by Graham Brown
In his prior life, Ranga had done research for all the top labs, as well as the U.S. government. His success in manipulating genetic codes and creating new forms of life was legendary, and he had intimate firsthand knowledge regarding the creation of biological weapons.
Beyond that, it was well-known that Ranga Milan needed money. What it was for remained a mystery, but Interpol, the CIA, and other Western security services had long feared he would trade his vast knowledge for the wealth he sought.
So far, Ranga told himself, I have done no such thing. It was a partial truth, one he’d risked his life to maintain. But a partial truth was also a partial lie.
He shook the thought away, focusing on the meeting. By holding it here, in the most public space in France, he hoped he would be safe from the people he’d once worked for. He’d believed in them once, believed they had similar desires, but as he discovered the truth he had no choice but to run. Otherwise they would take what he wanted to create and turn it into a weapon like no other that had ever been built.
Ranga shuddered at how close they’d come before he broke away. He cringed in fear that they might find a way to finish what he had already given them. He could have destroyed the research, should have destroyed it perhaps, but it was his life’s work.
And there was still a need.
“Excuse me,” he said, brushing past a group of Japanese tourists. “Merci, merci.”
He squeezed by the group, fitting himself into the front of the crowded elevator. He clutched a computer case to his side and waited as the doors lingered while several more passengers fitted themselves in.
Across the crowded plaza, he saw a gendarme turn his way. Just a casual tilt of the head and then a moment of hesitation, but the hesitation bothered Ranga. The policeman began walking toward the elevator, not hurrying, just strolling, not even really focused on the elevator anymore, but headed his way.
And then the doors closed, the gears whirled, and the elevator began to rise.
As the car raced upward toward the observation deck Ranga exhaled, relaxing for the moment. The computer case slung over one shoulder weighed heavily. Inside lay every ounce of funding he’d been able to put his hands on and it was still ten thousand euros short.
He guessed his contact would do little besides glance at the cash, but the man had his own needs and if an argument ensued Ranga had come prepared for that as well.
A ceramic object in his pocket that looked like a cellphone was actually a handgun. Barely bigger than his palm, it carried four shots. And though Ranga had never fired a gun, under no circumstances would he leave this place empty-handed.
The elevator doors opened and the tourists pushed their way out. Ranga moved with them, wiping a sheen of sweat off his upper lip. He spotted a figure in the southwest corner, at the very edge of the decking. A patch covered one of his eyes and a package rested at his feet.
Ranga walked over. “Bonjour,” he said.
The man turned toward Ranga. His weatherbeaten face, tanned skin, and coarse hair suggested a life of hardship. A scar disappearing beneath the eye patch confirmed it.
“The language of the Frenchman is not mine,” the seller said coarsely.
“But you make your home here,” Ranga said.
“Your money helped me escape,” the man said. “But I do not wish to forget.”
Ranga had made contact with this man during a stay in Iran. His name was Bashir, a onetime archaeologist and then a curator for a private museum. Bashir had been an opponent of the ayatollahs for many years. He’d kept a low profile until 2009, when he’d stood up and had then been caught and tortured for supporting the Green Revolution after the contested elections.
The hard-liners took his eye and then his family. Bashir had taken revenge by fleeing to France with treasures the world had long thought destroyed. He now sold them to fund the resistance.
“If it is the will of Allah, I will go back one day,” he said.
Ranga offered a sad smile. During their time together the two men had debated this concept many times. Apparently neither had changed his position.
“My friend, there is no God,” Ranga said. “Neither yours, nor mine, nor any other. There is only man and the stories we tell to explain the unexplainable.”
Bashir laughed a little bit. A laugh every bit as sad as Ranga’s smile. “They have tainted your mind.”
“They have poisoned many things, but this belief is my own.”
Ranga said nothing more, not wishing to think of the pain he’d endured at the hands of the radical group he’d allowed himself to join or the despair he felt from their legacy.
“Even as you speak I hear the doubt,” Bashir said. “Why else would you want the tablet and the truth it contains?”
Ranga understood how it looked. His interest in Bashir stemmed from the man’s knowledge, particularly of the cultures that had grown up in the Middle East thousands of years before the time of Christ. Cultures like the Uruk and the Sumerians and the Elamites, cultures that had left a record of man’s earliest quest to understand a being they could neither see nor hear but felt compelled to obey.
Indeed, Ranga was obsessed with the subject, but his reasons were more concrete than spiritual. He could not risk explaining them to Bashir.
“Do you have what you’ve offered?” Ranga asked. “Or must I wait?”
“I waited thirty years to see it again,” Bashir said. “So I understand your need. If I am right, this tablet was carved by the hand of Adam, the first man. Do you understand what that means?”
Ranga tried not to react. He had been fooled by hoaxes before. “How can you be sure?”
“There is no sure,” Bashir said. “But the writings that led us to his grave spoke of the Garden, the fall of man, and the exile. They also told us of—”
“Not here,” Ranga insisted.
Bashir seemed agitated. “But you must know. It is not what you think. It talks of water, the sword of fire, and of death.”
