The Nephilim (20 page)

“Now Benedict knows about us. Not everything but enough. Too much. He's been spying on us for years. And unfortunately he's been surprisingly successful. He's intercepted emails, stolen documents, broken into files and little by little started finding his way into our business. Somehow he's got around our security. He cracks passwords with shocking ease. He seems to be able to bug our meeting places even before we've decided where to meet. He has broken into some of our most secure facilities and stolen a lot of stuff. And we have no idea how he does half the stuff he does.”

“He knows about your people as well, through what he's stolen from us. And for a few years now he's been trying to get us to contact a few nephilim and let him use their gifts for his own ends. He’s even threatened to expose us if we don't. We've refused of course, and from time to time ended up fighting ongoing skirmishes with him.”

“Mostly he releases little bits of information, enough to embarrass us and make life difficult for a few of our people. But no more than that because he knows we are the only ones who have the information he needs. Likewise we've been making life difficult for him. We may seem like a bunch of museum curators to you but we still have some resources as well that we can use against him. After all, we spend a lot of time and effort covering up the mistakes some of your people make. You can't do that without gaining some skills. And Benedict doesn't want a war. If he tells all, he gets nothing. Nothing except a major headache.”

“Until recently that's been the extent of it. He'd done little except spy on us and try to hunt you down through our channels. We've been hiding the information from him, though apparently not that successfully. Unfortunately he's been getting good at cracking our databases.”

“As time has passed though he's become more desperate. Taking on more and riskier capers to make the millions he needs to live on and feed his ego. Often in countries he wouldn't feel safe in. He's getting older and his enemies are growing in both numbers and strength. His bank accounts keep getting hit. So he needs gold and a refuge. An enormous amount of gold and a refuge that he can buy so well it could never give him up. He's been searching for a key to help him get that for a long time. So when he found Katarinka he must have thought he was in heaven. When she was taken away from him it must have been like being thrown into the pit of hell. He was very angry and he was only too willing to show it.”

“He blamed us of course and acted accordingly. He released a few carefully selected pieces of information. As a result three of our offices had to be shut down and fifteen agents moved and given new names. And of course he took out some of his anger on you. The only reason he stopped was because he learnt that it was the Choir who took Katarinka from him and not us. Even he's not willing to cross them. Not directly anyway. For the same reason he won't reveal whatever he knows of the various libraries and repositories either. Not yet.”

“Now he knows that he doesn't have to fear the Choir's reaction if he did reveal the information he has since they would never operate out of vengeance or cause him harm. But he does fear your people's reaction. If he did reveal it the nephilim would be caught up in this entire mess. What’s more, your people do have powers and there are tens of thousands of you. He's not going to risk crossing the nephilim until he's absolutely certain he's safe from your retaliation.”

“Except that we can't retaliate. The Choir would never allow it,” Garrick responded.

“He doesn't believe that. He's neither nephilim nor Diogenes, and the thought of being prevented from retaliating is beyond him. Especially against whatever he has planned. Besides, if you know anything from the Old Testament it's that the nephilim were considered very bad news. Warriors, giants and generally dangerous people. The entire world had to be destroyed in a flood to remove them from the lands. He does not want to tackle that.”

Maybe she was right. Until he'd been instructed by Cassie as a child he would never have believed it either. That he and those like him had gifts and they could never use them against others. Not even when lives were on the line. The rules were simply too strictly enforced. And as for the Old Testament stuff, he could never understand it. The nephilim weren't monsters, and their gifts were very limited. The truth was simply so different. But still.

“Of course we're still on his hit list. And he knows not only that we have some secret repositories of angelic wisdom but we think he knows their locations. He knows the names of some of our members. He has copies we think, of some of the actual writings. Worst of all, we think he has information, maybe even documents showing when and where we've been forced to act to protect the secret of your existence. He can show the world that Diogenes is not a simple international body concerned with documenting and certifying antiquities. In short he has a smoking gun.”

“The knowledge itself is of course of no use to him. The writings we have are priceless, but ironically that also makes them worthless. People wouldn't believe them. The same is true of much of the knowledge we possess. What we know for a truth, others wouldn't believe. They'd call us mad.”

“However the evidence of how we have obtained that knowledge and what we've done with it is valuable. The evidence of your people's existence is more so since you are the living proof of everything that cannot be revealed. Secrets are his business. Dirty little secrets especially. Finding them out, using them for leverage, and ultimately releasing them. And at some point if and when it suits his purposes, he may well choose to reveal what he knows in some sort of media event. He could take down the Choir, the nephilim and us. He could turn the world into an inferno of religious insanity.”

“Normally he wouldn't risk revealing these things because he fears the Choir would stop him and he believes that your people are even more dangerous to him. He thinks you'll hunt him down and kill him. But he will risk doing it if it suits him. If he can do it quickly enough. Because he knows that once the knowledge is out there, the Choir couldn't stop him any more and they aren't into vengeance. And if he can leave your people in such disarray that you can't come after him then he's safe.”

