by Ted Dekker
Svensson lowered the pistol. “There is no way to stop the virus,” he said. “We can only control it now. That was the point from the beginning. Dissension will only hinder that objective. Any argument?”
They did not argue.
“Good.” He set the gun on the table. “As we speak, the governments of these affected countries are being notified of our demands. These governments won’t react immediately, of course. This is preferred. Panic is not our friend. Not yet. We don’t need people staying home for fear of catching the disease. By the time they realize the true nature of our threat, containment will be out of the question. It virtually is already.”
He took a deep breath. The power of this moment, standing over seven men—six living—was alone worth the price he’d paid. And it was only the very beginning. He’d resisted a smile, but now he smiled for them all.
“It’s a wonderful day, my friends. You find yourselves on the right side of history. You will see. The die has been cast.”
Markous had been guaranteed two things for this assignment: his life and a million dollars cash. Both he valued enough to cut off his own leg if needed. The cash he had already received. His life was still in their hands. He doubted neither their will nor their ability to take his life or give it.
He stood in the bathroom stall and flicked the small vial with his fingernail. Hard to believe that the yellow liquid could do what they insisted it would do. Unnerved by a few drops of amber fluid.
He held his breath and pulled the rubber cork out of the vial’s neck. Now only air separated him—his nose and his eyes and his skin—from the virus. Had he been infected already? No, how could he be?
He exhaled the air from his lungs, held his breath at the bottom, and then slowly inhaled, imagining invisible spores streaming into his nostrils. If it were scented, like a perfume, he would notice. But the objective was not to notice.
So then, he was now infected.
Markous impulsively splashed some of the fluid on his jacket, his hands, rubbed his face. Like a cologne. He tested it with his tongue. Tasteless. He drank a little and swished it around his mouth. Swallowed.
Markous stepped from the men’s room. Travelers crowded Bangkok International Airport despite the early hour. He looked both ways, straightening his tie. Rarely did he mix with women at nightclubs or other common social institutions, despite his handsome Mediterranean features. But at the moment, spreading a little love seemed appropriate.
He saw what he was looking for and walked toward a gathering of four blue-suited flight attendants talking by a phone bank.
“Excuse me.” All four women looked at him. Their luggage tags read “Air France.” He smiled gently and zeroed in on a tall brunette. “I was just walking by, and I couldn’t help but notice you. Do you mind?”
They exchanged glances. The brunette lifted an eyebrow self-consciously.
“Could you please tell me your name?” Markous asked. She wasn’t wearing a nametag.
“Linda.”
He stepped closer. His hands were still moist with the liquid. He imagined the millions of cells swimming in his mouth.
“Come here, Linda. I would like to tell you a secret.” He leaned forward. At first she hesitated, but when two of the others chuckled, she spread her hands. “What?”
“Closer,” he said. “I won’t bite, I promise.”
Her face was red, but she complied by leaning a few inches.
Markous stepped into her and kissed her full on the mouth. He immediately pulled back and raised both hands. “Forgive me. You are so beautiful, I simply had to kiss you.”
The shock registered on her face. “You . . . what do you think you’re doing?”
Markous grabbed the hand of the woman next to the brunette. He coughed. “Please, I’m terribly sorry.” He backed out quickly, dipping with apology. Then he was gone, leaving four stunned women in his wake.
He walked by the airport’s first-aid station, where a mother was asking a nurse for something while her two blond-headed children played tag about the waiting bench. An older man with bushy gray brows watched him take his still-moist jacket off and hang it on the coatrack. With any luck, the man would report the jacket and security would confiscate it. Before he took five paces, the mother, her two children, the nurse, and the old man were infected.
How many more he infected before leaving the airport, he would never know. Perhaps a hundred, though none with such tenderness as his first. He stopped in a morning market on his way through the city and worked his way down the crowded aisles. How many here, he couldn’t guess. At least several hundred. For good measure, he tossed the shirt he’d soaked into the Mae Nam Chao Phraya River, which wound its way lazily through the city center.
Enough. By end of day, Bangkok would be crawling with the virus.
Job done.
Carlos parked his car in the Sheraton’s underground parking structure at eight o’clock and rode the elevator to the lobby. The morning crowd was already bustling. He crossed to the main elevators, waited for an empty car, and stepped in. Ninth floor.
The meeting with Deputy Secretary Gains and the gathered intelligence officers had gone late last night, and his latest intelligence had it that Hunter was still in his room. Asleep. The source was impeccable.
In fact, the source had actually been at the meeting.
If they only knew to what extent Svensson had gone to execute this plan. The only caveat was Hunter. A man who learned from his dreams. A man none of them could possibly control. A man Carlos had killed twice already.
This time he would stay dead.
The elevator bell rang and Carlos slipped down the hall, tried and found the room next to Hunter’s, which was open as arranged.
There were two critical elements in any operation. One, power; and two, intelligence. He’d engaged Hunter once, and despite the man’s surprising skill, he’d handled him easily enough. But he’d underestimated the man’s endurance. Hunter had somehow managed to survive.
This time there would be no opportunity for a fight. Superior intelligence would prove the victor.
