“No. I’m recommending an actual vacation.”
“A vacation? Who are you and what did you do with Mr. Church?”
“Good-bye, Captain,” he said, and there was the slight chance he actually laughed. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. Hard to tell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE PRIORY
PRIVATE RESIDENCE OF MR. CHURCH
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
Church set down his cell phone, leaned back against his pillows, and rubbed his tired eyes. For several moments, he did nothing but listen to one of his favorite albums, Blue Moods by Miles Davis. It seemed as apt now as when he’d first heard every cut played live at a club many years ago, while he was on a mission in Germany. Charlie Mingus had invited him to the gig, and Church—then known by the code name Der Rektor—had gone to hear a few songs but stayed for three sets. A good end to what had been a terrible day. He remembered standing in the bathroom at the club, washing blood off his face.
Church touched his face, remembering that night with awful clarity. He had done dreadful things and taken wounds that ran very deep. Not of flesh, but of soul.
How many times since had he been marked like that? he wondered. Even he’d lost count.
Then he recalled that it had been the same night he’d met Aunt Sallie, then a young African-American field operative working undercover with Interpol. Were the horrors of that night mitigated by meeting one of the most important people in his life? Auntie became an ally, a fellow warrior, and a trusted friend. Together they had saved the world from greater horrors even than those Church had faced in Germany. Now, of course, Aunt Sallie was getting old, and he knew that she did not understand why time touched her with a heavier and crueler hand than it did him.
It was so sad. Auntie was family to him. Kin.
Kin. That word had been stuck into him like a knife blade for months now. The mad trickster Nicodemus called him “kinsman,” knowing that it would inflict a special kind of hurt. It did. Hurt and shame and a particularly dangerous frequency of nostalgia.
Kinsman. Not an accurate statement, but dangerous. It was tied to another of Church’s names. One that he had left behind long ago, even before the affair in Germany. A name discarded like so many others. A name no one alive knew, and Church was content to let that aspect of him die and be forgotten.
In truth, “Mr. Church” was the latest identity into which he’d stepped when he formed the Department of Military Sciences. Shucking previous names had become easy for him. He was rarely sentimental about any of his former selves and had cast them off with the cold efficiency of a molting tarantula. He remembered each of them, though some only distantly. The Washington and U.S. military crowd still tended to call him Deacon. A few old friends and enemies in Eastern Europe, Lilith among them, called him St. Germaine. Here and there were key men and women who knew him as “Cardinal” or “Saishi” or “Epískopos.” But most of those people were old and he knew he would outlive them. As he would outlive the memory of who he was when he wore those names. Other, older names were completely lost to time, and that was how it should be. Though once in a while—a very great while—a sadness crept into the edges of his day as he remembered old friends long gone. He even mourned some of his enemies.
Even Nicodemus.
Not that Church would ever admit that to the people who worked for him. And not that it stayed his hand when the two of them had fought last year during the Dogs of War matter. He closed his eyes and there, in his personal darkness, he could remember every moment of that battle. Nicodemus had worn as many names as had Church, and had shed them as easily. Church had flown from Brooklyn to the Pacific Northwest and tracked Nicodemus to the home of the brilliant and destructive psychopath Zephyr Bain. He’d arrived to find Nicodemus fighting—and beating—Top and Bunny. Church stepped between his men and Nicodemus, knowing that they could never have taken that man down. Not with the kinds of weapons they had—guns, knives, fists. He’d ordered his agents to flee, and Nicodemus, mindful of old rituals and etiquette, had allowed it.
That fight that took place had been a terrible ordeal. Church never let on to his people how close a battle it had been, or how much it cost him to win it. He never told them, or anyone, what happened in Zephyr Bain’s house. It was a memory that haunted him, though, and he knew he would relive it for the rest of his life. And now, all these months later, alone in his quiet house, Church mourned Nicodemus. Not the man who wore that false name, though. No, Church’s grief was older than that, ran deeper than that. Nicodemus had once been a different person, and Church mourned for that man.
There was a soft creak and he looked up to see Lilith standing in the bathroom doorway, drying her face with a hand towel. She wore a black silk camisole and matching slip. In the semidarkness shadows hid her eyes and hollowed her cheeks, transforming a beautiful face into a death mask. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.
“Was that Ledger on the phone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Lilith nodded and reached into the bathroom to place the towel on the sink. Then she walked slowly over to the bed. He lifted the blanket and she climbed in. They held each other for a long time. Church buried his nose in her dark hair, closed his eyes, and wished that he was another person. In another life. In another world.
Beyond the window, above the sprawling city, the wheel of night turned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE RESIDENCE OF THE PRESIDENT
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
They sat up late into the night. Jennifer VanOwen was in a deep armchair, a glass of brandy cradled between her palms. She wore a cream-colored blouse and a dark pencil skirt. Efficient heels that gave her enough of a lift to shape her calves—something that mattered to her as one of many tools with which she shaped the reactions of the people around her. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and her makeup was understated, suggesting power rather than sex. Very deliberate.
The president was slumped on the couch, dressed in an expensive satin bathrobe and hand-sewn silk slippers. The residence was quiet because the rest of his family was away.
