A/N: Only one more chapter after this one! And the replacement for Heir Apparent is full of the crazy.

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Rather than returning to Miami, Jackson just moved to his Berlin apartment and settled in again as Karl Müller. His days were spent being a normal Berliner: buying groceries at the Kaiser on the next block, visiting friends in the bar near the Grunewald S-Bahn station, climbing the rubble mountain outside of the Grunewald to look down at the city lights at night, shopping at KaDeWe, et cetera. His evenings, however, were spent watching reruns of German-language X-Files episodes as he planned the kidnapping and killing of Ihab al-Sherif. The plans were submitted to Poulain and then passed on to Pedram by late June. By the first day of July, Jackson had the names of his team-members and his plane tickets to Baghdad.

The next day, Jackson boarded a plane to Kuwait. Once there, he took the identity of a soldier and flew into Baghdad as the navigator of a jet. In Baghdad, he disappeared into the darkness of the city to meet up with his team, which consisted of two assassins, a former policewoman who was a professional at keeping hostages at bay, and surprisingly, Pedram. Jackson hadn't expected her (she certainly wasn't on his list) but thought it might be a test, so he didn't say a thing, just as Pedram hoped. They all settled in to their hotel and took shifts watching the area where al-Sherif was known to buy his daily newspaper. Each car that pulled up made the person on guard perk up, but it wasn't until the sun had long since risen that Pedram got to her feet and the entire team dispersed. They hid in their assigned places as one of the assassins got the getaway car and within minutes, al-Sherif had exited his own car and was shoved into theirs, his newspaper dropped, forgotten, on the dusty ground.

Jackson watched them from his hotel window as they drove away; he was completely unaware that every person in his group was in on the plan to sour the organisation for the new second-in-command. They drove the car away from the hotel and out of the city limits, one of the assassins watching in case Jackson decided to tail them. Far off, on the border of Iran and Iraq, they delivered the now-dead man to a courier, who would assure his shipment to Afghanistan, where he would bring al-Sherif to Al-Qaeda, who would surely announce that they'd been the planners and executors of the entire kidnapping. As they delivered the body, Jackson made his way towards Turkey in a car with a bunch of Iraqi civilians going to northern Iraq. That night, on foot, he made it to his rendezvous point in the Turkish city of Hakkari and was whisked off to Cyprus to await the report from his team. By two days later, he received the expected telegram and left Nicosia, flying back to Berlin to await instructions from Poulain, which came on the 6th.

With the okay to enjoy a vacation, Jackson took the next flight from Berlin to London. A night of hard partying and drinking the night before left him in a sleepy stupor, so he slept on the entire flight and promptly dropped off when he got on the Tube. He missed the announcement for Russell Square and every stop thereafter all the way to Cockfosters and the return trip. At Caledonian Road, a man jostled into him roughly in his preparations for alighting the train and Jackson was jarred awake, rubbing his eyes and trying to remember how much longer he had to be on the train. After studying the map above his head, he pulled out the USA Today European Edition and read over the same information he'd heard on the BBC World News that morning as he packed in Berlin. The train entered the famous Kings Cross station and stopped to welcome aboard a whole new slew of passengers. A man caught Jackson's eye, but he didn't let it concern him too much—after all, he was supposed to be on vacation. Shaking the newspaper, he went back to reading as the train began its plunge into the tunnels of the subway once more.

What happened next was completely unexpected. One moment, Jackson was watching the man he recognised out of the corner of his eye as the younger man fiddled with a rucksack in his hand through the back window of the car ahead of Jackson's, and the next he was plunged into darkness and thrown onto the ground, followed closely by the new metal briefcase he'd picked up a few months before. It cracked onto his head, and although his body screamed for him to pass out, he didn't let it happen. He groaned and looked slowly around at the chaos. There were people lying all around him, and if he was seeing properly through his rapidly swelling eye, there were several dead and incredibly bloody people at the end of the car near where the man had been standing fiddling with his rucksack. The stunned passengers around him were starting to move and moaning but Jackson was more interested in the movement outside of the windows of the car.

Groaning, Jackson sat up and slowly got to his feet, taking his briefcase with him. He held on to the bars of the overhead and closed his eyes, trying to adjust to the head-rush before moving out of the Underground car, stumbling over debris as he yelled after the people he'd seen through the window.

'Oy!' he screamed, and his voice, now coated in a thick Irish accent, jarred terribly in his throbbing head, but the people looked back at him. 'Is this the way to Russell Square?'

'Aye,' replied an Indian woman in a soot-covered business suit, her hair falling out of the bun at the base of her head.

Jackson pressed a hand to the dirty tunnel wall and slowly made his way to the two people. 'I need to get to the station.'

