“Then buckle up, Joe,” said Bug, “because there’s one more thing that popped up. I added Verona to the general pattern search for this case and guess whose grandfather was born there?”

“Just tell me, Bug.”

“The family name is Verrecchia. But that’s not the name he uses now.”

“What’s the name?”

“Vox.”

“Wait—Hugo Vox’s family comes from the same town as Nicodemus?”

“More than the same town, Joe. Half of the men who adopted Nicodemus as their priest names were born as Verrecchias. Nicodemus and Vox are from the same family.”

Chapter Ninety-five

Chapter Ninety-Five

Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park

Tehran, Iran

June 16, 3:24 a.m.

Vox looked at his watch and smiled. Time to make the first of his calls.

He took several fast, panting breaths while he punched a speed dial. Charles LaRoque answered on the second ring.

“Jesus, kid, you got to stop them,” said Vox, putting panic and urgency into his voice in exactly the right amounts.

“Stop who?”

“The Tariqa, who the fuck do you think I’m talking about. That whole thing with Rasouli and the flash drive? That was a smokescreen. It was bullshit to get the authorities looking in the wrong direction. And all the time he’s working out a deal with your pet monsters to shove the Agreement right up your ass.”

“What are you talking about?” LaRoque’s voice was filled with genuine panic.

“I’m talking about doomsday, you stupid fuck. I warned you—begged you—not to tell Rasouli too much before he took the full oath. He’s not the Murshid and never had any intention of being that. You know what he wants? He wants to put a lot of Christian heads on poles. He doesn’t want to keep the Shadow War going. That’s small potatoes for him. He’s ramping up Iran to be a nuclear power. And he’s got a really goddamn good chance of uniting all of Islam against the West. You Red Order clowns think you’ve been keeping the church alive? Rasouli is going to blow Christianity off the planet with a mushroom cloud and remake the world in the name of Allah.”

“That’s ridiculous, Hugo,” said LaRoque with a forced laugh. “Even if Rasouli betrays us, he doesn’t have that kind of power. Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons yet.”

“Iran doesn’t,” Vox said, “but Rasouli does. He arranged to buy decommissioned devices from the black market. The same bombs you tried to buy before 9/11. He has them.”

“Impossible. We never told him about—”

“He has an inside track to the whole Red Order. You have no secrets left, Charlie. Rasouli has you by the balls.”

“No, you’re wrong. No one in the Order would dare—”