The iron codex, p.5
The Iron Codex, page 5
He pressed the tip of his knife to the underside of its jaw. “End of the line, Makala.”
It spat in Cade’s face and then shouted at him in rapid-fire Vietnamese.
Cade thrust his dagger through the monster’s jaw and into its brain. It twitched for a moment, and then the eerie yellow light in its eyes dimmed and expired. The young American gave his blade a final twist inside the wound for good measure, and then he pulled it free. “That ought to do it.” As he wiped the athamé clean on his bedsheets, he asked Miles, “You okay?”
Miles realized he hadn’t blinked in nearly a minute. “What the bloody hell was that?”
“A penanggalan,” Cade said. “Or as the Laotians call it, a phi-kasu.”
Unable to take his eyes off the creature’s fangs, Miles asked, “Some kind of vampire?”
“Not quite. The undead are just a myth.” He tucked his dagger back into its spot inside a leather roll-up he used to transport his various tools of the Art. “That was a karcist named Makala Savang. She’s been working for the Vietnamese, stirring up shit all down the Mekong.”
“Hang on, mate. You’re telling me that thing is human?”
“It was. She yoked PAZUZU for one of its lesser-known abilities, one it grants only to women.” He rolled up his leather kit and tied it closed. “She’s been cutting a swath through the French troops down in Dien Bien Phu. I told them I’d take care of it.” He grabbed up some clothes and started to get dressed. “And I just did.”
“And painted a bull’s-eye on your back in the process.”
Cade shrugged as he put on his shirt. “Couldn’t be helped.” He sat on the bed to pull on his pants. “I needed her to come after me so I could ambush her.”
“Some ambush. You were on the dark side of the moon when I came through the door.”
An irreverent grin. “A cunning ruse. I had her right where I wanted her.”
“Five seconds more, she’d have had you for supper.” Miles loaded a fresh magazine into his Walther. “Speaking of which, I was only a few minutes ahead of some folks from the KGB and the MSS, both of whom have standing orders to neutralize you on sight.”
Cade looked up as he tied his boots. He seemed untroubled by Miles’s report. “So much for extending my vacation. And I had a front-row seat to the war and everything.”
“Save your jokes for the plane. We need to leave.” Miles made sure that his baritone conveyed the true urgency of their situation as he added, “Now.”
“Whatever you say, sahib.” Cade retrieved his Beretta from under his pillow, tucked it behind his waistband at the small of his back, and draped his wrinkled linen shirt over it. Then he grabbed a quarter-full bottle of gin off the dresser as he moved to follow Miles out the door.
Through the muddled odors of sweat and cooked opium, Miles caught a whiff of juniper on Cade’s breath. “Christ, mate, are you pissed right now?”
“No more than usual. Why?”
Miles beckoned Cade to follow him out of the room. “You’re a piece of work, old boy. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen you sober since the war.”
“I probably faked at least one of those,” Cade said as they hurried downstairs.
As they reached the ground floor, a burly bruiser with a classic Russian crew cut lurched through the villa’s open front door, a silenced Makarov pistol in his hand. He raised it in Miles’s direction and almost had time to aim before Miles shot him through his left eye.
The dead Russian fell as Miles noted a moving shadow blocking the moonlight spilling through the slats of a nearby window’s shutters. He put three bullets through the shutters and watched the shadow collapse. He went out the front door and held it open for Cade. “Let’s go.”
“One second,” Cade said. He extended his right arm and made a slicing motion in the air with two fingers. A third Russian staggered out of a dark corridor with his throat slashed open. Blood sheeted down his chest and soaked his shirt while his mouth twitched in a futile attempt to speak. Three steps out of the hallway he dropped his Makarov and fell dead onto his face. Gesturing toward the street, Cade added, “Now we can go.”
Fucking hell. No matter how many times Miles saw Cade wreak havoc with magick, it never ceased to unnerve him. He turned his back on the carnage in the villa and crossed the short walk to the gate that separated the villa’s property from the street. He raised his miniature torch and snapped it on and off a few times in a simple signal. From a few dozen meters up the road, the proper response signal came from a car’s headlights. He motioned for Cade to join him.
