Still, he didn’t move, enjoying every last bit of steam and blistering heat. He stretched kinks and rubbed knots. He’d had an intense workout and now paid the price. After being bruised and battered, he should have used more restraint. He’d just had the stitches out of his hand two days ago.
With a final rattle, the water quickly turned cool. Gray turned the faucet off, reached for a towel, and dried himself in the steamy warmth.
The brief cold spray took him back to the storm on Bardsey Island. Earlier today he had talked to Father Rye on the phone, to make sure Rufus was settling in as a church dog. Gray had also called to make certain Owen Bryce got the wired money to cover any repairs to the ferry they’d stolen.
Life was settling back to normal on Bardsey after a hard series of storms.
On the phone, Gray also questioned Father Rye about dark queens and Black Madonnas. The good father was certainly a font of knowledge. Gray suspected this month’s phone bill would be sky-high. Still, he had learned something interesting, that some historians believed the Black Madonna might have its roots in the worship of the goddess Isis, the queen mother of Egypt.
So there again was that Egyptian connection.
But after the explosion beneath the cloister, all further evidence had been destroyed: the glass caskets, the bodies, even Malachy’s lost book of prophecies.
All gone.
And probably just as well. The future was best left unknown.
But Malachy’s prophecies of the popes ended with a bit of a foggy mystery. According to Rachel’s uncle, Malachy had numbered all the popes on his list, with the exception of the very last one, Petrus Romanus, the one who would see the end of the world. This last apocalyptic pope had been assigned no number.
“This suggests to some scholars,” Vigor had explained from his hospital bed, “that perhaps an unknown number of popes remain unnamed between the current pope and the last. And that the world might go on for a little bit longer.”
Gray certainly hoped so.
Finally buffed dry, he wrapped a towel around his waist and headed into the bedroom. He discovered he wasn’t alone.
“I thought you were leaving,” Gray said.
She lay tangled in the sheets, one long leg bared to the hip. She stretched like a lithe lioness waking, one arm over her head, exposing a hint of breast. As she lowered her arm, she lifted the bedsheet. Her body still lay hidden in folds and shadows—but the invitation was plain.
“Again?” he asked.
An eyebrow tipped higher, followed by a shadow of a smile.
Gray sighed, undid his towel, and tossed it aside.
A man’s work was never done.
Epilogue
October 23, 11:55 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
Painter headed down the last flight of stairs to the nethermost region of Sigma Command. It was only a few minutes before midnight, an inauspicious moment to be visiting a morgue.
But the package had arrived only an hour ago. The work had to be done swiftly. Afterward, all evidence would be destroyed, cremated on site. He reached the morgue.
Sigma’s head pathologist, Dr. Malcolm Reynolds, was waiting and led him inside. “I have the body ready.”
Painter followed the pathologist to the neighboring room. The smell struck him first: overcooked meat gone bad. A figure lay under a sheet on the table. Wheeled next to it was a coffin. The casket’s diplomatic seal had been sliced open by Dr. Reynolds.
It had taken Painter a huge effort to get the body released in secret from France and delivered here with false papers.
“It’s not pretty,” Malcolm warned. “The body sat in that makeshift oven for several hours before someone thought to move it.”
Painter was not squeamish—at least not much. He pulled back the sheet and exposed Dr. Wallace Boyle’s corpse. The man’s face was bloated, blackened on one side, a purplish red on the other. Painter imagined the charbroiled side had been facedown on the brick floor of the subterranean chamber. He remembered Gray’s description of the incendiary charge and how it had baked the stones.
“Help me roll him on his stomach,” Painter said.
Together, they got Wallace over on his belly.
“I’ll need something to shave him.”
Malcolm disappeared.
As Painter waited, he stared down at the gaunt corpse. Wallace had claimed to be a member of Echelon, and according to Seichan, that name was rumored to denote the Guild’s true leaders. She had no other information, except for a darker rumor, a story she’d only heard once.
Malcolm returned with an electric clipper and a disposable razor. Working quickly, Painter used the clipper to remove the hair from the back of Wallace’s head, then shaved it smooth.
As he dragged the razor, he proved the rumor was true.
A small tattoo, about the size of Painter’s thumbnail, had been inked at the back of the skull. It depicted the tools of a mason: drafting compasses straddling an L-square.
The symbol represented Freemasonry, a worldwide fraternal organization. But the image in the center of the symbol was wrong. The square and the compass usually framed the letter G, standing for God or Geometry.
But sometimes it stood for Guild.
Painter knew Seichan’s terrorist organization had no real name, at least not spoken below the level of its leaders. Was this symbol and its connection to the Freemasons the source of the more commonly used name?
Painter studied the tattoo. In the middle of the symbol were inked a sickle moon and a star. He had never seen anything like it. Whoever these people were, they weren’t Freemasons.
With the symbol exposed, Painter grew more edgy. He had found what he needed.
“Burn the body,” he ordered Malcolm. “Down to ash.”
Painter didn’t want anyone to know what he’d learned. Much remained unknown about Seichan’s former masters. But he had two pieces to the larger puzzle.
The name Echelon…and the strange symbol.
For now, that would do.
But it wasn’t over—not for either side.
Malcolm asked him a question as he left. “What does it mean?”
Painter answered, knowing it to be true, “A war is coming.”