Sins of the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  Leo waved. He looked like he had lost ten pounds on the mission so far, the new clothes fitting him perfectly—a dark gray suit of some shiny material and a white shirt with a shroud of Turin impression of Jesus on it.

  “Feel better?” Andalou didn’t wait for Rakkim to answer. “We were just discussing your situation. I notified Spider immediately after speaking with Leo this morning. You know Spider…he’s already started hacking into the KGB database. Russian security is very good, full encryption and false entry points, but Spider is quite confident. I hope you appreciate the magnitude of your request.”

  “Cracking the database isn’t as hard as you think.” Leo sniffed. “Back-dating your name into the KGB files, that’s the tricky part. Probably not more than a dozen people in the world could—”

  “My history has to be planted behind at least one wall, two would be even better, and the history has to be accurate,” said Rakkim. “From the beginning until three years ago, when I was managing the Blue Moon.”

  Andalou smoothed his trousers. “I still don’t understand why you’re—”

  “You don’t need to understand.”

  “Such lovely manners.” Andalou poured ice tea for Rakkim. “Well, if this little game with your KGB file doesn’t work out, I suspect the two-hundred-million-dollar down payment you’re offering the Colonel will affirm your good intentions.”

  Rakkim looked at Leo. “Two hundred million? I thought the president didn’t want to leave his fingerprints on the operation.”

  Leo squirmed in his seat.

  “The president doesn’t know anything about the Colonel’s new Chinese friends or the change of plans,” said Andalou. “Please…try your tea. I hope it’s not too sweet.”

  Rakkim leaned forward. “What’s going on, Leo?”

  “It’s Spider’s money,” said Leo. “He transferred it into an account at the Bank of Liechtenstein this morning. Left traces of a Russian point of origin.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Rakkim.

  “Rikki wants to know why the president hasn’t been updated,” said Andalou.

  “Why do you think you have to explain things to him?” Rakkim said softly. “Does he seem stupid to you?”

  Andalou plucked at the ruffles around his neck, pursed his shiny lips. “Kindly do not threaten me, sir.”

  “Do you feel threatened?” said Rakkim.

  “Hey, you two,” said Leo. “We’re on the same side.”

  “If you want clarification of my good intentions, sir,” said Andalou, “perhaps you should talk with your wife.”

  “Go ahead, call me sir again,” said Rakkim.

  “Rikki, please,” said Leo. “Getty and Spider and Sarah…we’re working together.”

  “Nobody told me.” Rakkim saw Sarah’s face the morning he left…he could see she was upset, holding something back. He just thought she was afraid to start crying. Joke’s on you, Rikki. Ha-ha. “Must have been too important to share with the help.”

  “Rikki…if I may,” said Andalou. “I’ve been in contact with Sarah and Spider for some time now. Sharing information. Building up trust. Diplomacy 101.” He shook out his hair, sent perfume wafting through the air. “Sarah wanted to tell you, but I insisted on keeping our little circle small. After all, our lives depend on it.” He crossed his legs, the satin trousers rustling, and Rakkim thought of crickets and kudzu and ambushes when you least expected them. “If you want to know the truth, we thought we had more time. This business with the Chinese making overtures to the Colonel has moved everything up, and I’m not at all sure we’re ready.”

  Rakkim waited, enjoying seeing Andalou discomforted. He probably had rehearsed this moment for hours, ready for all the likely responses, but without Rakkim asking Ready for what? Andalou didn’t know how to proceed.

  “You’ve seen what things are like here now,” said Leo. “Mexicans taking back land, kidnapping tourists, diverting rivers. People all over the Belt are losing their jobs, or working for foreigners. Warlords and bandits everywhere, the cops have gone crazy, and the federal government needs press-gangs to fill the ranks of their army.”

  “My country is dying.” Andalou clutched his glass. “My country…is dying. And so is yours.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” said Rakkim.

  “Not you,” said Andalou. “Us. All of us.”

  Leo brought his pudgy fists together. “Reunification.”

  Rakkim laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” said Leo.

