The irony that Judas' line was again being exploited for the gain of others didn't escape her. As far as Devere was concerned it wasn't about faith at all, it was about money. His own thirty pieces of silver.
She sat back in the chair. It was all there to see.
That left Solomon as the fanatic, the one man who really did believe all of it--the broken faith, the false church, the defamation of Judas--and through it all, the truth of what being a messiah really meant. It was never about being the son of God.
Surely that made him the most dangerous animal of them all, because a man like that couldn't be reasoned with. Fanatics by definition weren't open to reason. They didn't want their eyes open to alternatives. And if they were persuasive, they could draw others closer to their flame of madness; but that wasn't reason, that was trading on their rigid insanity. And he was insane. Make no bones about it. He could act the part in public--he could be convincing--but underneath the skin he was gone. That made him all the more frightening. A man like that would stop at nothing to see his dream of a new Jerusalem, a new recognized Israeli state for people of the one faith, come to pass. A man like that wouldn't care if it meant stripping down the faiths of the Catholic Church and all of those other religions that didn't subscribe to the glory of man. The trappings of religion and heresy were meat and potatoes to a man like that. It played into his messianic complex.
It was like a trail of breadcrumbs had been left for her to follow, and all the way she'd been picking them up and not thinking about what they really meant. But now she'd got it. She knew who they were. She knew how their roles fitted together. Everything made sense.
She called Lethe on the toad's home phone and told him everything.
Then she waited for Mabus the Herald to come home.
And while she waited the sun went down.
Downstairs, she heard the front door slam.
The toad was home.
She waited.
She heard him breathing heavily as he labored up the large staircase.
Gavrel Schnur was a grotesque man. He was gasping hard, seriously out of breath, before he was even halfway through the ascent. Orla was patient. She waited, looking at her ghostly reflection in the glass.
The toad came into his study. He paused momentarily, stari the reflection of the devil in his wife's blue dress, and then he composed himself. "Did you think seeing you in my wife's dress, with your hair like that, would stop me from killing you?" he said. It was the last thing he ever said. Orla turned the chair around slowly. She looked at him. The arrogance faded when he saw the Jericho 941 she held low in her lap. She didn't see the man responsible for torturing her. She didn't see the man behind the terror attacks on Berlin and Rome and all of those other cities. She saw a fat, frightened man who had never recovered from losing his wife.
And right at that moment it didn't matter whether she had seven shots or four left.
She only needed one.
29
Scapegoat Konstantin Khavin didn't know whe he was.
There was a glass of water on the table, a tape recorder and microphone, and two chairs on the other side of the table. He was alone in the room. They worked him in shifts, refusing to let him sleep. They had taken his prints and run him through the system. They knew who he was. Worse, they knew what he was. They wanted to know who he was working for, who else was with him in Germany, why he had killed the Pope. Then someone came in with a security photograph of him in Berlin on the day of the sarin gas attack.
They put it on the table in front of him and asked, "Is that you?" He couldn't deny it. It was a good picture. It caught all of his features in full frontal. Any half-decent facial recognition software would identify him. There was no point lying. "Yes." He said and suddenly they were looking at a two-for-one deal on a sociopathic killer.
Because they knew who he was, they knew all about his training. They knew he was versed in interrogation techniques and torture. And they knew his experience wasn't just theoretical.
They came back in.
"I'm not going to lie to you," the woman said, taking the first seat on the other side of the table. "Things don't look good for you, Konstantin. You story does not check out."
Her partner, a straight-faced bodybuilder in a suit, sank into the seat beside her.
"That's her polite way of saying you're screwed. We've got hundreds of witness testimonies, video evidence, your prints on the weapon, all the physical evidence we could dream of, including the sworn testimony of the Swiss Guard who tried to stop you. That's what she means by 'things not looking good.' It gets substantially worse when we add your own story to the mix. A Russian defector, Konstantin? Do you have any conception of the word loyalty? Or is that it, you're some sort of sleeper agent? Did they plant you on this side of the Wall and wait for you to grow? Maybe this was always your mission? Is that it, Konstantin? Were you 'let go' so that you could do this all these years later? Did they think the humiliation of another defector was worth it in return for the death of the Holy Father? How did they sell the mission to you? Or are you programmed to obey?"
Konstantin stared straight ahead. He didn't so much as twitch. The words didn't register on his face. He gave them nothing, knowing it would frustrate them. People were behind the one-way glass watching the whole dance.
"In Moscow they would have brought a doctor in by now," he said, looking at the woman.
"Why?"
"To elicit a confession," Konstantin said.
"You mean soften you up with sodium pentothal to weaken your resolve? We have ways of making you talk and all that bullshit," the man said, full of scorn.
"I see you watch the movies," Konstantin said.
"I suppose they'd send the muscle in next to beat the confession out of you if the drugs didn't work?"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps they would let the doctor use the instruments of his trade. A lot of truths can be learned under a doctor's scalpel."
