Kill Switch (28 page)

“Jesus Christ,” I said, fighting to sit up. “Didn't they cure that shit like forever ago?”

“Not exactly,” said Rudy. “It ran its course but there were complications. This was the end of the First World War, whole populations were displaced, and medical services were taxed and…” He stopped and waved his hand. “It doesn't matter. Yes, there are vaccines available for this and other strains of avian flu; however, the particular strain that infected you and your men was, until now, unknown to science. It looked like the Spanish flu and even acted like it in laboratory tests, but there were subtle differences, including the presence of unknown forms of bacteria that somehow bonded with the virus. That presented Dr. Hu's medical team—and a great number of experts we consulted—with a genuine challenge. Not that it will give you much comfort, Joe, but books and papers will be written about it.”

“Um … hooray?”

“You should probably buy Will Hu a beer. You've become his favorite lab rat.”

I tried again to sit up, and failed. “I feel like I've been mugged by the Hulk. How bad am I?”

“Weak,” he said. “Once you were out of danger they transferred you here. At Mr. Church's request they began some muscle massage, passive movement, and a few other therapies to slow the rate of muscle atrophy. You're going to have to take it very slow, though, and be very careful. You'll need a lot of rest and a lot of physical therapy.”

“Fuck that. I want to get the hell out of here. Right now.”

“You'd fall on your face.”

“Then get me a wheelchair and a protein shake. Come on, Rude, I need to talk to Church. Houston—”

“Houston is a tragedy, Joe, but it's being handled. I'm sure Mr. Church will fill you in.”

“Good. He can do that at my office. Where are my pants?”

“You wouldn't make it to the door. You'll need time, therapy, and some medicines before you're fit to walk.”

“Don't bet on it.” I swung my legs out of bed and went to stand up. The room took a half spin and I could feel myself falling backward. When I woke up Rudy was eating a fish taco off of a paper plate. It was full dark outside.

“Did you have a good rest?” he asked, dabbing at sauce on his mustache.

“Fuck you,” I said.

He smiled and took another bite.

“For a doctor you're not a very nice man,” I told him.

“You are incorrect. I am well known for my courteous bedside manner.”

I wanted to say something smartass. Nothing came to mind. I tried to blink my eyes clear.

The room was empty.

Rudy was gone.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

ARKLIGHT SAFE HOUSE

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

TWO WEEKS AGO

Harry Bolt knew how to steal a car. It was one of the things he did very well. He found a Volvo that looked old enough not to have an alarm, jimmied the door, and hot-wired it. Violin slid into the passenger seat with the suitcase tucked into the footwell behind her. Her clothes were smudged with soot and they glistened with blood. Some of it was hers.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” he said.

Her look could have peeled layers of metal off a tank. “Don't be a child.”

“But—”

“Drive. Look for a tail, can you do that?”

“Sure, but—”

“Then go. No destination. Don't get us pulled over and don't draw attention.”

“Where are we going?”

She ignored him and removed her small laptop and opened it. She did not hit any keys, but instead spoke to it. “Authorize Arklight field protocol five.”

The monitor flashed several times and then settled on a screen saver with the smiling face of the
Mona Lisa
. Harry nearly sideswiped a car looking at it.

“Pay attention,” snapped Violin.

The
Mona Lisa
spoke. “Oracle welcomes you.”

“Oracle,” said Violin, “I am in company. Friendly. Not family. Confirm.”

“Confirmed. All secure data is shielded.”

Violin then switched to a language that Harry did not recognize even one word of. It sounded a little like Italian, but then most European languages sounded a little like Italian to Harry, and he could not speak Italian. Harry drove aimlessly, constantly checking the traffic patterns. If they were being followed he could not spot it, and he did not think so. Beside him, the strange woman's tone became sharper, more agitated, and she said some other words he didn't know but that he was positive were curses. They had that quality.

“Pull over,” she barked. When he pulled to the curb she turned the screen to him. The
Mona Lisa
was gone and now there was a diagram of a hand with splayed fingers. “Place your hand here.”

“Why?”

“Do it.” It was not a request, though not exactly a threat, either, but he took it that way and placed his hand on the screen. A scanner bar lit up and ran from top to bottom, mapping his palm and fingerprints. Suddenly Harry's driver's license, passport information, and birth certificate popped up in different windows on the screen.

“Hey!”

“Drive,” she said, and this time gave him directions. She spoke once more in the strange language to the computer and then signed off. He caught glances of her out of the corner of his eye. She sat there, chewing her lip, looking troubled.

“You want to tell me who the heck you are, what the heck is going on, and where the heck we're going?”

“I have bad news,” she said.

“Really? Why spoil such a great day?”

“Your team is dead.”

“I know that. Both of them were—”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “Your station office. There was a fire. Everyone is dead.”

Harry screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. Horns blared at him.

“What?” he bellowed.

“Drive the car,”
she hissed. “You're going to draw attention.”

He started driving, but he felt like he was in another world. Dazed and confused. “What happened?” he asked softly. “Was it those Brotherhood assholes?”

“No. Closers, I think,” she said. “Oracle gave me the story from the news services. Authorities suspect a gas explosion of some kind. The entire building went up.” She paused. “I'm sorry.”

Harry nodded and wiped tears from his eyes. “I hated those guys.”

“The Closers?”

“No, the guys at the office. Total bunch of dickheads.” Tears ran down his cheeks. Then he bristled as her words finished processing in his shocked brain. “Wait … whoa, hold on just a damn second. Closers?
Closers?
How the hell are Closers involved in this crap?”

“Do you know who the Closers are?”

“I'm in the fricking CIA, of course I know who they are. Men in freaking black who used to work for Howard Shelton and those ass-pirates at Majestic Three.”

“What is an ass-pirate?” she asked.

