David grimaced. He had little choice here, now that the ride had started and everyone was locked into their seats.
“All right,” he said. “But any harm comes to her and you lose any chance of more than what I’ve got in this case.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Carlos said, waving the gun around. “Now. Can we please go to the plane?”
THEY FLEW IN A private jet again, but this time Shako rode in the cargo hold.
It was pressurized, so it didn’t kill her, but the temperature soon dropped below zero. By the time they landed, she’d be lucky to stand, let alone fight.
She tried to conserve what warmth she could, and cursed David in her mind.
He didn’t understand. Of course he didn’t understand. She didn’t explain. And then, when she tried, he heard exactly the wrong message.
Some genius. Always trying to avoid the inevitable. Always trying to save people.
She huddled and curled into herself on the cold steel floor.
Instead, he’d probably just killed them all.
CHAPTER 32
TAMPA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, FLORIDA
THEY LANDED LATE at night. David was sleeping when Carlos’s man poked him with the barrel of a MAC-10. The plane was taxiing inside a hangar. He hadn’t even felt the jet touch down.
He rubbed grit from his eyes as he stepped out of the Gulfstream. It took David a moment to realize there was a party of men waiting for them in the hangar.
Max was there. So were Sebastian and Peter. And a bunch of guys with guns. And one man standing in front of all of them.
David recognized him from the videotape. Aznar.
Simon was nowhere to be seen.
David looked wildly at Carlos, who emerged from the jet sideways, angling his bulk through the airplane’s door.
He saw the guns and Aznar.
“You,” he said.
Aznar smiled broadly. “Me,” he agreed.
Carlos shoved David aside, moved with surprising speed down the stairs and across the floor. He stopped in front of Aznar and they glared at each other.
Carlos pulled out his .44. He pointed it at Aznar.
The guards on all sides tensed up, weapons ready.
Then Aznar threw up his hands and bellowed, “Let’s get ready to rumble!”
They both burst out laughing and embraced.
Oh shit, David thought.
They were giggly as schoolgirls when they turned to face him.
“My apologies, Dr. Robinton,” Aznar said. “My name is Juan Aznar. It is a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”
David said nothing. That sent Carlos into more fits of laughter.
“I think he’s actually surprised.”
“It’s hard to remember being that young,” Aznar said.
David pointed to the briefcase, still handcuffed to his wrist. “I thought you wanted this.”
“We do,” Aznar said. He turned to Carlos. “May I?”
Carlos handed over the gun. “Of course.”
Aznar snapped his fingers, and his men moved in response. Shako was unceremoniously dumped onto the concrete floor out of the cargo hold. Even though she was shivering violently and barely able to stand, she still lunged for the closest thug.
He stepped back, sliding in his elegant shoes, and hit her with the butt of his weapon.
Then they dragged her over to Aznar and made her kneel. He pointed Carlos’s borrowed pistol at the base of Shako’s neck.
“The briefcase, please,” Aznar said.
David hesitated.
Aznar rolled his eyes and pulled the hammer back on the pistol. “Do I really have to count to three?”
David shook his head. He took the key from his pocket and undid the handcuffs.
“David, don’t,” Shako called from the floor.
“Quiet,” Aznar hissed. “I’ve heard more than enough from you for ten lifetimes.”
David handed the briefcase over to one of the guards.
“Excellent,” Aznar said. He took the case from the guard, then nodded. Shako was picked up by three other men and carried to one of two identical white vans. Aznar waved the gun vaguely in David’s direction.
“You too, please. Into the next van.”
“You’ve got what you wanted,” David said. “You can let us go.”
That got him nothing but more laughter. “So young,” Carlos said.
The cuff that had held the briefcase was locked to David’s other wrist and he was escorted past them on his way to the van. He gave Carlos a hard look. “So, this is what your word is worth.”
Carlos laughed, his flab moving under his skin like seismic waves. “Oh. You child. Did you think I’d betray someone I’d known for centuries in favor of a boy I’ve known for a few weeks?”
“You seemed pretty happy with the deal when you thought it meant you’d be the only one left with the formula,” David shot back.
Carlos opened his mouth to say something, but Aznar spoke up first, his face thoughtful. “You know something?” he asked. “That’s an excellent point. You didn’t contact anyone when this boy and Shako first showed up on your doorstep.”
The amusement left Carlos’s face instantly. “Juan,” he said. “Surely you know that I would never—”
“Why not?”
“I told you about them as soon as your message arrived.”
“But not a moment before. Did you think you could outlive us? You wanted all of the boy’s formula for yourself?”
Carlos began to look a bit nervous. “No, of course not. I was simply waiting to see how best to manage the situation. They were in my home, Juan. I had no alternatives.”
Aznar looked impatient at that. “You’re a drug lord, Carlos. You have a thousand men with guns. How did they survive until we sent our message? Did they plant a bomb somewhere in all those folds of fat?”
