The Nameless Dead (24 page)

T
he Soul Collector leveled the Kalashnikov at the bearded man. ‘Don’t even think about it, Apollyon.’

He had been stretching for the pistol in front of him, but instead straightened up and stared at the blonde woman. ‘Who are you?’ He turned to the motionless body on the arms of the inverted cross. ‘Why did you kill my…kill my sister?’

I wasn’t sure if Sara had recognized me. I hadn’t seen her look in my direction once. Maybe if he went for a weapon…

‘I killed her because I know what your sister, known in the business as Abaddon, was capable of,’ she said, pointing the pistol at me. ‘Keep still, Matt. I’ve got two eyes, remember?’

‘Wait a minute,’ Apollyon said. ‘You know the business? Who the fuck…’ He broke off, his jaw dropping. ‘It can’t be. You’re the Soul Collector.’ He looked like he’d just eaten a large piece of bad seafood.

Sara nodded. ‘I’m glad to see my latest facial reshaping passed muster. Right, then. I don’t care why you tried to take me out in Pittsburgh—I’m guessing you
were pissed off I was getting all the best jobs—but you had your chance and you blew it. Personally, I’d have waited till my target was stationary, though I suppose the shot was tempting. You want to tell me what was going on here before I interrupted?’

The man called Apollyon—the name made me think of
Pilgrim’s Progress,
but it was a long time since I’d read that turgid text—confirmed what I’d worked out from the copy of the Antigospel I’d read: that he and his sister were the rightful heirs to the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant, and that he and his companions had taken the places of members, now dead, who had been loyal to the new Master. I glanced at Rothmann, who was sitting with his knees tight together, his eyes fixed on Sara. He didn’t seem to know her.

‘What was your sister doing outside the compound?’ Sara asked.

Apollyon gave a hollow laugh. ‘She was hired to blow away this piece of shit.’ He glanced at Rothmann. ‘We thought that was pretty funny, considering I was going to fuck him up at the rite, but she took the job anyway. That way, we got two bites at his cherry.’

‘I saw her in Maine,’ Sara said. ‘What was she doing there?’

‘She was told to sit on that guy’s ass,’ he replied, angling his head toward me. ‘Matthew John Wells. He’s one of the Kraut’s zombies. The idea was he would lead her to him, which he more or less did.’

‘More or less,’ the Soul Collector repeated, turning to me. ‘Whose side are you on here, Matt?’

I held her gaze. ‘Nobody’s, least of all yours.’

She laughed. It wasn’t a sound that boded well, either for me or anyone else in the barn. ‘Who’s your friend?’
She waved the pistol at Quincy. ‘And don’t pretend he’s a stranger. I saw him with you in Portland.’

So she’d been on us from the beginning. I wondered how, but that wasn’t important. Quincy had started to speak for himself. He rattled off his name, rank and unit.

‘Very impressive,’ Sara said, glancing at the bearded man. ‘Your church got a policy about black people? And how about you, Heinz Rothmann?’ She turned to the Master. ‘Nazis view blacks as animals, don’t they?’

Neither of them answered, which was a bad idea. The Soul Collector stepped toward Rothmann and stuck the muzzle of her Glock into his forehead.

‘All right,’ he said, his voice uneven. ‘Blacks are subhumans. What do you care?’

She leaned toward him. ‘I’m a professional killer. I don’t have time for politics.’

‘This isn’t just politics, darlin’,’ Apollyon drawled. ‘You’re in the South now.’

Quincy used the distraction to spring forward, his arms outstretched and clutching at Sara. Her eyes flicked round and she loosed off two shots. He collapsed with a crash and didn’t move again. I moved toward him, and then a rattle of automatic fire started from the side wall. Sara went down like a felled tree. I put my arms round my head.

After the shooting stopped, I looked up cautiously. There was no sign of the bearded man or of Rothmann. I crawled over to Quincy and laid hands on him. His chest was a slick of crimson.

‘Leave him, Matt.’

Sara was sitting on the floor, the pistol pointed at me. She didn’t seem to have been hit, but she was
stretching her back and frowning. She got to her feet awkwardly.

‘Move,’ she said. ‘You’re coming with me.’ She went over to the woman she’d called Abaddon and pulled the rucksack off her.