'So do we,' replied the man in a heavy Yorkshire accent as the woman wove her arm under Jackson's, supporting him. 'Bugger me, what carriage were you in?'

'The one right behind the one that exploded,' said Jackson breathlessly, tired from the exertion. 'I saw the man who did it.'

'The man who did it?' asked the man, gaping.

'This was caused by a man?' said the woman as they started walking towards the station. 'The scuffers'll probably want to talk to you.'

It took Jackson a moment to realise that she was talking about the cops. He tensed a little against her and started trying to figure out how he'd get out of talking to the police about the person he'd seen. What would be his explanation for knowing the man? The truth was that he had been one of the men who Jackson had seen on a watch-list of possible terrorists that was given to all of the organisation operatives. What about that man would have necessarily drawn Jackson's attention to him? He was any normal 19-year-old riding on the Tube on a weekday fiddling with his rucksack to find his iPod or something. Since Jackson woke up around Caledonian Road, he'd seen at least eight other people doing the exact same thing. He certainly didn't want to lie to the police, but he didn't want to be telling the truth either. He'd much prefer to just not speak to them at all.

There was something incredibly eerie about the unused tunnel. Usually there would be the woosh of trains and the creaking of rails in a Tube tunnel, but now there was an uncomfortable silence with the undertones of moaning and the occasional scream reflecting off of the close walls. There was sometimes a clang or thud as pieces of the ceiling around the train fell, but these sounds were dulled by both the thick smoke and the unending pounding in Jackson's ears. The emergency lights overhead were obscured by smoke and the woman he leaned on kept reminding him to stay off of the tracks because she had no idea if they were live or not. It seemed like forever before they made it into to clear, bright station, terrifying the already shaking people on the platform, who rushed over to help them out of the track pit.

'What… what happened?' stammered a young American woman wearing the typical college ensemble of jeans and a t-shirt with a messenger bag strapped across her chest. 'We heard a loud bang.'

'There was an explosion,' Jackson replied quickly, handing his briefcase to her before being helped onto the platform by a couple of men. 'There are people injured and dead. You need to alert the stationmaster.'

'He's already gone to get help,' she said to him, handing him back his briefcase.

The conversation ended when another group of soot-covered survivors appeared in the fluorescent light. Two of them were carrying incredibly bloody people who had tears creating greyish streaks down their cheeks; one of them was biting the coat of the man carrying her. Jackson stepped back and slumped down on a bench, collecting his thoughts as he took off the ripped suit jacket he was wearing and wiped off his face with the mostly clean lining. With the blood and soot cleared away, he was able to look with his good eye at his dirty and rent pants and noticed that he had a missing shoe—how he hadn't noticed it before, he had no idea. His big toe was poking through a hole in his sock, so he wiggled it just to be sure there wasn't a huge amount of damage on his leg.

A man who'd been standing to the side talking on his mobile came over and slumped down next to Jackson. 'I just got a call from me girlfriend. She was on the Tube near Liverpool Street and said that there was an explosion there too. The place is in havoc, but the bobbies are telling people that it was caused by a power surge.'

Jackson stared at the other man, dumbfounded. 'A power surge? Come on.'

'You don't think it was a power surge?' asked the man, looking at Jackson. 'What was it like down there?'

'It was a suicide bombing,' Jackson replied, giving the man a snarky look. 'People are dead and dying down in that train.'

The man tensed and nearly stood. 'Come on, then, we need to gather a group and go help them.'

'No,' Jackson said sharply. 'The air down there is thick enough to be cut by a knife. More people will get hurt trying to go in there before the rescue personnel than is worth it.'

The man seemed distraught by Jackson's disconnect from the situation. 'Do you not care at all about the people who are suffering—'

'No, I don't care about them,' he said darkly, raising his eyebrows.

With a disapproving look, the man stood and walked away to help the people off of the tracks. There was the sound of sirens screaming from the street and echoing from the tile walls of the station, so Jackson grabbed his briefcase and went towards the stairs. Looking ahead, he could see a mass of people who had been moved away from the platform and spread themselves through the hallway and ticketing area. He mingled with them, trying his best to look like someone who had been waiting rather than someone who'd been part of the blast. The rescue workers didn't even give him a second glance as they stormed down to the tracks to begin their operations, and after a few minutes, Jackson was being ushered out with the other survivors and waiting commuters.

At street-level, he was able to lose himself in the crowds of people who had gathered before making a beeline for his hotel. In the lobby, the workers were panicky about his appearance as he checked in, but Jackson was more concerned with the muted television in the hotel bar that had a picture of al-Sherif on it. He walked over to the bar, leaning heavily on it.

'Can... can you please turn that up?' he murmured to the barkeep.

The man turned it up and Jackson listened to the tape. 'Al-Qaeda announced today that they orchestrated the abduction and assassination of Ihab al-Sherif, an Egyptian official stationed in Baghdad, Iraq.'

