“It gets worse, Captain,” said Church. “Lilith confirmed that Ohan’s team was searching for another book from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.”
My heart jolted to a painful halt in my chest.
“He’s after one of the Unlearnable Truths?”
“Yes,” said Church. “Lilith sent Violin to secure the book before Ohan’s men could obtain it. Her last report was that she and Harry Bolt had tracked them to the Citadel of Salah Ed-Din, near Al-Haffah. They apparently entered the citadel, there is evidence of several fights, and then the earthquake hit. The Arklight team entered less than a day later and found Violin clinging to life.”
“Why did Harry do it? Why’d he shoot her? Did he out himself as being just like his asshole traitor father?”
“Harry was in a deep state of shock,” said Church. “He had a deep laceration on his scalp and some cranial damage consistent with having tried to shoot himself in the head at the wrong angle. The bullet crazed him and rendered him unconscious.”
“So, what’s that? Guilt? Remorse?”
“I think it may be something more relevant to this case, Captain. Please take your emotions out of gear for a moment and think it through. Harry, who we all trust, shot Violin during a mission to find one of the books Prospero Bell said were relevant to the creation of a God Machine. He then turned his gun on himself. What does that sound like?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“Lilith has dispatched a team to find Ohan. I imagine they will,” he said. “They are highly motivated, as you might imagine. And Lilith herself is coming here, because the connection to what’s happening in America is undeniable.”
“Was there a God Machine there in the citadel?”
“None that was found,” said Church, “but many of the underground vaults have collapsed in. However, they did find the book. And the Arklight team also found some pieces of green crystal.”
“So?”
“Junie insists that is important. She’ll brief you.”
Before I could ask more, the line went dead. The plane carved a hole in the air on its way to Brooklyn.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Valen checked into an inexpensive motel, slipped out to buy takeout Chinese food, bottled water, and a bottle of vodka. He ate the food, washed it down with a third of the vodka, and spent half the night throwing up.
His cell phone rang eight times. All from blocked numbers. Gadyuka, probably going crazy wondering what was happening to him. She probably had a tracking device in his car, but his not answering the calls had to piss her off.
Fine.
He tried to go back to bed, got sick again, and eventually fell asleep on the floor of the bathroom, curled up between the toilet and the tub.
In the morning he woke, showered for nearly an hour, standing under the spray, scrubbing at his skin until it was red and raw, rinsing.
Weeping.
The death toll kept rising. Collateral damage. The unfortunate civilian casualties of any war.
He still had a long way to drive. And then…
Millions would die.
Millions.
Thinking that made him vomit again, though by then all that was in his stomach was half a cup of water.
He dropped onto his knees in the tub and pounded the porcelain until his hands began to swell.
“My God,” he whispered. “My God.”
An hour later he was back on the road. Heading west.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
I never got to Brooklyn.
The pilot came back to tell me that he’d been ordered to land at a private airfield in Eastern Pennsylvania.
“Why?” I demanded.
“Doc Holliday wants me to activate an ORB for you,” said the captain. “Doc said the team has intelligence for you.”
“Where are we heading?”
“Vancouver,” he said. “That’s all I know.”
He returned to the cabin and locked himself in. Immediately the lights dimmed and a series of two hundred small lights blinked on, which made me feel like I was floating in outer space. This was one of Doc Holliday’s favorite inventions, and rumor has it that she’d cooked up the first prototype while in high school and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was her attempt to create a holodeck, where people could step into another place that looked entirely real, but which was illusion. Unlike in the Star Trek version, I couldn’t pick up the objects I saw. This was the twenty-first century, after all. But the 3-D holography was absolutely state of the art. It’s like wearing virtual reality glasses except that you aren’t wearing any goggles. The cabin of the jet became a conference room. Just like that. The name, ORB, means “Operational Resource Bay,” and personally I think the acronym came first and they retrofitted it because it sounded cool. This is teleconferencing taken to a weird new level.
The ORB flared for a moment and there was Doc Holliday in all her glory. Beneath the white coat she wore boot-cut jeans that looked to be a thousand years old and a silk blouse that was the same unnatural Maxfield Parrish sky blue as her eyes. Shocking red lipstick, too much eyeliner, and mountains of blond curls. I do not know how much of her is real or comes from surgery, makeup, and special effects; and I don’t much care. Doc Holliday looked exactly like she wanted to look, and was therefore the perfect example of herself.
“Howdy, Cowboy,” she said. If you tried to take the temperature of the day based on her exuberance and radiance you’d think all was right with the world and we’d all just stepped into the last, happy minutes of a Disney film filled with songbirds and bunnies. The truth is that she is at her happiest when the door to hell has fallen off its hinges and the demons are running wild. “Well, hoss, they did warn me that weird clings to you like flies on tree sap. What you’re not is boring.”
“Thanks?” I said.
“How’s your Russian?”
“Good enough,” I said. “Why?”
“’Cause you’ve won an all-expenses-paid, fun-filled trip to sunny Moscow.”
Doc raised a small clicker, pressed it, and suddenly Nikki Bloom was in the ORB with us. Not sure you could find anyone who is a more startling contrast to Doc. Nikki is a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, which made her a foot shorter than the scientist. She is built on a delicate frame and the only thing that seems to give her mass is a lot of wavy black hair. She wears shapeless sweatshirts without logos, and nondescript pants. Her one nod to color are Keds, which she has in every color they make. Currently, orange plaid.
“Um… hi…,” she said meekly.
“Oh, come on now, don’t be shy, sugar-lumps,” laughed Doc. “Tell Joe what you found, you being so gol-durned clever and all.”
Nikki, now the color of a ripe tomato, cleared her throat and said, “I, um, have been going over the keywords you gave me, but I also added a bunch of my own, and I’ve been getting a lot of different kinds of hits. We’re putting together a profile on this Valen Oruraka, aka Oleg Sokolov. We think he is some kind of Russian agent.”
“Kind of figured that, Niks,” I said.
“No, I mean something special. Do you know anything about the Novyy Sovetskiy?”
“Sure,” I said. “The New Soviet. It’s a fringe group that thinks they can rebuild the Communist Party in Russia. They’ve been fumbling around for years, but no one’s been taking them very seriously. Why?”