Assassin's Code

(1)

I was out of it for a long time.

Church was there when I opened my eyes. He looked haggard and old.

“Christ,” I said. “If you look that bad, I must be a frigging mess.”

He didn’t smile.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

I had to think about it, and I fell asleep a couple of times.

When I opened my eyes again it was morning and there was sunlight slanting in through the windows. Rudy was gone. Instead it was Mr. Church in the chair beside my bed.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“The trauma center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.”

“In?”

“New York.”

I thought about that. My body was swathed in bandages and, although there was pain, it was buried under a heavy layer of something. Morphine. My head felt like it was stuffed with bubble wrap.

“What do you remember?” he asked,

“Rudy asked the same question.”

“When?”

I couldn’t answer that, and I realized that this wasn’t the same room. “I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the raid on the refinery?”

It took me a long time, and the memories were sluggish and reluctant. “Some of it. Maybe. Did we… did we win?”

Church nodded. “You had the code scrambler. All eight of the devices have been secured.”

“Eight? I… don’t remember eight.”

But then I did. And that memory brought other memories. Church watched my face as each came tumbling downhill at me. Grigor. The army of Upierczi. Everything else.

“My team,” I asked. “John Smith?”

“No,” he said.

“Khalid.”

“No.”

We sat in the silence of that for a long time.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” Church said eventually. “They were good men.”

“They were family.”

“Yes,” he said. “They were.”

“What about the others?”

“Everyone else took some hits, but they will all recover.”

In body, I thought, but in spirit? In heart? I had my doubts. There was only so much loss a person could take.

“Ghost?”

“He’s recovering. He needed some work. He had cracked ribs and lost a couple of teeth. I arranged for dental implants. Titanium.”

“How-?”

“I have a friend in the industry,” he said with a faint smile.

There was one more name, but I was afraid to ask; and I vaguely remembered a moment like this with Top. Or was that a dream? Church read it on my face. He shook his head.

“No,” he said.

(2)

Church told me all of it.

The Book of Shadows was deciphered. Circe believed that it was the way the knights confessed their “sins” to God for everything they did to fulfill the Holy Agreement. Each entry was countersigned with the letter N. Nicodemus? Probably. Bill Toomey, the head of our handwriting analysis team, said that the same person countersigned every page, but of course that can’t be right.

Can it?

Toomey was doing carbon dating of the ink on all the signatures. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read his results.

Charles LaRoque was taken out by a Hellfire missile. Very appropriate. When the Iranians picked through the rubble they found three bodies. A driver, the remains of the last Scriptor of the Red Order, and the body of a man whose identity remains a mystery.

Grigor and the Upierczi from Aghajari? Like the song says, it’s all dust in the wind.

There are probably more of them out there. There are always monsters in the dark.

But Arklight is out there too. Hunting them, with the full resources of the DMS at its disposal.

If I were one of those bloodsucking freaks, I’d kill myself before I let Lilith’s people find me. I wonder if monsters have their own version of the boogeyman. I wonder if the thing that they dread when they go to sleep at night looks like a beautiful woman with eyes that hold not the slightest trace of mercy.

Rasouli tried to flee the country, too. Mr. Church made a phone call and even though Armanihandjob was in no way our friend, he was useful as a weapon. Rasouli will probably be in prison until the Middle East becomes a sunny center of tolerance and friendship for all.

Church, the presidents of America and Iran, and a few other key people met in Switzerland to discuss the Holy Agreement. The ayatollahs hoped to edit out Islamic involvement and lay it all on the Christian Church, but that was never going to happen.

“What will happen?” I asked Rudy, when he came back to visit me.

He smiled and shook his head. “Nothing visible. Nothing that will ever make the news.”

“Why the hell not?” I demanded, but Rudy looked at me with disappointment.

“What good could possibly be served by telling the world about this? Do you think it would stop hate crimes? Do you really think that it would end the violence in the Middle East?”

I sighed and turned away from him.

“Of course it wouldn’t,” he said sadly. “It would throw gasoline on it.”

“What happened to ‘the truth will set you free’?” I growled.

He sighed. “As much as I hate to say it, Cowboy, sometimes a lie is better.”

“Ignorance is bliss? Is that our stance?”

Rudy didn’t answer, because there was no answer.

And the world? It didn’t end. It still leans heavily on a crooked axis, and it still turns.

But as the weeks passed I saw something I hadn’t expected.

