The King of Plagues jl-3 Read online

The wall was filled with life. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, images of people in all their colors and costumes were animated by individual urgencies and passions. Newsreaders and statesmen, talk-show hosts and market forecasters, media experts and the man on the street. A hundred flat-screen OLED monitors brought every aspect of the crisis into the chamber. The seven men who sat on the ornate high-backed chairs were silent. The seven others—five men and two women—who sat beside them in less ostentatious chairs were equally silent. The voices that filled the room spoke from Wisdom Audio speakers, their many languages and dialects blending and swirling in the soft shadows of the chamber. A Tower of Babel, chatter and noise, and yet all of it saying the same thing. Everyone, on every screen, was absorbed in the event. The whole world shared this moment.

  The Royal London Hospital was gone. As the fourteen silent people watched, the last stubborn wall yielded to the fiery Mephistophelean fingers. The foundation blocks, blackened from hours of inferno heat, cracked to hot ash, and the tower canted sideways. As it crashed down, imps and demons of pure flame capered in the clouds of smoke that billowed up.

  That was how the King of Plagues saw it from his place at the table. Fire and heat. Melting flesh and screams from within a world of burning torment. He closed his eyes and felt an almost orgasmic rush.

  On the screens, the whole world paused in horror, as if there had been some hope built into the mortar of that last corner of the old building. As if its resistance somehow meant that the whole event was not comprehensive, that it was poised to occur rather than already seared into today’s page of history. But as it bowed in inevitable defeat, the world’s voices coughed out a collective and broken sigh.

  Acceptance is a terrible, terrible thing.

  Each screen showed the thick pall of oily black smoke that erupted from the burning building. It was so dense that it blotted out the sky and turned day into night.

  There was another moment of silence as the jackals of the media took a breath. Not in reverence, but in order to begin a fresh tirade that would be equal parts hysteria, greed for ratings or copies sold, and mindless chatter to fill airtime until someone fed them something of substance to report.

  He turned to his fellow Kings. Three to his left, three to his right. He looked at the Conscience who sat beside each King. Every King and every Conscience smiled.

  The King of Plagues recited a passage from Exodus, changing it only slightly to suit the moment: “‘And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land, even darkness which may be felt.’”

  Into the silence, the King of Plagues said, “Beautiful.”

  “Beautiful,” they all agreed.

  And truly, to each of them, it was.

  Interlude Four

  Four Months Ago

  Nouveau Visage Center for Cosmetic Surgery

  Beverly Hills, California

  The Burned Man had a hundred names in a hundred places around the world. His own name had been left behind when he had been forced into hiding, and over the last eight weeks he’d changed names weekly, often daily, relying on identities that had been carefully put in place over fifteen years. He had millions of dollars in numbered accounts, and safe-deposit boxes in forty countries filled with cash, jewels, and bearer bonds. As long as he was never identified he could remain free and live well for the rest of his life, and he was still a relatively young man. He had been forced to leave behind a fortune worth many billions, and a name that had been on short lists for the Nobel Prize and a knighthood.

  Now … ? His downfall had come through no fault of his own but through betrayal, and since then he had become infinitely careful. And infinitely bitter. When his name was mentioned these days, it was always accompanied by words like “terrorist,” “mass murderer,” and “most wanted.”

  Escaping with his life had been immensely difficult, and even his injuries were mild compared to what they might have been. He knew that he should be grateful to be alive and free and rich.

  He was also a very careful man. Before his accident, it would have amused him to know that the authorities were looking for him in all the wrong places. Now it was a simple fact of life, the result of the careful planning that would have to be routine forever.

  He felt no guilt for what he had done. When the pain from the surgeries flared, or the memories of his flesh melting as he struggled to escape the explosion, the Burned Man vented his anger by wishing he had done more harm. When he unwrapped his bandages and stared into a mirror at the ruin of a face that had once been on the covers of over five hundred magazines worldwide, from Forbes to National Geographic, his anger became an almost physical force—a burning ball of hatred that he wished he could spit out at the world.

