Red Knight Falling (19 page)

THIRTY-FOUR

At the head of the line, one of Diehl’s security guards checked IDs, holding each one up to its owner’s face and squinting hard before waving them out, while his partner kept one hand on a walkie-talkie and the other close to his holster.

I got an idea. Turning and wading back through the crowd, slow as a salmon swimming upstream, I tugged the sleeve of a harried-looking coordinator with a clipboard. Diehl’s gunmen might have shoot-to-kill orders, but I had a hunch that the rank and file had no idea what was going on. I could use that. I discreetly flashed my badge and leaned close, my voice conspiratorial.

“Agent Black. We’re here about the bomb threat.”

Her eyes went wide. “Bomb threat? Is
that
what this is? They only told us—”

I jabbed my finger at her. “Keep your voice down! You want to cause a mass panic? Look, just point us toward your head of security.”

“Right, right.” She nodded at an empty corridor behind the reception desk. “Just go down that hall, and take a left. Mr. Prescott should be in the surveillance room.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Keep up the good work.”

The din of the crowd faded behind our backs as we made our way down the back corridor, passing under the eye of a boxy, gray security camera. I had a feeling Diehl’s security would be focusing all their attention on the exits, expecting we’d be trying to escape—as opposed to flanking the windowed door to the tower’s security hub, pistols drawn and silently counting down from three.

We swept into the room like a hurricane. Uniformed guards looked up from their consoles, attention torn from a host of screens showing the lobby and parking lot from every angle. One went for his sidearm. The butt of Jessie’s gun whipped across the back of his skull, dropping him like a sack of groceries. The others grabbed air, staring down the barrel of my pistol.

“Hands,”
I snapped. “Let me see your hands,
right now
.”

“Whatever Diehl’s paying you, it’s not worth dying for,” Jessie said. “Which one of you is Prescott?”

“That’s me,” said the only one not in pressed uniform blues. He was in his late forties, built like a boxer after a three-steak dinner, and dressed in a cheap suit with a stiff polyester tie.

“Congratulations,” I said, grabbing him by the arm. I turned him around, jabbing the barrel of my gun into his back. “You’re going to walk us out of here.”

Jessie snapped her fingers at the closest guard. “You. Camera jockey. Get on the horn to the guys out front. Tell ’em we’re bringing their boss out, and if they so much as sneeze in our general direction, my friend here might feel startled. Her gun’s on a hair trigger, so, y’know, startling her is a
bad
idea.”

We marched Prescott out into the hallway, angling back toward the lobby. I kept my hand clamped on his arm and my eyes forward, while Jessie looked back to make sure none of his men tried to run up on us from behind. I felt Prescott’s muscles tense up, like he was bracing himself to make a move.

“I’m putting my gun out of sight,” I told him, snaking my hand under my jacket, “because I don’t want to cause a commotion. That said? Whatever you’re thinking about trying right now, you’ll be dead before you pull it off. Just take it easy, do exactly what I tell you, and everything’s going to be just fine.”

“You people made a big goddamn mistake,” he snarled.

“No,” I said, “you did, when you ordered your men to try and murder two federal agents.”

He stumbled, missing half a step. My hand tightened on my pistol’s grip.

“
What?
Mr. Diehl told us you were industrial spies! We were supposed to take you alive if we could, and find out who you were working for.”

“Uncle Sam,” Jessie deadpanned. “Now you know. So where’s your boss now?”

“I don’t know, I swear. He has a private jet
and
a helicopter. And a yacht. He could be anywhere by now. Am . . . am I under arrest?”

“Fortunately for you,” I said, “we don’t have time for little fish today. Get us out of here without making a scene, and I think we can let bygones be bygones.”

We waded through the churning crowd in the lobby, slowly making our way to the big glass doors out front. Prescott put on a big nervous smile and held up an open hand, his voice on the edge of breaking.

“S-security coming through, folks. Please make way, security coming through. Just . . . just stay orderly, you’re all doing great.”

The thugs by the door saw us coming, and hit us with rock-hard glares. One slipped his hand under his jacket.

“You’d better hope your boys
really
like you,” Jessie murmured.

One of the gunmen moved to stand in our path, blocking the way out.

“Out of the way, Lou,” Prescott said softly. “I’m escorting these ladies out of the building, all right?”

“Mr. Diehl’s orders—”

“Goddamn it, Lou. They’re FBI, all right? Get out of the way.”

“All the more reason we shouldn’t let them leave.”

With the crowds at my back, I slipped my pistol out from under my jacket, tickling Prescott’s spine with the muzzle.

“Lou,” Prescott breathed, “I am telling you, as your supervisor, to
stand the fuck down
.”

“Mr. Diehl’s orders were clear, sir. Capture or kill. I’m not letting them leave with a hostage.”

“What part of
FBI
do you not understand?” Jessie asked him.

