“You come to the house of God and you commit sins. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“Father, I did not tell you my name. How do you know my name?”
“You told me, Doctor Sanchez. You told me your name.”
“I did not.”
“Oh—not today,” said the priest, squeezing so hard now that Rudy gasped. “You told me when we met before.”
“That’s a lie. We’ve never met before.”
“I warned you about being disingenuous.”
“No. Let go of my hand.”
“You don’t remember me, doctor?” The priest’s voice seemed to change. It slurred into a kind of southern drawl. But not a real one—a cartoon one. Like someone pretending to be southern. “Don’t you remember me at all? We had such a lovely conversation, oh yes we did. We spoke of many things. We spoke of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. Surely you remember that.”
The light in the chapel seemed to shift and change, and with it the color of the priest’s eyes changed. They were no longer a medium green, but instead seemed to swirl with colors. Bad colors. Ugly colors. The green was now the sickly green of toad skin, and eddied with a fecal brown and infectious yellow. A sudden stink permeated the room. An outhouse stench of putrescence and human waste, of methane and sulfur.
Rudy recoiled and pulled furiously to free his hand, but the priest held on to it. Easily. With no visible effort, even though he was much smaller and slighter than Rudy. The heat of his touch increased, and now Rudy could feel his flesh begin to blister. Steam rose from between the priest’s fingers. The pain of that burning grip was intense.
“I weep for you,” said the priest. “I deeply sympathize. To lose everything that you love. To have them taken from you so cruelly, so completely. How will you ever survive it? How will you live, Doctor Sanchez, when your whore and that insect that curls asleep in her womb have turned to rot and ashes?”
Rudy’s cane was hooked over the back of the pew, and he snatched it up with his free hand, raised it, and brought it whistling down on the priest’s forearm. The shock of that impact was incredibly, insanely powerful. Pain shot like electricity through Rudy’s wrist and up his arm, and his hand spasmed open. The cane rebounded and flew from Rudy’s hand, falling with a clatter on the seat of the pew.
The priest looked at the hand-carved cane. He bent and sniffed at the wood, then winced and swatted it away from him as if it was something vile.
“Hawthorn and silver,” he said. “You must think I’m a witch. Or a vampire.”
He opened his mouth and laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
As he laughed, his mouth seemed to open wider and wider. Far too wide. And that laughing mouth was filled with far too many teeth.
Rudy screamed.
The shriek was torn from deep inside his chest, and it boiled out of him to fill the chapel. On the altar, the silver crucifix toppled and fell so that the dying Jesus landed on His face. The flickering lights of the candles were instantly snuffed out.
Rudy felt himself suddenly falling.
Backward, out of the pew.
Onto the floor.
His hand slipped free from the priest’s burning grip.
His head struck first the edge of the seat and then the floor, each blow feeling as hard as a kick. Lights detonated in Rudy’s eyes, and the whole of reality seemed to cant sideways and fall off its hinges.
He tried to call for Cowpers. He couldn’t understand why the agent hadn’t already burst into the room. But the man did not come. Instead, Rudy lay sprawled and helpless as the little priest bent over him. Those strange, strange eyes seemed to glow as if lit from within. Lambent and so wrong. The priest reached out and caressed Rudy’s cheek with the familiarity and intimacy of a lover.
“Listen to me, Rudolfo Ernesto Sanchez y Martinez,” the priest said in an accent unlike either he had previously used. This was the creaking voice of an old man. Dry and dusty and filled with malevolence. “We have met before, and we are ill met now. We will meet one more time, and it will be on the day of justice, when the conquerors are conquered and those who steal the blood of the earth are brought low by their own greed and hubris. Then I will come and take everything you love and leave you with bones and dust.”
Rudy cringed back in horror. He beat at the priest’s face and felt his hand bones crack and the skin of his knuckles split, but he did no damage to the man—to the thing—that crouched over him.
“What are you?” cried Rudy.
