Deep Silence

CHAPTER ONE

“Joe Ledger.”

I looked up from the gravestone to see three big guys in the kind of dark suits Feds wear when they want to be intimidating.

I wasn’t intimidated.

They weren’t wearing topcoats because it was a chilly damn day in Baltimore. There was frost sparkling on the grass around Helen’s grave. Winter birds huddled together in the bare trees and the sun was a white nothing behind a sheet of tinfoil-gray clouds.

“Who’s asking?” I said.

“We need you to come with us,” said the point man. He looked like Lurch from the Addams Family movies. Too tall, too pale, and with a ghoulish face. The other guys might as well have been wearing signs that said “Goon #1” and “Goon #2.” I almost smiled. I’d been fronted like this before. Hell, I’d even been fronted here before. Didn’t scare me then, didn’t scare me now. Didn’t like it either time, though.

“I didn’t ask what you needed, chief,” I said, giving Lurch a bright smile. “I asked who you are.”

“Doesn’t matter who we are,” he said, and he smiled, too.

“Yeah, pretty sure it does,” I said, keeping it neutral.

“You need to come with us,” Lurch repeated as he took a step toward me. He looked reasonably fit, but his weight was on his lead foot and he tended to gesticulate while he spoke. Whoever trained him to do this kind of stuff wasn’t very good at it, or Lurch was simply dumb. He should have had his goons surround me in a wide three-point approach, with none of them directly in the others’ lines of fire, and none of them close enough for me to hit or to use as a shield against the others. It always pissed me off when professionals acted like amateurs.

“Badge me or blow me,” I suggested.

Goon #2 pulled back the flap of his jacket to expose the Glock he wore on his belt. The holster looked new; the gun looked like he’d never used it for anything except trying to overcompensate.

I ignored him. “Here’s the thing, sparky,” I said to Lurch in my best I’m-still-being-reasonable voice, “you either don’t know who I am or you’re operating with limited intelligence. And I mean that in every sense of the word.”

“You’re Joe Ledger,” he said.

“ Captain Joe Ledger,” I corrected.

His sneer increased. “Not anymore, Mister Ledger.”

“Says who?”

“Says the president of the United goddamn States.”

They were standing in a kind of inverted vee, with Lurch at the point and the goons on either side. Goon #2 had his jacket open; Goon #1 did not. Nor did Lurch. If they were actually experienced agents, they could unbutton and draw in a little over one second. Goon #2 would beat them to the draw by maybe a quarter second.

That wasn’t going to be enough time for them.

“Going to ask one more time,” I said quietly, still smiling. “Show me your identification. Do it now and do it smart.”

Lurch gave me a ninja death stare for three full seconds but then he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a leather identification wallet, flipped it open, and held it four inches from my nose. Secret Service.

“Someone could have made a phone call and gotten me in,” I said.

“No,” he said, without explaining. “Now, here’s how it’s going to play out. You’re going to put your hands on your head, fingers laced, while we pat you down. If you behave, we won’t have to cuff you. If you act out, we’ll do a lot more than cuff you, understand, smart guy?”

“‘Act out’?” I echoed. “That’s adorable. Not sure I’ve ever heard a professional use that phrasing before.”

“They said he’d be an asshole, Tony,” said Goon #1.

Tony — Lurch — nodded and contrived to look sad. “Okay, then we do it the hard way.”

All three of them went for their guns.

Like I said, they didn’t have enough time for that.

CHAPTER TWO

I was close enough to kill him, but that wasn’t my play.

So, instead I stepped fast into Lurch and hit him in the chest with a palm-heel shot, using all of my mass and sudden acceleration to put some real juice into it. He wasn’t set for it at all and fell backward, hard and fast, into Goon #2. They both went down in a tangle. I kept moving forward and kicked Goon #1 in what my old jujitsu instructor used to call the “entertainment center.” I wasn’t trying to do permanent damage — and there are a lot of creative ways to do that — but I wanted to make a point. I made it with the reinforced rubber tip of my New Balance running shoe. He folded like a badly erected tent. I pivoted and chop-kicked Lurch across the mouth as he tried to simultaneously rise and draw his gun. The running shoes were new and the tread deep and hard. Ah well.

Lurch spun away, spitting blood and a tooth onto the grass. I stamped down on his hand while I took his gun away and tossed it behind me. Then I reached down and gave Goon #2 a double-tap of knuckle punches on either side of his nose. If he had sinus issues he would have a mother of a migraine for days. If he didn’t, he’d only have the migraine for the rest of today. I took his gun away, too.

Then I pivoted back to Goon #1, who was wandering feebly on his hands and knees, drool hanging from slack lips, eyes goggling. I gave him a nasty little Thai-boxing knee kick to flip him onto his back, drilled a corkscrew punch to his solar plexus, and took his gun for my collection.

In the movies, fight scenes take several minutes. There’s a lot of flash and drama, and when either the good guy or bad guy knocks the other guy down, he lets him get up. As if fights are ever supposed to be fair. For me, fairness began and ended with me not killing them. Every other consideration centered on winning right here, right now, with zero seconds wasted. That’s how real fights work.

This fight took maybe two seconds. Maybe less.

Not sure if these fucktards knew what they were getting into. They forced this game, though, which meant I got to set the rules. Sucks to be them. I stole their cuffs and, with a few additional love taps to encourage cooperation, cuffed them all together — wrists to ankles — and added a few zip ties from my pocket to keep it all interesting. The result is they looked like a piece of performance art sprawled there in the icy cemetery grass. None of them were able to talk yet, so I picked their pockets, taking IDs, wallets, key rings with car and handcuff keys. I ripped the curly wires out of their ears and patted them down to reveal small-caliber throwdown pieces strapped to their ankles. A glance showed me that the guns had their serial numbers filed off. The kind used during accidental or illegal killings and then planted on the deceased to build a case for resisting arrest. Wonder if that’s what they’d had planned for me.

There was no one around, so I pulled out my cell phone and made a call. My boss, Mr. Church, answered on the second ring.

“I thought you were on vacation,” he said by way of answering.

“Me too. Listen,” I said, “remember a few years ago when some federal mooks braced me while I was visiting Helen’s grave? Well, it must be rerun season, because three of them tried it again. Same place.”

“What’s the damage?” he asked.

“I think I tore a fingernail.”

“Captain…”

“They’ll recover,” I said, and gave him the details, including reading off their names. “You have any idea why this happened?”

“Not yet. Get clear of the area and then find a quiet place where you can sweep your car with an Anteater. Then go to ground and wait for my call.”

The line went dead. The Anteater was a state-of-the-art doohickey designed to find even the best active or passive listening system.

Speaking of my car, I could hear muffled barking in that direction. My big white combat shepherd, Ghost, was supposed to be sleeping in the car. He was up and clearly felt as cranky as I did. Lucky for the goon squad that I left the dog in the warm rental car or they’d need a lot more than ice packs and some career counseling.

I pocketed my phone, then dug an earbud out of my trouser pocket and pressed it to the inside of my outer ear. It looks like a freckle. I put the speaker dot on my upper lip by the corner of my mouth. Then I squatted beside Lurch, who was semiconscious and trying to muster the moral courage to give me another death stare. I patted his cheek as a warning, which he chose to ignore.

“You better like Gitmo, motherfu—” Lurch began, and I patted his cheek again, this time hard enough to dim the lights on Broadway.

“Whoever told you that you’re good at this is not your friend,” I said. “Whoever sent you made a mistake. You came at me here— here—which is an even bigger mistake. Be real careful that it doesn’t cost you more than you can afford to pay, feel me?”

He almost said something else, but didn’t. He was handcuffed to two guys who were probably supposed to be top-class muscle. I’d handed all of them their asses and hadn’t worked up a sweat doing it, so my friend here was probably having a come-to-Jesus moment. His eyes looked wet and his gaze slid away. I picked up the tooth he’d lost, showed it to him, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“Now,” I said calmly, “tell me why you were ordered to arrest me.”

“Look, I–I mean they didn’t…,” he stammered. Then he took a breath and tried it again. “The word came down to bring you in and not kiss your ass doing it.”

“Who cut the order?”

“My supervisor said it came straight from the top,” said Lurch. “Straight from the Oval Office.”

“Listen to me,” I said quietly. “I can give you a pass for fucking with me. You’re following orders. Stupid orders, but orders. I don’t hold grudges for that kind of thing. But you came here. You came to where someone very special to me is buried. Of all the places you could have come, you made it this place. That’s on you. You’re the crew chief here and you could have waited until I was done and walked out of the cemetery. You didn’t. That crosses a line with me. I don’t forgive that. So, listen very closely and believe me when I tell you that if I ever see you again — here, or anywhere; I don’t care where it is or why — I’m going to kill you. I’ll make it hurt, too, sparky, and I’ll make it last. Now, look me in the eye and tell me that you understand.”

I leaned back and let him take a look. He did.

“Tell me,” I said.

He licked his lips. What he said was, “I’m sorry.”

I punched two of his front teeth out. One fast hit. He fell back so hard his head bounced off the turf.

“I didn’t ask for an apology,” I said without raising my voice. “Your apology doesn’t mean shit, because you already crossed the line. I asked you to tell me you understand.”

He started to say something. Don’t know what, but he bit down on it with the teeth he had left because it wasn’t going to be what I wanted to hear. He was crying now; nose running and fat tears rolling down to mingle with the blood smeared around his mouth and on his chin.

“I…” He stopped, coughed, tried again. “You won’t… see me again.”

“Tell your dickhead friends, too.” I straightened. “And tell whoever sent you that this isn’t over. I’m going to pay someone a visit. Tell them that.”

He nodded but did not dare say another word. There are times you can trash talk and times when you need to consider how comprehensive your healthcare plan really is.

The sun was trying to burn through the clouds and the birds were watching silently in the trees. I almost said something else to him, but left it. If he didn’t get it now, then he was unteachable. So, I left him there with his buddies, cuffed in a tangle.

I took all of their personal belongings and weapons back to my car. As I got in, Ghost gave me a deeply reproachful look, as if to say that he couldn’t leave me alone for five minutes without me stepping on my own dick.

“Not my fault, fuzzball,” I said.

He seemed to read something in me that changed his attitude from high anxiety to wanting to comfort another member of his pack. He’d never known Helen, but he knew this place. He nuzzled me with a cold nose and whined softly until I bent and kissed his head. There were tears burning in my eyes.

They should never have come here. Those motherfuckers.

I started my car and drove over to where a big Crown Victoria with federal plates was parked. I got out and casually slashed the right front tire. I used Lurch’s key to pop the locks, but a quick search showed that the vehicle was clean. No warrants, no nothing other than drive-through coffee. One cup was untouched and still hot, so I took it; but one sip revealed the awful truth that it was decaf. I poured it over the front seat and dropped the empty cardboard cup on the floor.

Ghost and I drove away at a casual speed. If anyone saw me they’d think I was calm, cool, and composed.

Was I scared? Yeah. I was absolutely terrified and, sadly, that was not a joke.

INTERLUDE ONE

Valen Oruraka was deep inside a dream of chase and escape.

He was aboard a smuggler’s submarine, running from something unspeakable. The more he ran, the longer the hull was, stretching out before him like an endless road. Room to run, sure; but he could never seem to run fast enough. When he turned to look over his shoulder it was closer. Always closer.

“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” rose the cry. “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

The thing had no real shape. It was a shadow that roiled and twisted, lunging out with amorphous pseudopods and whiskery feelers and clacking claws.

Valen screamed as he ran, and the scream filled the hotel room. No one came to investigate, though. He was aware of how bad and how loud his nightmares had become over the last year, and he often booked a corner suite and slept in whatever standard bed, foldout, or couch was farthest from a connecting wall. Music blasted all night from his iPad, and that was directed at the door to the hallway.

He slept without his hearing aid, and so his own desperate cries never woke him. Nor did the shrieks of the ghosts he had created with every person he killed.

The night crawled on and he ran through his dreams and the sheets knotted like snakes around his naked thighs.

And then the dream ended with a touch. Bang. All of the horrors, gone. The submarine, the darkness, the capering shadows. Gone. He snapped awake, one hand darting blindly under the pillow for the small automatic he always slept with, the other whip ping to block any attack. The pistol was not under his pillow; his scrabbling fingers felt nothing at all.

He froze and peered into the gloom. A figure stood above him, but as he turned it moved back. Valen blinked his eyes clear and the shadow shapes from his dream organized themselves into a human shape. A woman’s shape, of that there was absolutely no doubt. There was also no doubt that she held a gun in one hand. His gun.

The woman leaned over and turned on the bedside light, and smiled. Then she dropped the magazine from the pistol, ejected the round from the chamber, caught it with a deft dart of her hand, and set the component parts on the bedside table. She did not speak because she knew he could not hear without his device. So, in silence she stood up and walked slowly, like a hunting cat, to the foot of the bed. She was very tall, with the strong shoulders and the muscle tone of the competitive skier she’d been twenty years ago.

Valen kept blinking until his eyes were clear as he fished for his hearing aid and put it on.

“Gadyuka,” he murmured. “What are you doing here?”

Gadyuka — the viper — smiled as she slowly unbuttoned her sheer blouse. She was in no hurry, but the deliberate movement of her long fingers pulled Valen the rest of the way out of the dream and very much into the now. Beneath the blouse was a pink underwire bra with a subtle paisley print of pink, orange, and yellow with lace trim, a satin bow in the front, and rhinestones in the center of the bow. It was more persuasively feminine than anything Valen had assumed she would wear. But then again, what kind of bras do stone killers wear? She unclasped the bra and let it fall, revealing full breasts the color of snow. Then she slid down the zipper on the hip of her smoke-gray skirt and let it fall, too. Her underwear was a medium bubblegum pink, with lace trim on legs and waist.

“What are you doing?” he said, his words slurred with sleep, surprise, and confusion.

“Maybe you’re dreaming,” she said.

“But…,” he began, but she shook her head, and that was the last of the conversation between them.

Valen licked his lips. His pulse was still rapid from the nightmare, but now it beat even harder. Her nipples were a subtle shade of pink, and hard, with the areolas pebbled from the cool air in the room. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties and pulled them down, revealing a trimmed pubic bush only a shade darker than the white-blond of her long hair.

She was aggressively, unbearably, mercilessly female, and Valen felt himself grow hard while also physically diminishing in her presence. He was a tough man, a killer and a fighter, and was regarded as dangerous by nearly everyone, but he knew that he was not a match for this Russian viper. She was so completely in command of herself that she seemed to crackle with energy and vitality.

When she climbed into bed it was she who took him. And she took him as many times as she wanted.

Hours later, Valen Oruraka lay totally spent, which shook out to feeling fully alive and yet near death. He was greased with sweat and covered with scratches and bites and the heady scent of her. His breathing was bad and his heart felt like a nuclear reactor on overload. The bed was a wreck. Some of the room was a wreck. He was a disaster.

Gadyuka sat up in bed, the damp sheets across her lap, breasts bare in the morning light, as she rolled a joint with great care, licked it, smoothed it, and put it between her full lips. Then she lit it and took two deep hits, held them in her lungs for a long time, and exhaled high into the air.

“Why are you here?” he croaked.

“Do I need a reason?” she asked, speaking in Russian with a Pomor accent. He knew that she was from the north, but that was all. Valen once considered doing some research on her but gave it up as likely a suicidal hobby. People he feared were afraid of Gadyuka, so he feared her, too.

It was like that with the people they worked for, as well. All of the Novyy Sovetskiy senior committee members were inflexible and unforgiving when it came to matters of security. Errors simply could not be allowed and so there were ten times as many safeguards as with any other plan in the history of modern warfare. There was only one punishment for breaking the rules. One punishment with no hope of repeal, parole, or pardon. That was only common sense.

He struggled to sit up. “You don’t walk across the street without a good damn reason. So what do you want?”

“I’m here to give you a job. Everyone is pleased with how you handled the recovery near Hawaii. That was as much a test as it was necessary to the goals of the Party. Now it’s time for you to tackle a much bigger project, and you will do it well because I told the senior members that you would.”

He looked at her naked body and cocked an eyebrow. “So… what? Are you my graduation present?”

“Hardly,” she snorted. “No, it’s a personal policy thing with me. I don’t fuck minions.”

“You lost me.…”

“Did you ever see that American movie Meet the Parents? Robert De Niro tells his daughter’s boyfriend that he’s now in the ‘circle of trust.’ Remember that? Well, welcome to my circle of trust.”

“Um… thanks? And, what does that mean, exactly?”

“It means life is about to get more interesting, Valen. In Star Wars—the original one, I mean — Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke that he’s just taken his first step in a larger world.”

“I didn’t know you were a movie buff.”

“I am. And it’s one of the things I’ll miss most about America once it’s gone.”

Valen flinched. “Gone?”

“Well, when it is no longer the bloated whore that it is.”

“Wishful thinking. Even after the election tampering and e-mail hacking and all that, they’re still the biggest gorilla in the jungle.”

Her smile was enigmatic. “That,” she said, “is why I’m here, lapochka.”

CHAPTER THREE

The president of the United States sat at the head of the table and smiled at the men gathered around him. The Joint Chiefs; Admiral Lucas Murphy, the White House chief of staff; several top advisors; Jennifer VanOwen, the president’s science advisor; and a few close friends to whom he had granted this highest level of security. Most of them looked attentive and mildly surprised since there was no active crisis.

The president turned to General Frank Ballard, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the ranking general of the U.S. Air Force. “Frank, I want to ask you a very important question. There was a program that was canceled by my predecessor. Majestic Three. M3, I believe it was called.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” said Ballard. “Majestic Three was shut down and all of its resources confiscated and assets reallotted.”

“Tell me something, General, did the Majestic Three program do us any good?”

“Good?” The general shook his head. “Hardly, sir. The governors of Majestic Three very nearly caused World War Three.”

“That isn’t the question I asked, is it? Is it, General? No. I asked if the M3 project did us any measurable good over the years.”

“Well, sir,” said the general, clearly uncomfortable. He fidgeted and cut looks at the other officers around the table, but no one was willing to meet his eye.

“Do I need to phrase it in smaller words, General?” asked the president. “Or do I need to ask the next person to sit in your chair?”

“It is, um, fair to say that we have benefitted greatly from the various M3 projects,” said the general. “New or improved metallurgy, polymers, fiber optics, aircraft design—”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the entire stealth aircraft project come out of what they were doing?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“And isn’t the stealth program what’s put us ahead in the arms race and kept us there?”

“To an, ah, degree, sir, but—”

“Then I’d say that the good it’s done pretty well outweighs the bad, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m not sure I can agree with that, sir. One of the T-craft developed by Howard Shelton very nearly destroyed Beijing. Others were being launched to destroy Shanghai, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang…”

“Which might have been a good damn thing,” said the president, and every face around the table went pale. “No, don’t look at me like that. Sure, it would have been a tragic loss of life, but overall, we’d have accomplished world peace. A lasting peace. We would have insured that American values were instituted around the globe.”

The room was utterly silent. The president smiled as if all of the gaping officers and advisors had nodded in agreement.

Jennifer VanOwen spoke into the silence. Over the last few years the science advisor had hitched her star to the president’s, even when he was only a candidate, and — even through staff cuts and public controversy — VanOwen had managed to stay out of the news and out of the limelight. A lot of the people in the president’s inner circle were afraid of her because she always seemed to know something about them; things that no one else knew. She did; but because she seldom used her knowledge as anything other than an implied threat to support the president, they simply either deferred to her or steered clear. A surprising number of power players around her knelt to put their heads on the chopping block, but among the survivors it was generally believed VanOwen was the one keeping that blade sharp. When she spoke, the president listened.

“Mr. President,” she said quietly, “the Majestic program, like all advanced and highly classified defense projects, was always potentially dangerous. The Manhattan Project was dangerous, and yet that ended World War Two and transformed the United States from a powerful nation into this world’s first true global superpower. Howard Shelton had his faults, no doubt, but he and the other governors of M3 were working toward a goal of an unbeatable and indisputably powerful America. One that took the concept of ‘superpower’ to a new and unmatchable level. With firmer and more courageous guidance from your predecessor, we might now have ended all wars forever. Instead, he was killed. Perhaps ‘executed’ is not too strong a word.”