Lou’s gaze shot toward her, his voice a robotic monotone. “Mr. Diehl’s orders were clear.”

“For the last time,” Prescott started to say—and then Lou went for his gun.

I shoved Prescott hard, knocking him off his feet. He stumbled forward and bowled into Lou, the two of them going down in a tangled heap. Jessie’s Glock was out in a flash, muzzle pressed to the forehead of Lou’s partner.

“Take your hand out from under your jacket,” Jessie said, “and it had better be empty.”

“She’s got a gun,”
someone shouted behind us, and a scream louder than the fire alarm rose up from the crowd. The stampede was on, people surging away from us like a tide of frenzied ants, running for the other exits in a mad dash for safety or just diving for cover. More gunmen came our way, wading through the panic with pistols out, trying to get a clean line of fire. Jessie grabbed her hostage by the shoulder and threw him, sending him crashing through the wall of glass and tumbling, rolling in a constellation of broken, glittering shards on the concrete outside.

We burst out into the California heat, sunlight dazzling my eyes as we sprinted between the manicured hedges. A gunshot cracked through the air, and a chunk of concrete near my feet shattered like a porcelain cup. We didn’t dare shoot back, not with so many civilians in the mix: all we could do was run.

The SUV barreled through the parking lot up ahead, tires screeching as Cody swung it around hard. The back door flung open, Kevin waving us in, ducking as another brace of shots rang out. Jessie threw herself into the backseat while I jumped in front, slapping my palm against the dashboard.

“Drive.”

Cody stomped on the gas and spun the wheel, the SUV’s tires screeching. Horns blared as he rocketed out of the parking lot and onto the street, bludgeoning his way into traffic, missing a semi’s front bumper by inches. I sat low in the passenger seat and watched the rearview mirror checking for a tail. After we put half a mile between us and the tower, I knew Diehl’s people weren’t trying to pursue us.

And why bother? They’d already won.

“He slipped out right from under us,” Jessie fumed. “It’s another goddamn leak. Somebody
told
Diehl we were coming for him.”

April shook her head. “How? The only people who knew we were out to apprehend him were Master Sergeant Novak and Huburtus Becke, both of whom have every reason to want to see us succeed.”

“Yeah, and remember what Bette said about the people she works for? ‘Conflicting alliances.’ How much you wanna bet, when she asked for authorization to raid his HQ, some high-ranking bean counter blew the whistle to Diehl?” Jessie slammed her fist into the back of my seat and swore under her breath. “We just got sucker punched by somebody
else’s
bureaucratic bullshit.”

Cody blew through a yellow light, flickering red a second after our wheels crossed the line.

“This is why you should never ask for permission to do
anything
,” Jessie seethed.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Cody said, “but where exactly am I driving?”

Good question. Our one link to recovering the tablet, our one hope at staving off doomsday, was capturing Bobby Diehl. And Diehl was long gone. With a billionaire’s resources he could be anywhere by now, his trail already cold as arctic ice.

By my watch, the planet had a little less than twelve hours to live.

“I’ll . . . start checking out flight logs,” Kevin said, his voice deflated. “He’s got a plane, right? Or planes. Maybe . . . maybe I’ll find something there.”

“Perhaps we could investigate his homes closest to Los Angeles,” April offered. “It’s most likely that he’s already left the state, but it’s worth looking into.”

Jessie folded her arms and sank back in her seat, sullen. “Fine. Kevin, check his jets first. Focus on Van Nuys Airport: it’s closest, and that’s where all the celebrities fly in and out of town. April, find out if he has any personal properties inside the city limits.”

From the tone of her voice, she felt about as optimistic as I did. Diehl knew he was being hunted. He wouldn’t risk his moment of glory, and he didn’t make a billion dollars by taking stupid chances. He was gone, and he’d stay gone, until the King of Silence came calling.

My phone buzzed against my hip. I tugged it out and glanced at the screen. Restricted number.

“Hello?”

“Come to the Redbury Hotel on Vine Street,” Linder told me. “You and Agent Temple
only
. Consider this crisis-level priority.”

I straightened up in my seat. “Sir, with all due respect, our top priority right now is—”

“I know exactly what you’re doing, and I’m trying to stop you from making a horrible mistake. Come to the Redbury immediately. And come unarmed.”

He hung up.

I relayed the message to the rest of the team. Jessie arched an eyebrow, dubious.

“‘Come unarmed’? He seriously said that?”

“He seriously did.”

“Yeah,” Jessie said, “we’re not gonna do that.”

“You know your boss a lot better than I do,” Cody said, “but there’s no chance that, uh . . .”

“That he’s been bought off by Bobby Diehl, and we’re about to walk into an ambush?” I asked.

“That was my general line of thinking, yeah.”

Jessie unholstered her Glock. She popped the magazine, checked her load, and slammed it back into place.