“And of life,” Ranga insisted, though he didn’t know for sure.
“Yes,” Bashir said. “And also of life.”
“And what of the scroll?”
“To the auction in Beirut, as I told you,” Bashir said sadly.
Ranga felt a spike of emotion, desperation mixed with panic. He had hoped Bashir would be able to find the scroll he’d spoken of, but in truth it didn’t matter now. Not if he was right about the tablet.
“Have you ever chased something that stubbornly remained just beyond your grasp?” Bashir asked.
“All my life,” Ranga admitted.
“The scroll has been that way for me. No matter how many times I’ve gotten close, it has always fled from me,” Bashir explained. “I will recover it with what you’ve given me. I will have it once and for all and I will share with you what it tells me.”
Bashir had promised to go to Beirut with the money Ranga was paying him, to bid on the scroll. The effort might avail him, might even prove what Ranga and Bashir both believed about Adam and the Garden, though for vastly different reasons. But now Ranga thought — he hoped — it was no longer necessary. The tablet was all that mattered.
“Let me see it.”
Bashir slid the satchel toward him. Ranga opened it. He could see the brownish stone inside and could just make out the carving.
Ranga took a breath and held it. He was so close he could feel it. The end of a quest that had driven him to madness was growing near.
Glancing up, he noticed Bashir’s eye shift. Bashir was looking past him, focusing on a spot near the center of the tower. A look of fear grew on his face.
“You’ve been reckless,” Bashir whispered.
Ranga began to turn.
“Don’t,” Bashir said.
Ranga straightened up, placed the computer case down, and reached into his pocket. Craning his neck around just far enough to see, he spotted four gendarmes spreading out through the crowd. Reflective vests marked them. Their hands rested
on holstered weapons as if they expected a fight.
“The Sûreté,” Bashir whispered.
Ranga recognized one of them and felt a wave of fear shoot through him like flash of pain. “Not the police,” he said. “It is them. They have come for me.”
“Surely they wouldn’t—”
“They would do anything,” Ranga said.
He pushed the computer bag filled with cash toward Bashir and grabbed for the package. If he could just find a way back into the crowd and down he could—
He took a step but a heavy hand fell on his shoulder like a claw. It spun him around. Ranga placed the satchel down, raised one hand in surrender, and almost simultaneously reached into his pocket and pressed the trigger of his little weapon.
The gunshot echoed through the observation deck. The crowd jumped. The “policeman” fell backward bleeding and clutching his abdomen.
The tourists screamed at the sight and bolted for the elevators and stairwell.
Ranga’s hand and side burned from the blast and he stood in foolish shock at what he had done. As the crowd raced around him, he sought a way out. He grabbed the package and tried to move, but more shots rang out. Bullets flew in his direction, forcing him to dive and take cover.
Pulling the zip gun from his pocket, he fired once and ducked behind the ironwork. For a moment he was hidden, but the crowd was thinning quickly and he would soon be hopelessly exposed.
“You can’t fight them,” Bashir said. “Give them what they want. It means nothing without the scroll.”
“You’re wrong,” Ranga said. “It means everything.”
Seeming to disagree, Bashir grabbed the satchel and tried to run, but Ranga tripped him up, the satchel hit the ground, and the tablet spilled out onto the deck, chipping one corner.
A voice with a Mediterranean lilt rang out across the platform.
“Ranga Milan, you have strayed from the faith. The Master has sent us to bring you home.”
He recognized the voice. Marko. The Killer. The Man of Blood.
Grabbing the clay tablet, Ranga scrambled for better cover. He wasn’t quick enough. A bullet hit him in the leg, taking his feet out from under him. He fell hard, rolled, and began to crawl, only to have another bullet hit him in the shoulder.
Wincing in agony, Ranga pulled himself into a more covered position. He grasped the tablet and gazed through the iron lattice of the tower.
The “policemen” were moving to new positions, surrounding him from three sides, cutting him off from any hope of reaching the elevator or the stairwell. He could not escape, and with only a few bullets in his small gun, he could not hope to fight his way out.
He looked around in despair.
“Just give it to them,” Bashir said. “They will let you go.”
“They will never let either of us go,” Ranga replied.
From the streets below he could hear alarms blaring. The men surrounding him would not wait long.
He glanced toward the edge of the platform. Out beyond lay the void of open sky.
He could not save himself now. He could not save those he wished to save, but he knew what these men would do with the secret contained in the tablet. He could not allow that to occur.
He ran his hand over the smooth surface and the carved markings. He studied the symbol at the center. A circle with four notches in it, within which lay a square and a smaller rectangle.
Bashir had called it the Mark of Eden. And he’d been right, but it would do neither of them any good. For if there was no God, as Ranga thought, then his existence was about to end brutally with nothing to show for it but misery. And if there was one, damnation surely awaited for what he had done.
He inched toward the edge.
“Give up, Ranga!” Marko shouted.
“So that you can use me to kill and destroy?”
“Your work will die alongside you,” Marko shouted. “Is that what you want?”
Ranga slid a few more inches. “Better than the hell on earth you want to see.”
