“I really will come back.”
“I know.”
“I will, Sarah.”
Sarah looked straight ahead as Rakkim accelerated.
Sarah flopped back on the bed, exhausted, hair lank, their bedroom steamed with sex. She stared at the ceiling, eyes half closed. “Wow.”
Rakkim curled himself around her, watched her breathe. Captivated by the steady rise and fall. Her breasts were fuller since the baby. He liked them before. He liked them now. He lightly raked his nails across her belly, and she shivered. His kissed the warmth back into her.
Sarah threw a leg across him, pinched him. Laughed as he yelped.
They still hadn’t talked about John Moseby. They had driven through the gates of their fortified home, walked inside, stopping only to peek in on Michael. Sarah had adjusted the baby’s covers, and Sarah’s mother, Katherine, grumbled from the next room, said if Sarah woke him up, she was going to have to put him back to sleep. Rakkim and Sarah kissed their son on the forehead. They lingered, listening to him snore and wondering what he dreamed of.
Afterward, they made love in silence. Time enough for words later. Rakkim lost himself in her as always, lost himself in the process, relieved at the absence of his own thoughts, the awful weight of knowing what he had to do. There were times making love with her that he couldn’t remember his name, and was grateful for it. He played with her hair while she rested her cheek on his heart. The two of them spent and exhausted, content for a moment, drifting…Of course he had to ruin things.
He raised himself on one elbow. “Do I…do I seem different to you?”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Just…different.”
“You’re more playful lately. More fun. Not so serious. I like that.” Her fingers traced the scars on his chest. She kissed the biggest scar, a pale, thick knot where Darwin had plunged his knife in. It should have been a killing strike, but Darwin had stopped the blade an eighth of an inch short, wanting to draw out the fun. Another kiss and she looked up at him. “You’re a better lover.” Her eyes creased, teasing. “Not that you weren’t always wonderful, but lately you’ve been a real maniac.” She must have seen his expression. Laughed. “I mean you’re just…unstoppable.” She kissed him. “I’m flattered, if you really want to know. I was worried after we had Michael that…that you might not be so interested in—”
“I killed two men earlier this evening.”
Sarah pulled back slightly.
“Al-Faisal’s bodyguards.”
“I’m…I’m sure they were trying to kill you.”
Rakkim nodded.
“Then they made their choice.” She reached for him. “What is it?”
“They made their choice…that’s just what I said afterward.”
She pulled the sheet over them, cooling their bodies as it fluttered down. “Well, they did.” She yawned. “Are you complaining?”
“No.” Since he had killed Darwin, Rakkim had been scanned, poked and prodded, every few months. The doctors said he had been lucky, his recovery miraculous. Most Fedayeen, in spite of their genetic boosters, would have died in that abandoned church in New Fallujah, bled to death from a hundred cuts, or gone into shock. Instead the two of them had circled each other, covered in each other’s blood, jabbing and slashing. Darwin chattered away the whole time, pale and rat-faced, but his hands, those beautiful hands, long-fingered as a concert pianist’s, and fast…faster than Rakkim…Yet it was Darwin who had died in the abandoned chapel, Rakkim’s knife driven into his open mouth, silencing his taunts, severing his brain stem. Darwin was gone, but there were times, late at night, while Sarah slept beside him…There were moments when he held up his hands and didn’t recognize them as his own. Moments when he closed his eyes and saw Darwin’s arrogant leer, heard his voice echoing in the church—Don’t die on me, Rikki. Not yet. Come on, don’t you want to play some more? It was all a game to Darwin. Until Rakkim killed him. Rakkim still wasn’t sure which one of them had been more surprised.
This wasn’t the first time he had closed his eyes and seen the dead. Heard the voices of men he had killed. Taking a life put one in God’s place for an instant, and with that role came the burden of ghosts. Killing Darwin had been different. Rakkim, the shadow warrior, had a new shadow now. Today he had killed two men in the Zone. Trained men flanking the choke points of the alley. At best he should have attempted a series of asymmetrical feints, hoping to draw them out of position, but instead, he had killed them without breaking stride. Killed them so quickly he wasn’t even aware of how he did it. Killed them as though they were cobwebs to be brushed aside.
