“Hello, my old friend,” said the priest.
Church closed the laptop and set it on the seat. “Hello, Nicodemus.”
“You look surprised to see me.”
“A bit.”
“Did you think I was dead?”
“I hoped as much. Sorry to know that I was wrong.”
“You know what they say about bad pennies.”
“Why are you here? No, let me guess,” said Church. “Baltimore? South Carolina? Milwaukee?”
There was a thunk as Brick closed the trunk and then a click as he tried to open the driver’s door. The bodyguard tapped on the glass, but Church didn’t reply.
“Those,” said Nicodemus, “are not even the start, and certainly not the end.”
“What’s coming, then?”
Nicodemus grinned with rotting green teeth. Maggots wriggled between the stumps. “Chaos.”
“You’ve been saying that for a long time.”
“I’ve been right about it for a long time,” said the priest. “Surely even you’re gracious enough to admit that.”
Church spread his hands. “Hugo Vox is dead. The Seven Kings are dead. The Red Order is in disarray, and the King of Thorns is dead.”
“So is your wife,” countered the priest. “Or … should I say wives. How many have you buried so far? Do you even still remember their names?”
Church said nothing.
“How many of them knew your name?” asked the priest. “One that I know of. Two, if you’ve told that witch, Lilith.”
“Leave Lilith out of this.”
“What about your children, my friend? Did any of them know who—or what—their father was? Did you even whisper the truth to them when you put flowers on their graves?”
“Taunting me with my sins is a card you’ve already played, Nicodemus,” said Church. “Once played, it loses its power.”
“Does it?”
“Yes,” said Church. “You’ve never understood that about me.”
Brick began knocking louder on the window. Church could hear the man calling out in anger and alarm.
The priest shrugged. “Very well. If I can’t play a useful card about the past, then let me play one about the future.”
“By all means. Your predictions have never been as accurate as you pretend. What is the nature of your latest forecast?”
“Bugs and bombs, my old friend,” said Nicodemus. “Bodies and blood. And the hounds of hell running loose.”
“Ah, you’ve come all this way to be cryptic. You disappoint me.”
“Oh, was I being too vague for you? Did I make it too tricky a riddle? Forgive me, my friend, and let me be very specific. Minimum three billion. Conservative estimate. Maximum four point eight. Probably high, but it’s possible.”
There was a sharper sound as Brick hit the driver’s window with the butt of his pistol. Once, twice. A crack appeared, but the reinforced glass held.
“What are we talking about? Money? Since when do you brag about how much you steal?”
“Never,” said the priest. “And not now.”
“Then what—?”
“Bodies.”
Church smiled faintly. “Ah. I find it rather sad that you try so hard to take credit for things that other people do. You pretend to be the mover of mountains,” said Church, “but we both know you’re not. Who’s your patron this time? I’m surprised you have any friends left.”
Nicodemus held up his hands, acknowledging the point. “Sure, you stopped Sebastian Gault and El Mujahid, you stopped the Seven Kings, you stopped the Red Order and the King of Thorns, you stopped Mother Night, and you stopped the Jakobys. They’re all dead, and you can brag because their scalps are dangling from your belt. Hail the conquering hero. But it’s all for naught, I’m afraid. You killed a whole generation, but you missed their progeny. You were and are too blind to see what was coming up behind them. Quietly, carefully, learning from everything they did and everything you did to them. And surpassing them all. That’s the funny part. You, in your posturing and violence and arrogance, have been as great a teacher for her as I’ve been. You like to think that you’re protecting the ‘little people,’ the average citizen. The herd. You like to think that you serve a higher purpose, but at the end of the day you’re preserving a corrupted status quo. You could use your resources to fight a different and better fight. You could have used MindReader to tear down the fat cats who rape this planet and are turning the very air into a cloud of poison. You could have used your beloved DMS to stop the politicians in this and other countries who wage war because it is in their best financial interest instead of shooting so-called terrorists. You waste your time treating the symptoms, because you lack the courage to carve out the disease. My beloved protégé knows this about you, and about everyone like you, and she will repay you for being complicit in everything that has gone wrong with this world.”
“That’s a nice speech. It’s naïve but well phrased. It’s also enormously disingenuous, considering that in the past you have aided Hugo and others like him. You supported the cabals that were the architects of the global political dysfunction.”
“They were a means to an end.”
“You don’t have an ‘end,’” said Church. “You’re a sad and lonely creature, and you live out in the cold dark. You like setting fires. It’s the only thing that keeps you warm.”
“Maybe. But those fires are so very pretty.”
Church took the cookies out of his case while Brick continued to hammer on the window. He took one and bit off an edge. “You are, and have always been, a parasite, John.”
Church watched to see how the use of that name would affect Nicodemus. The man nodded slowly. “It took you long enough to work that out.”
“John the Revelator, preaching the gospel of a curated technological singularity. That’s new, even for you.”
