Red by Ted Dekker Read Free Book Online Page A

virus.”
    â€œWho can help me?” Kara asked Gains.
    He flipped open his cell phone, walked into the kitchen, punched up a number, spoke briefly in soft tones, and ended the call.
    â€œYou met Phil Grant last night. Director of the CIA. He’s next door, and he’ll put as many people as you need on it.”
    â€œNow?”
    â€œYes, now. If black powder can be found and made in a matter of hours, the CIA will find the people who can tell you how.”
    â€œPerfect.” Thomas said.
    Kara liked the new Thomas. She winked at him and left.

    THOMAS TURNED to Gains. “Okay now, where were you?”
    It was all coming back to Thomas. Not that he’d forgotten any of the details, but he’d felt a bit disoriented thus far. He could only be spread so thin. With each passing minute in this world, his sense of its immediate crisis swelled, matching the crisis that depended on him in the other world.
    â€œWashington.”
    Thomas ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t imagine a group of politicians listening to anyone as forthright as me. They’ll think I’m insane.”
    â€œThe world’s about to go ballistic, Thomas. The French, the British, the Chinese, Russia . . . every country in which Svensson has released this monster is reeling already. They want answers, and you may be the only person other than those complicit in this plot to give them answers. We don’t have time to debate your sanity.”
    â€œWell said.”
    â€œYou made a believer out of me. I’ve gone out on a limb for you. Don’t back out on me, not now.”
    â€œWhere has Svensson released the virus?”
    â€œCome with me.”

    THERE WAS a sense of déjà vu to the meeting. Same conference room, same faces. But there were also some significant differences. Three new attendees had joined through video conference links. Health Secretary Barbara Kingsley, a high-ranking officer of the World Health Organization, and the secretary of defense, although he excused himself after only ten minutes. Something was odd about his early departure, Thomas thought.
    Eyes flittered about the room on high-strung nerves. The confident glares of last night were gone. Most of them had trouble meeting his stare.
    They spent thirty minutes rehashing the reports they’d received. Gains had been right. Russia, England, China, India, South Africa, Australia, France—all of the countries that had been directly threatened this far were demanding answers from the State Department. But there were none, at least none that offered the slightest sliver of hope. And by end of day, the number of infected cities was promised to double.
    Raison Pharmaceutical’s report on the jacket left in the Bangkok airport took up fifteen minutes of speculation and conjecture, most of it led by Theresa Sumner from CDC. If, and it was a big if , she insisted, every city Svensson claimed to have infected actually had been infected, and if—again it was a big if —the virus did indeed act as the computer models showed it would, then the virus was already too widespread to stop.
    None of them could quite grasp such a cataclysmic scenario.
    â€œHow in the name of heaven could anything like this have possibly happened?” Kingsley demanded. She was a heavy-boned woman with dark hair, and her question was greeted with silence.
    This same simple question would be asked a hundred thousand times in as many clever ways as possible in the next week alone, Thomas thought.
    â€œMr. Raison, maybe you can give me an explanation that I would feel comfortable passing on to the president.”
    â€œIt’s a virus, madam. What explanation would you like?”
    â€œI know it’s a virus. The question is how is this possible? Millions of years of evolution or however we got here, and just like that a bug comes out of nowhere to kill us all off? These aren’t the Dark Ages, for crying out