“Doesn't matter,” he said. “What matters is why there are even still Closers anymore. I thought the DMS chopped them all up. How are they back and why did they target my station? And why did they try to kill us?”

Violin stared out the window for a moment, then turned and looked over the seat at the suitcase. “We are in a lot of trouble.”

Harry just rolled his eyes.

“The Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum—the Brotherhood—are bad enough. They are dangerous but they're few. I can handle them, but—”

“I saw. You did pretty good against those Closers, too. Where'd you learn to fight like that?”

“My mother taught me.”

“Geez. I bet you cleaned your room when you were a kid.”

She studied him. “When I was a little girl my room was a filthy cell in an underground prison. My mother had to kill a dozen men to get me out.”

Harry blinked at her. “Is that a joke?”

“I wish it were.”

“Holy…”

“It's in the past where it belongs,” she said. “Right now we are in deeper trouble than I thought. If these are Closers, then they will have resources we can't match. Not the two of us, and you have no station left to help us. The Closers will have people inside your embassy and in local police.”

“I can make some calls. My dad knows—”

“We cannot trust anyone on your side of this, Harry. Not even your father. If the Closers are after you, then they will have people on him, tapping his phones, hacking his computers. Reach out to him and they will backtrack to you. It's what I would do.”

Harry swallowed. “You have to be wrong about that. If we go directly to the American ambassador, he'll give us a marine detail and—”

Violin shook her head. “You know so little about your own profession, Harry. How is that possible for someone who works as a spy? How did you even become a spy?”

“Nepotism and bad choices,” he suggested.

Violin gave him a faint smile. “We need to get this book into the hands of someone who can protect it.”

“Your mother, maybe?” he asked.

“No. She is in the field and out of touch.”

“How about my dad? Nobody's going to take anything away from him.”

Violin thought about it. “Maybe. But first we need to get out of the country without being spotted. That won't be easy and it won't be quick. We will have to use some back routes that I know about. This is one of those times when slow is safer than fast.”

“Before we do this,” asked Harry, “tell me why the Closers, if that's who they are, would want an old magic book? Majestic was all about some kind of UFO bullcrap, from what I heard. Howard Shelton was into the arms race, not voodoo.”

“It's not voodoo and it's not magic,” she said. “It's science.”

“Science? That book's a couple of hundred years old at least.”

“Older than that.”

“Then how's that going to be useful to some black budget government agency trying to build weapons of war?”

Violin shook her head. “You clearly don't know anything about war, Harry Bolt. Now … drive.”

 

INTERLUDE SEVENTEEN

BALLARD MILITARY BOARDING SCHOOL

POLAND, MAINE

WHEN PROSPERO WAS SEVENTEEN

They sat in the dark and talked. They were unalike in almost every way. Prospero Bell was very tall, thin, pale, blond, with piercing blue eyes and a full and sensual mouth. His cheeks and nose were dappled with freckles that had paled in captivity but not fled with boyhood.

His friend—his only friend in the whole world—was completely different. Shorter, bulkier, with hard muscles and a deep tan. Hair that was as black and glossy as crow feathers, and a hairline that plunged down his forehead in a dagger-point widow's peak. A saturnine face, thin lips, and eyes as dark as midnight. His given name was Leviticus Kingsley Grant, but he called himself Leviticus King. Like Prospero, Leviticus hated his father, and unlike his friend he had gone a step farther and forsworn the use of the family name.

They had met in “re-training,” which was the Ballard academy's soft-soap nickname for the punishment room. Both boys had given up keeping track of the number of times they had been beaten, or made to kneel on grains of rice, or forced to stand barefoot on the hard rims of metal barrels hour after hour. None of these tortures were ever reported to their parents, and both boys knew that if they tried to report them, their fathers would not care and the punishments would likely intensify. It was a locked system, a no-win scenario until they were eighteen. And even then Prospero did not believe they would escape. Paperwork was already on file to induct them into the military, and though conscription was technically illegal, all the right hands had been greased. They would go into the army and any attempts to escape that machine would result in federal prison. It was a trap and they were fully aware that they were not the first sons of rich men to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency and offered up to the gods of profit. Nor were they the first blue blood embarrassments to be hidden away from public scrutiny and paparazzi cameras. Not by a long shot. Some of the older boys and instructors bragged of having gone through these tortures themselves and having “seen the light” in the process.

The light.

Seeing the light was a big thing at Ballard. It was all about seeing the light, the light, seeing the goddamn light.

Which is why Prospero and Leviticus sat in the darkness.

They had a couple of joints King had stolen from the locker of one of the grounds crew, and the marijuana was laced with chemicals Prospero cooked up in his lab. They were edging toward being nicely baked. Getting high helped. Anything that sanded the edges off the world helped.

Prospero took a long hit off the joint, elbowed King lightly, and handed it to him. He held the smoke until they were both ready to burst and then they blew the smoke into the cold furnace behind them. It was summer and the big iron beast was off, and this late at night no one would see the smoke rising from the chimney many floors above them. This was a practiced routine, one they'd thought through and knew was safe.

“Evil is just a word,” said Prospero, picking up the thread of their meandering conversation. “It doesn't mean anything.”

“Yeah,” said King. “That's the part I don't get. You're saying there's no such thing as evil?”

“No, I'm saying it's the wrong word to use. It's too broad, too easy.”

King took a hit and passed the joint. “How is ‘evil' easy?”

“Because it's not a real thing,” said Prospero. “Think about it. You and I use the word the wrong way. We call our dads evil. We call the sergeants and the cadet trustees evil because of the things they do to us, but are they actually evil?”

King took another deep hit. “Yeah, I'm half-gone, man, so you're going to have to explain that to me. Because they seem pretty goddamn evil to me.”