I plugged the flash drive into the USB port on my phone and immediately got a bunch of read-error messages. The thing had been in someone’s stomach, so that was no surprise. However, I went through the steps to do a forced upload of bulk data and soon images were whipping across the screen too fast for me to see. Damaged or not, there was a lot of stuff on the drive. The upload failed twice and I had to repeat the steps, but eventually I got the UPLOAD COMPLETE message.
I scrolled back through the contents at a slower speed until I found a series of JPEGs, one of which was the picture Rasouli had showed me. It looked so innocent, so nondescript in its metal case. And though I know that machines have no personality, I could not help but ascribe the word “evil” to it, as if the malign intent of its creators had been somehow transferred to the device during its construction.
I took a breath, engaged the code scrambler, and punched a speed dial. The phone rang three times.
“Go,” was all Church said, which is more than he usually gives when he answers a phone.
“Boss, I have a Firehall One situation.”
“Is there a finger on a trigger?” His voice sounded as calm as if I asked him who pitched for the Orioles last night.
“Unknown. But … from the vibe I got from my source I’d say this is something coming at us rather than already here.”
“Tell me.”
“I just uploaded the contents of a flash drive to the server. It’s damaged goods. It’s filed under my name and coded for you, eyes only.”
I could hear him tapping keys on his laptop as I spoke.
“Okay, I have the data. Where did this originate? Who’s your source?”
“You’re going to love this,” I said, and told him everything. He did not interrupt once, and I hoped that he was alone because this was going to really test his Vulcan calm.
After a short pause, Church asked, “Were you able to verify his connection to Vox? Could Rasouli have simply thrown the name at you to win your trust?”
“I don’t think so. Vox told him to tell me that he vetted Grace and she was clean. He said ‘She wasn’t one of mine.’”
There was a longer pause. “Interesting.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“Rasouli made no move to arrest you?”
“Just the opposite,” I said. “Rasouli teased me by saying that one of the devices might be in the U.S. He couldn’t have been more vague if he’d spoken in code, though.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“I’m not sure I’d believe him if he said the desert was made out of sand. But…”
“Where are you?”
“My hotel room.”
“Bug might be able to salvage more of the damaged files. I’ll reroute a local asset to pick up the flash drive. Wait for his call.”
“I don’t think I should leave the country while—”
“You’re not. You’ll be taken to a safe house you can use as a staging area. We’ll evaluate the situation so be prepared to go after that device in Iran. I’ll have Echo Team rendezvous with you there.”
“Speaking of my team … did everyone make it out okay?”
“Everyone but you. Safe and sound and over the border.”
“Outstanding. What about the packages?”
“The three young people are with their families. They’ll go to London for a thorough physical, and we’ll have them home in forty-eight hours.”
“Not seeing anything in the news.”
“Iran hasn’t acknowledged the incident. There’s some question here about how they’ll play it. Fifty-fifty split between them producing dead soldiers and claiming that we launched an illegal attack that resulted in casualties; or they reach out to us on the sly and agree to a public statement that they worked with us to insure the safe release of suspected spies who have since been cleared. My money is on the latter. State is prepping a variety of responses,” he said.
“Be nice to have the good guys win. Those three kids were pretty tough. They didn’t break, and we both know the Iranians didn’t go light on them.”
“Admirable,” Church agreed, and that was about as sentimental and weepy as he ever gets. “What do you need, Captain?”
“I’m equipment-light. I need weapons and gear. Can your asset drop that stuff off?”
“I can arrange weapons, but he won’t have a field kit. Echo Team will bring the party favors. And I’ll have Bug send you the latest disarming protocols.”
“Once last thing, Boss,” I said. “Do you think this is the return of the Seven Kings?”
“Impossible to say at this juncture,” he said. The line went dead.
In my best impersonation of Church I said, “Why, thank you, Captain Ledger, damn fine work.” Ghost gave me a look and went back to his dried goat.
I studied the picture of the bomb. Jesus. Someone wanted to nuke the entire Mideast oil fields.
Understand, I gave just about half a warm shit about the whole oil wars thing. I cared even less about the politics of it. But there were hundreds of millions of people in the region. I thought of all the people coming and going in the café. Their families, their kids. All of them. Working, eating, sleeping, loving, and living on top of four, maybe six, nuclear bombs. Maybe more.
I stood up, swayed for a moment, then ran like hell into the bathroom, dropped to my knees in front of the toilet and vomited. It was so immediate and desperate that I could hear myself screaming as I threw up.
My stomach spasmed on empty and I dropped the lid with a bang. Ghost was in the doorway, barking at me, scared and nervous. I pulled some toilet paper off the roll and wiped my mouth.
“It’s okay,” I gasped, reaching out with a trembling hand toward Ghost. He gave my knuckles a nervous lick. “It’s okay.”
I flushed the paper and used the sink to pull myself upright. I ran the water on cold and stuck my face down into the spray. I rinsed out my mouth and tried to spit out the taste of terror.
