“The last of a dying order, I might add,” von Berg said. “And you’ll fare no better than your brothers. Where is your precious Jesus to save you now?”
Philip stared at the burning cigarette above. Realizing that he was about to die, he resolved to depart this earth in a manner worthy of his calling. He must not allow a moment of personal weakness to blemish the cause of Christ. Nor must his hatred of this evil man keep him from extending the Lord’s forgiveness. “Oh, He is coming soon, Baron von Berg. You need not worry about that. His reward is with Him, and He will give to everyone according to what he has done. He will repay you for your wickedness. But if you repent now, He will forgive you.”
“Is that so?” Von Berg smiled as his fingers dangled the cigarette. “You should have kept the vengeful faith of your former life, Hadji Azrael. If you had, the Maranatha text might be yours. Now it is ours.”
Philip watched in horror as the Baron dropped the cigarette into the crypt. The flicker of light grew larger and larger until it bounced off the wall and scattered its tiny, glowing ashes across the floor. For a moment they seemed to melt into the darkness with no effect. Then a sudden flicker of light exploded into a burst of fire, illuminating the horrified faces of the Archimandrite and the brethren. A second later, the inferno engulfed them all like the flames of hell.
LOS ANGELES, PRESENT DAY
6
Sam Deker awoke from his nightmare, gasping for air in the dark. He felt his bare chest for burns but found only electrodes. The polysomnogram monitor on the nightstand beeped loudly. He lunged wildly for a switch with a free hand until it finally shut up. Then he sat up in bed and blinked.
Slowly, his eyes began to adjust to reveal what appeared to be a small hotel room. Besides his bed and nightstand, there was a dresser with a TV on top, and a chair with his clothes and leather gym bag. He noted the single door to his left and the heavy drapes to his right. Only the surveillance camera in the corner gave away his location, bringing him back to the present.
He grabbed his Krav Maga watch from the nightstand. The glowing dial told him it was 5:24 a.m. He hadn’t even made it to six this time. He picked up his military dog tag with the engraved Star of David and slipped it around his neck. Then he stood up and pulled back the window curtains. The glass towers of Century City still reflected only stars in the predawn light.
Deker stepped outside his room into the deserted suite of doctors’ offices at Advanced Sleep Labs. He blinked under the bright fluorescent lights as the sole nurse on duty stood up from her computer station and walked over to the checkout counter. Her name tag read giselle. Deker remembered she was still a student at UCLA Medical School.
“Good morning, Sam,” she said. “Did you get any sleep this time?”
Blinking in the harsh office light, he wasn’t in the mood to report on the jumbled images of ancient texts, Greek monks, and a Nazi monster slowly fading from his head. “You tell me, Giselle,” he said as he signed out.
She hesitated. “Dr. Prestwick will interpret the data and call you in a couple of days,” she said, referring to the sleep specialist he had never met but to whom his own ENT physician had referred him. “But your spikes are off the charts.” She leaned closer with a conspiratorial smile. “Either your nightmares are so real that your body thinks it’s being skinned alive, or you’re still dreaming about me.”
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he smiled and said, “That must be it.”
7
Deker’s black Audi squealed out of the medical building onto Avenue of the Stars and turned west onto Santa Monica Boulevard. He passed the Century City shopping center and went through the McDonald’s drive-through for coffee; he didn’t feel like bantering with the baristas at Starbucks. Then he took a right onto Veteran.
The Federal Building loomed ahead.
The nineteen-story white monolith overlooked the Los Angeles National Cemetery, America’s largest veterans’ cemetery after Arlington, and was ground zero for protests in L.A. It also housed the region’s FBI headquarters.
As chief mason with M Building Systems, the L.A. contractor hired for the building’s $400 million renovation, Deker was supposed to ensure that “no extraordinary environmental circumstances” would result from the modernization. Meaning: As long as the building was still standing when all the work was done, Uncle Sam was happy.
He passed the stone pillars of the nearly half-mile-long fence surrounding the complex. He had installed a few of them himself. The pillars protected the FBI headquarters from truck bombs and other terrorist threats, and the white walls of the building were designed to be blast-resistant. But new federal guidelines following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, required a complete renovation, including two hundred thousand fully grouted and extensively reinforced concrete units for backup and partition walls.
He entered the rear lot and parked at the construction site next to the 405 freeway. Crews were already at work removing asbestos and continuing seismic upgrades. These renovations were exempt from local requirements for a full environmental review, which had riled the residents of nearby Westwood, along with the already unbearable traffic congestion.
He walked behind his car and opened the trunk to remove his bag. Inside were his Masonic apron and trowel. Anytime a federal public works project involved cornerstones, there was usually a lowkey ceremony of some kind. It had been that way since the founding of the republic.
He slipped his bag over his shoulder and shut his trunk door to see several armed FBI agents swarming him. The lead agent, a twenty-something punk kid like himself, gave him the death stare.
“Sam Deker,” he said. “You’re wanted for questioning in connection with an imminent terrorist threat. Come with us.”
8
Deker sat in the glass conference room on the fifteenth floor, overlooking Wilshire and the cemetery, while two feds argued outside the door. The agent who had detained him in the parking lot was going at it with a tall, thin African-American woman whom Deker recognized as Wanda Randolph, the unflappable former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police’s subterranean RATS division in Washington, D.C. The man stormed off in defeat, and Wanda walked in through the door, a thick file folder in her hand.
“Still can’t sleep, Sam?” she asked softly as she sat down at the table opposite him.
“What am I doing here?” he demanded.
“The FBI here gets a little nervous when they learn that a man of your particular background and talents is skulking around the foundations of their headquarters.”
Deker noted her use of “they” to refer to the FBI, which suggested she still might be working for General Marshall Packard at the Pentagon’s research agency, DARPA. A bad sign for him.
“Why are you here in L.A.?” he asked her. “Did you finally wise up and ditch Packard and his lunatics?”
She said nothing, only smiled.
Dammit.
“What do you people want?” he demanded.
“To help you, Sam.”
“Help me?” he repeated. “You’re the ones who sicced the FBI on me.”
“The FBI was already onto you, Sam,” she said, and opened his file. “And frankly, I’m curious to see how much they’ve got on you before we make it all go away. Aren’t you?”
So that was the bait. Packard was going to ask him to do “one more for the Gipper” and get a clean slate, or else.
“Fine,” he said. “What have I done?”
“What haven’t you done?” she said. “They’ve got you joining the U.S. Army after your father was killed in the north tower of the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks, then graduating at the top of your class at West Point. As a Ranger, you disobeyed orders in Tora Bora and went after Osama bin Laden yourself instead of letting the local Afghans do it.”