Weezy dropped to one knee beside the wheelchair and gripped her hand.
“You said you won’t survive another attack. How might they attack you again?”
“It must be with something from the Other side—like the chew wasps from the cenote at the nexus point, or the Fhinntmanchca. Nothing of this Earth can harm me.”
Jack watched Weezy give a knowing nod. He’d explained what had happened in Florida last year.
“But Darryl was of this Earth,” he said.
“No. He was no longer human. His very molecules had been changed to something Other, something from outside.”
“What about R?” Weezy said.
“Even the Adversary himself is powerless in that regard. Though he has become something more than human, he is of this Earth.” She patted the armrest of her wheelchair. “His minions could wire this chair with explosives and set them off, and I would not be scratched. So, unless they come up with something from the Other side—and I don’t think they will—or complete Opus Omega—equally unlikely—I believe I am safe for now.”
“So it’s just a matter of time before you’re back on your feet.”
She nodded. “As long as the noosphere retains its present intensity, I shall be as new by this time next year.”
Weezy smiled at him, and Jack did his best to return it. But he worried. Many signs pointed to a coming darkness, an endless darkness that would arrive next spring.
A year might be too long.
2
“Success?” Jack said as Russ opened the door.
He’d turned off his phone while with the Lady, and when he turned it back on he’d found voice mail from Russ Tuit saying he had something for him.
Russ shrugged as he stepped back to let him in. “Tough job. I don’t know if it’s accurate, but it’s as good as you’re going to get with available software. Better, actually, since I went into the code and added a couple modifications of my own.”
Jack nodded without saying anything. He didn’t doubt that Russ had done exactly what he’d said, but the extolling of his own efforts tended to act as prelude to the pumping of his fee.
“I approached it from every angle I could think of. I shaved each indi—”
“Shaved?”
Russ smiled. “Well, you wanted the beard off, right? So that required me to give him a shave. Get it?”
“Got it.”
“Anyhow, I shaved each individual image, then assembled a composite. I also made a composite of the bearded ones, and shaved that.”
“And the result is?”
Russ’s smile faltered. “Well, they’re not really the same face.”
“How’s that possible?”
He sat before his computer and began attacking the keyboard with machine-gun bursts of taps.
“Just the way the software works. Take a look. This is the one where I shaved the composite and it’s probably the lesser of the two as far as accuracy goes.”
A black-and-white image appeared on the monitor—the face of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, thin-lipped man who looked vaguely familiar, but not enough to trigger recognition.
“Let me see the other.”
Another face replaced the first and sparked a cascade of memories, all of them bad.
“Shit.”
Russ turned and grinned up at him. “I did it? You know him?”
“Yeah.”
Jack couldn’t take his eyes off that face.
“Well? Who is he?”
Jack continued to stare. “You don’t want to know.”
Jack too would have preferred not to know, but he did.
“The son of a bitch,” he muttered. “The lousy—”
“You’re looking a little scary, Jack. Who is he?”
He looked different from when Jack had seen him back in January—the nose was sure as all hell different—but not different enough to prevent recognition.
All so clear now . . .
Back in the nineties, after the Orsa became organic, the Order knew it was only a matter of time before it awakened, so they had to dig it up. To that end he’d infiltrated al Qaeda—probably not so difficult, considering his special abilities—and influenced the decision to attack America. Maybe he gave them the idea to use airliners as guided missiles. Perhaps they would have attacked the Trade Towers anyway—they’d already tried once—but he made sure they did.
He’d soaked his hands in the blood of three thousand innocent people and licked them clean.
Because during the attack Jack was sure he’d positioned himself close by, sucking up the terror, the panic, the chaos, the pain, the deaths, the grief and misery of loss. Same with the Madrid train bombings.
Him.
The man on the monitor screen.
The One . . . the Adversary . . .
He’d called himself Wahid bin Aswad. But he had a thing for anagrams, and that name didn’t work as one.
Wait. Weezy had mentioned his full name: Wahid bin Aswad al Somar.
Al Somar . . .
That nailed it. No doubt now.
Rasalom.
“Can you copy that file onto a disk for me?”
“Sure.”
“Good. And after you do that, I advise you to erase the files and anything connected with them.”
Russ looked worried. “Why? This a bad guy?”
Jack nodded. “Real bad. The worst.”
He didn’t want Russ caught in the middle of anything that Jack might start. And Jack intended to start something.
As Russ made the copy, Jack looked into the eyes of the face on the screen.
So . . . you don’t like your picture out and about? You send your Septimus flunkies around erasing all photographic evidence of your existence. What is it? Some First Age superstition? Afraid they contain pieces of your soul? Nah. You don’t believe in souls. More likely you’re afraid Glaeken will see through your disguises and decide to come looking for you. Yeah. Bet that’s it. You want to stay behind the scenes, pulling strings and playing Dr. Mabuse with nobody the wiser until the Big Day when the Otherness shows up.
I can’t seem to find a way to hurt you, but maybe I can find a way to distract you, annoy you. I know how to be really, really annoying.
Where are you now? Brooding and fuming about the failure of your Fhinntmanchca?
I hope to hell so.
3
Ernst watched the One stare at the lifeless husk of the Orsa. Its stink did not seem to bother him. But his silence disturbed Ernst. The command had come to meet him here, yet the One had spoken not a single word since Ernst arrived, when he’d found him standing just as he was now.
Ernst rolled his sore shoulders. Every muscle in his body ached from the Taser shock he’d received yesterday. A terrible experience. So helpless . . . completely at the mercy of that man.
His jaw clenched. Who was he? He knew much more than he should. It hadn’t been Glaeken, he was sure of that. He’d never seen the legendary foe, but he was reputed to be a large man with flaming hair. This bearded stranger had been average in size and looks.
Whoever he was, he had to be found. Thompson hadn’t seen him, but he was savagely intent on finding him. Ernst would add the Order and the Dormentalists to the Kickers numbers in the hunt. They’d find him. And when they did . . .
But that was the future. Ernst hoped the One would allow him a future.
He forced himself to speak, not simply to break the unbearable silence, but because he needed to know.
“How could this happen? How could the Fhinntmanchca have failed?”
A protracted silence followed, but finally the One responded.
“The Fhinntmanchca did not fail. It did exactly what it was designed to do. But what happened after its success . . . that is troubling. Her source recreated her almost instantly. It should not have been able to do that. In fact, it was considered an impossibility. Something has changed, something unforeseen has taken place within her source, enhanced its power. You must learn what that is and reverse it. Soon.”