The Devil You Know

by Sean Ellis

  The Devil You Know

  A Nick Kismet Adventure

  By SEAN ELLIS

  The Devil You Know

  Published by Gryphonwood Press

  Copyright 2010 Sean Ellis

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The excerpt from The Shroud of Heaven is copyrighted (2009) by Sean Ellis and published by Samhain Publishing.

  Prologue

  She looked, at that moment, more lovely than he remembered, and it occurred to him that if her face should be the last sight his eyes beheld, then he would die a lucky man. Then dark spots swam in front of his eyes, eclipsing her beauty and underscoring the simple fact that, lucky or not, he was about to die.

  His gaze swung back to the other face--the shadowed, barely glimpsed visage of his assailant--and he redoubled his efforts to break free. He clawed at the fingers which were clamped vise-like around his neck and which had already dammed the flow of life-sustaining blood to his brain. The fingers were thin, with gnarled knuckles like the branches of a willow tree, and gave no impression of inherent power, yet no amount of prying could loosen the killing grip. He changed tactics, directing his ever-waning strength into punches and kicks, but the dark garments of his assailant seemed to absorb the energy as if he were fighting his own shadow. Panic quickly gained a foothold and his actions, though already ineffectual, became increasingly frantic and all the more futile.

  A final rational impulse prompted him to go limp, sagging in his captor’s grip as if unconsciousness or death had at last claimed him. But his bluff was as useless as his struggle; the fingers did not relax their grip, even for the measure of a heartbeat. The black spots grew together, completely occluding his vision, and the capitulation of his flesh was no longer an act. Even the noise of his struggle grew indistinct, lost behind a haze of white static that gradually resolved into a sound like the ringing of a....

  1

  …telephone.

  Nick Kismet gazed in faint surprise at the white plastic receiver on his desktop, as if the mere fact of its presence might explain this unexpected interruption. The phone trilled again insistently, but offered no further enlightenment.

  He did not get many telephone calls on the office line. Almost everyone who might possibly want to contact him knew his cellular number; in fact, the office number didn’t even appear on his business card.

  Business card. Who would have ever imagined that? The thought brought a rare smile to his lips, cracking a normally intense, almost brooding expression. A tall man with broad shoulders and an athletic build, Kismet’s few acquaintances knew him to be reserved, some would even say anti-social. His dark hair was clipped short, as it had been nearly two decades before when he had begun serving as an ROTC cadet. While his military career had stalled and ultimately transformed into something entirely more individualized in nature, his sense of discipline had never been fully retired.

  As the phone commenced another cycle of electronic chirps, he relented and lifted the handset to his ear. “Global Heritage Commission, Nick Kismet speaking.”

  “Did you get my message?” The voice was feminine, faintly muffled as if the person speaking was attempting to disguise her identity by wrapping a handkerchief around the mouthpiece.

  “What mess--” He broke off when the irritating blare of the dial tone began screaming into his ear. When he spoke again, it was solely for his own consideration. “Well, that was useful.”

  He almost put the matter out of his mind. It was late, already six in the evening, and while he had never really kept any sort of traditional schedule, there was certainly no reason for him to be in his office in the lowest level of the American Museum of Natural History at this hour. Whoever had made the mysterious call had been lucky to actually reach him; by all rights he should have been en route to his Brooklyn Heights brownstone residence, if not absent from the United States altogether on some far-flung assignment. That the caller hadn’t seen fit to actually say anything relevant was barely a cause for concern.

  Probably a wrong number.

  He logged off his computer and rose to his feet, intent on leaving behind the cryptic communiqué along with all other matters relating to his position as American liaison to the Global Heritage Commission of the United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization. But as he reached for the door handle, his gaze fell upon an object protruding from his threshold. With a perturbed frown, he knelt to pick it up.

  It was a glossy tri-fold pamphlet of the kind often found in hotel lobbies touting various tourist destinations. The cover bore the unmistakable outline of the tallest building in New York City. He drew back his hand to toss it away.

  What message?

  For a moment he did not move; only stared at the paper in his hand, replaying the abrupt monologue of the female caller. At length, he unfolded the tract and was not at all surprised to find written on the shiny paper, in what looked like red grease pencil, a series of numbers: “8:00.”

  “Eight o’clock at the Empire State Building,” he murmured, shaking his head. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  He then folded back the remaining leaf to expose yet more writing--letters this time--and as the single word written there penetrated his conscious mind, Kismet would have sworn his heart skipped a beat.

  Prometheus!

  It took every ounce of self-control he could muster for Kismet to refrain from urging the taxi driver to go faster. There was no particular need to rush. He would be arriving at his destination well ahead of the implicit deadline, but he could barely contain his eagerness.

