Few of the overhead lights were working. None of the stores were open, their shelves all empty, handwritten CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE signs taped to the windows.
The groan of a train arriving on a lower platform reassured Eph as he shouldered Nora and Mrs. Martinez’s bag, Nora seeing to it that her mother did not fall. The concourse was jammed, and yet he welcomed the press of the crowd; he had missed the feeling of being an organism surrounded by a throng of humanity.
National Guard soldiers waited up ahead, looking drawn and exhausted. Still, they were scanning faces as they went past, and Eph remained a wanted man.
Add to that the fact that he had Setrakian’s silver-loaded pistol stuffed into the back of his waistband, and Eph accompanied them only as far as the great blue pillars, pointing out the Amtrak lounge gate around the bend.
Mariela Martinez looked scared and even somewhat angry. The crowd annoyed her. Nora’s mother, a former home healthcare worker, had been diagnosed two years ago with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she thought Nora was sixteen years old, which occasionally led to trouble over who was in charge of whom. Today, however, she was quiet, overwhelmed and operating deep within herself, out of her element here and anxious about being away from home. No cross words for her departed husband; no insisting on getting dressed for a party. She wore a long raincoat over a saffron-colored housecoat, her hair hanging heavily behind her in a thick, gray braid. She had taken to Zack already, holding his hand on the ride in, which pleased Eph even as it tugged at his heart.
Eph knelt down in front of his son. The boy looked away, like he didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to say good-bye. “You help Nora with Mrs. Martinez, okay?”
Zack nodded. “Why does it have to be a girls’ camp?”
“Because Nora is a girl and she went there. It’s only going to be you three.”
“And you,” Zack said quickly. “When are you coming?”
“Very soon, I hope.”
Eph had his hands on Zack’s shoulders. Zack brought his hands up to grip Eph’s forearms. “You promise?”
“Soon as I can.”
“That’s not a promise.”
Eph squeezed his boy’s shoulders, selling the lie. “I promise.”
Zack wasn’t buying it, Eph could tell. He could feel Nora looking down at them.
Eph said, “Gimme a hug.”
“Why?” said Zack, pulling back a bit. “I’ll hug you when I see you in Pennsylvania.”
Eph flashed a smile. “One to tide me over then.”
“I don’t see why—”
Eph pulled him close, gripping him tightly while the crowd swirled past them. The boy struggled, but not really, and then Eph kissed his cheek and released him.
Eph stood and Nora pushed in front of him, gently backing Eph up two steps. Her brown eyes were fierce, right up in his. “Tell me now. What is this you are planning?”
“I’m going to say good-bye to you.”
She stood close, like a lover saying farewell, only she had her knuckle pressed right into the lowest part of his sternum and was twisting it there like a screw. “After we’re gone—what are you going to do? I want to know.”
Eph looked past her at Zack, standing with Nora’s mother, dutifully holding her hand. Eph said, “I’m going to try to stop this thing. What do you think?”
“I think it’s too late for that, and you know it. Come with us. If you’re doing this for the old man—I feel the same way about him you do. But it’s over, we both know that. Come with us. We’ll regroup there. We’ll figure out our next move. Setrakian will understand.”
Eph felt her pull on him more than the pain of her knuckle in his breastbone. “We still have a chance here,” he said. “I believe that.”
“We”—she made sure he saw that she was referring to the two of them—“still have a chance also, if we both get out of here now.”
Eph pulled the last bag off his shoulder and hung it on hers. “Weapon bag,” he said. “In case you run into any trouble.”
Angry tears wet her eyes. “You should know that, if you end up doing something stupid here, I am determined to hate you forever.”
He nodded once.
She kissed his lips, wrapping him in an embrace. Her hand found the butt of the pistol in the small of Eph’s back, and her eyes darkened, her head moving back to study his face. For a moment Eph thought she was going to yank it out and take it from him, but instead she came close again, right up to his ear, her cheek wet with tears.
She whispered, “I hate you already.”
She pulled away, not looking back at him as she gathered up Zack and her mother and ushered them toward the departures board.
Eph waited and watched Zack go, the boy looking back as they reached the corner, searching for him. Eph waved, his hand high—but the boy didn’t see him. The Glock tucked inside Eph’s belt suddenly felt heavier.
Inside the former headquarters of the Canary Project at Eleventh and 27th, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Everett Barnes, was napping in an office chair inside Ephraim Goodweather’s old office. The ringing telephone penetrated his consciousness, but not enough to rouse him. It took the hand of an FBI special agent on his shoulder to do that.
Barnes sat up, shaking off sleep, feeling refreshed. “Washington?” he guessed.
The agent shook his head. “Goodweather.”
Barnes pressed the flashing button on the desk phone and picked up the receiver. “Ephraim? Where are you?”
“Penn Station. Phone booth.”
“Are you all right?”
“I just put my son on a train out of the city.”
“Yes?”
“I’m ready to come in.”
Barnes looked at the agent and nodded. “I am very relieved to hear that.”
“I’d like to see you personally.”
“Stay where you are, I am on my way.”
