EPILOGUE
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
“No, sir,” the man in glasses said into his
phone. “The White House managed to keep a lid on all of it. They’re
calling it an attempted suicide bombing. No evidence of the
Unmenschsoldaten will ever reach the general public.
Curtis’s approval ratings have even gone up.”
CNN, on mute in the background, played the same
animation over and over: a graphic that said ATTACK ON THE WHITE
HOUSE, which then exploded into a flare of light that filled the
screen.
Angry words came from the phone. “Yes, sir,” he
said. “I know this isn’t funny.”
More sharp words. He listened. “In my defense,
sir, Agent Holt behaved exactly as expected. She did everything she
could to help Konrad, and she believed it was her own idea.”
That didn’t go over well. He listened to the
abuse again. He could be eliminated on the basis of this failure,
but he’d learned to live with that. It wasn’t like they would tell
him if it was coming anyway.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I apologize. I was
wrong.”
His superior hung up, leaving him listening to
the sudden quiet in the office. Dimly, he realized that it was past
midnight, and he was the only agent working in this section.
Everyone else had gone home hours ago. Again. His wife was going to
kill him.
He sighed. Was it too much to ask for a little
gratitude? He’d done his job. Nothing could be traced back to the
Company. Holt never knew the real plan, or how he’d manipulated her
into moving it along. Using her obsessive fear of aging and
assigning her to Konrad, he’d almost been able to fulfill one of
the Prophecies.
The really annoying thing was, it should have
worked. And it would have, if Konrad hadn’t involved Cade. It was
possible the vampire was becoming a serious threat. He’d have to
run a cost-benefit analysis later.
The man in glasses sighed, and turned to his
computer. With a click of his mouse, he opened his TO DO list.
Moved “Dead Rising from Graves” back into the action items column,
right before “Sky Turns Black” and “Moon Becomes Red as
Blood.”
He wondered who’d killed Holt—Cade or Konrad? It
didn’t really make much difference to him.
Ah, well, he thought. Back to the old drawing
board. Armageddon isn’t going to happen by itself, after all.
EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
President Curtis sat behind Wyman’s desk. The
attack on the White House left him without an office, but not
without work.
Wyman entered without knocking. Curtis gave him a
sharp look.
“Sorry,” Wyman said. “Still used to thinking of
it as my office. Forgot something. Be out of here in a
minute.”
Wyman’s left eye looked even worse now, swollen
with a truly magnificent shiner. They blamed it on the terrorist
assault, part of the cover story, but Curtis stifled a smile as he
remembered the punch. Who knew Zach had such a mean right
hand?
“It’s fine,” Curtis said. “While you’re here,
there was something I wanted to ask you.”
Wyman stopped at the door. Was Curtis imagining
it, or did the man seem nervous?
“What did Griffin say to you? When he pulled you
aside.”
Wyman’s face was blank. Then he seemed to
remember. “Oh, that. He just told me to calm down. Not to panic. I
believe his words were, ‘Show some balls.’ ”
Curtis looked at the vice president for a moment.
“Nothing about the traitor?”
Wyman hesitated, then frowned. “Traitor?”
“Someone had to give up the location of the safe
house,” Curtis said. “I think we can agree it wasn’t Griffin. I had
hoped he might have said something to you.”
“Oh,” Wyman said. He shrugged. “No. Nothing like
that.”
“Unfortunate,” Curtis said.
“Yes,” Wyman said. “Tragic.”
Curtis turned back to the papers in front of
him.
Wyman turned to go.
“That means we’ll have to keep looking for him,”
Curtis said.
Wyman stopped.
“The traitor, I mean,” the president continued.
“Of course, now that we know he exists, he’d have to be fairly
stupid to try anything again.”
Wyman nodded. “Or very determined,” he
said.
Curtis stared at him; saw nothing but a perfectly
blank expression.
“Good night, Les,” he said after a moment.
“Good night, Mr. President,” Wyman said, and
left.
OUTSIDE ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
Konrad’s guide, a sullen young man in full beard
and robes, showed him to the hut where he’d be working.
It was the most advanced facility in the small
camp. It didn’t have a toilet or running water. A kitchen table,
badly scarred and worn, stood in the center of the room on a floor
of linoleum on top of dirt.
Konrad’s first lab, which had been in a medieval
castle, was more sanitary than this.
