by Alex Lukeman
"To good work," she said.
They drank.
"This one was hard," she said.
"They're all hard."
Selena looked out the window. "How are we going to replace Lamont?"
"It won't be easy but Harker will find someone. It's going to be a tough adjustment."
"How much longer do you think we can do this?" she asked.
"You miss your old life?"
"Some of it. I miss seeing students get excited about learning but I don't miss stuffy faculty parties and self-important professors who want to argue with me. After the last couple of years I could never go back to that. It would seem terribly boring."
Nick laughed. "Yeah, you can't say that what we do is boring."
"Do you think AEON is finally out of our lives?"
"I think so. But there's always someone out there who believes the world exists for their personal exploitation. It won't be long until something else like AEON comes along."
"That's a depressing thought."
"It's always been that way, all through history. The people who run things never learn."
Selena looked out the window. Dawn revealed the gray waters of the Atlantic far below.
"What am I going to do about my sister?" she said.
Her question took him by surprise.
"There's not much you can do. She's not really your sister, even though she has your father's blood."
"Yes she is, as much as I don't want to admit it. I wonder if she knows about me?"
"If Vysotsky has anything to say about it, I don't think she does," Nick said. "You'd be just as much of a surprise to her as she was to you."
"I wonder if we'll ever meet?"
"That might not be a great idea. Don't forget who she works for and what she does."
"I don't think there's much of a chance I'll forget that."
Nick changed the subject.
"I'm looking forward to getting back."
"So am I. I want to start putting our new place together."
"You just want to go shopping."
"Jerk." She punched him in the shoulder. "Seriously, aren't you excited about it?"
"About shopping? No. But I'm looking forward to living there with you."
"You are?"
Nick took her hand. "Yes. It took a while but I finally figured it out."
She looked at him. "Figured what out?"
"That we're a team," he said.
CHAPTER 65
Nick, Selena and Ronnie were in Elizabeth's office.
"Are you sure Gutenberg didn't get away?" Elizabeth asked.
"I don't see how he could have," Nick said. "There wasn't time for him to get very far and he was wounded. The building came down fast. It would have crushed him underneath."
Elizabeth nodded, once.
"The containers of plague were destroyed," Nick said, "but there could still be samples around. We never went into Krivi's corporate building to check the labs there."
"It's handled. Langley sent a team in. They recovered samples of the bacteria and two hundred vials of vaccine. We have what we need to stop the spread, once it's in production."
"How many have died?" Selena asked.
"I don't know the exact figure, but at least twenty-five thousand so far. There'll be more before it's done. It's still spreading. The borders of Brazil are closed and the entire country is under quarantine. It's wrecking their economy."
"So AEON wins after all," Nick said.
"Not quite. Aid is pouring in from all over the world. It seems not everyone in power thinks knocking out Brazil is a good idea. Don't forget, you stopped them from releasing the plague here. If Gutenberg had succeeded, millions would have died before a vaccination program was put in place."
"What about the Russians?" Selena said.
"What about them?"
"They could still have some samples."
"They might. If they do, they'll add it to their biological weapons inventory. Just like us."
Selena looked shocked.
"Us?"
"We'll store it with the other bio weapons we have."
"I thought all of that was illegal."
"It is. Technically speaking, we don't have biological weapons. We only have research facilities and samples stored for the purpose of creating vaccines and preventive measures."
"Yeah, right," Ronnie said.
"It's part of the MAD policy," Elizabeth said. "Mutual Assured Destruction. If our enemies know we have the capability to retaliate in kind against a biological attack, they might think twice about launching one against us."
"It's insane," Selena said, "immoral."
"But necessary. War has nothing to do with morality."
"Why did Vysotsky go after AEON?" Nick asked.
"It's not hard to understand," Elizabeth said. "It was Vysotsky's men who lost the samples in the first place. As far as the Kremlin was concerned, it was his fault and it was up to him to correct the problem. I think there was another element as well. From what I know of him, Alexei would take the deaths of his men as a personal insult. He's not a man to let an insult go by. He wanted revenge. Not to mention the fact that AEON posed a direct threat to the Federation."
"Does the president know about Senator Mitchell?"
"I intend to brief him later today. He needs to know so he can discover what Mitchell was doing. Whatever it was, you can be sure it wasn't in our interests."
"What are we going to do about Vysotsky?" Selena asked.
Elizabeth looked at her.
"Nothing. What would you have us do?"
"He sent my sister over here to kill an American senator. I know Mitchell was part of AEON but..."
"Selena. There's nothing we can do."
Selena opened her mouth to speak and closed it again.
Elizabeth reached into a drawer and took out several file folders.
"Nick, these are service records. Lamont's made it official. He's leaving at the end of the month and we need to replace him. I want you and Selena and Ronnie to look at possible candidates."
Nick reached over and took the files from her.
"It's not going to be the same without Lamont."
"No, but we don't have a choice."
"We'll get on it."
"That's all for today," Elizabeth said. "I just want to say that I'm glad you all made it back. Good work."
"We get a break?" Ronnie said.
"Count on a week unless something comes up."
Nick stood. "Come on, Selena. Let's go buy some furniture."
Elizabeth watched them leave and wondered how much longer the team would hold together. They were old for the kind of missions she sent them on. Ancient, by the standards of modern combat. Somehow they kept pulling it off. Lamont had been lucky, if you could call being left with a permanent limp lucky.
She got up and walked over to the counter with the coffee. It was the fuel that kept her going. She poured a cup and watched steam rise from the surface. She blew on the hot liquid to cool it and looked out through the bulletproof glass of the French doors at the patio and flowers that provided an illusion of normalcy.
AEON was finished, at least she hoped it was. Everything indicated that it was. But Elizabeth had learned that when one threat was finished, another waited in the wings. She opened the patio doors and took the coffee outside into the sunshine.
There would be time enough tomorrow to worry about what would come next.
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The Project Series
White Jade
The Lance
The Seventh Pillar
Black Harvest
The Tesla Secret
The Nostradamus File
The Ajax Protoc
ol
The Eye of Shiva
Black Rose
Book 10 of the Project series, King Solomon's Tomb, is coming soon...
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Acknowledgements
As always, my wife Gayle. She soothes the troubled waters when I feel like dumping everything halfway through and starting over.
Neil Jackson, who designs the dynamite covers for the Project series and always goes the extra mile.
Special thanks to Nancy Witt, Susan Blanker, Seth Ballard, Eric Vollebregt and Paul Madsen.
Notes
Bubonic plague is one of the great scourges of mankind, bringing down empires and kings with murderous indifference. Over the millennia there have been several distinct variations, each different from the last. The Plague of Justinian swept through the Eastern Roman Empire in 541-42 CE and devastated the world from the Mediterranean to China.
A characteristic of the Plague of Justinian was blackening of the toes and fingers. It died out, as plagues do, only to reemerge again and again over the next three hundred years until it finally disappeared sometime in the ninth century. It is estimated that over one hundred million people died before it was done. That was in a world with a much smaller population than today. Imagine what would happen now, if a variation were to appear that couldn't be stopped by modern antibiotics.
Victims of the plague were recently unearthed in Egypt and their genomes extracted.
Table of Contents
Ring around the rosie,
PrologueConstantinople: 541 C.E.
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"What? Destroyed?"
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
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
New Releases...
Acknowledgements