  The pills and the booze and the plastic surgeries helped, but only in the way that morphine helps to hide the pain of a cancer but does not remove the tumor. They did not take away the deep loss and sense of betrayal that hung burning in his mind every minute of every day.

  He lay on a chaise lounge by the pool in the recovery pavilion of Nouveau Visage, the most exclusive, confidential, and expensive center for cosmetic and reconstructive surgery in the United States. Even after weeks, much of his face was still wrapped in surgical dressings, as were the tips of his fingers. A tall glass of sparkling water garnished with cherries and mint leaves sat sweating on a nearby table, and movie stars in robes and bikinis lounged around him. Guests almost never spoke to one another. It was part of the mystique of “we were never here” that made the place so exclusive. Even the invoices sent by the billing department were in code so no secretary or IRS agent could sell secrets to the tabloids. The items on the Burned Man’s bills were for personal training, spiritual counseling, and financial advising. There was no trail to follow.

  He sipped his drink, wincing only a little at the effort.

  The Burned Man wondered if he was becoming addicted to surgery, a phenomenon he knew inspired many of his fellow inmates to return here at least twice a year without really needing to. Since he had checked in, the doctors from this facility—and specialists he’d paid exorbitant amounts to have flown in—had repaired the burns, done skin grafts, reshaped his ears, performed a complete rhinoplasty, augmented his chin, reassigned fat to give his body a new shape, and even transplanted a new eye to replace the one that had been boiled in his head during a geothermal explosion. When the bandages came off and the surgical bruises healed he would be a totally new man. A Swiss surgeon even had replotted the whorls and loops of his fingerprints using a radical new procedure that cost $1 million per finger. The downside was that it would have to be repeated every two years, but that was a small price to pay for his freedom. As long as he was careful not to leave DNA where it would come to the attention of the authorities it was likely he would never be identified and never be caught.

  The tissue grafts and the new eye had been provided by his friend and former lover Hecate Jakoby, and they were a perfect match to his own. They should be—Hecate was one of the world’s leading genetic designers and she had grown them especially for him in case of just such an emergency. Hecate had done the same for the Burned Man’s companion, who sprawled on the adjoining lounger reading an L. A. Banks novel and sipping a Bloody Mary.

  “May I freshen your drink, sir?” asked the pretty nurse, and when the Burned Man nodded she bent and retrieved his glass, giving him a generous and deliberate view of her cleavage. The nurses had a private bet that the Burned Man was one of the British royals and all wanted to bag a duke or a lord.

  The Burned Man admired the view and gave the nurse as much of a smile as his bruises and bandages would allow. His good eye twinkled and his lips and teeth were perfect.

  “Lovely girl,” said the Burned Man once she was gone.

  “She’s a cow with fake tits,” murmured the other without looking up from the page.

  “I’d like to shag her, not marry her—,” the Burned Man began, but a cell chirped so
ftly on the table between the loungers. His companion picked it up, flipped it open, and said, “Hello?” with complete disinterest and maximum boredom.

  “I want to play a game,” said the voice at the other end.

  The companion stiffened, which the Burned Man caught. They bent their heads together to listen.

  “Who is calling?” said the companion in a banal secretary’s voice that was entirely unlike his own.

  “That isn’t the response we agreed upon. I’ll hang up in five seconds.”

  The Burned Man and his companion shared a look that was equal parts wariness, surprise, and intrigue. There was no one else within earshot, and the noise from the artificial waterfall was an excellent sound blocker. The Burned Man nodded.

  “Very well. What game would you like to play?”

  “Horse racing.”

  Horse racing. The Sport of Kings. Sweet Jesus.

  Toys looked like he wanted to run, but the Burned Man smiled and took the phone. “Assure me that this is a secure line.”

  “It’s secure, Sebastian.” The man had a lot of Boston in his vowels.

  “I don’t know that name,” the Burned Man lied. “Why are you calling me?”