“When you come back from the Belt, I want us to make another baby.” Sarah cupped his face. “Promise me.”
They both knew the pledge she wanted was that he would come back. “I promise.”
He drew her close. “How did you find out that John Moseby is John Santee?”
She yawned again. “How did I find out that you gave a false report to the commander of the shadow warriors? Is that your real question?”
“You’re too smart for me.”
“I know.” Sarah curled up against him. “Redbeard told me. I don’t know how he found out.” Her nipples stiffened against him. “It was after you asked for my hand in marriage. That’s when he told me.” She giggled and her nipples tickled him. “He said a Fedayeen who violated his oath had committed a capital offense. He asked me if I thought such a man was a worthy husband.”
He pulled her on top of him.
“I told him…I told him you must have had a good reason to lie…” She slipped him inside of her, rocking gently. “…and surely…surely a man who thought for himself, without the burden of law or tradition, surely such a man was the best of all husbands.” She bit her lip, back arched, her eyes locked on him. “I said…I said, Uncle, if you hadn’t come to the exact same conclusion, surely you would have turned him over to the Fedayeen rather than risk being branded a traitor yourself.”
Rakkim groaned, his cries slowly trailing off.
She flattened herself against him, the two of them prickly with sweat. She waited until they got their breath back. “Why…why did you tell them Moseby was dead?”
He was still inside her, feeling her pulse as his own.
“This man broke his oath,” she said. “What was it about him that made you break yours?”
He remembered the last time he had seen Moseby. The man was a light sleeper, but not light enough. He had opened his eyes, felt Rakkim’s knife against his throat, but made no move to struggle or resist. Moseby was a shadow warrior too, he knew how skillful Rakkim had to be to sneak up on him. Moseby let out a long sigh, released his fear like a flock of white doves. Rakkim looked down at him and knew he had never felt at such peace with himself as this dead man did. Go on, Moseby whispered, not wanting to wake his wife, who lay sleeping beside him. Do what you have to and go quietly.
“Rikki? Why did you lie for him?”
“When I met him…it was before you and I were together, before I had any hope for us to be together. The way he looked over at his wife when he thought he was going to die…I never saw anybody so in love before.” Rakkim felt her grip him, enclose him with her heat. “Moseby…he was the only man I was ever envious of.”
Chapter 6
Rakkim and General Kidd washed their hands and feet with clean sand as the muezzin called the faithful to dawn prayer from the minaret. The light brown sand was imported from the general’s Somali homeland, its fine grit an accepted way to wash in that arid place. Swathed in white robes, they quickly filed into the mosque with the other men, the only sound their bare feet shuffling on the cool slate.
It had been almost three years since Rakkim had been to mosque with Kidd, and he missed it. Missed sharing meals with Kidd’s family afterward, missed seeing Kidd as a father in a more intimate setting. His own father murdered when he was nine, Rakkim had learned from Kidd’s stern but loving treatment of h
is children, his patient guidance, and patterned his own behavior accordingly. Choosing to remain in hiding after the death of Redbeard, he and Kidd had continued to meet privately, maintaining their friendship and Rakkim’s back-channel contacts with the Fedayeen. Now though, leaving soon on this mission into the Belt, Rakkim had wanted to pray with him, for perhaps the last time.
Rakkim rested on his haunches inside the mosque, eyes half closed, listening to the imam’s sermon, and the sound of the man’s voice might as well have been the crash of waves in the distance. He sat in the tiny mosque, packed so close that he could hear the rustle of Kidd’s white djellabah beside him, inhale the faint sandalwood oil Kidd rubbed into his anthracite black skin. The only white man in the mosque, Rakkim was half a head shorter than the others, Somalis mostly, with a scattering of Ethiopians and Nigerians, all of them Fedayeen, retired or active-duty. Like Kidd, the older men had journeyed to the former United States when the Civil War broke out almost thirty years ago, men who had left their homes and families behind, risking everything for the chance to conquer new lands for Allah. Fierce fighters, they had died by the hundreds, by the thousands, most of them buried in haste, without proper treatment, their graves unmarked. Still they had come, heeding the call. Rakkim, aware of his own faith only by its absence, felt honored to be among them.