“Well, that didn’t work,” said the president. He’d said something like that half a dozen different ways, each time with added acidity.
“I did advise against it,” said VanOwen. “Ledger may be psychotic, but he is very dangerous. After all, he took down Howard Shelton and M3. He took down the Seven Kings, the Jakoby family, and other groups that should have been unbreakable. He broke them.”
“He needs to be locked the hell up.”
“He will be. If you let me handle it, we will neutralize any potential threat from him and the rest of the DMS.”
“I should just go ahead and cancel their charter,” growled the president.
“As I’ve explained,” said VanOwen patiently, “that would almost certainly backfire. Church still has friends in Washington. It’s much better if we leave him in place and see who steps up when he needs help. Then we have our list of targets. Then, once we remove his supporters, we can end the DMS.”
The president sat up and studied her intently. “Today was a total disaster.”
Of your making, she thought, but didn’t say it. What she said was, “We have all the best cards, Mr. President.”
He merely grunted.
“Besides, we have Majestic,” she said, “and neither he nor Mr. Church know that it has been completely rebuilt. Stronger than ever.”
“If Ledger is free, he’ll find out.”
“Not in time,” she said with complete confidence. “Not in time.”
INTERLUDE SEVEN
THE GREEN CAVES
BELOW TUVALU, POLYNESIA
SIX YEARS AGO
“It’s not possible,” said the chief geologist. “No way.”
Dr. George Svoboda was a stooped, hatchet-faced man who seemed outraged by the crack in the wall. Valen Oruraka and Aristotle Kostas stood with him as they exa
mined the fissure that ran from floor to ceiling. Svoboda fumed because he had done all of the principal work on this site and had a global reputation as the go-to person for this kind of work. Even those colleagues who competed with him for grants seldom offered opinions contrary to his, and for good reason. He had literally written the book, the definitive scholarly texts, on the geology of South Pacific island substrata.
Marguerite did not argue with him. She and Rig stood to one side of the crack and let Svoboda work his way through his denial and anger. She caught Valen and Ari exchanging covert looks several times as Svoboda ran through various frequencies of denial, outrage, and anger.
“Stop yelling, for the love of God,” yelled Ari. “You’re hurting my damn head.”
The small, round Greek looked badly hungover and smelled of sweat, testosterone, wine, and sex. He looked like someone had dragged him down three flights of stairs. Marguerite had heard some sounds rolling over the surf from the expensive aluminum camper that had been airlifted in for him. Those sounds had been feminine, high-pitched, and it did not sound like anyone but Ari was having fun.
Valen stepped up and brushed the moss with his fingertips and peered close to watch how the stalks writhed. Rig offered him one end of a fiber-optic cable scope and fed the other end into the crack. When it was positioned, the scope sent high-definition video to Marguerite’s laptop, which rested on a folding chair. They could see that the supposedly solid wall was anything but. A few meters beyond where they stood was a kind of pocket, about the size of an old-fashioned phone booth, and it was choked with more of the moss, and with other foliage—unusual ferns and flowers and the roots of large plants.
“How is there this much plant life inside a solid wall?” asked Valen. “How is it flourishing? How is there photosynthesis in there? I’ve seen cave plants before and I’ve never seen colors as vibrant as that down in the darkness.”
“It’s one of the reasons I called you down here,” said Marguerite. “We can’t explain it. Chu is on the other side of the island, but I sent her some pictures of it.” Alice Chu was the team biologist. “She said that she couldn’t identify the moss, or any of the plants or flowers. She’s on her way here now.”
Ari glowered at Svoboda. “The fuck, man? You’re supposed to have checked every square inch of this place, and now someone else finds this?”
The geologist gave a stubborn shake of his head. “This section of rock is half a million years old. There are no vents to filter sunlight down into pockets like that. It doesn’t make sense.”
The two of them began yapping at each other until Valen roared at them to shut the fuck up. “Mistakes were made. It’s not going to do any of us any good to dissect the past. Right now we need to understand this find and what it may, or may not, mean for our project. That means we need to reassess this entire area.”
“It isn’t the mining operations,” insisted Svoboda. “It can’t be. You’re enough of a geologist to know that, surely.”
“Valen, Ari, listen,” Marguerite said quickly. “I didn’t call you here to see the plants or the pocket. There’s something a lot more important than that.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ari. “Not interested in more bullshit.”
Marguerite smiled. “Rig, show them what we found.”
The grad student grinned and worked the fiber-optic tube so that the little camera turned and burrowed like a snake past the strange foliage.
Ari laughed, “You found some of the damned quartz. Why didn’t you…?”
His words trailed off and he stood staring. They all stared for a long, silent, astonished time.
“Dr. Svoboda,” said Valen in a voice that was far calmer than the burning excitement in his eyes, “you say that this section of wall is at least five hundred thousand years old. I’ve read all of your reports, and I’ve seen the rest of the results, the radiocarbon dating, all of that.” He touched the screen. “If that’s the case, then tell me what I’m seeing.…”
Nobody spoke.
They did not have to. What the thing was … well, that was obvious. It was a piece of Lemurian quartz. Quite beautiful in color and luminosity.
