Orson Card - Shadow of the Giant

Or maybe he wasn't dead. Maybe he could spend his last moments explaining to Alai how he could betray him like this.

Alai walked to Ivan's body and felt for a pulse. Ivan's eyes were open. He was already dead.

"Come away, my Caliph!" shouted Alamandar. "There may be other conspirators!"

Conspirators. There was no possibility of other conspirators. Ivan didn't trust anybody enough to conspire with them. The only person Ivan absolutely trusted was...

Was me.

Ivan was a perfect shot. Even at a run, he could not have aimed at me and then clumsily hit two guards.

"My guards," said Alai, looking up at Alamandar. "The ones he shot—will they be all right?"

One of the other guards jogged back to look. "Both dead," he said.

But Alai already knew that. Ivan had not been aiming at Alai. He had come here with one purpose in mind, the purpose that had guided him for years. Ivan was here to protect his Caliph.

It flashed into Alai's mind with immediate clarity. Ivan had learned of a conspiracy against the Caliph, and it involved people so close to Alai that there was no way for Ivan to warn him from a distance without running the risk of alerting one of the conspirators.

Alai reached with one hand to close Ivan's eyes, while with the other he pulled Ivan's pistol from his slackened fingers. Still not taking his eyes off of Ivan's face, Alai fired the pistol upward into the guard who was standing over him. Then he calmly aimed at the guard who had gone back to the bodies and fired. Alai had never been as good a shot as Ivan. He could not have done this while running. But kneeling, he was all right.

The guard he had shot without looking was lying on the pavement, twitching. Alai shot him again, then turned to Alamandar, who was getting back into the limo.

Alai shot him. He fell into the car and it screeched away from the curb. But the door was not closed yet, and Alamandar was in no shape to close it. So as it passed Alai, there would be a brief moment when the driver would be unprotected by the heavy armoring and bulletproof glass. Alai laid down three quick shots in order to have a better chance of catching that moment.

It worked. The car did not turn. It ran into a wall.

Alai jogged over to the still-open back door of the car, where Alamandar was panting and holding his chest. His eyes were on fire with rage and fear as Alai leveled Ivan's pistol to fire.

"You are no Caliph!" gasped Alamandar. "The Hindu woman is more of a Caliph than you are, you black dog."

Alai shot him in the head and he fell silent.

The driver was unconscious, but Alai shot him, too.

Then he went back to the bodies of the guards, who were dressed in western business suits. Ivan had shot one of them in the head. He was larger than Alai but his clothing would do. Alai had his white robe off in a moment. Underneath he wore jeans as he always did. After wrestling with the corpse for a few moments, he got the shirt and jacket off the man, and without popping any of the buttons off.

Alai took the pistols from the two guards who had never gotten off a shot and dropped them into the pockets of the jacket he now wore. Ivan's silenced pistol had to be nearly out of bullets, so Alai slid it across the pavement back toward Ivan's body.

Where do I imagine an African man can hide in Hyderabad? No one's face was more recognizable than the Caliph's, and those who didn't know his face knew his race. They would also know that he spoke no Hindi. He would not make it a hundred meters outside in Hyderabad.

Then again, there was no chance he could get out of the compound alive.

Wait. Think.

Don't wait. Get away from this murder scene.

Ivan jogged through the parked cars. The garage would have been cleared of any observers by Alamandar's men; that meant Ivan must have been hidden inside a car. Where was that car?

Keys in the ignition. Thank you, Ivan. You planned for everything. No time would be wasted fumbling with keys, as you dragged me to your car to get me out of here.

Where were you going to take me, Ivan? Whom do you trust?

Alamandar's last words rang in his ears. The Hindu woman is more of a Caliph than you are.

He thought they all hated her. But now he realized that she was the one advocating war. Expansion. The restoration of a great empire.

That's what they wanted. And all his talk of peace, of consolidation, of reforming Islam from the inside before reaching out to the rest of the world, of competing with Peter Wiggin using the same methods, inviting other nations to join the Caliphate without requiring them to become Muslim or live under Shari'a—they had listened, they had agreed, but they hated it.

They hated him.

So when they saw the break between him and Virlomi, they exploited it.

Or ... was Virlomi behind this?

Was Virlomi pregnant with his child?

The Caliph is dead. But here is his baby, born after he died but infused with the gifts of God from his birth. In the name of the baby Caliph, the council of wazirs will rule. And since the mother of the new Caliph is ruler of India, he will join the two great nations in one. With Virlomi as regent, of course.

No. Virlomi could not have wanted him murdered.

Ivan would have an airplane waiting. The airplane that brought him. With his own trusted crew.

Alai drove at a normal pace. But he did not drive to the checkpoint where he normally entered the airport grounds. In all likelihood, that place would be manned by the conspirators. Instead, he went to a service gate.

The guard sauntered over and started to tell him only authorized service vehicles could use this gate.

"I'm the Caliph, and I want to go through this gate."

"Oh," said the guard, looking confused. "I see. I—"

He pulled out a cellphone and started to punch at it.

Alai didn't want to kill this man. He was an idiot, not a conspirator. So he swung the door open, bumping into the man. Not hard. Just enough to get his attention. Then he closed the door and reached through the window. "Give me that cellphone."

The soldier gave it to him. Alai switched it off.

"I'm the Caliph. When I say to let me through, you don't have to ask anyone else's permission."

The soldier nodded and ran to the controls and the gate slid open.

As soon as Alai was through the gate, he saw a small corporate jet with Cyrillic lettering under the Common letters naming the corporation. The kind of plane Ivan would have used.

The engines started up as Alai approached. No, as Ivan's car approached.

Alai stopped the car and got out. The door of the jet was open, forming steps to the ground. Holding one hand on the pistol in his pocket— for he was taking this plane whether it was Ivan's or not—Alai walked up the steps.

A businessman—or so he seemed—waited for him inside. "Where's Ivan?" he asked.

"We're not waiting for him," said Alai. "He died saving me."

The man nodded once, then went to the door and pushed the button to raise it. Meanwhile he shouted, "Let's go!" and then said to Alai, "Please sit down and fasten your seat belt, my Caliph."

The plane began taxiing before the door was closed.

"Do nothing out of the ordinary," said Alai. "Nothing to alert them. There are weapons here that could easily shoot down this plane."

"Our plan exactly, sir," said the man.

What would the conspirators do, when they found out that Alai had escaped?

They would do nothing. They would say nothing. As long as Alai might turn up alive somewhere, they dared not be on record as saying anything.

In fact, they would continue to act in his name. If they followed Virlomi's plans, if her insane invasion went forward, then Alai would know they were with her.

When they were in the air—having waited for ordinary permission from the controllers—Ivan's man came back and stood diffidently two meters away.