The Falcon and His Desert Rose

by George R. Lasher

  Horus continued to stare at the screen. “I don’t believe what this man is saying.” Pointing at the TV as if speaking to the newscaster, he said, “It couldn’t have been his brother. I would have sensed it.”

  “How could you have known, my Lord? You never saw him in the hospital and you were never any closer than five hundred yards away from him at Zion stadium. It would be impossible for you to be sure. Pardon me for saying, but your judgment is not always perfect, my Lord. Consider the hideous death earlier this day of that poor chimp, to which you gave a dose of your formula.”

  Horus turned to face the man who had come close to being the subject of that experiment. His glare stopped the vizier’s speech in mid sentence. “You are correct, Vizier. I remain far too human. My decisions are occasionally flawed, as may have been the case today in selecting the ape instead of you. Tomorrow, I will board a plane and travel to Washington D.C. to make sure that this serpent’s venomous accusations against our interests are silenced, and I also assure you,” he pointed to emphasize his intentions, “that when I return and it comes time once again to select a proper subject for my next experiment, I will not exercise poor judgment.” Horus turned away, striding briskly to the door. Stopping just before he exited, he turned back to say, “My judgment is improving all the time, Vizier.”

  The vizier knew what he meant. He would have to act fast to save his own life. The Egyptian government needed to be told this seventh clone had become dangerous and unreliable. After all, he had failed to kill the vice president, hadn’t he?

  In 2003, a replacement would have taken nine months to be born, and another twenty years to educate. But with the advances made over the past twenty years, an eighth clone could be grown and born as an adult after a gestation period of only sixteen weeks.

  His education would be achieved via intracranial intelligence implants developed in Argentina by Dr. Klaus Von Blomberg. Yes, clone number seven, after such a promising start, had proven to be a bitter disappointment. Tapping the crystal on his watch phone he accessed World Directory Assistance, seeking a resident of Boston, Massachusetts. “Ahhh, here he is,” the vizier said, smiling with satisfaction. He tapped the crystal again to stop the scrolling highlighter as it reached the name, Thomas Jefferson Franklin.

  ~~~

  When Thomas walked into his apartment the next day, weary from the long flight home, he went to his watch-phone recharger base that included a digital answering machine and began to work his way through the seventy-three messages that had accumulated since he left for the Israeli Peace Conference. The first five were normal - the kind he got all the time.

  “Hey, Thomas, Bill here. Wann’a shoot some hoops? Thomas, you home? Call me.”

  “HI Thomas, whatcha doin’? This is Bev. Listen, Janis and I are headed over to the Cambridge Brewery and wondered if you felt like a brew or two. We’ll be there for a couple of hours so come by if you can. See ya.”

  “Thomas, yo, Thomas. Thomas? Man, are you ever home?”

  “Thomas? This is Janis. Bev told me she left a message for you that said for you to meet us at the Cambridge Brewery. Well, never mind, because we aren’t going there, after all. I’ll get back to you.”

  The final message before the assassination... “Thomas? Hey, I’m over at Jimbo’s, doin some brewskies. Shit, you ain’t home yet?”

  Message number six came from a CBS reporter. “Thomas Franklin, this is Justin Morrison with CBS. My condolences on the loss of your father. When you get home call me. CBS is willing to pay handsomely for an exclusive interview which would be aired on a worldwide satellite broadcast. I know the other networks will be calling, but whatever they offer, we will match or beat it. You know we were always staunch supporters of your father and the vice president. Call me at the New York studios, or call my direct line, anytime, 801-555-6875.” Morrison was right. All of the other networks called. And they all made offers, some of them astonishingly substantial. The rest of the calls blended together in an endless stream of syrupy sympathizers, most of them unknown, until he got to one that stood out.

  “Thomas, this is President Daley. I think you know that I held your father in the very highest regard. Please, when you get back, call me. I want your input, as well as your mother’s, of course, if she’s able, on what you would consider to be an appropriate and lasting memorial to your dad. I have already made arrangements for burial in Arlington National Cemetery, unless you would prefer another location. Just call me, son. Call The Whitehouse and they will put you through to me.”

  Thomas paused the digital recorder’s playback on the watch phone base and dropped onto the couch. A fitting memorial? What did he know about funeral statuary? Doves, crosses, statues of Jesus? Granite, marble, or limestone? Why did Mom have to be so unstable? Anything he authorized, she would probably be upset about. He leaned forward, letting his head hang. He stayed like that for a while, grateful for the silence, grateful for the brief time before a decision became necessary.

  When he resumed listening to the messages, one stood out from the rest. Message number fifty-nine came from a man claiming to be a royal Egyptian vizier, whatever that was. But then the man said, “I know who killed your father, Thomas Franklin and, oddly enough, you know him too. The name you knew him by is Horace Khenemetankh. He killed the Boston senator and your father, and now he is on his way to Washington D.C. to slay the vice president as he had intended to do in Israel. You must stop him.”

