“No, my brothers,” Gault said with a smile, “we are not. If science has taught us anything it’s that a way will open. When one form of treatment fails, we often learn enough from its failure in order to design a more effective protocol. Observation and compensation are key to scientific advancement.”
Eris smiled. “Tell them,” she purred.
Gault leaned his palms on the table. “The answer lies within the phenomenon of pain. Our desire is to hurt the Inner Circle. Hurt them so deeply, so profoundly, that they will be crippled. Unable and unwilling to make another move against us. That is the true task.”
The Kings and Consciences turned slowly to look at one another, and there were many thoughtful nods.
“Kirov had the right idea, but not the right plan. I have a better plan,” Gault continued. “One that allows us to use everything we’ve already done. The disinformation campaigns through social media and the Internet, the manipulation of extremist cells, and the whole culture of modern terrorism. But it adds an element of coercion that has only been touched upon before.”
Toys noticed that Santoro sat up straight at the word “coercion” and his lips wriggled into an unpleasant and hungry smile.
“My esteemed brother the King of Fear has the resources to bring this program to fruition. With his vast network of contacts, and with the tactical genius of Rafael Santoro, I believe we can get my program up and running in under a month, which would allow us to complete it according to the same timetable as Kirov’s plan.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, followed by questions from everyone at once.
Toys used the commotion to lock eyes with the King of Fear. The American looked briefly furious, but he covered it by slapping on another hearty smile. However, he must have felt Toys’ eyes upon him, because he turned and gave him a very brief but definite wink.
“And now, my brothers,” said Sebastian Gault, “here is how we will do it.”
Chapter Forty-one
In Flight
December 19, 9:03 A.M. EST
I called Church. “You’re gonna love this, Boss,” I said, and told him about the plagues, including the almost certain connection to the Locust bomber.
He said, “It’s a short list of people who knew about that project. I’ll talk to the President. Is there anything else?”
“Yes. I’d like you to make a video.”
“Is this going to be one of your attempts at humor?”
“No. This is serious, and it might help us head another Kings event off at the pass.”
“Tell me.”
I did. He listened and then disconnected without comment. It’s always a Hallmark moment with him. You always feel like your call is the centerpiece of his day.
As I tucked my phone away, Circe said, “You think there will be more Kings attacks?”
“Don’t you?”
“Sadly, yes. But it may not be in what could be called an ‘ordinary way.’”
“Meaning?”
“Apart from the calls to violence, a lot of the Goddess posts are hints that her cult is part of an ancient belief system that is only now revealing itself. By incorporating references to other goddesses, she’s essentially borrowing their history. Hijacking it and claiming it as part of her legacy. If the Goddess is part of the Seven Kings organization, and I think we both agree on that, then the Kings might not actually have to commit seven more acts of terrorism. They can find some that have already happened and retroactively claim that they were responsible. I mean, it wouldn’t take much to suggest that 9/11 was the rain of fire and ash plague.”
“Maybe. Time frame is off.”
“Maybe not. Take the Plague of Frogs. Unless the Kings already have a target in mind that has a frog connotation, like the Locust thing with the bomber, they could claim that the frog extinction is their doing.”
“Wait! What? When did frogs become extinct?”
“What planet are you living on?” she said with exasperation. “Toads and frogs are dying out in huge numbers. It’s well documented. There have been TV specials. Of course, the science tells us that it’s because of pressure from the expansion of agriculture, forestry, pollution, disease, and climate change.”
“How would that have major PR punch for the Kings? I mean, I don’t want to see Kermit take a dirt nap, but … these are just some frogs, right? How’s that work in a biblical way?”
She muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “Neanderthal.” Aloud she said, “The die-off of amphibians could be a sign of possible future damage to other parts of the ecosystem, because frogs and toads are especially vulnerable and thus are the first to disappear. Also, a mass disappearance of amphibians would create broken links in the food chain, and that would definitely have an adverse impact on other organisms. If the Kings were to hijack this, it would elevate the public perception of them as unstoppable and possibly supernaturally powerful.”
“Okay,” I said, “I see it. From a propaganda point of view it only matters that the Kings take credit. Anyone who says they aren’t involved has the job of trying to prove a negative, which is self-defeating. I mean, what could the Al-Qaeda do to dispute it? Have a TV debate? Besides, the DMS has already taken out Seven Kings cells that had Al-Qaeda ties. Your 9/11 hypothesis might even be real.”
“God,” she whispered, and her dark eyes went wide.
“At the risk of sounding terribly macho, Doc, I want to find them and shoot them. A lot.”
She nodded. “I’ll load the gun.”
Then something occurred to me. “Hey, didn’t you say that you gave a copy of your Goddess report to Grace?”
“Yes.”
“It’s funny, because she never mentioned it to me, and neither did Church. When did you give it to her?”
“At the end of August.” Circe looked down at her hands. “I tried to call her the next day, but she was already involved in something. I never found out what it was. Then a couple of days later I heard that she died.”
Damn. Bull’s-eye, right in the heart.