This wasn’t the deal, but now Konrad had little
choice. The facility he’d been promised in Dubai—within walking
distance of luxury shops, malls and a five-star hotel—was now far
too public. After the attack on the White House, the U.S. military
was chasing down every possible lead to Khaled and his group. Banks
froze their accounts. Khaled’s associates had been forced to
retreat to the last safe haven—Pakistan. And Konrad had been forced
to join them.
Well, Konrad could make it work. He’d done more
with less.
Konrad surveyed the room and turned back to his
guide. “So that’s the lab. And where will I stay?”
The young man stared at him blankly. Konrad spoke
no Pashto, and his guide’s English was limited.
“Sleep,” Konrad said sharply. “Where will I
sleep?”
The young man nodded, and pointed with his AK-47
to a corner of the hut. A cot with an old blanket sat there.
“Of course,” Konrad said. “Absolutely bloody
charming.”
He dropped his bag on the cot. Lice began
crawling on the blanket.
Oh, Cade would pay for this. He would pay.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Reyes knew he’d made the right move, especially
once he saw the news. Almost buried in the panic over the attack on
the White House was an item about a dead federal employee: Ken.
Something about a mugging, miles away from the Federal Building.
Yeah, right. He saw the Company at work there.
Well, tough shit, buddy, Reyes thought. You
should’ve gotten out while you could.
He was packing a bag. The itchy feeling between
his shoulder blades hadn’t gone away. It had only gotten worse. It
was time to visit Mexico. Maybe explore his roots. Or go even
farther south. Someplace without an extradition treaty, where even
the Company would have trouble finding him. He’d heard good things
about Venezuela.
He stopped folding his shirts. He thought he
heard something.
Reyes was taking no chances. He took out his
pistol, turned around and crept toward the front of his
apartment.
He saw someone there. He fired.
The bullet went wide and tore through the arm of
the intruder.
She didn’t even flinch.
He saw the gun. It was silenced, the wide barrel
of the noise suppressor a black hole in front of him. He dropped
his own weapon and raised his hands.
Only then did he notice who was holding the
gun.
Helen Holt. But something had happened to her.
She held the gun in her left hand, not her usual stance. The
opposite side of her face was frozen, expressionless. In fact, her
entire right side seemed . . . well, dead.
Maybe she’d had a stroke, Reyes thought.
“What happened to you?”
Only half of her face scowled.
She fired one shot. It hit him in the foot,
blowing off a toe.
He fell back into a chair, mouth open to
scream.
She shoved the barrel between his teeth. He got
the message. He stayed as quiet as he could.
“That’s a question you’re going to learn not to
ask,” she said, words slightly slurred.
He sat down. Tried to not to look at her right
side.
“Did the Company send you?” he asked.
“I don’t work for the Company anymore,” she
hissed. “And neither do you. You’re working for me now.”
Reyes was confused. “So what are we doing?”
Half of Helen’s face smiled. The other half
remained expressionless. Cold.
“Oh, we have a lot to do,” she said. “More than
you can imagine.”
Reyes noticed the bullet wound he’d just given
her in the right arm. On her frozen side. It looked like a gash in
a piece of furniture.
It wasn’t bleeding.
Once again, Reyes had to admit: he was more
scared of Helen Holt than he was almost anything else.
THE RELIQUARY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
“What do you feed that thing anyway?”
Zach was pointing at the Allghoi Khorkoi, in its
glass case.
“It prefers human flesh,” Cade said. “Griff got
it to take hot dogs.”
After the attack, Zach showered the blood off,
had his wounds stitched up and called his mother, who was frantic,
watching the news about the terrorist assault. He told her he was
fine. Then he hung up and went home and slept for twenty
hours.
When he woke, he spent the day in bed, watching
the breathless coverage on CNN. “A miracle that the president and
vice president were not killed” is what the talking heads kept
saying.
Underneath the constant yammering, the crawl ran
a list of the Secret Service and White House staff killed in the
attack. Every two minutes or so, Zach saw it scroll past: Agent
William Hawley Griffin.
Some kind of miracle, Zach thought.
At dusk, his phone rang. Cade. Telling him to
come to the Smithsonian, with instructions on how to open the
hidden door.
He picked out another suit, put on his favorite
tie and drove to the museum.
Now Cade was looking at him, his eyes measuring
Zach.