Carlos approached the door that adjoined the suite next door to this one. He withdrew a Luger and screwed a silencer into its barrel.
Superior intelligence. For example, he knew that at this very moment this door was unlocked. The inside man had made sure of that. Past this door, one door on the left, was the door to Thomas Hunter’s room. Hunter had been sleeping in the room for seven hours now. He would never even know he’d been shot.
All of this Carlos knew without the slightest doubt. If anything changed—if his sister, who slept in the suite’s other bedroom, woke, or if Hunter himself woke—the video operator would simply page him, and the receiver on Carlos’s belt would vibrate.
Intelligence.
Carlos opened both doors separating the suites and walked to the room on his left. Cartridge chambered. All was silent. He reached for the doorknob.
A phone rang. Not the main house phone—the one in the sister’s room on his right. Immediately his pager vibrated. He ignored the pager and paused to listen.
The phone beside Kara’s bed rang once. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Where was she?
Bangkok. She and Thomas had attended a meeting the night before with deputy secretary of state Merton Gains because the Swiss, Valborg Svensson, had kidnapped Monique de Raison for one reason only: to develop the antivirus to the virus he would unleash on the world. At least that was what Thomas had tried to persuade them of. They hadn’t exactly run to him and kissed his feet.
The phone rang again.
She sat up. Thomas was hopefully still asleep in the suite’s other bedroom. Had he dreamed? Was he still dreaming? She’d suggested he dream a very long time and become someone new, an absurd suggestion on the face of it, but then so was this whole alternate-world thing he was living through. The spread of evil in one world, the threat of a virus in the other one.
The phone wa
s ringing. She’d taken the phone in Thomas’s room off the hook last night. He wouldn’t hear it.
She grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”
“This is Merton Gains. Kara?”
She switched the phone to her right ear. “Yes. Good morning, Mr. Secretary.”
“I’m sorry to wake you, but it seems that we have a situation on our hands.”
“No, no, it’s okay. What time is it?” What time is it? She was speaking to the deputy secretary of state, and she was demanding he tell her what time it was?
“Just past eight in the morning local,” Gains said. His voice sounded strained. “The State Department received a fax from a party claiming to be Valborg Svensson.”
A chill washed down Kara’s spine. This was what Thomas had predicted! Not so soon, but—
“He’s claiming that the Raison Strain has been released in twelve cities including Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta,” Gains said, voice now very thin.
“What?” Kara swung her legs off the bed. “When?”
“Six hours ago. He claims that the number will be twenty-four by the end of the day.”
“Twenty-four! That’s impossible! They did it without the antivirus! Thomas was right. Has any of this been verified?”
“No. No, but we’re working on it, believe me. Where is Thomas?”
She glanced at the door. “As far as I know, he’s sleeping next door.”
“How long has he been sleeping?”
“About eight hours, I think.”
“Well, I don’t have to say it, but it looks like he may have been right.”
She stood. “I realize that. You realize that this could have been prevented—”
“You may be right.” He wasn’t the one who’d doubted Thomas. She had no right to accuse him. What was she thinking? He was the deputy secretary of state for the United States of America, for heaven’s sake!
“If this new information turns out to be right, your brother may be a very important person to us.”
“He may be or he may not be. It could be too late now.”
“Can I talk to him?”
She hesitated. Of course they could talk to Thomas. They were powerful men who could talk to anyone they wanted to. But they’d taken too long to talk to him already.
“I’ll wake him,” she said.
“Thank you. I have some calls to make. Bring him down in half an hour. Will that be enough time?”
“Yes.”
The line clicked off.
Kara got halfway to the bedroom door and stopped. Half an hour, the secretary had said. Bring him down in half an hour. If she woke Thomas now, he’d demand to go down immediately. Besides, he’d hardly slept a decent stretch in over a week. And if he was dreaming, which she had no reason to doubt, then every minute of sleep—for that matter, every second— could be the equivalent of hours or days or even weeks in his dream world. A lot could happen. Answers could come.
Six hours ago, Svensson had released the virus. It was a mind-bending thought. She should wake her brother now, not later.
Right after she used the toilet.
Carlos had heard enough. He hadn’t anticipated hearing their reaction like this, but he found it quite satisfying.
He twisted the knob. Cracked the door. The sound of breathing.
He readied his gun and slipped in.
Thomas Hunter lay on his back, sleeping in a tangle of sheets, naked except for boxer shorts. Sweat soaked the sheets. Sweat and blood. Blood? So much blood, smeared over the sheets, some dried and some still wet.
The man had bled in his sleep? Was bleeding in his sleep. Dead?
Carlos stepped closer. No. Hunter’s chest rose and fell steadily. There were scars on his chest and abdomen that Carlos couldn’t remember, but nothing to suggest the slugs Carlos was sure he’d put into this man in the last week.
He brought the gun to Hunter’s temple and tightened his finger on the trigger.
He couldn’t resist a final whisper. “Good-bye, Mr. Hunter.”
38
RACHELLE WAS wrong.
Thomas did not eat the fruit forever.
