“The Hyena,” Abby said suddenly. “He’s taken it.”
“Mike got away?” I asked.
“Both he and a sand-foil were missing after the battle,”
Op Nine said. “It is a reasonable assumption he did not perish after Paimon obtained the ring.”
“Oh, another assumption!” Merryweather said crossly.
“Your assumptions and a buck ninety will buy me a tall coffee of the day at Starbucks!”
Op Nine dropped his eyes and didn’t say anything, though his lips tightened.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“Alfred,” Merryweather said. “OIPEP is the only organization of its kind in the world, with practically unlimited resources and an intelligence network that spans every country on the planet. We shall do what any powerful, multinational bureaucracy would do in such a crisis: we shall hold a meeting!”
28
The meeting was held in a large conference room on lower level 49 of OIPEP headquarters. Lower level 49 looked just like lower level 24 with the windowless, institutional green walls and gray floor. A round wooden table dominated the room, surrounded by twelve soft leather chairs.
Me, Abby, Op Nine, and nine other Company personnel, five women and four men, sat around a few minutes waiting for Merryweather to come in. Like all OIPEP agents, they had names like Jake and Jessica, Wes and Kelly.
The men wore business suits with perfectly knotted neckties over starched white shirts. The women were in suits too, mostly navy blue, but a couple wore pinstripes, and all of them were blond like Abigail and Ashley, who wasn’t there, and I wondered where she was, if she had been killed during the intrusion event. I remembered grabbing her beneath the tarp as the demons soared over us, the smell of her hair under my nose, and how the tears afterward seemed to make her blue eyes even brighter and more beautiful in a weird, sad way.
The door swung open and François Merryweather strode into the room, hair flying everywhere (if I were him, I’d cut it short or pull it back into a ponytail), carrying a stack of files under his right arm.
He slapped the files onto the glossy tabletop and said, “Well, folks, we’ve crossed the threshold, haven’t we? Not since the signing of the Charter has there been an intrusion event of this magnitude, and so the day we have been waiting for, the day that demanded our existence in the first place, has finally arrived.”
He stopped like he expected someone to say something, but nobody did.
“Whatever we decide today,” he went on, “must be executed with the utmost haste—the United States has gone DEFCON-2, the European Union has activated its reserve, and I’ve just received a communiqué from our ops in China that half the Red Army has been mobilized to its border with Tibet. The world is itching to pull the trigger, which has the potential to be as catastrophic as the intrusion event itself.”
He glanced at the ceiling and said, “Lights to half, please, and let’s have SATCOM I-41.”
The lighting dimmed and a three-dimensional image sprung up in the middle of the conference table. Dark clouds, their bellies full of flickering lightning, swirled over a mountain range, the jagged peaks snow covered and tinted red. The tallest peak was surrounded by a familiar orange glow flecked with bright white light.
“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.”