In The Shade of The Crow

It was mid-afternoon, and the Crow was parked in a quiet corner of the Reno Tahoe International Airport. Marx was outside it, standing in its shade while talking on his cellphone. He was busy cajoling Kristen back in New York City in a bid to try and stop her from resigning as his personal assistant.

'Listen to me, I simply can't have you just finish like this,' Marx said sharply. 'I realize you have fears, but you have a job to do and an obligation to me. It's just not acceptable.'

While Kristen replied, he kept an eye on Jack Day's van just some 100 feet away. It was parked beside a hangar. Inside it, Day counted the cash he was given for delivering Vacher and Irfan, who were now up in the Crow.

After a minute, Kristen finished what she had to say. None of it swayed Marx, but he acted otherwise to get what he wanted, so he softened his tone.

'Look, Kristen, I'm certainly not happy. I thought you were made of sturdier stuff, but the best I can do is meet you halfway,' Marx said. 'Which means I want you to come to China with me, with Ivan and some of the team, for the three or so days of business,' he said. 'You won't be in New York in case that rumored earthquake does eventuate, and then when we fly back, I will take you to wherever you want in the U.S., to your family's home, and then you can finish up with no more qualms from me,' he said. 'That's not even a week, very generous considering I'm meant to have a month's notice.'

Kristen's ten-second reply to his offer was noncommittal.

'Fine, think about it some more, Kristen, and get back to me with a freaking proper answer. You have an hour to do so,' Marx said. He ended the call without a goodbye.

Marx looked up as he heard Day's van start and then watched it drive away. One of his mercenaries, positioned on the ground at the front of the aircraft, then alerted him that two other vehicles were approaching from the other side.

A van and an SUV.

It was Alfonso Lazcano's crew.

Inside the van were Quintus and Tina, both of whom were still out cold. They had black bags over their heads and their hands tied with heavy-duty cable ties. Despite some rough handling, they remained unconscious while they were transferred into the Crow.

Mad Man Raving

Quintus was unsure how long he and Tina had been airborne for when he became conscious. He first became aware when someone grabbed his legs and dragged him out from the plane's cargo hold and into the main passenger's cabin.

That someone then pulled the black hood off his head. It was Vacher, his face contorted with loathing. He roughly pushed Quintus into a sitting position on the floor and propped him up against a seat.

Quintus was still woozy and disoriented from the drugs. His hands were behind his back, restrained by the cable ties which bit into his wrists.

Vacher stepped back, and through bleary eyes, Quintus saw someone else, a seated man looking at him. He was dressed in a suit, drinking liquor from a tumbler, but due to his blurred vision, Quintus couldn't immediately make out the man's facial features.

'You've only got yourself to blame, you know,' said the man who, of course, was Marx.

'What the hell is going on?' Quintus asked with a slight slur.

'Speak only when told,' Vacher hissed.

'No, let my old friend have his say. He's earned it in a roundabout kind of way. What's more, he's a senior citizen, so we should show him due respect,' Marx mockingly said.

Quintus closed his eyes and quietly sighed. He didn't want to entertain any thoughts on who this person was or could be.

'It was only a matter of time, Quintus. I must say I'm impressed by how you've managed to ramble around the world for so long and not get tired by it all,' Marx said.

'You've confused me with someone else,' Quintus said with his eyes still shut.

'Don't lie to me,' Marx shot back. 'You know full well that sooner or later, I'd find you. True, I was starting to think it wasn't going to happen. Certainly, took longer than expected, and the timing hasn't been at all convenient.'

Quintus then accepted who the gloating man was, but he didn't want to admit it openly. He opened his eyes, and, with more clarity, he studied Marx properly. It was unmistakable who Marx was — another Caucasian version of Meng.

Quintus sighed heavier this time. Nothing good came from meeting Meng's reincarnations in the past, yet he was not afraid. There was something fatalistic and even purposeful about it all, as odd as that might sound, and so he spoke.

'Do what you want with me or get whatever it is off your chest but just leave the girl out of it,' he said firmly.

'Leave the girl out of it? You and I both know that is not going to happen,' Marx said curtly. 'I've waited too long for this.'

'Touch her and —'

WHACK!

With a downward swing, Vacher struck Quintus hard across the face, leaving a welt on his cheek.

'No need for that yet, Vacher, in fact, you can leave now,' Marx ordered.

After giving Quintus a three-second death stare, Vacher did as he was told and went up front to join Irfan and the others.