“Now wait a minute, Jennifer,” cried the general. “That’s a pretty dangerous word to throw around. You weren’t even here when the Department of Military Sciences went up against M3.”

“No, General,” she replied coldly. “ You were. And now Howard Shelton is dead. He can neither explain his actions nor speak to his motives. There was no due process. There was not even the slightest attempt to allow him to offer any other version of what happened. Instead we have an after-action report written by the man who killed him. With other reports filed by that man’s team. All biased, all of them in lockstep with an agreed-upon agenda.”

“That’s hardly—”

The president cut him off. “There were three people running Majestic Three?”

“Yes, Mr. President. Three governors,” said VanOwen. “The second man, Alfred Bonetti, was also executed by Captain Ledger and his DMS goon squad. The third is a woman, Yuina Hoshino, and she’s in prison serving thirty to life.”

“Okay, okay,” said the president, “so maybe the bad apples are out of the basket. That’s fine, that’s okay. We can discuss them another time. Let’s see about putting some people we trust in charge of the program. We have people we can trust, right? We have the best people working for us. Get me a list of names, General. I want it on my desk this afternoon.”

“In charge…?” echoed the general, aghast. “Are you seriously considering restarting the Majestic program after everything that’s happened?”

“It’s my program now, General, or is someone else’s name on my door? You know the door I mean, right? Nice big office, kind of oval shaped? That’s mine. That’s where I work. That means I get to do whatever I want to do. That means I have the power to do what I want. Me. My power.” He placed his palms flat on the table and looked around, clearly quite happy with himself. “Ladies and gentlemen, to be perfectly clear, yes… we are going to restart the Majestic program. Only this time the president will be kept in the loop. This time the Majestic Three program will be my program. I am going to save this country. That’s what the history books are going to say. Do I hear any arguments?”

No one spoke. No one dared.

The president leaned back in his chair and smiled. It was good to be the king.

INTERLUDE TWO

Gadyuka smoked, held, considered the curling wisp coming off the end of the joint, then exhaled with a smile. “In your file, there is a notation about a man you knew when you went to college in America. A Greek.”

“Aristotle Kostas,” Valen said. “Ari. Sure. What about him?”

“His family is involved with the Mediterranean black market?”

Valen grunted. “The Kostas family is the Mediterranean black market. And they are a big chunk of the Middle East and North African black markets. Actually, last time I spoke with Ari he had big plans on taking the family business global.”

“Bigger than the Turk… what’s his name? Ohan?”

“Parallel. They each have their specialties and they do some business together, but as Ari told me, it’s a big world, and so far Ohan hasn’t tried to take the wrong piece of it.”

Gadyuka nodded as if she already knew it and was confirming that he did. “When’s the last time you spoke with him?”

“Maybe eight years ago. There was a college reunion thing and we went to it. Kind of an ironic appearance because neither of us give much of a shit about Caltech. It was a school.”

“He read business and archaeology, and you read geology and seismology,” she said, amused. “What on earth inspired you to read those subjects?”

“Ari’s choices were all about positioning himself to take over the family business, with maybe a small bias for the antiquities market, which he correctly predicted would go up. He’s made his rich family richer.”

“And you?” asked Gadyuka. “Why study those sciences?”

Valen absently reached out for the joint, took a hit, and held it while he thought of how to answer. He blew smoke up into the darkness gathered on the ceiling.

“When I was a boy,” he said, “my family lived in Chelyabinsk. We were not wealthy by any stretch, but we had enough. And to spare, I suppose. My mother was the sister of Abram Golovin. When my parents were killed in a car accident, I was sent to Ukraine to live with my uncle and his family. This was in 1985. The wall was still up and we were still the Soviet Union. Forever ago.” He sighed, took another hit, and then passed the joint back. “I loved my uncle. He was a good man, a decent man. He was a Communist and to him that meant something. To him, the Party was not the corrupt and decaying thing that they tell children in school nowadays. Back then it was a glorious ideal.”

“You are lecturing,” said Gadyuka mildly. “You are doing what the Americans call ‘preaching to the choir. ’”

He nodded. “Sorry. But I get that way when I think about Uncle Abram. When I think about Dr. Abram Golovin. Chief structural engineer at Chernobyl. A man whose books on building nuclear power plants were taught in the best universities. He taught me so much, you see. He explained the science of it. All of it, from A to Zed. From selecting the site and doing the geological surveys of the area, to working with architects to design and build a perfect facility, and to maintaining it despite the enormous pressures of cooling water, wastewater, nuclear waste management… the lot.”

Gadyuka and Valen handed the joint back and forth. It was getting small now, so she pinched it out and rolled another while Valen talked about his uncle.

“And then,” said Valen with a tightness in his voice, “on my eighth birthday, it all fell apart. 26 April, 1986. We woke to the sound of sirens. There were screams and explosions and people were fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. I stared out of my bedroom window and saw that the sky was on fire. Strange colors, too. Red and yellow and orange, but also a green hue. None of the papers ever mentioned that part, but I saw it clear as day. It was there for several minutes, and then it was gone. Everything was gone. My uncle was gone.”

He took the joint from Gadyuka but thought better of it and handed it back.

“They blamed him, of course,” said Valen. “Everyone did. They said that it was a structural fault, or a poor geological report. Oh, I know what you’ll say — that some people have lobbied pretty heavily to say that it was operator error, but in the reports that mattered, they said the plant was not designed to safety standards, in effect, and incorporated unsafe features and that inadequate safety analysis was performed. A scapegoat was needed, and they picked Uncle Abram because he was from Ukraine, not from Russia. That mattered then. In the eyes of the world, it mattered. In terms of propaganda, it mattered. The family was disgraced. I was shipped back to Russia and my cousins, my mother’s sisters, went into the system and I never heard from them again. Siberia, I suppose, though why they should be punished is beyond me. I was forbidden to even mention my uncle’s name. My own surname, Sokolov, was changed to the absurd one I have now. Do you know that it has no actual meaning? I heard a joke once that it was something they made up in some ministry office, and saddled me with it because no one else would have the name and everyone who mattered would instantly know who I am and the shame I carry. Perhaps I’d have even vanished into a camp, except for the fact that my father’s family had just enough pull to get me into a state school.”

Gadyuka turned on her side and stroked his thigh. “But…?” she prompted.

“But I don’t believe that. My uncle was a brilliant and diligent man. He checked everything twice, three times. He never left the slightest thing to chance.”

“You were a boy, Valen.”

He shook his head. “I know, but I was observant, even then. Uncle Abram always joked that I had an insatiable mind. Like a shark, always looking for something new to eat. It’s true. Always has been. So, when I was a little older, I managed to get hold of his research, his studies, as much of it as I could legally obtain. I’ve spent my life learning the things I needed to learn in order to understand it and then validate it.”

“What if you’d found a flaw?”

“Then I’d have gotten a measure of peace from that,” said Valen sharply. “I could have hated Uncle Abram like everyone else and been part of the crowd. But… no. I even went over those studies with my professors at Caltech. They all agreed that Chernobyl was sited correctly and built with great precision. Which left me with a puzzle. Why had it failed? What really caused it all to fall apart?” He sighed, then turned to her. “Why do you ask?”

“Because if you do what I want you to do, you may have the opportunity to clear your uncle’s name. And you will be doing a great service to our people.”

He gaped at her.

“Lovely myshka,” she murmured, a smile curling the corners of her mouth. “When you read your uncle’s research, did you read the report titled ‘Anomalous and Incidental Minerals Recovered’?”

“Yes, of course. It was a list of various minerals found during excavation, but which had little or no significance.”

“Did you, by any chance, take note of something called L. quartz?”

“I don’t recall offhand.”

“The L stands for a word. Lemurian, like the lost island in those stories. There is a white version, which is common. Not this, though. It is a vibrant green. It’s exceptionally rare, and exceptionally important to your new project,” she said. “Just like the quartz you were so clever to find for me in that submarine. I want you and your little black marketer friend, Ari Kostas, to find more of it. I want you to find all of it. Beg, borrow, or steal.”

CHAPTER FOUR

We drove around for a while, watching to see if we picked up a tail. And we did. Ghost caught me glowering into the rearview mirror and turned to bare his titanium teeth through the window.

“It’s smoked glass, Einstein,” I told him. “They can’t even see you.”

He gave an eloquent fart and continued to snarl. I cracked a window.

The follow car was the same make and model of blue government Crown Victoria.

“Okay, kids,” I said, “if you want to play, then let’s have some jollies.”

For the next ten minutes I made a whole bunch of random turns, U-turns, and even cut down a wide alley between factories. The driver of the follow car was good, but he was probably getting smug because he thought he was keeping up with someone who was attempting to flee. I was not in a fleeing mood, because the more I thought about the first bunch of assholes bracing me at Helen’s grave, the madder I got.

Church was no help, because he was still making calls, and when I got Aunt Sallie on the line, she told me to: “Stop bothering the grown-ups, stop whining like a girl, and grow a set.”

The follow car kept up with me, and I began to wonder if I was making a mistake by judging them according to the three clown-shoes I roughed up at the cemetery. Maybe I was also letting my anger cloud my thinking.

Thunder suddenly boomed overhead and it began to rain. Kind of a dramatic bit of affirmation that my gloomy musings were correct, but that was fine. I tapped three digits into the keypad on the steering column to activate the MindReader Q1 artificial intelligence system.

“Calpurnia,” I said, “can we use pigeon drones in this kind of weather?”

“Sure, as long as the wind doesn’t pick up.”

Bug, or some other maniac on his team, gave the AI a sexy, late-night-jazz-radio voice.

“Cool. Let’s put a couple of them in the air.”

“Of course, Joseph,” she said, which made me feel all tingly. “What are they looking for?”

“Access traffic cams,” I said. “Locate a dark blue Crown Victoria within three hundred feet of my location.”

“Done.”

“Track it. I want the license plate.”

“On it,” she promised.

There was a soft whir and a side panel opened near the left rear wheel and two small bundles fell out and rolled into the gutter. They were gray and unobtrusive in the steady rainfall. Luckily it wasn’t a full-blown storm — for once Mother Nature was aiding and abetting me instead of the bad guys.

As soon as the follow car was past and there were no pedestrians close, the drones’ proximity sensors activated the flight controls. The pigeon popped tiny propellers and rose straight up, then the wings deployed to hide the props. Once the bird was flying at sufficient speed, the propellers folded back into the body and the wings flapped like normal bird wings. It was very fast and the sensor software tracked possible line-of-sight observers to make sure none of this happened when anyone was watching. These are not the drones you buy at Target. These babies cost about four hundred thousand each, and if they were captured by anyone who did not have the right kind of RFID transponder chip, they would self-destruct.

The AI system that ran it was something new for us. It was the most sophisticated computer intelligence software in existence by something like an order of magnitude. Or maybe three. Freakishly intuitive, with natural conversational modes, various combat modes, and all sorts of other extras I barely understand. Bug — the über-geek head of the DMS computer sciences division — rebuilt the software after obtaining it from Zephyr Bain, the woman who’d designed it. Calpurnia’s original program was to oversee a curated technological singularity. Meaning Bain and her crew were trying to bring about a controlled end of the world as we know it. She wanted to kill off the vast multitudes of poor who she considered to be a drain on the global system; but she also wanted to kill off any one percenters who controlled companies that polluted and exploited the planet. So, a little altruism and a whole lot of bugfuck insanity. Calpurnia was designed to be self-learning, but Bain had built it too well, because Calpurnia became self-aware in the bargain. That self-awareness did not lead to a Skynet scenario, which is why we don’t have robot Arnold Schwarzeneggers stomping around shooting plasma rifles. No, Calpurnia went the other way and committed suicide rather than end the world. As acts of heroism go, it was really pretty goddamn touching. Lot of actual human beings I can name would never even consider that kind of selflessness.

While all that was happening, Bug put the new quantum upgrade of MindReader online. So, the suicidal self-aware artificial intelligence saw the birth of an almost godlike computer mind and begged it for salvation. Calpurnia downloaded every last one and zero of Bain’s carefully constructed master plan into MindReader and then erased herself out of existence.

Or so Bug said. And he named the DMS AI system in honor of Calpurnia, to celebrate her sacrifice, because that gave us a much-needed win and — let’s face it — saved the whole world. Personally, I have my doubts about some of that. I think maybe the best parts of Calpurnia are still alive within MindReader Q1. That scares me a little. Maybe more than a little. But it also gives us one hell of a weapon to bring into battle against other maniacs who want to burn it all down.

The data from the pigeon drones came in and Calpurnia processed it.

“The car is registered to the Secret Service motor pool,” she told me. “It was checked out this morning by Agent Virginia Harrald. There are two heat signatures in the car.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you like me to kill their engine? I could override their drive systems and—”

“No, thanks.”

“I could blow out the tires.”

“Maybe later.”

“Just let me know, Joseph. I’m happy to do whatever you need.”

“Sure, sure. Monitor their radio and cell phones.”

“On it. No current chatter.”

“There is a second vehicle, a black SUV.” As I made a random left, I gave her the plate numbers. “Find it.”

A minute later, Calpurnia said, “The second vehicle is two blocks on a converging route, one block over and two blocks ahead. It just made a right turn. Probability of a pincer interception is high.”

“Shit.”

“Language, Joseph.”

I made a mental note to kneecap Bug.

The next street was a one-way going the wrong way, but there was a public parking garage close to my end. No traffic heading in my direction, so I swung in and went into the garage. As I got my ticket from the machine I heard the squeal of tires and figured the Crown Vic was following after almost leaving it too late to make the turn.

I began moving up the levels.

“Calpurnia, call Top Sims’s cell.”

“It’s ringing.”

First Sergeant Bradley Sims — known as Top to everyone — was my number two, and he’d come to town with me to see an old friend. And by “old friend,” I mean the smoking-hot anchorwoman on the six o’clock news. Dinah Trevor. She looks like a taller Kerry Washington and has a Pulitzer. Not sure when they’d become friends, but Top kept a lot of his private life to himself.

“Morning, Cap’n,” he said, sounding more thoroughly relaxed than I think I’ve ever heard him.

“How much would you hate me if I asked you for a favor right now?”

There was a sound, maybe the rustle of sheets.

“Depends,” he said cautiously. “You need me to be anywhere in the next half hour, you’re likely to fall off my Christmas card list.”

“Yeah, well, guess this will save you a stamp,” I said, and told him what was happening.

“On my way,” he said.

The line went dead before I could even thank him.

I kept busy entertaining the Secret Service while I waited to spring my own surprise.

CHAPTER FIVE

It was the largest Roman Catholic church in the United States and was one of the largest churches in the world. Valen hoped it was large enough to let him get lost inside.

He spent two hours wandering through the collection of contemporary ecclesiastical art, and it might as well have been science fiction for all that he understood of it. Religion had formed no part of his life. Being aware of it was not the same as being part of it, and the various depictions of its strengths and weaknesses in movies, books, and TV gave him only a surface understanding.

He knew — or at least believed — that a priest was required to talk to someone in need. And he knew that many priests and ministers and other clerics were trained in psychology. They acted more like therapists than evangelists.

Even so, it took him five tries, five separate visits, before he worked up the courage to speak to any of the priests. It was as much a matter of timing as security. If he was too visible, or if there were too many people around, then either he couldn’t speak with any frankness, or he would risk creating liabilities. Gadyuka was probably having him tailed, and he did not want to put anyone in the crosshairs of a cleanup team.

The priest working the confessional area that night was fortyish, which meant he was probably not too much of a doctrinist and likely more college educated. Valen spent thirty minutes circling the man like a vulture before the priest noticed him. He was a thin man with an ascetic face and a hipster beard, but he wore a friendly smile as he came over to where Valen was standing.

“How can I help?” he asked. None of the “my son” crap. Good.

“I’m not a Catholic,” said Valen.

“Not sure I care,” said the priest. “I’m Father Steve. Steven Archer.”

“Andy,” lied Valen, and they shook hands. “Can we, um, talk for a minute?”

“Did you want to make a confession?”

“No,” said Valen. “Just talk.”

They sat at one end of a pew far away from the few other people there. Father Steve was patient and let Valen get to it on his own.

“This isn’t a church thing,” said Valen. “Not exactly.”

The priest nodded.

Valen considered the cover story he’d prepared, and then gave it a try. “I’m in the military. JSOC. You know what that is?”

“Sure. Special operations. I was a chaplain in Afghanistan ten years ago.”

Valen almost fled right then, but did not; instead he tweaked his approach.

“I can’t tell you what unit I’m with. You understand?”

“I do.”

“And I can’t disclose any details of what I do.”

“Sure. Nor would I ask.”

“I want to continue with what I do,” said Valen slowly. “I mean, I feel I have to. It’s important work, and a lot of people are counting on me.” He didn’t need to fake being troubled. It all bubbled just below the surface. “But at the same time… the kind of work I do is bad. People get hurt. People die. You say you were a chaplain, then you’ve talked to guys like me. Guys who want to be good people, guys who don’t want to be defined by the work they do, and yet because they’re good at it, they have to keep doing it. Is any of this making sense?”

Father Steve exhaled through his nose and nodded. “Yes, it is, Andy. And you’re right, I’ve talked with a lot of soldiers who are people of faith, often very strong faith, and yet who have to go against the precepts of that faith every day.”

“How do they stay sane, Father?”

Valen heard the desperation in his own voice. There was too much of it, more than he wanted to share. But Father Steve leaned close.

“The pat answer is that ol’ Fifth Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ But the reality is that the Old Testament was filled wall to wall with incidences in which God ordered his chosen people to wage war, and there are all manner of crimes for which public execution is not only permitted but endorsed. It was the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus, where he taught nonviolence and turning the other cheek. This, of course, is often cited as contradictory because in those same teachings he said that he did not come to abolish the old laws, but to complete them. By inference, the traditional forms of public execution were upheld — even if he interceded at times in this, as with the attempted stoning of the prostitute — and by extension the wars in God’s name waged by and for the people of His faith.” He stopped and smiled. “From your face I don’t think that’s what you wanted to hear.”

“Where does sin play into this?”

“Sin is something we have never fully defined. Not in any inarguable way, and yes, that sounds heretical to say. It’s not.” The priest smiled. “The laws of the church have changed and been interpreted more times than I can count. We can’t stand fast and say that we adhere without fluctuation from the pacifistic teachings of Jesus. Especially not us Catholics. The Crusades alone fly in the face of that, and those were authorized by papal bull.” Father Steve shook his head and offered a rueful grin. “The truth is that the commandment doesn’t actually say ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Most scholars agree that it says ‘Thou shalt not murder. ’”

“How is that different from what a soldier does? Innocent people are killed all the time in war.”

“And that is unfortunate. The truth is that divine forgiveness is what we have to offer when a soldier pulls a trigger. We know there is no animus between the soldier and the enemy he kills. Not really. In basic training all soldiers are taught to step outside of their morality and civilized values and trust that the enemy they are ordered to kill is truly worthy of being killed. It is a kind of brainwashing, and all of us who have served have gone through some part of it.”

The church seemed vast and dark and oppressive.

“So, you’re saying that no matter how many people a soldier kills, as long as it’s for the good of their country, then all they have to do is ask for forgiveness and that’s it? The soul is whitewashed?”

Father Steve looked pained as he shook his head. “No, Andy, it isn’t that easy, though quite a lot of people think it’s like flipping a switch.”

“What’s the secret, then?”

“Faith,” said the priest. “You have to believe that God will forgive you, and you have to genuinely repent of your sins.”

Valen turned away and stared at the statues of dead prophets and martyrs. Then, without another word, he got heavily to his feet and walked out of the church.

