“I am
other
,” I told him hotly. “And that’s enough. Especially when all I want to do is control one. Puny. Zombie.”
Vayl slid the sheath off his cane sword. The metallic
whoosh
sent a shiver up my spine. “Just a slit to your throat,” Vayl said silkily. “Just enough for Jasmine’s ohm to be inserted.”
“And then you’re mine,” I said. “Just like Dave wanted. You’ll be my zombie servant forever. Slave to an American assassin. How do you like them apples, Kazimi? And here’s the yummiest” — I hugged myself and licked my lips ecstatically — “the most chocolate cream-filled deliciousness part. Before I set you up in my apartment, wearing a frilly white apron, baking bread, dusting, and cleaning the toilet? I’m going to use you to take down the Raptor. That’s right. I’m setting your whole network up for an Edward Samos takeover. You’re going to lure him right out of the shadows. And when he moves in, the whole network caves. Won’t that be lovely?”
As the Wizard’s stony facade started to crumble, what I’d just said about Samos and shadows triggered a memory from my trip to hell with Raoul. It was important, but not enough to warrant my attention just now. I tucked it into my Check Later pile and concentrated on the Wizard’s face. I’d seen men go gray before. Delightful, as usual.
“What is it that you want?” he whispered. “I’ll do anything to avoid . . . ”
“Zombie bondage?” I inquired. I got right in his face, mustering all the spite I could gather on short notice. A surprising amount surfaced. If the words on my tongue were venom my whole mouth would’ve gone numb.
“You know what I want? Nothing,” I spat, my voice low and cruel. “My boss, here, has agreed to let me kill you slowly. You’ve got a lot of lives to answer for, after all. And justice so often looks the other way when it comes to pricks like you. So why would I give up my one chance to make things right? I mean, you’ve hidden yourself from the world for what? Twenty years? Built a booming real estate business using your legit identity while your shadow self perpetrated the worst sorts of atrocities imaginable on innocent civilians. It was you who released mustard gas into that subway in New York, right? And you planned the murder of three hundred Kurdish schoolgirls. Because we all know what Angra Mainyu thinks about females who can read. And, yeah, I’m certain I heard the Wizard was behind the bombings of Israeli airliners, British consulates, and Somalian Freedom trains.”
“You have no proof!” the Wizard cried.
Bingo
. “Give it to me,” I said.
“What?” He looked bewildered. Like I’d just dropped him in the middle of the rain forest and ordered him to hitchhike home.
“I’ve got a TV van outside. Go on camera. Show your face. Admit what you’ve done. And I’ll let you live.”
“What kind of life will that be?” he demanded. “To watch my world slowly decay as more and more misguided idiots swallow the rantings of men like —” He bit his lip.
“Your brother?” Vayl asked. Aha, so he’d seen the resemblance too.
“FarjAd Daei,” I said as the bitterness on the Wizard’s face betrayed him. “You set us up to kill your own brother.”
“
Half
brother,” Delir corrected. “We share only a mother.”
I shook my head. “I gotta say it was a brilliant plan. You couldn’t shed your own relative’s blood, so you manipulate the Americans into doing your dirty work for you. The bonus being that you cause a huge rift between our country and the only people in Iran who don’t want to vaporize us at the moment.”
Despite his dire situation, the Wizard grinned. “It was a glorious plan,” he said.
“It blew,” I told him. “You kill my brother to force me into killing yours? There’s no balance in that. You know the universe is going to come back and slap you for even trying it. And tonight, Delir, I am her strong right hand.”
“You are nothing!” he spat. “You have so little value that I am surprised every time I blink that you do not suddenly wink out of existence!”
“Oh yeah? Putting me in the garage sale before you even get a look at the goods? Not wise, Wizzy.”
“Bah. What good are you . . . you Americans? You strut around spouting rhetoric as if everyone should follow your lead. And yet your sons drive drunk and your daughters idolize whores. You scream that the planet is failing. But you guzzle the world’s resources as if they were cheap wine. You pray for peace even as your soldiers fight and die for a purpose they can no longer discern.”
“Ah, don’t give me that crap,” I said, waving off his rant with a careless hand. “You just hate us because you enjoy hating people and we’re an easy target. If we weren’t around you wouldn’t be any different.”
“Would too!” he insisted, stomping his foot like a surly three-year-old.
“Would not,” I said coldly. “Because the problem isn’t us. It’s you. You won’t talk. You won’t compromise. Hell, you won’t even come to the table without a big old stick of dynamite strapped across your chest. So screw you.”
The Wizard’s eyes got so big I wondered for a second if they were going to pop out of his head. “Infidel!” the Wizard screamed, spittle spraying off his lips. “Angra Mainyu let me live a thousand years so I can kill every American on earth!”
“Are you certain Angra Mainyu has any interest in your plans at this point?” Vayl asked. “After all, he did allow us to find you here.” When the Wizard had no reply Vayl added, “I should also note, though you cry for American deaths, the one you desire most is that of your brother, who is not.”
“He might as well be. Spouting all that rot about peace and tolerance. I should have killed him when we were boys. But I couldn’t figure out how to make it seem as if I were innocent. And my blessed mother would never have forgiven me had she known. ‘If only he were dead, but everyone else thought he was alive,’ I used to think. So I began to study necromancy.”
“But the zombie path wasn’t your ultimate choice for FarjAd,” I said. The Wizard shook his head. “Why not?” I asked.
“He’d be too hard to control. But I couldn’t trust myself to kill him. So I had to arrange for you Americans to do it.” Kazimi looked at me slyly. “And you have. So, despite the fact that your heart is set on binding me to your yoke indefinitely, I fear I must decline.” He directed our attention to the back of the room, where his zombies lined up like a badass bombardment team.
“Um, Wizzy?” I gave him a little wave to get his attention. “Before things get too hectic in here, I’d suggest you take a peek at Channel Fourteen.”
Giving me a puzzled look, he grabbed the remote from a low-slung table and keyed the power on his fifty-two-inch plasma. Up came his own snarling face, in five-second delay, announcing that he should’ve killed his brother when they were kids.
“Of course, not everybody in Iran knows English, so we’ll be taking our interpreter to the station later on to provide a translation. I think we’ll do a little ticker underneath the video as well. Something like
Real Estate mogul Delir Kazimi revealed to be state’s enemy, the Wizard. Housing prices drop accordingly
. What do you think?”
Vayl pointed toward the hallway’s end, where you could just see a lens and one pale, trembling hand. “Wave to the camera, Delir.” Bergman peered around the corner, gave me a brash grin, and then went back into half hiding. His bodyguards didn’t. Cole, Cam, and Natchez stepped out from their secreted spots and aimed their weapons at the Wiz as if daring him to hurt their little buddy.
“You ever heard of character assassination?” I asked. “It can be worse than death, Kazimi. Because you never recover. But you live on. Broke. Friendless. Exiled from your family. Your country —”