He hung up and the agent handed him his coat. Barnes was attired in full Navy regalia. They went out the main office and down the steps to the curb, where Dr. Barnes’s black SUV was parked. Barnes climbed into the passenger side and the agent started the ignition.
The blow came so suddenly, Barnes didn’t know what was happening. Not to him—to the FBI agent. The man slumped forward, honking the horn with his chin. He tried to raise his hands and a second blow came—from the backseat. A hand wielding a pistol. It took one more blow to knock out the agent, leaving him slumped against the door.
The assailant was out of the backseat and opening the driver’s door, pulling out the unconscious man and dumping him onto the sidewalk like a big bag of laundry.
Ephraim Goodweather leaped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Barnes opened his door, but Eph pulled him back inside, jamming the gun against the inside of Barnes’s thigh rather than his head. Only a doctor or perhaps a soldier knew that you might survive a head or neck wound, but one shot to the femoral artery meant certain death.
“Close it,” said Eph.
Barnes did. Eph already had the SUV in drive, and was racing out onto 27th Street.
Barnes tried to squirm away from the pistol in his lap. “Please, Ephraim. Please let’s talk—”
“Good! You start.”
“May I at least put on my seat belt?”
Eph took the corner hard and said, “No.”
Barnes saw that Ephraim had dumped something into the cup holders between them: the FBI agent’s shield. The muzzle was tight against his leg, Eph’s left hand heavy upon the steering wheel. “Please, Ephraim, be very, very careful—”
“Start talking, Everett.” Eph pressed the gun hard into Barnes’s leg. “Why the hell are you still here? Still in the city? You wanted a front-row seat, huh?”
“I don’t know what you are referring to, Ephraim. This is where the sick are.”
“The sick,” said Eph disparagingly.
“The infected.”
“Everett—you ke
ep talking like that and this gun is going to go off.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“And you’ve been lying. I want to know why there is no goddamned quarantined!” Eph’s rage filled the interior of the car. He veered hard right to avoid a broken-down and looted delivery van. “No competent attempt at containment,” he continued. “Why has this been allowed to keep burning? Answer me!”
Barnes was up against the door, whimpering like a boy. “It is completely out of my hands now!” he said.
“Let me guess. You are just following orders.”
“I… I accept my role, Ephraim. The time came where a choice had to be made, and I made it. This world, the one we thought we knew, Ephraim—it is at the brink.”
“You don’t say.”
Barnes’s voice grew colder. “The smart bet is with them. Never wager with your heart, Ephraim. Every major institution has been compromised, either directly or indirectly. By that, I mean either corrupted or subverted. This is occurring at the highest levels.”
Eph nodded hard. “Eldritch Palmer.”
“Does it really matter at this point?”
“To me it does.”
“When a patient is dying, Ephraim—when all hope for recovery is gone—what does a good physician do?”
“He keeps fighting.”
“You prolong it? Really? When the end is certain and near? When they are already beyond saving—do you offer palliative care and draw out the inevitable? Or do you let nature run its course?”
“Nature! Jesus, Everett.”
“I don’t know what else to call it.”
“I call it euthanasia. Of the entire human race. You standing back in your Navy uniform and watching it die on the table.”
“You apparently want to make this personal, Ephraim, when I have caused none of this. Blame the disease, not the doctor. To a certain extent, I am as appalled as you are. But I am a realist, and some things simply cannot be wished away. I did what I did because there was no other choice.”
“There is always a choice, Everett. Always. Fuck—I know that. But you… you are a coward, a traitor, and—worse—a fucking fool.”
“You will lose this fight, Ephraim. In fact, if I’m not mistaken—you already have.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Eph, already halfway across town. “You and I. We’ll see it together.”
Sotheby’s
SOTHEBY’S, THE AUCTION house founded in 1744, brokered art, diamond, and international realty sales in forty countries, with principal salesrooms in London, Hong Kong, Paris, Moscow, and New York. Sotheby’s New York occupied the length of York Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets, one block in from FDR Drive and the East River. It was a glass-front, ten-story building, housing specialist departments, galleries, and auction spaces—some of which was normally open to the public.
Not this day, however. A private security detail wearing breathing masks were posted outside on the sidewalk and inside behind the revolving doors. The Upper East Side was attempting to maintain some semblance of civility, even as pockets of the city fell to chaos around them.
Setrakian expressed his desire to register as an approved bidder for the impending auction, and he and Fet were issued masks and allowed inside.
The building’s front foyer was open, rising all the way to the top, ten levels of railed balconies going up. Setrakian and Fet were assigned an escort, and taken up escalators to a representative’s office on the fifth floor.
The representative pulled on her paper mask as they entered, making no move to come out from behind her desk. Shaking hands was unsanitary. Setrakian reiterated his intention, and she nodded and produced a packet of forms.
“I need the name and number of your broker, and please list your securities accounts. Proof of intent to bid, in the form of an authorization for one million dollars, is the standard deposit for this level of auction.”
Setrakian glanced at Fet, twiddling the pen in his crooked fingers. “I am afraid I am between brokers at present. I do, however, possess some interesting antiquities myself. I would be happy to put them up as collateral.”
