“Come on,” Lancaster commanded. “Time’s a-wasting. We got things to do.”
As the retired general led the way out of the interrogation room, Key told Nichols how the last name of legendary movie tough guy Humphrey Bogart came to be known as a term for holding on to something too long. Even afterward she still wasn’t sure, but Daniels promised to show her The Maltese Falcon before turning to Key with his own inquiry.
“Okay Joe, if you’re in a question-answering mood, finally, just tell me one thing. What does Cerberus mean anyway?”
Key laughed, truly enjoying the moment because he was certain it would be the last time he honestly laughed for quite a while. “I’ll tell you on the way back to HQ, Morty,” he promised.
Chapter 4
“Cerberus was, and I guess still is, the multi-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld,” Key told Daniels as they stepped off just one of Lancaster’s private jets. In this case, a Gulfstream G650.
“To keep angels from invading?” Daniels asked with feigned innocence.
“No,” Key answered with feigned patience. “That’s Judeo-Christian beliefs. This was Greek mythology.”
“Oh. And this watchdog did what?”
“Kept the dead from getting out.”
“So it is hell,” Daniels stubbornly replied.
“Not really, but that’s all beside the point.”
“So, we’re in league with the devil?” Daniels continued, glancing back to see if Lancaster had left the cockpit yet.
Key was unfazed. “Remember what the devil does for a living, Morty.”
“Tempt humans to do evil?” Nichols chimed in, bringing up the rear.
Key looked back at her knowingly. “Yes, maybe, but then punishes them in hellfire forever.”
“Hey,” Nichols realized, “that’s right.”
The trio did not bother looking for a limo to take them to Cerberus HQ. They had landed on Cerberus’s private runway, with their headquarters being no farther than a regulation airport terminal.
It, and they, were in Tashkurgan, Kashgar, Xinjiang, China—on the borders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan. That was why Lancaster had chosen it. Long situated on a caravan route for the historical Silk Road, it was a market town for sheep, and therefore wool. And all went well until a disastrous decision by the founding fathers to construct one of China’s burgeoning “fake” cities—exacting replicas of romantic world capitals—as a tourist and real estate investor attraction.
But just like all the others dotted throughout China, the “copycat countries ”—which included “duplitecture” facades of Venice, Paris, London, and even Manhattan—served as neither, and remained eerily empty. Until, in this case, Charles Lancaster appeared and made the Tashkurgan town fathers an offer they didn’t refuse.
So Key led his hunters into a scaled-down replica of the Palace of Versailles, tucked between mountain ranges, sheepherders, and carpet weavers. They stepped into the famed Hall of Mirrors, which looked to have the same walls, floors, and design as the original, but without the statuary, furniture, chandeliers, and decorations. But it was far from empty. The tools of Cerberus’s trade were everywhere.
Daniels scowled, having still not gotten used to the incongruity of the new organization, or its new headquarters. “Nah,” he decided. “I think we’re the devil’s Whac-A-Mole. The monsters pop their heads up and we knock ’em down again. Right?”
Key smiled. “Okay, okay,” he surrendered. “But remember, we believe what Logan-types can’t or won’t.”
“Won’t?” Nichols echoed, coming up on Key’s other side.
He nodded to her, appreciating her technique of gleaning more information. “At least to anyone else,” he told her. “If he does, he might have to admit, at least to himself, that there’s more to life than just selfish little him and his power-money games—games which humans invented, by the way, to distract themselves.”
“Oh, I hate it when you get all hippy-dippy touchy-feely,” Daniels moaned.
Key immediately responded with a knowing grin. “Uh huh. But you love it when second louies do, don’t you?”
Daniels reacted to the Strenkofski reference as if Key had cut him to the quick. “Geez, Joe,” he whined, “you really know how to hurt a guy, don’t you?” He elbowed Nichols. “C’mon, Ter, I’ll show you my Maltese Falcon if you show me yours.”
Nichols shook her head like a confused puppy shaking off rainfall. “We’re seeing Star Wars?”
“Maltese Falcon, not Millennium Falcon!’ Daniels exclaimed. “Bogart, remember?”
Nichols sniffed. “I’d rather train.” She looked at Key. “Gotta learn how to fight smart, right?”
“And effective,” Daniels agreed. “Then come on, squirt, there’s room for both Falcons and fighting.” Especially when the gym and armory were set up in this mock Versailles’s version of the Galerie des Batailles.
“Have fun, kids,” Key said, heading west. But before they were completely out of earshot, Key remembered something. “Morty!” he called, waiting for the echo to reach Daniels’s ears. “You still in touch with Lailani?”
At the mention of the Filipino escort Daniels had taken advantage of in Oman, his eyes narrowed but widened again when he remembered she had repaid the favor by saving his life. “Yeah, maybe,” he admitted. “Why?”
“I want to talk to her about something.”
“Okay. Like what?”
Key was willing to say, but more pressing issues prevented him from going into detail right then. “Let’s just say it’s about some hits and myths.”
“Okay,” Daniels huffed. “Be cryptic. I’ll set up a chat. Say when.”
“ASAP,” Kay replied. “Thanks.”
With that, Key trudged toward the Chateau Neuf section. On the way, he gave thanks that Tashkurgan hadn’t enough money to build the entire palace, or he’d be walking all day. Even so, it was a bit of a hike until he stepped into a cavernous warehouse of fake red brick and fake white stone, with a fake black tile roof. Originally the space was to house the king’s hunting lodge, but now it was home to “The Hispanic Mechanic’s Workshop”—wholly brought in from the Thumrait Air Force Base, only with even more improvements.
“Speedy,” Key called without affectation, using the nickname of Manuel Gonzales, the most remarkable engineer, inventor, and all around synthesizer of stuff he had ever met. Just as he had when first stepping into the original workshop, Key marveled at the constructions either in process or completed around him. The injection of Lancaster cash had done even more wonders to the man’s practical imagination. Key wouldn’t have been surprised to see both the Maltese and the Millennium Falcon come to life in there.
“Joe,” he heard, then spotted Gonzales coming around the tail end of the F. B. Law, a cutting-edge helicopter he had fashioned back in the Middle East. With him, as always, was his assistant, Faisal Safar—one of Cerberus’s first agents and a man who both recruited and saved their asses multiple times.
As the Hispanic-American and Arab-American approached, Key held his phone out to them. “The photo app has multiple pictures of both a wizened naked guy and the child corpse we collected. I’d like to know who they both are.”
Gonzales didn’t ask how soon. Unlike Daniels, he already knew everything was needed right now. Instead he took a quick look, and whistled.
“The