Empire of Dust (45 page)

LaPierre's men murdered the priests at the mission as a first shot in an intended holocaust that would include any practitioners of faiths not aligned with LaPierre's own narrow views. There is also the possibility that LaPierre may have been considering using nuclear weapons, as we witnessed a lead-lined underground facility at the site where the revolutionaries had gathered, but saw no actual nuclear devices.

There was more in the report, including the information that Agent Paul Daly had been turned by LaPierre's people, and had tried to kill the operatives. So that was why Skye hadn't heard from Popeye, the bastard. Skye had sent him west to keep an eye on the operatives, and unknowingly sent him right where he would do his real employer the most good.

Skye smiled thinly. He supposed he couldn't really blame Daly.
Let he who is without sin
, as long as he was in the biblical mood. After all, Skye had been bought and paid for by Mr. Stanley, who would be mightily disappointed that none of this seeming paranormal activity had borne fruit. Ah well, there would be other opportunities to find the mysterious prisoner he and his patron sought.

In the meantime, Skye would pass along Harris's warning that the proper agencies should infiltrate and ferret out the revolutionary cells LaPierre had established. And Skye knew, once he sent this classified information through the proper channels, that it would be done. The president would be delighted to have a right-wing religious fanatic military plot revealed, particularly since it had self-destructed so nicely. Unfortunately, Skye would be able to take no credit for it, since the operations of Harris, Luciano, and Stein were for his eyes only.

He sighed and wondered what his three operatives might be keeping from him. He wondered most about that "lead-lined facility" Harris had mentioned. Though he believed much of her report, the tidiness of it gave him the same sense of discomfort he'd felt when he'd read her report on the Holberg incident in New York. It all seemed a little too neat, too precise, with all the loose ends tied up in a pristine bow.

It seemed, he feared, like a clever fabric of lies.

"A
gent Brian Foster is missing."

The words brought Quentin McIntyre's head up fast. Alan Phillips stood in the deputy director's doorway, looking like he had wanted to report anything but the words he had just spoken. "Missing?" McIntyre repeated, and Phillips nodded.

"We haven't heard from him for forty-eight hours, and there's no response from his cell phone."

"Jesus Christ," McIntyre muttered. "Did they make him? Break the Yazzie cover?"

"I don't know."

"Hell, even if they had, they wouldn't have
killed
him, would they?"

"I don't know, sir. I have other agents in a four-state area looking for him. The last we heard from him was that he was following the signal from the device he had placed on their car, but then he lost it. His last report from northeastern Arizona said he was going to try to reestablish contact."

"What about the Company operatives? Any sign of them?"

"Yes sir. We sent someone to the motel in Gallup late this morning. They spent the night, and checked out before eight." He shook his head. "They're gone again."

McIntyre sat back in his chair, feeling unaccountably weary. "All right," he said to Phillips, waving a hand of dismissal. "Let me know as soon as you find anything." Phillips nodded and left the room.

Goddamned sonsabitches
, McIntyre thought. The only thing that made any sense was that they'd either killed Special Agent Foster or left him somewhere out in the desert. Either way, the FBI had succeeded in losing Harris, Stein, and Luciano again.

But if they'd found them once, they could find them again, now that he knew what Skye's little squad was up to. Paranormal phenomena: that was what had drawn this bunch of rogue ops, and the next time something like that occurred, the FBI would be there.

In fact, maybe they could even create their own little unexplainable incident. And when Skye's team took the bait, they would find themselves in a trap. If they wanted to play rough, they would be the ones at the muzzle end this time. They had no legal standing at all, not in this country.

They were fair game, and McIntyre intended to set a deadly trap for his quarry.

W
hen the man took off Taylor Griswold's blindfold, he found himself in a windowless room with only one lamp. It sat on a small bare table next to the wooden chair in which they'd placed him.

Griswold hated this cloak-and-dagger shit. Getting blindfolded and driven twenty or thirty miles to be told he was an incompetent asshole was not his idea of a good return to New York City. He was fairly sure that was what this Scotsman was going to say, and when the man came through the door and slammed it shut behind him, he was positive.

"You lost them," the man said. "You had them and you lost them, on straight, simple two-lane roads." His voice was low but jagged with burrs. It was a voice that pricked at you, making you deeply uncomfortable.

The man stepped closer, into the pool of light the lamp cast, and Griswold saw his angry face. The wild red hair that blazed atop his head like a flame only made his countenance look more fierce. He couldn't have been more than thirty, Griswold thought, but the clefts of his rugged face and the wisdom of his deep blue eyes aged him beyond his years. He glared down at Griswold from his six and a half feet as though demanding some kind of atonement.

"Christ, I'm not a cop, I don't know about tailing people like that. I got as far as the roadhouse, which was pretty far without them spotting me, and then they tore off after some guy speeding away, and some other guy was yelling something about murder, and even
then
I kept following them, but when they pulled off the road and went gangbanging back into the desert, there was no way I was getting involved in
that
action, so I just got the hell out of there, I admit it."