He only ate it for fifteen years. Not once in those fifteen years did he dream, but then, in the worst of times, when they didn’t think it could possibly get any worse, just as the boy had foretold, Thomas dreamed again.
And when he did, he dreamed that a gun was hovering by his left temple. Three words whispered menacingly in his ear: “Good-bye, Mr. Hunter.”
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES WITH RED . . .
RED
THE HEROIC RESCUE
Bangkok
KARA GOT halfway to her door and stopped. She and Thomas were in a large hotel suite with two bedrooms. Beyond her bedroom door was a short hall that ran to the living room and, in the other direction, to the adjoining suite. Across that hall—her brother’s room, where he lay dead to this world, dreaming, oblivious to the news she’d just heard from Deputy Secretary Merton Gains.
The virus had been released exactly as Thomas had predicted just last evening.
Half an hour, Secretary Gains had said. Bring him down in half an hour. If she woke Thomas now, he’d demand to go down immediately. Every minute of sleep—for that matter every second—could be the equivalent of hours or days or even weeks in his dream world. A lot could happen. Answers could come. She should let him sleep.
Then again, Svensson had released the virus. She should wake her brother now.
Right after she used the bathroom.
Kara hurried to the side room, flipped the light switch, turned on the water. Closed the door.
“We’ve stepped off the cliff and are falling into madness,” she said. Then again, perhaps the fall to madness had started when Thomas had tried to jump off the balcony in Denver. He’d dragged her to Bangkok, kidnapped Monique de Raison, and survived two separate encounters with a killer named Carlos, who was undoubtedly still after them. All this because of his dreams of another reality.
Would Thomas wake with any new information? The power was gone from the colored forest, he’d said. The colored forest itself was gone, which meant that his power might be gone as well. If that was the case, Tom’s dreams might be useless except as fantasies in which he was falling in love and learning to do backflips off a pinhead.
The water felt cool and refreshing on her face.
She flung the water from her hands and stepped to the toilet.
1
THOMAS URGED the sweating black steed into a full gallop through the sandy valley and up the gentle slope. He shoved his bloody sword into his scabbard, gripped the reins with both hands, and leaned over the horse’s neck. Twenty fighters rode in a long line to his right and left, slightly behind. They were unquestionably the greatest warriors in all the earth, and they pounded for the crest directly ahead, one question drumming through each one’s mind.
How many?
The Horde’s attack had come from the canyon lands, through the Natalga Gap. This was not so unusual. The Desert Dwellers’ armies had attacked from the east a dozen times over the last fifteen years. What was unusual, however, was the size of the party his men had just cut to ribbons less than a mile to the south. No more than a hundred.
Too few. Far too few.
The Horde never attacked in small numbers. Where Thomas and his army depended on superior speed and skill, the Horde had always depended on sheer numbers. They’d developed a kind of natural balance. One of his men could take out five of the Horde on any bad day, an advantage mitigated only by the fact that the Horde’s army approached five hundred thousand strong. His own army numbered fewer than thirty thousand including the apprentices. None of this was lost on the enemy. And yet they’d sent only this small band of hooded warriors up the Gap to their deaths.
Why?
They rode without a word. Hoofs thundered like war drums, an oddly comforting sound. Their horses were all stallions. Each fighter was dressed in the same hardened-leather breas
tplate with forearm and thigh guards. These left their joints free for the movement required in hand-to-hand combat. They strapped their knives to calves and whips to hips, and carried their swords on their horses. These three weapons, a good horse, and a leather bottle full of water were all any of the Forest Guard required to survive a week and to kill a hundred. And the regular fighting force wasn’t far behind.
Thomas flew over the hill’s crest, leaned back, and pulled the stallion to a stamping halt. The others fell in along the ridge. Still not a word.
What they saw could not easily be put into words.
The sky was turning red, blood red, as it always did over the desert in the afternoons. To their right stretched the canyon lands, ten square miles of cliffs and boulders that acted as a natural barrier between the red deserts and the first of seven forests. Thomas’s forest. Beyond the canyon’s cliffs, red-tinged sand flowed into an endless sea of desert. This landscape was as familiar to Thomas as his own forest.
What he saw now was not.
At first glance, even to a trained eye, the subtle movement on the desert floor might have been mistaken for shimmering heat waves. It was hardly more than a beige discoloration rippling across the vast section of flat sand that fed into the canyons. But this was nothing so innocuous as desert heat.
This was the Horde army.
They wore beige hooded tunics to cover their gray scabbed flesh and rode light tan horses bred to disappear against the sand. Thomas had once ridden past fifty without distinguishing them from the sandstone.
“How many, Mikil?”
His second in command searched the horizon to the south. He followed her eyes. A dozen smaller contingents were heading up the Gap, armies of a few hundred each, not so much larger than the one they’d torn apart thirty minutes ago.
“Hundred thousand,” she said. A strip of leather held her dark hair back from a tanned forehead. A small white scar on her right cheek marred an otherwise smooth, milky complexion. The cut had been inflicted not by the Horde, but by her own brother, who’d fought her to assert his strength just a year ago. She’d left him unscathed, underfoot, soundly defeated.
