The old man looked at the handkerchief with curiosity, then unwrapped it. His good eye widened at the sight of Taggert’s severed finger, which had yellowed.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Bradley said. “For all we know, Taggert suffered a heart attack during your interrogation of him, and you just cut off his finger after he was dead. The man had three heart surgeries.”
Jake did not like how shrewd his companions were, but he felt a little indignant. “I promise you, he was alive when I snipped this off. He cried like a baby. His corpse has several broken bones.”
“Show us the body, then.”
“I don’t think I care to incriminate myself like that.”
“We all incriminate ourselves,” Weiskopf said. “That’s the whole point of committing sacrifice. It’s an insurance policy.”
“I killed Morton, too,” Jake said.
“Where’s his body?”
Jake smiled.
“We need Taggert’s body,” Reichard said. “He wasn’t some contractor like Morton. He was the head of a multibillion-dollar company with international dealings. He testified before a senate committee. He can’t just disappear. An investigation will lead the FBI here.”
“Can’t you kill any investigation?” Let’s see how powerful you guys really are.
“We can control the investigation’s ultimate outcome, but we don’t wish for anyone to know that we even meet here. That’s why we get together only once a month under normal circumstances. You’ve obviously disrupted that schedule. And then there’s the underground media. Give us that body so we can avoid suspicion.”
Jake felt he had to give them something as a show of faith. “All right, he’s in an abandoned barn an hour away.” He gave them directions. “Tell whoever you send to look in a hole in the floor. They’ll need rope. Is Morton really so insignificant that you’re not even concerned about an investigation into his disappearance?”
“Completely.”
“I’m glad I killed him. Abby Fay didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“Regrettable, but you have to share part of the blame.”
Jake felt himself growing hot.
“How did you kill him, anyway? He was skilled in such matters.”
Jake glanced around at the faces staring at him. “I used my bare hands. I didn’t need a dagger.”
“That doesn’t count,” Weiskopf said. “It was self-defense.”
“What would you like me to do, cut the throat of a drugged-up hooker while you all watch?”
“No,” Reichard said. “We have something else in mind. We want you to kill Raymond Santucci.”
Jake blinked. For a moment, he was speechless. “You want me to assassinate the governor of New York?”
“We want Myron to become the next governor of this state,” Reichard said. “That will be the perfect stepping stone to the presidency.”
Jake glanced at Madigan. “If he’s such a talented politician, let him run for the office.”
“We will. Just not against Santucci, who’s extremely popular. If we kill him, he’ll be succeeded by his lieutenant governor, Mark Fryer, who’s a walking time bomb. The man has a checkered past and is incapable of running this state. He’s doomed to failure and ridicule, and Myron will beat him handily. Taggert had planned for Morton to do the job, and since you killed both of them, this seems like the best alternative.”
“Not from where I’m sitting.”
“We’ve already arranged for the governor to have dinner with someone in our employ at a quaint little restaurant in Albany tomorrow evening. You need to arrive before them and shoot Santucci between the eyes. Our witness will describe someone who looks nothing like you. Wear a disguise, if you prefer. Just be sure you don’t shoot the witness, too. The restaurant has no security cameras, and the lighting is low. The perfect location for a hit.”
Jake smelled a setup even over the exquisite aromas rising from the gourmet food. “This is crazy. What about the governor’s security detail?”
“We’ll handle them.”
“That isn’t very reassuring.”
“We have to trust you, and you have to trust us.”
“You’re asking an awful lot.”
“Hardly. The minute you pull that trigger, you’ll belong to Avademe. The next morning, seventy million dollars will appear in an offshore bank account we’ll set up for you. That’s ten million from each one of us. Myron will confirm it’s that easy.”
“Your entire world will change overnight. You’ll be richer and more powerful than you ever dreamed possible, and we’ll know that you truly belong at this table.” Madigan seemed displeased at the thought of sharing his newfound wealth so soon after acquiring it.
