She did not think the man in seat JJ66 was blind at all.
When he’d turned to her and raised his face, even though the glasses—as well as the dimmed ambient light—were too opaque to see his eyes, she could feel them.
It was so unnerving.
It wasn’t merely that sensation of being watched. No. It was more of being seen and seen all the way down to the skin. To the nerves and blood and bone. It was violative, invasive, and made her skin crawl.
Now she watched the aisle, hoping no one near the man and dog needed her.
And, as if hearing her thoughts, she saw the blind man lean out and look in her direction. Those black glasses against his pale skin. The touch of his perception.
It was so …
Dark.
That was it, she realized with an abruptness that made cold sweat pop out of her skin over her heart.
It was like the darkness outside the plane was looking at her through that blind man’s eyes.
She did not like that feeling. No, not one little bit.
Her fingers pressed the crucifix against her skin.
CHAPTER 25
WORLD-A-WAY SHIPPING AND STORAGE
THE PORT OF HOUSTON, TEXAS
Eve limped down the warehouse aisle, flanked by Cain and Abel. The rest of the Righteous—her special cadre of elite Fixers—were back at the Pavilion in Washington State. These boys, though, had become her constant bodyguards, and they’d passed the intense background checks imposed on them by Daddy.
She wished Rafael Santoro was there, but Daddy preferred to stay in Canada with Kuga. He was always so busy, and she missed him.
“Miss Eve?” called a voice, and a man’s head and shoulders popped out from between two stacks of crates. “I think I found them,” said the logistic supervisor.
“You think or you have?” she snapped back. It was the kind of thing Kuga said, putting people on the spot, making them jump.
“I … well … I, um, found the crates with the correct—ah—markings,” fumbled the supervisor. “We’ll need to actually open them to see.”
Eve went over to where he stood and peered at the labels stenciled on the heavy pine boxes. There were four, and each had AO/G-K, and then three smaller, narrower crates with AO/G-C.
She tapped Cain. “Open them up, and let’s look.”
“Ma’am,” said the Fixer and jogged off, returning quickly with two long-handled crowbars and a smaller pinch bar. The supervisor got a forklift, and soon all the boxes were sitting in a row on the floor. Cain and Abel set to work opening the big crates, while the supervisor used the pinch bar on the smaller ones. The wood was green, and it cried out in protest as the long nails were pulled out.
Once the lids were off and the packing straw tossed away, Eve peered inside to see a device that looked like a hunchbacked robot. She used a portable scanner to read the bar code on the back of the cowling, and a small light on her device flashed green. She repeated it with the three other units. All green.
“Those are good,” she said. “Repack it.”
The contents of the smaller crates took longer to inventory because there were many objects—gallons of chemicals, large bottles of capsules, and mechanical devices wrapped in bubble paper. There was no way to hurry the job, because the scanner was uplinked to Wi-Fi and sent the scan results directly to HK at the Pavilion and Daddy in Canada.
Tasks like this were tedious but necessary, and Eve knew that it was part of her training to be an executive within the Kuga organization. Daddy was watching, and so was Kuga himself.
Eve did not disappoint.
She knew she was a different person from what she’d been when she and her late lover, Adam, had been recruited by Rafael Santoro. They had both been smart and dangerous, but Daddy had begun a process of refinement. Eve also knew that her emotional extremes since Adam’s death had caused Daddy some embarrassment and a lot of concern. She’d very nearly gone too far, and that was a terrifying thought. More recently, she’d forced herself to be more controlled, less a victim of her own excesses. And so Daddy had begun gradually giving her more tasks—often mundane, things that anyone could do—and watched how she handled them.
This project, the one they all called the American Operation, was big. It was high profile, and any mishandling at any level could be catastrophic. The fact that Daddy was allowing her to oversee this … well, maybe it wasn’t such a nothing job after all, she mused.
She just hoped she’d get a chance to play when everything began going to shit here in America. That would be worth the wait. That would be fun.
And, who knew, maybe she’d get to shoot Joe Ledger in the process.
CHAPTER 26
PHOENIX HOUSE
OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE
They sat together on a couch in Church’s study, which was lined with books and hung with art. They had cups of coffee growing cold on a table, and slices of uneaten quiche neither had an appetite for. The speakers were turned low as Leonard Cohen sang soft, brooding songs about love and loss and the decline of the culture of insight.
Church wore a dark blue robe, and Lilith’s was red, a shade darker and more luxuriant than fresh blood. A fire spilled light and warmth into the room, but the shadows clinging to the corners were cold and resisted being chased completely away.
Lilith was a tall woman with very pale skin, intensely dark eyes, and full red lips. Her glossy black hair fell around her shoulders, with tendrils reaching to the tops of her breasts. Like Church, her age was impossible to guess. They were both older than they looked. Sometimes—as with tonight—they each felt every one of their years. And every inch of their scars.
“He’s back,” she said. It was the first thing either had said for ten minutes.
“He’s back,” agreed Church.
They watched the fire.
“How?” she asked.
