When the Suits filed into the salon, the captive was standing near the fireplace examining the buffalo head, which was still wearing its stupid Santa hat and beard. Zoey wondered, not for the first time, if in the next room over she’d find the rest of the creature’s body jutting out from the wall. Kevin’s face showed just the slightest alarm when presented with the phalanx of Suits that fanned out before him. Zoey knew the feeling—here’s the dead-eyed Will Blackwater in a suit that looked forged from cast iron, the massive Andre in a charcoal pinstripe suit with a purple shirt and a black tie, and Budd looking like he’d just returned from a tour of his plantation. Then there was Echo Ling, now in a stern black pantsuit and narrow librarian glasses, and finally Zoey, who was wearing a faded red T-shirt that said “IDAHO? YOU DA HO!” in letters barely visible behind the smelly Persian cat she was cradling.
Will said, “Have a seat, Kevin.”
Kevin sneered and said, “Why don’t you have a seat … on my funbone.”
He spat on the floor.
Andre walked over and shoved the guy down into a chair—the same chair Zoey had sat in, in fact, the first night she had arrived. So this was the interrogation chair. She noticed how low it was—Kevin was taller than her, and his knees were pointing upward. Designed so that everyone would look huge looming over you.
Will said, “I take it you know who we are.”
“You’re The Magician. He’s Black Mountain, over there is the Regulator, Echo, and Cat Boobs.”
Zoey said, “Really?”
Will said, “And we know who you are. Kevin Baughman. Molech’s second in command.”
There was a brief moment when Kevin started to refute this. Instead, he puffed up his chest and said, “I’m not telling you anything.”
Will said, “Time is short. Fortunately, this won’t take much time—Echo here knows torture techniques from the Orient that no human has endured for more than three minutes. So before I turn her loose, I’m going to ask you once, and only once. What does Molech want with the relic?”
Kevin looked nervously at Echo. Zoey could see he was torn—the easy answer in an interrogation situation is always “I don’t know,” and in this case that would be the truth, especially considering the question was total nonsense. But Kevin also really liked the idea of being treated as Molech’s top lieutenant.
He said, “Tell you what. You let me go, and I’ll tell Molech to take it easy on you.”
Will sighed, then nodded to Echo.
She strode over to the guy, and ran a finger along his collarbone, as if feeling for some sensitive nerve cluster only advanced torturers know how to manipulate.
Will said, “Last chance.”
Kevin did a disastrous job of hiding his fear, but still said nothing.
Echo pinched the man’s neck and twisted, in a way that seemed like it would hurt but didn’t seem particularly mysterious or torturous. Kevin growled and gritted his teeth.
Echo let go and Will said, “Talk! Tell me what he wants with the relic!”
Kevin screamed that Molech would wipe his ass with Zoey’s face. Echo stepped in and twisted again.
Will shouted, “Tell me!”
“Never!”
They repeated this once more, then Echo let go, hustling Will off to a corner—away from Kevin, but not too far.
In a harsh whisper that Zoey was sure Kevin could still hear, Will said, “We’re running out of time!”
Echo replied, “I’ve never seen pain tolerance like this. It’s unreal. We could do this for weeks and he’d never break.”
Will sighed, exasperated. He cursed and said, “We don’t have a choice. Give him the relic.”
Andre looked alarmed and said, “You sure?”
“Damn it, we’re out of options.”
Andre hustled out of the room. He walked back in with the case Will had sent him after—it looked like a heavy-duty suitcase, built to withstand an explosion. Will set the case on an ottoman in front of Kevin and opened it to reveal the bronze Buddha figurine they’d taken from Arthur’s nightstand.
Will said, “You win. Here’s the Buddha. I assume I don’t need to tell you not to touch it—you know how radioactive it is.”
Will closed the case. Andre removed Kevin’s handcuffs.
Echo said, “This case, of course, is temporary containment, Molech will have a vacuum unit waiting for it, but this will buy you about twenty minutes. So don’t stop for a haircut.”
Will said, “You tell Molech we gave him what he wants. Now leave us alone. And I hope you’re pleased with yourself, you sick son of a bitch.”
