“But Quayle’s problem is that he can’t entirely restore the Atlas. He thought he’d traced the last pages, however many there may be, but we found one of them first, and he doesn’t know we have it, although by now he may be starting to suspect. So, he could either try to force us to hand it over—which would be dangerous, and time-consuming, and might involve returning to the United States, which he wouldn’t want to do—or find another way to make the opening.
“And that’s the context in which these misbaha killings make sense. Reading up on Hawksmoor helped me to understand: the theory that his churches are focal points, generators. They’re similar to the murder sites, which are loci of power, most of them from long before the coming of any Christian god. Quayle is picking places where the barriers between worlds are thin, because they’ve been weakened by the potency of the belief systems that give meaning to those places. He’s using blood to make up for the missing pages, and he’s going to keep on killing, or convince others to do the killing for him, until he gets the result he wants.”
That couldn’t go on indefinitely, Parker knew. With every victim that was uncovered, the likelihood of apprehension grew, because every corpse, every grave, left clues. The misbaha were designed to confuse, an added distraction in the event of bodies being found. Quayle was no fool: he had anticipated problems, and calculated the risks. He was close to achieving his goal. He was dealing with hazards, not uncertainties. How many more bodies would it take: Three? Two?
One?
“We should talk to the police,” said Johnston, “but I doubt they’d believe a word we have to tell them. And of course, I might be completely mistaken about everything, but I don’t think I am. This is the only explanation that makes sense, even if on most levels it makes no sense at all. But I saw the pages of the Atlas with my own eyes. I saw what it could do.”
“We both did,” said Parker. “I’m going to talk to Ross. He may have some ideas on how to handle the police.”
* * *
PARKER CALLED ROSS SHORTLY before noon, which meant 7 a.m. on the East Coast. He knew that Ross was an early riser, having endured the occasional call from him at absurd hours of the morning. As usual, Ross deftly hid his delight at hearing from him. Parker thought that he could have been calling with the numbers for the following week’s Powerball Jackpot, obtained through experiments in time travel, and Ross would still have sounded kind of pissed.
“Where are you?” said Ross.
“London.”
“Where in London?”
“I can’t say for sure. I’m struggling to find my bearings.”
Ross took a moment to dredge for patience.
“What have you found out?”
Parker told him. It didn’t amount to much, especially not when exposed to Ross’s genetic predisposition against wild shows of enthusiasm. Ross did agree to look into Sellars’s finances, and—at Parker’s instigation—any payments to Sellars that might have come from Lockwood, Dodson & Fogg, or financial institutions connected to the law firm. It was a long shot, but Parker wasn’t paying Ross by the hour.
“These killings,” said Ross, “you’re sure they’re connected to the Atlas?”
“Bob seems to think so.”
“Bob is a bookseller, not a detective.”
“Bob is a born researcher, which makes him a good investigator.”
Parker was about to raise the issue of the English police when Ross preempted him.
“Have you had any contact with the law over there?”
“No, but the police will be aware by now that an American private investigator has been asking questions. Romana Moon’s father would have informed them. I’m surprised they haven’t already come knocking on my door.”
“You’re hard to find.”
“Not that hard. If you don’t know where I’m staying by now, you should probably find another line of work.”
“I should have found another line of work a long time ago.”
“You’re stuck with it now,” said Parker. “I think Bob is right about everything, but we don’t have nearly enough to be able to convince a team of English detectives. They’ll need to hear it from you as well. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the Atlas exists or not. It doesn’t matter if Quayle is deluded, the black sheep of his family, or someone who just liked the sound of the name. The problem never changes: what matters isn’t the truth or falsity of the belief, but the consequences of it. The police will have to be made to understand that. A group of teenagers blew up buses and underground trains in this city out of some misguided religious lunacy, so it’s not as though the concept will be alien.”
“Okay,” said Ross, “when the time comes, I’ll talk to them.”
“Thank you.”
“And you left a fucking mess behind in Amsterdam. Try not to do the same in London.”
“We didn’t leave any mess in Amsterdam,” said Parker. “That was someone else’s work. Why don’t you talk to Armitage, the legat? She was supposed to be your eyes and ears.”
“I would,” said Ross, “if I could find her.”
CHAPTER CXII
Armitage was in trouble. She couldn’t define precisely the kind of trouble, because she’d never experienced anything like it before, but it was definitely trouble, and she was undeniably in it.
First, she was ill. Her temperature was higher than normal, and she was experiencing uncomfortable hot flushes at all hours of the day and night. She was only thirty-three, so it was unlikely that this was the sudden onset of premature menopause. Her mouth tasted bitter, which was affecting her enjoyment of food, because it altered everything that passed her lips. Her tongue was discolored, more purple than red, and if she scraped her finger across its surface, a yellowish substance accumulated under the nail. She was experiencing pinprick aches all over her body, especially when she tried to sleep. She would wake to them, as though bugs were biting her, following which the sensation would ease for a time. Gradually, she would doze off again, only for the pain to recommence.
