Heart of the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  The waitress delivered the two Brain Fizzes. Leo tentatively took a sip. "Ummm." He drank half of it. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  "I'm glad you like it," said the Old One, taking a swallow. "There's a pleasant euphoric quality to it also, which is always welcome."

  Leo finished his. Tapped out an order for a couple of refills. "What kind of problem?"

  The Old One activated the privacy screen on the table, the clatter of the room instantly lowered to a whisper. "I don't know if it's in your area of expertise--"

  "I don't have an area," said Leo. "Everything is my expertise."

  "How fortunate for you."

  "You would think so," said Leo, "but you'd be wrong." He leaned over the table. "You ever hear that expression, 'too smart for his own good'? Well, that's me."

  "I don't think it's possible to be too smart," said the Old One.

  "You've never spent any time in the Belt, have you?" said Leo.

  "No...I can't say that I have. Dangerous place, from what I've heard."

  Leo puffed up slightly. "You got to stay on your toes, that's for sure."

  "You've been there?"

  The waitress brought two more Brain Fizzes.

  "I haven't just been there, I've traveled all over it," said Leo. "Almost got myself killed a couple times..." He hooked a pinkie into the blue foam of the drink, licked it clean.

  "I'm very impressed, Leo. You did this alone?"

  Leo shrugged. "I had company. Man named Rakkim. Used to be Fedayeen."

  "This Rakkim was your bodyguard?"

  "More like..." Leo took a long drink of the Brain Fizz. "More like my sidekick."

  "You're a man of many talents, Leo." The Old One shook his head. "I hope it doesn't embarrass you if I say I'm a bit in awe of you."

  Leo blushed.

  "Being treated so shabbily at the conference...it must have been very disappointing."

  "Their loss."

  The Old One toasted him. "Are you married?"

  "I'm engaged."

  "Congratulations. Who's the lady?"

  Leo started to speak, stopped himself.

  "I see," said the Old One. "Caution is a virtue, Leo. I'm a bit of a romantic, that's why I asked. A strange characteristic for a businessman, I know." He pulled at his chin where his beard used to be. "I lost my wife, Helen, last year...still haven't gotten over it."

  "Sorry to hear that."

  "We never had children." The Old One stared into his drink. "Your father is a very lucky man. Having you as a son...well, he must be very proud."

  "Not after he finds out I got laughed off the stage."

  "Not everyone was laughing. I certainly wasn't. You'd be telling the truth if you said that the theory you presented drew mixed responses. No harm in that."

  "I guess so."

  The Old One handed Leo a computational tablet. "Here's the problem I wanted to show you. I sent it to several of the other speakers a month ago, but they were all stumped."

  "Is that supposed to intimidate me? Because I'm not like anyone else." Leo drank the rest of his Brain Fizz. Reached over and snagged the Old One's untouched second drink. Tapped out another order as he stared at the computational tablet.

  "If it helps, Dr. Cheverton suggested that the answer involved some sort of algorithmic transformation."

  "The day I need a suggestion from Cheverton is the day I'll open a vein," said Leo, still looking at the problem.

  The Old One laughed. Dr. Cheverton, whose research facility was underwritten by one of the Old One's shell corporations, had led the chorus of disapproval of Leo's presentation, the personal tone of his attacks encouraging others. "I enjoy your sense of humor."

  Leo brightened. "You think so? Most people..."

  "Most people don't appreciate you, Leo. That's obvious. I want you to know something. Whether or not you're capable of solving the problem, I admire you."

  Leo looked away for a moment, then turned back to the Old One. "You never told me why you want this problem solved."

  "My company controls assets worth over one hundred billion Swiss francs. For safety's sake, the financial data is currently scattered in various encrypted accounts, so if one account is compromised--"

  "And you want to combine them into one account with encryption you can trust."

  "Yes," said the Old One. "It would greatly improve efficiency."

  "So you had somebody devise an encryption program."

  "Not somebody. A team of somebodies. The very best men in the field." The Old One indicated the computational tablet. "Took them years to come up with this oscillating program that shifts at regular intervals--"

  "How often?"

  "Every three hours."

  "Smart."

  "I spent seven million dollars renting the use of the linked computers at the Chinese Science Institute," said the Old One. "They took five days to solve--"

  "At which point it had already shifted forty times," said Leo.