I glared at her, my hands wet with Quincy’s blood. ‘Fuck you, you murdering bitch.’

She smiled weakly. ‘Good spirit, Matt. You’ll be needing that. Now move.’

I followed her to the door and down the passage to the exit. I heard the roar of an engine, then a pickup careered out of the compound. Farther away, there was the sound of another vehicle.

‘Apollyon must have left a friend outside,’ Sara said, looking around. ‘Looks clear. Come on, we’ll take whatever we can.’

We went toward the gate, where there were several vehicles. The first, a large SUV, had two flat tires. The second was a small sedan. Sara told me to drive. Neither of us spoke. I was still smarting from her casual execution of Quincy, the poor bastard. I’d liked him and could have done with him watching my back.

After about a quarter of an hour on a narrow track through the dark forest, she stopped me at a clearing. There was a bulky SUV behind some bushes. This time, she got in the driver’s door, after guiding me to the other side.

‘Put out your hands,’ she ordered, raising the Glock.

I did so with a display of reluctance, and she quickly tied my wrists together with high quality rope.

‘Why don’t you just kill me?’ I asked, finally finding my tongue.

She smiled. ‘Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for that later. Right now, I’ve got a job to complete.’

‘What’s that? Putting a bullet in your competitor Apollyon’s head?’

‘That’s not a job, that’s pleasure.’ She was pressing the switches on what looked like a location monitor. ‘There we are.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘Wherever they go, we’ll be on them.’

‘You bugged him?’

‘More correctly, I bugged the vehicle that brought you here.

‘How did you know Apollyon would take it?’

‘I disabled as many of the others as I could. I didn’t know he was going to be here, but I always make contingency plans.’

There was something weird going on that I couldn’t put my finger on. ‘Who did you think would use that vehicle?’

She laughed. ‘Did the crazy ritual do something to your brain, Matt? Who do you think? Abaddon wasn’t the only assassin with a contract to execute Jack Thomson, aka Heinz Rothmann. I’ve got one, too.’

I wondered if I’d stay alive long enough to see the fucker who’d destroyed my family get his come uppance.

Sir Andrew Frogget was enjoying himself. Not only had his Washington lawyers warned the FBI off, but he had passed an extremely successful day at Routh Limited’s U.S. office. The morning was taken up with new business. The hedge funds with the closest links to the American political establishment all maintained personnel in D.C., and most had shown interest in the portfolio of recent start-ups that he had brought. Already, he had commitments for almost sixty percent of the
funding required. On his return to London, he would pass the rest over to the experts, but he always liked to break the back of the work himself; he had learned in the army that commanders must undertake more than their share of the spadework.

That wasn’t all the army had taught him. He thought back to the Gulf War in 1991, remembering the desert road filled with burnt-out vehicles and charred bodies. It was then that he had realized not only the U.S.’s over whelming power, but the ruthlessness that came with it. He had engineered a transfer to Washington as military attaché and begun to build up the contacts he was still using. Many of them were involved in military operations, of course. The original directors of Routh, a collection of narrow-minded pencil pushers, had been dubious about the ethical side of such investments, but he had replaced them with people who shared his view that economic prosperity was rooted in superior firepower. The war to expel Saddam Hussein and its aftermath had illustrated the truth of that perfectly, even if the victors were less competent at rebuilding society than defeating a hostile regime.

Sir Andrew looked at his watch. His lady wife would be expecting him to call, but he wasn’t going to do that. Annabel had become tiresome about his frequent foreign trips and wanted constant reassurance that all was well. He had other things on his mind, not least the progress he had made in his afternoon meetings. Even though Jack Thomson, the founder of Woodbridge Holdings, had disappeared after the massacre in the cathedral, Routh Limited had not given up on him. Some of the backers had expressed concern, but almost all were still on board, and he was convinced the others
would come round. That was worth another glass of vintage Dom Pérignon.

He had just poured it when the doorbell rang. One of his local friends had loaned him his apartment in Adams Morgan for the evening, asking no questions—which was just as well. The girl who appeared on the screen by the door looked even younger than her handler said she was. Frogget’s throat was dry, despite its recent lubrication by the champagne, and his heart was beating as it had done when he had led night raids into Iraq.