Church almost smiled. “Rhetorical question?”
“Only to a degree,” said Lilith. “I thought after the Dogs of War case, he would be gone.”
“For good? Hardly.”
“For a while, I meant. Longer than this.”
Church touched her face, gently tracing the curve from high cheekbone to tapered chin. She was inarguably beautiful, but many people over the years had described her as looking cruel, unemotional, queenly in the ways history’s more powerful queens sometimes look. Not at all a fairy-tale princess. He loved those qualities about her. Lilith had never once compromised who she was or acted conciliatory to anyone. Certainly never to a man.
He was also aware that people used many of the same adjectives to describe him. Cold, cruel, aloof. Strange.
Fair enough. They were both strange, and their world was infinitely stranger than Scott Wilson or Doc Holliday or Joe Ledger knew.
Lilith touched Church’s face as she studied his eyes. The tinted glasses he usually wore were on a table in the other room. He did not wear them in private. Certainly not when he invited this woman to see his unguarded expressions.
She said, “Do you fear him? You’ve never actually said.”
“I fear what he can do,” said Church after a long pause.
“That’s an evasive answer.”
“No,” he said, “it’s really not.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Your people,” she said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the floor because the apartment was at the top of a castle and Rogue Team International was based in underground chambers many floors below, “think nothing scares you. That you are incapable of fear. Above it.”
“They believe what they want to believe. They believe what comforts them.”
“Oh, and you do nothing at all to perpetuate those beliefs.”
Church shrugged. “It’s useful to be calm when things are catching fire.”
“They think you destroyed Nicodemus.”
“I have never made that claim,” said Church.
Lilith smiled but let the topic go. Instead, she returned to an e
arlier point. “Nicodemus is a monster.”
“He is a disease,” said Church. “He never really goes away. And if there is a vaccine for a parasite like him, then I will be the first customer for it.”
She picked up her coffee cup and sipped, winced because it was cold, then drank anyway. Her eyes flicked toward his. “He’s aligned himself with Kuga.”
“Yes,” said Church.
“We have to be careful. He delights in revenge.”
“Yes.”
“He likes to hurt,” said Lilith. “I’ve already sent a coded message to Arklight. You should warn some of your people. And, given that he’s now tied to a criminal network with tentacles in governments, business, and social media, maybe there are people we should both contact.”
“I will be making quite a number of calls,” said Church. “Kuga has resources, but so do we. And we have friends we can call.”
She nodded. “Some of our friends are no longer in the best position to defend themselves. Aunt Sallie comes to mind.”
Aunt Sallie was the former chief of operations from the DMS days and before. Church had met her in Germany when she was a young but highly respected CIA field operator on loan to Interpol, doing elimination and cleanup against the Soviets and other groups. Aunt Sallie had been Church’s strong right hand for decades, but during the DMS’s last case, she’d suffered a terrible stroke. Now she lived in a very upscale, very private nursing facility in Corfu, where Auntie would likely spend her last years. If she still had years left. Of all the people with whom Church worked closely, Auntie had been with him the longest. She’d known some of his secrets. Some, not all.
“And here I thought you couldn’t stand her,” he chided.
Lilith gave a small shrug. “There’s no love lost between us, but she’s family. We both know that family may dislike and even disown you until the chips are down, and then blood tells.”
They sat and thought about that for a while.
Blood tells.
Church’s daughter, Circe, was estranged from him. Her choice. They had never been close. Or, rather, as soon as she knew what kind of things her father did for a living, and to what lengths he would go to fight the never-ending war, she withdrew from him. He got to visit her and her husband, Rudy Sanchez, only because Rudy insisted that Church be allowed to see his grandson. But the visits were few, they were chilly, and Church always left more brokenhearted than he had been when he arrived. Church visited Aunt Sallie’s care facility four times as often as he got to see his grandson, a fact made even more painful because that facility was less than a quarter mile from where Circe and Rudy lived on the island of Corfu.
“Blood tells,” he echoed. Lilith gave him a sharp, penetrating look, then set her coffee cup down and pulled him to her for a kiss.
CHAPTER 27
HÔTEL BYBLOS
20 AVENUE PAUL SIGNAC
SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE
Michael Augustus Stafford lay poolside, splitting his attention between a flock of exceptionally lovely women sunbathing across from him, an email from his stockbroker, and news stories about a terrible terrorist attack at a sportswear factory in a small village in central Java. What a shame. Total loss of life.
The reporters did not focus on the complete lack of cell phone photos or videos. Of course they didn’t. Mr. Sunday and Rafael Santoro would make very sure of that. That deep in the third world, it was easy to buy off anyone who mattered.
It made him happy that his employers were happy.
It made his banker and his financial advisor happy, too. And his broker was all but coming in his pants.
In all, a good week to be a bad guy.
And that’s how he saw himself. He had plenty of friends who wrapped themselves in cloaks of rationalizations, ranging from “There’s a sucker born every minute” to “They stood in the way of progress,” and all the iterations in between. But that wasn’t how he rolled. He knew exactly who and what he was, and Stafford liked that guy.
