The Aisha Prophecy
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Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers
The Aisha
Prophecy
John R. Maxim
iUniverse, Inc.
New York Bloomington
The Aisha Prophecy
Copyright © 2009 by John R. Maxim
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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ISBN: 978-1-4401-5534-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-4401-5533-8 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-4401-5532-1 (hbk)
iUniverse rev. date: 11/17/09
Contents
PRAISE FOR JOHN R. MAXIM
“No one does better characterization and plotting than Maxim.”
Linda Howard
“John Maxim is superb”
Iris Johansen
“Maxim, who’s been writing top-grade thrillers for more than two decades, continues to be one of the form’s best kept secrets”
Publishers Weekly
“Dazzling.”
Andrew M. Greeley
“Top drawer entertainment.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Maxim’s super-smart novels simply can’t be put down.”
Booklist
“Maxim constructs a complex plot, juggles numerous characters, and pulls it all off with a cinematic breathless pace.”
Library Journal
BOOKS BY JOHN R. MAXIM
NOVELS
Bannerman’s Ghosts
Whistler’s Angel
The Shadow Box
Haven
The Bannerman Solution
The Bannerman Effect
Bannerman’s Law
Bannerman’s Promise (previously published as A Matter of Honor)
Time Out Of Mind
Mosaic
Abel Baker Charley
Platforms
NONFICTION
Dark Star
Visit the JOHN R. MAXIM HOME PAGE for more info.
For the men – and especially the women – of Iran, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Washington D.C. who helped me write this book.
None of whom, sadly, can be named here.
And, as always, for my wonderful Christine
She had asked him to join her for her late evening swim. She held a bottle of wine and two glasses. Her eyes said, “We need to talk.”
The invitation was unusual in any case. They’d often shared the pool or soaked in the Jacuzzi, but they’d never done so at night. She would swim alone, all the pool lights turned off. It was her time, she said, to lose herself in her thoughts. They both knew that that wasn’t the reason. It was only in the darkness that she’d fully disrobe. Only when her scars could not be seen.
It did no good for him to chide her about a self-consciousness that from his point of view was misplaced. For one thing, he had a few scars of his own including one through his eyebrow that some women thought sexy. She thought he was foolish not to have it removed. She also once suggested that he shave his head. Or at least get those thick brown curls cut short.
“Anyway,” she’d said. “you’re not that damned sexy. And it’s dumb to be so easily recognized.”
One can see why any discussion of scars was a subject best avoided at all costs.
Sensitivities aside, she had a wondrous body. It was splendidly muscled like that of a dancer, like that of the natural athlete she was, and yet so softly curved and so utterly feminine. He treasured every inch of it. Especially the scars. Far from being ugly, he saw them as a testament. To her courage. Her indomitability.
He would never intrude on her evening swims. But he found not watching her hard to resist. From a distance. Standing quietly in darkness. He would watch as she swam doing languid laps during which her strokes made barely a sound and her motion hardly even stirred the surface. He would watch her as she rose from the pool, seeming almost to levitate out of the water. She would bend to pick up her towel and her robe, her body glistening with droplets in the moonlight.
Next she’d climb the stone steps that led to the Jacuzzi. Sometimes she would turn her face toward the house and pause before easing herself into it. She would smile. Or she would nod. Not toward him. To herself. She always knew that he’d be watching her, unclothed or not. And they both knew that neither would speak of it.
Tonight was different. Her eyes had said so. Those marvelous amber-colored eyes.
As they walked the winding stone path toward the pool house, she turned to look back at the main house. All the windows of the two upper floors were dark except for a single flickering glow that came from the screen of a computer. “Niki’s room,” she said. “Niki should be in bed. She spends too much time on that computer.”
But the screen blinked off at almost that instant. “She must have heard you,” he said, although he knew she could not have. None of the girls could see the pool from their rooms. Except for the one point of vantage he’d found, the whole estate had been landscaped for privacy.
