He nodded weakly. “I wrote an account of it. Of everything. It’s on my laptop, in the documents section. My password is
grásta
.’ With an accent over the first
a
. It’s hidden in a folder called ‘Christmas List.’”
“What’s
grásta
mean?”
“My family’s Irish. That’s Gaelic,” he said. “For ‘mercy.’”
I stood and stretched out my left hand. “Give me the beaker.”
He smiled and looked at the swirling brown mixture with the red veins. “It’s not what I said it was,” he said. “It’s just coffee and Tabasco sauce.”
He handed it to me. I still took it carefully and set it on the desk.
“Mercy,” I said.
“Grásta. But I don’t deserve it.” He buried his face in his hands. I could hear him saying the names of his wife and son over and over again.
Mercy.
I’m no saint. Furthest thing from it. But I can at least grant a little mercy.
I raised my gun and put the laser sight on him.
Aboard the
Delta of Venus
The St. Lawrence River
Four Months Ago
Sebastian Gault lay with his head on Eris’s naked breast as the stars wheeled overhead. The boat rocked gently under them, dark water slapping against the hull. Far away on Crown Island, cicadas and crickets
made the darkness pulse with life. Fireflies were pinpricks of light as they flitted among the tall grasses on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.
“I’m glad you accepted our offer, lovely boy,” Eris murmured.
“You knew I would,” said Gault. “It feels a little surreal, though. Kings and thrones.”
She laughed, deep and throaty. “It
is
surreal. We’re remaking the world into what we want it to be.”
“I hadn’t expected you to be the driving force for this thing.”
“Oh … you know, ‘behind every great man is a—”
“totally psycho power-hungry bitch?”
“Exactly.”
“And sonny boy is fine with that?”
“He’s less devoted to the Goddess than his fellow Kings, but he’ll do his part.”
“What about the others? Are they all still in your corner?”
“They are,” she said as she ran her fingernails down his chest and over his hard stomach. “I have a special relationship with each of the Kings.”
“God, please don’t tell me that you and your son are—”
“No.” She laughed. “Just the other Kings. I’m corrupt, lovely boy, but not tacky.”
“Thank god for small mercies.”
“Thank ‘Goddess,’” she corrected.
“Ah, yes.”
They lay together and watched as several meteors burned their way through the blackness. Minutes drifted past them on the current of the night.
“Sebastian … ?”
“Mm?”
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
“Who?”
“Amirah. Your pretty little Iraqi mad scientist. You really loved her, didn’t you?”
He closed his eyes, shutting out even the simple beauty of the star field above. “Love is a quicksand pit.”
“You’re being evasive.”
“Did I love her? Yes. Deeply, and despite the fact that she was married to another man, and despite the fact that I had several times planned to kill
her, and despite the fact that she betrayed me and tried to kill me, I loved her to the end.” He made a low, feral sound and a shudder passed through his whole body. “I still do, and I wish I could take a scalpel and carve that emotion out of my body. I’m not joking, Eris … . If I could actually cut it out, I would.”
“Is that what your plan is? The course of action you proposed to the Kings—is that the scalpel you want to use?”
He sat up and looked down at her. It was so dark that she was merely a paleness woven into the fabric of shadows.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Eris propped herself on one elbow. “Oh, don’t take offense, Sebastian. You can’t possibly be dense enough to believe that you’re not damaged goods. We all are or we wouldn’t be the people we’ve become. You are one of the greatest pharmaceutical researchers on the planet, a self-made rags-to-riches billionaire, and yet you’ve spent most of your adult life covertly funding terrorist organizations and creating exotic diseases just so you could be the first to bring treatments to market. You’re a thoroughly corrupt mass murderer. You paid to have a certifiably insane molecular biologist design a pathogen that could easily—easily—have caused a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. If it wasn’t for Joe Ledger and the DMS, this whole world would look like a sequel to
Night of the Living Dead
. And now you have been brought into a secret society, a group that has asked you to help them destabilize the economies of the global superpowers by any means necessary. You are all those things, lovely boy, and yet when you spoke tonight about what you would be willing to do as part of the Seven Kings there wasn’t a flicker of greed in your voice. There wasn’t ego or megalomania. What I heard was a person in pain who wanted to stop hurting.”