“So what’s your answer?” Cade asked. “Are you
taking the job or not?”
Zach was mildly surprised by the question. “I
thought I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Cade said. “No one is
ever a slave.”
“Griff said I’d have this job until I retired or
died. He said turning it down wasn’t an option.”
“That’s not what he told you,” Cade said. “He
asked you if you thought you’d be able to walk away. The question
stands: can you?”
Zach knew the answer without thinking:
“No.”
“Good,” Cade said. “Training is over. We have
work to do.”
He turned away, walking toward the computer. Zach
had another question, however.
“Am I going to end up like Griff?” he asked. “Is
that how this ends?”
Cade stopped. “There are worse ways to go,” he
said. “Does that change your answer?”
“No,” Zach said.
“Then why are we still talking about this?”
“Griff’s funeral is tomorrow at Arlington. I just
thought—”
“Griff is dead.”
Zach felt a flash of irritation. “I’m sorry, did
you have something else planned for us?”
“Yes,” Cade said. “We have one loose end.”
“And I bet we’re going to tie it off.”
“No,” Cade said. “We’re going to sever it.”
ONE WEEK LATER, ACAPULCO, MEXICO
Dylan sat in his family’s condo and drank
beer.
All was forgiven. He’d gone home to his father
and apologized. He told the old man about his trip to Kuwait, where
he worked for the army. Dylan’s father actually seemed proud of
him. He was just glad Dylan wasn’t hurt, he said.
After a year like that, Dylan needed a vacation,
his father said. He gave him a plane ticket and the keys to the
condo in Acapulco.
Dylan went back to the sun and the sand and the
babes and the beer, but it didn’t feel the same. He watched the TV
coverage about the White House attack and saw the faces of the men
and women who’d been killed. Khaled had almost done it. He’d almost
taken out the president. Dylan couldn’t believe he’d gotten away
clean.
In the mornings, when he woke up hung over and
faced the brilliant Mexico daylight without any chemicals in his
system, Dylan thought about what he’d done. He tried to tell
himself he was the real victim here. He was just along for the
ride. Khaled was the bad guy. If Dylan hadn’t helped him, it would
have been someone else, right?
And he didn’t get paid, either.
It usually took several beers for any of that to
sound convincing, even to him.
He was tired from hanging on the beach all day.
Too much sun. He decided to stay home and watch TV. Still, he
couldn’t lose the feeling that something was wrong.
Maybe it was the guy. There’d been some guy, some
snot-nosed punk in a suit, hanging around the resort all week. He
seemed official, somehow. Asking questions. But then he’d gone, and
he never even talked to Dylan.
So why was he still so jumpy?
He drank more beer. Flipped channels.
The screen popped and went dead as all the lights
went out in the apartment. Dylan dropped his beer. The power had
been cut.
That wasn’t too unusual in Mexico. He stood up
anyway. His heart was slamming itself against his rib cage. His
hands and legs shook.
He heard something on the patio. When he went to
check, the door was open. He knew he’d closed it.
That was enough. He’d seen plenty of horror
films, and the victims always made the same mistake: they waited
around to find out what was going to happen.
Well, screw that. He ran for the apartment
door.
He stumbled. Tripped over a coffee table. Then
bounced off a wall.
Only it wasn’t a wall.
Someone else was in the room, in front of him,
blocking his path.
He was dressed all in black.
Dylan tried to push past him. The man shoved him,
spilling him over the couch.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he sputtered.
“This is my family’s place, you’re in big trouble—”
The man spoke, in a voice as cold as
anything.
“Dylan Weeks,” he said. “My name is Nathaniel
Cade. You are guilty of treason.”
“No,” Dylan said, struggling to his feet. “You
got the wrong guy, I never—”
“You violated the bodies of the dead. You broke
their trust. And you betrayed your country.”
Cade was suddenly right in front of him again.
Nothing human could move that fast. Dylan was knocked back down to
the floor.
“I’m not here to argue,” Cade said.
Dylan didn’t like how that sounded. He got on his
knees. “Please. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
Cade looked amused.
“Sorry?” Cade said. “You’re sorry?”
Dylan nodded. “I swear. I had no idea.”
“That changes everything.”
For a split second, Dylan thought he might be off
the hook. Forgiven.
Then he saw Cade smile and saw the fangs.
Dylan tried to scream.
Cade didn’t let him.