CHAPTER SIX

The generals and advisors left, singly or in pairs. The administration was still young enough that even old friends did not know where their colleagues’ loyalties lay. It was an ugly and awkward part of any change in administration. They’d seen it in different ways during their individual paths upward through their own careers, and doubly so once those careers became more intensely political. Now there were wild cards in the old deck, and that skewed the odds and made card counting a failing proposition.

Jennifer VanOwen understood this and watched each of them as they left, noting who glanced at whom. Making mental tick marks when she saw small, hidden smiles or flicked glances; gauging the tightness of compressed lips, and assigning possible meaning to the degree of compression. Much of what she saw lined up nicely with her own assessments.

She lingered, as did the chief of staff, until they were the only ones left in the room, with even the military and Secret Service banished. Then the president tapped his chief of staff’s wrist.

“Give us the room, Lucas.”

Admiral Lucas Murphy’s eyes clicked over to VanOwen and back. “Mr. President, I—”

“Now.”

“Yes, sir.” Admiral Murphy stood, back stiff, face wooden.

When the door was closed, VanOwen leaned toward the president. “First, sir, let me tell you how courageous and bold this decision is.”

“Thank you. It’s what needs to be done to insure that this country is second to none.”

“And history will remember you for that.”

He smiled, pleased with the compliment. Thinking that it was a compliment. VanOwen was very happy that she had spent so much time with theater coaches over the years.

“There is something to consider, however, as we move forward,” she said. “We can’t ignore the possibility of pushback from the Department of Military Sciences.”

“Those clowns,” grumped the president.

“Yes,” she said, “those clowns. Despite their many flaws, they did manage to bring down the original Majestic Three program. They are reckless and dangerous, and it’s very uncertain as to where their loyalties lie. After all, they worked for the previous administrations, and there is a clear pattern of assuming control of matters without first clearing it with your office.”

The phrasing was precise, implying the failings of previous administrations to control the actions, and then reminding the president that it was now his office. VanOwen had practiced the right pace and inflection in her bathroom mirror that morning.

“No one has been able to keep them on a short enough leash,” she continued.

“Why not? And don’t give me that crap about Church having blackmail material on everyone, because I don’t believe it.”

“Church is a very large, very aggressive dog,” said VanOwen. “Not everyone who has sat in the Oval Office has had the physical strength or the strength of will to jerk back on his leash.”

“To hell with that. I’m not afraid of him.”

“No, sir, you are not.” She paused. “Mr. Church isn’t the only barking dog, though. There is Aunt Sallie.”

“Who? That black woman? The one that looks like Whoopi Goldberg? Who cares about her?”

“Exactly right, sir. She’s nothing,” lied VanOwen. “And there is Church’s number-one hotshot. Captain Joe Ledger. I gave you a briefing on him, too.”

“Right, right. He’s the one who killed Howard Shelton. I liked Howard. Howard was a good guy. Golfer. Decent handicap.”

“Howard Shelton was an American patriot. At most he should have been called to explain his actions. Instead Joe Ledger executed him and later claimed it was justified.”

The president sipped his soda and seemed to stare through the middle of nowhere for a few moments.

VanOwen leaned a little closer. “Mr. Church, Aunt Sallie, and Joe Ledger destroyed M3. They prevented America from benefitting from these new advances in defense technologies. The DMS is still in operation and operates under a charter established by executive order.”

“But not my order.”

“No, Mr. President. Not your order.”

He turned to meet her eyes. “Can we cancel their charter?”

“Not easily,” she said. “And if we did, there’s too good a chance it would draw congressional attention to your plan to rebuild the Majestic program.”

“Can we defund them?”

“Not as such, sir.”

“Then what?”

“Mr. President,” she said, “there are other ways to handle this situation.”

“Do I need to know what that means?” he asked.

“You know the phrase ‘plausible deniability’?”

“Of course.”

VanOwen gave him a radiant smile and said nothing else.

CHAPTER SEVEN

They hung like spiders from the ceiling. Both of them dressed all in black, armed with guns and knives, dangling from silk threads. Silent as the death they had brought with them.

The castle had stood for more than a thousand years, perched on a ridge between deep ravines and skirted by dense forests. Wars had raged around it and in it and past it, but the citadel endured and the memory of clashing steel and the screams of men seemed to be trapped like ghosts within its walls. Maybe more so down here, far below the grand halls. There were secrets built into the walls. Hidden rooms, concealed corridors and passages, vaults and tombs that even the historians and the UNESCO custodians had never found. Some were so skillfully built that it would take the outright destruction of the fortress for anyone to find them.

That had nearly happened, and still might. The fighters of ISIL had destroyed so many places like this. So had President Assad, who indiscriminately bombed historic sites with the same abandon with which he rained down death on rebel camps and civilian towns. The fact that Saladin’s Castle survived for so long had nothing to do with any respect for history or the memory of the warrior of Allah who had fought back with such intelligence and ferocity against the Crusaders. No, this place survived because it was never important enough to destroy, and its position in this remote part of northwest Syria made it of little value to anyone in the current war. Some refugees found shelter there, thinking themselves safe within the partially collapsed walls.

They were wrong. They were not safe here.

“They’re not coming,” whispered one of the silent invaders. Although male, he was the shorter of the two.

“They’re coming, Harry,” soothed his companion. She spoke quietly rather than whispering, because whispers carried farther.

“This harness is cutting into my nuts,” complained Harry Bolt.

“Stop squirming,” suggested the woman, Violin, without much sympathy. “And be quiet. Listen. ”

There was a sound; a clink of metal. Then the careful steps of rubber soles on stone. The soft whisk of clothing. More clinks and clanks. The sounds of people who thought they were alone.

Violin reached out a hand and gave her partner’s arm a small, reassuring squeeze. Be ready, it said, and she felt Harry tense. He was often nervous, which made him clumsy despite the months of intense training she had given him. Training that was superior to what he had gotten during his years in the Central Intelligence Agency.

Since they’d begun traveling together, Harry Bolt — born Harcourt Bolton, Junior — had grown as a fighter, deepened his knowledge of espionage tradecraft, and gained in practical experience. Even so, he was a liability in almost every crisis situation. Violin accepted that and never took him into a situation where his shortcomings would tip the odds too far the wrong way. Until today. She’d intended to do this job with a full Arklight team, but the timing did not work and Harry was the only one available.

The intruders below were a mixed bag of ex-military working for the Turkish black marketer Ohan, and experts brought here to solve the mystery of this place. What unified them all was that they were thieves of time. Of antiquities. Of history. It was possible they were merely corrupt; but Violin’s intelligence reports suggested they were looking for something truly and deeply dangerous. If that was the case, then this reconnaissance would have to turn into something else.

“Here,” said a voice, speaking Arabic with an Iraqi accent. “Come on, give me some light.”

Several flashlight beams flicked on, chasing the shadows back but a little. The light didn’t illuminate very much, and certainly didn’t reach all the way to the vaulted ceiling. A dozen men came hurrying through the darkness. She recognized their leader, a fierce man known as Ghul, who was Ohan’s trusted lieutenant.

“I don’t see anything,” complained one of the experts, a geologist from Saudi Arabia.

Ghul laughed. “That’s what you’re supposed to see.”

“We’ve scoured this place half a dozen times,” said another of the research team, a structural engineer. He spoke bad Arabic with a heavy Irish accent. “There’s nothing left to find, mate. Anything of value here is either already in museums or it’s been destroyed by the ISIL madmen.”

But Ghul shook his head. “No. This is something that was not meant to be found.” He tapped the fourth researcher, a birdlike man with a pointed beard and professorial glasses perched on the end of a beaky nose. “It’s time. Tell them.”

Violin knew this man, too, and he was why she had been sent here. Professor Ali Nasser, formerly of the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, where he had spearheaded several important research expeditions in the Middle East, including four in Syria. Before the war, Nasser had been one of the world’s most respected scholars on the Crusades in general, and the related artifacts of this region in particular. His book on the relics of Antioch was still required reading in universities around the world, and it retained its validity even though Ali’s personal reputation had crumbled when he was first arrested for selling artifacts to the black market. His fellow academics had banished him, treating him like a heretic for sins against scholarship. Violin thought it sad that such a man would have descended to this level. On the other hand, it might make what she had to do so much easier. Contempt was a weak barrier to violence and was more often a firm shove in the direction of action.

“Here,” said Nasser, waving the others toward a spot by the base of the pillar. “Shine your lights there. No, there. Good. Do you see that writing?”

“Writing?” said the geologist. “It’s nothing. Tool marks, maybe.”

“No, no, no,” insisted Nasser, his voice and face flushed with excitement, “it’s been scuffed, but it is certainly writing.”

Ghul placed a heavy hand on Nasser’s shoulder. “Mr. Oruraka and Mr. Kostas said you could read it. Prove them right.” The threat was unspoken, but eloquent.

Nasser unslung his pack and removed a few small vials and a sponge. As the others watched, he poured a little liquid from two of the vials into a plastic cup, used a coffee stirrer to blend them, and dabbed the corner of the sponge into the mixture. The geologist watched him do it and began to nod; however, Nasser explained his process to the others.

“Everything ages,” he said, “even rock. And, as forensic science tells us, all contact leaves a trace. This solution will react only to microscopic trace elements of iron, and the older and more oxidized the iron, the more it will react to the solution.”

“Brilliant,” murmured the geologist.

Nasser used the sponge to dab the solution onto the marks in the rock. High above, Violin tapped the controls of the goggles she wore and the zoom function brought what the professor was doing into sharp focus. Beside her, Harry watched and repeated the action. On the pillar the rough scratches changed as the oxidized flecks of ancient iron turned to the color of blood, revealing the original markings made by some unknown hand many centuries ago. Violin felt her heart begin to hammer as she recognized the marks.

“What does it say?” asked Ghul, and the excitement was evident in his gruff voice. “That’s not Arabic.”

“No,” said the professor, “nor is it the language of the Europeans who possessed this castle.”

The Irishman grunted. “I saw something like this when I was doing a mining assessment in Greece near an old Minoan ruin. Is it Linear A?”

“Not exactly,” said Nasser. “This is a very rare protolanguage used by a group within the Minoan culture. Linear A was their main language, and it has never been deciphered. This is older. Incredibly ancient, actually. It was only used by a secret sect of Minoan priests.”

“Then how can you translate it?” demanded the Irishman.

Nasser smiled and did not explain.

Ghul growled in irritation. “What the hell does it say?”

“It is both a warning and a set of instructions,” said the professor. “Something I’ve seen before in a translation in Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten… a very rare book, gentlemen. Yes, very rare. One passage spoke of the writing in the oldest of languages on a stone believed to be a lintel from a forgotten temple excavated from off the shores of Santorini. The passage was a warning not to touch that which is untouchable, or attempt to learn what is unlearnable.”

“Well, that’s a bunch of shite,” complained the Irishman.

Nasser ignored him. “The same warning is here, and it is meant for anyone except the priests whose job it is to protect what is hidden. Below the warning are instructions for those priests.”

“Read them, damn you,” snarled Ghul.

The professor nodded and bent close. “It says, ‘Push high with four hands, push low with six, and four to bow before wisdom and pull. Left and right and back. ’”

There was a beat.

“What the sodding hell does that mean?” demanded the Irishman.

Ghul chuckled. “It means the professor is about to earn his bonus.”

Nasser straightened and ordered his colleagues back as he walked around the pillar, dabbing now and again with the mixture. A few more symbols appeared. Nasser instructed some of the guards to place their hands in very specific places. Two big men were positioned with hands on the central stone in the pillar, at about chest height. Three others were made to squat with their palms on the lowest stone. And then two more had to kneel and dig their fingers into the narrow crack between the base of the pillar and a rectangular flagstone.

“Put your backs into it,” said the professor. “Ready? Go!”

The men pushing on the middle ring of the pillar pushed to the left, the lower three to the right, and the kneeling men pulled. They were big men, picked for this task. The pillar was heavy and ancient and held part of the ceiling. The other guards and scientists stood watching, their faces filled with equal parts confusion and skepticism.

There was a sudden harsh, deep, dusty, grating sound. Then the three pieces of ancient stone moved. The central stone rotated one way, the stone below it turned the other, and the flagstone slid away from the base. The men strained until some of them screamed with the effort.

“Stop,” gasped Nasser, and the men staggered back, sweating, gasping, cursing, exhausted by their efforts. Then they all fell into a shocked silence. Violin felt her heart turn to ice and she heard a small, strangled sound from Harry.

A section of the floor began to move, folding downward with a grating rumble, revealing by slow degrees a set of stairs hidden for hundreds of years. And from below, from where those stairs vanished into swirling dust, there was a sudden ghostly green glow.

The men staggered back as gas and dust billowed up from below. Even from her lofty perch Violin caught a whiff that smelled like old, rotting fish.

“Perfect,” breathed Nasser.

Violin turned, hooked a hand out, caught Harry by the sleeve, and pulled him close so she could whisper in his ear.

“It’s time,” she said.

Harry looked at her. “Wh-what?”

She did not answer. Instead she hit the release button on her tether and dropped down, drawing her knives as she fell.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I played follow the leader with the Secret Service agents as I worked my way over to the battlefield that is West Lafayette. Something like 16 percent of Baltimore buildings — homes and commercial properties — are abandoned. That makes for a large, spread-out, and very spooky ghost town within the thriving city. Lots and lots of ghosts there. Lots of bad things happening there. Crack houses, murder scenes, quiet places for all manner of horrific sexual abuse. Lonely places to hide, or be abandoned to die — or to be alive and hurt but left wondering if death was a useful doorway out.

Driving along West Lafayette is like driving into an Edgar Allan Poe opium dream, especially as you turn onto North Arlington and see the big, old, and sadly forgotten hulk of Sellers Mansion. It’s a sprawling pile built in 1868 for Matthew Bacon Sellers, president of the Northern Central Railway. Once upon a time it was a showpiece, but those times are long gone. Three stories tall, sturdily built, and although long empty it never felt to me like it was actually dead.

Not saying it’s a haunted house, but there is some kind of residual energy there, and we’re not talking Casper the Friendly Ghost. More like something from a James Wan horror flick. The kind of place where if some weird haunted doll suddenly stepped out through the bare laths you’d be like — yeah, that fits.

So, that’s where I led my entourage.

I put the pedal down to make some time and had Calpurnia hack into the traffic lights to slow the pursuit cars down. Did I mention that gadgets like this give me a woody? They do.

The rain had chased all the neighbors indoors. Good. I parked behind the mansion, took some goodies from a lockbox in the back of my car, told Calpurnia to secure the vehicle, then ran through slanting rain to the back door. Ghost’s nails were padded with silicone tips that muffled the sound of him running with me.

The door was locked, but I was in a hurry and the place was a dump, so I kicked it in. I gave Ghost the order to range ahead to check and clear, while I made my way carefully through gloom and shadows and dust to the staircase. The place was by definition a death trap, with holes in the floor, exposed wiring, water damage, rat droppings, human waste, garbage, and refuse I did not want to even speculate about, and the skeleton of what looked like a raccoon. No idea how that got there, and don’t really want to know.

Calpurnia whispered like a ghost into my ear. “The Secret Service vehicles have arrived at your location. Total five agents.”

I smiled and faded into the shadows.

INTERLUDE THREE

Valen hired a boat to take him to the Kostas mansion, which was a sprawling and vulgar piece of real estate so vast it nearly qualified as its own city.

It squatted on a kind of peninsula that thrust so aggressively into the sea that from the air it looked very much like the Kostas family was making a “fuck you” statement to anyone who could afford to see it. That was entirely in keeping with what Valen remembered of Ari. The man was a sexual animal. More goat than bull, with unsavory appetites that he could never quite assuage, but who had enough money to keep trying — and to handle any resulting legal or financial consequences. If he had not been very good at what he did for the family business, no doubt they would have shipped him off to some remote spot and then erased it off the map. But Ari, despite deep character flaws, was brilliant. He could find anything for anyone, and then get them to pay more than the market would bear to possess it. A dealer of antiquities, rarities, and art for the most discerning clientele, he’d made his first billion by age twenty-three. That was above what he inherited as the second son of a dynastic family of procurers.

Ari met him at the dock. Barefoot and smiling; a deep-water tan, generous belly, and sparkling white teeth. White trousers and an untucked white shirt that opened midway down a hairy chest. As they hugged and slapped each other’s backs, Valen recalled the last time he’d seen his old college roommate. It had been a few days after graduation, when Valen helped Ari bury a body in an unmarked grave near San Gabriel Park. A college girl who had gone to the wrong party and whose body would never be found. Or, if it was found, would never be connected to Aristotle Kostas. Valen insured that by lining her grave with plastic tarps and dumping in ten gallons of bleach. There would be no forensics to collect and the bleach would ruin even the tissue samples. Ari, who’d sat on a tree stump trying out various just-in-case alibis, had done very little digging. He’d been too drunk.

Lunch was served on a private patio overlooking the flawless deep blue of the rippling waters of the Mediterranean. They ate grilled fish and vegetables and, being a good host, Ari had provided Old Rip Van Winkle twenty-five-year-old bourbon. The thirteen-thousand-dollars-a-bottle whiskey was very fine and went down exceptionally well.

“You never just come to visit,” he said as honey-soaked dessert pastries were laid out. “So, why are we here getting drunk on a Tuesday afternoon?”

Valen nodded. “I am in the market for something that needs a delicate touch but a long reach to find. You once told me that you could get anything that can be gotten. That’s how you phrased it.”

The young Greek gave a small shrug. “I have had some luck in that department.”

“Which is why I came to you first. I have been asked to find something.”

“You are not the buyer?”

“You know better than that,” said Valen. “I have no money, and you know that I haven’t pursued a career in seismology. No, since college I’ve become something of a fixer. I help facilitate things for parties who, for various reasons, choose or need to remain anonymous. I’m the fellow who goes and fetches what they want.”

Ari nodded, accepting it as something quite right and proper in the world as he knew it. “What is it you need to find, my friend?”

“Can I trust that our conversation is confidential?”

Ari pretended to be offended. “This is something you ask me? An old friend? A Kostas? I am wounded unto death, Valen. I am bleeding. See the cut all the way to my heart?”

“Yeah, yeah, cut it out. It’s a serious question, because I am working with serious people and it’s more than my life is worth to breach their trust. I ask because I am expected to ask.”

Ari grinned and patted Valen’s arm hard enough to nearly knock him out of his chair. Then the young Greek leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Tell me what you need and I will tell you how much it costs.”

“You mean you’ll tell me if you can procure it?”

Ari threw back his head and laughed. The guards glanced their way, but neither moved nor spoke. “No, Valen, you beautiful fool. If it is there, I can get it. Cost is the only factor.”

They smiled at each other.

“It has many names, but among a certain community of — shall we say — credulous believers, it is called Lemurian quartz. The green variety, not the white.”

“There’s a lot of green quartz out there. How will I know I’m getting the right stuff for you? I don’t want to waste a lot of my own time. No offense.”

“None taken,” said Valen. “Check your e-mail later. I sent a molecular profile to you. There are several kinds of quartz that are almost — but not quite — identical, and my employers are particular. To that end, I can provide a portable scanner to help you assess samples before you purchase. And, for any items you obtain that have been made from the Lemurian quartz — artworks, or whatever — we would like you to use luminescence dating to determine how long ago those minerals were last exposed to sunlight or sufficient heating. We are most interested in any green quartz objects older than 1000 B.C.E. Particularly any that are found on, or come from, Crete or neighboring Aegean islands.”

Ari sipped his wine. “Are you looking for Minoan artifacts? You’re confusing me. First you mention Lemurian quartz, but in the same breath you want stuff from where people thought Atlantis used to be. I mean, it’s pretty well accepted these days that Plato created Atlantis as a way of explaining the wonders of the Minoan culture, and that an eruption on Thera — what is now Santorini — was what destroyed their civilization. The submergence of some areas is the basis for the myth of the so-called continent of Atlantis sinking. Basically, exaggeration by Plato based on indifferent reportage by scholars of previous eras.”

Valen nodded, pleased at his friend’s expertise. “And correct, insofar as what you know. However, as with all things, there is much more to the story.”

Ari looked interested. “Tell me, then.”

