Assassin's Code (40 page)

“It wouldn’t?”

“Well, I mean a bunch of people would be toast. Worst-case scenario from the five we already know of, including New Orleans, would be maybe fifty million dead from the blasts, maybe two hundred million dead in two to forty years from cancers. That’s nothing matched against the six and three quarter billion who wouldn’t die.”

“That’s ‘nothing’?”

“Try thinking big picture once in a while,” said Hu smugly.

“Are you—”I began, my voice rising.

“Don’t start,” warned Church. “We don’t have the time for it.”

I bit down on the things I wanted to say to Hu, and he was probably grinning at the other end of the phone, thinking that he’d just scored by having me yelled at by the teacher.

“What if the Upierczi stay underground?” asked Church.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “In graves or—”

“In tunnels. We have some intelligence that they live, or at least
lived
, in tunnels.”

“Well,” mused Hu, “rock and dirt are great insulators as long as they aren’t part of a contaminated water table or underground river.”

“In deserts?” I asked.

“Pretty good place to be. Again, though, they’d have to be away from water or, if Rasouli’s intel is right, away from the oil sands.”

“New topic,” I said. “Physiology. The Red Knight I fought was faster and stronger than me. Not just a little, either. What’s the upper range of human potential?”

“Impossible to say,” answered Hu, “because it depends on too many factors. Muscle density, bone density, and overall cellular structure. We keep pushing back the limits for fastest and strongest all the time, and I’m not just talking steroids. Every Olympic Games you have new world records set. There are going to be some extreme limits, of course. Human bones and muscle will never allow someone to bench-press a ton or outrun a sports car, but there is a whole lot of wiggle room; and that’s before we get into gene therapy. Remember the Berserkers from the Jakoby thing. They were big men who received DNA from silverback gorillas. Granted, it caused other mutations and it was a long way from healthy for the subjects, but in the short term those men were much stronger than ordinary humans. Now, if we talk natural mutation in terms of physical potential, that will vary, and we’ve seen average guys who are surprisingly strong and bulky guys who don’t have the strength to open a beer bottle. Like I said, I’d need to cut one of these guys to pin it down.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “What can I use to fight them? Those Sabbatarian freaks had hammers, stakes, holy water, and garlic.”

Hu snorted. “Forget holy water unless the Upierczi actually believe in it.”

“Why would that make a difference?”

“It wouldn’t, except psychologically,” said Church. “They’d fear it or try to evade it, which might open up an opportunity for you.”

“What about the stakes and hammers?”

“I expect,” said Hu, “that would work on anybody. If you don’t have a gun, a big pointed stick is worth a try.”

“And garlic?”

“Hm. Might be something to that. I did a search through the literature, and, though garlic allergies aren’t that common, there is plenty of documentation.”

“Fatal allergies?” I asked hopefully.

“Not usually. Most garlic allergies are a form of contact dermatitis. Chefs get it once in a while when they get garlic oil or dust in a cut. They present with patterns of asymmetrical fissures on the affected fingertips, maybe some thickening and shedding of the outer skin layers. In really rare cases that can progress to second- or even third-degree burns. Actually it’s a component of garlic, the chemical diallyl disulfide, or DADS, along with related compounds allyl propyl disulfide and allicin. You find all three in other plants in the genus Allium, too, like leeks and onions.”

“So what do I do, ask the Red Knights to make me some garlic bread and hope they have an accident with a knife?”

Hu laughed despite himself. “If the Upierczi have a congenital allergy, that could be in our favor. It’d be better if you could get some dust or oil directly into their lungs or bloodstream. That’s probably why the Sabbatarians threw garlic in your face. If you breathed it and you were a Upier, then you might go into anaphylaxis. Then they’d go all Buffy the Vampire Slayer on you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Hu said. “The kicker is that we don’t know if garlic is a genuine allergen to them or if that’s more disinformation. You’re going to have to figure that out on the fly.”

“Swell. Anything else you can tell me?”

