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  “I have told you, Amit. You came to us with great anger inside. Others, like the abbot, would have you meditate until that anger was buried or gone. I do not agree. We must summon anger when we fight. We are taught to spar as machines, but a fist cannot move as fast as it sometimes must without a modicum of anger. The Sri have long denied emotion in this context, but a warrior with passionate strikes will always defeat a highly skilled automaton. But it still must be controlled, Amit. You must tuck it deep like a seed beneath the soil. You must learn to control its blooming by giving it only sunlight allowed by you. Your anger and hatred have the potential to be a tremendous asset, but only if you learn where and when to use them. Do not deny your anger. Let it fill you like a hot core when you practice your disciplines, and give it expression with each strike. Your hands will become harder. Your placements will become more precise. Because unlike so many of the others here, if you learn to channel your rage you will always be able to summon a reason to fight.”

  The boy looked up at Woo, then after 30 long seconds nodded slowly.

  “You understand.”

  Another five seconds. The boy was again in control, practicing what the order had taught him: To always think, to never react without thinking actions out in advance — a failure that had so recently risked his presence at the compound.

  “I understand.”

  “Good,” said Woo. “Now, we meditate.”

  Chapter 9

  PRESENT DAY

  “HE KNOWS, YOU know.”

  The enormous black man in the bright-white T-shirt was well over 6 and a half feet tall, towering over Amit’s 5’9”, and twice as wide. His bare arms were a mural of tattoos, but his skin was dark enough that they vanished into scribbles. He held an automatic gun, and while it wasn’t trained on Amit, it wasn’t pointing toward the ground. From where he stood, Amit could see that the safety was off. One of the man’s big black fingers was over the trigger guard, an inch from firing position. Amit was fast, but could never reach the man before getting cut down.

  “What does he know?” Amit asked.

  “About the Right Hand. That Mr. Hayes is dead. Killed by a monk in blue robes.”

  Amit looked down. He’d returned to his rented room and had changed into a new robe and sash, because the other was too bloody. He’d been drawing stares, and a shaved-headed monk in robes attracted enough glances under ordinary circumstances.

  “It was not me. Perhaps it was another monk in blue robes.”

  The big black man nodded. “We get a lot of them. Worse than trick-or-treaters.”

  Amit gave the man a genuine smile. He felt good. He had erased the squad who had ended Nisha’s life, filling a war chest of eyes for her eye, and karmically correcting the wrong actions of the man who had issued the order. It was a beautiful day, and the sun was shining. Now he had this charming conversation to be thankful for.

  “Do the police wonder why men stand outside this house with illegal weapons?”

  The big man ignored Amit’s implication, but didn’t contradict the suggestion of the weapons’ illegality — something which Amit, who’d never trained much with firearms, wasn’t sure of. “Nope.”

  Amit was 30 feet down an enormous driveway. A massive, decorative gate loomed slightly uphill. The guard engaging him had a booming voice, so Amit had no trouble hearing every nuance of his words. Amit’s own voice was soft and conversational, but the guard seemed to have no trouble hearing him. He hadn’t smiled, and was wearing sunglasses, but seemed friendly enough. The kind of man Amit might like to have a cup of tea with under different circumstances — although Amit was gregarious and enjoyed sharing tea with most anyone.

  He’d been at the gate outside the Right Hand’s boss’s house for 10 minutes. The guards (Amit counted six, two of them in small guard towers) either didn’t see him as a threat or were friendly, because they hadn’t raised their weapons. But at some point, at least the two flanking the gate had flicked safeties to off, and while no one had to explain anything to anyone else, it was apparent that if Amit took more than a few more steps forward, he would be perforated like a page in a coloring book.

  Amit withdrew his prayer beads. The big guard didn’t flinch. He’d either figured out that Amit had no weapon or didn’t care. It was probably the latter. All six wore body armor over their shirts.

  Amit rubbed the beads between his fingers, thinking.

  “What does your boss do?” Amit looked at the guard on the other side of the door, over to the two in their towers, then the pair 15 feet farther down the wall on either side. Only the black man responded.

