by Graham Brown
“Why are you putting yourself through this?” she asked. “You did everything you could.”
“A long time ago I promised Sonia I’d never let anything happen to her.”
“You kept that promise when you dragged them out of Africa,” she said. “You put them on solid ground. They chose to go back into the land of snakes. Maybe they did it with good reason. But it was their choice. Not yours.”
He looked over at her. Obviously he knew that.
“I know,” she said, gently, thinking she might have overstepped her bounds. “Rational arguments aren’t going to do much for you right now.”
He nodded and gazed back toward the water.
“Did you love Sonia?” she asked.
He hesitated.
“It’s a yes-or-no question.”
“I loved the idea of her,” he said, proving that it wasn’t. “After five years looking over your shoulder and hoping the people you’re working with or the woman you’re sleeping with aren’t planning on killing you, you end up wondering if the world would be better off without you. Then you run into someone good who needs help and suddenly you matter.”
“And you’re not alone,” she said.
He nodded, then turned her way again. “I’m not big into psychoanalysis, but I wanted to feel alive. To feel normal. It almost felt normal.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, Hawker,” Danielle said. “There’s nothing wrong with any of that.”
“There is when you know it can’t last,” he said. “I couldn’t go back into the light where she was going and I sure as hell couldn’t bring her with me or she’d have ended up dead somewhere.”
He stopped. He didn’t have to say it. She knew his next thoughts. She put a hand on his knee.
“Hawker, right now you’re feeling guilt stacked on guilt, but even at twenty Sonia was a grown woman and nothing that happened since had anything to do with you. The only people to blame are Gibbs and the others he corrupted.
“We destroyed them,” she added, thanking God that the president had chosen to obliterate the whole island instead of just the freighter.
“There’s no indication that the virus escaped that island. There are teams looking for infected cormorants, but they haven’t found anything, not even a bird with singed tail feathers. Nothing got away, not in that firestorm.”
He nodded.
“You don’t feel it now, but Sonia gave herself for something that mattered, even if she was misguided at times. Who isn’t? Who wouldn’t want to be? Talk about life not meaning anything.”
She hoped her words were affecting him, but he remained silent.
Before anything else was said, a white Range Rover pulled up in the drive and parked next to the old wall that Danielle had been sitting on.
The horn sounded. Out on the beach Nadia perked up. She looked over her castle and toward the white SUV.
Keegan stepped out on the driver’s side and an elderly woman with olive skin and white hair stepped out on the passenger’s side. Almost immediately Nadia got up and began to hobble toward them. The woman came out past the wall and met Nadia halfway.
A look of relief swept over Hawker’s face.
“Who’s that?”
“Nadia’s grandmother. Keegan’s been looking for her all week. She’s from Barcelona. We didn’t know if she was still alive.”
Danielle felt as if a great weight had been lifted off Hawker’s shoulders and she couldn’t help but smile.
“This is a good thing,” she said.
He stood. “It’s a start.”
“You gonna be okay?” she asked.
“Someday,” he said,
“What about today?” she prompted.
“Today,” he said, pulling something from his shirt pocket and studying it. “Today I’m going to get even.”
He turned and began walking toward Nadia, her grandmother, and Keegan. Danielle quickly stood and followed. She caught up with Hawker as he reached them, picked little Nadia up, and sat her on the wall.
It was strange. The little girl looked exactly like a miniature version of the woman in the flowing dress, even though the woman was her grandmother and had to be in her seventies.
“Remember what Sonia told you?” Hawker said to Nadia, straightening her glasses, which had gotten crooked.
“That she’d fix me,” Nadia said.
“That she’d fix you,” Hawker repeated. “I have the medicine she gave me for you.”
As Danielle watched, Hawker showed Nadia a large syringe marked in white. Danielle recognized it as coming from the lab on the freighter. White for life.
No wonder he’d been unwilling to meet with any government officials. The sample would certainly have been taken.
Realizing what he was about to do, she felt a pang of fear.
“Hawker.”
“Sonia changed it,” he said, without looking up. “She couldn’t let Gibbs have what he wanted, but she wasn’t willing to hurt Nadia or take away her chance for life. She changed it so the virus can’t live outside the body. Once Nadia is healed and her body destroys the remnants of the carrier, the Eden virus will be gone.”
Nadia stretched out her arm, no doubt having received so many injections in her short life that she knew what to expect. Hawker found her vein, rubbed a small amount of antibacterial gel on her arm, and pulled the cap off the syringe.
Danielle took a deep breath but held back as he pressed the needle through the young girl’s skin and into her vein.
Nadia winced and made a little noise but that was it. Hawker slowly pressed the plunger down until 75 percent of the serum was gone. He stopped, pulled the syringe out, and capped it.
“I think the rest should go to the lab,” he said, handing it to Danielle. “Maybe Walter Yang can find other uses for it.”
Danielle took the syringe, thinking about the medical possibilities and worrying about the possible effects of what Hawker had just done.
“What if you’re wrong?” she asked.
He turned toward her and she could tell he’d already considered the possibility. Maybe that’s what he’d been pondering all these days on the beach.
“Then maybe we’ll start caring about this planet if we have to live on it forever.”
Danielle understood why he’d done what he’d done. She prayed he was right.
“Will she be well?” Nadia’s grandmother asked.
“I hope so,” Hawker said.
“Thank you,” the woman said.
“It was your son and Sonia,” he said.
The woman smiled.
“Come on, Nadia,” Keegan said. “All the ice cream you can eat inside.”
