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Authors: Jonathan Maberry

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BOOK: The King of Plagues
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“I’m not the boy I once was,” Gault said bitterly. He touched his bandages. “And I’m no longer ‘lovely.’”
Eris shook her head. “Bruises will heal and you’ll come to love your new face.”
“I wasn’t talking about my face,” he said distantly.
“Oh, God, are we going to have a gloomy existential conversation in a drafty hallway?” But before Gault could reply, she kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Go and make yourself clean and pretty for me.”
Breaking News: CNBC
December 17, 2:55 P.M. GMT
U.S. stock markets closed today after an apparent terrorist attack on the Royal London Hospital. The newly renovated hospital was completely destroyed, and early estimates number the dead at four thousand. That number is expected to climb.
Though the incident in London happened before the opening bell, trading went into full flight-to-safety mode as points were chopped off by panicking investors. Stock markets in Europe and Canada have also plunged.
SEC commissioner Mark David Epstein has not said when trading would resume.
Barrier Headquarters
December 17, 3:56 P.M. GMT
The three assassins were, in fact, genuine London police constables. All three had clean records; none of them had known ties to extremist political or religious groups. In every way they were ordinary citizens, and that was the scariest part of it.
“I don’t understand this,” complained Benson Childe. “They’re
good
men.”
“My ass,” I said.
We sat in his office on opposite sides of an open bottle of Clontarf single-malt Irish whiskey. MacDonal, Aylrod, and the others had just left to handle the aftershocks of the shooting and manage the spin control. Ghost slept under the table. I’d cleaned him up and calmed him, but he twitched in his sleep.
“The man you scalded with the tea is named Mick Jones. You broke nine of his bones. He’s claimed that this was an unprovoked attack.”
“He’s a lying sack of shit,” I said. “He was the one that said, ‘Happy Christmas from the Seven Kings.’ He was smiling when he said it. A happy guy doing a job he enjoyed. Probably one of the Chosen.”
Childe frowned into his whiskey. “Well, as soon as he can be transported to a military hospital we’ll see about opening him up. One of my lads, Spanton, will oversee the interrogation. He’s a right bastard, too, so we should get something.”
I wasn’t chewed up with sympathy for the crooked cop.
Childe downed a heroic slug of whiskey and poured two fingers into the glass. “All this brings up ugly questions. How did the Kings know you were here for a meeting? Why do they want you dead? How were they able to corrupt three upstanding police constables? And what did they hope to accomplish by killing you? Understand, Captain, that while your DMS field record precedes you, I don’t quite see why the Kings would target you above all others.”
“Me, neither. I’m certainly not a key player in the Hospital-bombing investigation.” I took a sip that was every bit as large as Childe’s. I was fighting a bad case of the shakes. “I spoke with Church a few minutes ago
and there haven’t been any attempts on other DMS agents. Guess I hold the golden ticket in the Lunatic Lottery.”
We sipped in silence. I wasn’t sure how to read Childe. I knew Church liked and trusted him, but the Barrier director seemed decidedly chilly since the shooting. Granted, he knew the officers, but I wondered if the confusing nature of the incident made him doubt me.
Well … fuck him if he did.
He must have caught something in my expression, because he gave me a rueful smile. “We’ll sort it all out, Captain. Here in the U.K. we have a longer history of dealing with terrorists and secret societies than your lot does. From Guy Fawkes to the bloody IRA. Half the time we never know what’s really going on. We catch a few, kill a few, dismantle a splinter cell, but it’s like cutting heads off a Hydra. Twice as many grow back and it’s bloody impossible to say if we’re doing any good.”
“Better than doing nothing,” I said.
He grunted and sipped. “It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like all we’re doing is pretending to maintain a shaky status quo while in reality things are slipping bit by bit into chaos.”
I leaned forward and pushed the bottle away from him.
“Oh yes, very funny. That’s not drink talking, Joe, and I’m not using this to wash down Prozac. I suppose it’s a kind of battle fatigue. I’ve been in this for thirty-four years and I can’t say with any certainty that I’ve won any wars. I’ve won my share of battles, but the war always seems to go on.”
It was the first time he’d called me by my first name. A flag of truce? I finished off my whiskey and set the glass down.
“Before this happened I was going out to play cop. That still sounds like the best way to try and tackle this.”
Childe looked at me. “After what just happened? Are you in any condition?”
It was a fair question. I’d fled to Europe because I didn’t think I was in any condition to be part of this sort of thing. Or at least that’s what I thought. Somehow the war always seems to find me.
“My vacation’s over, Benson,” I said. I clicked my tongue and Ghost instantly returned from whatever dark dreams were troubling him and was at my side. I bent and stroked his head.
Childe stood and offered his hand. “Stay safe.”
I laughed, but I shook his hand.
We went outside into the cold. We were both hypervigilant, and though we saw nothing else the rest of the day, I could
feel
the eyes of the Seven Kings on me wherever I went.
T-Town, Mount Baker, Washington State
Three Months Before the London Event
Circe O’Tree perched on the edge of her chair and tried not to chew her lip as Hugo Vox read through the most recent version of what had come to be known as the “Goddess Report.” Two or three times per page he reached into a ceramic bowl and took a handful of Gummi worms. He chewed steadily and noisily as he read, and except for the sound of shouts and gunfire from the counterterrorism range outside the room was quiet. The second hand on the Stars and Stripes clock on the wall seemed to crawl.
When he finished the last page he looked up expectantly. “This is incomplete. You got a lot of data here, kiddo, but I don’t see any conclusions.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Hugo. I don’t know where to go with it. I just know that it’s bad and it’s getting worse.”