  At some level, he regarded the assignation with suspicion. In almost twenty years of searching he had not heard so much as a whisper about the mysterious secret society named for the Titan of Greek mythology. His only knowledge of that group--if indeed it was an organized body--stemmed from a violent encounter with an assassin who had spared his life after massacring an entire family. Yet it was neither that horrific incident nor the unexpected stay of execution that had made the search for the Prometheus group his purpose in life, but rather the strange parting message of the killer:

  Kismet, if I killed you, your mother would have my head.

  A foundling, Kismet had no idea who his mother was, nor any clue concerning her involvement with the murderers associated with Prometheus.

  He gazed at the pamphlet again, examining the scrawled letters in the glow of passing street lamps. Further experimentation, in tandem with his knowledge of the gender of his mysterious contact, had led to the conclusion that the ‘ink’ was actually a bright crimson shade of lipstick. This revelation did not however relieve him of his anxiety regarding the approaching meeting. There was still every reason to believe that he was walking into a trap.

  His singular experience with Prometheus had been deadly and there was no way of knowing if the moratorium on his own death sentence had expired. He had always been circumspect in his search and to the best of his knowledge only a handful of people living, most of them members of the US military, sworn to secrecy, knew of the incident and Kismet’s interest in the secret society. Of course, that didn’t include the members of Prometheus itself, and therein lay the reason for Kismet’s apprehension. Then again, if they wanted him dead, they could have accomplished that goal at any time, and without heralding their intentions.

&nb
sp; He gave the cab driver a twenty-dollar bill and hastened toward the Thirty-fourth street entrance. As he passed into the lobby however, he slowed, studying the faces of its occupants for some sign of recognition. Most were obviously tourists; adventurous young couples making a nighttime sojourn to one of the city’s most famous landmarks. No one offered more than a cursory glance. He kept walking. Although the message had not indicated a specific place within the massive edifice for the rendezvous, Kismet felt an inexorable pull in defiance of gravity.

  As he stepped from the high-speed express elevator, surrounded by people who were easily distinguishable as visitors to the Big Apple rather than residents, it occurred to him that he had never before made this vertical journey. In the descending twilight, the skyline of New York City, as seen from the windswept, open-air observatory on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building, was an awe-inspiring sight. Despite the urgency of his purpose, Kismet flowed with the human current toward the iron bars that lined the edge of the observation deck and let his eyes rove over the cityscape. Only then did he turn away to see if anyone in the crowd found him more interesting than the view.

  Two people immediately caught his attention. They were not standing together but curiously enough seemed to have the same tailor. Both were burly men, looking like nightclub bouncers in sport coats and conspicuous in their choice of semi-formal clothing in such a casual environment. Kismet self-consciously realized that he too looked rather out of place in his charcoal gray two-piece suit. Despite their incongruous appearance, neither of the men were doing anything particularly suspicious. Their eyes periodically wandered from the skyline to glance at the crowd but their curious appraisal fell short of scrutiny.

  After a few minutes the tide of spectators began to ebb and most of the tourists lined up to catch the next elevator down. When Kismet looked again, he found that the two men had moved, changed position, but were still there, still making unobtrusive surveys of the group.

  They’re not interested in me. Who are they watching?

  He looked more closely, following their line of sight to determine what the men were really doing. When he finally spied her, Kismet wondered why he hadn’t noticed the woman earlier. Like the two watchers, her choice of attire was at odds with the standard uniform of most visitors to the landmark edifice but that was by no means her most noteworthy attribute. A shapely form in a maroon Armani suit, with glistening black ringlets that would have stretched down to the middle of her back if not for the constant winds that buffeted the eighty-sixth floor, she stood peering through one of the coin-operated stationary binoculars positioned at intervals along the edge of the observation area. Below the hem of her dark, mid-thigh length skirt, her sculpted legs were clad in matching fishnet stockings that eventually disappeared into pumps with impossibly thin leather bands and three-inch stiletto heels. Yet it wasn’t until she straightened, then turned to look in his direction, that Kismet knew he was looking at the author of the anonymous invitation.

  With a wry smile he walked toward her. “I hope you won’t think this too forward, miss, but that’s an extraordinary shade of lipstick you’re wearing.”

  Up close, the woman who introduced herself as Capri Martelli, was no less a feast for the eyes. Kismet found himself regretting the circumstances that had brought them together; now that the meeting had commenced, he would have to maintain a wary posture.

  “You chose an interesting place for this little meeting,” he commented after halting pleasantries were exchanged. “Very melodramatic. As was your invitation.”

  If she took offense at the veiled jab, Capri gave no indication. “Given the sensitivity of the subject at hand, I thought a clandestine approach was called for. I hope I didn’t inconvenience you.”

  “Not yet.” He smiled humorlessly and waited for her to make the first move. The silence that followed was almost uncomfortable, but Kismet did not relent.

  Her crimson smile finally faltered and she pursed her lips briefly before speaking again. “I know you must eager to hear what I have to say about Prometheus.”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, your invitation was hard to resist. I’ll reserve judgment on everything else.”

