The Nameless Dead Read online

  Gradually the gunfire died down. Through the cloud of discharged smoke, I made out six people still standing. Four of them were naked, three men and a woman, one other man was pulling on the clothes he had stripped from a dead guard, and the remaining one, a woman, was fully dressed. She was carrying a machine-pistol in one hand and a pistol in the other. None of the guards seemed to have survived.

  ‘Got any idea what’s going on?’ Quincy asked. He was still dazed from his time on the cross.

  I shook my head. ‘I think we might be about to find out.’

  The man who had got dressed pointed the naked people in the direction of the various exits. They took up positions there, pulling clothes from the bodies of guards. They were all toting weapons. Then he joined the armed woman and they embraced.

  ‘Touching,’ Quincy muttered. ‘Even assholes have feelings.’

  I had slipped the knife under my body and was trying to get it into my pocket.

  ‘Throw the blade over here,’ the woman said, pointing the pistol at me.

  I did as I was told, holding her gaze. She was tall and well-built, and she looked seriously comfortable with firearms. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail and she had a small rucksack on her back.

  ‘You,’ she said to Rothmann. ‘Sit down and stop sniveling.’

  He obeyed instantly, his hands over his now shrunken organ.

  The man was also tall, with a full beard. He was carrying a shotgun and there was a combat knife in the belt he had put on.

  ‘The Antichurch returns to its rightful leaders,’ the woman said.

  ‘Indeed, sister,’ the man said solemnly, eyeing Rothmann. ‘Shall we string up the heretic?’

  ‘Of course. The true Antigospel requires that traitors be sacrificed to the Lord Lucifer.’

  Rothmann made a high-pitched noise.

  ‘Have you anything to say before sentence is carried out?’ the man said to him. He had a strong Southern accent.

  ‘I…I wish to beg forgiveness,’ Rothmann said, groveling before him. ‘When I revived the Antichurch, I had no idea that Jeremiah Dodds had a brother. Or that he set up his church in opposition to the original cult.’

  The woman stepped forward and brought her boot down on Rothmann’s right hand, making him yelp in agony. ‘Jeremiah Dodds was a heretic,’ she said, pressing down harder on his fingers.

  ‘Besides, you sent people to kill us,’ the man added, bringing the muzzle of the shotgun close to Rothmann’s ear. ‘They killed several of the faithful before we gutted them.’

  ‘You mind telling us who you are?’ Quincy asked. He was still lying prone and had lifted his head.

  ‘Yes, I do mind.’ The woman pointed her pistol at him. ‘We don’t pay no heed to niggers.’

  I might have known that the original Antichurch would be a racist organization.

  The man laughed emptily. ‘Sister Abaddon, I see three crosses. What d’you say to hanging all three of these sorry creatures up and turning their insides out?’

  She smiled beatifically at him. ‘That would be a truly wonderful way to celebrate the Lord Lucifer’s triumph, Brother Apollyon,’ she said, moving toward the rope that I’d cut from Quincy.

  Her head disintegrated before she got there, the blast of the shot reaching my ears an instant later. The woman was thrown forward, her arms hooking over the horizontal bar of the cross and her head thumping against the vertical. Four more shots dispatched the people at the doors.

  ‘Drop your weapons!’

  The voice from the center of the barn was loud and clear. I watched as the bearded man complied and a figure in black combat clothes came toward us. It was a woman with short blond hair and high cheekbones.

  ‘What the fuck now?’ Quincy said, in a low voice.

  My heart went into overdrive. She didn’t look like she used to and she sounded like a native New Yorker, but I recognized her gait instantly.

  Sara Robbins had collected plenty of souls already. And now she was coming for ours.

  Arthur Bimsdale was finding his boss hard to fathom. If he’d been in charge, he’d have gone down to Texas as soon as Matt Wells and Quincy Jerome disappeared from the tracking grid. Every effort was being made by the Houston field office to pinpoint their locations, but Peter Sebastian would normally have been on the spot to concentrate the local agents’ minds and coordinate their efforts. When Bimsdale had suggested he go alone, Sebastian had told him he’d be better employed handling the operation from headquarters. That was patently not the case.

