That was how it was for the cat named Job and the man who had been born as Alexander Chismer but was never called that except by Mr. Church. Everyone else called him Toys. He hated that nickname because it reminded him of his sins. He never told anyone that he hated it, though. He knew that some of them — Junie Flynn, Dr. Circe O’Tree-Sanchez, Helmut Deacon, and a few others — used it with affection. That was hurtful in its way, though he accepted it as a necessary part of the comprehensive plan of his punishment. The damned do not have the right to complain.
Toys and Job lived quietly. Sometimes Job decided that he wanted to accompany Toys when he went to work. He accepted a collar and leash and walked right at Toys’s heel. In the car Job slept in a soft cat bed. At the office, he had his own carpet-covered perch that had several levels and allowed him to perch like a vulture up near the ceiling. From that vantage point he could look down at the people with whom Toys worked, and he could keep an eye on the monstrous gray Irish wolfhound that was always with Circe. Once in a while Junie would bring Joe Ledger’s cat, Cobbler, into the office. The two cats invariably ignored each other, though Job allowed the marmalade tabby to sit on one of the lower levels of his perch.
Toys did not love many things in this world, but came to love Job in a way that was unsullied and uncomplicated. They accepted each other on their own terms and without judgment.
Perhaps there was some cosmic message or lesson in the fact that it was the cat that saved his life.
Toys was asleep, slumped in a rattan chair with his feet propped on the edge of the bed. The TV was on but the Netflix movie he’d been watching had long since ended, to be replaced by a bland information screen. The cat was asleep on his lap, stretched across the tops of his thighs. The hotel grounds were quiet except for crickets.
Then suddenly Job was awake. The cat stood up, hissing, his claws flexing to stab into Toys’s leg.
“Ow, bloody hell!” cried Toys as he came suddenly and painfully awake. He shot to his feet. “What the hell are you playing at, you little bugger?”
Then Toys understood.
The French door had been opened and in the pale glow from the TV he could see figures inside his room. Four of them, and they’d all turned toward him when he’d cried out.
They were dressed in black suits, with white shirts and dark ties. Each of them held a small flashlight. One was bent over the chair on which Toys had placed his briefcase. Two others were hunched down over his laptop. The fourth was by the door, acting as a lookout.
They stared at Toys, and he gaped at them.
The cat hissed again.
The figure by the chair said only two words.
“Kill him.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Mr. Church locked the conference room door and walked over to the big windows. The San Diego night was huge and starless. Bastion meowed softly and Church bent to pick him up and stood with the cat tucked into the crook of his left arm while he stroked him with his gloved fingertips.
After a few minutes of silent contemplation, Church lowered the cat gently to a chair, picked up his cell phone, engaged the twenty-eight-bit encryption scrambler, and made a long-distance call. It rang five times before it was answered.
“St. Germaine,” said Lilith. She sounded winded.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m on a job.” In the background he could hear the faint but unmistakable sound of a voice raised in sudden agony. The scream rose and rose and then died away. It was a male voice, and there was a quality of weariness in the scream, as if this was not the first time he had been made to cry out.
“Does this have anything to do with what happened to Violin?”
“It might.”
“Lilith…”
“The Ordo Fratrum Claustrorum tried to kill my daughter. I want to know why. Do you expect me to sit at home and knit comforters?”
There was another scream. Briefer, but more intense.
“Have you learned anything?” asked Church.
“I learned that men are weak,” she sneered.
“It occurs to me that you already knew that.”
“It is important to reinforce one’s perspective,” said Lilith. “Though there is also a measure of disappointment in always being right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that the Brotherhood had become active again?”
“I don’t remember any agreement where I tell you everything that happens in the world, St. Germaine.”
Church sat on the edge of the table. Outside, on the moonlit beach, a group of teenagers were playing volleyball in the dark. On the missed shots, when the ball was lost in shadows, they collided and tripped, and they never stopped laughing. Near them a couple lay on a blanket, kissing with obvious passion. Farther up the beach a blond-haired man was helping a teenage boy — almost certainly his son — sort out his night-fishing rig. Life was happening. It was moving forward with vigor and even a measure of joy. It was clean and the moon was bright and there was a purity in the starry sky and the silver-tipped waves.
“Lilith,” he said slowly, “the power outages occurring here in the States are being perpetrated by ISIL. The technology was somehow taken from a program associated with Majestic. The scientists at that program had been attempting to obtain copies of the most restricted books on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.”
There was a heavy silence at the other end of the call. No more screams. Not even the sound of her breathing.
“Are you listening to me?”
“I’m listening,” said Lilith.
“You know that the DMS has been weakened.”
“I heard.”
“We are at a crisis point and I am asking you to tell me if there is anything you know or have heard that could help us.”
Lilith said, “This matter that you are working on, does it have anything to do with an attempt to construct and operate an interdimensional gateway? An Orpheus Gate.”
“It would appear so. Do you know something about it?”
“Yes,” said Lilith. “I know a lot about it. This is old, old science, St. Germaine. You understand me? This is very old.”
“Believe me when I tell you that I can appreciate that.”
“Good. Do you know about the side effects?”
“Yes.”
“Going into dreams? Traveling with just the mind?”
“Remote viewing. Yes. How do you know so much?”
There was another of the protracted screams. “People talk,” she said. “If you know how to ask the right questions, and in the right way.”
“Yes,” he said again.
“St. Germaine… do you know about the Mullah of the Black Tent?”
He said, “No, I do not.”
“I’m surprised,” she said. “The CIA are investigating him. I wonder that they haven’t told you.”
“I have been cut out of several information loops. Who is this person?”
She told Church a strange story about a simple cleric from a tiny mosque in an unimportant town who had, almost overnight, become a powerful force among the fighters of the Islamic State. Lilith’s Arklight team had been doing hits against ISIL for months, ever since they officially enshrined the rape of the Yazidi girls and women. Some of the ISIL fighters her sisters had taken had spoken of the Mullah as a new prophet who would lead a true global jihad. To speak of him to anyone was viewed as a sin against God, and even the slightest transgression, the most offhand mention, was punished by death. Not just of the sinner but of his family.
“That’s an effective security protocol,” said Church.