Sir Guy slowly straightened, almost afraid to see that unnatural swirl of colors in the cleric’s eyes, but what he saw was the same golden brown he had known for years.
“Thank you, Father.”
“My son … this undertaking … it is with the consent and cooperation of the infidel and heretic Ibrahim al-Asiri? Cousin and private advisor to Saladin, enemy of God? You have made a preliminary bargain with a representative of the Antichrist on earth?”
“He is a Saracen, to be sure, but—”
“Yes or no, my friend?” asked the priest. “Did you enter into an agreement with Ibrahim al-Asiri?”
“I did. In the name of God and for my love of the Church, I did.”
The priest took his hand and patted it. “I just wanted you to say it aloud. Plain and not couched in the twisted language of diplomacy which, I must admit, often sounds like the mutterings of the devil. Tell me the truth, Sir Guy, for much hangs on it. If I were to say no—if I threatened to do the terrible things that we both know I
can
do and indeed
should
do to a man who has brought this to me and asked of me what you have asked—would you be willing to kill me?”
Sir Guy said nothing.
“Speak now or I
will
call the guards.”
“Yes,” croaked the diplomat, though he knew that he could never do such a thing. He could kill an uncle or brother before he killed a priest.
“Then tell me one more thing. If you escaped; if you fled this hospital and the city, if you took a boat to Spain or some other port, if you changed your name and lived forever in hiding … would you still want this plan of yours to go forward? Does the substance of this agreement matter more to you than titles, land, wealth, or your own name? Does this agreement matter more to you than your own life?”
“Yes,” Sir Guy said again. His throat felt like it was filled with shards of broken pottery.
The priest stepped closer, his face as severe as one of the saints of antiquity. “If I were to call my guards in here and have them strike you down and cut off your head and scatter the worthless pieces of your body to the vultures … would you even then want this agreement to move forward?”
Tears broke from Sir Guy’s eyes and he buckled slowly to his knees. He drew his sword and let it clatter to the flagstones. His dagger clanged as he dropped that across the sword. Sir Guy bowed his head.
“Yes,” he said in a voice that was filled with passion but without hope.
The tears dropped from his face onto the toe of the priest’s shoe. A moment later the priest raised his foot and touched the tearstained toe to the tip of the dagger. It lay almost parallel to the sword, but the priest nudged it slowly until it sat crosswise so that the dagger formed the bar of a cross. Or the hilt of a sword. How often Sir Guy had noticed how similar cross and sword were to one another.
“Look at me.”
Sir Guy raised his eyes and saw that the priest was smiling. It was not a nice smile. It was like looking at a snake smile, and as his seamed faced wrinkled with the smile, the priest’s eyes once more seemed to be as much green as brown. Like the mottled skin of a toad.
“Swear to me, Guy LaRoque, knight of the Sacred Order of Hospitallers. Swear that you will live according to this agreement, now and for all of the days of your life. Swear that you will do everything in your power—everything that your faith and your imagination and your will demands—to insure that the substance of this agreement comes to pass. Swear that to me, now, on your knees, before God.”
Sir Guy bent forward and caught a fold of the priest’s robe and kissed the hem. “I swear,” he said, the words as much a vow as a plea. “I swear before God, to the end of the world and the redemption of my sinner’s soul … I swear.”
“Then rise, Sir Guy LaRoque, knight of the holy Hospital of Jerusalem, protector of the Holy Land, soldier of God. I bless you and sanctify this Holy Agreement and all of its precious secrets. I bless it and God blesses it. Amen.”
Sir Guy wept and kissed the priest’s hem again before he climbed to his feet. “Thank you, Father. Thank you!”
The priest waved away the gratitude and the tears.
“What do you call this crusade of yours—of
ours
—my son?”
“In truth I have not yet thought of a fitting title. Ibrahim has already given his order a special name. The Tariqa. It is the Sufi word for ‘the path.’ He will be its first Murshid, its first guide along that path.”