He slid off the chain and opened the door.

‘Hello, my dear.’

The girl gazed up at him, eyes wary above cheeks inexpertly daubed with rouge.

‘Come in. Have you ever had champagne?’

She batted her eyelashes at him and then took out the gum she had been chewing. ‘Where shall I put this?’

Sir Andrew extended a hand to receive the sticky pink mass. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said, the nerves in his hand tingling as if he’d grasped a live wire.

The girl sat down on the sofa, her thin legs apart, and gazed at him impassively.

When the door was broken down ten minutes later, the knight of the realm was naked, as was his companion. Peter Sebastian and Arthur Bimsdale didn’t bother to conceal their disgust.

‘How can you be sure Apollyon took Rothmann with him?’ I asked as Sara drove down the deserted country road, her eye flicking on and off the location monitor. ‘He could easily have killed him in the forest.’

‘I killed his sister. He’s using Rothmann as bait to lure me out.’

‘So let him go.’

‘I can’t do that. I have a reputation to maintain.’ She glanced at me. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of time for me to deal with you later. You’re not one of Rothmann’s pathetic devil-worshippers, are you?’

‘Your sister was into Satanism.’

That wasn’t such a smart thing to say. She gave me an armor-piercing look.

‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you did to Lauren,’ she said, her voice full of menace. ‘But she was my
half
sister, while my brother was the real thing.’

‘Who called himself the White Devil,’ I said, deciding I had nothing to lose. ‘And you call yourself the Soul Collector. You’re the pathetic devil worshippers, not me.’

There was a thud as she hit a raccoon that suddenly loomed up in the headlights.

‘I don’t worship anyone, Matt,’ Sara said, licking her lips as if there was blood on them. ‘I just terminate people for money.’

‘And gratification,’ I added, trying unsuccessfully to work some give into the rope on my wrists.

‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘Not anymore. The excitement’s worn off.’ She looked at me. ‘Though in your case…’

I turned to the front. She had become even more frightening since I’d last seen her—stony and pale-faced, like a devil sickening on sin.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Sara said, with false excitement. ‘You must have become a father again. Boy or girl?’

The words hit me like a sledgehammer. Bottling up the deaths of Karen and our son had been bad enough, but the idea of talking to my ex-lover about them was agonizing.

‘Come on,’ she said, blinking as if a large insect had just bitten her, ‘do tell.’

‘They’re dead.’

She hit the brake and the heavy vehicle screeched to a halt. ‘What did you say?’

I lowered my head. ‘You heard me.’

‘For God’s sake, what happened?’

I tried to keep silent, but I couldn’t. ‘Karen…she had to have an emergency Cesarean. They…neither of them made it.’ My eyes were damp, but I was determined I wouldn’t cry in front of Sara. ‘They think…you see, Karen and I were both…brainwashed by Rothmann and his sister. They think the drugs may have been behind what happened.’

Sara sat motionless, her hands on the wheel.

‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ she said, after a time. ‘I really am. Nobody deserves that.’

‘You fucking hypocrite. You’re going to kill me.’

‘I meant I’m sorry about Karen and the kid.’ She paused. ‘What was it, the child?’

‘A…a boy.’ I tried to remember the name we had chosen for him, but it was still gone.

She looked at me. ‘You’re going after Rothmann, too, aren’t you? They let you out of…wherever…to track the fucker down.’

I nodded, keeping my eyes off her. I felt sick. Telling my ex-lover about Karen and our son seemed the worst kind of betrayal, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself.

The Soul Collector slid the stick back into Drive
and moved forward, checking the monitor. ‘Well, we’d better make sure our target doesn’t get too far ahead,’ she said, with what might once have been tenderness.

I didn’t know what to think. Working with Sara meant that Rothmann had no chance of escaping, no matter how deadly the man who had taken him was. But she had killed Quincy without an iota of compunction. After she’d dispatched Rothmann, she would treat me in exactly the same way.

At least that would send me down the shadowy road to join my named and nameless dead.

T
he Master, whose wrists had been bound with rusty wire, watched the driver out of the corner of his eye. The bearded man was handling the pickup with relaxed movements, his eyes glinting in the light from the dashboard. There was a curious smell in the cab, something organic but decidedly unhealthy.