“How do you know what I said or how I said it, damn it? You weren’t even there.”
She laughed. “I’m
always
there, Sebastian.”
Gault said nothing.
“And you, lovely boy, are still being evasive. Surely you have the balls to admit the nature of your motivations. Or should I go looking for them?” Her fingers brushed his upper thigh and he batted them irritably away.
“What do you want from me?” he snapped.
“Only the truth,” she said. “That’s the only thing that matters between us. Between the Seven Kings, their Consciences, and their Goddess. No lies, no secrets.”
The wheel of night turned and turned above them before Gault could bring himself to speak, and when he did there were ghosts in his voice.
“I … died,” he said. “When Amirah betrayed me, when it all crashed down … I died. I could feel it inside. It was like a poison had taken hold of me. You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes? It does. I saw everything that I had done; I saw all the versions of myself. The child, the lad, the young entrepreneur, the man. I saw myself expand into a captain of industry. I saw the specific moments of my own corruption. My first dirty deal. I saw the faces of the people who were dead because I wanted them dead. I saw the friends betrayed and cast aside. And I saw Amirah’s face—beautiful before her betrayal and beautiful and monstrous after. I saw the monster that lived within me. I felt the humanity in me die, Eris. I felt it go and …”
His fingers closed around hers and she squeezed back.
“ … and I was glad.
God,
I was so glad to be rid of it. It was a tumor, a canker.” His voice was a reptilian hiss.
“Sebastian … my lovely boy …” Eris bent toward him, finding his face in the dark. She kissed his eyes, his cheeks, his lips, and as he spoke his cold words were breathed into her hot mouth.
“All that remains is the monster,” he said.
Eris took him in her arms and held him. Tears flowed like hot mercury from her eyes and splashed on his shoulder.
“This is so beautiful, my sweet,” she said. “This is what Caesar knew when he realized that he was more than man. This is what the pharaohs knew, and the first emperor of China. To be a King—a true king—is to be greater than a man.” She showered his face with a thousand quick kisses. “You’ve ascended. You’ve
become
. Anything and anyone to whom you were attached before this moment is gone. You don’t
need
them anymore. You are a King, a true king of this world, and you will be a god in the next.”
They clung together in the darkness of their own passion.
BELOWDECKS, IN A cabin that was spacious, luxurious, private, but not as soundproof as its designers intended, Toys, the Conscience to the King of Plagues, sat on a bunk, his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around his shins, fingers interlaced, head leaning against the hull. The cabin was as dark and desolate as his heart.
He had listened to the sounds of Sebastian and Eris making love, and it had amused him, even aroused him. Then he had listened to their whispered conversation.
All that remains is the monster.
Toys stared at the darkness in his cabin, but what he saw was a deeper and greater darkness within. He looked at his own hands. They were bloodstained, too; he knew that. Since he had become Gault’s personal assistant and closest confidant, he had charred his own soul with unnumbered crimes. His Catholic guilt had been nicely off-line for years now, surfacing only long enough to compel him to light a candle two or three times a year for all of the lives he had helped to destroy. His comfort and solace had been that over the last two thousand years the Catholic Church itself had done far worse, even without counting the excesses of the Inquisition.
But this …
Somehow this felt beyond that, maybe beyond redemption.
And the irony was that the catalyst to these dark thoughts had been the word, the label that the Kings used for people such as him.
“Conscience.”
Was there ever a crueler word?
The boat rocked gently, creaking as boats will. Far away a buoy clanged to mark the channel passage. His interlaced fingers pressed together so tightly that pain pulsed in every joint and sent fire flashes along his arms. The pain was the only thing that kept him from screaming.
