“Legal?” he said, sitting.
“Yes,” Slootjes said. “The ‘Octogon’ in your book bears a close resemblance to us—the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order.”
Winslow shrugged. “Never heard of you guys.” He seemed to have a chip on his shoulder.
“Never heard of us?” Ernst said, fighting a surge of anger. Insolent pup! The Order had been born in the First Age…
“That’s understandable,” Slootjes said soothingly. “We do our good works in private and don’t seek the limelight. It’s just that the resemblance between our factual brotherhood and your fictional one is uncanny. Which brings us to these dreams Mister Kushner says form the basis for your writing. Did everything apocalyptic in this novel come from the same dream?”
Winslow shook his head. “Nah. A whole series of dreams.”
“And does this organization, the ‘Octogon,’ play a part in all your dreams?”
“Off and on. A lot bigger part lately. That’s not its name in my dreams—names don’t stick with me after I’m awake so I have to make up my own. But, yeah, it’s the same group of suckers.”
Slootjes blinked and stiffened. “Why do you say ‘suckers’?”
Winslow laughed. “Well, they’ve been fed this line that they’re gonna be the head honchos after the world transformation goes down, and they’ve swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. But when the time rolls round, they’re as much cannon fodder as everyone else.”
“And…” Slootjes swallowed and seemed to have a hard time of it. “And the one who led them to these tragic circumstances?”
Another laugh. “That guy’s a real operator. He’s called ‘Uno’ and he gets transformed into a being who can thrive in the bad new world he’s created while all his followers are left to fend for themselves. And they don’t fend very well, let me tell you.”
Slootjes looked sick. Ernst wasn’t feeling too good himself. Uno and the One…the names could hardly be closer.
“What’s this all about?” Winslow said, looking at his agent.
Kushner cleared his throat. “Well, Frankie, when I read the book, I recognized the Septimus Order as the model for the Octogon, and I sensed there might be legal trouble ahead, so I arranged this meeting to try to head it off at the pass.”
Winslow jumped from his seat. “You’re part of this!”
“No-no, Frankie. I’m on your side. But you’ve got to face the hard fact that no publisher’s going to touch this if they get an inkling that a suit is waiting in the wings.”
“Fuck you!” He pointed to Ernst and Slootjes in turn. “And fuck you and fuck you! You think you’re gonna stop it from being published? Well, guess what? It’ll be on sale tomorrow.”
And then he stormed out.
“Well, thank you very much,” Kushner said after the door had slammed. “There goes one of my steady earners.”
Slootjes said nothing. He looked shell-shocked.
“What did he mean by that?” Ernst said. “On sale tomorrow? An empty threat, yes?”
Kushner shook his head. “Afraid not. He can self-publish it online on sites like Amazon or B-and-N or Kobo. Just a few clicks of a mouse and it can be available all over the world.”
“All over the world?” Ernst pounded his desk. “Go catch him and bring him back.”
When Kushner was gone, Slootjes looked at Ernst with haunted eyes. “What if they’re true?”
“What?”
“His dreams…what if his dreams tell the future?”
The idea landed like a blow to the center of Ernst’s chest. Winslow had nailed so many details about the Order itself. If his dreams about a coming apocalypse were on a par with that…
Had they all been played?
No. That sort of thinking was counterproductive. He pushed those thoughts aside.
“If his books get out to the public…” Slootjes said.
“What difference does it make? You and I are the only ones who know the story behind them. To everyone else they’re pure fiction.”
“But as loremaster I’m seen as an authority on the history of the Order. If our members read this book and ask me to explain the parallels, what will I tell them?”
“How can you have any doubt? You tell them it’s pulp fiction and that everything is fine and going just as we’ve planned.”
“But is it?”
This was not good. A loremaster with growing doubt about the Order’s lore. Instead of providing reassurance to wavering brothers, he might instead spread panic among them. A catastrophe in the making…
The best way to avoid that was to prevent the book from being published. Which meant Winslow had to be stopped.
And Ernst knew just the man to do it.
HARI
1
…the coroner ruled it an accidental drowning…but I know he was murdered… and I know the Septimus Foundation was behind it…
Hari ran Donny’s words around in her head a few times to make sure she had this right.
“This charitable foundation—”
“Supposedly charitable.”
“Whatever. You’re saying it murdered your brother?”
Donny’s nod carried no hint of doubt. “Right.”
“And you’ve determined this based on…?”
“Okay. I told you I accessed the foundation’s spreadsheets back to the first of the year. I also rescued a big-ass load of deleted emails. Putting the two together, it’s pretty clear that they were funding Russ’s project.”
Hari held up her hands. “Stop-stop-stop. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Donny leaned back and ran his hands through his long sandy hair. “Of course you don’t. Okay. Russ started hacking as a teen, phreaking and the like.” Before Hari could ask, he said, “Breaking into a phone company’s computers just to see if he could. Innocent stuff.”
“Why bother?”
“Just for lolz. He’d—”
“Just for what?”
“Lolz.” He gave her an I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-explain-this look. “You know…for laughs.”
Okay. A derivative of LOL.
“Got it. Go on.”
“Okay. The worst he’d do was arrange for free long distance, which was a big thing before cellular took over. His problem came when he graduated to banks.”
“Uh-oh,” Hari said. “Ran afoul of Treasury’s FinCEN unit?”
“Exactly. His hack arranged for the banks’ computers to round off a fraction of a cent on each international transaction and transfer it to his Swiss account. He was collecting in the high six figures a year until someone got wise.