Throughout the region the guns have fallen silent. Tensions are down across the Middle East. No one exactly knows why. At least, no one in the press seems to know.

Without gasoline on the fire, maybe the fire is finally going to burn itself out.

That would be nice.

We’ll see.

(3)

Violin?

They never found her body, of course.

Burned, they said, along with so many others. Human and vampire. Charred to dust, blown away by the hot winds of an unforgiving desert.

I saw Lilith, very briefly, at the joint-use base. She wouldn’t even look at me.

Everybody needs somebody to blame.

Maybe she’s right to pin it on me. Violin wasn’t just looking for the scrambler. She came looking for me. She told me that much, and it’s all we ever got to have.

(4)

The name on the young man’s passport was Gerald Hopkins. He did not look at all like the person he had once been; no one he had ever known would be able to pick him out of a lineup. People who had known him last year couldn’t even do that. The face and fingerprints of Gerald Hopkins matched the computer records. No bells or alarms rang. The airport security officers in Germany did no more than an ordinary search of the man and his possessions before passing him through.

“Have a safe flight, Mr. Hopkins,” said a cheerful man at the gate.

“Thank you,” said Hopkins, but he was not smiling. He found his seat and buckled in and sat staring out the window for the entire flight. He did not fly first class.

When his plane landed in Canada there was no one to greet him. He hired a cab and, except for the name of his hotel, Hopkins said nothing at all on the drive. The hotel was a modest one, second or third tier. He checked in, locked his door, set his bags down and spent the next full day sleeping.

When he woke up, he stumbled into the bathroom and stood naked for half an hour under the hottest spray he could endure. His skin screamed and he screamed. But the spray was loud and the walls were sturdy and nobody reported it to the front desk.

Later, he ordered room service, and while he waited he looked out at the skyline of Montreal. His mind was a furnace.

When the porter knocked, he opened the door and stood looking at the floor while the young man set up a table and laid out the meal. Hopkins gave him some cash and locked the door again when he was gone.

The food was cold before Hopkins finally sat down to eat. He removed the metal cover to see how the steak had been cooked.

There was no steak. The plate was clean. But it was not empty.

Instead there was a folded piece of paper.

Hopkins rushed to the door and checked through the peephole, but the hall was empty. He parted the curtains, but he was on the ninth floor and there was no one down on the street that looked like police or military. No SWAT.

Cautiously he crept toward the table and the note.

He was sweating, heart hammering as he picked it up.

The sheet was a single piece of legal-size computer paper folded into a small square. Hopkins carefully unfolded it. Most of the sheet was given over to a printed list of charity organizations around the world, the majority of which were devoted to poverty, clean water, and other humanitarian causes in third-world countries. None of them were high profile. Nothing that would get headlines.

Below that was a printed list of forty-seven numbered accounts and the balances of each. He knew those account numbers by heart. The amounts in each were untouched.

And below that, written in a neat hand was a short note.

The road to redemption is paved with rocks.

There are no third chances.

Do it right.

Hopkins read the note over and over again. There were only two men powerful enough to have gotten this information and arranged its delivery. He had abandoned one, and he was sure the other wanted him dead.

And yet.

The note was unsigned.

But it was not Hugo Vox’s handwriting.

The young man clutched the note to his chest. The first sob nearly broke the world. The tears burned like acid. He slid out of his seat onto the carpeted floor.

And, in the silence of his cheap hotel room, Toys wept all through the night.

(5)

Hugo Vox was grinning as he entered his study in Verona. Everything had played out perfectly. The Red Order was in ruins, and good riddance to the self-important pricks. The Tariqa were being hunted with quiet vengeance by their own people. Although they had been inactive since their leaders were killed during the invasion of Baghdad, many of them had old blood on their hands, and all of them were clearly willing to continue the centuries-old insanity. The surviving members of that sect would feel a wrath greater than anything Islam had leveled against the West.

Payback, Vox mused happily, was a real bitch.

He regretted that the knights were done, or as close to done as made no difference. They were interesting as all hell. They were one of the things that pulled him into this. Vox knew that he was a sucker for something with a biblical spin. Vampires. Bloodsucking hit men for the Church. You couldn’t make this shit up.

Shame the real story didn’t get into the press. That would have been legendary. That would be books and movies. Maybe they’d have gotten Ron White to play him. Vox loved that guy, never missed his stand-up act. Looking at him was like looking in a mirror. Well, a younger mirror.