“The first significant artifact of this special kind of green quartz was found in a chamber beneath Minoan temple ruins in Gournia, in Crete. The site was first excavated in 1903. There were several small hexagonal pieces recovered. Three are in the British Museum, four are at the University of Pennsylvania, but nine others went missing at some point after they were described and stored away. These nine were very special, Ari, because they had the same molecular structure as what I want you to find for me.”

“What makes them special?”

“That’s something we can discuss later.”

“Which means you don’t know,” said Ari, laying a finger beside his nose and nodding sagely. “You’re working for someone and they haven’t told you all of it. Or… maybe they don’t know all of it yet. No, don’t look so surprised. You’re not the first person to come to me looking for something all tangled up in history and myth. Kind of a thing in the antiquities trade, my friend. So, tell me… how much of it do you need?”

Valen finished his glass of whiskey and held it out for a refill. “All of it.”

CHAPTER NINE

The back door opened with a creak and swung all the way in, spilling gray light and rain onto the dusty floor. There was a beat when the doorway stood empty, and then two figures came in fast, breaking right and left, pistols up and out. Then the front door burst inward, the lock torn roughly from the splintered frame by a breaching tool swung by a brute of an agent. He stepped aside, dropping the heavy tool, and drew his gun as two other agents ran quickly past him.

They moved through the downstairs with professional competence and speed, clearing each room, pointing guns into closets. There were four men and one woman. All were grim-faced, unsmiling, and efficient. The two who had entered through the rear went down into the vast, unlighted cellar, which was a warren of small storage and service rooms left over from when the mansion had been occupied. The other three moved quickly to the stairs and went up, making sure to check their corners and watch each other’s backs. It was all done in a smooth and ghastly silence.

But they did not see the dark shape that waited for them beneath the stairs. It was not the natural place for them to look first. It wasn’t where their flashlight beams fell as they came down to the concrete basement floor. The two agents did everything right.

It wasn’t enough.

Upstairs, the three agents from the black SUV moved along the hallway in a three-point cover formation. One checked the hall behind and in front, moving in quick but smooth 180-degree turns. The second offered cover to the third, who pushed open doors to check and clear the rooms. For the larger rooms, they went in as a team, breaking to either side of the door while the first man watched their backs to prevent ambushers from coming from unchecked rooms.

They cleared four bedrooms and an old empty library and found nothing.

The second held up a fist to signal them to stop, then he pointed to the floor. There, in the dust, was a line of animal tracks. Heading toward the stairs to the third floor.

“He has a dog, doesn’t he?” asked the first very quietly.

“Yes,” said the third. “Big white combat dog.”

The second agent touched a smudge near the baseboard. They all studied it; they all nodded. It was the kind of smudge someone made if they were walking on the edges of their shoes in an attempt to avoid leaving footprints. But there was too much dust in the old place. The agents looked down the hall, following the lines of animal and human tracks around the corner toward the stairs.

They smiled. There were three other rooms to check, but the tracks were an arrow pointing to their quarry. The first two agents began to move; the third agent hesitated for a moment, knowing that they were doing it wrong. They were tracking an expert, a senior covert operator. The others were almost to the foot of the stairs.

“Wait…,” he called.

One second too late.

The door to the second-to-last bedroom stood slightly ajar. They had less than one full second to register the fact that something was moving through the air toward them. Small. About the size of a soda can.

The agent behind them tried to yell, “Grenade!” But the flash-bang flashed and banged. Real damn bright, too damn loud.

The agents in the cellar heard the blast and turned toward it. Toward the stairs.

Toward the big man with the dark goggles and sound-suppressing headphones.

They never even glimpsed the stun grenade that blew them backward against the wall, burned their vision from white to blackness, and dropped them into huddled masses so shocked that they could not even hear their own screams.

Top Sims kicked their guns away from them and had both agents — male and female — belly down and cuffed in seconds. Only then did he remove his sound suppressors and nearly opaque dark glasses. He was grinning. It was not a nice grin.

He cocked his head and listened to the cries and groans from upstairs. And then the harsh, angry, triumphant barks of a very big dog.

It made his smile very bright in the dusty darkness.

CHAPTER TEN

Five little agents all in a row.

They sat in the dust against a wall in the basement. Zip cuffs on wrists and ankles, pockets turned out, personal expectations and feelings of self-worth shattered. The effects of the flash-bangs had mostly worn off, though I think all five of them might need to see an ear, nose, and throat guy sometime soon. Maybe put Miracle-Ear on their birthday wish lists.

Top and I stood on either side of Ghost. All of their weapons and equipment were laid out on the floor. Top was examining their IDs and handing them off to me. The last person in the line was Agent Virginia Harrald, who was a snub-nosed woman with hate in her gray eyes and a stern slash of a thin-lipped mouth.

“You have no idea how much shit you just stepped in,” she muttered. She spoke too loud, the way people do who can’t hear all that well.

Top gave her a warm and fatherly smile. “Trouble? That’s adorable. Isn’t she being adorable, Cap’n? Making threats like a grown-up.”

“Adorable,” I agreed.

“Sitting there all tied up and shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Hair mussed up. Cuffed and scuffed and still full of stuff. Bet her parents would be so proud of her.”

Harrald stared pure unfiltered death at him. “Fuck you.”

“Such language. I’m shocked,” said Top, looking aghast. “Shocked, I do declare.”

Ghost made a sound that I swear to God was a doggy laugh.

I looked at Harrald’s ID, then stuffed it in a pocket. The other agents were Kurt Krieg, Thomas Hurley, Christopher Jablonski, and John Smallwood. I pocketed all of their IDs. No need to call it in, because the American flag pin I wore on my lapel was a high-res video camera that was feeding everything to MindReader in real time. Calpurnia had run facial recognition on each of them and one of Bug’s team was happily tearing through their entire lives via deep and unfiltered Net searches.

“Okay, kids,” I said to the unsmiling faces glaring at us, “I know it’s tough losing the big game, but we can take it as a learning experience. If you try real hard, make every practice, one day maybe — maybe — you’ll be able to play with the big kids.”

“Fuck you,” repeated Harrald.

“Okay, that’s a valid argument,” I conceded. “Or… how about you five are already fucked. Deeply and comprehensively fucked. None of you are carrying warrants. No warrants have, in fact, been issued for me. I checked.”

That put some doubt in the faces of the four men. They tried not to cut looks at Harrald, but mostly failed. Which confirmed that she was the foreman of this little crew.

“You guys know what happened to the three bozos who came at me at the cemetery this morning?”

“These pricks probably killed them,” said one of the other agents. Krieg.

“Maybe they should have come after me with a warrant,” I said, and for a moment I actually enjoyed the fear that flashed in their eyes. Then a second later I felt like a jackass and a bully. I caught Top looking at me, one eyebrow slightly raised in mild reproof. But he had a trace of a smile, too. Top is always the grown-up in the room. I seldom aspire to that role.

“We don’t need a warrant,” said Krieg.

“If you’re going to try and play the ‘national security’ card, son,” said Top, “maybe you’d better go reread the rules. We are national security. More than you know. More than you’ll ever be. So, don’t embarrass yourself here. Be a man, Agent Krieg.”

I had to fight to keep the wince off my face. Krieg didn’t. Ghost made that snarky sound again.

“Okay,” I said, squatting down in front of Harrald, “let’s cut right to it. Why were you following me? What were your orders? Who cut them?”

She tried to burn holes through me with her eyes.

“I didn’t kill the first three agents,” I said, “but they’re having a bad day. You’re having a bad day, too.”

“What are you going to do?” she said. “Shoot us?”

“No, dumbass. I’m hoping to reason with you. One federal employee to another.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“That would be sexual harassment, and besides… ewww. No.”

Harrald turned a very nice shade of tomato red.

“What I want here is for you to act like a professional. If you have a legal reason to attempt an arrest, then you need to tell me. And I don’t want to hear ‘Patriot Act,’ because that is what I use to wipe my dog’s ass. We both know that I’m with the Department of Military Sciences, which means I’m operating according to a precisely worded executive order. It is an irrevocable order, too. If you haven’t read it, then maybe you should. Oh, that’s right, it’s about a zillion steps above your pay grade. Ask your boss’s boss’s boss to read it. We don’t get arrested by the benchwarmers. If we somehow step on our own dicks, there are proper channels to address it and we would get spanked pretty damn hard. So, whatever you’re doing is, literally, illegal. I can arrest all of you. I would, in fact, have been within my legal right to shoot the shit out of you when you came after me with guns drawn. Be real happy I didn’t toss a fragmentation grenade in your face. I have some with me.”

Her ferocity was showing cracks at the edges, and I knew that she knew I was telling the truth. Maybe if we were alone she might have opened up, but her crew was with her. From what I know about the current state of the Secret Service, there was a lot of backstabbing and cliquishness polluting an organization that used to be known for its deep integrity. That made me sad and, let’s face it, a bit cranky.

But Harrald didn’t say anything else. None of them did. They bit down on their humiliation, fear, and anger and sat like defeated lumps.

There was a huge temptation bubbling in my chest to threaten them with what I could do to their lives with MindReader. It would have felt good for about three seconds. It might even have crowbarred one of them open… but it would have been small. And I knew Top would disapprove. Adult in the room, blah blah blah. Moral decency can occasionally be a pain in the ass.

So instead, I straightened and said, “When you get back to the office, tell your boss to pass a message up the line. You’ve come at me twice today, and both times you fucked up. Both times you also got lucky. If I was some kind of bad guy, as you cats seem to think, then I’d put bullets in your heads and burn this building down on top of you. However, I think you’re a bunch of misinformed idiots and not actual villains. Stay on that side of the line. Don’t come after me again. Make sure no one else comes after me. I just used up the very last of my give-a-fuck. Got no fucks left to give.”

“Hooah,” breathed Top.

We turned to go. Ghost shot me a seriously, no biting? look, then snuffed and followed us up the stairs. Top paused at the top step and yelled over his shoulder.

“Sit tight,” he said. “We’ll call someone.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Eventually,” he amended.

We left.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The men had no idea they were in danger.

They had no idea that death was falling toward them. They stood with their eyes fixed on the green glow that swirled up from below the castle floor. They stood transfixed. All of them.

And then Violin was among them.

The first hint any of them had of her presence was when one of the biggest men seemed to collapse beneath the improbable weight of shadow. Out of the corners of their eyes they saw a cloud of darkness strike him on the shoulders with such force that it bent him backward, broke him, crushed him down to the unforgiving stone. The scientists screamed in shock and sudden terror. The soldiers whirled, cursing, torn from one impossible thing to another.

And then the shadow rose from the twisted, dying man and coalesced into something else. Tall, slim, sheathed in black, with matched kukri knives in her gloved fists. Silver flashed and then the air was filled with rubies.

The closest man reeled backward, clutching at his throat, unable to process why it felt so hot and so wrong. Another soldier swung his Kalashnikov around with the speed of years of combat, but then it tilted and fell, held only by one hand. The other, still clutching the wooden handguard, no longer belonged to him. He gaped at it for a moment and then saw a line of silver moving toward him too fast for him to evade. He did not even have time to cry out.

Far above, Harry Bolt watched the carnage as he fought the release control on the silver wire that suspended him from the ceiling. It was supposed to operate with a gentle pressure of his thumb, but the goddamn thing would not move. He cursed and squeezed it with all his strength, hissing as his struggles made the harness cut even harder into his tortured scrotum.

“Come on, you goddamn cock-sucking son of a bitch,” he snarled as he shook the stubborn release. “Come on… please!”

Below, Violin was in the center of a storm of violence. Guns fired but she was never there. Men lunged at her and grabbed nothing. But there were so many of them and she was alone. Harry had a sidearm, but he did not trust his accuracy enough to risk a shot. Even though he’d become more skilled under her tutelage, he seldom scored more than one shot in ten in the kill zone. Violin seemed to be everywhere, dancing like she did, performing a ballet of slaughter. He was absolutely certain that if he tried to shoot from up there he’d probably kill her.

So, in desperation, he held the release in one hand and punched it with the other.

It did, in fact, release.

But his blow bent the speed-belaying device out of alignment.

He did not descend.

He plummeted.

Violin heard the caterwauling wail as Harry Bolt dropped like a rock from the ceiling, but she could not do anything about it. Ghul and two of his men were chopping at her with knives and trying to bring pistols to bear, and she was forced to take the fight to ultraclose range, using speed and her natural athleticism to evade and engage at the same time.

Behind her there was a heavy, ugly whump as Harry crashed down, and an accompanying double scream of pain; proof that he’d landed on one of the invaders instead of the unyielding ground. Violin could not spare the time to look, because everything around her was blood and fury, rage and death.

She spun and twisted, danced and leapt, her heavy, curved blades cleaving through bone as easily as they parted flesh. The Kevlar body armor some of the men wore offered no defense. It was made to stop bullets but was of little use against the scalpel sharpness of her knives. A few shots rang out, but her first kills had been the men with the flashlights. The melee proceeded in a boiling darkness in which she could see very well, while they saw nothing that would help them.

Harry groaned and rolled over onto his knees. Pain exploded along his back and in his shoulders and legs. He heard a nearby rattling breath and he turned to see one of the guards crushed up against the base of the pillar, legs twisted and hanging over the edge of the stairway, gasping and trembling. The man’s head was angled weirdly on his neck, and Harry realized with a sick jolt that his fall had broken the guard’s neck but hadn’t killed him.

“Sorry,” mumbled Harry, which was an absurd thing to say in the middle of a bloodbath like this. He fumbled for his pistol, found it, drew it too fast, and instantly lost it. The gun went bumpity-bumping its way down the stone steps into the green glow.

“Shit,” he growled, and cast around to see if he could find the AK-47 the guard had been carrying. It was ten feet away and he lunged for it, caught the stock, clawed it to him, sat up with it in his hands, looked for a target, and stared straight into the horrified, stricken face of Professor Nasser. The man was blind in the dark and nearly mad with fear. However, he had a gun in his hand.

“Drop it!” yelled Harry.

The professor flinched at the sound and his finger involuntarily twitched on the trigger. Harry felt himself falling backward as white-hot pain detonated in the exact center of his chest. As he fell, his hands both clenched and the rifle chattered out a ragged speech of death.

INTERLUDE FOUR

Gadyuka made another of her nighttime visits. What the Americans referred to as a booty call. Valen still hadn’t decided if he was appalled or enchanted.

However, as before, the sex was a prelude to talking business. She came at it in a roundabout way, talking politics first and sharing a few exciting details about the New Soviet. Then she hit him with a very strange request and encouraged him to bring Ari Kostas in on it. The mad Greek’s connections were crucial.

So, when he was alone, Valen called Ari.

“How are you at finding books?” asked Valen.

“What kind of books?” asked Ari, not particularly intrigued.

“These are books both sacred and profane. They are holy and unholy.”

“Are you quoting her?”

“Yes,” Valen admitted. “Though from what she’s told me, if we were not trying to save our country, I would burn them all.”

“Oh, please,” laughed Ari, “you must tell me more. These sound like books I should read.”

“Have you ever heard of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum?”

“Valen,” said Ari slowly and with no lingering trace of humor, “you’re talking about the Pauline Index, yes?”

“I am, yes.” The Index was a list of books deemed heretical, lascivious, or anticlerical. The list had been created at the behest of Pope Paul IV in 1559, and many horrible and cruel things had been done in the name of the Church to suppress those works.

“Books of black magic,” mused Ari. “I will say this for you, Valen, you are never ever boring. Now, let me think about this. Some of those books are supposed to have been destroyed. Some aren’t even supposed to be real — they were added to the list because someone in the church thought they were real. I’m talking about books made up by horror writers. H. P. Lovecraft and that lot. Pulp writers. The Necronomicon and all that bullshit.”

“Yes.”

“And now Gadyuka wants us to find those books. Books that probably aren’t real.”

“Yes. Gadyuka believes they are real.”

“How many of these books does she want?”

“All of them, Ari. Can you find them?”

“Me?” laughed Ari. “No. Not a chance. But… I may know a guy.…”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“What do you have for me, General?” asked the president. “Do you have the list of names I told you to prepare?”

General Frank Ballard felt like a big green bug on a plain white wall. Easy to spot, easy to swat. He’d been called to the Oval Office without the support of the other Joint Chiefs. The only other person in the room was Jennifer VanOwen.

“Well, Mr. President,” began Ballard, “let me first say that in terms of what Majestic Three accomplished… that all of the information related to the development, construction, and deployment of the T-craft has been destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” asked VanOwen.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ballard. “Destroying all of that material was the agreement when the, um, situation involving the former president was resolved.”

They sat with that. The situation in question was the abduction of the previous president by person or persons unknown. His safe return was conditional on the recovery of something called the Majestic Black Book, which was the repository for vast amounts of technical information supposedly reverse-engineered from a crashed vehicle of unknown origin.

“How can we recover that information?” demanded VanOwen.

“We can’t,” said Ballard. “And I think it would be a very dangerous thing to attempt.”

“Why?” asked the president.

“Sir, it was all in the briefing I gave prior to your taking office.”

“Little green men from outer space?” The president laughed. “My predecessor left a lot of that kind of stuff behind. Lies and misinformation left in the hopes of disrupting my presidency.”

“Sir, I was there when this happened. I was in the Situation Room when—”

“When you were fooled, General. Don’t embarrass yourself by saying that you believed that nonsense.”

“With respect, Mr. President…”

But the president waved it away with an annoyed flap of his hand. To VanOwen he said, “Put someone on recovering the Majestic Black Book.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Tell me, General, who was specifically responsible for destroying the T-craft data?”

“The, ah, physical records were stored at Howard Shelton’s estate — Van Meer Castle in Pennsylvania. The T-craft were also built and launched from there. After one T-craft was deployed, an order was given to have a flight of Thunderbolts destroy the launch site with missiles. The entire facility was incinerated and the mountains above the hangars collapsed. Shelton’s mansion and labs were stripped of all remaining materials and everything was incinerated.”

“That’s a loss,” said the president, “and typical of my predecessor. He had no real patriotism and no vision.”

“The decision was made to protect the country from a threatened disaster.”

“So, we’re negotiating with terrorists, General?” asked VanOwen.

“Ms. VanOwen, excuse me, but you were not there.”

“Then tell me this, General,” said VanOwen, “what exactly happened to the computer records for the entire Majestic Three program? If they built T-craft, some of the information had to be in computers for the groups handling manufacture and assembly.”

Ballard made his face show nothing. “The disposal of all such records was handled by the Department of Military Sciences.”

VanOwen turned toward the president, whose lip curled as if he’d tasted something sour and foul.

“Then they probably still have them,” said the president.

Ballard shook his head. “Mr. Church gave his word that the records would be destroyed. He ordered his computer people to use tapeworms to track down all records and references.”

“Church gave his ‘word’?” murmured VanOwen in a way that suggested only a complete damn fool would be gullible enough to accept that.

“Mr. Church is a patriot,” said Ballard coldly. “He and his people have gone above and beyond more times than I can count. None of us would be here right now if—”

“Enough,” interrupted the president. “Church has fooled a lot of people for a long time, believe me. Everyone knows that. If he took the M3 records, then he has those records. I am going to make sure he turns them over to us.”

There was so much that Ballard wanted to say, but he forced himself to rely on forty years of military experience to simply reply, “Yes, sir.”

“General,” said the president, holding out a hand, “give me the list I asked for. The names of people who can serve as governors of my new Majestic Three.”

It cost the general a lot to comply, and opening his briefcase felt like lifting an Abrams tank bare-handed. And yet he felt like a weakling in doing it. Forty years in the air force, combat missions in both Iraq wars and in Afghanistan, two Purple Hearts and a chestful of medals for actual courage, for defending his country from threats foreign and domestic. He had served with distinction no matter who was president, and he believed that true patriotism was putting the needs of the defense of America and all of its people ahead of any party’s agenda. Now he felt like he was betraying the trust of everyone in the country.

Maybe everyone in the whole blessed world.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We drove in separate cars to the Broadway Diner.

