The King of Plagues

Chapter Fifty-one

Circe and I pulled into the Starbucks in Southampton, where Routes 232 and 132 meet. I started to get out, but Circe opened her briefcase on her lap and removed her laptop. I sat back. “Aren’t you coming in?”

She looked at the store and made a face. “Marty and I never quite hit it off.”

“You know him?”

“Since I was a kid. If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here and go over my notes. We have so much information … there has to be some answers buried in all of this. Besides … Marty will probably be more candid without me there, anyway. You’re one of the boys.”

I smiled. “Okay. I’ll give you the highlights of this when I’m done.”

“Can’t wait.”

I clicked my tongue and Ghost bounded out of the backseat, but before I could reach for the door handle a car beep made us turn. A rental sedan pulled into the lot and Ghost was wagging his tail so hard he nearly knocked me over. Rudy Sanchez parked and got out, smiling at us despite everything else that was going on.

Rudy is short and carries a couple extra pounds, but he’s tougher than he looks and he has the most intelligent face I’ve ever seen. He’s also the only person on earth who I trust completely and without reserve. I got out and we shook hands, and then he pulled me into his version of a bear hug. We slapped each other’s backs as Ghost yipped and danced around us. He loses all traces of self-respect around Rudy. Rudy bent and vigorously rubbed Ghost’s head and received a comprehensive face licking.

“Hello, you furry monster. You keeping Joe out of cathouses?”

Then Rudy looked past me and saw Circe step out of the Explorer. “Dios mio!”

“Keep it in your pants, Rude. That’s Dr. Circe—”

“O’Tree,” he finished, grinning hard enough to injure himself. “I know. I saw her on Oprah. My, my, but the good Lord was in a generous mood when he made her.”

Circe walked over to meet us. Before I could make introductions, she said, “Dr. Sanchez?”

“Dr. O’Tree.”

“It’s ‘Circe,’” she said, smiling brightly and extending her hand.

“Rudy,” he said exactly the same way someone would say “your slave.” Even Ghost seemed to roll his eyes. “I’ve read your books. Fascinating work. Insightful.”

“Thank you,” she said graciously. “And call me Circe.”

“Mr. Church said that you’d be part of our team on this. I’d like to share my interview notes with you.”

“The Nicodemus interview?”

“Yes.”

“I’d love to see them,” she said, “and I have some things I’d like to run past you.”

I said, “You two want to stay out here and copy each other’s homework while I go inside?”

Rudy looked at me with a charming smile. “Yes, thanks. Buzz off.”

They tuned me out and were deep in conversation as they headed to my Explorer. I glanced down at Ghost. “I do believe we have been snubbed, my shaggy friend.”

He had no comment, so we went inside.

As I reached for the door handle I shivered unexpectedly and looked suddenly back at Rudy and Circe. It was a weird feeling that was based on nothing I could name, but I felt as if there was a shadow cast over them both. I lingered for a moment, letting my ears and eyes pick apart the surroundings. Was something wrong? Out of place?

No. There was nothing. A goose had walked over my grave, as my grandmother would say. Gradually the shadow in my mind receded.

Ghost looked at them and gave a single, short whuf.

Interlude Thirty-five

Toys touched his fingers to the glass, feeling the cool caress of the December wind. Behind him, Gault and the American sat on opposite sides of the big man’s desk, heads bent together in a discussion on logistics for the newest phase of the Ten Plagues Initiative. On the wall a silent flat-screen TV showed a shot from an aerial view of the scene of a gunfight in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. The legend across the bottom of the screen read: Terrorism?

Below the window where Toys stood, New York was sprawled in gaudy splendor beneath a gibbous moon. Millions of lights. Millions of beating hearts. Toys’ own heart felt like a piece of broken crockery in his chest. As cold as the night and as removed from real humanity as he was up here on the fiftieth floor of the building that the American owned. One of the big man’s many holdings. Here, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta. The man was immeasurably wealthy. Toys smiled thinly as he mused that he, too, was now wealthy. He had millions of dollars of his own money in numbered accounts. A gift from the American.

So you don’t have to keep sucking on Gault’s tit. That was how the American had phrased it.

I could leave, Toys thought. I could walk out the door, get into a cab, and vanish.

How long, he wondered, before Gault would even realize that he was gone? Then how long would it take Gault, using the vast resources of the Kings, to find him? A week at the most. And what would Gault do? Have him brought back in chains? Forgive him? Kill him?

Toys could not pick which option was most likely. He sighed and leaned his forehead against the glass. Gault had become the King of Plagues in every sense. He was fully invested with the Kings. He was one of them, heart and soul.

Which left Toys … where?

He had no idea.

The last four months had given him new definitions for both “heartache” and “hell.” Although Toys managed to fake interest in the Ten Plagues Initiative, he knew that it didn’t fool Gault. Not completely, anyway. The only comfort, and it was a cold and dubious comfort, was that Gault did not grasp the nature of Toys disapproval. He thought it was cowardice.

Cowardice.

Jesus. Toys wanted to take a knife and rip Gault’s guts out every time he thought about that. Twice in the last month he had come into Gault’s room in the middle of the night and stood over his bed, watching Gault sleep, holding a knife in his sweating palm.

Cowardice?

How could Gault have wandered so far from himself that he could not recognize love?

Not for the first time, Toys wondered if Eris really was some kind of sorceress.

He and Gault barely spoke unless it was about incidental things. A second round of martinis, travel plans. Nothing of consequence.

Gault’s time was taken up playing the role of the King of Plagues. He had entered the world of the Kings with a will, and even though bombings were not under his purview, Gault had actively participated in the planning of the London event. He had also selected Fair Isle. Toys was secretly pleased that the Ebola release had fallen flat.

Rivers of blood my ass, he mused.

And the woman, Amber Taylor, had dodged away as well. Bloody good for her.

He knew that although the failures could not be laid at Gault’s feet, they were nonetheless failures connected to his overall plan. The failures were embarrassing to the Goddess as well, and that really pleased Toys.

Now they were poised for the next round. More killings. More death. And still they hadn’t reached the real centerpiece of Gault’s plan.

Toys wondered if they would all drown in a river of blood of their own making.

We deserve it.

The phone rang and the American answered, spoke quietly for a moment, and then hung up.

“I need to deal with something,” said the King of Fear as he lumbered toward the door. “You boys make yourself comfortable.”

He closed the door behind him.

Toys stood by the big picture window and looked out at the New York skyline. This was the fifth of the American’s offices he had visited in the last few months, and he marveled at the fact that despite the differences in locale, each office was decorated identically, down to the bottles in the wet bar, the brand of expensive furniture, and even the art on the walls. He knew that this all made some kind of statement about the man, but he wasn’t sure what that statement’s message was. On the surface it seemed to suggest a mind that possessed a single fixed image of the world, but Toys knew that this was not the case. He wondered if it was more misdirection on the American’s part. A statement intended to cement a certain limited view of who he was into people’s minds.

Behind him, Gault sipped a Scotch and soda, the ice cubes tinkling against his lips.

Toys turned. “There’s still time,” he said.

“Don’t start,” muttered Gault quietly. “I’m not in the mood to have this discussion again.”

“We haven’t had this discussion yet. Every time I try to bring it up, you growl at me or storm out of the room. I’m supposed to be your Conscience—”

Gault snorted, which shut Toys up as effectively as a slap across the face.

Toys rubbed his eyes. He felt old and used up. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said sharply. “I’m going to say it anyway.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” warned Gault.

Toys crossed the room and stood in front of Gault.

Gault took a sip, sighed, then said, “Okay. Have your say. Get it out of your system. I suppose I owe you that much.”

Ha, Toys mused sourly. If you paid what you owed me, Sebastian, we’ d be thousands of miles away from here and running fast.

Aloud he said, “When we escaped the meltdown in Afghanistan you were too badly injured to walk. I carried you out of there, Sebastian. Carried. On my back.”

“You want a sodding medal? Fine, I’ll buy you one.”

“Hush.” Toys said it softly, and something in his tone made Gault close his mouth on another barb. He gestured with his glass for Toys to continue. “When we escaped and we got onto the medical transport, that was the most frightening time of my life. Not because I thought that they would catch us. No … I was afraid that with everything crashing down I would lose you.”

Gault blinked in what looked to Toys like genuine surprise. “You didn’t lose me,” he said softly.

“Yes, I did. Not then, but since then. In bits and pieces. I lost some of you before, to Amirah. I know you loved her, but you have to admit that I did see through her deception all along. If you had listened to me, things would never have gotten out of hand. I know that I’ve said that before and every time I do you and I have a row about it, but it’s true. I was right about her.”

Gault shrugged and his tone grew harder. “Okay, you were right about her. Bully for you.”

“Given that,” Toys persisted, “why can’t you take a moment and step back from all of this? The Kings, the Ten Plagues, the Goddess—all of it. Step back and at least consider whether I might be right again.”

“About Eris?”

“Yes. In a lot of ways she’s as mad as Amirah was.”

“So?”

“I think she believes that she is a goddess.”

“Again … so?”

“She isn’t,” Toys said viciously. “She’s a woman who knows that despite good genes and some natural longevity, this is the last blast for her as a sexual icon. Once her beauty really starts to fade, the other Kings will lose interest. Remember that ‘glamour’ is another word for an illusion or spell. That’s what she’s cast. Because she acts the part of the Great Beauty of the Ages, she is taken as such. It’s affectation, and she’s charismatic enough to pull it off. She’s also probably scared out of her mind because she has to see, day by day, that she is nearing that line when, once it is crossed, she will become ordinary. A woman. Not a goddess. An old woman.”

“You’re jealous of her,” sneered Gault.

“No. Even I’m not that damaged … and don’t think that you can do me any harm by attacking my sexuality. I’m not conflicted about who I am, Sebastian. I know who I am. Just as I know who you are.”

“And what am I, O wise and mighty Conscience?”

“You’re a fool,” Toys said acidly. “If you were merely naïve and oblivious I could forgive it, but you’re the smartest man I’ve ever known. Ever. So, this refusal to see Eris for who she is, and to refuse to see this Ten Plagues madness for what it is, that’s deliberate and stubborn foolishness.”

“You’re treading on thin ice, Toys, and your time is almost up.”

“When you conceived the Seif Al Din project I objected to it, as you may remember. Not because I’m capable of taking the moral high ground — we both know I’m too thoroughly corrupt for that — but because it wasn’t a good balance of reward and risk. A mistake could have led to a global pandemic, and very nearly did. If it wasn’t for Joe Ledger and the DMS, your mistake would have been the very last one in history.”

“Joe Ledger is a dead man,” sneered Gault. “He slipped us in London, but I’m going to have his guts for garters.”

“Will you listen to yourself? You’re obsessed with him as if he’s the cause of your problems.”

“He is.”

“He isn’t. You’re not a supervillain and he’s not your arch nemesis. This isn’t a sodding comic book.”

“Don’t be insulting.”

Toys sighed and flapped his arms. “Now, here we are again, standing at the brink of another needlessly risky venture. What are the rewards? You want to cripple the Inner Circle? Really? Since when did they mean anything to you? Four months ago you’d never heard of them. But then Eris fucked the last bits of common sense out of your head and suddenly you are willing to launch a program that will not only cause countless deaths but could very easily spark conflicts that will tear nations apart. Why? What do you think you’ll accomplish with that?”

Gault said nothing. He sipped his drink and watched Toys with hooded eyes.

“Shall I tell you then?” asked Toys.

“Oh, by all means. Show me how smart you are.”

“This isn’t about being smart, Sebastian, so don’t try to turn it into a contest to see whose brain weighs more. I know you’re smarter than me. You’re smarter than almost everyone. You’re just not as smart as you think you are.” Toys stepped closer. “You want to rise above your human weaknesses, Sebastian. Just as Eris wants to rise above the truth that she must inevitably age, you want to rise about the truth that you can be hurt. You’re both playacting at being gods because you can’t stand the thought that you are human. Flawed, limited humans.”

Gault finished the last of his drink and set the glass down on the American’s desk. “Go to hell,” he said softly, then shook his head. “No … rot in hell.”

He turned toward the door and Toys laid his hand gently on Gault’s arm.

“Please, Sebastian … I’m begging you. Don’t do this.”

Sebastian Gault hit Toys in the face. A single wickedly fast punch that caught Toys in the mouth, bursting his lips against his teeth. Toys staggered back, clamping his hands to his bleeding mouth, shocked into a horrified and broken silence. Blood welled from between his fingers and dripped onto his shirtfront.

Gault looked down at his own fist as if surprised that it had just done that. “Rot in hell,” he said again. Quietly, without emphasis, his voice as dead as his eyes.

He turned and left the room.

Toys sank slowly to his knees, blood running in lines down his chin and splashing on the floor. He caved in around his pain. Not the pain of torn lips and mashed gums, but the red howling ache in his chest.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and wept.

Interlude Thirty-six

Charles Osgood Harrington IV — known as C-Four since he was thrown out of college — was a total pain in the ass. Everyone knew that and agreed on it. The media loved to hate him and ran paparazzi pictures of him almost daily, usually peeing in a sacred fountain in Italy or in a perp walk after a DUI, or those infamous pictures of him during his first and second stays in county correctional facilities or work-release camps. C-Four’s father’s lawyers hated him because he was so irredeemably arrogant and unrepentant in court that he instantly alienated judges and juries. The members of the various boards on which his father, Charles Osgood Harrington III — Three to his cronies and the press — was the chair. The stockholders hated him because each time his personal life detonated onto the headlines the shares in the family companies — Harrington Aeronautics, Harrington-Cheney Petrochemicals, Harrington and Milhaus Fuel Oil Company, and the fourteen others — tumbled. The administration of Yale hated that they were coerced into pushing him through with a degree even though he rarely attended a class and was never sober, but the Harrington family and their friends wrote checks larger than the outrage of the board of regents. Even C-Four’s friends only stayed with him because they thought he was richer than God and liked to show it off by spreading cash around. On a whim he flew the cast of Gossip Girl to a clothing-optional island. Another time he bought a hotel just to throw a party, and once he purchased a Mercedes dealership on a bet and then lost it in a run of poker hands that same night.

When his name came up on programs like Dr. Phil and Ellen, kindhearted but misinformed guest stars speculated that C-Four suffered from emotional damage that was the result of having been too famous even from birth. They discussed how the rich and privileged bear a terrible burden because they can’t be real and said that C-Four’s escapades were no different from the early excesses of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, both of whom had been romantically linked with him at one time or another, at least according to the tabloids.

Three only had one son. His daughter, Victoria, had married a civil-rights lawyer from Boston and was now only tolerated at Christmas. The keys to the kingdom would be passed to C-Four.

Father and son sat in leather chairs by a penthouse window in the Regent Beverly Wilshire. A tall Christmas tree sparkled and glowed behind them. Neither of them had decorated the tree and neither cared who had. Three had barely registered that there was a ten-foot tree in the room. C-Four had draped unused condoms on it like tinsel.

“I would prefer you not go,” said Three.

His son waggled the engraved and gold-embossed card. “Are you fucking kidding me, Dad?”

“Watch your language.”

C-Four snorted. “Oh, right, ’cause you don’t want me to spoil my image.”

“No, I just don’t appreciate you talking like you’re from the gutter.”

“Fuck that.”

Three fumed into the amber depths of his Scotch.

“This gig is going to be too cool to miss.” He reached for the return envelope, which had fallen to the floor. He fished a pen from his pocket, scrawled a brief note, stuffed the card into the envelope, and licked the glue. When he was done, he held it up between fore and index fingers. “You should be happy they even invited me.”

“If I had known about it in time I would have made sure you weren’t invited. It isn’t appropriate that you should go. No one at Yale remembers any ‘good old times’ with you. At best you were a figure of fun, and I suspect you received that invitation out of pity.”

