The Eden Prophecy by Graham Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

attention back to Hawker. “That’s going to be a little hard to explain on the expense report.”
    “Tell them it’s a finder’s fee,” he said.
    La Bruzca had been suspected of trafficking arms for years, but the extent had never been known. Loaning Hawker out to the CIA for a while gave them a chance to get a look at his operation. Danielle had read his report already, including the successful planting of a tracer in the nose cone of one missile. Wherever La Bruzca took his wares they should be able to follow. And if he sold them, the tracer that Hawker planted would lead the CIA right to the end user. She guessed that ought to be worth a car or two.
    As the engines spooled up outside the cabin, Hawker’s eyes tightened on her. Despite her efforts to turn the conversation in another direction, he asked the exact question she’d hoped he would delay.
    “Were you guys able to get a line on Ranga?”
    “Yes,” she told him. “But it’s more complicated than that.”
    He nodded. “I figured it would be. I don’t need you to release the hounds or give me a key to the National Archives. I just want to know if there’s anything you can tell me.”
    She took a breath.
    Hawker’s fears for an old friend might have fallen on deaf ears, except for a few simple facts. To begin with, Ranga Milan was considered a ticking time bomb, an A. Q. Khan in the making, only in possession of knowledge far more deadly than the simple skills required to build an atomic bomb.
    Genetic technology could be almost infinitely dangerous. It was telling that the SALT and START arms limitation treaties and the Geneva Convention all but banned the creation and use of biological weapons, while nations stockpiled tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and pointed them at one another.
    The fact was that biological weapons were easily controllable,right up until the moment they were used. After that, all bets were off.
    A biological weapon was alive. It could change, mutate, grow, or spread in ways never predicted. Once you sent a plague into your enemy’s backyard, no one could promise it wouldn’t return home, even with an ocean in between. Nor could anyone guarantee that such an organism would not mutate and overcome defenses and vaccines prepared against it in advance. To use such a weapon was like building a house in a field of dry grass and then setting fire to your neighbor’s hut.
    Rational minds, even if interested in world domination, knew such weapons were not practical. But in the hands of a fanatic, a suicidal lunatic, or a doomsday cult, such a weapon might be perfect.
    And without an announcement by the user, it might be months before something was even noticed, at which point a disease or plague would have spread far beyond its initial starting point and become unstoppable.
    Fortunately or unfortunately, someone had recently made such an announcement, in the form of a letter, carrying an unknown virus and delivered to Claudia Gonzales, the assistant U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Suspicion focused on its being the work of Ranga Milan.
    That was fact number two. In the long run it would be the most painful. But under the current circumstances, Danielle guessed fact number three would bring on the most immediate anguish.
    “It’s more complicated than that because of a pair of incidents that occurred over the last forty-eight hours.”
    Not wanting to seem evasive, she focused first on Hawker’s question.
    “Regarding Ranga,” she said. “We took the information you gave us. We found him in Paris. I’m sorry, Hawker, but Ranga’s dead.”
    Hawker’s jaw clenched and he took a slow breath before responding. “How?”
    The file in front of her detailed the life and painful death of Ranga Milan. She could have handed it to him, but that seemed so cold.
    “Twenty-eight hours ago, a shooting occurred on the secondary observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. At first blush, it was considered a terrorist incident or even