The King of Plagues

“Probably.”

“It’s your mother’s fault.”

“It’s both their faults. They were made for each other.”

They each took a pull.

“I think I’ve been fired as his Conscience.” Toys tried to laugh about that, but his lips hurt too much.

“You’ll always have a place with the Kings, Toys,” said the American.

Toys looked at him. “Why? I’m Sebastian’s luggage. What am I to you?”

“Don’t sell yourself short, kiddo. You have clarity of mind. You can see the Big Picture without getting seduced by the shiny little details.”

“You mean I’m a cynic.”

“I prefer ‘realist,’ but yeah.”

Toys held out his hand for the bottle, took a pull.

They drank in silence for a long time. Then the American said, “I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

Toys looked at him in surprise. “What? You have—”

“Santoro? He’s a psychopath. I use him the way I’d use a gun. Point and shoot. But if it came down to where he had to decide between me and Mom, you know how he’d jump.”

“Is it going to come down to that?”

The American nodded. “Yep. You know it is.”

Toys sighed. “Sebastian, too. A Goddess, a King, and the Angel of Death. Very nice. You could build a heavy metal album on that.”

The American laughed. “Guess you’ve figured out that the whole ‘no secrets’ thing between the Seven Kings is a frigging joke. Always has been. Some of them take it seriously, and I pretend to … but I always hedge my bets. I don’t trust easily. With the Kings, I’ve made a fortune. I’m damn near richer than God, but I don’t really enjoy it. I fuck around with money because what else do I have?”

“‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’”

The American grunted. “A misquote from Plutarch, but it hits the bull’s-eye. My point is, though, that I can’t trust the Kings. I can’t trust Santoro. And I never trusted my mother. I’m glad I wasn’t actually raised by her. She was a rich debutante when she had me, but she gave me up and my dad raised me. He was a blue-collar guy. When he struck it rich, they got married, but by then I was in college. I didn’t know how corrupt she was until I was twenty-two or -three, and I didn’t know how crazy she was until I was thirty. She was already working on this Goddess thing when I created the Seven Kings.”

“That long ago?”

“Sure. She’s brilliant, but she’s totally fucking nuts. Gault is perfect for her. Brilliant but nuts.”

“Sebastian is broken.”

“A lot of people are.” The American nodded and took a pull from the bottle. “Sebastian and Mom are pushing this Ten Plagues Initiative forward despite everything I’ve tried to do to stop it.”

“Like … ?”

The American turned to him and smiled. “Before I answer that, you answer me this: if you had to pick one quality that defines everything the Kings stand for, what would it be?”

“Chaos—?”

“C’mon, kiddo … you know as well as I do that’s just the company line. What’re the real characteristics?”

Toys thought about it. “Misdirection. Lies, misinformation, disinformation. All of that.”

“See, you are a smart young fellow. Misdirection. The Israel-Islam thing? Misdirection. The terrorist attacks —9/11, the India attacks, bombing of the USS Cole? Misdirection. The whole Ten Plagues Initiative is mostly misdirection. Most of it is a pure profit machine, like we’ve been saying. But some of it—a lot of it—is to keep eyes looking in the wrong direction even among us. You can’t believe hardly anything we say, even when we’re telling the truth.”

“Okay. So, how does that answer my question? How does it explain how you’ve been trying to stop Eris? Mostly it looks like you’ve been helping her … .” His voice trailed off and he smiled as much as his mashed lips would allow. He cocked an eyebrow. “When Dr. Kirov died it nearly derailed the Ten Plagues Initiative.”

The American grinned approvingly. “Didn’t it, though.”

Toys smiled as much as his damaged lips would allow. “Kirov’s death was pretty convenient.”

“Uh-huh. It should have stopped the Initiative in its tracks. But … Mom talked the Kings into bullying me about calling Gault.”

“You didn’t want to bring him in?”

“Hell no.” He handed over the bottle. “Can you guess why?”

“Because … he would do what he has done. He’d figure a way to make the Ten Plagues Initiative work.”

“And ain’t that just a kick in the fucking ass?” The American patted Toys’ knee. “Now … keep thinking that through.”

They sat side by side on the floor while Toys worked it out. Toys asked, “When did Eris first ask about Sebastian?”

“Six months ago. Right around the time Dr. Kirov had his first stroke. A ministroke. Son of a bitch bounced back faster than I expected.”

“Six months. That’s … right around the time that the DMS started hitting cells being trained to support the Initiative.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We know that someone has been making anonymous calls to Mr. Church to tip him off.”

“Yep.”

“In order to reveal the location of those cells, the caller has to have a source within the Kings organization.”

“That’s what the Kings believe. There have been all sorts of internal witch hunts to find the blabbermouth. Turns out, it was Kirov’s Conscience.”

Toys looked at the big man, but the man’s smile never wavered.

“Inconvenient that the man died before someone as persuasive as Santoro could make him talk,” Toys suggested.

“Yeah, what interesting timing that was.”

Toys took a final sip of the tequila and set the bottle down. “A Big Picture kind of person might look at that and wonder if Kirov’s Conscience was ever truly dirty.”

“They might.”

“And that person might also wonder if there is truly a war between the Seven Kings and the Inner Circle.”

“Indeed.”

“And that person might wonder if the entire thing was misdirection from the jump. Maybe to start a war.”

“And how would that benefit the Kings?”

“It destabilizes those in power.”

The American grinned like a happy bear. “How’s the mouth doing?”

“I can barely feel it.”

“Does it hurt too much to talk on the phone?”

“No.”

The American got clumsily to his feet. As he did so his cell phone fell from his pocket and landed next to the bottle. He pretended not to notice it.

Toys looked at the phone and then up at the towering bearlike anomaly of a man. This King of Fear.

“Remember what I said to you a while back? About how Judas got a bad rap when he was really probably trying to save Jesus? In fact, here’s a bit of interesting biblical trivia. In Luke 24:33 and Mark 16:14 it clearly states that when Jesus rose from the dead he met with ‘the eleven.’ Most people assume that the missing disciple was Judas, who was supposed to have killed himself out of remorse for his act of betrayal. But in John 20:24 we learn