As a newly minted major in the army of the Islamic Republic, Kidd had led a brigade of African volunteers at Newark, Bloody Newark, or the second Gettysburg, as later historians called it. Kidd knew nothing of Gettysburg, he only knew that the standing order never to retreat was madness. To fight to the last man only meant there would be too many warriors in Paradise and not enough on the ground, where they were needed. Hopelessly outnumbered, Kidd had led a controlled retreat, gathering American Muslims with him as they drew the rebels from the Belt deeper into parts of the city still standing, high-rise neighborhoods where the rebel tanks had trouble maneuvering. On the fifth day of the battle, Kidd took control of all the Islamic forces and counterattacked, outflanking the rebels and halting their advance.
Rakkim’s eyes were on the imam, but he saw only the footage from the war museum, video of Newark burning, the flames like a tidal wave. The battle raged for three more days, the city wreathed with oily smoke, the streets clogged with the dead. Newark was the deepest penetration into the Muslim republic by the rebels, and while not a victory for either side, it was Kidd who staved off a Muslim defeat and stymied the rebels’ plan to head into Pennsylvania and Ohio, splitting the republic. A cease-fire was declared a week later, a cease-fire that had held ever since. Given a battlefield promotion by order of President Kingsley, after the armistice Kidd had created the Fedayeen, a small, elite force of genetically enhanced holy warriors.
The army had fifty times the men under arms as the Fedayeen, but they were poorly led, poorly equipped, and poorly trained, garrison soldiers strung along the border, ill suited for combat. Redbeard had told Rakkim that the army’s weakness was no accident. The Fedayeen remained outside the military chain of command, a praetorian guard operating without any oversight, answering only to General Kidd and the president. The calculation had worked well for many years, but the rise of the Black Robes had created fissures in the ranks of the Fedayeen, testing the loyalties of even the most devout. Three months ago, an entire company of Fedayeen, eighty fighters, had defected, taking their heavy weapons with them to a Black Robes’ stronghold outside of Dearborn, Michigan.
The imam leaned against the pulpit, white-haired and bent as a stick, his voice echoing, every sound magnified in the stillness, as the faithful nodded in agreement. Unlike the lavish grand mosques scattered across the city, this little mosque in the Fremont district was plain and unadorned, solid as the worshippers themselves. The floors were gray slate, the walls immaculate white plaster, the dome of beaten copper. The mihrab on the east wall, an ancient, wooden crescent indicating the direction of Mecca, had been brought over from Kidd’s boyhood village outside Kismaayo. Rakkim felt comfortable here among the old warriors and their many sons, more comfortable than in any other mosque. While the fundamentalist clerics bellowed demands from the pulpit, this Somali imam’s sermon stressed traditional values of piety, simplicity, and duty, urging the faithful to avoid the gaudy distractions of the modern world. Study the Quran, the imam repeated, exhorting the brothers to care for their families as Allah cared for them, “in this way shall you find peace in this world, and reward in the next.”
Peace in this world. The faithful pressed their foreheads to the floor. Allahu Akbar. God is great. Fine thoughts from the imam, but even in this holy place, Rakkim felt no comfort. He had spent his life mouthing the words, declaring his belief in one god, and Muhammad as his last prophet, but he was a Muslim in name only. Like most of the country, going along to get along. The difference was that Rakkim envied the faithful their piety. Their joy in submission. Their peace. All of it out of reach to him, a drowning man forever carried beyond the shore. Until he had killed Darwin.
