The King of Plagues jl-3

by Jonathan Maberry

  For once Church actually answered the phone. “Doctor,” he said tersely, “is this important? Otherwise—”

  “It’s very important.”

  “Then give it to me fast. We’re in the middle of something here.”

  Rudy did, though a couple of times he felt as if he were wandering down shadowy side corridors of speculation. Church listened without interruption, but when Rudy was finished he said, “Verify that he mentioned the Ten Plagues of Egypt.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a river of blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he mentioned Grace and Ghost?”

  “He used those words in a sentence. It might be pure coincidence, but I doubt it.”

  Church grunted.

  “Mr. Church,” Rudy said, “I want to be frank with you.”

  “By all means.”

  “This man frightened me.”

  “In what way? Because he appears to have insider knowledge?”

  “Not precisely. It’s more that he appears to have …”

  “Say the word, Doctor.”

  “Okay. He appears to have unnatural knowledge.” Rudy licked his dry lips. “What is happening over there? How come I can’t get through on Joe’s phone?”

  “Captain Ledger is participating in an active operation.”

  “Is he in danger?”

  Church did not answer.

  “What did Nicodemus mean by ‘river of blood’?”

  After a moment, Church said, “I’ll call when I have information that I can share.”

  Church disconnected, and Rudy sat alone.

  “Dios mio,” he breathed.

  Interlude Twenty-two

  The Seven Kings

  Four Months Ago

  “So … you make your fortunes by chaos?” Gault asked as he and the American strolled through the fragrant gardens on the island. Toys trailed along a few feet behind them, and watchful guards were posted in camouflaged observation posts. Gault carried a glass of whiskey and soda; the American had a balloon of brandy. Vox took slow drags on a cigar. Behind them the castle was lighted up like a Disney palace. Music and laughter from the party were muted by the dense trees.

  “‘Chaos’ is a good catchall word,” said the American. “By its own nature it resists specific definition. ‘Destabilization’ is maybe a little more precise. Any time the status quo takes a hit we make a buck.”

  “And yet your day job—if it’s not too vulgar to call it that—is all about stabilization.”

  “Yeah, well, life’s a fucking comedy act isn’t it?” They strolled in companionable silence for a bit. “With my day-job stuff … you do see how that allows for the other stuff to work, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So, you can see why I’m not too crazy about Mom screwing with it.”

  “Of course,” said Gault neutrally.

  “I’d rather we stuck with events like 9/11 and the London subway bombings. That stuff hits the market like a tsunami, and we turn a buck while staying far, far away from the action.”

  “You prefer to play it safe?”

  “Fucking right. The risks should all be on paper or in predictions of percentage points. We shouldn’t be risking our own goddamn necks.”

  “That’s less … exciting.”

  The American snorted. “Don’t lecture me on what’s exciting, Sebastian. You’re a nice kid, but you laid your balls on the chopping block when you got involved with Lady Frankenstein over in Afghanistan. And you didn’t profit from it. You’re on the lam and you lost how much money?”

  Gault said nothing.

  “Mom’s more like you,” continued the American. “She grooves on the danger. She was against the bank thing we did a few years ago.”

  “You robbed a bank?”

  “Ha! We robbed every bank on the Continent. We spent fifteen years orchestrating the recession that slammed everyone at the end of’08. That was mine, right from the beginning. No risks, and we made insane amounts of money.”

  “From an economic downturn?”

  “That’s just it, Sebastian: the Seven Kings don’t see what’s been happening as an economic downturn. It’s simply a turn; it’s a sudden and radical change. Look, imagine that the economy is like an hourglass. Turn it on its head and the sand flows in a safe and predictable way. But if that same glass had holes in its sides, then during the process of turning it around some sand would inevitably fall out.”

  “And when the glass is turned, you’re standing under those holes ready to catch the spill?”

