Something buzzed at Remy’s waist. He patted himself down and found a cell phone on his belt. He opened it and put it to his ear.
“There’s a game show I’d like to pitch,” said a familiar voice on the other end of the phone. It was the old Middle Eastern man in the wool coat. Jaguar. “Name That Sacred Text: Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out… Idolatry is worse than carnage.”
“Where are you?” Remy asked. He looked around the park and his eyes went back to the statues on the building before him.
“Here’s another one,” Jaguar said. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath. Okay, so which is which?” He made a buzzing noise. “No, I’m sorry. The correct answer is that there is no difference, except maybe over whether we were created from dirt or from a blood clot.”
“Where are you?” Remy asked again.
“And speaking of graven images, here’s something I don’t understand,” Jaguar said over the phone. “All those people who genuinely believe they saw Satan in the smoke that day. Don’t you find it just a little bit demoralizing, to be fighting ignorant, dark-ages zealotry when half of the people you’re fighting for believe the devil lives in a cloud of smoke and ash?”
Remy put his hand on his gun again and edged around the park, looking behind trees. “Where are you?” Remy asked between gritted teeth.
“I’m right where you told me to be.”
“Where?”
“Right here.”
Remy spun around. “Who are you?”
“Please,” he said over the phone. “This isn’t the best time-”
“They said you’re organizing and funding a cell here. That you are buying explosives.”
“Ri-i-ight,” the man said, as if this were obvious. “With the money you gave me. I’m sorry. Did you need a receipt?”
“The money I gave you?” Remy began to feel off-balance again. He recalled the envelope of cash. “But… they said you were…”
“That I was what?” he asked.
“…Jaguar,” Remy said quietly.
“Jaguar? No. Really?” The man scoffed. “That’s awful. God, is the entire agency made up of morons? Look, I appreciate that you don’t want to endanger your work by telling those amateurs about me… But come on – Jaguar? How could you let them do that to me?”
Remy slumped against a tree.
“What about Iceman. Or something that reflects my education – Doc, for example? Tell them that I find Jaguar culturally and racially offensive. Tell them you’re worried that I’ll file a civil rights complaint. That ought to scare those officious assholes.”
“I don’t-” Remy touched his forehead, trying to put it together. “Are you saying that… you work for us?”
“Us?” He laughed. “I’m sorry, but your idea of us tends to be a little bit fluid, my friend. Either you’re with us or… what? You switch sides indiscriminately… arm your enemies and wonder why you get shot with your own guns. I’m sorry, but history doesn’t break into your little four-year election cycles. Are you with us?” The man laughed, winding down. “May as well ask if I am aligned with the wind.”
“Look. I just need to know-” Remy squeezed his good eye shut. “Are you…” He couldn’t find the words. “…trying to hurt people?”
“Which people?”
“Innocent people,” Remy gritted.
The man laughed. “That doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”
“I’m going crazy,” Remy said.
“Yes… I used to think that,” said the man on the phone. “The sorrow would come over me. Like a fever. And I would scratch at my own face, tear at my skin until the pain and the rage felt like one thing… then, I used to wonder if I’d gone crazy. But other times-” There was a rustling, and then he said, “Okay. Your boy picked up the package. He’s on the move again. Your turn.”
Remy spun around the tree and saw Kamal leave the ornate building, this time with a larger package, in a shoulder athletic bag. Remy began following him again on foot, though he was unsure what to do. He still had the phone at his ear.
“Other times,” Jaguar said over the phone, “don’t you wonder if they’re all crazy? With their stone pilgrims, and their marble soldiers, with their virgins in paradise and their demons in smoke? Sometimes I think I’m the last sane person on Earth.”
And then-
REMY SPRINTED down an alley, around a pile of cardboard, a bicycle rack, and some plastic garbage cans. He came out on the narrow street, between the fire escapes of two old tenements with glossy new entryways. He stopped and looked around. Was this where he was running? Something, the activity, his racing heart, caused the flecks in his good eye to swarm like bees. His left eye – black as a painted window – throbbed behind the gauze. Remy stared around at the street in front of him, panting. He looked left. And then right.
And then Kamal burst around the corner to his left, looking over his shoulder as he sprinted down the sidewalk, carrying the athletic bag like a huge football. As Remy watched, the man darted between two parked cars and ran into the street. Remy stood tensed on the sidewalk, in the middle of the block, unsure what to do – until he saw Markham dart around the same corner, waving a gun and sprinting twenty paces behind Kamal, but losing ground on him. Remy stepped around a parked car. Kamal saw him and tried to veer, but Remy jumped, hit Kamal full with his shoulder, and knocked the smaller man to the street. The athletic bag skidded beneath a car. Kamal started to get up, but Remy was on him, pushing him facedown to the blacktop, a knee in Kamal’s back. Remy grabbed Kamal’s wrist, and he said calmly, “Give me your other arm.” Beads of sweat clung to his cheek. Kamal pulled his other arm out and Remy wrenched it behind the man’s back, causing him to groan.
“Nice work,” Markham said as he came up, panting. He pulled a plastic pair of zip-ties from his pocket and flipped them to Remy, who put them over Kamal’s wrists, pushed the ends through, and zipped them tight. Markham reached under the car and pulled out the athletic bag. “What do we have here? A little present for the great Satan?”
“You are making a mistake,” Kamal said, his face pressed against the street.
“The only mistake I made was not shooting you in the ass when you ran away from me,” Markham said. “And I heard you throw like a girl.”
“A mistake,” Kamal repeated, pushing his lips back over his jutting teeth.
And then Remy heard tires screaming and a car barreled around the corner and squealed to a halt in front of them, bucking like a horse before it finally stopped. It was a dented silver gypsy cab with brand new tires. Remy watched as two thick guys in sweatshirts and ball caps climbed out of the car, guns drawn, white wires dangling from their ears. One of the guys was the greasy homeless man from the park.
“Get the fuck off of him,” said the other man – the familiar agent with the crooked mustache and the BUFF ball cap.