“General Serling is being run ragged by the clowns on Capitol Hill. About you he’s still clueless. And as for the report your surgeon was required to file, he sent it off to Serling’s office, but somehow during the journey from here to there it disappeared. No one’s the wiser about you being shot.”

“I’m impressed.” St. Vincent nodded. “You’ve taken care of everything.”

“That’s right,” Cutler said with an ill-concealed smirk. “Every fucking thing.”

*   *   *

Preach, on his sat phone, was listening to one of his Iraqi Kurdish contacts—a tribal leader with both schooling and savvy. The separate Islamic caliphate within Iraq and Syria that IS had declared last year was making faster headway than even the Alchemists had anticipated, carving its way through the chaos of both countries with horrific cunning and cruelty. This was a branch of the future Crow had not seen, one that must be dealt with in the most robust and expeditious manner. The delicate balance Preach was aiming for—to keep both sides fighting and killing each other in a bitter war of attrition—was being threatened. He needed the human fighting machines in the field faster than he had expected.

“The timetable will be accelerated,” Preach said, speaking perfect Sorani, the dialect of the Iraqi Kurds. “You have my word. And my word is law.”

Disconnecting, Preach took up his mobile and dialed a number in Washington, D.C. For several moments, he spoke to the man on the other end in low tones.

It was time for him to insert himself more directly in the Affairs of the Alchemists.

*   *   *

The moment Cutler left, St. Vincent picked up his mobile. His forefinger stabbed out, pressing the speed dial numeral.

“Tell me,” Jonah Dickerson, his SIC, said in his ear.

“How do you give a priest a vasectomy?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. How do you give a priest a vasectomy?”

“No idea,” Dickerson said in a voice that seemed to have shrunk in on itself.

“Kick a choirboy in the ass.”

St. Vincent laughed, but he was the only one doing so. No wonder; it was a cruel laugh, filled with venom.

“What we know: we’ve lost comm with the villa, and Whitman and his team are not in Lebanon. They are at the villa and we need to make sure they stay there—permanently.”

“Why don’t you ask Cutler to send in another team? Whitman’s his guy.”

“Because I do the fucking thinking around here!” St. Vincent passed a hand across his eyes. He was still smarting from his conversation with that shit, Cutler. “Our immediate concern is Dante. It’s too late to notify him to abort. He’s too close to Seiran’s compound. He’s maintaining our strict radio silence protocol.”

“If Whitman gets his hands on Dante—”