'You'll have to excuse him; he's somewhat upset by what happened at the diner with you kicking him around the place. His ego is somewhat fragile, but he doesn't know you two have a shared past and that there might be some animosity there,' Marx said. 'You do know who he was, don't you?'

'I don't care.'

'Oh, I doubt that. You will care. He was Andrei Vasiliev; remember him?

That geriatric pyromaniac neighbor of yours back in Boise, Idaho.'

For a further five minutes, Marx described — with relish, I may add — what Vasiliev did on that awful day when Quintus lost his wife and daughter.

Quintus tried his best to hide it, but Marx's revelations hit him like a sledgehammer. Yet somehow, as Marx continued, he managed to remain poker-faced.

But as your narrator, I'll momentarily interject in what largely devolved into a long-winded monologue from Marx, something hard on the ears, so I'll filter much of what he said, mostly about their karmic ties, which included what occurred on White Dragon Mountain in 1966 when he was then the Red Guard known as The Hammer.

'I was tasked with neutralizing your overprotective master who was still, after all those years, skulking in that cave,' Marx said about the killing of Tai, as covered earlier in this tale. 'Admittedly, I didn't pull the trigger; I got someone else to do it, someone else still alive today, if only just, but nevertheless, the deed was done, and then you had no guardian angel, and Vasiliev was then meant to do you in stateside, but the moron killed your family instead.'

Marx then revealed to Quintus more about Vacher, who, along with Irfan, was one of the three killed on the Reno train platform.

'You bitch-slapped them and me back into oblivion,' he said. 'Do you remember?'

Quintus didn't reply, and so Marx promptly continued.

'They were both similarly involved with you being caged back in Ireland. Even further back to China.'

Marx told Quintus that Vacher and Irfan were, along with himself as Meng, the ones that he'd also killed on the mountain.

'It might sound like ancient history, but it all lives on till today; so it was you who got the ball rolling. Like I said, you've only got yourself to blame.'

Quintus closed his eyes, wanting to shut out Marx's words and the whiney sound of his voice.

'I don't want to hear to anymore,' Quintus said in unintended words.

'No, that's not how it works. But if it makes you feel any better, when I was that Red Guard, I died only a few days after your master was slain. Too much rice wine, and I slipped off a rickety riverboat just as we passed a giant Buddha statue carved into a stone cliff face. Comical, really,' Marx said. 'However, anyone who claims to drown is a painless way to die is kidding themselves.'

And then he continued, going on about how in the life before that, he was crushed to death in a Siberian mine by a boulder the size of a bus. He'd been a Japanese POW caught by the Soviets in 1945.

'I'd been with the Imperial Japanese Army's covert Unit 731 in northern China,' Marx bragged. 'In this unit, we conducted biological medical experiments on living people. Somewhat gruesome, but if you don't mind that type of work, it was rather gratifying,' he said. 'Not as gratifying though when compared to what I did as Meng or Entwistle, or that Red Guard or even mad crazy Chivington for that matter.'

Marx then gulped the last bit of liquor from the tumbler and poured himself a fresh round as he resumed talking.

'I guess I'm a bit like you, Quintus, with memories stretching back more than 2,000 years, but much of it, for me, was in the underworld where I made my deal. You know what that was?'

Quintus ignored the question and kept his eyes closed.

'You want to know the deal I made?' Marx asked again.

Quintus still didn't reply.

'You don't want the truth?!' Marx asked, this time borderline shouting.

Quintus maintained his silence.

'Well, I'm going to tell you anyhow!' Marx laughed. 'A big part of my deal was that I had my final revenge upon you,' he said. 'And for a while, it didn't look like it was going to happen, and I was beginning to think I'd been suckered in.'

Marx then spoke of how he now needed to be more of a pragmatist, as there was, he said, certainly more at stake if he failed to deliver on his part of the deal with the demon kings as opposed to the other way around.

After taking another quaff of his drink, he looked hard at Quintus.

How pathetic. Defeated. Spiritless, Marx thought.

'Difficult to believe you were once among the best that humanity had to offer,' Marx said. He then leaned forward to emphasize what came next.

'Let me tell you something really juicy. Those three bashing murders you committed at the Reno railway station changed everything,' he said with hideous delight. 'The ramifications were immense. It allowed the demon kings to go ahead with their doomsday plot, prying open the door for what's now happening around the globe. The destruction of Venice, Rome, and soon New York City was all made possible because of your lack of self-restraint, your resentment, your anger, your filth.'

Quintus began to feel both dread and shame upon realizing what Marx was implying.