In answer, the priest bent closer still and, with his hot, wet tongue, licked Rudy’s face. First his chin, then over Rudy’s lips and nose, up his check, over his one good eye, through the bristle of his eyebrow, and up his brow to his hairline.
“The whore and the maggot are mine, doctor. Mine. There is nothing you can do to save them.”
Rudy Sanchez screamed.
The priest straightened and stood over him.
“They are mine.”
He raised his foot, and, though Rudy tried to turn away to protect his face, the heel filled his vision as the priest stamped down.
Everything went black, and Rudy felt himself falling.
He never felt himself land.
Chapter Fifty-six
Boyer Hall
University of California, Los Angeles
March 30, 5:33 P.M.
The president of the United States wanted to hit someone. Anyone. It didn’t matter to him. He sat in a stuffed armchair, fists balled in his lap, jaw clenched, his people clustered around him as they all watched his political world come crashing down.
Even though he had not been president when Osama bin Laden—through his involvement with both al-Qaeda and the Seven Kings—had sent planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, this was on him. Even though he had not been president when SEAL Team Six breeched the compound in Abbottabad and killed the man everyone believed to be bin Laden, this was on him.
It was all on him.
He was the captain of the Titanic, and the ship had just hit the iceberg.
The so-called Friends of the Truth had fired their shot.
They had released the video from the DMS hit on the Resort. Seventy-one seconds that showed three big men in the distinctive black clothes of covert special ops standing around the nearly naked and thoroughly abused corpse of Osama bin Laden.
Already, news channels were using facial recognition software to confirm the identity of the dead man. The video footage was in ultra-high-definition, which allowed them to focus tightly on the smallest mole and scar. On the shapes of the nose, ear, eye, and mouth. On the precise distances between the landmarks of that hated face.
Experts were being added to the hysterical conversation. Everyone was on the same page.
This was Osama bin Laden.
They could see this corpse.
No one had seen the body of the man killed in Pakistan. The corpse had been mangled by gunfire, bagged, shipped, and then buried at sea. All of the conspiracy theories that had begun burning after Abbottabad now caught like brushfire, the flames driven by winds of doubt and what seemed incontrovertible proof.
The chief of staff and the top advisors were bent together in a cluster, firing verbiage back and forth, trying to construct a response that would not put them all on the public chopping block, not to mention the unemployment line.
“Fix this,” muttered the president. Everyone looked up at him, and for a moment the only sound was the chatter from the TV. The president repeated it. Again and again. Whether he was talking to his staff or himself was unclear.
Chapter Fifty-seven
Over Nevada Airspace
March 30, 5:38 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
Boy sat alone in the cabin of the Boeing 747–8 VIP. The cabin was a demonstration of absolute excess and vulgar luxury on an aircraft with a sticker price over $230 million. Boy did not need or even enjoy such luxury. Her tastes were simple, but this was the closest Ki
ngs jet available at an airfield outside the Philadelphia no-fly zone. She’d driven to Virginia to catch this flight.
The jet had once belonged to Hugo Vox and was one of three different ultra-high-end aircraft that still remained in the inventory of the Seven Kings. She looked around at all the wasted space. At the piano and winding staircase and heavy furniture. All of it requiring so much fuel to lift. Thirty thousand per trip, minimum.
Now the jet shot through the American skies.
There was an elaborate computer setup aboard the plane with a big high-end, flat-screen TV whose display was broken into several smaller windows. One window was a continuous feed from the ballpark in Philadelphia. Another looped the president’s speech and the resulting hit of the full bin Laden video file. A dozen smaller screens showed the media firestorm that had resulted, including footage of riots in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon. Another cluster of windows showed a burning house in Fort Myers, Florida, a townhouse in Brooklyn, a hospital in San Diego, a house in Chula Vista, and other locations. Some events were past tense. Others were in progress. Everything was running according to a timetable that no longer needed her oversight. No orders needed to be given. Not for this phase. From here, it was the great machine of the Seven Kings grinding away the old version of the world to make room for whatever was next.