Half a minute later they clambered into the back of a black Peugeot 203 sedan, one with rearward-opening “suicide doors” in the front. The driver, Akamu, was a local MI6 asset Miles had met only that morning, but he had found the skinny young man to be extremely helpful, even in the face of deadly violence. “The airport, Akamu,” Miles said as he pulled the door shut behind him. “Don’t stop for anyone or anything.” He passed the man a fistful of crisp new twenty-kip banknotes. “Understand?”
“Not stop,” Akamu said, slamming his foot down on the accelerator.
Outside the car the shadowed streets of Luang Prabang blurred past. Cade and Miles ducked low in the backseat, as wary of being spotted as they were of ending up on the wrong end of a stray bullet. “I suppose you have a ride lined up at the airport,” Cade said.
“Naturally. You don’t think I’d saunter into a shithole like this and not have a plan for getting out, do you?” He fished a crumpled pack of Player’s Weights cigarettes from his pants pocket, dug out one that was still intact, and lit it with his next-to-last match. Then he passed the smokes to Cade, who exhumed a crooked but unbroken cigarette and lit it with a snap of his fingers. The two old friends savored their nicotine in silence as the car hurtled through the night.
Between drags, Miles asked, “Care to tell me where you’ve been the last eight weeks?”
“Tracking the penanggalan.”
“For part of it, maybe. But my sources insist you arrived in Laos only six days ago.”
Cade shot a cagy side-eye look at Miles. Then he finished his cigarette with a final pull and flicked its smoldering stub out the open window on his right. “Wake me at the plane.” He shut his eyes and offered up a fairly good impression of a corpse.
Wide awake, Miles kept his concerns to himself, just as he had for years.
Cade’s had a streak of melancholy ever since the war ended, he reflected, but I can see it’s getting worse, no matter how much he denies it.
He watched his old Oxford chum sleep—or maybe just pretend to sleep, not that it mattered—and worried that the troubled young American was not going to be able to pull himself out of this nosedive toward self-destruction.
Miles lit a broken half of another cigarette and swallowed his frustration at being unable to help Cade in any way that mattered.
I keep hoping he’ll exorcise whatever personal demons are haunting him. But from what he tells me, demons are what keep him in business.… And I’m pretty sure they’re also what’s killing him, day by bloody day, from the inside out.
* * *
Libraries had always unnerved Anja, and La Paz’s Biblioteca Municipal was no different. The narrow white building sat at the convergence of Calle Cañada Strongest and Calle Mexico, a pair of boulevards that terminated—or originated, depending upon one’s point of view—at the Plaza del Estudiante. Its exterior fused Art Deco curves and angles with stately Doric pillars, but its interior was as dark, musty, and cramped as every other library she had ever seen.
And the silence. The oppressive, smothering silence.
Anja could enjoy peace and quiet, especially when she was free of demons. Having it imposed upon her rankled her. Being shushed stoked a spark of rebellion deep inside her heart.
For the sake of survival, she embraced the discretion that came with using the library as a meeting point. Her contact from the Mossad had selected this location several months earlier, and so far it had served them well. She would request meetings by placing coded ads in the classified section of O Estado de S. Paulo, Brazil’s newspaper of record, which was generally available in major cities throughout South America. Usually within a few days, her contact would respond with a similarly coded ad that she then deciphered to determine the day, time, and specific location for their meeting inside the library.
Today she had been instructed to meet him on the third floor, in the stacks of the Philosophy section. She had been sent to subsection 110, Metaphysics, and told to seek him in 111, Ontology. When she found the shelf, it was configured just as she had expected: subsection 110 occupied one side of a towering shelf and 111 stood on the other. In the interest of discretion and plausible deniability, a wall of books would stand between Anja and her contact.
As usual he was late. She passed the time paging through a book of Buddhist philosophy that touched upon but ultimately dismissed most metaphysical queries as “spiritually unhelpful.” She could only nod in sympathy. There is much truth in the old ways.
A book was cautiously removed from a spot on the far side of the bookshelf, creating a narrow gap from one aisle to the next. All that Anja could see of Yaakov Stern through the sliver of space was his eyes and formidable brows, but those and the wiry fortyish Israeli’s voice were all she needed to be sure it was him. “Find something of interest?” he whispered.
