CHAPTER 8

The Old One stood on the balcony of his penthouse, wanting to burn the world to a cinder and scatter the ashes among the stars. The world and everyone in it. He could still hear his chief physician's lugubrious voice-A systemic breakdown, master. Deterioration at the cellular level. A death sentence was a death sentence, no matter how carefully it was worded. A death sentence for him but not for the world. Where was the justice in that? To die now, when he was so close to achieving everything he had worked for? What was Allah thinking?

Far up the coast, he could see waterspouts dancing opposite the casinos, man-made cyclones five and six hundred feet tall, with colored lights in their swirling arms. The tourists loved them, and so did the Old One. Not tonight, though. Tonight he loved nothing. He watched as the largest waterspout turned dark green, white and red, the colors of the Aztlan flag, an homage to the slain oil minister. The Aztlan Empire was gobbling up territory from Texas to Southern California, but Nueva Florida had wisely chosen neutrality, its strictly business mentality serving everyone's interests.

The tricolored waterspout rose higher and higher. Lester Gravenholtz had done a good job this afternoon; the brutality of its ambassador's murder had infuriated Aztlan almost as much as the assassination itself. Even so, the Old One wished Darwin had been here to do the job. Wishes, however, would not bring back Darwin. He watched the waterspouts spiral for ten minutes until they finally died down, leaving the surface of the water calm again, the colors bleeding into the deep. The darkness seemed bereft somehow.

The Old One shivered in the warm breeze off the ocean. One got used to immortality. Took it for granted. Death, the fate of all other men, seemed a small, shabby thing, a distant memory. Until now. He amused himself with the thought that perhaps he should seek help from that backwoods faith healer Baby had told him about. Malcolm…Malcolm Crews, that was his name. Baby had inserted Crews into the Belt president's inner circle a few months ago. A brilliant move on her part. Ibrahim had been furious.

You would have thought the Old One would have grown tired of life, but if anything his hunger to live was more intense than when he was a youth. So much work left undone. He remembered the first whispers that he might be the Mahdi, the twelfth imam, the messiah chosen by Allah to unite all Muslims and establish a worldwide caliphate. The Old One initially resisted such speculation. The son of a wealthy sheik, educated at Oxford, he had no use for the burden of faith. Still, the whispers persisted, until finally he decided to visit the holy Iranian city of Qom.

Shiite pilgrims regularly journeyed to a well on the outskirts of the city, the place from which the twelfth imam was supposed to emerge during the last days. The Old One had visited the well after midnight, passing through a small village, feeling foolish, the site deserted except for a dozen of his most loyal retainers. He had peered into the blackness, whispered a prayer for guidance and then stumbled backward as Allah answered, spoke to him so clearly that even today he could still hear the echo of God's voice in his heart. As he stood there beside the well, dazed, a host of birds rushed out of the depths, a flock of white doves such as had never been seen before or since in that place. The birds wheeled above his head, their wings like frost in the moonlight, then just as suddenly they dropped to the ground at his feet, dead. The next day Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was murdered in Sarajevo, precipitating the First World War, and the Old One was assured of his destiny.

In the years following, he had grown ever richer and more powerful. Other men seemed dim and lazy by comparison, and he used their weakness against them, jerking them about as though they were suspended on strings. While those around him grew weary and gray, and his wives and children tumbled into the grave, the Old One continued. Time had slowed for him, and the Old One used all scientific means to increase his days. It had taken Massakar to remind him that though time had slowed for him, it had not stopped.

In the distance a wave-energy buoy bobbed on the water, warning lights flickering. There had been hundreds of them initially, the Cubans investing heavily in alternative energy. Almost 50 percent of Nueva Florida's electrical supply had come from the wave buoys…until the latest cycle of super-hurricanes had torn through, uprooting their land links and sending them hurtling far inland. The Cubans had shifted to solar power.

The Old One massaged his knuckles, wondering when he would start stiffening with the infirmities that troubled other men. Rage twisted through him again, rage and frustration…and doubt. Rage and frustration were to be expected, but doubt…to question his anointing was to question Allah's judgment and that was blasphemy. The Old One inhaled deeply, let the clean salt air fill him. Whether he had three years or three minutes, he would not falter.

Others had been rumored to be the mahdi over the course of history, sixty false prophets as predicted, the most successful of them gathering whole armies to their cause before their inevitable defeat, like that fool in the Sudan in the 1880s and Osama bin Laden a hundred years later. These imposters announced themselves with trumpets and declarations, turned themselves into targets for the infidels and then were surprised when they were destroyed. The Old One knew better. He might have hundreds of billions of euros in assets, thousands of men who would eagerly die for him, but against nations-against Christians and Jews and false Muslims-he had no choice but to use more delicate tactics: stealth, bribery, assassination-methods that required patience. The world was a vast, multilayered chessboard, and the Old One took years between moves. Perhaps he had been too patient, relying on his own false sense of immortality to achieve his aspirations.

He had spent twenty years engineering the rise of one of his many sons to a position of prominence in the Catholic Church, having favorable articles written about this young cardinal, eliminating rivals. When the man finally ascended to the papacy as Pius XIII, it turned out that his time in the Church had changed him. His son had truly become a devout Catholic, and proceeded to do everything he could to thwart the Old One's ambitions, jailing clerics loyal to the Old One, and dramatically increasing his security. The Old One's attempts to cajole him were rejected, as were his efforts to discredit him. When all else failed he summoned Darwin. A week later, Pius XIII was found lying peacefully in his bed at the Vatican, hands neatly folded in prayer, one staring eye red with blood. Dead of an aneurysm, according to a team of coroners. Darwin never did tell him how he had accomplished the feat. Now it was too late.

The Old One watched the stars reflected in the waves, let his gaze linger so that after a time he couldn't tell the heavens from the sea… He whirled around, saw Baby standing just inside the doorway, a healthy young animal that had lost all fear of him. "I told you I wanted to be alone," he said quietly. "You disobeyed me."

"Yes, I did, Daddy."

"Where is Ibrahim?"

"Ibrahim is a good boy." Cold eyes, almost as cold as his own. "He does what he's told."

"Ibrahim has been by my side since he was born. I barely know you, girl."

"Ibrahim has been in your shadow since he was born, Daddy. I see things more clearly than he does…I can be more useful to you." Baby walked out beside him, leaned against the railing. "This thing you had Lester do today…killing the Mexican oil minister, it's fine and good, and Lord knows, Lester needed to kill somebody or there'd be no living with him, but I don't really see the purpose of it."