'The demon kings successfully argued that if you, a killer, were touted as an exemplar, then none deserve to exist, and nobody could really argue otherwise. They placed you on Hell's waiting list after Reno, and when I finally send you there, they'll put you, I guess, someplace among the wrathful and sullen,' he said.

Marx's cellphone rang, and he stopped talking. He checked the caller ID and chuckled in recognition.

'Oh, I love this.'

He took the call.

'So, Kristen, what's your answer?'

He privately listened to his PA's response, which took some 15 seconds.

'Good, I'm glad you're staying on board for the few days as I requested,' he said.

Marx then put on the phone's speaker so that Quintus could hear her voice.

'And what else do you need to tell me?' he asked.

'The doctor you asked for, Shiro Ishii, is confirmed as per your earlier instructions,' Kristen said.

The sound of her voice took Quintus' attention. Its inflection was familiar.

'Excellent, you've made my day. How is my cousin?' Marx asked, referring to War.

'Still where he was, Mr. Marx, drawing away.'

'Good, I'll see you in the morning.'

After ending the call, Marx released a sigh of immense satisfaction.

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'Quintus, believe it or not, that was your wife,' he sniggered. 'Those head demons sure have an absurd sense of humor sending her to me. They tricked her, of course, as she wanted to go elsewhere.'

Internally, Quintus tried rejecting what Marx said, but instinct told him it was true, and now a cold numbness overtook the cocktail of emotions that had been bubbling in his being. This woman Kristen once was Kaitlyn, and he could do nothing but listen to Marx explain why she was in his service.

'By having her on my staff, the idea was that I would have a greater chance at success in finding you; like fate — bit like you returning to Reno,' Marx said. 'What were you thinking anyway by getting married?'

Quintus didn't answer, nor did Marx expect him to.

'You're hardly marriage material Quintus, it was never going to work out. Vasiliev, a.k.a. Vacher, did you a favor whether you care for it or not.'

And from there, Marx ranted on for a further hour, much of it about things that were not even related to Quintus, bits, and pieces about Marx's other lives and the reality of Hell. There was no one else on earth to who he could say such things and be taken seriously.

Around the 20-minute mark of Marx's tirade, Quintus disconnected from what was being said, allowing him to adjust his mental state. He wouldn't let the words of a madman affect him. A cool clarity replaced the numbness, offering him the means to mentally prepare himself to get himself out of this mess. He had just enough faith and hope left in himself that things would somehow reverse. He could not, would not give up.

As for Marx, his eventual hour-long monologue and continuous drinking had left him both exhausted and sozzled. The past few days had been a roller coaster ride, one that he expected would continue. With a slur, he ordered Quintus to be dumped back into the cargo hold and requested there be quiet on the plane. After taking some sleeping pills, he was promptly sucked into another dreamless sleep.

Consolation

As the sun came up over New York City, Kristen woke in her bed and did so alone. She sat up on its edge, somewhat confused yet comforted by the extraordinary dream she just had, a dream where she played a piano in a living room warmed by a lit fireplace.

The soulful, yearning music she played was interrupted by the joyful sound of a young child's laughter coming from elsewhere. It was not an unwelcome interruption. In the dream, she was glad of it, as if it was expected and familiar.

She left the living room and went to a part of the dream house that looked out over a suburban backyard where a girl of pre-school age talked with a man wearing mail armor and donning a bronze helmet with a traversing red crest on its top. He leaned on his shield as he spoke with the girl who held a stuffed teddy bear. The man was a Roman soldier, but Kristen saw he had a kind face. Then, the girl and the ancient warrior noticed her, and they both waved and offered her smiles.

Then Kristen woke up.

A warm residue from the dream kept her company while she used the bathroom and afterward, as she made breakfast in her small kitchen. It was when she turned on her television that she was reminded that the world outside had broken. Much of the undoing was occurring not so far from where she was. You see, the Big Apple was in a panic, according to the morning news.

'Roads out of New York City are choked with traffic while reports continue to come in of looting and acts of wanton anarchy across the city's five boroughs,' a news anchor said.

The broadcast was interrupted by the sound of an incoming text on her cellphone. It was from Marx; he was back in the city and was waiting for her downstairs in a parked limousine.

Stretched Limousine

Outside the apartment, Vacher stood beside Marx's stretched black Mercedes. In bemusement, he watched several looters smash the windows of a 7-11 further down the street.