She leaned close to the gap and matched his hushed tone. “A journal. Taken from an ex-Nazi. It proves Odessa is real.”
“Of that we did not need to be convinced.” Yaakov pretended to leaf through whatever book he had opened. “Why should this concern us?”
She looked around, paranoid that they might acquire an eavesdropper. Satisfied they were still alone, she continued. “It has names. Addresses. And more I cannot decode. It is a map to hundreds of Nazi war criminals hiding in South America.”
Yaakov lifted one eyebrow in consideration. “You’re sure it is genuine?”
“Positive.”
He fixed her with an intense one-eye stare. “Did you bring it?”
Anja was reluctant to share her leverage, but how else was she to entice the Israelis? She took the leather-bound journal from inside her satchel and pushed it through the gap in the wall of books. Yaakov plucked it free from the other side and assessed its contents in short order. “It is … interesting.” He closed the journal and sent it back to Anja, who anxiously snatched it back off the shelf. Yaakov asked, “What do you want for it?”
She saw no point in playing coy. “Your promise that the Kabbalah scholars in Jerusalem will help me translate the Iron Codex.”
Yaakov shook his head. “I can’t give you that. The journal is a good find, but its clues are vague. It would take time, maybe years, to unpack its true value.”
“More excuses,” Anja muttered in anger as she put away the journal. “Same old lies.”
“I won’t make promises I can’t keep,” Yaakov said. “If you had a solid lead on someone like Mengele, or Alois Brunner, maybe I could make a case for bringing you to the rabbis. But as it stands, my supervisor doesn’t think I should ever trust a Russian as an asset.”
She glared through the empty space on the shelf and suddenly noted how much it resembled the murder holes of a medieval fortress. “You are not much use to me alive, are you?”
He sighed. “If you want to give me the journal, I can arrange for a drop of some money and weapons, like we did for you last year in Asunción.”
“Stop wasting my time. I took the journal off an Odessa cell leader. I know it has value.”
There was guilt and resignation in Yaakov’s expression. “You may be right. But the truth is, the Mossad isn’t ready to act on that kind of intelligence. It might be years before we’ll have the strength and experience to move against escaped Nazis. All we can do for now is watch, listen, and keep good records.”
“If that is all you can do, your efforts amount to nothing.”
She returned her book of Buddhist thought to the gap on the shelf and strode away, eager to put this waste of time and effort behind her. As she emerged from between the stacks, Yaakov gently took her arm to stop her. “Anja, please—”
She confronted him with a promise of violence in her eyes. “What?”
“Our sources in Moscow say the KGB knows you’re here. They’ve been tracking you since you left Cochabamba.” He telegraphed his concern with a frown that looked rehearsed. “It might be a good time for you to leave La Paz.”
She pulled her arm from his grasp. “I will leave La Paz when I know its Nazis are dead.”
6
JANUARY 22
Briet was safe inside her operator’s circle, and her patron spirit ASTAROTH was secured inside a triangular ward several yards away. Around them yawned the vast cavity of the Silo, all of it except the conjuring stage lost in darkness. Though the cavernous pit’s myriad sensors, cameras, and witnesses all were well out of sight, Briet never let herself forget, not for a moment, that they were there, ever vigilant. No doubt waiting for the one time I make a mistake.
The only illumination on the pentagonal platform came from the coal-burning torchères that ringed its periphery, and from the great swirling cloud of violet flames exhaled by the demon between answers. A sullen inflection tainted the beast’s elegant baritone, which it delivered in a normal human register, unlike so many of its Infernal kin. “Are thy questions nearly exhausted? I grow weary of this inquisition.”
“I shall ask as many questions of thee as I need and desire.”
She refused to be bullied or wheedled by the demon. It had wasted enough of her time this day by appearing in three consecutive false forms—by turns grotesque, indistinct, and patronizing—before presenting itself in its true shape: that of a nude, beautiful angel with flowing golden hair, feathered wings smeared with blood and ash, and a huge, semi-tumescent coal-black penis. In its right hand it held a writhing viper; a ten-pointed crown glittered with painful brightness upon its brow. It sat astride a beast that sported a hyena’s head, a lion’s paws, a feathered torso, leathery wings, and a serpent’s tail.
