When the man ranting at them wound down, there was an ugly silence broken only by faint crunching noises.
“Well,” growled the little man on the screen, “did you hear me?”
“Yes,” said Church mildly. His took his time finishing his cookie: chewing thoroughly, washing it down with a sip of water, dabbing at his lips with a linen napkin, then refolding the napkin and placing it neatly on the table.
“Damn it, Church, I asked you a question.”
“My apologies, Mr. Spellman,” said Church, “I believe that we are still waiting for an answer to our question. Why is there an arrest warrant out for Captain Ledger?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I believe it is my business. If you would like to reread the DMS charter and get back to me, that would be fine.”
Norris Spellman was the attorney general for the United States, but he was a man remarkably unsuited to his post. Nearly as unsuitable as the previous occupant of his office. A political appointee who did not have the kind of credentials appropriate to being the top law enforcement officer in the country. The press knew it, people on both sides of the aisle knew it, and he likely knew it himself. He had not been a very good attorney when he worked as a prosecutor in Arizona, and he had gained no ground at all in a series of escalating political bumps. His genius, if the word could be accurately applied, had always been in backing the right horse, even changing parties to make sure he was on the winning team.
“The reasons for the warrant are sealed by executive order,” said Spellman.
“Captain Ledger works for me,” said Church, unruffled. “The nature of the DMS charter expressly lays out the protocol of action if any of my people need to be detained or interviewed by any other government agency. That is also an executive order.”
“Not signed by this president.”
“Not rescinded, either,” countered Church. “Which means it stands as policy. The actions of the agents today are in violation of that order, which means that they were committing crimes. They are, in fact, complicit in a conspiracy to violate an executive order. This discussion compounds that and calls into question your own level of involvement in these crimes.” During the ensuing silence, he took another cookie and tapped crumbs from it on the edge of the plate.
“You think the president won’t cancel your charter?” sneered Spellman.
“I want you to listen to me for a minute, Norris,” said Aunt Sallie in a voice that would turn burning logs into icicles. “That pickup was illegal. We all know it, just as we know the pickup order is likely a whim or a mistake, and your boss would rather be eaten by rats than admit that he ever made a mistake. I know this puts you in a bind because you’re not being given a choice. If POTUS says ‘jump,’ you have to jump or you’re out like the last fool whose ass polished your chair. No … don’t interrupt me, Norris; you know better than that. The pickup was bogus. If POTUS is going to rescind it, he has to notify us before doing so. That’s the agreement. If he wants to amend it, ditto. Captain Ledger reacted to an illegal act and showed remarkable restraint. If they’d drawn on him, he was legally allowed to defend himself using any appropriate force. The fact that he chose to stay at the lowest possible rung on the force continuum ladder speaks to his integrity as an agent of this government. The fact that he hasn’t filed federal charges against your goons also speaks to an admirable restraint and the best practices of the Department of Military Sciences. Push this, Norris, and he will file charges, and you know that we have judges who will back his play. And, if you don’t know how scary our lawyers are, then you had better ask around, because we can out-lawyer you into the dirt. Now, either you tell us why POTUS issued the pickup order or we are going to start our own investigation. Ask what happens when we take a personal and particular interest in someone.”
Spellman tried to tough it out, glaring and glowering, but his face had gone dead pale and he couldn’t sell it.
Into the troubled silence, Mr. Church said, “I’ve placed several calls to the Oval Office, to the chief of staff, and to the director of the Secret Service. None of those calls were taken and none have been returned. Perhaps in the interest of cooperation and adherence to chartered protocols you might see what you can do about that.”
Before the attorney general could organize a response, Church ended the call. He finished his cookie, sipped some water, and sighed.
Auntie kicked the desk. “What in the Technicolor hell is going on with that clown college in D.C.?”
Instead of addressing the question, Church said, “You spoke highly of Captain Ledger.”
She scowled. “Well … he may be a mouth-breathing Neanderthal, but for something like this, he’s one of us.”
“Even so, Auntie, you were effusive in your praise. Did it hurt?”
“Bite me,” she snarled.
INTERLUDE FIVE
ANTICA LOCANDA DI SESTO
LUCCA, ITALY
SIX YEARS AGO
Valen saw the woman and knew it was her right away. Dr. Marguerite Beaufort was a French national who had, according to her Facebook page, “grown up all over the world.” The daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of scholars, she had an air of bookishness and introspection that put a toe across the introversion line. She was a pretty and well-dressed thirty-something who sparkled with intelligence.
“Dr. Beaufort,” he said, offering his hand as he approached the table.
“Mr. Oruraka,” she said, “what a pleasure to meet you.” Her hand was cool, strong, and dry.
“It’s Valen,” he said as he sat across from her. “May I call you Marguerite?”
“Oh, please do.”
After the waiter came to take their order and brought wine for her and an Armorik French single malt for him, she said, “I was rather surprised to get your e-mail. How did you know about me? And how did you know I was here in Lucca?”
