The Impaler

manner that his son had grown to appreciate only after he joined the FBI. Then again, Markham knew that was because his father had grown to appreciate him only after he joined the FBI—de-spite the circumstances surrounding his change of careers.

Peter Markham had never supported his son’s desire to be an English teacher. Of course, he’d never come right out and said anything, but young Sammy had always been able to intuit his father’s opinions by what he didn’t say—like the way he never asked him how he was doing in his classes; like the way he never even asked him if he’d gotten laid yet. “It’s your life,” was all Peter Markham would say, his mind unable to wrap itself around the concept of a former all-star high school athlete like Sammy Markham wanting to teach poetry and shit. Besides, when it came right down to it, how much could a fella make doing that stuff anyway?

“Sammy’s not allowed to talk about his work,” said his mother. “You know better than to ask him, dear.”

“I’m not asking about his work, Lois. I’m just asking if this Vlad boy is his boy.”

Lois Markham rolled her eyes and slipped two eggs onto her son’s plate.

“It’s all right,” Markham said. “I’ve no problem telling you I’m working on this case, Dad. But pretty much all we know is what you guys have read in the paper there.” This was a lie, but he didn’t care; knew this was the best way to get his father off the subject, and added, “But you have to keep all this between us. Don’t go mentioning anything about me to the boys at the gun club. Okay?”

“What the hell do I look like?” said Peter Markham, cutting his steak. “I know better than to shoot my mouth off. You see, Lois? That’s all I wanted to know.”

Lois sighed and sat down at the table with a look of knowing resignation that her son had seen many times over the years. As close as he had been with his father growing up, Markham knew deep down that he was more like his mother—more reserved, more intellectual, and (oh God, don’t fucking say it!) more sensitive.

Lois Markham had worked for a time in real estate with her husband, but for most of her adult life she’d been a stay-at-home mom. She dabbled in painting and poetry before her son was born, and used to take little Sammy with her to the theater and to classical music concerts. Peter Markham would never have been caught dead at the theater—used to say that all that artsy-fartsy stuff was gonna turn his boy into a sissy—but somehow Peter and Lois Markham made it work for over forty years.

“I’ll tell you this, however,” said Peter Markham with a mouthful of food. “The only way you guys’ll catch this nut-bag is if he screws up. I’m not knocking what you do, Sammy, don’t get me wrong. But all them serial killers that I’ve read about, they screw up eventually, am I right?”

“Not all of them,” said Markham. “Some have never been caught—”

“I know, I know,” his father said, waving his fork. “Jack the Ripper was one, sure. But nowadays it’s just a matter of time. I guess you could say that they screw up all along, but it takes a smart guy like you to see the screw-ups that nobody else sees. You understand what I’m saying?”

“All right, Peter,” said his wife. “Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

“What? I’m just telling my son I’m proud of him. I am proud of you, Sammy. You know that, don’t you?”

Markham nodded but said nothing. He chewed his food slowly as his mind drifted to the Impaler. What the hell was he doing in Connecticut having dinner with his parents when he should be back in Raleigh? He was due to fly out tomorrow afternoon around two o’clock, but the idea of spending another night here, the idea of waiting well into the day tomorrow, suddenly seemed unbearable to him.

The family ate the rest of their meal peppered with small talk—politics, the Yankees, a woman Lois knew who left her husband for a younger man—but Markham’s mind soon turned to Andy Schaap.

Still working on his lists, he thought. Christ, I ’d give anything to trade places with him right now.

After his parents retired to the den to watch a movie on HBO, Markham excused himself and stepped out onto the back porch. He dialed Schaap’s number on his BlackBerry—tried him first at the Resident Agency, then left a voice mail on his cell asking how things were going and to call him back ASAP with an update.

Then he sat for a long time just staring out the screened porch windows to the jagged silhouette of woods behind his house. It was chilly, and he could not see the stars, but he had no urge to go outside to look at them. Instead he closed his eyes and imagined what the sky would look like had he been camping out in the backyard with his father as they so often did when he was a child. Back then, little Sammy Markham didn’t know where to look for Leo, but tonight he saw the lion through the eyes of a little boy—bright and shining above all the other constellations—and began to wonder if the Impaler ever camped out in the backyard with his father, too.

Chapter 64

The General almost fell off his ladder when the FBI agent’s BlackBerry went off. He was working in the attic with his grandfather’s old circular saw, and had he not paused to wipe the sweat from his brow, he most certainly wouldn’t have heard KISS’s “Detroit Rock City” blaring up at him from the attic floor. The General would never have pegged Andrew J. Schaap as a KISS fan, but then again, a lot of things had taken him by surprise today.

“I feel uptight on Saturday night,” Paul Stanley wailed, and the General nodded absently. He was uptight, too. Things were taking longer than expected, and even after all these years, he was still afraid to be in the attic alone. But the work up there had to be done. And soon.

True, judging from Andrew J. Schaap’s lists and the files on his computer, he and the Prince still had time to get things done before the rest of the FBI arrived. But what to do next and where to go once the work in the house was complete—well, that remained to be seen in the Prince’s visions.

The FBI agent was working alone. There was no doubt about that, and no doubt that he had only recently put two and two together and was working systematically down a list of names. The General had not been able to sign into the Sentinel case management system (something he shouldn’t do anyway, IP addresses and all that), but still, from what files he could access, the General was nothing short of blown away.

The FBI knew almost everything—his relationship with the Prince, the stars, the ancient texts, the mark of the lion, Nergal, and the connection to Iraq. But what really stunned the General was the account of how the ancient Babylonian seal was found in Italy—the same seal that Edmund Lambert had offered up to the lion on the eve of his anointing!

Incredibly, the ancient artifact had been found. How? The General couldn’t even begin to imagine. Maybe the lion dropped it, or maybe the seal had been discovered in the lion’s stomach by someone who had killed it for meat. Maybe it was found in the lion’s shit—

Or maybe, said a voice in his head, just maybe the lion never took the seal at all. Maybe you imagined the whole thing and dropped the seal in the alleyway. Maybe one of your comrades found it and sold it in Qatar himself—

But the General only laughed at this idea. The lion in Tal Afar had been real—there could be no doubt about that. The seal, that very instrument that the ancient Babylonians had used to seal their secret messages, was a secret message in and of itself. And that Edmund Lambert, the man who would become the General, should have selected it from all the other stolen artifacts proved that he was not only worthy but also the only mortal capable of understanding the Prince’s messages.

Furthermore, the fact that Andrew J. Schaap and almost the entirety of the FBI’s investigation had been literally dumped on his doorstep proved to the General two things: one, that the Prince’s return was indeed inevitable; and two, that it was up to the General to put all the information he had been given to good use.

“But who is this Sam Markham?” he’d wondered when he first searched the FBI agent’s laptop. “Who is this man who seems to know the Prince better than anyone?”

Oh yes, the General had thought, this Sam Markham was a very smart man; for the files on the computer made it abundantly clear that it was he who had singlehandedly put everything together.

But the General did not have the time to ponder this. More important matters required his immediate attention. And now, hours later, the BlackBerry was ringing on the attic floor; now, perhaps, Andrew J. Schaap’s friends had begun looking for him. The General didn’t know if they would activate the vehicle-tracking device that he