The King of Plagues

possible. Even DeeDee looked ten feet tall.

“They’re in the security database,” said Circe, and handed over a thick folder. “Here are their papers.”

“Welcome aboard the Sea of Hope,” Alesso said with a bright smile. The only reaction he got was a microscopic twitch of Top’s upper lip. Alesso’s smile looked like it had become fragile, so I covertly gestured for Circe to wrap this up before the poor guy fainted.

Alesso showed us to staterooms—Echo Team’s was a suite directly across the hall from Lavigne’s. We carried our stuff inside and closed the door. Circe’s stateroom was on another deck, but as soon as she dropped her suitcases she came back. Church and Dietrich, too.

“Welcome to the Sea of Hope,” Top said, echoing Alesso. “Now what?”

Dietrich opened one of the cases and handed me a pair of glasses. “First things first.”

I put them on. The prescription was fake, and the heavy frames contained an ultrathin receiver that allowed me to get the same lens display intel feed. The lenses worked like one-way glass, so I could see the display, but no one looking at me could. Dietrich tossed me the small pocket mouse that would allow me to scroll the intel. I adjusted glasses, studied the floor plan for this part of the ship, then flicked through some other data to make sure the uplink was working fast.

The shades Echo Team wore had the same technology built in.

Circe and Church were already on their laptops. I was about to kick off a new version of the same discussion we’d been having about what the hell to do now that we were onboard when Circe said, “Oh my God!”

“Now what?” Bunny muttered, but we all gathered around her.

Circe said, “This just came in from Dr. Cmar; he’s an infectious disease doctor at Johns Hopkins.” “He sent these images. Look!”

The first image that filled one lens of the glasses showed Charles Osgood Harrington IV, the rich kid everyone called C-Four. “This was the first victim. Look at the lesions here and here.” Little dots appeared on the display and moved to indicate pustules that covered the corpse’s face. The lesions were pale, of course, without blood pressure to give them shape and color, but it was clear enough what they would have looked like when the kid was still alive.

“Attractive,” I said. “What’s it tell us?”

“The symptoms reported by the various first-responder EMTs and police were a rapid onset of pustules that covered the bodies of the victims. Remember in the news, the stories about mycotoxins from the tomb of the firstborn son of the Pharaoh? We’re seeing a kind of anaphylactic reaction, like hives. Only the whole thing is amped up. Super-hives.”

“So?”

“This isn’t nature, Joe, and it’s not pure mycotoxins. I’ll bet you this is some kind of designer pathogen. Something created to kill very quickly but not spread. Zero communicability.”

“Targeted for specific victims,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Circe. “Now, think about the Seven Kings. What is their defining characteristic?”

“Misdirection.” It had become an automatic response by now.

“Right! They want us to think that this was their endgame … but it’s not. These victims may be firstborn, but that’s not what we’re seeing. This is the Plague of Boils!”

“Okay. But we know their endgame is mass murder on the Sea of Hope. What’s your point?”

Church cut in. “We’re going under the premise that the ship is going to be destroyed by a bomb or something equally large scale. Probably during one of the key speeches. However, remember what Toys told you. Gault is running this show. Gault isn’t just a member of the Kings … .”

“He’s the King of Plagues,” I said. “Shit.”

Bunny said, “Please do not say that this is worse than we thought. Do not say that.”

Circe looked terrified. The same look was probably on my face.

“Gault is planning something even bigger than the deaths of all these celebrities,” she said softly. “He’s planning something huge.”

Church said, “Something the world will never forget.”

Interlude Forty-four

The Chamber of the Kings

December 21, 5:27 A.M. EST

“You can’t be here!” cried Toys. “You’re—”

“Not as stupid as you seem to think.”

Gault pointed his gun at Toys’ face. “Toss that phone over here. No, put it on the floor and slide it. None of your sodding tricks.” His voice was as cold as his eyes were hot.

Toys lowered the phone, weighing his chances of throwing and hitting Sebastian without getting shot. Gault was not a great shot and Toys had a knife, clipped to the back of his belt … but at this distance Toys didn’t like his chances. He bent slowly, placed the phone on the floor, and shoved it away from him.

“Now back away. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Toys raised his hands and straightened. He took two small backward steps. Gault advanced and crouched, holding the gun steady and looking right at Toys as he fished on the floor for the phone.

Toys whirled and dove for the nearest throne, hitting it with his outstretched palms and knocking it over. The backrest of the heavy seat chopped downward, missing Gault by inches as he spun away and snapped off two quick shots. The first missed. Both shots punched into screens on the wall, killing the FOX and MSNBC news feeds. Toys threw his weight against a second throne and it immediately canted over. Gault pivoted and fired again. The bullet punched red fire through Toys’ thigh at the same instant the canting throne of the King of Fear struck the King of Plagues on the shoulder. Both men screamed in agony. The gun went spinning across the floor as Gault collapsed under six hundred pounds of teak and ebony and carved ivory.

Toys flopped to the floor and rolled over onto his stomach as blood poured from both sides of a through-and- through wound. Secondary pain exploded within him as the jagged ends of his shattered femur ground together, pinching torn muscle. Toys screamed and screamed as he clawed his way across the floor toward the fallen pistol. A dozen feet away Sebastian bellowed in rage and pain as he struggled to fight his way out from under the massive throne. The gun was almost in reach, Toys’ scrabbling fingers clawed at the wooden grips, and then the world exploded in white-hot agony as Sebastian Gault, free and standing erect, stamped down with all his force on the gushing wound in Toys’ leg.

Chapter Seventy-two

The Sea of Hope

December 21, 6:01 A.M. EST

“Something bigger than slaughtering all the people on this boat?” asked Top. “Shee-ee-it.”

Khalid raised a hand. “Permission to leave the boat.”

“These guys keep twisting it, don’t they?” asked DeeDee.

John Smith simply grunted, which constituted a long-winded speech for him.

Something occurred to me and I snapped my fingers. “I think the Kings may have thrown us another curveball and I think they did it through their own men.”