“Only one way to find out,” she said. “Let’s go to the Redbury.”

THIRTY-FIVE

We crawled through sluggish afternoon traffic in the heart of LA, the sun broiling down on dirty sidewalks and faded white stucco. The SUV rolled past the old Pantages Theatre at Hollywood and Vine, an art deco cathedral in the heart of a modern metropolis. The Redbury stood just around the corner. It was a boutique hotel, five floors painted fire-engine red, its name glowing on a theater marquee above the glossy front door. The place wore its style on its sleeve, offering up a taste of Hollywood luxury and seedy bohemian glamor.

“Wait here,” Jessie told the team as we got out of the SUV, “and keep the engine hot. If we’re not back in half an hour, come in shooting.”

Linder had left a message for us at the front desk. Just a room number and a spare key, nothing more.

We found his room at the end of a third-floor hallway. I listened at the door. Silence.

“How do you want to do this?” I whispered to Jessie.

“We play it straight.” She left her gun holstered and brandished the room key with a flourish. “As long as he does, anyway. Be ready for anything.”

We let ourselves in.

The suite beyond the door felt like somebody’s über-hip Hollywood apartment, done up in crimson wallpaper, overstuffed pillows, and vintage furniture. The kind of place where an up-and-coming actress might kick back and relax following the after-party. Linder rose from a sofa upholstered in chintz, waiting patiently while we shut the door behind us. Lamps bathed the room in a soft yellow glow, all the curtains pulled tight to block out the sun.

“All right,” he said, glancing toward the open bathroom door, “they’re here.”

Of all the people I might expect to see emerging from the bathroom, Bobby Diehl’s assistant was near the bottom of the list.

My gun came out in a heartbeat. So did Jessie’s, locking the other woman in her sights as she strode across the room. The admin had a piece of her own, a slender blue-chrome, nine-millimeter semiautomatic. She took aim at Jessie, her grip steady and cool.

“
This
is why I wanted you to come unarmed,” Linder said, rolling his eyes. “Somehow I expected you’d disregard my orders. Can’t imagine why. Stand down, Agents.”

“Fuck. That. Noise.” Jessie gritted her teeth. “This bitch just tried to get us killed. What’s she doing here, Linder?”

“I was
trying
to keep you clods from ruining two years of hard work,” the admin snapped. “And please, spare me: if you couldn’t handle a few rented thugs, you never would have been recruited into Vigilant in the first place. It was a calculated risk.”

“Agents Temple and Black,” Linder said, “please meet Agent Cooper. Beach Cell.”

“Beach?”
Jessie’s pistol held steady, aimed between Cooper’s eyes. “Oh, even better. Last member of Beach Cell we met planted a bug on us. This whole team is dirty.”

“Agent Lawrence’s indiscretions were regrettable,” Cooper said, “and an aberration. I assure you, the rest of my team is performing Vigilant’s most important work. They’re solid, every last one of them.”

I blinked at her. “The ‘most important work’? Maybe you haven’t been briefed, Agent, but we’re trying to save the world right now. A mission
you
just botched by letting Diehl escape. What were you
thinking
?”

“I was thinking that you were about to destroy my entire undercover operation and sanction my number one lead. Now, can we
please
stop pointing guns at one another and communicate like adults?”

“You first,” Jessie said.

Eventually, everyone lowered their weapons. I holstered mine. Jessie didn’t.

“Agents, what we’re about to discuss is internally classified at the highest level. You’re only being brought in on this due to absolute necessity.” Linder gestured at Cooper. “Go ahead. Brief them.”

Cooper sat down in an overstuffed armchair, slipping her gun into her purse. We took seats on the sofa opposite, while Linder clasped his hands behind his back and paced the thin carpet.

“My entire team is conducting a long-term infiltration of Diehl Innovations,” Cooper said. “I have operatives and informants in every major division, and I’ve spent the better part of two years working my way into Bobby Diehl’s personal confidence. I assume you’re aware of his family history.”

“Sounds like the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree,” I said.

Cooper nodded, her expression grim. “That’s an understatement. Diehl’s public persona is a well-crafted mask. Behind closed doors, he’s a sexual sadist with a predilection for knives. He’s also a fairly skilled sorcerer and demonologist, and he’s fetishized his grandfather’s legacy into an all-consuming obsession.”

“I’m not hearing an explanation as to why he’s still breathing,” Jessie said. “You’ve been running an infiltration op for
two years
? I can fix this problem with two
bullets
.”

“You can’t, and you won’t,” Linder said. “Diehl is off-limits.”

“Sir?” I said. “I’m going to need some clarification here.”

“Believe me, nobody on Earth wants to see Diehl dead more than I do,” Cooper said. “I’ve made sacrifices over the past two years. Considerable personal sacrifices to infiltrate his inner circle. For the time being, we need him alive and on the loose. It’s a big-picture issue.”