I closed my eyes. The whole mess with the Dragon Factory and the Jakobys started on the twenty-eighth. Grace died on August 31. Because of her the world didn’t die on September 1. The ache in my chest was so fresh, so raw, that I wanted to scream. I could see every line, every curve, of Grace’s beautiful face. I could smell the scent of her, taste her lips, feel the solid, lithe warmth of her in my arms.
I felt something warm on my forearm and for a single crazy moment I thought that somehow Grace had reached out of those shadows to reassure me. But when I opened my eyes I saw that it was Circe O’Tree’s hand on my arm.
“I’m sorry, Joe,” she said.
I took a breath and shook my head. Circe moved her hand away, a little embarrassed.
“I don’t think your report was ignored,” I said, my voice a bit thick. “I don’t think Grace ever had a chance to pass it along.”
Circe looked depressed. “God, I would hate to think that we could have somehow prevented this. The Hospital and the rest.”
“Let’s not Monday-morning quarterback it. We’re doing good work here. We’ll get this stuff into MindReader and who knows? We might actually be somewhere.”
Circe nodded but didn’t comment.
I snapped my fingers. “Wait … you said there were ten plagues. River of blood, darkness, frogs, ghats, flies, pestilence, boils, rain of fire, and locusts. That’s only nine. What’s the last one?”
All the blood drained from her face. “The last one is the worst of all. It’s the one that finally broke Pharaoh’s resolve and made him free the captive Israelites.”
“What was it?” I asked, but I thought I already knew, and the knowledge scared the shit out of me.
She recited the passage in a hollow voice. “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son
of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again.’”
She paused and watched my face as the horror sank in.
“The tenth plague is the death of the firstborn children of the entire country.”
Interlude Thirty
Crown Island
Six Weeks Ago
On the morning of the first of November, Toys walked down to a deck that overlooked a particularly lovely stretch of the island’s rocky coastline. He sat in a deck chair, alone with thoughts that had become increasingly troubled and convoluted.
Toys heard a soft footfall and turned to see that Rafael Santoro stood alarmingly close. Few people were able to sneak up on Toys. Peripheral awareness was something he prided himself on, and he was immediately irritated.
Santoro held two steaming cups in his hands. “May I join you?”
Four or five variations of “go fuck yourself” wriggled on Toys’ lips, but he held his tongue and ticked his head toward the other lounge chair. Santoro handed him a cup and lowered himself onto the chair.
The view was spectacular. The sun had risen above the rippling waters of the St. Lawrence River, red and orange fire igniting from a million sharp wave tips. The rocky edge of the island was marshy, with tall bulrushes through which blue herons picked their way with the delicacy of monks.
Toys cut a covert glance at Santoro, but the little man seemed not to notice. He sipped his tea and appeared to be fascinated by the dragonflies flitting among the reeds. The Spaniard had an interesting face, like one of the medieval saints on the tapestries in the dining hall: high cheekbones, hooded eyes, full lips, and a light in his eyes that suggested a complex inner life. The man’s appearance was so strangely at odds with what Toys knew about him: torture, extortion, terrorism, mass killings, and personal murders so numerous that they were recounted in summary form.
The Spaniard sipped his tea. “Tell me, my friend,” he said softly. “How are you enjoying life as the Conscience to the King of Plagues?”
“So, tell me,” Toys said after a few minutes, “what do I do as ‘Conscience’?”
“That depends on you, and on your King.”
Toys snorted. “I’m still adjusting to the concept of Sebastian as a king.”
“You find it amusing?”
“Amusing? Not in the least,” he said, and that was truer than his tone conveyed. “Though this whole setup seems a bit dodgy. It’s more like a movie than real life.”
“But it is life,” observed Santoro. “The world does not turn by itself. It requires that kings step up to lead.”
“Very profound.”
“It’s true. The Seven Kings have always existed. I speak in the abstract. Before the Kings there were others. Always others. It is a necessary evil, yes?”
“‘Evil’ is an interesting word choice.”
Santoro smiled thinly. “It is evil, by the standards of the sheep.” He gestured with his mug to the unseen lands beyond the sunrise. “But evil is a concept constructed by man, and therefore it is subject to laws and interpretations. If we were subject to the same laws we would have to own guilt for what we do, but we do not acknowledge the laws of any land. We maintain the conqueror’s point of view, which is self-justifying.”
“How so?”
“Tell me: who was more evil, Alexander the Great or Adolf Hitler?”
“Hitler.”
“Ah, but you say that without considering it. Hitler is regarded as evil because he slaughtered millions of people and tried to conquer Europe. By the standards of those who defeated him, he was evil. Alexander tried to conquer the entire world, a process that resulted in a higher percentage of deaths than during Hitler’s war.”
“Hitler tried to exterminate whole races of people.”
“Alexander issued challenges to cities and nations. If they surrendered to him, he let them live, and even preserved their cultures. But if they opposed him, he slaughtered them wholesale. He killed the men and sold the women and children into slavery. How is one more moral than the other? Do you want to debate degrees of acceptable genocide?”
