“No. The epiphany was that there are some wars you can’t win. There are some wars, in fact, that are so big and yet so subtle that all you can hope to do is catch glimpses of them as they move through your life.”
I looked at him.
He shrugged. “This has that feel to it.”
“What … Are you saying you don’t think we’ll catch them?”
“We don’t even know who they are, Captain. We’re miles from certain knowledge of any kind. Even the things we’ve learned today could be carefully seeded misdirection. This is the nature of the War on Terror. Sometimes there is no face, no name, no target for us to point a gun at. It can be disheartening and daunting, and the frustration of it has forced a lot of players out of the game.”
“But not you,” I said.
“Not me.”
“Why not?”
Church didn’t answer that. Instead he said, “The darkness is all around us. Very few people have the courage to light a candle against it.”
“I’m not that kind of idealist.”
“Nor am I. We are of a kind, Captain, and neither of us is holding a candle against the darkness. Like the unknown and unseen enemy we fight, people like you and me, we are the darkness. In some ways we are more like the things we’re fighting than the people we’re protecting. Granted our motives are better—from our perspective—but we wait in the shadows for our unseen enemy to make a move against those innocents with the candles. And by that light we take aim.”
“Is that all we are?” I asked. “Hunters in the dark?”
“Isn’t it enough for you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want that to be all that I am.”
Church nodded.
We stared out to sea, watching as the thickening clouds were underlit by the setting sun. The colors were intense. Dark reds and hot oranges. It looked like the whole world was on fire.
Part Three
Ten Plagues
The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans.
—BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Chapter Thirty-seven
In Flight
December 18, 10:29 P.M. GMT
Prebble’s team gave me a lift to Heathrow. It was a silent trip except for some murmured condolences for the losses suffered by the DMS. We were all in mourning. The final death toll from the Hospital had been released.
Four thousand, one hundred, and sixteen people.
That was eleven hundred more than had died in the fall of the Towers. Add to that the body count from Area 51: 79 people on the research and development team, 26 support staff, 8 from the Nellis Air Force Base Military Intelligence Team, 6 members of Lucky Team, 9 men and women from Area 51’s on-site security team, and the 2 members of Echo—130 all told. Add Plympton’s wife and daughter, Charles Grey and his family, and two dead in the fish tank and the total was 4,253 dead in less than two days.
Those numbers were full of broken glass and splinters. You couldn’t touch them without bleeding.
I sat in one of the padded seats on the chopper with Ghost’s head on my lap and stared inward into some of the empty darkness in my head.
I wished that Grace was with me.
God Almighty, Grace … why aren’t you here?
I closed my eyes and tried not to scream. Inside my head the Warrior was ramming the point of his knife into the ground over and over again, teeth bared in a feral snarl of unrelenting bloodlust. The Modern Man was hiding somewhere; he just couldn’t deal. I wanted the Cop to emerge, to assert his cool control, but for the moment he was silent, and ugly winds blew across the darkness of my inner landscape.
I dozed for a while, but my dreams were nasty and I woke to the sound of my phone buzzing. I flipped it open.
“Do not tell me there’s been another attack,” I said by way of hello.
“No,” said Mr. Church, “but here’s a twist for you.”
“Hit me.”
“Jerry Spencer and his team found the body of Trevor Plympton in the subbasement of the hospital.”
“Killed by the blast?”
“Hardly. The debris kept him fairly intact, but it is clear that he had been systematically and comprehensively tortured.”
“Ah, Jesus … . Were they able to fix the time of death?”
“Best guess is two to six hours after the deaths of his family. Well before the bombs went off.”
He let me process that for a moment.
“That is a twist,” I said, “but it tells us something. It straightens the logic.”
“Tell me.”
“If Plympton had been coerced into bringing the bombs to work and setting them up for fear that something bad would happen to his family, he might have snapped. He might have killed his wife and kid and then gone to work to maybe stop the bomb.”
“Why kill his family?” Church asked.
“Because he was about to betray the extortionists.”
“Why not go to the authorities?”
“Plympton told us why in his note.”
“‘They are everywhere,’” Church quoted.
“Yes, and he believed that to the point of killing his wife and daughter in order to protect them from worse treatment at the hands of the Seven Kings.”
“So, who killed Plympton?”
“Good question. We know from Fair Isle that the Kings had several agents in place. They clearly used the same setup here. So we’re back to what we talked about on Fair Isle, that the Kings have a way of identifying certain psychological profiles within their target facilities.”
There was silence at both ends of the line as we each thought about all the things that were wrong with that.
“It smacks of too much inside knowledge,” said Church.
“Way too much.”
“Let me work on that end of things,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ve arranged for a specialist to liaise with you. Dr. Circe O’Tree. She’s an analyst who specializes in the social, religious, and historical justifications for terrorism. She’ll join you on the flight to the States.”
“Good. We can use the help. But … where do I know that name from?”
“I doubt you watch Oprah, so I’ll venture that you saw her latest book in the stores. The Terrorist Sophist.”
“That’s it. Looked interesting,” I said. “Should have picked it up.”
“Pick it up in the airport,” he suggested. “It’s useful stuff. Dr. O’Tree works for Hugo Vox out at Terror Town, though she’s been in London for the last two months working in security logistics for the Sea of Hope. Her track record for intuitive leaps and Big Picture perspective checks is remarkable. I tried to recruit her for the DMS, but she declined.”
“Why?”
When he didn’t answer, I said, “She sounds like a sharp cookie. I’ll try not to embarrass the home team.”
“That would be nice,” Church said dryly. “Last thing before you go. We have the first lab reports from the Hospital fire. They’ve found residue consistent with a large quantity of automobile tires. They were apparently stored on the top floor of the Hospital in several rooms that had been roped off, ostensibly for plumbing repairs. Hospital officials have no explanation for that, and they believe that the tires had to have been brought in very recently. We can presume that Plympton and/or others working for the Kings brought them in within the last twenty-four hours before the fire.”