"Maybe he thinks he can use him somehow," Joseph said. "Mulcifer's power is unbelievable. Colin Mackay already tried to harness it and failed. Skye may be next."
"Or the person behind Skye," Laika added. "Whoever he talked to wasn't taking any crap."
"Make that 'le crap,'" Tony said, looking up from his computer. "The call went to the Hotel d'Avignon in Paris."
"Don't suppose you can get a room number?"
"No. Hotel switchboard, that's all."
"He sounded American, though," said Laika. "What's in Paris right now?"
"International Commerce Expo," Joseph said. "A few government types would be there, but mostly businessmen. All the movers and shakers . . ." He paused for a moment, then whispered, "Oh, sweet Jesus . . ."
"What is it?" Laika asked.
"The voice on the phone. I think I know where I heard it. Put yourself back a few years, and try and hear it saying, 'It takes a good man to help a good country.'"
"Political ad," said Tony. "What was it, the Republican primaries . . ."
"David Allan Stanley," Laika said. "Oh, my God."
They all knew who David Allan Stanley was. His father had been a billionaire, and by channeling the family fortunes into the computer industry at just the right time, the son had become worth $30 billion.
In 1996 he had gone after the Republican presidential nomination to the tune of $20 million, running on a one-issue platform of a simplified tax code. His lack of any political experience, along with his doughy appearance and absence of any personality that could be captured by video cameras, had doomed his effort. He had won in only one state, early in the campaign, and finished as high as second in only four others. Some said that his loss had embittered him, and though it was true that he had kept a much lower profile since his defeat, no one believed that his hatred of big government and taxes would remain private for long.
Tony rewound the tape and played it again. "That's him," said Laika. "You're right, Joseph."
"I hated those damn ads," said Tony. "I should've recognized his voice. First LaPierre, and now Stanley. What is it about money, anyway? You get a certain amount and suddenly you want to take over the world?"
"I wouldn't know," said Joseph. "I've never had that much. And if this kind of shit is any indication of what you become, I'll gladly do without it."
Laika bit her lower lip, thinking it through. "I hardly think that Stanley would have been recruited by the CIA. That seems to indicate that Skye's working for him now, and not the Company." She hissed out an angry breath. "If Stanley can't buy the leadership of the free world in one way, maybe he figures he can in another."
"But how did Skye get involved with Stanley?" Tony asked.
"For that matter," said Laika, "how did Skye or Stanley find out about the Prisoner? It doesn't matter. What does matter is that we get a record of this meeting tomorrow night. If Skye's acting outside the Company, then so are we. And that means we'd better have some bargaining chips. There's a bluff overlooking that beach. Tonight we'll set up a video camera with a telephoto lens. Have you got a shotgun mike that'll pick up that far away, Tony?"
He nodded. "The water sound might intrude, but I should be able to filter it out afterward. There's brush all along there, so we can hide the camera pretty well."
"All right," Joseph said. "When do we go?"
"You don't," Laika said. "I don't want you anywhere near that castle. Mulcifer probably thinks we're all dead, and there's no reason to enlighten him otherwise, so we're not going to take any chance on his picking up your thoughts, or whatever it is he does."
"Maybe we ought to put your head inside a lead mask," said Tony with a grin.
"Then Leonardo DiCaprio and I would have something in common other than looks," Joseph replied.
Chapter 43
The following morning Brian and Henry Baird drove into the town of Stirling, forty miles west of Edinburgh. The two brothers, following Mulcifer's orders, had driven south and stopped for the night. Then they had proceeded to Stirling, the site of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, where William Wallace's band of Scots had defeated the English in 1297.
The Victorians had erected a monument to Wallace high on the Abbey Craig, and it was to this national shrine that the Bairds now went. When the monument opened at ten in the morning, the parking lot at the base of the Craig was already half full.