“Thanks, Pop. Always nice to know that you care.” C-Four shook his head and finished the last of his drink. “Besides, this isn’t one of those über-mysterious Inner Circle things. And it’s not for you and your crew of vultures and thieves. For once it’s my generation instead of the corrupt old farts you hang out with.”

“‘Corrupt’?”

“Sorry, Dad, was that the wrong choice of words? Would ‘insanely manipulative’ be better?”

“Charlie …”

“Don’t even try to call me that. And don’t pretend that I don’t know what you and your Inner Circle Bonesmen are all about. Christ, everyone with Net access knows about the shit you assholes pull.” C-Four held up the sealed return envelope. “Besides … this is going to be the party of the century.”

C-Four got up and walked over to the wet bar, mixed a complicated drink, drank half of it standing there, and then strolled to the Christmas tree.

“In what way?” demanded Three.

C-Four took another pull on the drink. “I doubt you’d …” His voice trailed away and he stood frowning at the tree.

“You doubt I’d what?” snapped his father.

“Hm? What?” C-Four looked at his father with a confused smile on his face. He touched his cheeks. “What?”

“You said you doubted that I’d — what?”

C-Four’s confused smile flickered like a lightbulb whose filament was burning too thin. He shifted uncertainly and Three could see that there was something wrong with his son’s face. It looked weirdly uneven. Knobbed. Almost … blistered. “I …”

“Charlie, what’s wrong?”

His son tore at his collar, exposing his throat. All along his upper chest and neck dozens of red spots were appearing, rising from pinpricks and swelling into boils even as the young man stood swaying.

“Good God!” yelled Three. “What the hell did you do to yourself?” C-Four’s fingers twitched and the glass tumbled from his hands. It hit the thick Persian carpet, bounced, and splashed ice and alcohol over his bare feet. But the young man did not seem to notice. He stood there with a half smile, brows knit, head cocked into an attitude of listening as if he was pondering some great internal mystery. Boils blossomed across his face and on his hands. When he touched the ones on his face, they burst with sprays of red mist.

“Careful, dammit …,” his father said, starting in his chair. Then he froze in place as C-Four raised dreamy eyes toward him.

“I feel really …”

And blood exploded from his mouth and nose.

“Charlie!”

Charles Osgood Harrington III erupted from his chair as his son’s knees suddenly buckled and he dropped. C-Four landed on his knees and fell sideways against the tree. The whole mass of it — tree, tinsel, ornaments, condoms, and fairy lights — canted sideways with the young man on top of it. Blood geysered from C-Four’s mouth and the boils on his skin burst. His father was thirty feet away and he crossed the room in a shot.

But C-Four was already dead.

Chapter Fifty-two

Hanler saw me and stood as I approached. He offered me his hand and gave me a single-pump shake that was dry and rock hard. Marty Hanler was in his mid-sixties, with receding gray hair and a deepwater tan. He had bright blue eyes that looked merry but were as focused as a sniper’s eyes. He peered past me out the window.

“Is that Circe? Wow … she’s really … filled out.”

When he straightened he caught sight of my face. My expression flipped some kind of switch inside his head, because immediately the caveman receded and the writer stepped forward. He cleared his throat and looked at Ghost. “That’s a good-looking shepherd. Is he friendly?”

“Occasionally.”

“Can I pet him?”

“Can you type without fingers?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets.

We ordered coffee and sat in the back and there was some nice cover noise in the form of a mixed tape of pop stars singing Christmas songs. Ghost lay down between our chairs, within petting reach, but Hanler didn’t rise to the bait.

I’d met Hanler through Mr. Church, but I’ve known about him since college. His espionage thrillers always hit the number one spot on the bestseller lists. So far, four of them had been made into movies. Matt Damon starred in the last one. I owned the DVD, but I didn’t say that to Hanler.

“Mr. Church said that you had something for me.”

“‘Church,’” he said, smiling with teeth so bright I felt like I was getting a tan. “I’m still not used to calling him that. He’ll always be ‘Deacon’ to me.”

“Is that his real name?” I said, pitching it to sound offhand, but Hanler flicked his shooter’s eyes at me.

“Good try.” He laughed. “Ask him.”

I grinned. “Which means that you don’t know, either.”

He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “Okay, I called the Deacon because I think someone took an idea I had and maybe put it into practice in the most terrible possible way.” He cut me an amused look. “Settle down, Dick Tracy …. I’m not here to confess. I said I may have come up with the scenario, but I’m not part of a global criminal conspiracy.”

“Hit me.”

“It’s a plot for a novel. The Hospital thing.”

“When was the novel published?”

“That’s the weird part. I’ve been knocking the idea around for a while. It’s something I thought I’d do if I ever started a new series. My Rick Stenner books are all set in the U.S. except the flashback one, Black Ops, which is set during the invasion of Baghdad. But I’ve been wanting to spin off the Xander Murphy character for a while now. He was a supporting character in White Gold, and the readers really took to him. Kind of lowrent James Bond type that—”

“I know,” I said. “Jude Law played him in the movie.”

“Right, right … so you know. Okay, well, I figured that if my writing schedule ever opened up a bit, or if the Stenner books got stale, I’d do some Murphy books. It would be a switch to—”

“Slow down …. You’re saying that the Hospital scenario is from a book you plan to write but haven’t actually done anything with?”

“Right.”

“There are no early drafts?”

“There are no drafts at all. Never got that far.”

“Notes? Plot outlines, anything like that?”

“Nope. The idea’s still up here.” He tapped his skull. “That’s one of the reasons I’m so concerned. I mean, if it was something that I’d already published—”

“Then we’d have six billion suspects.”

“I don’t sell quite that many books.”

“Anyone can read your stuff in a library,” I said.

“Good point. On the other hand, if it was something I’d written but which hadn’t yet been released, that would narrow it down to the staff at my agent’s office, my lawyer, my family, and my publisher. Still a lot of people, but a narrower field.”

“So, who have you told about this plot?”

“I belong to a couple of writers’ organizations and we have conventions every year. The pros do a couple of panels for the fans, and then we decamp to the closest bar and spend the rest of the weekend networking or bullshitting. You know, gossip, industry news, that sort of thing. After a couple of rounds we start one-upping each other about what would make the absolute best kick-ass novel and how we’re the guy to write it.”

“And that’s where the Hospital idea came in?”

“Yeah. This was a convention called ThrillerFest. I was at the bar in the Hyatt with a whole bunch of other writers. We were all hammered and we were doing the one-up thing with the perfect thriller plot. I told them about the Hospital bombing.”

I said, “Tell me why you picked that hospital.”

“You probably can’t tell from my accent, but I was born in London. Grew up in Whitechapel, about two blocks from the hospital. We emigrated when I was seventeen and I lost my accent in college theater courses. My first job, though, was as an assistant orderly at the London. Mostly I pushed a laundry cart around, but I was in every part of that hospital every day. I could draw a diagram of it from memory, or at least a diagram of the old building. So, when I needed a landmark for my imaginary terrorists to blow up, I picked that one.”

“Write what you know,” I suggested.

“Exactly.”

“So, who stole your idea?”

He grunted. “I’m pretty sure Osama bin Laden wasn’t doing shots with us that night.”

“When was this?”

“Couple of years ago. July 20 09.”

“Who was there?”

“In the bar? Christ, everyone. Place was packed. People were coming and going. I can’t tell you for sure who was in our conversational circle when I talked about that scenario. We were all pretty well hit in the ass. It was late, though. Midnight at least, which means that the party was in full swing.”

“Give me some names.”

“Well … David Morrell was there for some of it. He asked me later if I ever wrote the book.”

“Morrell?”

“Guy who created Rambo? Who else? Let’s see …. Gayle Lynds was there. Sandra Brown, Doug Clegg, Steve Berry, Vince Flynn, Eric Van Lustbader, Ken Isaacson, John Gilstrap …”

He rattled off a long list of names. I recognized some of them from Hugo Vox’s Terror Town think tank. I wrote down all of the names. By the time Hanler was finished rooting around in the rubble of that drunken memory we’d compiled a list of twenty-eight names. Of those eleven were definites. Four of them were hazy maybes. The rest had all been at the table, but he didn’t know when or for how long.

“Anyone else there?”

“Maybe, but I was seeing pink lobsters by the time I rolled out of there. I should have been arrested for the way I drove the elevator to my floor.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, drinking our coffee, thinking it through.

“Your plot,” I said, “did it involve bringing in oil or rubber in large quantities? Or pallets of tires?”

He gave me a shrewd look and for a moment I could see the brains behind the bestseller bluster. “You’re talking about the black clouds? Yeah, I saw that on TV and thought it was odd.”

“Not part of your story?”

“No.”

“Any religious themes in your plot?”

“Just the usual stuff. Fundamentalist Shiites. Not very original, I’m afraid, and I’d probably have changed it in the writing. The genre’s moving away from using Muslims as the go-to bad guys.”

I said nothing.

Hanler sipped his coffee and stared up at the ceiling. “It would be kind of weird if a writer was involved in this sort of thing,” he said. “We cook up the worst possible catastrophes. Brilliant crimes, terrorist campaigns, mass murders. We get inside the heads of serial killers and extremists. Good thing we’re the good guys.”

“If all of you are,” I said.

“Yeah, there’s that. Sorry this wasn’t more useful. And I hope like hell that I didn’t waste your time.”

Me, too, I almost said aloud.

We stood and shook hands. Hanler eyed me for a moment. “Look, Joe, if it turns out that it was one of the people at ThrillerFest or someone from the T-Town group, someone who used my idea …”

“Yeah?”

“Put the son of a bitch down like a rabid dog.”

“Why? For stealing your idea?”

“No,” he said without humor. “Because it means that I’m partly responsible, however far removed, for the deaths of four thousand people. I have trouble sleeping at night as it is. I think knowing that for sure … Christ, I think that might kill me.” He sighed and smiled a weary smile. “Come on; let me buy you one for the road. And something for Circe and your pal.”

And that fast everything went all to hell.

There was a series of firecracker pops somewhere outside and the whole front set of windows of the Starbucks exploded inward.

Chapter Fifty-three

A barrage of heavy-caliber bullets tore into the coffeehouse, tearing apart the counter, shattering the big urns of hot coffee, sending stacks of paper cups flying, and ripping apart the spot where I’d been standing a split second before.

The heavy front glass was thick enough to have deflected the first rounds; otherwise I’d be dead. Instead I hooked an arm around Hanler and a young woman wearing a Grinch sweatshirt. I felt two hard jerks at the flaps of my sports coat and knew that a couple of rounds had missed me by inches. We hit the deck just as the first screams rose, louder than the gunfire. Then a second window blew and suddenly I was screaming myself as glass splinters rained down on my head. I shielded my eyes with my arm.

“Down! Down! Get down!” I roared.

I pivoted and looked out from under my bent arm. Most of the customers were already in motion, dodging and ducking, leaping over counters and pitching themselves behind the overstuffed chairs. But a few stood there with slack mouths and eyes like deer on a highway … and the bullets tore them to rags. A college jock with a Rutgers ski cap flew backward into a display of stocking stuffers, his white parka blooming with red flowers. As he fell his outflung arms knocked down an old man and a teenage girl, sending them sprawling and saving their lives by accident as the heavy-caliber rounds swarmed the air.

Even through the thunder of gunfire I could hear Ghost barking like crazy, but I couldn’t tell if he was hurt.

“Hanler! Crawl behind the counter! Hanler!” I yelled, but Marty Hanler didn’t reply, and he didn’t move. He lay facedown on the floor and blood spread from beneath him in a growing crimson pool. Damn.

“He’s over there!”

The yell came from the shattered window and a split second later a line of bullets pocked the floor near my head. I used my right foot to shove the screaming young woman out of the way as I rolled in the other direction. I tore open my sports coat, found the knurled grips of my Beretta, racked the slide as I rolled to a kneeling position, and brought the weapon up in a two-handed grip. The first of the shooters stepped through the window. He wore heavy body armor and had a scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth and wore ski goggles. He held a Colt AR-15 Tactical Carbine, firing at anything that moved.

I gave him a double tap.

The first round punched into his sternum — it didn’t penetrate his vest, but it froze him into the moment — and I put the next round through his right eye. The impact snapped his head back and probably broke his neck, and it painted the two men behind with blood and brains. I shot the second one in the mouth as he tried to yell.

The third shooter swept the room with an AR-15 that had an oversized hundred-round drum magazine. Bullets chopped the floor and turned tables into clouds of splinters.

And … oh Christ — Rudy and Circe! They were still outside.

If they were still alive.

Rudy didn’t carry a gun, but he had common sense, good survival instincts, and a cell phone. I hoped he was hiding under my car calling for backup.

The counter above me disintegrated into a storm cloud of splinters and I threw myself forward and down, one arm hooked over my face to protect my eyes as I went onto my side and fired blind. I put half a magazine through the flying debris and the chatter from the assault rifle abruptly stopped.

“He’s over behind the counter!” a man yelled from the other side of the store.

Suddenly three other long guns opened up from the far end of the store, blasting the side window and running lines of destruction along the floor. People screamed as bullets found them, punching through heavy winter coats, tearing chunks out of legs and arms, and splashing the floor with red.

This was going from bad to absolute frigging disaster. Adrenaline was pumping through me by the quart, but at the moment it was triggering more of the flight impulse than the desire to fight all these guys. I was scared out of my mind; I’ll admit it to anyone.

“Grenade, grenade!”

I didn’t know if someone was calling for a frag or telling his comrades that he was throwing one, but I did not want to wait around to find out. I came up firing and put the rest of the mag downrange, forcing them back for a second. The grenade dropped from dead fingers and fell outside the store.

There was a huge whump! and a dozen car alarms began to blare.

Any hope I had that the blast had taken out the rest of the shooters was blown to hell as they opened up again. And I prayed that Rudy and Circe were nowhere near that grenade when it blew.

I had only one spare magazine and I swapped it out as I flung myself to the left, hitting the base of the front wall. Broken glass covered the floor, and as I slid out of the line of fire the jagged shards tore through my trousers and bit into my left thigh like a swarm of piranha.

The third shooter — the one I hit while firing blind — was down but not dead. He lay partly inside the coffee shop and was slowly trying to crawl back out. Blood dripped from a thigh wound and another on his right forearm. The strap of the AR-15 was wound around his injured arm.

I stretched for a long reach just as the other shooters opened up again. My scrabbling fingers caught the strap and I jerked it toward me, hauling gun and gunman into the store. The shooter tried to make a fight of it, but I wasn’t in the mood. I jerked harder and as he flipped over onto his back I chopped down on his windpipe with the butt of the Beretta.

There was movement to my left and I saw Ghost crouching behind the ruined counter, his teeth bared, his white pelt dottled with blood. His muscles bunched as he prepared to make a run at the gunmen.

“Down!” I snapped. It was forty feet to the side window, and fast as Ghost was, he’d never get them before they got him. The dog gave me a fierce, despairing look. He wanted to be in this fight. He probably smelled my blood and the ancient instinct to protect the pack leader was coming close to overriding his training.

Behind me a man growled, “C’mon, Turk; get this motherfucker!”

Then one of the gunmen kicked the rest of the glass out of the window and stepped through. There were at least a dozen people in the coffeehouse, and most or all of them were hurt. A lot of them were dead, too. I cut a look at Hanler, but he lay in the center of a lake of blood and wasn’t moving. I didn’t think he was ever going to.

Son of a bitch.

I took the AR-15 and from the weight I could tell that the drum mag was more than half-gone. How many rounds left? Twenty? Thirty? The dead man’s coat was open and I flipped back the flap, saw a second mag hanging from his belt, and made a grab for it.

The shooter caught the movement and suddenly the dead man’s body seemed to rise from the floor as rounds punched into his meat and muscle, jerking the corpse into a horrible parody of convulsive life.

Lying flat on my back, head toward them, I raised the rifle with both hands and emptied the first magazine at that end of the store. It sounds easy, but the recoil slammed into my upraised arms and threatened to tear them out of the shoulder sockets.