  His boss had returned to the office around 10:00 p.m., giving no explanation of where he had been. He had turned off his cell phone during his absence—Bimsdale knew this because he’d called him with Houston’s latest negative update. Why the secrecy? Department heads, like all agents, were supposed to be contactable at all times. The look on Sebastian’s face, however, had discouraged questions or comments. He received the news from Texas with a distracted air.

  ‘Arthur, email me everything we’ve got on Routh Limited. Do a search on Sir Andrew Frogget, too. See if our guy in the London embassy’s got any new shit.’

  ‘New shit?’ Bimsdale repeated uncertainly.

  Sebastian gave him a drained look. ‘As far as I recall, his record’s clean. Too clean. I want to know everything about him. In particular, I want to know what his weaknesses are.’ He raised a hand. ‘Don’t say anything, Arthur. I know he was decorated in the first Gulf War, I know he spends his weekends with underprivileged children. Now dig me some dirt!’

  Bimsdale did as he was told. It didn’t take him long. Ferris, the senior FBI agent in London, had picked up a hint of something rotten in the state of Frogget. Apparently his wife was suffering from depression, code in British high society for their marriage being on the rocks. On the face of it, the Routh chairman wasn’t a big enough celebrity to attract the attention of the tabloid press, but he employed a notoriously devious publicity agent. That attracted Bimsdale’s attention and he asked Ferris to sniff around. An hour later, the agent called back. Nothing had ever been proved, but there was a faint rumor that Sir Andrew had paid off the parents of a twelve-year-old girl after he was found alone with her.

  Peter Sebastian was less excited by that piece of news than Bimsdale expected, but he finally authorized twenty-four-hour surveillance on the knight.

  After dealing with that end of things, Arthur went back to his desk and contacted Houston.

  Sara Robbins had a Glock 19 in one hand and an AK-47 rifle in the other—she had taken both weapons from a sentry near the gate of the compound. She had dispatched him by cutting his throat with the plastic knife she favored. Things had worked out very well, not least because the painkillers had kicked in. On her way toward the location, identified by the bug she had attached to the pickup carrying Matt, she caught sight of a shadowy figure behind the tree line. That individual had provoked the guards by throwing a grenade into the open space in front of the buildings. When they came out to check, the intruder followed them back to the gate and killed them. Sara had been twenty yards behind, making no sound. After arming herself, she had gone toward the large barn—the intruder had stood at the door, and then slipped inside. Sara used her knife on the tires of the nearest vehicles and cautiously entered the building. She took cover behind a heap of firewood, to the rear of a group of naked people. A dead guard had been dragged there, his killer now sheltering behind an antique tractor.

  It was when that individual turned to the side that Sara recognized her profile. It was the woman from Maine—the one she had got rid of outside the diner. That wasn’t too much of a surprise, though knowing who she was and who she worked for would be nice.

  It turned out to be irrelevant. Sara watched the insane ritual and tried to work out what Matt was doing. He seemed to be in thrall to a naked man in a hyena mask, and almost attacked the black man with a knife. Then the shooting had started, and in the chaos that overtook the next few minutes, the bulk of the surviving congr
egation had thundered past Sara to the rear exit, leaving the wounded and dead behind.

  Sara only recognized the tall man carrying a shotgun when he got up on the platform with the crosses. It was the beard that had deceived her. The last time she saw him, he had been clean-shaven. He had tried to kill her then and, by doing that, had signed his own death warrant—her professional standing as an assassin required all attacks on her person to be answered with maximum prejudice.

  Stretching her back to dissipate the pain that had begun to bite again, the Soul Collector took aim at the woman who had been irritating her since Portland. Soon, it would be time to settle accounts with the hired gun known as Apollyon and, of course, with her former lover. The lives of the black man and of the people guarding the doors were of no consequence whatsoever.

  Twenty-Six

  The Soul Collector leveled the Kalashnikov at the bearded man. ‘Don’t even think about it, Apollyon.’

  He had been stretching for the pistol in front of him, but instead straightened up and stared at the blonde woman. ‘Who are you?’ He turned to the motionless body on the arms of the inverted cross. ‘Why did you kill my…kill my sister?’

