Free Heart of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno Page A

coast, he could see waterspouts dancing opposite the casinos, man-made cyclones five and six hundred feet tall, with colored lights in their swirling arms. The tourists loved them, and so did the Old One. Not tonight, though. Tonight he loved nothing. He watched as the largest waterspout turned dark green, white and red, the colors of the Aztlan flag, an homage to the slain oil minister. The Aztlan Empire was gobbling up territory from Texas to Southern California, but Nueva Florida had wisely chosen neutrality, its strictly business mentality serving everyone's interests.
    The tricolored waterspout rose higher and higher. Lester Gravenholtz had done a good job this afternoon; the brutality of its ambassador's murder had infuriated Aztlan almost as much as the assassination itself. Even so, the Old One wished Darwin had been here to do the job. Wishes, however, would not bring back Darwin. He watched the waterspouts spiral for ten minutes until they finally died down, leaving the surface of the water calm again, the colors bleeding into the deep. The darkness seemed bereft somehow.
    The Old One shivered in the warm breeze off the ocean. One got used to immortality. Took it for granted. Death, the fate of all other men, seemed a small, shabby thing, a distant memory. Until now. He amused himself with the thought that perhaps he should seek help from that backwoods faith healer Baby had told him about. Malcolm...Malcolm Crews, that was his name. Baby had inserted Crews into the Belt president's inner circle a few months ago. A brilliant move on her part. Ibrahim had been furious.
    You would have thought the Old One would have grown tired of life, but if anything his hunger to live was more intense than when he was a youth. So much work left undone. He remembered the first whispers that he might be the Mahdi, the twelfth imam, the messiah chosen by Allah to unite all Muslims and establish a worldwide caliphate. The Old One initially resisted such speculation. The son of a wealthy sheik, educated at Oxford, he had no use for the burden of faith. Still, the whispers persisted, until finally he decided to visit the holy Iranian city of Qom.
    Shiite pilgrims regularly journeyed to a well on the outskirts of the city, the place from which the twelfth imam was supposed to emerge during the last days. The Old One had visited the well after midnight, passing through a small village, feeling foolish, the site deserted except for a dozen of his most loyal retainers. He had peered into the blackness, whispered a prayer for guidance and then stumbled backward as Allah answered, spoke to him so clearly that even today he could still hear the echo of God's voice in his heart. As he stood there beside the well, dazed, a host of birds rushed out of the depths, a flock of white doves such as had never been seen before or since in that place. The birds wheeled above his head, their wings like frost in the moonlight, then just as suddenly they dropped to the ground at his feet, dead. The next day Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was murdered in Sarajevo, precipitating the First World War, and the Old One was assured of his destiny.
    In the years following, he had grown ever richer and more powerful. Other men seemed dim and lazy by comparison, and he used their weakness against them, jerking them about as though they were suspended on strings. While those around him grew weary and gray, and his wives and children tumbled into the grave, the Old One continued. Time had slowed for him, and the Old One used all scientific means to increase his days. It had taken Massakar to remind him that though time had slowed for him, it had not stopped.
    In the distance a wave-energy buoy bobbed on the water, warning lights flickering. There had been hundreds of them initially, the Cubans investing heavily in alternative energy. Almost 50 percent of Nueva Florida's electrical supply had come from the wave buoys...until the latest cycle of super-hurricanes had