  “Where should I start?”

  She’s fishing. “Maybe you should start by telling me who you really are.”

  “I told you my name, Mr. Kismet. But I don’t think that’s what you meant. The truth is, I’m a journalist.” She grimaced, as if the admission was a source of shame.

  Sure you are. Kismet thought about the two men now unobtrusively observing them from a distance. “And why did you contact me?”

  “I thought that was obvious. Prometheus.”

  He folded his arms and leaned against the upright bars, which bordered the perimeter. “Pretend I don’t know what that means.”

  For the first time, her eyes betrayed her. The surprise evident in her expression confirmed that she had expected a very different progression of events. After another awkward silence, Kismet decided to put her out of her misery. “Let me tell you what I think. You heard somebody mention my name and something called ‘Prometheus’ in the same sentence and thought I’d be eager to tell all. That’s not going to happen, Capri.”

  His decision to use her first name was methodical; it would either put her at ease, as with a familiar, or elevate his status in her eyes to that of an authority figure, a parent or teacher. It was an old interrogator’s trick; a skill he had first learned in Army Intelligence. He wasn’t completely sure of his stated conclusions but knew that the accusation would force her hand. To reinforce his position, he pushed away from the barrier and began walking toward the elevator lobby.

  “Wait!”

  The panic in her voice told Kismet he had won. He paused but did not turn to face her. “I’m listening.”

  She hastened to stand in front of him, and kept her voice low. “I got a tip…an anonymous tip…that said you knew something about Prometheus. I was warned to be very discreet.”

  “This is your idea of discreet?”

  “I didn’t think I should just walk into you office. And the phones could be tapped.”

  He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “So you don’t really know anything about this… this Prometheus, whatever that is?”

  “I know a little.” Her eyes darted past him, then swept suspiciously around the observation deck. “Enough to know that Prometheus makes the Illuminati sound like the Boy Scouts.”

  “A secret society?” Kismet affected skepticism. “Conspiracy theories? What news service did you say you work for?”

  “I didn’t, Mr. Kismet. I’m employed at the Clarion—”

  He stiffened apprehensively. The Clarion was a daily tabloid, owned by a media mega-corporations, that catered to the lowest of lowbrow readers with sensational stories, lurid photographs and inflammatory editorials. Reporters for the Clarion were often accused of impersonating journalists.

  Capri cringed at his obvious reaction. “This isn’t for the paper. I’m doing a… a research project on secret fraternities. It’s a family matter.”

  Something about the way she had used the word led him to believe that Capri’s ‘family’ was more than just her close blood relatives. He glanced involuntarily at the two suited men; they had changed positions again but remained at a distance, still futilely attempting to blend in with the diminishing crowd. Kismet felt a chill creep over his back that had nothing to do with the relentless wind. A connection between the mysterious group he sought and organized crime was something he had never considered.

  “Okay. So how did that lead you to this Prometheus? I’ve heard about some of these secret societies, but I’ve never seen a Prometheus mentioned anywhere.” It wasn’t a lie. More than a decade of searching libraries and archived documents had not yielded a single mention of the organization.

  She looked around, as if expecting to find someone eavesdropping, then reached out to take his arm. He did not resist as she guided him ba
ck to the perimeter of the observatory and turned him so that they were both facing out into the night. The sky had darkened considerably in stark contrast to the illuminated forest of skyscrapers all around. Three distinct dots of light--helicopters--were moving in a tight formation out over the East River. Kismet almost commented on this, but a moment later Capri surreptitiously pressed something into his hands. It was a cell phone. “Listen to it,” she implored.

  When he put it to his ear, a mechanical voice was repeating: “To hear your saved message, press ‘one’ now.” He did.

  The words that next issued from the tiny speaker sounded even more robotic, electronically distorted to mask the identity of the speaker. “I know about the book you’re writing; secret societies and such. But there’s one you don’t know about. No one knows about it. Prometheus, the oldest of them all. Ask Nick Kismet at the Global Heritage Commission. He’ll tell you all about it. But be careful so no one knows what you’re up to.”

  Kismet frowned as the terse message ended and at a prompt from the automated system, he played it again. Despite the altered modulation, there was something familiar about the speaker’s idiom. Yet, it was the content of the message that he found most troubling.

  “That’s all I’ve got,” said Capri in a low voice. “Listen, I’ve done research on dozens of groups: the Bavarian Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Carbonari, even the Hong Kong triads. On a fundamental level, they’re carbon copies. In a way, they’re like locks. Each one has its own identity, a key if you will, usually manifest in a complex arrangement of rituals. But what if there is a master key? A society that spawned all the others and can still control them: Prometheus. Am I right?”

  Kismet stared off into the distance. His eyes saw that the strange formation of helicopters was closer, much closer, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Whoever made that message has the answers. He’s got to be on the inside; it’s the only explanation. But why use Capri as an intermediary?