Chapter Fourteen
Over the Atlantic, Flight 7988
December 17, 2:42 P.M. GMT
Dr. Rudy Sanchez sat in his first-class seat and fumed. He disliked air travel at the best of times and definitely didn’t want to be in the air when terrorist bombs were going off anywhere in the world. In the days following the attack on the World Trade Center, Sanchez had been one of a team of doctors who had descended on Ground Zero to help in any way they could. As a psychiatrist, Rudy saw firsthand the initial waves of post-event trauma that were the result of the attack. He saw the wound inflicted on the hearts, minds, and souls of the people working the site. The haunted eyes of police and firefighters who spent hours picking through the rubble to locate pieces of people who had been their friends or colleagues. The dreadful loss of confidence in the world in the eyes of the thousands of people who stood constant vigil at the fringes of the disaster. The strange blend of relief and guilt in the eyes of the survivors.
During the flight he’d listened to the constant buzz of frantic discussion aboard the United Airlines jet. Since 9/11, terrorism was part of everyday language. It had become so commonplace that jokes were made about terrorists. Books and movies had been made about it. And the thought that it was already that deeply enmeshed with ordinary life chilled Rudy to the bone.
And now he had the Nicodemus file and everything about this matter was unnerving. The file was strangely incomplete. There should have been hundreds of pages of it. Evaluations, transcripts, after-session notes, and a detailed record of the man’s arrest, trial, and incarceration. Instead there were a few dozen pages of very general notes that might apply to any prisoner. Commonplace stuff. Worthless except for the very last set of handwritten notes taken a few hours ago by the prison psychiatrist, Dr. Stankeviius, and even they were cryptic. References to a “goddess” but without context to identify which goddess.
The overall thrust of Nicodemus’s words had tended toward Judeo-Christian references, particularly with his reference to Dumas and Gesmas. They were variations on the spellings of Dismas and Gestas, the names of the two criminals crucified on either side of Jesus. But since those names were not in the standard Bible but in the highly apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, it seemed likely they were simply part of the overall religious delusion the prisoner had built up around himself. None of it tied back to either 9/11 or the London, at least as far as Rudy could determine. There was nothing else of substance in Stankeviius’s notes.
Rudy was alone in first class. Since the bomb went off there had been a flood of seat cancellations. He used his secure access to open a video Web chat with Bug via satellite. A small box opened up, showing the face of the head of the DMS computer lab. Although his name was Jerome Taylor, even his own family called him Bug. He had been a computer hacker as a kid and came onto Mr. Church’s radar when he tried to hack Homeland, believing that if he had the right access he could locate Osama bin Laden. Maj. Grace Courtland and Sgt. Gus Dietrich showed up at Taylor’s door the following morning. He was offered a deal: work for the DMS or go to jail. When he accepted and was told about MindReader, he fell deeply and irrevocably in love.
“Hey, Doc!” he said brightly. The world could be in flames and Bug would still be jovial. Rudy wondered how Bug’s mood would change if the Internet crashed.
“Bug,” he said, “are you sure you sent me all of Nicodemus’s records?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you have missed something?”
“Could Oprah fit into Beyoncé’s bikini?” He snorted and said, “Either they have a lot of his stuff stored on paper records or …”
“Or what?”
“Or someone’s removed it.”
“Can’t MindReader tell if someone has been into the computer files? Doesn’t it leave a handprint?”
“Footprint, and yes. Except there’s no footprint here. From a computer standpoint nothing appears to be missing, and I’ve gone into the Willow Grove and Philadelphia PD databases, too. There’s just nothing else there. We can’t even verify his first name. If he has one.”
“Hijo de puta.”
“The fact that all of this is missing is deep magic. I’m getting a Woodrow just thinking about how sexy this is, ’cause we’re not talking about some pissant tapeworm. Someone’s punked the system just like MindReader. And they’ve absconded with the treeware and—”
“‘Treeware’?”
