Steven Savile - Silver

Given the extent of the dossier Grace had assembled on Grey Metzger, Lethe figured he was what Six liked to call a “person of interest.” That was a euphemism for prime suspect for something or other. In this case Lethe had no idea what for, but the answer was almost certainly buried within the hundreds of pages of words and numbers he’d just unlocked. He’d find it. It was what he did. The others might flex their muscles and work up a sweat playing soldiers, but what happened in this little room beneath Nonesuch was every bit as vital as all of the running about and fighting that went on up there in the “real world.”

Judging by the creation dates of the various files, Grace had been working Metzger for the best part of three years.

Lethe sat back in his chair, processing what, exactly, that little nugget of information meant in terms of the big picture. He thought of life as a huge, multi-million-piece mosaic, each tile offering an action, a reaction, an interaction, a person, a place, an event, and it wasn’t until all of the tiles were laid down that this thing called life began to make sense. He figured that the whole life flashing before your eyes at the end really just meant for once you could see the entire mosaic instead of just those few tiles closest to you.

That Grace Weller had been following Metzger for three years meant one thing in terms of the big picture-for three years Metzger had been doing something worth watching.

Lethe browsed quickly through the files, scanning for key words that caught his eye. They were surveillance reports on Grey Metzger, logging his movements for almost two and a half years. There were hundreds of low-res and high-res photos taken in smoky bars, lecture halls, beside national monuments, at digs, in cafes and restaurants, shaking hands, kissing, hugging. What he wasn’t doing was trading any suspiciously wrapped packages or meeting men with briefcases on park benches while the fog set in. It was a life in pictures. Metzger’s life, to be precise. It looked decidedly normal.

There was a comprehensive journal that covered everything from contact lists, emails, phone numbers, and logs of phone calls in and out. Grace had shadowed his life with a thoroughness that bordered on the obsessive.

And then, seven months ago they made contact.

It was all there in her report.

She had seduced Metzger, ingratiating herself into his world.

They had become lovers.

There was something incredibly cold about the way she reported it all, like there was no emotion in any of it. Getting close to Metzger was a job, and she was determined to do it to the best of her ability. Lethe wondered what it would be like to live your life that way, disassociated from even the most intimate of things, reducing everything to assignments and lies.

Looking at the paperwork, she had moved in with Metzger three months ago-four months after first contact-but her surveillance hadn’t stopped. If anything it had become even more detailed. Midway through the autumn she had noted her fears that Metzger was involved with someone she called Mabus.

There was something familiar about the name. Lethe stared at the screen. “Mabus,” he said, tasting the sound of it on his tongue. He’d heard it before. He didn’t know where, but he’d definitely heard it before. He said it again and a third time as if it might be a charm. It was. He hadn’t heard the name before, he’d seen it. And he knew exactly where.

Mabus was the name Nostradamus had given the third Antichrist. Napoleon, Hitler and finally Mabus. He switched screens and ran a search for Mabus, cross-referencing it against Nostradamus. The results were pretty much what he had expected, page after page of theories, conspiracy and crackpot, about the rise of the Antichrist, the Mabus Code, the Mabus comet and so much other stuff and nonsense.

Lethe read the original quatrain, Century 2, Quatrain 62:

Mabus will soon die, then will come

A horrible undoing of people and animals

At once one will see vengeance, one hundred powers, thirst,

Famine, when the comet will pass.

It wasn’t exactly damning stuff-comets, the undoing of animals, powers thirsting. It was all pretty vague.

Most of the articles he found turned Mabus around and called the damned man Sudam, and much as the Hister of Nostradamus’ earlier quatrains was reinterpreted to mean Hitler and Napaulon Roy became Napoleon Bonaparte, they turned Sudam into Saddam. It was a small step, then, to declaring the execution of Hussein the beginning of the end that Nostradamus had foreseen.

He came across another quatrain, Century 8, Quatrain 77:

The anti-christ very soon annihilates the three,

twenty seven years his war will last,

The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled;

with blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth.

Reading through the stuff it was fairly obvious that all of the so-called prophecies were vague enough that absolutely any and every meaning could be shoe-horned into them neatly enough if you were determined to impress a certain interpretation. A twenty-seven-year war of vengeance for the death of Saddam Hussein? Hussein transformed into the martyr for the Arabic world? Instead of ensuring peace, could cutting the head off that particular snake usher in the End of Days? There were enough people out there that seemed to think so. They pointed at the escalating nature of the terror attacks that had plagued the West following his execution in the last days of 2006, but that didn’t mean they were right. Hell, it didn’t mean they were anything other than kids in their back bedrooms with a few books and a crush on Armageddon. That was the joy of the Internet- it gave everyone a voice even if they had nothing to say.

Still, the very notion sent a chill running down the ladder of Jude Lethe’s spine.

For the next hour he immersed himself in Grace Weller’s world. From what he could gather from her reports, this particular Mabus was-at the time of writing pheeast-very much alive and well, a fact which jarred with the Hussein theory.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this went back to Masada and whatever Grey Metzger and the others had found there. But what tied the archeological dig at the home of the Sicarii assassins, the herald of the Antichrist and thirteen suicides together? One thing was for sure, whatever it was, Grace Weller believed Metzger was up to his neck in it. She’d been putting the case against him together for three years. That meant this thing had been going on even longer. All the way back to ’04 and the dig at Masada, perhaps? He needed to know more about the woman and what she was working on, and that meant using the ghost network to dig through Six’s files. But first he needed a smoke to clear his head. It was going to be a long night.

Lethe printed out everything onto a hardcopy for the old man. He’d want to see it. Lethe couldn’t shake the feeling that he was staring at three of four pieces of the mosaic instead of seeing the picture in all of its glory. Maybe the old man would be better placed.

He put the Bluetooth earpiece back in place and called up to Sir Charles. Max answered the phone on the second ring. “This is not a good time, Mister Lethe,” the butler said without missing a beat. “Sir Charles is taking his early evening constitutional.”

“Tell the old man I need to see him. We’re talking a shit-and-fan moment.”

“You do have such a colorful way with words, young sir.”

“Just tell the old man that MI6 has had one of our suicides under surveillance for three years.”

“And where there is one, there are likely to be others. I assume that is the gist of this message?” Max said, filling in the blanks.

“Add the fact that Koni had some trouble in Berlin, that that trouble was collected in a diplomatic car, and I’d say things are just starting to get interesting.”