Jake knew that if he refused the assignment, his time in the cabal would end before it started. If he accepted the proposal, he would at least buy time. “Seventy million is a lot of money,” he said.
Reichard winked at him. “Tax free. You can buy your own mansion with that kind of money. New cars, the best clothes, the finest women. You’ll never have to work again in your life. Even better, you’ll draw profits from every one of us in this room each quarter. You’ll be a full-fledged member of the circle. There’s no better feeling in the world than running the world.”
I bet. “That’s a lot to digest over one meal. Can’t you have another long arm from White River Security do the hit?”
“We have literally hundreds of men and women stationed around the world who will kill anyone we tell them to without question. But we want you to do this. We need you to kill someone for us. A sacrifice.”
“Couldn’t I just sign my name in blood somewhere?”
“You belonged to a brotherhood once. Now you’re an independent operator. An outcast. Our assemblage is also a brotherhood. We need to know you’re a team player, that you won’t turn rogue on us like Nicholas did.”
Jake felt dumbfounded that he and Tower shared similar traits. “Before I accept your offer, I need to know a few things.”
“You don’t set the terms.”
“Myron’s wife hired me to get dirt on him. I’d say I was successful. I didn’t turn the evidence over to her, and I never spoke to her about what I saw. She’s no threat to any of you.”
“You’re right about that,” Reichard said in an ominous tone. “What else is on your mind?”
“I’m not satisfied with the answer I just got to my first question.”
“Then you’re not satisfied. What else?”
“I want to know what the hell those creatures—those watchers— were that attacked me the other night. They look nothing like anything I saw at the Tower.”
Reichard sat back. “Kill Santucci and we’ll tell you everything. Until then, you’ve learned all we care to share.”
Surveying the faces at the table, Jake felt so close to the truth. “How can I say no to seventy million dollars?”
Reichard beamed. “Excellent! We’ll furnish you with details after dinner. Now let’s enjoy dessert. I had a German chocolate cake flown in from Germany just for the occasion.”
CHAPTER
17
Jake drove back to Manhattan with his hands shaking and his knees knocking against each other. He had known from the minute he had taken Marla’s case that he was dealing with men who would stop at nothing to carry out their plans, but he hadn’t suspected just how powerful this nest of vipers would prove to be.
The most powerful men in the world, he thought. Nicholas Tower multiplied by seven.
Avademe ruled the world. Or at least it ruled the United States and influenced the rest of the world. Seven men whose greed and lust for power had resulted in evil on earth—and possibly elsewhere.
Blind spots.
According to Cain and Sheryl, the Dark Realm and the Realm of Light were unable to observe Avademe’s activities. Or were they? Cain had warned Jake not to trust Sheryl, and sure enough, Sheryl was using Jake to locate Abel because she loved him. Jake knew
better than to trust Cain, and Laurel had secrets of her own.
He had no one to trust except Carrie, and she was no use to him. He felt more alone than ever. Not only because Sheryl’s heart belonged to Abel, but because Edgar no longer existed as Jake had known him. In Hunts Point in the Bronx, while battling Katrina’s zonbies, Jake had entrusted Edgar with his life, and Edgar had come through for him with flying colors.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. He needed to learn more about the Order of Avademe. The bastards had done their best to convince him they were only interested in accumulating personal wealth, but he knew better. How were they destroying souls, and why?
Headlights from oncoming cars bounced off” the windshield. He could not see the drivers, but he knew the men and women operating the vehicles were oblivious to the existence of the Avademe cabal, just as he had been until three days ago. All across the country, people worked low- and seemingly high-paying jobs, while Reichard and his gang grew fat on money acquired by ginning the system.
A system they created, he thought, fitting world events into a timeline that corresponded to the century Avademe had been pulling political strings. World War I. World War II. The Korean War. The moon landing. Vietnam. The Gulf War. Afghanistan. Iraq. All events and conflicts that had increased the personal wealth of each man in the circle.
War profiteers.
And no one else on earth but him had a clue.
