“So… we’re talking the Nazi extermination ideal here. Kill the Jews, Gypsies, blacks… anyone who wasn’t a blond-haired, blue eyed son of Odin.”
Church nodded. “The death of Adolf Hitler hardly put an end to genocide. It just became more politically useful to world governments to keep it off the public radar, to call it something else. To blame terrorists and splinter groups.” Church’s voice was uncharacteristically bitter. Couldn’t blame him a bit. “But understand me, Captain, this long ago ceased to be part of German culture or even the Aryan ideal. Germany stands with us in the war on ethnic genocide. No… these men and women are a shadow nation unto themselves. They no longer want to remake a nation; they want to remake the world.”
“And Haeckel was a button man for these assholes?”
“Was. Possibly still is.” Church adjusted his glasses and his tone shifted back to neutral.
“And I think I get why that video has you so jacked. If that animal is the product of some kind of newfangled genetic design, and if Haeckel’s working for whoever made it, and if they are these same assholes-this Cabal-then that means that they’ve ducked your punch, been working in secret for a lot of years, and are screwing around with cutting-edge genetics.”
“Yes,” Church said slowly.
Dr. Hu smiled at me. “I told you that video would blow you away.”
“Yeah, glad you’re happy about it, Doc.”
“Hey,” he said, pushing up his sleeve to show his light brown skin, “I’m on the hit list, too. But you have to admire the scope of it. The imagination of it.”
“No, I fucking well don’t,” I said.
Church said, “When you get back to the Warehouse I’ll give you a more complete account of the Cabal and the efforts to dismantle it. In the meantime it’s important to know that we have only two links to Gunnar Haeckel, and Haeckel is our only link to the Cabal-if it indeed still exists. The first connection is this video, though we still don’t know who sent it, or why. The second is whatever is stored at Deep Iron. It might be nothing, but considering that Jigsaw went off the grid while running this same mission, I think it’s safe to say that there will be a connection.”
“You make anything out of the other stuff… the comment about the ‘Extinction Wave’?”
“No, but we’ll do a MindReader search on it. Hard to search for something without more to put in the search argument. Otherwise I’d Google it.”
“Did you Google it?”
He ignored the question.
There was a soft bing! and I heard Hanler’s voice: “Buckle up, Captain. We’re making our descent.”
“Mission objectives?” I asked Church.
“Your first priority is to locate and secure whatever the Haeckel family stored there. Secondary mission is to locate Jigsaw Team.”
From the bitter lines on his face I could tell that he didn’t like the order of priorities any more than I did.
Church said, “We’re operating without support here. I’d prefer to have you met by SWAT, HRT, and the National Guard, but those are calls I can’t make under the present circumstances. You have Sims and Rabbit. I was able to get a technical support vehicle out to them, which means you’ll have weapons and body armor but no advanced equipment. And we have no other boots on the ground.”
“Three of us on a mission in which a dozen operators went missing? Swell.”
“It’s asking a lot of you, but believe me when I tell you that this is of the first importance. There may be opposition that we don’t know about.”
“If we have a new enemy, boss… they may have some opposition they don’t know about.”
Church gave me a long, considering look.
“Good hunting, Captain,” he said.
Chapter Thirty
Sandown Park Racecourse-Surrey, England
Nine weeks ago
Clive Monroe looked nothing at all like what he was, but he looked exactly like what he had been. He wore a gray city suit with a chalk stripe, polished brogans, and a bowler hat. His clothes at least looked the part of an investment banker down from London to have a flutter on an afternoon of jump races at Sandown. He even had an umbrella in the car and a precisely trimmed mustache. He could have been on a poster for British business.
A casual passerby might have made that mistake, but everyone who caught Clive Monroe’s eye changed their opinion. His eyes were dark brown and utterly cold. Not emotionless, but rather filled with a calculating and deliberate cold. Ruthless eyes. When he smiled, the humor never reached those eyes, and they were never idle or inattentive. When Clive Monroe took your measure you knew that he could value you to the last penny. Not just in the expected business sense, but in every sense. You believed that he knew enough about you that he could predict what you’d do, what you’d say.
It was a fair enough assessment.
Clive Monroe had been an investment banker for twenty years, and his eyes and his assessing coldness made him a formidable opponent, whether over the details of a portfolio of holdings or over a round of golf.
Twenty-one years ago he had been a different man in a different job, and in the years before that his ability to assess a situation or a person had kept him alive when others around him fell.
Monroe walked past the oddsmakers in Tattersalls, heading for the stairs to the reserved boxes where he was expected for drinks between the third and fourth race. Monroe never placed bets on the races, though he amused himself by reading through the form books, reading the history of each horse and weighing their breeding against the weather conditions and the orientation of the field, the number of jumps, the angle of the incline run to the winning post. If he was a betting man, he would have made money on two out of three of the races run so far that day. When he spent a whole day at the track he would mentally calculate his theoretical wagers and winnings. Last year he would have been up thirty thousand pounds, even taking into account a horse he would have backed in the Two Thousand Guineas who’d fallen on the third fence and taken down two of the other favored runners.
He climbed the steps to the row of glass-enclosed boxes where he was greeted by Lord Mowbry and three conservative members of Parliament who were well known for their love of horses. Mowbry himself was seldom away from the jump-racing world and conducted nearly all of his business between races.
They shook hands and a white-liveried waiter brought Clive his usual: gin and tonic with extra tonic. Even though Clive took pills for the malaria he got in the fetid swamps of West Africa, he still favored the quinine-rich tonic. Old habits.
They toasted and settled into leather chairs.
“So,” said Lord Mowbry as soon as the waiter was gone, “have you considered our offer?” His tone was brusque.
Clive sipped his drink, shrugged.
“Is it the money?” asked Sheffield, the most senior of the MPs.
“No, the money’s fine. Very generous.”
“Then why the hesitation, dammit?” Mowbry demanded. He’d been the head of a wealthy family and owner of so many companies that he’d long ago lost his deferential air. Clive understood that and never took offense.
“I’m comfortable where I am,” Clive said. “I’ve been at Enfield and Martyn for a long time. I can retire in two years with my full pension and spend my sunset years going to the races.”
“You could make more money with us,” insisted Sheffield.
“If it was just about the money, Cyril, I’d be down there having a flutter on Blue Boots in the fourth.”
“That’s another thing,” said one of the other MPs. “You come to the races, but you never bet. Where’s the fun in that?”
“Everyone finds amusement in their own way.”
“And that’s beside the damn point,” snapped Lord Mowbry. “He’s already said that money wasn’t his motive.” Mowbry glared at Clive with piercing blue eyes over a hooked nose and a stern patrician mouth. “We need you in this venture, Monroe. You know the way these people think. No one pulls the wool over your eyes. That’s why we sought you out for this. This whole scheme hinges on having a man with actual experience in this sort of thing.”