  “It’s not possible either,” said Rakkim.

  “One of the early patriots, Ben Franklin, said we could either hang together or hang separately,” said Andalou. “It’s as true today as it was then. I’m not the only one who sees things this way. There are others…in high office, in business, good folks in the Islamic Republic as well as the Belt. People know things are wrong. Even if they’re too young to remember the way things used to be, the evidence is all around them. The bridge in San Francisco…New Fallujah, whatever you call it. The bridge is rusting, badly maintained, cables worn through. Another five or ten years, it won’t be usable. What happened to the people who built that bridge? The country that built that bridge?”

  “I’m no traitor,” said Rakkim.

  “Nor am I,” said Andalou.

  “I want to talk with Sarah,” Rakkim said to Andalou. “Don’t tell me you can’t do it; you obviously talked to her after Leo called Spider yesterday.”

  The ice in Andalou’s drink clinked against the glass. Rakkim wasn’t sure if his hand was trembling or if the dandy just liked the sound of it. “It’s dangerous,” he said.

  “A cautious revolutionary? You’re not going to get anywhere like that.”

  Andalou nodded. “Indeed.”

  Rakkim and Leo followed Andalou into one of the other rooms of the penthouse. The bedroom suite. The love nest of a decadent playboy, the bed a round, canopied tent draped in red silk, paintings of fleshy nudes on the walls. Into the walk-in closet, his clothes a rainbow of peacock finery. Andalou pressed a light fixture and a false wall slid back, revealing a small alcove behind a rack of suits. A videophone link was built into a desk. He beckoned them into the cramped interior, the wall sliding shut behind them.

  “Landline?” said Leo as Andalou keyed in a number.

  Andalou nodded, moved slightly to give Rakkim more room.

  “You intersecting through Mozambique?” said Leo.

  “Sri Lanka,” said Andalou, checking various readouts.

  “I’d have gone with Mozambique,” said Leo. “They’ve got faster switches. What’s your response delay? Fifteen seconds?”

  “Nineteen,” said Andalou.

  “That’s what I mean,” said Leo. “Mozambique, you’re talking about—” He stopped as Sarah’s face flickered on-screen. She looked worried.

  “What’s wrong?” said Sarah.

  Andalou looked at Rakkim.

  “Our friend here just told me that you’ve been keeping secrets,” said Rakkim. “When were you going to tell me?”

  They waited for the signal to travel the long way around the world to Seattle, a small packet of information among the flood of anonymous words and images. Waited for Sarah’s response to make the same journey. Indirect, and slower than satellite feeds, but landlines were safer. Not safe. Data mining by both the Belt and the republic filtered all communication channels, searching for useful intelligence, but Andalou must trust his connection. It was his head at risk. Safer, but not safe.

  “I know you’re angry, but I was waiting for the right moment. Waiting for things to be bad enough. Conditions desperate enough.” Her image broke up for a second, reconstituted itself. “I knew how you would react. You have to trust my judgment. It’s the only way we’re going to survive as a nation.”

  “What do you think Redbeard would say? Would he trust your judgment?”

  “I think…I think he saw where things were going for a long time before he died. I t
hink he did his best to make things work…to give the nation time to grow, but if he saw what was happening now, he’d say do what you need to do. That’s the most basic rule of statecraft. Do what has to be done, regardless of the consequences. If a nation torn apart can’t survive, then the nation has to be put back together.”

  “Who rules this new nation once you put it back together?” said Rakkim.

  Her response seemed to take forever to reach him. “A candidate acceptable to both parties. North and South. There will be a vote…that’s certain.”

  “So you don’t really know,” said Rakkim. “You’re just hoping it will all work out. You’re praying, they’re praying, and God, oddly enough, will come down on the side of the one with the most guns and most willing to use them. God always does.”

  Sarah shook her head. “We don’t have time to work out the details. The president came back from Geneva with very bad news. The Aztlán Empire has put in a claim for the whole Southwest and half of Texas. Greater Cuba wants to annex the rest of Florida and south Georgia. The Canadian government, using the Indigenous People’s Doctrine, is demanding the return of most of New England, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Both the Belt and the republic are being eaten away. Reunification is risky, I don’t doubt that…but it’s our only chance.”