Fire spilled from its mouth as it sighed. “Ask thy questions, Eve-spawn.”
“Share with me any portents to which you have been privy, especially those that concern activity Below as directed from here on earth. Confess to me dark tidings, the schemes of my enemies and allies alike, and any tales of war or rumors of war.”
It was a routine inquiry during rituals of divination, a catch-all solicitation for bad news and warnings of danger. Briet much preferred the more esoteric queries she sometimes got to ask when the scientists would prepare questions for her in advance—requests for insight into realms metaphysical or subatomic. But this was not that kind of session. This day’s scheduled experiment was all about America’s foreign policy and national defense.
So it struck Briet as odd when ASTAROTH hesitated to answer.
The great duke of Hell had a well-earned reputation as a spirit that would give true answers of all things past, present, and to come, and regarding all matters of science. But a routine supplication for a general warning seemed to have left the tarnished angel tongue-tied.
Briet pointed her wand toward the brazier of burning coals at her feet. “Speak! Or I shall torment thee without respite until you comply! By the names ADONAY, ELOHIM, JEHOVAM—!”
STAY THY ROD, the beast commanded, its voice swollen into a roll of thunder. I SHALL ANSWER THY QUESTION. The viper in its hand writhed as if desperate to escape back to Hell. OMENS OF A GREAT CALAMITY HAVE ALL HELL CLAMORING TO RISE.
A chill snaked down Briet’s spine. “What kind of calamity? Natural? Or man-made?”
THE LATTER. A HOLOCAUST ABORNING.
“From whence comes this danger?”
FROM WITHIN THY MASTERS’ BORDERS. A CASTLE OF FIRE—
Red warning lights mounted on the Silo’s walls snapped on, and a man’s voice boomed from unseen loudspeakers, “BRIET! ABORT!”
ASTAROTH belched a cone of green flames that Briet deflected with her raised wand. Twisting to and fro within the confines of its triangular ward, the beast demanded, WHO DARES TO ADDRESS ME WITHOUT INVITATION? SHOW THYSELF AND FACE MY WRATH!
Briet stabbed her wand into the coals at her feet. “Hold, demon!” The beast howled, its wails of pain mixed with roars of fury. “The Law applies only to my tanists, and as you can see”—she motioned at the otherwise empty conjuring stage behind her—“I have none. Hold fast to thy appointed place!”
Again the voice bellowed from the hidden speakers: “BRIET! TERMINATE THIS EXPERIMENT NOW!”
The command was still echoing as the demon threatened to break free of its magickal restraints, its eyes ablaze and fixed upon Briet. YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS BREACH!
I have to end this while I still can.
She raised her wand, met the demon’s burning stare, and spoke quickly. “Our business is done for today, great ASTAROTH! I dismiss and discharge thee by the terms of our pact. Depart in peace and return when, and only when, I call for thee. Begone, spirit, in the name of ADONAY, ELOHIM, ARIEL, and JEHOVAM!”
Her patron roared as the floor inside the triangle beneath it vanished, plunging the creature into a starless void. As soon as the tips of its soiled wings passed from sight, the floor reappeared, accompanied by a clap of thunder that dimmed the flames in the torchères. A leaden silence settled over the great emptiness of the Silo, and in her moment of solitude Briet felt a great tide of anger rise from deep within the darkest parts of herself.
The overhead lights snapped on, harsh, cold, and white. Briet squinted. Shielding her eyes, she walked off the stage and crossed the bridge with murder on her mind.
Minutes later she stormed through the technology-packed confines of the Silo’s control suite, which she considered to be little more than an overhyped observation deck. Half a dozen sergeants and junior officers tried to block her path, but she brushed them aside with sheer force of personality and a glare that could carve diamonds. One wall was full of windows that looked down into the Silo from several levels above the conjuring stage. The opposite wall was lined with towering gray steel cabinets that housed computers whose endless labors took the form of tape reels that jerked and spun, back and forth, ad infinitum.
