by Ted Dekker
His words were so cutting, so terrible, she wondered if he might be telling the truth after all. And even if he wasn’t, he might as well be. Any love they might have shared was now over.
“I still don’t believe you,” she said. But even as she said it, tears began to stream down her face. She stared at him, suddenly overcome by his words.
What if they are true, Chelise? What if the only love you’ve ever known turns out to be a false love, and the love you will know is a brutal love that grinds you into the ground? Then there is no true love.
Thomas continued to read the Book in his hands. He was either so crushed by his own words that he couldn’t proceed with his charade, or he truly did not care for her and was now disinterested.
Gradually her tears stopped. She wasn’t going to leave this room without knowing the full truth. He just read the Book, refusing to look at her.
A thought occurred to her. “If I drowned in one of your red pools and became an albino like you, would you love me then?”
He turned his back to her and leaned against the bookshelf.
“If I didn’t smell and I didn’t look so pale, could you stand to touch my skin then?”
Nothing.
She slammed her palm on the desk. “Talk to me! Quit pretending you’re reading that Book and talk to me! There’s a red pool on the north side of the lake, you know. I could run there right now and dive in. Would that change your mind?”
Thomas faced her. He blinked. “There is?”
“Yes, there is. It’s all that remains of the original lake. They’ve covered it with rocks so you can’t see it, but I’ve heard it runs underground. We’d have to remove the rocks. Would that satisfy you?”
For a moment he seemed completely caught off guard. Then he set his jaw. But the tears were flowing again.
She stood and walked toward him. “Please, Thomas. Please, I beg you. I can’t believe—”
“Stop it!” he snarled. “Grow up! I don’t love you!” His glare was so ferocious that she could hardly recognize him. “I could never love you after using you. You’re a spent rag.”
Chelise’s legs felt weak. He might as well have drilled her with an arrow. She couldn’t move.
He slammed the Book on the shelf, walked to the door, and turned the handle. It was locked. He slapped the panel with his palm. “Open this door! Let me out!”
Nothing happened. He hit the door again, then turned back. Chelise felt numb. She still didn’t think she could believe him, but she was left with nothing else to believe in.
He walked to the corner, sat on the floor, and lowered his head into his hands. His shoulders shook gently.
Chelise returned to the desk and sat down. You should leave now, she told herself.
And go where? To Woref? To the castle where Qurong planned her wedding? To the desert to die? Chelise lay her head down on the desk, closed her eyes, and began to cry.
They remained like that for a long time. Whether his mind was on his own failure in this plot he talked about, or whether it was on her—impossible to tell. It hardly mattered anymore. She was dead either way.
A thump on the wall pulled her from the depths of despondency. She opened her eyes.
Another thump. Then again, thump, thump.
She lifted her head. Thomas was standing in the corner, hitting his forehead against the wall.
Thump, thump, thump.
Then harder. And suddenly very hard.
The whole wall shook with the impact of his head, crashing against the wood. She pushed her chair back, alarmed. His teeth were clenched and his face was wet with tears.
He was killing himself?
Thomas suddenly spread his mouth in a roar, drew his head way back, and slammed it against the wall with all of his strength.
The wall shuddered. He collapsed, unconscious.
It was then that Chelise remembered his dreams.
40
Carlos stepped into the dark cell and locked the door behind him. He flipped the light switch on. The gurney Thomas had lain on sat empty. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around this situation, but he had decided that Thomas was right: Fortier had no intention of leaving any part of the Muslim world intact.
He walked to the cabinet and unlocked the door. He wasn’t sure why Fortier had asked him to monitor the exchange from the remote feeds at the farm, but with each passing hour he grew more nervous. The Frenchman had overemphasized the need for Carlos to stay put. It was tantamount to an order. The exchange was now under way, and Carlos had finally resolved that he could wait no longer. If he was to act against Fortier, it would have to be now.
He withdrew the Uzi and three extra magazines. Two grenades.
He unbuttoned his shirt and jammed two of the clips into his belt. The rash on his belly had spread up to his neck and along his arms. The symptoms of the virus were now spreading beyond the gateway cities. In four days’ time there wouldn’t be a person alive without the red dots. In a week half the world might be dead.
He buttoned his shirt, grabbed a plastic charge with a detonator, shoved them into his pocket, and closed the cabinet.
If Fortier hadn’t ordered him to stay, he might have been able to take Svensson as Thomas had suggested. But if he tipped his hand by leaving against orders, his usefulness would expire. No chance of securing Svensson. The man would go deep.
Carlos walked to the door and slid the safety off.
As soon as he made a play to leave this compound, the Frenchman would take steps to protect the antivirus, but there was one thing Carlos could try. One last desperate act to right some of the wrong he’d brought upon his own people.
He hung the weapon on his shoulder and pulled out his pistol. Working by habit, he screwed the silencer into the barrel and checked the chamber.
The hall was empty.
He walked quickly, eager now to do what he did best. There is a reason you hired me, Mr. Fortier. I will now show you that reason.