  ~~~

  The attractive flight attendant smiled and handed the tall, muscular, black man a pillow. He thanked her, placed it behind his head and tilted his seat back, looking as if he were intent on getting some sleep. Before she walked away she said, “We’re going to be serving a light meal and beverages in a few minutes, sir. You might want to stay awake for a few more minutes if you think you’ll want something.” Again the man thanked her, but indicated no interest in food or a beverage. He turned his head away and closed his eyes.

  His mind filled with memories of his childhood, not the happy kind of memories that people normally associate with younger, carefree days, but a collage of frustrating, spirit dampening experiences, dominated by one individual, always on hand with a belittling comment, an intimidating threat, a stultifying attitude. The vizier’s disapproving eyes penetrated the dark behind his closed eyelids, reminding him of his earlier inclination to test the yet to be perfected, ancient, immortalizing elixir on this man who had never once extended a hand in kindness when it would have been so welcome. His dark recollections were so vivid; he could hear the vizier’s raspy, nasal voice in his memory as if it were being projected over the jet’s speaker system.

  “A boy’s ears are on his back. He hears only when he is beaten.” He couldn’t have been more than seven years old the first time he heard that axiom. During a brief break from his studies he’d found a kitten in the courtyard of the compound where he lived. He remembered playing with it, enjoying the tiny grey and white animal’s antics as it batted at a piece of twine that he dangled and twitched in front of the little creature.

  “Leave that animal alone, number seven,” the vizier insisted. “Return to the table so we may continue your lessons from the book of instruction.”

  There were no other children in his class, or for that matter, in the entire compound. All possible distractions had been removed so that “number seven,” as they called him, would concentrate properly on his assigned tasks.

  Enthralled by the sheer joy displayed in the eyes of the tiny kitten as it danced like a miniature marionette on its diminutive hind legs, its wee paws reaching upward in an effort to catch the twine, the young student called out, “I’ll be right there.” But as he stuffed the string in his pocket and reached out to pet his little friend, a huge booted foot crashed down upon the animal’s head, sending a sickening spray of blood across his tunic and killing the kitten instantly.

  His cries of horrified protest were met with fierce retribution. Brutally caned for his failure
to obey, he found himself dragged, weeping and coughing, back to the table to continue his lessons. Then he heard the vizier say to a priest who seemed concerned with the severity of the punishment, “It is not easy to be so harsh, but in service to Egypt I must always remember the ears of a boy are on his back. He hears only when he is beaten.” As the years progressed, the vizier would repeat the phrase many times.

  “You have served your country well, Vizier,” Horus whispered to himself. “Soon you shall reap what you have sown. I shall see to it.” Aided by the monotony of the long flight he slipped into a dream-filled sleep which featured scenes from a possible future, picturing himself as the immortal, all powerful, pharaoh of the world’s most powerful nation and the raven haired Jeanne Mosley as his loving and obedient queen.

  At Dulles Airport, the throng of government security agents resembled a colony of ants at a picnic, inspecting every piece of luggage and detaining every passenger exiting the Egyptair jet. Passports were scrutinized while they fingerprinted each individual and went far beyond the standard inquiries — why they had come to the United States, and the anticipated length of their visit.

