The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (53 page)

“Perhaps,” Grey said quietly. “Perhaps not. The DVD’s already disappeared, hasn’t it?”

“Faster than a Russian summer. There was a man with the police, the man I told you who’d been following me, and who I assumed was part of Darius’s organization.”

“I saw him at the end. He led the medics to me.”

“He paid me a visit at the hospital,” Viktor said. “His name is Farinata, and he’s a ranking member of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. Somehow the Church discovered that a few of the cardinals had been compromised, and he was sent to control the damage.”

“And he followed you because he knew you were investigating the murders, and he had no idea what else to do. He never approached you because he
wanted to ensure all evidence was destroyed before involving anyone outside the Church.”

“Presumably,” Viktor said. “He didn’t say. Curiously he himself had never heard of the Tutori. He told the Vatican where I had gone in Sicily, and connections were made.”

“That must have caused a bit of heartburn in Rome. And Jacques called him after he got my text?”

“That, or he was in contact with the London police,” Viktor said. “The Vatican has ways of keeping tabs on information it desires.”

“So he showed up at the hospital with his tail between his legs, begging for silence.”

“And asking whether we knew of any copies of the DVD,” Viktor said. “The prospect of
that
will give them heartburn. He extended an apology on behalf of the Church and offered a reward for our troubles. I declined.”

“Thanks for asking me,” Grey said drily. He shoved a piece of tuna sashimi into his mouth. “Darius is dead, I assume.”

“Anka stabbed him twenty-three times before they reached her.”

Grey remembered the disturbing things Anka had told him at the end, the sight of her face just before she had killed Darius. He set down his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “I suppose she hated him after all.”

“Or she believed what the Sicilian priest told me,” Viktor said with a smirk. “That Ahriman favors only one.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Whatever her reason, she’s in custody. Something else: Jacques discovered there was a passenger on your San Francisco flight listed as Eve Summerfield, from Glaisdale. You can sleep better knowing Anka was booked on that flight.”

Grey didn’t think he would sleep better for a long time. Had Anka been insane all along, or had Darius tortured her to the point of mental instability? Had she, too, had a glimpse of that damnable book? Did something inside it have the power to warp, whether real or imagined?

Despite his bleak view of the world, Grey was at his core an optimist in the potential of the human spirit. He still wanted to help the woman whose touch had haunted his dreams, and whose life story, if at all to be believed,
was a sad tale no matter what had later transpired. He wanted her to be spared the horror of those gray walls and bars.

Then his mind flashed, from her beckoning lips and sincere green eyes to the woman who had seduced and then placed poison-filled bottles in the rooms of multiple men, probably himself included; to the woman who had performed unspeakable acts in the video Viktor had described; to the woman who had stalked the Parisian catacombs with confidence and purpose, mingling with the members of L’église de la Bête, at home among the leering skulls and bones.

To the woman who had tried to use him even at the end.

Whoever she had once been, she had been made into someone else, her lost innocence warped by the power of evil into a weapon of unusual beauty and deceit.

“Farinata said the Ahriman Grimoire was never found,” Viktor was saying, pulling Grey’s thoughts back to the room. “Though Darius wouldn’t have kept if far from his side. I’ve a strong suspicion it’s now resting in a secret vault in the Vatican.”

“What’d the media say?” Grey said.

“The Vatican orchestrated a cover-up, and since Niles Widecombe is a major MP, I suspect the British government didn’t protest too much. A news release claimed Simon Azar has embarked on an undisclosed spiritual sabbatical. Some of his worshippers have already disbanded, some have formed splinter groups, some have proclaimed him the new messiah and await his return.”

“Lovely.”

“Jacques cleared up a few things as well,” Viktor said. “As we suspected, they found a tiny ignition device in the sleeve of Darius’s robe, a quite sophisticated mini-flamethrower.”

“But how’d the flames spread so quickly on the victims? And how did you avoid being burned?”

“When Darius held me captive, he brought me into the bedroom filthy from my travels, allowing me a final cleansing before donning the ceremonial
robe. Darius leaves nothing to chance, so I suspected an ulterior purpose. We already theorized the robes had been doctored, but when I saw the soap in the shower, it hit me. Darius was a chemist, not a tailor. Testing has already confirmed that the victims were literally coating their skin with a water-resistant chemical accelerant, and that’s how they burned so fast and at such a high degree.”

Grey whistled. “Clever. It fits with the poisoned perfume as well. Chemical concoctions in everyday products. How’d he manage the fire with the other two victims, if he wasn’t actually there?”

“With an assistant and misdirection, I’m sure of it. When I was with Gareth it was chaotic, and the guard conveniently ran past Gareth right when the fire started. I’ll bet my diplomas Oak and the guard were using mini-igniters.”

“We still don’t know how he managed the disappearing act.” Grey said.

“The art of deception, in the rights hands, is a very powerful tool.”

Grey looked Viktor in the eye. “When I climbed onto the tomb to throw the knife, it took me some time to gather my strength. I saw him touch you and disappear.”

Viktor shrugged, but Grey saw a flicker of doubt buried deep in his eyes.

Grey continued, “At the cemetery I saw Oak, Alec Lister, and at least one member of the Beast Church I recognized from the catacombs. Did Jacques ask them about the disappearances?”

“To a person, they swore Darius had the power of the Devil. All of which reinforces the theory that for his greatest illusion, he confided in no one.”

“Was there any evidence of hologram capability at the computer station?” Grey said.

“No.”

“What about the research on bilocation?”

“Theoretically possible, I suppose. Though there are no verified cases of anyone being able to control such a phenomena to that degree.”

“And you verify that how, exactly?” Grey said. “So your theory is an illusion of which we have no proof, and which you, an expert at debunking the supernatural, witnessed up close and personal.”

