A Knight of the Sacred Blade (16 page)

Wycliffe threw back his head and laughed. “Okay. Fine. Go ahead and tell them.” 

“What?” said Jones.

“Go ahead,” said Wycliffe. “Do it, you gutless coward. Hang up on me and call the press. Tell them everything.” 

“I…fine! I’ll do…it. I will…I…” Jones’s voice dissolved into a strangled gasp of pain.

“That’s right,” said Wycliffe, smirking. “You can’t. You’re a spineless worm, Senator, but that’s not why. It’s the compulsions I’ve burned into that quivering jelly you call a brain. You can’t tell the press. You can’t tell anyone. You can’t kill yourself, you can’t back out, you can’t do anything except what I tell you. You’re mine, Senator Jones. Things will go well if you simply do everything I tell you.” 

Jones stifled a sob. “I…”

“President of the United States,” said Wycliffe. “That’s what I’m offering you. Think of it. President Jones. You’ve wanted it for years. Are you really going to lose your nerve now?”

“I…I’m just so tired,” whispered Jones.

“The tunnel’s always the darkest just before the light,” said Wycliffe. “Another six months, Senator. Another six months, I promise, and you’ll be President of the United States of America.” He let the Voice slip into his tone, coaxing and tempting, rather than dominating. Sometimes a carrot was better than a stick. “Do you really want to abandon it all, after you’ve worked for so long and so hard?”

“No,” said Jones.

“Very good,” said Wycliffe. “I knew you would make the right choice. I have confidence in you, Senator. You’ll reschedule that speech and make it tonight.”

“But I…”

“Do it!” said Wycliffe, the Voice snarling to full power in his tone. The smartphone grew warm beneath his fingers. “You will make the speech, I command it. I know what is best for you, Senator, even if you don’t.”

“Okay,” said Jones, pained. “Fine.”

“Furthermore,” said Wycliffe, the Voice crackling in his throat. “You will not question me again. I trust this is understood? You will deliver the speech, the speech I have written, and you will not question me…”

Static blared from the smartphone as the Voice reverberated through its circuits. Wycliffe cursed and dropped it to the floor. Sparks shot from the battery housing, and the screen flickered and went dark. 

“Damn it!” said Wycliffe, flexing his fingers. “I go through more of those things in a month…”

“Shall I kill him?” said Goth.

Wycliffe frowned. “Who? Jones? I need him alive.”

Goth growled.

Wycliffe thought about it. “After the election.” 

###

The limo splashed through deep puddles as it pulled up to the curb. Wycliffe sighed, grateful for the air conditioning, and leaned back in his seat. He glanced out the window at the hustle and bustle of O’Hare airport. Storm clouds still broiled to the west, yet shafts of sunlight blazed down through gaps in the clouds. 

Wycliffe reached for his smartphone and cursed as he remembered its fate. “Fletcher. Call the O’Hare information desk and ask if the flight’s landed yet. It’s private flight number 567, as I recall.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fletcher. He produced his own phone, asked a few questions, grunted acknowledgement, and slid the phone back into his jacket. “The plane landed ten minutes ago. Our guests are on their way.”

“Good.” Wycliffe watched the terminal’s doors. He had wasted a lot of time on this, time that could have been better spent campaigning. But Marugon had been insistent about this for years. Why did this have to happen during the campaign? Public opinion was so fluid, and if any whiff of scandal attached itself to the Gracchan Party…

Four men walked out the terminal doors and made for the limo. Three wore black, and the fourth wore a hideous mauve suit with a plaid tie and a battered fedora. 

Wycliffe grinned and opened the door. “Gentlemen. It has been entirely too long.” 

“Oh? I am not in agreement,” said Vasily Kurkov. He settled on the seat between Wycliffe and Goth. “The weather is always miserable when I come to this country. Always. It snowed nine inches the last time.” Kurkov had aged in the five years since his last visit to America. He had lost weight, and his eyes had sunk deeper into his skull. The man looked mired in the later stages of drug addiction.

“Bah.” Dr. Krastiny sat opposite of Wycliffe. The mauve suit had kept the worst of the rain from him. His grim-faced protégés Bronsky and Schzeran settled on either side of him. “It is still better than life in the Army. And a little spring rain never hurt anyone.” He took off his hat and settled it on his knee. Krastiny, unlike his employer, had not aged a bit. He glanced at Goth, flinched, and looked away. 

Bronsky and Schzeran remained as silent as ever. 