“Paper. Actual we’re-so-last-century printed documents. Somone in meatspace actually swiped the physical records as well. That’s stuff we can do when we bring our A-game. No one else has anything like MindReader, so I can’t grok how they did this. Whoever he is, this guy’s a freaking ghost.”
Rudy disconnected and then called Mr. Church.
“Problem?” asked Church.
Rudy explained about the records. “Is it possible Bug missed something?”
“Bug doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
“Then, that begs the uncomfortable question as to the possibility of a more sophisticated computer system than MindReader.”
“Unlikely. It would have to have been designed and built entirely without a connection to the Internet or we’d have gotten a whiff of it. Or built with an operating system so different as to be unrecognizable as a computer to all other computers. It’s doubtful something that exotic would be able to interface with the existing systems and networks.”
“Deep Throat has a phone system that we can’t understand or crack.”
Church didn’t comment.
“Coming at a time like this,” said Rudy, “with terrorist activity ongoing, a mystery of this kind is more than a bit unsettling.”
“Yes,” Church agreed. From his tone of voice he might have been agreeing to a comment on the weather, but Rudy knew him as well as anyone at the Warehouse. There was an edge of strain in Church’s calm voice.
Church disconnected and Rudy tapped keys to bring up the booking photos of Nicodemus. From the side he was unremarkable. Thin, slightly stooped, with a receding chin and thinning hair. An ordinary man. From the front, however, he was something … else. His eyes were a little too far apart, and the left was set higher and at a slight angle. His nose was thin and his mouth was a wet smile. Rudy enlarged the photo and stared into the man’s eyes. They were cold and bottomless. Those eyes, and that smiling mouth, suggested a warped sensuality that Rudy found immensely distasteful, and a deep understanding of things that had no natural place in the human mind.
“Dios mio,” Rudy murmured.
Interlude Eight
T-Town, Mount Baker, Washington State
Four Months Before the London Event
Circe O’Tree chewed on a plastic pen cap as she scrolled through the recent postings on Twitter. When she refreshed the page she had been watching, a new tweet popped up.
The Elders of Zion are not a myth. They live … they wait. They will have justice.
She chewed her lip.
It was posted by one of the new accounts Circe was following. Enyo. Circe opened a browser and hit a saved link that took her to an online reference database of mythology. She typed in the name. The entry came up at once.
Enyo.
A Greek goddess of war. She often accompanies Ares into battle. During the fall of Troy, Enyo inflicted horror and bloodshed alongside Phobos (“Fear”) and Deimos (“Dread”), the sons of Ares. Enyo is responsible for orchestrating the destruction of cities.
Circe frowned at the screen for a few seconds and then reached for the phone. Hugo Vox answered after four rings.
“Jesus Christ, woman, don’t you ever sleep?” Vox growled, sounding like a sleepy bear.
Circe glanced at the clock and realized with a start that it was four twenty in the morning.
“I’m sorry, Hugo … . I completely lost track of the time.”
“The White House had better be in flames,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, flustered and suddenly embarrassed by her impetuousne
ss. “It can wait.”
“No,” he grumbled, “I’m awake now. What is it?”
She told him.
“Ah … Christ. Okay, I’ll be right down.”
While she waited, Circe toggled back to Twitter and refreshed the page. The comment had been retweeted 41 times. When she refreshed again a minute later there were 153. An enormous amount of posts, even for a social network as active as Twitter. Most of the posts were negative, decrying the comment and disputing the existence of the so-called Learned Elders of Zion. But more than a hundred posts offered support of the comment. Of those, only a third were goddess names. Circe did track-backs on many of them. Half were known agitators among the violent fringe of the conspiracy community. Some were frequent posters of anti-Islamic comments. The rest appeared to be ordinary people.
There were so many things about this that bothered her. First, the choice of a name that was clearly tied to violence and destruction. Over the last few weeks the Goddess had made a clear shift toward militancy, though choosing the name Enyo suggested a much more aggressive leap. The other troubling point was the Elders of Zion reference. Circe was sure she had something on that.
