“You’re not Saladin,” I said. “And I’m sure as hell not Richard the Lionhearted.”
The hand did not move.
So, I shook it. Fuck it. It didn’t cost anything except a little pride and disgust, and I had a bottle of Purell in my pocket.
“Remember,” he said, “that you have been instructed to wait for ten minutes after my departure before leaving this coffee shop.”
With that he turned and left. Feyd opened the door for him and gave me a single withering stare, which I managed to endure without dying of fright. I stood by the glass and watched them walk around the corner of the building out of sight, presumably to a waiting car.
The next ten minutes took about ten thousand years.
Chapter Eleven
Driving in the City
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 8:17 a.m.
The passenger in the limousine rolled up his window as the tall American agent stepped out of the Starbox. The limousine idled one hundred feet down the side street, mostly hidden by a sidewalk stand selling dried lentils and wheat flour. The American agent looked up and down the street and then turned away and headed in the direction of the hotel district.
The passenger slid open the glass door between the front and rear seats. “Sefu, follow him. We need the name of his hotel but for God’s sake don’t let him see us.”
“Sir,” grunted the driver. Sefu was an Egyptian Christian who had worked for many years in this man’s service. He was not in the habit of letting anyone spot him when he tailed them, though he was circumspect enough not to say so. He put the car in drive and eased into traffic three cars back from the one closest to the American.
In the rear seat, Charles LaRoque, a French businessman and one of the world’s leading brokers of fine Persian rugs, pushed the button to close the soundproof glass partition. He cut a look at the rearview mirror to assure himself that the driver was not watching him, then he fished a small compact mirror out of his pocket. He opened it to reveal that both top and bottom held small mirrors. LaRoque studied his face in one mirror and then the other, back and forth for several moments, tilting the compact and changing his expression over and over again. A strange little laugh burbled from his chest.
“Delicious, delicious, delicious,” he said to the alternating images. There was so much to see there, so many faces. His father and his grandfather. The trickster and the priest. The Red Knights with their red mouths. The King of Thorns. It was all so very delicious.
“Oh yes it is,” LaRoque said, and laughed again.
A soft musical tone filled the car. Not the ringtone of his regular cell but the much more elaborate encrypted device given to him by a friend of his father’s.
“I’ll talk to you later,” LaRoque said to his mirror and shoved it back into his pocket, then closed his eyes and composed himself before he reached for the cell phone. When he opened his eyes he felt composed and ready to play his role.
“Yes?” he said into the phone, his tone serious and sober. Even so, LaRoque almost giggled and caught himself. He took a breath and forced himself to live his role. On this call, and in this matter, he was no longer Charles LaRoque. He was the Scriptor of the Ordo Ruber, the Sacred Red Order. The Scriptor did not giggle. The Scriptor was stern, decisive. That was how the old priest wanted him to play it.
“Was it Ledger?” asked Hugo Vox. “Was he there?”
“Yes,” confirmed LaRoque. “Just as you said.”
Vox laughed. He had a bass voice and a rumbling grizzly laugh. “What happened? What’d they talk about?”
“How would I know?” said LaRoque in a waspish voice. “I was outside in the bloody car, wasn’t I?”
“Charlie,” replied Vox with false patience, “don’t f**k with me. You heard every goddamn thing they said and we both know it.”
LaRoque cut a guilty look at the headphones lying next to him on the car seat. He debated lying to Vox. There was no strategic benefit to it, but lying was fun. But, he sighed instead and grunted. “I listened.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t what we thought,” said LaRoque. “It had nothing to do with the Red Order or the Holy Agreement. Well, at least not much. Rasouli mentioned the Book and the Codex at the end, but he didn’t tell Ledger what they were.”
“Hunh. That’s interesting as shit,” said Vox sourly. “What did they talk about?”
“Some nonsense about bombs.”
“What kind of bombs?”
“Nuclear bombs.”
There was a heavy silence at the other end of the line. “Really.” Vox said it more like a statement than a question. “Tell me exactly what they said.”
As well as he could, LaRoque repeated the conversation between Jalil Rasouli and Captain Joe Ledger. Vox did not interrupt, and when LaRoque was done there was another ponderous silence.
“It’s not our concern,” LaRoque said into the silence.
“Yeah,” said Vox, “I think it f**king well is.”
