The Eye of Moloch

Chapter 48

In this place where the world’s super-elite liked to playact at rugged living, there was one large cabin that was always reserved and kept spotless and ready for a single, infrequent visitor. No one but his servants, his invited guests, and his closest associates had ever set foot inside since it had been built for Aaron Doyle in the early 1930s.

There he sat before the roaring fire, considering the status of the game that had been playing out for most of his long life.

Some moves had taken years to formulate—the ebbs and flows of political power, the debasement of a key currency, the patient process of swindling on a global scale—but in response to every move he made there always came an answer. These countermoves were so clear one could almost see William Merchant’s hand behind them.

But the game had taken on a frightening new aspect following the dying words of Arthur Gardner. What he’d said had scarcely left Doyle’s mind since, and now those words returned to him again.

If Merchant is dead, then who in heaven’s name has been up there fighting against us for these past thirty years?

Who, indeed.

The die was cast, in any case. Whatever or whomever it was that he was playing against, whether flesh or spirit, the game must proceed. Deep in these thoughts, Doyle flinched then at the sound of a voice just beside him.

“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news,” Warren Landers said.

“Tell me.”

Landers bent and spoke into his ear, and as he did so he made a motion toward the door. Two guards entered with a small and bloodied man dragged between them.

They forced the prisoner to his knees in the center of the room. One of them held him where he knelt, slapped him hard across the face, and wrenched his arm behind him with a smart twist to bring him alert for the questioning.

“What’s your name?” Landers asked.

The kneeling man was looking only at Aaron Doyle. His voice was winded and broken when he spoke, but the words were quite clear. “I thought you people knew everything,” he said. “Don’t you already know who I am?”

He was struck again, and Landers repeated his demand.

“Tell us your name.”

“I’m Ira Gershon.”

The other guard had left the room but now he returned and began to methodically spread wide, thin plastic sheeting in overlapping layers behind and around the prisoner, a precaution to keep any of the fine furnishings from being soiled.

“And your friends, Mr. Gershon, where are they?”

“I don’t know.” This denial was met with another blow and a twist of the arm hard enough to dislocate the joint. The kneeling man drew in his breath sharply, but he didn’t cry out. His eyes were still fixed on Aaron Doyle.

“We have other avenues to find them,” Landers said. “There’s nowhere they can hide—”

“But they’re not hiding anymore.”

Doyle turned to the prisoner for the first time, and leaned closer. “What is it that she’s going to do?” he asked.

“That, I can tell you,” Gershon said. “Someday soon, she’s going to win.”

Landers sighed and gave a nod to the man behind, who’d now finished his preparations. He came around, drew his pistol, and stood ready.

Ira Gershon straightened himself up as best he could. “Would you let me pray a last time?” he asked.

“Go right ahead,” Landers said. “Why not waste your last few seconds on earth with a plea to the empty sky?”

As the kneeling man set about his foolish ritual, Landers bent again to the ear of Aaron Doyle, lowered his voice, and spoke with assurance. “I have good people working on the forensics from their last hideout. They tell me to expect definitive information within a few hours, a day at the most. With some luck we’ll know everything we need to. Whatever they do, you’ve planned for it, sir. We’ll turn it against them and make the best of it.”

Doyle nodded slowly, but he didn’t seem so sure.

Landers stood, checked his watch, and turned back to the man on his knees. “All right, then. Have you finished?”

The pious silence dragged on for a few seconds longer and at last Ira Gershon unclasped his hands and looked up. “Yes, I’m finished.”

Landers motioned to the executioner, who checked his silenced weapon for readiness, pressed the muzzle to the prisoner’s forehead, pulled back the hammer, and waited for the final order.

“Hell of a lot of good all that praying did you,” Landers said.

The man on his knees smiled at this, having made his peace with what was coming, and then he quietly spoke his final words.

“What makes you think I was praying for me?”