Ten minutes later Hugo Vox came into her office wearing gray T-Town sweats that were water stained. His hair had only been finger combed. He looked at her and then more pointedly at what she was wearing. The same blue skirt and blouse from yesterday.
“You didn’t leave here all night, did you?”
“I got caught up—”
“Look, kiddo, while I admire the dedication you have for your job, you’re young and pretty and smart and you should be out on dates on Friday nights … not locked up here with a computer and the kind of junk food I eat.”
She made a face.
He sighed. “I know, I know … you don’t like dating guys in the service. How come, though? They’re all good guys. Top of the line.”
“And vetted by Vox,” she said with a grin.
“Well … not vetted for dating you, but I could look into that.”
“Thanks, Hugo, but I don’t need a matchmaker. Besides, the guys here at T-Town pretty much ooze testosterone. They spend all day long shooting things and beating each other up. What would we talk about over dinner? Muzzle velocity and choke holds?”
“What about some of those bookworms you meet at signings? That literary agent of yours has a case of the hornies for you.”
“Oh, please. He’s a wiener.”
Hugo grinned. “So … soldiers are too manly and the artsy crowd is too effete. Let me know when you find someone in the middle. I’m serious. You ever get off your ass and go out to have a real night off, I’ll pay for dinner for both of you.”
She mumbled something awkward and waved him to a chair. He was chuckling as he settled his bulk into it.
“Okay,” he said, “you obviously found something. Thrill me.”
She launched in, but before she was finished he held up a hand. “‘Elders of Zion’? What the hell’s that?”
“The full name is The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which was supposedly the secret master plan by a group of Jews outlining how they would take over Europe and dominate the Christian world.”
“How come I never heard about this?”
“Well, this is early-twentieth-century stuff. And it was proved to be a hoax.”
“Then why the fuck am I not still sleeping in my goddamn bed?”
“Please, bear with me, Hugo. The Protocols were a piece of propaganda intended to implicate European Jews in a conspiracy that did not exist. Henry Ford, who was a notorious anti-Semite, used the Protocols in his campaign against Jews, and even Hitler trotted them out to support his racist insanity. Much of the material was directly plagiarized from writings of political satire totally unrelated to the Jews. But hatred of the Jews in early-twentieth-century Europe was stronger than common sense; and later, following the establishment of Israel as a state, a renewed wave of anti-Zionism sparked new interest in the Protocols … and this hatred spread from Europe to the Middle East.”
“So what?”
“The Goddess has just started posting about the Elders of Zion.”
Hugo sat forward. “Okay, now you have my full attention.”
“No one credible defended the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” said Circe, “So … why bring them up now? The Goddess’s earlier militant remarks had been firmly directed at Islam on behalf of Israel. Maybe now she’s trying to build a case that the Protocols are real.”
“Yeah,” Hugo said thoughtfully, “and that could get ugly, considering the lunkheads who gobble this shit up.”
“Another possibility is that Enyo is someone else using the same tactics as the Goddess in order to redirect anger back at Israel.”
“Also potentially ugly.” Hugo rubbed his eyes, then cocked his head at her. “Tell me straight, kiddo … rate this on a scale of one to ten, one being harmless freaks on the Net and ten being we scramble the DMS.”
She chewed her lip some more. “Right now, I … I don’t know. Maybe a five? But this is the kind of thing that can lead to real violence.”
Vox snorted. “Violence against who? The Jews? The Muslims? I can’t tell from this shit who the Goddess is really mad at.”
“That’s just it,” Circe said. “Maybe it’s both. Maybe she just wants to start a fight.”
“To what end? She’s got to be rooting for someone.”
“Maybe not. Maybe she just wants to see things burn.”
He peered suspiciously at her. “Isn’t that a line from a Batman movie?”
Circe blushed. “It fits, though. Or it might fit. Some people groove on violence.”
Vox grunted.
Circe said, “Look, remember last year, when the white supremacist group in Alabama started using message boards to make threats against Jews? There were a half-dozen synagogues torched.”
“The people posting weren’t the same ones who torched the temples. They were idiots following a bad idea.”
