Tarot of the Archons (Immortal Montero Book 2) Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2016

  A Kindle Scout selection

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  For Lauren

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  My greatest fear is to be caught by an unscrupulous man—or an enemy—and imprisoned. If my tormentors were to strap me to a table and decide to torture me to death twenty-four hours a day for weeks, even months, I would surely lose my sanity the way any man would. A far more terrible thought is what if nothing could drive me insane?

  Sometimes, listening to the crickets, the dark smoothing away ephemeral thoughts, my mind calculates how many times I could die in a day. As long as I don’t have to regenerate a limb or reskin myself after being burned, I can recover in as few as twenty seconds, certainly under a minute. Sixty times an hour, let’s say, if death is instantaneous upon my regaining consciousness. One thousand four hundred and forty times a day—I get shot in the head one minute and wake up to a man who curses at me before jamming a knife into my heart. When I come to, two giggling men hold my mouth and nose closed, and when I wake up after that, a man watching me with hatred, leans over and begins slowly cutting my throat with a rusty serrated knife. Coming to and smelling gasoline, I see a man at the end of the table holding a match . . .

  It made Sisyphus’s punishment look like a Club Med vacation.

  Yes, I have lived for more than seven centuries, appear to be a youngish thirty, and have amassed such a fortune I spend time figuring out how to lose some of it before a government begins to wonder how I could possibly have acquired assets so extensive in one lifetime. I drive expensive sports cars, go anywhere I want, do anything that amuses me. As enviable as that sounds, my nightmares are much worse than yours.

  Because you can only die once.

  Prologue

  Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

  Thursday, April 9, 1949

  I strode across the lobby of the Peninsula Hong Kong hotel, my shoes clicking on the floor of the magnificent foyer. Ignoring the concierge, I proceeded directly to the elevators. This place contained nice memories. I had been here twenty-one years ago when the hotel, the crown of the island, had opened. I had amazed the patrons of the Nathan bar by drinking four magnums of ice-cold Taittinger champagne in five minutes. Doing that gives one a very chilly head indeed.

  The lift doors opened, and I stepped aboard.

  “Have you eaten rice today, my son?” I asked the young elevator operator cordially in Mandarin.

  “Yes, thank you, father,” he replied politely. I nodded and faced the closing doors. As soon as the car started to rise, he began speaking rapidly in Cantonese.

  “The colonel is on the ninth floor, sir, but you’ll never get near him. Third houseboy Tang said he was checked five times by armed men before he was allowed into the suite to collect the laundry.”

  “Let me worry about them,” I told him in the same language. “Take me to the twelfth. What else do you know about his setup?” The elevator passed the fifth floor.

  “He always stays in this same room. He had it altered five years ago, very quietly. There is a secret door in the parlor, behind the bar. Beyond is a space just large enough for one person to be able to sit. He keeps an armed man in there most of the time.”

  “Nice work,” I told him.

  As the circle lit for the eighth floor, I pulled the Beretta out of my shoulder holster and checked the safety. The shiny new grooves circling the end of the barrel matched the threads inside the heavy Brausch silencer in my jacket pocket. I slid the gun back under my arm and re-buttoned my coat.

  We passed the tenth, then the eleventh, and the elevator came to a smooth stop at twelve. The doors slid open.

  “Good luck, sir.”

  I stepped out, turned right, and walked across a blue-and-gold carpet to the double doors at the end, keying myself into room 1202. Once inside, I closed the door and locked it. I checked both bedrooms and both bathrooms. As soon as I confirmed the suite was empty, I returned to the parlor.

  A pale green carpet with a gold border stretched from wall to wall. Near the balcony doors, an oak sideboard contained tantalizing bottles of liquor. I stood next to a large, blocky executive desk with a guest chair in front and a high-backed chair behind it. It faced into the parlor, where there were three chairs around a table with a lamp, a brocade couch, and a long, low divan.

  I walked past the bar and slid open the glass door leading to the balcony, stepped out into the balmy Hong Kong afternoon, and moved to the railing so I could look below.

  This room lay directly above Colonel Nishiki’s suite, three stories higher. His balcony jutted slightly left of mine. No others stood between these two, and none stuck out below his. Like mine, his had a small outdoor table and chairs and a brazier on which to burn fragrant sticks of incense.

  I stepped back into my room and sat on the long gold-upholstered divan. I removed my watch and turned it so the back faced up, took a dime out of my pocket, inserted it into a groove carved on the watch case, and twisted clockwise a half turn. The crown popped up.

  Holding the watch in my right hand, I pressed the crown down with my thumb. The case vibrated for three seconds. When it stopped, I strapped the watch, now useless, back on my wrist.