After the fires and explosions.
After the deaths.
After the chaos.
The jet flew on through sunlight and clouds.
She wondered how long it would be before no planes flew over this country anymore?
Soon.
So soon.
Chapter Fifty-eight
27 Eighth Avenue
Park Slope, Brooklyn
March 30, 5:39 P.M.
“Will you need me, Auntie?” asked the DMS agent as he held the door open for his boss.
Aunt Sallie shook her head. “No, that’s okay, Tank. Just want to grab a change of clothes. I’ll only be a minute. Go wait in the car.”
Tank, who was a tall, wide, muscular man with no visible neck and the cold eyes of a reptile, nodded. He was one of three agents on permanent detail to protect the woman who was second in command of the Department of Military Sciences. He’d worked for her since the DMS scouts recruited him from the army military police. Tank’s partners, Colby and Kang, were on the street. Colby stood by the open door of the Escalade, her humorless face turned toward the foot traffic. Kang was looking at the traffic. Every few moments, they would shift position to check the other direction, overlapping their line-of-sight surveillance.
“I can carry the stuff for you,” offered Tank.
“And I can carry it my own damn self,” she fired back. Aunt Sallie was in her midsixties, short, heavier than she used to be, but still capable of pulling a suitcase. “Now go down to the street like a good dog.”
Tank did not take offense. He was too practiced at working this detail. No one made the cut for Auntie’s team unless they had thick hides, a balanced ego, and the ability to keep their opinions and reactions to themselves.
“Of course,” he said.
Once, when he first joined the detail, he’d made the grave mistake of calling Auntie “ma’am.” She had promised to kneecap him if he ever—ever—called her that again. Not only had her glare been convincing, Colby and Kang, who were already on the detail and who stood behind Auntie, shook their heads in warning and silently cut their hands back and forth across their throats. The look of alarm on their faces was eloquent, and Tank was quick-witted enough to jump in the right direction when he thought there was a land mine.
He waited until she was inside the townhouse, then retreated down the steps to stand on the pavement. He would not wait in the car.
* * *
INSIDE HER HOME, Auntie tossed her keys on the table by the door, picked up the mail from the rug and threw it in on the couch without looking at it, and headed upstairs. Her house was lovely, understated, nicely appointed, and virtually unused. Most of the time she slept in her suite at the Hangar, the main DMS headquarters buried under a hangar at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. But she’d been there for three days straight now, and she needed fresh clothes and a few of her prescriptions. Valsartan for her blood pressure. Celebrex for her arthritis. Extra syringes and insulin for her diabetes. It annoyed her to be a slave to both age and medicine, but there wasn’t much she could do about either. Well, maybe she could cut down on the sweets and lose a few pounds. But, as she often said to her doctor, fuck it. Life was too short to live small.
She stood for a moment at the base of the stairs, listening to the quiet. It was nice. And for her it was rare. The DMS was a loud place. Hundreds of employees, lots of machines, conversation, videoconferences. This place, though somewhat sterile, was soothing and quiet.
She sighed, rubbed her tired eyes, and began climbing the stairs. With the mess in Philadelphia now tied to the Seven Kings, she knew that once she got back to the Hangar, she’d probably be living there for at least a week. She hoped she had enough clean clothes.
The wall beside the stairs was lined with paintings. All original—some valuable, some not. Each was important to her, though. Not in terms of the art—something she understood but didn’t treasure—but because each piece reminded her of something. Or someone. The small Picasso litho midway up was bought after the death of her first husband. Simeon. Every time she passed it, Auntie remembered him and smiled. He’d been a man’s man. And an agent’s agent. An American version of James Bond. Suave, sophisticated, deadly as a pit viper. Great in the sack. He’d been part of one of the Deacon’s early teams. Way back when. But, sadly, he’d been ambushed in Diyarbakir, Turkey. Forty-nine bullets and a closed coffin. Simeon had loved Picasso.