  The Old One didn't answer, annoyed at being interrupted.

  "So you thought you'd try it out on the best minds in the world, see if human creativity could defeat the encryption when computer power couldn't." Leo sniffed. "You wasted your time with dolts like Dr. Cheverton."

  "Am I wasting my time with you, Leo?"

  "Come back in an hour. Go on, shoo."

  Seething, the Old One gritted out a smile and left. When he returned in an hour, Leo was eating a hot fudge sundae covered in whipped cream and maraschino cherries. An empty sundae dish was pushed to one side. The Old One sat down. "Any luck?"

  Leo spooned in ice cream. "No such thing as luck." Hot fudge dripped from his full lips.

  "Did you solve it?"

  "Not really a solving situation." Leo bit into a maraschino cherry, squirted red juice across the table onto the back of the Old One's hand. "That's why even the linked computers couldn't answer the problem until it was ancient history." His spoon dredged out more hot sauce. "You have to anticipate the solution. Leapfrog it." He waved the dripping spoon at the Old One. "It's intuitive as much as inferential. Need a human being for that." He grinned. "Of course, I'm probably the only human being in the world who could do it, so maybe there is such a thing as luck. I mean, if my father had come here instead of me, you'd still be thinking it couldn't be done."

  "You did it?"

  "Thirty-seven minutes. Would have been faster, but I had to go to the bathroom."

  The Old One blotted cherry juice off the back of his hand with a napkin.

  "So your team is going to have to come up with something a little tougher to crack," said Leo, slurping ice cream. "Either that or reset the system every five minutes."

  "We can't do that. There are certain...other considerations."

  Leo shrugged.

  "I'm very impressed," said the Old One. "I hope we can get together in Seattle."

  "Really?" The spoon banged against the side of the sundae dish as Leo got the last of the chocolate sauce. "You're coming to Seattle?"

  "I've got business there, and I intend to pay you for your work."

  Leo licked the spoon. "Maybe you could meet my father. He's an amazing individual."

  "Oh, I'd like that very much," said the Old One.

  CHAPTER 35

  "That was good," said Baby. "That's what I've been missing."

  The Colonel lay beside her, breathing heavily, one hand resting on her bare thigh. Moonlight squeezed through the pulled curtains of their bedroom, turning the darkness cool and gray.

  Baby threw a leg over him. "You're trapped now."

  "I know," sighed the Colonel.

  They were in the summer cabin, part of a hidden encampment protected by the surrounding mountains and two hundred of the Colonel's best troops. This time of year, the Colonel would usually be set up in one of the small towns, or back at the farm, but since Aztlan had accused him of assassinating their oil minister, he had chosen the security of the summer cabin. Baby had only been here a few
times before, remembered it mostly for the wildflowers that seemed to spring up overnight, and making love in the deafening thunderstorms.

  Baby picked up their wedding photo off the nightstand. "I look so young."

  "You're still young."

  "My mama wanted me to wait, but I was sixteen, I knew my own mind." Baby replaced the photo on the nightstand. "You made me happy. Don't ever forget that."

  "I missed you." The Colonel stroked her back, made her shiver. "I didn't know how much until this moment."

  "I hardly thought about you at all," said Baby, enjoying the look on his face. "Didn't even watch news about the Belt the whole time I was in Nueva Florida." She lowered her voice so he had to strain to hear. "I tried to put everything out of my mind. Start over. I wanted to be a new person...but no matter what I did, I was just me." She tugged at his chest hair. "Now that I'm here beside you again...feels like I've never been gone."

  "Hard to believe everything that's happened since you left." The Colonel lay propped up on the pillows. "A year ago Malcolm Crews sent his band of dopeheads and maniacs up against me...today, he's the loudest voice defending me against Aztlan."

  "I've seen him all over the tube ever since I came back," said Baby. "He's respectable now. More than respectable. He's the Man in White. How did that happen?"

  "Damned if I know."

  Baby let the silence gather in the twilight, let it coil around itself, tighter and tighter. "When are you going to ask me?"

  "Ask you what?"

  "Don't be like that. You got to have questions you want to ask me. Why I did it, and what I did afterwards, and was I unfaithful, and who--"

  "You're here, that's all that matters."