I ordered a Chesapeake burger, which comes topped with crabmeat and Old Bay sauce. Tomatoes if you want them, which I didn’t. Lots of golden French fries. Top got his favorite from when we were both stationed here — a Juicy Lucy burger, which is stuffed with cheddar cheese and chopped bacon. I ordered two cheeseburgers without bread for Ghost, who looked properly docile in his service dog vest. The waitress knew he wasn’t anyone’s emotional support animal, but she was a dog person and brought him three patties. Her attitude toward my dog is reflected in the kind of tips I leave.

We had a corner booth and I placed an Anteater bug-detection gizmo on the table to make sure it was all clear. The device is designed to look like a clicker for my car. The lights popped green and stayed that way. The place was pretty empty, so there was no one to hear us when we leaned together for a chat.

“Called Bunny on the way over here,” said Top. “He wants to come out.”

“Tell him not to bother. We can handle—”

“He’ll be here tonight.”

I knew better than to argue. Top had a bit of mother hen in him. If he was rattled enough on my behalf to want another set of eyes on me, then he was going to get his way.

“Thanks,” I said.

Despite my parting words to Harrald, I made a call to some old friends in the Baltimore PD, and they sent a car. The five agents from the mansion and the three from the cemetery were all being treated at a local hospital. The goons from the graveyard were admitted for observation. I made a notation on my calendar to cry about it the day after hell freezes over.

I called Church and conferenced Top’s cell in. “We anywhere with figuring this out?” I asked.

“We are not,” said Church. “Bug has been poking around inside the Secret Service computers. E-mails, voicemails, procedural and case files. Whatever this is, no one is making a record of it. Or, put it another way, they are being very careful to make sure there’s no record of it, which actually tells us a lot. It suggests that they know they are acting outside of the law. The Secret Service would not do that openly unless they had some offer of protection from higher up the food chain.”

“How far up?” I asked. “The goon at the cemetery said it came from the Oval Office, but I figured he was lying.”

“Maybe not.”

“Damn,” said Top.

“Yes,” said Church.

We batted it back and forth for a bit but there was nowhere to go with it for now.

“What do you want us to do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Church. “Sergeant Sims, you had some days off, I believe. Feel free to go back to doing what you were doing.”

“Maybe I should loiter around and watch his back,” suggested Top.

“No need. The captain can go to the Warehouse for a night or two and wait until we have something.”

“That doesn’t sound fun,” I said.

“Life is full of little disappointments, Captain,” said Church, and rang off.

The waitress brought our food and refilled our coffee cups. She started to say something, but then she caught the looks on our faces and retreated in hasty silence.

Top poured milk into his coffee, and without looking up at me, said, “And you got no idea why the G wants your head on a pike? You ain’t pissed on anyone’s shoes lately?”

“Not that I can recall,” I said.

Top sipped his coffee and leaned back against the cushions. “Not that you can recall. And I guess you can recall every single time you pissed someone off who you shouldn’t have? I mean, just this week?”

“You have a point, Top?”

“Me? Nah. I actually like you.”

“But…?”

“You been known to ruffle some feathers hither and yon.”

“‘Hither and yon’?”

“Being poetic.” He sipped and set his cup down. “Not like you been making a secret about your feelings on how things are being run in D.C.”

“I’m allowed to have an opinion.”

“Sure. And people are allowed to get their noses out of joint about it.”

“So, you think this is a proportional response to me mouthing off?”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Nothing’s proportional anymore, Cap’n.”

“Yeah, damn it,” I said.

We ate our burgers in a shared, troubled silence.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jennifer VanOwen spent an hour discussing the names on the list provided by General Ballard. “Well,” she said, “no to the first four, right off the top. They’re not political appointments and don’t work in government, but they’re outspoken about politics.” She shook her blond head. “We need team players, not idealists.”

VanOwen similarly eliminated most of the other scientists on the list. Some were cut because they were in the camp of climate change, which was politically inconvenient as long as petro-dollars ran the world. Others were axed because of their voting records or party affiliation; or for content on their social media pages.

“Well,” said VanOwen again, this time almost as a sigh, “there’s really only one good prospect. Donald Carpenter, CEO of Carpenter Systems out of Pasadena. His company has done extensive work with the guidance systems of the latest generations of stealth aircraft and drones, and he’s built surveillance satellites for us. However… there is someone who knows the Majestic Black Book and all of its various technologies better than anyone else.”

“Who?” asked the president then he stiffened. “No… wait a damn minute. You’re not actually suggesting we hire Yuina Hoshino, are you? She’s a convicted felon and a traitor.”

“You can look at it like that, Mr. President,” said VanOwen with a reptilian smile, “or you can look at it like she’s one presidential pardon away from being the person who can put us so far out in front of the arms race that no one will ever catch us. The person who could make you — inarguably and without question — the most powerful man on Earth.”

“Mr. Church won’t like it,” he said. “So, there can’t be anything on the Net. No e-mails. Nothing.”

“Of course, Mr. President, I know how to manage the DMS. Leave all the details to me.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I sat in what used to be my office, in a visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk. The current head of this station was Sam Imura, who used to be the sniper on Echo Team. Sam and I were veterans of some of this world’s more bizarre battlefields, and more or less friends. But after he got hurt during the Kill Switch affair, something had changed the dynamic between us. We stopped being friendly and operated with a kind of strained civility that I did not understand. I’ve seen that sort of thing happen sometimes when someone gets close to the edge of the big drop-off into the deep black. They turn sour on life, sometimes they pick someone to blame because every bullet needs a target.

Or, maybe that’s me trying to carry someone else’s emotional baggage. My best friend and therapist, Rudy Sanchez, says that it’s likely me being a bit narcissistic while also making enormous assumptions about what’s going on in someone else’s head and heart. Whatever the reason, there is palpable distance between Sam and me these days. I can’t reach him and he seems to only tolerate me as a necessary inconvenience.

We sat in our chairs, both of us with feet on the desk, both of us drinking coffee from oversized mugs. Top had gone back to his lady friend with a promise of joining me later on. Ghost was sprawled on the floor, dreaming doggy dreams.

“They’re legit Secret Service,” said Sam. The eight sets of identification were spread out on his desk along with the weapons and personal effects I’d confiscated. “All relatively new hires, though. Post Linden Brierley.”

I nodded. Brierley was the former director of the Secret Service. He was the best example of the phrase “a good guy but not a nice guy.” During his tenure on the job, the Service had been a tightly run department, with a zero-tolerance policy for screwups. Like a lot of us in this biz, Brierley was largely apolitical because political affiliations were a distraction, as the occupants of the White House tended to change with the whims of elections. Brierley was nobody’s fawning toady, though, and the new POTUS didn’t like that, and gave him the boot in favor of a spectacularly unqualified ass-kisser. The Service is in danger of becoming a circus act as a result, and that’s a damn shame. Some of my oldest and most trusted friends have worked that job, and this feels like a deliberate slight to their integrity.

I said, “Knowing that they’re legit doesn’t tell us why they tried to arrest me and were willing to draw guns to do it.”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe they know you.”

“Ha,” I said without emphasis. “Ha, ha.”

“Bug’s people hacked the Service’s system,” said Sam, “and there’s no official order on file. So, figure VBO.”

Verbal order only was becoming more common in D.C., especially in departments where people knew about MindReader. Fair enough. If I was going to try and kick the DMS in the wrinklies, I’d make sure there was no paper or digital trail. Mr. Church tends to get cranky about such things, and he is not the person you want to make cranky. Trust me on this.

“Shame we can’t grill those agents,” said Sam. He gave me a scowl of disapproval. “You know, you could have called in to have them arrested.”

I sipped my coffee and manfully did not tell him to go stick it up his ass.

The clock on the wall above his desk ticked loudly for two full minutes.

When I’d been installed here it was a shrine to the Orioles, with balls, bats, gloves, and shirts signed by Cal Ripken, Jr., Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, Boog Powell, Melvin Mora, and other gods of my personal pantheon.

Sam, however, was more culturally retro and had a matched pair of very old Japanese swords — katana and wakizashi — on a stand behind his desk, and photos of his parents in California and relatives back in Osaka on the walls. There were framed certificates from rifle competitions, and none of them were for second place. A shadow box on a stand had a deconstructed CheyTac M200 Intervention sniper rifle that I knew had been the one he’d used to win the International Sniper Competition at Fort Benning.

We drank coffee and the clock ticked. Then Church teleconferenced and Sam sent it to the big flat screen on the wall.

Church is a big man. Somewhere in his sixties; blocky, with dark hair streaked with gray, tinted glasses that hide his eyes, and black silk gloves over hands damaged by frostbite during the Predator One case. I don’t know much about his life before he started the DMS. Rumors and strange tales, mostly. I am inclined to believe even the weirdest stories people tell about him, and I suspect they don’t even scratch the surface. Anyone who could read power would immediately know that this was someone who was two or three levels above apex predator. He scares the people who scare me, and I’m pretty goddamn scary myownself.

“Gentlemen,” Church said quietly, “it seems we have a problem.”

“Well, gosh, boss, I kind of figured that,” I said. “Who is it and when do we start kicking ass?”

Church gave a small shake of his head. “It’s more complicated than that. The pickup order did indeed come from POTUS, or someone high up acting on his orders.”

“Why?”

“Unknown at this time. POTUS has declined to take my call. Aunt Sallie is reaching out to her friends in Washington to see what she can find.”

Sam gave a sour snort. “Do we even have any friends left in Washington?”

It was meant as a joke. Kind of. “Not many, I’m afraid,” said Church. “Maybe not enough anymore.”

“What’s the call?” I asked. “How do you want me to go after this?”

“The call, Captain,” said Church, “is to do nothing. Stay off the radar until further notice.”

“Now wait just a goddamn minute,” I roared. “The Secret Service just tried to arrest me. Twice. No way am I—”

Church hung up.

I said a lot of very loud, very ugly things. Ghost got to his feet and barked at the blank video screen. Behind his desk, Sam Imura turned his face away to hide the fact that he was laughing his ass off.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Harry Bolt lay at the entrance to hell and felt himself die.

The pain in his chest was astounding, almost beautiful in its purity. It allowed no other sensation to intrude, to interrupt the orchestra of agony that played through every single nerve ending. He opened his eyes and stared up at the deep shadows that clung to the lofty ceiling. Around him, outside of his peripheral vision, people fought and cursed and screamed. There were gunshots and the unmistakable and horrible sound of blades cleaving through meat and bone. The sounds were faint, though, as if the battle was happening far away.

He was going into the light. He was sure of it. What he did not understand, though, was why the light was green. Wasn’t it supposed to be white? Purity of heaven and all that shit? Or, considering how many of the commandments he’d cheerfully and repeatedly broken over the years, hellfire red?

Then Harry took a breath and actually felt himself inhale and exhale. Felt the pain in his chest, in bone and flesh. Frowned. If he could still feel the pain, did that make sense? Did the dead and the damned have to feel the pain of the wounds that had killed them? Well… sure. Hell. Everything in hell is supposed to suck, so why not?

He tried to turn away from the light, to look at darkness. Tears leaked out from under his closed eyelids and it made him feel weak, small, stupid. Alone.

Lost.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a tiny voice, directing it to God, to the Devil. Or to anyone or anything who could hear him. “I’m sorry. Please give me another chance. I swear I’ll be a better person. I swear. No more drinking. No Internet porn. I’ll give half my money to charity. Save the whales or trees or some shit. Whatever. I swear. Just don’t let me burn.”

Harry’s whole face scrunched up and he began to sob.

Suddenly Violin slapped him so hard that his eyes popped wide and he stared up at her scowling face. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you just lying there?”

“Wait… What? I’m not dead?”

Violin pulled him roughly to his feet. “We’re wasting time,” she said sharply. “Ghul is getting away.”

“I don’t care,” shouted Harry, then touched his body, feeling body armor instead of a sucking chest wound. “Oh,” he said. “Shit.”

Violin crouched at the top of the stairs, her face a mask of dark concern. “I was hoping Professor Nasser was wrong. I was hoping they wouldn’t find any hidden doorway. I was hoping this would be nothing more than a training exercise for you. Truly, Harry… I never thought they would find…”

Her voice trailed off.

“Find what?”

A sound came from below. A hissing noise and then a rumble of guttural words and growls that Harry couldn’t understand. If they were words, there weren’t enough vowels. It was loud, too. As if blasted from massive speakers rather than from any human throat.

“I ä! I ä! F’ nafl’fhtagn!”

“Goddess, no…,” gasped Violin, and she made a strange warding symbol in the air. The voice boomed out again and now dust fell from between the tightly pressed ceiling stones. The light streaming up from below changed in hue and intensity, becoming a luminescent green. It stung the eye to look at it, and the very sight of it made Harry’s skin crawl.

“Y’ ahor h’ mgr’luh ahororr’e. H’ nwngluii ah mgahnnn.”

“Impossible,” cried Violin. “They can’t be that crazy. They’ll kill us all. Come on, Harry, we have to hurry.” She stepped down onto the top step, then — despite everything — threw him a wild grin. “What’s wrong? Do you want to live forever?”

“Actually,” he began, but Violin ran down the stairs before he could finish.

Harry licked his dry lips, tilted his head, and cut a sideways look heavenward. “Look,” he said reasonably, “if I cut the porn stuff down but not out, you still let me live, right? Is that fair?”

There was no answer from the heavens. Harry saw his gun lying on the fourth step down, picked it up, and went down the stairs.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“He is a criminal and you will surrender him.”

The words were not spoken, they were yelled. And the man yelling them was small, wrinkled, and livid. Red splotches bloomed on his cheeks and his eyes bugged out of his head. He seemed to lean out of the flat screen toward the two people seated at a table in the conference room.

Mr. Church, cool and comfortable in his Ermenegildo Zegna bespoke suit, Stefano Ricci Formal Crystal silk satin tie, and hand-sewn Brunello Cucinelli leather shoes. Beside him, Aunt Sallie — a black woman in her late sixties — wore a Nigerian block-print dress and had colorful beads strung between her gray dreadlocks. A carafe of spring water stood between them and each had a glass. There was a large plate of assorted cookies near the carafe. Auntie had a smaller plate in front of her. Every few seconds she would take an animal cracker from the pile, bite the head off, and drop the rest into a growing mound. Church slowly nibbled at a vanilla wafer. Neither spoke.

When the man ranting at them wound down, there was an ugly silence broken only by faint crunching noises.

“Well,” growled the little man on the screen, “did you hear me?”

“Yes,” said Church mildly. His took his time finishing his cookie: chewing thoroughly, washing it down with a sip of water, dabbing at his lips with a linen napkin, then refolding the napkin and placing it neatly on the table.

“Damn it, Church, I asked you a question.”

“My apologies, Mr. Spellman,” said Church, “I believe that we are still waiting for an answer to our question. Why is there an arrest warrant out for Captain Ledger?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I believe it is my business. If you would like to reread the DMS charter and get back to me, that would be fine.”

Norris Spellman was the attorney general for the United States, but he was a man remarkably unsuited to his post. Nearly as unsuitable as the previous occupant of his office. A political appointee who did not have the kind of credentials appropriate to being the top law enforcement officer in the country. The press knew it, people on both sides of the aisle knew it, and he likely knew it himself. He had not been a very good attorney when he worked as a prosecutor in Arizona, and he had gained no ground at all in a series of escalating political bumps. His genius, if the word could be accurately applied, had always been in backing the right horse, even changing parties to make sure he was on the winning team.

“The reasons for the warrant are sealed by executive order,” said Spellman.

“Captain Ledger works for me,” said Church, unruffled. “The nature of the DMS charter expressly lays out the protocol of action if any of my people need to be detained or interviewed by any other government agency. That is also an executive order.”

“Not signed by this president.”

“Not rescinded, either,” countered Church. “Which means it stands as policy. The actions of the agents today are in violation of that order, which means that they were committing crimes. They are, in fact, complicit in a conspiracy to violate an executive order. This discussion compounds that and calls into question your own level of involvement in these crimes.” During the ensuing silence, he took another cookie and tapped crumbs from it on the edge of the plate.

“You think the president won’t cancel your charter?” sneered Spellman.

“I want you to listen to me for a minute, Norris,” said Aunt Sallie in a voice that would turn burning logs into icicles. “That pickup was illegal. We all know it, just as we know the pickup order is likely a whim or a mistake, and your boss would rather be eaten by rats than admit that he ever made a mistake. I know this puts you in a bind because you’re not being given a choice. If POTUS says ‘jump,’ you have to jump or you’re out like the last fool whose ass polished your chair. No… don’t interrupt me, Norris; you know better than that. The pickup was bogus. If POTUS is going to rescind it, he has to notify us before doing so. That’s the agreement. If he wants to amend it, ditto. Captain Ledger reacted to an illegal act and showed remarkable restraint. If they’d drawn on him, he was legally allowed to defend himself using any appropriate force. The fact that he chose to stay at the lowest possible rung on the force continuum ladder speaks to his integrity as an agent of this government. The fact that he hasn’t filed federal charges against your goons also speaks to an admirable restraint and the best practices of the Department of Military Sciences. Push this, Norris, and he will file charges, and you know that we have judges who will back his play. And, if you don’t know how scary our lawyers are, then you had better ask around, because we can out-lawyer you into the dirt. Now, either you tell us why POTUS issued the pickup order or we are going to start our own investigation. Ask what happens when we take a personal and particular interest in someone.”

Spellman tried to tough it out, glaring and glowering, but his face had gone dead pale and he couldn’t sell it.

Into the troubled silence, Mr. Church said, “I’ve placed several calls to the Oval Office, to the chief of staff, and to the director of the Secret Service. None of those calls were taken and none have been returned. Perhaps in the interest of cooperation and adherence to chartered protocols you might see what you can do about that.”

Before the attorney general could organize a response, Church ended the call. He finished his cookie, sipped some water, and sighed.

Auntie kicked the desk. “What in the Technicolor hell is going on with that clown college in D.C.?”

Instead of addressing the question, Church said, “You spoke highly of Captain Ledger.”

She scowled. “Well… he may be a mouth-breathing Neanderthal, but for something like this, he’s one of us.”

“Even so, Auntie, you were effusive in your praise. Did it hurt?”

“Bite me,” she snarled.

INTERLUDE FIVE

Valen saw the woman and knew it was her right away. Dr. Marguerite Beaufort was a French national who had, according to her Facebook page, “grown up all over the world.” The daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of scholars, she had an air of bookishness and introspection that put a toe across the introversion line. She was a pretty and well-dressed thirty-something who sparkled with intelligence.

“Dr. Beaufort,” he said, offering his hand as he approached the table.

“Mr. Oruraka,” she said, “what a pleasure to meet you.” Her hand was cool, strong, and dry.

“It’s Valen,” he said as he sat across from her. “May I call you Marguerite?”

“Oh, please do.”

After the waiter came to take their order and brought wine for her and an Armorik French single malt for him, she said, “I was rather surprised to get your e-mail. How did you know about me? And how did you know I was here in Lucca?”

“You’re an academic, Marguerite,” he said, “and academics are always tethered to their universities. I played that game long enough to know how to find who I wanted.”

She nodded. “I looked you up, of course. Geology and seismology, with a minor in structural engineering. Are you planning on building a dam?”

Archaeologists were often brought in during large-scale construction to assess the cultural or historical significance of items uncovered during excavation. However, Valen shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I’m working on a very special project, and one that, I’m afraid, comes with a rather ponderous stack of nondisclosure agreements. Are… you familiar with NDAs?”

Marguerite sipped her wine and rolled her eyes. “I’ve written a mountain of grant proposals. So, yes.”

“Yes. This is a little different than that.” He sipped his whiskey. “There are a few things I can share with you before asking you to sign an NDA. Call them ‘bait.’ Tell me, have you ever heard of Lemurian crystal?”

That made her lean back, and she sipped more wine as she considered him. “That depends on what you mean.”

“Tell me what you think I mean.”