Without even listening to the rest of the report, a steamed Jackson stomped away from the bar and to the lift, pulling out his cell phone and grumbling to himself. Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda, it was always Al-Qaeda! There was less and less use for trained assassins and managers because any yahoo could strap a bomb to himself and detonate the entire surrounding area and that terrified people more than a thousand political assassinations could. Any person at any time could be killed in a terrible explosion; there was no finesse anymore. No person sitting up in a tower with a sniper's gun, picking out the one person in the crowd to shoot and ignoring all the rest. True, he'd worked to do some of the Algerian massacres, but in the long run, he'd only chosen locations and arranged for Lyna to be smuggled into the country for aid. Since September 11th, he'd been more and more concerned for his own safety in day-to-day activities and had refused participation in any job that required the downing of planes, use of bombs or the killing of any group of people. There were murmurs that he'd grown soft, but because Poulain himself had never participated in a group murder, there was nothing much they could say—now that he was second-in-command, there was absolute silence on the matter.

The doors slid open and he pressed the speed-dial on his phone. When he placed it to his ear, however, there was a circuits-busy tone. He grumbled and got into his room, flinging the briefcase on the bed and angrily picking up the phone from the side-table. He dialled Poulain's number and the phone rang.

'L'office de Monsieur Poulain, c'est Anaïs.'

'Pourrais-je parler à Monsieur Poulain?'

'Qui est à l'appareil?'

'C'est Rippner.'

'Ne quittez pas, je vous le passe.'

'Merci.'

The hold music started, a Chopin piece, and Jackson pressed the speakerphone button. He could feel blood spilling down his face and went to the bathroom, sighing as he looked at himself in the mirror. A thick trickle of blood came out of the matted mess of his hair, falling down his forehead and past his nose, beside his lips and under his chin. His soot-smudged shirt had blood soaked into the collar, and before he had time to clean, Poulain's voice came over the speaker.

'Ouais, mon fils?' Poulain said. 'I've just heard about the London bombings—are you all right?'

He walked out and lay down on the bed next to the phone. 'Yes, I'm all right... I was in one of the trains that was hit, but I escaped with a bad bump on the head and some minor blast injuries.'

'Did you call to inform me of this?' Poulain asked, and Jackson could hear him turn down the television in his office. 'Or is there something else on your mind?'

'You read me like a book, monsieur,' Jackson replied. 'I'm calling to submit my resignation.'

---

Ghodsi Pedram sat in her Damascus office biting the end of a pen as she looked over the newest requests for managers and their assassins. She was working out the placement of a manager for a massacre in Iraq when her phone rang.

'Pedram.'

'It's done.'

'Good.'

With that short conversation, she smiled and went back to her work. Jackson Rippner was dead, the victim of a random terrorist bombing in London, and there was only a negligible chance that she or her associates would be implicated. If things had gone as she planned, it would be difficult to even identify his body. She was nearly ecstatic—with Jackson out of the way, the de facto inheritor of the organisation would be Philip Greene, who, with his alliances, would be able to place the organisation at the forefront of the current political scene; in other words, he'd be able to make the organisation a cover company for terrorist groups, which would increase their jobs immensely. When her phone rang again, however, Pedram looked at it warily.

'Pedram.'

'Ghodsi, it's Matthias.'

'Oh, sir, I'm sorry to hear about your loss!' she gushed.

'My loss?'

'I know that Jackson was in London today, and one of my associates in the city said that she saw him at King's Cross on the way to her job this morning.'

'Oh,' Poulain replied with a light laugh. 'My boy escaped with just some minor injuries, which is impressive, considering he was in the carriage right behind the one that exploded!'

Pedram froze. The bomber had ridden the wrong carriage.

'Anyway, I gave the boy that new American job that came across my desk this morning. The purchaser is a man in your region, so I assume you also have the request?'

She swallowed to whet her mouth. 'Ye-yes, the Deputy Director of Homeland Security?'

'That's the one,' the man replied. 'Jackson will be working on that one because I know he already knows the Miami area quite well, and I want his last job with us to be an easy one. Shall you arrange the meeting between Jackson and the employer, or would you prefer I do it?'

'I'll take care of it,' she replied smoothly, opening the file he was speaking of. 'The purchaser is actually in the London area right now, so I'll call him immediately. Thank you very much for keeping me abreast of this situation, sir. I'm relieved that Mr Rippner wasn't hurt.'

After hanging up the phone, she cursed loudly and then called Hassan Nasrallah to arrange the meeting between Jackson and him, all the while considering which members she could work with to move on to plan B of ridding the organisation of Jackson Rippner. It wasn't until after she picked the time and place of the meeting that she realised Poulain had told her that Jackson was retiring.