What none of them could explain, or even dared to try and theorize about, was that the green quartz was shaped like a weapon, but not a sword or spear or cudgel. No. That would have painted the day in different and more predictable colors. This was not any weapon of the ancient world.
There was a mound of something green and organic-looking partially blocking it. A dead lizard, perhaps. But it was obvious even to the least perceptive of them gathered in the cavern that the weapon was a handgun made from green crystal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE WAREHOUSE
DMS FIELD OFFICE
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
2:33 A.M.
I slept badly and dreamed of monsters.
It was the kind of sleep where you know you’re dreaming but you can’t wake up. Sleep paralysis of a kind, but it feels worse than that. It feels wrong. As if the force that binds you into sleep is malicious, maybe even vampiric. It’s feeding on something, some essence that’s important to you. It’s taking it against your will, and the violation is so subtle, so devious that you know that when you wake you’ll be diminished but you’ll never be able to prove the cause to anyone.
My body lay wrapped in the coils of some dark and shadowy thing, and it pulled me down into dreams. Fragments of dreams. Flash images. Parts of memories of things I’ve actually done, things I’ve seen in my waking life, but intercut with images from remembered nightmares and hallucinations.
I was fourteen and I never saw the punch that dropped me.
Sucker punch. There was a massive black explosion in the back of my head and then I was down. I would later learn that the blow cracked my skull. The resulting concussion was not the worst of it. Not by a mile. Not by a million miles.
Nor were the bones that snapped as four sets of sneakered feet kicked and stomped and broke me. Nor even the damage to kidney and liver and testicles and spleen. Not the broken jaw or broken teeth. None of that really mattered. What mattered—what hurt the most and what never healed—was what I saw. My eyes were swollen nearly shut, but not all the way. No. That would have been a mercy. Being beaten to death would have been a mercy. But there was no mercy at all in that shaded, remote corner of the park where I’d been walking with Helen. Two kids. Still virgins. Still innocent. Still optimistic and naïve enough to think the world was a place that treasured the innocent.
I lay there and watched them beat Helen. That wasn’t the worst, either. I could hear the sounds of her clothes being torn. I could hear the sound of zippers being pulled down. I heard her muffled screams as she tried to shriek her outrage through the balled-up underwear they’d shoved into her mouth.
That was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Even though it wasn’t happening to me. Lying there, broken and bleeding but not dead. Knowing that I wasn’t going to die. Knowing that neither of us was going to die. Despite being killed like this.
Yeah. That was the worst.
* * *
Then it was later. Being stopped by her sister at the front door. Being told that Helen didn’t want to see me. Not anymore.
This was years later. After surgeries. After therapy. After being told that there was nothing the cops could do. No witnesses. No DNA on file that matched anyone.
Cathy stopped me from going in. “It’s killing her, Joe,” she told me.
“You don’t understand,” I insisted. “Things are going good now. The new medicine, the therapy…”
She had a look in her eyes like someone at a funeral. The eyes of a mourner who had already accepted the reality of death.
“She can’t stand to see you anymore, Joe. It’s killing her.”
This time I heard her. This time I got it. This time I felt the knife go deep and turn. Bleeding, I turned and left.
It was then that I felt the first fracture in
my head. It was then that I knew that I was so far gone that there was never going to be a way home. Not for Helen. Not for me.
* * *
And that morphed into … Me in the dojo, kneeling, my hands aching, bleeding. My eyes filled with sweat and tears while I watched my sensei apply compresses to the face of the kid with whom I’d been sparring. My friend Dino. So much blood on the floor where he’d fallen.
Eyes looking at me. Not understanding. Hating me. Disappointed in me. Afraid of me. Sensei cutting me a look that was filled with pain and conflict. We’d only been sparring. It wasn’t a real fight. Points only.
But the light coming through the windows had changed his face into someone else’s. An older teenage face I’d seen in a park, grinning at me as he huffed and thrust and ruined something perfect.
I don’t remember the actual fight with Dino. It wasn’t me who hit him and hurt him. I know that. It was someone else inside my head. A stranger. Brutal and vicious and efficient in his cruelty.
* * *
Then later. Weeks, months, years telescoped together.
Learning about the people in my head. Thirty-four of them at one point. Not schizophrenia. Not true multiple personality disorder. Something else. A unique madness that was mine to own.
Rudy Sanchez came into my life. The memory of him was a light in the darkness of those dreams. Steady Rudy. Smart and kind Rudy. Doctor to Helen, doctor to me. Friend. Helping me hunt down the people in my head. Killing some, banishing others. Making hard deals with the ones who were left.
The Civilized Man. The tattered remnant of who I might have become if the world had not dealt those wicked cards.
The Cop. The person I was evolving into. Cool and precise, taking the discipline of martial arts and the analytical qualities of an investigator. Giving me a solid piece of ground on which to stand. Saving me.
And the Warrior. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Killer. The savage who had brutalized my friend Dino. The hunter who wanted to find those four teenagers—grown men by now—and hurt them in ugly ways. But who, denied that, was always ready to go to war under a black flag against anyone who hurt people like Helen.
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