She smiled. “Well, first off, it’s not Lemurian. Lemuria was part of a theory postulated by the nineteenth-century Darwinian taxonomist Ernst Haeckel, as a way of explaining some anomalies in biogeography — the natural spread of animal species. He theorized that Lemuria was a land bridge that connected existing land masses in the Indian Ocean but which has since been submerged. But that has been entirely discredited by modern theories of plate tectonics. Unfortunately, the Theosophists of his day grabbed onto the idea because that lot love the possibility of lost civilizations, especially those that leave no artifacts to prove or, more significantly, disprove their wild claims. It’s no different than Atlantis or—”

“Okay, you can stop right there,” said Valen. “Let me shift my question. Tell me something about the Roman festival of Lemuria.”

Marguerite shrugged. “That was real. It was an important festival in which specific rites were performed to exorcise the lemures, the evil and restless dead who haunted their homes. During the rise of Christianity, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon in Rome to the Virgin Mary and all of the Christian martyrs, effectively supplanting the old religious holiday with a new one.”

Valen smiled. “Now tell me why I asked about that celebration?”

“Well, what most people do not know, Valen,” she said, “is that the nickname of Lemurian quartz is not tied to a faux lost continent, but to that old Roman feast. At least when they refer to the green variety of Lemurian quartz. The white quartz is a label used by the New Age crowd, and actually is tied to their belief in an actual island nation of Lemuria.” She waved her hand dismissively. “For what we’re talking about, people in Rome would use pieces of rare green quartz to ward off the evil spirits. They made small fetishes from it in the shape of weapons — swords, knives, arrows, cudgels — and placed them in their homes for a full day, while gathering together in tents or lean-tos in the streets. On 13 May they would send the bravest and purest person from each town or village to go from house to house and collect the quartz weapons. These would be wrapped in blessed cloth and buried in a lead box in a place known only to the priests, safe until the following year.”

Valen finished his whiskey and signaled the waiter for a refill. While he waited, he took the wine bottle from the table and poured more for Marguerite.

“What would you say if I told you that it is my belief that many of these fetish weapons were made from quartz mined, not in Rome, but elsewhere?”

She shrugged. “I read something to that effect. Some were found hidden in a mine near Santorini, which suggests that the Romans may have borrowed the practice of making such fetishes from an older culture, Greek or possibly Minoan ruins.”

“I know. I’ve read that paper,” said Valen. “But the mine I’m talking about is not in that region.”

“Then where?”

Valen sat back, sipped his whiskey, and smiled. “That’s where the nondisclosure agreement comes in.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

They descended into a green hell. Harry was three steps behind Violin, wishing he was ten thousand miles away from where they were going.

Once they were below the level of the floor it was immediately apparent that this was not some cramped hidden chamber, or even a roomy basement. No, the stairs zigzagged down out of sight, and Harry reckoned that it was forty or fifty feet to the floor.

The engineering skills of the ancient world always dazzled him. He understood a bit of structural engineering from a course he took in college — because of a very hot undergrad he wanted to impress. While he had utterly failed to amaze the woman with his grasp of the science, he had nevertheless learned some things by simple exposure. He knew that many of the feats of building managed by cultures going back as far as the Sumerians were astonishing. Things that would be daunting undertakings with hundred-foot cranes, stonecutting machines, and all of the benefits of modern science were accomplished with simple tools, determination, and patience. From the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan to the Great Pyramid of Giza, from Angkor Wat in Cambodia to the Taj Mahal in India, those accomplishments made Harry feel particularly incompetent.

The source of the green glow was still not evident, but the illumination itself revealed a vast room supported by dozens of carved stone columns. There were hundreds of what looked like stone sarcophagi resting on bases of dark volcanic rock. As they reached the floor of the chamber Harry could see that none of those sarcophagi were normal. The ones he’d seen in museums and at other ancient sites with Violin were all roughly human, approximating some idealized version of the body entombed within. Not these. They were too big, for one thing: the smallest he saw was at least ten feet long, and some were twice that size. The figures were strange blends of human and fish, or human and octopus. Some with vast wings, others with too many heads to count.

“What are these?” he whispered.

“Children of the Deep Ones,” she said.

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Violin paused and cocked an ear. “Listen.”

He did. At first he heard nothing — and he was glad it wasn’t more of that booming voice — but then, off in the direction where the green light was brightest, he could hear the fading sound of running feet.

“Hurry,” said Violin as she sprinted toward the noise and the strange green light.

Harry lingered, and for a moment he almost did not follow. In that moment he thought about what in the world he was doing here. Sure, he was a former CIA operative, but not a good one. He was ten million miles away from being in the same league as Violin. Or his secret hero, Joe Ledger. He was a short, dumpy loser who sometimes got lucky. Luckier than he deserved.

What in the living hell was he doing here? What was he even thinking? That he was Indiana Jones? That he was Joe Ledger? He knew the real answer to those questions.

“Please,” he said quietly, as if asking to be excused could get him out of this. He had a pistol in his hand and it felt like a prop from a bad TV movie. He ran to catch up but hadn’t gotten fifty feet before the men they were chasing began to scream.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Waiting and doing nothing is a pain in the ass. I’m no good at it.

To keep from climbing the walls, I called home, but got the answering machine, then called Junie’s cell. And got her voicemail. She was so busy with FreeTech that I had a closer and more meaningful relationship with her recording. I left a message for her to call, told her I loved her, and hung up feeling peevish and slighted, which I know is both immature and unfair.

Beneath my foul mood I was genuinely in love and deeply proud — possibly in awe — of what Junie Flynn had accomplished over the last few years. Church had offered her the role of CEO of a private company that took the deadly technologies the DMS forcibly appropriated from bad guys and repurposed them for humanitarian uses. New water filtration systems, new organic fertilizer enhancers, medical equipment, cybernetic implants for the physically challenged, and most recently a portable diagnostic device that was helping with the weaponized rabies plague spread by Zephyr Bain during the Dogs of War case. She was saving lives every single day, and bringing light into a darkened world. She was one end of the evolutionary bell curve. I, a more primitive kind of creature, was way farther back.

The reason for my grumpiness was that we were both starting to feel the strain of being so deeply involved in our jobs that we were drifting from one another. It wasn’t a lessening of love — at least not for me — but it was more like we were in danger of becoming strangers. Or worse, acquaintances. It was something we each promised to work on, and I prayed we still had time.

She didn’t call back. I couldn’t go home. So, I did what any tough-as-nails, battle-hardened, deeply skilled special operator would do. I sat in the mess hall and sulked.

Top was in there, too. Top knows how to make a sandwich. It’s not about how many slices of pastrami or roast beef you add, it’s about how they’re placed. He makes sure there are irregular air pockets so that biting into the sandwich isn’t like eating a slab of meat. He cuts his pickles lengthwise and uses the heart of a tomato so there’s less skin and more juice. He also has a light hand with mustard or mayonnaise. He appreciates subtlety. Top is an artist and I am a devoted fan.

Like proper adult men, we ate the sandwiches over the big double sink.

Bunny arrived with a suitcase in one hand and a case of cold beer under his arm. He set the beer down on the counter, opened three, popped the caps, and handed them around. “Medical supplies.”

“Hooah,” said Top. We clinked bottles and drank.

That case of beer didn’t stand a chance.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The small Japanese-American woman perched on the edge of a leather guest chair. She was not wearing handcuffs, but a pair sat conspicuously on the desk. The woman who sat across from her smiled like a moray eel.

“Do you know why you’re here?” asked Jennifer VanOwen.

Yuina Hoshino folded her hands in her lap and let nothing show on her face. “No,” she said simply.

“Do you know who I am?”

A shake of the head.

“I am the special advisor to the president on all scientific matters,” said VanOwen. She opened her desk and removed a crisp sheet of paper and placed it facedown on her desk. Then, after a moment’s pause, removed a second and laid it next to the first. “You know that you will never live long enough to serve your entire sentence. You’re lucky that you were not given the death penalty. A lot of people wanted that to happen. A lot of people wanted you to vanish into a black site where psychopaths on our payroll would make life a constant and intense hell for you.”

Hoshino wanted to look away. She wanted to cry. But she did neither. Instead she looked into the middle of nowhere and let her expression go totally blank.

“The people who arrested you and wanted to end you belonged to a different administration,” said VanOwen, then she corrected herself. “No, they belonged to a different view of what patriotism means. They subscribed to a view of America and its place in the world that is limited, skewed, and small.” She paused. “I know that you have a different view of America’s potential greatness. One that is built on ambition and courage, but which also prizes a shift away from globalism.”

“I don’t have any politics,” said Hoshino. “I don’t have any religion. Just science.”

“And yet you worked with Howard Shelton to build the T-craft that almost destroyed Beijing and Moscow and the capitals of countries that have anti-American agendas.”

“No,” said Hoshino. “That was Howard’s dream. He and his toady, Mr. Bones, closed me out of the T-craft program’s real aims.”

“So… you disapprove of what they tried to do?”

“Fear of a conqueror is one thing,” Hoshino said carefully, “however, to conquer the world — this world — would be to make enemies or, worse, fearful slaves, of eight billion people. It would end open warfare, but it would not end war.”

“Why not?”

“Because in the face of overwhelming military force, the weaker side will fight back using guerrilla tactics. These tactics are why we have not beaten ISIL, why America has failed to defeat the Taliban or al-Qaeda. It was hard enough in the pre-Internet days to beat a guerrilla resistance; now it is impossible. The army becomes a virtual one, connected through e-mails and the Internet. Their weapons become man-portable rocket launchers, drones, and other small but potent weapons. With a conquest of China and Russia, and the resulting de facto subjugation of all other military powers, you would create a network of nuclear states that also have access to advanced biological weaponry. You could not defeat that kind of opposition even with a fleet of T-craft. It would be the equivalent of fighting disease-carrying mosquitoes with carpet-bombing. The weapons you can bring to bear are too large for targets so small and maneuverable.”

“Did you ever say as much to Howard Shelton?”

“I tried, but he was never interested.”

“And yet you helped him build the T-craft…,” prompted VanOwen.

“We all wanted the craft built. We had different reasons, as it turned out.”

VanOwen leaned forward. “What was your reason?”

“Power.”

“Power?”

“Yes. To use the T-craft as this generation’s ultra-advanced reconnaissance aircraft. Just as the Lockheed U-2 was the breakout technology of its day, and later supplanted by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, and so on, the T-craft would give us another big jump forward.”

“Only that?” asked VanOwen with a crafty smile.

“That, and to provide the next generation of stealth fighters and bombers. However, we were not the only country actively developing T-craft. Russia, China, North Korea, Japan, Great Britain, France, Brazil… there are — or maybe were — similar programs around the world. We were closer, though. We solved the problems they could not solve.”

“The biomechanical interface?”

Hoshino nodded. “Without that, every engine exploded upon firing.”

VanOwen’s smile lingered. “In your estimation, how close were the other countries to solving that same problem?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Maybe five years? Possibly less.”

“A lot of that time burned off,” observed VanOwen.

Hoshino said nothing.

VanOwen picked up the first of the two sheets of paper. “This is a presidential order, endorsed by the directors of Homeland Security and National Security, and countersigned by the attorney general. It effectively ends your status as a citizen and orders that you be sent to a special facility so remote that it has no name, appears on no map, and none of the prisoners who have gone there have ever returned. Not one.”

The blood in Hoshino’s veins turned to icy slush and she felt vomit burn in the back of her throat.

VanOwen picked up the second sheet. “This is a special executive order that includes a pardon for all past crimes and will effectively seal any legal matters involving you. Neither paper has yet been signed by the president.”

“I… I…,” began Hoshino, but her mouth had gone too dry to speak.

VanOwen stood up and walked around her desk. She was tall and lithe and beautiful, and it made Hoshino feel small and breakable. The woman sat on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling as she swung it back and forth.

“The president of the United States is frequently referred to as the most powerful man on Earth,” she said quietly. “He gets that nickname because of the financial and military power he wields. It’s my job to make sure that he truly is the most powerful man. I want this to become clear to everyone else in the world. I want it to become clear to the people of this country. We are not looking to use T-craft to start a war. What we want is for the rest of the world to know that the age of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction is at an end, and a new age has begun. You, Dr. Hoshino, can help this president earn his place in history as the greatest American president since Washington. Tell me now… which of these papers should I send to the president for his signature, and which should I run through the shredder?”

INTERLUDE SIX

Dr. Marguerite Beaufort crouched in the dark and watched the snakes disappear, one by one, through a crack in the wall. Ten of them at least, and likely more that she had not seen. The soft rasp of their sinewy bodies was the only sound in the cave except for a distant slow drip of water. Work lights were strung on wires and she had a strong LED light on her metal hard hat, but the cavern was so vast that the darkness seemed to devour the illumination with rapacious hunger. The walls were slick with moisture and there was a faint rotten-egg stink of sulfur in the damp air.

“What the hell?” cried her assistant, Carlton Wrigley, known as Rig, a gnomelike graduate student who looked like he belonged on someone’s lawn, or maybe in one of the lower-income Hobbit holes. “Hey, where are they going?”

At the sound of Rig’s voice, the last of the snakes paused and turned its head toward them. There, frozen in the stark glow, Marguerite could see the glassy markings more clearly, and it startled her. Instead of true markings, they almost appeared to be flecks of Lemurian quartz embedded in its skin. That, of course, made no sense at all. Partly because the snakes all had them, and none of them looked to have been injured by some rockfall; and partly because the placement of the chips was orderly. Like something natural instead of accidental. And it would also be the greatest find so far in an otherwise disappointing dig, because the only green quartz they’d found were fragments left behind by some unknown miners in the distant past. For weeks now Marguerite had been trying to figure out the best way to tell Valen and his friend Ari that they were likely wasting their money. Wrangling snakes with shiny green markings was not what she was paid to do.

“What kind of snakes are they, Doc? Think they’re poisonous?”

“I don’t know, but don’t touch them.”

“As if.”

The snake studied her with its dark eyes, and its tongue flicked out as if it could understand her through what it tasted on the still air. As if it took secrets from her that she did not want to share. Then it turned and slithered after the others and was gone.

“Jee-zus,” breathed Rig. “Where do you think they went? You think there’s a nest back there? I thought the walls down here were supposed to be solid. That’s what Dr. Svoboda said, right?”

George Svoboda was a top geologist at the University of Chicago.

“That’s what we were told,” she replied, but there was as much doubt in her voice as his. She touched the wall. “This is strange, Rig. I don’t remember seeing these cracks before. Do you?”

She told Rig to set up a portable light stand topped by a wide LED panel. He turned it on and angled the panel so that the light etched every bump and crack. Marguerite stepped toward the wall and used her fingertips to trace a crack that ran crookedly from the rocky ceiling to the stony floor. A dozen smaller cracks to her left were where the snakes had vanished; but this one was different. Not only because it was much longer, but because there the edges were crusted with some kind of plant life. A kind of moss with unusually long stalks and bulbous heads flecked with dots of red.

“Moss?” she murmured.

“That’s weird,” said Rig. “I didn’t see any moss there yesterday.”

He was right, but Marguerite didn’t say so. The cracks and the vegetation were new. It was odd-looking, too. She’d seen all kinds of plant life in the various sites where her career had taken her. Weeds, fungi, molds, and thousands of other forms, but none exactly like this. In truth, this moss looked more like sea anemones, and when she touched it with her gloved fingertip the bulbous ends recoiled.

Marguerite snatched her hand back.

“Holy shit, Doc,” gasped Rig, his voice jumping an octave in alarm. “Did that stuff just move?”

She cleared her throat and forced herself to sound calm. “Yes. Some plants are touch reactive.”

“Yeah, sure, a Venus flytrap maybe, but… crap, Doc… moss? That’s freaky stuff right there.”

Yes, it is, she thought. Then she caught a brief glimpse of something inside the lichen. No, past it, deeper inside the cleft. She took a small but powerful penlight from her pocket and directed the beam inside.

She froze, staring, not believing what she was seeing. Sweat burst from her pores and ran down into her eyes, and her mouth, despite the humidity in the cave, went completely dry.

“Rig…,” she said very carefully, “go get Dr. Svoboda. Valen, too.”

“What is it? What did you see?”

“Get them,” she said. “Right now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Church finally called twenty minutes shy of me actually climbing the goddamn wall. I’d long since said a tipsy goodnight to Top and Bunny, and was stretched out on a lumpy bed in one of the guest rooms used for visiting staff. I was uncomfortable, angry, drunk, confused, and scared in equal amounts. Ghost was hogging most of the square footage of the mattress. When my cell phone rang with the Darth Vader ring tone I’d set for calls from Church, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I punched the button. “What do we know?”

“Not enough,” said Church calmly. “Auntie is on her way to D.C. and will begin pushing at her network first thing in the morning. From what she’s been able to determine through phone calls, though, if there is something official in the works against you, no one outside of the Oval Office seems to know what it is.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the cold, polished concrete floor. “Well… shit. Do we have any guesses at least?”

“None that will make you happy, I’m afraid. There’s been some talk about rescinding the DMS charter—”

I snorted. “Haven’t they tried that like a dozen times?”

“Seven times,” corrected Church. “However, Captain, I can’t impress upon you enough that things are not ‘politics as usual’ in Washington, and they haven’t been for some time. The old checks and balances are crumbling in what has become an increasingly obvious smash-and-grab phase. Trust, as a concept, is broken, and there is a lot of career anxiety because we’ve moved so far away from a merit-based hierarchy in the important departments.”

“Was it ever an actual meritocracy?” I asked sourly.

“More than you might think. At least in the critical departments concerned with intelligence and national security.”

“Not now, though,” I suggested.

“Not now,” he agreed. “Positions of power are being given out as payment for favors more than I’ve ever seen, and I have been involved in American politics for a very long time.”

“Yeah, exactly how long?” I asked.

Church didn’t take the bait. He never does. “It is entirely possible, according to Linden Brierley, that the arrest order was given as a test.”

“To test what?”

“Us,” he said. “Me. Brierley seems to think that this may have been done to see how I would react. To see how much power the DMS actually has.”

Ghost shifted around and laid his head on my thigh in a “pet me now” move. I scratched his head and his eyes immediately began to drift shut. “Why play that game?” I asked.

“You know the rumors, Captain,” said Church. “People think I have dirt on every power player, from junior senators all the way to the president. The knowledge that MindReader exists has fueled those beliefs, which is why there is such a mania to keep certain kinds of knowledge off of the Net, out of e-mails, and out of computer files.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, “guess I kind of believe that, too.”

Church sighed, sounding unutterably weary. “Captain, if I was a master blackmailer, could anyone have betrayed us like they have?”

I said nothing and stared up at the uninformative wall across from the narrow bed. There was a framed painting of bulrushes along a riverbank. Pretty enough, in a bland and boring kind of way.

“It may surprise you,” he said, “but I am not a sorcerer, nor am I omniscient. I’m a shooter turned upper management who is trying very hard to keep this country and this planet from burning down. Manipulating the government through blackmail would require far more time than I can spare from actually fighting the kinds of threats that come our way every day.”

“Ah,” I said, feeling a bit like an immature ass. “But what do we do if POTUS rescinds our charter? Or changes it? Or suddenly decides that we’re all criminals or traitors or whatever? What then? Do we let them put black bags over our heads and waltz us off to some black site? Do we go into open rebellion?”

“None of those choices is acceptable,” said Church.

“Then why not dig up dirt on these ass-clowns? Why not tear the whole thing down and…”

I trailed off because I heard what I was saying. Church knew that I’d gotten there, too. He was silent, waiting.

“No,” I said at last. “I get it. Tear it down and we leave ourselves temporarily vulnerable. We’d be a big, tough gazelle with a limp. There are too many predators just waiting for that moment when we stumble.”

“And if that happens…?” he asked gently.

“The rest of the predators are free to take the whole herd.”

We sat in silence for a few moments.

“So,” I said, “now what? How do we respond to the arrest thing? Top and I kicked the shit out of a bunch of Secret Service agents—”

“—and no paperwork has been filed on it,” said Church. “There are no witnesses and no official report. Brierley’s people inside the Secret Service believe the pickup was ordered on a whim or as a test, but it was illegal. It was an attempt to make us do something actionable.”