Now Carlos looked angry. “Have a care, Aznar. They’re here now. I brought them to you. No one else. To you. That should tell you all you need to know about my loyalties.”
“Yes,” Aznar said. “It does.”
Then he put his gun just under Carlos’s right ear and pulled the trigger.
The 240-grain slug punched through Carlos’s skull and blew a fist-size hole out the other side of his head. David saw the drug lord’s eyes literally pop from the sudden pressure of a bullet moving at fifteen hundred feet per second through his brain.
Carlos’s body fell like a slow-motion landslide to the ground, first at his knees, then at his massive waist, and finally his torso and his ruined head. It seemed to take hours.
Carlos’s bodyguards were caught completely flat-footed. One of them belatedly put a hand into his waistband for his own weapon.
Aznar turned the .44 almost casually toward him. “The moment to be a hero has passed,” he said.
The man slowly moved his hand away from his body.
“Good,” Aznar said. Then he aimed the .44 down at Carlos’s head and emptied the rest of the chambers. What was left looked more like a stain than anything human.
“That ought to do it,” Aznar said. He turned to the guards again. “You can work for us now, if you like. Or die. I don’t really care much one way or another.”
Carlos’s former employees were not complete idiots; they chose to live.
David stood there, his ears still ringing, looking at the remains of Carlos’s head. Aznar dropped the empty pistol and gestured grandly toward the van.
“That was one of my oldest friends, David. And I don’t even know you. Keep that in mind.”
David walked over to the van.
The doors were opened for him. In the brief moment that light penetrated the dark interior, he saw another body, also handcuffed, sitting awkwardly against the wheel well.
&nbs
p; Simon.
Simon blinked in the sudden glare, and his eyes fixed on David.
“I believe you two have a lot to discuss,” Aznar said.
David was shoved inside. He saw Carlos’s men struggling to get the massive body of their former boss into the plane’s cargo hold.
The doors slammed again, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 33
SIMON AND DAVID couldn’t see each other, or anything else. The interior of the van was completely dark and sealed off from the driver’s cabin.
Somehow it made it easier to talk, without having to look at Simon’s face.
“You seem pretty calm,” David said. “Is this where the Illuminati come bursting in to save you?”
“Illuminati?” He laughed. “A wet dream for those who cannot take responsibility for their own actions. I’ve been to the Bilderberg conference, sat on the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, and spent a weekend at the Bohemian Grove. They’re all the same. Very rich and important people suffering under the illusion that they know how things work, who are just as surprised by what’s on the news as everyone else. Believe me. If there were any secret masters of the world, I’d have met them by now.”
“Maybe you just don’t meet their standards. I certainly expected more. Five hundred years old and you’re in the back of a van with a mere mortal like me.”
Simon laughed again. He seemed relaxed, even happy. He spoke as if it were a relief to finally drop the many masks and disguises, as if he’d been suffocating underneath all of their layers.
“Oh, David. You’re so young. It took me almost a century to see it myself. Humans are herd animals. They are slow, but they move like glaciers across continents, inevitable and unstoppable. All I’ve ever tried to do is steer them. And even unlimited wealth and endless life are small tools against the shortsightedness and greed of millions of your kind. It’s like reincarnation. Which is an utter fantasy, by the way. I’ve lived a very long time and never met anyone twice. But I’m sure you’ve noticed that everyone who believes in it always claims they were royalty or a hero or nobility in a past life. No one wants to be a peasant. The fact is, the world has always been too big for one ruler. Most of the time, history is just a thing that happens to people. We have worked hard to make a difference, but there were only eight of us. Our time and resources were limited, compared to the task at hand. We couldn’t be everywhere at once. And we made mistakes. Do you have any idea how long I spent winning the loyalty of the king of Belgium? I wish there was a way to control every variable, to run the whole world from behind the scenes, to make it as simple as the conspiracy theorists say.”
“Yeah,” David said, voice dripping with contempt, “it’s a damn shame, all those people living their lives without your permission.”
Suddenly Simon’s good humor dropped. “My way is better,” Simon hissed. “Look at how you people behave if left to your own devices. You don’t even have to pick a genocide. They are all depressingly similar. Instead, just watch a single man in a car on the freeway when he suddenly realizes he’s got to make an exit. He will cross five lanes without looking, endanger dozens of lives, maybe even cause a massive pileup that backs up traffic for a day—all because he can’t possibly wait for the next stop on the road. Literally billions of dollars have gone into making cars safer, to designing airbags and crash safety, and improving roads to funnel people where they need to go. And one man can destroy all that in a split second of stupidity and selfishness.”
“And what have you done? From what Shako tells me, you’ve started enough wars and genocides to qualify as a horseman of the Apocalypse yourself. Five hundred years of corpses. You want to take credit for that?”