“We do only what is necessary,” Marko said. “What you suggested so long ago.”
The thought sickened Ranga. It had come full circle, the arrogance he’d always been accused of, the indictment of his profession. Geneticists playing God. And now …
What had he done?
Despite a decade of effort, he saw the truth plainly. His work must die. He must die with it.
He inched closer to the edge. He whispered to himself, “I’m sorry, Nadia. I tried.”
He turned, fired his last shots blindly, and then lunged for the edge without hesitation.
He made one full step before the crack of a gunshot cut him down.
Ranga’s back arched as blistering pain racked his body. He slumped to his knees, one hand on the railing. The tablet fell from his hand, landing on the deck, the Mark of Eden staring back up at him.
He tried to stand but lacked the strength. He reached for the tablet, felt its smooth surface in his hand once more, and then heaved it.
He watched it fall. It spun and tumbled, dropping silently through the air for what seemed like an eternity. Farther and farther down. And then it hit. Shattering into a thousand fragments on the concrete below.
Collapsing facedown, Ranga drifted toward darkness, expecting a bullet to find his skull. But instead of a finishing shot, he felt rough hands yank him up.
“Take him with us,” he heard Marko say. “Take them both.”
“What about the tablet?”
The second voice sounded nervous, fearful. Ranga understood that, too. The Master would be furious.
Marko was less afraid. “We will find the others, once we have the scroll.”
Marko grabbed Ranga by the hair and shook him awake. “And we will force the truth from your lips before you die. I promise you that.”
Ranga heard these words through a fog. He saw Marko’s unforgiving eyes and felt the hatred in his soul. He knew it was not a lie.
He had failed. He would die in horrendous pain. His dream would be twisted into an endless, living nightmare and hell would come to the earth after all.
CHAPTER 6
Danielle Laidlaw sat in the passenger cabin of a Citation X business jet as it idled on the ramp at an airport forty miles south of Dubrovnik. The main door stood open, the stairs down and locked. Activity was at a standstill.
This jet would be Hawker’s method of extraction, a departure in a style appropriate to the people he was supposed to represent. If anyone was watching, all they’d see was Hawker boarding a jet owned by a mysterious corporation chartered out of Malta and known to be involved in international weapons sales.
The only possible link to the United States would be Danielle herself. For that reason she stayed inside, window shades down, restricted to watching the ramp via a closed-circuit camera feed that displayed on a flat-screen monitor at the front of the cabin.
Hawker was late, twenty minutes so far. Not an overly concerning amount, but enough to stir a small degree of worry. She cared a great deal for Hawker. He had a way of bringing out the best and most honorable parts in her own personality. Parts she had lost in her initial climb up the ranks of the National Research Institute.
Her job often required lying, stealing, and deceiving in the name of the greater good. She didn’t really have a problem with that. But a time had come when it all went too far, when the NRI began hiring civilians, putting them at risk and lying about the dangers they would face.
Two and a half years ago, on a mission like that, they’d also retained Hawker. He’d been little more than a hired gun at the time, but as the mission frayed at the edges and then blew itself apart, Hawker had been the one factor that kept the damage from becoming all-encompassing.
The final tally was grave, with more than a dozen deaths and a barely contained scandal that led right back to the agency’s then director, Stuart Gibbs. He’d disappeared before Danielle and the team made it home, and the NRI itself had almost collaps
ed, maintaining its existence by the thinnest of margins.
In the words of one critic, the mission had been “cataclysmic in the scope and magnitude of its failure,” but she and several others, mostly civilians, had survived, almost exclusively due to Hawker’s efforts.
The experience had been so intense that it took Danielle a while to work out her feelings. Only later had she come to realize the irony of Hawker, the fugitive mercenary and pariah, showing her, the upstanding straight-A government agent, what mattered and what didn’t.
It reminded her of deep-seated beliefs about honor and righteousness that she’d somehow buried or rationalized away as a hindrance to getting the job done. It had been the beginning of the way back to herself. And when the dust cleared, she found that she liked new her — the old her — better.
Eventually she’d returned to the NRI with renewed purpose and strength, determined that she could do what was right and still do her job.
Perhaps that was why her feelings for Hawker went deeper than the physical attraction they both felt. She was fairly certain that he’d touched her soul somehow.
Someday, in some way, she hoped, they’d get a chance to see where things might go, but so far Hawker’s cover required him to live exactly as he had for the previous decade. He lived in the shadows as a target for Interpol and American agencies like the FBI that were purposefully kept in the dark as to his change in status, lest it leak out. He never spent more than a few weeks in one place. Not exactly the way to start a relationship.
She’d hoped that after this mission to Croatia they might have some time to be by themselves, but Hawker’s message and the information she’d uncovered trying to help him meant there was little chance of that.
As she waited and worried for him, it grieved her that she was here to deliver terrible news.
On the screen she saw an expensive-looking white sedan slide through the gate at the edge of the taxiway. The car rolled across the apron and parked beside the Citation, stopping at the foot of the stairs. Her heart filled with relief when Hawker got out, handed the keys to another man, and then began to climb the stairs.