Inside the limo, Marx, suffering a mild hangover, shared the back with Irfan and a 38-year-old scruffy Japanese doctor by the name of Shiro Ishii, who feigned being asleep.

Ishii was Marx's go-to man for any suspect medical needs, including providing medical support for his Black Crow security company.

Ishii was also a hopeless drug addict and, as such, was unreliable but easy to manipulate.

'Here she comes,' Irfan alerted Marx as Kristen exited her apartment building carrying luggage.

Given Marx now had Quintus, he had wondered if Kristen was still required, but he decided she was still useful in looking after War, at least until they got to China.

Vacher took her bag and opened a limousine door for her. The Frenchman was chagrined as Kristen ignored him as she stepped into the vehicle. She couldn't help it; Vacher's presence had always repulsed her, even more so than Marx and any of the others.

In the limo, she slid across the seat next to Ishii and opposite Marx. She nodded to her boss, trying to hide her anxiety while doing so.

'Kristen, we will take the doctor to the club, but before that, we will drop you at the office,' Marx said. 'I'd like you to continue looking after Ivan. I'll organize a car to take you both to the airport a bit later.'

After Vacher put Kristen's luggage into the limousine's trunk, he got in, and they drove off, avoiding the chaos further down the street as they went.

Inside The Devil's Pleasure Palace

After arriving in New York City the night before, Marx had Quintus and Tina taken to his nightclub. There, they were placed and locked up in the two shiny chrome cages dangling from the ceiling of the dance room.

Two of the club's bouncers, big, burly guys with past convictions, were tasked with keeping an eye on them. Most of their time, though, was spent watching the television they had set up in a corner of the room.

In her cage, Tina lay curled up in a fetal position. She no longer had her hands tied or a hood on her head. She had been unconscious since being kidnapped but eventually awoke around mid-morning. It took her several minutes to gain clarity and sit up. Upon realizing her situation, she began to fret, but the sight of Quintus standing in the neighboring cage gave her hope.

'Tina, save your strength,' he quietly said. 'An opportunity will come. We will get out of this, I promise you.'

His words helped restrain her fears and doubts.

'You feel okay?' he asked.

'Nauseated, I ache all over but could be worse,' she said.

Tina looked at the bouncers watching the TV, both had murky auras not dissimilar to the thugs at the Reno diner. One of them began laughing at the television.

'Oh yeah, I love this guy; he got the whole world hooked no matter how crazy he may sound,' the bouncer said, referring to Chuck Goyette.

On the TV, three serious-faced breakfast show hosts were quizzing the cult leader.

'Mr. Goyette, can you describe how this nuclear war will start?' one of the program's hosts asked.

'Oh yes, I certainly can. About a week after the New York City earthquake, North Korean nuclear missiles will hit several major cities in the U.S. and in Japan,' Goyette said. 'So, there's a shrinking window of opportunity for the president to take pre-emptive action to lessen American losses.'

'Really?' asked a host.

'Really indeed. Tough decisions need to be made, so it shouldn't stop at North Korea, and I'm advising the president of the United States to strike China as well. The Chinese communists have an emerging first-strike capability, especially given their development in hypersonic weapons. Sooner or later, they'd be looking at using them or, at the least, giving them to the North Koreans.'

The other bouncer shook his head in disbelief.

'Man, someone should just nuke his sorry ass,' he said. 'That'd save the world.'

Another TV host questioned Goyette.

'Now, so the second horsemen of the Apocalypse, War, is he instigating all of this?'

'Yes, War, I guess you could say he is the puppet master in this regard,' Goyette replied.

From his cage, Quintus saw one of the bouncers read a text message on his cell.

'They're here. Kill the TV, and I'll let them in,' the bouncer told his colleague as he walked off.

The remaining bouncer turned off the television and then looked up at Quintus and Tina.

'Glad I ain't you two,' he said.

Tina stood up in the cage and tried appealing to the bouncer's better nature in the hope that he had some that she couldn't see.

'Let us go, please,' she said.

The bouncer only laughed.

'Girl, just save it! We took your hoods off and the cable ties. That's as good as it gets.'

Not long after that, his friend arrived with Marx, Ishii, Vacher, and Irfan following.

Tina didn't pay attention to anyone but Marx. She was so stunned by what she saw surrounding him that she nearly forgot to breathe. He didn't have an aura. Instead, he was surrounded by a thick fog of darkness full of demonic slithering forms. It even smelt like sulfur to her. The density of this darkness was so great she could hardly see when Marx gave the bouncers envelopes fat with cash.