“Which I did.”

“Not in a way useful to them. They needed you to resist and possibly cause some injuries while also being taken into custody. That latter part was the way they could reverse-engineer justification for the actual pickup. Without having you in custody, they had no play left, and now Aunt Sallie has spread the word to enough people that there’s no way for them to fabricate a plausible chain of cause and effect that works for them. It’s a fumble, and too many people know it. It’s likely you would have gone to a black interrogation site and either been held as leverage over me, or been worked over until you gave them something they could use.”

“Yeah, well, sorry to spoil their plans,” I said.

“Quite frankly, I’m rather pleased with how it turned out. It’s very informative.”

“Okay,” I said, “so what now? Shouldn’t we be filing fifty kinds of formal charges?”

“That’s one way to go, Captain,” said Church, “but the fact that there are no records of this makes it the word of a covert group against that of the current administration. Remember, Captain, we don’t officially exist, at least as far as the public knows. If we file formal charges, our useful anonymity ends, and there would be consequences to that.”

He had a damn point. Because of betrayal from within, and hacking of the older generation of MindReader, the DMS had hit some serious heavy weather. The biggest problem was the Kill Switch case, where Harcourt Bolton, Sr. used a mind-control device to literally take over the actions of several DMS agents, including Top, Bunny, and me. While being suborned by this “mind-walking,” we did some truly awful things. A lot of innocent people died and there was video footage of one bloodbath on the docks in Oceanside, California. Doesn’t matter that we were all wearing balaclavas that hid most of our faces. Doesn’t matter that Bug used MindReader to go in and mess with the images on those videos. There are people in the government who know, or at least suspect, that it was our fingers on the triggers.

“If we go after them,” I said, “they bury us with Kill Switch.”

“And other things, yes,” said Church. “They don’t need to prove anything. All they need to do is put us in the spotlight and wait for the public to demand our heads on pikes. If that happens, Captain, the DMS is effectively dead, which means that we will be cleared off the battlefield at a time when we are very much needed.”

“Shit.”

“It frequently astounds and disappoints me when I witness the lengths some people will go to to get in the way of their own conscience or sense of duty.”

“So, do we just forgive and forget?”

“Did I say that?” When I did not answer, he said, “I seldom forgive, Captain; and I never forget.”

“Then what’s our play?”

I could hear him crunching on a cookie. If the world was actually burning and there were missiles inbound to where he sat, the man would pause for a vanilla wafer.

“Aunt Sallie will address matters in Washington,” he said. “I want you to go back to San Diego. Take a week off. Maybe have your brother and his family come out for a visit.”

“Why?” I asked suspiciously. “Are they in danger out here?”

“No. I’m recommending an actual vacation.”

“A vacation? Who are you and what did you do with Mr. Church?”

“Good-bye, Captain,” he said, and there was the slight chance he actually laughed. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. Hard to tell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Church set down his cell phone, leaned back against his pillows, and rubbed his tired eyes. For several moments, he did nothing but listen to one of his favorite albums, Blue Moods by Miles Davis. It seemed as apt now as when he’d first heard every cut played live at a club many years ago, while he was on a mission in Germany. Charlie Mingus had invited him to the gig, and Church — then known by the code name Der Rektor — had gone to hear a few songs but stayed for three sets. A good end to what had been a terrible day. He remembered standing in the bathroom at the club, washing blood off his face.

Church touched his face, remembering that night with awful clarity. He had done dreadful things and taken wounds that ran very deep. Not of flesh, but of soul.

How many times since had he been marked like that? he wondered. Even he’d lost count.

Then he recalled that it had been the same night he’d met Aunt Sallie, then a young African-American field operative working undercover with Interpol. Were the horrors of that night mitigated by meeting one of the most important people in his life? Auntie became an ally, a fellow warrior, and a trusted friend. Together they had saved the world from greater horrors even than those Church had faced in Germany. Now, of course, Aunt Sallie was getting old, and he knew that she did not understand why time touched her with a heavier and crueler hand than it did him.

It was so sad. Auntie was family to him. Kin.

Kin . That word had been stuck into him like a knife blade for months now. The mad trickster Nicodemus called him “kinsman,” knowing that it would inflict a special kind of hurt. It did. Hurt and shame and a particularly dangerous frequency of nostalgia.

Kinsman . Not an accurate statement, but dangerous. It was tied to another of Church’s names. One that he had left behind long ago, even before the affair in Germany. A name discarded like so many others. A name no one alive knew, and Church was content to let that aspect of him die and be forgotten.

In truth, “Mr. Church” was the latest identity into which he’d stepped when he formed the Department of Military Sciences. Shucking previous names had become easy for him. He was rarely sentimental about any of his former selves and had cast them off with the cold efficiency of a molting tarantula. He remembered each of them, though some only distantly. The Washington and U.S. military crowd still tended to call him Deacon. A few old friends and enemies in Eastern Europe, Lilith among them, called him St. Germaine. Here and there were key men and women who knew him as “Cardinal” or “Saishi” or “Ep ískopos.” But most of those people were old and he knew he would outlive them. As he would outlive the memory of who he was when he wore those names. Other, older names were completely lost to time, and that was how it should be. Though once in a while — a very great while — a sadness crept into the edges of his day as he remembered old friends long gone. He even mourned some of his enemies.

Even Nicodemus.

Not that Church would ever admit that to the people who worked for him. And not that it stayed his hand when the two of them had fought last year during the Dogs of War matter. He closed his eyes and there, in his personal darkness, he could remember every moment of that battle. Nicodemus had worn as many names as had Church, and had shed them as easily. Church had flown from Brooklyn to the Pacific Northwest and tracked Nicodemus to the home of the brilliant and destructive psychopath Zephyr Bain. He’d arrived to find Nicodemus fighting — and beating — Top and Bunny. Church stepped between his men and Nicodemus, knowing that they could never have taken that man down. Not with the kinds of weapons they had — guns, knives, fists. He’d ordered his agents to flee, and Nicodemus, mindful of old rituals and etiquette, had allowed it.

That fight that took place had been a terrible ordeal. Church never let on to his people how close a battle it had been, or how much it cost him to win it. He never told them, or anyone, what happened in Zephyr Bain’s house. It was a memory that haunted him, though, and he knew he would relive it for the rest of his life. And now, all these months later, alone in his quiet house, Church mourned Nicodemus. Not the man who wore that false name, though. No, Church’s grief was older than that, ran deeper than that. Nicodemus had once been a different person, and Church mourned for that man.

There was a soft creak and he looked up to see Lilith standing in the bathroom doorway, drying her face with a hand towel. She wore a black silk camisole and matching slip. In the semidarkness shadows hid her eyes and hollowed her cheeks, transforming a beautiful face into a death mask. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.

“Was that Ledger on the phone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Lilith nodded and reached into the bathroom to place the towel on the sink. Then she walked slowly over to the bed. He lifted the blanket and she climbed in. They held each other for a long time. Church buried his nose in her dark hair, closed his eyes, and wished that he was another person. In another life. In another world.

Beyond the window, above the sprawling city, the wheel of night turned.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

They sat up late into the night. Jennifer VanOwen was in a deep armchair, a glass of brandy cradled between her palms. She wore a cream-colored blouse and a dark pencil skirt. Efficient heels that gave her enough of a lift to shape her calves — something that mattered to her as one of many tools with which she shaped the reactions of the people around her. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and her makeup was understated, suggesting power rather than sex. Very deliberate.

The president was slumped on the couch, dressed in an expensive satin bathrobe and hand-sewn silk slippers. The residence was quiet because the rest of his family was away.

“Well, that didn’t work,” said the president. He’d said something like that half a dozen different ways, each time with added acidity.

“I did advise against it,” said VanOwen. “Ledger may be psychotic, but he is very dangerous. After all, he took down Howard Shelton and M3. He took down the Seven Kings, the Jakoby family, and other groups that should have been unbreakable. He broke them.”

“He needs to be locked the hell up.”

“He will be. If you let me handle it, we will neutralize any potential threat from him and the rest of the DMS.”

“I should just go ahead and cancel their charter,” growled the president.

“As I’ve explained,” said VanOwen patiently, “that would almost certainly backfire. Church still has friends in Washington. It’s much better if we leave him in place and see who steps up when he needs help. Then we have our list of targets. Then, once we remove his supporters, we can end the DMS.”

The president sat up and studied her intently. “Today was a total disaster.”

Of your making, she thought, but didn’t say it. What she said was, “We have all the best cards, Mr. President.”

He merely grunted.

“Besides, we have Majestic,” she said, “and neither he nor Mr. Church know that it has been completely rebuilt. Stronger than ever.”

“If Ledger is free, he’ll find out.”

“Not in time,” she said with complete confidence. “Not in time.”

INTERLUDE SEVEN

“It’s not possible,” said the chief geologist. “No way.”

Dr. George Svoboda was a stooped, hatchet-faced man who seemed outraged by the crack in the wall. Valen Oruraka and Aristotle Kostas stood with him as they examined the fissure that ran from floor to ceiling. Svoboda fumed because he had done all of the principal work on this site and had a global reputation as the go-to person for this kind of work. Even those colleagues who competed with him for grants seldom offered opinions contrary to his, and for good reason. He had literally written the book, the definitive scholarly texts, on the geology of South Pacific island substrata.

Marguerite did not argue with him. She and Rig stood to one side of the crack and let Svoboda work his way through his denial and anger. She caught Valen and Ari exchanging covert looks several times as Svoboda ran through various frequencies of denial, outrage, and anger.

“Stop yelling, for the love of God,” yelled Ari. “You’re hurting my damn head.”

The small, round Greek looked badly hungover and smelled of sweat, testosterone, wine, and sex. He looked like someone had dragged him down three flights of stairs. Marguerite had heard some sounds rolling over the surf from the expensive aluminum camper that had been airlifted in for him. Those sounds had been feminine, high-pitched, and it did not sound like anyone but Ari was having fun.

Valen stepped up and brushed the moss with his fingertips and peered close to watch how the stalks writhed. Rig offered him one end of a fiber-optic cable scope and fed the other end into the crack. When it was positioned, the scope sent high-definition video to Marguerite’s laptop, which rested on a folding chair. They could see that the supposedly solid wall was anything but. A few meters beyond where they stood was a kind of pocket, about the size of an old-fashioned phone booth, and it was choked with more of the moss, and with other foliage — unusual ferns and flowers and the roots of large plants.

“How is there this much plant life inside a solid wall?” asked Valen. “How is it flourishing? How is there photosynthesis in there? I’ve seen cave plants before and I’ve never seen colors as vibrant as that down in the darkness.”

“It’s one of the reasons I called you down here,” said Marguerite. “We can’t explain it. Chu is on the other side of the island, but I sent her some pictures of it.” Alice Chu was the team biologist. “She said that she couldn’t identify the moss, or any of the plants or flowers. She’s on her way here now.”

Ari glowered at Svoboda. “The fuck, man? You’re supposed to have checked every square inch of this place, and now someone else finds this?”

The geologist gave a stubborn shake of his head. “This section of rock is half a million years old. There are no vents to filter sunlight down into pockets like that. It doesn’t make sense.”

The two of them began yapping at each other until Valen roared at them to shut the fuck up. “Mistakes were made. It’s not going to do any of us any good to dissect the past. Right now we need to understand this find and what it may, or may not, mean for our project. That means we need to reassess this entire area.”

“It isn’t the mining operations,” insisted Svoboda. “It can’t be. You’re enough of a geologist to know that, surely.”

“Valen, Ari, listen,” Marguerite said quickly. “I didn’t call you here to see the plants or the pocket. There’s something a lot more important than that.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Ari. “Not interested in more bullshit.”

Marguerite smiled. “Rig, show them what we found.”

The grad student grinned and worked the fiber-optic tube so that the little camera turned and burrowed like a snake past the strange foliage.

Ari laughed, “You found some of the damned quartz. Why didn’t you…?”

His words trailed off and he stood staring. They all stared for a long, silent, astonished time.

“Dr. Svoboda,” said Valen in a voice that was far calmer than the burning excitement in his eyes, “you say that this section of wall is at least five hundred thousand years old. I’ve read all of your reports, and I’ve seen the rest of the results, the radiocarbon dating, all of that.” He touched the screen. “If that’s the case, then tell me what I’m seeing.…”

Nobody spoke.

They did not have to. What the thing was… well, that was obvious. It was a piece of Lemurian quartz. Quite beautiful in color and luminosity.

What none of them could explain, or even dared to try and theorize about, was that the green quartz was shaped like a weapon, but not a sword or spear or cudgel. No. That would have painted the day in different and more predictable colors. This was not any weapon of the ancient world.

There was a mound of something green and organic-looking partially blocking it. A dead lizard, perhaps. But it was obvious even to the least perceptive of them gathered in the cavern that the weapon was a handgun made from green crystal.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I slept badly and dreamed of monsters.

It was the kind of sleep where you know you’re dreaming but you can’t wake up. Sleep paralysis of a kind, but it feels worse than that. It feels wrong. As if the force that binds you into sleep is malicious, maybe even vampiric. It’s feeding on something, some essence that’s important to you. It’s taking it against your will, and the violation is so subtle, so devious that you know that when you wake you’ll be diminished but you’ll never be able to prove the cause to anyone.

My body lay wrapped in the coils of some dark and shadowy thing, and it pulled me down into dreams. Fragments of dreams. Flash images. Parts of memories of things I’ve actually done, things I’ve seen in my waking life, but intercut with images from remembered nightmares and hallucinations.

I was fourteen and I never saw the punch that dropped me.

Sucker punch. There was a massive black explosion in the back of my head and then I was down. I would later learn that the blow cracked my skull. The resulting concussion was not the worst of it. Not by a mile. Not by a million miles.

Nor were the bones that snapped as four sets of sneakered feet kicked and stomped and broke me. Nor even the damage to kidney and liver and testicles and spleen. Not the broken jaw or broken teeth. None of that really mattered. What mattered — what hurt the most and what never healed — was what I saw. My eyes were swollen nearly shut, but not all the way. No. That would have been a mercy. Being beaten to death would have been a mercy. But there was no mercy at all in that shaded, remote corner of the park where I’d been walking with Helen. Two kids. Still virgins. Still innocent. Still optimistic and na ïve enough to think the world was a place that treasured the innocent.

I lay there and watched them beat Helen. That wasn’t the worst, either. I could hear the sounds of her clothes being torn. I could hear the sound of zippers being pulled down. I heard her muffled screams as she tried to shriek her outrage through the balled-up underwear they’d shoved into her mouth.

That was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Even though it wasn’t happening to me. Lying there, broken and bleeding but not dead. Knowing that I wasn’t going to die. Knowing that neither of us was going to die. Despite being killed like this.

Yeah. That was the worst.

Then it was later. Being stopped by her sister at the front door. Being told that Helen didn’t want to see me. Not anymore.

This was years later. After surgeries. After therapy. After being told that there was nothing the cops could do. No witnesses. No DNA on file that matched anyone.

Cathy stopped me from going in. “It’s killing her, Joe,” she told me.

“You don’t understand,” I insisted. “Things are going good now. The new medicine, the therapy…”

She had a look in her eyes like someone at a funeral. The eyes of a mourner who had already accepted the reality of death.

“She can’t stand to see you anymore, Joe. It’s killing her.”

This time I heard her. This time I got it. This time I felt the knife go deep and turn. Bleeding, I turned and left.

It was then that I felt the first fracture in my head. It was then that I knew that I was so far gone that there was never going to be a way home. Not for Helen. Not for me.

And that morphed into… Me in the dojo, kneeling, my hands aching, bleeding. My eyes filled with sweat and tears while I watched my sensei apply compresses to the face of the kid with whom I’d been sparring. My friend Dino. So much blood on the floor where he’d fallen.

Eyes looking at me. Not understanding. Hating me. Disappointed in me. Afraid of me. Sensei cutting me a look that was filled with pain and conflict. We’d only been sparring. It wasn’t a real fight. Points only.

But the light coming through the windows had changed his face into someone else’s. An older teenage face I’d seen in a park, grinning at me as he huffed and thrust and ruined something perfect.

I don’t remember the actual fight with Dino. It wasn’t me who hit him and hurt him. I know that. It was someone else inside my head. A stranger. Brutal and vicious and efficient in his cruelty.

Then later. Weeks, months, years telescoped together.

Learning about the people in my head. Thirty-four of them at one point. Not schizophrenia. Not true multiple personality disorder. Something else. A unique madness that was mine to own.

Rudy Sanchez came into my life. The memory of him was a light in the darkness of those dreams. Steady Rudy. Smart and kind Rudy. Doctor to Helen, doctor to me. Friend. Helping me hunt down the people in my head. Killing some, banishing others. Making hard deals with the ones who were left.

The Civilized Man. The tattered remnant of who I might have become if the world had not dealt those wicked cards.

The Cop. The person I was evolving into. Cool and precise, taking the discipline of martial arts and the analytical qualities of an investigator. Giving me a solid piece of ground on which to stand. Saving me.

And the Warrior. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Killer. The savage who had brutalized my friend Dino. The hunter who wanted to find those four teenagers — grown men by now — and hurt them in ugly ways. But who, denied that, was always ready to go to war under a black flag against anyone who hurt people like Helen.

There were other moments like that. None of them good. Staring into my mother’s eyes as she slipped over the edge of life and fell into the big black. That precise moment when, even through the cancer and the drugs, she found a moment of clarity and knew — knew — that she was dying. In that moment. Right then. The mixture of hope, regret, and doubt was unbearable. Hope that there would be something waiting. Regret that she was leaving her sons and her husband. Doubt that the fall would just go on and on and on.

And the day Cathy called me to say that she hadn’t been able to get in touch with Helen. Cathy asking me to go to Helen’s apartment. Me going. At Helen’s door. Smelling what there was to smell. Kicking the door in. Finding Helen days too late. Seeing the empty bottle of drain cleaner by her bloated hand.

Later still, holding Major Grace Courtland in my arms, inhaling her last breath as the assassin’s bullet took her away from me. Feeling her begin to cool; believing in the moment that it was the black ice in my heart that was stealing away her heat.

On and on, all through the night.

Fighting monsters. The walkers created by the Seif al Din pathogen. Genetically engineered soldiers deep in the dark of a military research lab. Being hunted by genetic freaks beneath the Dragon Factory. Looking into the eyes of berserkers. Facing the Red Knights and their bloody appetites.

And on and on. Year after year.

Then the God Machine.

The device created by the young and tortured madman Prospero Bell. Getting caught in the energetic wave as the machine pulsed. Feeling myself being torn out of the now and into the nowhere. Fighting zombies after the world ended.

Walking on the beach of some other world, seeing alien spacecraft cut across the sky while some monstrous thing — a demon or god or something there isn’t a name for — rose above me, wings spreading, eyes burning red above a beard of writhing tentacles.

So much. Too much.

I screamed myself awake. I could feel the scream coming from way down deep inside of me. Deeper than the pit of my stomach, deeper than my lungs. Maybe from the bottom of my soul. I don’t know. It rose up, soared up, ripped its way up and burst from my mouth as I twisted free of whatever held me and the sound of it shattered the air as I fell to the cold floor.

I lay there, hearing the scream echo around me. It was not a wordless scream of pain or fear. No.

What I’d screamed was “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” It was the prayer to the dark god of that other world.

I sat there on the floor. Ghost stood five feet away from me. Invisible in the utter darkness. Growling.

At me.

INTERLUDE EIGHT

It took Svoboda’s team, coordinating with Dr. Beaufort and Valen, two days to excavate the cavern wall. Most of that time was used in assembling timber-and-steel support beams for the ceiling. A separate team double-reinforced the exit tunnel in case the drilling caused a collapse. Once that was done, the jackhammers and pick-axes went to work.

The wall, even cracked, fought them. It was old stone, hard and stubborn, and they encountered anomalous veins of iron.