“So then it becomes a question of whether it suits him. And mostly it wouldn't. A world in chaos is a dangerous world. He could end up stuck in unexpected war zones just like everyone else. After all, many of the countries with no extradition treaties are politically unstable. He could be bankrupted if he puts his money into an unstable country’s bank and the bank goes belly up. His property could be nationalised when countries become desperate for cash. Targeted by thieves if the countries suffer famine. And his playboy life could end in any of a hundred different ways.”

“But if he's already incredibly rich, with his cash based on – say – gold and diamonds, rare works of art and business empires when it happens? If the largest threat he faces isn't a dangerous world but extradition, and a stable world allows for that while an unstable one protects him from it? If he's safe from all his enemies? From the Choir, from the nephilim, from the intelligence agencies? Then releasing the information becomes a strategic move for him. It only becomes a matter of 'when' not 'if'.

“That's his plan. We're certain of it. For him it's about one more job. One final, huge heist that will leave him filthy rich for the last of his days. After that he’ll be looking to release all the information he has so that he incapacitates the Choir, the nephilim, Diogenes and every intelligence agency in the world that could pose him a threat.”

“We think he believes that that time has come. That's why he was so desperate to have the girl. Our sources have told us that the moment he found her he started moving serious money around. Contacting some of his underworld connections. We also expect that he's been trying to bend her will to his so that she will do whatever he wants without question. She is the one thing that will make whatever plan he has for making himself a billionaire possible. And the moment he's done that he'll throw the rest of us to the wolves. After all, what better way could he have for covering his tracks than leaving the entire world in chaos?”

“Chaos?”

That was the Choir's fear, always. Or it was at least one of them. But he'd never been so certain that exposure would cause such mayhem. People were adaptable. They got used to things. Garrick had always imagined that if the secret of their existence got out it would be bad for a while, but not terrible. But while he was sure that the world would survive, he wasn't so certain about the nephilim. Benedict wasn't the only one who would want to use them. And there would be others who would want to study them. Worse, many more would fear them. People feared what they didn't know or understand. And when they were afraid they did bad things. The world wouldn't end but his people might. After all, the gifts they had were mostly minor. Few of them could defend themselves against serious force. And if they could the Choir wouldn't let them use their gifts to do it. The fear of what exposure would do to him and his people was what had always kept him silent. Not the thought that it would destroy the rest of the world.

“If he does it right he could start half a dozen holy wars, destabilise the global economy and reshape geopolitical boundaries. Terrorism would abound. World religions would be in turmoil. Extremists would abound. The intelligence agencies across the world would be sent scrambling for years to come. Too busy with a thousand threats to hunt down one ageing thief.”

“That seems a little much.”

“You keep forgetting how much you know that others don't. How close you are to things that no one else even suspects. Just imagine what would happen if the presence of the Choir was not just known but proven? And with them, the existence of God? There is not a major religion on the planet that wouldn't be desperately trying to claim the Choir and God as their own. And if and when they learned that what they've been preaching for years isn't always right – well wars have been fought for much less. It would all be heresy and lies. And let’s not forget that some of the most religious countries in the world also produce half the world's oil. If they're in turmoil and oil can't be pumped, the world economy would collapse.”

“All the moves to secular political societies and democracies would be undermined. The actual words written would be far less important than the fact that there were words written in the eyes of those who seek power through religion. Doomsday cults would be everywhere preaching the second coming.”

Maybe she had a point; Garrick couldn't be sure. He was never sure about such things. Still, it seemed a long way to go from exposing a few nephilim to the end of the world stuff she was talking about. Then again, he'd lived with the knowledge of the Choir for nearly twenty years. Maybe he was too close.

But he knew there were no answers to be found in worrying about it. It was time to consider the more practical matters – and first on the list was that she had come to him for a reason. “And what do you want me to do about it?”

“What you're good at. Hunt. It's time to put Armando Benedict behind bars and stop him from exposing us.”

And where had he heard that before? Suddenly Garrick could completely believe she had spoken with the Choir. Cassie had also said he should hunt the man, though of course she'd said nothing about worldwide threats or acting on what he found. Only that he should make sure that the rest of his people knew the risk Benedict posed. Nor had she said anything about Diogenes.

“In case you missed it I'm crippled. I can barely hobble around, my arm is a mess, my leg is held together by bits of metal. I'm in no shape to start chasing bank robbers around. To add to that I'm on suspension until this entire mess is cleared up. I have no official power. Plus, I'm being watched by the press twenty four seven. Besides I passed the information about Benedict on to my people. There should be another hunter on his tail.”

He hadn't checked of course if there was. He'd passed on Cassie's warning, but after that he’d had no contact with the town. It had seemed safer that way when he was in the middle of an inter-agency snarl up and probably being monitored.

“There was. Sally Anne. But she had some passport issues that arose unexpectedly. Our guess would be that it wasn't coincidental. I told you, Benedict knows about your people and he certainly knows about the ones that are dangerous to him. Top of the list – hunters. Sally Anne was on his radar and the moment she made a move to fly to America he acted.”

Maybe it shouldn't have come as a surprise that he knew about her. Sally Anne was an excellent hunter, but she had gone private twenty years before. She had tracked down some big criminals for the bounties on their heads and earned some very large rewards. She had made a name for herself. Even in Canada. But there were others in North America even if she was out.