Kill Switch

by Jonathan Maberry

  He said something else to her in the language of Upierczi, which is also the private language of Arklight and the Mothers of the Fallen. Church probably doesn’t know that I’ve managed to sort out a lot of that language. I’m very talented with languages.

  What he said was, “Be safe, sweetheart.”

  He said it the way a father might. Yeah. So … there’s that. Which is confusing, since both Lilith and Violin told me her father was Grigor, the so-called King of Thorns, head of the Upierczi. I’d killed Grigor in the tunnels under an Iranian power station. How, then, did that explain Church’s connection to Violin? An adopted daughter? I don’t know and I doubt he’d tell me under torture.

  When the call was done Church stared into the middle distance for a long time. When his eyes came back into focus he looked at Junie.

  “As you overheard,” he began slowly, “that was Violin. She has been on the run from two competing groups of operators. One is a religious order I’ve run into once or twice over the years. The Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum.”

  “I’ve heard of them,” Junie said. “There are a lot of stories about them. The conspiracy rumor mill is rife with them. They’re supposed to be pretty scary.”

  “They are,” said Church. “The Brotherhood, as they’re also known, is very real and highly dangerous. But they’re only half the problem. The other team that has been chasing Violin are Closers.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “Violin has obtained one of the books from that list. De Vermis Mysteriis. The—”

  “The Mysteries of the Worm,” said Junie. “That’s one of the books Lovecraft mentioned in his stories. It’s … real, isn’t it?”

  Church nodded gravely. “So it would appear. Violin has had a great deal of trouble getting it out of Europe. The Closers and the Brotherhood have been very aggressive, and she and her partner have had to go to ground to keep themselves and the book safe.”

  “Her partner?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Church slowly, “she has partnered with a young CIA field agent formerly of the Hungarian station. His name is Harry Bolt.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know him.”

  “You know his father,” said Church. “Harry shortened his name some time ago. His birth name is Harcourt Bolton, Junior.”

  PART THREE

  LIGHTS OUT

  Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

  Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

  But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token.…

  —Edgar Allan Poe

  “The Raven”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  THE PIER

  DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 8, 1:19 P.M.

  Junie Flynn stepped onto the elevator, pushed the button for the parking garage, and was tugging her cell phone out of her pocket to make a call when someone yelled for her to hold the car. A hand shot between the doors and the rubber buffers bounced back from the wrist of Harcourt Bolton.

  “You’re fast,” she said as he stepped inside.

  “Old but not dead yet,” he said, grinning and puffing a little from having run down the hall.

  “Parking lot?” she asked.

  “Yes. Been a long day and we old duffers need to take naps or we fall asleep in meetings.”

  “It’s only a little after one.”

  “I was up all night,” he said, and reinforced it with a yawn that made his jaws creak. “God, excuse me.”

  They got off in the parking garage, but Bolton touched her arm before they went their separate ways. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Junie. You’re quite an impressive woman. You’ve overcome so much. You’ve dealt with hardships and obstacles that would have crippled most people, and yet here you stand. A radiant woman of intellect and power. Compassion, too. FreeTech is a testament to good intentions.”

  Junie was surprised. “You know about FreeTech?”

  “Mr. Church tells me that your company is repurposing many of the technologies Joe took away from Howard Shelton’s Majestic group.”

  “I’m surprised he told you.”

  Bolton’s smile was rueful. “The Deacon and I go way back. I won’t lie and say we’ve always been friends, more like friendly rivals, but we play for the same team. We both want to save the world from itself.”

  “I suppose that’s how we all feel.”

  “Not all of us,” he said, his smile dimming. “I heard that your offices were robbed. Such a frightening invasion. Thieves these days wouldn’t bat an eye about hurting someone. There are so many bad people in the world. So many people who have darkness in their hearts. So many people who want to turn out the lights on everyone else.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And it hurts me to see how often they win.”

  “You think they’re winning?”

  “Don’t you?” she asked, surprised. “With what ISIS or ISIL or whatever they’re calling it now is doing? With what those people down at Gateway tried to do?” She shook her head. “It shows how sick the world is.”

  “Sickness can be cured,” said Bolton. “And bad people can be redeemed.”

  “Sometimes, I suppose.”

  “Look at your own company. As I understand it you are taking technologies that could do unimaginable harm and are using them to save lives. And, if you want to talk about redemption, I hear that Alexander Chismer—or should I call him Toys?—is one of your employees. Or is he more than that? He has unusually high DMS-approved security clearance for a person who, by all accounts, should be serving multiple life sentences for murder, terrorism, and a laundry list of other crimes. If you have been able to reform someone like him, then perhaps there is hope for us all.”

  “How do you know so much about Toys?”

  “You ask how and not what I know?” Bolton chuckled. “Come now, Junie, don’t forget who I am. I’m a spy, don’t forget.”

  Junie took a small step back from him. “I don’t think I want to talk about Toys or FreeTech,” she said. “I have to go.”

