Gault turned an inch toward his companion. Toys smiled.
“The same.”
“He still listen in on all your calls?”
“Yes,” said Toys. “Someone has to weed out the cranks and bill collectors.”
The American laughed. “Thank god you haven’t changed. The world would be a much dimmer place.”
Gault cut in irritably, “What’s this about?”
“Ah … it’s about destiny, my friend.”
“Whose?”
“Why, yours, of course. This is a big day for you guys.”
“No, it isn’t. Today we plan to have seaweed wraps and then I think we’ll each get a massage. That’s as much destiny as I want, thank you very much.”
“I doubt that’s true. What happened to your dreams of empire? I remember you telling me how you planned to make a king’s fortune, how you were going to reshape the world by forcing the U.S. out of the Middle East in a way that would put tens of billions in your pocket.”
“It was hundreds of billions,” Gault said with a touch of frost, “and if you read the papers you’ll know that things didn’t quite work out as planned.”
“Yes, but we are so impressed by the scope and subtlety of your plan. It should have worked. It would have, had you placed less stock in true believers and more in practical cynics like Toys.”
Toys leaned back and gave his friend a charming eyelid-fluttering smile.
Gault covered the phone and hissed at Toys, “Tell me, ‘I told you so,’ again and I’ll smother you in your sleep.”
Toys mimed zipping his mouth shut, but his smile persisted.
Into the phone Gault said, “Tell me again why we’re having this conversation? And try for once not to be so sodding cryptic. And … who is this ‘we’ you’re referring to? Or has the Dragon Lady gotten back into the game?”
“Ha! I’ll tell her you called her that. She’s killed for less. We’ve both seen her do it.”
“The only excuse your mother needs for killing someone is that the day ends in a y. She’s the most lethal bitch I ever met.”
“But you love her.”
“Of course,” conceded Gault, which was true enough. Right around the time Gault first made the cover of The Lancet, Eris had begun summoning him to wherever she was staying for long weekends filled with every kind of sybaritic excess. Although Eris was twenty years older than Gault, her sexual appetites were more ferocious than his, and that was saying quite a lot. Even Gault’s late, lamented Amirah—that treacherous witch who was the reason he was swathed in surgical wraps—was less of a bedroom predator than the American’s mother. More than once Gault had thought about marrying Eris. If she’d been younger or, perhaps, saner, he might have. Even so, the memories of being the fly in her erotic webs were so potent that he felt a serious stirring in his loins.
He said, “How could I not?”
The American laughed again. He had a bray of a laugh that came from deep in his chest.
“Tell me what this is about,” Gault prompted.
“I’ll do better than that, Sebastian. We’ll show you. Get dressed and pack your stuff. I’ll have a car outside in twenty minutes.”
“You don’t even know where I am.”
“Of course I do,” said the man. “Nouveau Visage … in the pool area. You’re on the fifth chaise lounge; Toys is on the sixth. Oh … and don’t bother with the fresh glass of sparkling water the nurse is bringing. They’re charging you for Bling H20, but it’s only Perrier.”
He disconnected.
Gault sat there, letting his body pretend a posture of relaxation while his good eye cut right and left around the pool area. Beside him, Toys clicked his tongue.
“Well, well,” Toys said softly. “That’s unnerving.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Trite as it sounds to say it—especially coming from me—I feel violated.”
“Everyone who meets that son of a bitch feels violated,” Gault said. “And for good reason.”
They looked around, making it casual, faking some conversation and genial laughter, but neither of them could spot the spy or spy camera. It made Gault itch all over.
Still …
“Why did he call? How did he know where we were?”
“‘We,’” Toys echoed.
“We,” Gault agreed. He stood up. “Let’s go back to our suite,” he suggested.
“To search it?” asked Toys.
“No,” said Sebastian Gault. “To pack.”
Chapter Eleven
Barrier Headquarters
London, England
December 17, 1:50 P.M. GMT
“Who the bloody hell are the Seven Kings?” Detective Chief Inspector Martin Aylrod looked at the screen and then at me as if this was somehow my fault.
However, Deirdre MacDonal turned to him in surprise. “Good God, Marty, don’t you read any of the reports I send you? They’re that terrorist organization the DMS and Barrier have been crossing swords with since—”
“Well,” Childe interjected, “it’s really just the DMS. We’ve only provided support, but this is the first evidence of them being here in the U.K.”
“Which doesn’t answer the questions of who they are,” insisted Aylrod. “Christ, Benson, you look like you’re about to pass a kidney stone.”
I said, “We don’t actually know who they are. In general terms they’re a secret society supposedly modeled along the lines of the Illuminati.”
“More like SPECTRE,” muttered MacDonal. “A lot of James Bond supervillain nonsense.”
“They’re a bit more than that,” Childe said dryly.
“What do you mean,” demanded Welles.
I told them all about Deep Throat and the cryptic info he’d fed us. “Hard to tell if they’re a genuine secret society or a criminal group using that as a PR campaign to make themselves appear ancient and powerful.”
“They blew up a sodding hospital,” snarled Aylrod. “That seems pretty effing powerful to me.”
“Sure,” I agreed neutrally, “but that’s today’s news. Until now they’ve been like Professor Moriarty—behind-the-scenes and supposedly tied to a lot of stuff, but really frigging hard to connect with any certainty. And they like using pop culture to build their mystique, so it’s really hard to pin down anything clear-cut about them. There’s a ton of stuff about them on the Net, and a lot of conspiracy theorists have tied the Seven Kings to a zillion ancient groups and prophecies.”
“What are their politics?” Welles asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine, sir. Deep Throat said that they’re dedicated to chaos.”
“‘Chaos’?” Welles said dryly. “Could you be a bit more vague?”
I smiled and spread my hands.
Aylrod said, “And your lads have had run-ins with them?”
“Quite a few.” I gave them the highlights. “Their street-level soldiers are called the Chosen. The odd thing is that the Kings have so far worked with extremist groups among the Shiites, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and a Sunni group. Yes, I did say Sunni.”
“So, they’re opportunists,” suggested Welles. “Working with whoever will work with them?”
“Or manipulating any group they can to further their own aims,” I said.
“Clever,” said Aylrod. “Have you managed to interview any of these ‘Chosen’?”
“Sure, but these street-level guys are just that. They’re members of isolated cells so far removed from the policy level that they genuinely don’t know anything beyond a couple of words and names. Nothing that connects us to anything useful. So far we’ve been able to determine that the Chosen are the ground troops. There’s a group that’s a big step up from them called the Kingsmen. The DMS had one tussle with them, and they are very, very tough hombres.”