He beat his fist on the screen. Over and over and over again until the screen cracked and blood splashed across the hissing, distorted image. Then a fit of laughter rippled through him like an uncontrollable shiver.
He drank a huge mouthful, but the motion of leaning back to drink made him lose balance and he staggered backward five wobbly steps and then sat down hard on the floor. The American’s phone fell out of his pocket and the pitcher dropped, too, and smashed, splashing him with booze and broken glass. He stared at it for a long moment, and then burst into tears.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he said between sobs. “I’ve become a sloppy crying drunk.” Weeping turned to laughter and back to sobs.
Eventually, drunk and exhausted, his face streaked with tears, Toys climbed slowly to his feet and brushed glass gingerly from his clothes. He picked up the phone and stared at it, suddenly horrified about what he had done.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the empty room. “Oh, God … I’m sorry.”
“There are no gods here,” purred a voice behind him. Toys screamed and whirled. “Only a fool and a King.”
A man stood in the doorway to the Chamber of the Kings. He was tall and handsome, and he was smiling.
Sebastian Gault raised his pistol and pointed it at Toys.
Chapter Seventy-one
The Sea of Hope
December 21, 5:26 A.M. EST
The chopper touched down on a helipad that extended out from the foredeck on massive hydraulics. As soon as the door was open, deck crew ran to escort us down a ramp and into a protected receiving alcove. Our gear was loaded onto railed carts that whisked them away. Then the rope was unclipped and the bird rose and headed back across the black water toward Rio, on the mainland of Brazil.
The alcove doors closed and a tall man who had a smile that could burn your retinas and a hairpiece that had no origin in nature entered and shook Circe’s hand.
“Dr. O’Tree, so wonderful to have you join us,” he said in a thick Italian accent. “I thought you had decided not to participate.”
“Miss this?” Circe said with a good affectation of genuine surprise. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”
His smile never wavered. He was of the kind who would roll with anything short of having Ghost hump his leg without allowing his professional demeanor to falter.
“Mr. Alesso, I’d like you to meet my aide, Mr. Kent.”
Alesso shook hands with Church, who managed a convincing smile. I wish I had a photo of it. I could win bets with it.
“It is very much my pleasure to meet you,” said Alesso. He was probably the real deal, but he sounded like a bad actor in a pizza commercial.
She turned to Gus, who was in a crisp white naval uniform. Ghost sat primly by his side, playing his role. “And this is Chief Petty Officer Wayne. The Navy thought we could use him.” She lowered her voice to a confidential tone. “His dog’s a bomb sniffer.”
“Ah!” said Alesso, arching his eyebrows as if we were all part of a wonderful bit of intrigue. “And these other gentlemen are here for Ms. Lavigne?” He pronounced it “La-vig-ne.”
Circe began to introduce me, but I alpha-maled myself into the moment.
“Je m’appelle Jean-François Fieuzal.”
Alesso blinked at me. “Perdono?”
I rattled off my full credentials in French, watching to see if he got any of it, but after a sentence or two it was clear I’d left him stranded on the beach.
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak—”
“Mr. Fieuzal is with the Canadian Cultural Liaison’s office. They arranged for the additional security.”
My apparent inability to speak English cut short any need for polite chitchat.
Alesso looked at the “security team.” They were really working it. All five of them wore identical sunglasses despite the early hour, none of them had a flicker of expression on their stone faces, and they stood as tall as possible. Even DeeDee looked ten feet tall.
“They’re in the security database,” said Circe, and handed over a thick folder. “Here are their papers.”
“Welcome aboard the Sea of Hope,” Alesso said with a bright smile. The only reaction he got was a microscopic twitch of Top’s upper lip. Alesso’s smile looked like it had become fragile, so I covertly gestured for Circe to wrap this up before the poor guy fainted.
Alesso showed us to staterooms—Echo Team’s was a suite directly across the hall from Lavigne’s. We carried our stuff inside and closed the door. Circe’s stateroom was on another deck, but as soon as she dropped her suitcases she came back. Church and Dietrich, too.
“Welcome to the Sea of Hope,” Top said, echoing Alesso. “Now what?”
Dietrich opened one of the cases and handed me a pair of glasses. “First things first.”
I put them on. The prescription was fake, and the heavy frames contained an ultrathin receiver that allowed me to get the same lens display intel feed. The lenses worked like one-way glass, so I could see the display, but no one looking at me could. Dietrich tossed me the small pocket mouse that would allow me to scroll the intel. I adjusted glasses, studied the floor plan for this part of the ship, then flicked through some other data to make sure the uplink was working fast.
The shades Echo Team wore had the same technology built in.
Circe and Church were already on their laptops. I was about to kick off a new version of the same discussion we’d been having about what the hell to do now that we were onboard when Circe said, “Oh my God!”
“Now what?” Bunny muttered, but we all gathered around her.
Circe said, “This just came in from Dr. Cmar; he’s an infectious disease doctor at Johns Hopkins.” “He sent these images. Look!”
The first image that filled one lens of the glasses showed Charles Osgood Harrington IV, the rich kid everyone called C-Four. “This was the first victim. Look at the lesions here and here.” Little dots appeared on the display and moved to indicate pustules that covered the corpse’s face. The lesions were pale, of course, without blood pressure to give them shape and color, but it was clear enough what they would have looked like when the kid was still alive.
“Attractive,” I said. “What’s it tell us?”
“The symptoms reported by the various first-responder EMTs and police were a rapid onset of pustules that covered the bodies of the victims. Remember in the news, the stories about mycotoxins from the tomb of the firstborn son of the Pharaoh? We’re seeing a kind of anaphylactic reaction, like hives. Only the whole thing is amped up. Super-hives.”
“So?”
“This isn’t nature, Joe, and it’s not pure mycotoxins. I’ll bet you this is some kind of designer pathogen. Something created to kill very quickly but not spread. Zero communicability.”
“Targeted for specific victims,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Circe. “Now, think about the Seven Kings. What is their defining characteristic?”
“Misdirection.” It had become an automatic response by now.
“Right! They want us to think that this was their endgame … but it’s not. These victims may be firstborn, but that’s not what we’re seeing. This is the Plague of Boils!”
“Okay. But we know their endgame is mass murder on the Sea of Hope. What’s your point?”
Church cut in. “We’re going under the premise that the ship is going to be destroyed by a bomb or something equally large scale. Probably during one of the key speeches. However, remember what Toys told you. Gault is running this show. Gault isn’t just a member of the Kings … .”