The President's Vampire

by Christopher Farnsworth

  “You can have it,” he said. “You can have all of it. That’s why you are here. That’s why we found you. The world is darker than you know. If you are willing to see its true face, you must take that darkness inside you as well. If you want power in this world, you must embrace what other men call evil. And then, you can have everything you ever wanted and more.”

  Graves thought about it. He knew this was one of those pivotal moments in his life. But he felt like the decision had already been made. Still, he took the bottle off the table and poured. Then he took a drink to steady himself.

  Graves tried to gauge how serious the old man was. This was starting to sound uncomfortably close to things he remembered from Sunday school.

  “Are you asking me to sell my soul?” Graves asked. He chuckled a little, to try to make it sound like a joke.

  The old man beamed, revealing yellow teeth. “You sold your soul a long time ago, my boy. Now you get paid.”

  Lord took Graves’s hand in a firm grip as if meeting him for the first time.

  “Welcome to the Company,” he said. “I think you’re going to do very well with us.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Finally there is the story . . . of Dave Morales, a self-proclaimed CIA assassin who one night, with only close friends present, went into a boozy diatribe against Kennedy for sacrificing his CIA-trained comrades at the Bay of Pigs. Suddenly he stopped . . . and remained silent for moment. Then as if saying it only to himself he added: “Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn’t we?”

  —Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

  Cade saw no reason to wait. Graves had escaped justice for decades.

  In the next split second, Graves’s throat was in Cade’s right hand. He raised the briefcase like a shield, his feet kicking in empty air.

  Still, he looked far too calm for a man in a vampire’s grip.

  Cade paused. Longer than he should have.

  Behind them, Cade heard the sounds of weapons being readied. The pilot of the chopper shouted at him over the bird’s P.A. system.

  “Release the Colonel! Do it now! We will shoot!”

  Cade realized exactly how this looked. He saw it from the perspective of the Marines in the copter: a field of smoldering corpses, a man in a known uniform, pointing the finger of blame at someone dressed in rags, covered in grime and blood.

  It was an old trick. And a shamefully effective one.

  But it wasn’t the Marines that made Cade hesitate. He maneuvered Graves between them and himself.

  Cade felt something he wasn’t accustomed to; something so rare it took a moment to name it.

  Uncertainty.

  “You can’t do this,” Graves said, choking out the words.

  “Something’s wrong,” Cade said. He could not harm Graves. It was a fact, simple and inarguable, as solid as bedrock.

  The Marines continued to scream at them. Cade paid no attention. He looked at Graves, bewildered. “How—?”

  Graves pointed to the inside pocket of his jacket.

  Cade lowered Graves so his feet touched the deck again, but kept him as a shield for the Marines.

  With his free hand, Cade reached into the pocket and came out with nothing but a single sheet of paper.

  It began: “Pursuant to the power granted me by the Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 2, as President of the United States, I have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, unconditional and absolute pardon . . .”

  Cade recognized the language instantly. It was a presidential pardon for any and all crimes committed. Signed by the previous president on the day before Curtis’s inauguration, but without any end date. That made it preemptive, automatically forgiving the recipient for anything done, even after it was issued.

  In other words, it was the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.

  And it had Graves’s name on it.

  Cade couldn’t harm Graves in any way. The pardon was nonnegotiable, just the same as a direct order from the president. Even though that president was no longer in office, Cade was bound by his oath to follow it. Thanks to that paper, Graves was free from any sanction the United States government could deliver. And that included Cade.

  Graves smiled, the first genuine expression Cade had ever seen on his face.

  “You see,” he said, “as far as you’re concerned, I’m untouchable.”

  CADE STOOD there for a moment. He was not used to being taken by surprise, not by anything.

  “You’re Shadow Company,” he said. It was so painfully obvious that he didn’t need to say it, but words were all he had right now.

  “I think it’s adorable that you still call us that,” Graves said. “Remind me to get you one of the new business cards.”

  Without warning, Graves moved faster than a man half his age and shoved the briefcase at Cade.

  It bounced into Cade’s chest. He caught it by reflex, releasing Graves.

  Graves made the most of the chance. He ran away, screaming. “It’s him!” Graves shouted, waving his arms. “He’s the one who killed them all!”

  By then, the Marines were already shooting at him.

  They sent a line of bullets across the deck, separating him from Graves. He pivoted and ran the other way. He felt the heat of the rounds as they passed by him. If he were human, they would have torn him to pieces already.

  The smoke pouring off the deck in front of him suddenly parted in a thunder of rotors. The helicopter rose just above him. A door gunner had his weapon out and aimed.

  Cade was caught in the cross fire. There was no cover anywhere, no place to hide.

  Briefcase still in hand, Cade vaulted the railing and went over the side.

  The door gunner got off one last burst. One of the rounds tore through him, turning him like a pinwheel in midair, at the arc of his leap.

  He fell five stories until he hit the deep black sea, then sank without a trace.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Other Side—

  Death, or the land of death. (Ex. “He passed over to the other side.”) Thought to originate from the Greek myth of crossing over the River Styx and into Hades, the realm of the dead.