“I am very sorry.” She was already retrieving the forms from him, refiling them in her desk drawers.
“If I might,” said Setrakian, returning her pen, which she made no move to touch. “What I would really like to do is to view the catalog items before making a decision.”
“I am afraid that is a privilege for bidders only. Security is very, very tight, as you probably know, due to some of the items being offered—”
“The Occido Lumen.”
She swallowed. “Precisely, yes. There is much… much mystique surrounding the item, as you may be familiar with, and naturally, given the current state of affairs here in Manhattan… and the fact that no auction house has successfully offered the Lumen for sale in the past two centuries… well, one doesn’t have to be especially superstitious to link the two.”
“I am sure there is also a strong financial component. Why else go on with the auction at all? Evidently Sotheby’s believes that its sale commission outweighs the risks associated with bringing the Lumen to auction.”
“Well, I couldn’t possibly comment on business affairs.”
“Please.” Setrakian laid a hand on the top edge of her desk, gently, as though it were her arm. “Is it at all possible? For an old man just to look?”
Her eyes were unmoved over her mask. “I cannot.”
Setrakian looked to Fet. The city exterminator stood up and pulled down his mask. He produced his city badge. “Hate to do this, but—I need to see the building supervisor immediately. The person in charge of this property itself.”
The director of Sotheby’s North America rose from behind his desk when the building supervisor entered with Setrakian and Fet. “What is the meaning of this?”
The building supervisor said, his face mask puffing, “This gentleman says we have to evacuate the building.”
“Evacuate the… what?”
“He has the authority to shutter the building for seventy-two hours while the city inspects it.”
“Seventy-two… but what about the auction?”
“Canceled,” said Fet. He punctuated that with a shrug. “Unless.”
The director’s expression flattened behind his mask, as though he suddenly understood. “This city is crumbling around us, and you choose now, today, to come looking for a bribe?”
“It’s not a bribe I’m after,” said Fet. “The truth is, and you can probably tell just by looking at me, I’m something of an art fanatic.”
They were allowed restricted access to the Occido Lumen, their viewing occurring inside a private, glass-walled chamber within a larger viewing vault located behind two locked doors on the ninth floor. The bulletproof case was unlocked and removed, and Fet watched Setrakian prepare himself to inspect the long-sought tome, white cotton gloves covering his crooked hands.
The old book rested on an ornate viewing stand of white oak. It was 12 × 8 × 1.8 inches, 489 folios, handwritten in parchment, with twenty illuminated pages, bound in leather and faced with pure-silver plates on the front and rear covers and the spine. The pages themselves were also edged in silver.
Now it made sense to Fet. Why the book had never fallen into the possession of the Ancients. Why the Master didn’t just come and take it from them right here, right now.
The silver casing. The book was literally beyond their grasp.
Twin cameras on arched stems rising out of the table captured images of the open pages, which were shown on oversized vertical plasma screens on the wall before them. The first illuminated page in the front matter featured a detailed drawing of a figure of six appendages done in fine, glowing silver leaf. The style and the minute calligraphy surrounding it spoke of another time, another world. Fet was drawn in by the reverence Setrakian showed this book. The quality of the craftsmanship impressed him, but, when it came to the artwork itself, Fet had no clue what he was lookin
g at. He waited for insights from the old man. All he knew was that there were clear similarities between this work and the markings he and Eph had discovered in the subway. Even the three crescent moons were represented here.
Setrakian focused his interest on two pages, one pure text, the other a rich illumination. Beyond the obvious artistry of the page, Fet could not understand what it was about the image that captivated the old man so—that wrung tears from Setrakian’s eyes.
They stayed beyond their allotted fifteen minutes, Setrakian rushing to copy out some twenty-eight symbols. Only Fet could not find the symbols in the images on the page. But he said nothing, waiting while Setrakian—obviously frustrated by the stiffness of his crooked fingers—filled two sheets of paper with these symbols.
The old man was silent as they rode the elevator back down to the foyer. He said nothing until they had exited the building and were far enough away from the armed security guards.
Setrakian said, “The pages are watermarked. Only a trained eye can see it. Mine can.”
“Watermarked? You mean, like currency?”
Setrakian nodded. “All the pages in the book. It was a common practice in some grimoires and alchemical treatises. Even in early tarot card sets. You see? There is text printed on the pages, but a second layer underneath. Watermarked directly into the paper at the time of its pressing. That is the real knowledge. The Sigil. The hidden symbol—the key…”
“Those symbols you copied…”
Setrakian patted his pocket, reassuring himself that he had taken the sketches with him.
He paused then, something catching his eye. Fet followed him across the street to the large building facing the glass front of Sotheby’s. The Mary Manning Walsh Home was a nursing home run by the Carmelite Sisters for the Archdiocese of New York.
Setrakian was drawn to the brick front to the left of the entrance awning. A graffiti design spray-painted there, in orange and black. It took Fet a moment to realize that it was yet another highly stylized, if cruder, variation on the illuminated figure in the front matter of the book locked away on the top floor of the facing building—a book no one had seen for decades.
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