“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 —”
“I will always have the dead!” the Wizard cried, holding out his arms to his zombies.
“No. You will not.” It was Asha. He’d come. My shoulders slumped with relief as he swept into the room. I handed him the bone. He held it up. “This is the ohm of Delir Kazimi. Let it hold all his power forevermore.” The Wizard fell to his knees as a black cloud that buzzed like an angry nest of wasps swirled out of his mouth and into the ohm. For a moment the room filled with pressure. So much that my ears popped. Asha folded the bone into his large hand. Squeezed. And when he opened it, all that was left filtered onto the carpet as harmless white powder. The pressure released. The Wizard’s zombies fell to the floor, finally truly dead. And we all stared as Asha laid his hand on Kazimi’s forehead.