He turned on a single light, locked the door, and crossed to his computer. He had looked for Toys on the Net, using the resources that had once belonged to the Seven Kings, but he hadn’t found him. The kid was all the way off the grid.

Vox’s smile flickered when he thought of Toys and the last, hard words between them.

I hate you, Hugo. I wish you were already dead.

Had Toys really meant that?

Probably.

Fuck.

He switched on the computer, entered his passwords, and accessed his banking records. His wealth was so scattered and so well protected that it was almost impossible to calculate. Somewhere a hair’s breadth south of one hundred billion. Nothing to piss on.

Enough to rebuild the Seven Kings.

Or, maybe find the scattered remnants of the Upierczi.

Hell, maybe both.

If he was going to live forever, he might as well have some fun.

He was smiling as he tapped in his banking codes. The screen buzzed with an error message. Mistype, he figured, and tried again. And again.

“What the fuck?”

He switched to a different bank and tried to log in.

The same thing happened.

He tried seven more, his fingers trembling with panic. Nothing.

“Goddamn son of a bitch, what the f-?”

A voice behind him said, “You’re wasting your time, Hugo.”

Vox jumped and spun around in his seat. He had not seen the figure sitting quietly in the darkness of the far side of the study. Vox had not even sensed his presence. The figure was seated in a leather chair, legs crossed, body relaxed and casual, face completely hidden by shadows.

“God…” Vox gasped, and he felt as if a hand were suddenly clamped around his throat.

The figure reached to the lamp on the nearby table and switched it on. In the yellow glow of the low-wattage bulb he looked calm, his face without expression, the lenses of his tinted glasses reflecting Vox’s shocked and terrified face.

“Deacon… Holy Christ, how’d you… How’d you…?” He could not finish the sentence.

Mr. Church lifted something from his lap. A coded cell phone. A purple one. “I received this in the mail. From a mutual friend.” He tossed it onto the floor between them. “My friends in the industry constantly amaze me with what they can do with reverse engineering. Even to the point of turning a simple phone into a tracking device.”

“No…” breathed Vox. Sweat burst from his pores.

Church said nothing.

“Is Toys alive? Did you kill him?”

“What does it matter to you?”

Vox wiped an arm across his face. “You know it fucking well matters.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why does he matter to you, Hugo?” Church asked quietly.

Vox glared at him. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“No, because you’re a heartless prick, Deacon. Ask Circe. When’s the last time you told your own daughter you loved her? When’s the last time you loved anyone?”

“You’re saying that you love Toys?”

“He’s my son.”

“Really.” Church made a statement of it, not a question.

“Why the fuck do you think I did all this?”

“I know why you did this, Hugo. It’s what you do. It’s who you are.”

“You’re wrong. That may have been true when I was running the Kings, but this-this was different. I’m giving it all to Toys. Poor dumb kid found God again. Wants to devote his life to good works, corny as that shit sounds. So what can I do? I’m dead in a box in a few months. At least I can step out on a good note.”

“Please, Hugo,” said Church mildly. “It’s just the two of us here, and I think it’s past the time when you should be lying to me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Church nodded and picked up a folder from the table. He whipped it across the floor so that it skittered to a stop with one corner under the toe of Vox’s left sandal. Vox looked down at the folder but did not reach for it. Instead he kicked it away.

The label on the folder read UPIER 531.

“Christ,” Vox gasped. “How the hell do you know about that?”

Church shrugged. “I know.”

Vox said, “Toys?”

Church didn’t answer. They sat in silence for almost a minute.

“Who took my money? You or Toys?”

“Who do you think?”

“I gave him a billion frigging dollars.”

“And took it back. I checked the records. You left him with a penny.”

Vox spread his hands. “He in custody?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Let him go, Deke,” murmured Vox. “The kid. Toys. Let him go.”

Church said nothing.

“Whatever he was when he was with Gault, that’s over. He wanted out when Gault joined the Kings. He tried to stop Gault. He even called your boy Ledger to warn him.”

Church said nothing.

“This stuff-Kings and intrigues and all that shit-it broke him. Or… or maybe it healed him. I don’t know. I’m not a philosopher and I’m not a priest. All I know is that he’s done. He’s really going to do as much good as he can with that money.”

Church said nothing.