“I don’t care about that sort of thing. All I care about is whether Rasouli signs the Holy Agreement so we can get back to business.”
“Seriously?” asked Vox. “I mean, holy shit, Charlie, I knew that you were no rocket scientist, kid, but I didn’t think you were actually challenged. Rasouli is bending you over a barrel and dropping his shorts.”
“Nonsense.”
“You said that he gave a flash drive to Ledger. How do you know that it doesn’t have the whole damn story of the Agreement on it? It could have the name of every Scriptor and Murshid, every action taken by the Red Order and the Tariqa for the last eight hundred years. You gave Rasouli that information.”
“Not all of it,” LaRoque said defensively, and despite what he’d said to Vox he was beginning to think the uncouth American traitor might be correct.
“Enough of it, damn it. Enough to have you stood against a wall and shot. Christ, Charlie, if this gets out old ladies and nuns will want to cut your balls off, let alone the Americans and NATO. You should never have—”
“Stop lecturing me, Hugo. I don’t appreciate it and—”
“What would you prefer I do? Leave you to the wolves? Your father and grandfather were friends of mine. I made promises to them that I’d always be there for you, no matter what.”
“You mean, ‘no matter what silly insane Charles did’?”
“If the shoe fits, kid.”
LaRoque looked out the window, trying to catch his reflection in the smoked glass. He needed to see one of his other faces. One of the stronger ones. Or, maybe the face of the old priest. As the car rounded a corner to follow Ledger, LaRoque thought he caught a glimpse of the wizened features of the priest. Just a flash and then it was gone.
It was enough, though. It steadied him.
He drew a breath and let it out audibly. “Very well, Hugo. What do you advise?”
“Good,” Vox said, and LaRoque wondered if the American had also seen the priest. Could Vox do that, he wondered. Did the priest appear to everyone? Or to a chosen few? Or just to him?
“Let’s go on the assumption that Rasouli gave Ledger information that could hurt the Order,” said Vox. “Start there ’cause that gives us a game plan for safety.”
“What plan is that?”
“A very simple one because we need to do two things and they can both be done at the same time,” said Vox. “We have to get the flash drive back and we have to kill Joe Ledger.”
“Only that?”
Vox paused. “To start, yeah. Then we have to decide what to do about—”
Suddenly Vox’s words disintegrated into a terrible fit of wet coughs. Vicious coughs that broke from deep in his chest. The coughing fit lasted nearly a full minute before winding down to gasps. When he could finally speak, Vox cursed.
“Good lord, Hugo, are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, shit,” Vox wheezed. “These chemo treatments are kicking my ass.”
The Scriptor took a moment to make sure that his voice was filled with concern, even if his mouth was trembling with a smile. “Are you in much pain?”
“A bit.”
“I’m sorry.” He almost said, “Oh, goody.”
“Yeah, well. Life’s a bitch and then you’re dead for a long time.” Vox cleared his throat. “Look, the bottom line is that you have to get that flash drive back and you have to do it right f**king now.”
“Why the hurry? I looked him up in our database and he appears to have been competent, yes, but not—”
“Don’t be an idiot. You only have his army and police records. I’ll send you his DMS file. It makes interesting reading.”
“You’re saying he’s a threat?”
“I’m saying that he’s Mr. Church’s pet psychopath. Don’t underestimate him. Ledger’s a weird cat, but he’s sharp and he is f**king relentless. He’s also got some freaky mojo.”
“‘Mojo’?”
“Luck. Son of a bitch is either lucky or unlucky, depending on how you look at it, but he always seems to be in the thick of things. Should have been dead a dozen times, but even though bodies stack up around him the cocksucker keeps finding a way through to the other side.”
“An angel in his pocket?” mused LaRoque. He looked down in surprise to find that his hand held the little compact mirror even though he had no memory of removing it from his pocket. He watched as his manicured thumbnail popped it open.
“You need to send a knight after him,” said Vox, and LaRoque almost dropped the compact.
“What? No. You have whole teams of Sabbatarians in Tehran—”
“Forget those fruitcakes. Ledger would have them for lunch.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“I’m not. Ledger and his team dismantled my Kingsmen last year, and no one’s ever done that before. And I have it on good authority that Ledger beat Rafael Santoro one-on-one.”