“Hooah,” they said, and left one at a time.
I took my batch and followed my map. I headed over to the central main-deck area, which was where the concert would be. It was roped off and there were scores of workers laboring under a hot morning sun. Finishing the bandstand, doing sound checks on the massive speakers, hanging bunting, setting up tapes for line control.
The best angle to see the whole area was by the team working together to inflate several thousand red and white balloons. There were six men, all of them Mexican, seated on folding stools surrounded by big tanks of helium. Huge nets had been erected to catch any stray balloons as the men filled, tied, filled, tied, over and over again. Four other men took netfuls of the balloons aft, where, according to Circe, they would be released as the Sea of Hope sailed into Rio. The balloons were all biodegradable and would eventually burst harmlessly in the stratosphere, themselves acting as a symbol of green choices for a polluted planet.
I listened to the Mexicans chatter among themselves in Spanish. Nothing more sinister than speculation on next year’s World Cup. One of them noticed me looking and met my eyes. He looked from me to the thousands of red and white balloons and back to me; then he rolled his eyes. I gave him a sympathetic smile and turned away. A few seconds later I heard one of the men speaking in a strangely squeaky voice and turned to see that he had sucked some of the helium out of a balloon and was speaking like Donald Duck. Everyone cracked up.
Then a fussy-looking white man in a cruise line blazer yelled at him and the Mexican pasted a contrite look on his face and tied off the balloon. As I passed, I made a quiet remark about the fussy man’s personal hygiene, only loud enough for the six Mexicans to hear. They all cracked up again.
I moved on.
My credentials got me into the VIP area. Behind gates and decorative shrubbery was an entirely separate set of pools and waterside bars. I slouched around trying to look like I wasn’t looking. Everywhere I looked, though, was a paparazzo’s dream. Movie stars in thongs or Speedos that left nothing to the imagination. I saw Pink, wearing a bikini that could fit comfortably into a shot glass, lounging by the pool reading a Kelly Simmons novel. Two chairs away, John Legend was playing chess with that short guy from American Idol. Legend was kicking his ass. There were rock stars and R&B stars and rappers and celebrities from the movies and TV. Some of the Generation Hope kids—daughters and sons of the global power players—were peppered among them, either gawking in starstruck awe or pretending the kind of indolence that only teenagers can pull off.
I moved among them, placing the chameleon sensors here and there, taking my time so that I didn’t attract any attention.
I didn’t see anyone looking particularly sinister. It’s not like on the old Batman TV show, where bad guys wore shirts with HENCHMAN, THUG, and EVIL ASSISTANT stenciled on the chest. Would be pretty damn useful, though.
I drifted out of the VIP area and placed the last of my sensors on the major stairways, then headed back to the suite. The others were already there. All of the sensors had been placed, but no one had seen anything.
Interlude Forty-five
The Chamber of the Kings
December 21, 5:22 A.M. EST
“You traitorous bastard!” Gault screamed as he stamped down over and over again. “You Judas!”
Toys felt his broken thighbone shatter. The pain was so intense, so enormous, that he could no longer scream. His mouth was open, his lungs pushed air out, but the only sound he could make was a thin and nearly ultrasonic shriek that tore itself from each tortured nerve ending.
The world swam in and out of focus as clouds of black and red swirled behind his eyes.
Then abruptly the pain stopped.
The moment was suspended inside a crystal teardrop of time. Toys wondered if this was what it felt like to die. Had the jagged ends of broken bone severed an artery? Was he bleeding out and drifting into the big darkness? Or had he reached the end of pain? Was pain a finite thing, a line drawn in the mind that, once crossed, became an irrelevant concept?
He did not know and did not know how to think about it.
He lay in a cocoon of unfeeling silence for—how long? A second? Hours?
Then feeling returned to him, one unkind bit at a time.
The first thing he felt was a tear breaking from the corner of his eye and falling down toward his ear. It felt cold instead of warm.
“G-God … ,” Toys whispered. A whisper was all that he was capable of.
Darkness obscured his vision and he blinked. No. Not darkness.
Sebastian Gault stood above him, impossibly tall. Pale and blue-white in the glow of the wall of screens. Not the face Toys had loved for so long. This was Gault’s new face. Blond and angular and handsome. The work of surgeons. Nothing that was part of nature. He looked like Apollo. Like the god of the sun.
“God … ,” Toys whispered again. The pain was an unrelenting fire in his leg. “Please …”
Gault stood and looked down at Toys. With his head bent his eyes were in shadows. It gave his face a weird appearance, like a beautiful skull.
“We’ve had our suspicions, you know. The Goddess and me. She didn’t trust her son, and I’ve lost my trust in you.”
“ … God … please …”
Gault ran both sets of fingers through his hair. He removed a handkerchief and mopped sweat from his face. He folded the handkerchief and returned it to his pocket.
“Last week we planted bugs in Hugo’s office. We heard him make a call to someone at the DMS. I wanted to kill him right then and there. We decided that we would let Santoro do it. Goddesses always need new angels.”
“ … Sebastian, please …”
“And then we heard you in Hugo’s office. You, on the phone. Not just with the DMS … no, you had to go and call sodding Joe Ledger!”
Gault darted in and kicked Toys in the stomach like a placekicker going for a thirty-yard punt. Toys screamed and writhed. Bloody spittle flew from his mouth and patterned the tile floor.
“I won’t ask you why,” said Gault, his mild tone completely at odds with what he had just done. “I know why.”
“L-love … ,” Toys croaked in a voice that was barely human.
“Yes. Love. You pathetic little faggot. Do you think I would ever lower myself to love a creature like you? All you’ve ever been to me is a convenience. Someone to get things. Someone to make sure the dry cleaning is picked up and the wet bar fully stocked.” Gault shook his head. “Love? It’s not love, Toys … it’s jealousy. You can’t stand the fact that I can love and you’re too damaged and twisted to be capable of it.”
Toys’ lips formed the word again: “Love.”
He braced his elbows and tried to heave his head and shoulders off the floor. Instantly there was a burst of unbearable agony from his shattered leg that tore a ragged scream from him. He tried to twist away from the pain, but as he did something hard dug into his opposite hip.
“Don’t dare use the word ‘love’ for what you feel,” sneered Gault. “I know love. Eris is love. I know the love of a goddess incarnate.”
Breathing through the pain took all of his strength, but Toys fought to get words past his gritted teeth. “You … don’t understand … you fucking idiot … .”
The words materialized as a snarl of unfiltered rage.
Gault smiled. “I understand everything.”
“No, Sebastian,” Toys snarled. “ … you never understood me.”