Kevin actually looked amazingly pleased with himself, if not a little confused. He stood, rubbed his wrist, and picked up the case.
Andre said, “Now get the hell out of here. And you tell Molech Black Mountain will see him in Hell.”
Budd had parked Kevin’s Camaro outside the front doors, and the Suits watched as it went squealing off toward the main gates. On the way out, he passed a plain sedan that turned out to be Officer Kowalski, the bald guy with accusing eyes who had scared the crap out of Zoey her first night. He pulled up and emerged carrying a leaking grocery sack.
He hurried up to the door and said, “Got your head here.”
THIRTY-SIX
Kowalski and the Suits stood in a circle around the table in the Mold Room looking at a severed head. This was the position Zoey had caught them in that first night, and she realized that she was now officially a member of their cult. Arthur’s chair at the end of the table still sat empty, and Zoey had actually considered making a big show of sitting in it, but the chair looked old, cracked, and farted-on. Instead, Zoey paced around the room, squeezing Stench Machine and trying not to look at the head, which had belonged to the man who had called himself The Hyena, among other things, but whose real name had been Lawrence Shandy.
Echo was hunched over a virtual keyboard that was projected onto the coffee cup–stained conference table, typing and pausing occasionally to swipe through menus from the coin’s embedded memory.
“There’s a mountain of data on here. It’s not just the gold hardware drivers, it’s everything. I’m seeing schematics for devices, implants, prototypes … it goes on and on. He saved it all.”
Zoey turned her attention to the wall monitor displaying the map of the city and its scatter of red dots. They had been joined by a single, moving green dot—Kevin’s Camaro, hopefully on its way to impress his idol with a fifteen-dollar souvenir Arthur had bought at a gift shop in the Incheon International Airport. Zoey had expected the green dot to steadily make a beeline toward Molech’s location, then felt like screaming when she saw the car stop, then lurch forward slowly, then stop again. She hadn’t anticipated traffic and intersections.
Zoey glanced back at Echo and said, “So you were Arthur’s computer genius?”
“Ah, no. I knew absolutely nothing about computers when Arthur brought me on. He hired me for a position that had no job description, I just taught myself on the fly because he kept calling me every time something broke.”
“Really? Your Blink highlight reel referred to you as a Chinese computer hacker. And sexy seductress.”
“Well, I’m Filipino, but whatever.”
Without turning away from the feed, Andre said, “Yeah and I’m the sexy seductress.”
“And your nickname is Black Mountain? Does everybody call you that?”
“No, and that’s kind of insulting in two distinct ways. Still kind of like it.”
“So are you saying Will’s nickname isn’t The Magician?”
Will said, “One time, I get caught on camera doing the one coin trick I know…”
Kowalski said, “They call me Supercock.”
Kowalski had been a vice squad detective with Tabula Ra$a police right up until the whole organization fell apart and all vices were effectively legalized. He was technically still TRPD, but hadn’t been paid in four months. Most of the rest of the cops had rented themselves out
as private security to pay the bills, but Kowalski continued to show up to the precinct every day, taking money under the table to do favors for Livingston Enterprises. Meanwhile, he continued to work cases for free because, well, he liked it.
Zoey asked, “So … did the coroner have some reason for taking the guy’s head off, or…”
Kowalski said, “Nope. But they got a saw in there. Slices right through tendon and bone, I just lopped it off and walked out with it in a grocery bag. I wasn’t gonna drag this bastard’s whole corpse into my back seat.”
“And … that’s not going to cause any problems? It’s not, I don’t know, messing with evidence or something?”
“Evidence of what? Nobody is disputing the shooting, the guy’s own Blink got it all. And sure as hell nobody is debating whether this prolapse had it coming. The only ones who’d have a legitimate beef would be his family, if they wanted to throw him a funeral.” He shrugged. “If they call, we’ll duct tape it back on. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna leave before you ask me to do something morally questionable.”
After he was out of earshot, Zoey asked Will, “How much do you trust that guy?”
