Vox didn’t have the energy for a cry of dismay, so he let a protracted silence convey the right amount of shock. When he thought enough time had passed, Vox said, “Are you positive?”
“Sir,” said Belloq, “when you know the world of covert operations as well as I do, you understand that very little is certain. We operate on degrees of ‘confidence’ in a thing, and then we are forced to act. If we waited for absolute certainty it would be too late.”
“Yes, yes,” said Vox with feigned distress, “you are right, of course. I don’t understand these things. It’s just that… my God! Bombs? What would vampires want or need with such dreadful weapons?”
He heard Belloq sigh with exasperation. Good. That was the right reaction. He wanted the man to be impatient. Impatience was useful.
“Sir,” said Belloq, “I’ve explained this a dozen times. The Red Order has lost control of the Upierczi. The Kingdom of Shadows is in open revolt and they are about to make war on the world of men. And the human traitors who work for the Upierczi have infiltrated every government, every level of industry and world trade. The launching of bombs will be the first wave… and I believe it will send a signal for a complete takeover of world governments and key industries.”
“You think it will actually come to that? Humans helping monsters to conquer the world?”
“It is happening!” insisted the priest. “And we are running out of time. That list your chief of security provided… We need to act on that immediately. We need to cut off the Hydra’s head before we are overwhelmed.”
Vox almost laughed. The phrasing was so trite, so corny. Belloq might be a ruthless killer, but he was also a complete ham-bone. That was also useful.
“The list,” Vox echoed, as if fretting over a dreadful decision. In truth the list was one he had prepared and added to while still in the good graces of Church and the president of the United States. It was his own version of a nuclear bomb, and once used it would do far more damage than the Teller-Ulams hidden throughout the Middle East. That list would blow a hole in the world and leave nothing but chaos behind.
A very, very profitable chaos.
“I’m sorry,” Vox said contritely. “This is all beyond me, and it terrifies me.”
“We’re all scared,” Belloq assured him. “But courage is defined by acting even in the presence of great fear. God needs us to be courageous. God needs us to be the heroes in this battle against the forces of evil.”
Forces of evil. Vox had to cover the phone while he laughed quietly. He wished he could put that on a business card.
“Tell me what to do,” he said after a moment.
“There is only one thing you need do, sir. You need to give me permission to use that list. I promised that we would do nothing without your say-so. Mr. Verrecchia-now is the time. Search your heart, search your faith… Ask yourself what God requires of you.”
Vox was silent as he picked lint off his pajama bottoms, letting the clock burn. Letting Belloq imagine the torment that “Verrecchia” must be experiencing because of the consequences of this action. Many people would die. Thousands of them. Men, women, and even children. No one could be spared. It was the only way to protect the world from the vampire uprising.
Although he kept his voice grave, Vox was smiling as he said, “Let God’s will be done.”
He disconnected and tossed the phone on the bed.
The sickness in his stomach was still there, but Vox realized that the trembling in his legs and arms was less. Much less. Even though the side effects hit him sooner and harder with each treatment of Upier 531, there was no doubt at all that they were wearing off sooner. He rolled up his sleeve and peeled off the bandage to examine the puncture marks.
There were none.
Vox pulled open his robe and pulled up his vomit-stained undershirt.
This time his gasp was genuine.
The big puncture wounds from the horse needles Dr. Hasbrouck used on him were…
Well, shit, he thought. They were gone.
No. That wasn’t the right way to think of it, he realized with a new and dark delight.
They were healed.
He closed his eyes.
The treatments were working.
And with a jolt he realized that he hadn’t had a coughing fit all day.
Hugo Vox smiled. If Father Belloq had been there to see that smile, the Sabbatarian would have screamed and grabbed for a hammer and a stake.
Chapter Seventy-One
The Hangar
Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn
June 15, 10:25 a.m. EST
Church’s phone rang and he saw that it was Lilith again. He answered.
“Have you had a chance to look at the contents of the flash drive?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Your opinion?”
“It’s contrived.”
“That was Circe’s take.”
Lilith paused. “How is Circe?”
“She’s well,” said Church coldly, “but she is not a topic of conversation.”
“You are a difficult person to like,” she said.
“Many have said the same about you.”
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, and in that silence much was said.
Eventually Lilith returned to Church’s original question. “Rasouli is feeding the Red Order to you.”
“So it seems,” agreed Church, “though I still don’t know what the Red Order is. Not in full. I suspect you do.”
“Actually,” she said, “I don’t. I know how they operate, I know some of the players, but there is something called the Holy Agreement, and I would give a lot to know what’s in it. We believe that the Agreement was drafted and signed by Sir Guy LaRoque, the first Scriptor of the Red Order, and his counterpart, Ibrahim al-Asiri, who was, in turn, the first Murshid.”
“Surely you have a guess about its content.”
“Guesses are useless in the absence of verifiable information. We have a thousand theories, and some of them may be correct, but there’s no meter that will let us know. It’s fair to say that Rasouli’s information does more harm than good to our speculations, because we can’t factor nukes into any of our scenarios.”