"That's barbaric," the woman said.
"It is one of the reasons I left Moscow. Not the only one. It was another world back then. Do not think you can intimidate me with threats like your colleague is trying. I come from a different world, one where violence is commonplace. I do not fear pain. I do not fear torture. But if you want to hear it, I will tell you the truth of torture, officer."
"Go on," she said.
"Everyone talks. That is the truth. Everyone talks even if they know it is going to kill them in the end. They just want the pain to end. The movies where the square-jawed hero doesn't break is just that, a movie. The reality is he will foul himself. He will cry snot and tears. He will piss down his legs and he will scream, and in the end, he will beg you not to hurt him anymore; he will tell you everything you want to know and more; he will offer secrets you didn't know he had, just to lessen the pain for a little while."
"Are you telling us to torture you?"
"Would you if you thought it would give you the truth?"
"We have the truth," the man cut across their little dance. "It's on bloody film for the entire world to see."
That is not the truth," Konstantin said.
"You're insane. Do you know that? You're a freakin' sociopath! So what, you want us to waterboard you?" The man shook his head in disgust.
"There is no way I can convince you. Even if you open my stomach and reach in with your bare hands to pull at my guts, my truth will not change. I did not kill him."
"Easy to say," the man said. "We can all be brave when it's only words."
"Then cut me," Konstantin said. "My people will not save me. I am alone here. I have nothing to gain by lying and nothing to lose by telling the truth."
"I don't believe you, Konstantin," the man said. "You're a liar. One way or the other. Either you lied to your people when you fled to the West, or you lied to us when we welcomed you? Which one is it?"
"Silence is not a lie."
"Why did you do it, Konstantin?" the woman asked, taking over the interrogatio
n. Her voice was calm, honeyed. She smiled at him. It was a "we're all friends here" smile. It was the biggest lie of the day so far.
"I didn't do it."
"We know you did, Konstantin. What we don't know is why. We've got a lot of other questions as well, things we don't understand, like, how does killing the Pope link in with the Berlin subway attack? And how are you tied to Rome and the people who burned themselves alive in London and all of those other cities? We're only seeing part of the picture, Konstantin. Help us see all of it. Talk to us. If you help us, we can help you."
She wasn't particularly good. She wasn't one of the A team, Konstantin thought, listening to her. Neither was her partner. They were the breakers, the waves sent to crash against the shore just to wear him down. They were never meant to get the truth out of him. It was all about weakening his resolve. They were the sodium pentothal, figuratively speaking.
But they could ask all the questions they wanted, they could badger and push and probe; they were never going to catch him in lies, because he wasn't lying.
Or he could give them something.
"You want another truth?" he asked.
The woman nodded eagerly, like Pavlov's detective.
Konstantin's memory was good. It had to be. He remembered the zero plate from the car in Berlin.
He gave it to them. It was up to them what they did with it.
"Who does the car belong to? Your boss? Your contact?"
Konstantin shrugged. "How would I know? But the car is connected. It all is. Everything is connected."
"Very zen of you, Konstantin," the man said.
"Find the owner of the car, find the Berlin cell. Everything is connected."
The woman glanced toward the glass. Konstantin knew that behind the mirror people were frantically trying to connect the dots, work out who the car belonged to and if Konstantin was telling the truth. They had no reason to assume he wasn't, and every reason to believe he was selling one of his collaborators out. That was the way they broke terror cells, one small confession at a time. If Konstantin gave them the man behind Berlin, it would hardly prove his innocence, though. If anything, it would only serve to compound his guilt as far as they were concerned.
"Find Berlin and you will find Rome, or London or Madrid or Paris. Everything is connected. Information travels down channels; it isn't just plucked out of the air. Everything is connected. It has to be, because of the precision. The suicides had to know when to burn themselves. The poisoner in Rome had to know when to poison the water. He didn't want people dying early. He didn't want the deaths blending in with the deaths in Berlin. He didn't want the majority dying the same day the Pope was killed. Everything had to be separate. Forty days and forty nights of fear, see?"
Still, the clock was ticking on another day. Mabus had promised forty days and forty nights of terror, and nothing told Konstantin that had changed just because the Pope was dead. Now was the perfect time to increase the intensity of the attacks. So it didn't matter if they thought he was guilty or not. If he had something that could help save innocent lives, even something as simple as a registration number, he was always going to share it, even if it meant damnmself. That was his sacrifice.
The woman came back alone the next time. She brought him a warm cup of black coffee. It was a trade, he knew. She gave him warmth and sustenance-he gave her another truth, quid pro quo. It was straight out of the good cop/bad cop handbook.
He didn't complain. He warmed his hands on the cup, then sipped at it slowly.
"They found a body in the Moselle this morning."
Konstantin looked up at her. "And you think I killed him as well?"
She smiled that smile again. "Difficult. The coroner puts time of death almost a full day after we took you into custody, so I think you're safe on this one."
"Then why tell me about it? I assume you have a reason?"
