“I’m not sure the QC would help,” he said. “Even if we had all of the MindReader upgrades finished we still might be looking for something that does not exist on any computer.”
“‘Verbal briefing only,’” I quoted, and he nodded. “So what are we thinking about all this?”
“That is still a work in progress, Captain. We need a lot more information. Currently the pieces don’t seem to fit together in any way I find comfortable.”
“Well, join the damn club, Boss.” I rubbed my tired eyes. “So, are we both thinking the same thing? That our friends from outside the neighborhood are the ones who built that city?”
“Ah,” he said wistfully, “if there were only something left to study, then perhaps we could answer that question.”
“You think I shouldn’t have called in an air strike?”
“I wasn’t there, Captain, and I try not to Monday-morning quarterback my officers. The call was made and that’s that. Even if it was the same call I would have made, it still leaves me with regret that we can’t explore that city.”
“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t pick you up a travel brochure, but I was in the moment.”
“Apparently so. Unless we can identify and interrogate any surviving persons involved, we may never know what most of these programs are, or were,” said Church. “Excavating the site is pointless. Have you seen the satellite pictures? Cartographers around the world will have to redraw their maps of Antarctica. To say that the president would very much like to have you skinned alive is not an understatement. He used those exact words.”
“Nice to be admired for one’s accomplishments.”
Church gave me a sour look.
I said, “Well, okay, maybe I was going off the deep end when I tried to order a nuke—thanks for running interference on that one—but the rest? Yeah. You didn’t see what we saw. Maybe it was us hallucinating, but I don’t think so, which means the strikes I ordered kept whatever it was from getting out. Or … if it was some kind of psychic warfare, then this is on them for playing us. Either way, I stand by my call.”
“Have you heard me say otherwise?”
“Yeah, well…” I stopped and changed the subject. “So … what does Bolton make of this? Does he think I’m crazy, too?”
“Harcourt has been very sympathetic to your recent troubles. He has also tried several times to intervene with the president. The fact that our charter has not been terminated is largely due to him.”
“Ah. But what does he think about all of this?”
Church took a moment with that. “He was not involved in the Majestic affair, but he’s been briefed on it. He knows that we are dealing with some extraordinary matters.”
“You’re dancing around it, Boss,” I said. “He doesn’t believe what Top, Bunny, and I saw down there, does he?”
Church picked up a cookie, looked at it, then set it down without taking a bite. “He has expressed some concern that, with a lack of evidence, we should all avoid jumping to conclusions.”
“Sigh,” I said. I got up and stretched my aching muscles and began pacing the room, feeling restless and angry.
“Harcourt is working the Kill Switch angle,” said Church. “Portable directed-energy weapons, particularly jammers and EMP-type devices, are the next hot technology. The science of miniaturization is catching up to both military and terrorist needs for man-portable weapons of that kind. They are very attractive to terrorist groups because of the relatively low cost and ease of transport.”
“Houston,” I said. “That’s ISIL, right? I mean that’s what we all think?”
“It’s a high probability, but they are being coy about taking credit because of the obvious global political and military backlash.”
“Sure, if we knew it was them, then everyone would go on a witch hunt for them. A lot of civilians would get killed in the process, though.”
“Regrettably, yes, but that witch hunt would happen. Nothing could stop it.”
I squatted down to pet Ghost while I thought it through. “Houston was big,” I said slowly, “but it wasn’t enough. It was a stupid risk because of what you just said.”
“But—?” he said, gesturing to encourage me to follow my thought.
“But, I think there’s another shoe about to drop. Houston was a punch but it wasn’t a knockdown punch. Not even close. Same for the racetrack and the debate. They were jabs, but somewhere there’s a big overhand right coming. Whatever it’s going to be, the Kill Switch thing is going to set it up.”
“Agreed.”
I straightened. “What about nuclear power plants? What would happen if they hit one of those with the Kill Switch device?”
“We looked at that,” Church said. “If this was twenty or thirty years ago, then they would have had a real chance at causing a catastrophic nuclear event. But the safeguards built into all domestic nuclear power plants wouldn’t permit it. Older systems were based on the SCRAM method that inserts chemicals into the reactor to effectively negate the reaction and cool down the rods. The SCRAM systems were electronically and mechanically based, and Kill Switch would have been effective against them. However, the newer systems are classified as passive designs, but these still require batteries if AC power is lost. The problem ISIL would face is that the emergency diesel generators on the current designs can be manually started. They use air-start motors. And the control rods are held out by electromagnets, so in the event of a power loss, gravity would let them drop into place, thus preventing overheating and meltdown.”
“Well, that’s a goddamn relief.”
“It is,” he agreed, “but it’s not an answer to our question. What is their play?”
We knocked theories back and forth but it was all speculation. I was just about to get up and go find Harcourt Bolton—half-sure I wanted to fawn on him because he’s my hero and half-sure I wanted to put two in the back of his head for invading my home turf—when Church’s phone rang. I swear sometimes you can tell it’s going to be bad news from the way the phone rings.
This was one of those times.
Church’s phone rang and he took the call and he stiffened with new tension. “Thank you, First Sergeant. Come back here as soon as you are able.”
