But this . . . this was classic Skorzeny. For one thing—and he knew he could take this to Skorzeny’s Swiss bank—it was a misdirection, an attention-getter while the real action unfolded elsewhere. That had been the man’s MO back in Edwardsville as he played on the sentiment of a nation while he tried to get his ships into port to launch the EMP devices, one on each coast. He was still new to the game, though, and had let his man Milverton get too cocky, and Devlin had managed to stop both of them—one of them terminally.
His hand stole to his shoulder, where Milverton had wounded him so grievously, where Skorzeny had kicked him as he dove down his escape hatch in Clairvaux. He’d had the bastard in his hands, and his weaknesses had defeated him. If it weren’t for Maryam . . . his guardian angel . . .
The secure Android buzzed again. He ignored it.
The attack on Midtown Manhattan had been several orders of magnitude greater, but again Skorzeny had underestimated him, sent a child to do a man’s job. Devlin regretted having to kill Raymond Crankheit as brutally as he did, but it was a mercy killing. The boy had reminded him of himself, and he’d had to cut him off in his amateur prime, before anyone else got ahold of him and turned him into a really lethal weapon. He’d been up against the best the SAS had to offer in Milverton, and some punk, and between the two of them the punk had scared him more.
The goddamn phone was not to be ignored. He activated all necessary security measures, and knew that the party on the other end of the line had done so as well.
“Speak,” he commanded.
“This is President Jeb Tyler,” came the voice.
“Save your breath, sir. I know who you are. You fired me, remember?”
“That was then and this was now.”
“Do I sense my dad and the SecDef there with you?”
“You do, as per their authorization.”
“We have to stop meeting like this.”
The president replied: “I need you back.”
“If it’s about the cows, I’m already on my way.”
To Devlin’s surprise, there was a moment of silence. Tyler was usually quick with a snappy comeback; Devlin half thought that the president was amused by his rudeness, since Devlin was the only man on earth who could get away with being insubordinate to the commander in chief.
“I’ve got bigger problems than a bunch of dead cows.”
“I’ll say. You’ve got an election to lose, and I must say you’re doing a damn good job of losing it, sir.”
“Believe it or not, the election is only second on my list of worries. General Seelye?”
“Hi, Pop,” said Devlin before the director of the National Security Agency could say anything. That was just to get under Seelye’s skin. If there was anybody in this world he hated almost as much as hated Skorzeny, it was Seelye—the surrogate father who had raised him after the deaths of his parents in Rome on that horrible day back in 1985. The day he saw his father die and his mother die in his arms when he was eight years old.
“What do you know about the Mahdi?”
“Laurence Olivier played him in Khartoum. Is this a serious question?”
“There’s something afoot in Iran,” said Tyler.
“There’s always something afoot in Iran. There’s been something afoot in Iran since 1979. Carter should have done something about it. Reagan should have done something about it. These bastards have been killing our people, either directly or through surrogates, since just after their glorious revolution. They are the leading sponsor of state terrorism in the world. And yet your predecessor did nothing about them, despite all his brave talk, and you’ve done nothing about them. Don’t tell me you’re finally growing a pair.”
“Why don’t you shut up before I fire you again?”
“Why don’t you put Maryam on the case? She’s already in country, I believe.” That hurt, hurt him more than it hurt them, but he might as well get it out there, clear the air, get at least one ghost out of the way before anybody else got killed.
“This is no time for jokes,” came a female voice, which he knew belonged to Shalika Johnson. Johnson had fought her way up the ladder, from Philadelphia to prison to rehab to the Army to the officer corps to the general staff. She was mean and tough, an affirmative-action wet dream who had earned every last one of her plaudits, which meant she had exactly zero sympathy with bullshit gold-bricking diplomacy, political correctness, or half-measures. Although she had yet to fight her first war, everybody knew that when she did, and if Tyler took the gloves off, she’d finish the job in record time.
Of course, she could also finish him.
Then again, if Tyler lost, as now seemed probable, she’d also be out of a job. As would Seelye, in all likelihood. So maybe the smart play was to work against all of them, fuck up royally, and then disappear somewhere, forever.
Nah . . . they’d hunt him down—either they or their successors. He was walking a tightrope with no net, and the only way to go from here was straight to hell.
“You’re right, Shalika,” he said, “so cut the crap and tell me why you’re all bothering me.”
“That is Secretary Johnson to you, mister—”
“Listen, you two,” said Tyler, “you can work out your insubordination issues later. Right now—”
“There is no right now, Mr. President,” said Devlin. “You know the drill and you know the deal, and if little Miss Your Name Here until November at the DoD doesn’t like it, she can go piss up a rope. I don’t care. But this talk about Iran interests me, so get to it before I change my mind. Send me the dossier, and I’ll let you know what I decide, and what my conditions are.”
He could hear Tyler exploding in the background; then the voice transmission went to mute. He gave them thirty seconds to get back to him and then he’d ring off.
He was down to seven in his countdown when Tyler came back on. “Deal.”