  “First, tell me how you are. I’ve heard some alarming reports. Sebastian Gault—third most wanted man on eighteen international police lists.”

  “Fourth,” Sebastian corrected.

  “Third. Janos Smitrovitch had a heart attack in his hot tub last night.”

  “Third then. Thanks for sharing. Now please bugger off—”

  “Ah, c’mon … be civil for Christ’s sake. Can’t you squeeze out enough enthusiasm to shoot the breeze with an old friend? At least tell me how you are.”

  Sebastian Gault—the Burned Man—sighed. “Oh, I’m just peachy. I feel like a new man,” he said dryly. Speaking hurt less this week than it did last and the physical therapy had gone a long way to restoring the mobility of his jaw and neck muscles, but the discomfort was always there. The doctors said that some pain might linger forever. Gault was learning the skill of eating his pain. Each bite made him more bitter and less forgiving.

  “And Toys?”

  Gault turned an inch toward his companion. Toys smiled.

  “The same.”

  “He still listen in on all your calls?”

  “Yes,” said Toys. “Someone has to weed out the cranks and bill collectors.”

  The American laughed. “Thank god you haven’t changed. The world would be a much dimmer place.”

  Gault cut in irritably, “What’s this about?”

  “Ah … it’s about destiny, my friend.”

  “Whose?”

  “Why, yours, of course. This is a big day for you guys.”

  “No, it isn’t. Today we plan to have seaweed wraps and then I think we’ll each get a massage. That’s as much destiny as I want, thank you very much.”

  “I doubt that’s true. What happened to your dreams of empire? I remember you telling me how you planned to make a king’s fortune, how you were going to reshape the world by forcing the U.S. out of the Middle East in a way that would put tens of billions in your pocket.”

  “It was hundreds of billions,” Gault said with a touch of frost, “and if you read the papers you’ll know that things didn’t quite work out as planned.”

  “Yes, but we are so impressed by the scope and subtlety of your plan. It should have worked. It would have, had you placed less stock in true believers and more in practical cynics like Toys.”

  Toys leaned back and gave his friend a charming eyelid-fluttering smile.

  Gault covered the phone and hissed at Toys, “Tell me, ‘I told you so,’ again and I’ll smother you in your sleep.”

  Toys mimed zipping his mouth shut, but his smile persisted.

  Into the phone Gault said, “Tell me again why we’re having this conversation? And try for once not to be so sodding cryptic. And … who is this ‘we’ you’re referring to? Or has the Dragon Lady gotten back into the game?”

  “Ha! I’ll tell her you called her that. She’s killed for less. We’ve both seen her do it.”

  “The only excuse your mother needs for killing someone is that the day ends in a y. She’s the most lethal bitch I ever met.”

  “But you love her.”

  “Of course,” conceded Gault, which was true enough. Right around the time Gault first made the cover of The Lancet, Eris had begun summoning him to wherever she was staying for long weekends filled with every kind of sybaritic excess. Although Eris was twenty years older than Gault, her sexual appetites were more ferocious than his, and that was saying quite a lot. Even Gault’s late, lamented Amirah—that treacherous witch who was the reason he was swathed in surgical wraps—was less of a bedroom predator than the American’s mother. More than once Gault had thought about marrying Eris. If she’d been younger or, perhaps, saner, he might have. Even so, the memories of being the fly in her erotic webs were so potent that he felt a serious stirring in his loins.

  He said, “How could I not?”

  The American laughed again. He had a bray of a laugh that came from deep in his chest.

  “Tell me what this is about,” Gault prompted.

  “I’ll do better than that, Sebastian. We’ll show you. Get dressed and pack your stuff. I’ll have a car outside in twenty minutes.”

  “You don’t even know where I am.”

  “Of course I do,” said the man. “Nouveau Visage … in the pool area. You’re on the fifth chaise lounge; Toys is on the sixth. Oh … and don’t bother with the fresh glass of sparkling water the nurse is bringing. They’re charging you for Bling H20, but it’s only Perrier.”

