Heart of the Assassin (25 page)

"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.

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 Rikki."

"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?"

Darryl glanced at his sister. "Okay...that would be good. No sense wasting."

Rakkim handed the bottle over.

Darryl started to snatch it, forced himself to slow down.

"Rikki and I are going back into the city, ma'am," said Moseby.

"That's foolish," said Mrs. Harrison. "You're going to poison yourself."

"We've got a better vehicle this time," said Moseby.

"I noticed," said Mrs. Harrison. "Seems like I saw a man named Corbett driving a van just like it."

"We bought it from Corbett," said Rakkim.

"That so?" Mrs. Harrison massaged her gums with a forefinger. "Well, you might have paid him, but the Corbett I know would sooner give up his balls than that war wagon."

"He's got no need for the van now," said Rakkim. "Or his balls."

"Glad to hear it." Mrs. Harrison examined her forefinger. "Honest...like your wife, that's saying something, but you still don't know where you're going, and the war wagon's not going to change that," she said. "Couple of outsiders driving around the city thinking treasure's going to call out to them."

Rakkim walked over to the family photographs that lined one whole wall. Photographs, not holograms, some of them ancient black-and-whites too. Poor folk in their Sunday best, kids behind the wheels of trucks, hard-eyed men and suspicious women, two young men in homemade rad-suits pretending to hold up the Washington Monument.

"That's me and Eldon on our first trip into the city together," said Darryl, standing beside him. "We hammered out an FBI insignia from inside a federal building a day later. Sold it for almost eight hundred dollars. Would have got twice that much but we chipped it."

"
You
chipped it," said Mrs. Harrison.

Rakkim checked out a grainy snapshot of a tired young man with a cigarette dangling from his lip, an automatic rifle slung in front of him. His jungle camouflage uniform blended in with the dense green foliage around him. A medal under glass was on the wall next to him. "Who's the soldier?"

Darryl stood beside him. "That's Eldon Harrison the first," he said, his gums whistling slightly. "Our great-grandpa. We got an Eldon in every generation since. My brother was the fourth in the line."

"Looks like he saw clear to the other side," said Rakkim. "That's a Silver Star."

"Yup. They don't give those out in cereal boxes."

"Where was that photo taken?"

"Vietnam. First war we ever lost. Not the last, though." Darryl sipped the Coca-Cola, offered it to Rakkim.

"You finish it," said Rakkim.

"Obliged," said Darryl, as fixed on the photo as Rakkim. "He was killed in action eighteen days after that picture was taken. A real hero. The best of us. Never even got to see Eldon Harrison Junior."

"I'm sorry," said Rakkim.

Darryl nodded.

"You had any more time to think about what we talked about, ma'am?" said Moseby.

Mrs. Harrison sat across from him, knees pressed together. "I've tried my best, but I can't come up with anything else. I'd tell you if I could."

"I know that," said Moseby. "It's just that sometimes things that you don't think are important turn out to be."

"I made Eldon three fried eggs the morning he left for the city and there was a spot of blood in one of the yolks," said Mrs. Harrison, her hands in her lap like they didn't even belong to her. "Just the tiniest spot of blood, but that's bad luck. I was going to throw them all out, start fresh, but Eldon told me I was crazy to waste good food." She blinked back tears. "That was the last meal I ever cooked for my husband. You'd think what I cooked or didn't cook wasn't important, but I think of that fried egg sizzling away in a dab of bacon grease, and I see that spot of blood...and...and I just want to die."

Darryl looked over at his sister-in-law, then at Rakkim. Shrugged.

Rakkim stared at another photo, a wedding photo, the young couple holding hands, grinning shyly at the camera. The slender bride seemed lost in the folds of her wedding gown, the groom stiff. He squinted at the date on the bottom.

Darryl tapped the glass over the photo. "That was a happy day. God, me and Eldon got so drunk the night before I didn't think he was going to make it through the ceremony."

"I didn't have any doubts," Mrs. Harrison said. "He knew what I had waiting for him that night. Both of us sixteen and raring to go."

"He was happy, Bernice." Darryl took a swallow of Coca-Cola. "No matter how bad things got, he was happy. Made me jealous, I'll tell you the truth."

Rakkim stared at the date on the wedding photo. If they were sixteen when they got married, Mrs. Harrison was only thirty-six. She looked like she was in her sixties.

"Do you love your wife, Rikki?" said Mrs. Harrison.

