Empire of Dust (5 page)

He stopped and sniffed. There was something dead nearby. The coyote snuffled the ground, and detected traces of blood in the sand. He dug tentatively, and the scent grew stronger. Meat was buried here.

He dug faster, and the scent continued to strengthen. The meat was deep, but the sand was soft. It flew from his paws, and he began to pant with the exertion.

The scent was powerful now, almost maddening to the starving animal. He dug as if in a frenzy. But when his claws finally scraped the surface of the meat, he yelped and leapt back.

Something was wrong. The meat was bad. Not rotten, but bad in a way that the coyote could not understand. Though his stomach burned with hunger, he could not bring himself to approach this meat again.

He turned and ran silently away into the night.

O
ne week after the old coyote had uncovered Ezekiel Swain's corpse, Richard Skye sat in his office in the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. On his computer, he was writing his monthly report to the deputy director concerning the field agents working under his supervision.

Three of his agents, he reported, were working separately, using simple covers to investigate the interconnected activities of the Russian Mafia in Ankara, Bucharest, and Azerbaijan. Their involvement with illegal drug transactions in order to penetrate the layers of the Mafia's bureaucracy had made it impossible for Skye to entrust the local governments with data concerning the operations. So the operatives were working under NOC, nonofficial cover, with fully developed legends, complex but artificial life histories and backgrounds.

As far as the governments of Turkey, Hungary, and Azerbaijan were concerned, the agents were dangerous drug dealers. If it was revealed that they were working for the Company, the resulting fallout would be unacceptable to national security, and if the agents were revealed to the Russian Mafia as anything other than what they were thought to be, there would be no opportunity for a rescue.

Agents Laika Harris, Joseph Stein, and Anthony Luciano were now on their own. Reports from them would be sporadic, as each contact increased the risk of their discovery. The operations could take a year or longer. It was altogether possible, Skye reported, that he might not hear from any of them at all during that time.

God, what a sack of crap
, thought Skye, as he keyboarded in his code name for the deputy director. But it was an impregnable sack, lined with steel mesh. He hit the combination of keys to transmit the report, then sat back, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and permitted himself a rare grin, showing white, even teeth beneath his carefully trimmed moustache.

That would do it. The agents were now his to do with as he liked. And his goal, crystal clear to him, but hidden from everyone else except his true, secret employer for whom he had done a number of services in the past, was to find that goddamned prisoner.

He remembered when Mr. Stanley had first told him about the prisoner:

Consider, Mr. Skye, a man of near infinite power, whose abilities are so beyond ours that we might even consider him a god. But he is still a man who can be made a prisoner, and if he can be held, his power can also be harnessed. The man—or government—who is able to control this creature could have unlimited powers, Mr. Skye. And unlimited wealth.

It was a pleasing prospect for any man, most of all Richard Skye. Mr. Stanley had heard through his many sources that the Roman Catholic Church was holding such a man, if a man he was. He had been held for many years in many places all over the world, and what better way to ferret out his hiding place than to use the most sophisticated intelligence gathering agency in the world? Skye was a high-ranking member.

But not high enough. Three years before, he had been passed over for a deputy director appointment. Even though Skye had made the Company his life, apparently he had not kissed enough asses in his twenty-plus years of service to warrant the promotion. So he remained in field operations, hating those above him, coming to hate even his country, but not to the point of selling it out like Aldrich Ames, for a small bit of money.

No, the way to become Judas was to align yourself not with some enemy of your country, whose bureaucracies would prove to be just as stifling and unrewarding as your own, but to one of the true powers of this world, to an individual with so much money and influence that his only unrealized ambition was the amassing of still more. Such was Mr. Stanley, and if Skye were able to utilize his position in the Central Intelligence Agency to track down this supernatural paragon and deliver him into Mr. Stanley's hands, and if Mr. Stanley were able to harness this creature's power, well then, Skye would come as close as one could to sitting at the right hand of God.

But so far the quest had proved fruitless. Skye had been able to ascertain, from certain lower level informants in the Vatican, that the church was indeed holding a mysterious prisoner, but that was the extent of the information. No government in the world was more difficult to gather intelligence on than the geographically minute but influentially global bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic Church. By the time a functionary reached a certain level in Saint Peter's government, he was unturnable. No priest would betray his holy city for money when he sincerely believed that after thirty more years of wealth in this world, he would spend an eternity bubbling in the hellfire of the next.

The only thing known for certain about the elusive prisoner was that his presence had in the past been considered responsible for what people referred to as paranormal activity. It was a long shot, indeed, but since no cardinals were rushing forward to reveal the prisoner's whereabouts, the only other option was sending operatives into the field to investigate such events.

The trick was that such operations had to occur without anyone in the Company but Skye knowing their true objective. And what made such intelligence gathering even more difficult was having to do it within the borders of the United States, an action specifically prohibited by the CIA charter.

Still, Skye had found a way around the difficulties. He had recruited a team led by Laika Harris, a thirty-five-year-old African-American agent, highly experienced in field operations. The woman was a born leader, and Skye suspected she had to be in order to handle two such disparate personalities as the others on the team, Joseph Stein and Anthony Luciano.

Stein hadn't been in the field in years and was an out-of-shape desk jockey, but with a mind like a fifty-gig hard drive and a skepticism that quickly separated the bullshit from the truly paranormal occurrences. Unfortunately, they had seen more of the former than the latter.