One could either take the shuttle bus up the winding road to the tower itself, or walk up its steep incline. The Bairds decided the bus would be better. Otherwise they would have had to carry the hundred-pound canister of VX up to the tower, and might be too tired to haul it the rest of the way up the 264 steps of the narrow spiral staircase to the top.
They each had an automatic, and when the bus arrived at the bottom of the hill, Brian waited for everyone to get off, and then stepped inside and showed his gun to the driver, telling him that he would shoot him if he did not keep everyone else off the bus. Then Brian sat right behind the driver and held the pistol around the right side of the driver's seat, so that it pressed into his side.
The driver told everyone that he was taking no passengers on the next run, and by then Henry was there lugging the canister of VX. The driver helped him take it onto the bus, and then drove them up to the tower, shaking with fear. At Brian's orders, he stopped thirty yards from the shuttle pickup. Several tourists started to walk toward the bus, but Henry stepped out and waved them away, shaking his head, and they obediently moved back to the pickup spot.
Brian yanked the telephone cord out of its socket and pulled the keys from the ignition, then took the driver to the back of the shuttle, where he struck him on the head with his pistol butt and set him on the floor. Then he and Henry put their pistols under their jackets and carried the canister to the main entrance of the slim square tower. On one corner, the outline of the spiral staircase seemed like a huge, off-center pillar soaring up to the great hexagonal spire that partly covered the open observation deck like steepled fingers of stone.
The brothers went inside, past the curious tourists, and turned to the left, where an official asked what they were up to. In reply, Brian struck him down with his right fist and pushed him out of the way with his foot. Then they started up the staircase.
It was so narrow that one man could scarcely pass another, and when Brian, who was in the lead, met someone who was coming down, he told them gruffly to go back up, which they did, getting off the staircase at one of the exhibit floors. Only one man, whom the Bairds encountered just as they had passed the second level, refused, saying that it was less trouble for them to go down a few steps than it was for him to go all the way back up to the third level. Brian took out his gun and told the man that if they couldn't go past him, they would step over him, and the man turned and ran quickly up the stairs.
At last they ascended the stairs and came out onto the top observation level. The wind was blowing so hard that they could scarcely hear the voices of the dozen tourists standing by the stone railings, looking out over the town below and the hills beyond, to the great loops of the River Forth, and far-off Stirling Castle, rising like the spine of a buried giant from its tree-covered foundation of volcanic rock.
But Brian and Henry Baird had not ascended the tower for the view. They went immediately to the side that overlooked the town, and in front of the curious tourists, leaned the canister against the parapet, and opened the valve with a screwdriver. There was no hesitation on their part, just as there was no recalcitrance on the part of the valve. It opened as easily as if it had been made the day before, and VX gas started to rocket invisibly from the nozzle.
The Baird brothers breathed it in and immediately went into convulsions, as did several of the people nearby. When others saw what was happening, they started to run for the stairs, but the gas, swirled about by the wind, caught them, and they too went down, unable to breathe. Only two people who were on the observation deck just beneath were able to get into the spiral staircase and down befo
re the gas followed them. Everyone else above, ten people and the Bairds, died within a minute of breathing in the VX.
But the strong winds at the tower's top proved lifesaving to those below, sweeping the deadly gas out and up, and dissipating it high in the air. What might have destroyed the entire population of Stirling killed only a few high-flying birds, and did not even reach those at the base of the tower.
No one else was killed, thanks to the couple who had survived near the top, and the warnings they gave as they passed each level that someone was releasing poisonous gas at the top. Several people were injured in the rush down the spiral stairway, but a few broken bones were a small price to pay for survival.
Within a half hour, police had arrived and awkwardly made their way up the narrow stairs in their bulky biological containment suits. After they took photographs, they lowered the bodies, tightly wrapped in plastic, down the outside of the tower, and reported to their superiors what they had found.
The radio in Colin Mackay's small room was playing at a higher than normal volume to drown out the conversation that Colin was having with Rob Lindsay. They were sitting close together, remembering Angus Gunn and trying to come up with a plan to end Mulcifer's reign of terror over their organization.