“Nothing that isn’t blind speculation. We don’t have the data to do more than speculate.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Church, and he dropped Hu out of the conversation. “Any other thoughts, Captain?”

“Just one. What are the chances that the Iranian government is behind this whole thing? I know Rasouli gave me the flash drive, but I can see how he could be pulling a fast one: planting nukes in Iran and in the States and tipping us off so that we find them.”

“To what end?”

“To whitewash their reputation. They discover a global threat and reach across political and religious differences to join with us in a joint operation that proves to the world that they’re part of the solution and not the core of the problem.”

“Why do so covertly?”

“Because if it goes wrong they can plausibly deny any involvement and probably dump it all on us. After all—we have the original flash drive now, and we have people operating inside their borders without permission. We flub it, they have proof; we don’t flub it and we can both retroactively spin the story that this was all a hush-hush joint operation from the jump.”

“Chasing Hugo Vox is turning you into a cynic, Captain.”

“Hard to stay optimistic with a bunch of nukes ready to pop,” I pointed out.

“I could accept that Rasouli is behind it, but not as an official representative of the Iranian government,” mused Church. “They couldn’t afford to come within a million miles of such a plan. It would do irreparable political harm to the sitting party.”

“What about a move by an opposition party or a dissident group?”

He considered. “It would take enormous resources and would be ultimately self-defeating.”

“Only if they pulled the trigger.”

Church paused a little before he said, “Yes.”

“Do we have an overall game plan yet?”

“If we can we locate the last two devices, then we go for a quarterback blitz.”

“That’ll be interesting.”

“Won’t it, though?”

I closed my eyes and prayed to the gods of war to cut us a break. What Church was suggesting was to have teams move against every target at exactly the same time. It was a strategist’s worst-case scenario because if thousands of years of organized warfare have taught us anything it’s that no major campaign ever goes off exactly according to plan. There are always snafus. And that word came into military parlance as a result. SNAFU. Situation normal all fucked up. Tells you all you need to know.

“And if we don’t locate the other two?” I asked.

“Then we may have to try something riskier.”

“Like taking out the five we know about in order to secure suspects who we can interrogate?”

“Glad to see we’re on the same page.”

“It’s not a good page, Boss. There are a lot of ways that can go wrong too.”

“Yes.”

“And only one way it can go right.”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “I’ll be landing in Kuwait in a bit. Hope to see you there by this time tomorrow.”

I heard the faint
bing-bong
of the doorbell downstairs.

“I think the courier’s here,” I said, and disconnected.

Chapter Seventy

Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park

Tehran, Iran

June 15, 6:52 p.m.

Hugo Vox was bent over the toilet, his stomach heaving and churning with nothing left to expel, when the phone began ringing. His private cell.

He clawed a towel off the bar and wiped his mouth and crawled out of the bathroom to the night table. Walking was an impossibility this soon after the dose kicked in. There was only enough time to drive home and swallow half a dozen aspirin before the first waves hit, and it was worse with each treatment. He joked to Grigor about the fact that the cure was going to kill him before it cured him. Now he wasn’t sure it
was
a joke.

The thick sausages of his swollen fingers were clumsy on the buttons, but he finally hit the right one.

“What?” he demanded.

“Mr. Verrecchia?”

Ah. It was Father Belloq, East Asia regional coordinator for the Sabbatarians. That group knew Vox by his old family name, Verrecchia—a name his grandfather had changed at Ellis Island, but which Vox still used for certain operations. As far as Belloq was concerned, “Luigi Verrecchia” was a devoted and very rich Catholic who was serving God by covertly using a great deal of his wealth to fund the operations of the Inquisition. And that wasn’t all that far from the truth, except in terms of motives. Vox couldn’t care less about the church, or its God, but he found it useful to have a vicious little private army he could aim at his enemies. The Sabbatarians were everywhere, their ranks significantly expanded over the last fifteen years thanks to the millions Vox funneled into their numbered accounts. They were blind fanatics who were convinced they were making serious inroads into the fight against supernatural evil. In point of fact, they had contributed significantly to five of the most lucrative operations of the Seven Kings.