Walking to his building from the garage, Jake studied the faces of people moving on the sidewalks, then the buildings above him, and finally the Tower. He loved New York City, but he was beginning to view everything as an illusion: a country and world built on lies. He thought of the great technological advances since World War I and suspected Avademe had pushed them on a world unprepared for them. Pollution, global warming, warfare—these conditions either served the cabal’s interests or resulted from them.
The entire world is dying so Karlin Reichard can fly chocolate cake in from Germany.
He clenched his fists.
Old Nick’s ambition had resulted in thirteen murdered civilians as far as Jake knew. The number of people killed in wars that Avademe had either started, conflated, or prolonged over one hundred years was incalculable. All to keep the industrial war complex thriving and the cabal’s bank accounts swollen.
He stopped outside Laurel’s parlor and debated knocking on the door. He needed someone to talk to, and she knew him better than anyone else. That was part of the problem: she knew him too well. He couldn’t even touch her without her absorbing his thoughts and secrets. But he intended to visit her before heading to Albany.
Jake entered his building and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Inside his suite, he searched all the rooms to make sure no one lurked about waiting to surprise him. The security system obviously didn’t work where supernatural entities were concerned.
Satisfied that neither heaven nor hell intended to pester him, he sat at his desk and did some general research on his newfound prospective partners and their respective companies. It didn’t take long before he pictured a giant spiderweb enshrouding the earth, with its many strands intersecting each other. The majority of the men owned several companies and sat on the boards of others, and that was just the public tally.
Sipping a Diet Coke, Jake searched octopus god and octopus monster. After sorting through dozens of line drawings of giant octopi clinging to tall ships and other vessels and a number of illustrations from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and stills from its movie adaptations, he found some text on a website devoted to world mythology that raised his interest.
Na Kika, the octopus god of the Gilbert Islands, was the son of the first beings, Nei Teuke and Na Atibu. Na Kika used his great tentacles to raise the earth from the Pacific Ocean’s bottom, creating the chain of sixteen atolls and islands. Na Kika’s name means “Sir Octopus.”
The names sound Indian, Jake thought. He cross-referenced Gilbert Islands and discovered the native population was Micronesian. A long way from Lake Erie.
Kanaloa is the Hawaiian creator and the god of the underworld, who teaches magic in the form of an octopus. According to the Hawaiian Creation Myth, the cosmos are only the latest in a series of universes, and the octopus Kanaloa was the sole survivor of the previous universe.
Abel had described the Realm of Light and the Dark Realm as other dimensions. Could they have been previous universes, or could previous universes be the term used by ancient Hawaiians to define the higher dimensions?
Tae-o-Tagaloa of Samoa is a human-octopus hybrid. Throughout southern Polynesia, magic connected to the numeral eight stems from the tentacles of Tae-o-Tagaloa.
Human-octopus hybrid. The thought of Reichard’s creatures caused Jake to shudder. Hybrid made him picture Tower’s Biogens. Pondering the Polynesian emphasis on the number eight, he studied the ring on his finger, turning it from side to side so the gold tentacle reflected the overhead light. The disparate myths tore his differing theories apart rather than unifying them. Pushing his chair back, he ran his palms down his face and sighed. None of this was going to help him before his deadline to assassinate Santucci.
The telephone on the desk rang, and Jake checked the caller ID. Unavailable.
He lifted the wireless phone from its receiver. “Hello?”
“Jake? Benjamin Bradley. Myron and I are sitting in my limo downstairs. Come join us.”
Jake’s body tensed up. What could Bradley and Madigan want with him so soon after the cabal’s big dinner? It didn’t matter. He would learn the answer soon enough. “I’ll be right down.”
He changed into dark slacks, a polo shirt, and running shoes, then put on his shoulder holster and Glock, which he concealed beneath a jacket. It felt reassuring to carry his gun again. He took the stairs so he would see sooner if anyone waited in the lobby. It proved to be empty.
