“My name is Powers,” I said. “Austin Powers.”
She ignored me and plowed ahead. “We’re in the middle of a crisis. We may have to work closely together for several days, or even several weeks. Close-quarters travel, emotions running high, all that. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not spend the next few days living inside a trite office romance cliché. That includes everything from mild flirtation to sexual innuendo and double entendre and the whole ball of wax.”
She sipped her Coke. The ball landed in my court with a thump.
I leaned back and smiled.
“What?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to hear this.”
She was flustered by that for almost a full second.
“You agree?” she said guardedly.
“Agree? While you were talking I was doing a little mental preflight check and, yeah, I had every typical male reaction in the book. Eyes, boobs, legs, the works. And you’re not ‘moderately good-looking’; you’re a fucking knockout and you know it. Or you should know it if you have a mirror. So yeah, I get that attraction is part of the proliferation of the species. And from a purely observational point of view I’m guilty as charged. No question,” I said. “And no apologies.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m as male and horny as the next guy. Maybe the next four guys, and sure, that’s the alpha-wolf drive-to-breed gene firing on all cylinders. Good call. On the other hand, you pointed out that I’m a professional of the kind Mr. Church hires. Not only don’t I think with my biceps or trigger finger; I don’t think with my dick.”
Circe considered that, nodded.
“One more thing,” I said. “Despite the hardwired urges, I’m also not on the market. I’m letting my heart take a long vacation. It might even retire to a cave.”
“Broken heart?” she probed. “Someone dump you?”
I almost let her off the hook, but I actually respected her for her candor. “No,” I said. “The woman—the extraordinary woman—with whom I was in love died.”
Circe’s lips parted, but she said nothing.
“She died on the job. If it wasn’t for her, you and I couldn’t be here having this conversation because the whole damn world would have gone to hell and, yes, in a handbasket.”
I could almost hear something go clunk in her head as a couple of disparate pieces of information fell sharply into place.
“Oh my God,” she said softly. “Grace Courtland? You were the one she was in love with?”
I nodded.
“Did Church tell you?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Grace did.”
That hit me like a punch between the eyes. “Grace told you about us?”
“No … not really. She told me that she was starting to fall in love with someone. Someone … in the DMS. I … I thought she meant Mr. Church.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it; a single bark of shocked laughter burst out. “Church?”
“That’s funny?”
“Funny weird, not funny ha-ha.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I sipped my whiskey and hoped for a nice midair collision.
“As initial encounters go,” I said, “this is a doozy.”
“Where does it leave us? Except literally and metaphorically out to sea?”
“If we’re adults, it means that we can start with a clean slate, a fair mutual understanding, and a shared agenda.”
She smiled. “I like that.”
We shook on it.
“Now,” I said. “It’s your turn.”
She gave me a half smile, kind of a “you asked for it, buster” look, and then told me all about the Goddess.
Interlude Twenty-six
The Seven Kings
Three and a Half Months Ago
Toys tried to catch Gault’s eye, but he was deep in conversation with the King of Lies. They were laughing. In the two weeks since they’d come to the castle, Toys and Gault had grown wary of each other. Gault had thrown himself into the world of the Kings and the Goddess with his whole heart. Toys walked more circumspectly around the fringes, playing the role of Conscience for protective cover but generally feeling trapped.
You, my friend, he said to himself, are in a right pickle.
Suddenly the room went silent and all eyes turned as the door to the chamber opened and Eris came in. She wore a white dress, long and tailored, and although the cut was simple and the design plain, on her it looked like a regal gown. Everyone stood. Each King, each Conscience, got to his feet, and as Eris walked across the room they all bowed.
Not wanting to stand out, Toys bowed as well. As he did so he imagined how good it would feel to slip a knife into her kidney. Do goddesses bleed like ordinary mortals? he speculated darkly.
Eris ascended the throne on the raised dais, then waved everyone else to their seats. They sat like obedient dogs, Toys thought. All except the American, who took his time.
In this lighting, in this setting, Eris looked ageless and beautiful and more regal than anyone else Toys had ever met in the flesh. And he’d met most of the crowned heads of Europe. Everyone beamed at her in a way that Toys thought looked truly … worshipful. That was the only word that fit.
It troubled him.
The King of Famine got to his feet. “Goddess … we are complete again. We are Seven.”
“Seven is the sacred number.” She looked at Gault. “Do you know why?”
He shook his head like a man in a dream. “Tell me … .”
A wicked smile played over Eris’s lips. Toys thought that it was half virgin, half whore, and thoroughly corrupt.
Eris raised her arms as if in invocation. “The world was made during seven days of Creation, and it will end when the Seven Seals spoken of in the Book of Revelation are opened. The number seven is key to every religion, every path to spirit. Look into the sky and behold the seven-starred constellation of Saptarishi Mandalam representing the Seven Sages.”
“Seven upon seven mysteries!” intoned the group.
“The Virgin Mary experienced seven joys.”