“We’re building some theories along the lines of a doomsday cult. Does that make any sense based on your understanding of this matter?”
“Doomsday? No.”
“What about a faction rising within the Order or the Tariqa with a bent toward mutually destructive tactics? Suicide bombers and big-ticket destruction are not unknown in these circles,” he said.
“Maybe, but in their own way, both sides of the Agreement have tended more toward moderation than extremist acts.”
“You view blowing up mosques and murdering nuns to be indicative of balance?”
“Yes,” she said. “No other view makes much sense, not when you consider how long this has been going on.”
“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully, then changed the subject. “We are trying to make sense of Rasouli’s mention of the Book of Shadows. My people are trying to decode the fragments of the book included on the drive.”
“Good luck. We’ve been trying to decode that damned thing for-” She suddenly stopped and there was a heavy silence at the other end.
“Lilith?” prodded Church. “How exactly have you been trying to decode the pages? Is there something you would like to tell me? Did you provide those pages to Rasouli? Is that what you started to say?”
“God, no. But…” Lilith cleared her throat. “We, um… we actually have a complete copy of the Book of Shadows. We’ve had it for some time.”
“Have you?” Church said mildly. “And were you planning on telling me about it before or after the nukes detonated?”
Lilith said nothing.
“How long have you had the Book?”
“Well… give or take… seven years.”
Church sighed. “This kind of obfuscation is exactly why counterterrorism is a bureaucr
atic nightmare.”
“Wait a damn minute,” snapped Lilith. “You speak as if you had a right to it. Some of our people died to obtain this copy.”
“So lay some flowers on their grave and move on from the dramatics,” he fired back. “I’ve made my resources available to the Mothers and to Arklight on a number of occasions.”
“Sure, but you never let us have access to MindReader. You keep that to yourself.”
“Hardly the same thing.”
“Well, it’s water under the bridge, isn’t it?” she fired back. “We have a copy of the Book of Shadows, and if you stop being such a prick I’ll consider e-mailing you a high-res scan.”
“Have you translated any of it?”
“No.”
“In seven years?”
“Perhaps we may have accomplished something if we had MindReader.”
“Point taken. Send me the e-mail now and I will make sure that it is fed through MindReader. I further promise that I will share the results of that scan. All of it, unreservedly.”
After a moment she said, “Thank you.” And hung up. Forcefully.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Over Kuwaiti Airspace
June 15, 10:28 a.m. EST
Church pressed the intercom.
“Bug, I’m sending through a file. It’s a complete scan of the Book of Shadows. The book is four hundred and thirty one pages of densely written and coded text. Run it through MindReader. Pattern recognition, decryption, the deciphering software, all of it. If you get anything, no matter how small it seems, contact me at once.”
“You got it.”
“Also, tell Circe and Dr. Sanchez that we have this. Let them have full access. Circe may want to compare it to the Voynich manuscript.”
“Sure.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
Mustapha’s Daily Goods
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 6:54 p.m.
I went downstairs and out through the back to meet Abdul Jamar. Twilight brought the cool breezes and birdsong that are the rewards for anyone who survives the blistering heat of the day. I stayed in the shadows as a three-year-old Runna X12 pulled to the curb. I noted that the dome light was rigged not to come on as he opened the door.
Abdul was dumpy little man with face like a tired accountant and glasses with thick lenses. You’d never pick him out as a dissident operative working with the CIA to overthrow Ahmadinejad, which I suppose was the point.
He looked me up and down with apparent disinterest. “Cold for this time of year,” he said.
“More like January,” I agreed.
He sighed as if the simple exchange of code words was a burden and a pain in the ass. He glanced at Ghost, who was poking his head out past my thigh.
“Friendly dog?” Abdul asked, beginning to reach out for a quick pet.
“Not today,” I said. Abdul whipped his hand back. He opened the trunk of his car and produced a zippered laptop case and a blue gym bag.
“For you,” he said to me, keeping an eye on Ghost.
I took the items and handed him a plain white envelope that I had borrowed from Jamsheed. It was sealed and folded several times around the flash drive.
“For the pouch?” Abdul asked.
“Yes. I’m not joking when I say that you need to protect that with your life.”
Abdul managed to look deeply unimpressed. Without another word he got back into his car and drove away. Charming guy.
I checked that the alley was empty and went back inside. Jamsheed was in his store, so I took my gear to the bedroom and locked the door. The briefcase and valise I’d taken from the vampire hunters were on the bed. I told Ghost to guard the door and he did so by flopping down in front of it and falling asleep.
The laptop was a DMS tactical field computer. Ultrasophisticated, hardened against EMPs, rigged with 128-bit code scramblers, with a powerful satellite uplink. I turned it on and punched in the proper passwords.