She had stripped the sheets and taken them to the Laundromat, just in case something nasty had taken up occupancy in her bed, but it hadn’t helped. Following consultations with her neighbors, who were enduring no similar difficulties, she got rid of her mattress, even though it was only a couple of years old, and engaged the services of a fumigator. She was now the proud owner of an expensive new mattress, along with box-fresh sheets and pillows, and the less proud owner of an apartment that smelled faintly of poison.
And still she was not sleeping.
Her doctor could find nothing wrong with her. If an infestation of bugs was responsible, then the culprits were leaving no evidence on her skin beyond the scratches caused by her own nails. The doctor collected samples of blood and urine to be sent for tests, but it would be at least a week before the results came back. She was given a topical cream to use at night, tablets to help knock her out, and told to take a couple of days off.
Armitage wasn’t the kind to seek sick leave—she could have lost a leg in an accident, and would somehow have found a way to struggle to the office with a tourniquet on the stump—but the lack of sleep had left her fractious, and struggling to concentrate at work. She was making mistakes and missing details. Her errors had already been noticed, and she had endured an awkward meeting with her superiors at which she was forced to admit to suffering from some as yet undiagnosed ailment. They were sympathetic, but she knew what they were thinking: stress. It would go in her file, and questions would be raised about her ability to function under pressure, because The Hague wasn’t the most difficult of postings. If she were showing signs of laboring after just a couple of years in one of the duller European cities, how would she deal with Tel Aviv, Kabul, or even Mexico?
And, you know, maybe it was stress of some kind. She’d been required to dispose of Cornelie Gruner and Eva Meertens in the space of one night, and she wasn’t some kind of psychopath. She’d killed only once before for the Backers
, and that was before she’d even entered the academy. Also, it had involved only the pouring of a phial of colorless liquid into a glass of vodka, and monitoring the effects once the drink was consumed, which was very different from shooting an old man in a chair, and fatally injuring a young woman before dumping her body in a canal. A place in the academy had been her reward for that first killing, and influence was applied to ensure she ended up in the legat program, which was where the Backers wanted her, even if the reasons for this had never been explained. She hadn’t even enjoyed much further contact with the Backers, rare requests for information apart, before the Principal Backer sought her help with neutralizing Gruner.
So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that her body should be manifesting physical symptoms of psychological turmoil—it might have been stranger were it not—but it was still important that she recover as quickly as possible. If this meant taking it easy for a few days in the hope that the symptoms would vanish of their own accord, so be it. Alternatively, the medical tests might reveal a larger issue that could then be addressed. What mattered was getting back on track, for the sake of her career and her general well-being, both short and long term; short in the sense of her current predicament, and long in relation to the Backers. If she couldn’t be of use to them, they wouldn’t aid her rise through the ranks of the Bureau. She’d end up pushing papers in a backwater until she retired.
The problem with resting was that she should ideally have been doing it in her apartment, but she couldn’t be at ease there. The smell of the chemicals used during the fumigation process seemed to be growing stronger rather than vanishing entirely within twenty-four hours, as she’d been assured it would, and opening windows didn’t help. She couldn’t settle on her chairs or her couch, and she realized that she had become frightened of her bed. Even in a narcotically induced sleep, she was suffering nightmares that remained disturbingly clear in her mind when she woke, visions in which the discarded organs on a slaughterhouse floor came together to form a hooded figure, a being composed of dead flesh. Fucking Cornelie Gruner and his fairy tales, she thought, sowing bad seeds in my imagination before he died. She’d resorted to spending hours in coffee shops watching crap on her iPad until it grew late enough for her to return home and swallow a pill, only crawling into bed once the drug began to take effect.
Her apartment was at the top of a quiet building in The Hague. She could have chosen to live in Amsterdam, since it suited the embassy to have some staff with quarters elsewhere in the Netherlands, but she preferred The Hague, and not only because it was the center of political activity, and the second city of the United Nations. Amsterdam struck her as a teenage town, too quick to chase easy fixes, while The Hague was more adult, more relaxed.
She was just finishing a coffee at Restaurant Deluca in De Passage when her private cell phone rang: the Principal Backer. She had been avoiding him. If her sickness was stress-induced, then he was responsible, but there was nothing she could do for him in her present condition. She’d messaged him to explain that she was ill, and would be taking a few days off to recover. His persistence irritated her, yet if she continued to ignore him it would cause problems down the line, so she decided to answer the call.
“Yes?” she said.
“Am I disturbing you?”
“I was having coffee.”
“Because you sound annoyed.”
“Not annoyed: tired, and unwell. I left a message.”
“Which I received.”
“Good.”
“I simply wanted to check on your situation.”
“I’m getting better, I think.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
Armitage swore silently at the phone. She should have known better.
“Tell me,” said the Principal Backer, “have you discovered the cause of your ailment?”
“No.”
