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.
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.
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. It 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.”
“Okay. And you said something about the Nile turning to blood.”
“‘And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thine hand upon the waters of Egypt, upon their streams, upon their rivers, and upon their ponds, and upon all their pools of water, that they may become blood; and that there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood, and in vessels of stone.’ Exodus, chapter seven, verse twelve.”
“That talks about the water itself turning to blood.”
“Metaphor,” she said, holding up a scholarly finger. “Metaphor. If an airborne strain of Ebola escaped and reached mainland England, people would start bleeding out by the tens of thousands. Blood would flow like a river, or as close as you would want to get.”
“Damn,” I said. “What are the other plagues?”
“They vary in type and severity. If the Kings are using weaponized versions of them, we’re not seeing them unfold in the same order. The third and fourth were plagues of gnats and flies. The fifth was a terrible disease that targeted the Egyptians’ livestock. Cattle, oxen, goats, sheep, camels, and horses. The sixth was a plague of boils on the skins of Egyptians. During the seventh plague fiery hail fell from the sky and thunder shook the land. The eighth plague was locusts and the ninth plague was total darkness, so that’s the London Hospital. The tenth was—”
“Whoa, whoa!” I said. “Did you say
locusts
?”
She looked alarmed. “Yes, why?”
“Christ!” I leaned close. “Area 51. Son of a bitch!”
“What do you mean? They use a bomb to destroy—”
“Metaphor, Doc,” I said. “The R and D team out at Area 51 was working on a brand-new stealth fighter-bomber. The craft’s designation was
Locust
FB-119.”
“Locust … ?” Circe’s dark eyes widened. “Oh my God … .”
The Seven Kings
Three and a Half Months Ago
In the days following the “Ritual of Seven” Toys kept to himself. When asked, he said that he was meditating on the mysteries of the Goddess. The others actually accepted that as a valid answer, which both amused and appalled Toys.
The only person on the island that he could bear to be around was the American. All interaction between them had so far been wordless eye contact during Kings meetings. However, on the way to a planning meeting Toys found himself in the elevator with the King of Fear.
The American smiled like a grizzly. “How are you settling in?”
“It’s a bit much at times.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
The American studied Toys for a few seconds, and the genius mind behind the oaf was clearly there in his eyes. “If I were a betting man,” said Fear, “I’d put the whole wad on the fact that your King doesn’t really know the first thing about what goes on in here.” He tapped Toys with a thick finger. Not on Toys’ head, but over his heart.
Toys didn’t dare respond to that. He smiled as the elevator descended into the heart of the island. Then, apparently apropos of nothing, the American said, “You know, some people don’t think that Judas was a traitor.”
Toys blinked at him in surprise. “What—?”
“Some people think he tried to keep Jesus from fucking up a good thing.”
The elevator stopped and the doors opened silently.
Before the King of Fear got off, he turned and said, “Some people need to be saved from themselves. Even Kings and goddesses.” He chuckled. “Funny old world.”
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania
December 19, 9:01 A.M. EST
Whenever her cell phone rang Amber Taylor’s heart spasmed as if she’d been stabbed in the chest. She wished she could have set a special ringtone for him, but there was no way to know which number he would use. Once the man called from Amber’s home. Another time was from her daughter’s cell. When Amber later asked the girl if she had lent her phone to someone else—a stranger or someone she knew—the girl said no, it had been in her school locker all day. That had been one of the worst moments since this whole nightmare began. True to the man’s threats, he and his people seemed to have total access to Amber’s life. Nothing and nowhere was safe. That’s what he had told her that first time.
Nothing and nowhere.
“You and those you love are only safe as long as we allow it.”
“We.” Such a horrible word, filled with dreadful and unlimited potential. Who were “we”? How many of them were there? Would the police even be able to make arrests? Based on what evidence?
You and those you love are only safe as long as we allow it.
Amber Taylor feared her own cell phone. She feared his call. Any call.
If
she dared, she would have thrown the phone into a culvert, let it sink into the muck and filth where it belonged. But she knew that she could never do that. He would never allow it, and the punishments for any infraction of his rules had been clearly outlined to her. The memory of those terrible photographs was always right there behind her eyelids, cued up on her mind’s internal audiovisual projector.
Her cell rang just as she closed the door to her three-year-old BMW and Amber jumped so badly she missed the ignition keyhole and dropped her keys. Amber dug frantically into her purse and found the phone on the third ring. She checked the screen display.
Wolpert
. She sighed in relief and sagged back against the seat. Cathy Wolpert was her best friend and neighbor.
Smiling in anticipation of a manageable crisis—probably something else about the wedding plans for Cathy’s daughter—Amber flipped open the phone.
“Hi, Cathy—”
“Hello, Mrs. Taylor,” said the man with the Spanish accent.
His voice was quiet, polite, but it grabbed her by the throat and throttled the air out of her world.
“Oh, God!”
“Not quite,” said the man. “But close.”
“Are my children all right? God … you didn’t touch them—?”
“Shhh,” he soothed. “Shhh now. Emily and Mark are fine. I can see Emily right now. Such a pretty little face in that tiny school bus. Her new braces are quite nice. She wears them well.”
“Don’t—”
“Isn’t it nice that she doesn’t try to hide them behind her hand when she talks? Not even when she smiles. She’s very self-possessed for her age, don’t you think?”
“Please,” Amber begged. Her voice was already raw, as if she’d been screaming. “Please don’t hurt my babies.”
“Why would I? You haven’t done anything that requires that they be hurt, have you?”
“No!”
“So why would I let anything happen to them? Unless you demand that I act, then none of us will touch a hair on her head. Or Mark’s head. That is our agreement, yes?”
“Yes.” Tears boiled from the corners of Amber’s eyes and fell like acid down her cheeks. “Why are you doing this?”
The man laughed. It was the first time she had heard him laugh, and the sound of it made her cringe. The laugh was unspeakably ugly. Deep and filled with a knowledge and delight so dark that it threatened to burn the light out of the clear morning sky.
“Mrs. Taylor,” he said, “do you know why I am calling you today?”
“Y-yes.”
“You knew that this day would come. I told you that I would make this call.”
“Yes,” she whispered hoarsely. “When?”
“Today,” he said. “Right now.”
“But … my children … I have to—”
“No, Mrs. Taylor, you only have one thing to do. We are watching
your children. We are waiting for you to do what you have promised to do.”
“I need to know that my babies are safe!”
“That’s up to you. If you do this, then I swear to the Goddess and by all of her works that I will not harm them. When this is over for you, it will be over for them. They will live to grow up and grow old and put flowers on your grave.”
“Please don’t make me do this … .”
“Or,” he said softly, “you could spend your remaining years putting flowers on
their
graves. That is … if you could ever find where they were buried.”
Amber tried to shout at him, but her voice broke into splinters of fear and grief and tears.
He hung up, but Amber heard him whisper something as the connection was broken. A single word.
“Delicious …”