  "That just means you don't want to know."

  "That's right, I don't want to know," said the Colonel. "Man goes looking for trouble, trouble's got a habit of following the scent right back to him."

  "Okay," said Baby. "But if you ever--"

  "I won't."

  Baby slid her hand along the sheet, handled his man parts. She had almost forgotten the heft of him. Old man with a big pecker...deduct twenty years for that. "I'm not staying, Zachary. I don't want you to get your hopes up."

  The Colonel sighed as she lightly squeezed him.

  "I been wanting to ask you...whatever happened to John Moseby?" Baby felt him tense. "Last I saw of him he was half dead with the bends or something from diving in that underground lake. I just hoped he pulled through. You told me Fedayeen were tough--"

  "Moseby survived."

  "Praise the Lord." Baby released him, stared at the cracks in the ceiling. "It wasn't you, in case you're wondering. And it definitely wasn't Lester Gravenholtz, who I left two days later, thank you very much. You were a good husband, the very best--"

  "Baby..."

  "I went from my mama's house to your house. Never was on my own for a minute. I needed to find out what that was like, and Miami sounded strange and exciting."

  "I understand. I wish I didn't, but I do," said the Colonel. "Were you still in Nueva Florida when the oil minister was murdered?"

  "Oh my, yes," said Baby, feeling the warmth run down her neck to the tops of her breasts. "Awful thing. The things they showed on the news, 'bout to turn my stomach."

  "I saw the footage too. The look of the body, the rage of the killer...reminded me of the kind of thing Lester was capable of."

  Baby covered her mouth. "I thought the exact same thing, but was afraid to bring it up. You think we should contact the Aztlan embassy in Atlanta?"

  The Colonel chuckled. "I doubt that Aztlan would put much weight in anything you or I have to say. Even if they did, they'd probably assume Lester was still in my employ."

  "I was just trying to help." Baby curled up beside him, the Colonel hard as knotty hickory. "Maybe you should warn Rakkim. Lester had a huge hate-on for him. Not just for cutting up on him, but for the way Rikki looked at me. Lester gets his feelings hurt, there's no fixing it."

  "If Lester was going to come after Rakkim, he would have done it before now."

  "I guess so." Baby's hand snaked across the Colonel's belly. "It's just...just that killing the oil minister was the first we heard of Lester in a year. Maybe he was hurt and now he's well, and back doing what he likes best." She sat up, her body like marble in the moonlight. "You were the only one could keep Lester in line once he got the killing taste...heck, even you had trouble holding him back."

  The Colonel watched her and for a moment Baby was afraid she had moved too fast. He nodded, and her doubts evaporated.

  "You can tell Rikki yourself," said the Colonel.

  "Can you reach him in the Republic?"

  "I don't have to," said the Colonel. "He should be back here sometime in the next week."

  "Rikki's in the Belt?" Baby hid her pleasure. This changed everything. "Is that why you said you weren't worried about Aztlan?"

  The Colonel pulled her back to him. "Rikki's not here to help me. He's...looking at property around Gatlinburg. Tensions been easing between us and the Republic, and you know Rikki, he loves the Belt. I told him it's a good place to raise a family."

  Baby tugged at the gray hairs on his chest. The Colonel was lying about Rikki looking at property. Rikki was here to help Moseby find the cross, she was sure of it. She had come here to steal the cross from Moseby and bring it to her daddy, but this new development was even better. Daddy had a real thing about Rakkim. All he talked about some nights, the two of them standing out on the balcony looking at the stars. Said Rikki was unique, a pivot point that he could use to move the earth itself. Didn't want him killed. Didn't even want him taken prisoner, if it could be helped. Just wanted to talk with him. No force. No threats. Said threats wouldn't work with Rikki anyway. Just wanted to give him a chance to see the light. Another chance.

  Evidently they had talked once before, four or five years ago. Daddy had offered Rikki anything, and Rikki turned him down flat. The refusal, of course, had just made Daddy want him more. Baby had played that same game with men all her life, but Rikki, it was no game to him. Still, Daddy wasn't about to give up. If Baby strolled back into Daddy's suite bringing a piece of the cross and Rikki...well, let's just say Ibrahim would be lucky to end up as an attendant in a West Virginia outhouse.

  "Baby?"