"I do. His name was Emery Seifert. Does that name mean anything to you?"
Konstantin shook his head. "Should it?"
"He was a member of the Swiss Guard. More pertinently, he was one of the guards on the stage when you killed the Pope."
"I didn't kill the Pope," Konstantin said, reflexively.
She smiled at that. Again.
"Can you think why anyone would want to kill Seifert, Konstantin?"
Only one reason, Konstantin thought. He looked at the woman, trying to decide if she was deliberately trying to lead him into this line of reasoning. If she was, he couldn't see what she stood to gain from it. "Because he saw what really happened on the stage," Konstantin said, "or because he suspected." "Either way we have all of this video evidence, so it's just one voice against the maddening crowd."
"And yet here you are telling me all about it."
"Maybe I want to believe you, Konstantin?"
"Maybe you do, maybe not. Either way won't change the truth."
"You're a strange man. You don't want legal representation. You don't want to confess. You aren't spouting any religious propaganda. You aren't trying to convince us that you had to strike for Lucifer to rise again. In fact you seem disturbingly rational. Yet you know things you clearly shouldn't know, such as the license plate of a diplomatic car that is registered in Berlin to the Israeli Ambassador's personal staff."
"Who? Who's it registered to?"
She looked at him, surprised by the sudden intensity of his question. For a fraction of a moment the implacable calm of Konstantin Khavin came down and she saw the real man beneath. It was like seeing the wizard behind the curtain.
"Lieutenant General Akim Caspi of the Israel Defense Force."
Konstantin closed his eyes. He had been that close.
"Caspi's dead," Konstantin told her.
"Did you kill him?"
He let out a slow breath, shaking his head. "No, the man in the car pretending to be him almost certainly did. Caspi died in June 2004."
"That doesn't mean you didn't kill him," she said reasonably. "One fact does not contradict the other."
"Check my service record with Ogmios."
"And again, you know we can't. As far as we can ascertain this Ogmios is a figment of your imagination."
"Do you believe that?"
"It doesn't matter what I believe, Konstantin."
"And yet here you are," he said again, "telling me about a dead body in a river that could go some way to validating the truth of my story."
"Or, you could have had one of your people kill the guard for that selfsame purpose."
Konstantin nodded slowly. He couldn't help it, he rather liked this woman. She thought about things. She didn't leap to conclusions based upon what she could or could not see. He needed to find a way to get her to call the old man. He could give her all the truths she needed.
"You want me to give you names?"
She shrugged. "Rather depends whose names they are, doesn't it? You could start by telling me who you were working with in Berlin, and who helped you in Koblenz."
Konstantin slapped his forehead. He had thought for just a minute that she believed him, for what good it would have done him. She was just as blind as her partner.
"I work for Sir Charles Wyndham," he said. That was all she needed really. One name. If she was good at her job, she would ignore official channels and go to the old man directly. Of course, he didn't expect her to do that. Why would she? As she kept telling him, they had screeds of evidence against him. They could place him in Berlin at the time of the subway attack and on the stage with the silver dagger in his hand as the Pope died. They didn't need anything else. "Can I ask you a question?"
"You can ask," she said.
"How long have I been in here?"
"Four days," she said.
"They've taken the Pope back to Rome?"
She nodded. "It was on the news this morning. They are preparing Saint Paul's for over six million people to make the pilgrimage to see Pope Peter lying in state."
"Have there been any other attacks since t
he Pope? It's been three days. Forty days and forty nights of fear. That's what they promised."
"Nothing," she said. "Which rather supports the idea that with you stuck in here there's no one out there to coordinate the attacks, doesn't it?"
"Or it means that Orla got Mabus."
She looked at him. She had obviously heard what he said but didn't know either of the two names, and because she didn't know them, that turned the simple sentence into something that made no sense to her.
He tried to think through the chain of events. They would have returned the Pope's body to the Vatican. The Cardinal Camerlengo would have officially declared him dead, calling out his real name three times. It was all ceremony, but that was part of believing, holding to the old rituals even as the world turned. Then the Camerlengo would have shattered the Papal seal of Peter II and split the Ring of the Fisherman, so that no one else might use it in the dead man's place to forge papal decrees. Then the Church would enter Sede Vacante, the Empty Seat. There were nine days of mourning between the death of the Pope and the conclave that would elect his successor. There were precedents for moving the conclave of the Cardinals forward in times when the Church and the faithful were at the greatest risk, but they would resist that at all costs. Moving the conclave forward would show the world they were frightened by Mabus and his terrors.
That meant there were five more days until the conclave would convene.
Five more days. And he was stuck in this interrogation room, helpless to do anything, while Mabus and Caspi and Devere moved into their endgame.
It disturbed him that there had been no more attacks since he had been taken. Terrorists needed to make good on their threats, otherwise the fear they instilled would be diluted. Cities would rally. Berlin and Rome would be stronger for their suffering, just like New York and London. There should have been something else, something more.
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