“You’re an academic, Marguerite,” he said, “and academics are always tethered to their universities. I played that game long enough to know how to find who I wanted.”
She nodded. “I looked you up, of course. Geology and seismology, with a minor in structural engineering. Are you planning on building a dam?”
Archaeologists were often brought in during large-scale construction to assess the cultural or historical significance of items uncovered during excavation. However, Valen shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I’m working on a very special project, and one that, I’m afraid, comes with a rather ponderous stack of nondisclosure agreements. Are … you familiar with NDAs?”
Marguerite sipped her wine and rolled her eyes. “I’ve written a mountain of grant proposals. So, yes.”
“Yes. This is a little different than that.” He sipped his whiskey. “There are a few things I can share with you before asking you to sign an NDA. Call them ‘bait.’ Tell me, have you ever heard of Lemurian crystal?”
That made her lean back, and she sipped more wine as she considered him. “That depends on what you mean.”
“Tell me what you think I mean.”
She smiled. “Well, first off, it’s not Lemurian. Lemuria was part of a theory postulated by the nineteenth-century Darwinian taxonomist Ernst Haeckel, as a way of explaining some anomalies in biogeography—the natural spread of animal species. He theorized that Lemuria was a land bridge that connected existing land masses in the Indian Ocean but which has since been submerged. But that has been entirely discredited by modern theories of plate tectonics. Unfortunately, the Theosophists of his day grabbed onto the idea because that lot love the possibility of lost civilizations, especially those that leave no artifacts to prove or, more significantly, disprove their wild claims. It’s no different than Atlantis or—”
“Okay, you can stop right there,” said Valen. “Let me shift my question. Tell me something about the Roman festival of Lemuria.”
Marguerite shrugged. “That was real. It was an important festival in which
specific rites were performed to exorcise the lemures, the evil and restless dead who haunted their homes. During the rise of Christianity, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon in Rome to the Virgin Mary and all of the Christian martyrs, effectively supplanting the old religious holiday with a new one.”
Valen smiled. “Now tell me why I asked about that celebration?”
“Well, what most people do not know, Valen,” she said, “is that the nickname of Lemurian quartz is not tied to a faux lost continent, but to that old Roman feast. At least when they refer to the green variety of Lemurian quartz. The white quartz is a label used by the New Age crowd, and actually is tied to their belief in an actual island nation of Lemuria.” She waved her hand dismissively. “For what we’re talking about, people in Rome would use pieces of rare green quartz to ward off the evil spirits. They made small fetishes from it in the shape of weapons—swords, knives, arrows, cudgels—and placed them in their homes for a full day, while gathering together in tents or lean-tos in the streets. On 13 May they would send the bravest and purest person from each town or village to go from house to house and collect the quartz weapons. These would be wrapped in blessed cloth and buried in a lead box in a place known only to the priests, safe until the following year.”
Valen finished his whiskey and signaled the waiter for a refill. While he waited, he took the wine bottle from the table and poured more for Marguerite.
“What would you say if I told you that it is my belief that many of these fetish weapons were made from quartz mined, not in Rome, but elsewhere?”
She shrugged. “I read something to that effect. Some were found hidden in a mine near Santorini, which suggests that the Romans may have borrowed the practice of making such fetishes from an older culture, Greek or possibly Minoan ruins.”
“I know. I’ve read that paper,” said Valen. “But the mine I’m talking about is not in that region.”
“Then where?”
Valen sat back, sipped his whiskey, and smiled. “That’s where the nondisclosure agreement comes in.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CITADEL OF SALAH ED-DIN
SEVEN KILOMETERS EAST OF AL-HAFFAH, SYRIA
TWO DAYS AGO
They descended into a green hell. Harry was three steps behind Violin, wishing he was ten thousand miles away from where they were going.
Once they were below the level of the floor it was immediately apparent that this was not some cramped hidden chamber, or even a roomy basement. No, the stairs zigzagged down out of sight, and Harry reckoned that it was forty or fifty feet to the floor.
The engineering skills of the ancient world always dazzled him. He understood a bit of structural engineering from a course he took in college—because of a very hot undergrad he wanted to impress. While he had utterly failed to amaze the woman with his grasp of the science, he had nevertheless learned some things by simple exposure. He knew that many of the feats of building managed by cultures going back as far as the Sumerians were astonishing. Things that would be daunting undertakings with hundred-foot cranes, stonecutting machines, and all of the benefits of modern science were accomplished with simple tools, determination, and patience. From the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan to the Great Pyramid of Giza, from Angkor Wat in Cambodia to the Taj Mahal in India, those accomplishments made Harry feel particularly incompetent.
The source of the green glow was still not evident, but the illumination itself revealed a vast room supported by dozens of carved stone columns. There were hundreds of what looked like stone sarcophagi resting on bases of dark volcanic rock. As they reached the floor of the chamber Harry could see that none of those sarcophagi were normal. The ones he’d seen in museums and at other ancient sites with Violin were all roughly human, approximating some idealized version of the body entombed within. Not these. They were too big, for one thing: the smallest he saw was at least ten feet long, and some were twice that size. The figures were strange blends of human and fish, or human and octopus. Some with vast wings, others with too many heads to count.