‘Where are you taking me?’

Apollyon glanced at him. ‘Need to know basis only. Don’t worry, you’ll be going to meet Lord Lucifer soon enough.’

Heinz Rothmann thought about that. When he had revived the Antichurch, he had been completely cynical about it—who worshipped the Devil in the 21st century other than needy degenerates? But gradually he had come to understand the attraction of occult knowledge, despite the fact that Adolf Hitler had ultimately discounted its power. It seemed, as in many things, that Heinrich Himmler had more imagination than his Führer, with his deep interest in Teutonic lore and symbols. Since the failure of the plot against the President, Rothmann had found the Antichurch a more pressing
interest than the militia of conditioned subjects he and his sister had set up.

‘I am ready to meet Our Lord whenever he desires that,’ he said devoutly.

Apollyon gave a hollow laugh. ‘Don’t be too hasty, asshole. My sister was a Mistress of Lucifer. What kind of a welcome do you think she’s preparing for you in Hell?’

Rothmann saw a way to exert pressure. ‘You shared power with a
woman?
There is no sanction for that in the Antigospel.’

‘Not even in the one you rewrote so
your
sister could wear the gargoyle mask?’

The Master wondered how Apollyon knew about that. Security in his organization had been tight until the meddler Matt Wells had intervened. Where was
he
now? Had the female assassin dealt with him as she had Apollyon’s sister and the negro? That would be a pity. He had hopes for the Englishman, hopes that could still be fulfilled, whatever Apollyon did.

The bearded man jabbed his elbow into Rothmann’s ribs. ‘I’m not hearing your answer, Kraut.’

‘My sister…’ Rothmann fought the pain. ‘My sister and I were twins.’

‘As if that makes a difference.’

The Master needed to divert his captor to more fertile ground. ‘Do you know who the blonde woman is?’

‘The Soul Collector? Sure I do. She kills for money.’ The bearded man turned to him. ‘Like me.’

Rothmann decided to twist the knife. ‘So she killed your sister to reduce the competition?’

Apollyon reduced speed behind an eighteen-wheeler.
‘Don’t get cute with me, shithead. You heard what the blonde bitch said—she saw Abaddon in Maine.’

‘That doesn’t seem like a reason to blow her head apart.’

‘What are you trying to say, asshole?’

‘Simply this. The Soul Collector used to be the Englishman Matt Wells’s lover. It can hardly be a coincidence that they both turned up at the barns.’

Apollyon hit the horn as the eighteen-wheeler slowed to a crawl. ‘They’re in this together?’

Rothmann kept as cool as he could. He knew that survival depended on sowing doubt in his captor’s mind. ‘Of course. This whole thing is a trap. Someone engineered it so that you and your sister would be neutralized.’ He paused. ‘Do you have any enemies, Apollyon?’

The bearded man swerved to the left and floored the gas pedal. Rothmann pressed back in his seat as he saw headlights approaching fast. At the last moment, Apollyon wrenched the wheel to the right. There was a horn blare from the other vehicle.

‘I’ve been a gun for hire for eleven years,’ the bearded man said. ‘I’ve got more enemies than your false Antichurch has got followers.’

Ten minutes later, he pulled into a gas station and made a call. His face was still set hard when he got back into the pickup. Then his nostrils flared.

‘What is that stink?’ he said, searching under the dashboard. He found a small package loosely wrapped in silver foil and opened it. The smell immediately got worse. ‘For the love of Lucifer.’

Heinz Rothmann looked at the shriveled heart. He had added a commandment to the Antigospel, requiring
the faithful to keep the vital organs of their deceased loved ones. The owner of the truck had obviously been obedient. He was gratified to see that Apollyon looked physically ill. Obviously, he wouldn’t be going back to remove his sister’s heart.

‘They’ve stopped,’ Sara said, taking her foot off the gas. ‘Just over two miles ahead, outside a place called Caluga.’ She pulled up and reached toward the backseat.

I had visions of her preparing for battle. ‘What are you doing?’

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I need to educate myself before I take further action. Let’s see what’s in Abaddon’s rucksack.’