  Miles away, in Atlanta, Georgia, Horus, whose passport identified him as Ahmad Rashtiff, calmly stepped off a chartered Lear jet from King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. When asked why he had come to this country, he said he was here to conduct business on behalf of the Egyptian government and the Arabic oil cartel nations. “You can verify that,” he asserted, “by calling the ambassador at the Egyptian Embassy.”

  The lone agent, who had been told to look for an Arabic, but not a bearded male, made the suggested call and appeared to believe the Egyptian ambassador’s verification of the fact that Ahmad Rashtiff had come to do official government business. He stamped his passport and let him proceed without so much as a second glance.

  As the driver tossed his overnighter and attaché into the trunk of the waiting BMW, Horus smiled at how easy it all was. The fact that his head was no longer clean shaven, and that he had grown a beard, along with his ability to change the pigmentation of his skin and color of his hair, made him virtually impossible to recognize. He knew with the impending perfection of the “Fluid of Life,” it wouldn’t be long before he would be able to do much more than just change his hair or skin color.

  When he reached the Egyptian Embassy in Washington he was ushered into a handsomely paneled room decorated with opulent, red velvet curtains and gilded antique desks and chairs, where he was handed the key to his suite at the St. Regis on sixteenth street, along with the one thing he needed to carry out the job he had come to do: One tiny, smoky brown vial. The label emphatically warned any handler that the poison contained within the small bottle (a long banned substance once used for coyote control in the Midwest United States), called sodium fluoroacetate, was potent enough to kill anyone or anything that either ingested it or came in contact with even the most infinitesimal amount.

  Blatant non-biodegradability issues had caused the chemical to be banned due to the fact that the tissue of anything killed by this colorless, tasteless liquid would in turn become toxic, killing other animals which were unfortunate enough to drink not far downstream from where the carcass of a poisoned animal lay.

  Satisfied with the lethal capacity of the liquid, Horus tossed the vial into the air, catching it casually, as if it were nothing more than a coin which he might flip. With an air of confidence he slipped the vial into his jacket and nodded to the elderly Egyptian that handed him his key and the poison. The alarm in the eyes of the man caused Horus to ask, “What troubles you, old man?”

  “My Lord, please, you must be careful, there is enough poison in that small vial to kill more than 500 people. You are the chosen one, the one we have waited for ever since Cleopatra’s death. If it were to fall and shatter...”

  Waving away the old man’s worries Horus replied, “I understand your concerns, but you will see that they are unfounded. I shall exercise the caution you advise and will put the object of your fears to good use. How could anything go wrong? The prophets have foreseen our success.”

  Chapter Twelve

  After receiving the message about Horus, Thomas called Morgan Robinson, one of his father’s old friends in the C.I.A. Thomas admitted to Morgan that he had no idea who this person was that had called him, or even if the call should be considered as a threat. “I don’t even know what a vizier is and I find it pretty hard to believe Horace would do anything to hurt me or my dad, although I do know he didn’t care for the Gillpatricks.”

  Although he sounded skeptical, Robinson said he would see to it that each flight into Washington received additional attention. Before Thomas hung up, Morgan’s skeptical tone vanished briefly as he asked one last question that Thomas thought seemed a little odd. A hint of concern accompanied these words, “By any chance, was your friend black?”

  “No, why?” Thomas wondered.

  “Oh, just something a secret service agent said right before he died outside of Zion stadium. It’s been bothering me. Hmmm, I thought there might be…never mind. Listen, my other line is ringing, but thanks for bringing this to my attention.”

  Thomas hung up thinking, great, now I’ll be branded as some kind of paranoid crackpot.

  His second call went to Jeanne Mosley. He didn’t think she would know anything about Horace wanting to kill the Gillpatricks, but he figured she would at least want to know about the message he received.

  After expressing her sympathy over the death of Thomas’s father, and asking if she could do anything for his mother, she reacted as he expected to the idea that Horace could have been involved in the assassination.