They had no real role in the chaos that Vox was building around the Red Order, the Tariqa, Iranian politics, and the mad plans of the King of Thorns; but that was the point. Vox loved adding random elements. It would drive Church and the DMS up a goddamn wall trying to figure out how the Sabbatarians factored in. Sure, there was the obvious vampire connection, but the Sabbatarians created the
wrong
connection. Chaos was a lovely, lovely thing.

Vox took a breath and adjusted his tone. “Yes, Father. Do you have something to report?”

“We have had a problem, sir.”

“Tell me.”

Belloq told him about the failed ambush of Joe Ledger.

“You lost the whole team?” growled Vox. His anger was only partly contrived. It would not have surprised Vox to hear that Ledger had taken out at least half the team; he knew Ledger was that good. But all of them?

“Every last man is in the arms of Jesus.”

“Please, Father Belloq, this is madness,” said Vox, mopping sweat from his face. His stomach felt like it was ready to explode, but there was nothing left it in. “What could possibly have happened to all those men?”

“There is only one possible explanation,” said the priest with undisguised contempt. “Upierczi.”

Vox faked a gasp and then waited a few seconds for Belloq to appreciate how disturbed he was by this news.

“Surely no single Red Knight could—”

“No, sir. We believe that the Upierczi are out in force. Sir … I’m afraid that the thing we were afraid of is about to happen.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes … it seems certain now that the Upierczi have obtained nuclear weapons.”

Vox didn’t have the energy for a cry of dismay, so he let a protracted silence convey the right amount of shock. When he thought enough time had passed, Vox said, “Are you
positive
?”

“Sir,” said Belloq, “when you know the world of covert operations as well as I do, you understand that very little is certain. We operate on degrees of ‘confidence’ in a thing, and then we are forced to act. If we waited for absolute certainty it would be too late.”

“Yes, yes,” said Vox with feigned distress, “you are right, of course. I don’t understand these things. It’s just that … my God! Bombs? What would vampires want or need with such dreadful weapons?”

He heard Belloq sigh with exasperation. Good. That was the right reaction. He wanted the man to be impatient. Impatience was useful.

“Sir,” said Belloq, “I’ve explained this a dozen times. The Red Order has lost control of the Upierczi. The Kingdom of Shadows is in open revolt and they are about to make war on the world of men. And the human traitors who work for the Upierczi have infiltrated every government, every level of industry and world trade. The launching of bombs will be the first wave … and I believe it will send a signal for a complete takeover of world governments and key industries.”

“You think it will actually come to that? Humans helping monsters to conquer the world?”

“It
is
happening!” insisted the priest. “And we are running out of time. That list your chief of security provided … We need to act on that immediately. We need to cut off the Hydra’s head before we are overwhelmed.”

Vox almost laughed. The phrasing was so trite, so corny. Belloq might be a ruthless killer, but he was also a complete ham-bone. That was also useful.

“The list,” Vox echoed, as if fretting over a dreadful decision. In truth the list was one he had prepared and added to while still in the good graces of Church and the president of the United States. It was his own version of a nuclear bomb, and once used it would do far more damage than the Teller–Ulams hidden throughout the Middle East. That list would blow a hole in the world and leave nothing but chaos behind.

A very, very profitable chaos.

“I’m sorry,” Vox said contritely. “This is all beyond me, and it terrifies me.”

“We’re all scared,” Belloq assured him. “But courage is defined by acting even in the presence of great fear. God needs us to be courageous. God needs us to be the heroes in this battle against the forces of evil.”

Forces of evil.
Vox had to cover the phone while he laughed quietly. He wished he could put that on a business card.

“Tell me what to do,” he said after a moment.

“There is only one thing you
need
do, sir. You need to give me permission to use that list. I promised that we would do nothing without your say-so. Mr. Verrecchia—now is the time. Search your heart, search your faith … Ask yourself what God requires of you.”