I watched as she removed the contents. There wasn’t much—a combat knife, some ammunition clips and a laptop.

‘Bingo,’ Sara said, opening the computer and turning it on. After a few moments, her fingers started moving rapidly over the keys. ‘I’m in.’

I was impressed. ‘The last time I saw you with a laptop, you knew even less than I did.’

Her eyes stayed on the screen. ‘A lot of things have changed since then.’ She looked up. ‘Including my appearance. What do you think?’ She moved her head like a film star advertising shampoo.

‘Em, fine.’ I was trying to remember what she had looked like when I loved her, but that had gone into the void.

‘Fine?’ she said, in annoyance. ‘The surgery cost me fifty thousand dollars.’

‘It was worth it,’ I said, not wanting to incite her to
further violence. I didn’t tell her that her gait had given her away.

‘Like the twenty grand I spent on technology skills was worth it.’ She gave me a dead-eyed stare through what I presumed were contact lenses—her eyes weren’t blue when we were together. ‘Okay, the woman who called herself Abaddon knew what she was doing. There are no obvious files and no favorites on her internet program.’

‘How about email?’

Sara gave me another hollow stare. ‘Oh, thanks for reminding me.’ Her fingers flew about. ‘Completely empty. Either she didn’t use it or she deleted all her messages.’

‘In which case, they’ll be in the hard drive.’

‘Yeah, but there isn’t time to access that now.’

I suppressed a smile. ‘Did you take voice coaching from a New Yorker?’

She ignored that. After several more minutes, her fingers stopped moving.

‘Shit,’ she said, chewing her bottom lip. I remembered her doing that when she had a deadline from her editor on the newspaper. Our evenings together had often been interrupted by urgent stories and updates. We often ended up having wild sex after she filed. That was an unwelcome recollection. Why was it more lucid than visions of Karen?

‘Wait a minute.’

I watched as her fingers hit the keys again.

‘Bastard,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘The fucking snake.’ She sat back, her face suddenly damp with sweat.

‘What is it?’ Talking to her was painful, but neces
sary. The only way I was going to survive was by softening her attitude toward me. Pretending to care about what she was going through was one way of achieving that. I imagined the ones I had lost covering their eyes and shunning me.

‘My fucking broker, Havi,’ Sara said. ‘Abaddon had his email address buried in a maintenance file.’

‘What does that mean?’

She gave me a stare that was marginally less empty. ‘It means he was screwing with me.’

‘Playing you off against Abaddon?’

‘Maybe. I’ve been picking up rumors that I was the so-called Hitler’s Hitman. You hear about those murders?’

‘Greenwich Village, Michigan, Boston and Philadelphia,’ I said, trying not to sound too much like a Rothmann-conditioned robot.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re very well informed.’

‘What do you expect? The FBI reckoned that Rothmann was behind them and I was their main link to him.’

She laughed emptily. ‘But, of course, Rothmann had nothing to do with the killings.’

For a moment I thought she really was the murderer—messing with me had been her modus operandi since she’d gone on the run after the White Devil’s death. Then I saw the anger on her face.

‘That piece of shit,’ she said, spittle flying. ‘I think Abaddon did those murders and Havi set up the deal. Since then, he’s been trying to pin them on me.’

‘Why?’

She looked at me as if I were a small child. ‘Jesus, Matt, use your novelist’s imagination. If you were my
broker, would you get a nice warm feeling every time I got in touch?’

She was right there. No doubt she was brilliant at her work, but she was a naked flame that attracted insects and then burned them up—I had personal experience of that. I could imagine this Havi guy might have thought he’d live longer working for other principals.

‘Then again,’ I said, rubbing my wrists together to restore the circulation, ‘if Abaddon killed those people, she was even worse than—’ I broke off.

‘Even worse than me? Oh, Matt, say it ain’t so.’

I remembered what she’d done to my friend Dave Cummings. She had also almost killed my mother, my ex-wife and my daughter Lucy, as well as numerous others. No matter how bad Abaddon had been, she could never have matched my ex-lover.

‘Don’t worry, Matt, you might still be saved. Abaddon’s brother Apollyon has got an even worse reputation for savagery. Maybe he’ll get me before I get him.’