“You have no idea.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
“You have no idea,” Simon said again, “what the world was before you were in it. You still weep for your sister? When I was born, nearly half of all children died before they were five years old. Just having a baby could be a death sentence for women. People poured their shit in the river and then drank the water. They starved when the winter was bad or when the summer was too hot, and every few years, some plague or another would rip through them and the corpses would pile dozens high in the street.
“And you have the nerve to complain? You soft, overfed toddler. You grew up on land that was paid for with the blood of millions. You think the natives just walked away from it? They had to be forced at gunpoint. I know. I held the guns. Your buildings, your institutions, your colleges and universities were built with dollars from slavery. Your country grew fat and happy while millions of men, women, and children were bought and sold like cattle. The bloodstains are so deep in the fabric of your nation you don’t even see them anymore. All you get is the reward: a limitless future, a vast nation, unlimited possibilities, from sea to shining sea.”
David felt as though he had to speak up for himself. “I didn’t do any of that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Simon shot back. “I did it for you. Me and everyone like me. We did the hard things. We did the vicious things. We did it for the future. You want to blame me for the way the world is now? I will take it. I admit it is not what I had planned. But I will take credit for every forward step, every small, bloody inch of progress, because I had to claw each one with my fingernails.”
“You’ve killed thousands of people.”
“Oh, more than that,” Simon said. “Many more. I have slaughtered my way across continents and built machines of death and paid politicians to wage wars. But every time, I did so knowing that there was something better that could come out of the bloodshed. For every corpse on my conscience, I’ve saved a thousand lives. The world is better now than it once was. And I will take credit for that.”
David was silent for a moment. “And yet Shako still wants to kill you. I guess she just can’t see the bigger picture the way you can.”
“You don’t understand us,” Simon said. “Our first lives were like our childhoods. Everything was so vivid and new. We didn’t know how long our lives would be. So of course we carry the wounds and scars deeply. The same way you still probably tear up at the thought of your first puppy. The same way she and I still love each other.”
David laughed out loud at that. “You think she loves you?”
“I know she does.”
“That’s funny. Because when we were in bed together—”
Something like a growl escaped Simon’s throat. “Be very careful, David.”
“Sorry. Didn’t realize how sensitive you are. When we were in bed together, fucking— Too offensive? Want me to stop now?”
No response.
“Shako never mentioned loving you. Lots of talk about killing you. But nothing about love.”
“You still don’t understand. You’re a pet to her. At best. A toy.”
“Maybe so,” David admitted. “I’m smart enough to admit that, even if it stings. But at least I don’t fool myself into thinking I’m a god.”
Simon laughed bitterly. “There is no God. But if there were, I’d be far closer to him than to you. After all, I changed your life.”
“Because you gave me a job?”
“Because I killed your parents.”
David went silent in the dark.
“All your pillow talk, and Shako didn’t tell you that? I’m surprised.”
“She told me,” David said quietly.
“I see. You didn’t believe her. Well. I can’t blame you. She’d already told you so many lies. How are you supposed to know what to believe? If it gives you any comfort, it wasn’t anything I enjoyed. It was another sacrifice. Your father was a brilliant man, David. Truly. But he was as limited in his morality as you are. He couldn’t see the greater good.”
“Simon,” David said, “go fuck yourself.”
Simon sighed heavily.
“You see? You’re simply reacting on a genetic level. Responding to the loss of your parents, your sister. A slave to your instincts to protect the animals that have the closest similarity to you. This is why we do not have children. As soon as you are tied to their future, rather than your own, you are lost. You become part of the herd. The world cannot survive such sentimentality. That is what separates me from you, and all those like you. I can see the end. The rest of you are fatally distracted.”
“You’re right,” David said.
Surprise filled Simon’s voice. “I am?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure if Shako was telling me the truth. Now I know. And you’re still utterly full of shit. Five hundred years and what have you really done? You might think you’re not a part of the herd, but you’re just as selfish and shortsighted. Look at everything you could have done better. You could have cured any disease. You could have revealed the Water to the world years ago, made it into an international resource. You could have fed the starving and housed the poor. You could have taken your wealth and built cities on the moon, for Christ’s sake. You could have been walking among the stars by now. You could have done anything.”
Simon snorted. “You think the world works like that. You’re not so bright after all.”
“Maybe you’re right. But I know you’ve had five hundred years, and all you’ve done is live the same pointless, stupid life over and over again. You’ve fought the same petty little squabbles, trying desperately to hang on to something you stole in the first place. All because you’re too frightened to face the truth. Everybody dies sooner or later, Simon. With or without the Water. Everybody dies. And so will you.”
“Is that your idea of a threat?”
“No. It’s a fact. You’ve lived a long time, but it’s going to end soon. I’m going to kill you. Count on it.”
Simon sat with that for a long time. David thought perhaps the other man was finished talking. Then Simon spoke up again.
“You’re right, David. Everyone dies,” Simon said. “But I’m willing to bet I’ll outlive you.”
The van came to a halt. They had arrived.
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