  In espionage, used to refer to the sponsor of enemy agents. (Ex. “Philby was turned to the other side while at Cambridge.”)

  —Falsworth’s Dictionary of Idioms and Phrases, 1971

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Down in the morgue, the sprinklers finally stopped. Bell slicked her hair out of her face. “Now what?”

  Zach pulled out his phone. Down here, it was safer than land-lines, and hooked immediately into the wireless network shared through all the tunnels.

  He hit the number listed under CLEANERS.

  “Operator” was the only reply.

  “Code name: JIMMY CHRISTOPHER,” Zach said, struggling to remember the right daily sequence and the right code. “UNDERWORLD. CHARON. STYX. ZOOKEEPER.”

  “Confirm location.”

  Zach pressed a button on the phone, activating the homing beacon, then put it back to his ear.

  “Got it,” the operator said. “Sit tight. We’ll have someone there as soon as we can. Good luck.”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “Thanks.” But the line was already dead.

  “What was that?” Bell wanted to know.

  “Cleaning crew. They’ll be here to secure the location and deal with . . .” He looked at the desk drawer as his voice trailed off.

  “Not your first time doing this, then.”

  Zach sighed. “It’s not even my first time this month.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s the federal government. We have procedures for everything. Why do you think I’m inoculated against zombies?”

  “There’s a vaccine for zombies?”

  “Oh sure. HZV, H1Z1, most of the other strains.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  For a second, Zach savored being the guy who knew s
tuff nobody else did.

  “Sorry. Classified.”

  Bell gave him a dark look that said he wasn’t nearly as amusing as he thought.

  They both shivered from the cold and the sudden adrenaline crash.

  Bell looked around the room. “Do we have to stay here?”

  Zach wasn’t wild about the idea either. Why not, he figured. They both needed a change of clothes.

  Zach led her down one connecting tunnel, then another. Five minutes later, they were in the Reliquary.

  Bell looked at all the exhibits with a kind of exhausted wonder. She was losing the capacity for shock and awe: Oh, so that’s what a Chupacabras really looks like? Huh, who knew? Zach could tell; he’d been there himself.

  He found a set of Smithsonian sweats that would fit her and a towel from the stack of things he kept for the nights he slept here.

  Bell sat in the growing silence. Zach didn’t know what to say. The reality of dying horribly was always there, sort of a steady background music on the soundtrack of his life. But he really hated these moments where it suddenly came to the forefront and dominated the whole scene.

  They sat among the dead mysteries in silence.

  “You really don’t think about quitting?” she asked, with the lopsided smile he’d seen before.

  “Oh, I think about it,” Zach said. “But I can’t.”

  She shook her head, still with the same funny grin.

  “You could,” she insisted. “But you choose not to.”

  “You could quit, too, if you wanted.”

  The smile vanished. “No,” she said. “Not my job. Not at all.”

  He waited for her to explain, but she left it there.

  “You ever want a normal life?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Why do you ask?”

  Before she could reply, Zach’s phone buzzed. He picked it up.

  “Leave it,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  She pulled him closer. “Oh,” he said.

  He lifted her shirt and put his lips to her breasts. She leaned back on the table, guiding his head down her belly.

  He was kicking his pants off when one of the interior Reliquary doors came crashing open.

  Men with wicked-looking guns, wearing full-body riot gear, aimed their weapons.

  Zach looked up. Then looked angry. “God damn it, Smitty.”

  The man in the lead flipped up the visor on his helmet, revealing a bearded, grinning face. “You didn’t answer your phone,” he said, in a Southern drawl, as if that explained everything.

  Bell was busy covering herself.

  “Who the hell are you?” she said.

  “The cleaners I told you about?” Zach said, pulling up his pants. “This is them.”

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Zach, you know we’ve got protocols for a reason.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t you have a dead monster to scoop up?”

  Zach was pretty sure he heard muffled laughter from under the other riot helmets.

  “You weren’t in the lab. We didn’t know what had happened. Standard operating procedure. Also, I can’t help but notice you’re here with unauthorized personnel.”

  “She’s with me. Obviously, I’m fine.” Zach had regained his pants, if not his dignity.

  “Obviously,” Smitty said. “But for a minute, it sure looked like you were under attack.”

  Zach scowled at him. “Go away.”

  “Sorry, kiddo,” Smitty said, still grinning. “I know what it’s like when the adrenaline gets going. Shoot, I remember one time, I was out in the field with this operative from the U.S. Marshal’s Service—”

  “Go away now.”

  He laughed and signaled his team. The cleaning crew shouldered their weapons and filed out.

  Zach looked at Bell, who wavered between anger and laughter. He wasn’t sure exactly how to apologize for this.

  “What I get for not answering my phone,” he said. He picked it up and checked the screen.

  Something he hadn’t noticed. An e-mail had come through. Delayed by the servers—overburdened government issue, of course, running last year’s software. It was from Everett.