Vox licked his lips. “You know the story about the guy who wrote ‘Amazing Grace.’ John Newton. Started out as a slaver then one night, right off the coast of Donegal, a storm whipped up and was going to sink the ship. Newton prayed to God to save the ship and everyone aboard. They weathered the storm and by the time the ship docked, Newton had gone through a spiritual conversion. Worked the rest of his life to abolish slavery. Became a minister. That’s Toys, Deke. He’s hit that same moment… and after he left me, I think I did too. Big perspective check when your own son leaves you.”

Mr. Church traced a small circle on the arm of the chair. “As usual, Hugo, you twist the truth to get what you want. John Newton didn’t renounce the slave trade for four more years, and he captained slave ships until 1754. It was only when he had a stroke and feared that he was going to die that he underwent that conversion. Even then… he continued to invest in the slave trade.”

Vox smiled. “My version’s better.”

“Your version is a lie.”

“Toys, though.”

“You took all his money and threw him to the wolves. If that’s your attempt at tough love, you should reconsider your strategies.”

“Hugo… when I look at this whole thing, all the players, all the factions, all of the secret agendas, it doesn’t add up to anything. It’s chaotic. But as I sat here I believe I figured it out.”

“Think so, huh?”

“It’s simple, when viewed from a certain distance. When you got involved in this, you were dying and you wanted to throw yourself a going away party. My guess is that the Upier 531 is working. You’re going to live. You don’t want anything to blow up because that would close the candy shop for you. And you used everyone-your allies, your friends, and me-to cancel each other out. I thought it was clumsy at first, but now I appreciate it. It’s so utterly chaotic that no one would ever sort it out; there are too many missing pieces. However I know you, Hugo. Those pieces are irrelevant because they wouldn’t make a clear picture no matter how they were assembled. Chaos is the best way to hide your tracks.”

Vox smiled, but he neither confirmed nor denied Church’s allegations.

“And if the nukes had gone off? What then? No, don’t bother to answer. You wouldn’t even wait for the dust to settle. You’d find a safe place to build your next web and start all over again. Now that you have the Upier 531, there will be no end to the chaos, will there?”

Vox said nothing, but his eyes shifted toward the door and back.

Church half-smiled. “Please, feel free to try and run.”

Vox’s face underwent a change. He let the mask of pretense slip away.

“Come on, Deacon…” he said. “Give me a pass. I’m no threat to you anymore.”

Church continued to trace the circle.

“I’m begging you,” said Vox. “I’ll get down on my knees if that’s what you want.”

“Sure,” said Mr. Church. “Let’s see you on your knees.”

The big man blinked at Church. “Really?”

“Really.”

Vox licked his lips again and slid out of his chair onto his knees. The jolt knocked a single sharp cough out of him, but it was a small thing. A fading echo of what was. Upier 531 was doing its job. They both knew it.

“Please,” said Vox. “I’m on my fucking knees and I’m begging you.”

“Betraying me and betraying your country is one thing,” Church said. “You provided the Sabbatarians and the Upierczi with lists of all of the DMS staff and their families.”

Vox licked his lips. “Nobody got hurt, did they? You stopped all that shit. It was a scare tactic, a diversion.”

Mr. Church studied him for a long time. An unbearable time for Vox.

“Circe’s name was on that list, Hugo.”

“Hey, come on, Deke… you know I’d never hurt a hair on her head. You know that.”

Without comment or change of facial expression, Mr. Church reached inside his suit coat and withdrew a pistol. He shot Hugo Vox once in the heart and once in the head.

The bullets were low caliber. There were no exit wounds and Vox’s body was solid enough to withstand the foot-pounds of impact. He stayed there on his knees for three full seconds before he canted backward and collapsed onto the floor.

Mr. Church laid the pistol on the table and folded his hands in his lap.

He did not move at all for over an hour.

(6)

Dr. Rudy Sanchez sat next to Dr. Circe O’Tree in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. It was midafternoon, and a tour group was following a guide up a side aisle as the man droned on about how this church had been burned, sacked, ravaged by earthquakes, and rebuilt several times over the years. Circe had her eyes closed, listening to her own thoughts, but Rudy eavesdropped on the guide. The story seemed appropriate to all that had happened.

“It’s different,” Circe said quietly and Rudy turned in surprise, wondering how the comment fit the speech.

“What?”

“The world,” she said. “It’s different.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding.

“Today and tomorrow and from now on. It’s different.” Circe wiped away a tear.