“That had better be one damn big picture,” Jessie said.

Linder handed Cooper a manila folder stuffed with glossy eight-by-eleven photographs. As she reached for it, her jacket sleeve rode up, baring an inflamed red circle around her slender wrist. Like the aftermath of a rope burn.

“Bobby Diehl,” Cooper said, “is making a bid to join the Network. He’s our way in.”

“Bullshit,” Jessie snapped.

I held up a finger. “Excuse me? Network?”

Jessie shook her head at me. “It’s an urban legend. It’s supposed to be this international crime syndicate so secretive that most law-enforcement agencies don’t even know it exists. Basically an underworld fairy tale for career criminals; everybody knows somebody who knows somebody whose brother’s cousin’s roommate did a job for them once. They don’t exist.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Cooper said. “I assure you, Agents, the Network is as real as it is lethal, and they have their fingers in criminal operations around the world. The Mexican drug cartels. Human trafficking in East Asia. Arms deals fueling African brushfire wars. The Network supplies misery on a global scale, and they do it with the aid of the most powerful occult technology I’ve ever seen.”

Linder moved to stand beside Cooper’s chair. “They move through cutouts and proxies three levels deep,” he said. “Once you get past the outer layers, their agents are all under
geises
to keep them from betraying their masters. They employ telepathic scans and long-distance scrying to keep tabs on their operatives, rendering undercover infiltration impossible.”

Cooper shook the stack of photographs from the envelope and laid the first one on the coffee table between us. A crime-scene photo in vivid color, showing wooden floorboards splashed in buckets of crimson. I couldn’t identify the man in the picture, not without his head attached.

“And when someone gets close, they retaliate hard and fast.” Cooper tapped the photo with her fingernail. “This was a
Washington Post
reporter who spent nearly a decade following up whispers about the Network. They ignored him until he finally stumbled on the farthest edge of one of their operations. This happened the very next morning. The Network employs a cadre of top-tier assassins with occult support and, we believe, at least one incarnate demon.”

“So if you can’t infiltrate the Network,” I said, following Cooper’s logic, “you’ll let Bobby Diehl infiltrate it
for
you.”

She gave me a firm nod. “Precisely. All we need is a way in. Once we do, we can take down Diehl, the Network, all of it in one fell swoop. And that’s why you can’t hurt him: if Diehl dies, we lose the best opportunity we’ve ever had. We may not get another.”

Jessie leaned back, eyeing the photograph. “Two years is a long time to wait for a thumbs-up. Did his application get lost in the mail?”

“Originally, we were after Diehl and his immediate associates. It wasn’t until I learned his greater ambitions that we turned him from a priority target to an info source. And, well, his first attempt at making contact with the Network was a disaster. He thought he could buy his way in. That . . . offended them.”

She turned the photo, revealing the next one in the stack. Fires swept across a dour industrial plant, slate-gray paint bubbling and seared black, a cloudless sky choked with billowing clouds of smoke. A bullet-riddled corpse slumped halfway out of a shattered window.

“Mumbai, India, last summer,” Cooper said. “This is BPK Manufacturing, where the majority of Diehl Innovations’ microchips are assembled.”

“I remember that.” I gestured to the photograph. “It was a terrorist attack, wasn’t it? Kashmir Liberation Front? Nearly fifty people died.”

“The KLF were patsies. Those were Network hitters, sending a message: specifically, telling Diehl exactly where he could stick his money. He’s been slowly making amends ever since, worming his way back into their good graces.”

Jessie blinked. “They killed fifty innocent factory workers just to make a point?”

“The Network,” Cooper said, “is about more than profit. It has an
ideology
.”

“What’s their ideology?” I asked.

She shook her head, gaze fixed on the photograph.

“I don’t know. Yet. If you ask me, though, the truth is in the pattern. It’s half what the Network does and half what they
don’t
bother pursuing even if it could turn a bigger profit. All of the crimes we’ve linked them to, directly or indirectly, result in widespread human suffering.”

Cooper looked up, meeting my eyes.

“If you ask me, Agent Black? I think they’re trying to create hell on Earth.”

“None of which changes the fact,” Jessie said, “that by sunrise there may not
be
an Earth. You don’t want us to sanction Diehl? Fine. I respect that. But we still need to interrogate him.”

Cooper turned over the photograph. Next in the stack was another industrial plant, this one painted milky white and gleaming pristine in the sun.

“You don’t need to,” she said, “because I’ve already done it for you. Diehl is planning a gala tonight for all of his occult-underground buddies to gather and ‘witness his glorious ascension.’ He’s going to ritually destroy the tablet and welcome the King of Silence back to our world. Until then, though, it’s being held in a secure facility under heavy guard. The good news is, I know
exactly
where to find it.”