He nibbled a Gummi worm and said nothing.
Circe took a breath and plunged in. “Ever since I started this I’ve been making connections and tracking patterns. The Goddess, the Elders of Zion, the covert and overt suggestions for violence … there’s a lot of stuff here. The more the Goddess posts, the more the other Internet extremists pick up on it and repeat her comments, add to them, discuss them in chat rooms and on message boards. People are blogging about it, writing essays and magazine articles about it. Not just conspiracy theorists and shock journalists, either. And … it’s spilling over into the real world.”
She laid a copy of
The Grapevine
on his desk. The picture showed the fiery aftermath of a Pakistani mosque being destroyed by a bomb in a parcel that had been delivered a few minutes before prayers. Forty-three dead, eighty wounded. The headline read:
ISRAEL STRIKES BACK.
Vox picked up the newspaper and sneered. “This is a rag. This is the
same paper that printed Pat Robertson’s comment that 9/11 was God showing displeasure at gays.” He tossed it down on the desk. “I wouldn’t wipe my ass with it.”
She reached into her briefcase and brought out a stack of other newspapers and began stacking them on his desk one by one.
USA Today,
the
Arizona Republic,
the
Chicago Tribune,
the
San Jose Mercury,
and
The Fresno Bee
.
“Balls,” he said.
“Every major newspaper has reported incidents that
could
be interpreted as hate crimes.”
“Most of these papers retread each other’s—”
She lifted a shopping bag that was filled with newspapers. “
Bahrain Post, Gulf Daily News, Cyprus Mail, Al-Ahram Weekly, Tehran Globe
… I could go on and on, Hugo. Want me to get the rest from my office?”
“Okay, okay, Circe, but we have to look beyond the reportage. Have you established for certain that these crimes are related to the Goddess posts?”
“I don’t know if it’s even possible to prove that, but look at the timing.” She unfolded a flowchart and spread it over the mountain range of papers. “See? The red line marks the first of the anti-Islam posts and here’s the first of the
Protocols of Zion
posts. Now look at the blue line. Those are incidents of hate crimes. Look at the spikes.”
“These are all hate crimes against Muslims?”
“No. Some are against Jews.”
“
By
Muslims?”
“Not always. Some are from anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist groups composed of Christians and others, but—”
“So, we’re seeing hate crimes go up, but they’re not all specific to the message of the Goddess?”
“No, but—”
“This is supposition, Circe. I can surf the Net and build a case that the widespread popularity of Hello Kitty was responsible for the fall of the Nixon presidency.” When she looked blank, he gave her a Cheshire cat grin. “Hello Kitty hit the U.S. in 1974, same year as Watergate. I bet I could do a flowchart and probably make a good enough case to get a book deal out of it.”
“How do you
know
this stuff?”
He grinned and tapped his head. “I am filled with useless trivia. I’d clean the hell up on
Jeopardy!
Point is, kiddo, this data is interesting, but it still doesn’t make your case.”
“That’s the thing, Hugo; with the Net it’s almost impossible to collect hard, verifiable evidence. That’s why groups like the Goddess
use
it.”
“Say that’s true, so how do we separate that out and give it more credence than the ten billion other equally well-documented conspiracy theories, lies, exaggerations, wishful thinking, and pure bullshit that comprise the World Wide goddamn Web?”
Circe sagged. “What are you saying, that we ignore it?”
Vox looked genuinely surprised. “Hell no! I really think you’re on to something here, kiddo, but we’re talking about making a case to the lunkheads in Washington who have an ironclad record for ignoring good leads and following bad ones.”
“The DMS is different,” she said.
“Sure, and if we take this to the DMS and we’re wrong, D.C. will fry us. No one is supposed to bring
anything
to them unless it’s verified to the highest possible probability, and right now that isn’t how we can label this. Personal belief alone doesn’t cut it.” He took a breath. “In the meantime, what’s your next step?”
She was momentarily flustered, then steadied herself with a breath. “I created a few e-mail accounts with goddess names and have posted responses phrased to coax a more definitive statement, but most of the posters are clearly not core to this. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet gotten any responses that I can say are clearly from someone in the know.”
“
If
someone even
is
in the know.”
“If,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I believe that the Goddess is real, and I believe that the group she represents poses a real threat.”
“I hear you, but until we have facts we can’t build a case for it being a clear and present—and therefore
actionable
—danger.” He tossed the report onto the desk. “What do you suppose their motive is?”
“I don’t know. ‘Chaos’ doesn’t seem to be a profitable goal.”
“I guess not.” He tapped the report with a half-eaten Gummi worm. “You know, ever since you brought this to me I’ve been back and forth with the State Department, the FBI and CIA, and the Israelis. None of
them think that this is coming from Israel. I mean, beyond the tension that’s been going on since—oh, I don’t know, Moses parted the fucking Red Sea, there isn’t anyone in Israel who thinks Jews are involved in this at all.”
She nodded. “The more I read the Goddess’s Net postings the more I’m convinced they are designed to do the reverse of what they’re saying, just like the
Protocols
. By pretending to support and justify Israeli aggression against Islam, they’re actually trying to frame them as terrorists. The problem is … it might be working. Whether they blew up the mosque or not doesn’t matter as long as the right people
think
they did.”
“Which brings us back to the third-party possibility.” He rubbed his eyes. “Keep on this. But maybe you can drop a bug in the ear of that British broad you’re friends with.”
“Grace Courtland?”
“Yeah. Get her take on it, but on the down low. Nothing official. If she thinks you have something, then I’ll reach out to Mr. Church. But take it slow, kiddo. One step at a time.”
BOOK: The King of Plagues
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