Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (10 page)

I focused back on the symbols carved into Norberg’s back.

Unlike Black, I winced. The flesh was pretty torn up. I couldn’t really make out much, but some of what I saw looked vaguely familiar, like maybe I’d seen it somewhere before. It didn’t look seer to me though, at least from what little I’d seen of seer language and symbols.

But really, only Black would know that for sure.

Black walked around the body, telling them to turn it one way and then the other. He also spent some time looking at the corpse’s feet, and then the hands.

“This going through forensics too?” he said. “This mud here?”

Korhonen sniffed again. “Of course. Along with his clothes.” Clearly, whatever good faith Black was granted for his knowledge of medieval weaponry and arcane Bible passages had been revoked.

Black nodded, but barely seemed to hear him.

He made one more circuit of the body, then looked at Nick.

“You saw that some of this is writing, right?”

Nick nodded, pulling out a pad of paper. Frowning, he read it aloud.
“And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.”

“Revelations,” Black said. “Also from a gnostic version of the text. You have detailed drawings of the designs?”

Nick nodded, watching Black warily now, like he was trying to figure out what he was doing, or maybe where he was going with all of this. He glanced at me, but I couldn’t really help him. I didn’t really know what Black was doing either.

I was still blown away that he could quote the Bible.

“You need anything else, doc?” Black said, looking at me.

I shook my head. “No.”

Black nodded, then looked at Nick. “We should talk.” He glanced at Korhonen. “Away from this jackass,” he added, his voice a touch louder.

Korhonen flinched. He opened his mouth then shut it.

He looked at Black like he couldn’t believe what he’d just said.

Sniffing loudly and derisively a few more times, he turned bright red when Black didn’t react, or even so much as glance at him. After another few expressive sniffs, Korhonen walked away from the table altogether. He seemed about to leave the room then must have changed his mind, probably because he realized he would inconvenience us more by staying. He stomped over to the sink standing behind Nick and Black, where he began noisily moving around instruments and stainless steel trays inside the deep basin, clanging and rattling them together as he turned the water on full blast.
 

He was still standing there when he yelled for Dr. Jaipa.

“Anna! This prep area is a mess! This is totally unacceptable!”

She jumped a little, gave Black another quick smile, then hurried over to her boss.

Korhonen’s face was still bright red as he dumped soap on the steel pans.

Nick lifted an eyebrow at Black, but I saw a smile toy at the edge of his lips, almost like he couldn’t help himself.

“Making friends as usual, I see, Black,” he murmured.

Black gave him a level stare, then quirked his own eyebrow.

As if giving in, Nick shook his head, giving a low snort.

Then he jerked his head towards the door, motioning for us to follow him out.

“ALL RIGHT,” NICK said, plunking his weight down in a gray cloth chair and staring across the table at Black. “Let’s hear it. Astound me.”

Nick brought us to a different room to talk than where he and Glen questioned me earlier. This room was a lot smaller, and looked like it used to be someone’s office and now doubled as a storage room. Glancing around the cramped space, I figured he must have chosen it primarily because he didn’t want anyone walking in on us while we talked.

He probably also didn’t want anything we said recorded or overheard.

We’d all grabbed sandwiches and drinks at the deli across the street on our way up, so now the three of us sat at a square folding table tucked in the corner of the room. I’d suggested leaving the police station altogether to go somewhere to eat and talk, but Nick checked his watch and said the two detectives from L.A. were supposed to be there within the hour, so he wanted to be on hand for when they showed.

I strongly got the sense he didn’t want to miss anything when Glen talked to Mozar, especially. Nick could be territorial as hell when it came to his cases.

At the thought, I found myself wondering what Nick planned on telling Glen about this little meeting, if anything.

Or about me and Black at all, when it came down to it.

I took a bite of my roast beef sandwich and immediately felt Black’s eyes on me. Glancing at him, I saw heat there, right before he looked away. I had a sudden memory of him telling me he got off on watching me eat, that that was some kind of “seer” thing too, making associations of that kind. The thought made me flush and look down, although I didn’t stop chewing the roast beef. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so famished.

I can feel it, doc,
he told me quietly.

That heat grew stronger briefly. I felt him consciously pull it back.

I also felt a whisper of something else on him.

Something that felt a lot like frustration.

When I looked at him that time, he wasn’t looking at me at all, but focusing on Nick with narrow eyes.

“The symbols aren’t seer. They’re alchemical.” His voice was blunt, his military voice. If it was a little deeper than usual, I’m relatively sure Nick didn’t notice. Unfortunately, I did. Black gave me another bare glance. “...I’ve seen them before though. That combination, I mean. Specifically like that...”