“Fletcher,” said Wycliffe. “Make for the compound.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fletcher. He put the limo into drive, joining the constant mass of traffic around O’Hare.

“So,” said Wycliffe. “I trust you had a pleasant flight?” 

Kurkov snorted. “What, are you a flight attendant now? Are you going to offer me peanuts and watery Pepsi?” 

Krastiny chuckled. “Don’t mind him, Senator. It’s been two days since he had a cigarette.”

Kurkov snapped his fingers and slid a pack from his pocket. “The airlines have gone to hell. No smoking. No alcohol. No women, at least willing ones. Nothing to do but stare at out the window at the ocean.” He lit up, inhaled, and let out a long sigh of relief. 

Wycliffe coughed. “I do hope those aren’t Stanford Matthews cigarettes.”

Kurkov frowned. “Stanford who? No, these are Camels. Russian cigarettes are no good.” 

“Our baggage has already bent sent on to your compound, Senator,” said Krastiny. “It should be waiting for us when we arrive.”

“Good,” said Wycliffe. “And your weapons?” 

Krastiny grinned. “Why, right here, of course.” He patted a bulge under his left armpit. “We are Mr. Kurkov’s bodyguards, and we can’t be expected to do our jobs without our weapons, can we?” His eyes gleamed with that chilling razor light Wycliffe remembered. “The benefits of flying a private jet. And a few hundred dollars in judicious bribes, of course.” 

“I trust you did not bring anything that would cause me undue embarrassment?” said Wycliffe. “This is a very delicate time.”

Kurkov laughed. “What, the election?” He coughed, his throat rasping. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“Of course,” said Wycliffe, reaching for the refrigerator. “Water, soda, and wine coolers.” 

Kurkov scowled. “Wine coolers? What, are you a teenage girl? You have nothing stronger? Damn it all, I’ll take a wine cooler.”

“I as well, if it’s no trouble,” said Krastiny. 

“Of course,” said Wycliffe, opening the fridge and passing out the bottles. 

Kurkov drained off half his bottle in one drink. “So. I hear you are running for the office of vice president.”

“That’s correct,” said Wycliffe. 

Kurkov laughed. “Vice president? Not president? What good is a vice president? There is a joke. A woman had two sons. One became a monk. Another became vice president. Both…”

Wycliffe rolled his eyes. “Were never heard from again. Yes, yes, Vasily, I’ve heard that joke before. Numerous times.”

Kurkov lit another cigarette. “I thought you had more ambition. I’ve seen pictures of this William Jones. He looks like a shriveled-up old corpse.” Kurkov himself did not look much better, but Wycliffe remained silent. “Why run as his vice president? Why not run as president yourself?” He finished the wine cooler and dropped the bottle to the floor. “Then I would not need to do all this scrounging and searching for your weapon.” 

“Oh,” said Krastiny, smiling. “I think our Senator Wycliffe has much more ambition than he lets on. Much more. William Jones is an old man. Perhaps he will not live for very long once he becomes president, hmm?” 

Goth’s lips almost twitched into a fanged grin. 

“Perhaps,” said Wycliffe, his tone neutral. “I hope and pray for Senator Jones’s continued health. But you did not come all this way to discuss politics, I would assume.” He turned to Kurkov. “The weapon. Have you found one?”

Kurkov took a long draw on his cigarette. “Yes. It was not easy. The Russian army is the Russian army, of course, and soldiers are never paid enough to live. Krastiny, if you ask him, will prattle on for hours about the subject.” He scowled. “But the soldiers who are in charge of the nuclear weapons, they are paid a bit more. And they know what they guard is dangerous. So they are not so willing to sell as the regular soldiers.”

“But the bomb,” said Wycliffe. “How did you find it?”

“There was a secret base in Armenia,” said Kurkov. “No one knew about it. Khrushchev built in the early 1960s when the Americans put missiles in Turkey. A small base, with only four missiles, but enough to destroy Istanbul and a few American bases.” He snickered. “Of course, when the Americans took the missiles out of Turkey, the missiles in Armenia stayed. The base sat there until…”

“Until the earthquake in December of 1988,” said Wycliffe.

Kurkov nodded. “Yes. The quake destroyed the base, buried it under rubble.”

“And here is the stroke of good fortune,” said Krastiny. “As it happens, the quake also killed the military personnel who knew about the base.”

Wycliffe raised his eyebrows. “Indeed?”