A stretch limo idled at the curb outside, a chauffeur waiting for him. Exiting the building, Jake wondered if the man knew how he had treated the last chauffeur he had encountered. He noted the black SUV waiting behind the limo—Madigan’s security detail.
The chauffeur opened the rear door for him. “Good evening.”
Nodding at the man, Jake looked for a holster but saw none. As he climbed into the limo, he thought of mafioso going for late-night rides with comrades only to vanish.
“There he is,” Bradley said.
Jake’s right hand twitched, ready to grab the Glock’s grip beneath his jacket.
Bradley and Madigan sat in the long seat perpendicular to him. Each man held a drink. The chauffeur closed the door and circled the limo.
“The bar’s fully stocked,” Madigan said.
Jake’s gaze never left the two men as the chauffeur got into the front seat and closed the door. He felt a personal animosity toward each villain: Bradley for cultivating the Dreamers and Madigan for his criminal treatment of Marla. “I don’t drink, remember?”
The limo crept forward, a real smooth ride.
“We’ll have to cure you of that foible,” Bradley said.
Jake felt his muscles tightening.
“Relax,” Madigan said. “This is a social call.”
“It’s a little late for visitors.”
“We’re not visitors. We’re hosts. That makes you our guest.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” Bradley said.
“I’m not a fan of surprises. They usually amount to trouble.”
“You’ll like this one,” Madigan said, almost leering. “Trust me.”
Not as far as I can spit, Jake thought. “I have a big day tomorrow. I need my beauty sleep.”
“Your assignment will go off without a hitch,” Bradley said. “And our little diversion will relieve you of that stress you must be feeling.”
Jake sat back in his seat. The limo headed uptown, got on the FDR Drive, and headed uptown faster. The men kept staring at him, which made him squirm.
At last Jake said to Bradley, “That’s some business you’ve got. All tax free because of the religious angle, right?”
Bradley smiled. “We don’t discuss business except when all of us are present. That way no one gets paranoid.”
Jake turned to Madigan. “I’m surprised you’re traveling with such a light entourage.”
Madigan shrugged. “I pull what strings need pulling to draw as little attention as possible.”
“Pretty ballsy, considering the attention your wife’s disappearance is getting.”
Madigan was about to respond when Bradley tapped his shoulder and shook his head.
They got off in Yorkville, Jake’s old neighborhood. The limo turned up Second Avenue, then Eighty-sixth Street, and glided toward Carl Schurz Park. Jake wondered if they were going to Gracie Mansion. Instead, the limo pulled over to the curb of a narrow, three-story brick building with white trim. Jake had passed the building many times when he lived in the neighborhood but had never given it much thought. He always assumed a wealthy family lived there.
The chauffeur opened the back door and Jake got out, followed by Madigan and Bradley. Jake looked at his fellows, awaiting instructions, and Bradley led the way to the building’s front door and rang the bell.
A muscular man in a suit, his hair cropped close to his skull, opened the door. His gaze darted from Jake to the old men. “Good evening, gentlemen. Won’t you come in?”
As they entered the building, Bradley said, “Lionel, meet Jake Helman. He’s a contender.”
“Welcome,” Lionel said in a voice that held thinly veiled contempt.
Who the hell is this guy to look down on me? Jake thought. “Uh, thanks.”
Lionel closed the door, and Bradley and Madigan hung their coats on gold wall hooks.
“I think I’ll leave mine on,” Jake said, not wishing to explain his Glock.
“Not for long,” Madigan said with a wink.
Lionel escorted them down the hall and opened a door at the end, admitting them into a deep room that resembled a nightclub, complete with a long bar, plush banquettes, European lamps, and pink and lavender fabrics dripping from the walls. Jake counted eight women luxuriating in the room, posed to perfection. By his estimate, they ranged in age from twenty to twenty-three. They had dark skin, porcelain skin, short hair, and long hair and were squeezed into outfits that revealed plenty of skin. Their full lips formed half smiles and half kisses.
Cosmic Forces: Book Three in The Jake Helman Files Series Page 18
