Mary touched my hand. ‘Matt, you have to let them go.’
I wasn’t impressed that my feelings were so obvious, but she was right. I could still see the ones I’d lost, but their faces were blurred and they no longer came close. Soon the darkness would swallow them up completely. I had no idea how I’d cope then.
I forced myself back to the small town in Texas, which was showing more signs of activity now. I had a decision to make. Either I handed the laptop over with the rest of the gear, or I kept it from the FBI. I looked at my watch. It was nearly 8:30. The advance guard from the Dallas office would be arriving at the camp soon. I decided on a compromise.
A mile before the turnoff, I stopped. I put the computer in the rucksack and stashed it behind a tree at the roadside.
‘I presume I didn’t see that,’ Mary said, with a weak smile.
‘You presume right, if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course I don’t, Matt. After all we’ve been through…’
That was some kind of invitation. I didn’t respond. Mary was a good woman, but I had nothing to give her.
We came over the rise of a low hill and saw a line of stationary vehicles with flashing lights. There was a roadblock in front of them. I stopped and identified myself and Mary. We were told to get out of the vehicle by a uniformed police officer. There was a clutch of plainclothes officers at the junction.
‘Is that yours, sir?’ the officer asked, pointing at the Kalashnikov in the backseat of the Highlander.
‘I borrowed it.’
The next few hours passed in a blur of questions, familiar and unfamiliar faces, and body bags. Colonel Singh, temporary dressings on his legs, seemed to be in pretty good spirits, even though he had lost at least half his men. He eyed Major Al-Haq belligerently when the Pakistani troops passed close by, but both kept their real disapproval for the men from the camp. Not many of them were unscathed, though I saw the bulky man who had taken orders from Apollyon pass by under guard, one arm drenched in blood. He was still wearing the cap, but the badge had been removed-I wondered by whom. I remembered the figure holding the snakes- Hercules, the invincible warrior who had descended to Hades. What was the significance of that?
‘Mr. Wells.’
I looked round. ‘Special Agent Bimsdale.’
He took in the scene. ‘Quite a major incident.’
‘You could say that. You should call the CIA. Someone needs to keep the peace between those Indians and Pakistanis.’
The young man gave me a curious look. ‘I’ve been receiving updates on the plane. I’m satisfied that we can handle everything.’
His tone attracted my attention-suddenly he seemed more authoritative.
‘Where’s your boss?’
‘Back in D.C.’
‘I’d have thought Sebastian would be down here like a shot.’
Bimsdale twitched his lips like a debater who had won a point. ‘Oh, I see.’ He smiled enough to show the edges of his pearly teeth. ‘You don’t know, of course. I’m sorry to tell you that Peter Sebastian was murdered last night.’
‘What?’
‘I’m afraid so. His car was found in the northern suburbs with him inside. He’d been killed with a knife.’
Every alarm in my body had gone off. The timing of the senior FBI man’s death was pretty striking, but that was nothing compared with the way Arthur Bimsdale was reporting it. He sounded like a newsreader trying and failing to emote with earthquake victims in a distant country.
‘What was it?’ I heard myself say. ‘Robbery gone wrong.’
‘That’s what the police are working on, I believe.’ Bimsdale gave me a look that suggested his grief had been short and shallow. ‘A great loss, of course, but life goes on.’
That did it. As far as I was concerned, all bets were off. I would give the FBI whatever would be corroborated by other witnesses, but the rest I would keep to myself. Something was very wrong. I still needed to play ball, though, so I told him about the compound of barns to the east.
When I’d finished, Bimsdale looked confused. ‘I don’t understand how you and the Soul Collector woman ended up here,’ he said, nibbling the end of an old-fashioned wooden pencil.
‘We followed the car containing the assassin Apollyon and Rothmann. Sara-the Soul Collector-had bugged the pickup they were in.’ I thought about Rothmann. He’d been at the rear of the Hades complex with Apollyon and had looked shit scared, but not particularly surprised. Had he been there before? If so, that suggested he and whoever was behind the murders in the northern cities had perhaps been close. Was the person I was after a former collaborator of Rothmann’s? Had he or she been put off by the Nazi’s full-blooded espousal of the Antichurch and decided to get rid of him?
‘Okay,’ Bimsdale said, putting away his pencil and notebook. ‘We need to get you out of here, Matt.’
I was instantly suspicious. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, you’ll be much more comfortable in our Dallas field office.’
That sounded like bullshit, but I wasn’t in a position to do much about it. Then the special agent’s cell rang. He answered, straightened up as if he was on parade, narrowed his eyes in puzzlement and then handed it to me.
‘This is the Director of the FBI,’ said a nasal voice, which I’d heard on the news bulletins more than once. ‘Mr. Wells, I have only just found out about your involvement in this case. I view it as a serious misjudgment by the late Peter Sebastian and would like to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss it. You could fly up to Washington on the Bureau plane that took Special Agent Bimsdale to Texas. Is that acceptable to you?’
I confirmed that it was and handed the phone back to Bimsdale. Washington was a lot closer to New York than the Lone Star State and I wanted to retrieve whatever Sara had stashed in Queens. With luck, the Director would have patted me on the back and sent me on my way by the evening.
I watched as Sebastian’s former assistant ate what looked like several crows before terminating the call. ‘It seems you’re leaving us,’ he said, red spots on his cheeks.
‘Yeah. Can Mary Upson come with me as far as D.C.?’
‘Certainly not. She needs to be formally interviewed.’
It was only as the Bureau car pulled away that I started to wonder exactly what the Director wanted with me.
Was he the fire to the Texan frying pan I’d just survived?
The Reverend Rudi Crane was in the master bedroom of the Hercules Solutions apartment on Central Park West. To his right, the picture window provided a vision of sylvan splendor in the midst of the metropolis, but he paid no attention to that. He drank his hot water and ate his oatmeal, reveling in a rare morning spent in bed. It had been justified by the rigorous activities of the previous night. He had promised the striking stewardess-what was her name again?-a hefty pay increase, and he was seriously considering making her his secretary, even though his wife would smell a regiment of rats if that happened. He would just have to play the affronted husband, appalled that his spouse of thirty-four years could think badly of him. Then they would pray together and everything would be forgotten.
Lord be praised, it was a beautiful day, even though the New York atmosphere was filled with all sorts of hydrocarbons and aerial poisons. That was why he was here-to fly the flag of Hercules at the United Nations Climate Change Conference that began tomorrow. He would be the only CEO and chairman of a private security contractor present and he planned to make the most of that. He had a list of meetings as long as the Ukrainian girl’s leg, including a panel with the prime minister of Upper Congo-he needed to check the atlas about that country’s precise location, though he knew very well that diamonds were its chief export-and the defense minister of Burma, which had a new name that he could never remember. Contracts were in the offing and he meant to close the deals with a brisk shake of his god-fearing hand.