  He began to reach for her and caught himself. “God, I didn’t mean to spook you, Junie. Truly I did not. I’m trying to tell you how much I admire what you’re doing.”

  “I really have to go,” she said. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  She backed a couple of steps away and then turned and hurried over to her car. When she got in and locked the doors, Junie turned to see him still standing there. Watching her as she started the car and drove away.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CATAMARAN RESORT HOTEL AND SPA

  3999 MISSION BOULEVARD

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 8, 9:01 P.M.

  He lived like a monk in paradise.

  The resort was gorgeous, with sculptured gardens in which stands of green bamboo framed ponds of brightly colored koi. Parrots in lovely ornate cages chattered to one another, and ducks waddled in and out of a series of lazy streams that were also home to turtles and bullfrogs. Totem poles hand-carved in Bali seemed to encourage meditation in the gardens. And guests could wander beneath the cool canopy of leaves formed by over a hundred species of palm trees, with a thousand species of flowers and plants filling the air with a subtle olio of fragrances.

  The Polynesian-themed hotel had over three hundred guest rooms and suites, each with a private balcony or patio. One wall of them looked out over the blue perfection of Mission Bay. From the top floors on the other side the guests could see the deeper blue of the vast Pacific.

  The sad young man sat on a beach chair outside one of the ground-floor garden apartments. His was the least ostentatious of the rooms and it had the least enchanting view. That was fine with him. It was remote and it was quiet. The fact that he owned the hotel was something no one at the Catamaran knew. The staff knew that he was a permanent resident—the only such person at the place—and they mutually assu
med that he was a relative of the owners.

  He wasn’t. He had no relatives anywhere. They were all dead. So were most of his friends.

  He wished he was, too, and though suicide was always easy enough to engineer, it was never an option for him. Some of the residents of purgatory took their penance seriously. He certainly did.

  Living at the resort offered him solitude when he wanted it. Tourists were notoriously clannish in places like this. There were very few of the raucous party types there, and the rest of the guests seemed to sense that they would not find a companion for idle chatter in the unsmiling young man. They were correct in that. He was never rude, but he seldom gave more than one-word answers. The only conversation he ever sought was with the resort’s five parrots, Bianchi, Chadwick, Cornell, Mercer, and Scooter. They never asked complicated questions and he found them to be agreeable company even in his darkest moods.

  He also had a cat.

  Or, perhaps it was more true to say that the cat had adopted him.

  On a chilly April night the gray-and-black tabby had come in through his open French window, jumped up on his bed, and gone to sleep without comment. The young man allowed it. After all, who was he to tell a cat where he could or could not sleep?

  After a week of sharing his room, his bed, and his meals with the cat it was clear it had no intention of leaving. It was also clear that it had once been a well-cared-for housecat but had now fallen on very hard times. It was scruffy, underfed, and badly scarred from claw and tooth. No collar or tag. Only after the man received a couple of fleabites did he scoop him up and take him to an animal hospital. The cat was given a thorough examination, received all the proper shots, had a chip inserted under its skin, was washed and groomed. When the woman at the desk asked him what the cat’s name was, the young man considered for a moment, and finally said, “Job.”

  And Job he was.

  Job and the young man kept company with one another. The cat liked being petted, so the man petted him. The cat liked grilled fish instead of cat food, and so the man requested that from the kitchen. The cat didn’t like to use the cat box inside the apartment, so the man put one on his deck. It was the cat’s life, after all, and the man had no desire to impose his will on it. Every once in a while, in the darkest hours of the night, the cat would allow the young man to wrap his arms around the small furry body. If it minded the salty tears that fell on its head, it did not complain.

  That was how it was for the cat named Job and the man who had been born as Alexander Chismer but was never called that except by Mr. Church. Everyone else called him Toys. He hated that nickname because it reminded him of his sins. He never told anyone that he hated it, though. He knew that some of them—Junie Flynn, Dr. Circe O’Tree-Sanchez, Helmut Deacon, and a few others—used it with affection. That was hurtful in its way, though he accepted it as a necessary part of the comprehensive plan of his punishment. The damned do not have the right to complain.

  Toys and Job lived quietly. Sometimes Job decided that he wanted to accompany Toys when he went to work. He accepted a collar and leash and walked right at Toys’s heel. In the car Job slept in a soft cat bed. At the office, he had his own carpet-covered perch that had several levels and allowed him to perch like a vulture up near the ceiling. From that vantage point he could look down at the people with whom Toys worked, and he could keep an eye on the monstrous gray Irish wolfhound that was always with Circe. Once in a while Junie would bring Joe Ledger’s cat, Cobbler, into the office. The two cats invariably ignored each other, though Job allowed the marmalade tabby to sit on one of the lower levels of his perch.

  Toys did not love many things in this world, but came to love Job in a way that was unsullied and uncomplicated. They accepted each other on their own terms and without judgment.

  Perhaps there was some cosmic message or lesson in the fact that it was the cat that saved his life.