The shakes hit me then and I had to ball my hands into fists as I walked into the bedroom. You can only play it like Mr. Cool for so long before the realities of emotion and brain chemistry show up to kick your ass and prove to you that you’re just as human as everyone else. Maybe Mr. Church has a lock on invulnerability, but I haven’t cracked the code yet. I sat down on the edge of the bed and tried not to cry.
In the movies, Bruce Willis doesn’t cry. He’s a stoic. He’s also working off a script that he knows has a happy ending. I wasn’t. What if it came down to me to stop these things? Me and what I can do pitted against the potential loss of life that numbered several hundred million. I’m one guy. A year ago I was just a cop.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, and I could hear the raw horror in my own voice.
Chapter Sixteen
The Hangar—DMS Central HQ
Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn
June 15, 12:49 a.m. EST
Mr. Church typed his personal code into his laptop and brought up the Rasouli files. He scanned the index and then began viewing the files one by one. His face was relaxed, composed, without expression, as data, charts, diagrams, lists, and photographs came and went, came and went on his laptop screen.
The room was still except for music playing softly. “Smokin’ At The Half Note” by Wynton Kelly Trio with Wes Montgomery. The current track was Tadd Dameron’s “If You Could See Me Now.” Mr. Church appreciated the simple intensity of Wes Montgomery’s guitar work on the track, and he let it play through before he did anything.
Mr. Church selected a vanilla wafer from a plate, tapped crumbs off of it, and took a small bite. He munched quietly for several seconds. He was a large man, broad-shouldered, strong and blocky. It was generally believed by those who knew him that he was north of sixty, but people agreed that age did not seem to touch him. The gray in his hair was the only real mark; and the scars on his face and hands suggested that his years, no matter how many they were, had not been idle.
His eyes were hal
f-closed behind the tinted lenses of his glasses as he looked inward, assessing what Ledger had told him, working through the implications of the information on Rasouli’s flash drive. If anyone had been in the room they would have thought he was a man lost in the subtleties of a piece of classic jazz. There was no outward sign of agitation.
A slender cell phone sat on the desk blotter next to his laptop. The image on the laptop’s screen was the one Joe Ledger had sent via e-mail. When the song ended, Mr. Church picked up his cell and opened it, punched a number, entered a code that engaged a 128-bit scrambler, and waited for the other party to answer. After three rings, a man’s voice said, “Hello?”
Mr. Church said, “Mr. President, we have a situation.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Kingdom of Shadows
Beneath the Sands
One Year Ago
The fat American sat uneasily on the edge of a metal chair that was draped with red velvet. He was not accustomed to being uneasy. For most of his life it was other people who were uneasy around him. The other man—if “man” could accurately describe the pale figure who sat opposite him—was not like other people. The American doubted this creature feared anything.
Their chairs were identical, ponderous wrought-iron monstrosities looted centuries ago from a desecrated mosque. A single small candle in a shaded sconce cast the only light, and its pale glow was far too fragile to hold back the enormous walls of darkness that closed in on them from every side. The American could only guess at the size of the chamber in which they sat. During the long and convoluted walk down here from a hidden entrance in the city above, the American could see that it had been carved out of the living rock, and was forever filled with shadows that dripped and whispered. The black mouths of tunnels trailed off into darkness all around them. The American knew that there were guards in those tunnels—creatures equally as pale and strange as this man—but he could not see them.
He could, however, feel them. And he caught glimpses of luminous red eyes staring at him with suspicion and pernicious hunger.
The American and the pale man sat in silence for long minutes. Studying each other with the frankness of butchers.
The pale man was tall and gaunt, dressed simply in black trousers and a collarless shirt the color of old rust. No shoes on his pale feet, no jewelry on his hands, and only a crystal locket on a silver chain around his neck. Long white hair was brushed back from a narrow, ascetic face. When the American had first met him, the man looked like a starving albino, but on closer inspection there was a ferocious vitality in the thin face and long-fingered hands. A lupine, predatory quality. The American adjusted his opinion: this man was not wasted by hunger, but defined by it. Made powerful by it.
When the American had been ushered into the room he had brought with him a heavy metal briefcase which he set on the bare rock floor between them, equidistant between the chair provided for him and the three-step dais on which his host sat. The pale man regarded the case but did not ask that it be opened or inspected.
“So,” said the American, “LaRoque wasn’t bullshitting me when he described you.”
The pale man said nothing.
“I believe his exact words were,” continued the fat man, “‘the King of Thorns.’ I thought it was some kind of lurid nonsense at the time. Some bit of poetry that he was using to try and spook me. But…”
“The Scriptor,” said the pale man.
“Beg pardon?”
“You will call him ‘the Scriptor.’ We do not use his daylight name.”
“You may not, chum, but I do,” laughed the American, but his smile was fragile and fleeting. “Okay, yeah. The Scriptor. Silly damn name, though.”
“So says the ‘king of fear,’” murmured the other. “Or am I mistaken about who you are, Mr. Vox?”
Hugo Vox straightened in his chair and eyed the pale man shrewdly for a few seconds. “Yeah, okay, cards on the table. Call me Hugo. What do I call you, though? ‘King of Thorns’ is a bit clumsy for a casual chat.”