All that remains is the monster.
“God,” he whispered as the first tears fell from his eyes.
Fair Isle Research Endeavor
The Hot Room
December 18, 3:14 P.M. GMT
I stood in front of the fish tank, my pistol down at my side. The marshmallow people inside stared at me through the surgical tape slits. I couldn’t see their eyes, but they could see mine.
I used my free hand to press the button for the intercom.
“Listen to me,” I said. “You know what Dr. Grey did. You know he’s dead.”
A few of them nodded. Most stood as still as statues.
“He had an accomplice. Someone sabotaged the security systems and bypassed the vent controls. The plan was to release the airborne Ebola to the atmosphere. That means that one of you in there is in on this.”
They cut sharp looks at each other, many of them taking involuntary steps back from whoever was nearest, and often colliding. There was a buzz of voices.
I leaned into the wall mike.
“Shut the fuck up.”
They froze and stared at me.
“I’m talking now to the person who sabotaged the systems. If you are not a terrorist … if you were coerced into this, then you have one chance. Identify yourself and provide any help and information you can and I promise that any threats made against you or your family will be dealt with. If someone threatened to harm members of your family, let us know now so that we can send teams to take them into protective custody. This is bigger than local police; this is bigger than any one government organization. This is connected with what happened yesterday at the London. That means this is international terrorism of the worst kind. There are no limits to what we will do to protect you and your family if—and only if—you step forward and cooperate with us right now.”
I stepped back. They looked at each other. Probably friends reaching out voicelessly to each other, hoping to see innocence in familiar eyes and be judged innocent in turn. Or maybe looking for traces of guilt.
“All lines of communication to this island have been cut,” I said. “That
means that no word of what’s happening here will get out. If you’ve been told that harm will come to your loved ones unless the pathogen is released or the news hits the airwaves, then you need to speak up now. We can have teams anywhere in less than fifteen minutes. And all teams will be monitored, so even if there is a spy in the network he won’t be able to act before he can be stopped.”
No one said anything.
I edged closer and tapped the glass with my gun.
“I’m having a really bad day, folks … so believe me when I tell you that if you don’t come forward and we find out who you are—and we will find out—then your day is going to make mine look like a Disney flick. Tick-tock.”
Nothing.
“Okay. That’s your call. Bear in mind, this isn’t U.S. soil and this facility does not officially exist. Anyone involved in this is hereby designated as an enemy combatant. You are about to disappear into the system and you will never resurface. There will be no one left to speak for your family.”
I started to turn away.
“Wait!”
The crowd inside the fish tank stepped back from one figure. It was a large man near the back.
“Please!” he said urgently. “They said they’d kill my mother and my sisters. They … they showed me pictures of what they’d do. Can you help them?”
I stepped close to the glass. “What’s your name?”
“Chip Scofield, building maintenance. God, please tell me you can help them. They said that if the rivers didn’t run red with blood, then the blood of my family would run like a river.” His voice was rising to a hysterical pitch. “Oh, God—get them out!”
“Calm down, Chip. You’re doing the right thing. Can you tell me anything about them? Can you tell me anything about the Seven Kings?”
“Yeah. The Spanish guy who—”
Suddenly two shots rang out and Scofield was slammed forward against the glass with such force that blood shot all the way to the ceiling and splashed the glass for a dozen yards to either side. I heard him grunt in
surprise with his last truncated breath. Everyone screamed and lunged away from a slender figure who stood with her back to the far wall.
It was the woman who had pointed the way to Dr. Grey, and she held a .32 automatic in her gloved hand.
She fired two more shots. Right at me. The glass of the fish tank spider-webbed, but I was already diving for the floor. Another two shots and the whole front of the tank exploded outward, throwing huge chunks of reinforced glass into the Hot Room. As I rolled sideways there was a fifth shot. I came up into a shooter’s crouch, my gun out in front of me in a two-handed grip, but when I put the laser sight on the spot where the woman had been standing it illuminated the center of a fresh splash of dark red. The woman slid slowly down the wall, her hand falling away from where she had placed the barrel beneath her chin. The wall behind where she had stood was splashed with blood, brains, and bits of bone.
