“Everest, ladies and gentlemen,” Dr. Merryweather said. “Unassailable by ground and nearly impregnable by air. Also, I might add, for the literalists among you, the closest place to heaven on earth. Lights, please.”
The image vanished and the light in the room went back to normal. I noticed my leather chair made that farting sound leather chairs make when you shift around in them. I glanced around to make sure nobody noticed and wondered why Alfred Kropp, the big trouble-making kid, was at this meeting cutting farts.
“Op Nine.” The director nodded at him and Op Nine stood up.
“The wearer of the Great Seal commands seventy-two outcasts of varying ranks,” Op Nine said. “Presidents, dukes, princes, counts, kings . . . but these are mortal designations, not their true titles, the hidden names spoken only once, and that by God. Each noble in his turn rules legions of lesser entities, some more, some less, according to his rank within the infernal hierarchy. For example, Paimon, the king to which the ring has fallen, commands two hundred legions.”
“How many legions total?” the agent named Jake asked.
“Two thousand sixty-one.”
Somebody whistled. Another asked, “And how many IAs per legion?”
“Six thousand.”
Dead silence. Then Jake whispered, “Dear God, that’s over fifteen million.”
“Sixteen million, five hundred sixty-six thousand, to be precise,” Op Nine said.
“That’s twice the population of New York.”
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Merryweather snapped. “Or seventy-four percent of the total forces under arms in the world. Or sixteen times the size of the U.S. military. Or the entire population of New Zealand, including women, children, and sheep. Continue, Nine.” He was pacing around the room, rubbing his forehead. When he passed behind me, I could smell Cheetos. Cheetos have a very unique smell, so I was sure it was Cheetos. The crunchy kind.
“Each Fallen Lord has various powers or abilities at the disposal of the conjurer, some more . . . disturbing than others,” Op Nine said. “Some have healing capabilities, some are builders—others are more destructive. There are givers of wisdom and slayers of reason. Those who control weather and those who are masters of the other earthly elements. Shape-changers, mind-readers, and mind-benders, all their myriad powers combine to serve the one who wears the Seal of Solomon.”
“Now in the possession of this King Paimon,” Merryweather added. “Who is Paimon?”
“One of the Firstborn of Heaven,” Op Nine answered. “Second only to Lucifer and the first to join the plot to overthrow heaven’s throne. In the literature Paimon rides upon a dromedary, though there are other accounts that put it astride a great winged beast of monstrous appearance. Two lesser kings usually attend Paimon, Bebal and Abalam, with a host of other infernal beings, twenty-five legions or more, and Paimon commands two hundred legions.
“Paimon is a teacher, granting secret knowledge to the holder of the Seal, bestowing all the hidden arts and mysteries of heaven and earth. Paimon controls wind and water and can bind men’s minds to the will of the conjurer. In short, of all the seventy-two lords, the Seal has fallen to perhaps the most powerful—and most terrible—of them all.”
“In other words,” the director said dryly, “the inmates have stolen the keys to the prison and for the first time since before Time, they answer to no one.”
The whiff of Cheetos reminded me I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a meal. My stomach commenced to growling and continued to growl for the rest of the briefing. I also didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, what month it was . . . although I was still pretty sure what year it was. What I needed, besides a meal, was something really ordinary, to remind me that I hadn’t fallen down some gruesome rabbit hole where the mad tea party included sixteen million guests, all of whom could make you tear your own eyeballs from your head.
“Let’s have SATCOM I-27S,” Merryweather said toward the ceiling. The lights dimmed again and sitting in the middle of the table was the gigantic bowl of glass in the desert. This image was a still shot, and Merryweather directed a laser pointer at a tiny black dot at the edge of the shiny surface.
“This, we believe, is the Hyena, minutes after the Seal was lost. This”—and he moved the tiny red dot to another speck in the scene—“is the altar. Enhance to the third, please.” The image grew, distorting slightly as it did, and now you could see the outline of the altar, though the edges were fuzzy. “The Vessel is gone. We assumed”—and here he cast a baleful eye in Op Nine’s direction—“that the IAs had absconded with the Lesser Seal as well. Now it appears they did not. The key operational assumption we will make henceforth is that the Hyena took the Vessel in the confusion after the ring was lost.”
“Why?” a lady agent named Sandy asked.
“Why what?”
“Why would Mike take the Vessel?”
“For protection, first,” Op Nine said. “He has a bargaining chip, should they find him before we do. He may also approach us to broker a deal.”
“I don’t understand,” Agent Jake said. “Why do they need the Vessel? We can’t put them back in it without the ring.”
“It is not a question of what they need,” Op Nine said. “Without the Vessel, there will always be the risk, however small, that somehow they might be returned to it. Having the prison in their hands ensures their freedom from it.”
“Their freedom to do what?” the agent named Greg asked.
“I don’t know,” Op Nine answered.
“Wait a minute, aren’t you the demonologist here? If you don’t know—”
“We do not need to know what they will do with their freedom,” Abby interrupted. “All we need to know is what they will do if they do not obtain the Vessel.”
She paused. Jake blew out his cheeks. Somebody coughed.
Op Nine was staring at the tabletop. Finally, Sandy blurted out, “Okay, I’ll bite. What will they do?”
Abby glanced over at me. So did Merryweather. I looked away. I didn’t want to tell them what I saw in Carl’s empty eye sockets. I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want to think about it.
Op Nine spoke up. “Understand their hatred is beyond human comprehension. They abhor the Creator and so also the creation. Whatever brings joy, whatever brings peace, whatever redeems the dark deed or relieves the terrors of the night are their enemies. I do not know for certain what they intend to do, but I suspect it goes beyond our own pitiful comprehension of evil, our childlike notions of heaven’s opposite. We must assume their goal has not changed since the beginning of time. What will they do? They will consume us.”