  Toys was asleep, slumped in a rattan chair with his feet propped on the edge of the bed. The TV was on but the Netflix movie he’d been watching had long since ended, to be replaced by a bland information screen. The cat was asleep on his lap, stretched across the tops of his thighs. The hotel grounds were quiet except for crickets.

  Then suddenly Job was awake. The cat stood up, hissing, his claws flexing to stab into Toys’s leg.

  “Ow, bloody hell!” cried Toys as he came suddenly and painfully awake. He shot to his feet. “What the hell are you playing at, you little bugger?”

  Then Toys understood.

  The French door had been opened and in the pale glow from the TV he could see figures inside his room. Four of them, and they’d all turned toward him when he’d cried out.

  They were dressed in black suits, with white shirts and dark ties. Each of them held a small flashlight. One was bent over the chair on which Toys had placed his briefcase. Two others were hunched down over his laptop. The fourth was by the door, acting as a lookout.

  They stared at Toys, and he gaped at them.

  The cat hissed again.

  The figure by the chair said only two words.

  “Kill him.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  THE PIER

  DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 8, 9:08 P.M.

  Mr. Church locked the conference room door and walked over to the big windows. The San Diego night was huge and starless. Bastion meowed softly and Church bent to pick him up and stood with the cat tucked into the crook of his left arm while he stroked him with his gloved fingertips.

  After a few minutes of silent contemplation, Church lowered the cat gently to a chair, picked up his cell phone, engaged the twenty-eight-bit encryption scrambler, and made a long-distance call. It rang five times before it was answered.

  “St. Germaine,” said Lilith. She sounded winded.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m on a job.” In the background he could hear the faint but unmistakable sound of a voice raised in sudden agony. The scream rose and rose and then died away. It was a male voice, and there was a quality of weariness in the scream, as if this was not the first time he had been made to cry out.

  “Does this have anything to do with what happened to Violin?”

  “It might.”

  “Lilith…”

  “The Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum tried to kill my daughter. I want to know why. Do you expect me to sit at home and knit comforters?”

  There was another scream. Briefer, but more intense.

  “Have you learned anything?” asked Church.

  “I learned that men are weak,” she sneered.

  “It occurs to me that you already knew that.”

  “It is important to reinforce one’s perspective,” said Lilith. “Though there is also a measure of disappointment in always being right.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that the Brotherhood had become active again?”

  “I don’t remember any agreement where I tell you everything that happens in the world, St. Germaine.”

  Church sat on the edge of the table. Outside, on the moonlit beach, a group of teenagers were playing volleyball in the dark. On the missed shots, when the ball was lost in shadows, they collided and tripped, and they never stopped laughing. Near them a couple lay on a blanket, kissing with obvious passion. Farther up the beach a blond-haired man was helping a teenage boy—almost certainly his son—sort out his night-fishing rig. Life was happening. It was moving forward with vigor and even a measure of joy. It was clean and the moon was bright and there was a purity in the starry sky and the silver-tipped waves.

  “Lilith,” he said slowly, “the power outages occurring here in the States are being perpetrated by ISIL. The technology was somehow taken from a program associated with Majestic. The scientists at that program had been attempting to obtain copies of the most restricted books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.”

  There was a heavy silence at the other end of the call. No m
ore screams. Not even the sound of her breathing.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “I’m listening,” said Lilith.

  “You know that the DMS has been weakened.”

  “I heard.”

  “We are at a crisis point and I am asking you to tell me if there is anything you know or have heard that could help us.”

  Lilith said, “This matter that you are working on, does it have anything to do with an attempt to construct and operate an interdimensional gateway? An Orpheus Gate.”

  “It would appear so. Do you know something about it?”

  “Yes,” said Lilith. “I know a lot about it. This is old, old science, St. Germaine. You understand me? This is very old.”

  “Believe me when I tell you that I can appreciate that.”

  “Good. Do you know about the side effects?”

  “Yes.”

  “Going into dreams? Traveling with just the mind?”

  “Remote viewing. Yes. How do you know so much?”

  There was another of the protracted screams. “People talk,” she said. “If you know how to ask the right questions, and in the right way.”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  “St. Germaine … do you know about the Mullah of the Black Tent?”

  He said, “No, I do not.”

  “I’m surprised,” she said. “The CIA are investigating him. I wonder that they haven’t told you.”

  “I have been cut out of several information loops. Who is this person?”

  She told Church a strange story about a simple cleric from a tiny mosque in an unimportant town who had, almost overnight, become a powerful force among the fighters of the Islamic State. Lilith’s Arklight team had been doing hits against ISIL for months, ever since they officially enshrined the rape of the Yazidi girls and women. Some of the ISIL fighters her sisters had taken had spoken of the Mullah as a new prophet who would lead a true global jihad. To speak of him to anyone was viewed as a sin against God, and even the slightest transgression, the most offhand mention, was punished by death. Not just of the sinner but of his family.