Steven Savile - Silver

Still, the clock was ticking on another day. Mabus had promised forty days and forty nights of terror, and nothing told Konstantin that had changed just because the Pope was dead. Now was the perfect time to increase the intensity of the attacks. So it didn’t matter if they thought he was guilty or not. If he had something that could help save innocent lives, even something as simple as a registration number, he was always going to share it, even if it meant damnmself. That was his sacrifice.

The woman came back alone the next time. She brought him a warm cup of black coffee. It was a trade, he knew. She gave him warmth and sustenance-he gave her another truth, quid pro quo. It was straight out of the good cop/bad cop handbook.

He didn’t complain. He warmed his hands on the cup, then sipped at it slowly.

“They found a body in the Moselle this morning.”

Konstantin looked up at her. “And you think I killed him as well?”

She smiled that smile again. “Difficult. The coroner puts time of death almost a full day after we took you into custody, so I think you’re safe on this one.”

“Then why tell me about it? I assume you have a reason?”

“I do. His name was Emery Seifert. Does that name mean anything to you?”

Konstantin shook his head. “Should it?”

“He was a member of the Swiss Guard. More pertinently, he was one of the guards on the stage when you killed the Pope.”

“I didn’t kill the Pope,” Konstantin said, reflexively.

She smiled at that. Again.

“Can you think why anyone would want to kill Seifert, Konstantin?”

Only one reason, Konstantin thought. He looked at the woman, trying to decide if she was deliberately trying to lead him into this line of reasoning. If she was, he couldn’t see what she stood to gain from it. “Because he saw what really happened on the stage,” Konstantin said, “or because he suspected.”

“Either way we have all of this video evidence, so it’s just one voice against the maddening crowd.”

“And yet here you are telling me all about it.”

“Maybe I want to believe you, Konstantin?”

“Maybe you do, maybe not. Either way won’t change the truth.”

“You’re a strange man. You don’t want legal representation. You don’t want to confess. You aren’t spouting any religious propaganda. You aren’t trying to convince us that you had to strike for Lucifer to rise again. In fact you seem disturbingly rational. Yet you know things you clearly shouldn’t know, such as the license plate of a diplomatic car that is registered in Berlin to the Israeli Ambassador’s personal staff.”

“Who? Who’s it registered to?”

She looked at him, surprised by the sudden intensity of his question. For a fraction of a moment the implacable calm of Konstantin Khavin came down and she saw the real man beneath. It was like seeing the wizard behind the curtain.

“Lieutenant General Akim Caspi of the Israel Defense Force.”

Konstantin closed his eyes. He had been that close.

“Caspi’s dead,” Konstantin told her.

“Did you kill him?”

He let out a slow breath, shaking his head. “No, the man in the car pretending to be him almost certainly did. Caspi died in June 2004.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t kill him,” she said reasonably. “One fact does not contradict the other.”

“Check my service record with Ogmios.”

“And again, you know we can’t. As far as we can ascertain this Ogmios is a figment of your imagination.”an›

“Do you believe that?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, Konstantin.”

“And yet here you are,” he said again, “telling me about a dead body in a river that could go some way to validating the truth of my story.”

“Or, you could have had one of your people kill the guard for that selfsame purpose.”

Konstantin nodded slowly. He couldn’t help it, he rather liked this woman. She thought about things. She didn’t leap to conclusions based upon what she could or could not see. He needed to find a way to get her to call the old man. He could give her all the truths she needed.

“You want me to give you names?”

She shrugged. “Rather depends whose names they are, doesn’t it? You could start by telling me who you were working with in Berlin, and who helped you in Koblenz.”

Konstantin slapped his forehead. He had thought for just a minute that she believed him, for what good it would have done him. She was just as blind as her partner.

“I work for Sir Charles Wyndham,” he said. That was all she needed really. One name. If she was good at her job, she would ignore official channels and go to the old man directly. Of course, he didn’t expect her to do that. Why would she? As she kept telling him, they had screeds of evidence against him. They could place him in Berlin at the time of the subway attack and on the stage with the silver dagger in his hand as the Pope died. They didn’t need anything else. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask,” she said.

“How long have I been in here?”

“Four days,” she said.

“They’ve taken the Pope back to Rome?”

She nodded. “It was on the news this morning. They are preparing Saint Paul’s for over six million people to make the pilgrimage to see Pope Peter lying in state.”

“Have there been any other attacks since the Pope? It’s been three days. Forty days and forty nights of fear. That’s what they promised.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Which rather supports the idea that with you stuck in here there’s no one out there to coordinate the attacks, doesn’t it?”

“Or it means that Orla got Mabus.”

She looked at him. She had obviously heard what he said but didn’t know either of the two names, and because she didn’t know them, that turned the simple sentence into something that made no sense to her.

He tried to think through the chain of events. They would have returned the Pope’s body to the Vatican. The Cardinal Camerlengo would have officially declared him dead, calling out his real name three times. It was all ceremony, but that was part of believing, holding to the old rituals even as the world turned. Then the Camerlengo would have shattered the Papal seal of Peter II and split the Ring of the Fisherman, so that no one else might use it in the dead man’s place to forge papal decrees. Then the Church would enter Sede Vacante, the Empty Seat. There were nine days of mourning between the death of the Pope and the conclave that would elect his successor. There were precedents for moving the conclave of the Cardinals forward in times when the Church and the faithful were at the greatest risk, but they would resist that at all costs. Moving the conclave forward would show the world they were frightened by Mabus and his terrors.

That meant there were five more days until the conclave would convene.

Five more days. And he was stuck in this interrogation room, helpless to do anything, while Mabus and Caspi and Devere moved into their endgame.

It disturbed him that there had been no more attacks since he had been taken. Terrorists needed to make good on their threats, otherwise the fear they instilled would be diluted. Cities would rally. Berlin and Rome would be stronger for their suffering, just like New York and London. There should have been something else, something more.

Five more days for the Disciples of Judas to strike the most decisive blow of all.

They had promised to shatter the world’s faith.

Killing one man would not do that.

He had no idea what would.

And then he realized what this was: the calm before the storm.

Everyone in the world would think this was it, that it couldn’t get any worse. They’d seen cities ruined from within and without, and then the Father of the Catholic Church struck down.