The pool house had been built in the style of the main house, as had the separate garage. Split-timbered Tudor on a base of gray stone. The pool itself was of an equally impressive design. First a mound had been built to house the Jacuzzi. The mound was about eight feet high. The pool itself was fed by a waterfall that seemed to come from the Jacuzzi. It didn’t, but that was the illusion. It tumbled over gray boulders and tropical plants that created a grotto effect. The Jacuzzi, built of stone in matching earth tones, bubbled welcomingly as they approached. She reached for a switch that dimmed all the lights. She placed the wine and the glasses on the nearest edge and reached for the clasps of her robe.
The robe was red silk, oriental in style. Full length, high collar, showing only hands and feet. She bent down to gather the hem of her robe and raised it as she stepped into the water. She continued to raise it as she lowered her body, removing it only when her breasts were submerged. She placed it near the towels that he’d brought. She glanced at him shyly, self-consciously as always. She murmured, “I’ll get over it. I know I should have by now.”
He said, “Whether or not, I’ll be here.”
He knew that she might never. The scars still ran deep. Fifteen years had passed since she’d suffered the first of them. Back then, she’d left Texas – she’d grown up there, adopted – to learn what she could about her natural parents who had died at the hands of Saudi jailers. She was twenty-two years old. Almost fatally naïve. She’d paid a Saudi to smuggle her in from Bahrain and serve as her guide and translator. The guide took her money and betrayed her. She was quickly thrown into a Saudi Prison, frightfully abused, released six months later. Well… not so much released as disposed of. She been dumped from a truck near the Jordanian border. She’d been left on the hot sands to die. A Muslim doctor, a women, treated her first. Later a team of Israeli surgeons made the more serious repairs. Other Israelis took her in. Still others trained her. They made her into what she soon became.
Those scars were deep but they weren’t the last. There was the one high on her forehead the width of her face. A bounty hunter tried to scalp her as he sat on her chest, wanting her conscious as he did so. He was an Englishman, by the way. Neville Bean. Not a Saudi. Neville Bean looked more like a hog than a man and was known for extravagant behavior. He told her that he meant to take her eyes as well. They would make a wonderful trophy. He interrupted his scalping long enough to pry her eyes open for a good last look. He used the butt of his knife hand to do so. Bad mistake.
She bucked and she seized the knife hand in her teeth. In trying to get loose he shifted some of his weight. This allowed her to work one hand free and to reach her own knife that was sheathed in her boot. The story is that she slowly disemboweled him. The story is that she didn’t stop there. She then took his eyes like she was coring an apple. Next she released him and pulled him to his feet so that she could watch him stagger blindly about, trying to hold his insides together, all the while screaming in agony.
The story, at least much of it, is nonsense.
Yes, old Neville tried to scalp her; she did best him and kill him, but he would have died quickly with her knife in his brain within two seconds of her getting a grip on it. When you go to kill, you kill. You don’t taunt, you don’t torture and you certainly don’t linger, especially with a scalp that needs stitching into place. The Israelis have denied that they embellished the story, but they surely had no interest in correcting it.
Nor has she, for that matter, ever spoken of it. Not to him. She knows that he knows that she is a professional. She knows that he knows how she works. But she’s probably also a little embarrassed that she’d let a creature like Neville Bean get close enough to put his mark on her.
Even so, she didn’t really seem to mind that scar. It hardly showed unless she wore her hair up. Israeli surgeons, eventually, made it almost invisible. And one or two others as well.
Much more obvious were the scars from the bullets she took back when he first knew her and was with her. They hit her in the abdomen, right side, tearing through her. He more than avenged her. As did the Israelis. She’d very nearly died, but a fine doctor saved her. Not Israeli this time. Another Muslim. But those scars, unlike the others, could never be hidden even though a one-piece swimsuit would conceal them entirely. The deepest scar was the knowledge that she’d never bear a child. Those scars were why she’d only disrobe in the dark. That was why she would only make love in the dark. It didn’t really make sense. But there it was. He had accepted it.
She sipped her wine. She was looking at the house. She said to him, “You know we can’t stay here.” He nodded. “Not forever, but you heard what Harry said. He thinks we should lie low for a year.” He spoke with the barest trace of an accent in a voice that was deep but very soft.
She shook her head. “I don’t think he meant here.”
