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."

"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."

29.

"I still don't get it," Jake said. "What's the point of pursuing the Hyena? Say we find him and get the Vessel-then what? We can't use it because we don't have the ring. We should be going after the ring, not the Vessel."

"Yes, well, we'll put you on that team," the director said. "You can lead the assault up Everest against the sixteen million fiends."

Jake ignored the sarcasm. "Maybe that's what we oughtta do. Take it to them!"

"We are still making modifications to the 3XD," Op Nine said. "As well as other applications for the active agent contained in the ammunition."

"I'm talking a small team, maybe two or three ops with a couple Sherpas. We draw this, what's-his-name, Paimon out and one shot to the hand does it."

Op Nine shook his head. "Perversely, the Hyena's instincts to seize the Vessel were correct. Obtaining it strengthens our position. At the very least, our possessing it will give them pause."

"How so?"

"For the same reason they desire it. While it is outside their reach, they can never be assured of their freedom."

"Maybe not," Agent Jake shot back. "But they'll still be free and we'll still have no way of putting the genie back into the bottle. And you still haven't answered my question, so I'll ask it for, what, the third time . . . Let's assume we get the Vessel-then what?"

I guess nobody had an answer for that, because nobody said anything.

"Gee, this is terrific," Jake said quietly. "They better watch out, because we're gonna give 'em pause."

"Suggest an alternative," Op Nine said icily. He didn't like this Agent Jake, you could tell.

"Thought I already did."

"We pursue the Vessel because it is the only option open to us. Your suggestion is a futile gesture, doomed to failure, and we must not abandon the one thing that separates us from the Fallen."

"What's that?" Jake asked.

"Hope."

Dr. Merryweather clapped his hands suddenly and everybody gave a little jump. "So! We know where they are, we know what they want, and we know what they intend to do if they don't get it. The Hyena must be found and the Vessel secured, or we may expect all you-know-what to break loose. The question is . . . where is he?"

Nobody said anything. The director looked at Abby. She stood up and Op Nine finally got to sit down. He didn't look good. He didn't look much better than Carl up in the morgue, and Carl was dead.

"All computer simulations return these ten locations as the most likely for target acquisition," she said crisply. "Based on prior associations, duration, and comfort level." She handed a stack of printouts to the person on her right, who took one and passed on the rest. The agent to my left took the last one, so I didn't get to see what was on the printout. "We'll dispatch teams of two to each location-"

"Why only two?" Jake asked.

"The smaller the team, the less likelihood of mission compromise." "Also the less likelihood of finding the Hyena," Jake said. "I say we put as many boots on the ground as possible."

"Every signatory, with the exception of the Swiss, God bless 'em, has pledged full cooperation and logistical support," Dr. Merryweather said. "The locals will be available, if called upon."

"Again, Director," Op Nine said, studying the printout, "I would suggest sending a team to the Hyena's last known safe house."

I wasn't sure, but I guessed Op Nine was talking about the cabin in the mountains.

"Even Arnold isn't that foolish," Merryweather said. "Too obvious."

Op Nine started to say something, but decided against it.

Abby cleared her throat and said, "Make sure your people understand this mission is strictly voluntary. The First Protocol applies: no one with immediate family, mission objective deemed Imperative. The Holy Vessel of Solomon must be obtained. For this reason, the Hyena has been designated as a 'target' under the definition contained in Section 189.23 of the Charter."

"Good," Agent Jake said. "I hope my team finds him. I'm gonna take great pleasure putting a fat one right between that jerk's eyes."

30.

The meeting broke up into little pockets of mini-meetings, with the director, Abby, and Op Nine huddled in one corner, whispering. All three would glance in my direction every few seconds, so I guessed they were trying to decide what to do with me now. I didn't figure they'd send me back to Knoxville: I knew too much and the encounter in the morgue with the devils' mouthpiece sort of indicated I was the only person the demons would talk to. I figured they would put me on ice here in OIPEP headquarters, where they could keep an eye on me and where I could do the least amount of damage.

Nobody had brought up that I was the reason we were having a meeting in the first place. I'd had the ring in my hands. All I had to do was get it to Op Nine. Instead I tried to play King of the Demons. Of course, it's hard to stay cool in the face of sixteen million spiteful spirits.

After a few minutes, Dr. Merryweather had to join a conference call between the President of China and the Dalai Lama, so Op Nine and Abigail escorted me back to my room. My leg had gone stiff from sitting so long; I had to lean heavily against Op Nine on the way back. It took a lot out of me, and I sat gasping on the bed while Abby and Op Nine engaged in a whispering argument, probably a continuation of the one in the conference room.

"I'm hungry," I gasped. They kept arguing, so I said it louder: "I'm hungry!"

They stopped and stared at me for a second. Then Abby said, "What do you want?"

"Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, and some rolls." I was trying to think of comfort food, what normal people living normal lives eat. "And a slice of pizza."

"Pizza?"

"Pepperoni. Make that two slices. And some ice cream. Chocolate."

She was smiling now. "Anything else?"

"No. Yes. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With a pickle spear. Claussen."

"Claussen?"

"Or any crisp pickle, but Claussen's my favorite."

"Is that all?"

"Isn't it enough?"

She started out of the room. "Oh, and a bag of Cheetos," I called after her. "The crunchy kind."

She left. Op Nine studied me with his dark eyes. He wasn't smiling.

"What?" I asked. "Cheetos over the top?"

"Your appetite has returned. A good sign, Alfred."

"Not too many of those lately-good signs, I mean. What happened in the battle, Op Nine, after I . . . ?" I couldn't finish. He didn't seem to mind.

"Once Paimon obtained the ring, it gathered the legions together and the battle was abandoned. They fled as fast as thought, Alfred."

"Mike too."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"How do we know he has the Vessel?"

"The area was searched thoroughly after the encounter. The Lesser Seal is gone, Mike has vanished, and Paimon now demands its return. I do not doubt Mike has the Vessel."

He took a deep breath and pressed his fingertips hard into the corners of his eyes.

"We lost forty-three of our helicopters and all but four of the insertion team."