  Rakkim stared at her on the screen. Wished he were there.

  “Rikki?”

  “How’s Michael?”

  “He misses you. So do I.”

  “You’re going to have to tell the president. He’s the only one who can sell reunification to the people.”

  “I know.”

  “And General Kidd. The president’s going to have to work on him. Even Kingsley might not be able to do it, but you won’t have a chance without Kidd, and he’ll never listen to a woman.”

  “You sound like you’re already convinced.” She waited.

  “Any word about al-Faisal?”

  “State Security concluded he blew himself up rather than be captured. Anthony…he’s not so sure. Neither am I. You didn’t tell me he was a strangler.”

  “I’m a bad boy. I wish I was there so you could put me to bed without my supper.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Kiss Michael for me. Tell him Daddy loves him.”

  “You tell him.” Sarah wiped her eyes. “Come back and tell him yourself.”

  Chapter 28

  “So you’re just going to stroll into the Colonel’s camp?” said Leo. “That’s your big plan?”

  Far in the distance, Rakkim could see the Atlanta skyline in his rearview. They had left Getty’s suite after breakfast, driven away in the vehicle he had secured for them—a battered four-by-four Mao safari wagon with rusted door panels and a solid suspension. Reliable, built for the back-country, but not worth enough to attract hijackers or the authorities. Sarah would have liked it, a car they could use to explore for dinosaur bones in Utah or to take Michael to Mount Rushmore, let him see the dynamited faces of the old presidents, maybe buy him a replica of the original from one of the street hawkers.

  “What, I don’t deserve an answer?” Leo waited. Little fucker was patient. “Well?”

  “Yes, I plan to just stroll into the Colonel’s camp. Trying to infiltrate didn’t work out so well for the other three shadow warriors sent in.”

  “I hate to break it to you,” said Leo, “but in terms of game theory, the opposite of a failed tactic is not necessarily success.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Would you at least tell me why you want Dad to bury your identity in the KGB files? How does that help?”

  Rakkim watched the road. “Because no one believes what they’re told. They believe what they uncover. What they dig up on their own. And the harder it is to find, the more they believe it when they do find it.”

  Leo thought it over. “So you want the Colonel to crack your KGB file?”

  Rakkim smiled. “If he doesn’t, I’m dead.”

  Leo yawned.

  Rakkim kept driving. Traffic had thinned out after their leaving the vicinity of the capital, the roads getting progressively more run down, the ditches overgrown with weeds. A stake-body truck loaded with pianos raced past, changing lanes erratically—battered uprights and grand pianos shifted from side to side, sounding like thunder. Rakkim tailed the truck, moving when it moved. Sometimes outlaws mined the main roads, looting the wreckage. He imagined ivory keys scattered across the asphalt like teeth, wondered what they would be worth.

  Carefully cultivated fields of peanuts and soybeans gave way to pine forests and dense underbrush as the miles passed. Rakkim spotted an abandoned car nearly swallowed up by the greenery, creepers twined through broken windows, upholstery furry with moss and mildew. He took an unmarked road toward North Carolina, the car bumping over potholes.

  “Could I see the shekel again?” said Leo. “I’ll be careful.”

  Rakkim handed it over. He knew how Leo felt. He found himself fingering it at odd moments, or just touching the pocket he kept it in, reassuring himself that it was still there. Crazy to rely on an old silver coin to win over Malcolm Crews, but they needed Crews and his ragtag army, and faith was the most powerful force in the universe.

  Leo cupped the coin in the palm of his hand. “You ever wonder if maybe it’s real?”

  “’Course it’s real.”

  “No, I mean…what if it really was one of the thirty pieces of silver paid out to Judas?”

  “You’re the math whiz, you figure the odds of that.”