The gun clicked empty way too soon; I’d guessed wrong about how many rounds were left. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen rounds left, but it bought me a second’s worth of grace, which was all I needed to swap out the magazines.

I drew a breath, then let out the loudest war cry I could. Who knows what I said or if I said anything at all? Just noise. Loud and feral, the primitive and inarticulate cry of the Warrior within as I rolled onto my stomach and came up into a low crouching run, firing from the hip, blasting on full auto as I dodged from wall to wall. I don’t know how I didn’t get shot. Battlefields are like that. Sometimes you have the best armor and the best cover and a ricochet pings off a wall and punches your ticket, and sometimes you feel painted with magic as you run through hellfire without a scratch. Bunny calls it having a Die Hard moment. Top says that it’s Madman Mojo. I don’t have a name for it, but I made it to the counter alive. I hip-checked Ghost and sent him on a nail-skittering sideways slide into the wall. He yelped in pain, but he was still on his feet and out of the line of fire.

Then the tone of the fight changed. Only one gun continued to pour fire my way; the others were shooting at something outside.

Rudy and Circe?

It sounded like a dozen guns in play out there.

I dove for cover, and my heart sank in my chest. There were more of them, and no matter how much of a Die Hard moment I was having, I couldn’t win against an army. In the movies a hero can win against unlimited odds. This wasn’t the movies. I was already slowing down and I was going to run out of ammunition very soon. And then I was going to die.

There was a scream and a crash and I looked up as one of the shooters came backward through the window, arms flung wide, chest and face exploding like fireworks.

Then I heard it.

“Echo! Echo! Echo!”

A deep, bass rumble of a shout.

Top!

The shooters at the far end turned toward the shouts, and I rose up and hosed them. But one of them spun and fired a full mag at me. I felt the wind of the first rounds as I dropped back out of sight.

There were more screams, and no more rounds came my way.

I ducked and crabbed sideways and looked down the store and saw that one shooter was gone, punched back out through the window and sprawled like a starfish on the hood of a parked Hyundai. A second man had dropped his weapon and was trying to stop his life from leaking out of a hole in the side of his neck.

The third shooter held his ground and was slapping a fresh magazine into place. I’d been waiting for that moment, and I rose up from hiding and ran at him. Ghost was right on my heels, racing along with the silent speed that a fighting dog has when blood is in the air and it’s time for the kill. The AR-15 was a burning monster that bucked and jerked in my hands as I put twenty rounds into the shooter. Vest be damned. I drilled a hole through his chest you could drive a truck through, and what was left of him pinwheeled out through the window.

Two more shooters ran past the window, heading toward the front, but I heard a fusillade of mixed-caliber reports and both men staggered back, turning and juddering as Echo Team chopped them apart. There was more movement outside and I saw Top Sims and Bunny duck down behind a car and trade fire with yet another pair of shooters. How many of the bastards did they send? I mean, I’m flattered and all that they think I’m that tough, but an entire army seemed a bit excessive.

I reached the window. The man with the neck wound wasn’t hurt near as bad as I thought and he pivoted and used a bloody hand to draw his sidearm. There was a flash of white, a fierce growl, and a sharp crunch, and then the gun arm collapsed into red junk as Ghost took him. He screamed, but Ghost growled like a monster out of myth.

“Keep!” I ordered Ghost, and the big shepherd stopped short of killing the man but didn’t let go of the mangled arm.

I crouched and did a fast look around the corner of the window. There were four shooters on my right, all of them firing over the hoods of parked cars. It was weird. You see scenes like this in Iraq and Afghanistan, not in suburban Pennsylvania. I’m sure there was a lesson in there about cultural arrogance, but I was too busy to sort out the nuances at the moment. I dropped the AR-15 and took the sidearm from the guy Ghost was babysitting. The guy didn’t seem to mind. He was busy trying not to scream.

I sighted down on the closest shooter. Top caught my eye and shook me off. I withheld my shot and then saw why. Khalid Shaheed had worked his way around to the far side and was three steps from a flanking position. One of the shooters must have spotted him and started to turn, so I blew out the windshield of the car he was hiding behind. He made the mistake of being surprised and looking up.

Khalid put a round through the guy’s ear.

The other shooters faltered, caught in a cross fire.

Top bellowed at them in his leather-throated sergeant’s voice, “Drop your weapons and step out from behind the vehicles! Do it now!”

It was a simple choice. It was their only remaining choice. An idiot could have recognized it as the only way out of the moment.

But the dumb sons of bitches went for it. They opened up on Khalid and on Top. The return fire came from Top and Bunny, from Khalid, from me, and from DeeDee, who appeared out of nowhere and took up a shooting position right outside the window. It was a four-way shit storm, and it was over in seconds. Nobody was going home from that party.

DeeDee looked up with a dazzling blue-eyed smile. “Howdy, Boss. Did you get me a vanilla latte with foam?”

I actually laughed and then I heard tires squeal. I jumped out of the window and sprinted for the front of the building with DeeDee on my six. A white van roared past us and headed for the far exit. The side door was open and I saw two men with scarves standing braced in the opening. They both had assault rifles and I was starting to pivot, reaching to push DeeDee out of the way, when there were two sharp cracks and the men pitched backward into the van. I whipped my head around and saw John Smith lying chest down over the hood of Black Bess, his sniper rifle smoking.

The van was still going, the driver hell-bent on getting his ass out of the parking lot. We all opened up on the vehicle, battering it with rounds, but the driver had the pedal on the floor and we didn’t have a good angle on him.

“Rudy!” I bellowed as I broke into a dead run.

“Here!” came a strangled croak from the other side of the building. I spun and cut across the lot to try to cut the van off. As I cleared the corner I saw Rudy on his knees, right hand clamped over his left arm, his face white as paste as blood poured from between his fingers.

What I saw behind him twisted my brain around.

Circe O’Tree stood over Rudy, legs wide in a solid shooter’s stance, holding a smoking Glock .40 in a two-handed grip, the barrel pointed right at me.

I almost shot her.

However, she wasn’t aiming at me. She was aiming past me, and I whirled and dodged sideways as she fired. Her first three bullets exploded the van’s windshield and the next two hit the driver in the face. The van suddenly swerved as the driver pitched sideways, his dead hands dragging the wheel hard over. The van missed Circe by ten feet and Rudy by less than a yard. It plowed into the back of my Explorer and crushed it like a beer can.

For one crystalline moment the entire scene was dead silent, as if we were all frozen into a photograph from a book on war. This could have been Somalia or Beirut or Baghdad or any of the other places on our troubled earth where hatred takes the form of lethal rage. We, the victors, stood amid gunsmoke and the pink haze of blood that had been turned to mist, amazed that we were alive, doubting both our salvation and our right to have survived while others — perhaps more innocent and deserving than ourselves — lay dead or dying.

Chapter Fifty-four

Then the moment crumbled to dust as sirens burned the air and hearing returned to our gunshot-deafened ears so that we heard the screams of those still clinging to life.

“Top!” I yelled.

“Clear!” he called as he and Bunny came out from their points of cover and swarmed the dead, kicking away their weapons, checking for pulses behind the appearance of death.

I turned and ran toward Rudy, but Circe was there, pushing him down. She had a knife in her hand — God only knows where it came from — and she was cutting his sleeve away, yelling at him to hold pressure there, there, dammit, changing from the person who had just killed into the doctor who had dedicated her life to doing no harm. Tears glittered like diamonds at the corners of her eyes.

“Dr. O’Tree,” Rudy said in a voice slurred by shock and pain, “it’s a pleasure to—”

“Shut up,” she snapped.

“Okay.”

As Circe worked, her gaze kept flicking up and past me. I followed her line of sight and saw the six small holes clustered in the center of the driver’s windshield of the van. The figure inside was slumped sideways, eyes wide and fixed and nothing much else remaining of his face.

DeeDee knelt beside Circe with an open field surgical kit. She popped a surette of morphine and jabbed it in Rudy’s arm. He said something in Spanish that sounded like “I love you,” and passed out.

I tried to help them, but they waved me off.

“Inside! The people!” Circe cried in a voice that was as fragile as cracked porcelain.

The sirens were getting louder. Help was coming. Thank god.

I ran to the front of the destroyed Starbucks just as the first police cars came screeching into the parking lot.

I stepped into a scene from hell. The ceiling lights had all been blown out. People were screaming. Those who could still scream. I looked in through the shattered window. Too many of the sprawled figures lay still and silent, their voices silenced forever. The place looked like it had been spray painted with red, but it wasn’t the cheerful holiday red of Christmas.

There were no other shooters. The woman in the Grinch shirt was on her hands and knees, splinters of glass glittering in her hair like stardust. She looked around at the carnage. Then she looked down at the figure that lay beside her.

Marty Hanler.

She screamed. I couldn’t blame her.

“Federal agent!” I yelled. “Police and ambulances are on their way. Everyone stay down!”

Top and the others swarmed past me to provide first aid.

Ghost stood above the last of the shooters. The only one still alive. I had to step over the dead and dying to get to him.

“Off,” I said quietly, and Ghost released the ruin of an arm. “Watch.”

The man was white from blood loss, but he was far from dead, the wound in his neck was bad but not fatal, his arm was probably a total loss unless he got to a top-notch microsurgeon in the next hour or so, but even with all that he would live. When he looked up into my eyes I could see the precise moment when he realized that surviving this was not going to be any kind of mercy.

Not for him.

Interlude Thirty-seven

When the American came back to his office he found Toys sitting on the floor, his shirt covered in drying blood, dark stains on the carpet. Toys held his head in his hands as if it would crack and fall apart if he didn’t press the broken pieces together.

“Holy shit,” said the American. “What happened?”

Toys sniffed, shook his head. “I tried to tell him,” he mumbled. “I tried to explain the danger he was creating for himself.”

“Ah,” said the American. “Yeah, I could have told you that was a waste of time. He hit you, huh?”

Toys sobbed into his hands.

The American took a clean towel from the wet bar and poured ice cubes into it and handed it to Toys. Then he took a bottle of Don Julio tequila, pulled out the stopper, and dropped it on the bar. He placed his back against the wall and slid down to the floor so that he sat next to Toys. He nudged Toys with his knee and handed him the bottle. Toys shook his head.

“Take a fucking drink,” growled the American.

Toys sighed, took the bottle, and drank a careful mouthful through torn lips. Coughed, gagged, drank another. He handed the bottle back and the American took a pull. For the next ten minutes neither said a word. They passed the bottle back and forth and let the minutes harden the cement that held their thoughts together.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Toys said.

“Probably.”

“It’s your mother’s fault.”

“It’s both their faults. They were made for each other.”

They each took a pull.

“I think I’ve been fired as his Conscience.” Toys tried to laugh about that, but his lips hurt too much.

“You’ll always have a place with the Kings, Toys,” said the American.

Toys looked at him. “Why? I’m Sebastian’s luggage. What am I to you?”

“Don’t sell yourself short, kiddo. You have clarity of mind. You can see the Big Picture without getting seduced by the shiny little details.”

“You mean I’m a cynic.”

“I prefer ‘realist,’ but yeah.”

Toys held out his hand for the bottle, took a pull.

They drank in silence for a long time. Then the American said, “I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

Toys looked at him in surprise. “What? You have—”

“Santoro? He’s a psychopath. I use him the way I’d use a gun. Point and shoot. But if it came down to where he had to decide between me and Mom, you know how he’d jump.”

“Is it going to come down to that?”

The American nodded. “Yep. You know it is.”

Toys sighed. “Sebastian, too. A Goddess, a King, and the Angel of Death. Very nice. You could build a heavy metal album on that.”

The American laughed. “Guess you’ve figured out that the whole ‘no secrets’ thing between the Seven Kings is a frigging joke. Always has been. Some of them take it seriously, and I pretend to … but I always hedge my bets. I don’t trust easily. With the Kings, I’ve made a fortune. I’m damn near richer than God, but I don’t really enjoy it. I fuck around with money because what else do I have?”

“‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’”

The American grunted. “A misquote from Plutarch, but it hits the bull’s-eye. My point is, though, that I can’t trust the Kings. I can’t trust Santoro. And I never trusted my mother. I’m glad I wasn’t actually raised by her. She was a rich debutante when she had me, but she gave me up and my dad raised me. He was a blue-collar guy. When he struck it rich, they got married, but by then I was in college. I didn’t know how corrupt she was until I was twenty-two or — three, and I didn’t know how crazy she was until I was thirty. She was already working on this Goddess thing when I created the Seven Kings.”

“That long ago?”

“Sure. She’s brilliant, but she’s totally fucking nuts. Gault is perfect for her. Brilliant but nuts.”

“Sebastian is broken.”

“A lot of people are.” The American nodded and took a pull from the bottle. “Sebastian and Mom are pushing this Ten Plagues Initiative forward despite everything I’ve tried to do to stop it.”

“Like …?”

The American turned to him and smiled. “Before I answer that, you answer me this: if you had to pick one quality that defines everything the Kings stand for, what would it be?”

“Chaos—?”

“C’mon, kiddo … you know as well as I do that’s just the company line. What’re the real characteristics?”

Toys thought about it. “Misdirection. Lies, misinformation, disinformation. All of that.”

“See, you are a smart young fellow. Misdirection. The Israel-Islam thing? Misdirection. The terrorist attacks—9/11, the India attacks, bombing of the USS Cole? Misdirection. The whole Ten Plagues Initiative is mostly misdirection. Most of it is a pure profit machine, like we’ve been saying. But some of it — a lot of it — is to keep eyes looking in the wrong direction even among us. You can’t believe hardly anything we say, even when we’re telling the truth.”

“Okay. So, how does that answer my question? How does it explain how you’ve been trying to stop Eris? Mostly it looks like you’ve been helping her ….” His voice trailed off and he smiled as much as his mashed lips would allow. He cocked an eyebrow. “When Dr. Kirov died it nearly derailed the Ten Plagues Initiative.”

The American grinned approvingly. “Didn’t it, though.”

Toys smiled as much as his damaged lips would allow. “Kirov’s death was pretty convenient.”

“Uh-huh. It should have stopped the Initiative in its tracks. But … Mom talked the Kings into bullying me about calling Gault.”

“You didn’t want to bring him in?”

“Hell no.” He handed over the bottle. “Can you guess why?”

“Because … he would do what he has done. He’d figure a way to make the Ten Plagues Initiative work.”

“And ain’t that just a kick in the fucking ass?” The American patted Toys’ knee. “Now … keep thinking that through.”

They sat side by side on the floor while Toys worked it out. Toys asked, “When did Eris first ask about Sebastian?”

“Six months ago. Right around the time Dr. Kirov had his first stroke. A ministroke. Son of a bitch bounced back faster than I expected.”

“Six months. That’s … right around the time that the DMS started hitting cells being trained to support the Initiative.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We know that someone has been making anonymous calls to Mr. Church to tip him off.”

“Yep.”

“In order to reveal the location of those cells, the caller has to have a source within the Kings organization.”

“That’s what the Kings believe. There have been all sorts of internal witch hunts to find the blabbermouth. Turns out, it was Kirov’s Conscience.”

Toys looked at the big man, but the man’s smile never wavered.

“Inconvenient that the man died before someone as persuasive as Santoro could make him talk,” Toys suggested.

“Yeah, what interesting timing that was.”

Toys took a final sip of the tequila and set the bottle down. “A Big Picture kind of person might look at that and wonder if Kirov’s Conscience was ever truly dirty.”

“They might.”

“And that person might also wonder if there is truly a war between the Seven Kings and the Inner Circle.”

“Indeed.”

“And that person might wonder if the entire thing was misdirection from the jump. Maybe to start a war.”

“And how would that benefit the Kings?”

“It destabilizes those in power.”

The American grinned like a happy bear. “How’s the mouth doing?”

“I can barely feel it.”

“Does it hurt too much to talk on the phone?”