The screams from the other staff were shrill and unrelenting.
I held my ground, fanning the gun back and forth, looking for another target, but I knew it was over. I’d had a single chance at this, and now it was gone.
The Seven Kings
Four Months Ago
Gault and Toys returned to their separate apartments before dawn, but almost immediately Gault rapped on Toys’ door and came sweeping in, glowing with energy.
“This is bloody marvelous!” he said.
“Marvelous,” Toys agreed without inflection. “Drink?”
“Martini,” Gault said, and Toys mixed them. “God, I can’t wait to read Kirov’s notes and see what they’ve been doing. A terror campaign based on the Ten Plagues? It’s brilliant.”
“You’re praising a terror campaign, Sebastian.” Toys jiggled the pitcher. “Maybe you need a double.”
Gault laughed and accepted a glass. “Let’s drink a toast.”
Toys gave an unenthusiastic grunt.
“What’s with you? You seemed pretty effing eager back in the Chamber.”
“Did I? Mm. Maybe I was caught up in the moment,” Toys said. “I thought you were, too.”
Gault snorted. “This isn’t just a ‘moment,’ Toys. This is our life now. Why is that so hard to grasp?”
“Sebastian, we’ve been on the run for months. You were betrayed and nearly killed. After all these weeks of surgery and pain, you should be careful. Take things slow.”
“Oh, sod that. This situation is tailor-made for me.”
Toys noticed that Gault had changed his reference from “us” to “me.” It confirmed his fears. “Tailor-made? Really? Sebastian, we narrowly—
narrowly—
avoided being killed during your last ‘can’t fail’ master plan.” He paused and took a breath. “Look, we have money, and we still have youth and strength. We don’t need this. Let’s face it, we are not cut out to be evil geniuses. We never were. Let’s take the money and bloody well run.”
“Not a chance. We already ran. Now we’ve arrived.”
“Christ.” Toys flapped an arm. “And of course the fact that there’s a woman involved has
nothing
to do with your wanting to stay. You already have that look in your eyes.”
“What look?” Gault’s voice was suddenly cool.
“You know what I mean.”
“No, why don’t you tell me?”
Toys sighed. “Don’t start a fight, Sebastian. It’s just that when there’s a woman involved you—”
“I what?” interrupted Gault sharply. He slapped down his martini glass hard enough to slosh the contents onto the wet bar and crossed the room to stand uncomfortably close to Toys. “I
what,
Toys? Are you saying that if I become interested in a woman I lose control? Or perspective?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what
are
you saying? You’re comparing the Goddess to Amirah and—”
“Whoa, Sebastian, let’s have a little effing perspective. We’re not in the Chamber now and Eris is not a goddess.”
“Perspective?” Gault murmured. He edged closer still, so that his breath was hot on Toys’ face. “Yes, let’s both have a perspective check. When things went wrong in Afghanistan I had a moment of weakness. I won’t deny it, Toys, and I needed you. I really did.”
“Yes,” Toys said in a hoarse whisper.
“But … what happened when I called out for your help? Do you remember?”
“Sebastian, I—”
“
Do you fucking remember?
” Gault snarled.
Toys tried to meet Gault’s fierce glare, but he felt his own eyes growing moist and weak. He turned his face away.
“You slapped me, Toys. I was in pain, I was desperate and your response was to attack me.”
“It wasn’t an attack, Sebastian, and you damn well know it. You were sinking and I needed to snap you out of it.” Toys suddenly threw his drink against the wall and wheeled on Gault, his own anger finally rising. “If I hadn’t, then that fucking whore Amirah would have released a doomsday plague.
A doomsday plague.