“He did indeed,” he told her. “Harry made it quite clear. He also said that if we should begin to feel restless, he owns homes even grander in a half dozen countries. Two that I know of come with yachts.”
She said, “Yachts come with crews and grand houses need staff. Sooner or later word would get out. Someone would realize who we are.”
Possible, he thought. Perhaps even likely. She still had a million dollar price on her head. Himself, he’d probably be worth more than that if he wasn’t widely believed to be dead. For that matter, so was she. Killed several times over in this or that country by this or that bounty hunter or fanatic. They’ve been trying to get it right for fifteen years.
She said, “I want a life. I want a home of my own. The girls especially need a home of their own. They should be going to school. They should be making new friends.”
He was silent for a moment. “You’ve decided to keep them?”
“Certainly Aisha. I’m all she has. The other three… I don’t know. Well, actually I do. It might be best for them if I let the Nasreens place them. The Nasreens will give them new names and new papers. They’d be safer than they are with the two of us.”
“That is the first time I heard ‘us’ in your musings. Am I to conclude…”
She waved a hand as if to forestall the question. She said, “The thing is… no one knows what I look like. At least no one who isn’t a friend. There’s only one fuzzy photograph. They’re not even sure it’s me. There are descriptions, but they vary so wildly that…”
So wildly as to be useless. He knew that. It’s why the Black Angel has been killed so many times. He asked, “Is it me you are concerned about?”
“Yes.”
“I could remind you that I have been dead for two years. That I’m considerably deader than you are, my darling. But that isn’t what concerns you. What is?”
She didn’t answer.
“That I’d leave again?” he asked her. “Or that I won’t?”
She brushed her hands across her eyes as if to wipe away tears. They could not have been tears. The Black Angel never wept. It must have been the rising moisture from the hot tub.
She said, “I’ve never told you how I feel about you. I don’t know if it’s love, but it might be.”
He started to speak. She reached her fingers to his lips. She said, “Let me try to say this. Just listen.”
She said, “Aisha loves you. There’s no question about that. As far as she’s concerned, we’re her parents. Yes, we’re all she has. We are all she’ll ever need. You and she are also all that I have.” She took a breath. “But you’re a lunatic, Martin. There’s my concern. You can be tender and loving. You’re honest and true. But you’re fearless to a fault, almost gleefully reckless. Look what happens when you’re between jobs and getting bored. You go to rough bars and pretend to be gay, hoping that some bully will pick on you so that you can take him apart. I’m not sure that lying low is in your genes.”
“This was only once or twice. An occasional diversion.”
“Occasional? Shall I cite more examples?”
He poured himself more wine. “May I speak now?”
She said, “No. Here’s what else I think aboutus. We’ve never been a team, we’ve often gone separate ways, but that’s not how people think about us. Being together, staying together, magnifies the chance that someone will make us. If that happens they’ll have also made the four girls. I can’t forget that we almost lost Aisha that way. There’s no longer a bounty on Aisha, we fixed that, but there’s probably one on the other three girls. And even if there isn’t, someone might go after them as a way to get at me. I mean at us.”
“You want me to leave. So, I’ll leave in the morning. I’ll be out of the country by nightfall.”
“Shit.”
“Wrong answer?”
“Of course it is, stupid. I’m stuck with you, damn it. How could I ever have another man in my life? I mean a straight one. Steady job, steady habits. How would I ever explain all these scars?”
He shrugged and sighed deeply. This clears it all up. He’s a dangerous lunatic. But he’s her lunatic. Yes, she could start dating. She would draw men like flies. But explaining the scars would be the least of her problems. She would still always be who she is, what she is. And God help any such man who crossed her.
He said, “So you’re willing, I take it, to settle for me. I’m overwhelmed by such selfless devotion.”
“Oh, don’t start acting hurt. You know I’m just talking. You heard me when I said I think I love you.”
“You were at least somewhere in the ballpark.”
She grimaced. “I meant…” She wiped her eyes once again. She said, “Okay, let’s face it. We’re stuck with each other. Let’s just… see how it goes day by day.”
“Night by night as well. I’m moving into the guest room.”
She stood up in the Jacuzzi. She stood naked before him. She said, “Like hell you are, Martin.”