He chewed on an ice cube and sat back in his seat with a gratifying smile. The singer, sweat dripping from his chin, poured his heart out to the dwindling crowd.
Derka became aware of a presence near him and it sent him into attack mode. His hand stretched for his knife. It wasn’t there.
“You looking for this?” A dark-haired man with a purple toothpick dangling from his lip sat next to him. The man was playing drums on the tabletop with Derka’s knife. A drunken smile etched on his face.
Derka assessed the room. Besides the stranger, there were only twenty or so people left. Every one of them was there when he sat down and gave no appearance of association with the stranger. “Who are you?” he demanded.
The man was using his free hand to tap the table opposite the knife-beat to resemble drumsticks. He ignored Derka, lowering his head and moving it to the beat, his eyes closed. He bumped into Derka’s shoulder when he swayed too far left. Derka was pretty sure the man was intoxicated; he knew he was crazy.
“Why are you sitting here?” Derka asked.
“Just enjoying the blues, man.”
Derka glanced at his wrist. It was almost time for him to get back to the safe house. There wasn’t time to deal with the drunk just now. He needed to do the smart thing and leave. But he wanted to be certain this nut sat next to him by chance. He didn’t believe much in coincidences.
Derka turned in his seat and faced the man. He was forceful now, letting the man know he was in charge. “Why did you choose this seat?”
The man leaned into Derka and whispered, “I know who you are.”
Derka cursed to himself. He was going to have to kill this man and it didn’t matter how much attention he drew. He could straight-hand the man’s throat, then work his eyes until they became useless. Permanently. This could be done in less than five seconds. Derka understood his abilities and he knew that Kemel Kharrazi himself wasn’t quick enough to stop Derka’s attack from such a close distance. This man was already dead, but he didn’t know it yet.
“Who am I?” Derka seethed.
The stranger stood up and dropped the knife on the wooden table. “I’ve gotta go to the men’s. Be here when I get back.”
Derka found himself with his mouth open. He watched the stranger strut in between empty tables, snapping his fingers to the bass line of an old Willie Dixon tune. He was beginning to wonder who the man could be. A drunkard pickpocket maybe. He certainly wasn’t a police officer. And what in the world was ‘the men’s’?
Derka picked up his knife, discreetly pulled up his pant leg and slid it back into his leg strap. He watched the man enter a hallway that he knew only contained the men’s and women’s bathrooms. The men’s, he thought.
When Derka entered the men’s room, the stranger was swaying in front of a urinal, his head resting forward against the cold tiled wall, his free hand grasping the flushing device for leverage. Derka felt that without the metal handle, the man would be making an awful mess.
The bathroom was larger than expected for such a small bar. Double sinks hung below a single stretch of mirror that ran across both basins. It had two urinals and two stalls. Derka crouched to check the stalls and confirm their solitude. The drunk seemed oblivious. He was murmuring the lyrics to the song that could be heard bleeding through the thin walls.
Derka twisted the deadbolt lock to the room. He bent over to withdraw his knife and decided to make it quick. He’d taken two steps toward the man, when he heard, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
The drunk had his head turned slightly in Derka’s direction. At first Derka thought the man was standing in an awkward position because he’d lost his balance. After a moment he realized that the man had his arm across his body in front of him. His hand peeked out under his armpit holding a gun. The man pointed the weapon at Derka as if it were part of his body. Something told Derka that the man wasn’t just a pickpocket.
The stranger flushed and zipped without taking his eye from Derka. “Surprised, Mustafa?” he said, dangling an open wallet from between his thumb and index finger.
It took a second, then Derka felt his back pocket and found it empty.
“What kind of name is Mustafa, anyway?” The man appeared sober now, and Derka wondered if he would have acted differently had the man appeared sober from the start.
Derka was still going to kill the man, he only needed one small lapse, a hesitation. “What is it you want?” Derka asked.
The man gestured with his hand. “First, gimee the knife.”
Derka considered doing just that, but the gun deterred him. He bent over and slid the knife across the tiled floor to the man.
“Good boy.” The man took the knife and tossed it into a stall. Derka heard it splash into a toilet.
“What did you mean when you said you knew who I was?”
The man switched hands with the gun while removing his jacket. He draped the jacket over the partition of the stall and unbuttoned the top button of his collared shirt. “You guys killed some friends of mine and I’m here to settle the score.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must have me confused with someone else.” Derka couldn’t help himself, the man was removing his clothes. If he were going to shoot him, he would have done it already. “Why are you removing your coat?”
“Because as much as I want to nail you, I’m going to do it with my bare hands. I want you to have hope and I want to see that hope evaporate as I beat the ever living crap out of you.”
Derka watched as the man crouched and placed his gun on the floor under the sink, then sidestep back to the middle of the floor. He couldn’t believe his luck. It was the opening he needed.
While rolling up his sleeves, the man seemed to examine Derka. “I understand you guys are going to bomb the White House tomorrow night. How do you go about doing something like that?”
Derka shook his head. The idiot actually expected an answer. He was looking at the man, but in the corner of his eye he measured the distance to the gun. It was even closer to him than the man was. He decided he wouldn’t need it. He leapt toward the stranger and sprung his foot into the man’s chest, sending him backward against the wall. The man caught Derka’s ankle with his hand and pulled him down on his back.
The man jumped on Derka and squeezed one hand around his neck, the other smacked jabs into his face. Derka was impressed with the man’s abilities. Unlike most Americans, who were used to fighting with high-tech equipment, this one seemed to be familiar with hand-to-hand combat. Still, he was no match for Derka.
Derka jammed his thumb into the man’s eye and applied the necessary pressure to force the man’s hand from his throat. For a moment the man rolled to his side and tended to the pained eye. Mustafa looked over his shoulder and realized that the gun was now within arm’s reach. He grabbed the gun and straddled the man’s chest, digging the barrel into the loose skin under his chin.
“Who are you?” Derka demanded.
The man choked on the pressure the gun caused on his larynx. “Please,” the man said, looking up with his one good eye. “I was supposed to find out how you were going to blow up the White House, then get the information back to the FBI,” the man gasped while Derka enjoyed cramming the pistol deeper into the man’s throat, trying to prevent him from talking any further. “Before you shoot… at least tell me how you were going to do that.”
A sly grin spread across Derka’s face. Why not, he thought, the secret’s going to die on the floor of this bathroom. He leaned over the man and whispered, “With a missile, from underwater. It cannot be stopped and it cannot be found. Kemmel Kharrazi himself is on his way to our headquarters thousands of miles from here, where he will detonate the device himself.”