“I know.”

The tour guide moved off toward reliquaries containing bones of dead saints, his flock following, cameras flashing.

“It’s not fair.”

“I know.”

“The dark isn’t the dark anymore. There are things in it.” Circe bared her teeth in an almost feral snarl. “I don’t want it to be real.”

“No.”

“But it is.”

“Yes.”

“Vampires,” she said. “God help us.”

Rudy wrapped his arm around her and held her close and looked up at the statues of the holy people who were supposed to keep them all safe.

“ Dios mio, ” he whispered.

(7)

The bishop and the gathered priests stood in the multicolored rays of light which slanted down through the tall stained glass windows. The bishop stood in the Great Entrance of the Liturgy, flanked by assisting priests, watching as the young candidate for ordination came forward, carrying the Aer-chalice veil-over his head, following the procession of other members of this holy event.

The bishop took the Aer from the candidate and covered the chalice and diskos with it. A priest brought a chair for the bishop to sit in, setting it in front and to the left of the Holy Table.

Two priests flanked the candidate and brought him through the Holy Doors, escorting him three times around the altar, allowing the young man to pause and kiss each corner of the Holy Table. At the end of each circuit the candidate bent to kiss the bishop’s palitza and right hand. The priests guided him then to the southwest corner of the Holy Table. The young man knelt and rested his forehead on the table’s edge. The bishop then placed his omophor and right hand over the ordinand’s head and read the prayer of ordination.

The other clergy quietly recited a litany amongst themselves and the faithful in the pews chanted “Kyrie eleison.”

When the prayers were completed the bishop clothed the new priest in the sacerdotal vestments. As each garment was placed, the people in the pews cried out, “ Axios.”

He is worthy.

Throughout the ceremony the man looked slightly dazed, as if this was all such a mystery and a wonder to him. In the pews, his parents beamed at him. They had never figured this lad for the priesthood, not when he was a boy. But God has His own needs and His own ways. If the call comes, then what man of true faith can turn away?

“By what name will you be known as you serve God?” asked the bishop. It was a formality, rooted in old traditions, echoed down through time since popes had chosen not to take the name of Peter out of respect for the first of their line. These days, priests usually kept their own name. But the young man surprised the bishop.

“I will be Nicodemus,” he said.

The bishop nodded, his approval outweighing his surprise. Nicodemus was a righteous name, and there had been many priests from right here in Verona who had chosen to serve God with it.

“Receive thou this pledge, and preserve it whole and unharmed until thy last breath, because thou shalt be held to an accounting therefore in the second and terrible Coming of our great Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

The new priest turned toward the gathered people as the colored light from the stained glass windows patterned his face. His eyes no longer looked confused or doubtful. Instead, the mingled lights seemed to paint them in shades of green and brown.

He smiled and smiled and smiled.

(8)

My plane touched down at Dulles on a blistering hot afternoon in August. When I walked out of the terminal the sun felt like it was a foot above my head. Hellish hot.

Ghost walked beside me. Silent, loyal, alert. When he smiled at the tourists, sunlight glinted off of his four new titanium teeth. I think he liked showing them off.

I saw my Explorer sitting in a no-parking zone. The big Echo Team tactical vehicle, Black Betty, was parked behind it. Bunny leaned against my fender. Top sat in the passenger seat, the door open. Lydia stood near Bunny. Just the three of them. Ghost wagged his tail when he saw them.

No one said anything. I shook hands with Bunny and Lydia, nodded to Top, who nodded back.

A cop stood a dozen yards away, trying to give us the look for blocking a loading zone. We ignored him.

I put my bags in the back and climbed behind the wheel. Top patted me on the shoulder and got out to join the others in the TacV. In silent convoy we headed out of the airport for the ride to Baltimore. We could have gotten a DMS helo, but this was fine.

As we cleared the airport traffic I took a deep breath and let it out. There was half a hitch to it, almost a sob.

Ghost laid his head on my thigh and whined softly. I stroked his fur.

When we were on the highway my phone rang. I didn’t want to answer it. I didn’t want to hear from Church or Rudy or any-damn-one else. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to get drunk.

But the DMS owns my ass, so I snatched up the phone without looking to see who I was going to growl at. “What?”

“So,” she said, “how many brownie points do I have now?”

Ghost raised his head and whuffed.

I smiled.

“Hello, Violin,” I said.