Croyd sat cross-legged on the floor next to a stocky woman in full chador. The woman rose as the Black Dog entered.
"Welcome, Hound of Hell," the woman said.
"Good morning, Azma." The Black Dog bent and took the woman's hands in his. He brushed the muzzle of his mask across her fingers. She bowed to Zoe and the newcomers and left the room. Croyd got his legs under him with less grace, but he got up without using his hands, which were wrapped around a tiny coffee cup.
"I think you have to grow up sitting on the floor," Croyd said, "or your knees just don't bend the right way."
"Miss Harris, this is Croyd Crenson."
"We've met," Zoe said. She tried to put enough ice into her voice to freeze his nose off.
"Hello, Zoe," Croyd said. He toasted her with his cup and sipped more coffee. "They got me, too."
"So I see."
The Black Dog seated himself on the floor and pulled a floor cushion up to use as an elbow rest. He poured himself a cup of coffee from an ornate silver urn. The coffee smelled of cinnamon. Don't sit down, Zoe told herself. Keep the tiny advantage you have by standing while he sits, make your speech, and go.
"I wanted to plead with you the first time I came here," Zoe said. "I still do. I don't want my kids trained as killers. I'll do anything I can do, pay any price that I'm able to pay, to prevent that. I don't mind that they're associated with the Fists. We can't live here otherwise, I know, but surely they can be trained as non-combatants. I beg you, don't do this to them. They are tough kids, but they're good kids. Please. That's all I have to say. I'll go now.
"Thanks for the coffee," Croyd said. "I'll just be running along myself."
A guard, not Balthazar, appeared in the doorway, his rifle at the ready.
"Please," the Black Dog said. "Sit down, both of you. Needles, pour the lady a cup of coffee." He motioned to the floor in front of him. Zoe sat. So did Croyd.
"You're here for a reason. You too, Croyd. You're here because I need you, and because you both look like nats. I don't like nats. I don't like aces. I don't trust them. But trust can be contracted, if the terms are right. I need your help."
Needles handed Zoe a cup of thick black coffee.
She stared at it. Was it drugged, too?
"I need you to go to the Ukraine and buy a nuclear warhead," the Black Dog said.
His words were clear enough. He had just said, "I need you to go to the Ukraine and buy a nuclear warhead." Right. Zoe had a lot of experience in international arms trade, sure. That's why he had kidnapped her, of course. The man was totally psychotic, she had no business here to begin with, and a rifle was pointed at her back.
"The Card Sharks have a biologic weapon that can kill all of us, jokers, aces, carriers, anyone infected with the wild card. The Sharks have developed a killer virus they call the Black Trump. If it gets loose, we'll die. All of us."
"That's crazy," Zoe said. No one could develop such a weapon and be sure it would work. "The Card Sharks were a delusion of Gregg Hartmann's. He said so." But then Hartmann had always had a tendency to bend the truth, Zoe remembered.
"Needles? The case report, if you would."
Needles handed Zoe a manifa folder. She opened it, seeing scattered words: Hemorrhagic shock. Lysis of internal organs including the brain ... the victims exhibit lethargy and cerebral dysfunction so that they appear to be dead while still alive....
Zoe slapped the folder shut. An eight by ten glossy slid out, full-color reds and blues of something collapsed and limp that might have once been a joker.
The Black Dog retrieved the photo, slipped it back inside the folder, and handed it to Croyd.
"The virus has been tested. It works. The Card Sharks aren't a delusion. The Sharks are real, and they have the Black Trump. I don't want it turned loose in Jerusalem. I don't want it turned loose anywhere."
"Go to the police. Go to Interpol. Go to the UN."
The UN didn't do such a great job in Jerusalem as it was. So many UN "peacekeepers" had died in Jerusalem that their presence was now a carefully calculated sop for tourists. They left the real violence in the city alone. Maybe not the UN. Maybe CNN.
"Your friend Charles Dutton is under arrest. Father Squid is missing. No one can find that horsy little doctor from the Jokertown clinic."
"Dr. Finn? Missing?"
"Everyone in New York who knows about this virus is missing. Jokertown's most colorful freaks vanish and there's not a whisper, not an arrest, no inquiry."
"That much coverup couldn't happen."
"It has."
Bjorn had believed Hartmann's stories about a conspiracy. If this were one, it had to go all the way up. All the way.
Impossible.
But there had been all that trouble about getting Anne's records out of the clinic, strange voices on the phone, delays, no way to talk to Finn, and he had liked Anne.
"That's why we need a bomb. If we can blackmail the Sharks with it, we will. If we can't, and there's an outbreak - "
"You'd have to pray that the virus was loosed only in one confined place. You're crazy. Can't you just tell the Sharks you've got a bomb?" Zoe asked.
Well, no. The Sharks couldn't be that stupid, the Black Dog couldn't be sure that some of his people didn't report to the other side.
"What do you plan to do with this ... device ... when you get it?" Zoe asked.
"Threaten to expose the plot. Bargain for the virus. Turn the warhead over to the UN when we can."
Uh-huh.
"If you're looking for a smuggler, you're looking in the wrong place," Zoe said. "I've never even shoplifted anything."
Croyd shut the folder, laid it on the floor beside him, and sipped at his coffee.
"Mr. Crenson has skills in this area," the Black Dog said.
"Your pictures don't scare me and I don't understand some of the big words in that report. Pictures can be faked. Forget it. I don't do nukes," Croyd said.
The Black Dog leaned back against his cushion and rested an elbow on his knee in a storyteller's pose from a bad movie of the Arabian nights. His masked face seemed to stare at something above Croyd's head.
"Croyd Crenson has always been afraid to sleep. His fear is not of sleeping but of waking." The Brooklyn street slang in the Black Dog's voice vanished, replaced by the sonorous cadence of a storyteller in the souk. "Because he believes that one day he will wake as a madman, as demented as the mother that he scarcely remembers."
"How could you know that? Nobody knows that." Croyd's face went pale and his eyes locked on the dog mask.
"We spoke of contracted loyalty." The Black Dog sighed as if he were contemplating human treachery with great sorrow. "There was a man once who wanted to help you. Do you remember?"
Croyd's lean body had looked almost gaunt. It wasn't, Zoe realized. He was thin in the way bodybuilders called "ripped." Every muscle in his forearms, in his neck, stood out in tense definition. She pulled her shoulders in, trying to look smaller and nonthreatening.
The Fist's leader settled back on his cushion again. "Pan Rudo. Here's the deal, Croyd. Bring me the bomb. We'll bring Pan Rudo to you. I promise it."
"Bullshit" Croyd said "One, the Card Sharks are cranks. And two, I finally managed to kill that sonofabitch Rudo. He's dead! I killed him. Count me out of this, okay? I gave at the office."
"Pan Rudo's alive. He was jumped into a strong, young body. We're looking for him now.
"No!" Croyd moved with the speed of a trained athlete, on his feet in an instant with his hand stretched toward the Black Dog's throat. The guard at the door snapped his rifle into position, and Croyd stopped in what seemed to be mid-leap. He had managed to put down his coffeecup before he moved, Zoe noticed. He hadn't spilled a drop.
"Sit down, Croyd. The Twisted Fists are after Rudo now. We'll find him. When we find him, he's all yours."