  “Sure. Here’s the crazy thing: most of the actual methods we use to scoop up the sand are legal. We have legions of people working for us holding the buckets. Investors, brokers, trust attorneys. For example, back at the end of 2009 our hedge-firm guys raked in billions in profits. Record one-year takes. Since we helped to destabilize certain banks, we knew who was likely to fall and who would remain standing. While most investors were running for the exits or swallowing bottles of sleeping pills, we used our people to scoop up beaten-down bank shares. We bought Bank of America stock when it had dropped below a dollar a share, and then sat tight as the bailout shored up the holes we’d kicked in the sides of the ship. A bunch of ultraconservative boneheads didn’t follow suit because they thought that the government was about to nationalize the big banks. There were times no one else was even bidding.” He took a deep lungful and blew pale blue smoke over the heads of a thousand roses. “During the resurgence, one of our guys scooped up about twelve billion after fees in the second quarter of’09 and did even better in each quarter of 2010. That was just one of our guys.”

  “No one noticed?”

  “Sure they noticed, but they don’t draw the right conclusion based on what they saw. It’s like that old joke about six blind guys trying to describe an elephant. One touches its ears and thinks the elephant looks like a fan, another one touches its tail and thinks it’s a snake, and another one touches its tusk and says it must be like a spear, yada, yada.”

  “Three blind men,” Gault corrected.

  “Six,” the American said without rancor. “The American poet John Godfrey Saxe translated that story from an old Indian legend cooked up by a Jainist philosopher. Some lazy ass shortened it to three men.”

  Gault grunted as he sipped his whiskey.

  The American gave him a foxy wink. “I know you think I’m a fucking moron ’cause I talk like I’m a blue-collar chowderhead from South Baaaston.”

  “Only sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes,” agreed the American.

  “Point taken,” Gault said. “My apologies.”

  “Fuck it. The Seven Kings don’t apologize to each other. Or to anyone. We also don’t take offense. In fact, it’s useful to try and never take anything personal. You’re above that shit now; you live in a Big Picture world now, Sebastian. It takes some adjustment to think of yourself in those terms.”

  “As a king?”

  The American nodded.

  “It may take some getting used to,” Gault murmured, “but I expect I’m going to like it.”

  “Oh, you will.”

  They walked on, pausing as a fat peacock strutted across their path, taking his time and pretending not to notice the two tall men.

  “Faggot bird,” the American muttered. “Eris loves them. I’d like to turn my dogs on ’em. That’d be wicked fun.”

  “Hedge funds,” Gault prompted.

  “Well, yeah, hedge funds. When a lot of businesses tanked, we cleaned up buying properties for pennies on the dollar, and did better buying billions in beaten-down commercial mortgage-backed securities. For a while the fluctuations in the bond market pretty much gave us a license to print money.”

  “What if the market doesn’t recover?”

  “We won’t be aboard any ship that’s actually sinking, and if we have to take a loss here and there to maintain respectable credibility, then we’re taking a chunk of the back end. The stuff our a
ccounting department does is science fiction.”

  “How do you keep yourself safe from the IRS and the FBI?”

  The King of Fear chuckled. “Most people run from the feds because they know you can’t fight ’em and you can’t beat ’em in court. We don’t have that problem.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is what I mean by ‘Big Picture,’ Sebastian. Small minds try to figure out how to dodge the bullet the system shoots at them. Big minds try to fight the system by wrapping themselves in layers of legality.”

  “And that’s what you do?”

  “No. We’re Big Picture, but we’re Big Picture as viewed by Kings. What we do is plan ahead. Years and years ahead. Anyone involved in the actual crisis is going to get looked at very closely, right? What we do is plan far in advance and then we seed people into the system. We’re everywhere, Sebastian. We’re in all levels of government, all corners of Wall Street and other national financial districts. We’re in Congress and the White House. We’re deeply positioned in the IRS, FBI, SEC, EPA, FTC, … and everywhere else. We have significant players in the Republican and Democratic parties. And we have people peppered through the press. We’re on both sides of every argument, every congressional bill, every peace accord, every global summit. Chaos isn’t about taking sides. Kingship is about ruling all of it.”