“And endured seven sorrows,” the Kings replied.
Toys saw that Gault’s lips were moving. He could not know this information—Gault was a lapsed Presbyterian—but it was clear that he wanted to participate, even to the point of trying to speak a litany to which he had never before been privy. Toys was sure that Gault was unaware that he was doing it, and that alone was frightening, because Gault was always aware. His perception was the thing that had always defined him. Now, in the space of seconds, he had descended into ritual behavior. Cult behavior.
Toys wanted to grab him, slap his face, and drag him out of this madhouse.
“There are seven heavens in Islam and seven fires in their hell,” said Eris.
“Heaven and hell,” said the crowd. “Linked by seven doors.”
“The Jews know this truth,” said Eris. “God told the Israelites that they would displace seven peoples when they entered the land of Israel.”
“Hail the power of Seven!”
Eris spoke of seven dimensions and sets of seven gods and demons in a dozen religions. She named seven dates as the key moments on which history turned, and the seven secret families who brought Europe out of the Dark Ages. She spoke of sevens in astronomy and physics, geography and philosophy. Her voice rose to a screech as she spoke of seven as a core number in sacred mathematics, naming it as the fourth prime number, a Mersenne prime, a double Mersenne, a Newman-Shanks-Williams prime, a Woodall prime, a factorial prime … .
Toys could feel the pull of the magic she wove, and it took every ounce of his will, and every splinter of his hate, to keep from being swept away by it all.
Everyone else was completely caught up in it, their faces aglow with fanatical light. None more so than Santoro, who looked like he was having a long, slow, and very powerful orgasm as he stared at the Goddess.
The only other person in the room
who did not look like he had been transported by the Goddess was her son, and when Toys looked across the room he saw the American looking directly back at him. And he was smiling. It was a small thing, a tiny curl of the lip that betrayed a subtlety at odds with his bombastic personality. As Toys watched, the American flicked a look at Eris, then rolled his eyes in a “can you believe this bullshit?” expression, then smiled again at Toys.
No one else noticed. The others were with Eris in a completely different place.
Toys risked the smallest of reciprocal smiles, and the American gave the tiniest of nods. Then the King of Fear turned his face away and pretended that he, too, was enraptured by the Goddess.
Eris turned to Gault and whispered, “Now, my newest son and King, tell me a secret known to the King of Plagues. Tell me a secret of Seven.”
Everyone turned toward Gault and Toys almost reached out to touch him but could not make his hand move. The moment—every bizarre part of it��was unreal and alien.
Gault licked his lips and blinked, but his eyes remained glazed.
“Whisper truth to us,” coaxed Eris.
And Gault said, “There are seven types of viruses in the Baltimore classification. Double-stranded DNA viruses; single-stranded DNA viruses; double-stranded RNA viruses; single-stranded RNA viruses, positive sense; single-stranded RNA viruses, negative sense; positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses that replicate through a DNA intermediate; and double-stranded DNA viruses that replicate though a single-stranded RNA intermediate.”
When he began speaking his voice had the flat intonation of a student repeating information from a textbook, but with each new type of virus he named his voice became more thoroughly charged with emotion. With passion.
“Jesus,” whispered Toys, but nobody heard him as the Kings and the Consciences and the Goddess broke into cheers and applause. And even though it felt like lifting bricks instead of hands, Toys made himself clap, too.
“And,” said Eris, raising her hands to heaven, “there are Seven Kings. Speak, that the world may know!”
The American reached for his wineglass and raised it. In his booming bass voice he cried aloud, “I am the King of Fear!”
The Israeli did the same; but crying, “I am the King of War!”
And the Russian: “I am the King of Famine!”
The Saudi: “I am the King of Lies!”
The Italian: “I am the King of Gold!”
The Frenchman raised his glass. “I am the King of Thieves!”
All eyes turned to Sebastian Gault. The glaze in his eyes changed as Toys watched. It no longer spoke to a mindless vacuity but to an intellect that was as deep as pain and as precise as torture. Gault lifted his glass and stared for the briefest of moments at the contents; the wine was as dark as welling blood. He looked from it to the Goddess on her throne.
“I am the King of Plagues!” He yelled it. Fierce and wild, full of pride and hubris and hatred.
Eris smiled. “The world belongs to me and I sanctify and bless you, my seven glorious Kings. Let those who oppose our will perish in torment. This I say before you all!”
“The Goddess!” they all screamed.
Then the Kings drank, and the Consciences drank with them. Even Toys, against his own will, fumbled for his wineglass and sloshed some bloodred wine into his mouth, though it burned like acid in his throat.
Chapter Thirty-nine
In Flight
December 18, 6:35 P.M. EST
Circe told me about the Goddess and the hate crimes inspired by her online postings.
“Okay,” I said, “that lines up with what we’ve gotten from Plympton’s note, Dr. Grey, and that fruitcake Nicodemus. You’re the expert on symbolism and we’re ass deep in it—so what the hell are we looking at? And, just a heads-up, if you say that you don’t know I’m pretty much going to throw myself out of the plane.”