  “Olive oil importing. Waste management. Gaming.”

  Amit nodded, getting the joke. There wasn’t much in the way of visual entertainment in the Sri compound, but he’d been outside many times, and that was enough to understand the supposed ways of crime lords. Retroactively, he justified that time spent as research.

  “What if I told you why this other monk — who was not me — did what he did to the Right Hand?”

  “I’m not particularly interested.”

  Amit paced, rolling beads in his fingers. He’d come here because he’d needed the lay of the land. Of course, the boss would have heard about the monk; Amit himself had instructed the Right Hand to tell him that this monk would be coming for him next. Of course, his security would be raised. He could have hidden, but given that he’d already gone out of his way to make his mission known, showing up in person was logical. It was always possible that the guards would try shooting him out of hand the moment he arrived, but Amit didn’t think they would. For one, powerful men maintained low profiles with the law as best they could, and firing automatic weapons needlessly would surely attract attention. He’d kept his distance, and while he could never strike in time to outrun six separate lines of fire, he’d be able to run in plenty of time if those guns started to chatter. Mostly, he’d come — after following the cues he’d sussed out from the boss when meeting with the Right Hand — in order to show himself. Every magician knew that the best tricks were built on misdirection, and that meant giving your audience something to look at.

  “I am actually a very nice person.” Amit turned and smiled, showing his teeth so the guards would see his mirth. “I long to kill your boss, but wish you no harm. You must know that. I do not want you to see me as a threat to you, personally. This is important. I have many friends and would always like to have more.”

  “Charming,” said the big man.

  “When I come back, if I get closer to you than two lengths of my arm, please consider dropping whatever weapons you are holding and raising your hands. If you do, I will merely incapacitate you. Like this.”

  Amit had noticed the empty guard station — above the main gate, on a small walkway — upon arrival. He’d watched the remaining guards before walking from the small clutch of trees and into the open. He saw how they were all watching certain areas more than others out of habit. By watching their eyes, he could see their collective blind spot. Their sweeping guns never sufficiently covered the driveway’s center.

  A twig snapped behind Amit.

  He dropped to the ground, knowing the man behind him would fire his weapon the minute he saw rapid movement from the man in his sights. The seventh guard did not disappoint; the gunfire’s cough etched a tattoo in the lawn and caused the large guard to leap back in alarm. Amit had been monitoring the man’s breathing. When he heard it — intermingling with the slight breeze but still distinct — he knew the man was close enough for Amit to guess his weapon’s aim, and reach with his foot after a quick crab-scuffle backward.

  Amit hooked his forefoot around the man’s ankle and yanked, dropping him hard to the ground. A half second later, he’d popped up and stepped on the man’s gun hand, careful not to hurt him. The guard, also in a white T-shirt with a bulletproof vest over the top, tried to wriggle toward his weapon. Amit shifted and drove his heel into the man’s throat.

  He coughed, gasping for b
reath.

  Amit picked up the gun and looked it over with childlike curiosity, then looked down at the coughing man. “Please. Join your friends.”

  The man gaped. Amit chuckled, pulled the clip from the gun and tossed it downhill, then extended it toward the guard. The guard took it and, with constant glances backward, stumbled toward the gate. Fifteen seconds later he was holding his neutered weapons beside the others.

  “Remember, two arm lengths.” Amit raised his own arms to indicate what they should do. He didn’t want to kill them, and hoped they’d listen.

  His message understood, Amit gave a small bow then walked back the way he’d come. The guards did not follow. He was disappointed but not surprised. There had always been a chance that they’d chase him. If they did, he could lose them, circle back, and maybe get past the diminished ranks. But although today was glorious and beautiful, it was apparently not lucky. To the guards, who were big men with armor and weapons, Amit was one tiny, crazy man. All that mattered was protecting the gates, and the boss behind them.