“No.”

The American got clumsily to his feet. As he did so his cell phone fell from his pocket and landed next to the bottle. He pretended not to notice it.

Toys looked at the phone and then up at the towering bearlike anomaly of a man. This King of Fear.

“Remember what I said to you a while back? About how Judas got a bad rap when he was really probably trying to save Jesus? In fact, here’s a bit of interesting biblical trivia. In Luke 24:33 and Mark 16:14 it clearly states that when Jesus rose from the dead he met with ‘the eleven.’ Most people assume that the missing disciple was Judas, who was supposed to have killed himself out of remorse for his act of betrayal. But in John 20:24 we learn that the missing disciple was Thomas. So … that means that the other eleven included Judas. And in 1 Corinthians 15:5 the Apostle Paul says that Matthias wasn’t voted in as the replacement twelfth Apostle until forty days after the Resurrection. So … Judas was still there. In fact, in Acts 1:25 we learn that Judas ‘turned aside to go to his own place.’ People don’t read the whole Bible. They don’t get the Big Picture. Judas’s death was a fake, and considering that God ordained his betrayal, and Jesus predicted it, Judas was acting according to the will of God. He wasn’t a traitor — he was a company man who did the right goddamn thing, even though it was the hard goddamn thing to do. He was a Big Picture guy. Just like me and you.” He smiled down at Toys. “Lock up when you leave, kiddo.”

He turned and lumbered out.

Toys stared at the empty doorway for a long time, and then he set down the ice and picked up the phone. It was an exotic model with a kind of scrambler attachment he’d never seen before.

Chapter Fifty-five

Every cop in five towns and some from Philadelphia descended on that parking lot. The streets were closed off, the airspace declared a no-fly zone except for SWAT choppers.

The cops wanted to bag my team, but that wasn’t going to happen. We had the right credentials, and by the time the first ambulance rolled in Echo Team was already at work on the survivors. Khalid was an actual M.D., so he and Circe sectioned the coffee shop and triaged the wounded. Bunny, Top, and John Smith went to work patching bleeders, immobilizing injured backs and necks, removing the most immediately threatening glass splinters, and treating people for shock. Then waves of EMTs arrived, as well as a couple of carloads of nurses and doctors from the nearby hospital. As the professionals claimed the scene, we backed off.

I called the DMS but was unable to get Church on the phone, so I told the duty officer the pertinent details and said that we needed someone on the horn to the local chief of police and probably the governor.

Top caught up with me. “Khalid’s got the prisoner stabilized. Want to go have a little chitchat?”

“Yes, I do.”

My nerves were still jangling and I had the jitters and sick stomach that often follows violence and an adrenaline surge. If I had the time I’d throw up, then buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and curl up in my room and watch Comedy Central until I passed out. Fat chance of that. My thigh hurt like hell, and blood from the cuts had pooled in my shoe, so I sloshed as I walked.

I went over to the corner where the wounded shooter was being prepped for transport. Khalid had removed the man’s scarf, goggles, and hat to reveal a face that was as American as apple pie. Well, as American as pizza and cannolis. His skin was a greasy gray, and pain had etched deep lines on either side of his mouth. His eyes followed me with glassy uncertainty. An IV bag was plugged into his arm and he was wrapped in bandages. His uninjured hand was cuffed to the stretcher on which he lay.

Ghost sat a yard away looking like he was unhappy to have had his fun interrupted. His white pelt was streaked with blood, but he didn’t appear to be seriously hurt. I stood over the shooter and looked down at him.

“What’s his status?”

Khalid rocked back on his heels. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but we’ve stabilized him for transport.”

“Put him in the back of the TacV. Do not transport him until I say so. I need to ask him some questions, but we need privacy. Is he able to talk?”

The shooter answered that one himself. He glared up at me and said, “Fuck you.”

I smiled at him.

Chapter Fifty-six

While the shooter was being loaded, I popped the lock on my Explorer, found a plastic container of Wet Ones, and did a quick job of cleaning and examining Ghost. He had some minor cuts from flying debris and a splinter thick as a coffee stirrer gouged into his back. I told him to sit and be still and I pulled it out. Ghost whined and even bared a tooth at me, but it was all show. He braved it out, and luckily the splinter had gone in at an angle so it stuck mostly in the rubbery top skin, missing the real meat and muscle below. The cut didn’t even bleed much. I put a pad on it and wound some surgical gauze around his barrel chest.

“You’ll live, fella.”

Ghost used his “I’m dying, please be kind” face on me, so I gave him a couple of Snausages and emptied a bottle of spring water into his plastic bowl. My hands were shaking so badly I spilled half of it.

Ghost licked my hand and looked into my eyes for a moment before he bent and began lapping up the water. Yeah, the best of friends, no doubt.

My phone rang and I sat on the ground to take the call. Church.

“Ten shooters. Nine dead, one in DMS custody, and—”

He cut me off. “How is Circe? Is she injured?”

“No. In fact, she took out one of the shooters.”

There was a long silence. “She killed him?”

“Yes. But listen, there’s more. Your friend Marty Hanler … he’s gone, Boss. He went down in the initial attack. He never saw it coming, and I doubt he felt anything.”

Church was silent.

How did a guy like him process that kind of news? I’ve buried a lot of loved ones over the years and I’ve had to eat a lot of my own pain, but I also have had friends, like Rudy, my dad and my brother, and for a while Grace to help me deal.

Who did Church have?

All he said was, “That is unfortunate.”

Then he changed his tone, shifting into a “business as usual” mode that I found disconcerting.

He said, “Talk to that prisoner. Find out what he knows.”

“I can’t do that with a lot of civilians around.”

“Then do it in the air. I’m sending a Chinook from Willow Grove. Rendezvous with it in Tamanend Park. It’s two miles up Route 232.”

“Copy that.”

“Is the prisoner stable enough for interrogation?”

“Probably, but he’s a pro. He’s not going to talk—”

“Captain,” Church snapped, “I’m not asking for an estimate on how difficult it is for you to do your job. People are dying and he has information we need. Surely some solutions will occur to you.”

He hung up.

Ouch.

I was just about to climb into the back of the DMS TacV when Circe came out of the ruined Starbucks, wiping her hands with a wad of paper napkins. Her hair was in disarray and there were bloodstains on her clothes. Ghost wagged his tail at her. Guess he forgave her for being a cat person.

“How are you?” I asked. It was one of those insanely lame questions we ask when nothing more sensible occurs to us.

She shrugged, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You did good work back there,” I said.

Saying that caused a visible change in her. One moment she was a doctor who had spent the last twenty minutes struggling to save lives — she had been surrounded by death and blood, but to a degree she was in a known world and in the center of her own power — then my words jarred her back to the moment before she had entered the coffeehouse. She looked down at the powder burns on her hand. Circe had the calluses of someone who spent regular hours on a pistol range, and she’d handled her gun with professional skill and accuracy. Even so, her face went paler still and her mouth twisted into sickness.

“I don’t understand this,” she said. “Why did they do this?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

“I mean … why hit us? We’re not even close to anything yet.”

Her chest hitched as if she was fighting a sob. Or struggling to swallow bile that had boiled up into her throat.

“Where’d you get the gun?” I asked.

“It’s mine.”

“You had it on the plane?”

“Yes. I’m cleared to carry because of my work with Sea of Hope. I have to be ready to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice. Hugo Vox and Mr. Church cleared it for me.”

“You learn how to shoot at T-Town?”

She nodded and brushed a tear from her eye.

“Is this the first time you shot someone?” I asked gently.

She nodded again. “I’ve fired I don’t know how many rounds at the combat ranges … but … but …”

Suddenly her color changed from white to green. She abruptly spun away from me, ran to the side of the building, and threw up in a trash can. I tried to comfort her, but she gave a violent shake of her head and I backed off.

Ghost gave me a “smooth move” look and whined a little as Circe continued to cough up her fear and disgust and — if she was as human as the rest of us — self-loathing.

I understood that. No matter how much you hate someone, no matter how justified you are in pulling the trigger, at the end of the day there are only three possible emotional reactions to killing another human being. You either like it, in which case you shouldn’t ever be allowed to touch a gun again. Or you feel nothing, in which case the words “cry for help” should be tattooed on your forehead and they should lead you away to a nice, comfy therapist’s couch. Or you feel like you just committed an unforgivable sin. After the moment is over, as you stand there feeling the adrenaline ooze out of your pores and the cordite stink of discharged rounds mixes with the coppery smell of blood, you feel the enormity of it. You took a life.

Circe had shooter’s calluses. She had to have prepared for this moment.

That preparation saved lives, but you absolutely cannot fully prepare a person for the reality of having ended a human life. But the fact that it appalled Circe was proof of a heart and mind that was not already inured to basic humanity or corrupted by a disregard for the sanctity of all life.

I wanted to tell Circe this, but this wasn’t the time. She wouldn’t be able to hear it now. Right now she needed to survive the reality of the event, and that would add a layer of callus on her soul.

Damn.

“I got this,” said a voice, and I turned to see DeeDee. She closed on Circe and put a sisterly hand on her shoulder. A lot has been said about “brothers in arms.” In the twenty-first century we’re going to have to broaden that view to include sisters in arms. I backed off and then turned toward the TacV, where my suspect waited.

Interlude Thirty-eight

On Martha’s Vineyard, police cars and an ambulance were tearing along the winding back roads toward the mansion of H. Carlton Milhaus, CEO of Milhaus and Berk Publishing. The company published, among other periodicals, The Fiscal Conservative and Right Smart. Milhaus’s eldest daughter, Sandra, was using the estate for a combination holiday party for the company’s executives and fund-raiser for the Republic senator from Massachusetts.

As the emergency vehicles roared through the gates, the officers could see that every light in the house was on. Despite the cold, people in cocktail dresses and dinner jackets were standing outside on the patio and lawn. Many of them had hands to their throats or faces, and all of them had shocked eyes.

The first-in officers knew that everything they said, everything they did, here among these people would be scrutinized. A single misstep, a carelessly chosen word, could crush their careers. They’d seen it happen over and over again to their peers. Their former peers.

The first responders entered with as much haste as caution would allow. The EMTs were a dozen steps behind.

They stepped into a world of elegance and sophistication, of holiday cheer and conspicuous wealth, of shocked white faces and bright red blood.

Sandra Milhaus lay faceup, her feet on the second and third steps of the grand staircase, her arms flung wide with an inartistic abandon, her green silk gown twisted around her pale legs. Her eyes were open, as was her mouth. Her coiffed blond curls lay in the center of a pool of blood that, by perverse chance, spread around her like a halo and reflected the Christmas lights on the walls and banister. That she was dead was obvious, even from a dozen feet away.

The officers cut each other a quick glance, knowing they had just stepped out of a potential “incident” at the party of one of the richest families on the Vineyard and stepped into a crime scene that would be front-page news, even with all that was going on in London. When they were still five feet away they froze.

Sandra Milhaus was not merely dead. Every inch of exposed skin was covered with lumps like boils. Some of them had clearly burst and leaked blood or clear fluid that was tinged with pink. The others were pale knobs, the color lost from the settling of blood in her body after her heart had stopped.

They stood on either side of her, careful not to step in the blood.

“Who can tell me what happened?” asked Jimmy Redwood, the male officer. “Was she allergic to anything?”

There were a hundred people clustered around. On the stairs and balcony above, in the open doorway of the grand ballroom to their right and the dining room to their left. The officers recognized many of the faces from the news.

Redwood’s partner, Debbie Tobias, turned to the nearest person, an older woman. “Ma’am, do you know if she ate something she wasn’t supposed to?”

The woman shook her head and didn’t — or perhaps couldn’t — answer.

“Please,” said Tobias, pitching her voice for authority but not intimidation, “was she sick before the party?”

The EMTs came hustling in, carrying their heavy equipment boxes.

“What have we got, Jimmy?” the lead paramedic asked Redwood.

“I don’t know, Barney. Looks like allergic reaction.”

The EMT closed on the body. And stopped.

They looked at each other.

This wasn’t anaphylaxis.

“Oh, shit,” said Barney.

His partner, Paresh, cut a worried look at the crowd and then pulled Tobias closer. He whispered urgently in her ear, “Get everyone out of here, but keep them contained.”

Barney was already on the phone, calling in the visible symptoms. Neither he nor his partner made any attempt to touch Sandra Milhaus.

Tobias looked up at Paresh. “What is it?”

But the EMT shook his head. “I don’t know. But for God’s sake get these people contained, Debbie. Now!”

Interlude Thirty-nine

Rafael Santoro did not want to make this call. In all the years during which he had served the Goddess and the Seven Kings he had only had to make such a call twice. This was the third time he would have to report not one failure but two.

The King of Plagues answered, his voice mildly distorted by his scrambler.

Instead of a greeting, Gault said, “I’m watching CNN. I’m hearing a lot about an attack on a house in Jenkintown that ended with four dead and two taken. I’m also hearing about a bunch of trigger-happy wankers who shot up an effing Starbucks. I’m hearing about civilian casualties. I’m hearing about a dead sodding writer. Can you guess what I’m not hearing about? I’m not hearing about Amber-fucking-Taylor and her children being spooned into body bags. I’m not hearing about a dead federal agent named Joe-effing-Ledger. Want to fucking tell me why not?”

Santoro took a calming breath. He was deeply ashamed. “I have no excuses.”

“Who’d you send? The frigging Mousketeers?”

“I used local assets on both jobs.”

“Kingsmen?”

“Chosen. Trey Foster and his team out of Philadelphia were given the Taylor pickup. I used Sarducci and his team for Starbucks. That is the Jersey crew I’ve used for three situations for the Kings over the last year.”

“Did they screw those up, too?” Gault’s voice was loud and full of acid.

“No,” said Santoro calmly. “Both teams have done good work for us in the past.”

“God damn it, Rafael.”

“They were unprepared for the arrival of DMS field teams at both locations.”

“What?” Gault screamed the question so loud Santoro winced and held the phone away from his ear. When the King of Plagues was done shouting, Santoro explained what had happened.

“Such calamities are the price when action is taken without planning, yes? Had I been given more time, I would have scouted the area, set watchers on the perimeter, and listened for activity on our information stream. However …” He let the rest hang.

“Describe them to me,” snapped Gault, and when Santoro finished he said, “That’s sodding Echo Team. They’re Ledger’s team, but what the bloody hell are they doing in Southampton?”

Gault shouted more and Santoro endured it, sighing quietly as he drove. As much as he loved and honored the new consort of the Goddess and even though he would gladly die for this man, as he would for any of the Kings, Sebastian Gault could be a tiresome bore. And he was loud. Santoro, however, was never loud. Loud was crass — except for the loud shrieks and cries of his angels in their moment of transformation.

“How bad is this?” asked Gault.

“Nine of the Jersey team are dead, as are four of the Philadelphia team. Three operatives are in DMS custody.”

“Can you get to them?”

“Impossible.”

“What do they know?”

“Nothing of any value. Even under torture they have nothing useful to reveal.”

Which was only partly true. They knew Santoro’s name and that he worked for the Seven Kings, but Santoro did not think that this provided enough of a threat to risk having the King of Plagues lose his temper again.

“What would you like me to do?”

Gault sighed. “There’s nothing you can do. Let the DMS have them.” He sighed again, deeply and for a long time. Santoro could almost feel Gault’s blood pressure dropping. “Besides … and to be fair, I did ask for this to be splashed across the news feeds. It was. I was hoping that it would reinforce the threatening presence of the Kings … not make us look like imbeciles.”

Santoro did not comment.

“Very well,” said Gault. “We’re going to write this off. Perhaps the Goddess can find a way to spin this in our favor. In the meantime, put a couple of people you can trust on Ledger, and if the opportunity comes up kill the bloody bastard.”

“With pleasure.”

“Meanwhile, we have bigger fish to fry. The Inner Circle should be getting some very bad news right about now. You did good work setting that up,” Gault said grudgingly. “The Goddess is well pleased.”