Strange to think that only when facing evil incarnate had Rakkim felt the presence of God. Darwin, the Old One’s personal assassin, should have killed Rakkim when he had the chance. Instead he had toyed with Rakkim, gone blade to blade with him in an abandoned church, laughing as he cut his signature into Rakkim’s flesh again and again, both their blood flung about like holy water. Sarah’s going to be all alone after I kill you, Rikki. Nothing better than fucking a new widow. Best pussy in the world. Darwin’s face was pale and slack, but his eyes burned in the twilight. Maybe I’ll leave your cock under the pillow for her. Rakkim remembered the sound of his own labored breathing as he moved across the floor, stained glass crunching underfoot as he held eye contact with Darwin, and Darwin…seemingly fresh and free, almost dapper, knife in his long, slender hands, gracefully directing Rakkim’s movements like a symphony conductor. You’re not tired, are you, Rikki? We’re just getting started. This is just foreplay. Wait until you see what I’ve got planned for you. Then, as Rakkim teetered, bleeding from a hundred cuts, he had felt soft wings brush his cheek, angel wings, and strength rushed into him as he flung his knife. Darwin staggered back, stood pinned against a wood pillar, Rakkim’s blade driven deep into his mouth. Darwin’s soft, full lips twitched, trying to speak, as shocked as Rakkim. Not so bad to die, that’s what Rakkim had thought as he collapsed onto the floor of the church…not as long as that devil precedes me to hell. Angel wings…the delirium of a dying man, that’s what he told himself as he drifted off. Then he felt the angel’s touch again, and lost all doubt, blinded by tears as those downy wings enfolded him, lifted him up from the well of death. While Darwin died, Rakkim lived. Granted the gift of life. And the burden.
Sitting on his heels, hands resting on his knees, Rakkim spoke in unison with the faithful, entreating Allah’s blessing. He turned his head to the right, toward the angel recording his good deeds. Then turned his head toward the left, toward the angel on his shoulder recording his bad deeds. “Assalaamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullah.” Peace and blessings of Allah be upon you. Rakkim stood with the other men, gently embraced Kidd. “May Allah receive our prayers.”
Rakkim walked quickly to the door. After that time in the abandoned church, after killing Darwin, he had never again felt the presence of Allah. Never. God had slipped away from him like sand through his fingers. Slipped away while Rakkim lay for days where he had fallen, his body slowly healing itself. No matter. That one touch, that glimpse of the infinite, had left its mark. So much for miracles. Rakkim was on his own now. A new creature. Each step a first step. These thoughts had troubled him, but lately…lately he had taken a perverse pleasure in his situation. Never had he felt so free. So limitless in his reach.
Kidd walked beside Rakkim as they strode the narrow streets toward the family compound, the apartments already noisy, the air rich with the smell of frying bananas and corn cakes. The Fremont district was almost exclusively Somali, a conservative enclave with tribal mores and extremely heavy secu
rity. Kidd was safe here. So was Rakkim. Six of Kidd’s sons, all Fedayeen, walked behind them at a respectful distance.
“The mosque did not collapse upon us,” said Kidd.
“Allah must have been busy with more important things,” said Rakkim.
Kidd smiled for just an instant. “It’s been a long time since you’ve joined me for prayers. Are you all right, Abu Michael?”
Abu Michael. Kidd honored him with the name when they were together. A Somali man lost his given name when he became a father, took on the name of his firstborn. Abu Michael—father of Michael. Kidd told him once that in his grandfather’s time, a man whose first child was female would often have the child killed, so as not to bear the shame of being given a woman’s name. Strange days then…strange days now. Abu Michael. He was not on his own. A new creature? Where did such thoughts come from? He had a wife and a son, duties and responsibilities and all the joys that went with them. Father of Michael. Yes, that was worth hanging on to. Like all shadow warriors, Rakkim had gone by many names, but Abu Michael was his favorite. If he was ever in the presence of Allah again, what would God call him?
Kidd peered at him, his eyes deep-set over high cheekbones. Light gleamed on his shaved skull as he waited for an answer. “Abu Michael?”
“Never better,” said Rakkim.
Amir, one of Kidd’s thirty-seven sons, dodged a knife stroke from one of his many brothers, slid under the man’s blade, and jabbed his brother in the heart. The two brothers bowed to each other, the loser retreating to the edge of the training room, blood trickling from a dozen minor wounds on his legs and torso. Their veiled mothers, sisters and wives, sprawled on pillows along the opposite side of the room, eating sweets and gossiping.
Amir beckoned to the last of his brothers calmly waiting his turn, the last of his five opponents, and the man trotted out to join him, his bare feet kicking up sand. A light rain started up, beating on the metal roof. Harder now.
Sins of the Assassin Page 6