  He paced the grounds, keeping the wall in sight but staying out of the range of prying eyes, and circled the perimeter. There was only the one gate, and the place was fortified like a castle. Here and there, guards paced the wall’s perimeter, all with the same automatic weapons, in pairs with at least 20 feet between them. It was an impossible configuration for one man to attack; if he reached one guard, the other would either shoot them both or call for help. There was no way inside.

  Amit began to traverse the path back from where he had come, taking his time. He strolled for a half hour, keeping a keen ear to the sounds of pursuit. He found a high rise and a stunning view of the valley, then a solid rock where he sat with crossed legs. He ran his palm over his head, feeling stubble. He would need to shave again soon if he found the time, but was mostly beyond caring. What he’d told the Right Hand was true: He was no longer part of the Sri in any meaningful way. He probably shouldn’t be wearing his robe and sash, but Amit had earned them and wished to wear what was comfortable.

  He closed his eyes, focusing inward, falling into contemplation.

  You must not use your skills to fight, Amit.

  Woo and the abbot didn’t agree. The order trained and trained without ceasing. They sparred monk on monk, and monk on machinery. The Sri went through pads and punching bags the way most groups their size would go through food. The average shadow monk could perform surgery with his toes and twist his muscles away from a point of impact on a micro level to dissipate a blow like a car’s crumple zone. But they were also trained to be non-combative, nonviolent. The older boys had picked on Amit as a child; he’d been expected to turn the other cheek. Whenever he’d fought — other than in designated sparring sessions — he’d been reprimanded. To Amit, all that training was a waste without application. Yes, the discipline of training was good for both spirit and soul, and for their connection to the Great Beyond. But if they were enlightened, didn’t it also make sense to use their skills to defeat the enemies of enlightenment? Wasn’t what happened to Nisha enough to break the seal on his training and draw evil’s blood? What use was their training if it could not address wrongs and advance rights?

  Amit heard the abbot in his head, as if Suni was watching from above: You have addressed enough wrongs. You have spilled enough blood to counter that lost by Nisha.

  But if Amit stopped now, she would have died for nothing: no lesson learned. Everything had purpose, and if Nisha died in front of him, it was to catalyze Amit into action. Some of his duty was done, but he had only chipped the fingernails of the hand behind the strings. If he did not continue and strike at the heart, the evil’s hand would buff its nails and deal more death. That was far worse than Amit’s transgressions.

  He thought of the compound and the wall. He thought of the seven armed guards at the gate and the pairs around the edges, all within easy sight of each other. He could take out one man, then possibly retreat. But to what end? He’d never be able to take another. And they would surely add more guards tonight, now that the killer monk had declared his intentions. The Right Hand had been comparatively easy.

  He could wait for the boss to come out, but there was little chance that he’d do it in the way Amit needed. The man had to be alone before his guts could spill. This wasn’t an assassination; it was, at least in part, an interrogation. If he came out, the boss would be in his car, in public, surrounded by guards.

  Amit could attempt to infiltrate as a guard, but he wasn’t big enough, and they didn’t wear helmets.

  He could try to scale the wall in stealth, but he’d circled several times and hadn’t seen any expanse without at least four guards in view.

  He kept his eyes closed, deeply inhaling the day’s sweet air. The sounds of nature surrounded him, down to the slightest rustle of brush. Animals skittered. Beneath his legs, he felt the rock where he sat. He breathed, feeling lighter, until the deeper part of his mind heard nothing. While his outside layer remained hyper-aware, a pure calm descended inside. Amit was in a void, with nothingness around him. Floating, as if in a tank.

  Everything had a weakness.

  Amit waited for the situation’s vulnerability to surface from the void.

  Chapter 10

  A WEEK LATER, JASON ALFERO set the supreme pizza on a tray he’d taken from a high cabinet above his stainless steel refrigerator. The tray was oversized, like Jason. Sometimes, it occurred to him that he was a cliché: fat, Italian, and able to pretend that his wife believed their money came from a line of designer vitamin waters — when in fact she knew about the dirty dealings and neck-breaking that were part of NutriBev’s ancillary marketing plan. Julia was a good woman and didn’t like what her husband had dragged them into, but Jason was a good liar, and she mostly believed they were barely criminals.

