Chapter Thirty-Six
The Kingdom of Shadows
Beneath the Sands
June 15, 10:01 a.m.
The King of Thorns stretched out a pale hand to accept the cell phone offered by his fourth son. Grigor’s fingernails, thick and dark, curled around the slender phone, trapping it in his palm like a tiny mouse caught by a spider. He was familiar with phones, but he did not care for them. All they possessed was sound. No smell, no taste. With a small sneer of distaste he put the phone to his ear.
“Yes.”
“Grigor,” said Charles LaRoque, “Your knight failed.”
“Failed?”
“Yes, and I am very disappointed,” said LaRoque in a waspish tone. “I was led to believe that the knights were more capable than this. A simple hit on a single target. Perhaps I should have hired someone who understands his profession.”
Grigor’s fingers tightened on the phone. Cracks jagged their way through the plastic cover.
“How did it happen?”
“Who cares how it happened? It happened. He failed. You failed, Grigor, because you chose the knight. You chose someone who apparently could not complete a simple mission, and now we have a potentially catastrophic situation. His body is still at the target site.”
“I-” began Grigor, but the Scriptor cut him off.
“Don’t humiliate yourself with excuses, Grigor. Clean it up and complete the assignment. Do not disappoint me again, I’m warning you.”
The line went dead and Grigor lowered the phone from his ear. He regarded it with hooded eyes as if by looking at the device he could see the weak, doughy face of the new Scriptor. His white fingers curled around the phone until they formed a fist. There was a screech of protesting metal and plastic, and then Grigor opened his hand to let the mangled pieces fall.
Silence washed through the darkness for several moments.
“Nothing ever changes, does it?” asked Hugo Vox.
Grigor turned. Vox stood at the foot of the dais, a glass of Scotch in his hand. In the year since he had first met the former King of Fear, Vox had dwindled from a bombastic fat man to a ghost. His flesh was as loose as his clothes, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“You heard everything?”
Vox nodded. “Charlie’s old man treated you like dog shit and so did his grandfather. How the fuck did you put up with it this long?”
A grunt was Grigor’s only reply.
“Are you going to do what LaRoque wants?” asked Vox.
“Yes,” said Grigor.
The American nodded. “Because you want to, not because you have to, though. Am I right?”
Grigor gave that a single nod.
“Good,” said the American. “That works for us.”
Grigor made a slight gesture and one of his aides came hurrying out of the shadows. Grigor spoke to him in the language of the Red Order-a language Vox had learned well enough over the last year to catch the gist of Grigor’s orders. The aide bowed and scuttled away.
“It will be so delicious to hang him by the heels and let his blood rain down. I would not even drink it. I would let it pool upon the ground and then piss in it.”
“I like the way you think,” said Vox, “but we need him alive for a little while longer. Him and Rasouli.”
“Why? All we need now are the codes.”
He gestured to a small device that lay on a brass table beside his throne. It was a converted satellite phone that had been rebuilt with Vox’s own scrambler technology.
“Everything’s in motion, Grigor,” assured Vox. “A little more patience, a couple of tweaks, and then you can start your revolution and crack the pillars of heaven.”
The King of Thorns glared with red hatred into the shadows. “I wonder sometimes if I can trust you, Hugo.”
“You can definitely-” Vox suddenly doubled over as a ferocious coughing fit tore through him. He spat out the whiskey and reeled, catching himself on a stone wall as the coughs racked his wasted frame. The coughing fit lasted a whole minute during which Grigor did nothing except observe with a faint smile of amusement on his lips.
Vox tore a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his mouth as the last deep coughs shook him. When he removed it the center of the cloth was stained with a few drops of blood. The scent of it perfumed the air.
“God,” he wheezed. “Goddamn it…”
Grigor traced the contours of his own mouth with the tip of a black fingernail.
“What does it feel like to be so weak? To be sick?”
Vox glared up at him from beneath knitted brows. “Fuck you.”
The King of Thorns laughed.
“You’d better step up the goddamn treatments,” rasped Vox, “because that scrambler isn’t worth shit without the access code, and without that scrambler you and your bloodsucking freak show of a race are going to remain slaves for the rest of time. So wipe that shit-eating smile off your face and find out where that asshole Dr. Hasbrouck is. I need my shots.”
The smile on Grigor’s face faded only a little as the echoes of Vox’s words bounced off the cold stone walls of the caverns. “The doctor says that you’d never survive the last round of treatments.”
“You better pray he’s wrong, Grigor.” Vox spat onto the floor. The sputum was dark with blood. “If I die then all your dreams die with me.”
Part Two
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Golden Oasis Hotel
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 10:02 a.m.
Ghost and I made it down to the hotel’s basement laundry without being seen by anyone. I opened the back door and listened for commotion or sirens. There were none. I was right-no one had heard the fight and the shot was either silenced or fired from a great distance. It felt a little weird to me, even after everything I’ve done, that such a traumatic and dramatic moment could go unnoticed by people a couple of floors away. It makes you wonder about all of the ghastly things that happen every day all around us.
There were so many things about what had just occurred that I didn’t know where to begin thinking about them. No-that wasn’t true. The goon with the fangs knew about the flash drive, and he seemed pretty damned stunned when I mentioned the nukes. I wasn’t sure how to interpret that. Did it mean that he knew what was on