I didn’t find that very comforting. Apollyon was hardly likely to let me go with a pat on the back if he disposed of the Soul Collector. Besides, there was another factor.

‘What about Rothmann, Sara? You’ve been contracted to kill him. Doesn’t he take priority over Apollyon?’

She gave me a dark look. ‘That deal was fixed by the scumbag Havi.’ She raised a finger. ‘Wait. If he’s transferred my share of the advance, he’s in the clear.’

I watched as she tapped away. Even though we were in what seemed to be an underpopulated part of Texas, the laptop’s wireless connection was good.
No doubt Abaddon had earned enough to buy the best technology.

Sara scowled. ‘The fucking bastard. Not only has he not sent anything for the Rothmann job, but he hasn’t paid the balance on my last contract.’

‘Whose death did that involve?’ I asked, hoping she might come clean without thinking.

‘Good try, Matt. Do I look like I’ve lost it completely?’

I was thinking about the hit-and-run incident in Florida, the one that had killed Gordy Lister’s brother. If she had been hired to kill Rothmann, it wasn’t unlikely that the same employer would have wanted to put Rothmann’s number two under pressure. But who was that employer?

‘They’re on the road again,’ Sara said, shutting down the laptop.

The flashing cross on the monitor had started to move.

I watched this former lover of mine as she drove on. I was thinking about the question she had asked—‘Do I look like I’ve lost it completely?’ Until she’d said that, I hadn’t thought anything of the sort. But now I had begun to wonder about the sweat on her face and the tension around her eyes. Could it be that the invincible Soul Collector was finally beginning to come apart at the seams?

‘I wish to see my lawyer immediately.’

Peter Sebastian was sitting across the table in the interview room from Sir Andrew Frogget, Arthur Bimsdale by his side. He looked down at the photographs
that had been taken on their entry to the apartment in Adams-Morgan.

‘I’ve already outlined the law pertaining to sexual acts with minors,’ Sebastian said. ‘Would you like me to send these photographs to your lawyer?’

Sir Andrew stared back, but there was less fire in his gaze than before.

‘Since you’ve spent weekends with Mr. Mallinson at his place in the Northern Neck, you’ll know his daughters Molly and Kirsten.’ He glanced at his assistant.

‘Molly is thirteen and Kirsten eleven,’ Bimsdale supplied.

Sebastian watched as the Englishman looked away. He bided his time. The guy had medals from the Gulf War; he wasn’t going to crack so easily. After several minutes, he picked up one of the photos and examined it. Frogget was in the fore as he stood over the girl, who was naked on the sofa. She had just registered the sound of the FBI team’s entry to the apartment, but it looked like she was turning from Sir Andrew in revulsion.

‘I imagine Lady Annabel would be interested in this,’ Sebastian said. ‘Have you got a fax machine at home?’

Sir Andrew smiled frostily. ‘If you think that my wife will be in the least bit disturbed, you know even less about the British upper classes than your fat-arsed countrymen who hang around outside Buckingham Palace.’

Sebastian knew the investment banker’s marriage was under strain, but he didn’t come back on that. He wanted to see how much punishment Frogget could take.

‘All right,’ he said impassively. ‘So you won’t mind if we send the images to your old regiment?’

The Englishman blanched, but attempted to rally. ‘Surely you don’t believe all that crap about officers and gentlemen, Mr. Sebastian.’

‘What I believe is not germane to this interview.’ The senior FBI man looked at his notes. ‘We can also send them over to the British ambassador. I believe you knew him at Cambridge?’

There were spots of red on Sir Andrew’s cheeks now. ‘I—’

Sebastian raised a hand to cut him off. ‘Of course, we will have to provide your board of directors with the images. We also have the fax numbers of the
London Times
and BBC News.’

The knight’s shoulders dropped.

Peter Sebastian had one last lance to pierce the bull’s hide. ‘We would be sure to send the photos to your London club, as well.’

All the fight had gone out of the old soldier. ‘Enough,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘What is it you want from me?’

‘You know that very well, Andrew,’ Sebastian said, deliberately dropping the title. ‘I want to know every detail about the backers of Woodbridge Holdings.’

It was only as the Englishman began to spill what was a very revealing can of beans that Peter Sebastian fully realized what he had done.