“Enough.” He was watching an avalanche of indecipherable code cascade down the coin’s holographic display, “What are we looking at here?”
Echo muttered, “The work of a madman. This is software written in a computer language that Resnov invented from scratch, intended to manage hardware that he invented, all of it patched by Singh, who was learning it as he went. Some of the menus are in broken English, some are in some alien language that might be code, I don’t know.”
“If you had enough time with it, could you figure it out?”
“I don’t think God could figure out how it actually works. I’m just trying to figure out the commands to install it to the Raiden hardware. This menu had a picture of a stick figure man with an arrow pointing at it, so I hit it, and … it started uploading data. Now I guess we turn on this guy’s jaw implants and see if it … fails.”
“You mean explodes?” finished Zoey. “Do you mind if I wait outside?”
Will said, “He’s turning down Fairfax.”
Zoey looked up at the monitor, and soon the green dot slowed, then stopped, turning off the street into what must have been an alley or parking lot. Not far down the street were two dots, side by side.
Will said, “Is that the Fire and Ice?”
Echo glanced up from her work and said, “Yep.”
Andre muttered, “Son of a bitch.”
Zoey asked, “Where’s that?”
Budd said, “It’s a pair of buildings downtown, been closed for a couple years. It was called the Fire and Ice Casino. Twin towers, the Ice Palace and the Fire Palace, on opposite sides of Fairfax Avenue. Former covered in ice, latter done up to look like it was a volcano or somethin’. They both had rooftop pools, connected by a swim bridge that spanned the street, guests could drift back and forth. It closed down after the Fire Palace was gutted by a fire.”
Zoey said, “That’s ironic.”
Budd said, “It’s not irony when a poorly designed building covered in hundreds of decorative open flames ends up a towering inferno. And yeah, he’s walking toward the Fi—”
The severed head twitched, and everybody in the room jumped back at once. Its jaw opened, then closed, metal teeth clinking together loudly—a huge amount of force in the mechanism. Then the jaw clanked together again, and again, its slack lips opening and closing like some kind of macabre puppet.
Echo said, “Let’s, uh, take that out to the yard.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Forty-five minutes prior to Molech’s deadline, they all stood under a portico overlooking the courtyard. The severed head had been tossed out into the snow at what they hoped was a safe distance. Out in the middle of the statues and shrubs, the jaws bit at the air, teeth snapping with that metallic snick that made the hair stand up on the back of Zoey’s neck. They all watched, mesmerized by the head that was slowly spinning around in the snow as its jaws worked, the Hyena’s blank eyes half-open, a blood-encrusted hole in his temple. Andre grabbed a shovel that had been leaned against a fountain nearby, cautiously walked over and stuck the handle into the Hyena’s dead, biting mouth. The teeth snapped through the two-inch-thick wooden handle as easily as biting the end off a cigar.
Come back off the ice, sweetie.
Zoey shivered and said, “I think I’m in a straitjacket somewhere, imagining all of this.”
Will asked Echo, “How long do we let this go on?”
She glanced down at a tablet screen. “That’s more than two hundred repetitions. The capacitor is perfectly stable, assuming that’s what this green bar here means.”
Zoey said, “Yay, he successfully invented a machine that will let humans eat bricks. Now we just need to develop a system for pooping them.”
Echo said, “What he invented was the most important advancement in energy technology since mankind learned to split the atom. Raiden works. The world has changed forever.”
Zoey watched the severed, rotting head bite its way through the snow, leaving behind a pink smear of blood from its severed stump. “Yeah, looks like it.”
Armando said, “I’ve seen enough. Upload it to me and let me go end this.”
Will said, “I don’t see why that’s necessary.”
“You don’t see why I’d need an edge if I am to attempt to slice my way through Molech’s headquarters?”
“There’s no need for you to go at all. This is what I’ve been saying, over and over—what we have there is a bargaining chip, the one thing in the world we know Molech needs. This is leverage. The kind of leverage that could maybe make him drop everything, take Zoey off his hit list, and end this ordeal.”
