The Crimson Code

“Wait, Devon.”

The butler paused and straightened to attention. “Monsieur?”

“Have you seen the news about the public attacking mosques? And protesting?”

“Yes, sir.”

Soult turned to look the man in the eye. “What do you think of it?”

“I can understand the anger, monsieur, but the actions accomplish nothing of purpose.”

Soult nodded slowly, and dipped the mouth end of his cigar in the brandy for a moment. “What would be your idea of a proper response?”

Devon’s eyes widened only a fraction, and only momentarily, before he resumed his customarily formal demeanor. “I’m quite sure I don’t know, sir. I am merely a butler.”

Soult chuckled. “And a diplomatic one at that. Don’t you feel the least urge to strike back, to seek vengeance, no, justice, for these atrocities?”

Devon hesitated. “What I feel, sir, is not necessarily a wise response. Yes, I feel loathing for persons who could commit such crimes. But does that give me the right to take the law into my own hands?”

With that, before he could be questioned any further, Devon and his salver disappeared from the library.

Soult studied the curl of smoke rising from his cigar, then glanced at the news again. Devon would bear watching, he decided. Then, a moment later, he changed his mind. Devon had spoken as a rational, mature man who had been raised in a culture of law. And everything that he himself was about to do would be under the color of law. And if it were so, then Devon should have no reason to object, not that Soult had any intention of letting his butler in on his secrets. Still, he knew better than to presume that a butler—even one as impeccably trained as Devon—would be oblivious to what happened around him.

Reaching for the phone, he placed a call. When his comrade answered, Soult spoke in flawless Spanish. “I have the position, but I must attend to administrative details before I can issue a contract. However, you may begin your recruiting efforts immediately.”

He hung up and sat back in his chair. Everything was going as it should. Another smile creased his face. Every revolution required an army, and soon he would have his. What’s more, the very government he intended to seize would be paying for that army. The effortless irony of his plans gave him a heady feeling of power, almost a rush. Better than Napoleon brandy and Cuban cigars.

But even as he was feeling smugly content, the news broke away from its coverage of random acts of malice to something far more deadly.

“Today in Vienna,” the reporter said, “special agents of the EU and the United States carried out a joint strike on a terrorist cell believed to have been involved in Black Christmas….”

Soult sat forward quickly, brandy forgotten, and turned up the volume. Pictures of bodies being carried out flashed across the screen, along with exterior shots of a nondescript concrete apartment house of a type that had become common after the war, a type Soult felt was a blight on the beauty of Europe.

Bodies. Nine terrorists killed in a fierce gun battle. And then the face of the American president, Harrison Rice. “This is only the beginning,” the president said. “We will hunt down these terrorists to the last man. In cooperation with our European allies, we will not allow these atrocities to go unavenged. Thank you.”

Soult sat back slowly. For the first time that day, he sensed something at work that was beyond his knowledge. Beyond his control.

Every bit of triumph he had been feeling vanished like a puff of smoke from the end of his cigar.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Ahmed Ahsami watched the television, absolutely livid. His men had gone in there to take out those terrorists, but the situation had been snatched away. Among the nine “terrorists” whose pictures were now being broadcast to the world was Yawi. His sister’s son.

He slammed his hand down on his desk over and over, grief and anger warring on a scale that was beyond speech, beyond description. At that moment he could have blasted the entire world into oblivion.

Someone was using him. Someone he thought was an ally. Nothing else could possibly explain this. The information had come to him about the location of the terrorists, but it had apparently gone to someone else, as well. How else could Austrian and American commandos have arrived just minutes after the survivors on his team had withdrawn? That could not have happened by coincidence.

His nephew and Isa had been killed, offered up like sacrificial lambs, and were now being labeled as part of the terrorist cell. And the American president was standing smugly before a bank of microphones, his Alabama drawl and artificially confident smile reminiscent of nothing so much as a plantation owner swearing that rebelling slaves would be hunted down.