Chapter One Hundred Twenty-one

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One

The Iran-Kuwait Border

June 16, 6:30 a.m.

Charles LaRoque sat hunched in one corner of the limousine as it raced toward the border checkpoint between Iran and Kuwait. Forty miles and they would be out of the accursed country.

Across from him, Father Nicodemus appeared to be dozing.

LaRoque’s phone rang and he snatched it up, looked at the screen display, and punched the button.

“Where are you?” asked Vox.

“Nearly to the border. We’ll be out of the country in less than an hour.”

“Good. Things are going to hell here. Get out and lay low, and I’ll call you when the dust settles.”

“What about the bombs?”

Vox laughed. “You’ll know if they go boom.”

“Goddamn it, Hugo.”

“Look, Kuwait’s safe ground. Grigor isn’t targeting that. But once you get to the airport go somewhere really safe. Outside of the prevailing weather patterns. Fallout drifts, you dig?”

LaRoque glanced at Nicodemus, who was smiling in his sleep.

“How could so many things go wrong all at once?” asked LaRoque. “I thought you said it was all under control.”

“Yeah, well,” said Vox. “Shit happens.”

Vox was laughing as he disconnected, and LaRoque frowned. His father had trusted Vox, but his grandfather had not. Now LaRoque wondered which one truly knew the man.

“Father—?” he asked.

Nicodemus opened one eye. “What is it, my son?”

“That was Vox.”

“Yes,” said the priest, as if he had heard the conversation. Perhaps he had. He was sneaky like that.

“Were we wrong to trust him?”

“‘We’?” The priest smiled. “I wouldn’t say that we were wrong to trust him.”

LaRoque stared at him in puzzlement, confused by the inflection.

“I’ve always trusted Hugo. Ever since he was a boy.”

“What? But I … I thought … you said you didn’t know him before this.”

“Oh,” said Nicodemus. “Yes, that was a lie.”

“What?”

“I do that,” said the priest. “Lie, I mean.”

“What are you talking about?”

The priest gestured to LaRoque’s pocket. “Look at your mirror. Tell me what you see.”

Deeply confused, LaRoque removed the compact from his jacket and opened it. The top mirror showed his own troubled face, mouth turned down in a frown, brows knitted. Then he angled it to show the bottom image.

It was the priest’s face. It was not the first time LaRoque had seen the priest in his mirror, but there was something different about it. The face was much younger, less seamed and spotted. A healthy face that was nonetheless unhealthy. Diseased in a different way. The face was grinning—the merry, devious grin of a trickster.

“Sir Guy was a trusting fool, too,” said Nicodemus. “That’s why I loved him. You, however, are a disappointment even as a pawn. I’ll have to find some new toys.”