“It is always my pleasure to serve the Goddess,” said Santoro.

He disconnected and drove randomly through the towns that adjoined Southampton. It hurt him that both of his victims had slipped the punch. Perhaps, if he was lucky and the grace of the Goddess touched his destiny, he would have another opportunity to kill those two. This time, however, he would do the job himself. Not once in his entire life had Santoro failed when he, rather than a team, was the instrument of death. Not once.

Chapter Fifty-seven

We crowded into the back of Black Bess. Top, Bunny, Ghost, and me. The others established a perimeter outside and nobody got past them.

I sat on the bunk opposite the prisoner. Ghost sat on the floor, his head rising above the level of the gurney, his dark eyes filled with predatory intensity. The shooter looked from me, to Ghost, to Top and Bunny and back again. It was evident he didn’t like what he saw in our faces. No reason he should. The TacV was wired for digital recording, and Top gave me a wink to indicate that it was running.

“Here’s the way it sits, dickhead,” I said to the shooter. “You’re in the shit up to your eyeballs. There are eight dead civilians and nineteen wounded. We’re with Homeland and you’ve been designated as an enemy combatant and a terrorist, so the Patriot Act just got shoved up your ass. That means you have no rights. You don’t get a lawyer, you don’t get to make a phone call, and you are about to vanish from the face of the earth.”

“Kiss my nut sac,” he said with a sneer. Even with the morphine it was a pretty good hard-guy act. But he was playing to a tough crowd.

I continued to smile. Bunny, his bulk filling the entire back of the truck, squatted on his heels and chewed gum. Top sat on a metal equipment case just above the shooter’s head, and his face was one that I wouldn’t have wanted to look into if I was this deep in my own crap.

“You’re going to be on suicide watch, so you won’t be sneaking out of this.” I kept my tone normal, my voice quiet and reasonable. Giving him information, not making threats. Letting him think he had bargaining room. “You’ll disappear into the system. You’ll get the very best medical care. You might even keep that hand. We’ll want you healthy because the stronger you are, the longer you’ll last in interrogation. Understand me, friend, you won’t hold out … you’ll just last longer. We will get every bit of information you have. No question about it.”

He grinned at me with bloody teeth. “Take your best shot, asshole.”

His accent was New Jersey. Local boy.

“Print him,” I said, and Bunny produced a small electronic device.

The shooter clutched his good hand into a fist.

Bunny popped his gum. “I can take prints off severed fingers, too, genius.”

Jersey Boy kept his fist clenched. He was playing this role to the end.

“Take ’em from the other hand,” said Top, nodding to the swollen tips of fingers that stuck out of the layers of gauze around Jersey Boy’s torn and shattered forearm.

Bunny left the fingers attached but he used the injured hand to take the prints. It got very loud in the TacV. Ghost broke into a stream of agitated barks, and I let him go for a while, then quieted him with a control word. He settled down, but he continued to stare at the shooter as if he was an unfinished lunch.

Jersey Boy lapsed into a breathless, panting silence. Greasy sweat glistened on his face.

Bunny checked each contact scan and then pressed the upload button that sent the high-res digital files to the satellite. MindReader would have them in ten seconds and we’d have a match in a couple of hours.

“You got one chance to make the rest of this process a lot less painful,” I said. “Talk to me now. Freely, openly, without coercion. You help us and I promise you that we will reward that cooperation.”

Jersey Boy shook his head. I had to give the guy points for balls — he had a real pair of clankers. No frigging brains at all, though, because I believe he actually thought he was going to tough it out.

Top must have been reading my thoughts. “Boy’s too stupid to know when someone’s handing him a lifeline.”

“That ain’t a lifeline, Tupac,” the shooter said. “You want to put me in jail for the rest of my life, go ahead. Put me in Gitmo if you want. Don’t matter a goddamn thing. My man Santoro will have me back on the street inside a month.”

“You think so?”

He raised his head and glared at me. “I know so. Do whatever you want. You dickwipes just stepped into a world of hurt bigger than anything you ever heard of. The Seven Kings are going to rip your world apart, Ledger. You and the rest of the DMS. You, that psychopath Church, that cunt O’Tree, these ass clowns here — all of you are already dead and you just don’t know it yet.”

Top grunted in real surprise. “Well, well,” he said, “ain’t that interesting as shit?”

Bunny blew a big pink bubble, popped it, and continued to chew. His poker face was still in place, but from the way the muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched and flexed I knew that he was probably as rattled as I was.

The shooter had said the name Santoro. That was a nice name. A Spanish name. Very interesting.

“The ‘Seven Kings,’ huh?” I said. “Why don’t you tell us all about them?”

“Why don’t you suck my—”

Without saying a word, Bunny reached out and grabbed Jersey Boy’s shattered wrist, gave it a light squeeze. It wouldn’t have dented a soda can, but the shooter screamed loud enough to hurt my ears.

Outside I heard the sergeant supervisor yelling indignantly, demanding to be let in. DeeDee’s voice cut him off in mid-protest. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it redirected his outrage from me to her.

When Bunny released Jersey Boy’s wrist the bandages were soaked through with blood and the man’s face was gray. Without taking my eyes off him, I said, “Top, tell the blues that we’re commandeering this prisoner on the grounds of national security. Have the rest of the team follow. Bunny, you’re driving.”

“Where we going, Boss?” Bunny asked as he clambered past me into the driver’s seat.

“Somewhere … quiet,” I said, and gave him directions to Tamanend Park.

“You’re digging your own grave, Ledger,” said the shooter. “We’re going to kill everyone you ever knew or loved. Your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your dog. You just signed their death warrants.”

I rose and leaned over the prisoner and bent my face to within an inch of his. I said nothing. No words could convey the outrage, naked fury, and bottomless contempt I felt, so instead I smiled at him. It wasn’t the Cop or the Modern Man smiling. This was the blood grin of the Warrior who crouched inside my head and knew that he was about to be let out to play.

The shooter must not have liked that smile, because after a few seconds the contemptuous grin he wore dimmed and then faded completely. And he looked very appropriately afraid.

Interlude Forty

Sebastian Gault sat on the edge of the sofa, bent forward with his elbows on his thighs, watching as Eris worked her magic on the computer. The boat rocked gently with the cross-waves of the choppy St. Lawrence River as the captain steered it away from Crown Island.

All day she had been seeding the Net with vague comments about the wrath of the Goddess striking down the firstborn of the wicked. That sort of thing. She crafted original posts and sent them to her team, who kept the social media engines revving hour after hour. Online speculation as to who these firstborn were was spreading like wildfire. In the wake of the London bombing and what was now being called a terrorist attack in Southampton, Pennsylvania, these posts were having a measurable effect on the world market. The President had ordered Wall Street shut down for another day, but other markets around the world were staggering.

Gault got up and strolled over to the wet bar to make drinks. “I wish there was a way you could aim your virtual hate arrows at the real world.”

“At Joe Ledger,” she said with a laugh.

“Yes. I want his balls nailed to my trophy wall.”

“You’re even talking like a King now. How delightful, lovely boy.”

Gault laughed and sat down to watch her magic turn to dark sorcery.

Chapter Fifty-eight

I stepped outside the TacV and called Church.

“Santoro?” He tasted the name. “Could be our Spaniard. I’ll have Bug run that. You get anything else from him?”

“Not as much as I will get.”

“He needs to have a pulse when he gets to the Hangar, Captain.”

“Don’t sweat that, Boss. He’ll be alive and kicking. Can’t say he’ll be enjoying life, but that’s the breaks.”

“Tragic. What else do you need?”

“We have to roll, which means I’m going to lose control of this scene. If the shooters met with Santoro, then there is a chance, however small, that we can pick up some DNA or hair and fibers from their gear and vehicles. I need you to talk to someone who will in turn call Southampton PD and impress upon them the importance of not touching a goddamn thing.”

“Not a problem. Jerry Spencer touched down at Philly International eight minutes ago. I had Fran Kirsch drive up from the Warehouse with a full team and all the gear Jerry will need.”

Fran was a forensic photographer and Jerry’s right hand. She had all of the warmth and personality he lacked. She also had a degree in psychology, which helped with profiling while collecting and analyzing the evidence.

“Good. You get anything more out of the two survivors from Jenkintown?”

“No. They’re both Chosen — too low-level to be of any use.”

“Damn.”

“I want you and Dr. Sanchez up here at the Hangar ASAP. Bring Dr. O’Tree as well.” He paused. “How is she handling this?”

I was surprised he cared enough to ask. “She’s pretty rattled. First time she’s dropped someone. It leaves a mark.”

“Yes,” he said, and I could hear the whisper of ghosts in his voice.

The park was a few miles away. We loaded Rudy and the shooter into the waiting Chinook. I detailed DeeDee and John Smith to drive Black Bess to Brooklyn. The rest of us piled into the bird. Once we were airborne I told Ghost to lie down and stay; then I checked on Rudy. Since he’d been shot, Circe seemed to have claimed the role of mother hen. She got him situated in as much comfort as the transport helicopter would allow and heaped blankets on him to prevent shock. She hooked an IV bag to a clip on the wall.

I saw that his eyes were open and he was looking around trying to make sense of where he was.

“Hey, Rude,” I said, squatting in front of him, “how you doing, buddy? Are you comfortable? Anything I can—”

“Vete a la verga, pendejo,” he snarled with as much venom as morphine would allow.

“All righty then, I can see you need your rest.” I turned to Circe. “Say, Doc, can you give him another dose of morphine?”

“He’s already had enough.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

Circe gave me a withering look and tucked the blankets in under Rudy’s chin.

I made my way aft to where Khalid was watching over the prisoner.

“Joe …”

I turned to see Circe hurrying after me. She looked fierce and angry.

“Doc, are you going to tell me to go fuck myself, too?”

“Is that what he said?”

“Pretty much.”

“He’s never been shot before.”

“I know, and I’m sorry that he’s joined the club.”

“Look,” she said. “I know you’re going to interrogate the prisoner and—”

“Doc, if you’re winding up to give me a speech about human rights and civil liberties, then save—”

“No,” she said, cutting me off. “I just spent the last forty minutes doing patch jobs on men, women, and children. Children, Joe. Every person in that place was wounded. Eight are dead. Four will lose limbs and at least one fifteen-year-old girl is going to be a quadriplegic and—”

“I was there, Doc. What’s your point?”

She stepped close and looked up at me with eyes that were as black and merciless as the twin holes of a double-barreled shotgun. She jabbed the hard nail of a stiffened index finger into my chest and in a fierce voice she said, “If that son of a bitch in there knows something that might stop this from happening, then you go and fucking get it.”

I’ve seldom heard anyone put as much venom in a single sentence. I stepped back, reassessing everything about this woman. For just a second her tone of voice and ferocity of personality reminded me of Mr. Church. No wonder he respected her. I smiled.

“This isn’t something to smile about, Captain. I didn’t say to enjoy it. Just get it done.”

“Hooah, Doc.”

She held her ground for a moment, her eyes full of challenge and aggression; then she whirled and stomped back through the cabin and sat down next to Rudy. I saw her take his hand. She did not look at me again.

After a moment I turned and went aft. Jersey Boy watched me come, and he glared a “do your worst” look at me.

“He’s a jumped-up street punk,” murmured Khalid. “He may not know much.”

“We’ll see.”

As it turns out, he knew a lot. Not as much as I wanted to know, but more than we already knew. And more than he wanted to give.

Interlude Forty-one

Toys sat in the American’s office, the bottle of tequila nearly empty and resting against his crotch. He was in the big man’s chair, watching the iron gray clouds scrape their way across the winter sky and thinking some of the darkest thoughts he owned. The first time his cell phone rang he ignored it. And the second. Finally, when it began ringing for the third time in five minutes he snatched it up, expecting it to be Gault, expecting this to be the call that would end with his oldest friend telling him to sod off … but it was not Gault.

Toys punched the button. “Hello?”

“How’s the mouth?” asked the American.

“Less dreadful.”

“Any tequila left?”

“Not much.”

“Finish the bottle if you want. Good for whatever ails you.”

“This is why you’ve been calling?”

“Hardly. I wanted you to know that Mommy Dearest and her boy toy have launched phase two of the Initiative. The bodies are already dropping.”

Toys sighed. “Guess there’s no turning back now.”

“Nope. On the upside, Joe Ledger is still sucking air.”

“What?”

“Yeah, the crew Santoro hired screwed the pooch. It’s on the news. The rest of the Kings aren’t going to love Gault for this. It makes us look clumsy.”

“How’d Ledger escape? I thought Santoro was sending a whole team. Did you do something?”

“Me? No. Ledger slipped the punch all by himself. Well, he had his crew of goons. Echo Team. And … you’ll dig this … Circe O’Tree was there. She apparently capped one of Santoro’s shooters.”

Toys started to laugh, but it hurt his mouth. “Maybe Eris will finally have that stroke I keep hoping for,” he said.

“Hey now … that’s my mother,” said the American, but he was laughing, too.

Their laughter faded into a thoughtful silence. Finally, Toys said, “Isn’t there any way to stop the second phase?”

The American grunted. “Not a chance. It’s already too late.”

“Damn.”

“You worry too much, kiddo, and you’re looking at the wrong end of the timetable. Who gives a flying fuck if some of the Bonesmen spawn bite it? You need to decide if you want to let Gault’s showpiece play itself out.”

“He closed me out of that whole thing. What can I do?”

The American was quiet for a moment. “Maybe something will occur to you,” he said at last, and then he hung up.

Toys set the phone down on the desk. He placed it next to the other phone, the one the American had dropped. Toys leaned forward on his elbows and considered that other phone for a long time.

Something did, in fact, occur to him.

Chapter Fifty-nine

For most of the flight I sat alone, processing what I’d learned from the shooter — whose name was Sarducci — and seeing if any of these new pieces fit the weird puzzle that was the Seven Kings. The fact of there being so many crucial employees in secure facilities kept shouting in the darkness of my thoughts, but I couldn’t yet understand what it was trying to tell me. Abstract thinking is like that. You gather facts and then throw them into a bag with guesses and bits of the unknown, and either a picture leaps out or it doesn’t. I kept shaking the bag and reaching in for a new fistful of Scrabble pieces.

When my phone rang I expected it to be Church, but the caller ID was blank, which was weird, because I have a DMS account. Nobody’s supposed to be an “unknown caller” to us.

“Yeah,” I said neutrally.

There was nothing. No … I could hear someone breathing.

“Bad time for an obscene phone call, sport,” I said.

“Joe Ledger?”

A male voice. Soft, a trace of an accent.

“I’ll see if he’s in. Who’s calling?”

“Don’t be clever,” he said. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

I was sure it was a voice I hadn’t heard before. He was trying to speak with an American accent, but it was a fake. I was sure of it. I pressed the three-digit code to initiate a trace.

“It’s your dime,” I said.

“You’re looking for the Seven Kings.”

Ah. “Who are you?”

“Don’t be daft,” he said. “And don’t bother to trace this call. It’s routed through a dozen networks on five continents.”

“Are you the person who’s been calling Mr. Church?”

“No. But—”

“Are you calling to screw around or—?”

“No, I’m calling to collect my thirty pieces of silver,” he said. He sighed and I waited. “I am not going to tell you who the Kings are or where to find them. Not all of them. I am not going to reveal all of their plans or give you the intelligence necessary to bring down the entire operation. That really would be a betrayal.”

Even with the scrambler I could hear the turmoil in his voice. It made him sound hysterical and even a little drunk. Either way, it was clear that this was someone who absolutely did not want to make this call.

“I am, however, going to offer you a deal.”

“I’m listening.”

“This isn’t for me,” he said, “and I want your word.”

“I can’t give any word unless I know what I’m swearing to.”

He paused and he was probably chewing his nails.

“I am going to say a name. It’s all I can give you, but you should be able to put two and two together to figure where to be to stop what the Seven Kings are really doing. You’ll save a lot of lives. You’ll be a hero.”

