Diabolical (7 page)

“Tell him to stand down.”

Bartlett gave Edgar another little nod, pursing his lips and knitting his brow as he did, and the smallish man moved across the room, giving Hatcher a long look on the way to the back. He leaned against the counter near the sink, half sitting on it. His expression seemed like a collection of reactions to small amusements, but there was definitely anger swirling behind those eyes.

The guy in the sweater was on all fours, sounding like he was trying to dislodge a hair stuck in his throat. Hatcher glanced down at him, then over to Bartlett. The general stood his ground with an avuncular easiness, an expectant cast to his face, a calm patience to his bearing. He might as well have been waiting on a free refill. There was cool, and then there was
cool
. Something wasn't right.

“The weapon,” Bartlett said. He held out an arm. “Hand it over, son, so we can talk. Please.”

Hatcher watched him, studied the man's posture. Open, trusting. Confident. His gaze drifted off Bartlett and over to Vivian. She wasn't happy—eyes a bit wide, staring intently—but she didn't look terrified. If he sensed anything coming off of her, it was something like shame.

He shifted his attention back to Bartlett. Hatcher lowered his arms and let the muzzle of the HK tilt toward the floor.

“How many years were you on active duty, General?”

“Thirty-three.”

Hatcher nodded. “Most of your commands were of combat regiments and SF teams, right?”

“Most of them, yes.”

“Oversee any psyops? Fourth Airborne, maybe? JTF? Delta Force?”

Bartlett grimaced. “I'd prefer we have this discussion after you lay down arms, soldier.”

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

Hatcher looked down at the HK, then spun around, jerking the barrel in the direction of Mr. E. He squeezed the trigger.

The firing mechanism made an audible click as the pin slammed into place. But other than that, nothing else happened.

The room was quiet except for the persistent hacking of sweater guy. Then Bartlett coughed a little laugh into his hand, shaking his head.

“How did you know?”

“The tactics were sloppy, and you don't have a rep for sloppiness.” He dipped his head to the guy on the floor. “Your man here gave me too much of an opening. Bad positioning, let me get too close. He wouldn't be on your personal detail if he was that lax.”

“Very astute, Hatcher. Anything else? Or is that your entire after-action report?”

“Knife boy over there seemed to be holding back a chuckle. Some inside joke.”

Eyes on him, Mr. E hitched a shoulder. He seemed mildly entertained, but mostly apathetic.

“Let's see if I can follow the script,” Hatcher said. He tossed the HK onto the closest of the two beds. “You have one of your guys deliver me to a psychopathic freak for some kind of test, to see if I can take him. You arrange a stadium view, want to see firsthand how I handle myself. Then, figuring I will be more than a little pissed about being the evening's main event, you give me a chance to blow off steam, prove a point in my head, feel like I made a statement. And in doing so, you establish a basis for trust, a chance for me to see you empathizing with my anger, then show good faith by complying with my demands. You demonstrate you care, ask me nicely for the weapon like you expect me to live up to a bargain, and I'm supposed to come away from this believing you're someone who prefers to play it straight, and who has confidence in my character and understands me. Confidence I'm then supposed to feel obliged to prove worthy of. Am I close?”

“You can't blame me for wanting to avoid getting things off on the wrong foot.”

“Things got off on the wrong foot when you tried to feed me to Roidzilla out there.”

“Calvin”—Bartlett dipped his his head toward the one on the floor still trying to get up—“the man you just took some of your anger out on—had a clean shot. He was instructed to end it if it got out of hand.”

Hatcher started to ask what the hell his definition of getting out of hand was, but said nothing. Instead, he looked down at Calvin, who was trying to pull himself up off his knees, his body too distracted by the coughing and wheezing to make much progress. That was enough to prompt Bartlett to wave a hand toward Mr. E, who crossed in front of Hatcher and helped Calvin to his feet. Hatcher had given the man a nasty chop to the windpipe. Blow like that probably warranted medical attention. He wondered if maybe he should have tried something less harsh.

