The Impaler

1930s. That too had been a message from the Prince—their first face-to-face encounter —but young Edmund Lambert had simply been too stupid to understand.

But after Edmund read Macbeth and understood he needed a head to communicate with the Prince, it was the General who broke into the taxidermy shop and brought Leo back to the Throne Room. And so only the General was allowed to wear the lion’s head, and only then in service of the Prince.

But now, it was Edmund Lambert who slipped the Prince’s visage over his face; and all at once he could feel the Prince’s power flowing through his muscles. It always felt like liquid electricity to the General; but to Edmund Lambert, the energy coursing through his veins made him feel weak and fearful—like a child sneaking into a haunted house.

Thhwummp!—a rush of brightness—and the doorway was open.

Yes, there was his mother! Clear and bright and floating with the swirling colors of sin behind her. She was dressed as she was on the day she died, at once both near and far away, but she did not call to him anymore—only dropped to her knees and cried with joy when she saw him. And there was Edmund—a finger to his lips as his other hand reached out and touched her face. A secret touch that spoke of little time but said, “Don’t worry, Mama.”

Flash-flash—a sliver flash like the strobe light at the farmhouse—and now there was someone else with them, someone helping his mother to her feet and drawing her back into the swirling colors. Another woman, dressed in white. A young woman with long black hair and a smile that looked like—Cindy Smith’s?

“Ereshkigal,” his mother said before she disappeared. “Ereshkigal will help us.”

Flash-flash and another rush—this one of darkness—and suddenly Edmund was back in the Throne Room with the lion’s head in his hands. He’d torn it from his face without realizing, and quickly fumbled it back onto the shelf. Then he bolted from the cellar—up the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door.

He kept running until he was safely inside the barn—closed the doors behind him, tore off his shirt, and fell to his knees before the mirror in the horse stall, the temple doors of Kutha rising and falling with his breaths.

He was terrified, but that was all right for now. The Prince had not awakened—would not be able to hear him in here even if he was awake. No, this doorway, the last of them all, was not yet open.

Ereshkigal, he heard his mother say in his head. Ereshki-gal will help us.

That had been unexpected—perhaps even more unexpected than hearing from his mother. He knew the latter would have to happen eventually, especially if she ever sensed him near the doorway or perhaps saw him with the Prince.

But Ereshkigal? The Prince’s beloved?

Of course, Edmund knew the story of how the Prince had raped her and taken her throne by force. And when he thought about it, the fact that Ereshkigal might want to help them made perfect sense. Perhaps that was why the Prince did not want to talk about Cindy Smith. Perhaps the Prince was keeping something from him after all.

Then again, Edmund thought, the General had been keeping something from the Prince, too—a promise he’d made long before he was anointed, but a promise nonetheless of which the Prince would surely disapprove.

But could this be a trap? Could the Prince be testing the General’s loyalty?

“The General is still loyal,” Edmund said out loud. “His loyalty is split is all; and there is no reason why this can’t be part of his reward.”

But the Prince demands ultimate devotion. You know that. There is to be no one but the Prince. He has shown you that in his visions, in the sacrifices at Kutha—

“The General made his promise before he was anointed,” Edmund said. “That is surely one of the reasons why the Prince chose him. For his loyalty.”

The voice in his head was silent, and all at once Edmund Lambert was the General again. He watched himself in the mirror until the temple doors became still. Cindy Smith? But how could she be Ereshkigal? How could she be both in this world and that world at the same time?

The General envisioned the young actress as Lady Macbeth; saw her in her spirit costume rising from beneath the stage to take her husband into Hell. The General kept replaying this scene over and over again in his mind. Could the answer have been right there in front of him all along? Was it written in the stars that he, the General, should have been the one to design and build the doorway through which he would join with Ereshkigal in the Underworld?

Something deep behind the temple doors on his chest told him yes. A parallel with his day-life, part of the equation, everything connected—but he would need to think on it. There was still much about the doorway that he had yet to understand—so much so that, oftentimes when the Prince revealed things to him in his visions, the General didn’t know what to make of them. Even after consulting with the Prince.

Of course, there would be no consulting the Prince about all this. And even though the Prince spoke to the General inside his head, he could not read the General’s thoughts unless the General wanted him to.

No, when it came to this part of the equation, the General was on his own.

But that was all right. He’d figured out how to balance other parts of the equation on his own. And so he would figure out how to balance this part on his own, too.

Eventually, a voice answered in his head.

The General smiled. He understood the concept of eventually. It had been that way from the beginning, all those years ago when he promised his mother he would save her. It had taken him almost two decades of eventually to balance that part of the equation.

But then again, the General thought, what’s a couple of decades compared to eternity?

Chapter 39

Alan Gates hung up from a call with his Interpol liaison feeling frustrated and helpless. He hated having to deal with anyone at the United Nations—hated having to deal with anyone outside the FBI period. True, things had gotten better since 9/11; clearer channels and more cooperation all around. Nonetheless, even with this new wrinkle surrounding the ob-jets d’art seized in Rome, he knew things were going to come to a screeching halt again in Jordan. Yes, now that the United States was involved, those bastards would take great pride in sabotaging Interpol’s investigation.

The suspect in question was a Dutchman named Bertjan van Weerdt, a black-market antiquities dealer whose specialty was European art seized by the Nazis during World War II, and against whom Interpol had been building a case for almost a year. Why or how van Weerdt had gotten mixed up in one of the many smuggling rings to come out of Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion was still a bit of a mystery. He’d already been turned over to the authorities in The Hague, and even though Interpol had him by the balls, van Weerdt wouldn’t give up the name of his contact in Jordan—said he knew the man only as Abdul and could provide no further information. Gates had a feeling van Weerdt was telling the truth. He knew the type—no loyalty, anything to save his own skin—and could already see the trail ending at the Jordan consulate with or without the Dutchman’s help.

Of course, Gates would fly one of his men to The Hague to run van Weerdt through the obligatory round of questions. But that was going to take time, and time was something they didn’t have.

The implications of his protege’s theory were staggering. Never mind the killer’s time line; never mind his connection to the constellation Leo, the god Nergal, and his obsession with the mark of the lion. No, given the date on which Inter-pol nabbed van Weerdt in Rome, what bothered Alan Gates the most was that, if in fact the Impaler had drawn on the stolen Babylonian seal for inspiration, there were really only two possible scenarios in which he could’ve come into contact with it. Either he was involved in the smuggling ring himself, or he’d seen the seal somewhere else—perhaps at an archaeological dig in Iraq or a private collection that eventually got mixed up with the stolen items from the Baghdad Museum. The latter left open too many variables. And so, until anything told them differently, the FBI would have to begin from the premise that the Impaler had