Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the assassin

“What happened to him?” said Sarah, right beside Rakkim. She bent down, picked up the stuffed rhinoceros. There’s a…bootprint on this. We took off our shoes. Spider must have followed the same procedure. So who stepped on this?”

Rakkim took the rhino. Without speaking, they both put their shoes back on.

“The assassin wouldn’t have done this, would he?”

“No. This isn’t his style.” Rakkim looked around, not rushing, trying to see something that whoever had trashed the place might have missed.

“All these beds and cribs…how many people lived here?” asked Sarah.

“He had a lot of kids. I saw five or six the time I was here. Heard more. There were others too, older ones. Spider didn’t like to go out, but he liked company.”

Sarah wrapped her arms around herself. It wasn’t cold, but she was probably feeling the weight of earth and concrete around them. Imagining what it would be like to be trapped down here. “What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know.” Rakkim reached under a chair. One of Spider’s antique snow globes lay shattered, New York City’s Twin Towers crumpled among the shards of glass. Souvenir stands all over the capital sold similar versions, only with the towers in flames. This one was pretransition.

“We should go.”

“We will.”

“Are we going to have to use Redbeard to find Safar Abdullah now? Rakkim?”

Rakkim tossed the Twin Towers aside. “No, I’ve got…” He cocked his head, listened. Grabbed Sarah by the arm.

Sarah didn’t resist, didn’t protest. She couldn’t hear them, but she knew Rakkim.

Rakkim led her into what had been the children’s room, eased Sarah under a mattress that had been half pulled off the bed. Had her curl up out of sight. Checked it from several angles to make sure she couldn’t be seen. A brightly colored mural of the periodic table of elements had been painted on the wall facing the beds. Voices echoed from the tunnel outside, loud enough for her to hear. She shrank deeper into the shadows. He bent down, kissed her. “I love you.”

“Now, I know we’re in trouble.”

Rakkim moved away. The voices were louder now as he slipped behind a large, rolled carpet that leaned against a support wall. It wasn’t the perfect hiding place, but he needed to see who was in the room and to put himself between them and Sarah. He needed to be able to move quickly, to spring out in a rush. His knife rested in his hand, and as always, it comforted him.

“Who left the light on?” A voice like sandpaper.

“Don’t blame me.”

Rakkim peered through a crack between the carpet and the wall, saw two beefy men in the doorway, hands on their hips. Two more were already inside the room, checking things out. Black nylon jackets, loose pants, daggers on their belts, neatly trimmed beards. Enforcers for the Black Robes.

The two in the doorway bowed as another man strode into the room, evidently a senior Black Robe. Two other bodyguards followed him. The Black Robe was younger than he expected, his beard scraggly, the skinniest man Rakkim had seen outside of prison. Dead white skin and red-rimmed eyes. He looked like a rabid dog Rakkim had killed in the Carolinas. A hollowed-out mongrel that had bitten two men, torn their legs open, and kept lunging at Rakkim even after he pinned it with a hay rake.

“My stars, this place stinks of Jews,” said the Black Robe, his voice reedy. “Would that they were still here, Tarriq.”

The largest enforcer hung his head.

“How many years have we been searching for this Jew?” said the Black Robe. “How long has this…Spider bedeviled us?”

“In all due respect, Mullah, we don’t know for sure that Spider exists.”

“We won’t get a chance to find out now, will we?” The Black Robe kicked aside a browning head of lettuce, sent it rolling across the floor. “I had hoped to parade this Jew for the cameras. To show the people that we have succeeded where Redbeard had failed. To prove that he has allowed the enemies of Islam to burrow deep within our cities. Now we have nothing.” He glared at the enforcer as they circled the room. “Your informant failed us, Tarriq. All we did was send the vermin scuttling off to another nest.”

“We…we were close, my lord,” rasped the enforcer.

“Ah, close,” said the Black Robe. “That changes everything.” He threw wide his arms, his hands skeletal from the sleeves of his robe. “See? My wrath has dissipated like dew in the glory of dawn.”

Rakkim glanced at the bed, but there was no sign of Sarah. He wondered if the mullah was Ibn Azziz. Redbeard said the new leader of the Black Robes was a zealot, but this man seemed too young to have achieved such power.

“The informant had been watching the waitress for weeks trying to find out where she disappeared to,” said the enforcer. “He didn’t know if she was a Jew or if she just lived in one of the abandoned warehouses. There’s plenty of that. It was his own good instincts that kept him after her, and when he saw her duck into the hidden tunnel, he notified us. He took a chance and he was right, Mullah. We launched our raid an hour after his call, but there was no way to know where she had gone, and she…she must have sensed that she had been observed. By the time we finally found this room, they were gone.”

“What do we owe this informant?” said the Black Robe. “What do we owe this man who allowed himself to be…sensed by a female?”

“Twenty thousand dollars. Standard bounty for valid information. Plus, ten thousand apiece for every Jew we captured, but of course, that doesn’t apply here.”

“Thank you for pointing that out to me.”

“We’ll find them, Mullah. They’re on the run now.”

Rakkim held the knife loosely as they got closer. And closer. Six armed men and the Black Robe. It depended on how they were bunched…and the level of their training. He had the element of surprise, but if he waited until he was spotted to attack, he would lose that advantage. The biggest danger was that Sarah would get involved-there was no way he could use his speed to full effect while defending her.

“Look at this filth,” said the Black Robe. He sounded as if he was on the opposite side of the carpet. “See the scientific devilry these foul Jews use to teach their brood?” He walked right past Rakkim’s hiding spot-were he to have turned his head, he would have seen him-walked right past and stood before the periodic table. He was close enough to where Sarah was hiding to kick her. The Black Robe reared back and spat on the center of the mural, a fat gob sliding down the wall.

The enforcers laughed.

Rakkim was motionless. The Black Robe would die first. Then the others.

The Black Robe turned on his heel, walked past Rakkim. “Pay your informant. Pay him in small bills and shove them down his throat. Fill his gullet. Make him choke on his money. Let him learn the price of failure.”

Their footsteps faded. The lights went out. The door closed. Rakkim found Sarah in the dark.

“It’s me,” said Rakkim.

“Let me speak to Sarah,” said Redbeard.

“What did the werewolves say about the assassin?”

“Let me speak to her. Now.”

Redbeard would be happy to go back and forth as long as Rakkim wanted to keep it up-the longer they talked, the better chance Redbeard had to pinpoint their position. Rakkim didn’t take the bait. He passed the phone to Sarah. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Hello, Uncle.” Sarah looked past Rakkim, toward the ferry slowly crossing Baraka Bay, the water rusty in the setting sun. She was wearing a new, pink-camouflage hooded sweatshirt, and baggy, matching sweatpants. The anonymous retro-jock look that was all the rage among moderns. The two of them were sitting on a bench with a panoramic view of the waterfront. A relief to be out in the open air after the dark claustrophobia of the tunnels. “I’m fine…I said, I’m fine. I’m twenty-six years old; I’m capable of making my own decisions.” She chewed her lower lip, listening. “Shame is not really an effective strategy at this point, Uncle.” A glance at Rakkim. “That’s not possible…No. I love you, but I’m not about to do that. Tell Angelina that I’m well. Tell her I’m saying my prayers.” She stuck her tongue out at Rakkim, handed the phone back to him.