Carlos headed up the steps. The first guard he saw was a short, thick native of France who hadn’t learned to smile. The man saw him and immediately lifted his radio to his mouth. Carlos put a slug through the radio—and through the back of his open throat.
He stepped over the man and walked toward the back door.
The second guard was facing the driveway by the door. The bullet caught him in his temple as he turned. He toppled sideways. Not a sound other than the familiar phwet of the gun and the dull smack of slug hitting bone.
But the sound might as well have been a siren to the three trained men by the Jeep. They spun together, rifles ready.
Carlos preferred to leave the compound without giving them a chance to call in his departure. Paris would know that something was wrong when the farm missed their next report in fifteen minutes, but fifteen minutes was a lifetime in situations of this nature. Literally.
He kept the pistol leveled, scanning through the sights. Movement. He shot two of the guards as he ran through the door. Dropped into a roll.
The third guard got off a scream and managed to squeeze the trigger on his automatic weapon before Carlos could bring his gun up.
A hail of bullets smacked the wall above him. Worse, the gun’s chattering echoed through the compound with enough volume to wake Paris.
Carlos put two bullets through the guard’s chest. The man’s finger held the trigger as he fell backwards, stitching shots into the sky. Then the gun was silent.
There was a chance the communications operator in the basement might not have heard, but the guards on the perimeter would have.
He slid into the Jeep, fired the engine, and snatched up his radio. “We have a situation on the south side. I repeat, south side. The Americans are bringing in a small strike force.”
He dropped the radio on the seat and floored the accelerator.
“This is Horst on the south side,” a voice barked. “I don’t see them. You said south side?”
Carlos ignored the question. He onl
y needed enough confusion to slow the two guards at the gate. He roared around the corner and headed straight for them. One had his binoculars trained to the south.
Carlos stopped twenty yards away, threw open his door, and planted one foot on the ground, swinging out. “Any sign?”
“Gunshots—”
Carlos shot the one without the binoculars first. The other heard the silenced gun but couldn’t respond quickly enough to save his life.
This is what I can do, Mr. Fortier. This is only part of what I can do.
He ran to the gate, slapped the large red button that opened it, and returned to the Jeep.
When Carlos next glanced at his watch, he saw that exactly two minutes had passed from the time he fired the first shot to the time he exited the long driveway that fed the main road.
Paris was two hours by the primary roads. Five hours by back roads. And Marseilles?
Reaching his destination unscathed would be his greatest challenge. If he managed to make it through, he had an excellent chance of completing his mission.
Armand Fortier looked at the thirteen men seated around the conference table. He had promised these men the world. Dignitaries from Russia, France, China, and seven other nations. Not one of them would live beyond the week.
“I can assure you this is of no consequence. We knew the Americans and Israelis at least would never turn over their weapons. From the beginning our objective was to pull their teeth, not take over their arsenals. We simply put them in a position where they felt secure doing it.”
“And now you’ll insist that you also expected them to destroy—”
“Please,” he said, exasperated, cutting the Russian off. “No, we did not predict this exact response. To be honest, I expected more. None of it matters. They are in a box. The only weapon that matters now is the virus, and we control that. The game has been played perfectly by all accounts.” He stood. “I’m sure you’re eager to complete our arrangements for the antivirus. Soon enough, but I am needed elsewhere at the moment. If you need anything over the next few hours, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
He left them without a backward glance. It was the last time he intended to see any of them.
Fortier walked evenly down the hall. For years he had rehearsed this day. He’d pored over his own graphs and debated possibilities ad infinitum. The outcome had always been certain. He’d always known that if he could get his hands on the right virus, the world would be his to manipulate.
But he’d never actually lived through stakes so high. For the first time he looked at the reports pouring over the television monitors and wondered what he had done.
He’d done what he’d set out to do, of course.
But what had he really done? Over six billion people were infected with a lethal virus that would kill them within the week if his antivirus wasn’t distributed within the next forty-eight hours.
His thrill was barely manageable.
He’d read once that Hitler had frequently experienced profound physical reactions to the elation he felt when exercising his power. He’d exterminated six million Jews. Who could have imagined the power that Armand now held in his hand?
God.
But there was no god. For all practical purposes, he was God.
Fortier stepped into a small room at the end of the hall and picked up a black phone.
He was experiencing the exuberance of a god. But with the power came immeasurable responsibility, and it was this that caused him to wonder what he had done. Just as God must have wondered why he’d created humans before sending a flood to wipe them out.
It was a beautiful thing, this power.
Svensson picked up on the first ring. “Yes?”
“Issue the order and meet me in Marseilles.”
The distribution of the antivirus was one of the most complex elements of the entire plan. In most cases, those who ingested the antivirus would do so without knowing they had. It had already been administered to a number of key individuals in their drinks or their bread. In most cases, the elect would be called with some mundane excuse to a remote distribution point, where they would unknowingly inhale a localized air-borne strain. They would leave destined to survive. The risk of the anti-virus landing in the wrong hands would pass in less than twenty-four hours. By then, even if someone got hold of it, he wouldn’t have time to manufacture or distribute it.