Once, watching an interview with a movie actor who played a famous serial killer, the actor said, “No one is evil in their own minds. No one looks into a mirror and sees a villain. Villains, like everyone else, have to maintain a worldview that paints them as the good guy, or at least not a distinctly bad one.”
Stafford found that amusing as hell. And maybe it was true for some people in his line of work. But he thought on the whole it was naive. He was a murderer, a contract killer, an occasional trafficker in very young sex workers, and frequently in cahoots with terrorists. That made him a bad guy, and that was what he always wanted to be.
He was not a product of a bad childhood. His folks were great. So were his two sisters and older brother. All of them, fine people. Gentle, supportive, fun. Nor was he bullied in school. He had no chemical imbalances, no brain tumors, and was not anywhere on the autism spectrum. He was pretty sure he wasn’t even a sociopath, though perhaps an argument could be made.
Nope, he was just a bad guy.
A very good-looking, well-hung, and seriously rich bad guy.
And that made him very, very happy.
CHAPTER 28
PHOENIX HOUSE
OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE
The four members of Havoc Team were in a corner of the mess hall. Top and Bunny, Belle and Andrea. There were other people around—operators from the other teams—Bedlam and Chaos; scientists and lab techs, general staff. No one came and sat with the four remaining members of Havoc Team. No one even came over to chat.
They knew.
Everyone knew.
Colonel Joe Ledger had gone off the reservation. That was the expression, and it carried with it a lot of weight, a lot of doubt and uncertainty. A lot of fear.
Ledger was the cornerstone of the field operations division. To everyone who worked for Mr. Church, Ledger was something of a mythological figure. He was the jovial party guy who was everybody’s friend when the beer was flowing and the steaks sizzling. He was the operator you wanted coming when you’d been praying for the Seventh Cavalry to ride over the hill. He was the guy people told stories about without having to exaggerate a single detail. He was a warrior who stood between the innocent and harm, preferring to take the shot meant for the good guys. He was the one who’d actually saved the world. Time and again.
And now he was gone.
Just … gone.
Andrea stared into the depths of a coffee cup as if it would suddenly become a magician’s mirror. “Alligator balls,” he murmured.
Many of Andrea’s comments focused on the testicles of some animal—real or mythological—or those of various saints.
Bunny grunted. “Why alligator balls?”
“Because it is,” said Andrea. Bunny thought about it, nodded, and went back to looking sick and stricken.
“He will come back,” said Belle. It was not the first time she’d said this. And, as before, the others nodded without any real optimism.
Top Sims sipped his coffee, which was excellent, but winced as if it caused him physical pain. The wince had nothing to do with the coffee, and his friends knew it. He was in serious pain that had nothing to do with nerve endings or old injuries. Top was not taking this well.
Bunny punched him lightly on the arm. “Not your fault, old man.”
“Maybe it’s all our faults, Farm Boy,” said Top.
“How d’you figure that?”
Top shook his head. “We all knew the colonel was still too busted up from last Christmas. No way he should have been let back into the field. That’s on us.”
“And were we supposed to stop him?” asked Belle.
“By any means necessary,” said Top, “up to and including kneecapping him. Better a limp than him losing his shit and going rogue out in the world.”
“He is going after Rafael Santoro and Kuga,” said Belle. “Maybe this is a good thing.”
Top turned slowly to look at her. “We are going after Santoro and Kuga. All of us. Field teams, everyone at the TOC
, integrated sciences and computer sciences. The whole RTI machinery. That’s what we’re here for. The colonel is a force of nature, sure, and I’d walk through hell on Sunday for him, we all would … but he can’t do this alone. Cannot and damned well should not.”
“Hooah,” said Bunny softly.
“We’re the ones closest to him, and we let him down.” Top paused and gave another shake of his head. “I let him down. I told him to go out and get some air. That was on me. I should have put one of you with him.”
“No,” said Bunny, “that’s bullshit. If the colonel wanted to slip away, he’d have found a way even if we were babysitting him. This is Joe Ledger we’re talking about. No … you can secure that shit right now because it’s not true. He wanted to go, and he went. If it wasn’t on that island, then he’d have found a moment and gone.”
“Then we need to find him, Farm Boy, instead of sitting here with our thumbs up our asses. Instead of mounting a full-on hunt, what are we doing? You and me? We’re flying all the way the hell to goddamned America for some goddamned undercover mission that might not be worth a goddamned thing.”
“Job’s a job,” said Bunny.
“Colonel Ledger should be our job. We don’t know where he is or what he’s doing … but whatever he’s up to, it’s not good. This isn’t him making sound decisions. That bomb on Christmas Eve blew out all his circuits, and you know it as well as I do. Best-case scenario is he’s in some bar god knows where drinking himself to death. Worst-case scenario … well, you all saw what he did in Croatia. Those lab techs … then executing Mitrović in cold blood. While the man was unconscious and helpless. Find him? Find him in time? Shit. How?”
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