I did as I was told, holding her gaze. She was tall and well-built, and she looked seriously comfortable with firearms. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail and she had a small rucksack on her back.
‘You,’ she said to Rothmann. ‘Sit down and stop sniveling.’
He obeyed instantly, his hands over his now shrunken organ.
The man was also tall, with a full beard. He was carrying a shotgun and there was a combat knife in the belt he had put on.
‘The Antichurch returns to its rightful leaders,’ the woman said.
‘Indeed, sister,’ the man said solemnly, eyeing Rothmann. ‘Shall we string up the heretic?’
‘Of course. The true Antigospel requires that traitors be sacrificed to the Lord Lucifer.’
Rothmann made a high-pitched noise.
‘Have you anything to say before sentence is carried out?’ the man said to him. He had a strong Southern accent.
‘I…I wish to beg forgiveness,’ Rothmann said, groveling before him. ‘When I revived the Antichurch, I had no idea that Jeremiah Dodds had a brother. Or that he set up his church in opposition to the original cult.’
The woman stepped forward and brought her boot down on Rothmann’s right hand, making him yelp in agony. ‘Jeremiah Dodds was a heretic,’ she said, pressing down harder on his fingers.
‘Besides, you sent people to kill us,’ the man added, bringing the muzzle of the shotgun close to Rothmann’s ear. ‘They killed several of the faithful before we gutted them.’
‘You mind telling us who you are?’ Quincy asked. He was still lying prone and had lifted his head.
‘Yes, I do mind.’ The woman pointed her pistol at him. ‘We don’t pay no heed to niggers.’
I might have known that the original Antichurch would be a racist organization.
The man laughed emptily. ‘Sister Abaddon, I see three crosses. What d’you say to hanging all three of these sorry creatures up and turning their insides out?’
She smiled beatifically at him. ‘That would be a truly wonderful way to celebrate the Lord Lucifer’s triumph, Brother Apollyon,’ she said, moving toward the rope that I’d cut from Quincy.
Her head disintegrated before she got there, the blast of the shot reaching my ears an instant later. The woman was thrown forward, her arms hooking over the horizontal bar of the cross and her head thumping against the vertical. Four more shots dispatched the people at the doors.
‘Drop your weapons!’
The voice from the center of the barn was loud and clear. I watched as the bearded man complied and a figure in black combat clothes came toward us. It was a woman with short blond hair and high cheekbones.
‘What the fuck now?’ Quincy said, in a low voice.
My heart went into overdrive. She didn’t look like she used to and she sounded like a native New Yorker, but I recognized her gait instantly.
Sara Robbins had collected plenty of souls already. And now she was coming for ours.
Arthur Bimsdale was finding his boss hard to fathom. If he’d been in charge, he’d have gone down to Texas as soon as Matt Wells and Quincy Jerome disappeared from the tracking grid. Every effort was being made by the Houston field office to pinpoint their locations, but Peter Sebastian would normally have been on the spot to concentrate the local agents’ minds and coordinate their efforts. When Bimsdale had suggested he go alone, Sebastian had told him he’d be better employed handling the operation from headquarters. That was patently not the case.
His boss had returned to the office around 10:00 p.m., giving no explanation of where he had been. He had turned off his cell phone during his absence-Bimsdale knew this because he’d called him with Houston’s latest negative update. Why the secrecy? Department heads, like all agents, were supposed to be contactable at all times. The look on Sebastian’s face, however, had discouraged questions or comments. He received the news from Texas with a distracted air.
‘Arthur, email me everything we’ve got on Routh Limited. Do a search on Sir Andrew Frogget, too. See if our guy in the London embassy’s got any new shit.’
‘New shit?’ Bimsdale repeated uncertainly.
Sebastian gave him a drained look. ‘As far as I recall, his record’s clean. Too clean. I want to know everything about him. In particular, I want to know what his weaknesses are.’ He raised a hand. ‘Don’t say anything, Arthur. I know he was decorated in the first Gulf War, I know he spends his weekends with underprivileged children. Now dig me some dirt!’
Bimsdale did as he was told. It didn’t take him long. Ferris, the senior FBI agent in London, had picked up a hint of something rotten in the state of Frogget. Apparently his wife was suffering from depression, code in British high society for their marriage being on the rocks. On the face of it, the Routh chairman wasn’t a big enough celebrity to attract the attention of the tabloid press, but he employed a notoriously devious publicity agent. That attracted Bimsdale’s attention and he asked Ferris to sniff around. An hour later, the agent called back. Nothing had ever been proved, but there was a faint rumor that Sir Andrew had paid off the parents of a twelve-year-old girl after he was found alone with her.
Peter Sebastian was less excited by that piece of news than Bimsdale expected, but he finally authorized twenty-four-hour surveillance on the knight.
After dealing with that end of things, Arthur went back to his desk and contacted Houston.
Sara Robbins had a Glock 19 in one hand and an AK-47 rifle in the other-she had taken both weapons from a sentry near the gate of the compound. She had dispatched him by cutting his throat with the plastic knife she favored. Things had worked out very well, not least because the painkillers had kicked in. On her way toward the location, identified by the bug she had attached to the pickup carrying Matt, she caught sight of a shadowy figure behind the tree line. That individual had provoked the guards by throwing a grenade into the open space in front of the buildings. When they came out to check, the intruder followed them back to the gate and killed them. Sara had been twenty yards behind, making no sound. After arming herself, she had gone toward the large barn-the intruder had stood at the door, and then slipped inside. Sara used her knife on the tires of the nearest vehicles and cautiously entered the building. She took cover behind a heap of firewood, to the rear of a group of naked people. A dead guard had been dragged there, his killer now sheltering behind an antique tractor.
It was when that individual turned to the side that Sara recognized her profile. It was the woman from Maine-the one she had got rid of outside the diner. That wasn’t too much of a surprise, though knowing who she was and who she worked for would be nice.
It turned out to be irrelevant. Sara watched the insane ritual and tried to work out what Matt was doing. He seemed to be in thrall to a naked man in a hyena mask, and almost attacked the black man with a knife. Then the shooting had started, and in the chaos that overtook the next few minutes, the bulk of the surviving congregation had thundered past Sara to the rear exit, leaving the wounded and dead behind.
Sara only recognized the tall man carrying a shotgun when he got up on the platform with the crosses. It was the beard that had deceived her. The last time she saw him, he had been clean-shaven. He had tried to kill her then and, by doing that, had signed his own death warrant-her professional standing as an assassin required all attacks on her person to be answered with maximum prejudice.
Stretching her back to dissipate the pain that had begun to bite again, the Soul Collector took aim at the woman who had been irritating her since Portland. Soon, it would be time to settle accounts with the hired gun known as Apollyon and, of course, with her former lover. The lives of the black man and of the people guarding the doors were of no consequence whatsoever.
Twenty-Six