  He disconnected.

  Gault sat there, letting his body pretend a posture of relaxation while his good eye cut right and left around the pool area. Beside him, Toys clicked his tongue.

  “Well, well,” Toys said softly. “That’s unnerving.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Trite as it sounds to say it—especially coming from me—I feel violated.”

  “Everyone who meets that son of a bitch feels violated,” Gault said. “And for good reason.”

  They looked around, making it casual, faking some conversation and genial laughter, but neither of them could spot the spy or spy camera. It made Gault itch all over.

  Still …

  “Why did he call? How did he know where we were?”

  “‘We,’” Toys echoed.

  “We,” Gault agreed. He stood up. “Let’s go back to our suite,” he suggested.

  “To search it?” asked Toys.

  “No,” said Sebastian Gault. “To pack.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Barrier Headquarters

  London, England

  December 17, 1:50 P.M. GMT

  “Who the bloody hell are the Seven Kings?” Detective Chief Inspector Martin Aylrod looked at the screen and then at me as if this was somehow my fault.

  However, Deirdre MacDonal turned to him in surprise. “Good God, Marty, don’t you read any of the reports I send you? They’re that terrorist organization the DMS and Barrier have been crossing swords with since—”

  “Well,” Childe interjected, “it’s really just the DMS. We’ve only provided support, but this is the first evidence of them being here in the U.K.”

  “Which doesn’t answer the questions of who they are,” insisted Aylrod. “Christ, Benson, you look like you’re about to pass a kidney stone.”

  I said, “We don’t actually know who they are. In general terms they’re a secret society supposedly modeled along the lines of the Illuminati.”

  “More like SPECTRE,” muttered MacDonal. “A lot of James Bond supervillain nonsense.”

  “They’re a bit more than that,” Childe said dryly.

  “What do you mean,” demanded Welles.

  I told them all about Deep Throat and the cryptic info he’d fed us. “Hard to tell if they’re a genuine secret society or a criminal
group using that as a PR campaign to make themselves appear ancient and powerful.”

  “They blew up a sodding hospital,” snarled Aylrod. “That seems pretty effing powerful to me.”

  “Sure,” I agreed neutrally, “but that’s today’s news. Until now they’ve been like Professor Moriarty—behind-the-scenes and supposedly tied to a lot of stuff, but really frigging hard to connect with any certainty. And they like using pop culture to build their mystique, so it’s really hard to pin down anything clear-cut about them. There’s a ton of stuff about them on the Net, and a lot of conspiracy theorists have tied the Seven Kings to a zillion ancient groups and prophecies.”

  “What are their politics?” Welles asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, sir. Deep Throat said that they’re dedicated to chaos.”

  “‘Chaos’?” Welles said dryly. “Could you be a bit more vague?”

  I smiled and spread my hands.

  Aylrod said, “And your lads have had run-ins with them?”

  “Quite a few.” I gave them the highlights. “Their street-level soldiers are called the Chosen. The odd thing is that the Kings have so far worked with extremist groups among the Shiites, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and a Sunni group. Yes, I did say Sunni.”

  “So, they’re opportunists,” suggested Welles. “Working with whoever will work with them?”

  “Or manipulating any group they can to further their own aims,” I said.

  “Clever,” said Aylrod. “Have you managed to interview any of these ‘Chosen’?”

  “Sure, but these street-level guys are just that. They’re members of isolated cells so far removed from the policy level that they genuinely don’t know anything beyond a couple of words and names. Nothing that connects us to anything useful. So far we’ve been able to determine that the Chosen are the ground troops. There’s a group that’s a big step up from them called the Kingsmen. The DMS had one tussle with them, and they are very, very tough hombres.”

  “How tough?” asked Aylrod.

  “Man for man they could hold their own against the SEALs or the SAS. Smart, resourceful, superb level of training, and they’re equipped with the latest and the best gear.”