“Something like that.”

“I just want him to come home in one piece,” said Colarusso.

“Anthony Junior is hardcore.”

“Too damned hardcore. That attitude can get you killed.”

“Being a coward can get you killed too,” said Rakkim.

A black cop and a white cop leaned against the bar, bellowing along to Sam Cooke, slurring the words to “You Send Me,” until Father Alberto poked his head out of the kitchen and told them to shut the fuck up.

Colarusso looked into his cup of wine. “I worry about him.”

“So do I.” Rakkim hesitated. “Anthony Junior impressed a lot of people during the recent action in Alaska. Conspicuous gallantry, from what I’ve been told. General Kidd himself selected him to lead a forward strike team.”

Colarusso glared at him.

“Leading a strike team is an honor,” said Rakkim. “You should be proud of him.”

“Fedayeen exist to serve and die, right? Heaven awaits and seventy virgins feeding you cherries and pomegranates, right?” Colarusso banged the cup on the table, sloshed wine across his fingers. “I don’t believe that horseshit for a moment. Do you believe it?”

Rakkim noted the tracery of broken blood vessels in Colarusso’s nose and cheeks.

“I asked you a question, Rakkim.”

“I believe we have to act as if God is watching. As if God cares,” Rakkim said softly. “I believe we have to act as if Paradise awaits the good and the brave, and that the hottest fires of hell await those who do evil in God’s name.”

“That’s your answer? That’s the best you got for me?” Colarusso shook his head. “Anthony Junior…he’s good, isn’t he?”

“Very good.”

“His mother lights candles for him at St. Mark’s every day. Me, I do a lap around the beads before I go to sleep.”

“Can’t hurt.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Same as you. Nothing.”

The two of them clinked glasses. Colarusso drained his wine as Rakkim finished his. “You’re a poor excuse for a Muslim.”

“It’s the friends I keep,” said Rakkim.

Colarusso watched him. “So what’s bothering you?” He narrowed his eyes, the stony look that had elicited a thousand confessions. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I need a favor.”

“Most times people ask me for favors, they got parking tickets they want taken care of. Or the name of a good attorney who takes time payments.” Colarusso ran a hunk of bread around his plate, sopping up sauce. “Something tells me you got a bigger problem.”

“I’m going to be gone for a few weeks. Maybe longer.” Rakkim watched two vice cops from the waterfront district passing around the latest holo-graphic porn, the air shimmering and pink around them. “I want you to look after Sarah and Michael.”

Colarusso chewed with his mouth open. “Where you going?”

“Away.”

“You’ve gone away other times. You never asked me to look after Sarah and the boy before. What’s different this time?”

“I asked for a favor,” said Rakkim. “Not an interrogation.”

“If this was an interrogation, believe me, you’d know it.” Colarusso wiped his lips with his napkin, crumpled it. “’Course I’ll take care of Sarah and the brat. Just don’t make me have to. I changed enough diapers to-” He pressed a finger against his ear canal. Listening to the police command alert. He looked at Rakkim. Relieved. “Al-Faisal’s gone to the happy hunting ground.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means he blew himself up just as State Security was about to arrest him. Hamburger all over the highway.”

“Stranglers don’t die so easily,” said Rakkim. “Make sure it’s him. Don’t take State Security’s word for it.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job, troop.”

Rakkim leaned closer. Close enough that Colarusso backed off slightly. “Anthony…make sure.”

Chapter 8

Massakar, the Old One’s chief physician, started to help him up from the recovery table, but the Old One waved him back. He felt better after his rejuvenation treatment than he had in weeks, his blood cleansed of impurities, his system restored to its natural vigor by the technicians and their miraculous machines, may Allah be praised. The ocean liner’s mighty engines throbbed under his bare feet, the captain running the Star of the Sea full speed at the Old One’s command. The few passengers who questioned the staff were easily mollified, given tales of tsunamis and rogue waves. In a few days, when the captain told them that there’d been a change in the itinerary, the passengers would merely nod, return to grazing over the buffet, confident that their best interests were the captain’s highest priority. Sheep fit only for slaughter.

The Old One thought of Tariq al-Faisal and how close they had come to disaster, wondered again if Allah was testing him with misfortune. He longed for the day when he did not have to work through intermediaries, when he could act directly, without need of cat’s-paws. That day was not here, he groused, not yet. He unsnapped his white cotton surgical gown, let it fall to his feet, standing there naked. He gazed at his reflection without shame, his mood brightening again-he still had the bony shanks of an elderly man, but his muscles tingled, his face radiant.

A young nurse bent to retrieve the gown and the Old One felt inspired by the perfectly straight part in her long, black hair, his newly refreshed eyes aware of every glossy hair on her head. She stood up, clutching his still-warm gown to her chest, saw him watching, and lowered her eyes.

“What is your name, child?”

“Alisha, my lord.”

The Old One nodded, noting the grace with which she moved. Women were a blessing from God and the Old One had been blessed beyond all expectation.

He had dressed by the time Massakar approached him again, deferential, head inclined. The Old One had often heard the chief medical officer berate the younger doctors, cursing them for their stupidity and slowness, even saw him once twist the ear of a new endocrinologist so hard that the man wept. First in his class from Harvard Medical and Bombay Neuro-Science Institute, board-certified in five specialties, Massakar had been the Old One’s personal physician for almost forty years, but he was starting to slow down. No one but the Old One would have noticed it, but the man’s eyes had lost a shade of brilliance, and his cuticles were rough.

Massakar bowed. “Your hormone levels and test results remain strong, Mahdi. All organs operating within anticipated parameters.” He stroked his short, gray beard. “Although within a year or so we’ll want to consider kidney replacement, just as a precaution. While we’re in there, we might as well swap out your adrenals-”

“Fine.” The Old One patted him gently on the shoulder, felt the man flinch. “I want you to bring Castle and Gleason up to speed with all your procedures and drug regimens. I’ll decide which one will replace you after we consult on the matter.”

Tears gathered in the corners of Massakar’s eyes. “Have I…have I displeased you, Grandfather?”

The Old One smiled at him. “No, little soldier,” he said, using the term of endearment he hadn’t spoken since Massakar was seven years old. “You have served me honorably and well. I find no fault in you, but time is not the friend of flesh.”

Massakar hung his head. A tear dropped onto the toe of his frost-white shoes.

The irony of the Old One’s statement was not lost on either of them. Massakar’s age had finally caught up with him, but the Old One stayed forever young…well, not young, there were limits to even the best technology, and the Old One’s unique favor in the eyes of Allah merely slowed the wheel of time. Still, while Massakar carried the faint whiff of mortality, the Old One, over sixty years his senior, was infused with a clarity and vitality the younger man could not even imagine.

The Old One kissed Massakar on the forehead and his grandson trembled before him, before backing away. The Old One allowed himself a small sigh, a trace of regret for all those who had passed before him, comrades and lovers, sons and grandsons and great-grandsons, all of them taking their leave while the Old One remained. Surrounded by his most loyal devotees, the Old One was utterly and completely alone. He remembered Massakar’s mother…she had been a great beauty, an Indonesian princess with eyes dark as obsidian, and an ass as firm as a ballerina’s. He could still hear her cries of passion, still see the perfect roundness of her belly…but he could no longer remember her face. Nothing. The Old One shook his head at the lapse. There had been so many wives, so many concubines…a caravan of lust swaying past, almost out of sight now. Annoyed at this sudden melancholy, he took the elevator to his bedchamber and summoned Alisha.