“I’m not looking to be a hero, sport. If you have information that can save lives, then let me have it.”

“I want your word. That’s the price.”

“My word on what?”

“That you won’t kill him.”

“Kill who? The person whose name you’re going to give me?”

“Yes. Swear to me that you won’t kill him and I’ll tell you.”

“How can I guarantee that?”

“You’re smart, Ledger. You’ll figure out a way. Do I have your word?”

I hesitated.

“Or,” he said, “I could hang up right now and you can watch the world burn. You think that what’s on the telly is the real news? Believe me, mate, this is the warm-up act. I want you to do something about it.”

“You have a lot of faith in me.”

“I should. I already have scars because of you,” he snarled.

“Whoa, slow down. Do I know you?”

His snarl turned into a laugh. “No … I doubt you even know my name. But you know his. You’re almost as much to blame as she is. Him and that slut Amirah.”

And that fast someone sucked all the air out of the chopper’s cabin. Amirah.

Holy Mother of God.

I knew the name he was going to give me. I knew it and I prayed like hell that I was wrong.

“Okay,” I said quietly, hardly trusting my voice not to crack, “tell me.”

“Give me your word.”

What could I do? I could lie, and it probably would be a lie. He would have to know that. So, what value did my word have to this man? On the other hand, what did I have to lose?

“Very well,” I said. “I give you my word that if I can take him alive and unharmed, I will.”

“Swear it.”

I did. I actually did.

There was a muffled sound. It wasn’t a laugh; I was sure of it. I think it was a sob.

He said, “There are Seven Kings. Gold, Fear, Lies, Plagues, Famine, War, and Thieves.” He took a breath. “Sebastian Gault is the King of Plagues. If he isn’t stopped, he’ll wipe them all out. And I know — I know—that he won’t stop there. She’ll keep pushing him and pushing him, filling his head with dreams of godhood until he creates another doomsday plague. I know he’ll do it … unless you stop him.”

I closed my eyes. God.

Sebastian Gault.

The man who tried to release the Seif Al Din pathogen. The man who came close — so very close — to destroying everything. It was because of him that I was sought out and recruited into the DMS. The last guy to hold my job had been killed. Slaughtered along with his entire team.

Sebastian Gault. If I had a personal bogeyman, then he was it.

After we stopped the release of Gault’s pathogen, a worldwide manhunt was launched. As large and as aggressive as the search for Osama bin Laden — and so far, just as futile. We’d begun to suspect that Gault was dead, his body burned in the same geothermal meltdown that had destroyed the lab where Seif Al Din was created. But now … Gault and the Seven Kings.

I felt as if I was falling through space. I pressed my back against the cold metal skin of the Chinook.

“Gault is responsible for the Hospital … for Area 51? Gault’s part of the Seven Kings?”

“Only for a few months. We were brought into this after … after …”

“After the Seif Al Din. A lot of people thought Gault died in Afghanistan.”

The man laughed. A small, sad sound. “Maybe he should have. Maybe we both should have.”

And that’s when I knew who the caller was.

“You said that what’s happening now was part of something else, something bigger?”

“Yes. Gault and the bitch. They’ve taken this whole thing away from the Kings and they’re going to bury us all with it.”

“Who is the woman? What’s her name?”

I knew that it couldn’t be Amirah, Gault’s former partner and the designer of the Seif Al Din pathogen. I knew for sure that she was dead. I’d pulled the trigger.

“No,” he said. “You don’t get that.”

“Then give me something else,” I said. “Give me Santoro.”

“Christ! How do you even know that name?”

“Give him to me.”

“Why?”

“If you know him, then you know why. Give me him and I’ll move heaven and earth to protect Gault.”

He was quiet for a moment. My cell had been running the trace for almost two minutes now and it hadn’t beeped the signal that alerted me to a successful hit. Must be the same technology Deep Throat used.

“Find Gault and you’ll find Santoro. That psycho prick will be in the thick of it. He wouldn’t miss an opportunity to see that much pain. Now, I’m sorry, I have to g—”

I took a risk. “Toys!”

I expected a scream or a yell of denial or a theatrical attempt to pretend ignorance. Instead he gave a small laugh. The risk had paid off. Gault’s best friend, valet, personal assistant, and maybe more. Alexander Chismer.

Toys.

“See?” Toys said shakily. “I said you were smart. That’s why they tried to kill you today. I’ll give you one more thing and you have to remember it; otherwise all of this goes to shit.”

“Tell me.”

“They are everywhere. The Kings, their agents, Santoro’s people. They’re everywhere. Even some of the people you work with and some of the people you’re going to try and rescue. Some belong to the Kings, and some will do anything to keep Santoro out of their lives. You understand what I mean? You can’t trust anyone. Or anything. Nothing is what it seems. It never is with the Kings. That’s it, that’s all I can tell you. Now figure out the rest.”

But he did not disconnect. I waited through several heavy seconds. This time I knew the sound I heard was a sob. Toys said, “If you succeed, Ledger … do me one more favor.”

“If I can.”

“If you save all the lives that are on the line … see if you can spare a little pity. Go to church and light a candle.”

“For Gault?”

“No,” he said. “For my soul.”

Chapter Sixty

I stared at my cell phone for a full minute.

“God Almighty,” I said aloud. Ghost heard the tone of my voice and came over to me and licked my face, looking into my eyes to see if the pack was in some kind of trouble. It surely, surely was.

And yet …

Toys.

It happens that way more often than people think. Cops spend 90 percent of a case gathering evidence, analyzing it, doing interviews, running computer searches, and building a profile of the possible culprit, and then they get a phone call from out of left field that tells them who, what, when, and where. Ten times more criminal cases have been solved by anonymous tipsters, people hoping for rewards or confidential informants.

Who in hell would ever expect Toys to be mine? Or to be the one who hammered a crack into the hardest case the DMS ever tackled.

I was sweating badly and I dragged a forearm across my eyes.

They are everywhere …. Even some of the people you work with and some of the people you’re going to try and rescue.

I looked around the cabin of the Chinook and inside my head the Warrior was drawing his knife and squinting through the gloom.

Who did I trust? I’d been away for months, and Santoro had more than shown that he could turn ordinary and trustworthy people into killers.

I thumbed open my sports coat. The handle of the Beretta was comfortably close.

Rudy?

He lay in a narcotic doze while Circe sat beside him, tapping away on her laptop. If Rudy was under Santoro’s thumb, I think I’d lose it. Rudy was my best friend. Closer to me than my own brother. He was the only person on earth I trusted completely. No … no, it couldn’t be Rudy.

Circe?

Who was she really? She worked for Hugo Vox at Terror Town. She was in position to know the security secrets of a lot of crucial operations, and that included probably access to security information on facilities like the London Hospital, Fair Isle, maybe even Area 51. After all, Church and Vox both trusted her. An unscrupulous person could exploit that trust. Sure, she looked beautiful and innocent and forthright, but she could also be a good actress. I’d met spies and moles before. They aren’t picked for that kind of work if you could just look at them and say, Yep, that there’s a spy.

And she was pretty handy with a gun. On the other hand, she didn’t pop a cap in my favorite head, so props for showing good judgment. Unless that was part of a plan to win my confidence and insinuate herself into the DMS.

Across the cabin, Circe brushed dark curls from her face; then she looked at Rudy and placed a hand very tenderly on his chest and kept it there for almost a minute while he slept. I didn’t want it to be her.

A few feet away, Top and Bunny were seated side by side. Bunny was dozing; Top was strip-cleaning his M4. He caught me looking and gave me a slow nod. I nodded back.

Bunny and Top had been with me since I joined Echo Team. We’d saved each other’s lives a dozen times over. They were brothers to me.

On the other hand, Bunny had four sisters and lots of nieces and nephews. He had parents. That gave the Kings a lot of dials they could turn. Same with Top. His daughter, Monique, lost both her legs in Baghdad two Christmases ago. A Taliban mine blew up under her Bradley. Top was divorced; his ex-wife was a nurse. I knew Top still cared for her, maybe even still loved her, and he certainly loved his daughter. If Santoro threatened them, especially Top’s wheelchair-bound daughter, was there anything he wouldn’t do to protect them?

That was a hard call. I’d like to think that both men would come to me, or to Church, with it. Of course … I’d been away, out of touch and out of reach.

What would I do if one of them had been turned by the Kings?

I’d try to save them if I could. Them and theirs. And if I couldn’t? If they came at me? Shit. I knew what I would do, and I could hear the Warrior grunt his dark approval.

That left Khalid, DeeDee, and John Smith. I knew them, but I didn’t really know them. We had less history. Smith was a closed book that nobody could read. Maybe Church, maybe Rudy. No one else.

DeeDee? She had no family, no close friends. If she was a rotten apple, it would be more likely in the role of a spy rather than a coerced victim.

Khalid? The doctor and scholar who was also a first-class shooter. I liked him and I knew that I trusted him. But it occurred to me that I didn’t know much about his family. He had a brother here in the States, but the rest of his family lived in the Middle East. Iran, Egypt, and some in Saudi Arabia.

I realized that I was not adding Church to my list. If he was a bad guy, then we were all totally fucked. I’m pretty dangerous, but he scares me. He scares everyone. You simply cannot imagine him losing a fight, and I doubt he ever has. He’s brilliant, cold, vicious, detail oriented, and largely a mystery. If it came down to a fight between us, I didn’t like my odds.

I flipped open my phone and called him. He picked up on the third ring. I told him everything Toys had said.

Church listened without comment and the silence continued after I was done.

Finally, he said, “What’s your ETA?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Talk to no one about this,” he said. “No one.”

I began to ask him a question, but Church hung up on me.

I settled back against the wall, my jacket open and the butt of my Beretta within easy reach, and stared into the middle distance all the way to Brooklyn.

Chapter Sixty-one

Mr. Church’s phone rang as he entered his office. He looked at the screen display. He frowned and let it ring twice more before he flipped it open.

“Deacon? You there?” said the gruff voice. “You got a minute?”

“Half a minute, Hugo. What do you need?”

“I’ve been hearing some scary stuff. Is Circe okay?”

“You heard about Starbucks? Yes, she wasn’t hurt.”

“Did I hear right that she popped someone?”

“Yes.”

“Her first time. Poor kid. I was kind of hoping she’d skip that milestone.”

“Life’s hard for a lot of people, Hugo.”

“I know …. I heard about Marty, too.”

Church said nothing.

“He deserved better than getting gunned down like a dog,” Vox continued. “Ledger’s a lucky bastard.”

“He might disagree. People keep trying to kill him.”

“He keeps not getting killed, though, Deac’. From what I heard about Starbucks, he’s the luckiest son of a bitch on two legs.”

Church said nothing.

“Did Ledger get any useful intel from the surviving shooter?”

“No,” said Church. “The man is critically wounded and we don’t expect him to recover. It’s unlikely we’ll get anything out of him.”

There was a pause at the other end. “Really? I heard that he was talking and—”

“You’ve been misinformed, Hugo. We’re getting nowhere with this. Now, I hate to break this off, but I have a meeting. I’ll be in touch when I have something fresh.”

Mr. Church disconnected and placed his phone on the desk. He walked around and sat in the leather chair. There was an open pack of vanilla wafers in the top drawer. He removed them, selected a cookie, and ate it slowly while staring at the silent phone.

Chapter Sixty-two

We came in low past the Gil Hodges Bridge and landed in a fenced-off compound near the Rockaway Inlet, just outside of Hangar Row in Floyd Bennett Field. There were six black unmarked DMS choppers lined up. Two AH-64D Apache Longbows, a monster of a Chinook like the one we were in, and three UH-60 Black Hawks. There were rows of Humvees and TacVs. Everywhere we looked there were armed guards. Everyone looked tense.

DeeDee and John Smith hadn’t arrived with Black Bess, but knowing the way DeeDee drove, they wouldn’t be far behind.

Sgt. Gus Dietrich met us on the helipad. He held out a hand. “Glad to see you boys in one piece. Well, mostly. Sorry to hear about Rudy taking a hit.”

“Could have been worse,” said Bunny.

“It could always be worse,” agreed Dietrich.

Nurses and orderlies arrived with two-wheeled gurneys. Circe O’Tree took charge of the wounded as if it was her right, and the nurses did not argue the point. I found that odd but didn’t comment on it.

The prisoner was hustled off with a pair of armed agents flanking his gurney. If he thought his day had been crappy so far, he was on his way to see Mr. Church, so it wasn’t like things were going to be sunshine and puppies.

Dietrich led Echo Team and me through the main entrance.

This was the first time I had visited the headquarters of the Department of Military Sciences. It was at least twice the size of the Baltimore Warehouse, which was pretty big in its own right, and even bigger than Department Zero, the massive office in L.A. It housed over six hundred scientists, soldiers, and support staff.

“Mr. Church landed ten minutes ago,” Dietrich said as he punched the code to open a side door. “Top, why don’t you take your team in for some chow? Ask anyone and they’ll show you where it is.”

Top nodded and peeled off with the others to follow the gurneys. Dietrich turned back to me. “The Big Guy’s expecting you.”

Dietrich led me into the Hangar’s operations command center. Ghost trotted along at my heels, eyes wide, nose and ears gathering data. The massive main room was circled with glass-enclosed labs and workrooms, and overhead was a latticework of steel walkways. There were more armed guards inside and a lot of people moving like busy ants in a nest. There were tiers of stainless-steel catwalks and elevated computer stations. Metal gleamed; colored lights flashed. It was Christmas in Bill Gates’s head.

“Wow,” I said. “Nice to see my tax dollars at work.”

I saw Church, his head bowed in conversation with a short black woman with a round face, granny glasses halfway down her nose, and long dreadlocks. The person he was talking too made me do a double take. I tapped Dietrich on the shoulder.

“Okay … why is Whoopi Goldberg here and why is she talking with Mr. Church?”

Dietrich laughed and didn’t reply. I felt like I was going crazy. The woman looked exactly like the actress. She wore a blouse with an orange Sudanese print, a necklace of chunky colored stones, and rings on every finger except her trigger finger. She smiled as we approached, but there was no trace of humor in the polished black ice of her eyes.

Church beckoned us closer.

“Captain Ledger,” he said, “I want you to meet the DMS Chief of Operations — Aunt Sallie.”

I was convinced that this was some kind of bizarre practical joke. “Um … hello?” I said, but as I extended my hand the woman spoke and the illusion was shattered as if she’d struck glass with a hammer.

“Feel free to wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, Captain,” she said in an accent that was pure back-alley Brooklyn. “I’m not her, so let’s just bury that nonsense right now.”

I am seldom at a loss for words, but the best I could manage was a mumbled, “Ma’am,” as I took her hand. She had a grip like a vise and she gave me one hard pump while she looked me up and down. Her gaze had the same invasive and impersonal precision as an X-ray.

Ghost sniffed her and then quickly backed up several paces and lay down.

Aunt Sallie studied me. “So, you’re the hotshot shooter from Baltimore.”

“I’ll have to put that on my business card.”

“The one who let Marty Hanler get killed.”

I did a slow three-count before I trusted my voice to reply.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

“Are we going to have to make sure you have full-squad backup every time something gets a little rough?”

“Feel free to kiss my ass,” I said pleasantly.

“You got your full and complete share of mouth, don’t you?”

Beside me I heard Dietrich murmur, “Oh boy.”

Aunt Sallie turned to Church. “Give us a minute?”

Without waiting for a reply, she took me by the elbow and led me twenty paces away. The placement of her fingers on the nerve clusters was very precise. It hurt and she knew it hurt, but I didn’t let so much as a flicker show on my face. She knew that, too.

When we were out of earshot she said, “Okay, Ledger, here’s the deal. Marty Hanler was a good friend of Church’s, and more important, he was a good friend of mine. We’d been through fire together. You let someone put him on their trophy wall, and that means you lost all points on my scorecard. Mr. Church may think you piss rainbows and shit little gold coins, but as far as I’m concerned you’re a reckless field agent and a psychological basket of worms.”

