The King of Plagues

Jesus Santiago, then—”

Nicodemus suddenly leaned forward. The guards jumped in surprise and almost—almost—made a grab for him, but neither of them seemed capable or willing to lay hands upon the little man. Dr. Stankeviius recoiled from the wild look in Nicodemus’s eyes. His eyes flared wide so that the whites could be seen all around the irises, but those irises seemed to have darkened from a mottled green-brown to a black as dark as midnight. It was a trick of the light, Stankeviius told himself.

A trick of the light.

“They are coming,” whispered Nicodemus in a voice that was unrecognizable as his own and barely recognizable as human. It passed through the doctor’s mind like a cold wind.

The room went still.

“How will you be judged when the Sons of the Goddess sit on their thrones? When the Elders reclaim what is theirs and the Goddess reaches out her dark and shining hand across the face of this world, will you stand with the wicked and be cast into everlasting perdition? Or … will you stand with the Chosen and be counted as a warrior of heaven?”

Stankeviius felt his skin crawl. When he exhaled he could see the vapor of his own breath. But that was impossible; the thermostat was permanently set at sixty-eight.

Nicodemus bent forward another inch so that now his eyes were completely hidden by the shadows of his pale, craggy brow.

“The Elders have appealed to the Goddess and she has sent her judgment.”

“Wh-what judgment, Nicodemus?” stammered the doctor, his body suddenly wracked by a shiver. It was so cold in the room that his teeth hurt.

Nicodemus smiled so that his full lips were stretched thin over wet teeth. “She has sent Ten Plagues, just as the God sent Ten Plagues in His turn. The first was a rain of fire and ash that filled the streets of the new city. Woe to the children of the wicked that they did not listen, that their hearts were hardened as the Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. But the Goddess did not harden the hearts of the wicked. Anyone who says that she did is a liar and blasphemer. The wicked need no help in hardening their own hearts. They are defiant in their iniquity.”

“What are you talking about? What are these plagues?”

The guards edged away from him, their hands on the riot sticks hanging from belt loops. Neither of them looked at each other or to Dr. Stankeviius. Each was locked in his own private moment, each caught up in his own damaged reaction to this man.

Nicodemus sat straight, bringing his face down toward Dr. Stankeviius. He opened his eyes and for a moment—for a terrible single moment—his eyes were completely black. No iris, no sclera.

“Lo! And behold the rise of the Seven Kings. All shall fall before them!”

He blinked and his eyes were normal again.

A trick of the light, Dr. Stankeviius told himself. Just a trick of that damned light.

Nicodemus sat still and did not say another word.

After a few minutes Dr. Stankeviius ordered the guards to take Nicodemus back to his cell. When the door was closed and the sounds of their footsteps faded, Dr. Stankeviius rose and tottered toward his bathroom. He stared for a long minute into his own bloodshot and haunted eyes. He sank to his knees as a wave of nausea slammed into him; then he flipped up the lip of the toilet and vomited into it. Again and again until his stomach churned and twisted on nothing.

Only a trick of the light.

Except that he was sure that it wasn’t.

Chapter Eighteen

Whitechapel, London

December 18, 7:29 A.M. GMT

Next morning I caught two chilly hours’ sleep in the back of a police car while Ghost kept watch, and then shambled to a pub for a late breakfast. Eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, and jam. I’m a big believer in the adage of eating breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. Except that I tended to eat lunch and dinner like a king, too. That way there were plenty of leftovers for the mouth-on-legs that was Ghost.

I called Rudy, who was on the plane to America, and I woke him up. You’d never think that a civilized, cultured, and educated medical man like him could curse worse than Amy Winehouse on a bender.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Where do you think I learned to curse?” he growled.

I’d met his mother and I could see his point.

“Why am I awake and talking to you?” he asked after a yawn so loud that I could hear his jaw pop over the cell phone.

“You hear about what happened yesterday?”

“Yes,” he said, and that fast I could hear that he’d shifted gears. “Mr. Church said that you weren’t injured. But … how are you feeling?”

“Paranoid, scared, angry, and frustrated.”

“I can imagine,” he said. “There’s a lot of that going around these days.”

“We’re chasing phantoms.”

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just the feeling that keeps popping into my head. Trying to fight back against the Seven Kings is like trying to grab shadows. You can never put your hands on them.”

“If I said, ‘That’s part of the spy game,’ how much of a beating would you give me?”

I laughed. “Look, I called because I need to bang some ideas off of you before I bring them to Church.”

“Sure,” he said, and, “As you’re so fond of saying, ‘hit me.’”

I took a sip of coffee. “Okay, the way in which it was set up, the multiple bombs in key spots, suggests inside knowledge, and we’re probably looking at someone in authority. Barrier estimates that the bombs had to be big, hundreds of kilos of C4 or something like it. The blast didn’t have the signature of TNT, so we can probably rule out materials hijacked from a mining or demolition company. This is military grade, and that’s very hard to come by.”

“That’s two points,” Rudy observed. “The first being the access to the building and the probable authority to allow for materials to be brought in, or to cover up the fact that they’ve already been brought in. The second point being that the bombers had access to significant amounts of military-grade materials.”

“Right. But on the first point, that suggests more than one person.”

“Why?”

“Unless this was done in increments over time, it would take several people and some equipment to get all those explosives into the building. Hand trucks at least. And the materials would have to have been hidden, so maybe file cabinets filled with them. Or laundry hampers.”

“File cabinets or hampers that no one cared to look in between the time they were brought in and the time the bombs went off,” Rudy said. “That’s not actually very hard for the right person to manage.”

“Who would have that authority?”

“The hospital administrator and the first tier of assistants, of course. But to move objects in carts or hand trucks you have the head of physical plant, the senior janitorial staff, and the head of housekeeping. It’s actually a longer list of people than you might think.”

“That’s what I was thinking. So we’re probably looking at a minimum of two people working to bring the