  By pressing the crown, I had transmitted a high-frequency signal, and now the US Hong Kong field office was sending a coded radio transmission to the commander of the sixteenth fighter-interceptor squadron, giving them the signal to launch their wing of four F-80Cs, America’s new fighter jets.

  I sat cross-legged on the couch, closed my eyes, and began to meditate on the universe. I knew it would be at least thirty minutes before the jets could scramble, eve
n though they were waiting for the order.

  I had drifted light-years away when a high whine brought me back. I opened my eyes, climbed off the divan, and strode back outside. The sky remained clear. I waited. The distinctive rumble of the F-80s approached. Swinging one leg over the railing, then the other, I gripped the metal bars, let my feet slide off, and struggled down until I hung by my hands.

  I desperately tried to still my swaying body before the jets arrived. I looked up. I could not see them yet, but the noise they were making would cover the sound of my landing. I let go.

  The roar as the planes overflew us became earsplitting—the high whine of the turbines on top of the booming howl of raw power drowned everything else out. I dropped in the middle of this maelstrom, looking down, hoping I wouldn’t hit the railing and go tumbling over into the bay. As the jets’ passage washed over us, I crash-landed on the colonel’s balcony.

  I hit awkwardly; my left ankle snapped, and my right leg landed stiff, directly on the heel, jamming my knee up and dislocating my hip. I fell onto my side, the bolt of pain from my broken and tortured bones pushing an inaudible cry out of me.

  All of this occurred in a maelstrom of sound even as the jets began to peel away, their thunder still reverberating back to us, shaking the hotel, the building’s tall, flat exterior amplifying the concussive sound wave.

  The people stationed at the American embassy would get a call about violating airspace by flying too close to the hotel, but they were ready for it and were prepared to say they were terribly sorry—it would never happen again.

  I had just dragged myself behind the garden furniture, cursing in Korean and Japanese, when the door slid open. I stopped moving and watched through the legs of a wicker chair.

  A man pushed past the curtain and took a step outside. He wore a long red smoking jacket with black lapels and black cuffs. He looked up at the retreating jets, a sneer on his face. He turned and walked back inside, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  I waited, catching my breath, feeling the internal engine that repairs my injuries kick into high gear. Clenching my teeth, I popped my hip back into place. Intense pain flashed, nearly forcing a cry of agony from me. After that, a dull ache remained. I tested my ankle. It still hurt but worked fine.

  Cautiously getting to my feet, I remained crouched behind the lounge chairs. On one knee, I pulled the Beretta out and took the short, precisely machined metal tube from my jacket pocket. I screwed the thick silencer onto the end of the gun. Once the muffler tightened in place, I thumbed the safety off.

  With the pistol pointing along my right leg, I crept across the balcony. The afternoon sun shone on the opposite side of the building, so I did not generate a shadow that could fall on the curtains.

  As I neared the crack in the door, I could hear people talking inside, speaking in Japanese.

  “ . . . jets are made by the fat, overfed Americans. They will never be a threat.”

  “Don’t be so sure. The Americans may be fat, but their funding is equally substantial. It will only become more difficult to keep up with them if we fall behind early.”

  “Surely it’s not so bad as that.”

  “Those jets are more advanced than anything we or our allies have, and air domination is war domination. We do not commit as much money to vital research and development as we should.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all. And keep an eye on that elevator boy.”

  Footsteps crossed the room. A door opened, clicked shut. I waited, heard the creak of someone sitting in a leather-covered chair. A few more moments. There were no other sounds.

  I stepped through the opening, half-in and half-out, pushing the curtain back with my left hand, the gun extended, the man behind the desk already in my sights. I did not fire. He had not seen me. He was bent over, absorbed in something he was writing. I looked around cautiously. We were alone. The wet bar stood to my left. I would have to walk past it if I wanted to get closer.

  The colonel had mounted his war sword on the wall behind him. I made a note of that.

  I crossed the room as silently as a beam of light. When I came into his peripheral vision, he gasped, flinched back in his chair, and dropped his pen. He looked up and opened his mouth when he saw me.

  “Make a sound and I will be forced to shoot you,” I said softly.

  He closed his mouth.

  I recognized him from his pictures, but he had done well transforming himself. He looked his part: a business executive who had made his fortune in the Japanese textile industry and retired shortly before the end of the war. He had put fifty pounds on his spare frame in the last two years, changing his overall appearance drastically, and he had begun to bald. He no longer had a tan but rather the florid features of a heavy drinker. Drowning his guilt, no doubt.