'Thank you, gentlemen; if I were you, I'd get as far south as possible, that way, you may get to spend this money,' Marx told them as they left.

Marx then watched Ishii rummage through his small day pack, which doubled as a medical bag. He pulled out a blood-type test kit and began preparing it.

Marx then turned to his caged captives and smiled at Quintus.

'Well, Quintus, that must give you the warm and fuzzies being back in a cage like that,' he said. 'It gives me warm fuzzies just seeing it.'

Quintus didn't reply, he just held Marx's gaze.

'Tediously predictable — always zero fun,' Marx said with distaste. 'But any way you two, the doctor needs some blood,' he said.

Tina voiced her opposition.

'I don't understand what —' she said before being cut off by Marx.

'Quiet! Don't freak out. Let's all go along to get along. The good doctor only needs a drop, that's all.'

Vacher and Irfan held a small ladder under Quintus' cage for Ishii to climb up and get some blood.

'Roll up your trouser leg Quintus so he can prick you,' Marx ordered. 'As I said, he only needs a drop of your blood.'

Quintus didn't move.

'Don't make it harder on yourself, you're not in the position to do otherwise. Unless you want the girl to suffer unnecessarily.'

Reluctantly, Quintus did as instructed, and Tina did the same not long after.

With samples taken, Ishii mixed the blood on test cards and got results.

'Both are O-negative. They're a match,' he said.

'Best news of the day so far. On your way then, good doctor,' Marx said as he threw a cash-filled envelope to Ishii, who, with it, scurried out of the nightclub.

Marx smirked.

'I once thought doctors were pillars of society,' he said as he turned to Quintus and Tina.

'And then I realized what a broad and largely incorrect generalization that was. Take China as an example, where some doctors are making a fortune from organ transplants,' Marx said.

'An organ recipient there pays top dollar for a second-hand liver or heart, which are dubiously sourced. It's a well-known secret that it is state-sanctioned, so it's usually very efficient, but I have an old friend who is sick in hospital. He's already had two liver transplants, but he is balking at a third because he refuses to kill any more prisoners of conscience,' he said.

'Given the country does not, in reality, have a functioning voluntary organ donation system, his odds of surviving are getting slimmer by the minute,' he said.

'Bad news for you, Quintus, is that he and his family have no qualms about his getting a body part from a low-life foreigner. As for you, young lady, we'll keep you in reserve.'

Marx turned to Vacher and Irfan.

'Put their hoods back on and tie their wrists for our flight to China,' he ordered.

The Boy Everyone Admired

Kai may have only been 12 years of age, but he had the bearing of someone older and wiser. He had an old soul, was what his nai nai (grandma) told others in their village situated close to the city of Leshan in southwest China's Sichuan province. In fact, most of the villagers who knew Kai and his family regarded him with a sense of awe. He was not a typical boy, and he was certainly never naughty, they said. Even as a toddler.

Agreeing with that sentiment was his mother, not that she was with her son that much, but she traveled five hours from the mega-city Chongqing, where she worked, to check on him at least once a month. He was so capable and mature for his age that she often found herself deferring to him, not that the boy wanted that to happen. She was confident that he could soon take care of his grandparents if needed.

A large chunk of Kai's exceptionalism was due to some little-known Taoist methods passed on to him by his grandfather's brother. The relative gave Kai several Taoist manuscripts that were saved from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. The boy, then only five years of age, read them ardently and repeatedly.

By his sixth birthday, Kai was able to meditate in a full lotus position for an hour, and it wasn't much longer before he developed some mystical abilities. He could recall past lives through dreams, and his celestial eye opened. What he read from the old manuscripts helped him to make sense of the deities, ghosts, and demons he began to see.

By the time he was nine, he was also mysteriously the equal of a black belt in Kung Fu. It appeared he was self-taught in that.

When it came to more mundane things, Kai spent time helping his grandparents or trekking the hills around their village.

Recently, he informed his grandparents of his intention to walk up a mountain someway further west of where they lived. This idea naturally freaked them out, especially given the government had made the area he spoke of out of bounds. Both grandparents thought they convinced him not to go until they woke up one morning to find him gone. An apologetic note was left on his bed for them.

'Dear nai nai and ye ye, I am visiting the mountain. Please do not worry, as I will safely return in three days. I am sorry for any concern this may cause you, but please do not be afraid. I shall see you soon enough.'