The piece above that one was a framed piece of Nigerian beadwork. Another memory. Callisto. The entire time they were lovers, she hadn’t known his real name. She found out when the State Department told her he was dead. Anton Michael Gunn. A Scot who worked for MI6 and who died with a Russian bullet in his brain.
There were others. All tied to memories of people whose faces could never be put on her walls. Security, ethics, politics. They had to remain anonymous except inside her memories. The most bittersweet was the one at the top of the landing. A big framed piece with its own small light. A moody surrealist landscape in which nothing appeared to be present except dust blown by colored wind. To the discerning, attentive eye, however, there were shapes suggested by deft brushstrokes. Lions and prey animals, carrion birds and jackals. But you had to know how to see them. It was subtle and powerful. So powerful.
That piece was the only one that was not tied to a ghost.
The man was alive, but he was as unreachable as the surface of an alien world. A man who was layered in mystery, just as the theme of the painting was layered.
She paused, as she often did, and studied the painting, a faint smile on her lips that she was totally unaware of.
She did not speak his name aloud. Not even here. Not that she thought her place was bugged or that he was watching. No, her life was built around habits of good security. Repairing damage was not preferable when damage could be avoided.
So, she never spoke his name here.
Not his real name or any of the many names he used. Now and over the years. Instead, she sighed and reached out to touch the lion hidden by the swirling clouds of color.
She never heard the bedroom door open.
She never heard the silent footfall on the carpet.
She never knew how close to death she was until the point of the knife buried itself between her ribs.
Chapter Fifty-nine
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March 30, 5:43 P.M.
I lay there like a lump while Church called Toys. Church put the call on speaker, and I heard both sides of the conversation. Toys’s voice was subdued, nearly uninflected. I could imagine why. After the fall of the Seven Kings and
the destruction of the Red Order, Church had taken Toys on as some kind of project. He gave him access to a lot of the Kings money and encouraged him to do some good with it. Maybe it was some kind of social-engineering project. Maybe the big man liked to study insects. Not sure, and I don’t much care. If Toys stepped in front of a crosstown bus, I wouldn’t much care, either.
Perhaps I need to learn to be more forgiving.
Perhaps I don’t want to.
Toys represented the kind of human animal that was preying on the rest of the herd. I don’t bond with predators. Never have. My life was ruined by a gang of predators who raped my girlfriend and nearly beat me to death. If that’s made me unfair or intolerant, then fuck it.
Church had his own agendas, his own motivations. He thought Toys was worth trying to save.
Everyone needs a hobby.
On the other hand, some of what Toys was saying made me sit up and pay attention.
“I’ve been putting this all together. The drone attack at the ballpark in Philadelphia, the secondary set of bombs. That almost fits a pattern,” said Toys.
“What pattern would that be, Mr. Chismer?”
“It was something Hugo Vox had put together years ago. He was working on a way to follow up 9/11 and one-up the game. He wanted a bigger hit, with longer-lasting effects on the U.S. and world stock markets. He wanted to essentially crash the American infrastructure. At the same time, he wanted to disable the DMS via a series of attacks that would have an emotional impact on the key players.”
“You’re saying you knew of this plan and have waited until now to share it with us. I find that very interesting.”
“No,” Toys said quickly, “you don’t understand. This was something Hugo had wanted to do, but he’d shelved it because the rest of the Kings opted to go with the Ten Plagues Initiative instead. Hugo told us about it one night over brandy and cigars.”
“Us?”
“Well … Sebastian and me. Hugo was thinking out loud. Being expansive, the way he liked to do. Showing how easy it would be to work a big con on the rubes. His words. Hugo laid out exactly how it could be done using drones. And that was before drones were as sophisticated as they are now. Hugo anticipated their development, even estimating a timetable for it. He was brilliant like that.”