"I couldn't do a thing to stop him, Colin," Rob said. "I could only stand there and watch as my best friend killed himself."
"Were there some who could do anything?" Colin asked.
"Aye, I think so. It looked like Danny was going to make a move on the bastard, but I saw Michael start to reach for his gun to stop him. I don't know, maybe I even started to myself. But if you and Danny are untouched by the bastard, odds are there are one or two others who go along because they know damn well that Mulcifer will order us to kill them if they rebel. They'd just be throwing their lives away."
"God damn it," Colin said, smashing his fist down on his thigh. "Sometimes I think it'd be better to do it and die than to be that monster's slave anymore, which is what you all are, while I'm no better than a prisoner now. And what about Henry and Brian? He sent them off with enough gas to kill thousands. When's the other shoe going to drop on that? And where?"
As if in answer, the music on the radio stopped, and a BBC news bulletin reported that terrorists had released poison gas at one of Scotland's great national shrines, the William Wallace monument in Stirling.
Colin went white and stared into space, scarcely able to believe what he was hearing, but knowing that after the attacks on London, this was a mere bagatelle for Mulcifer. He didn't have to see any pictures of the two "suicide terrorists" to know who they were.
"He spat in our faces," Colin said, when the story ended. "It wasn't enough to use us, he had to spit right in our faces." He looked at Rob with fury in his eyes. "There's no place more sacred to us than Stirling, and he knew it." With one mighty swing of his fist, Colin smashed the radio, stopping the music in a shower of sparks. "It ends now!"
He went to the door and swung it open. Outside stood two of his men with pistols in their holsters. "All right, if you're going to shoot me to keep me in there, you'd better do it now. I'm not leaving, I just want everyone in the great hall now." He went down the hallway, banging on the doors of the rooms. "Come on, all out! Come with me! The great hall! Up and out with you!"
Within a minute the ten men who remained were standing in the large room. Nearly all had weapons either holstered or in their hands. Colin had no idea where Mulcifer was, and he didn't care. All he cared about was that the beast had put all of them in hell.
"Have you heard?" he cried. "Have you heard what that goddamned monster did? Do you know where he sent Brian and Henry with their canister of gas? To Stirling, lads! To the Wallace monument, where they climbed to the top and released the gas, killing ten people and themselves! He's pissed in our pot, lads! He's turned us and defiled us and made us into what we never wanted to be. And now it ends!"
"I hardly think so," said Mulcifer, leisurely walking in through the open door. "These are my men now, Mackay. I'm the one with the hold over them, remember?"
"No, you can't have them all." Colin looked sternly at his men, trying to put a will of iron into them, his will. "Stop it here and now. Have no more to do with this beast. The fault is mine. I thought we could control him, that we could offer him what he wanted, and we could get what we needed in return, but I was wrong. Now let's stop him together."
"How?" asked Danny Christie, almost shyly.
"That would seem to be the question," Mulcifer said.
"By denying him," said Colin, ignoring the creature. "By refusing him and turning him out. By banishing this second-rate Satan from our souls. We'll do his will no more!"
"Colin," James Menzies said apologetically. "I'm not so sure I can do that."
"Well, I can!" Colin shouted. "And Danny, so can you! And there must be others here, too. We're true Scots and strong men, so let's take him and hold him and bind him in that lead coffin I had made, and this time we'll sink him to the bottom of the sea forever!" He eyed his men intently. "Who of you here is untouched by him? Who's been holding back out of fear? Don't be afraid now to admit it—Danny, you're not his, are you?" Danny Christie shook his head.
Then John Caldwell took a step toward Colin and looked angrily toward Mulcifer. "I'm not his, either, the blackhearted bastard!"
"Ooo," said Mulcifer in mock pain. "I'll remember that."
"Remember and be damned," Caldwell said. "I've had enough of your shite!"
"That's three strong lads we are," Colin said. "The rest of you lot can see he can't touch us, so come join us, then, or if you can't, leave us be. We're enough to take him down."