On the other hand, he thought, resisting the urge to rub his own throat, fuck him.

“You don't have enough information to understand,” Bartlett continued. “Yet. But the long and short of it is, I had to know.”

“Had to know what?”

“Vivian insisted I give you a chance.”

“Okay, that's it . . . I'm walking out that door if you don't tell me exactly what this is all about. And I mean, right now.”

Bartlett held Hatcher's gaze for a prolonged moment, clearly a man not used to being spoken to in such a manner. The muscles in his jaw made tiny fists at the edges. Then his face seemed to relax, and his mouth formed a happy shape that looked something like a precursor to a smile. His eyes dropped to his fingernails as he checked them.

“Are you by any chance a student of World War Two?” he asked. “Did you ever study it?”

“A little. In school.”

The man's eyebrows squirmed slightly, like furry worms greeting each other. “Ever hear of Operation X-Ray?”

“No.”

“Few people have. It was an example of thinking outside the box, a plan to attack Japan that was being tested roughly around the same time as the Manhattan Project.” The general paused, looking directly into Hatcher's eyes. “I'm sure you're familiar with that one.”

“I know as much about it as the next guy. If the next guy knew what they teach you in junior high.”

Bartlett nodded. “Compared to Manhattan, X-Ray was rather low tech. It was thought up by a dentist, of all people. The plan was to unleash canisters containing thousands of bats—to drop bat bombs, if you will—over Tokyo. The bats were to have tiny incendiary devices attached to their legs.”

Hatcher shot a glance over to Mr. E. He was leaning back near the door, poker-faced. Calvin was in a chair, still holding his throat.

“I can't say I understand where this is heading, General.”

“I'm getting there. The idea was simple. Once the bats were loosed, they would immediately seek shelter in crevices and crannies, in attics and under eaves, anywhere dark they could insinuate themselves. Tokyo was made mostly of wood. The trickiest part was designing a workable mechanism to start the combustion. Once they had one, the army tested the plan on a deserted mining town in Utah. They set the delay on the devices for two hours. Within minutes after detonation, the entire town was up in flames. But before X-Ray got the green light, they pulled the plug on it. The A-bomb had been successfully tested. And that project was a lot more expensive. They weren't going to waste all that money and all that science in favor of dropping bats.”

“Fascinating. But I still have no idea what you're trying to tell me.”

“I know what you did, how you fought to keep Demetrius Valentine from fulfilling a prophecy of apocalyptic proportions. That you saved Vivian here from being . . .
violated
by the demon prince known as Belial.”

“I killed some bizarre animal Valentine had engineered, or whatever. That's all I know for sure.”

“Yes, well, you certainly don't need to affect an air of skepticism with me.”

“I'm not ‘affecting' anything. I killed a creature grown in a lab by a rich nut case. You can read the police report.”

“That would be like directing someone to the Warren Commission findings for the truth about JFK's assassination. Are you really going to stand there and tell me you don't believe that what you encountered, the thing you killed, was a demon hybrid inhabited by Belial? Don't get me wrong. I can see why you wouldn't want to. She also explained the price you paid for protecting her. And that means you'd also have to believe that in touching it, in having contact with the crown prince of Hell, you've rendered yourself unclean. Damned.”

“Look, General, I'm tired. My neck feels like somebody used a blood-pressure cuff on it. My head felt better the time my M9 exploded and the slide ricocheted off my face. Just tell me what the hell I'm doing here.”

Bartlett let his gaze linger on Hatcher for several moments. Then he dipped his head toward Vivian. She reached down next to the bed and lifted a canvas satchel. The bag rose slowly, twisting as she floated it over the bed, sagging in the middle from its weight. Vivian turned it over and dropped its contents onto the mattress. Something hard tumbled out. It sunk a couple of inches into the comforter with barely any bounce. She pulled back and set the empty canvas on the table.

