“I’m glad you’re happy, Dad.”
The speaking engagement was a nice distraction, and a necessary one, but Nick did not say that — he didn’t need to. They both knew it. Earlier that year, Nick’s mom had lost her battle with lymphatic cancer. This would be Kurt’s first Christmas without her in forty-three years.
Kurt, a professor of Hebraic Studies at Denver Seminary, had received an invitation to speak on Talmudic archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as their satellite campuses in New York and Germany. He started with New York, and with two days to kill before continuing on to Germany, he had taken Amtrak’s famous Acela bullet train down to Washington, DC, to see his grandson. The university’s travel office graciously booked his next flight out of Dulles. They booked the return through Dulles too. The older Baron had announced a few days ago that after he came back, he was planning to stay through the New Year.
Nick knew he was supposed to be happy that his dad wanted to spend the holidays with them, but they were both type A personalities, tending to clash when forced together. Since Nick was a teen, his mother had acted as a buffer. Now she was gone.
“You’re going to miss the tunnel,” said Katy, pointing ahead at the exit for the Third Street Tunnel that ran beneath the Capitol Mall.
“We don’t want to take the tunnel.” Nick glanced into the rearview mirror with a forced smile. “Dad wants me to drive across the Mall so he can see the sights, right Dad?”
Kurt looked up from his grandson and frowned. “How many times have I told you not to assume, Son?” He paused to scratch that ridiculous goatee and watch the exit for the tunnel pass behind them. “However, since you’ve already missed your turn, I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit of your city.”
Nick gritted his teeth and jerked the jeep left onto First Street. Yeah, it was going to be a really long month.
CHAPTER 2
The black Jeep Cherokee turned onto Constitution Avenue, entering the Capitol Mall at exactly the predicted time. Standing in the shadow of a tall curtain, a lissome figure lowered his high-powered binoculars and began to dress. Scar tissue covered half of the watcher’s back, along with what remained of his right arm. Before donning a shirt, he exchanged the functional prosthetic below his forearm with an aesthetic one, so nicely sculpted that it would fool a casual observer, even if the observer were standing right next to him.
Despite the ugly scars, the man moved with measured grace, taking care to keep the tail of his white linen shirt from brushing the gaudy striped carpet as he lifted it from the bed. His hotel room was adequate, but the institutional-grade carpet offended his bare feet as much as it offended his eyes. He would have much preferred the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel down the road. At least that establishment put pads under their carpets. Unfortunately, their penthouse did not offer the commanding view of the eastern Capitol Mall that today’s mission required.
With well-practiced movements, he used his one good hand to button his shirt and then placed a ball cap atop his bald head. He kept it shaven because the scar tissue from his burns prevented his hair from growing normally. This was not vanity. He had learned over the past nine years that appearances played a vital role in achieving one’s goals. At times, letting his wounds show suited his purpose. Other situations demanded a more pleasing veneer, and he had acquired the skill and the resources — such as the very expensive prosthetic — to meet that demand.
Like his appearance, the man’s name shifted quite often. Sheikh Rahman, Omar Aleem, Mustafa Khan — he traveled and worked under many aliases. But he held only one title. He was the Qaim, the Emissary of the Mahdi, the voice declaring a new age.
The Qaim slipped on a jacket and then returned to the window to check the position of his target. The jeep was now crossing Constitution Avenue. At this range, and from the elevated position of his hotel suite, he could not see the driver through the windshield, but in his mind’s eye he saw him quite clearly. He saw the stern expression, those blue eyes searching the road ahead, always searching. He had studied the man for so long that he saw those eyes in every dream, and every nightmare.
The Qaim had studied his target as one should study any opponent, by examining his body of work. That was no easy task, for this man was a ghost and one does not observe a ghost directly — at least, not at first. At the start, one observes the effect a ghost has on its environment, the wreckage it leaves when it passes on. The Qaim had learned to follow the signature his target left behind.
Yemen, Afghanistan, Venezuela, China — the Qaim had traced the blond man’s movements across deserts and oceans, digging through the rubble he left in his wake. Capitalizing on the bitterness of survivors and the greed of low-level clerks, he had reconstructed his opponent’s previous games one move at a time — pawn, bishop, and king — so that he could understand every maneuver. By now, he knew his opponent better than he knew himself. He knew how this man planned and how he operated. He had learned precisely how the blond man’s brain worked.
In his studies, the Qaim had come to know his opponent’s family too — his wife and child, his clownish friend, even his boorish, overbearing boss. He wondered how these peripheral players would weather the coming tribulation, and how they would move on in the peace that followed — if any of them survived.
The black Jeep crossed Madison Drive, and the Qaim once again set down his binoculars. With his good hand, he picked up a burner phone and dialed the most recent number. An understandably nervous young voice answered.
“Yes?”
“It is time, Jamal,” said the Qaim in a low and comforting voice. “It is time to begin.”
Jamal dropped his cell phone on the passenger seat. He pulled a tiny ziplock bag from his pocket, dumped the two white pills it contained into his mouth, and forced them down with a gulp from a bottle of water. He set the bottle on the passenger seat as well, without replacing the cap, so that it tipped over and spilled its contents onto the fabric and the phone. Jamal did not notice.
After another moment’s hesitation, he carefully got out of the vehicle, struggling to lift the extra thirty-five pounds he carried under his bulky black coat. He had parked in front of the National Museum of the American Indian because it was the only building on this block without metered parking. That allowed him to sit and wait for the Qaim’s call without fear of an interruption. At another spot, a meter maid might have noticed the ill-fitting coat and become suspicious.
Despite the cold of the afternoon, there were a number of pedestrians about as Jamal cut diagonally across the street to the Health and Human Services building. A few people sat on the benches in the small park next to the museum. Others huddled under a Lexan shelter near the steps ahead of him, waiting for the next Metrobus. Jamal suddenly wondered if perhaps he should wait for the bus too, but then he dismissed the thought. The Qaim had been very specific about timing.
Most people just hurried by, shoulders hunched against the cold, heading somewhere important. Jamal’s eyes fixed upon a particular woman, a blonde in a long black overcoat, her stockinged legs visible from midcalf down to her high heels. She glanced in his direction and caught his gaze. He looked away, feeling the shame he always felt when a woman caught him gawking at her.
Her notice sparked a chain reaction. First the people in the bus shelter, then a couple crossing the street in the opposite direction, then another passing by on the sidewalk. Every eye turned to focus on Jamal. A bead of sweat slowly descended his forehead as he mounted the stacked-concrete platform in front of the building. The drop felt like ice in the cold wind, but he dared not remove a hand from his pocket to wipe it away. He dared not make any move at all beyond crunching up the snow-covered steps. The pills that he had taken were supposed to relax him. Instead, he felt his heart racing, pounding so hard he feared it might explode before he completed his task.