Kurkov nodded. “Everyone who knew about it was killed, except for a common infantryman who had been on guard duty. He had the good luck to go on leave the day before the quake. When the Soviet government collapsed, the military command forgot about him. But he did not forget about the base. And when I began searching for a weapon, he remembered. For a substantial fee, of course.” 

Wycliffe’s lip twitched. “Of course.” He leaned forward. “So did you find a weapon there?”

“Yes,” said Kurkov. “Well. Not entirely. The quake destroyed the weapons, the missiles, and their housings.” 

Krastiny rolled his eyes. “So much for fail-safes, eh? It was probably a favor to the locals that our men dug out the radioactive material and bomb components. I shudder to think of the neighboring village’s cancer rate in thirty years.”

Kurkov rolled his eyes. “No one cares. Besides, we paid the mayor and the village council much money to look the other way during excavation. They better not care, if they know what’s good for them.”

“So were you able to find enough parts and plutonium to build a working weapon?” said Wycliffe. His mind crawled with the potential dangers this held to his campaign. If any whiff of this reached the press, even the Voice might not suffice to contain the damage. He wished Marugon could wait until after the election. The United States had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and once Wycliffe was vice president, Marugon could have one. But, no, Marugon wanted his damned bomb now. So Kurkov had to scrounge around on the black market. 

“Enough? Yes,” said Kurkov. “Finding someone to put it all together, that was hard. It took us two years to find a competent nuclear scientist.” He dropped his cigarette to the floor, ground it out, and lit another one. Wycliffe was going to have to replace the carpet. “Finally found one a year past. Some Pakistani fool…ah, what was he, Krastiny?”

Krastiny grunted and adjusted his ugly tie. “Him? I believe he started his career as a secular atheist. Sometime in his mid-thirties he converted to one stripe or another of radical Islam. And he was disgruntled at the CIA and the World Health Organization for some reason. Why, I’m not sure. I could never quite work my way through his unending rants.” 

Kurkov made an irritated noise. “Obnoxious bastard. He never shut up.” 

“So you have a functional bomb?” said Wycliffe. 

“Yes,” said Kurkov. “It is not quite in my hands yet. That is why I have come to America. The bomb is still in Russia. It would have been hard to get it through customs at Petrograd, impossible in any of the European countries. The Mediterranean would have been no better. The Turks and the Israelis are bastards about customs. So I am shipping it via the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok. I have hired a freighter captain who knows to keep his mouth shut. He will take the bomb straight to Los Angeles. My agents in the port there will bypass customs, and from there it is a small matter to have the bomb loaded onto a truck and taken to Chicago.” 

Wycliffe laughed. “So that’s why you’re in America, isn’t it? In case the authorities in Russia catch the bomb. You’ll already be safe here.”

Kurkov helped himself to another wine cooler. “I have not lived this long by doing stupid things.” Wycliffe almost commented on the cigarettes, booze, and drugs, but thought better of it. 

“But the bomb does work?” said Wycliffe.

Kurkov drained off a large portion of the wine cooler. “It’s not as if I’ve tested it.” Krastiny snickered. “But it works. That Pakistani, he is nuts, but he is good.” Kurkov held his hands out about four feet apart. “The bomb was about as big as a large steamer trunk when he was done. Very small, but heavy. And he used parts from all four wrecked missiles.” He grinned. “So instead of four little bombs, you will have one great big bomb.”

Wycliffe suppressed a shudder. “Marugon should be pleased.” 

Krastiny frowned. “What does our mysterious friend need with an atomic weapon? His opponents are armed with swords and spears. Fifty men with AK-47s could conquer his world.”

“He said something like that,” said Wycliffe. “I don’t know what he intends to do with the bomb. Something big and dramatic, I suppose. It’s hardly my problem.” He looked at Kurkov. “And just how much is this wonderful little bomb going to cost me?”

Kurkov grinned. “Thirty million dollars.”

Wycliffe sputtered. “What the hell? You can’t be serious.”

“Thirty million dollars,” said Kurkov. “This was a very expensive operation. More expenses are coming, once all the bribes have been paid out. A nuclear device will cost you thirty million dollars.” 

“Thirty million?” said Wycliffe. “I thought you said ten.”

Kurkov shrugged. “Expenses.” 

Wycliffe swore. “Fine. Thirty million goddamn dollars. Do you have any idea what a serious hole this is going to put in my pocket?”

“No.” Kurkov smiled. “But it will patch many holes in my pocket.”