“No problems?” Svensson said.
“Carlos has turned. He’s on his way here.”
The phone was silent. They had prepared two installations for this final phase, one in Paris, one in Marseilles on the southern coast of France. No one except the two of them knew about Marseilles. It was now all over but the waiting.
“He’s no idiot,” Svensson said.
“Neither am I,” Fortier said. “Remember, no evidence. Leave the anti-virus in the vault.”
41
The riots had fallen apart on two counts. The word that the United States had traded its nuclear arsenal for the antivirus and then summarily sent that arsenal to the bottom of the ocean had sent a shock wave across the nation. The news jockeys and political pundits might have spent countless hours dissecting the implications, but another, greater urgency trumped even this stunning bit of news.
The virus had struck.
With a vengeance.
Millions of people in America’s urban centers helplessly watched the red spots spread over their bodies. No amount of anger or saber rattling could make these symptoms vanish. Only the antivirus could.
But the antivirus was on its way, Mike Orear insisted. The president had stood on the steps of the Capitol and declared their victory to the world. Hope was not dead. It was being shipped at this very moment, ready to be whisked to the gateway cities, where it would be infused with the blood banks. Within a matter of days, every resident of North America would have the antivirus.
Thomas had followed the news over a secure microwave receiver at twenty thousand feet above the Atlantic. America was holding its collective breath for an antivirus that would not work.
They collected him from the Nimitz and streaked back into the sky without offering any answers to his questions. Worse, they declined his request to speak to the president. Not that it mattered—they were in the final throes of a hopeless death anyway. He sat with his hands between his knees, listening to the speculations and calculations and ramifications or possibilities and inconsistencies until he was sure his heart had fallen permanently into his stomach.
The game was over. In both realities.
The fighter settled in for a landing at BWI. Baltimore.
Maryland. Johns Hopkins?
They transferred him to a helicopter. Once more he was denied information as to the nature of his sudden recall to the country. Not because they were hiding anything from him—they simply didn’t know.
But his guess that they were taking him to Johns Hopkins proved inaccurate. Twenty minutes later the chopper set down on the lawn adjacent to Genetrix Laboratories.
Three lab technicians met the chopper. Two took his arms and hurried toward the entrance. “They’re waiting for you inside, sir.”
Thomas didn’t bother asking.
The moment he stepped into the building, all eyes were on him, from the foyer, through a large room filled with a dozen busy workstations, to the elevator, which they entered and descended. They had heard of him. He was the one who’d brought this virus on them.
Thomas ignored their stares and rode down three floors before stepping out of the elevator into a huge control room.
“Thomas.”
He turned to his left. There stood the president of the United States, Robert Blair. Next to him, Monique de Raison, Theresa Sumner from the CDC, and Barbara Kingsley, health secretary.
“Hello, Thomas.” He turned around. Kara walked up to him. Sweat glistened on her face, but she smiled bravely. “It’s good to see you,” she said.
“Kara . . .” He glanced at Monique and Th
eresa. The rash had covered Theresa’s face. Monique’s was clear. The president and the health secretary had been infected twelve hours behind them, and their faces were still clear, but the red spots were showing on their necks.
He knew then what they had called him to do. They wanted the dreams. That had to be it. These four wanted to take him up on his suggestion to Kara and Monique that they dream a very long dream using his blood.
“I apologize for the secrecy,” Robert Blair said. “But we couldn’t risk word of this getting out.”
Thomas could hardly bear to look at Kara’s face. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good,” he said. He faced the others. “The rash is taking over. Gains is pretty bad, but I . . . You have to hurry.”
“You’re right,” Monique said. “Time is more critical than you can imagine.”
“But you don’t need me here. I left the blood for you to dream.”
None of them moved. They just looked at him.
“What’s going on?”
Monique stepped forward, eyes bright. “We’ve found something, Thomas. It could be very good.” Her eyes darted to Kara and back. “And it could also be very bad.”
“You . . . you found an antivirus?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“You notice that neither Monique nor I have the rash, Thomas?” Kara asked.
“That’s good. Right?”
“How’s that rash under your arm?” Monique asked.
He instinctively touched his side. “I have it . . .” Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t felt the itching for some time. He lifted his shirt up and ran his hand over his skin. No sign of the rash.
“You sure that wasn’t a heat rash? I think it was.”
Meaning what? He, Monique, and Kara hadn’t broken out yet.
“You’re virus-free, Thomas.”
Monique turned around and pressed a button on a remote in her right hand. The wall opened, revealing a bank of monitors surrounding a large flat screen. The smaller monitors were filled with charts and data that meant nothing to him. But the huge screen in the center was a map of the world. The twenty-four gateway cities where the virus had initially been released were marked with red dots. Green circles indicated the hundreds of labs and medical facilities around the world that were involved in the search for an antivirus. White crosses marked the massive blood collection efforts that had been underway since news of the virus went public. Small crosses spread out from the gateway cites, indicating smaller collection centers. They had enough blood, he knew that.
