Rakkim thought of asking him where al-Faisal had gone but didn’t. The man wouldn’t tell, and Rakkim wouldn’t insult him by asking. The bodyguard might not have done the terrible things that al-Faisal had done, but he had facilitated evil, protected evil. He had chosen. Fedayeen swore an oath to defend the president and the nation. When the grand mullah had declared the president an apostate three years ago, the great majority of Fedayeen held fast to their vows, but many had resigned, aligning themselves with the Black Robes. No, the bodyguard had made his decision. He alone was responsible.
The tall bodyguard’s bright blue eyes were wide now. Hairs in his nostrils waved with every breath. He clamped his jaw tight.
Rakkim held the bodyguard’s gaze. He raised his knife in salute and this time he meant it. “Salaam alaikum. Go with God, Fedayeen.”
Eyelids fluttering, the tall bodyguard exhaled slowly, weary now, as though settling down for a rest after a long race. He sank to the pavement, already dead.
Rakkim hurried toward the Presidential Palace.
Chapter 4
The bioscanner beeped, refused Rakkim entry to the secret passage that led into the Presidential Palace. First time for that. Nothing worked right anymore. He stood within a small alcove outside the walled complex, a utility shed concealed by thick shrubbery and the darkness. Seagulls screamed overhead. Trucks rumbled in the distance.
Rakkim kept his heart rate at a steady sixty-five beats per minute as the bioscanner swept over him again. ENTRY REJECTED. Rakkim adjusted the Fedayeen knife nestled against his forearm-carbon-polymer, impregnated with his own DNA, the knife didn’t register on any scan. He smoothed it flat anyway. A third failure would set off alarms and armed response. He tried again. ACCEPTED. He stepped inside, the vault-thick outer door sliding shut behind him. Another bioscan required to get past the interior door. He thought of the two bodyguards he had just killed, and the look in the eyes of the tall one as he acknowledged his own death. The bodyguard seemed less troubled by his dying than Rakkim was with his method of killing him. Assassin tradecraft? Where had that come from? He heard Darwin’s mocking laughter echo in his skull as the security door opened into the president’s private corridor, and hated himself for his memories.
Rakkim double-timed down the corridor, wondering why Sarah had called him to the palace. Had the Old One resurfaced? That evil bastard wasn’t going to stop causing trouble until someone killed him. Rakkim would happily volunteer. Maybe ibn-Azziz, grand mullah of the Black Robes, was stirring from his stronghold in New Fallujah, Rakkim’s sighting of al-Faisal part of some new offensive. Rakkim just hoped nothing had happened to General Kidd-the Fedayeen commander was the president’s most loyal, and most important, supporter. Without the Fedayeen backing him, the president was just a well-intentioned figurehead. General Kidd had survived two assassination attempts in the last year. If anything had happened to him…
Rakkim opened the door into the president’s wood-paneled library. President Kingsley slouched behind his cluttered desk, exhausted, his fine white hair sticking up on one side. Sarah and Spider stood studying a holo-graphic map of North America that covered one wall-the Islamic Republic shaded light green, the Bible Belt in red. Lights pulsed in the current trouble spots in the Mormon Territories, highlighted the incursions into California and Arizona by the Aztlán Empire, the Mexicans attempting to reestablish ancient boundaries. Spider held on to a chair for support-a short, stocky Jewish genius, hair everywhere, twitching from the disease that was slowly killing him. Sarah smiled at Rakkim, then went back to the map.
The president scowled. “Glad you could make it, Rakkim.”
Rakkim didn’t let his surprise show. Kingsley took pains to maintain a semblance of good humor, even when the cameras weren’t rolling. What had happened?
“You are late, Rikki,” soothed Sarah.
“Al-Faisal is in town,” said Rakkim. “I tracked him to a tech store in the Zone.”
“Al-Faisal here?” Spider looked at Sarah. “Have you heard-”
“I don’t give a shit about al-Faisal.” The president tossed a chunk of jagged, twisted steel from hand to hand, a treasured piece of wreckage from Newark, the climactic battle of the Civil War. “The Black Robes are the least of my concerns.”
“What’s wrong?” said Rakkim.
“Wrong?” said the president, his watery eyes sunk into a nest of wrinkles. “What could be wrong? Allah watches over us, guides our every action, does he not?” He set the paperweight down, then came from behind his desk, a handsome man, formerly robust but slightly stooped now, even with the back brace that no one was supposed to know about. “I want you to go back to the Bible Belt. Save the nation, noble Fedayeen. Be the hero again.” He started for the door. “Sarah will fill you in on the details.”
The door clicked shut. Deniability, that’s what this sudden exit must be about. The president had sent Rakkim on other covert assignments. New Fallujah. The Mormon Territories. Rakkim had air-dropped into Pakistan, to follow up on a sighting of the Old One; slipped into the Aztlán Empire to find out what the Mexicans were up to. The president had always briefed Rakkim himself. Not this time. Tonight Sarah got the job while the president kept his manicure clean in case anything went wrong. President-for-life Kingsley was a great man, a moderate who had almost single-handedly kept the Islamic Republic united, and kept the fundamentalists at bay. But he was still a politician.
“What’s al-Faisal doing here?” said Spider.
“Not now.” Sarah walked to the wall map, took the remote from Spider’s trembling hand.
She was still the same woman Rakkim had fallen in love with, but her responsibilities as secret advisor to the president had taken their toll. So had the covert existence they lived, her rarely going out in public, and the necessity of constant security measures. A brilliant historian specializing in the transition between the former and the current regime, she had been forced to eliminate all contact with friends and colleagues. The strain showed. Sarah was still slender, her eyes just as lively, but her playful instincts were muted now, reserved for moments when they were alone. She had cut her dark hair shorter a year ago, said it was easier. He missed it curling past her shoulders, brushing against him while they made love.
“Rikki?” Sarah nodded at the map. The central region of the Belt-Tennessee and the Carolinas-filled the wall. “You know who Colonel Zachary Smitts is, don’t you?”
“Yeah…I know the Colonel.” Memory carried the smell of bacon and coffee flavored with chicory. Twelve years ago Rakkim had been eating breakfast in a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. His second insertion as a shadow warrior. The Colonel’s picture hung over the counter, not the usual airbrushed glory of the fake warrior, but the Colonel in a filthy rebel uniform, unshaven, an unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lip. Portrait of a young man, hard and handsome under the dirt, a backwoods Elvis with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder instead of a guitar. The Colonel had looked back at him from the picture, tired but unbeaten…look what you made me do. A trucker had sat at the counter beside Rakkim, tugged at his hat toward the photo. Rakkim had done something similar a few moments later, raising his coffee cup to the photo before he drank-oblique mirroring, a way to bond with a subject without him being aware of it. “His people love him, I know that much. He’s a smalltime Tennessee warlord sitting on some prime real estate. Civil War hero. Brutal but smart. He stopped our advance along the eastern front. Saved Tennessee and the Carolinas. Did it outmanned and outgunned too.”