“Quit playing with him and get this over with,” Victor said.
The Hoyl stepped forward and shook the chain. More droplets of Gunnar’s blood pattered on the ground. He looked down at Mason’s Sigma in his hand, turned it over, and shook his head disapprovingly.
“A primitive weapon. Ugly and loud. Point and squeeze. Bang! Someone’s dead. It’s too easy. Your enemies are here one second, gone the next. They simply cease to exist.”
“Maybe I’m missing something, but I was under the impression that was the whole point,” Mason said.
“Have you used this archaic instrument recently?”
“My custom Sigma? Yeah. I used it to make several of your friends ‘simply cease to exist.’”
“Friends? Friends are a liability, Special Agent Mason. I believe your current predicament proves as much. I have no doubt that had you elected to let Mr. Backstrom fall, you could have killed me and at least two of the others. Maybe all of us. Am I mistaken?”
Mason didn’t reply. The Hoyl was trying to get inside his head, to keep him off balance, to prevent him from realizing that he still had a modicum of control over the situation. If his nemesis wanted him dead, he would have killed Mason the moment he hesitated to shoot. There was something the Hoyl needed from him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what.
“What about the lovely Ms. Vigil? Pray tell. Even when you realized that the building was about to turn to flames around you, did you attempt to save her? Or was it already too late? Was it the sound of the blank firing that drew you to her bleeding corpse? Did you risk your own life in a futile attempt to save a woman you barely knew?”
Mason kept his expression studiously neutral. It might not have been much of one, but he’d gained a slight advantage.
“You’re right,” Mason said. “I didn’t know her nearly as well as you did. I’ll bet you think about her every time you look at that Freddy Krueger face of yours in the mirror.”
The smile in the Hoyl’s eyes never faltered.
“My only regret is that I didn’t have the opportunity to spend her final moments with her.”
“I’d be happy to give you the chance to see her again.”
“You had that chance and you didn’t take it. That particular threat rings hollow now.”
“Don’t think for a second that you’re leaving here alive. You signed your death warrant when you murdered my wife.”
“The lovely Mrs. Angela Thornton Mason? Did I kill her or was I merely the instrument of her demise? Like this gun.” He waved Mason’s Sigma in front of him as a reminder. “Do you blame the weapon for a person’s death or the man who pulled the trigger? The gun exists for no other reason than to perform a single function. You point it at whomever you want to die and pull the trigger. It’s quite a simplistic mechanism.”
“So you’re a victim in all of this? An innocent weapon that merely performed its designated function?”
The Hoyl held out the gun. The woman stepped into the light, took it from him, and aimed it first at Mason’s chest, then at his face.
He kept his eyes locked on the Hoyl’s the entire time.
“Unlike the gun pointed at your head, I am anything but a simplistic mechanism. I take great pride in what I do. And great pleasure. The gun derives no satisfaction from its task. It is little more than an extension of a killer’s arm, while the Hoyl is death personified. In his various incarnations, he has crossbred pathogens, brought historical epidemics back from the dead, and created viruses more frightening than any God could design. He has engineered more vaccines than any pharmaceutical company, saved more lives than the Red Cross, and contributed more to mankind’s understanding of disease than the CDC. He is the weapon wielded by men of prescience and the purveyor of their salvation. He is an avatar, the physical manifestation of a belief, and as such cannot be killed.”
“I know all about your bloodline,” Mason said. “You Fischers may have plagued the world for more than a century, but you’re not immortal. I’ve seen proof of that with my own eyes.”
“No individual is immortal, but the Hoyl is. He is the living embodiment of an ideology to which each of us has devoted his life.”
“His lineage is one of inbred psychopaths who sell their services to men who’d exterminate their entire race to turn a profit.”
“He’s the only hope for saving mankind from itself.”
“By murdering countless innocent people?”
“Consider them sacrifices for the greater good.”
“And how much will the men ‘wielding’ you make from their ‘sacrifices’?”