"All right, Griswold," the Scotsman said. Griswold had to admit to himself that he usually liked hearing him say his name. The Scots pronunciation gave it a couple extra syllables. But this time it sounded like a Scottish curse. "I know you only help us for the money you get paid, but that's coming to an end. You've been pretty useless to us. I admit, you've put us on the trail of the three, but you can never stay with them until we arrive. We're going to have to use different measures now. Here's the deal—you get anything that looks like the genuine article, you inform us and you'll be paid. But stay away from the three from now on, ye ken?"

"Huh?"

"Do you
understand
?" the man said, as though Griswold were stupid.

"Yes. Yes, I understand."

"Because if you try and come in contact with them again, or if you try and contact us beyond your usual method, or if, by any chance, you should try to write this up into a story for your sad rag of a newspaper, believe me, we will kill you, Griswold."

Griswold felt beads of sweat on his upper lip, but didn't dare move his arm to wipe them off. "I understand," he said again.

The Scotsman nodded. "Tread lightly, Griswold." He picked up the man's blindfold from the table and dropped it into his lap. "Now, be on your way."

Griswold tied the blindfold tightly around his eyes as he heard the Scotsman cross the room and open the door again. Someone else came in, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. He left the room without speaking or hearing more. But as he went, he listened nonetheless. He wanted to be able to judge where, approximately, he was. Maybe he could find these men again.

Yes, he was frightened of them, but he had been threatened before—hell, reporters were
always
threatened, but he was still alive. And if this Scotty thought that he was going to let go of the story of the decade when he had it by the balls, he was sorely mistaken.

Or maybe, he thought, that should be
sairly
.

L
eft alone, the tall, red-haired Scot sat in the wooden chair in the darkened room and rested his head on his right hand. The chair and the darkness had looked comforting at first, but as he closed his eyes, he knew that he could not find peace, no matter how dark or how quiet his surroundings. Battles were waged within his brain.

At least they were well rid of Griswold. The man was a greedy fool with no courage. Guts were not courage. And he had no sense of honor. His only country was his wallet. Best to pass on men like that. They had ruined causes before and would do so again.

The Scot had had his soldiers contact the man a year earlier. He had thought it valuable to have someone on the payroll who was close to the weird and bizarre, who could separate the wheat from the chaff. So they had hired Griswold through several layers of secrecy, in hopes that the man might be able, by design or accident, to bring them news that would lead them to the one the Catholics called the Antichrist, the one whose dark activities the tall Scot's father had monitored as a Knight Templar.

Colin Mackay, son of the late Sir Andrew Mackay, sat in the near darkness and thought about his father, and the grail that had given him youth, and the people who had taken his immortality from him.

He thought about his task, about his poor, sad country, bound by impure, inbred fools whose only claim upon it was a stolen crown.

He thought about the news stories that mentioned the empty leaden casket in the desert earth, and about the creature, guarded so long, now set free on an unsuspecting world.

And he thought about what the power of that creature might do, set loose upon the might and kingdom and soldiers of those royal idiots.

He wished with all his heart that he could return to his home, to his Scotland. But that day was not yet to be. It would come only when he was ready to give his country the freedom it deserved. To make that day come, Colin Mackay was willing to shake hands with the Devil himself.

And perhaps that circumstance was not as impossible as it seemed.

H
e stood alone in the desert, watching the sun, staring directly into the fiery ball, eyes open, never blinking. It had been centuries since he'd been able to move freely, to see the natural qualities of this world.

He remained there, watching as the earth rotated and the edge of the planet rose to block out its sun. He watched as the stars began to appear, and remembered, so long ago, the routes he had taken through them. He drank in the sight of the sky; he tasted his freedom fully.

He had wandered since that day of blood and water that had freed him, observing rocks and plants and the creatures that dwelt in this arid land. He touched the sand and the rock and the water of the infrequent streams, and saw only one human being in all that time, who he'd told to saw open his throat with the edge of a sharp rock, and the human had obeyed.

He had watched as the human's blood had sprayed out when the artery was severed, and when the human had fallen to the sand and died. It was interesting, but not, for any reason he could name, as interesting as the land. Here he and what constituted his mind were free to roam, unfettered by that foul dark substance through which neither he nor his will could pass, but by extreme effort.

So he roamed that land. There would be time to pay back those who had kept him bound for so long, and he would repay them. He would make the world run red with blood from a billion self-severed necks.

But for now he would simply wander, enjoying his freedom, even though bound on this world. He did not know how long he might wander. Perhaps for forty days and nights, like the dead Jesus his captors kept droning about.

Or perhaps it would be forty years before he would war on these puny creatures again, find his allies among them, those thirsty for lives. Yes, since time meant nothing to him, perhaps forty years.

Or, if he got bored, forty minutes.

"H
ere's to our continuing good health," said Laika, raising her glass of wine.

"Something," said Joseph, "that's getting more and more difficult to maintain."

Tony said nothing. He smiled slightly and drank his wine. It was two weeks since they had left the southwest for some well-deserved rest and recuperation in San Francisco. Now they sat on the deck of a waterfront bistro overlooking the bay, breathing in moist air instead of dry, and seeing the setting sun through clouds.

"The fuss is dying down at last," Joseph said.

"Over the 'Armageddon Plot'?" said Laika. "In the big media, maybe, but I suspect that the Internet and the alternative publications will feast on it for years. It's a conspiracy theorist's wet dream—a real, honest-to-God
conspiracy
."