“Let’s hope it passes quickly, for your sake.”
The ambiguity was so undisguised, it was all that Armitage could do not to call him on it. In the end, wisdom, and an instinct for self-preservation, prevailed.
“The police have no leads on the deaths of Gruner or Meertens,” she said instead, “and no questions are being asked by other parties, by which I mean there’s no sign of Mors or Quayle.”
“A pity. I thought he might have sent Mors to investigate.”
“And then?”
“We could have killed her.”
“Who do you mean by ‘we’?”
She heard the Principal Backer laugh.
“Not you, in case you’re worrying. You’re no match for Quayle’s ice maiden, but neither are you being particularly useful by drinking coffee in expensive arcades.”
De Passage had been built in 1882. Its façades were stone, and its ceilings high-vaulted and made of glass. Armitage looked around. The arcade was busy, with any number of people talking on cell phones. None appeared to be paying her any attention, but then, she was herself an agent, and knew how to monitor a subject without being spotted. Was the Principal Backer having her followed?
“How did you know where I was?”
“A lucky guess. If I were you, and seeking some escape in your city of residence, I wouldn’t be drinking coffee near the Binnenhof or the Plein—too many politicians—and I wouldn’t be at the Grote Markt, because it would mean adding tourists to the mix. No, I would look for solace elsewhere, and Deluca would be my choice. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” she said, but still did not know whether to believe the explanation. “Is that all?”
“No, it’s not all,” said the Principal Backer. “Gruner is gone, but Quayle remains. If Parker can’t stop him, the burden of doing so will fall back on us, and you’ll have your part to play. When you return to work, we’ll feed you some information that will restore you to the good graces of your superiors. In the meantime, enjoy your coffee, and I hear the Mango Scorpino is very good.”
“Wait!”
To her surprise, Armitage felt her eyes grow hot at the injustice of her treatment at the hands of the Principal Backer. She had killed for him, and this dismissal was less than she deserved.
“I found out something,” she said. “About De Jaager, and Parker’s friend, the one called Louis.”
“What is it?”
“I think Louis may have killed a Bosnian Serb named Timmerman at De Jaager’s instigation. Timmerman was an enforcer for the Zemun crime syndicate. The Zemuns believe he was murdered by Muslims in revenge for atrocities Timmerman committed in the Balkans, but they’re mistaken.”
“You’re sure?”
“Do I have to be?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That we tell the Zemuns about Louis.”
“To what end?”
“His death, and maybe that of his confederates, too.”
“Parker?”
“Why not?”
She could hear the Principal Backer breathing, weighing the pros and cons.
“All right, but only after the hunt for Quayle has ended. Well done. There is hope for you yet.”
He hung up. Armitage paid the check, and returned to her apartment. She detected no signs of surveillance along the way, even though she made sudden stops and reverses, and used reflective surfaces to watch those behind her. Only when she was safely behind her own door did she relax, but the feeling lasted just seconds.
Someone had been in her apartment. All her books were scattered on the floor, although everything else appeared undisturbed. She listened, and could hear no signs of movement, but remained on her guard while she checked that no intruder was still on the premises. A cursory inspection revealed that nothing had been stolen: her laptop was sitting in plain sight on the dining table, and an assortment of currencies that she kept in her bedside locker was untouched, as was her jewelry. By the time she had finished examining the scene in more detail, she had come to the conclusion that only her books had been tampered with, as though someone had been searching for
a document believed to be concealed among them.
The smell in her apartment was also noticeably more pungent—less of chemicals, more of rot—and strongest nearest the books. Armitage was on the verge of calling the embassy, as any such incursion had to be reported to her superiors before the police were informed, when she noticed the damage to one of the volumes that lay open on the floor. It was Master of the Senate, the third part of Robert A. Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. The book had been vandalized by being overwritten in purple ink, in an alphabet Armitage did not recognize but a script that was almost familiar. At first, she thought the graffiti was limited to only a few pages, but as she flicked through it, she saw that every page had been defaced. She picked up a second book, a novel, and found the same blighting of its contents. A third, a fourth: every one of her books bore similar markings, but one recurred more than any other, and seemed to be in a different alphabet that she thought might be Arabic.
And in the midst of the havoc lay a bookmark that was not her own. It was made of blue leather embossed with gold lettering, and bore the name Antiquariaat Cornelie Gruner. The underside was stained with dried blood.
Armitage sat against the wall, thinking, and did not move for a long time. When she finally did so, it was to return the books to the shelves, because she could not think of what else to do with them, but not before taking a picture of the Arabic word with her phone. The bookmark she cut into pieces, doused with lighter fuel, and set alight.
She did not call the embassy. She did not call the police.
And that night, she did not sleep at all.
CHAPTER CXIII
Priestman was staring at the printouts in disbelief, watched by Hynes and Gackowska. Hynes couldn’t help but feel a hint of amusement, even amid the blood and bodies. You had to take your pleasures where you could, however small they might be.
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