Valen and Svoboda tried to make sense of it, because as they cut their way into the wall, the cracks Marguerite had discovered made less and less sense. For one thing, they did not follow the standard irregularities and stress points in the stone. There were clearly preexisting fracture points and mineral weaknesses that should have been where some kind of tectonic shift would naturally create fissures. Those were untouched. Instead, the cracks were in what could best be described as random places. Svoboda kept urging Valen to stop, to allow him to do tests, take samples, document the phenomenon. Valen’s answer each time was to order the diggers to up their game.

They broke through into the pocket near midnight on the second day.

“Mr. Valen,” called the worker who broke through the wall, but Ari and Valen were there, pushing him aside, crowding past him. They froze in the ragged entrance, shocked to stillness by what they saw. Marguerite, Svoboda, and the others tried to crowd around them to get a look.

“No,” cried Valen, though to Marguerite it wasn’t clear if he was telling them to stop crowding him or making a statement of flat denial at what he saw in the pocket.

Then Valen sagged sideways against the edge and ran a trembling hand over his face. His knees buckled, and he would have fallen if Ari had not caught him. Valen grabbed his friend’s arm and clawed his way up it like a drowning man coming over the edge of a lifeboat.

“Ari,” whispered Valen in a hollow croak of a voice, “get them back. Get everyone back. Please, for God’s sake.”

Ari stood a moment, too shocked to move, then he blinked and whirled and roared at the others. “Get back. Get the fuck back. Everyone out of the tunnel. Now! ”

They retreated with great reluctance. Everyone was scared, confused. Marguerite tried to linger but Valen shook his head and she finally backed away, turned, and followed the others out.

When they were alone, Valen went into the hole and stepped gingerly into the exposed pocket. He saw that, although the plants had looked fresh through the fiber-optic scope, it was clear that they were dying. At first, he thought it might be because of exposure to different air quality now that the pocket was opened, but it became apparent that this, like so many assumptions, was wrong. All of the plants, and the roots of others, were severed. Every single one of them seemed to have been sheared through as if the whole pocket had been carved out of a natural landscape and somehow transported into the center of a rock wall. Impossible as that was.

“Are you seeing this?” he asked Ari, who stood in the tunnel mouth.

“Jesus Christ…” was Ari’s only reply.

Valen knelt by the crystal gun. It looked like something out of an old science fiction novel. Or a kid’s toy. All knobs and bulbs and blunt barrel with no opening. Valen’s eyes, though, were not fixed on the gun but on the thing that lay partly across the handle. Through the scope it had appeared to be some kind of dead animal. A lizard or something, but the foliage had blocked most of it. Now Valen and Ari could see the whole thing. It wasn’t any kind of small animal.

No. It was a hand and part of a wrist. Neatly severed. It had a thumb and three long fingers, each of which ended in a thick dark nail, sharp as any claw.

And it was scaly and green.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I held my hand out for Ghost to sniff but he hesitated a long time before he would even look at it. His dark eyes were filled with strange lights, but I knew that the strangeness was mine and he was merely reflecting it. Reacting to it. Fearing it.

“Please,” I said, and reached another inch closer.

Ghost finally took the tiniest of steps forward, moving with a mincing delicacy for so large a dog. Like he was stepping onto thin ice. His wet nose twitched as he sniffed. All the hair along his spine still stood up, thick and stiff as brush bristles.

Then his tail moved. A wag. Half a wag. Enough of one.

I slid off the edge of the bed and onto the cold concrete floor. Ghost came to me and I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him against my chest. A sound, not quite a sob, broke from my chest and I really could not tell you why. The dreams. Something about those dreams.

I’m a grown man, a skilled fighter, a practiced killer, and a special operator. But not at that moment. In that moment I was very young, and very small, and there were monsters. Not in my closet or under my bed, but in my dreams. In my head.

I clung to Ghost and the night closed around us like a fist.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

They ran toward the strange, booming voice. They ran toward the sound of men screaming in pain and terror. They ran toward the rattle of gunfire and the roar of something that was too alien, too weird, too big to exist down here. They ran.

Why the fuck are we running toward all this? That was the question pounding through Harry Bolt’s head. He was positive that he was completely unprepared for whatever the hell this was. And yet he ran.

The pillars were so many and so thick that they blocked the view of whatever was happening. Green light flung impossible shadows on the walls. Men, their outlines distorted to capering goblin shapes, fighting something that writhed and twisted like a nest of giant snakes. Gunfire flashed and thunder boomed. Violin, running far ahead, rounded a corner and vanished into the green madness. Her shadow loomed like a giant warrior woman from some ancient myth.

Then Harry was there, rounding the same corner, seeing what Violin saw. He skidded to a stop, tripped, fell. Lay there staring, unable to do anything else. His heart punched the inside of his chest cavity over and over again.

The intense green light poured out through a doorway. Or a cleft. Or a hole. He could not understand what it was, because it seemed to hover in the air. It was not a door in the wall. It was not anchored to anything. It was merely there and it was open, and from the other side of that doorway stretched a dozen…

His mind tried hard to refuse the word.

Tentacles .

Gigantic tentacles were stretched through the doorway and they curled and thrashed and beat at Ghul. They curled around the shrieking tomb raiders. They crushed them and tore the men to pieces and dragged them, bleeding and dying, back through the doorway. Harry caught Ghul’s eyes for a moment, and even though they were strangers, even though they would have otherwise murdered each other, there was a pleading and desperate appeal. Person to person. Human to human. But when Ghul opened his mouth to scream for help, he vomited a torrent of dark red blood.

However, it was not the tentacles, nor the impossible doorway that rooted Harry to where he lay and made him stare with eyes so wide they ached.

No. It was what he could see on the other side of the doorway. Beyond it was… daylight. Bright sun shone on hills and fields, and above them machines flew through the sky. He could see them quite clearly, silhouetted briefly as they flew in front of the moon.

The several moons that hung in a sky that was a luminous green instead of blue. The sky of another world.

That’s when Harry Bolt screamed and screamed and screamed until he passed out.

INTERLUDE NINE

Ari sat on one side of the table in the suite overlooking the bay. He was drunk, but Valen could not blame him. Neither of them had been entirely sober since the opening of the pocket in the Green Caves.

Valen sat across from him. There were wine and whiskey bottles everywhere. A thousand-dollar bottle of Pappy Van Winkle had fallen over and leaked a puddle onto the carpet, but neither of them cared.

The hand was wrapped in plastic and sitting in a cooler packed with dry ice. The green crystal gun lay on the table. Gadyuka was sending someone to collect them. All Valen told her via coded message was that there were unusual “artifacts” she needed to see.

Valen’s cell phone rang, and he tensed when he saw the display. “It’s the site.”

“Valen,” cried a breathless Marguerite, “you need to come back here right away.”

“Whoa, wait… why? What’s happened?”

“We found something else. God… how soon can you get here?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

DMS special agent D.J. Ming wrapped the blood-pressure cuff around Aunt Sallie’s upper arm and began squeezing the rubber bulb.

“You’re making it too damn tight,” she complained, but D.J. ignored her. He had been her driver, bodyguard, and private nurse for two years now and had become so hardened to complaints and abuse that his friends joked that he was literally bulletproof. No one in the DMS was harder to work for than Aunt Sallie.

She was in a blue nightgown with little white flowers on it. It made her look like a senior citizen in a nursing home, and she knew it. Her dreadlocks hung limply down beside her rounded cheeks and the jewels in them caught little bits of lamplight. Dots of beauty around a sad, angry face.

D.J. finished pumping and then eased pressure as he looked at his watch. The digital meter told the story: 161 over 98.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, appalled.

“It’s better than it was this morning,” Auntie said defensively.

“This morning I was going to drive you to the ER.”

“You can’t drive with my foot up your ass.”

D.J. removed the cuff and stepped back. Not for perspective, but to be out of range. “Auntie, I’m just going to say this one more time—”

“Don’t bother.”

He ignored her. “Your blood pressure is off the charts and your blood sugar scares the hell out of me. Don’t get me started on your balance. The fact that none of this scares you, scares me even more.”

“It’s fine. It’ll go back down once I knock in a few heads tomorrow.”

“And how long’s that going to take?”

“A day, tops.”

They both knew she was lying. Auntie was the queen of power phone calls. The fact that she couldn’t unravel the mess involving Captain Ledger and thought coming here was a good next move told D.J. that the knots were tied way too tight. A day was a laughable estimate and they both knew it.

The agent-cum-nurse walked across the room and placed the cuff on the dresser next to her blood glucose monitor and insulin supplies. He turned, leaned back, and folded his thick arms. D.J. Ming was in his middle thirties and had been a Navy SEAL for seven years and a DMS operative for nine. He was one of the most highly qualified experts in small-arms and hand-to-hand combat in the agency, and would have had a chestful of medals if the DMS gave out any. Instead he had scars and memories. It was fair to say that there wasn’t a whole lot that scared him.

Aunt Sallie did, but not for the reasons she scared everyone else. He knew the difference between bluster and real threat. He could take her barbs and insults and complaints without blinking. But he cared very deeply for her, and her declining health worried him more than any battlefield he’d ever been on. If he could put himself between her and her own self-destructive nature and somehow fight that enemy, he would do it without the slightest hesitation. Auntie, despite everything, inspired a level of loyalty that ran very deep in people like him. In soldiers. D.J. was a third-generation American citizen and a second-generation special operator. His mother and Auntie had run field ops together years ago. Now D.J. was watching her wither away. Maybe die. And it was killing him.

She was the deputy director of the Department of Military Sciences, second only to its founder, Mr. Church. No one crossed her. No one went behind her back. Ever. D.J. was giving it some real thought, though. It was a balancing act — betrayal or broken heart.

Before he could try another tack with her, Auntie heaved a sigh and held up a hand. “Look, kid, give me one more day. I promise to take better care of myself. Go fetch my pills and syringe and all that crap.” When he didn’t move, she smiled. It was a ghastly attempt at relaxed affability. “Trust me, this will all be fine.”

He nodded and turned to begin sorting out her pills. And, mostly, to hide the tears that kept trying to form in the corners of his eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Something woke me from another round of bad dreams. I sprang awake, thinking it was an explosion or an attack. Ghost started barking. I grabbed my sidearm and whipped the door open, expecting to see flames and armed hostiles. Instead, a few other confused and sleepy DMS staff came out of bedrooms, peering around like confused turtles.

One of the science techs stood listening, then nodded to himself. “Minor earthquake.”

“You sure that’s all it was?” I asked.

“Positive.”

We stood and listened to what a grumpy Mother Earth had to say, but apparently, she rolled over and went back to sleep.

Eventually everyone went to their rooms. I sat on the bed and stroked Ghost’s fur. The following morning we’d be on a plane back to California, and leaving all this behind. The crap in Washington was going to be sorted out by Aunt Sallie, who would kick ass and take names.

“It’s okay, Ghost,” I said. “It’s all okay.”

Which neither of us believed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The priest was middle-aged and he’d seen it all. Desperate drunks looking to make a bargain with God. The broken heart who had no other lifeline to grab. The fallen and the falling. The displaced ones who came because the doors were open. Those sad ones who came in just to see if they were still welcome. People whose faith was cracking but who wanted to cling to belief.

So many kinds. Father Steve often mused that he could fill a book with the different types. Multiple volumes. He knew that only half of them still identified in some way as Catholic. The rest were a mixed bag of Christians, lapsed-somethings, agnostics, or atheists who were having a crisis of their own lack of faith. Why Immaculate Conception? Easy. It was in a part of town where the crime rate was low enough to risk keeping the doors open all night. A lot of cops came in here. People from the crisis centers took the Metro to come here.

It was all the same to him. Father Steve was a practical guy. He’d been a chaplain in the First Gulf War and had logged time as a missionary attached to crisis hospitals in five different African countries. Since then he’d been running Immaculate Conception, mostly doing counseling, taking confessions, and working the night shift. It was a big church and there were three priests, of which he had middle seniority and no ambition to run the whole shebang.

He preferred keeping the candles lit for the wanderers who came in for quiet reflection at odd hours. Right now, there were six people in the various pews. Each sitting as geographically far away from each other as was possible. He admired the desperate geometry of it.

The old woman closest to the front was a widow who had been in every three or four days since her husband of sixty-four years passed from cancer. She was one of the brokenhearted ones, because she’d outlived her husband, both daughters, and three grandchildren. She sat rocking in silence, and Father Steve knew that no words existed to offer comfort, and no advice — no psychology or scripture — could adequately explain to her why she survived while everyone else she loved died.

Then there was the guy who ran the NA meeting. Not using, earning his ten-year chip, and running a successful meeting was in no way a buffer against hearing the stories his fellow NA members told. He’d once admitted that he felt like he was carrying those stories around as surely as if they were tattooed on his skin.

The other four tonight were new, but there were always a lot of those.

Father Steve made just enough noise to ensure they all knew he was there in case they needed something more than the setting and the atmosphere.

Then he spotted a seventh visitor he hadn’t noticed before, seated in the shadows to the left of the basin of holy water, just outside the circle of yellow light cast by the flickering candles. Late thirties, he judged; well dressed but with a kind of disheveled air about him. As if the man was rumpled rather than his suit.

He needs his soul dry-cleaned, mused Father Steve, then chewed for a moment on that thought. It was accurate, but he could not pinpoint why it was right.

There was a sound and everyone in the church looked up as a bass growl filled the air. It was not very loud and not sharp. Not like an explosion, and not quite thunder. Then Father Steve felt the floor vibrate beneath his feet. For a moment he thought it was a subway train rocketing along beneath the ground, but the sound was wrong, and the vibration was too strong.

The guy from Narcotics Anonymous said it out loud, putting a name to it. “Earthquake.”

He was right and everyone knew it. They sat where they were. No one rushed for the protection of a doorway. The rumble was low, soft… and then it was gone.

“Thank God,” said the NA guy.

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Father Steve and, as all eyes were suddenly on him, he made the sign of the cross in the air and gave a blessing for the safety of one and all.

The others said amen.

Except the man in the shadows, who caved slowly forward, placed his face in his hands, and began to weep.

No one heard him whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Not even Father Steve.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Harry woke up slowly. It hurt. His body ached, and there was a feeling like a splinter driven into his mind. He sat up, gasping, drool hanging from his rubbery lips. Understanding coalesced with slow reluctance. The citadel in Syria. The tomb raiders. The hidden chamber and the green glow and the…

His head whipped around but the strange doorway was gone. It was all gone. Ghul and his people, those damned tentacles, the glimpse of some alien sky. All that was left was a trace of the green glow. A fragment of something that gleamed like glass, or crystal, lying on the stone floor near the base of a pillar. It pulsed like a heartbeat, the light waxing and waning very slowly.

Violin stood over it, and by that bizarre light Harry could see her expression, and it froze the heart in his chest. He had never before seen a look of such profound and personal horror. It twisted her lovely face into an ugly mask of disgust and hate and fear.

“V–Violin…?” he whispered, tripping over her name. His voice was hoarse and cracked.

She turned her head very slowly toward him. It was a strange movement that, in the strangeness of the moment, did not look at all human. It was more like a praying mantis swiveling its head. Her dark eyes looked like orbs of black onyx and he saw no warmth at all in them. However, the horror and fear slowly drained from her expression, like sand from a broken hourglass.

“Violin?” he asked again.

She blinked once. Slowly. Then again. And after a third blink there was a change. She was back.

“Harry?” Violin murmured in a voice stretched paper thin with tension. She took a step toward him, caught him under the arm, and jerked him to his feet with such shocking force that Harry went stumbling several paces forward. But he skidded to a stop when he realized that she’d accidently propelled him toward the piece of green crystal. Violin cried out, but Harry began backpedaling, pinwheeling his arms like a sloppy tightrope walker. Violin caught his shoulder and pulled him farther away. They stood for a moment, panting as if they’d run up ten flights of stairs, staring at the pulsing green object.

“What is that?” he asked in a church whisper.

Violin licked her lips. “Something that should not be here.”

“‘Here’ where? In this frigging tomb?”

“No,” said Violin. She shook her head as if trying to clear her thoughts, then pulled a compact satellite from a pouch on her belt. “No signal,” she said after a moment.

“Violin, what is that thing? It makes me feel weird.”

She turned and suddenly jerked to a stop, staring at him, her eyes wide but face wooden. “Harry,” she said in a slow, calm, controlled voice, “put that down.”

“Put what down?”

Then he felt the weight in his right hand and looked down to see, with total astonishment, that he was holding his pistol. “I… I…”

He had nowhere to go with that, because he hadn’t been aware of drawing the pistol. Or wanting to.

“Give me the gun, Harry,” said Violin.

“What?”

“Give it to me,” she said. “Do it now.”

“Oh… sure,” he said vaguely, and offered it to her.

Except that’s not what he did. His arm rose, but the barrel was pointing at a spot exactly between Violin’s breasts. He could feel his finger moving along the curve of the trigger guard.

“Harry… give me the…”

Violin’s voice melted into nothing. Into an absence of sound so profound that it was as if his ability to hear and perceive sound had been torn from him. As it happened, Harry felt totally detached from the motion of pointing the gun at her. In his head, it was as if a door every bit as strange and alien as the one they had seen a few moments ago had suddenly opened wide. He could not hear Violin’s voice. It was gone. All sound was gone, and in its place a silence as vast and deep as forever yawned like the mouth of some great, hungry thing.

Harry looked into it. Hearing nothing, but seeing so far. So deep. Into forever. He never saw Violin move. He did not feel his finger pull the trigger; never heard the shot. He did not hear the scream. Nor did he feel the ground beneath him begin to rumble and growl.

INTERLUDE TEN

They gathered around a dark blue Tyvek tarp Rig stretched out on the floor of the cavern. The guards stood at the exit, but even they craned their necks to see the green objects brought with great care from new pockets discovered in the walls.

“I can’t explain this,” said Svoboda uselessly. He’d said it so many times that it was now as much background noise as the dripping water.

“What is it?” asked Rig. The whole thing was so riveting that Valen noticed that Rig and Ari stood shoulder to shoulder despite everything that had happened. This was bigger than that. Bigger than anything.

“What it is,” said Marguerite, who knelt on the edge of the tarp, “is inarguably the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of the world. And I am not exaggerating. If the carbon and luminescence dating continues to come back with the numbers we’ve been seeing from the chips found in this cavern, then this will mean that history, as we know it, is wrong.”

They all looked at each other. It was what they’d all been thinking, but somehow hearing it aloud made it somehow more real. That’s how Valen took it, at least. More real.

He cleared his throat and knelt across from Marguerite. “First things first,” he said. “The dating is going to take some time, so we can’t let ourselves get caught up in wild speculations.”

“But—” began Marguerite, but he caught her eye and gave a tiny shake of his head and she fell silent.

“First, we need to determine what this thing is.”

They looked at the scattered pieces. Each one had been gently cleaned and placed on the tarp along with a small tag with a numerical code.

“It’s a machine,” said Rig. “What else can it be?”

There were more than three hundred pieces, ranging from some as large as a car battery to others that were clearly some kind of pin or fastener.

“What do we do, though?” asked Rig. His clothes were covered in rock dust and his eyes seemed to be filled with crazy lights. “I mean… can we put it back together?”

“No,” said Svoboda and a few of the others in a chorus of alarm.

“We don’t have a blueprint,” said Marguerite, trying to be a voice of reason.

“I can figure it out,” promised Rig. “I’m good at machines. My work-study job at MIT was repairing assistant engineer in the lab. I fixed everything from the processors on the electron microscope to the gears on that big industrial laser.”

“Kid’s telling the truth,” said Ari. “When the generator in the other cave blew, he fixed it like nothing.”

“Okay,” said Valen. “Kid, you just got a promotion. But every step gets documented. Marguerite will work with you on that. Pictures, video, complete notes. The works. Dot every i and cross every t.”

“History would never forgive us for making a mistake,” said Marguerite.

Valen nodded, though he was thinking of someone else who wouldn’t forgive him if there were any mistakes.