"You are done?" asked Chiun, his wrinkled face tight. He wore stealth black, with thin, deep red piping that would disappear under night conditions.
"Covered her up and everything."
Chiun walked over to the bed and peered at the sleepy face. "Her lips are tight."
"She's a little high-strung."
Chapter
Farther down Ninth Avenue, they had a wheeled robot circling an olive-drab relay box. The robot looked like a mechanical dog on wheels, but he understood how such devices worked. This one was sniffing for explosives. If any were found, it would be made to shoot a charge into the box while the bomb squad stood off at a safe distance behind steel body bunkers and other armor.
But there was no bomb in the relay box. Farouk knew this. He had been advised that as long as he was on his holy mission of murder, New York would not explode in whole or part.
It was a wonderful feeling, to be told that New York City was safe only as long as Farouk Shazzam had work to do in it.
Going to the Marriot Marquis Hotel near Times Square, he was confronted at the entrance door by an FBI agent who demanded his hotel-room confirmation number. In the lobby, an ugly woman in black leather and a red beret emblazoned with the letters NOW demanded the same information.
This accomplished, he checked in as Patrick O'Shaughnessy O'Mecca and was given a key. No one questioned him further, for he was neither dressed as a postal worker nor did he look Middle Eastern, although he was a Hashemite born in Jordan. His dark Moorish good looks struck many as quintessentially Black Irish.
The glass capsule elevator took him to the sixteenth floor. When he got off, the corridor was very ordinary, but when he left the area of the elevator bank it became very strange.
The hotel, he saw, was built about a great concrete cathedral-like atrium. The entire center was hollow. It seemed foolish to Farouk, especially with real-estate prices as they were, but many things were strange in the land of the infidel.
The rooms all faced outward, along the square concrete walkway. A low, fern-tipped concrete wall prevented one from tumbling over into the cavernous space through which thin light spilled down from great skylights.
Farouk found his room number and entered with a magnetic pass-card.
Unpacking his bag, he removed his letter-carrier uniforms, leather pouch, ear protectors and Uzi with spare clips. His red prayer rug he unrolled on the plain hotel carpet so that it faced Mecca.
Kneeling, he bowed his head and began to pray.
Into his mind came his favorite verse from the Koran: "No man knows the land in which he will die."
It was a favorite Koranic saying. And very poignant on this day, on which he was fated to die in the supreme act of annihilating the heretic Abeer Ghula.
Assuming, of course, that the call came.
At exactly noon, the room telephone began shivering.
"Yes. Hello?" he said in his unaccented English.
A sweet voice said only, "It is the ordained hour."
"I understand."
The line went dead. Nothing more needed to be said. The Deaf Mullah had spoken. His pronouncements were absolute.
Reciting one final prayer—the afternoon prayer— Farouk donned the uncouth blue gray uniform with the eagle's head on blouse and shoulder patch, added the blue cap and, after checking the action of his Uzi, stowed it into the leather pouch, which he then shouldered. It was filled with junk mail he had neglected to deliver on his Washington route. These useless things concealed the Uzi.
Clapping the ear protectors over his head, he stepped out and took the elevator down to the tenth floor, where it was said that Abeer Ghula dwelt in imagined safety, but in truth cowered in terror.
The difficulty lay in that it wasn't said which room the hypocrite cowered.
This was easily discovered, Farouk thought. Starting with the first numbered room, he knocked on all doors and, when someone answered, he handed them a piece of gaudy junk mail addressed to Occupant.
Many were surprised by him. Some shrank from his smiling face. And why should he not smile? This was his last day on the unhappy earth.
At the room numbered 1013, his knock was answered by a querulous "Who is it?"