Anthony Luciano was Stein's opposite in many ways, gullible and a believer in his Catholic faith, but of great use for such a group, since he was a master of B&E and surveillance. He was also a masterful killer, should he be forced to resort to using those skills.

The supposed rationale behind the operations was that the president was concerned with the way that leftist New Age beliefs in everything from crystals to cults, and fundamentalist fervor over demons and angels, were making the USA the world center of irrationality. The operatives' job was to visit "paranormal" sites, as representatives of the National Science Foundation, and prove their normality. Case closed.

What Skye was counting on was that there would someday be a case that
couldn't
be closed by the ops' investigative prowess, and when that happened he would set them looking in earnest for the elusive prisoner—them and a few of his attack hounds in the Company, relatively brain dead but loyal as dogs to Skye. This current report would ensure that when Harris, Stein, and Luciano had accomplished their actual mission, they could, if it became necessary, be quietly terminated to keep their superior's involvement permanently secret.

Unfortunately, the first operation had been unsuccessful, although Skye thought it had initially shown much promise. Peder Holberg, a sculptor who worked in iron, had disappeared in an explosion in a workroom in his New York City studio. Dozens of people had supposedly seen him enter the room, and there was no other way out, yet no traces of human remains had been found after the explosion.

The operatives had discovered a secret studio in a warehouse that held the ruins of the sculptor's last work, which had been destroyed at roughly the same time as the explosion in the main studio. After months of investigation, however, the agents had found that Holberg had indeed left the room before the explosion had occurred, unseen by the drunken and cocaine-snorting patrons of the arts. According to their report, he had booked passage on a cargo ship back to his native Norway but never arrived. His suicidal tendencies had undoubtedly driven him over the side. As for the sculpture, it was merely a work of modern art, and a ruined one at that.

Mr. Stanley had been greatly disappointed, though not surprised. It would have been a stroke of good fortune had their very first attempt proved positive, but both Skye and Stanley were realists enough to know that the search could take years, and the current operatives would have to be replaced before it was completed.

Harris, Stein, and Luciano were the best team Skye could gather, but already he was considering who might replace them when the time came. They could not remain indefinitely under NOC. But he had just bought at least a year of their usefulness, certainly long enough to look into a number of occurrences, the next of which would be the strange death in Arizona and a possibly paranormal phenomenon only a few miles away from where the body had been found. Perhaps one of these by itself would not bear investigation, but it was the combination of the two that bore looking into.

Skye's operatives had had enough R&R time. He began to write the directive that would take them west.

"W
hy the hell do we have to drive all the way to Arizona?" Joseph Stein said, turning in the front passenger seat and trying unsuccessfully to stretch his six-foot frame.

"Because the airports may be covered," Laika Harris replied from the backseat. "You know
somebody's
been trying to follow us."

"It was merely a rhetorical question," Joseph said. "As in bewailing my state."

"Well, keep your bewailing to yourself," Laika said, "or I'll make you trade seats before the next stop." She turned toward Tony Luciano, who was smiling at the exchange. "Make any more tails since we lost that one in Jersey?"

He shook his head. "Nope."

"I still don't think he was a fed," Joseph said.

Tony nodded his head. "He was, trust me. He drove like a fed."

"You lost him easy enough," Joseph reminded him.

"A
dumb
fed," Tony added.

"What would the FBI be trailing us for?" Joseph said, unable to drop the argument.

"I don't
know
, Joseph, but it was the kind of car the feds drive, and the method of the tail was right in line with their training—I mean, it was textbook. That's why he was so damn easy to lose." Tony suspected that the agent was young, and hadn't yet learned how to break the rules. He was glad he'd been able to help educate him. "Where do we make the switch?" he asked Laika.

She referred to a dossier on the seat beside her. "About fifty miles, after we get on 78. It's a rest stop set back from the road."

Tony nodded. "We get to hear the directive, then?"

"No," Laika answered. "More of Skye's cloak-and-dagger stuff. Not until we're over the Missouri border."

"Oh well, that makes sense," said Joseph dryly. "Missouri—espionage capital of the world. Come on, Laika, we'll never tell. Open the damn thing now and let's find out what goofy assignment we've drawn this time. Christ, he's probably got us going after a cactus in the shape of the Virgin Mary."

"Yeah," Tony said, "Or a haunted hacienda or something." Tony could feel Joseph tense, and he wished he had bitten his tongue. The mention of a haunted house couldn't help but remind Joseph of the woman he had killed in New York. A supposedly poltergeist-infested row of townhouses had turned out to be haunted by an all-too-alive pair of insane squatters whose baby had died of malnutrition. When Joseph and Laika had found their hiding place, the woman had attacked, and Joseph had had no choice but to shoot her.

Tony kept his voice light, going on as if he'd said nothing unusual. "Come on, Laika. Skye hasn't bugged the car. I checked. What's the difference if we know now or twelve hours from now?"

"Forget it," Laika said. "The orders say Missouri; we wait until Missouri."

And that, Tony knew, was the way it was going to be. Laika was the team leader, and she went by the book. At least, she had until she had given Skye that completely spurious report about their activities in the Peder Holberg investigation. They were all in on it now, not only working against the charter by performing internal operations, but going a giant step beyond that by conspiring to keep vital intelligence from their superior.