He disconnected the call and told me about Top and Bunny.
INTERLUDE TWENTY-TWO
BELL FAMILY ESTATE
MONTAUK ISLAND, NEW YORK
WHEN PROSPERO WAS EIGHTEEN
Oscar Bell set the phone down.
The sun was behind the trees and it threw somber brown shadows through the window. The sound of birds in the trees was wrong; they sounded like rude people talking in church. The house was still. Empty of children for years now, empty of wives old and new, empty of everyone except the live-in staff who knew not to make noise and not to be seen. The mansion was so big these days. Once, the sixteen bedrooms and eighteen baths, the formal and casual dining rooms, the kitchens, the sitting rooms and libraries and offices had all felt alive. Vibrant.
That was then.
It was different now and Bell could feel the change.
He could hear it. On evenings like these the wind came whispering off the ocean and found cracks in the walls and gaps in the windows, and it howled at him.
Like ghosts.
He wondered if one of those ghosts belonged to Prospero.
Was the boy dead? Or was he alive somewhere in the world, hating him, as Bell knew he deserved to be hated?
Was he even on this world?
Bell had no idea.
Such a loss.
He wondered about Prospero’s mother. Surrogate or not, she had loved the boy as much as a fractured mind like hers could love. As much as a broken heart like hers could love. When she killed herself it was an act of murder and it stole something from this place. From Bell, too. Even from him.
And now Corrine.
Gone.
“Suicide” is such a clinical word but it was safer than the truth. It was a buffer from the details.
Erskine had told him, though. He’d been happy to, the cold-hearted son of a bitch. He’d used the details like a knife to stab him.
“The silly bitch took off all her clothes and went walking out in the snow,” Erskine had said. “She’d shit herself, of course. But that was before she went outside. Stupid cow.”
Erskine had to know that Bell and Corrine were sleeping together. He was like that. He knew. And he had the God Machine. He had those dreamers.
Sadistic sick fuck of a bastard.
Telling him about Corrine was the knife, but it wasn’t the point of the call.
“The project is a failure, Oscar,” said Erskine. “After a careful review we can only conclude that you were aware of the unreliability of the machine. That you knew about the instability and chose not to inform us is nonfeasance. That you were informed by Major Sails of problems at our facility related to the device and still chose not to provide information is malfeasance. You have grossly violated the terms of our agreement and you are in further violation of the spirit as well as the word of the understanding between you and the Department of Defense. Our attorneys are filing actions against you and I have no doubt we will recover all fees paid to you and receive a judgment of penalties for damages.”
The words battered Bell, driving him down into his chair and almost onto the floor.
“Marcus … why are you doing this? We’re family, for Christ’s sake!”
“Family?” Erskine burst out laughing. “Even after all this you really don’t understand how the world works, Oscar.”
That had been the end of the call.
After that it was the lawyers and the process servers. The federal agents who came to seize the property and all his holdings. The bank officers who told him that his assets had been frozen. The IRS account managers who called to schedule audits.
It all came tumbling down.
Down, down, down.
And yet through all of it all he could do was think of Corrine Sails. That mind. That devious, lovely mind.
Gone.
His own mind, always cruel, conjured memories for him. The taste of the side of her throat. The feel of her nipples as they grew hard between his lips. The heat of her when he slipped inside. The sounds she made when she came. Guttural, primal. Ringing now in his ears.
Those memories were like knives to him.
Those memories were like swords.
There wasn’t enough scotch in all of Long Island to drown them away.
It was a terrible, terrible thing to realize that love is in the heart only after the heart itself is too badly broken to contain it.
CHAPTER FIFTY
THE PIER
DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 8, 1:14 P.M.
Top and Bunny wouldn’t be back to the Pier for an hour, so I stumbled down to the office that had been commandeered by Harcourt Bolton. His secretary—one of his people, not one of mine—told me that he was out of the building. I left a request for a meeting when he got back.
“You’re Captain Ledger?” said the receptionist, a busty Nordic blonde with big plastic boobs, collagen lips, and merciless eyes. The name on her desk placard said MUFFY. There are so many jokes I might have made had it been a different day. “You used to run this place, as I understand.”
I wanted to yap at her like a kicked dog and tell her that I still ran the Pier, but I didn’t have the energy for a losing fight. Instead I slunk away with Ghost in tow.
On the elevator I looked down at him. “We are not having a good day, kiddo.”
He wagged his tail at me. So I gave him a dog cookie.
My office was where I left it, and I was thankful I hadn’t actually been evicted from the building. Small comforts are better than none.
“Can I get you anything?” Lydia-Rose asked after giving me a thorough up-and-down appraisal.
“Coffee.”
“Weren’t you finishing a big Starbucks when you got here?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have any of the coffee I put in the conference room?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t you think you’ve had too much already? Your hands are shaking.”
“Three things,” I told her. “First, there’s no such thing as too much coffee. Second, caffeine has nothing to do with my jitters. And third, there’s no such thing as too much coffee.”
