There was a commotion to my right and I turned to see a tall, harried-looking man in a black uniform fighting his way through a sea of TV and news service microphones.
“Fire Commissioner Allen Dexter is on the scene,” said Kajikawa as she hustled over to join the throng around the man.
“Commissioner Dexter,” shouted a Reuters reporter, “do we know how many casualties yet?”
Dexter’s lip curled in irritation at the typical callousness of the question. It was clear from the different shapes his mouth took before he answered that the words he said were not the first ones on his tongue: “Not at this time.”
“Can you speculate for us?” the reporter persisted.
The commissioner slowly faced the hospital, which was an inferno from foundation to rooftops. When he turned back, his pale eyes were bleak. “We have not yet identified anyone who was in the building at the time of the blasts and who since escaped.”
The reporters were too jaded to be stunned by this. They screamed questions at him, but Dexter turned away as a wave of police officers surged forward and cut him out of the pack.
“There you have it,” Kajikawa said, turning back to face the camera. “This is quickly becoming the worst hospital disaster in British history. And if this is a terrorist attack, then it could well be the worst ever.” She said it with what almost sounded like pride. Somewhere between her earlier tears and now she’d made a huge internal shift from “human being” to “reporter.” Maybe the cameraman had said something to her, or maybe she did a mental review of reporters whose careers had been made by great human suffering. Like Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite breaking the story of JFK’s assassination, Wolf Blitzer with the first Gulf War in Kuwait, and Anderson Cooper during Hurricane Katrina. Or maybe being in the thick of the throng of reporters reminded her of the most sacred rule of journalism: “If it bleeds, it leads.”
I thought it was vulgar.
Kajikawa was still working it. “We do not yet have word about how many of the hospital’s eight thousand staff members were on duty today, but as the building continues to burn out of control, hopes for a happy outcome are likewise going up in smoke.”
Jesus.
Chapter Three
The Royal London Hospital
Whitechapel, London
December 17, 10:46 A.M. GMT
I found a relatively quiet spot in a vee formed by two fire trucks parked at right angles and called Church. I told him what it was like at the scene, and remarked on the dense oil smoke that was turning the entire sky black.
“Odd,” he said. “Perhaps it is intended as a symbolic touch. A statement.”
“On what? The Mideast oil wars?”
“Let’s add that to our list of questions.”
“What do we know about this attack?” I asked.
“Too little. Benson Childe, my opposite number in Barrier, called to ask if we’d heard anything from our networks. We haven’t. Nothing credible, anyway. Half a dozen fringe groups have issued statements claiming responsibility, but they are the ones who do that for everything. I’ve had our people trolling through FBI, CIA, and Senate subcommittee records, reports to the President, speculation from our own analysts. So far we have a lot of enemies and there is no shortage of threats against us and our allies, but nothing that specifically targets this location or date. No one has identified a specific political or religious motivation for this, so the Brits are holding off on calling this a terrorist attack.”
“From where I’m standing it doesn’t look like anything else. I worked a lot of fires when I was a cop, Boss, and this isn’t bad wiring or someone smoking in bed. There’s going to be more collateral damage than we had at Ground Zero. Maybe a higher body count, God help us.”
“Yes. Which means that the whole world is going to be looking at this, and that’s why the Brits are taking their time in putting a label on it. They don’t want to kick off a rash of hate crimes. For the moment the verbiage is ‘national tragedy.’”
“Anything from Al-Qaeda?”
“Not so far, but expect something. If this isn’t their play, then they’ll reach out to praise whoever did it.”
“What about our other sparring partners? The Cabal? The Kings?”
“There’s not enough of the Cabal left to orchestrate this. As for the Seven Kings … that may be more likely.”
“Why? What’s been happening while I’ve been off the radar?”
“There have been some clashes. Our informant is still feeding us useful intel. We’ve had several dustups with the Chosen.”
“Sorry I missed the party,” I lied. In truth, I wasn’t looking to jump back into any firefights with the Kings’ field troops.
We had learned about the Seven Kings a few weeks after my first mission with the Department of Military Sciences. Mr. Church had received an anonymous phone call from a source even MindReader was unable to trace. The call had come in on Church’s private line, a number known only to key people: the President of the United States, a few people in government, the heads of the top counterterrorist organizations belonging to our allies, and the team leaders of the DMS. Either one of them was the mysterious caller or the caller had managed to learn that private number or the caller had the technology to hack into Church’s coded phone. None of those options was particularly comforting.
He was able to record the call, however, and played it back for us … .
Chapter Four
Telephone Call
June 23, 8:17 A.M. EST
“I want to speak to Colonel Eldritch.”
Eldritch was one of a dozen different names for the man I knew as Church. None of them were his real name as far as I knew.
“Who is this?” Church asked.
“A friend.” The caller spoke through a voice-distortion system that made it impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Your ID is blocked. My friends don’t need to hide their identities.”
“Then consider me a new friend.”
“What is the basis for our new friendship?”
“A shared interest in the security of our nation.”
“Will you tell me your name?”
“My name is of no importance. What is important is who I represent.”
“Who is that?”
“A group of loyal Americans whose actions are always in the best interest of America.”
The caller had not said in the best interests of the American people.
“What do you want?”
“There is a new and grave threat to this country.”
“What is the nature of this threat?”
“It is a group called the Seven Kings of the New World Trust.”
“Who are they?” asked Church. “And what is their agenda?”
“Chaos,” said the caller.
“What kind of chaos?”
“Total. Global. Apocalyptic.”
“Excuse me,” said Church, “but this is bordering on being a crank call. If you are a loyal American as you claim, and if there is a threat about which you have knowledge, then please give me the facts in plain and simple terms.”
There was a sound that might have been a short laugh. “For reasons that I do not care to explain, I cannot give you too much information on the Seven Kings. Perhaps I will be able to share some information from time to time.”
“Will you give me something now?”