced so they could be incinerated again and again. If the Christian hell offered half-measures of pain, their heaven offered equally dilute joys-an afterlife of wings and clouds and harps. Muslims expected the full measure of ecstasy in Paradise, virgin lovers and perfect mates, the joys of the flesh in rapturous and infinite varieties, a suitable reward for devotion in this life.

Rakkim ran the tip of his tongue across Sarah’s lower lip. Paradise might not await him in death, but he was grateful for the glimpse that Sarah offered him. Her heat, the curve of her hips…he was never closer to God than when he was inside her. At moments like this, Rakkim could almost forgive himself his sins. He thought of Colarusso in the basement of his church, asking Rakkim if he wanted Father Joe to hear his confession. Catholics. Their God forgave everything. What a pushover.

Sarah watched him, her eyes silky.

“I thought you were sleeping.”

Sarah reached down between his legs, drew the hardness from him, squeezed him harder still, her fingers gently working. “My sweet assassin.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Sarah kissed him. “You’re too modest.”

Afterward, Sarah lay on top of him, dozing. He rested his hand on the downy patch at the base of her spine. A moist patch. He had licked every inch of her in the last couple of hours. Salty and sweet…warm as summer…Sarah.

She raised herself up. Braced on her elbows, looking down at him, still sleepy-eyed. Her small breasts brushed his bare chest. “I missed you, Rikki.”

He felt her nipples thicken against him. “I can tell.” She rested her face against him as he cupped her ass, pulling himself deeper inside her.

They were entwined on the pullout sofa in the half-empty office building, their clothes abandoned. Dropped beside the cardboard boxes filled with Warriq’s journals. The snapshot of Sarah as an infant in her father’s arms lay on the coffee table. Traffic sounds filtered from below. Horns and engines, faint conversation from the street. A perfect moment. Too perfect to last.

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

“Assassins are hard to kill.” He stroked her flanks, raised goosebumps. “All I know is that he’s not here. There’s just us.”

Sarah rolled off him, rested on her side, one leg across his thigh, and he stiffened yet again. “I keep thinking about Marian. I didn’t even tell her what I was looking for in her father’s journals.”

“You haven’t told me either.”

Sarah yawned. “Lose the tone. We’re not married yet.”

“Yeah, that’ll change everything. You’ll be a good wife who never contradicts me, and I’ll be bored out of my skull.” He got a smile out of her, and she put her hand on his chest. “What are we looking for in the journals?”

Sarah’s hand on his chest trembled. “A fourth bomb.”

Rakkim sat up.

“New York City, Washington, D.C., Mecca…” Sarah winced. “The fourth bomb was supposed to detonate in China.”

“You know this?”

“If the fourth bomb had gone off, China wouldn’t have stayed neutral. They were never going to become an Islamic state, but a billion and a half Chinese would have shared our grief and anger. Russia would never have dared offer the Zionists sanctuary. The whole world dynamic would have shifted. From a strictly academic view, the Old One’s plan was really…quite brilliant.”

“Is the bomb supposed to be under the Three Gorges Dam?”

She covered her surprise. “Maybe.”

“Maybe? What, you stuck a pin in a map and figured it was a good place to start?”

Sarah stared at him. “You were in my bedroom? You noticed that?” She shook her head, seemed to consider whether she should keep talking. “My father learned of the existence of a fourth bomb shortly before he was murdered. It was somewhere in China, that’s what he told my mother. She still thinks it’s in Shanghai, but I’m convinced the Three Gorges Dam-”

“Your mother?” Rakkim stared. “You’ve met her?”

Sarah shook her head. “Katherine contacted me a couple years ago, right after my book came out-”

“You haven’t seen her since you were a child-”

“It was her. The first e-mail…she called me ciccia. It’s Italian. It’s means little fatty. I was chubby as a baby.” Sarah was crying, embarrassed, laughing too. “My mother was the only one who ever called me that. It’s one of the few things I remember about her.”

Rakkim held her, felt her sobbing against him. Sarah had never talked about her mother, even when they were children. Redbeard had forbidden any mention of her, but that wasn’t it. Sarah did what she wanted. No, it was her way of pretending her mother’s absence didn’t matter. If Sarah believed she was in contact with her mother, he trusted her instincts. It made sense. Katherine Dougan had fled after her husband’s assassination. If anyone would have delved deeper into the Zionist attack, it would have been the first head of State Security. The Old One had him murdered, but James Dougan had talked to his wife first. Pillow talk, the oldest means of communication.