The mountain was just under 100 miles from his village, and it took him a three-hour-plus bus ride to get close to its base. Once on foot, armed with a walking stick that could double as a fighting pole and shouldering a small backpack full of food and bits of clothing, he headed up the mountain towards an area he'd seen in his dreams at least a dozen times over the past two years.

In these dreams, he saw a mystical place three-quarters of the way up the mountain, a place that felt familiar, like home. He presumed he'd been there before in another life. In his dreams, there was also a Westerner, a man with sandy hair and blue eyes. Additionally, he dreamt of a spring fountain in the rock wall and a mystical dragon guarding the area.

But as Kai walked up the mountain, he was unsure what he would find in reality. It wasn't until the last hour of daylight on day two of his trek that he reached his desired destination. As he approached, the first thing he saw was a group of white butterflies fluttering near the cliff's edge, which was the verge of a terrace that fronted the remains of the Taoist's sanctuary.

The area was more dilapidated than it was in his dreams, but when he walked onto the terrace, he did so with reverence. After 12 paces, he stopped at its center and observed the area. Two car-sized boulders covered half of the terrace's space. He rightly presumed they had recently tumbled down from further up the mountain. There was no longer a plum tree as per his dreams, and there was certainly no man from the West there either. Nevertheless, Kai knew it was the place of his dreams.

Kai made his way to the mountain wall where he dreamt the spring fountain had been, but he only found a small hole in the rock.

He put his hand inside it and found it to be dry and dusty. After pulling his hand out and dusting it off on a trouser leg, he moved towards what appeared a cave opening further along the terrace but stopped when he heard a loud clunk and felt a shudder that seemed to come from within the mountain itself. A second later, water began to flow into the rock hole he had just been investigating. The boy quickly returned to it. Initially, the water was muddy, but it quickly became crystal clear.

The biggest smile spread across his face. This mountain is indeed alive, he thought.

Kai retrieved a blue plastic cup from his bag and scooped out some water from the spring. He gulped it down. It was the sweetest water he'd ever tasted, and it made him feel good.

He pulled a canteen bottle from his bag, and as he began to fill it with water, he felt the arrival of something behind him. He sensed it was large but unthreatening. He heard it shuffle closer to him and then felt its warm breath on the back of his neck. Kai turned and found himself face to face with the White Dragon of the mountain.

It was a glorious sight.

Both the boy and the mystical creature smiled at each other.

Flying To South-West China

Quintus and Tina were once again placed in the cargo hold of Marx's jet, this time for the 15 hours it takes to fly from New York City to the Chinese city of Chengdu. They sat on the floor with their hands zip-tied behind their backs and the black hoods over their heads.

Tina was distressed and confused by what was happening, but as long as Quintus was nearby, she was able to restrain her fears and sleep for half of the flight.

As for Quintus, he was trying to make the most of their predicament by keeping his mind clear, strong, and detached. In fact, he was buoyed by the news that they were going to China. He just somehow had to avoid getting himself, and Tina killed for their organs and then get himself to White Dragon Mountain as once predicted.

Marx's two minions took turns watching over them, and Irfan got the last leg of the trip. Towards the 15th hour, Vacher opened the door to pass on a message.

'We're landing in 10 minutes, make sure these two are awake and ready to move after landing,' he told Irfan.

'What time is it wherever we're going to?'

'Around 3.30 am, I was told.'

'You think the clubs will be open?'

'No time for partying. We gotta look after these two and make sure nothing happens to the Iranian.'

'You really think he's Iranian?' asked Irfan about War.

'It's only an educated guess. The Iranians and North Koreans are allies. So why not? Or is this about you?'

'What do you mean?'

'Is this a Muslim Sunni versus Shia thing?'

Irfan shrugged.

'Either way, get ready, we're landing soon,' Vacher said as he shut the door.

As the Frenchman returned to his seat in the middle of the cabin, he passed by Marx, who tugged at his arm, stopping him.

'Everything okay in there?' Marx asked.

'Yes, boss, everything is fine. They'll be ready to move out once we land.'

'Don't forget they do so only after Kristen and Ivan are off the jet and in vehicles driving away. Is Irfan clear on that?'

'Of course, Mr. Marx.'

'I certainly hope so,' said Marx, who nodded for Vacher to carry on.

Up at the very front of the cabin near the cockpit, Kristen was sitting next to War, who sketched on a drawing pad. She'd just woken up from several hours of sleep, which included another dream featuring the Roman soldier and the young girl. This time it was more serious, the soldier was holding up his shield, protecting the girl from something dark and sinister. Kristen didn't understand what it meant, but it added to her building sense of unease.