“As a matter of fact,” Toys said, “I don’t.”
Santoro nodded and they watched the sun climb higher. In the glow of the new sun his saintly face was beatific. It troubled Toys and he turned away.
Santoro asked, “Do you feel it’s wrong?”
“Right and wrong is another discussion I don’t want to have.”
“That is as it should be, yes?”
Toys looked at him in surprise. “How so?”
“Well, my friend, if we are to accept that we are conquerors in the purest and oldest sense of that word, and if that means that what we do is governed by rules we set which, by their nature, are outside of the laws of any land, then right and wrong are concepts without substance. They don’t apply to us because they are specific to individual cultures and we are not.”
Toys sighed, feeling himself drawn into the discussion despite his better judgment. “What about basic human rights?”
“Ask the Chinese that question.”
“Pardon?”
“Human rights, as we understand them today, are based upon Western ideals of democracy. These Western values are themselves profoundly bound up with strong individualism, profiteering, and capitalistic competitiveness. The Confucian system does not subscribe to any of those values. There is not a single statement on human rights to be found within the Confucian discourse. Confucianism advocates duties and responsibilities and makes no case at all for individual rights. They believe that they act according to Heaven’s Mandate, in which the ruling body does whatever is necessary for the greater good, even if that means the sacrifice of individuals of the lower classes. Do you follow?”
“Yes. So … you’re saying that human rights are as subjective as any other set of rules?”
“Absolutely, and the subjectivity in question is the perspective of the most powerful. That is why when I kill for the Seven Kings I am not committing murder, nor am I participating in acts of terrorism. Those are subjective concepts, and our worldview is grand. It is our mandate from heaven. As a result, we are above all of that, yes?”
“Just because we say we are?”
“Yes. And because we have the power to enforce our own and particular set of rules.”
Toys looked for the hidden meanings in Santoro’s words, but the man was nearly impossible to read. On one hand, he appeared devious and multifaceted, and on the other, his intent seemed dreadfully straightforward. Toys decided to test the waters.
“What about the people who surround kings?”
“Which kings?”
“Oh,” Toys said casually, “take Jesus. King of the Jews. If laws don’t apply to kings, what’s the trickle-down effect? Do the laws of right and wrong apply, say, to Peter?”
“For betraying Christ?” Santoro gave an elaborate shrug. “He was weak, but he believed, and he recanted his weakness to the point of martyrdom.”
“And Judas?” He pitched it offhandedly, but Santoro’s face darkened.
“That was a betrayal because of personal fear—Judas betrayed Christ into torture and death. His was an unforgivable affront that cannot be redeemed. In my pride and sinfulness I have prayed that I could meet such a man and teach his cowardly flesh to sing songs of worship and praise.” As he said this he touched his wrist, and Toys knew that there was a knife hidden beneath the sleeve.
Santoro smiled and for the first time Toys could see the killer behind the saint. He looked into Santoro’s eyes and saw—nothing. No life, no spark of humanity, no genuine passion. There was absolutely nothing there. It was like looking into the eyes of a monster. A zombie. Or a demon.
Toys nodded as if agreeing to the sentiment, but inside he shivered. He found it curious that there was such a gap in beliefs between Santoro and the American. He’d suspected as much, hence his
reference to Judas, but the Spaniard’s reaction was unexpectedly intense.
Not a confidant, then. Note to bloody self.
“What if Judas genuinely believed that Jesus was making a misstep?” he prodded. “I’ve heard a bunch of different theories. One is that Judas may have thought that Jesus was becoming a danger to his own cause and that Judas went through proper channels of the church—the Sanhedrin—to try and head him off at the pass before he got into worse trouble.”
Santoro said nothing. He listened, eyes narrowed, mouth pursed.
“Another theory is that Judas was a bit more ‘Old Testament’ than Jesus and he had him arrested in the hopes that once Jesus was in peril he would be forced to reveal all of his glory and power and kick Roman ass.”
The birds sang for a long time before Santoro answered. He studied Toys, but Toys was too practiced a hand at dissembling to allow anything that he felt to show on his face. He sipped his tea and waited.
Finally, Santoro said, “You ask troubling questions.”
“You asked me about Hitler.”
Santoro nodded, taking Toys’ point. “The question supposes that Jesus was fallible.”
“Are either of us that inflexible that we think that he wasn’t? Or couldn’t have been? After all, Jesus doubted. He lost his cool and trashed the moneylenders outside of the temple. Let’s face it—the whole point of his being here was to be human. To show that if he, locked in flesh and filled with the full roster of human emotions, can have faith and ultimately do the right thing, then so can we. That all falls down if he was infallible.”
Santoro nodded again. “Please do not be offended by this,” he said softly, “but you are smarter than you look.”
Toys gave him a charming smile. “Now why would I be offended at that?”
“I meant it as a compliment. You are deeper than you appear. People are often fooled by you, yes?”
Toys shrugged.
Then Santoro tried to blindside him. “Do you have doubts about what the King of Plagues is doing?”