“It’s always a deal,” replied Devlin. “It’s either our deal or it’s nothing. Ready to send?”
“Coming through in three minutes. You’ll get some security misdirects first.”
“Okay. But whatever it is, first I have to get up to Lemoore and pick up some reinforcements. Plus there’s the matter of all the dead livestock.”
“We’re already on that,” said Tyler. “Botulism in the feed, caused by Congress’s cuts to agricultural subsidies—that’s the official explanation for now. The outbreak seems to be limited to a fifty-mile radius centered around Visalia, running up as far as Fresno. We don’t like it, but we can handle it while we figure out what it really is. Take a look at this report from Tehran.”
Devlin closed his eyes and let his mind race. This was the moment he had been waiting for—not for months but for years. This was the moment when he could tell the lot of them to go hang. This was the moment he could simply walk away, the moment when his life sentence was lifted, when a sudden, miraculous deus ex machina pardon had suddenly descended from the sky. All he had to do was say no—which under the terms of his indentured-servitude contract, he was now free to do—and that would be the end of it.
Only one thing stood in his way.
Her.
Had she betrayed him, like everybody thought?
Had she double-crossed him, been an Iranian plant all along? Set him up, established her legend with him as far back as that day in Paris, seven years before his final confrontation with Milverton? The Iranians, the inheritors of a thousand-year empire, knew how to play the long game, that was for sure. But did she? Would she? Could she?
He had bet his life on the proposition that she could not. Based on absolutely nothing but a hunch, he had staked his fortune on twenty-two black, just like in Casablanca—one spin of the wheel for all the chips, and devil take the come what may.
“Send it through.”
Now it was Tyler’s turn to pause. They were locked in a loveless embrace, he and the U.S. government, neither side able to live without the other, but wishing passionately that it coul
d be otherwise. “On its way.”
The Android started to buzz. That would be the security check.
“One more thing.” This time the voice was Seelye’s. “One more thing I thought you’d like to know. That compromised computer?”
That would be the computer he had entrusted to her before he dove under the Hudson River, on his way into Times Square to take up the fight against the terrorists. She had taken it with her to Hungary, at his command, and whatever had happened there, it had disappeared along with her.
“What about it?”
“Nothing. It has not self-destructed, nor has been accessed in any way that we can tell. So either it’s lost, they haven’t touched it, or . . .”
“Or she didn’t defect, and it’s still with her.”
“I figured I’d throw that in as a deal-sweetener. What do you think?
Devlin waited a beat before responding. He couldn’t let his hopes get up, it was unprofessional. But there was no reason he could not dream.
“I think it’s sweet,” he said, and rang off. Anyone attempting to listen in would have heard nothing. They would not even have heard scrambled noise. Instead, they would have picked up some perfectly banal conversation between a mother in Bemidji, Minnesota, and her middle-aged son in Merced, recorded by NSA ops and used just once, on this occasion.
He could imagine the SecDef ’s rage. She wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, and was probably still laboring under some quaint delusion about the sanctity of the chain of command. She was new to the operation of Branch 4, new to his unit and its strict protocols. If he could have his way, he would cut the secretary completely out of the loop, but since Branch 4 had operational authority in any theater of war, he was just going to have to live with it.
Oh well, the election was coming right up and it would all soon be over, one way or another. He was already past Bakersfield, so there was only another sixty miles or so to go, and he could make that in no time. There were no Chippers out here in the desert, and if one stopped him, well, that wouldn’t work out so well for the Highway Patrol. He had neither the time nor the inclination to fuck around with some dickhead with a badge.
He let his mind drift back to California City. The rose was still on the seat beside him.
Had he dreamed the whole thing? Jacinta, the mute driver, Father Gonsalves? He still had the priest’s money in his pocket, so that part at least was real. That part and the rose.
Whether he’d really seen something, there was no way to tell. He fished around in the seat for the Polaroid photos, but couldn’t find them right away.
The Android gave off a series of beeps. That would be the incoming. As prescribed, he didn’t touch the PDA for at least two minutes after the receipt of the information; anyone trying to intercept it would be eager to open it, and that would destroy all the data, plus send a locator to the Building. Accidents happened quickly once NSA headquarters got a tracer on you, including sudden car crashes that couldn’t quite be explained, house fires, and gas explosions. Operational security was everything, or else it was nothing.
He didn’t even have to look at the material to be able to guess what it was. As he had told the President in the aftermath of the failed operation to snatch Skorzeny from his lair in France, the crazy bastard was at war with the West, so his common cause with Kohanloo in the Times Square assault came as no surprise.
“An atheist’s apocalypse,” he had said. “End-times craziness.” It would be just like Skorzeny to sign on to the Shiite eschatology, and use their religious belief as the tip of Klingsor’s spear—and to plunge it not into Parsifal, but into Christ’s side one last time.