  Leo rubbed the profiled face on the coin with his thumb, caressed the pitted surface. “Probability’s one thing…but there’s no such thing as zero possibility.”

  Rakkim took the coin back. It felt warm. He likely wasn’t going to have it much longer. Judas probably felt the same way. You could buy anything with money; that hadn’t changed in two thousand years. Problem was, what you bought didn’t last.

  “I liked Getty,” said Leo. “He said I could visit him in Atlanta anytime.”

  “Getty’s a politician. You’re supposed to like him. Doesn’t mean you turn the country over to him and trust that he’s going to do right.”

  “Dad trusts him. So does Sarah.”

  “If Sarah trusted him she would have told me about him before we left Seattle. She thinks she needs Getty. Doesn’t mean she trusts him.”

  Leo stretched out his legs. “I still don’t know why we don’t just go see this Malcolm Crews guy now, instead of taking another detour.”

  “It’s not a detour. I told you, I have business in Addington.”

  “We got the shekel, what more—”

  “The shekel’s not enough,” said Rakkim. “Every big lie needs at least three parts to be convincing. Three…aspects. They don’t even have to be mutually reinforcing, they just have to fill in the landscape of the lie.”

  Leo yawned.

  “The shekel’s one part. Addington…the Church of the Mists, that’s the second.”

  Leo closed his eyes. “What…what’s the third?”

  Rakkim glanced over at him. Leo looked like a big baby, sprawled against the door, mouth hanging open, already snoring. “Me,” he said softly. “I’m the third part.”

  A large wooden cross stood beside the road, jesus saves spelled out in white boulders behind it. Another mile, another cross, this one made from flattened metal cans edged with rust. Another mile, another cross. And another. Rakkim relaxed as the narrow road led him deeper into the foothills of the Appalachians, past small towns cut off from change even before the war, towns given up to ruin and poverty, and their faith all the stronger for it. God’s country, that’s what the locals called it, disparaging the city Christians for their backsliding and arrogance. During the war, all of the Belt had been God’s country, fiercely devout, unified, fighting to the death for what they believed in. The armistice had been in effect for almost thirty years now, time enough for the rot to set in. The same rot he saw in the republic.
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  Leo sighed, pillowed his head with his arm.

  A little after noon, Rakkim stopped for gas at a tiny two-pump station all alone in the woods. No credit chips accepted, just cold cash. The attendant sidled out, a scrawny young guy with a bad complexion and a pistol on his hip—he watched Rakkim fill the tank with a gas-kerosene mixture, the only fuel available. Probably cut with paint thinner as well, from the smell of it. Moonshine even. Rakkim had seen all of them used in this part of the Belt. The attendant lit a cigarette, seemed to enjoy Rakkim’s discomfort at the open flame. Rakkim returned the favor, struck a match on the back of his front teeth, and tossed it at the attendant’s feet, right next to a splash of spilled gas. The man grinned, ground the match out, then asked Rakkim if he wanted to buy some traveler’s insurance.

  “Why?” said Rakkim, wary.

  “Man like you got a need for some extra protection. Anybody with eyes can see that.”

  “I’m just another traveler on the road to glory,” said Rakkim.

  “Yeah, and I’m Willie Jefferson Clinton.” The attendant hitched up his trousers, beckoned, walked inside the station.

  Rakkim looked around. Followed.

  An old desk rested against one wall, under an Osama bin Laden dart-board. The attendant pushed aside an overflowing ashtray, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a tray of jagged-edged silvery medallions. The medallions were cut out from oil cans, brightly colored geometric shapes—stars and crosses, eagles and rockets and knives, each with a tiny hole at the top strung with clear fishing line. “Hang one of these from your rearview, keep you safe.”

  “From what?”

  “From whatever means to harm you,” said the attendant. “You believe in Jesus Christ?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  The attendant peered at him and there was blood in the whites of his eyes. “You believe he’s coming again, bringing fire and brimstone this time, to smite the wicked and destroy the unrighteous?”

  “Who could blame him?” said Rakkim.

  The attendant stared. Nodded. “For you…ten dollars.”