“I don't suppose this means anything to you,” Bartlett said.

It was a piece of engraved stone, a corner section of something larger, maybe a foot across and eighteen inches long. At least a couple of inches thick. Rough and jagged where it had been broken off, but flat and squared at the bottom corner and along the unbroken edges. The surface was dark and smooth. There were symbols carved into it.

Hatcher stared at it. “Should it?”

“No, but it was worth asking. This is a plaster cast of something I came into possession of about six months ago. Don't ask how.”

“What is it?”

“The real one is a sandstone tablet, dating back two, but more likely close to three, millennia.”

“Millennia?”

“Yes. The composition of the stone is consistent with other relics that have been unearthed around excavation sites near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There are even gold flecks embedded in it, something that suggests it was in the temple itself for some time. The inscriptions are in what is known is
lingua malitia
. Do you know what it says?”

“I'm sure I would, if I had any idea what that meant.”

“It's the language of demons. Similar to Enochian. Very few humans have ever even heard it. The only known person to have spoken it was Solomon.”

“The Solomon from the Bible?”

“That Solomon.”

“And you think I can read this?”

“No, but it couldn't hurt to ask. We've had a hard time translating it.”

Hatcher looked at the engraving. There were symbols and characters carved into rows of text. To his untrained eye, it looked like a combination of Greek and hieroglyphics.

“So?”

“Best anyone can tell, it talks about the creation of a gate. A portal.” Bartlett pointed a finger, swept it over the some of the markings. “It references a being banished to Hell, then coming back. A Hellion.”

Hatcher said nothing for a long moment. He didn't like the way that sounded. It reminded him of things he'd heard before. From the Carnates. Gorgeous women who had everything. Except souls. That hadn't turned out so well.

He dropped his eyes to examine the tablet once more. “I still don't see what this has to do with me.”

“Two weeks ago, a Markhor goat was stolen from the Los Angeles zoo. A rare specimen. Enormous. Almost six feet tall at the shoulders.”

“Okay.”

“Fingerprints recovered from the cage matched a serial rapist from Seattle. They found his body a few days ago. His genitalia were missing. Surgically removed, you might say. So was his right hand. No sign of the goat.”

“I guess with one gone, he wouldn't need the other anymore.”

“This isn't a joke. Do you know how he was killed? He was hanged.”

A crude comment about being hanged but not hung came to mind, but Hatcher was able to keep it from popping out.

“And?” he said.

“The right hand of a hanged criminal is used as something called the Hand of Glory. An implement of magic that can be used to render a person immobile, put them almost instantly into a hypnoticlike state. It can also be used to open that person up to a spiritual possession.”

“Still not getting how I fit in.”

Bartlett nodded to Edgar, who retrieved a folder from the table and pulled out a sheet of paper. He handed it to Bartlett. Bartlett held it out for Hatcher to see. It was a drawing of a creature with a human torso and goat's head.

“Are you familiar with this?”

“It looks like the Devil sat for a sketch artist.”

“It's called the Baphomet.”

“If you say so.”

“It is an icon of demon worship. A powerful symbol. A goat's head, a human torso, goats legs, wings. An authentic one, the kind suitable for conjuring a very specific demon, requires very specific body parts. One is the penis of a rapist.”

“I'm not following.”

“Did you happen to catch the Apocalypse exhibit at the museum here some weeks back? Pity. Several of its displays contained unmistakable references to what's happening. Imagine, Hatcher, if a passage to Hell were opened. A doorway. Imagine demons being set loose on this world, streaming into it like the bats I just described. Each of them containing the equivalent of a ticking incendiary device. Thousands of bats out of Hell, working their way into our society, then once in place unleashing hellfire everywhere. Imagine death and mayhem and damnation here on Earth, the world literally burning. What would you say if I told you that was a very real possibility?”

“I'd say insurance companies would be looking for another round of bailouts. Then I'd ask again what the heck you think it has to do with me.”