David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

She nodded. “Exactly. These guys are just doing what lunatics have done forever. Rewriting history the way it suits them. Revelation was written at a time when Christianity was being torn apart by oppression from Domitian or whoever. They really did face their own particular apocalypse, but it wasn’t a supernatural one. It was real and it came from Rome. Because the Christians were under such threat, they had to refer to it in code. Later, people just started to like the code because it’s a code. When the Church split off into factions the same message that was supposed to encourage solidarity among Christians was used to make the case against Catholicism. That the pope’s just the new Roman emperor, the Antichrist.”

More blind alleys, more complexity. “So Kaspar’s a religious fanatic?”

“I doubt it.” There was no stopping her until this particular thread was through. “This is someone playing a game. You need code names for projects like this. So they compete to come up with the craziest ones. It started all those years ago when the Babylon Sisters got together. Maybe Kaspar thought of all this terminology. Maybe he comes from someplace out in the boondocks where this kind of stuff isn’t uncommon. It was appropriate on another front too. Rome was where they all met to begin the mission. Here’s another chunk of Revelation. Same chapter. ”And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.“ You see?”

“Sort of,” he lied.

“It’s a joke within a joke. They have to use fake names and IDs. It’s that kind of job. Why not have some fun along the way? These guys were just hamming it up among each other. Scarlet Beast. Babylon Sisters. Throw in some backwoods fundamentalism, mix it in with a bunch of old jazz-rockers called Steely Dan…”

“Who?” He was wondering how much longer his head could contain all this.

“A band. A very good one, actually. I remember my dad playing their records when his buddies came around and the beer started to flow. Just bear with me, Nic. These people were having fun, playing spooks, everything NTK, just like he says.”

“NTK?”

“ ”Need to know.“ They’re the rules you play by when stuff is so secret you don’t tell anyone anything-your real name even-unless you absolutely have to. It’s all a game and my dad used to love games. He was always coming up with some crazy ideas.”

She’d been racing ahead until that memory, which made a little of the brightness go out of her eyes.

“At least, he was back then. They were just playing with words. He did it all the time. These guys are still doing it. Remember what your boss asked Leapman? How did we know he’d come to Rome? Remember his answer?”

Costa did. The FBI man flatly refused to deal with the question.

“I remember.” He considered what he’d seen on the screen. “He couldn’t say it, could he?”

“Kaspar came to Rome because he got invited.”

Costa read the new screen out loud. “ ”Let’s get together again back in the old places, folks. Reunion time for the class of “91. Just one spare place at the table. You coming or not?” Which translates to “Come to Rome, we’re waiting for you.” “

Emily punched his arm lightly. “See! You can get there.”

“Thanks.”

There was more to the argument, though, and he was surprised she hadn’t seen it.

“This all begs a big question.”

She gazed at him, amused, bright and attractive again. “I thought it begged several, actually. A couple of dozen, in fact, right off the top of my head.”

Suddenly there was surprise on her face, as if she’d seen something unexpected.

“Nic. For a moment there you stopped staring at me as if I’m the cleverest kid in the class. I don’t like that. I am the cleverest kid in the class. Aren’t I?”

“Of course you are, Little Em.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said coldly, drawing back from him. “Don’t ever call me that.”

“I’m sorry. It was stupid of me.”

“Yes…” She was almost pouting now. She was young and old in the same body. Costa wanted to laugh. More than that, though, he wanted to kiss her.

Instead, he reached over and messed with the computer.

“What are you doing?” she asked nervously.

“Looking for something. Here: ”Honor his memory.“ And here. In the original memo: ”The Scarlet Beast was a generous Beast.“ ”

She blinked. “So?”

“You’re right about the place, Emily. I don’t doubt it. But listen to the words. It’s more than that.”

He read the two sentences aloud again. She listened carefully. Costa watched her lively intelligent eyes, saw them glitter when she understood.

“Christ,” she murmured. “How could I have been that stupid?”

“It’s a riddle. It’s meant to be obscure. Besides, there’s no saying my interpretation’s the right one.”

She waved away his doubts. “Of course it is. I was just reading into it what I wanted to see. This is a place and a person, isn’t it? The Scarlet Beast’s the paymaster. He’s the man even Kaspar was ultimately beholden to.”

“I think so.”

“Is he the bad guy, then?” she asked. “Does Kaspar blame him for this? He thinks he was betrayed somehow?”

Costa threw up his hands in desperation. “It’s just guesswork.”

“Then who the hell was he? If it wasn’t Kaspar?”

Costa searched for the memo on the computer, found the sentence, highlighted it with the cursor.

“It’s just a guess. That’s all.”

They looked at the sentence from the document: Let it be known that I, William F. Kaspar, the Lizard King, the Holy Owl, Grand Master of the Universe, etcetera, etcetera, shall be attending the court of the Scarlet Beast presently .

She screwed up her face in bewilderment. “Someone in Rome? Does that make sense?”

“What was that you said about ”need to know“?”

“OK. OK. Point taken. Distance does makes sense. So maybe even Bill Kaspar doesn’t know who’s really in charge. Maybe he’s guessing right now…”

Emily was thinking hard. She looked at him with scared eyes. They both knew where this was going.

“Or maybe he does,” Costa finished quietly. He scrolled through some of the sentences in the original memo, pointing them out.

The Scarlet Beast-where do they get these names, Danboy? This one of yours or what?… We possess a God-given duty to deliver and it is a mighty relief to old Bill K this faceless bastard has volunteered you already. Though I cannot help but wonder, dear friend, whether you didn’t understand that all along. NTK, huh ?

“No, no, no, no, no!” she said with conviction. “My dad was lots of things but he wasn’t a traitor. That just isn’t a possibility.”

“Kaspar could be wrong.” Costa suggested it without much enthusiasm.

“So what are you saying?” she asked brusquely. “Kaspar thought my dad was taking part in his own escapade? Funding it and playing along, too?”

“Can you rule that out?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Emily was going to stick up for her old man, but not in face of the facts. “Theoretically I guess so. The way these operations were funded was pretty secretive. Someone just dropped a bag of money out of nowhere and let the team get on with it. You had to have someone running finance, logistics. Dad was big time here in Rome. But…”

She leaned back on the sofa and, for a full minute, covered her face with her hands. When she took her fingers away from her cheeks there were tearstains there and naked fury in her eyes.

“I still don’t get it. I’m awful at this crap. I can’t believe my dad was too, and that’s not just family talking. He was so damned organized, Nic. If you knew him you’d know he couldn’t just screw it all up in the desert, get away with his own hide, then leave that poor bastard to go crazy in some Iraqi cell putting one and one together all the time over the years, working out who to blame. My father was a good man. He wouldn’t…”