DNA. Very smart, very expensive, and very illegal. Which is how I found out about it, because if it involves science and it’s against the law, I’m always involved, I’m always making a buck on it, and I always find out about it.”
“What is it to you? What is any of this to you? You have the Seven Kings. You are their King of Fear. You are more powerful than most of the governments in the world above.”
Vox reached up, threaded his fingers through his hair, and revealed a bald pate that was blotched and unhealthy.
“I’m a walking dead man,” he said. “Cancer. I’m done. Best-case scenario gives me eighteen months.”
Grigor’s eyes glittered like rubies.
“Nobody knows. Not the Kings, not my mother. Not the Scriptor. Nobody.”
“Why come to me? Do you want a quicker death?”
“No… I want to live. You see, the other thing that I know about is what the scientists discovered while they were engineering the new generation of Upierczi. They cracked your DNA. They found out why you never get sick, why you lucky pricks live for so damn long. They know what makes you as close to immortal as living flesh and bone is ever going to get.”
Vox took a last step closer to Grigor, well within reach.
“I know about the treatment. I know about Upier 531,” he said fiercely. “And I fucking want it.”
“It isn’t for your kind. It would kill you.”
“It might kill me,” corrected Vox. “Or it might make me live forever.”
Grigor laughed. Low and soft. If a wolf could laugh, Vox thought, it would sound like that.
“Why should I give it to you? What could you possibly give me in return?”
“I can give you the whole fucking world, Grigor. I can make sure that no one and nothing can put you in chains again. I can guarantee it.”
“Prove it,” demanded Grigor.
He and Vox stared at each other for a long minute, their faces less than a yard apart.
Vox raised the detonator between them. He turned it over and slid back a small panel on the bottom, revealing a nine-digit touch pad. Vox showed this to Grigor and then slowly and deliberately punched in a complex code. The LED light glowing under his thumb faded to black. Hugo Vox raised his hand, palm out, offering the inert detonator to Grigor.
“All hail the King of Thorns,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Golden Oasis Hotel
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 9:01 a.m.
Knowing that Church was working on finding the nukes was a tremendous relief. Even I don’t have a sense of all the forces he can bring to bear at need. His connections and his political clout are considerable, and he doesn’t allow red tape to slow him down. With Vox in the mix? Well, let’s just say that I pity anyone who got in his way today.
Having handed off the ball, I switched my focus to the second part of Rasouli’s message. The Book of Shadows and the Saladin Codex. I had no idea what they were and I did not believe for a moment that they were entirely tangential to the nuclear issue. Rasouli had been a little too casual about mentioning them.
I called Bug. He wasn’t good with computers-he was a freak. When 9/11 happened Bug was still in high school, amusing himself by hacking into the school board computer to give everyone he liked a 4.0 average and to put the school disciplinarian on a sex offenders watch list. A couple of years after the planes hit, Bug tried to hack Homeland, believing that if he had access to their data he could find Bin Laden. The next day Grace Courtland and Sergeant Gus Dietrich-Church’s personal bodyguard-showed up at his front door to offer him a choice: jail or a job with the DMS. Bug made the smart choice.
Since then he’d become the high priest in the church of MindReader. And back in 2011 he got his wish by helping track Bin Laden to his Pakistani compound.
He answered the call with: “Hey, whaddya know, Joe? Heard about the hikers gig. Echo Team kicks a-a-a-a- ass.”
“Thanks, Bug, but listen up. Something else is about to hit the fan. The Big Man will be calling you any minute about-”
“I know, the nukes. I’m looking at it right now. Frigging scary as shit, huh?” Bug said with the kind of excitement you hear from video gamers who have found a challenging new level. I sometimes wonder if Bug knew that he didn’t exist in a purely virtual world.
“So you’re already tied up?”
“Nah, this stuff is crap. Got to run it through a bunch of filters and a clean-up program before we can do much with it. That’s going to take a couple of-”
“Good. Then, before you get swamped with that I need you to start a database search for me. It’s part of the nuke thing; but it’s a different arm of the investigation and to tell you the truth I don’t have a clue how it relates. All I have are the names of two books. No authors, no other data.”
“Fire away.”
“The Book of Shadows and the Saladin Codex.”
“Saladin, as in the sultan who-?”
“Presumably. Rasouli dropped his name during our little chitchat, so I figure that was some kind of hint.”
“Okay. Wait-there’s something about them on the drive. No… forget it. Stuff’s corrupted as all shit. Reads like some kind of gibberish. I’ll have to see if I can translate it. What do you need?”
“Anything you got. General and specific. I had to dump my tactical computer and PDA, so send it to me via e-mail so I can read it on my phone. You ring any serious bells, call me directly. If I don’t answer, hit scramble and leave it on my voice mail.”
“You got it, Joe.”
I disconnected, and again I could feel another layer of stress crack and fall away.
Ghost came over and leaned against me. He does that. I know it’s more of a greyhound trait and the fuzzmonster is pure White Shepherd, but Ghost isn’t one to pass up a trick that might get him petted. I ran my fingers through his fur.
“I don’t suppose you know how to sniff out a nuclear bomb, do you?” I asked him. “No? Guess I’d better do it.”
He wagged his tail to show that he believed me to be Captain Invincible who could find those pesky nukes and crush them in my hands of steel. That or he thought I had more goat strips in my pocket.
I debated taking a shower and maybe drowning myself. Might be a tension breaker.
Instead I called Rudy Sanchez.
“Cowboy!” he said instead of hello. “Are you home?”
“I wish. Where are you?” I could hear wind rushing past the phone.
“On the way to the Warehouse. Mr. Church called ten minutes ago and told us to come in right away. Can you tell me what’s happening?”
We were both on scrambled phones, so I gave him the highlights.
“ Dios mio! ”
“No kidding.”
“How are you doing with all of this?”
His question, I knew, had very little to do with the mission and a lot to do with my overall mental health. Rudy and I have a lot of history. When I was a teenager my girlfriend Helen and I were jumped by a gang of older teens. The guys completely trashed me, breaking bones, rupturing some stuff inside. While I lay there coughing up blood they took turns with Helen. That image is seared onto the front of my mind. I see it every single day.
Helen and I healed from the physical trauma. I got involved in martial arts and made myself as tough and as ruthless as I could. Helen wandered down a few dark corridors inside her head and never found her way out.
