The Eden Prophecy (35 page)

In more fear than ever, Sonia scooted away from him until she hit the solid block of the workstation behind her.

The man with the tattoo stepped toward her, grabbed the hammer off the floor, and then yanked her up to her feet.

“Let me show you something more useful to do with this tool.”

Grabbing the back of her arm he walked her over to another table. Resting in the middle lay the section of the tablet Sonia had placed in her pack. She knew what it held. She prayed she was wrong, but she doubted it.

The man grabbed a carbon steel chisel, placed it against the center of the tablet, and swung the hammer rather lightly.

One blow, one chime of metal on metal, and the tablet split in half. At the center, three small objects half the size of golf balls rocked back and forth. The baked clay clung to them but in places the gold leaf showed through.

The seeds of the Tree of Life lay inside.

“You think they’re just going to stop?” she said, thinking of Hawker and his American government friend. “They want this as badly as you do.”

“Maybe worse,” the man said in a mocking tone.

“They’ll come for me,” she insisted. “And even if you kill me, they’ll come for you.”

“I believe you,” he said sadistically. “In fact I’m counting on it.”

Once again Sonia had been thrown off balance. The situation was terrifying. She was quite sure she was going to die before it ended, but each time her captor spoke or reacted differently than she expected, she grew even more afraid.

“You will bring me riches,” he explained, looking down at her. “And you will bring me power over everyone
on this earth. But most important, you will bring
them
running to me.”

Sonia felt weak and fearful and somehow culpable.

She’d expected Hawker would die trying to save her on the sand hill in Iran and she didn’t want to think of it. She didn’t want anyone else to suffer for what she and her father had begun and chased all these years. But the way this man talked … Something else
was
going on here. And suddenly she felt as if she were just a pawn.

“Go to hell,” she said.

“There is no hell,” he said. “Except the ones we make for ourselves.”

“I don’t care what you do,” she said, trying to be strong. “I’m not giving you a damn thing. I’ll kill myself before I let you make me the world’s murderer.”

The laughter came again. Derisive, mocking.

“I won’t do anything to you,” he said. “In fact, I’ll let you live at the end. If you still want to.”

He grabbed a radio. “Bring them in,” he said calmly.

A second later the door opened and two more men came in, pushing other smaller figures in front of them, shoving them forward.

“Oh God,” Sonia said, her knees buckling. Only by holding on to the table was she able to stand.

In front of her, at the hands of the men who had apparently killed her father, were Savi and Nadia. Savi was pushed to the floor; Nadia was shoved forward. Her glasses were gone and she smacked into the workstation as if she didn’t see it.

Sonia ran to her. Tears were streaming down the little girl’s weathered face. Sonia felt her heart breaking.

“It’s okay,” she said, corralling Nadia in her arms. “It’s going to be okay.”

She looked over at Savi. Her face was bruised, her nose badly broken.

“Please …,” Sonia begged, beginning to cry. “Please no.”

Her tears flowed unabated. Her lips and her body quivered. Nadia was crying in her arms.

“They hurt Savi!” the little girl cried.

“I know, baby. I promise it’s going to be okay.”

She looked up at the man who’d called himself her master. He was now in every way. She would do anything to keep Savi and especially Nadia from harm. “Please don’t hurt them,” she pleaded. “I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you ask.”

“I know you will,” he said. “But to prove you should not doubt me, I give you proof of my resolve.”

He snatched a gun from his belt and aimed it toward Savi.

“No!” Sonia shouted, covering Nadia’s face, burying the child’s face into her chest.

The gun sounded like a cannon when it fired. Sonia closed her eyes and heard the sickening thud of Savi’s body hitting the floor and then nothing.

She held Nadia tight, cradling the young girl’s head. “It’s okay,” she whispered over and over, not wanting the girl to look or to know or even guess. As it was, Nadia sobbed and held on to Sonia.

“Finish the serum,” her master said. “Give me what your father promised and I’ll let you all go when we’re done.”

In her heart Sonia knew it was a lie, but she couldn’t speak it, couldn’t force the truth out or stand or fight anymore. All her adult life she’d been fighting against the truth, and she couldn’t do it anymore.

“And don’t be too smart for your own good,” the Master said. “You can still save her, but whatever you give us, she gets first.”

She’d made a terrible mistake. She’d feared so badly for Hawker, been so certain he was going to die defending
her on the sand hill in Iran, that she’d let herself fall off the ATV. She knew the men wouldn’t shoot her, she knew they would take her and scurry away for fear of losing their master’s prize, and she’d been certain when she did it that she would probably end up dead. But she and her father were responsible for all this misery, so who better to sacrifice?

