Sets up nuclear accident

“Present for you,” Karrin said.
“Mmmmnghf?” I asked.
She plopped a file folder down on the table beside me and said, “From Paranoid Gary the Paranetizen.”
I swallowed a mouthful and delayed getting another long enough to ask, “The one who found the deal with the boats last year? Crazy-but-not-wrong guy?”
“That’s him,” she said.
“Huh,” I said, chewing. I opened the folder and started flipping through printed pages of fuzzy images.
“Those are from Iran,” Karrin said. “Gary says that they show a functioning nuclear power plant.”
The images were obviously of some sort of installation, but I couldn’t tell anything beyond that. “Thought they had big old towers.”
“He says they’re buried in that hill behind the building,” Karrin said. “Check out the last few images.”
On the last pages of the folder, things in the installation had changed. Columns of black, greasy smoke rolled out from multiple buildings. In another image, the bodies of soldiers lay on the ground. And in the last image, up on the hillside, which was wreathed in white mist, or maybe steam . . .
Three figures faced one another. One was a large man dressed in a long overcoat and wielding a slightly curved sword in one hand, an old cavalry saber. He carried what might have been a sawed-off shotgun in the other. His skin was dark, and though his head hadn’t been shaved like that the last time I’d seen him, it could really have been only one person.
“Sanya,” I said.
The world’s only Knight of the Cross was standing across from two blurry figures. Both were in motion, as if charging toward him. One was approximately the same size and shape as a large gorilla. The other was covered in a thick layer of feathers that gave an otherwise humanoid shape an odd, shaggy appearance.
“Magog and Shaggy Feathers,” I muttered. “Hell’s bells, those Coins are slippery. When were these taken?”
“Less than six hours ago,” Karrin said, “according to Paranoid Gary. The Denarians are up to something.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Deirdre said that Tessa was supposed to be in Iran. That makes sense.”
“In what way does that make sense?”
“Nicodemus wants to pull a job over here,” I said. “He knows there’s only one Knight running around. So he sends Tessa and her crew to the other side of the world to stir up major-league trouble. Let’s say Gary’s right, and Iran has a nuclear reactor running. And something goes horribly wrong with it. You’ve got an instant regional and international crisis. Of course a Knight gets sent to deal with it—where he can’t get to Chicago, or at least not in time to do any good.”
Karrin took that in silently, and I went back to eating. “So you’re saying, we’re on our own.”


Skin Game Chapter 24, Page 191-193