“I have seen the future and preach the good word,” Nicodemus said, then burst out laughing. “You should see how they eat it up. Whole rooms filled with the best and the brightest. Even the ones who think they’re so egalitarian come to point when I get to the part where I tell them that they are the chosen ones, the nerdy meek who will inherit the earth.”
“I don’t for a moment think you genuinely believe in the benefits of such a thing, and your motives for wanting to attempt it are clear enough. But do you actually believe that you have the power and the resources to bring about such a catastrophe?”
“Time will tell.”
“I suppose it will.” Church took another bite, chewed for a moment, then asked, “You said that your protégé was a ‘she’…?”
“Oh yes, my friend, it is a lovely young woman. Or, at least, she was. Not much meat on the bone these days, I’m afraid.”
“Tell me, is this mystery woman a twin by any chance?”
Nicodemus frowned, and Church thought that for a moment the man was actually surprised, even confused. He recovered quickly, though. “No. She is an only child, with an intellect that is so lush and beautiful and a heart filled with red shadows. She cannot be bullied and she cannot be frightened. She’s past all that. There’s actually nothing you can do to hurt her.”
Church shrugged. “Hurting her is a quality of revenge. I’m more interested in stopping her.”
“There is no chance of that. The countdown is already over.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here.”
Nicodemus shrugged.
“So,” continued Church, “why come to me now? Why come at all? You never do anything without a reason. Not even small, mean little things. Or is it that you’re so marginalized by whatever is happening that you need a fix of attention?”
“I’ve come to say goodbye,” said Nicodemus. “But first I wanted to tell you that you’ve lost, that everything you think you’ve been fighting for is all set to burn. I wanted to see the fear in your eyes when you finally accepted that you’ve been fighting a losing battle all along.”
&nbs
p; Church brushed lint from his tie, yawned, and said, “I’ve heard that kind of claim before and it has never been true. I even see fear in your eyes.”
Nicodemus leered at him. “Is that what you see? My, how clouded your vision has become in your dotage. No, my friend, what you see is my true delight in knowing that everything you’ve worked for, everything you’ve done to try and whitewash your soul, will fall down and something new and glorious will rise in its place. She will curate the next phase of evolution, and the things you treasure and pretend to love will wither and die.”
“You’re ranting,” said Church. “It’s unbecoming.”
“Go ahead and mock me, kinsman. If it offers some comfort to you, then be my guest. Make no mistake, however, that I have won and you, you arrogant bastard, have lost. The new world order is coming. It is almost here. Look at the walls of the world as it is. Can you hear the foundations crack? Can you smell the rot that eats at the roots? I can, and I came to tell you, because it pleases me so very much that you cannot stop it. No, no, no. And isn’t that delicious?”
The driver’s window exploded inward and Church threw an arm up to shield his face.
“Boss!” yelled Brick as he leaned in to pop the locks. He yanked the rear door open. “Are you all right? What’s happening?”
Church looked at the fold-down seat. It was snugged neatly in place and he was alone in the car.
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
IN FLIGHT
We all watched the video clips Nikki sent us.
“John the Revelator,” murmured Rudy, absently touching the crucifix he wore on a silver chain beneath his shirt. “My God … I met him. But I don’t understand—that can’t be Nicodemus. It doesn’t look like him at all.”
“Church said he uses disguises,” I said.
Rudy shook his head and didn’t comment, but it was clear that he wasn’t thinking that this was a matter of colored contact lenses, a wig, and some makeup. Neither did I, but neither of us wanted to say what we thought it actually was. No way.
“I want to put a bullet into this trickster cocksucker,” said Top.
“I’ll load your gun,” said Bunny.
“Hooah,” I said.
Cole got up from her seat and walked over to the monitor, bent close, stared into the eyes of the prophet of the technological apocalypse. Then she straightened and stood in a thoughtful posture, lips pressed into a hard line, eyes half closed in calculating appraisal. Then she turned back to us.
“I grew up out in the sticks of South Carolina,” she began slowly. “If you’ve ever spent time there—spent time outside the cities, spent time in the woods—then you know how strange the nights are there. Lots of people think everyone from down there is a redneck hick. But, as that saying goes, ‘Country don’t mean dumb.’ We see stuff. We hear about stuff. We believe in stuff. Church stuff and other things that aren’t in anyone’s Bible. Maybe one of these days I’ll tell you about some of the things I heard about, and some things I saw, and some things that people whose word I trust have seen. The stuff that goes on around Crybaby Bridge in Anderson. The Boo Hag and the Ghost Hound of Goshen. The legend of Julia Clare and the Third-Eye Man they used to see in the tunnels under the University of South Carolina and the haunted Baynard Crypt. Hell, I know people who say they saw something like Bigfoot down there. Is any of that real? Who knows? I don’t know. But I have to tell you guys this much—I got five different good-luck charms and I say prayers to God and some saints in ways that aren’t exactly part of my good Baptist upbringing.” She paused for a moment. “And I saw some things when I was deployed that made me wonder, stuff that made me really scared, and made me question who or what was running the world and maybe the universe. Now, I’m a smart girl and a good cop and I’ve had education, so I’m not saying this because I’m some kind of hick girl from the middle of nowhere. I’ve seen things that I don’t usually talk about because most of the people I meet haven’t seen those kind of things. But I listened to what you said and I see the look in your eyes and … well … I know that you know. I know that you’ve been out there hunting more than terrorists with fancy bombs.”