“Enough talk,” Victor said. “Finish this.”
“Perhaps you would care to do the honors, Mr. Thornton,” the Hoyl said. “Or is getting your hands dirty not on today’s agenda?”
“Don’t forget that this is my agenda, Hoyl.”
“Ah, yes. Your agenda. The one in which your enraged brother-in-law, the federal agent who’s been stripped of his badge and blames his father-in-law for his wife’s death, brings the venerable Mr. Thornton out here and murders him in cold blood…”
To Paul’s credit, his face showed no indication of surprise. He was already lowering his head and closing his eyes when Dietrich swung Mason’s Sigma toward him and pulled the trigger. A spray of blood and gray matter erupted from his temple. He toppled sideways and crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap.
The Hoyl’s eyes glittered with amusement. Mason suddenly realized why the woman was wearing gloves. He’d recently fired the pistol, which meant that not only had it discharged residue onto the back of his hand, his fingerprints were all over it.
“Congratulations, Victor. Your coup d’état went off without a hitch. You are now officially the president and chief executive officer of Global Allied Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals. Huzzah.”
Mason turned his fury on Victor.
“You orchestrated this whole thing? You had your own sister and father murdered? And for what? Money?”
“You don’t understand, Jim. This is about more than money; it’s about power. About taking my rightful place at the table.” He flashed that smug, practiced smile. “The world is changing, whether you like it or not. And only those of us who are brave enough to embrace the vision of a new world order—”
“You’re a monster, Victor. No … worse than that. You’re stupid.”
“Just shoot him and get it over with,” Victor said.
“Don’t you get it? Here’s how this plays out: Your crazy brother-in-law shoots both you and your father before being gunned down by security. Or maybe he’s merely wounded and his arrest is used to destroy the reputation of his father, the senator. Meanwhile, the men you’ve chosen to get in bed with—the same men who helped your great-grandfather breed the Spanish flu a century ago—will take complete control of your company and make billions—”
“And you call me stupid?”
“—off of the cure you’ve developed for a disease of your own design.”
“I’ve already told you. This has nothing to do with money.”
“That’s not entirely true,” the Hoyl said.
“Are you blind, Victor?” Mason said. “You’re just a pawn. Did you ever really think you were in control, especially of someone like the Hoyl? Like the men for whom his bloodline has been creating pandemics for generations? You’re nothing, Victor. In the big picture, you’re less than nothing. They’re using you, just like they did your great-grandfather. What did he get for his part of the pig farm? Forty-three million dollars? They made billions off a man they considered a stupid farmer. Billions, Victor. And now they’ve gone back to the trough again to find another stupid farmer—”
“I am not a stupid farmer! I am now one of the Thirteen—”
A deafening crack of gunfire.
Victor was still smirking when his head jerked violently to the side. The bullet lifted him from his feet and sent him sprawling. He hit the ground and slid through a wash of his own blood.
Dietrich lowered the smoldering barrel of Mason’s Sigma and tucked it into the pocket of her leather jacket.
The Hoyl made a sweeping motion with his hand.
The blond woman took both Victor and Paul by a wrist and dragged them off into the darkness, the clicking of her heels echoing throughout the great room.
“So you have everything figured out, do you?” There was no mistaking the mirth in the Hoyl’s eyes. “If that’s the case, then why are you still alive?”
Twenty feet separated them. Mason could cover that distance in six running strides. Less than two seconds. The man to his left would get off a shot. As would the one behind him. The sudden movement might affect their reaction time and possibly their aim, but he had to plan on being hit at least once.
“A better question would be, why are you?”
He tensed to make the sprint. He’d tear the Hoyl apart with his bare hands, no matter how many times he was shot.
“Don’t even think about it,” the man behind him said.
Mason recognized the voice immediately. It lived in his subconscious. In his dreams.
Shoot him, Mason.
The ground dropped out from underneath him.
He closed his eyes.
Take the shot, damn it!
Mason took a deep breath and turned to face his former partner.