The other bag included party favors. A Beretta 9mm with a Trinity sound suppressor and four extra magazines loaded with subsonic hollow points. A nylon shoulder rig was included with a fast-draw holster, and it had slots for two of the mags. A Rapid Response Folder, which is a nifty tactical knife that clipped on to my right pants pocket and hung out of sight. A snap of the wrist flicks out a 3.375-inch blade which, though short, allowed a fighter to cut and slash at full speed with no drag at all on the arm. There were four flash-bangs and four fragmentation grenades. And a Smith amp; Wesson Airweight Centennial, a hammerless. 38 revolver in an ankle holster. As I unpacked it I could feel my body happily pumping out testosterone. If I ran into another Red Knight, it was going to be a substantially different encounter, no matter what Church or Violin thought about my chances. I felt like saying “Fuckin’ A” or “Bring the pain,” but I knew Ghost disapproved of that kind of rah-rah crap.
I strapped on the Airweight and clipped the RRF in place, then shrugged into the shoulder rig.
The computer case had a few extra goodies, including a new set of earbuds with a pocket-sized uplink booster. The receiver looked like a mole and affixed to the inside of my ear. The mike was a pale freckle on my upper lip. The technology is a couple of giant steps ahead of what’s in all of the holiday catalogs for the covert-ops community. Mr. Church has a friend in the industry, and he always has the coolest stuff.
There was also a smaller zippered case containing a complete toolkit useful for everything from rewiring a toaster to, for example, de-arming a booby-trapped briefcase.
Back when I was a cop, we had specialists to come in and do this sort of thing. They were very brave men and women who had jobs I never envied. In the Rangers I had some basic bomb-handling courses, but it wasn’t until I began working for the DMS that I learned how to do this sort of thing for real.
It did occur to me-now, I mean-that it would have been more practical to have searched the cars and then asked Krystos for the combination before I shot him. Can’t unring a bell, though.
I took the toolkit and the briefcase into the bathroom and closed the door.
I removed a tiny electronics detector and ran it over the case. As expected, the locks were wired. The question now was whether they had a simple intrusion trigger or a dead-man’s fail-safe. I ran the scanner over every inch of the case and matched the readings against the unit’s stored records of over three thousand trigger variations. The reading was not one hundred percent, but it was weighted heavily toward the locks being simple antitheft. They’d blow if the wrong combination was entered too many times on the coded touch pad, or if the locks were tampered with.
However, when I ran the scanner over the front and back of the case there was no electronic signature. I smiled a larcenous little smile and set the case on the closed lid of the toilet seat and pulled my RRF. The blade flicked into place with hardly a sound, and I took a breath and then stabbed the case. Not all the way through, only enough to cut through the side, then I sawed a line through the leather and compressed cardboard. Nothing blew up.
“Amateurs,” I sneered.
This sort of thing was typical of people who didn’t quite grasp the philosophy of security. These are the kinds of people who will spend ten thousand dollars on security alarms and locks for every door and window on the first floor and completely ignore the windows on the second or third floor. Crooks count on that kind of thinking.
So do guys like me.
I cut a rectangular piece out of the center of the case, making sure to stay well clear of the locks and the trip wires; then I lifted out the panel and tossed it into the trash can. The resulting hole revealed several file folders and a few assorted items. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Passports for each of the people I’d killed at the CIA safe house, and IDs for four more men whom I had not seen.
I set those aside and removed the folders and flipped open the top one. There was a sheaf of documents held together with a clunky metal clip. I removed the clip and put it in my shirt pocke
t. The top sheet had an official seal that matched the tattoo on Krystos’s arm. The seal of the Holy Inquisition. The content of the letter and all of the attached papers were written in Greek. I can speak a little of the language, but I can’t read a word of it.
It was a speed bump but not a dead end. The field computer had a detachable wand scanner. I ran it over every page in the top folder and set it aside. The second folder had more of the same, as did the third. It wasn’t until I opened the fourth folder that I realized that I had found something that literally took my breath away.
Beneath the same sort of official-looking cover letter was a series of eight-by-ten glossy surveillance photos of me, Top, Bunny, Khalid, Lydia, and John Smith. On the back of each was a handwritten note in English that included a brief physical description and a summary of our military or police training.
I recognized the handwriting. I’d seen it a million times on reports from Terror Town and on evaluations of potential staff members being vetted for top secret clearance.
Hugo Vox.
“Shit,” I said aloud.
There was more, and it was worse. Much worse. A thick sheaf of printed pages held together by a heavy binder clip. I stared at the information on the lists and felt an icy hand punch through my chest and close its fingers around my heart.
I dropped everything and called Church right away.
Interlude Ten
The Kingdom of Shadows
Beneath the Sands
April 1231 C.E.
Sister Sophia clutched at the tatters of her habit, pulling them to her to try to hide her nakedness. It was a hopeless task. Her clothes were little more than streamers of black and white. Grimed with dirt and filth, caked with blood.
A metal grate in the iron door clanged open and a pale hand shoved in a bundle wrapped in cloth and a leather pitcher. Immediately she could smell bread and cooked meat. The grate slammed shut and she listened to hear the soft footsteps fade into silence. Then Sophia sobbed and crawled across the floor toward the food and tore open the bundle. A small loaf of coarse black bread and a leg of something-she could not tell what animal it had come from. The meat was bloody raw inside and charred outside, but it was the first food they had given her in three days. She wept hysterically as she tore at it with her teeth.
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