“Terror,” said Rudy very quietly, “is a bigger and more comprehensive word than most people think.”
I said, “While I was being recruited for the DMS by Mr. Church, he told me that we’re very much in the business of stopping terror. He didn’t set the parameters of what that word meant, and after running with Echo Team for all these years I realized that any attempt to precisely define that word would be the same as closing my eyes to its potential.”
We all turned and watched John the Revelator on the screen.
“So … how do we kill this man?” she asked.
Bunny said, “Personally, I’ve found that if you put enough ordnance downrange you’re bound to do some good. Words to that effect.”
“No, I mean do we use silver bullets? A stake? What’s the play?”
“I’m going to try all that,” promised Top. “And then I’m going to burn the son of a bitch and piss on the ashes. Think that’ll work?”
Cole suddenly smiled bright enough to push back the shadows of the day. “Sounds like a good goddamn plan,” she said.
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
THE HANGAR
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
TUESDAY, MAY 2, 6:01 AM
“He was in your fucking car?”
Church winced and leaned away from his phone as Aunt Sallie’s voice filled the garage with shrill outrage. There was fear and anger there, too.
“Not exactly,” said Church quietly when she was done yelling.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” roared Auntie. “Either he was or he wasn’t.”
Church stood by the elevator door and watched as a dozen DMS technicians tore his car apart. Forensics techs assigned to Jerry Spencer were carefully placing items on a tarp they had spread out on the floor.
“It was a new kind of hologram,” said Church. “Jerry’s people have found more than thirty tiny ultrahigh-res 3-D projectors inside the back of my car. It’s a kind they haven’t seen before, and the image was strikingly realistic.”
“Did you know it was a projection? No, let me ask it another way. How did you not know it was a projection? Don’t you have to wear some kind of big goofy glasses for VR to be that real?”
“The senior tech thinks that the projection was structured so that the tint of my glasses acted as the cooperative filter. He said that the projectors and my glasses are a precise match.”
“How in the nine rings of hell would Nicodemus know what color tint you use?”
“Unknown,” said Church, “but it would not be the first time Nicodemus has used superior intelligence-gathering to give the impression that he’s conjuring magic.”
Aunt Sallie said, “Not all of that is smoke and mirrors, Deacon, and you damn well know it.”
“I don’t want to have that argument again,” Church said. “Not right now. What matters is that he had access to my car, either here or at my home, which are the only two places it’s been recently. Otherwise the cameras would have been found in the last sweep four days ago.”
“Then we’ll tear this place and your place apart until we find out how he managed it.”
“Fair enough,” said Church. “You can see to that. In the meantime, we need to consider what he said and what it tells us.”
“Three to six billion people dead? Is Nicodemus bullshitting us or bragging? No, don’t answer that. He’s doing both, and he’s doing it to mess with your head, Deacon.”
“That is a given,” said Church. “But it does not mean that he’s lying. Nicodemus loves to taunt. This is some kind of riddle.”
“Oh, so he’s a Batman villain now, taunting us with riddles?”
“Whatever he is or is pretending to be, Auntie, his threats aren’t to be taken lightly. It’s clear that he has access to a new and radically advanced generation of technology. If he’s tied to what is unfolding in
Maryland, then he has nanotech, advanced surveillance bugs, some new kind of attack drones, computer viruses, and more.”
“Christ, I wish Bill Hu was still here. God damn him for getting his skinny ass killed.”
“His absence is very much felt,” Church agreed. “I’m having another car swept for bugs, and I still plan to head west. This thing is escalating, and we need to determine how big and how bad it’s likely to get.”
“And then what?” asked Auntie. “How do we stay braced when we don’t know from which goddamn direction the punch is coming?”
“We can’t, and I think that was his point. He wants us to be afraid, to be watching. He loves an audience, he loves attention. When we get the real call, he’ll want us to know it’s his ring.”
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
IN FLIGHT
Bug and Yoda videoconferenced us with news.
“We decrypted the software from the Zika mosquito nanites,” said Bug, his eyes dancing with excitement and way too much caffeine. “I’ll skip the short course in how nanites are programmed, but think of them as moderately stupid computers. Because they’re small, they can’t carry enough memory for complex functions. With me?”
“Yes,” I said. “Go on.”
“Okay, one way to get nanites to perform complex functions is to have them form little networks. Each one has part of the program, but together they have the whole thing. And if that code is written correctly the specifics of that program can be tweaked. So the main program they carry is the one that regulates the release of the virus developed by the CDC to make Zika-carrying mosquitoes infertile, resulting in a swarm die-off. That’s the main plan, and if you analyze any of the nanites in the swarm you’ll find that program.”