“We were ambushed by ten shooters with automatic weapons in a professional cross-fire attack. Let’s see you do better.”

“I have done better, and even at my age I can run your ass all over a live-fire combat range.”

“Do you want to blame me for the four thousand dead at the London just because I was in England? How about Hurricane Katrina? I went to Mardi Gras once. Do I look good for that?”

“Don’t try to be smart, Ledger; you don’t have the tools for it.”

“You’re a charming lady. So happy to make your acquaintance.”

She let that pass. “Before Church hired you, all you did was some penny ante police bullshit and an Army tour during which all you did was jerk off. Before the DMS you had zero field time.”

“And since then, ma’am, I—”

“Call me Aunt Sallie or Auntie,” she snapped. “Call me ma’am again and I’ll kneecap you. Don’t think that’s a joke.”

“Whatever. If I’m supposed to be impressed by all this, I’m not. You don’t like how I handle things? Too fucking bad. Church scouted me, so if you have any problems with my qualifications then you can take ’em and shove ’em where the sun don’t shine. But let’s be real clear on one point, Auntie: I don’t give a rat’s hairy ass what you think of me. Honestly. I really don’t. I don’t know you well enough to dislike you, but I could put some effort into that.”

“Nice speech. Here’s the bottom line: I read your psych profiles and I think you’re a danger to our cause. Sure, you racked up some wins, but a lot of good people seem to die around you, and that marks you with a permanent red flag in my book.”

“You finished?”

“For now.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

She smiled, then turned and walked back to Church and the others. I took a breath and followed.

“You two kiss and make up?” Church asked.

“Sure. I promised him a blow job later if he buys me dinner.”

“Looking forward to it,” I said.

Church said nothing. He carefully unwrapped a stick of gum and put it in his mouth, then folded the silver wrapper into a neat little square. We all watched him do it and I saw Dietrich’s eyes flick from Church, to Aunt Sallie, then to me, and then he stared past me into the middle distance. He was having a very hard time keeping a straight face.

Finally Church said, “Captain Ledger, I would like you, Dr. O’Tree, Dr. Hu, and Aunt Sallie to join me for a brainstorming session. Let’s convene in fifteen minutes. It’s been a long, bad day for everyone, but we need to be sharp for this.”

Auntie nodded and headed off to set things up, throwing me a short and pointedly dismissive look as she went.

Dietrich turned to follow, but I leaned in to whisper to him.

“Is she always like this?”

“Nah, you caught her on a good day. She’s usually pretty cranky.”

Church said, “Captain, you might use that time to clean up.”

I nodded. My clothes were dark with dried blood and I still hadn’t looked at the damage to my thigh, which hurt like a son of a bitch. I turned to go, but Church touched my arm.

“Hold on,” he said quietly. We walked out of earshot of the rest of the staff. After the reaming from Auntie I thought I was going to get fried by him, too, but instead he offered his hand. “You did good work today, Captain.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” I said honestly.

“Anyone can be ambushed. It’s the nature of war.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“No,” he agreed. He adjusted his glasses. “However, if the call you received is good intel then it’s probably a game changer.”

“You know, Boss,” I said, “I listened to the tapes of your conversation with Deep Throat, and Toys isn’t the guy who has been calling you.”

“Same anti-trace technology, though.”

“Yeah, which brings up its own set of questions. If Toys and Gault are part of the Kings organization, then can we continue to believe that Deep Throat is not also part of the Kings?”

Church nodded. “I’ve been giving that considerable thought, Captain, and I tend to agree with you. Either he’s a mole who shares his phone with another mole or we’re not seeing a conflict between organizations. I think this is an internal matter.”

“Which explains why Deep Throat was so cagey about giving you much information.”

“Yes. If two groups within the Kings are pursuing different agendas, or — more likely — if two operations within their organization have come into conflict with one another, then using the DMS to injure the other party can be viewed as a clever strategic move.”

“It’s pretty damn devious.”

He spread his hands. “Secret society.”

“Yeah, okay, but what does that mean? Are Deep Throat and Toys calling from different ends of the playground? Or are they working together?”

“Impossible to tell at this point. What would your guess be?”

“My gut tells me that they’re on the same side.”

He nodded.

“But,” I added, “considering that we know that every move in the Seven Kings playbook is built around deception and misdirection, I’m not sure we can trust any guess.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“Toys said that the Kings had agents among the people I trust, and among the people we have to rescue.”

“Feeling paranoid?”

“Yep.”

“Welcome to my world. I’ve long considered paranoia to be a job requirement.”

“Is there anyone in our ranks we should be looking at?”

“I’m looking at everyone.”

“Isn’t there anyone you trust completely?”

Church gave me his tiny fraction of a smile. “Everyone I trust is in this building,” he said.

“But not everyone in this building has your trust.”

“No.”

“Where do I stand?” I asked.

“Where do I?”

Before I could answer, he patted me on the arm.

“Get cleaned up and we’ll talk more at the conference.”

Church turned and walked away.

Chapter Sixty-three

We gathered in a large conference room with a table into which were built computer workstations. There were plasma screens on all the walls and a multipanel central computer screen for teleconferencing. Everything was tomorrow’s idea of state of the art. Aunt Sallie, Church, Dietrich, and Dr. Hu were there. Bug peered at everyone from one of the view screens. The last to arrive was Circe O’Tree, and she pushed a wheelchair in which sat a disgruntled and deeply embarrassed Rudy Sanchez.

I smiled at him, but he held up a stern finger. “One word, Cowboy, and I will find a way to kick your ass.”

“Just wanted to say that I’m glad you’re feeling up to this. Can’t be easy.” He gave me an evil look. “Really? I find getting shot to be so invigorating.”

Circe left his wheelchair with me and ran over to give Aunt Sallie a hug. For me it was a real WTF moment. And not just because I couldn’t imagine anyone liking Aunt Sallie. It just seemed like such a surreal occurrence.

When Circe stepped back from Aunt Sallie, she saw that Church was there. Circe froze and her face went blank. No hugs there, just a formal handshake and a few words privately exchanged.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Church signaled for everyone to take their seats. I helped Rudy out of the wheelchair and into a seat next to mine at the table. Circe came and sat on Rudy’s other side.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’ll live,” she said. “Where’s your dog?”

“In my room eating his way through most of a large cow. At least that’s what I think the kitchen staff delivered. Might be an elephant. Ghost was in monkey heaven.”

“Glad someone’s in a good mood. I’m not, and I’m having a hard time processing all of this.”

“Doc … before this whole thing gets started, I wanted to say that I respect and appreciate everything you did today. You put your ass on the line twice. You may have saved my life and you definitely saved Rudy’s. That van would have run him over if you hadn’t fired on it.”

“I already thanked her, Cowboy,” Rudy said, but I ignored him.

Circe’s eyes glistened. “Does that mean I get to curse, get a tattoo, and say ‘hooah’?”

There was just the hint of a smile as she said it.

I grinned. “Yes, you do.”

“Hooah,” she said with dry irony.

“Hooah.”

We traded a fist bump.

“Dios mio,” Rudy breathed.

“Are you children done playing?” snapped Aunt Sallie from across the table. Circe and I whipped our hands back like we were caught going into a cookie jar.

On the central display, a dozen screens came to life showing the faces of directors of the various DMS field offices, most of whom I knew by sight or reputation. Church took his chair, but before he spoke he raised a small remote and pointed it at the door. There was a hiss of hydraulics and the clang of heavy locks.

“We are in full lockdown,” he announced. “I am hereby initiating a Class One security protocol. You are all hereby bound by Executive Order A-9166/DMS. All participating stations are to activate protocol Deacon Alpha Ten. Verify.”

One by one the DMS field commanders gave their verification. This was only the second time since I’d been with the DMS that we had gone to our highest security status. I understood why, but from the confused and concerned looks on the faces of everyone else they didn’t. Even Aunt Sallie frowned at Church.

“What’s going on, Deacon?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “We get something hot?”

“Red-hot,” Church murmured to her, but to everyone else he said, “I will say this, and I want each of you to understand why I’m saying it. It is possible that the Seven Kings have infiltrated the DMS. If this is so, then we will discover the name or names of whoever is on their leash. If any of you are under coercion from the Kings, now is the time to let me know. This is a closed conference. The secret will be safe and we will act immediately to protect you and your family. If you have been the victim of coercion, then I offer a complete amnesty as long as you tell me now. That offer expires in thirty seconds.”

We waited out those thirty seconds. Church’s face was as hard as granite. I could see several people begin to sweat. There was a plate of vanilla wafers on the table in front of him. Church selected one, bit off a piece, and munched it thoughtfully. His eyes were invisible behind the tinted lenses of his glasses. Everyone waited. Except for the crunch of Church’s strong white teeth on the cookie there was no sound.

“Time’s up,” said Church. “I direct each team leader to spread the word to their staff members. Same offer. Come to me directly and I will protect them. Failure to do so would be … unfortunate.”

Considering the circumstances, the statement was almost bizarrely dry and formal. Except that we all knew what lay beneath the calm surface of Church’s words. No one spoke. We watched him finish his NILLA wafer and wash it down with a sip of water. I cut a look at Rudy, who raised his eyebrows at me.

“Very well,” said Church. It was impossible to read his expression. It was somewhere between one of those giant rock faces on Easter Island and Darth Vader. “I’m going to play a recording of a phone conversation that occurred less than an hour ago. The call was made to Captain Ledger’s phone using the same anti-trace technology used by the confidential informant who has tipped us off to the Kings. I’ll play it twice. Listen without comment first, and then the floor is open to speculation afterward.”

He used the same remote to start the playback.

He need not have cautioned everyone to silence. Every mouth was slack with shock; every set of eyes stared in absolute horror.

Finally it was Rudy who broke the silence.

“Madre de Dios!” he said. “Gault?”

“Sebastian Gault,” agreed Church gravely. “The King of Plagues.”

Dr. Hu smiled like a kid on Christmas morning. “That’s soooo cool.” Everyone stared at him, but he gave an unapologetic shrug. “Hey, without guys like him this job would be booooring. That guy rocks.”

“Can I kill him?” I asked Church.

“Maybe later,” Church said. He sounded so convincing that Hu’s smile faltered. To the group Church said, “I want to review all of the pertinent information. You’re on point for this, Captain. Bring everyone up to speed.”

“Okay,” I said, “here’s the short course. We know for sure that the Seven Kings are behind this entire crisis. We know that Sebastian Gault has the designation within the Kings organization as the ‘King of Plagues.’ We know that there are also Kings of Fear, Famine, Gold, War, Lies, and Thieves. Beyond that, we don’t know anything else about the nature of their organization, including whether they are an ancient or modern secret society. We know that they use campaigns of disinformation and information manipulation, and in a minute I’d like Dr. O’Tree to talk more about that.”

She nodded.

I continued, “One of the methods used by the Kings is coercion, most or all of it perpetrated by a man named Santoro, who we’ve been calling ‘the Spaniard.’”

“Hold on a minute,” interrupted Hu. “Extortion? Not blackmail?”

“No,” I replied. “Blackmail is messy and it leaves a trail. MindReader would have tripped over that in at least one or two of our background searches. We’ve been constantly updating the search arguments for the victims, and we’ve hacked everything from their e-mails to their tax records. People are never completely pristine about their own wrongdoing; otherwise no one could blackmail them. Besides, it’s hard as hell to blackmail someone into murder and suicide. Death pretty much cancels the leverage, so some of the vics would have fessed up. No … each of the victims had a family, right? What better leverage is there than a direct threat to loved ones? The victims are told that if they don’t do it, then something far worse is going to happen. With that kind of pressure, people will definitely kill … or die.”

Church said, “The threat would have to be made in a way that leaves no doubt as to whether the extortionist would follow through.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “They would need to really mind-fuck their victims.”

“It’s hard to imagine that working,” Hu said.

“Really?” I said. “If someone told you to murder a co-worker or they’ll kill your whole family, you wouldn’t pop a cap in one of your lab assistants?”

“No way. My folks are in China, and my brother is a total asshole.”

“Okay, imagine if you had a soul instead of a big empty place in your chest.”

Hu actually smiled at this. “Sure. But how do you make a leap to that scenario?”

“Let me read the note I found at Plympton’s apartment.” I dipped into the shared case files and sent it to the main screens. I read the note aloud and then reread a few key lines. “‘I know that what I have done is unforgivable …. But at least what I have done here in our home will save you both from greater horrors.’ That’s significant.”

“I agree,” said Rudy. “And it’s reinforced by the last line: ‘I am only the monster they made me.’ This is a man driven to extremes. He’s guilty, certainly, but only after the fact. He’s not apologizing for anything done prior to what he clearly considered a mercy killing.”

Hu thought about it for a moment and gave a grudging nod.

I said, “We see similar things in the case of Dr. Grey and the staff at Fair Isle. And we know for sure from the deposition of Amber Taylor. The extortionist has to bring a lot to the game, though. He’d have to already know something about how staffing and procedures work at facilities of this kind. You can’t just Google that. On the flight from Pennsylvania I had the opportunity to interrogate the surviving shooter from the Starbucks hit. His name is Danny Sarducci.”

I uploaded his military ID photo and Sarducci looked every bit the punk he was.

“Twenty-nine, from Trenton, New Jersey. Lot of stuff in his jacket. Four arrests for armed robbery as a juvenile. A judge let him join the Army instead of going to jail, which means the Army taught him how to fight and use better weapons. He was brought up on charges of sex with a minor in Afghanistan. The girl’s family didn’t call it rape, though from his commanding officer’s report that’s what it was. After Sarducci was kicked out, he was picked up by Blue Diamond Security.”

“Ugh,” said Dietrich. “Those assholes.”

Blue Diamond had made the papers as often as Blackwater and had been the first mercenary group thrown out of Iraq for a laundry list of offenses.

“Yeah, those assholes,” I agreed. “Sarducci went off the radar six years ago. Now jump to this morning and he was crew chief of a team of well-equipped shooters assigned to kill Mrs. Ledger’s favorite son.”

Aunt Sallie and Hu both snorted at that.

“Sarducci gave us the names of the other shooters, and they all have similar backgrounds. Low-level muscle who went off the public radar a few years ago. Half of them have military backgrounds, but it was mostly one tour and out. One deserter who ran to keep from getting recycled by ‘stop-loss.’ I asked Bug to hack Blue Diamond’s records.”

“I got nothing, Joe,” said Bug. “They’ve been using a closed system. No hardlines, no Wi-Fi. Paranoid as shit. They probably know about MindReader and are taking no chances. Everything is intranet, which means we’d have to go and physically tap into their wires.”

“Maybe we should,” I said.

“That would be a bitch of a job,” said Aunt Sallie. “They’re based in Honduras and their compound is more fortress than military base. It would be easier to destroy it than infiltrate it.”

“Works for me,” muttered Dietrich.

“Who hired Sarducci?” asked Frost from the Denver office.

“Santoro. Sarducci described him as an adult Hispanic male, about forty. Slim but very fit. Looks like a wrestler. Fast hands and extremely good with a knife, which jibes with Dr. Grey’s experience. I gave the physical description to Bug and he’s running it through MindReader.”

Bug frowned. “Don’t get your hopes up, Joe. That description fits about forty million Hispanic males, but we’re cross-referencing with key words.”

“Sarducci knew that Santoro was part of the Seven Kings,” I said, “but he didn’t actually know what the Kings were beyond some rah-rah rhetoric. He said that Santoro talked about the Kings all the time. How they were going to reshape the world. How they were the personification of Chaos on earth — not his kind of phrasing, of course, so he was probably quoting Santoro. He said they pay well and in cash. Sarducci and his crew did several jobs for them, and Bug’s cross-referencing the names and dates.”