Colin began to walk slowly toward Mulcifer, who backed away, shivering theatrically. Caldwell and Christie joined the advance. Suddenly, Mulcifer stepped past Colin and thrust the two other men back, one with each hand, so that they stumbled and fell onto the floor. Then he grabbed Colin from behind before he could turn around, and held him as securely as if he had been chained in place.
"Enough of this shit," Mulcifer said, looking at the other men. "Kill those two now."
Chapter 44
Colin Mackay shouted, "No!" and tried to break free, but he could not, so great was Mulcifer's strength. He watched in horror as the other men, all eight of them, including Rob and James, took out their weapons and began to fire at John Caldwell and Danny Christie.
Tears streamed down the faces of the men who fired, and their mouths were open and their eyes afire with the agony of what they were doing to their comrades. The bullets smacked into the bodies of the two victims over and over until their faces were red masks and their chests raw plains of blood.
"Enough," said Mulcifer over the gunfire, and though he did not shout, everyone heard, and the firing ceased, leaving in the vast room a silence broken only by the low sobs of the men who had just killed their friends. Rob Lindsay fell to his knees and grasped his head as though it were about to come off, sobbing from his broken heart.
There was another noise that Colin heard, and he couldn't tell if it was the sound of blood running from the two corpses or his own blood rushing inside his head. Mulcifer's arms released him then, and he stumbled forward, failing to his knees beside his two dead, loyal comrades. He touched their bloody heads as though he needed some physical proof that what he had just seen had truly happened, and then he looked up at Mulcifer through eyes clouded by tears.
"Why don't you just kill me too then? You . . . fucking . . ." There was no word left to call him, no appellation bad enough in all the tongues of this world.
"Because I want you to live, Colin. I want you to see what happens next, to appreciate what else I'm going to do in your name, in the name of your precious Scottish independence, and of course in the name of Mackay. I hate that name. Your father was one of the twelve men who persecuted me for seven centuries.
"I would no sooner reach out of my prison, at great pain and effort, to touch a sympathetic soul, than your cu
rsed father or one of his knightly partners in self-righteousness would undo my handiwork, put an end to my long-sought disciple, terminate my pleasure, the only pleasure I ever had. Do you know what it's like to be imprisoned in lead? Lead? That dense, flat element which absorbs the dreams that I send out like no other element on this shabby little planet? Do you know what effort it takes me to project a wish, a desire, a need through lead?
"The agony that your little dogs here suffered was nothing compared to mine, every time that I pushed through. And I had no choice, just as your other pets had no choice but to cut these men down. How can I make this clear to you, Colin Mackay?" Mulcifer crouched and put his face only inches from Colin's. "When you hunger, you must feed. And if you cannot, you must at least try. That is what I did. That is all I did. I followed my nature, and your people called me Antichrist and tortured me because of it.
"Nature. Like your red hair or your white skin. My hunger. Nature, Colin Mackay. You cannot deny nature. You cannot keep nature bound in lead forever. And for the sins of your father in fighting my nature, I take my vengeance on you."
Mulcifer stood up. "As for that leaden coffin you had made, that proof of your intended betrayal, it has long since been dismantled, and its pieces sunk in the Minch. You see . . ." He gave a twisted smile. "I hate lead." Then he turned to the others. "Take him and put him in the bottle dungeon," he told them. "I'll come to you, Colin Mackay, and let you know what I do next, in Edinburgh, the capital of your great country."
Colin leapt at him then, with all the anger he could muster propelling him forward, and bore him to the floor. He struck Mulcifer full in the face, once, twice, thrice, and then he was grabbed by the others and hauled to his feet.
Mulcifer stood up as well, seemingly unharmed. He looked annoyed, and Colin was jubilant to see that he had at least been responsible for that. He had surprised the monster, and if he had surprised him once, maybe he could again. "I'll destroy you yet, Mulcifer, I swear to God."
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