  They stopped by the cliff and looked out over the wind-troubled waters of the St. Lawrence River.

  “Who does your dirty work? Hits and bombings and such?”

  “We recruit from existing extremist cells. We fund them and protect them, and then we tap them to be our street troops. We call them the Chosen, and they’re sold different versions of a bill of goods about rewards in heaven. Or whatever else they’d sell their souls for. Money, pussy, whatever works. You’d be surprised how many of these soldiers of God will sell their own mothers for a few hundred K and a California blonde with plastic tits. Kind of ruins your faith in suicidal fundamentalism.”

  Gault laughed and the American blew smoke rings at the moon.

  “Couple, three years ago,” continued the American, “my man Santoro came up with an idea to build a more elite combat team. The Kingsmen.”

  “Catchy.”

  “It inspires a sense of pride and entitlement. I put Santoro in touch with some ex-Delta and SEAL guys and they built a training program that is world-class and wicked hard. Couple of guys out of every group die or get crippled. We let the other cadets shoot the cripples. Sounds harsh, I know, but it also makes them hard as fucking nails. Real fire eaters.”

  “How are these Kingsmen used?”

  “Black ops, wet works. That sort of thing. We had one tussle with the DMS. Our team lost, but it was an overwhelming-odds situation, and the DMS thought they were facing some rogue cell of ultrajihadists.”

  “The DMS teams are the toughest I’ve ever seen,” Gault warned.

  “Yeah, well … we’ll get a chance to test that.”

  “These Kingsmen … what’s their incentive?”

  “Numbered accounts in the low seven figures. Plus they watchdog each other, and that keeps them all straight. Lots of trust between them. Real pride. No way they’d screw each other over. They have a real sense of pride, and they are totally devoted to Mom. Eris has built her mystique to the point that some of these guys really think she is a goddess. She’s convinced them that she is a direct descendant of Sargon the Great of Akkad, so the Kingsmen believe they can trace their warrior lineage to the first emperor in human history. That’s quite a legacy. Santoro is their general, role model, and chief badass.”

  “He seems like a capable chap.”

  “He’s a fucking nut bag. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy like a son, but he is eight beers short of a six-pack. Santoro absolutely believes Mom’s a goddess. That’s not a joke. Guy gets a spiritual boner every time her name is mentioned, and once—just once—one of the Kingsmen saw Eris walk by and didn’t yet know who she was, so he made a crack about wanting to tap that, and Santoro was right there. Jesus fucking Christ, you never saw anything so fast and nasty. Santoro told the guy to pull his knife, and mind you, this guy was ex–Force Recon and he was a badass mamba-jamba and twice Santoro’s size. But my boy cut him four kinds of bad: long, deep, wide, and often. He humiliated him and carved pieces off the guy and then did things to him while he was down and dying that I don’t like to think about. Had the guy begging for forgiveness from the Goddess with half a tongue and his guts in his lap. Talk about an object lesson. There had to be forty, fifty of the Kingsmen—full team members and cadets—watching that. By the time he was done, Santoro was painted red from head to toe and he looked like some kind of demon. The other Kingsmen knelt—actually fucking knelt—in front of him, and then Santoro led them in a prayer to the Goddess. That, my friend, is how legends are made.”

  Gault stared at the American. “Bloody hell.”

  The King of Fear chuckled. “Life’s weird for us, but you get used to it.”

  They began walking again.

  A little while later Gault said, “If you disapprove of Eris’s plan are you outside of it? Or do all the Kings work together on everything?”