“Don’t kill yourself just yet. Between what you have and what I have, we may actually have something here.”
“But—? You say that, but you have ‘but’ written all over your face … and, yes, I am fully aware of how that sounds, so please pretend I didn’t say it.”
Circe smiled. She had a good smile and so far I hadn’t seen very many of them. “‘But,’” she said, leaning on it intentionally, “the scope of it is so … big.”
“Mr. Church said something today. He told me that sometimes a war is so big and yet so subtle that all you can hope to do is catch glimpses of it as it moves through your life. I don’t like to accept that, but I’m beginning to think he’s right.”
She nodded. “That’s the nature of a terrorist organization. They’re more like an online virtual community. They don’t physically exist in any one place. There are some here, some there, … and most of them don’t even know each other. Not on a real level.” She chewed her lip and considered. “Let’s look at this one piece at a time.”
“Hit me,” I said.
“The Hospital fire. After looking through all of the employee lists, all of the programs and services, the research highlights, et cetera … , there are two things that stand out. The first is the scope. It’s big. So big you could call it ‘epic.’ No one will be unaware of it, and that kind of scope adds weight and authority to any subsequent message by the perpetrators.”
“Right. A terrorist who blows up a hot-dog cart isn’t taken as seriously as one who knocks down the Twin Towers.”
“Exactly. Second point is that we are finding out information about the Kings. I would like to think that our side is simply so smart that we’ve been able to compile information very quickly, but—”
“But,” I cut in, “information is being handed to us. Deep Throat, Nicodemus, the confessions of Plympton, Scofield, and Grey …”
She nodded. “And the Goddess posts.”
“So, we’re being fed this stuff? Why?”
“It speaks to the interpretation of the events. It shows us, the good guys, the size and scope of our enemy’s plan. Another way to interpret an ‘epic’ scale is ‘biblical.’”
“They want us to see this as something off-the-scale?”
“Sure. It reinforces their mystique.”
“How does that help them?”
“If they are not tied to a specific religion like Islam or Christianity, or a political ideology like democracy or communism, then their message won’t carry the same weight.”
“I get it,” I said. “By building the mystique of a secret society acting out the orders of a goddess but by using elements of existing religions, they make us see them as ancient, powerful, and mysterious.”
“It’s window dressing,” she conceded, “but it works.”
I nodded. It really was working.
“Moreover,” Circe continued, “they are also raising the bar. 9/11 gouged a scar into everyone’s psyche. The only way to one-up that was to go bigger. Blowing up Windsor Castle or Parliament would have been big, but a hospital has more emotional punch. It sends a very clear message: There is no one safe from the Seven Kings. No religion, no race or national background, no age, no gender. The Kings are willing to kill babies and old people. They are saying that they are not afraid of anything. They are saying: ‘We are above you and your laws. We are, in fact, your Kings.’ The presence of a goddess suggests that the action of the Kings is mandated by a higher power. Based on what Nicodemus said, the Goddess transcended the older ‘version’ of God by embracing more aspects and combing them to become who she now is. ‘Become’ is the key word. We see that a lot in cases of transformative megalomania and sociopathy. A person ‘becomes’ something higher through ritual acts that include sacrifice.”
“Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon,” I said. “Serial killers do that.”
“Killing is proof of dominance over ordinary life as well as the pathway to ascendency.”
“Nice. What about the black smoke?”
“Yes. That makes no sense except as a symbol. I saw it from my hotel room. I
t was extremely thick, and the TV reporters kept saying that it looked like night over the Hospital. If we didn’t have Nicodemus’s comments to go on, then we might have been fumbling around with metaphors. He mentioned the Ten Plagues of Egypt. He fed us the connection.”
“Look, I mostly ducked out of Sunday school to play baseball, so can you give me the Cliffs Notes version of the whole Ten Plagues thing?”
She smiled. “Moses and his brother, Aaron, confronted Pharaoh to ask that the Israelites be allowed to leave Egypt. He refused, so Moses appealed to God, Who in turn taught Moses some magic. Stuff like transforming his staff into a serpent and causing or curing leprosy. Unfortunately, the Egyptian court magicians were able to duplicate most of the same tricks.”
“So the Ten Plagues was a pissing contest?”
“I’m not sure biblical scholars would agree with that interpretation. It was supposed to prove the power of the One God over the many gods of Egypt.”
“Politics,” I said, and she nodded. “So, Plague of Darkness. What’s the skinny?”
Circe tilted her head back for a moment, accessing memories, then recited: “That’s Exodus, chapter ten, verses twenty-one and twenty-two: ‘And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.’”
“The black smoke from the burning tires didn’t cover the whole land and it didn’t last for three days.”
“Right, but keep an open mind. Most scholars believe that much of the Bible is metaphor.”
The King of Plagues Page 29
