Blood Oath (21 page)

She lifted her head to glare at him. It felt like she was swimming in wet cement.

“Do you understand your situation now?”

Tania nodded.

Konrad kneeled to look her in the eyes. “I won’t insult you by pretending this little training collar would be enough to make you kill Cade. I have someone else for that. However, there are quite a few errands you can run for me. I’ve got a lot to do in the next few days.”

“What do you want?” Tania asked, biting off each word.

“You’ll see,” Konrad said, rising again, straightening his shirt and tie. “For now, I want you to get in the closet downstairs and shut up.”

Tania couldn’t help looking puzzled.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I have a date,” Konrad explained.

—BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

 

 

 

 

I
t was almost dawn by the time Helen got to the house. She opened the door with her key, then she rubbed her eyes and yawned as she entered the foyer.

Konrad waited on the couch. One side effect of his long life—he rarely needed to sleep. Somehow, he even looked younger than when she last saw him. Bastard.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Long day,” she said.

“It’s not over yet.”

She was exhausted, but that didn’t mean anything. She still had work to do.

She dropped her bag and began to strip. First the suit jacket, then the blouse, then the skirt and the panty hose. She did it without any flourish. He liked it as mechanical as possible.

Then, naked, she went to him and bent over the arm of the couch.

Konrad stood. He dropped his pants. Kept his shirt on.

He hummed Wagner. It was the only sound he ever made.

 

 

AFTERWARD, IN KONRAD’S BATHROOM, she surveyed herself, checking her face carefully in the mirror. Another line, faint but undeniably there, at the corner of her right eye. The price she had to pay for staying up this late.

She rummaged in her makeup bag and came out with a vial of her collagen-enhanced anti-wrinkle cream. She ground it into her skin viciously, knowing it wouldn’t really help.

She was aging. There was nothing she could do about it. Thirty-six years old, and there was no way she could turn back the clock.

But Konrad could.

He entered the room behind her, stood looking at the both of them in the mirror. He moved her blond hair off her neck, a gesture that could be mistaken for tenderness.

She knew better. He was inspecting her, like a specimen under a microscope.

“Another little crow’s-foot,” he said.

Bastard
. “I know.”

“You should take better care of yourself, Helen.”

Helen tried not to smirk at that.

“You could do something about it,” she said.

“I never pay in advance. We’ve had this discussion.”

She turned to face him. “You know how much I’ve risked for you?”

“You know what they say about great risk. It’s the only way to great rewards.”

“Haven’t I done enough?”

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“You keep saying that.” She tried to keep the anger, the pain, out of her voice. “How do I know you’ll ever give me what I want?”

“I give you my word,” he said calmly. “You’ll never age another day. Once Cade is truly dead.”

He removed her hands from the front of his robe and left her in the bathroom.

She checked herself in the mirror again. No gray hairs. Nothing showing at her roots. No visible sagging, no other lines.

He had to come through for her. Because every day that he put her off, dangled the promise of eternal youth in front of her, that was another day on the wrong side of the calendar.

Time was ticking away. She had to get Konrad’s secret soon.

Living forever wouldn’t mean a damn thing if she had to become an old woman first.

 

 

 

 

T
he safe house turned out to be a windowless space in an office park near LAX with few other tenants. They parked in a garage in the back, a heavy steel door closing behind them.

Inside, it was like a garage attached to a cheap hotel room. The car sat on bare concrete, which ran right up to thin carpet, with a bed, table and a corner bathroom.

Another steel door was placed in the center of the wall. While Cade unloaded equipment, Zach wandered over and opened it. Cade didn’t say anything, or stop him. It opened into a fake office—a reception desk with a plastic palm tree. On the other side of the frosted glass was the front parking lot.

Zach went back into the room. There were toiletries in the closet-sized bathroom, including toothbrushes and toothpaste. The White House dental budget. Bigger than you’d expect, Griff said.

The phone rang.

“You expecting a call?” Zach asked.

Cade picked up the handset. “What?”

“Put me on speaker, the kid needs to hear this, too,” Griff said. He was used to Cade’s way of answering the phone.

Cade hit the button, and Griff’s voice, tired and rough, filled the room. Zach checked his watch, still set to D.C. time. Just before seven a.m. there, and it didn’t sound like Griff had spent any time sleeping.

“Here’s what we’ve got: the container was shipped by KSM Holdings, a Kuwaiti front company for a Saudi national.”

“Super,” Zach said. “Let’s send the CIA or someone to go talk to that guy.”

“Unfortunately, it’s never that simple,” Griff said. “The Saudi national is Mahmoud al-Attar.”

“Crap,” Zach said. Zach knew exactly who that was. Cousin of the current ruling family. Massively invested in Western businesses. Occasional visitor to the U.S., including diplomatic missions on behalf of his relatives. There was probably more than one photo of him shaking hands with the president.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cade said. “If he’s involved, he should be punished.”

“Slow down there, Cade, there’s more,” Griff said. “The front company—a shipping concern—is run by one of al-Attar’s sons. Kid is from the second or third wife, I forget which. Name’s Khaled al-Attar. Apparently he and his father aren’t close.”

“Then we can send the CIA to talk to him, right?” Zach asked.

“Oh, they’d like to. They’ve been looking for him for some time. Khaled has been a big contributor to Hamas, Islamic Jihad ... basically anyone willing to strap on a suicide belt and run into a crowd. Here’s the problem: he’s off the map. Last intel report I can find says Khaled was getting impatient with the lack of progress in killing the infidel. He began moving toward a more mystic interpretation of Islam, including following Iblis.”

“Who’s Iblis?”

“The Devil,” Cade said. “In Islam, Iblis is the name of the Devil before he fell and became Shaitan.”

“According to our last report, Khaled felt that maybe this world belonged to Iblis, because it was so corrupt,” Griff said. “And the only way to cure that corruption would be to bring about the final battle between good and evil. It seems like he formed a group called Zulfiqar—named for a magic sword used at the battle of something or other. From there, he got deeper into black magic, rituals summoning demons, that sort of thing. This led our guys over there to label Khaled a whack job. They think he went off to a monastery to study religion or something.”

“And that’s when they lost track of him, I bet,” Zach said.

“Good guess.”

“Then we’ll find him ourselves. When he comes to Konrad,” Cade said.

Zach frowned. “Wait a second. Something about this doesn’t make sense. Konrad is a mad genius. Right? Emphasis on
genius
. Sending a container that can be so easily traced back to the source doesn’t sound all that smart to me.”

For a moment, the only sound was the static over the line on the speakerphone.

“Kid’s got a point,” Griff said.

Cade was unimpressed. “Are you suggesting Konrad has been framed somehow?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Zach said. “You guys have your history, and that’s something, sure. But you might want to look into this a little deeper. Maybe we need to change our focus.”

“No,” Cade said flatly. “Konrad is involved. He’s the only one who can make the
Unmenschsoldat
process work.”

“That’s not what he said.”

“It’s a waste of time, Mr. Barrows.”

Cade seemed to think that ended it. Zach didn’t.

Zach rolled his eyes. “Get over yourself, will you? I can’t believe I’m telling the vampire and the secret agent this, but things aren’t always what they seem.”

Griff made a noise, over the speakerphone. “Might be worth considering the alternatives, Cade.”

“Where is that last shipment from KSM Holdings?” Cade demanded.

“Should arrive in L.A. tomorrow night,” Griff said.

“There’s no time for alternatives. Without Konrad, there will be no way for Khaled to use the creatures. This is the most direct solution.”

Griff paused. “I think Cade’s right,” he said.

“Whatever,” Zach said. “You’re the big frightening monster killers. You don’t need me, I’m going to get something to eat.”

Zach stalked away from the phone to the front of the garage.

“Take me off speaker, Cade.”

Zach went to the other side of the safe house. Cade put the phone to his ear.

“He’s really growing on you, isn’t he?” Griff said. Cade looked at his knuckles, still slightly bruised from where he’d punched dents in the car while seizing.

“He’s smarter than he appears,” Cade admitted. “What’s going on there?”

A heavy sigh over the line. “Wyman’s office called. He wants to see me. I get the impression he’s angry about the investigation, but I couldn’t tell you why,” Griff said.

“That’s another thing that doesn’t make sense,” Cade said. “The agents watching Konrad. Now Wyman wants to talk. Why are so many people so anxious to help Konrad?”

“I’ll look into it. In all my free time.”

Cade waited.

“I said I’ll look into it,” Griff said. “Don’t stand there with that creepy look on your face. I know you.”

“You’re in pain,” Cade said. “I need this information. Especially now that we’re looking at the possibility of an imminent attack. If you are not able to do this—”

“Don’t lecture me. I’ve got it under control. You just watch yourself and my replacement.”

Silence.

“He’s not replacing you,” Cade said.

Griff paused. “Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t get all cuddly on me now, Cade.”

He hung up.

Cade forgot his brief moment of sentimentality by the time the phone was back on the hook.

Zach walked back over to the phone, munching dry cereal out of the box.

“You think any more about what I said?”

“No,” Cade said. “We have a long day tomorrow. You should sleep.”

“Whatever.” Zach shrugged, and headed back for the hotel-room section of the safe house. He stopped, and faced Cade again.

“Hey,” he said. “If these things really are on their way here—I mean, you’ve fought them before?”

“One. I only fought one.”

“But you could take a group of them, right? I mean, that’s what you do. You could beat them, if it came to that.”

Cade didn’t reply.

“Cade?”

“It’s late, Mr. Barrows,” Cade said. “Get some sleep.”

 

 

 

 

H
elen got to work at nine, red-eyed and surly. She passed through the regular corridors of the Federal Building on Wilshire, on her way to the conference room. People smiled vaguely at her, like any coworker they only sort of recognized. She’d been based here for a year, but was still invisible.