The old priest nodded. “We will have to do the same, for you know that you cannot use the name of the Sacred Order of Hospitallers for this cause.”
“I confess that I’ve come up dry on that and—”
“
Ordo Ruber
,” said the priest.
“Father?”
“The Red Order. We are born in the blood of Christ, are we not? And it is the blood of sacrifices and martyrs that shall sanctify our cause.”
Sir Guy murmured the name, feeling how the words and all of their many possible meanings fit in his mouth. “Yes,” he said. “That is perfect. The Red Order.”
They stopped in the archway, both of them bathed in purple shadows. Sir Guy’s heart was swelling with love and gratitude. He took the priest’s hand, bent and kissed the blood red ruby of his ring.
“Thank you,” he said. “I thank you with all my heart, Father Nicodemus.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Hangar
Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn
June 15, 2:50 a.m. EST
Aunt Sallie and Church were still in his office when the phone rang with an overseas call. “Well, well,” he said and showed the display to Aunt Sallie.
Auntie smiled like a happy cat in a canary store. “This should be interesting as all hell.”
Church activated the scrambler and speaker.
Without preamble, Lilith demanded, “Have you talked to your agent, Ledger, today?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that he met with Jalil Rasouli?”
“Yes.”
“Is he on or off the leash?”
“He has my trust.”
“Okay. Good to know, I suppose,” she said. Her tone was icy and scalpel sharp. “Word is that Rasouli gave something to Ledger. Care to tell me what it was?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“Because I think Rasouli is playing a game.”
“And that would be different from his normal behavior in what way?”
“Don’t try to be cute,” Lilith said tersely. “Do you know that the new Scriptor of the Red Order is trying to recruit Rasouli as the new Murshid of the Tariqa?”
Church cocked an eyebrow at Aunt Sallie. She shook her head and began tapping keys on the MindReader interface.
“I was not aware of that,” admitted Church. “Until today the Order has been off the radar since Baghdad. I am rather surprised to learn that they are active again.”
“They never really stopped. The new Scriptor—Charles, the last of the LaRoques—took over after we took his father off the board.”
“So that
was
you.”
Lilith ignored that. “The Order slowed down for a bit until they could build a list of candidates for a new Murshid. Rasouli’s been on the top of that list for a couple of years now.”
Aunt Sallie signaled to Church to look at the information on her monitor. Church nodded.
“It’s my understanding that Charles LaRoque has been treated for a variety of personality disorders since boyhood,” said Church. “Paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis. A handful of others. How is he able to run an organization as sophisticated as the Order?”
“The priest.”
“Priest?”
“The priest,” she said again, emphasizing the word.
“Lilith, you never mentioned a priest to me. Let’s remember that I’ve asked you many times for a complete history of the Red Order and each time you’ve refused. Actually, each time you never responded at all. So, again I ask, which priest? Who is he?”
There was a pause and when Lilith spoke again her tone changed. Less harsh, more cautious. “When Sir Guy LaRoque founded the Red Order he did so with the blessing of a priest from the Knights Hospitaller. Ever since then, each Scriptor has had a priest as his spiritual advisor.”
“And the current priest is part of the Order? And he is managing Charles LaRoque even though the young man is mentally unstable? That suggests that it is the priest who is the de facto head of the Red Order.”
“Yes.”
“Who is this priest?”
“Arklight has been trying to figure that out for a long time,” said Lilith. “There are some anomalies in his file.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the fact that when we compare a four-month-old surveillance photo of him it is a perfect match to a photo from 1936 that was part of some church records recovered after the Second World War.”
“There are a number of ways to doctor a—”
“And both photos match paintings hanging in churches in northern Italy. One from 1897 and one from 1633.”
Aunt Sallie mouthed the words “Oh shit.”
“We also have reliable visual confirmation from an agent in Baghdad that the current priest died in the bombing along with Charles’s grandfather and the Tariqa council.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything, St. Germaine.”
“I prefer ‘Church’ these days. Or ‘Deacon,’ that still works. I don’t really have a connection to ‘St. Germaine’ anymore. I’m sure we’re both adult enough to understand why.”