How can you of all people not grasp what that means? If you want a perspective check, then embrace that for a moment. Christ, you’re lucky I didn’t put a bullet into you right there and then, because I bloody warned you about her. I warned you over and over that she couldn’t be trusted, and each time you ignored me.”
“She was my—”
“What? Your ‘lover’? Get a sodding grip, Sebastian! She was playing you. She played you all the way and then she turned into a goddamn zombie and tried to
eat
you. I mean … how thick are you that you can’t see that you were wrong?” He jabbed Gault in the chest with the tip of his finger. Gault flinched but held his ground. “Or have you become so bitter and arrogant that you can’t admit that you made a misstep? You want to get mad at me for hitting you? Go ahead!”
“I’m warning you, Toys—”
“No! You don’t warn me.” Toys jabbed his finger again, much harder this time. “If we’re going to be part of this bullshit, then while you go and play King I’ll be the Conscience I’m
supposed
to be. If there are no lies and no secrets in this absurd secret bloody society, then let that start right here and now. I love you, Sebastian. Like a brother. More than a brother, but I will not take your shit. Not now, and not ever. And I will not let you make another mistake.”
Gault looked down at the finger that was still pressed into his chest right above his heart. He slowly, gently reached up and pushed it away.
“Listen to me, Toys,” he said softly. “Don’t think I’m unaware and ungrateful for what you’ve done for me over the years. You’ve been closer to me than family. You are my family. I’ve never had secrets from you. But don’t forget who you were before I found you. A minimum-wage laborer in one of my plants. I was the one who saw something special in you, the potential. I paid for your education; I put you in that posh flat; I let you buy whatever you wanted.”
“And I earned those things a thousand times over.”
Gault gave a single stubborn shake of his head. “When I found you, you were
nothing.
”
“Maybe,” hissed Toys, “but a few months ago this ‘nothing’ kept you from destroying ‘everything,’ so don’t be all high-and-mighty with me.”
Gault’s mouth opened and closed. He turned and began striding away, but within a few steps he slowed and stopped. His rigid shoulders slumped, and in a gentler voice he said, “The world has changed, Toys. It started when Amirah betrayed me. I feel … I feel like the fires that burned my flesh also burned away something else.” He turned. “It burned away my weakness, my doubt. I can look back at the Seif Al Din project and I can see where I went wrong, just as I can see how I would do it all differently. Life usually doesn’t give you a chance to start over, to do it the right way … and yet here we are. Not only is this a second chance; it’s a chance at something greater, grander, than anything we imagined. All of those wild, mad dreams we had, they’re nothing compared to this. We passed through fire, Toys—you and me—and we emerged as changed beings. Purified. No longer ordinary men. The universe has opened the door to greatness. Don’t you understand? To greatness.”
The moment held and stretched.
Toys wiped tears from his eyes. “Is this what you want, Sebastian?” he asked quietly. “Look me in the eye and tell me, brother to brother, that this—the Seven Kings, the path to domination, all this death and destruction—is what you truly want.”
Gault crossed the room and placed his hands on Toys’ cheeks, framing his face. He bent and kissed Toys on the forehead. Gault’s eyes burned like candles.
“Yes,” he said. “This isn’t just what I want, Toys. This is what I will
have
.”
Toys searched Gault’s face, looked deep into his friend’s eyes. He shivered. If eyes were the windows of the soul, then …
God save my soul,
he thought.
“Okay,” he said softly. “Okay.”
The Seven Kings
Four Months Ago
The American sipped his whiskey as he watched the replay of the argument between Toys and Sebastian Gault. It was the fourth time he had viewed it. During each viewing he focused on a different aspect of the spat. This last time he had zoomed in to watch the expressions on Toys’ face. He found them very interesting.
He swirled the whiskey, enjoying the tinkle of ice cubes.
“Okay,” said Toys. “Okay.”
The American played that back with the sound up, listening for subtleties of intent and meaning in the young Englishman’s voice.
The King of Fear smiled.