“What are these?” he whispered.
“Children of the Deep Ones,” she said.
“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Violin paused and cocked an ear. “Listen.”
He did. At first he heard nothing—and he was glad it wasn’t more of that booming voice—but then, off in the direction where the green light was brightest, he could hear the fading sound of running feet.
“Hurry,” said Violin as she sprinted toward the noise and the strange green light.
Harry lingered, and for a moment he almost did not follow. In that moment he thought about what in the world he was doing here. Sure, he was a former CIA operative, but not a good one. He was ten million miles away from being in the same league as Violin. Or his secret hero, Joe Ledger. He was a short, dumpy loser who sometimes got lucky. Luckier than he deserved.
What in the living hell was he doing here? What was he even thinking? That he was Indiana Jones? That he was Joe Ledger? He knew the real answer to those questions.
“Please,” he said quietly, as if asking to be excused could get him out of this. He had a pistol in his hand and it felt like a prop from a bad TV movie. He ran to catch up but hadn’t gotten fifty feet before the men they were chasing began to scream.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE WAREHOUSE
DMS FIELD OFFICE
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Waiting and doing nothing is a pain in the ass. I’m no good at it.
To keep from climbing the walls, I called home, but got the answering machine, then called Junie’s cell. And got her voicemail. She was so busy with FreeTech that I had a closer and more meaningful relationship with her recording. I left a message for her to call, told her I loved her, and hung up feeling peevish and slighted, which I know is both immature and unfair.
Beneath my foul mood I was genuinely in love and deeply proud—possibly in awe—of what Junie Flynn had accomplished over the last few years. Church had offered her the role of CEO of a private company that took the deadly technologies the DMS forcibly appropriated from bad guys and repurposed them for humanitarian uses. New water filtration systems, new organic fertilizer enhancers, medical equipment, cybernetic implants for the physically challenged, and most recently a portable diagnostic device that was helping with the weaponized rabies plague spread by Zephyr Bain during the Dogs of War case. She was saving lives every single day, and bringing light into a darkened world. She was one end of the evolutionary bell curve. I, a more primitive kind of creature, was way farther back.
The reason for my grumpiness was that we were both starting to feel the strain of being so deeply involved in our jobs that we were drifting from one another. It wasn’t a lessening of love—at least not for me—but it was more like we were in danger of becoming strangers. Or worse, acquaintances. It was something we each promised to work on, and I prayed we still had time.
She didn’t call back. I couldn’t go home. So, I did what any tough-as-nails, battle-hardened, deeply skilled special operator would do. I sat in the mess hall and sulked.
Top was in there, too. Top knows how to make a sandwich. It’s not about how many slices of pastrami or roast beef you add, it’s about how they’re placed. He makes sure there are irregular air pockets so that biting into the sandwich isn’t like eating a slab of meat. He cuts his pickles lengthwise and uses the heart of a tomato so there’s less skin and more juice. He also has a light hand with mustard or mayonnaise. He appreciates subtlety. Top is an artist and I am a devoted fan.
Like proper adult men, we ate the sandwiches over the big double sink.
Bunny arrived with a suitcase in one hand and a case of cold beer under his arm. He set the beer down on the counter, opened three, popped the caps, and handed them around. “Medical supplies.”
“Hooah,” said Top. We clinked bottles and drank.
That case of beer didn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
OFFICE OF JENNIFER VANOWEN
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
TWENTY MONTHS AGO
The small Japanese-American woman perched on the edge of a leather guest chair. She was not wearing handcuffs, but a pair sat conspicuously on the desk. The woman who sat across from her smiled like a moray eel.
“Do you know why you’re here?” asked Jennifer VanOwen.
Yuina Hoshino folded her hands in her lap and let nothing show on her face. “No,” she said simply.
“Do you know who I am?”
A shake of the head.
“I am the special advisor to the president on all scientific matters,” said VanOwen. She opened her desk and removed a crisp sheet of paper and placed it facedown on her desk. Then, after a moment’s pause, removed a second and laid it next to the first. “You know that you will never live long enough to serve your entire sentence. You’re lucky that you were not given the death penalty. A lot of people wanted that to happen. A lot of people wanted you to vanish into a black site where psychopaths on our payroll would make life a constant and intense hell for you.”
Hoshino wanted to look away. She wanted to cry. But she did neither. Instead she looked into the middle of nowhere and let her expression go totally blank.
“The people who arrested you and wanted to end you belonged to a different administration,” said VanOwen, then she corrected herself. “No, they belonged to a different view of what patriotism means. They subscribed to a view of America and its place in the world that is limited, skewed, and small.” She paused. “I know that you have a different view of America’s potential greatness. One that is built on ambition and courage, but which also prizes a shift away from globalism.”
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