  “What is it?” Bell asked.

  Some instinct told him to read it first. Maybe it was the interruption by the cleaners, or maybe Cade’s warning was coming back to him. But he remembered how much classified info he’d let Bell see.

  “Just a second,” he said. He opened the message and scanned through it.

  Everett might have been a little weird, but he wasn’t one of those people who bury points in a report just to fill pages. If he found something important, he put it right at the top.

  Zach remembered this. Everett had tried to tell him, right before they left.

  “The deceased has a steel plate and bolts in the lower right femur, repairing an old fracture,” Everett wrote. Serial numbers on the plates were run through the medical manufacturers’ databases. The surgical plate was one that was sold in bulk to a Pentagon contractor, later used in field hospitals in Afghanistan. “Specifically, the plate in question was issued to Bagram Air Force Base, where it was used by U.S. Army surgeons to repair the broken leg of an enemy combatant held in custody, Tariq Sharraf,” Everett wrote.

  Everett might have been a freak, but he was great at his job. Zach realized he had the first real breakthrough in this mess. He had a name.

  “Zach, what is it?” Bell said again, impatience growing.

  “Give me ten minutes,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  IT TOOK HIM TWENTY.

  Working on the Reliquary’s computers, he had access to more information than when he was off-site. Through its encrypted communications lines, he could sift through all the massive paperwork generated by the federal government. It was just a matter of finding the right needle in a haystack made of needles.

  Bell sat, stewing, clearly unhappy at being made to play Girl Friday while he worked. But he had to check this for himself.

  Tariq Sharraf. Several terrorists or suspected terrorists had that name. Several different spellings popped up on no-fly lists, border-watch lists, INTERPOL, and so on. The one Zach was looking for, however, was also known as Tariq “the Mute” for his ability to resist interrogation. That was where he got the broken leg and the surgical repair job, both courtesy of the U.S. government, while he was held at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan.

  The prison at Bagram was notorious; some of the things there made Abu Ghraib look like day camp. An interrogator got frustrated with Tariq and hit him with an aluminum baseball bat—not exactly approved interrogation procedure. Because it was a compound fracture of the femur, and because Tariq was considered high-value, he was rushed into surgery and the repair performed. He was given to the CIA in 2003 for further questioning. His paper trail dead-ended there.

  Which meant he shouldn’t have been turned into a Snakehead and shipped to Somalia.

  Zach checked the date of Tariq’s release to the CIA again: July 12, 2003.

  Couldn’t be a coincidence. Just couldn’t be.

  He flipped open his laptop and brought up Graves’s list of assignments and stations again.

  There on the screen, just as he’d remembered: Bagram Collection Point, Combined Joint Task Force—180 (CJTF-180), Afghanistan, 11/11/01 to 08/17/03.

  “Son of a bitch,” Zach said.

  “What?” Bell said, standing up and crossing to look at the screen with him.

  “It’s Graves,” he said. “Graves is the one moving the prisoners. He’s behind the whole thing.”

  BELL LOOKED GENUINELY DISTRESSED. “That’s not possible. How did he get the White House to let him investigate himself?”

  “I don’t know,” Zach said. “If he’s Shadow Company, then he’s got a connection somewhere pretty high.”

  “I don’t buy it,” she said. “You don’t have any real proof. Just because he was there at the same time?”

  “The guy he
was supposed to deliver for the CIA turns into a Snakehead. That cannot be a coincidence.”

  She shrugged, not looking at him. “You really think so?”

  “You don’t?”

  “Close enough, I guess,” she said.

  Zach wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but Bell kept talking. “What if he had no choice?” she said. “What if he was ordered to do this?”

  Zach was amazed. He couldn’t figure out why Bell was so anxious to stand up for Graves.

  “You think that matters? You think there’s any way to say ‘Sorry, my bad’ for this? More important, you think Cade will accept that as an excuse? No way. Cade simply can’t let something like this pass.”

  “Graves isn’t a lightweight. He’ll fight.”

  “He doesn’t seem that frightening.”

  “You don’t know him. Nobody does. Most of what I know comes from rumors,” she said. “But I believe them all. Even the ones that contradict the other ones.”

  “He’s just a man,” Zach said.

  She gave him a sharp look. “Just because you know Cade doesn’t make you an expert on what’s scary,” she said. “Seriously. You have no idea about some of the things he’s supposed to have done.”

  Zach thought he heard a little fear in her voice when she said that. Fear, and maybe just a trace of admiration. It irritated him, almost like they were arguing over whose dad was stronger.

  Only, he was right.

  “You’ve never seen Cade hunt,” he said. “He won’t stop. He can’t stop. Not for anything. No matter what, he’ll find a way. Someone has to pay for this. There has to be blood.”

  Bell thought about that. “You’re right,” she said.

  She grabbed Zach by the hair and slammed his head into the metal desk. Zach’s eyes were full of pain and surprise. Bell slammed him into the desk again.

  Zach’s eyes closed. He fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Bell picked him up under the armpits and began dragging him toward the corridor.