  I wasn’t sure if Sara had recognized me. I hadn’t seen her look in my direction once. Maybe if he went for a weapon…

  ‘I killed her because I know what your sister, known in the business as Abaddon, was capable of,’ she said, pointing the pistol at me. ‘Keep still, Matt. I’ve got two eyes, remember?’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Apollyon said. ‘You know the business? Who the fuck…’ He broke off, his jaw dropping. ‘It can’t be. You’re the Soul Collector.’ He looked like he’d just eaten a large piece of bad seafood.

  Sara nodded. ‘I’m glad to see my latest facial reshaping passed muster. Right, then. I don’t care why you tried to take me out in Pittsburgh—I’m guessing you were pissed off I was getting all the best jobs—but you had your chance and you blew it. Personally, I’d have waited till my target was stationary, though I suppose the shot was tempting. You want to tell me what was going on here before I interrupted?’

  The man called Apollyon—the name made me think of Pilgrim’s Progress, but it was a long time since I’d read that turgid text—confirmed what I’d worked out from the copy of the Antigospel I’d read: that he and his sister were the rightful heirs to the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant, and that he and his companions had taken the places of members, now dead, who had been loyal to the new Master. I glanced at Rothmann, who was sitting with his knees tight together, his eyes fixed on Sara. He didn’t seem to know her.

  ‘What was your sister doing outside the compound?’ Sara asked.

  Apollyon gave a hollow laugh. ‘She was hired to blow away this piece of shit.’ He glanced at Rothmann. ‘We thought that was pretty funny, considering I was going to fuck him up at the rite, but she took the job anyway. That way, we got two bites at his cherry.’

  ‘I saw her in Maine,’ Sara said. ‘What was she doing there?’

  ‘She was told to sit on that guy’s ass,’ he replied, angling his head toward me. ‘Matthew John Wells. He’s one of the Kraut’s zombies. The idea was he would lead her to him, which he more or less did.’

  ‘More or less,’ the Soul Collector repeated, turning to me. ‘Whose side are you on here, Matt?’

  I held her gaze. ‘Nobody’s, least of all yours.’

  She laughed. It wasn’t a sound that boded well, either for me or anyone else in the barn. ‘Who’s your friend?’ She waved the pistol at Quincy. ‘And don’t pretend he’s a stranger. I saw him with you in Portland.’

  So she’d been on us from the beginning. I wondered how, but that wasn’t important. Quincy had started to speak for himself. He rattled off his name, rank and unit.

  ‘Very impressive,’ Sara said, glancing at the bearded man. ‘Your church got a policy about black people? And how about you, Heinz Rothmann?’ She turned to the Master. ‘Nazis view blacks as animals, don’t they?’

  Neither of them answered, which was a bad idea. The Soul Collector stepped toward Rothmann and stuck the muzzle of her Glock into his forehead.

  ‘All right,’ he said, his voice uneven. ‘Blacks are subhumans. What do you care?’

  She leaned toward him. ‘I’m a professional killer. I don’t have time for politics.’

  ‘This isn’t just politics, darlin’,’ Apollyon drawled. ‘You’re in the South now.’

  Quincy used the distraction to spring forward, his arms outstretched and clutching at Sara. Her eyes flicked round and she loosed off two shots. He collapsed with a crash and didn’t move again. I moved toward him, and then a rattle of automatic fire started from the side wall. Sara went down like a felled tree. I put my arms round my head.

  After the shooting stopped, I looked up cautiously. There was no sign of the bearded man or of Rothmann. I crawled over to Quincy and laid hands on him. His chest was a slick of crimson.

  ‘Leave him, Matt.’

  Sara was sitting on the floor, the pistol pointed at me. She didn’t seem to have been hit, but she was stretching her back and frowning. She got to her feet awkwardly.

  ‘Move,’ she said. ‘You’re coming with me.’ She went over to the woman she’d called Abaddon and pulled the rucksack off her.

  I glared at her, my hands wet with Quincy’s blood. ‘Fuck you, you murdering bitch.’

  She smiled weakly. ‘Good spirit, Matt. You’ll be needing that. Now move.’