Maybe all of this was related. Maybe the vision in the desert had something to do with whatever was happening in Iran. There didn’t have to be a supernatural explanation for any of it, but the thematic relationship was irresistible. That would be how Skorzeny would want it, Klingsor the magician, always signing his dirty work with the hand of the master, the last civilized man eager to put out the lights of the West before death finally took him and carried him, screaming, only God knew where.
Only one caveat—sending the bastard to hell was his job, not God’s. And that was one job he planned to finish this time, no matter what.
That and find her. If Maryam really was in Iran, then Skorzeny couldn’t be far behind.
Now that was a twofer.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
San Sebastian de Garabandal, Spain
They were passing by the church, as they did every day after school, four of them, four schoolgirls, two named Mari, after the Virgin, and Jacinta, and Conchita. Just like the girls back in the early sixties, same first names and all, the ones who had seen the vision, and heard the warning about the Great Chastisement that was sure to come if her words were not heeded.
Like schoolgirls everywhere, they babbled and giggled as they passed the parish church. The time was long past that they thought maybe they just might catch a glimpse of what those girls had seen so long ago: a vision of radiant loveliness, her face creased with sorrow, her message stern: Repent.
It had been easier to believe when they were children. It was easy to repent of sins you had not yet committed, not even in your heart, and yet almost impossible to imagine what those sins could really be. They were things only whispered about, to be savored and to be feared.
The first message had been delivered on October 18, 1961: We must make sacrifices, perform much penance, and visit the Blessed Sacrament frequently. But first, we must lead good lives. If we do not, a chastisement will befall us. The cup is already filling up and if we do not change, a very great chastisement will come upon us.
Chastisement was a word they all understood. Franco’s Spain died long before they were born, but its memory lingered on, especially here in northern Spain, not far from Santander. Chastisement meant punishment and pain. Especially in light of the second message, the one Conchita alone received:
Previously, the Cup was filling; now it is brimming over. Many priests are following the road to perdition, and with them they are taking many more souls.... We should turn the wrath of God away from us by our own efforts. If you ask His forgiveness with a sincere heart, He will pardon you. . . . You are now being given the last warnings.... Reflect on the Passion of Jesus.
They could all recite the words by heart, for they had been hearing them all their lives. Tourists came and went through the small village and occasionally a man from the Vatican, which was still investigating the apparition, trying to decide whether it was real or fake. Of the hundreds and thousands of Marian apparitions around the world, fewer than a dozen were officially recognized by the Catholic Church.
So there was no reason to suspect that this glorious October day would be any different from all the others—or that it would be the same as that day back in 1961.
It was early morning, and at first they thought it was the glistening of the sun, past its summer prime. Later, in talking to the villagers and to the newspeople who showed up at their doorsteps, they described it as a blinding flash of light that caught them all in the eyes, as if someone were shining a very powerful searchlight directly at them. And yet, it was focused on each them, individually.
It took a few moments for them to begin to be able to see clearly once more as their retinas began to synthesize the light and the image.
She was framed against what appeared to be a celestial doorway, but on later reflection they realized it was the portals of the simple parish church that served the spiritual needs of the three hundred souls living near the Bay of Biscay. She wore a crown and a cloak. They could see her clearly, silhouetted against an impossible backdrop of the clear blue sky and the shining sun.
But all these details came later. Because, for many weeks, after the apparition, they could not really remember what the Lady had looked like, or how she was dressed, or whether she was holding anything in her arms. They could only remember that her lips were moving but that, strain a
s they might, they could not hear what she was saying.
But they could see her clearly enough, and that was all that young Jacinta needed. For Jacinta was deaf and she had learned to read lips—not only in Spanish but in Basque and border French—from the time she was young. St. Bernadette, who had seen her own famous vision not terribly far from here, in Lourdes, had heard the Lady speak in Pyrenean patois: “Que soy era immaculada concepciou.” And so had Jacinta—not heard, but seen.
And this was the proof, the evidence, that what they had seen was not an illusion, not a fake like so many of the so-called apparitions. This was real, in the way that Guadalupe had been real, and Lourdes had been real, and Fatima had been real. The Virgin had not spoken to them in Castilian Spanish, but in their Cantabrian dialect. Halfway between the Basque country and the French Pyrenees. This was the reason that at first hundreds, then thousands, and then tens of thousands of pilgrims had flocked to Garabandal back in the day. This was the reason they were now on the news.
Because they knew the secret. They knew the Word. And what a sacred word it was. It was the word the Lady had been saying for a hundred years—an eternity to them, but the blink of an eye to the Lady, who was still mourning the death of her Son and yet celebrating His coming apotheosis. There could be no final triumph without trouble, no everlasting transfiguration without confrontation. The final battle between good and evil must be enjoined, and Jacinta knew that it was her sacred and spiritual duty to make that happen as fast as possible.
Therefore, no matter how rigorous the questioning from the priests—some of them Spanish, some of them French, some of them black Africans and races she had never even imagined before, not here in her little village of Garabandal—she had stuck to her story, their story. Jacinta had emerged as their leader, and the leader she would stay. Even if she was only twelve years old.
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