“You may call me Grigor.”
“Good. I prefer first names when I do business.” Vox pursed his lips. “If you know about me, then I guess that means you know about the Seven Kings.”
“Yes.”
“Who told you? The ‘Scriptor’?”
Grigor shook his head. “The Scriptor does not choose to come down here. He calls when he needs his Red Knights.”
The pale man’s voice was strange, heavily accented, and controlled, which made it a challenge for Vox to read inflection and subtext. Even so, he could detect an edge of contempt in Grigor’s phrasing in that last sentence. Certainly disapproval, and maybe more than that.
“So, what, he phoned in about me? Just up and broke his word to me? He told you the secret he swore on his life that he wouldn’t share with anyone?”
The pale man smiled and made a small dismissive gesture with one hand.
“No, uh-uh,” persisted Vox, “we don’t just drop that. How do you know about me?”
“It is the business of the Red Knights to know everything—”
“Yeah, cut the sales pitch. I’m not a rube and you’re not at one with the universe. This is supposed to be a very hush-hush meeting and you are not supposed to know who I am. That information was mine to share or not. The fact that you do know makes me pretty goddamn twitchy about the whole deal. My business associates—”
“Your associates are terrorists, corrupt officials, and mass murderers, Mr. Vox. Let’s not pretend they are anything else.”
“And you’re what? Kermit and the Muppet Babies? You really want to measure dicks to see who gets the bigger boner from screwing the public?”
Grigor looked amused. “What the Red Knights have done, and what we continue to do, has the blessing of the church.”
“Bullshit. It has the blessing of one twisted fuck of a priest who is even scarier than you and me put together, and I know for a fact that the Vatican has no clue what he’s giving his personal blessing to. If they did, they’d go Old Testament all over the Red Order, the Red Knights, and Father-frigging-Nicodemus, and you can put that in the bank.”
Grigor said nothing. He steepled his long fingers and simply stared at Vox. Around them the shadows echoed with the scuttle of rat feet and the distant weeping of women.
“Fuck it,” said Vox and stood up.
“The priest.”
Vox stared at him. “What?”
“The Scriptor did not betray your trust. It was Father Nicodemus who told me your name. It was he who told me about the Seven Kings and what you and your mother are planning. Weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Father Nicodemus thinks that it is a beautiful plan.”
Vox narrowed his eyes. “How does he know about that?”
“He did not say.”
“No,” muttered Vox. “He wouldn’t. Spooky bastard.”
Vox remained standing for a moment. He looked around and saw milk-white faces watching him from the tunnel mouths. The watchers seemed to be cast in black and white except for their eyes. Like the man on the dais, everyone down in the shadow kingdom had dark red eyes. Vox was only half sure that it was stage dressing designed to create exactly the reaction he was having. Naked fear.
To the pale man, Vox said, “Which means that LaRoque—excuse me, the Scriptor—probably knows, too.”
“The Scriptor and the priest do not have secrets from one another. That is one of the pillars on which the Ordo Ruber was built.”
The Red Order. Vox did not speak the translation aloud, but he knew what it was. LaRoque’s grandfather had told him the whole story decades ago. That sharing had been a betrayal of the strict rules of the Red Order, and knowledge of it was supposed to be a death sentence for anyone not initiated into their ancient brotherhood.
“Okay,” he said, “then let’s both lay cards on the table. You know who and what I am? Fine. Turns out, I know who, and much more importantly, what you are.”
The pale man looked skeptical. “Then who and what am I?”
Vox smiled thinly as he spoke a single word. “Upier.”
He heard gasps and angry mutters from the surrounding shadows. Grigor’s eyes widened briefly and then narrowed to dangerous slits.
Vox held up a hand. “If you’re planning on giving me one of those ‘men have died for less’ speeches, save it for the tourists. We got off on a bad foot here. I’m appropriately skeeved out by you and your troops down here, so you can put that in your win category. Still—to make this completely fair, I think you should be a little more afraid of me.”
Grigor smiled at that. “The Scriptor said that you were brash, but he neglected to tell me that you were a fool.”
“The Scriptor is a paranoid schizophrenic and a fucking moron who couldn’t find his own dick with both hands and a set of printed instructions,” said Vox. “And just so you don’t think I’m blowing smoke up your ass, take a look at what I brought.”
He nodded to the briefcase. Grigor stared down at it with sudden suspicion, his pale lips parting slightly, but he made no move toward the case. Vox nodded approvingly.
“We both know what’s supposed to be in the case,” said Vox. “Contact info for every arms dealer on three continents, and some of my untraceable cell phones. But, since I’m not hideously stupid, the contact information is on a password-protected laptop and the cell phones can’t be activated without a special access code.”
Grigor’s eyes narrowed to lethal slits. “You did not bring them?”
“No,” said Vox, “I did not bring them down here to your deep, dark ultrascary secret lair. Like I said, I’m not stupid. What I brought instead, is a bomb.”
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