Shadow of the giant

the purpose that had guided
him for years. Ivan was here to protect his Caliph.
    It flashed into Alai's mind with immediate clarity. Ivan had
learned of a conspiracy against the Caliph, and it involved people so close to
Alai that there was no way for Ivan to warn him from a distance without running
the risk of alerting one of the conspirators.
    Alai reached with one hand to close Ivan's eyes, while with
the other he pulled Ivan's pistol from his slackened fingers. Still not taking
his eyes off of Ivan's face, Alai fired the pistol upward into the guard who
was standing over him. Then he calmly aimed at the guard who had gone back to
the bodies and fired. Alai had never been as good a shot as Ivan. He could not
have done this while running. But kneeling, he was all right.
    The guard he had shot without looking was lying on the
pavement, twitching. Alai shot him again, then turned to Alamandar, who was
getting back into the limo.
    Alai shot him. He fell into the car and it screeched away
from the curb. But the door was not closed yet, and Alamandar was in no shape
to close it. So as it passed Alai, there would be a brief moment when the
driver would be unprotected by the heavy armoring and bulletproof glass. Alai
laid down three quick shots in order to have a better chance of catching that
moment.
    It worked. The car did not turn. It ran into a wall.
    Alai jogged over to the still-open back door of the car,
where Alamandar was panting and holding his chest. His eyes were on fire with
rage and fear as Alai leveled Ivan's pistol to fire.
    "You are no Caliph!" gasped Alamandar. "The
Hindu woman is more of a Caliph than you are, you black dog."
    Alai shot him in the head and he fell silent.
    The driver was unconscious, but Alai shot him, too.
    Then he went back to the bodies of the guards, who were
dressed in western business suits. Ivan had shot one of them in the head. He
was larger than Alai but his clothing would do. Alai had his white robe off in
a moment. Underneath he wore jeans as he always did. After wrestling with the
corpse for a few moments, he got the shirt and jacket off the man, and without
popping any of the buttons off.
    Alai took the pistols from the two guards who had never
gotten off a shot and dropped them into the pockets of the jacket he now wore.
Ivan's silenced pistol had to be nearly out of bullets, so Alai slid it across
the pavement back toward Ivan's body.
    Where do I imagine an African man can hide in Hyderabad? No
one's face was more recognizable than the Caliph's, and those who didn't know
his face knew his race. They would also know that he spoke no Hindi. He would
not make it a hundred meters outside in Hyderabad.
    Then again, there was no chance he could get out of the
compound alive.
    Wait. Think.
    Don't wait. Get away from this murder scene.
    Ivan jogged through the parked cars. The garage would have
been cleared of any observers by Alamandar's men; that meant Ivan must have
been hidden inside a car. Where was that car?
    Keys in the ignition. Thank you, Ivan. You planned for
everything. No time would be wasted fumbling with keys, as you dragged me to
your car to get me out of here.
    Where were you going to take me, Ivan? Whom do you trust?
    Alamandar's last words rang in his ears. The Hindu woman is
more of a Caliph than you are.
    He thought they all hated her. But now he realized that she
was the one advocating war. Expansion. The restoration of a great empire.
    That's what they wanted. And all his talk of peace, of
consolidation, of reforming Islam from the inside before reaching out to the
rest of the world, of competing with Peter Wiggin using the same methods,
inviting other nations to join the Caliphate without requiring them to become
Muslim or live under Shari'a—they had listened, they had agreed, but they hated
it.
    They hated him.
    So when they saw the break between him and Virlomi, they
exploited it.
    Or ... was Virlomi behind this?
    Was Virlomi pregnant with his child?
    The Caliph is dead. But here is his baby, born after he died
but infused with the gifts of God from his birth. In the name of the baby
Caliph, the council of wazirs will rule. And since the mother of the new Caliph
is ruler of India, he will join the two great nations in one. With Virlomi as
regent, of course.
    No. Virlomi could not have wanted him murdered.
    Ivan would have an airplane waiting. The airplane that
brought him. With his own trusted crew.
    Alai drove at a normal pace. But he did not drive to