"Yes, ma'am, I do."

"You have children?" said Mrs. Harrison.

"A son."

The mister and I had nine," said Mrs. Harrison. "Three of them alive and well, praise God."

Rakkim pointed to another photo, three children in neat blue school uniforms with white piping on the sleeves and trousers. "Is this them?"

Mrs. Harrison rose from her chair, crossed over to him. Moseby followed her.

"That's my angels." Mrs. Harrison tapped the biggest child. "That's Eldon the fifth." Tapped the girl. "That's Evelyn." Tapped the smaller boy. "And that little dickens is Zachary. Named him after the Colonel, greatest man who ever lived after Jesus Christ and Eldon the first."

"Nice-looking children," said Rakkim. It was the truth. They looked radiant.

"They're at the Bush Academy in Ottawa, Canada," said Mrs. Harrison. "Your wife got them a full scholarship. I guess you didn't know that."

"No, ma'am...I didn't," said Rakkim.

"Cost a pretty penny to go to that school," said Darryl. "All those rich kids...they're never going to want to come back here."

"I hope they don't," said Mrs. Harrison. "I most definitely hope they don't."

Rakkim couldn't take his eyes off the holo of the three children. "They...they look like they fit right in to that fancy school."

"You seen them a year ago, you wouldn't a' said that," said Darryl.

"They had the usual problems...usual for around here," said Mrs. Harrison. "Then my husband made a big find about a year ago. Everything changed after that."

"Eldon was always the lucky one," said Darryl.

Mrs. Harrison blushed, turned to Rakkim. "With the money we got from his big strike we were able to send the children to the clinic in Montreal. Bought them new kidneys, new pituitary glands, complete blood wash, of course. I visited them in the hospital afterwards and hardly recognized them. They were as fresh and beautiful as the day they were born."

"What did your husband find in the city?" said Moseby.

Mrs. Harrison shook her head. "I let the mister take care of business, and he let me take care of the home. Worked out pretty well all these years."

"He never told me either," said Darryl. "His own brother. Said it was none of my concern."

"He never brought this treasure home?" said Moseby.

"No," said Mrs. Harrison. "I guessed it was too big to carry."

"And too valuable to share," said Darryl.

"Why don't you take the Coca-Cola and go back to your room," said Mrs. Harrison. "Go on now." She waited until Darryl left. "He's not a bad man. Just always thought he got hind tit."

"Did your husband ever tell you what he was looking for on that last trip?" said Moseby.

"I
told
you, he kept his business to himself," said Mrs. Harrison.

"We know he made several trips for Sarah, before he found what she wanted," said Rakkim, looking over the other photos, trying to imagine the man who would leave all this and go into the dead city, time after time, even as his children sickened and died, even as he was eaten up with death. The sense of history and place that held them here...Rakkim didn't have it. Neither did Moseby; he had left the Republic and the Fedayeen for love and never looked back.

"He must have at least told you what he saw along the way...some building, some landmark," said Moseby. "We just want to know where to start looking, Mrs. Harrison."

"I'd help you boys if I could," she said. "Your wife...she's been a blessing to our family," she said to Rakkim. "She done things for us we could never repay. Getting the kids into the Bush Academy, that wouldn't have happened without her. So, you'll have to believe me when I tell you, when the mister left that last morning...all he said was he was going somewhere bound to break his heart."

"The whole city makes me want to cry," said Moseby.

"That's
you,
and your outland ways, bawlin' over a stubbed toe or a runover kitten," said Mrs. Harrison. "My husband was made of stronger stuff. We lost our first three babies...I never seen him shed a tear when he broke ground for their graves, just cursed the earth for taking them. I can't imagine what it would take to break his heart, but that's where he said he was going."

If burying your children didn't break your heart, Rakkim didn't know what would...but Eldon Harrison had found it in D.C. Rakkim stared at the soldier in the jungle. Eldon Harrison the first. The best of them, Darryl had said. The noble dead. He took a deep breath, then walked over to Mrs. Harrison, embraced her, and she was all sharp bones and startled femininity. "Thank you for all your help, ma'am."

Mrs. Harrison nodded. "You give our love to your wife."

They were almost at the war wagon before Moseby spoke. "Why are we leaving?"

Rakkim turned and waved to Mrs. Harrison, who stood on the porch watching them. She didn't wave back, instead turned and went back inside. "She told us enough," said Rakkim. "I think I know where the safe room is."