  I followed her to the door and down the passage to the exit. I heard the roar of an engine, then a pickup careered out of the compound. Farther away, there was the sound of another vehicle.

  ‘Apollyon must have left a friend outside,’ Sara said, looking around. ‘Looks clear. Come on, we’ll take whatever we can.’

  We went toward the gate, where there were several vehicles. The first, a large SUV, had two flat tires. The second was a small sedan. Sara told me to drive. Neither of us spoke. I was still smarting from her casual execution of Quincy, the poor bastard. I’d liked him and could have done with him watching my back.

  After about a quarter of an hour on a narrow track through the dark forest, she stopped me at a clearing. There was a bulky SUV behind some bushes. This time, she got in the driver’s door, after guiding me to the other side.

  ‘Put out your hands,’ she ordered, raising the Glock.

  I did so with a display of reluctance, and she quickly tied my wrists together with high quality rope.

  ‘Why don’t you just kill me?’ I asked, finally finding my tongue.

  She smiled. ‘Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for that later. Right now, I’ve got a job to complete.’

  ‘What’s that? Putting a bullet in your competitor Apollyon’s head?’

  ‘That’s not a job, that’s pleasure.’ She was pressing the switches on what looked like a location monitor. ‘There we are.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘Wherever they go, we’ll be on them.’

  ‘You bugged him?’

  ‘More correctly, I bugged the vehicle that brought you here.

  ‘How did you know Apollyon would take it?’

  ‘I disabled as many of the others as I could. I didn’t know he was going to be here, but I always make contingency plans.’

  There was something weird going on that I couldn’t put my finger on. ‘Who did you think would use that vehicle?’

  She laughed. ‘Did the crazy ritual do something to your brain, Matt? Who do you think? Abaddon wasn’t the only assassin with a contract to execute Jack Thomson, aka Heinz Rothmann. I’ve got one, too.’

  I wondered if I’d stay alive long enough to see the fucker who’d destroyed my family get his come uppance.

  Sir Andrew Frogget was enjoying himself. Not only had his Washington lawyers warned the FBI off, but he had passed an extremely successful day at Routh Limited’s U.S. office. The morning was taken up with new business. The hedge funds with the closest links to the American political establishment all maintained pers
onnel in D.C., and most had shown interest in the portfolio of recent start-ups that he had brought. Already, he had commitments for almost sixty percent of the funding required. On his return to London, he would pass the rest over to the experts, but he always liked to break the back of the work himself; he had learned in the army that commanders must undertake more than their share of the spadework.

  That wasn’t all the army had taught him. He thought back to the Gulf War in 1991, remembering the desert road filled with burnt-out vehicles and charred bodies. It was then that he had realized not only the U.S.’s over whelming power, but the ruthlessness that came with it. He had engineered a transfer to Washington as military attaché and begun to build up the contacts he was still using. Many of them were involved in military operations, of course. The original directors of Routh, a collection of narrow-minded pencil pushers, had been dubious about the ethical side of such investments, but he had replaced them with people who shared his view that economic prosperity was rooted in superior firepower. The war to expel Saddam Hussein and its aftermath had illustrated the truth of that perfectly, even if the victors were less competent at rebuilding society than defeating a hostile regime.

  Sir Andrew looked at his watch. His lady wife would be expecting him to call, but he wasn’t going to do that. Annabel had become tiresome about his frequent foreign trips and wanted constant reassurance that all was well. He had other things on his mind, not least the progress he had made in his afternoon meetings. Even though Jack Thomson, the founder of Woodbridge Holdings, had disappeared after the massacre in the cathedral, Routh Limited had not given up on him. Some of the backers had expressed concern, but almost all were still on board, and he was convinced the others would come round. That was worth another glass of vintage Dom Pérignon.

  He had just poured it when the doorbell rang. One of his local friends had loaned him his apartment in Adams Morgan for the evening, asking no questions—which was just as well. The girl who appeared on the screen by the door looked even younger than her handler said she was. Frogget’s throat was dry, despite its recent lubrication by the champagne, and his heart was beating as it had done when he had led night raids into Iraq.