The Sons of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

battlements and quaint village became visible. Within, however, the granite rock now housed a secure labyrinth of rooms and corridors constructed to withstand wave, wind, earthquake, or bomb blast. The causeway to the mainland had never been rebuilt, for ecological reasons (or so it had been explained at the time) and so the Mont once again enjoyed the protection of violent tides and shifting fields of quicksand.
    This cut back on the tourist trade a bit, but the Company (which now owned Mont St. Michel, due to France defaulting on a debt) didn’t mind. Nor did the French, really. The place was exquisitely kept up, and moreover now housed the world-class Grand Musée de Rennes, a glorious shrine to French culture, which anyone might visit if he or she had the proper academic credentials.
    Victor didn’t need credentials. He stepped down to the landing pier with the mortal tourists and made his way past the ticket kiosks to a private entrance. The guard posted there nodded and let him in; locked the gate behind him. Three minutes later Victor stepped from an elevator and emerged in the corridor outside the Chief Curator’s private suite. The guards posted there nodded, too, but they paused to transmit news of his arrival to Aegeus before they let him in.
    “Victor!” Aegeus half rose behind his desk, smiling. “Have a seat, please.”
    He was an immortal, solid and blond, with the look of a respectable public official. His office looked like an antique dealer’s showroom. Victor, seating himself, didn’t bother to stare at the massed wealth there: the paintings by Gericault and Renoir, the Cocteau lithographs, the holosculptures of Marcel Gigue, the gold and crystal and calfskin and teak that had been whisked out of the paths of armies and secured away here, for Aegeus’s private appreciation.
    “How was your journey?” Aegeus inquired, settling back in his late-eighteenth-century chair. On the lapel of his suit coat he wore the enamel pin representing a clock face without hands. Among the higher-ranking immortals, the pins had become cynically chic, a perverse statement of identity.
    He did not offer Victor a drink from the decanter on the table at his side, though the glasses were Waterford and the ice in the silver bucket was fresh.
    “Uneventful,” Victor replied. He proceeded to relate the substance of his conversation with Labienus. Aegeus listened, frowning thoughtfully.
    “Hong Tsieh, eh?” he said at last. “Another Facilitator. I’d never have suspected, but we’ll set a trap accordingly. Good work, Victor! Our masters will be pleased with you.”
    “What about the other matter?” asked Victor. “The body of Jason Smith. Do you want me to divert it and deliver something harmless?”
    Aegeus made a face. “Regrettably … you’ll have to follow through on that one, Victor. Deliver as intended.”
    Victor blinked. His pale face went a shade paler. “Innocent mortals will die,” he stated in a calm voice.
    “Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.” Aegeus smiled sadly and shook his head. “History records the outbreak of a virulent and previously unknown autoimmune disorder in Nangjing in two months’ time. It’ll kill thousands and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. Pity, but there you are. Labienus will pay for it, rest assured.”
    Privately Victor doubted this. Aegeus had been assuring him that retribution was just around the corner for Labienus for decades now. There was always some reason to delay his arrest a moment longer, some previously unguessed-at lead that must be followed up.
    “So I’m to deliver the, the body as ordered? The disease culture? Work with this Hong Tsieh?” Victor asked.
    “I can’t think of anybody else I’d trust with the job,” Aegeus told him, nodding. “It’ll be hard, I know, but you’ve the spine for it. Save any mortals you can, of course. And observe Hong Tsieh closely. This opens up a whole new field of investigation. We’ll need to