  “No way. That’s totally absurd.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” he agreed, “but I still figured you’d want to know about it.”

  “And you actually called the C.I.A.?” She asked.

  “What else could I do? I mean, what if something really happened and I hadn’t said anything?”

  “I guess. But you know this is probably some stupid...”

  “Of course, Jeanne, it’s bullshit, I know. But Jesus, just think about it. Remember when he got pissed off at the vice president during Thanksgiving?”

  Thomas could tell from her voice that Jeanne’s feathers were becoming ruffled. “Thomas, you can’t label someone as a terrorist just because they don’t agree with Daley’s policies.”

  “C’mon Jeanne, you’re a little too defensive here. I’m not saying he did anything...”

  “Well good, because —”

  “Because what, Jeanne?” An insidious jealous streak shot through Thomas as he remembered having to listen to Jeanne ramble on about Horace, and how Horace always shared his feelings for Jeanne and asked for advice. Rather than exercising good sense and repressing the urge to vent a little, he said, “Down inside, you still yearn to be his desert rose, don’t you? You still want to drive his Maserati. Maybe you wish he would have boinked you, just once — or did he and you just miss it, is that it?”

  Thomas heard a resounding smack, as Jeanne slammed her hand down on the face of her watch phone, disconnecting the call. “Oops,” he said. “I think I just went too far.” He considered calling her right back, but then thought it might be wiser to go over and apologize in person. Maybe with some flowers. Yeah, that’s the ticket, he figured, but not roses!

  An hour later, holding a bouquet of pink carnations, Thomas knocked on Jeanne’s door, wondering if she would still be angry.

  She was.

  After swinging the door wide open, Jeanne asked, “What are you doing here?” Eyeing the bouquet of carnations, she wondered, “What are those? Leftovers from your folk’s house?”

  “No.” Thomas would have been offended if he hadn’t deserved the remark. “I went out to get these for you.” He held them out for her to accept.

  “Really? Which florist did you buy them from?”

  “I got them at Safeway, if you must know. You
want to see the receipt? What difference does it make? Flowers are flowers, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, I guess. As long as they weren’t leftovers.” She reached out, took the flowers and admired them for a moment, her scowl softening before looking up and saying, “Those were some pretty shabby things you said to me.”

  “I know. That’s why I bought those flowers for you. I felt bad. Maybe that was jealousy, talking.”

  “Jealousy?” Jeanne’s eyes widened with surprise and sudden interest, “Now what in the world have you got to be jealous of?”

  “Well, you know, for a while there you always wanted to be with Horace. And when you called me it was always just to tell me about you and Horace—”

  “Now isn’t that cute?” Jeanne interrupted, tilting her head at an angle and peering into Thomas’s eyes. “That was jealousy talking, wasn’t it?” She motioned for Thomas to follow her and turned around. “I need to get these in water,” she said. “And we need to talk.”

  While reaching into the cabinet where she kept the Lennox China vase that had been used to hold the numerous bouquets of roses Horace gave her, she noticed Thomas standing behind her, admiring her figure. “That’s what Horace used to do, you know. See anything you like?” she asked bluntly, turning around. “Every time I reach for that vase someone is looking at my ass.”

  “I wasn’t looking at your ass, Jeanne; I’ve seen you wear far more provocative things than that sweater and those jeans. Remember that bun flosser you wore at the beach?”

  “Oh, you remember that, do you? So what are you saying? You didn’t like what you saw then, or now?”

  Ouch, that wasn’t fair. Now what could he say? “No, I mean yeah, I mean, c’mon Jeanne you’re beatin’ me up here. Give me a chance. You gotta give me a chance.”

  “That’s what I’m doing, silly,” she beamed before turning back around to the sink, twisting the faucet, and placing the vase under the stream of water. Thomas had never seen her smile at him quite like that before. He thought it had a touch of “come hither” to it, a little sly seduction, but he couldn’t be sure. While the vase continued to fill, she asked, “Would you reach up into that cabinet,” she pointed, “and get me an aspirin out of that bottle on the first shelf?”