"Compared...compared to what?"
"You really don't know what's good for you, Rakkim Epps." Baby walked to the edge of the pool and washed the blood off her hands. "You can stay here if you want, but me, I'm going back to Miami. Don't worry about me taking over the world or anything, that was Daddy's dream." She tossed her hair and it was as if somebody had thrown a handful of dirty gold into the air. "I got better things to do."
Rakkim watched her leave. His mouth tasted rusty. He stood up, dizzy, listened to the waves lapping against the sides of the pool, stirred up by the filtration system. Gravenholtz bobbed along the bottom, facedown, flotsam on the tide.
He looks better like that, said Darwin. Most folks do, but him more than most.
Rakkim saw Darwin standing beside him, the assassin almost transparent.
You could at least act surprised, Rikki.
"I don't have the energy. You could have helped me before. I almost got killed."
I don't have the energy either. Besides, you had the girl to help you with the Old One...and Gravenholtz, you didn't need me to take care of him either. Surprised me too. Dug right into the sticky stuff, didn't you? Couldn't have done it better myself. You didn't even need a blade to kill him--the best ones don't. Guys like us, we don't need anything.
"What...what are you doing here?"
I just stopped in to say good-bye.
"Where...where are you going?"
Anyplace but here, Rikki. I'm done with it.
"I thought you didn't like being dead."
You get used to it. Darwin looked down at the Old One. You would have had fun working for him...and then there's the daughter...that would have been doubly sweet. I would have jumped at the chance if I were you.
"No thanks."
Darwin's lips moved but no sounds came out.
"What?"
I said... Darwin's face thinned out, only his eyes remaining sharp as ice. Only thing I miss about life is the killing. I was good at it. Good as God. Better maybe.
"Me...I'm tired of killing."
Darwin said something.
"I can't hear you."
Darwin faded, fell apart like smoke, and Rakkim was alone.
EPILOGUE
Three Months Later
"I'm dizzy," said Sarah as Rakkim swung her round and round to the music from the wedding reception, wild music, Belt music, all bass and thump, the sound bouncing off the surrounding mountains. "Give me...just a minute."
Rakkim put her down, her pale blue bridesmaid's gown swirling around her. They held hands on the hillside, watching the reception below.
"Leo's quite a dancer," said Sarah, still out of breath.
"I thought he was having a seizure," said Rakkim.
The head of Abraham Lincoln hovered over them, a massive outcropping of granite more than sixty feet high, the sixteenth president stern and stoic as teams of workmen put the finishing touches on him.
Anthony Colarusso trudged up the path to join them. "Me...I'm just a big, dumb cop, and I don't know anything about art or sculpture, but..." He nodded at the monument where an engineering crew rooted around in Lincoln's nostrils with pulsating laser drills. "...but that just looks painful to me." He touched his own nose. Winced.
"You look a little drunk, Anthony," said Rakkim.
Colarusso grinned. "Couple of fellas in the Belt ambassador's entourage had some bourbon they wanted to share and I didn't want to hurt their feelings."
"Good for you," said Rakkim. "Wouldn't want you to cause a diplomatic incident."
Colarusso belched into his fist. "Heaven forbid."
Leo and Leanne had gotten married in the Black Hills of South Dakota, right under the ongoing restoration of Mount Rushmore. The Black Robes had dynamited the original monument forty years earlier, saying human representation was blasphemous, but the Black Robes' opinions no longer counted for much. Lincoln was almost finished. Washington was still a work in progress. The other two faces were being left in their damaged condition until a bilateral committee determined who belonged up there with his head in the clouds. President Kingsley was the clear choice for the Republic. The Belt wanted either the Colonel or Elvis. Mount Rushmore was government property, off-limits to the public, but after it was learned that he was the one who cracked the Aztlan command code, Leo could get almost anything he wanted.
"Nice wedding we got going here," said Colarusso. "Good food, good weather. Marie's been introducing our girls to everyone in pants. Spider even gave the bride a spin around the floor before he had to stop and rest."
"He's happy," said Sarah.
"Probably more relieved than anything," said Colarusso. "Leo may be some kind of genius, but let's be honest, the boy needs a keeper. Wish the Colonel could have come. I'd like to meet him."
"The Colonel's got his hands full running the Belt," said Rakkim.
Sarah brushed cake crumbs off Colarusso's jacket.
Colarusso flushed. "You two coming back down?"
Sarah glanced at Rakkim, then back at Colarusso. "Not now."
"I know that look. Don't you go outraging public decency, Sarah." Colarusso scratched at a smear of cake icing on his necktie. "Something about a wedding that puts females in a lather. If I could bottle it, I'd never have to work again."
"Maybe you better stay here and protect my virtue, Anthony," said Rakkim.
"Too late for that, troop." Colarusso sucked dried icing off his fingernail. "Long past it." He started back down the path as a new song started up.
"What kind of music is that they're playing?" said Rakkim.
"Prewar classics," said Sarah. "Motor-Town they called it...no, Motown, that's it."
Rakkim rubbed the nape of her neck, felt her yield to his touch. Her dark hair was piled high--he preferred it down, but he liked being able to see her long slender neck. He brushed his lips across the sensitive spot under her ear, and she half closed her eyes.
"Maybe...maybe when things settle down we could have another baby," she said.
"If we wait for things to settle down we'll never have another one," said Rakkim.
Sarah kissed him, a brief kiss but there were promises behind it.
Michael ran up the path, making race-car sounds as he ran right past them at full speed, shirttails flying.
