“He’s the King of Plagues,” I said. “Shit.”
Bunny said, “Please do not say that this is worse than we thought. Do not say that.”
Circe looked terrified. The same look was probably on my face.
“Gault is planning something even bigger than the deaths of all these celebrities,” she said softly. “He’s planning something huge.”
Church said, “Something the world will never forget.”
Interlude Forty-four
The Chamber of the Kings
December 21, 5:27 A.M. EST
“You can’t be here!” cried Toys. “You’re—”
“Not as stupid as you seem to think.”
Gault pointed his gun at Toys’ face. “Toss that phone over here. No, put it on the floor and slide it. None of your sodding tricks.” His voice was as cold as his eyes were hot.
Toys lowered the phone, weighing his chances of throwing and hitting Sebastian without getting shot. Gault was not a great shot and Toys had a knife, clipped to the back of his belt … but at this distance Toys didn’t like his chances. He bent slowly, placed the phone on the floor, and shoved it away from him.
“Now back away. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Toys raised his hands and straightened. He took two small backward steps. Gault advanced and crouched, holding the gun steady and looking right at Toys as he fished on the floor for the phone.
Toys whirled and dove for the nearest throne, hitting it with his outstretched palms and knocking it over. The backrest of the heavy seat chopped downward, missing Gault by inches as he spun away and snapped off two quick shots. The first missed. Both shots punched into screens on the wall, killing the FOX and MSNBC news feeds. Toys threw his weight against a second throne and it immediately canted over. Gault pivoted and fired again. The bullet punched red fire through Toys’ thigh at the same instant the canting throne of the King of Fear struck the King of Plagues on the shoulder. Both men screamed in agony. The gun went spinning across the floor as Gault collapsed under six hundred pounds of teak and ebony and carved ivory.
Toys flopped to the floor and rolled over onto his stomach as blood poured from both sides of a through-and-through wound. Secondary pain exploded within him as the jagged ends of his shattered femur ground together, pinching torn muscle. Toys screamed and screamed as he clawed his way across the floor toward the fallen pistol. A dozen feet away Sebastian bellowed in rage and pain as he struggled to fight his way out from under the massive throne. The gun was almost in reach, Toys’ scrabbling fingers clawed at the wooden grips, and then the world exploded in white-hot agony as Sebastian Gault, free and standing erect, stamped down with all his force on the gushing wound in Toys’ leg.
Chapter Seventy-two
The Sea of Hope
December 21, 6:01 A.M. EST
“Something bigger than slaughtering all the people on this boat?” asked Top. “Shee-ee-it.”
Khalid raised a hand. “Permission to leave the boat.”
“These guys keep twisting it, don’t they?” asked DeeDee.
John Smith simply grunted, which constituted a long-winded speech for him.
Something occurred to me and I snapped my fingers. “I think the Kings may have thrown us another curveball and I think they did it through their own men.”
“How?” asked Church.
“It’s more of the twisted logic that they use. Sarducci, the shooter I interrogated. He made a real point of saying how much the Kings wanted me dead. And you, Circe, and Auntie.”
“So?”
“What if they didn’t? Or what if our deaths are beside the point? What if Hanler was the real target all along?”
“What’s the value of that target?” Top asked.
“Silence,” I said. “I keep coming back to the disinformation thing. It’s everything to these guys. Now factor in the fact that we now know Sebastian Gault and Hugo Vox are involved. We know that Vox used his position as a screener and all that, but he wore a lot of hats. He ran Terror Town, and he also had his think tanks. One of those think tanks was made up of—”
“Thriller authors. Like Martin Hanler,” Church finished.
“Right. Hanler told me that he talked about his Hospital bombing plot in front of a bunch of other writers. Maybe he mentioned it again—or one of them mentioned it during a brainstorming session at T-Town. I mean, think about it. A member of one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on earth has an entire think tank of novelists cooking up elaborate plots for him. Then he brings in counterterrorism teams from all over the world to run the plots and work out all the details. Sure, they’re supposed to be coming up with protocols for stopping them, but if you flip that around, they’re also creating worst-case scenarios.”
“Like the London.”
“And probably Fair Isle and Area 51.”
“And the Sea of Hope,” Church concluded. “I think we can safely assume that Hugo did not share all of the scenarios cooked up by the think tanks.”
Church opened his cell and called Bug to order him to hack all of T-Town’s think-tank records.
Under my breath I said, “Thanks, Joe … damn fine work. Couldn’t save the world without you.”
Dietrich snorted. “Really? You joined the DMS for all the pats on the back?”
Khalid sat down on the end of the couch. “That think-tank thing is pretty scary. All of those devious brains—authors, CT experts—working hundreds of hours to create the worst possible scenarios. And we’re supposed to figure it out by the time the concert starts tonight?”
DeeDee looked at her watch. “Thirteen hours.”
“Thank you,” he said. “A countdown is very comforting.”
“Okay,” I said, cutting in, “let’s get to work.”
That fast they were all business.
One of the suitcases was filled with canvas bags filled with devices the size of shirt buttons. These are one of Hu’s very best gadgets: sensors with a microchip inside and a tiny burst transmitter. Peel off the tape on one side and you expose a chameleon chemical. Press it to a wood grain door for five seconds and turn it over and the wood grain is imitated perfectly. Peel off the tape on the other side and press it to the door, and unless you know it’s there, you won’t see it. Especially if it’s set low, below the ordinary fall of the eye. The sensors were designed specifically for bomb detection, and when they finally hit the market it will be possible to position them just about anywhere and maybe give some warning before things go boom!
We each had a dozen multipurpose processor units as well. Those were the size of a pack of Juicy Fruit and had the same chameleon coating. Affix one to a wall or stairway or anywhere in the path of human traffic or airflow and the device collects and analyzes the air for radiation, nitrites, and dense concentrations of viral material. It wasn’t as sensitive as the BAMS unit I had at Fair Isle, but it wasn’t far behind. And the devices were networked for greater effect.
There were also a bunch of Minicams, and some booster units to collect the signals from the tiny sensors and uplink them to the DMS satellite.
“You each have assigned sections of the ship,” I said. They nodded and put their glasses back on, using the pocket mouses to pull up floor plans. “We have time, so place the sensors unobtrusively, but keep your eyes open, too. Report anything that looks hinky.”