Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the assassin

“I will not send my guards away.”

Angelina took a deep breath. “She is…she is…” She lowered her voice, the words inaudible now.

“Speak up!”

“I love her, Mullah. The sound of my betrayal will burn my ears for eternity.”

Ibn Azziz looked at his bodyguards. Saw them indicate that she had been searched. He beckoned to her.

Angelina took a halting step. She spoke again. The words even softer than before.

“Closer!”

Angelina was two feet away. Near enough to count his eyelashes.

“That’s close enough. I can’t bear the stink of a female.”

Angelina lowered her head. Whispered.

Ibn Azziz smacked his hand against his leg, sent his black robe fluttering.

Angelina stepped forward muttering. They were close enough now that Ibn Azziz could hear the words. She was praying. Asking God to give her strength. Asking for God’s blessing for what she was about to do.

Ibn Azziz started to shout but it was too late.

Angelina launched herself at him. Hooked one of his eyes with her forefinger, drove it deep behind the jelly and scooped it out. He screamed, struggled to escape her, but the chair held him in place, and fifty years of housework had made her hands strong. Fifty years of prayer had given her courage. The eye she had torn out flopped against her wrist as she clawed at his face, seeking the other one. The eye was like a grape. A muscat grape peeled for a pasha. Such things were done in the old days. She gasped as the knives entered her body, but the thought of Sarah made her hang on, raking his face with her nails. Such screaming from Ibn Azziz. Again and again the bodyguards stabbed her, and she felt her body shudder. She wished…she wished she had been granted the gift of seeing Sarah and Rakkim marry. To see them kiss. To hold their baby in her arms. The knives…the knives hurt, but not so badly as she feared. The pain was bearable. Above all else, Allah was merciful.

“Sorry, mister, I’m still not seeing anything.”

Rakkim stood with his arms outstretched in front of the MRI screen. “Run it again. Maximum sensitivity.”

The tech looked at Sarah. “It’s already maxed.”

“Just do it.” Sarah watched over the tech’s shoulder as the scan progressed. She turned to Rakkim, shook her head.

Rakkim let his arms drop. He should be happy. He had been certain the Old One would have implanted some sort of tracking device inside him during surgery, but the MRI body scan showed nothing. Nothing metallic. Nothing of a foreign or nonbiologic nature. Neither had Sarah’s watch registered any electronic signature. They had run a full-spectrum check with it before going to the MRI lab of the hospital. He watched Sarah pay off the tech. It wouldn’t have been hard for the Old One. Fedayeen tracking devices were as small as a poppy seed, and his wounds offered easy access for implantation. He had plenty of old scars that could have hidden the insertion point. So why had the Old One passed on the opportunity?

Sarah and Rakkim eased out the side door and into the stairwell. It had been three days since he’d woken up in the hospital and had his halting conversation with the Old One. Rakkim was dressed in some new clothes she had bought in downtown Las Vegas, ugly clothes he wouldn’t have been seen in back in Seattle-Spanish-style, black trousers with little balls running up the side seams, and a yoked Western shirt with red parrots embroidered on the chest. In a city of tourists, dress like a tourist. He still hated looking in the mirror. Her clothes were typically modern-blue leather, knee-length skirt and a short-sleeved comfort sweater that adjusted its weave depending on the ambient temperature.

“Why am I dressed like a matador?” said Rakkim.

“I thought it would cheer you up.”

“You thought it would cheer you up.”

“That too.” She squeezed his hand. “How are you really feeling?”

Rakkim started up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Sarah was right behind him. They stopped at the eighteenth landing, the top floor, both of them panting. Rakkim gave it a count of five, then started back down. When they got to the bottom, they did it again.

“That’s enough,” Sarah gasped, back at the eighteenth-floor landing. “After lunch. We can run up Mount Everest. Or swim. Swim the Pacific.”

Rakkim bent slightly forward, rested his hands on his knees. He spit into the dusty corner. There was a tiny spot of blood in it.

They walked down the stairs and out the door on the main level. Stepped out into the morning sunshine. Eighty-six degrees and no humidity. Hot-air balloons drifted in the distance, not the dull security blimps that ringed Seattle, but brightly colored balloons from which tourists could appreciate the landscape.

“I still don’t understand why we’re still alive,” said Sarah as they cut across the green lawn to the sidewalk. “Why didn’t the assassin just kill us? If Fancy had any proof of her father’s part in planting the fourth bomb, it’s gone now.”

Rakkim glanced around as they walked. He hadn’t been outside since he was shot and the open air smelled clean. Vegas was beautiful-the air crystalline, the Spring Mountains to the west set in high relief against the deep, cobalt blue sky. Rakkim had never seen such clear skies, either at home or in the Bible Belt. If anything, the Bible Belt was more polluted than the Islamic Republic, due to their dependency on coal. He looked back at the hospital, shielding his eyes. There was no way to appreciate how big it was from the inside. Open too, with plenty of glass and a lobby that faced the street. He had never seen a hospital without protective barriers around it to guard against truck bombs.

“So what does the Old One hope to gain by keeping us alive?” persisted Sarah.

“He’s keeping us alive now for the same reason he didn’t kill us before-he’s using us to find his vulnerabilities. Things he missed. Things that could implicate him.” Rakkim took in the cars and buses cruising past, hydrogen-fueled and almost silent. Voice-activated too, the steering wheel an anachronism. “If Fatima Abdullah was a threat to him before, she’s no threat now. The Old One must think there are other loose ends. Someone else who knows too much.”

“Like my mother. She’s the one he really wants to find.”

“I still don’t understand why the Old One didn’t implant a tracker.”

“Darwin didn’t need a tracker to find us in Disneyland. He did it the old-fashioned way.”

Rakkim kept silent. It was true, but he didn’t have to like it.

They walked on, both of them picking up the pace, glad to leave the hospital behind. Casinos loomed before them as they reached the edge of the Strip, a cascade of neon laser light and fanciful designs. Arabian Nights. Renaissance Italy. Star Wars. Mandarin China. Dinosaurs and musketeers. The two of them were still mostly alone on the sidewalk, tourists from the nearby hotels preferring the elevated moving sidewalks that took them from casino to casino. Tourists from the Bible Belt and the Islamic Republic, plenty of Asians and Europeans too. Even a few Dutch fundamentalists-even stricter doctrinally than the Black Robes-haranguing other Muslims for their sins.

“We should contact Redbeard, let him know we’re here,” said Sarah. “We should warn Colarusso too.”

“The last thing we want is Redbeard coming here to rescue us, and even if Darwin was telling the truth about using Colarusso’s informant, it’s too late for a call to do any good.”

“So we do nothing?”

“For now, the Old One is giving free rein. No guards. No chaperones. For the time being, we should assume that anything that’s easy to do is what the Old One wants us to do. So we don’t run the first chance we get. We don’t call Redbeard. We wait. We act on our timetable, not his.”