“At night, in a cemetery, with ample time and opportunity to arrange an illusion beforehand.”

“You touched his hand.” Grey said.

“I
thought
I did.”

Grey gave Viktor a long stare, then ticked off the choices on his fingers. “So it’s an impossible illusion, astral projection or bilocation, some other arcane working of the universe of which we’re unaware, or the power of the Devil.”

“I can admit,” Viktor said evenly, “that perhaps the power of Darius’s belief allowed extraordinary psychosomatic acts to occur. This is uncharacteristic of you, Grey. Aren’t you the Doubting Thomas?”

“Just seeing where you stand.”

“I see,” Viktor said. “And what did you learn?”

“That you’re not convinced yourself of what happened.”

Viktor’s hand moved as if to straighten his tie, then he seemed to realize he wasn’t wearing one. He folded his arms instead. “You can trust me when I say I don’t believe that Darius gained the favor of a being named Ahriman, who made him handsome, charming, and afforded him the power of teleportation.”

Grey said softly, “You almost died, Viktor, because you left me and went to Sicily to pursue the grimoire. And you still can’t believe?”

“I went to Sicily to gain insight into Darius’s actions. If I hadn’t, I might not be alive.”

“I’m afraid if something
is
out there,” Grey said, “watching us from the spiritual realm or the astral plane or wherever the hell else, you can never prove it. And you might kill yourself trying to.”

Viktor looked through Grey for a long moment. “Maybe there’s nothing more than an unthinking and impossibly complex universe. Or maybe there’s a personal God after all, or an unfathomable entity to whom we can never
hope to relate, or something else entirely. All we can do is scrape at the truth and discredit anything false. What greater calling is there?”

“How about living life?”

“Why the third degree?” Viktor said. “Why does this matter so much to you?”

“Because what
I
care about is not seeing my partner killed.”

Viktor seemed taken aback, then bent to clasp Grey’s hand. “Thank you, my friend,” he whispered.

“What’d you say to Darius at the end?” Grey said. “I heard you shout something, but I didn’t recognize the language.”

“It was Old Persian. Roughly translated, I said, ‘In the name of Ahriman, the true God, thee I do swallow.’”

“Okay, that’s chilling. Why exactly did you say that?”

“The priest I met in Sicily gave me the idea, as did my previous observances of Juju and other auto-suggestive mental phenomena. After the fire failed to burn me, I wanted to continue to erode Darius’s faith, if for nothing else than to buy time.”

“Let me get this straight—you hedged your bets by allowing for the possibility that Ahriman had granted Darius powers?”

“No,” Viktor said, “I allowed for the possibility that Darius
believed
that Ahriman had granted him these powers.”

“I thought you were a professor, not a lawyer.” Grey ran a hand through his hair, leaving it cupped behind his neck. “I have a question for you, something that’s been on my mind during this case for obvious reasons.”

“Of course.”

“Do you believe in evil?” Grey said.

Viktor chuckled.

“That wasn’t supposed to be a joke.”

“A student at a recent lecture asked me the same question,” Viktor said.

“And has your answer changed?”

Viktor compressed his lips. “We’re two generations away from Adolf Hitler, Rwanda and the Balkans are barely scabbed wounds. You yourself
witnessed the depravity of L’église de la Bête. So no, I don’t question the existence of evil. I just want to know where it comes from. And what’s your opinion on the matter, my promising young student, after a year in the field?”

“Of course evil exists. And I don’t give a damn where it comes from.”

Viktor’s eyes crinkled. “I suppose that’s why we make a good team.”

Grey noticed Viktor’s hands had started to shake, whether from the lack of absinthe or from the weight of memory or from something else, Grey wasn’t sure.

Viktor turned towards the door, and Grey said, “Heading back to Prague?”

Viktor kept his hands in front of him, out of Grey’s line of sight. “Just stepping out for a bit of air.”

“No need to stick around on my behalf. I’ve been in worse shape.”

“It’s not a need, Grey.”

He left the room. Grey let his gaze linger on the closed door for a long time after Viktor left, then shifted to look out the window, at the afternoon light struggling to streak through the clouds.

Late that night, when Grey was alone with the beeping monitors, he found himself thinking, despite his strong words, about what had transpired. Though he saw no intrinsic value in it, maybe part of him, maybe part of everyone, yearned to know what this bottomless sea of atoms in which we swim was all about, this Ping-Pong game of quarks and quasars and dark energy, played out by forces unseen, wielding the paddles with such caprice.

And if a Supreme Being did exist, he had to admit he rather liked the idea of a more human concept of God, a God who was something less than perfect, and thus not accountable for evil. He knew the theologians would tell him how juvenile that was and that absolute free will was necessary and that our omnipotent God, with all his smiting, was like a father to a two-year-old because sometimes punishment just had to be given, and that, like two-year-olds,
we humans become confused when we try to find rhyme or reason in God’s actions, and the reality is that we just can’t see clearly enough. And, so those theologians would argue, it was all okay because God knew exactly what He was doing when He created such flawed creatures and set the stage for a world where fathers beat their sons and men in white collars rape little boys and serial killers torture victims in dank holes and whole races are enslaved and whole cities are atomized and Jews are shoved into ovens and pink-skinned gurgling babies are born into crack houses.

Though he disagreed with those theologians, Grey could concede that maybe he just wasn’t smart enough to understand the finer points of all the arguments. But he didn’t really care, because he didn’t think it mattered.

Grey thought in human terms, because that was the perspective he was given, and he thought the followers of all religions and cultures and creeds, people everywhere, knew the basic difference between right and wrong. That it was only when someone wanted something so badly that they began to justify their actions.