Dietrich asked, “Did he give you anything else? Like why he wanted to kill Marty Hanler?”

“They weren’t after Hanler,” I said. “They were after me. And, I think, Circe.”

Circe’s eyes flared. “What?”

I tapped a key to replay one of Sarducci’s comments. “The Seven Kings are going to rip your world apart, Ledger. You and the rest of the DMS. You, that psychopath Church, that cunt O’Tree, these ass clowns here — all of you are already dead and you just don’t know it yet.”

“Sorry for the vulgarity, Doc. His words, definitely not mine.”

Church leaned forward and looked hard at me. “Sarducci threatened Circe?”

“Yes.”

It’s weird, his expression did not really change, but somehow his blank face suddenly conveyed a degree of menace that I have seldom before experienced. The others in the room must have sensed it, too. Everyone turned to look at Church.

He sat back and brushed cookie crumbs from his sleeve.

“Interesting,” he said softly. “Please continue.”

His eyes were fixed on Circe, who colored and turned away.

“Sarducci was very forthcoming with threats.”

“Anyone else make his greatest-hits list?” asked Dietrich.

I ticked my chin toward Aunt Sallie. “Not by name, but he used a few vulgar gender-specific racial epithets. This bozo is not a fan of Affirmative Action or women in the workplace.”

Aunt Sallie smiled thinly. “Nice to be noticed here at the back of the bus.”

“I got nothing else useful from him. He’s a lowlife piece of crap and I hope we find a hole and drop him into it.”

“Count on it,” murmured Aunt Sallie. She wrote something on a slip of paper and slid it across to Church, who read it and gave her the tiniest of nods.

“By the end he was rerunning the same stuff. The DMS is going to fall; we don’t stand a chance; the Seven Kings will rule; we’re all going to die; rivers of blood will sweep us away. That sort of thing.”

“More rivers of blood,” Dietrich said. “The fuck is it with these guys and rivers of blood?”

“Maybe they really had their hearts set on the Fair Isle cluster fuck going south on us,” said Auntie. She gave me a look that seemed to say that with me at the helm she was surprised it didn’t.

I manfully restrained myself from throwing my coffee cup at her. “There was one other thing Sarducci said,” I continued. “It came out kind of sudden and it was clear that he didn’t want to say it. He went off on a tangential rant to try and hide it.”

“What was it?” asked Church.

“He said that Santoro had a worse hard-on for the DMS than the Kings had for the Inner C.”

“The Inner C?” Dietrich frowned. “Is that a gang name?”

“No,” said Church. “And that is very interesting, Captain. It ties into something my informant told me when he called yesterday. He said that the Kings ‘want to break the bones of their enemies and suck out the marrow.’ ‘Bones’ is the operative word.”

“Wait!” said Circe suddenly. “I have something on that, too.” She gave everyone a quick recap of the Goddess posts she had been tracking for months. She scrolled through her data and then put a Twitter post on the screen. “One of her posts mentioned bones.”

“It was in the posts after vandals broke into a tomb in Egypt,” Circe said, and explained about the tomb of the lost firstborn son of Amenhotep II, seventh pharaoh of the eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. She leaned on the word “firstborn.”

“Cool,” said Hu.

“Okay, bones and bones,” said Dietrich, “how does that relate to the ‘Inner C’?”

“Son of a bitch,” breathed Aunt Sallie. “The goddamn Bonesmen.”

Chapter Sixty-four

“Bonesmen?” asked Circe. “As in the Skull and Bones?”

Aunt Sallie gave her an approving nod. “Right, and the Inner C has to be the Inner Circle.”

“I thought they were a myth,” said Dietrich; then he answered his own comment, “Right, and we’re the DM-fricking-S, so they’re probably real.” He sighed and shook his head. “One of these days we’re going to find out that UFOs, Godzilla, and vampires are real, too. Sometimes I hate this job.”

Aunt Sallie shared a private smile with Church, and we were welcome to make anything we wanted out of that. It made me wonder if something that Dietrich said hit a nerve. With my luck it would be Godzilla.

“Have we had any dealings with the Inner Circle?” asked Rudy.

Aunt Sallie nodded. “Mr. Church and I have been looking into them since before the DMS was founded. We’ve been considering making them a ‘project,’ but they’re sly cocksuckers and gathering evidence on them is a lot like trying to punch through smoke.”

“We may have to take that look,” said Church quietly.

Circe said, “If we are to interpret this correctly, the Inner Circle are enemies of the Seven Kings.”

Church didn’t comment and he gave me a tiny shake of his head, so I kept my mouth shut about what he and I had discussed before the meeting.

“Looks that way,” Hu said, looking very pleased. “A clash of secret empires. This is sweet.”

“This can’t end happily,” said Circe. “What are we into here? Is this a three-way fight, or are we getting caught in the cross fire?”

“Points for using combat slang,” I said.

“Bite me,” she muttered; then to the group she said, “Actually, a clash makes a lot of sense. It explains the tip-off information. And it makes sense that the Inner Circle would reach out to the DMS.”

“Does it?” Church murmured.

“Sure,” agreed Aunt Sallie, “to use us to do the dirty work instead of having to endanger any of their own assets.”

Dietrich nodded. “Smart.”

“Isn’t it a little obvious, though?” asked Rudy. “I mean … if these are separate groups and if they are as secret as they’re supposed to be, then how do they know so much about each other? How can the Inner Circle know so much about the terrorist cells working with the Kings that they can feed reliable tips to Mr. Church?”

“A double agent,” suggested Circe.

“Or they managed to plant someone inside the Kings,” Auntie ventured.

“No,” decided Circe. “It’s too pat. If the Inner Circle wanted the Kings torn down, then they could just as easily pass that information along within channels. The Bonesmen are supposed to be wired into every level of government. Going outside their own network is an unnecessary risk.”

“Right,” agreed Rudy. “A letter with no return address would accomplish the same thing.”

“Doc’s right,” Dietrich agreed. “It’s either showing off, or it’s clumsy—”

“Or it’s misdirection,” finished Circe. “Don’t forget the Goddess and her posts. It’s all about misdirection.”

“Sorry to interrupt, guys, but you got to see this,” said Bug. He hit some buttons and suddenly we were looking at Wolf Blitzer. The feed cut in mid-sentence. “—rocked the foundations of power as four scions of powerful American families died under what can only be called ‘suspicious circumstances.’ Sources at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta have not yet declared this to be an outbreak, and so far no one else who was in the company of the four victims has become sick. Even so, each site has been quarantined and—”

Aunt Sallie snapped her fingers at Bug. “Shit! Pull up a list of known members of the Skull and Bones.”

“On it.” The list flashed onto a second screen. Bug scrolled through the names, highlighting them as he went. Harrington, Milhaus … one, two, three, four. “Oh, man … they’re all on the list.”

“They’re Inner Circle,” Auntie said. “Those four are power players, and two of them for sure are Inner Circle. My guess is that all of them are.”

“Dios mio,” breathed Rudy. He put his hand on Circe’s arm. “You know what we’re seeing here?”

We all knew, but Circe put it in words: “The deaths of the firstborn.”

Rudy actually crossed himself.

“There’s been a fifth death,” interrupted Bug. “Just came in. Jessica St. Stevens, daughter of—”

“Congressman Pierce St. Stevens,” said Church. “I know him. Close friend of Dick Cheney. Jess is his only child. She’s estranged from her father. Works for Doctors Without Borders.”

Auntie gave a derisive snort. “No fucking way she’s tied into her dad’s politics.” She snapped her fingers at Bug. “Make sure you pull the names of anyone suspected of being connected to the Inner Circle. We need to identify their children and get the word out. Now!”

Bug worked furiously and more names began appearing on the main screens and that was quickly followed by biographical data and then contact information.

“No time to get this out to the local authorities,” growled Church. “We need to act now.”

We all grabbed phones and began making calls. The team leaders from the other DMS shops did the same. Within ten minutes we had three hundred people making calls to families, police departments, the Centers for Disease Control, hospitals, the National Institutes of Health, and a dozen federal agencies. It was a nightmare of urgency, and as we worked reports kept coming in. Six victims. Then it jumped to a nine. A dozen. We kept at it. Fifteen victims. Sixteen.

“Are we too late?” Dietrich asked. “There must be hundreds of Bonesmen. Are all of their firstborn kids being targeted? Or just the children of the Inner Circle?”

“No way to know,” snapped Church. “Call everyone. Go beyond the Inner Circle.”

The night ground on. Our calls were met with skepticism and hostility by those people suspected of being in the Inner Circle. None of them denied it. At least none of those who answered the phone in voices that were broken by sobs or screams.

The ordinary Bonesmen were shocked and angry. Most of them didn’t believe it. Not surprising, but also not helpful. A lot of people hung up on us.

Some of these people were past presidents. Many of them were generals, corporate CEOs, billionaires. Their combined might could crush even the DMS. And since many of them did not know about the Seven Kings or believe in them, we were the ones bearing the bad news, so a lot of genuine rage was directed at us. Mr. Church got a call from the President, who had gotten over thirty calls from members of Congress and colleagues of such political importance that their calls got through to him without red-tape hindrance.

Between calls I caught a fragment of Church’s side of that conversation.

“—yes, Mr. President, I believe that we can call this a terrorist attack. However, I don’t think we should say so to the press. A statement to that effect would be exactly what the Seven Kings need—”

Just after midnight we got word of the twenty-first victim. The latest victim had been a fourteen-year-old boy at a military academy. He had collapsed and died during a Christmas party.

God Almighty.

Twenty-one.

By two in the morning we had exhausted all of the numbers Bug could find, but there had not been a new case reported. We made hundreds of follow-up calls.

Three A.M. came and went.

“I think it’s over,” said Rudy. He was bleary-eyed and gray with pain and fatigue. For the last hour he’d been covertly popping Advil like they were M&M’S.

“Still only twenty-one,” said Bug.

Circe gave him a bleak and haunted stare. “‘Only’?”

Church sat back and rubbed his eyes. Even he looked exhausted.

“Now what?” asked Dietrich.

“Now we have to monitor this,” said Aunt Sallie. “We need to keep ahead of it in case there’s another wave.”

“Do we even know the cause of death?” I asked. “Is this a plague? Poisoning? I mean … no one else at each of the murder scenes was reported with symptoms ….”

“We know the cause of death,” said Circe, her dark eyes filled with strange light. “It’ll be mycotoxicoses.”

Church leaned forward. “And how exactly would you know that?”

Interlude Forty-two

Nicodemus lay on his cot, fingers laced behind his head, ankles crossed, and stared at the shadows on the ceiling. The warden had ordered everything removed from his cell. He had no books, no writing paper or pencils, no TV. All that had been left for him was a single sheet, a thin blanket of rough wool, a pillow, and a roll of toilet paper.

It was enough for him.

Nicodemus did not need to be entertained. He did not need to read, not even the Bible. There was no one that he wanted to talk to, no diversion that he required. He had everything that he needed.

It was all there inside his head. In his thoughts. As clear as if he heard it outside his cell. As clear as if they were there beside his cot. It did not matter that no one else could hear them. The video recorders trained on his cell would not tape any of the sounds that he heard. That was as it should be. The sounds were for him to hear.

He lay for hour after delicious hour, smiling a small and secret smile to himself. Listening to the screams of the dying.

Chapter Sixty-five

“The tomb,” explained Circe.

Every eye was on her. She looked scared, but she held her ground.

“Spill it, girl,” said Aunt Sallie.

“Experts have been trying to scientifically explain the Ten Plagues for years,” Circe said. “If there were a series of catastrophes during the time of Moses in Egypt, then there would likely be panic and unrest. During such times raids on food stores would be possible, even likely. After a time of pestilence it’s very likely that some of the food stores were contaminated by any number of bacteria or fungi. Any bread made from moldy wheat would carry diseases. The sudden deaths of so many Egyptians could very well have the result of a raid on contaminated foodstuffs. The persons most likely to conduct a successful raid would be the older and more capable members of that society. If not precisely firstborn, then at least symbolically the ‘first among them.’ It’s not all that much of a stretch to see how that could have evolved into a more dramatic story of the firstborn dying as a result of a plague sent by God. After all, it was the last straw that led to the liberation of the Israelites.”

“You’re talking about mycotoxins,” murmured Rudy, nodding agreement.

Hu looked jazzed by all this. “Right! Mycotoxins can present in a food chain as a result of fungal infection of crops. Human infection can come through direct ingestion of infected products — bread, livestock, whatever — and even cooking and freezing won’t destroy them. Nice call, Circe.”

“What are—?” Dietrich began, but Hu cut him off.

“It’s a toxic chemical produced by fungi. The toxins enter the bloodstream and lymphatic system, damage macrophage systems, and some other evil shit. Back in 2004, over a hundred people died after eating maize contaminated with aflatoxin, a species of mycotoxin. There have been other cases, too. Mostly in third-world countries.”

“The biblical connection is mostly guesswork,” Circe admitted. “The Jewish story about Passover begins at the end of the Ten Plagues. Passover celebrates the first meal to mark the escape of the Israelites from bondage and from the plagues. The Passover meal consists of symbolic newborn lamb, fresh herbs, and horseradish — and all of these are safe from mycotoxin exposure. The same goes for unleavened bread, which is, by definition, free of any yeasty mycotoxin contamination.”

“Makes sense even to me,” said Dietrich. “But how’s all that relate to a ransacked tomb?”

“Remember the Curse of King Tut?” she asked. “Lord Carnovan, the Englishman who financed Howard Carter’s expedition to find the tomb of King Tutankhamen, died of a mysterious illness after entering the tomb. It’s very likely that he became ill after exposure to a fungus that had been dormant in the tomb for thousands of years and reactivated by fresh air. Recent studies of newly opened ancient Egyptian tombs that had not been exposed to modern contaminants found pathogenic bacteria of the staphylococcus and pseudomonas genera, and the molds Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus.”

“Yeah,” said Hu, “but the concentrations were weak. They’d only be dangerous to persons with weakened immune systems.”

“Oh, hell, Doc,” I said, “don’t forget who we’re dealing with. You trying to tell me that Sebastian Gault couldn’t amp up and weaponize one of these toxins?”

Hu sat back and gave me a rueful smile. “Shit … I could do that.”

Rudy said, “So, if Amenhotep II was the pharaoh from the time of Exodus, then his son could have been a victim of the mycotoxin infection. If that’s the case, and if we go on the premise that it was Gault and the Kings who raided the tomb, then are we concluding that they found a more potent strain of mycotoxin?”

We thought about that. Circe chewed her lip and Hu drummed his fingers on the table.

I said, “I may not be a scientist … but I don’t think that’s what happened.”

“Why not?” asked Church.

“Because it’s way too convenient. The tomb was opened what — a month or so ago? That’s awfully tight timing for science, isn’t it? No … Gault’s smart, but we know that the Goddess is big into misdirection. We also know that the Kings dig symbolism. The tires used to create the Plague of Darkness weren’t exactly biblical. Nor are the ‘Locust’ bombers. Wouldn’t it work just as well for them to break into the tomb to establish the mythology and then hit the firstborn of the Inner Circle with something Gault already cooked up?”

They looked at me for a while, then at each other, and one by one they began nodding. Even Hu.

Aunt Sallie grunted her approval, though she clearly found it difficult to believe that Captain Shortbus had thought it up.

The main screen over the conference table showed a collage of twenty-one faces. Young men and women, a few kids. All of them dead now, victims of a modern version of an ancient plague.

I noticed a small red light flashing on Circe’s laptop. “What’s that?” I asked.

“The Goddess!” she said, toggling over to a Twitter screen. “I have it programmed to signal me if there’s a new Goddess post and — oh my God!”

“What?” demanded Church.

“The Goddess … she posted something ….”

Circe hit a button to send the message to the main screen. We sat there, shocked to silence. The message read:

“Dios mio,” whispered Rudy.

“Yeah. The Seven Kings beat us,” I said. “We lost.”