  His eyes gave him away. I saw the same cruel glint that had been the last thing more than three hundred civilians had seen before he beheaded them with his blade.

  He and his men called it baseball. Four people at a time—men, women, children—were placed at four corners on their knees, blindfolded, hands bound behind their backs. They were the bases. The “hitter” stood in the center of them, his sword held high. If he could hack off all four heads with four strokes, it was a home run.

  Colonel Nishiki and his men had become proficient at hitting home runs during the war.

  His gaze was calculating as he took in my automatic pistol. I sat in the guest chair on the other side of the desk. His cigarettes sat on top. He pointed to them. I nodded.

  I crossed my legs and laid the Beretta on my thigh. I straightened the crease at the knee of my pants, pulled my pack of Players out. We both lit up simultaneously. I snapped my stainless steel Zippo shut and placed it on the desk, its mirror-like exterior giving me a tiny view of the room behind me. I slid my pack in my pocket, tilted my head back, and blew smoke at the ceiling.

  He shook out his match and tossed it in the ashtray. He had one book on his desk. It didn’t look as if it had a title. The edge of a thick card with a gleaming gold border stuck out of the pages. He took a long puff, his hands steady. He closed his eyes momentarily. The smoke hissed out between his lips.

  We locked eyes. For more than a minute we smoked and stared.

  “How did you get in here?” Now that he knew I was not going to kill him outright, his voice was relaxed, even amused. The voice of a man who has an ace up his sleeve.

  I continued staring at him, silently smoking.

  “You have come to kill me? Why?”

  I tapped the ash off my cigarette and let it fall to the carpet. A flash of irritation crossed his face. Such impertinence. I decided then to kill him as slowly as his flabby body would allow.

  “I am a retired business owner. Who am I to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I tell you, you have me confused with someone else, young man.” He tried to appear relaxed and confident, but he still sat straight up, not leaning back. His eyes cut to the wet bar. I could imagine his rising panic and fury at the thought that his sentry might have fallen asleep.

  I continued to smoke my cigarette. When I had taken my final puff, I exhaled, opened my mouth, tossed the butt in, and swallowed.

  He blinked. He hesitantly took another puff and leaned forward. As he stubbed his cigarette out, the crystal ashtray wobbled under his now shaking hand.

  I picked the gun off my thigh and pointed it leisurely at him.

  The man in the secret room never made a sound, and the colonel never gave anything away on his face. But I saw movement in the Zippo and knew the guard was positioning himself behind me.

  “You are making a very bad mistake, my foolish friend,” the colonel said. He leaned back comfortably and steepled his hands. “Would you like to tell me your name while you still can?”

  I cocked the pistol.

  “Stop,” said a voice from behind me.

  I felt the barrel of a gun touching the back of my neck. With the
pistol pressed against me, the man reached over my shoulder for the Beretta. I pushed the chair back into him hard and twisted to my right, falling to the ground. As I came up on my knees, he fired. The bullet caught me in the chest, slamming me backward. I crashed into the wall next to the bathroom, slumped sideways into the doorway. My head hit the frame hard enough to cut my forehead. Warm blood seeped into my right eye.

  I sat up. The shooter already loomed over me.

  “Good night,” he said in Japanese.

  I looked into the single eye of his .45 automatic as he pulled the trigger. The bullet snapped my head back, and my whole body went rigid as the metal object plowed into my brain. I shook and consciousness left me.

  I heard a buzzing in my head. Not unpleasant. A soft drone. Soothing. A white light beckons me. I feel a presence. Mama? Marguerite? I turn . . .

  Crash. Return of light and form. Shiver. Back. Sounds. Alive.

  “What were you doing in there while he had me covered, you fool?” The voice growled, full of menace. I heard a slap. And again.

  I was twisted to the side, my body still crumpled in the doorway to the bathroom. My eyes were open. I was careful not to move them. I could feel drying blood on my forehead. My body tingled as the internal mechanism of my repair process mended my wounds. I told it not to heal the hole in my forehead. How my body knew what I meant, I did not know. I only knew I could control my repairs by thinking about them.

  “Please, Colonel,” the man said. Another slap.

  “Don’t call me that! Have you lost your mind as well as your vigilance?”

  “No, sir.”

  Pounding footsteps. Three more men strode into the room.

  “What the hell happened?” the first one said. “Sir?”

  “How did this man get in here?” the colonel asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why are you standing there? Find out! Somebody is going to wish the day never happened!”

  I could see their shapes out of the corner of my eye, all of them standing next to the desk.

  “What do we do about him now?”

  The phone rang. My gun lay on the desk in front of the guest chair.