The King of Plagues

“I told you … I found notes on my desk, in my lab coat. And then the security cameras and ventilation cut out. They have someone else here. I don’t know who, so I made everyone put on hazmat suits and go into the fish tank. I locked it from the outside.” He coughed and there was blood on his lips.

“Are the people in the fish tank infected?”

“No, but it’s in the air with them. If you trust your people, then maybe you can interrogate them. Get one of them to talk. I didn’t release the virus until the tank door was sealed. I put a bicycle lock on the crash bar and broke the key off in the lock. You’ll have to cut it to get them out.”

“I’m still a step behind you here, Doc. If you’re going to hand everyone over to us, why not turn yourself and your family in? This isn’t some candy-ass drug buy. This is international-incident stuff. This is terrorism. We’d be able to protect you; I guarantee it.”

Dr. Grey looked at me with eyes that wept tears of blood. “He said that they are everywhere. The police, INTERPOL, everywhere.”

“And yet you asked for someone from Homeland.”

“What else could I do? I had to make this big enough so that it would be harder for them to cover it up.”

“How do you know I’m not one of them?”

“I looked out the window. I saw the helicopters land. Not all of you can be involved. I mean … if you are, then my family is better off out of a world like that. And if you’re not involved …”

He looked to me for encouragement, and I gave him a small nod.

“ … then please do something.”

“You haven’t told me much, Doc. How is this connected with the bombing at the London?”

Grey stared bug-eyed at me. “Is it? Oh my God! Are you sure?”

“The Seven Kings put their mark on both places right before things went to hell. You’re involved in this thing; you tell me.”

He gave me a frank and uncomprehending stare. “Who are the Seven Kings?”

“Their symbol is painted in blood on the wall outside of the Hot Room.”

“I … saw that outside when I sent Mikey to … to …” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it means.”

“The guy who roughed you up, the Spaniard. Did he say anything about why they were doing this? Or about what they wanted?”

He laughed and then abruptly turned his head and spit blood onto the cold floor. “He never said why. He only told me what he wanted me to do. He said, ‘Go to your job, remove the Ebola from the vault, and spill it on the floor of the Hot Room.’”

“Nothing else?”

“Just that. Since the fail-safes were supposed to kick in as soon as there was a biological accident, I thought that all they wanted was an incident. Maybe kill some of the staff and expose America’s involvement in secret bioweapons testing. It’s the only thing that made any sense. Then the vent controls went down and the fail-safes never kicked in.”

“And he never mentioned the Seven Kings?” I asked. “Or even just ‘Kings’?”

“No, just the Goddess, and I—”

“Goddess? Tell me exactly what he said.”

“Both times he attacked me he mentioned the Goddess. When he promised not to hurt my family if I did what he wanted, he swore by the Goddess. And yesterday, when he attacked me in my garage, he said that ‘nothing is impossible if the Goddess wills it to be.’ He held a knife up to my eye and made me swear that I believe in the Goddess. I … got it wrong first, I said that I believed in God, and he got so mad I thought he would kill me right there. He kept ranting about faith and how the Goddess was his shield and he was her sword. Crazy stuff like that. Then he gave me his knife and told me to kill him. He said that his faith would protect him.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? He said that if I didn’t try to kill him he would go upstairs and turn Mikey into one of his angels. God. That’s what he called the poor women and children in those photos. Angels. He called his victims ‘angels.’”

Grey described how he had tried to kill the Spaniard and how the man had disarmed and beaten him without effort. “He was so fast. I … I never saw him move. God, please! I couldn’t let him do that—I couldn’t let him turn Mikey into an angel.”

His sobs were as deep and as broken as any I’d ever witnessed. This man, this Spaniard, had killed Dr. Grey long before today. He’d broken Grey’s spirit and his mind and cut away the fabric of hope and trust that bound his life together. It was horrible to witness and it provoked in me an atavistic dread of the Spaniard, and of the Seven Kings and the Goddess they worshiped. A dread … and a killing rage that burned like boiled acid under my skin. I wanted to face this man, and I knew that I didn’t want to do so from the cold and antiseptic distance of a gun. I wanted to be up close and very personal with the Spaniard. Knife to knife, or—far better yet—hand to hand.

Grey coughed and the sound dragged me back from the edge of a red darkness and into the broken moment. I looked at Grey and thought about Plympton. The selection of these men had to have other elements. I mean … hell, I had a family that I loved—my dad, my brother and his wife and kid, couple of aunts—but I wouldn’t slaughter four thousand people in a hospital to protect them. I’d find some other way to keep them safe while I looked into it. So, okay, I’m a cop and a federal agent, and psychologically speaking I have a headful of bees and spiders, but I could not believe that there were levers strong enough to turn me into a mass murderer. What was it about Grey and Plympton that made them different?

“I’m going to find out who did this,” I said. “I am going to find them and I can guarantee you, Dr. Grey, I will show them what ‘terror’ really means.”

He closed his eyes. “I wish I could believe you.”

I said nothing to that. He was starting to drift. Bloody sweat was leaking from his pores.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I said softly.

He nodded weakly. “I wrote an account of it. Of everything. It’s on my laptop, in the documents section. My password is grasta.’ With an accent over the first a. It’s hidden in a folder called ‘Christmas List.’”

“What’s grasta mean?”

“My family’s Irish. That’s Gaelic,” he said. “For ‘mercy.’”

I stood and stretched out my left hand. “Give me the beaker.”

He smiled and looked at the swirling brown mixture with the red veins. “It’s not what I said it was,” he said. “It’s just coffee and Tabasco sauce.”

He handed it to me. I still took it carefully and set it on the desk.

“Mercy,” I said.

“Grasta. But I don’t deserve it.” He buried his face in his hands. I could hear him saying the names of his wife and son over and over again.

Mercy.

I’m no saint. Furthest thing from it. But I can at least grant a little mercy.

I raised my gun and put the laser sight on him.

Interlude Twenty-three

Aboard the Delta of Venus

The St. Lawrence River

Four Months Ago

Sebastian Gault lay with his head on Eris’s naked breast as the stars wheeled overhead. The boat rocked gently under them, dark water slapping against the hull. Far away on Crown Island, cicadas and crickets made the darkness pulse with life. Fireflies were pinpricks of light as they flitted among the tall grasses on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

“I’m glad you accepted our offer, lovely boy,” Eris murmured.

“You knew I would,” said Gault. “It feels a little surreal, though. Kings and thrones.”