Rakkim watched Amir move in on his brother. “Test them again.”

Kidd nodded. “Redbeard would be proud of you.”

Rakkim bowed at the honor. Redbeard had taken him in off the street, had raised him and trained him, taught him always to look for the hidden agenda, the knife behind the handshake. Rakkim had learned the lessons too well.

“Sad state of affairs when I can no longer trust my own.” Kidd rubbed the raised scar along the edge of his jaw. “I’ll set up a dummy mission back to the Belt. Some covert op that will take weeks to plan. Hopefully our mole, if there is a mole, will be distracted.”

“Initiate a smaller op too,” said Rakkim. “No more than two men, strictly outside the normal chain of command. Tell them to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice and then let them wait.”

“A feint behind the feint…Very good.” Kidd nodded. “You should have never retired. I had hoped you might replace me someday.”

“You have too many sons for me to replace you,” said Rakkim.

“It is not a matter of blood, Abu Michael,” said Kidd.

Amir leapt high. His hand darted out as he twisted in the air, knife flicking across his brother’s jugular. It was a forbidden sparring move, the chance of a mortal blow too easy, but Amir’s cut barely sliced the skin.

“Amir may be a worthy successor when my time comes,” said Kidd as Amir approached. “A fearless fighter with an aptitude for command, but he needs to control his temper. He was a most difficult child, always demanding his own way.” He shook his head. “No matter how hard I beat him, he did not cry. Did not change his behavior either.”

“Redbeard used to say the same thing about me.”

Amir bowed before his father. “General.”

Kidd nodded.

Amir acknowledged Rakkim with his upraised knife. A deep scar ran from under his left eye to the side of his mouth. “I have exhausted my brothers,” he said, slightly out of breath. “Care to play?”

“Thanks for the invite,” said Rakkim, “but you’re too good for me.”

Amir’s eyes went flat. “Am I a child to be told fairy tales?”

“Amir,” growled Kidd.

Amir stepped closer still, towering over Rakkim. “Am I not worthy of your attention?”

Rakkim stayed loose. “More than worthy.”

Sweat gleamed on Amir’s muscled torso. He gripped the knife tighter. A mistake.

Rakkim caught the knife as it came at him, plucked it from Amir’s grip. Offered it back to him, handle first. “A fine blade, Amir, worthy of its owner. Thank you for letting me see it.” He bowed.

Stunned, Amir slowly took back his knife, bowed to his father, and left.

“I apologize for my son,” said Kidd, watching Amir cross the training room.

“Amir meant me no harm, sidi, he just wanted to teach me some manners.”

“Instead you taught him. A dangerous lesson for the teacher, Abu Michael.” Kidd clicked his prayer beads, running them quickly through his fingers, round and round, still watching Amir stalk away. “If you come back from your trip, you must show me how you snatched the blade from him. I’ve never seen such a thing.”

“If I come back?”

“I’ll walk you out of the neighborhood,” said Kidd.

It was raining harder now. Kidd inhaled the fragrance of the open air, his stride lengthening so that Rakkim had to double-time to keep up. “When I was a boy, growing up outside of Mogadishu…it didn’t rain for a year and a half. Not a drop. Not a cloud in the sky. So dry I could taste dust in my dreams.” Kidd raised his face to the sky, the downpour running down his cheeks. “I’ve been in this country thirty-five years…and I still treasure the smell of rain.”

Rakkim put up the hood of his robe.

Moisture glistened on Kidd’s eyelashes and cropped beard as they walked through the alley. “Redbeard and I were never friends. We were both too hardheaded, too eager to get the president’s support for our fiefdoms, but we respected each other. The worst time between us was when you joined the Fedayeen. I don’t think he ever forgave me.”

Rakkim stopped. “It wasn’t your idea, it was mine.”

“All Redbeard knew was that his dreams for you were over. You were never going to become State Security. You chose another life. A life without him. He couldn’t hate you, so he did the next best thing. He hated me.”

Rakkim splashed through a puddle. “I didn’t know.”

“I considered Redbeard’s actions weak and petty…the mark of a man with too few children.” Kidd’s skin gleamed in the rain. “Until you left the Fedayeen. Then I knew how he felt. Even with all my sons, I knew exactly how bitter and resentful he felt, how wounded that you had chosen another path.”

Rakkim held his head high, listening to the click-click-click of Kidd’s prayer beads.

“I told myself Allah had other plans for you,” said Kidd.

Rakkim looked around, wary now, but they were the only ones out in the downpour.

“Do you think I made a mistake?” said Kidd. “Disbanding the assassin unit…” His prayer beads clicked away. “They were dangerous to our enemies, but just as dangerous to us. I thought by subsuming the assassin training into all our units, we could have benefit of their killing skills without endangering the souls of our warriors. The assassin trade…it’s corrosive to even the spiritually strong.” He gripped Rakkim’s wrist, squeezed. “You know that better than I do, Abu Michael. You saw what Darwin became. Whatever was in him that caused him to be selected for assassins in the first place, whatever moral vacuum made him excel at the killing craft, it perverted him. Destroyed him.” He looked into Rakkim’s eyes. “I have no idea how you defeated him. Allah must have been beside you that day.”

Rakkim looked back into Kidd’s deep, dark eyes.

Kidd released him. “Yes…yes, that is the only explanation.” He blinked in the storm. “Still…I find myself wondering if I acted too hastily. If I had a master assassin at my call, I could just send him into the Belt, tell him to kill the Colonel and everyone else connected to this devil’s dig. Instead, my son…I must send you.” He embraced Rakkim, kissed him on both cheeks. “Salaam alaikum.”

“Alaikum salaam,” said Rakkim, but it was too late. Kidd had turned his back on him and was walking rapidly away.

Chapter 7

Who knew that I-90 was the road to Paradise? Daniel Wilson tried to smile, but he couldn’t, pressing down on the floorboard as though that would slow the car down.

“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,” repeated bin-Salaam, one of his brother’s many bodyguards, as he hunched over the steering wheel. Bin-Salaam, a glum, beefy zealot missing an ear. “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,” he continued, the words flowing together as he wove the car through morning traffic. God is great, God is great, God is great.

Wilson just nodded, turned around. Far behind, but closing fast, three State Security vehicles chased them, sirens blaring. The other cars on the road moved toward the shoulders.

Bin-Salaam accelerated.

Wilson stared at the detonator wired to his index finger and started to shake. He loved his brother Terry. Tariq al-Faisal, he corrected himself. No, he would always be Terry to him. His older brother. The good brother, that’s what his parents called him, and Wilson had to agree. No one outside the family knew that Terry had become a Black Robe. While his older brother now sat at the right hand of Grand Mullah ibn-Azziz himself, Wilson attended mosque intermittently, couldn’t keep a job…or a wife. Delia had left him a year ago, gone to live with some Catholic in Los Angeles, flaunting her body in that moral sewer. His mother wept when he finally told her of his shame. His father couldn’t look at him. He glanced at bin-Salaam, then back to the road. A failure in every sense, Wilson had been given one last chance to redeem himself. Terry had knocked on his apartment door two nights ago, beardless as a bricklayer. Terry had kissed him on the cheek, said, Gather your things, brother, I have a great gift for you.