“You are talking a holy war,” growled Nicodemus, “and again I say that we already have that.”
“We have an open war that is doing no one any lasting good. The Crusades have become a business venture to see who possesses the most land and the best trade routes, and for every enemy killed in the name of God there are a hundred slaughtered in the name of profit. I propose a limited war. A quiet war. A war fought in the shadows.”
“Wars escalate. What would prevent this ‘shadow war’ from escalating into random killing, or killing for profit as we have now?”
“We would impose limits and restrictions. This would have to be managed carefully and regularly. Representatives from each side would have to meet regularly to agree on how many deaths would be allowed, how many castles or churches or mosques destroyed, and so on. And we would have to agree on the value of each death. Just as we now select our sacrifices for their importance to the masses, we would share that information with the other side, thereby transforming the process from self-sacrifice to mutually created martyrs.”
Nicodemus pursed his lips and turned away, walking slowly and thoughtfully across the room to the shadowy wall and back again, passing Sir Guy and crossing to the opposite wall. Sir Guy stood in silence, watching the old priest as he paced. Five long minutes passed as Father Nicodemus thought it through, and his seamed face was etched with firelight and shadows. The priest stopped a few feet from the hearth and stared into it for another moment, and then nodded to himself.
“A war of shadows,” he murmured as fire danced like devils in his eyes. “Yes. But your knights, skilled killers that they are, are too clumsy for the kind of killing you propose. This war would require stealth. Spies, who could steal into the strongholds of an enemy and kill them in their beds. That would strike fear into the hearts of the faithless and that would drive them back to God.”
Sir Guy nodded. “Ibrahim said that he could make a deal with the fida’i, those Sufi killers who cause so much trouble for the Templars. The cult of assassins run by Hassan ibn Sabbah. Ibn Sabbah is a great friend of Ibrahim’s. Would that we had their like in Europe. We will have to invent what we need. We will have to find a way to train candidates to become a new breed of warrior. Not knights but assassins like Ibn Sabbah’s fida’i. ”
Nicodemus suddenly straightened and walked a few steps away. He stood staring into the shadows a long time and his body was so rigid with tension that Sir Guy dared not interrupt.
Finally, Nicodemus turned, but his face was in shadow.
“Do not be afraid, my son,” murmured the priest. “God Himself speaks through me and He has whispered a word to me. The answer to what we need to wage our shadow war.”
As Nicodemus stepped forward into the firelight Sir Guy gasped and took an involuntary step backward, for once again a strange and inexplicable change had come over the priest. His brown eyes swirled with colors-leprous yellows and greens, mushroom white, and the mottled brown of toad skin. Sir Guy touched the heavy silver cross that hung around his neck.
“What word?” asked Sir Guy with a dry throat.
The priest smiled, revealing crooked yellow teeth.
“Upierczi,” he whispered.
Part Three
Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life…
Chapter Fifty-Seven
CIA Safe House #11
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 12:53 p.m.
I sagged against the door frame.
“Ah… Christ…”
The Mouradipours had been stripped naked and tied to wooden chairs. On a nearby table were pliers, a hammer, matches, wire cutters, and other tools. Everything in the room was covered with blood and wrongness. They were both dead. I didn’t need to search for pulses to figure that out. It would be nice to believe that they had died quickly and with some shred of dignity left, but that would be an absurd self-delusion. The team downstairs had torn information from them and then continued on to tear away their humanity. And the bastards had used burning matches to sear crosses over their hearts.
The Mouradipours were Muslim, so if it hadn’t been for the stakes and garlic and all that vampire hunter bullshit I would have figured this for some kind of anti-Islamic statement.
And why kill the Mouradipours and then try to take me captive? Or, was capturing me a prelude to a trip up here to this makeshift torture chamber?
Probably.
Even so, why set up this hit at all? Just to get the flash drive? Or to keep its information out of someone else’s hands? Hours had passed, surely they had to know that I would have passed along that information by now. What was the point of targeting me now?
And how many teams was I facing here?
The Red Knights were one faction, and they were top of the line. I would like to think that I would have won the fight in the hotel without Violin’s help, but I’m not sure I can say that with conviction. I can say without fear of contradiction that I have never faced anyone as fierce or capable as that knight.
On the other hand, the fearless vampire hunters-though clearly organized and violent-were Triple-A ball compared to the knight’s major league status. Sure, the team downstairs was brutal, but they were absurdly clumsy. I’m pretty good in a fight, but I was unarmed when I stepped into the house, and I won this one too easily. They were not exactly amateurs, but they sure as hell weren’t very high up on the professional food chain. If they hunted the Red Knights I wonder what the win-loss ratio was. If this was Vegas I’d bet the farm on the knights for a shutout.
Now, my friend the rat-bastard Rasouli was a third team.
Violin and whoever she worked for were a fourth.
Could I make an argument for any of them being the same team? Hard to say, because I had no idea who was lying to me and who was telling me the truth.
The knight clearly wanted the flash drive and had no love for Rasouli. That seemed obvious. Violin was willing to work with Rasouli to set up the meet this morning, but she said that she considered him to be a spitty place on the sidewalk. She knew about the knights. The knight knew about Arklight, and so did Violin, and she tried to scare the bejesus out of me by saying that my even knowing that name could be fatal. She also warned me away from the knights. The bastards downstairs knew about the knights but so far they hadn’t mentioned anything about Rasouli, the flash drive, Arklight, the Book of Shadows, the Saladin Codex, or the nukes.
And on top of all that, were any of these teams the ones who planted the nukes?
If the nukes were even real.
My head was starting to spin. What would help me fill in the blanks?
I thought about Krystos and the Romanian guy. I looked at the dead bodies and the tools that had been used on them and some very ugly thoughts began forming in my head. The Civilized Man in my head cried out in protest. We didn’t do that kind of thing. The Warrior was grinning and sharpening his knife. He was all for it. I looked to the Cop for the voice of reason, but he kept looking out of my eyes at the innocent couple who had been torn apart.
There was a clean sheet on the bed, and I pulled it off and covered the murdered couple. I don’t know why: it wouldn’t matter to them; it wouldn’t make any of it better. I tried to tell myself that it was out of courtesy and respect, or a token act to afford them some measure of dignity even after this kind of death.
That sounded nice, but it was bullshit.
I couldn’t bear to look at them. If I turned away I knew I’d still see them that way in my mind. If I covered them, then that would be my last memory of them. Or so I hoped. Any lingering regrets I might have had for shooting Inigo drained away and left no trace.