“Why not for once simply use your real name?” groused Lilith.
Church’s voice was very cold. “Do you really want to open that door? There are other skeletons in the same closet.”
Eventually Lilith said, “No.”
“Will you give me the name of the current priest? And the names of any of the others you know to have been associated with the Red Order?”
“You still don’t get it,” said Lilith. “There is only one name.”
“They … all adopt the same name?”
“That’s one theory.”
Church cocked his eyebrow at Aunt Sallie, who parked a haunch on the edge of the table and stared at him over the lenses of her granny glasses.
“Give me the name.”
Lilith said, “Father Nicodemus.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
On the Streets
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 11:22 a.m.
Ghost and I walked quickly through five or six streets lined with houses that had been left to crumble beneath the relentless Iranian sun. I saw a single sign with a notice about rezoning and impending construction, but it was at least five years old. The only life we encountered there were starving dogs who fled from Ghost’s warning growls, and a single vulture who sat on a telephone pole that had long ago been stripped of its wires. The vulture’s ugly, naked head swiveled slowly on its scrawny neck, watching us as we walked past.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I warned the scavenger, and gave him an evil squint that entirely failed to impress him.
A few blocks later we reentered a residential quarter where people still lived, though even here there was a sense of life fading to dust. I knew from my travels that the typical meal in an Iranian home was unleavened bread and lentils. That’s it. Animal protein was a rarity. I wanted to sneer about it and speculate on how often the ayatollahs had lamb or chicken; but I’m from Baltimore. I’ve seen American poverty at its worst, and as the richest nation on earth we’re the last ones who should throw stones about allowing poverty and starvation within our own borders.
There were a handful of cars, mostly junkers that were held together by rust and need. But one car caught my eye. It was also beat up but it didn’t labor to make it down the block; and I saw it three times. Twice on streets that paralleled the one I was on, and once idling at a light a block ahead. My route may have been random, but I paid close attention to cars and people; and one of the tricks is looking down a cross street when you reach a corner to see what cars are moving along at your pace a block or two over.
Spotting the same car three times could have been a coincidence. Kim Kardashian’s boobs could be real, too, and that’s about as likely.
When I got to the next block, I cut through an alley, running only as fast as Ghost could manage. At the end of the alley, I went through a couple of backyards and then a side yard which took me back to the street just as the little sedan drove past. I was in deep shadows and the driver was looking slowly side to side to check the faces of pedestrians on a moderately busy market street.
The driver was a woman.
I could not tell much because she wore a chador, but her eyes were intelligent, intense and, except for heavy makeup, they did not look even remotely Middle Eastern. Northern Italian at best.
“Violin,” I said, and I knew that I was right. My own Sniping Beauty. And as I murmured her name she turned in my direction, but I was in shadows and the traffic gave her no room to stop.
She could not have heard me. No way.
I opened my cell phone and called Bug, giving him the make, model, and license plate number of Violin’s car.
“Whoa!” Bug said as soon as he ran it. “This is really weird. I got a screen pop-up that says all inquiries for this plate number are to be directed internally. Here, I mean. The DMS. The pop-up is initialed
D
.”
D
. For Deacon.
Church.
“Put him on the line,” I demanded.
“I can’t,” said Bug, “he’s on a conference call with somebody overseas. Don’t know who and he’s marked his line for ‘no intrusion.’”
“Then make goddamn sure I’m his next call,” I growled, and hung up.
Violin’s car was gone by the time I stepped out of the alley with Ghost lumbering along beside me. A few people threw me annoyed looks. Iran had weird rules about dogs on the street. I ignored them.
As we picked our way through the crowds of shoppers, I kept one eye on the cars, watching to see if Violin circled back. Then I froze. Another car drifted along, and the driver, much like Violin, was looking side to side to scan the pedestrians. It wasn’t my guardian angel. It was a man, and when he turned my way I saw a gaunt face and red rat eyes staring through the glass.
A Red Knight.
Christ.