  The American puffed his cigar before answering, “It’s one for all and all for one. For the most part. I have a couple of my own gigs running, but this thing—what we’re calling the Ten Plagues Initiative—is what everyone else wants to do, so I’m doing my part. But there are threads that could lead back to me. Granted, it would take some pretty damn creative logic jumps to connect the dots, but even so that’s more of a trail than I like to leave. The DMS are not as stupid as my darling mother thinks.” He cut Gault a look. “You know that firsthand.”

  Gault touched the bandages. “Yes. But … tell me, is this the first time the other Kings voted against you?”

  The American smiled. “Yeah. Kind of caught me off-guard, too.”

  “Is this going to be a problem?”

  “Nah,” said the American. “I got it handled.”

  TOYS TOOK MICROSIPS from a glass of wine as he trailed along behind Gault and the American. Neither man had so far bothered to direct a single comment to him. Nor did they lower their voices to prevent him from hearing the conversation. He supposed that it was all meant to be a sign of trust, an unspoken acknowledgment that he was privy to all of their secrets.

  But it didn’t feel that way to Toys.

  He sipped his wine and digested everything he heard, and kept his thoughts to himself. In the darkened woods the peacocks screamed like damned souls.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Fair Isle Research Endeavor

  The Hot Room

  December 18, 3:10 P.M. GMT

  “Are you him?��� It was the same question his son had asked me. “I told them to send someone from Homeland Security.”

  “Then I’m him,” I said.

  “Where’s Mikey?”

  “You know where he is, asshole.”

  Tears ran down his cheeks. “Was it fast?”

  “What do you think?”

  “God.” He licked his lips. “It’s important that you understand. I need to make you believe me when I say that I loved my son.”

  “Save it for Saint Peter. He likes a good bullshit story,” I snapped. “Right now I need to know why you’re doing all of this.”

  He wiped his streaming eyes and nose with a forearm. I reached out with a foot and pushed the pistol out of his reach.

  Grey flinched and clutched the beaker to his chest as if that might protect him from my anger.

  “Why don’t you put that beaker down?”

  “You’ll kill me if I do.”

  “I’m already talking to a dead man.” I showed him the BAMS unit. “Ebola’s all over this place. Besides, after what happened to your kid, I’m not sure I’d do you the favor of giving you a quick way out. You should feel what he felt.”

  “Yes.”His eyes were bleak but steady. “I should. I gave Mikey a little morphine first.
But … not for me.”

  “If you’re looking for admiration for your sacrifice, too bad. Now … put the beaker down.”

  “No. I need something to make you stay with me until I get it all out.”

  I tapped the chest of my HAMMER suit. “Sorry, but scary as that Ebola shit is, I’m covered.”

  He shook his head. “That suit has polycarbonate components. This is filled with a rapid-action strain of pseudomonas bacteria. It eats oil. They use it for cleaning up oil spills, but this strain was designed for bioweapons use. It would dissolve the seals in your suit before you reached the first air lock.”

  “Well, kiss my ass,” I said. “You’ve really thought this through, Doc. You earn the merit badge for Mad Scientist of the Week. It’ll look great in your obituary.”

  I was calculating how fast vapors would spread if he dropped the beaker compared to how fast I could get my ass the hell out of here.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t buy much sympathy these days. This is your play, Doc, so … talk.”

  He did.

  I expected it to be about politics. But that wasn’t it at all. Instead Dr. Charles Grey told me a horror story. There were no ghosts or vampires in it, but it was scary as hell.

  He and his family lived in a cottage on the other side of the island. A few weeks ago, while Mikey and his mom were preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for the American staff at FIRE, Grey walked into his study, felt a sudden burn on the back of his neck, and then woke up five minutes later tied to a chair with a hood over his head. There was at least one man in the room with him. A frightening, invisible figure who spoke politely but told of dreadful things that would be done to Grey’s wife and son if the doctor did not do exactly what the man wanted. The man stood behind Grey and pulled off the hood. Then he reached past Grey and began placing photographs on the table in front of him. Photos of women who bore a strong physical resemblance to his wife. And little boys who looked like Mikey.