  "I'm sorry...I was just thinking how happy I am," said Baby.

  "You know...Lester had reason to be jealous," said the Colonel. "I saw the way Rikki looked at you too."

  "Hush now. Rikki...he's just got those eyes, like some kind of hawk," said Baby. "Rikki doesn't miss anything. I could see how you might mistake that for interest, though." She looked at him the same as she did when she told him "I do" in that little church. "You got no reason to be jealous of anyone. I'm in your bed."

  "Now."

  "I deserve that." Baby lowered her head. "I don't blame you one bit. You want to send me away, just--"

  "I want you to stay," said the Colonel. "I want you to stay forever, if you've a mind to. And if I wake up tomorrow and you're gone again...then I'm still the luckiest man on earth to have spent one night with you."

  Baby rested her head on his chest, felt his heart pounding and knew that it belonged to her.

  CHAPTER 36

  The woman who answered the door wore a bad wig atop her wrinkled face, a shapeless blue cotton dress hanging on her bony frame.

  "Mrs. Harrison," started Moseby, "I'm John--"

  "I remember you...." The woman chewed her lip, revealed her few remaining teeth. "We talked a while ago...you were driving one of the Colonel's trucks."

  "Couple weeks ago, yes, ma'am," said Moseby.

  "Couple weeks? Seemed longer." She peered at Moseby. "You got a touch of it, didn't you?"

  "Ma'am?"

  "D.C. fever," said the woman. "I can see it in your eyes. Told you not to go there. No place for an outsider." She looked at Rakkim. "That your owner?"

  "No, ma'am," said Moseby. "I'm not indentured. This is my friend R
ikki."

  "Good morning, Mrs. Harrison," said Rakkim. "Pleasure to meet you."

  "I bet," said the woman. "What do you boys want?"

  "Can we come in, Mrs. Harrison?" said Rakkim. "I'd like to talk to you. My wife, Sarah, had dealings with your late husband."

  "You're Sarah's husband? That girl in Muslim country? Come on in. Make sure you wipe your feet." She shuffled into the house, feet slapping on the wood floor. "Darryl! We got company." She waved at a sagging sofa. "Sit yourselves down, I'll fetch you boys something to drink."

  A man walked from a side room, skinny as the woman, equally toothless, his hair in patches on his scalp.

  "The white boy's Sarah's husband," Mrs. Harrison shouted from the kitchen.

  "Pleased to make your acquaintance," said Darryl, pumping Rakkim's hand. He hesitated, did the same for Moseby. "Howdy."

  Mrs. Harrison emerged from the kitchen carrying two bottles of Coca-Cola between the fingers of her left hand, a bottle opener in the other. Rakkim saw Darryl's eyes widen at the bounty. She popped the tops, passed the bottles to Rakkim and Moseby. "Didn't figure you boys would cotton to cold well water," she cackled. "Go ahead, drink up."

  "What about you?" said Rakkim.

  "Darryl and I aren't thirsty," said Mrs. Harrison.

  "No...no, we ain't," said Darryl.

  "I want you to know," Mrs. Harrison said to Moseby, "the reason I didn't invite you into the house last time wasn't 'cause of your skin color. We're not racists in this family, not like some I could mention." Darryl nodded. "Just that my brother-in-law here was away, and it wouldn't be right for a woman alone to have a strange man in the house."

  Moseby sipped his Coca-Cola. "No offense taken."

  "Where were you, Darryl?" said Rakkim.

  "Away." Darryl didn't take his eyes off the pop bottle in Rakkim's hand.

  "Your wife has been a good friend to this family," Mrs. Harrison said to Rakkim. "She bought things from my husband for years, big things and little things, always paid top dollar. Asked about his health too. Only one who ever did. Are you a historian too?"

  "No, not me." Rakkim took a long drink, the coldness and carbonation numbing his tongue, trickling down his dry throat. Nothing like it. He looked around the living room, surprised at the cleanliness and relative opulence of the surroundings. Hand-crafted furniture, a hutch filled with china, wallscreen TV. Even a piano in one corner. He checked the rad counter on his wrist--relatively low radiation count too. Credit the new-looking air scrubber on the roof. He looked at Darryl. "I'm not that thirsty and I'd hate to see the bubbles go to waste. Would you mind sharing this with me?"