  Everyone cheated on their taxes; everyone bought shoes that were sewn together by Third-World kids working in some Malaysian sweatshop. Every American had benefitted from the theft of land and the murder of natives, and had the luxury, today, of outrage because nothing could be changed and outrage cost nothing. Everyone was complicit in crimes against the environment, and everyone here was party to the segmentation of the very poor into the gutters. Jason wasn’t a bad guy; he was a realist. He had a few businesses that skirted legality. So what? He was being honest; everyone else was a hypocrite.

  The pizza was medium. He used to get larges, but his doctor said in stern terms that eating more large supremes was tantamount to driving a stake into his heart. He’d shown Jason a few photos because his most frequent patient was great at getting terrified about his own health in short bursts. The photos showed blood vessels so tightly constricted with arterial plaques that blood hadn’t been able to go through them. “You’re begging for a heart attack, Jason,” Doctor Altieri had told him.

  But heart attacks were too common for hypochondriacs, so when his behavior failed to change, Doc A had discussed a few more exotic diseases, constantly flicking his eyes away as he listed them, as if embarrassed about what he was saying. Jason wrote them all down, and looked them up at home: multiple symmetric lipomatosis, lipedema, Dercum's disease, more. None of those rare lipid disorders seemed to be caused by obesity, but Doc A had suggested that they might be masked by obesity, thus preventing a proper diagnosis. It seemed absurd for a few minutes, then terrifying. Home and fretting while browsing WebMD for diseases he was certain he had, Jason had called the doctor, requesting some testing. Shirley the receptionist said she’d have the doctor get back to him, but that in the meantime, the doctor had noted that Jason should start losing weight immediately.

  Doc A never had returned that call, probably because he was violating one of his doctor oaths. It smelled like bullshit, and for all of five minutes after hanging up with Shirley, Jason let himself dismiss the whole thing. It was a ruse: the doctor’s listing of odd disorders that he’d surely looked up moments before entering the exam room to meet with his fat gangster patient, the
receptionist delivering medical instructions instead of just taking the fucking message. For five minutes, Jason had laughed, before deciding he had acute lipedema. He’d already forgotten what the condition was and what it meant, but it made sense. Maybe whatever lipedema was would work together with the brain tumor he was also certain he had. He’d recently had that CT scan, but scans missed things. His vision sometimes blurred when he watched TV. It had to be a tumor.

  Laziness was about the only thing that could go toe-to-toe with Jason Alfero’s hypochondria. Worrying about your health could be exhausting and traumatizing. Gobbling through some favorite foods was a great way to feel better fast. He compromised, certain he was dying from something he couldn’t see, feel, or imagine. He got the medium pizza, same as he’d been doing every Thursday night for months. It was significantly smaller than the large. Saving those extra calories might buy him a bit more time before the blood parasites drove him to insanity, or before the many latent aneurisms waiting to explode in his brain finally did.

  None of it made him feel better. But eating pizza pushed those ever-present concerns into the corners of his head, allowing him to forget as much as he could for the tiniest while.

  He set the pizza on a tray, still in the box. He set a stack of napkins next to the pizza, then poured himself a large glass of Coke, in a plastic tumbler that matched precisely none of the rest of his expensive kitchen, and placed it beside the napkins. Julia was already on the couch, and had set the kids up as well. They were 16 and 14, but both had their mother wrapped around their fingers. They needed to start doing more for themselves, start taking responsibility. As soon as Jason thought of it, he looked down at the pizza, still in its box on his tray. He looked at his own massive gut. Julia was slim, like Anthony and Marie. Each had a single piece of the other pizza on their plates, and Marie was eating hers with a fork and knife — something Jason saw as thoroughly stupid. But it beat stuffing your face, worrying about all of the ways you were about to die — both through the bogus diseases Jason was certain he had and the legitimate ones built brick by brick by his neverending gluttony.