He felt the blast before he heard it. A deep rumble like a subway train rolling beneath his feet and then muted thunder filled the air behind him as the densely packed high-RDX explosives in the car detonated. He turned to see the shock wave ripple along both sides of the street like a waft of heat haze, shimmering in the air and blowing out storefronts and car windows. Santoro wrapped his arms over his head and dropped into a squat beside a wooden kiosk where brightly colored tourist scarves were sold. The shock wave passed him and fled down the street, and he peeked through an opening in his overlapped arms. He smiled at the beauty of it.
He turned as the crowds of people around him shook off their shock and ran toward the burning building. Santoro consulted his watch. His mental calculation had been off by less than fifteen seconds. The watch read: 1:30.
The crowd surged past him and he allowed the tide to pull him back to the scene of the disaster. He stood with the others and watched as the stock exchange burned, and when the flames leaped to the adjoining buildings Santoro hid a small smile. He stayed there for over an hour, and by then news that there had been a second blast was already being circulated. By the time he reached his hotel room and ordered a meal, the news stations were frantic with reports of bombings all across Bombay. The current estimate was eight, but Santoro knew that there would be more. Twenty had been planned. Some in cars, others on buses and even in the saddlebags of scooters.
Room service arrived and he ate a healthy meal of curry, flavored with coconut, tamarind, chili, and spices, with basmati rice. He tipped the boy and settled down to his meal.
He ordered a bottle of wine and sat with it in a comfortable chair. He was glad that he had not been one of the agents who had been ordered to leave a suitcase bomb in his hotel. He liked this place. Maybe next spring he’d come back here. He wasn’t as fond of the Juhu Centaur Hotel or the Hotel Sea Rock, so he didn’t mind when the increasingly shocked reporters told of blasts that tore through each of them. Other bombs destroyed the Plaza Theatre, the Nair and J.J. hospitals, part of the University of Bombay, and the Zaveri, Century, and Katha bazaars. He watched the news all day. He was mildly disappointed that the rail station bombs were found and defused before they could detonate. By day’s end the tally was thirteen blasts that claimed 257 lives and left over seven hundred injured. A nice day’s work.
He could not help but laugh as the police and various “experts” on terrorism discussed and debated the reason for the attacks. The air of Bombay was thick with paranoia.
Santoro showered, washing away the brown dye that made him look Indian. He would apply a fresh coat tomorrow before he checked out of the hotel.
He toweled off and got ready for bed. He knew that the whole plan would succeed. It was like clockwork. Long in the planning, subtle in the orchestration, deceptively simple in execution. A bread trail would lead the police toward a Muslim crime family who would take the fall. Lovely. There were no loose ends for the police to follow, nothing that would lead them back to Santoro, or to the men who had hired him to plan and execute what had been discreetly referred to as the Bombay Holiday.
Muslims had nothing to do with it. It was not part of any Islamic jihad. It had, in fact, nothing at all to do with any religious ideology and it made no specific theological statement. At least, not as far as Santoro knew. He was fairly insightful, and as far as he could judge, this whole thing was about what it was always about.
Money and power.
With that happy thought in his head, Santoro pulled up the sheet, snuggled into the pillow, and fell into a deep and untroubled sleep, content in the knowledge the world would never be the same again. The Seven Kings would be pleased. His last thought as he drifted off was, The Goddess will love me for this.
THE BOAT THUMPED down over a tall wave and Santoro jolted awake. He looked around, his hand touching the knife beneath his clothes.
The captain saw him and smiled. “Wind’s picking up,” he said. “We’re ’itting some chop, but we’ll be in port before it gets too bad.”
“Yes,” said Santoro, but he was agreeing to a different meaning entirely.
Smiling, Santoro took his iPhone out of his pocket and checked his text messages. There were separate notes of congratulations from each of the Seven Kings. Both the King of Fear and the King of Plagues asked him how things were progressing on Fair Isle. To both, Santoro sent the same message:
Crimson rivers will flow.
He could imagine the champagne corks popping as that was read aloud in the Chamber of the Kings. Just before the boat docked, Santoro received a message from the Goddess herself:
You are the beloved Sword of the Goddess.
The world swam around him and Santoro felt tears stinging his eyes.
He bent his head and whispered prayers of thanks and love to the Goddess, and prayed to her that he might soon be lifted from the flesh of a servant to the spirit of a god. Her God.
Her God and lover.
Chapter Twenty-three
The Plympton Crime Scene
Whitechapel, London
December 18, 10:36 A.M. GMT
Owlstone removed two pairs of latex gloves from her pocket and handed a set to me. I pulled them on and took my camera from my jacket. It’s a special design that takes thirty-five megapixel shots at ultrafine quality, with a three-hundred-image capacity. A prototype from one of Church’s friends in the industry. I clicked off a hundred shots, moving fast, trusting to the anti-shake function to capture everything. At least the forensics team would have some nice pictures to look at.
Nice.
Christ.
When I finished taking the pics I took a small cable from my pocket and connected the camera to my phone and then sent the images via satellite to Church, Benson Childe, Jerry Spencer, Bug, and Dr. Hu.
Photos on the bureau made it clear that the victims were the mother and daughter who had lived here. Laura Plympton, forty-one, and daughter, Zoë, fifteen. They’d both been pretty.
“Look at this,” Owlstone said, her voice dropping into a whisper. She drew a cheap plastic pen from her inner pocket and touched the curled left hand of Laura Plympton. I came around to her side of the bed. I took my penlight and shined it into the dark hollow formed by her curled white fingers. “Is that paper?”
“You have a good eye, Detective Sergeant,” I said, and took some close-ups of Laura Plympton’s hand. “You ought to consider a career in criminal investigation.”
“Oh yes, very funny.”
We very slowly, very carefully worked together to gently spread Laura Plympton’s fingers. She must have been murdered early yesterday morning, so rigor had come and gone, leaving her fingers slack in a creepy, rubbery way. In death her bladder and bowels had released, so the smells that rose from her were eye-watering, and buried beneath them were the beginnings of the sweet stink of decomposition.
Owlstone slid the paper out and I lowered Plympton’s hand back to its resting place on her breast. I knew that she was dead and far beyond any feeling, but I felt like I wanted to apologize to her for this necessary violation.