Excited, Nadia got down from the wall and headed for the beach house, not waiting for any of the adults.
“I’ll see to it,” her grandmother said, following after the little girl.
Keegan watched them go in, then turned to Danielle and Hawker. “So does this make me part of the team?” he asked.
“What team?” Hawker said.
“Your team, mate. The one with the big government pension and the expense accounts for all the Jags and the business jets. I could enjoy all of that.”
Hawker turned to Danielle. “Tell him all about it,” he said. “Break his heart.”
Hawker began walking toward the bungalow, leaving them behind.
“He’s your friend,” Danielle said, catching up to Hawker and looping her arm through his.
For a second Keegan was left alone. He sounded stunned.
“Is this because I’m a Brit?” he asked, turning to follow. “What, a Brit can’t earn a few dollars from America? I mean come on, you already took all our rock and rollers, and Beckham. Why can’t I hop across the pond? I could be huge there.”
“Keegan,” Hawker said, “look at this place. The big government pension you’re talking about wouldn’t cover your cleaning bill.”
“Sure,” he said, pushing between them and putting one arm
over Hawker’s shoulder and the other over Danielle’s. “But I could lose all this in one bad week at the tables. And then what would I have to fall back on? There’s my good looks and charm, of course. I’ll always ’ave those. But that only goes so far.”
They reached the door and stopped.
“Where did you get him?” Danielle asked Hawker.
Hawker shrugged. “Apparently I pick up strays.”
Somehow she felt like the one who picked up strays. Looking at Hawker and now Keegan, she suddenly felt the tribe growing.
“Who else is going to have your back?” Keegan said. “Did you see how I swooped in with that boat?”
“It was damn good to see you,” Hawker admitted.
“Exactly,” Keegan said. “And that’s exactly how you’re going to feel every time you see my smiling mug from here on out.”
Hawker looked over at Danielle. She felt like she was being conned, but there was no resisting at this point. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.
With that Keegan opened the door and the three of them went inside.
EPILOGUE
Mina, Saudi Arabia
Two months later
The crowd swirled around him in white and tan. Pilgrims numbering in the tens of thousands pressed forward, moving toward the three walls known collectively as the Jamarat. Most were eager, even emotionally overcome at the chance to complete this part of the hajj, the holy pilgrimage of Islam.
As soon as the noon prayers ended, they’d rushed toward a small bridge and toward the other entry points that would take them in front of the walls. In their ardor, few noticed or paid attention to a figure moving slowly, reluctantly. A man whose shoulders remained hunched, his head scarf pulled forward, hiding his neck and face.
Yousef Kazim had come on the pilgrimage not knowing what to expect. After the American woman let him go, he’d found his way back to France, to let his mother know he was alive, and then to Saudi Arabia.
Most poor Muslims had a hard time making the pilgrimage, but all were expected to do it at least once in their lives. Now, standing on this ground, Yousef felt a sense of nervousness, a heartsickness that he found hard to explain.
He had rejected Allah and then betrayed those who took him in.
He thought often about the conversation with the American woman, trying to hate her, trying to blame her for tricking him, but he realized she’d handed him a chance to redeem himself. In not giving in to him, she’d saved him somehow.
But now, standing only yards away from one of the holiest shrines in Islam, he did not feel any right to go inside. He tried to hold back, but the crowd flowed like a river, and despite his efforts Yousef was slowly swept along until he stood in front of largest of the walls, the most important of the three.
This was the tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar. On this day the pilgrims would throw stones at the large wall, the Jamrah al-Aqabah, which represented the devil. The ritual was meant to recreate the time when Abraham had thrown stones at the devil to chase him away.
On the following days, the pilgrims would throw stones at all three walls, the others representing the devil’s temptation of Abraham’s son and of Abraham’s wife. But today was only for the large wall.
As hundreds of others stood and threw their stones, Yousef hesitated. The noise, the heat, the sound of stones ricocheting off the wall were foreign to him. He felt out of place, not only among the people and the noise, but among Allah’s holiest sites.
He braced against the crowd, trying at least to remain in the back, but inexorably he was pushed toward the front. Long before he was ready, Yousef found himself facing the wall.
The words coursed through his head.
He had no right. He was the worst kind of heretic. If the others knew the truth they would stone him instead, he was certain of it.
He wanted to run away and escape this place, as if he could hide from his shame. He twisted his body in hopes of sliding through the surging crowd. But then the American woman’s voice came to him. He remembered its unexpected kindness and strength. He remembered her words.
He was Yousef Kazim. Who in his darkest moment had resisted the devil and given the world a chance at life.
He knew it to be true. He knew of the explosions on the Iranian island. He knew the Americans had destroyed the laboratory and the cult and the biological weapon they were building. He had played a part in that, as much as he’d had a part in all the evil that had been done before.
He was Yousef Kazim.
He held the first of seven stones in his hand as a sensation of fire built inside him. He felt a type of anger that was very familiar, a mix of bitterness and guilt, but he also felt a sense of peace that he had never known.
He thought of the woman who had saved him. He thought of his mother crying when she saw him again, and he thought of the people who had lured him away, Cruor, the man of blood, and Draco, the serpent, and what they had made him do. The anger grew as these images flashed through his mind.
Yousef Kazim raised his arm slowly, gripping the stone so tightly his knuckles turned ashen. And then, with all his might, he began to hurl his stones at the devil.
BY GRAHAM BROWN
The Eden Prophecy
Black Sun
Black Rain
BY GRAHAM BROWN AND CLIVE CUSSLER
Devil’s Gate
