The Dragon Factory

“This is irregular,” said Veder.

“I know. But he was insistent.”

“Does that mean the contract is canceled?”

“Canceled?” DaCosta sounded surprised. “No. No, not at all. Apparently there is another matter he would like to discuss with you. A side job.”

“And you don’t know what it is.”

“No. He said he would like to discuss it with you.”

“I can give you a phone number-”

“No… he wants to discuss it with you face-to-face.”

“I don’t do face-to-face. You know that.”

“I told him.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

“He told me to say that he will provide a bonus equal to half the agreed price of the current contract if you meet with him.”

That was three and a half million dollars. Even so, Veder said, “No.”

“He said that he would wire the money to your account before the meeting.”

Veder said nothing.

“And he said to tell you that if you accept the side job, he will double the entire amount of the original contract.”

Veder said nothing.

“On top of the meeting bonus.”

Veder, for all of his deep-rooted calm, felt a flutter in his chest. That would mean that this entire job would net seventeen and a half million dollars. He thought about that for a long minute, and DaCosta waited him out.

“Where and when?”

“He’ll send a private jet.” DaCosta told Veder the location and time.

“You know I’ll assess the situation,” Veder said. “If this is a trick or a trap, then I’ll walk away.”

“My client knows that.”

“And I’ll hold you responsible for setting me up.”

This time DaCosta said nothing for almost thirty seconds.

“It’s not a setup. Check with your bank in thirty minutes. The money will have been wire transferred.”

Veder said nothing.

“Are you there?” DaCosta asked.

“How do I know that this will even be the client?”

“He told me that you’d ask. He said that if you did I was to say this: you are needed in the West.”

Veder said nothing. It was the right code. The client had to be either Otto Wirths or Cyrus Jakoby. Veder had already determined that they were the ones who had been paying him to assassinate the remaining members of the List. They were the only people-apart from Church and the woman named Aunt Sallie-who knew about the Brotherhood of the Scythe and of his code name: West.

Veder did not like it. It meant stepping out of the antiseptic world of clean kills with no emotional connection and back into the muddier world of politics and idealism. Veder held both in contempt. Thirty years ago he had been recruited into the Brotherhood for his skills, and back then he was susceptible to idealistic rhetoric and flattery. The Brotherhood was to be the world’s most deadly alliance-the four greatest living assassins. It had been done with the ostentatious ritualism of the old Nazi Thule Society. The members of the Brotherhood wore masks when they met. They swore blood oaths. They promised fealty to the Cabal and all it stood for.

How silly, he thought. He was privately embarrassed to have been coaxed into the group, though admittedly they had provided great training, excellent intelligence, and lots of money. And in a very real way they had made him the man he was, because as the List systematically dismantled the Cabal, Veder had learned habits of caution that became the framework for the rest of his life.

Since then he had intentionally distanced himself from any connection to political or social agendas. He did not like being drawn back into it now.

But the money…

Veder was detached enough to realize that Wirths and Jakoby were using money now in exactly the way that they had used idealism and flattery back then. It was trickery and manipulation.

What made Veder the most unhappy as he sipped green tea in luxurious comfort aboard the private jet was that the manipulation worked.

Part Four. Monsters

He who fights with monsters must take

care lest he thereby become a monster.

– FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Chapter Ninety-Two

The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland

Monday, August 30, 5:01 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 54 hours, 59 minutes

Grace Courtland lay naked in my arms. She was gasping as hard as I was. Our bodies were bathed in sweat. The mattress was halfway off the bed and we lay with our heads angled downward to the floor. The sheets were soaked and knotted around us. Somehow we’d lost all of my pillows and the lamp was broken, but the bulb was still lit and it threw light and shadows all over the place.

“Good God…,” she said hoarsely.

I was incapable of articulate speech.

Grace propped herself on one elbow. One side of her face was as bright as a flame from the shadeless lightbulb, the other side completely in shadow. She looked at me for a long time without speaking. I closed my eyes. Finally she bent and kissed my chest, my throat, my lips. Very softly, like a ghost.

“Joe,” she said quietly. “Joe… are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“Was it terrible?”

I knew what she meant. After I’d interrogated Carteret and brought him back to the computer room, we heard more gunfire and the whump of explosions. I handcuffed Carteret, and Top, Bunny, and I rushed out to investigate. What we found was indeed terrible. The remaining staff members of the Hive had fled to the far side of the compound. A guard sergeant named Hans Brucker herded them all into a secure room, telling them all that they could seal it and that they’d be safe until Otto sent a rescue team. Once they were all inside, Brucker and two other guards had opened up with machine guns and threw in half a dozen grenades before slamming the doors. There were no survivors. No one who could talk, no one who could help us.

Brucker then shot the two other guards and put his pistol in his mouth and blew the back of his own head off.

It was insane.

It was also confusing, because Brucker was clearly the man who had led the unicorn hunt. Despite what Church