Toys took her hand and kissed it in a way that was at once elegant and filled with self-referential mockery. Eris gave him a wicked grin. At close quarters he could see that she was indeed older than she at first appeared, but no one would ever guess fifty, let alone mid-sixties. The bikini top was challenged to restrain abundance; her eyes were as green as a tropical sea and flecked with sparks of gold fire.
“Welcome to Crown Island,” she purred.
“Thank you for having us,” said Toys.
Eris eyed him up and down. “I haven’t had you yet.”
Then Eris hooked their arms so that they bookended her and led them toward the huge fortress of a building that was McCullough Castle.
Above them the sun was a furnace, and Gault wondered what was being forged in its heat.
GAULT AND TOYS were escorted to separate rooms.
“Divide and conquer?” Gault asked with a smile.
“Divide, yes, conquer—no, lovely boy. We want you to be comfortable. Travel is such a bore. Take a hot shower. Fresh clothes will be laid out. Someone will come to fetch you in an hour.”
One of the two silent Koreans stepped up to Toys and led him down a side hall.
When they were alone, Gault took Eris’s hand and led her a few steps away from the second servant.
“What’s going on, love? This is weird even for you.”
She laughed. “Mystery and intrigue is all the thing, lovely boy.”
“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.”
Chapter Fifteen
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.
Chapter Sixteen
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
“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