Zoey said, “I think the one thing Molech needs is to not get shot in the face by Armando here. I think the coin is second.”
Will shook his head. “You do that, you’re playing his game.”
“If that was your mother in that car, you would not be standing here calmly talking about leverage.”
“You’re wrong.”
Armando said, “I respect you, Mr. Blackwater, and I am sure that you know your business. But this, right here? This is war. And that is my area of expertise. Wars are won by people like me, not people like you.”
“Wars are started by people like you. The peace is negotiated by people like me. Leverage brings your enemy to the table. Guns are useful only for gaining that leverage.”
“Then it’s decided,” Zoey said. “Armando will put a gun to Molech’s head and then we’ll have leverage. Echo, turn Armando into Superman. And somebody turn off the head, it’s freaking me out.”
Echo tapped at her tablet then said, “I’m … actually not sure how.”
“Then just throw a towel over it or something.”
Thirty minutes left. Echo was watching software stream into Armando’s implants—Zoey thought she’d have to plug a cable into his head or something, but it was all done wirelessly.
Will said, “Molech demanded you meet his people in the lobby of Livingston Tower, with the gold in hand, and that you come alone. But I see no reason you can’t bring your phone, so the plan stays the same—I do all the talking. Stalling is the name of the game. It doesn’t matter where the conversation goes as long as it goes. Don’t be alarmed by whatever I say. Ultimately the goal is to stall, to give Armando time to work.”
While he spoke, Zoey was chewing on her thumbnail and watching the feed of her mother. The car had parked somewhere in the woods, and Zoey’s mother and her abductor were drinking beers and laughing, digging sandwiches out of fast-food bags. The guy had probably found her at the bar and offered a trunk full of free beer if she’d leave with him. It usually didn’t take more than that to get on Melinda Ashe’s good side. Zoey couldn’t stop crying.
Will said, “Listen to me, Zoey. This here—this is what we did for your father. We identified and nullified threats, by whatev
er means necessary. We’re old hats at this. There’s a process, that’s all. Any good plan is just a series of branching pathways, like a flowchart. We can’t predict what Molech is going to do, but his options aren’t infinite and we have to have a procedure in place regardless of which choice he makes. So no matter what I say, no matter what happens, we’re winning as long as we keep him talking. No matter what. And if he thinks he’s winning, so much the better. Understand?”
Zoey nodded.
Budd pointed at the feed and said, “I know who that is with Zoey’s momma. See the cigarette pack on the dash? Guy’s name is Kools Duncan. Real name is Charlie. Low-level rent-a-turd, got rough with one of Arthur’s girls a few years back.”
Andre looked dubious. “He’s the only guy in the world who smokes Kools?”
“See how he’s dippin’ his fries in his milkshake? Playin’ Nina Simone on the stereo. Yeah, that’s Kools. Gave himself that nickname. He’s white, by the way.”
Andre squinted at the screen. “You think he went alone?”
“No way to know for sure, but I reckon so. Kools never did get along with partners. He once stabbed a fella over whose turn it was to drive. Kools says I want to drive and the other fella says sure and Kools stabbed him in the face.”
Will said to Zoey, “All right, we should get going. Just wear what you’re wearing. Don’t brush the cat hair off your shirt. And don’t wash your face.”
“Why?”
“It’s clear you’ve been crying, your makeup is a mess. Leave it like that, that’s what we want. I’d have you bring the cat, too, but he’s too difficult to control.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to elaborate.”
“This will be the opposite of how we did it at the memorial service—we want Molech to perceive a shift in power. We can’t look like we have a plan here, the more vulnerable you look, the more receptive the other person is to what you have to say. They’ll take any offer as genuine as long as they think it’s coming from a place of weakness. And props are everything. For instance, if hypothetically you had grown mistrustful of Andre and he was trying to get back in your good graces, he might show up here looking hungover, eating some kind of ridiculous food. It would instantly endear you to him. Remember, the most powerful impression a person can make is that they don’t care if they make an impression. And whoever we’re meeting with needs to take one look at you and realize you’re the weak link, that you can be pushed into accepting whatever they want.”