“Yeah.” The kid blinked, looked away. “Tell her to come get me. Tell her to stand on the steps of Saint Xavier at noon, and I’ll see her. Tell her I’ll be watching for her every day.”

CHAPTER 42

Breaking news. Terrorism by the bay.

Rakkim put down his lamb kebab as the video crawl flashed over the napkin dispenser. Images of shattered metal and whipping pylons. Rakkim slid across the red Naugahyde seat of his booth at Pious Sam’s Pious Eats, getting closer to the screen. A section of the General Masood Bridge across San Francisco Bay had collapsed at the height of afternoon rush hour. Hundreds dead. The camera zoomed in on bodies floating in the water, the current sending overturned cars bouncing against the support pillars. The mayor of the city came on camera, the wind whipping his robe and turban as he demanded that Redbeard answer for the failure of State Security to prevent the attack. Behind him, women in black burkas, impenetrable behind their eye slits, were beating large, flat stones together in the light rain, wailing in rage and sorrow.

Sarah had barely glanced at the screen.

Rakkim pointed at the video. “You see this?”

Sarah nodded. “Another bridge collapse blamed on terrorists. The usual excuse for years of official neglect.”

“No, this time, instead of railing against the godless infidels for doing the deed, they’re blaming State Security for allowing it to happen.”

“That’s Mayor Miyoki. He’s always been an enemy of Redbeard.”

“Has he ever criticized Redbeard by name?”

“Miyoki’s up for reelection. It’s San Francisco. Sharia City. They behead homosexuals at the Civic Center every week. Redbeard represents everything Miyoki hates.”

Rakkim wasn’t convinced. Miyoki’s denunciation seemed like another manifestation of Redbeard’s declining political power. “What’s wrong? You haven’t touched your food.”

Sarah pushed aside her plate. “Did you have to kill him?”

“No. I could have let the musclehead debone me. Maybe Zeke would have given him seconds on you as a reward.”

“I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong. I knew what they would have done to us, but you didn’t kill the other two. You just…broke their bones, so they couldn’t hurt us.”

Rakkim pretended to watch the video crawl. “It was easier.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means things were happening fast. It means the training took over and I let it.”

“But, if you had time…you wouldn’t have killed him? Right?”

Rakkim knew where she was going. She had seen how fast he was an hour ago; she had seen the Fedayeen in him and it scared her. It scared him sometimes too. Something else was behind her questions. Anthony Jr. had talked to her at the skating rink. Probably told her how Rakkim had cut him and his boyos in the alley, how Rakkim had danced around them that night, stabbing them a hundred times, but never deep enough to do permanent damage. Anthony Jr. probably told her about his scars. Offered to show them to her sometime. Rakkim hoped Sarah had seen through the kid’s bravado, that she understood what had really happened. Speed was easy. Self-control was the hard part.

Rakkim took her hand. “I’m not like the assassin, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I just think…I think it must be hard not to enjoy something you’re so good at.”

Rakkim released her. “I’m not going to apologize.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” Sarah reached for him. “You sure you don’t want to call Colarusso for help finding Fancy?”

“I’ve already put him at risk. I’m not going to make it worse.”

“So we call Colarusso from a data farm. Totally anonymous-”

“A call from a data farm only means that someone is contacting Colarusso who wants to hide their identity. What do you think that tells anyone monitoring him?” Rakkim sat back in the booth. Lowered his voice. “Anthony is the only one who knows we’re here. Any contact with him jeopardizes that. I’ve got someone down here we can use.”

Sarah pulled her hand back.

Rakkim watched the traffic flow past on the freeway in the distance. They had driven inland after leaving Long Beach, sightseeing, trying to decide what to do next. Sarah noted how many Catholic churches there were, many of them even with crosses on top, something strictly forbidden in the capital. The pollution was worse here than along the coast. Last summer over eighteen thousand people had died of acute respiratory distress during a three-week thermal inversion. The news had never been reported. Not in any of the local or national media. Colarusso had told Rakkim at the skating rink, said the cops all had oxygen units in their rigs. The bill for their lunch flashed on the video crawl. Rakkim fed money into the slot. Pressed No change required.

“We passed a mosque about a mile back,” said Sarah. “I want to check the recipe site and see if my mother left a message for me. Their Internet kiosk will have the right filters.”

“You didn’t have any kind of a schedule worked out with her?”

Sarah shook her head. A truck drove past loaded with watermelons, big green ones with black stripes. “Contact was always at irregular intervals.”

“She’s careful. That’s good.”

Sarah stared out the window. “I want to meet her. I want to see her, talk to her…but, at the same time, I almost wish she had never contacted me.” Sarah looked at Rakkim. “I wish we were back at the motel.”

“Say the word.”

Sarah shook her head. “Don’t tempt me.”

CHAPTER 43

“You missed lunch, Sister,” said Sister Elena, the novice, a little out of breath.

“I didn’t want to be tempted by Sister Gloria’s strawberry-rhubarb pie.” Katherine had wanted to be alone. The lie was a venal sin, easily expiated.

“Mother Superior would like to see you.”

Katherine stayed where she was. Sister Elena might be fooled by the lie, but Bernadette would not be denied Katherine’s presence. The wind whipped her cassock, sent it billowing around her, but she made no attempt to push down her skirts. Angelina had been right about this new head of the Black Robes. Ibn Azziz was more than dangerous. He was toxic. “I had bad dreams last night,” she said as tendrils of black smoke rose over the distant hills. “I awoke to find them true.” She saw Sister Elena tremble, an earnest nun in her early twenties, soft and gentle as a white-breasted thrush. Katherine wondered what the girl would do when the conflagration reached her, wondered what Sarah would do in similar circumstances. They were about the same age. Elena had been left at the convent by her mother, a Muslim teenager who had taken refuge with the nuns during her pregnancy, then afterward slipped away to some city where she could get lost. Sarah…she had been barely five years old when Katherine had abandoned her.

“Is that a forest fire?” Sister Elena squinted at the smoke. “This isn’t the season.”

“It’s Newcastle.”

The convent was a former hunting lodge on the edge of a national forest in Central California. The closest town was Newcastle, a logging community fifty miles and a full-day journey over the winding, rutted roads. A town too busy for politics, with Muslims and Christians living together. The nuns had always been tolerated on their regular shopping excursions, but Katherine monitored the police band, knowing that trouble would come through Newcastle first. Katherine had noted a change last week, the national religious TV channels all rage and paranoia.

“Sister?” Sister Elena put her hand on Katherine. “We shouldn’t keep Mother waiting.”

The whole way back, Sister Elena kept glancing behind her at the wisps of smoke, trying not to look, stumbling once in her conflicting desires. She would probably confess her looking back as a weakness and receive her penance gratefully. After all, had not Lot’s wife been turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at God’s rain of fire and brimstone onto the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah?