“What was in the dart?” Dr. Hu asked with great interest.
“Ebola.”
Hu actually broke into a grin and the word “cool” was forming on his mouth when I shot him a look that promised slow, agonizing death. He suddenly found his fingernails very interesting.
Grace said, “Effing hell! I didn’t hear about any outbreak—”
“There was no outbreak,” Church said, “and no one else was infected. The doctors were able to identify the symptoms quickly enough to get Jerome into isolation. Oskar was only able to observe him via video camera. Afterward the German government put a security clamp over the whole matter. If the true cause of death surfaces at all, it will be as an accidental exposure of some kind. No one but Oskar, his superiors, and us in this room — and the killer — know that this was a murder. Oskar even managed to get the museum security tapes without raising any alarms.”
“That was smart,” Bug said.
“Oskar had already been looking into the killings of the List members at the behest of his father, and when he brought the information to me I discovered a very deliberate pattern.” Mr. Church stood and crossed to the flat screen. He touched the first image. “Lawson Navarro, late of MI6, was killed in a car accident. While working with the List he arranged the deaths of several Cabal members by tampering with their cars, setting car bombs, or staging high-speed driving accidents.”
He tapped the next picture.
“Clive Monroe, also of MI6, was the most skilled sniper of the List. He was shot with a high-powered rifle at Sandown Racecourse.”
And the next.
“Serena Gallagher of the CIA died in a fall while hiking. Her method had to been to arrange ‘accidents’ for her targets.”
Then the last.
“Lev Tarnim, one of Mossad’s most celebrated field agents, was one of a dozen people killed by the suicide bomber in Tel Aviv last month. Until now the blame had been put on HAMAS. However, Tarnim was the List’s explosives expert.”
“So,” said Grace, “this isn’t just a matter of former agents being killed… each person was killed in a way appropriate to the kind of damage they did to the Cabal.”
“Exactly,” agreed Church.
I said, “What about Jerome Freund?”
“Jerome did a number of selected eliminations using various biological agents.”
“Jeez,” said Bug.
“There is another thing,” said Church, “and it’s possible that this contributed to the specific choice of weapon used against Jerome. There are many disease pathogens that can kill… but Ebola was the weapon of choice. Jerome was a historian. He published several books on the war. He’s best known for his book on the attempt to assassinate Hitler, because his father worked with Stauffenberg on that plot and was likewise executed. However, Jerome also wrote two books on the death camps, one of which was a general history of them and one in which he explored the cultural damage done to the German people because of what the Nazis did. Most people equate all Germans of that era with Nazism and believe that all Nazis were complicit in the attempts to exterminate whole races of people. That was never true. Many people opposed it, many were in denial about it, and many underwent irrevocable psychological damage because they were afraid to speak out against it. We Americans had a tiny dose of that following 9-11 when the public fervor was to go to war even though America had not been attacked by all of Islam. Hysteria and fear are terrible things.”
“No joke, boss,” I said.
“Jerome’s next book, which was only half-written at the time of his death, was a history of the death camp program and the ideology — if we can call it that — within which men felt both compelled and entitled to do so much harm to entire races of people. Jerome Freund postulated that the Nazi Final Solution served as the model for all subsequent ethnic genocide around the world, and particularly in Africa. He argued that the mass extermination of entire races, ethnic groups, and cultures that is running rampant nowadays would never have been so virulent had it not been for the thoroughly documented final solution campaign.”
“And you feel that since he cited Africa so heavily an African pathogen was chosen?” Grace asked.
He nodded. “It seems to be in keeping with the Cabal’s attempt at poetic justice. But that was only one-half of what drove the Cabal. They were also deeply dedicated to using cutting-edge science to restart and see to completion the eugenics program.”
“Dios mio!” gasped Rudy.
“Wow,” said Hu, a smile blossoming on his face.
“Shit,” I said.
“What the hell are eugenics?” asked Bug.
Chapter Sixty
Paris poured martinis for them both. Hecate was perched on the edge of a chair, her body tense, her eyes bright with anger. Paris set the pitcher down and slumped onto the couch.
“He was telling the truth,” Paris said. “After what you did to his friend he couldn’t tell enough of the truth. He was begging you to believe him.” Paris’s face still wore a shadow of the disgust he felt. He did not mind killing and even liked a little recreational violence, but torture was not his cup of tea.
“I can believe this of Otto,” said Hecate, “but not Dad.”
Paris peered at her over the rim of his glass, one eyebrow raised. “Really? You can’t believe that Dad—our dad — would resort to murder?”
“Don’t be an ass,” she snapped. “I know what kind of a monster he is. If you tally up all the nastiness in which we’ve indulged, we don’t hold a candle to him.”
“Then how on earth can you be surprised that he’d want one of us killed?”
She sipped her martini. “Because we’re his children. His only children.”
“Are we?”
She shot him a look. “What do you mean by that?”
“That kid… SAM. The one Otto called ‘Eighty-two’ before Cyrus bit his head off for it. I never saw a picture of Dad as a kid, but SAM looks like how I imagine he’d looked. Same eyes, same mouth and chin.”
“Otto said that he was Dad’s nephew.”
“Sure. And we both know how much trust we can place in anything Otto says. Besides, I’m pretty sure the kid is a twin. A year or so ago I saw another kid at the Deck. He ducked out of sight pretty quick, but it looked a lot like SAM, and I’d just come from seeing Cyrus and SAM. Twins run in families.”
She nodded, chewing her lip.
Paris said, “Cyrus probably has a legion of little bastards roaming around, ready to usurp our place.”
“Even so… I can’t believe that Dad would want us killed.”
“Only one,” Paris reminded her. “And it didn’t matter which one, according to our late informant.
“I think we should be more concerned,” said Paris, “with how he found us. Marcus said that no one came aboard our jet when we were at the Deck, and I believe him. But we were clearly followed. That means that Otto somehow managed to put a tracking device on the jet and also managed to have us followed. How? Where did Dad get the follow planes that Pinter fellow told us about? How did he hire assassins? Pinter said that this wasn’t the first mission he’d done for Dad. How the hell is Dad managing all of this?”
She shook her head. “I guess we don’t have as tight a control on him as we thought.”
“Oh really? You think?” He sneered as he rose and refilled their glasses. “At this moment I don’t know who we can trust. We certainly can’t trust anyone at the Deck. I wish to Christ we’d gone through with the fail-safe device we talked about, ’cause right now I’d be happy to blow the whole fucking thing up. Dad, Otto, and everyone.”