“Where?” Nick said. He was chewing energetically on his own sandwich, so I guess I wasn’t the only one who was hungry.

That time, when Black glanced at me, his lip curled perceptibly.

He hadn’t touched his own food yet, I couldn’t help noticing.

“If I’m right about the configuration, then you might be right about this guy having been a pro,” Black said, looking at Nick again. “Last time I saw that exact set of symbols was in Vietnam. Elite unit... not American. We thought maybe they were Spetnaz when we first ran into them, borrowed from Russia. But when we finally caught up with one of their units, it turned out they were paid pros. Mercs. Pure private sector.”

Nick blinked at him, chewing on his sandwich as if digesting the stream of information from Black slower than he was managing with his food. He narrowed his eyes as he thought. I could feel him stopping on a few of the different things Black said, as if trying to decide which one to ask about first. Then, something seemed to click.

He looked at me, his dark eyes openly incredulous, then back at Black.

“Vietnam?” he said finally.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“During the war.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed more. “Which war was that?”

“Was there more than one?” Black said, his voice holding a thread of contempt. “Are you asking if I fought with the French, Tanaka? Or maybe the Chinese? Because I’m not quite that old. And I think I would have phrased it differently.”

“The
Vietnam
war.” Nick didn’t voice it like a question that time, more a clarification, but his voice hadn’t lost any of that incredulity. Still frowning when Black didn’t flinch, he pressed the point. “The
American
Vietnam war?”

“Conflict, technically.” The gold eyes didn’t waver. “And yes. Obviously.”

Nick looked at me again, as if he wanted me to back up what Black had said or refute him or maybe just laugh it off with him.

I only shrugged, taking another bite of my sandwich.

I saw Nick try to decide if he wanted to pursue that, too.

“You’re saying this guy was in the Vietnam war?” Nick said.

Black clicked at him impatiently, a very seer sound that made Nick stare at him all over again. I was a little baffled at how much Black was “sharing” right now too, frankly, but maybe once you were in on the big secret, you became privy to all of the little ones, too.

“No,” Black said, impatient. “I’m saying
I
ran into this merc group over there. I’m saying he might belong to the same group. Assuming they’re still in operation. Or he might have been trained by someone who was.”

“And you’re sure it was a private group? Back then?”

“Yes,” Black said, still speaking in that more clipped way of his. He inclined his head. “Truthfully, it was the first modern, fully-equipped private security outfit I ever ran into.” He glanced at me, a faint thread of embarrassment in his eyes, before looking more sharply at Nick. “...It wouldn’t be a stretch to say it inspired me to start something similar. With a slightly less...” He made one of those graceful gestures of his.
“...mercenary
approach.”

Nick grunted, making it clear what he thought of that.

“Where were they based out of?” he said.

“I don’t know for sure.”

“But you know something about their ops? You looked into it, right?”

Nick had adopted Black’s military-report manner of speech, I noticed. I could practically see them circling one another, as if trying to figure out how to work with one another. Or maybe how to beat each other up, I couldn’t honestly tell.

Black answered in the same flat tone.

“Intel showed the main offices in Mexico City. Back then, anyway.”

“How good was the intel?”

“Unknown,” Black said, gesturing in another graceful turn of his wrist. “I looked them up again, for a different job. Eighty-four. March, I think.”

Nick blinked, but seemed to decide to let that go. “So you’re saying this guy isn’t American? The Templar? He’s an immigrant?”

Black gestured fluidly, that time in a
no.
“I’m not saying that. He could absolutely be American. The group recruited from all over. International. I only ran into them directly the one time... although there have been times since where I suspected their involvement in jobs I was on.”

“When was that?”

“Last one was eighty-four. Like I said.”

“What made you suspect their involvement that time?” Nick said. “More alchemical symbols carved in corpses?”

Black shrugged with one hand, his eyes unmoving.

“And how directly were you involved with them in Vietnam?” Nick pressed.

“Direct,” Black said, his level stare unmoving. “We made contact.”

“As in, you talked to them? Or shot at them?”

“As in, I shot at them, they shot at me, we talked... then they tried to recruit me,” Black said, folding his hands on the table.

Nick made another of his dark humor grunts, but I could tell he was annoyed.

He hated everything about what Black did for a living. I knew that had less to do with Black personally and more to do with similar outfits we’d run into in the Middle East, most of which were under contract with the Pentagon, like Black’s company often was.

They usually brought those guys in for “enhanced interrogations” (torture) and “wet-work” (murder), so it wasn’t that surprising that Nick didn’t think much of people in that line of work. Nick was a soldier, but one who probably should have been born a few decades earlier. He didn’t care for people that colored outside the lines, not even when they worked for our side.