Arklight Camp
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 3:23 a.m.
Church stepped out of the warehouse to make a series of phone calls to get this rolling; the first of which was to Aunt Sallie. She was in the big Tactical Operations Center at the Hangar, which made NORAD look like an Internet cafe.
Bug called us just as Church rejoined me.
“I ran down every priest who chose the name of Nicodemus,” said Bug, “and either MindReader is having a senior moment or there is something mucho freaky about the Vatican database.”
“Why?”
“Well, there is a pretty tightly managed registry of priests. Names, personal data, photographs, the works. This goes back pretty far, to the point where paper records were stored and later scanned; and back past that to written records. All scanned now into their systems. Worldwide there have been a couple of hundred priests who chose that name, and a few for whom that was their birth name. Now here’s the kicker. About once every generation, call it twenty-five to thirty years, there is a record of another priest taking that name. Always from the same place, Verona in northern Italy. The thing is, we have dates of births and dates of deaths of each priest, but when I cross-referenced this with public records in Italy, they don’t match. In fact, there are no records at all of any of those priests. Either these guys lied when they applied to priest school or whatever it’s called, or there’s a conspiracy to hide the true identities of these guys.”
“Swell,” I said. “Another mystery. ’Cause I was just thinking that I wasn’t nearly confused enough.”
“Then buckle up, Joe,” said Bug, “because there’s one more thing that popped up. I added Verona to the general pattern search for this case and guess whose grandfather was born there?”
“Just tell me, Bug.”
“The family name is Verrecchia. But that’s not the name he uses now.”
“What’s the name?”
“Vox.”
“Wait-Hugo Vox’s family comes from the same town as Nicodemus?”
“More than the same town, Joe. Half of the men who adopted Nicodemus as their priest names were born as Verrecchias. Nicodemus and Vox are from the same family.”
Chapter Ninety-Five
Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park
Tehran, Iran
June 16, 3:24 a.m.
Vox looked at his watch and smiled. Time to make the first of his calls.
He took several fast, panting breaths while he punched a speed dial. Charles LaRoque answered on the second ring.
“ Jesus, kid, you got to stop them,” said Vox, putting panic and urgency into his voice in exactly the right amounts.
“Stop who?”
“The Tariqa, who the fuck do you think I’m talking about. That whole thing with Rasouli and the flash drive? That was a smokescreen. It was bullshit to get the authorities looking in the wrong direction. And all the time he’s working out a deal with your pet monsters to shove the Agreement right up your ass.”
“What are you talking about?” LaRoque’s voice was filled with genuine panic.
“I’m talking about doomsday, you stupid fuck. I warned you- begged you-not to tell Rasouli too much before he took the full oath. He’s not the Murshid and never had any intention of being that. You know what he wants? He wants to put a lot of Christian heads on poles. He doesn’t want to keep the Shadow War going. That’s small potatoes for him. He’s ramping up Iran to be a nuclear power. And he’s got a really goddamn good chance of uniting all of Islam against the West. You Red Order clowns think you’ve been keeping the church alive? Rasouli is going to blow Christianity off the planet with a mushroom cloud and remake the world in the name of Allah.”
“That’s ridiculous, Hugo,” said LaRoque with a forced laugh. “Even if Rasouli betrays us, he doesn’t have that kind of power. Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons yet.”
“Iran doesn’t,” Vox said, “but Rasouli does. He arranged to buy decommissioned devices from the black market. The same bombs you tried to buy before 9/11. He has them. ”
“Impossible. We never told him about-”
“He has an inside track to the whole Red Order. You have no secrets left, Charlie. Rasouli has you by the balls.”
“No, you’re wrong. No one in the Order would dare-”
“Don’t you listen? I never said that a Hospitaller betrayed you. What I’m saying is that those bloodsucking dogs you think you have on the leash have been off the leash for a long damn time.”
“What?” LaRoque asked, but now there was doubt in his voice.
“Yeah,” said Vox. “Rasouli has made a deal with your devils.”
Chapter Ninety-Six
Arklight Camp
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 3:27 a.m.
“Vox and Nicodemus are related,” I said. “That’s it, I’m going home.”
I expected Church to looked rattled by the news, but he stood there, slowly nodding to himself.
“What?” I asked.
“Pieces are coming together.”
“Making what kind of a picture?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet, but let me ask you this, Captain, do you feel that we’re at war with the Red Order?”
I thought about it. “Actually, even though this thing is tied to them, I… I really don’t see how. We’re at war with someone.”
“Are we?”
“The nukes.”
“The nukes are in play, but we haven’t yet cracked the logic of their placement. There have been no threats, no demands. Nothing in the case files on the Red Order suggests an anti-American agenda.”
I thought about it. “Y’know, I kind of have the same feeling about Rasouli. I mean, he kicked this off by giving me the flash drive, but the drive itself is sketchy, and he’s been totally off the radar since it began. Granted, that’s not even a full day yet, but Rasouli feels like a day player. A walk on.”
Church shook his head. “He’s more important than that, otherwise the flash drive would have been sent anonymously through the mail. No, Rasouli and the Red Order are in this. I’m simply not convinced we’re at war with them.”
“They sent a Red Knight after me.”
“Someone sent a knight after the drive. Not the same thing.”
I grunted. “What about the Sabbatarians?”
“They’re independents. They hunt the Upierczi, which means they don’t work for the Red Order; and they are fiercely Catholic, which means that they aren’t acting on behalf of Rasouli.”
“The question, then, is who pointed them at me?”
“Captain-take yourself out of the equation. They were pointed at the knights, who were in turn pointed at the flash drive. You… got in the way.”
“Ah. I guess the villains just aren’t that into me.”
He manfully refused to smile.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to nominate Vox as the bad guy. Who else has ‘criminal mastermind’ on his business cards?”
“Vox alone?”
Interesting question. “Nicodemus?”
Church shrugged. He left to make a few more calls.
I saw Echo Team standing apart from the activity, looking like a biker gang that had crashed a women’s empowerment meeting. I gestured for them to follow me to the far end of the warehouse.
“Good job tonight,” I told them. “I was listening and I still never heard you on my six.”
“Kinda the point,” said Lydia. “Clumsy soldiers don’t get Christmas bonuses.”
We stood for a moment, each of us looking back at the cluster of Arklight women as they continued arming for war. I saw Violin sliding loaded magazines into slots on a bandolier. She saw me watching and gave me a brief nod that I returned. We turned away at the same moment.
“Top,” I said, “get back to the other warehouse and get everything ready. Finish modifying our equipment, but don’t use all the garlic. Church will have some kind of transport here soon. As soon I talk to the Big Man again I’ll come back for a mission briefing. Everyone eat some food, hit the head, take your vitamins. Finish that special project I gave you earlier from those notes Circe got from that folklore professor. Looks like we’re going to need it. We need to be ready to rock, and who knows how long this will take. Bring as much extra ammunition as you can carry.”