“That’s what I think we have here. Maybe the Goddess is a movement rather than a person. There are plenty of people who feed off that sort of thing. They don’t actually have to be the ones throwing Molotov cocktails as long as they can watch the fire on TV.”
Vox pursed his lips and considered. “You say you’re at a five with this? When you get to a seven I’ll give you assets; until then you’re flying solo. But … update your Goddess report and send it to me. I’ll make sure someone at Homeland pays attention to it.”
“Thanks, Hugo.”
“This is good work, kiddo. Even if this turns out to be nothing, this is very sharp stuff.” He stood up and walked to the door, then half-turned. “You may not want to hear this—I know things are kind of weird between you two—but your dad will be proud of you.”
Interlude Nine
McCullough, Crown Island
St. Lawrence River, Ontario, Canada
Four Months Ago
As promised, the limousine was waiting at the curb. A driver in traditional livery stood by the open door. A second man, identically dressed, stepped forward to take their bags. Both were slim, fit, and Korean.
Toys caught Gault’s eye, flicked a glance at the driver, and then affected to scratch his ribs. Gault did not need the cue. He’d already seen the bulge of the driver’s shoulder-rigged pistol. The other man, too. Nice cuts to their jackets, though. Most people would never have guessed either of the Koreans was armed.
Gault did not have a weapon. Toys, he knew, carried a knife in his left sleeve. Gault had seen his friend use that knife several times. Few surgeons were as precise or dispassionate.
Once upon a time Toys had been Gault’s employee, a combination executive secretary, valet, and bodyguard, but that time had passed. Events had occurred that forever changed the dynamic of their relationship. Now they were more like brothers. Or fellow refugees. Gault was at least nominally the alpha of their two-man pack, but that positi
on was held now by mutual consent rather than financial or personal power. In the same disaster that had scarred them both, Gault had discovered an emotional blind spot that had nearly proven fatal while Toys had demonstrated terrifying personal power.
They got into the car and settled back. The driver and the other man sat in the front with the Plexiglas screen closed. The limo was next year’s model. Very expensive and nicely outfitted. Toys poked around and found unopened bottles of Cerén vodka—a superb El Salvadoran brand—and vermouth. Toys set about making martinis.
“Stirred, not shaken,” he said as he handed one to Gault. It was a private joke. Although Toys loved watching the Bond movies—for eye candy of both genders—it irked him that Ian Fleming had his hero order his martinis to be made the wrong way. By shaking the mixture, the bartender created air bubbles that turned the martini cloudy. More crucially, shaking also caused the ice to release too much water, thereby bruising the flavor of the vodka. A perfect martini should be stirred gently for thirty seconds, then chilled properly and served stingingly dry and cold. Toys always made perfect martinis.
They sipped.
“What are the odds that this lovely car is bugged?” asked Toys. He said it in a normal tone of voice.
Gault smiled thinly. “I would be disappointed if it wasn’t.”
They settled back and sipped their drinks and said nothing else during the drive.
THE TWO KOREANS took them to a small airport and ushered them onto a private Gulfstream G550. Gault was impressed. He had planned to buy one of those for himself before his plans had gone to hell in Afghanistan. The sleek jet came with a $59.9 million price tag. It had a range of sixty-seven hundred miles and all sorts of lovely bells and whistles, and though it was designed to accommodate up to nineteen passengers in great comfort, Gault and Toys found themselves alone in the cabin.
The second Korean came in to attend to drinks and to take their orders for dinner, and when the food came it was superb. The first course was a crème brûlée of foie gras that they washed down with 1990 Cristal champagne, and that was followed by several small but delicious dishes, including tartar of Kobe beef with Imperial Beluga caviar and Belon oysters, and mousseline of pattes rouges crayfish with morel mushroom infusion. The accompanying wines—a 1985 Romanée-Conti, a ’59 Château Mouton Rothschild, a ’67 Château d’Yquem, and a ’61 Château Palmer—inspired great respect from both of them.
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