She sighed and went over to the big Mr. Coffee and began making a fresh pot. I heard her say several things in back-alley Spanish that questioned my sanity, my parentage, and my personal hygiene. I went inside and slammed the door.
After a couple of tries I managed to get Bug on the line for a videoconference. When his face filled my laptop screen I saw that he was still trying to grow a goatee. A recent style choice that wasn’t working out all that well. Bug’s in his late twenties but puberty hasn’t completely unpacked its suitcase in his genes. His brown face was dusted with about nine black hairs.
“Looking good,” I told him.
“Oh … bite me,” he said. He wore a baggy gray sweatshirt with UNIVERSITY OF WAKANDA stenciled on the chest. “How are you doing, Joe?”
“I’ve had better incarnations,” I admitted.
“Should you even be at work?”
“Considering the day I’m having so far,” I said, “I’m thinking about returning to the hospital and asking if they can put me back into a coma.”
“Ouch. Hey, that whole thing down in Antarctica was weird,” he said. “Freaky.”
“You think?”
“No, I mean I’m genuinely freaked. I’m into the whole Cthulhu Mythos thing and—”
“The what?”
“Didn’t Mr. Church tell you about the book, At the Mountains of Madness?”
“Only a little about the author. H. P. Lovecraft, right?”
“You ever read his stuff?”
“A few short stories maybe.”
“Okay, short version is that Lovecraft created a kind of fantasy backstory to his horror stories. Gods, alien races, monsters, other dimensions. Like that. His stories were self-referential. You see, there’s this race of ancient space beings called the Great Old Ones who used to rule the Earth. They lost control of the world over time and some of them left and others went to sleep. One of the biggest and baddest of these gods is Cthulhu, and he’s asleep in the undersea city of R’lyeh. A lot of the stories deal with people who stumble onto a cult who worship one of the monsters, or in some cases have managed to interbreed with them or their even more monstrous servants, or they catch a glimpse of one and go totally gaga nuts. In the stories these creatures either live in places here on Earth that are so remote no one ever goes there—except the poor dumb son of a bitch of a protagonist—or they exist in a parallel dimension. Sometimes Lovecraft kind of confused the two. You’re just lucky you didn’t run into any shoggoths down there.”
“What a shoggoth? Or do I even want to know?”
“Not really. The shoggoths are this race of shapeshifting monsters created by another race of ancient creatures called the Elder Things.”
“Not the Great Old Ones?”
“No. It’s complicated, I know. The Elder Things were more like space travelers who settled on Earth a billion years ago. They built huge cities, and believe me, Joe, I’ve been losing sleep ever since I heard how you guys described the city you saw. It fits.”
I said nothing, trying to let it sink in. Trying to decide what I believed. What I could allow myself to believe.
“This whole cycle of stories is the Cthulhu Mythos,” Bug said. “Lovecraft invited his writer friends to tell their own Cthulhu stories. A lot of them did. A whole lot. People still do. There are thousands of Cthulhu stories, and a lot of them are actually better than the stuff Lovecraft wrote. Even Stephen King. You can see the influence everywhere. You know those Hellboy movies you like so much? That’s inspired by Cthulhu. But, between you and me, Lovecraft was a misogynistic, racist
jerk who couldn’t write dialogue worth a darn.”
“Useful to know,” I said. “But, kid, I’m pretty sure I don’t believe any of this shit.”
“You were in the city, Joe. Bunny got his face eaten off by a giant penguin, and Erskine got funding to develop a whole line of psychic weapons. Want to hear a wild theory, Joe?” asked Bug, leaning close to the screen as if afraid of being overheard.
“No,” I said weakly, “I really don’t.”
“I’m kind of thinking it’s real. Or some of it, anyway. Like I said, I’ve read all of this stuff and there have been people over the years who’ve suggested that Lovecraft wasn’t so much making this up as having visions. They did a History Channel special once about how the artists from the surrealism movement believed they were painting images from other worlds they traveled to in dreams. And Erskine had programs called ‘Dreamwalking’ and ‘Dreamshield.’ I’m just saying. There was something down there, and between you and me, I’m really glad you called in an air strike. Imagine what would have happened if terrorists or even a foreign power got their hands on these kinds of weapons?”
I looked around my office for something to drink, but there was no booze. Someone had even swiped all the beers from my fridge. Maybe they thought I was never going to come out of the coma. Inhuman bastards. Ghost came over and leaned against me. To comfort me or maybe to receive some for himself. I ran my fingers through his thick fur. “Bug,” I said, “you’re hitting me with all this, but where does it take us? What do I do with it?”
He shook his head and it was clear my question punched him in the gut. He sagged and looked lost. “Oh, man … I really don’t know. I just look stuff up. You’re the field guy.” He tried on a smile but it didn’t fit well. “Everything’s gotten weird lately, you know? All those screwed-up missions. We’ve faced some big things before, but nothing like this. We took down the Seven Kings, we busted up the Jakobys and Majestic Three and the Red Knights, but man … what’s happened to us? We dropped the ball on so many jobs they’re not letting us anywhere near the ISIL thing. And the Gateway stuff is past tense. That place is gone. Are we just spinning our wheels? God, I never felt so lost before.”