"Ibrahim bin-Salah was found dead at a hotel in Nueva Florida yesterday," said Sarah, as Michael continued up the trail, kicking up pebbles. "Evidently your little friend in Miami has finalized her hold on the Old One's financial empire."
"My little friend?"
Sarah laughed. "You were friends, weren't you?"
"The Belt makes people do crazy things," said Rakkim, "but I wasn't that crazy."
"Well, it's a good thing you turned her down in that motel, Rikki." Sarah took his hand. "If I hadn't killed you, eventually she would have."
Rakkim watched the party below; saw Colarusso bellowing along to the music while his wife tried to quiet him. Nobody else seemed to mind. "You were right about the cross," he said quietly. "That chunk of wood did everything you hoped for."
"Yes, it did. When President Brandt turned it over to the Colonel and the head of the Baptist Synod...that's when I knew it was just a matter of time until reunification."
"Highest TV ratings in history."
"By far." Sarah squeezed his hand. "Both in the Belt and the Republic. The line to view it at that church in Atlanta has never been less than a mile long."
"Congratulations."
Sarah pointed at the monument. "The workmen up there, they come home at the end of the day filthy, covered in dust and dirt and rock fragments, hands scarred from laser slag, but the tourists observing the result someday will see only the strong, comforting faces of great men. Studying history is for tourists--polite, tidy people with clean desks and clean consciences. Making history is for people willing to get their hands dirty, to make mistakes and lie when necessary, so that someday historians can sit quietly at their desks and act shocked."
&nbs
p; "You don't have to convince me." Rakkim put his arms around her.
"What's strange, though," said Sarah, resting her head on his shoulders, slow dancing, "what's really strange are the flowers blooming on the cross. I don't know how that happened and neither does Spider. The wood...it looks different too."
"You think it's real?"
"I don't know what's real anymore, and I don't care." Sarah looked up at him. "I just know we needed a symbol and you brought one out of a dead city, you and Moseby, and that's miracle enough for anyone."
The workmen scurried over the presidential heads, moved across the rock on a lattice of thin steel cables as they etched in Lincoln's beard. Behind them, the sky was a rich, deep blue--the face of God, empty and infinite.
"Have you changed your mind about General Kidd's offer?" asked Sarah.
"I don't want to be head of the Fedayeen."
"General Kidd's heart is broken over Amir...and it's a profound honor." Sarah broke their embrace. "Like being offered the presidency."
"I don't want to be president either. Why don't you be president, Sarah?"
"Not yet," said Sarah.
"How nice you're willing to wait."
"What do you want to do, Rikki?"
"I'm waiting for God to give me a clue." He smiled. "It's a good thing I'm patient."
The two of them watched the cloudless sky framing the stone faces, holding hands. A more perfect union, that's what Sarah said Lincoln was after--well, maybe this time they'd do a better job of it. If anyone could make it happen, it was Sarah. He could hear Michael hollering as he approached, his voice echoing off the mountains.
"He needs a brother or sister," said Sarah.
"I'm willing to do my part."
"How noble of you." Sarah stroked the inside of his arm. "I still can't get used to you not wearing your knife. It's been a part of you for so long."
"An old friend told me something the last time I saw him. He wasn't right about anything else, but he was right about this...." Rakkim drewher to him, held her so tightly it was as if the same blood rushed through the both of them. "I don't need a blade anymore."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It's been over six years since I started the Assassin Trilogy and I had no idea where it was going to take me. I feel like I've been gone a long time and I'm not the person I was when I started...thank God.
Many people are owed my thanks, and here's a few of them.
Thanks to my family for putting up with my moodiness and distraction during this time, for covering for me when I forgot the names of people I've known for years, and reminding me by their every action why it's good to be home.
Thanks to my agent, Mary Evans, for her insight and determination.
Thanks to my editor, Colin Harrison, for his talent and ability to see to the heart of what I was trying to accomplish. He made the trilogy better and I am grateful.
Thanks to my publisher, Susan Moldow, for her creativity and unwavering support for a difficult project. When writers get together, we mostly talk about how clueless publishers are. Susan left me with nothing to say.
My research led me to the work of many fine writers and thinkers. The five I feel most indebted to are Samuel P. Huntington, Bernard Lewis, Robert D. Kaplan, Mark Steyn and the columnist for Asia Times who writes under the name Spengler. I would also like to thank Hugh Hewitt, law professor and broadcast journalist, whose nationally syndicated radio show both informed me and exposed the Assassin Trilogy to a broader audience.
Thanks to my readers who, by buying the books, have allowed me to finish the trilogy. And put a new roof on my house. A special thanks to the many readers who have written me--your encouragement meant a great deal. I didn't even mind when you asked me to write faster.
Finally, I would like to thank my characters, Rakkim and Sarah, Anthony Colarusso, Spider and Leo, the Colonel and John Moseby and General Kidd. Thanks to the Old One too, and Baby, of course, and preacherman Malcolm Crews, Satan's own holy roller. Lester Gravenholtz, you sick, redheaded warthog, you belong dead. But you're not, of course, not you, not any of them, least of all you, Darwin. I created every one of you, but you outgrew me and I can't follow. The best dialogue you wrote yourselves, whispered it in my ear as I typed. You cracked me up, scared me, made me cry at the Tigards' farmhouse and again at Graceland. I had the best seat in the house because of you, and I couldn't wait to get to the keyboard in the morning. Thanks for the ride.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT FERRIGNO is the author of ten previous novels, including Prayers for the Assassin, The Wake-Up, Scavenger Hunt, Flinch, and the bestselling The Horse Latitudes. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest.
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