The Apocalypse Codex

“I’m Bob to my friends,” I drone on autopilot as my brain freezes in the headlights. Stunning beauty in a minidress over black leggings, studiously casual yet somehow managing to send a bolt of electricity straight down my spine and drop my IQ by about fifty points on the spot…Yes, I’ve seen her like before. “That’s a nice glamour. Class two?”

Her smile freezes for an instant. “Class three, actually.” Then she lets it slip slightly and the starry soft-focus dissolves, and I’m merely shaking hands with a strikingly pretty dark-haired woman of indeterminate years— anything between twenty-five and forty—with Mediterranean looks and a dance instructor’s build, rather than a sorceress with a brain-burning beauty field set to Hollywood stun. “You have much experience of such things?”

“My wife doesn’t bother.” Is that a palpable hit? “But I’ve met them before, yes.”

Lockhart keeps a stony face throughout, but at this latter bit of banter he begins to show signs of irritation with me. “Bob, if you’d care to sit down, perhaps we could order some food?”

We sit down. I pointedly pay no attention to McTavish pointedly taking no slight at my pointed rejection of his mistress’s pointed—and unsubtle—attempt to beguile me. I’m somewhat disappointed. Do they think we’re amateurs or something?

“That was a very interesting service you sent us to last night,” Hazard tells Lockhart. She’s working on the English understatement thing, but her hands, expressive and mobile, give it away: she’s spinning exclamation marks in semaphore. “Absolutely fascinating.”

“Yes it was, wasn’t it?” Lockhart deadpans. He glances at McTavish. “You took a different angle, I assume?”

McTavish nods. “Penthouse and pavement.” His expression is oddly stony.

“Good—” Lockhart stops as the door opens. It’s one of the Wong Kei’s crack assault waiters, pad in hand. They’re famously rude; it’s all part of the service.

“You ready to order?” he barks.

“Certainly.” Lockhart is clearly a regular here. “I’ll start with the hot and sour soup…”

Two or three minutes later:

“Where was I?” Lockhart asks.

“You were grilling us about last night, as I recall,” says McTavish.

Hazard nods, eyes narrowing.

Lockhart glances at me briefly. It’s barely a flicker, but enough to warn me: The game’s afoot.

“Did you notice anything unusual about the, ah, performers?”

“What? Apart from the way they programmed the event to build the audience’s emotional investment in the key payload, then love-bombed them from fifty thousand feet with the warm floaty joy of Jesus?” Hazard props her chin on the back of her hand and pouts, sulky rather than sultry. “You should send Bob. He doesn’t like glamours. Do you, Bob?”

“Hey, it’s not you—it’s just that the last time someone put one on me I ended up buying an iPhone!” My protest falls on deaf ears.

“It’s not the glamour that interests me,” Lockhart says deliberately, “but the person it’s attached to.”

“You’re asking about Raymond Schiller, of the Golden Promise Ministries,” McTavish says lazily. “More like the Golden Fleece Ministries if you ask me, Duchess.”

“Mm, that tends to go with the territory.” Hazard is noncommittal.

“You didn’t see the average take in the collecting buckets at the back. Lot of people going short on luxuries this month, if you ask me.”

“The O2 Arena doesn’t rent for peanuts.”

“Unless it’s a charity loss-leader and they make up their margin on the food and entertainment franchises.” McTavish is a lot sharper than he looks. “Or someone with a glamour as good as Ray Schiller gets to the management committee.”

“Does he, ah, preach the prosperity gospel?” asks Lockhart.

“After a fashion.” McTavish’s lips are lemon-bitingly narrowed. “There are doctrinal shout-outs, dog-whistles the unchurched aren’t expected to notice. The prosperity gospel is in there, of course—it’s a Midwestern mega- church, after all. That’s what their appeal is all about. But there’s other stuff, too. It put me in mind of the church of my fathers, and not in a good way.”

“You didn’t say that last night.” Hazard sits up. The door opens as a pair of waiters appear, bearing trays laden with soup and starters. She continues after they leave, addressing Lockhart: “It was a very non-specific love- bombing, but it was a very public evening. I thought it was a recruiting drive for foot soldiers rather than a second- level indoctrination aimed at officers. Very skillful, though.”

“I’d use a different word for it,” McTavish says darkly.

“Yes?” Lockhart focusses on him.

“You’ll have read my file.” McTavish winks and picks up a prawn toast. “Let’s not disrespect the food, eh?”

As I dive into my chicken and sweetcorn soup I’m trying to place Hazard’s accent. It’s not remotely American, but not British, either; there’s a hint of something central European, but it’s been thoroughly scrubbed— all but erased—by very expensive speech training.

“Ray is an interesting character,” Lockhart explains over the starters. “We don’t know much about him. US citizen, of course; he came out of Texas, but his background is rather vaguer than we’re happy about. There’s a worrying lack of detail, especially about what he did before he found Jesus in his mid-twenties and joined the Golden Promise Ministries, back when it was a converted shack in the Colorado mountains.”

“Aye, well.” McTavish is busy with his ribs—I can’t tell whether he’s genuinely hungry or using them as a smoke screen—but Hazard is suddenly abruptly intent on Lockhart, her gray eyes as tightly focused as a battleship’s range-finder. “You think…”

Lockhart clears his throat. “Please don’t say what you’re about to say. I’m implying nothing, Persephone. There’s no evidence and there are no witnesses—none we’ve been able to locate. I may be barking up the wrong tree. Nevertheless, we are concerned.”

“I am not sure I see why,” she says slowly. “As long as he simply takes the marks for their marks, what’s the problem?”

Johnny McTavish has gone very still and very distant, gaze fixed and unblinking in a sniper’s thousand-yard stare. A cold chill runs up and down my spine. I’m the only person at this table who hasn’t been fully briefed on whatever is being spoken of here, and I feel horribly exposed, because I’ve read enough of the BASHFUL INCENDIARY dossier to know what Persephone is capable of, and Johnny is her lieutenant—and I suspect the subject of the other dossier, the JOHNNY PRINCE one I saw on Lockhart’s desk—which means he shouldn’t be underestimated either.

“Did you stay for the laying on of hands?” Lockhart asks after a moment.

“Yes.” Her eyes narrow. “And the speaking in tongues, and the reeling and writhing. Thank you very much.”

Johnny is pointedly silent and dour.

“Did they say anything interesting?” Lockhart leans forward.

“Hard to tell.” She frowns. “Glossolalia is always hard to follow, even with my—assets. The music and chanting and clapping and cheering from the back, they make it really hard to hear. But if I had to guess, I think—I might be wrong—it was all coming through in High Enochian. And one lady in particular—she was facing in my direction as the Holy Spirit took her—she was calling, He is coming, he is coming, over and over. And it was definitely in that tongue.”

Johnny looks up and nods. “The faith of my fathers, for sure,” he says quietly. “I could feel the siren song in my blood.”

“Well that tears it.” Lockhart looks at me sourly.

“What?” I say, surprised.

“Gerry, would you mind explaining, preferably in words of one syllable, just why this particular hedge-wizard occultist turned preacher-man is suddenly a person of interest to Her Majesty’s Government?” Hazard stares at Lockhart, openly challenging.

Johnny looks uncomfortable. “Duchess—”