In dying she might right the wrong. End the trail that was leading the world to perdition. She even had a plan, a thought in her mind of how she could trick these men into thinking they had what they wanted and give them nothing. But now that they had her sister and they had 951, she was powerless.

“And if I don’t give you anything?” she managed to ask.

“Then I’ll torture you both to death and I’ll release 951 instead.”

At that moment Sonia wanted to die. She found herself wishing she’d died either the day before in the desert or back in Dubai or years ago in Africa. As irrational as it was, she cursed Hawker in her mind for saving her. He’d preserved her life just long enough to send her to hell. A hell of her own making.

C
aught flat-footed because something on Hawker’s phone had distracted her, Danielle raced to catch him before he went too far.

As he slammed the door open, she saw Scindo stirring, a look of fright in his eyes. Hawker grabbed him, yanked him out of the chair, and threw him against the wall. Dropping down beside him, Hawker ripped the tape off the man’s mouth.

“You’re going to tell me where they are, you bastard!” Hawker yelled. He hoisted Scindo up, just far enough to knee him in the gut and then fire a right cross to his jaw. Scindo’s lip burst open with blood.

“Hawker, stop!” Danielle shouted. “We don’t have to do this!”

Hawker wasn’t listening. When Scindo didn’t reply, Hawker threw him to the ground again, kicked him again, and then stood on his chest.

“Listen to me,” Danielle said. “There’s something wrong here.”

“Get out of here!” Hawker shouted. He grabbed a pair of pliers off the shelf, dropped onto Scindo with a knee, and jammed the pliers into the drywall beside him.

Scindo’s eyes were as large as saucers as Hawker gouged out a huge hole right above the electrical socket. Slamming his fist into the wall, Hawker widened the hole, then
he reached in and, using the pliers, tore the copper wires loose from the socket.

“Hawker, there’s a message on your phone. It came from my phone but I didn’t send it.”

Hawker wasn’t listening. “You murdered her father!” he shouted.

For the first time the man replied, his eyes filled with fear. “I did not,” he said in English.

Danielle took that as a positive and a negative. Scindo’s determination not to talk might be breaking, but did that mean Hawker’s insane plan needed to be tried?

“You lie!” Hawker shouted, yanking more of the electrical cord through the wall.

“I don’t,” Scindo said. “It was not me. I never saw him.”

Hawker stood, pulled the gun out of his belt, and put it down on the table behind him.

“Where are they taking her!” he yelled.

No answer.

“Where!”

When Scindo refused to speak, Hawker moved away from him an inch or two. Careful not to touch him, he jammed the two copper leads into Scindo’s side. Sparks jumped, the lights dimmed and came back on, and Scindo screamed.

Watching this, Danielle’s heart went into her throat. She knew what was coming. There was no way to turn back now.

“Tell me, you son of a bitch!” Hawker shouted.

“Stop it!” Danielle screamed at him.

“Tell me!”

Scindo held quiet and Hawker shocked him again.

The lights in the room dimmed and Scindo screamed. Hawker held the prongs on him, singeing the man’s skin. The smell of hair and skin burning filled the room.

“For God’s sake, Hawker!”

“Get out of here!” he yelled back.

“Please,” she begged.

His response was to shock Scindo again. And Danielle could wait no longer.

She grabbed the gun off the table and cocked the hammer. The sound got Hawker’s attention.

Hawker turned and Scindo’s eyes followed. Both of them stared at her.

Tears were streaming down her face, welling up in her eyes, and rolling across her cheeks.

“Get away from him,” she said firmly.

A look of utter shock appeared on Hawker’s face. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Please,” she begged. “I can’t do this. I can’t go where you’re going.”

“You’re saving him?” Hawker whispered in disbelief.

“I’m trying to save you,” she said.

Hawker’s face hardened, as if this was another betrayal. “No,” he said. “Go to hell. You’re not stopping this.”

He turned back to Scindo and shocked him again. The prisoner writhed and slammed his head into the wall.

“Hawker!”

“Tell me what you know!” Hawker shouted.

“Hawker, please!”

Hawker shocked Scindo again, only this time a gunshot echoed along with the prisoner’s screams. Hawker fell forward, dropping the electric wires and slamming into the metal chair in the corner of the room.

It collapsed with a loud clang and Hawker rolled over on it. Lying prone, he turned back to face her. Staring back from the corner, he clutched a bleeding shoulder.

“Are you insane?” he grunted.

She ignored him. “Get up!” she shouted to Scindo.

If Hawker was in shock, Scindo was even more surprised.

“Get up!”

Scindo staggered to his feet, the shackles making it hard to walk, traces of smoke rising from his charred skin.

Hawker moved as if he were about to get up but winced in pain and fell back down. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted.

She backed out the door, motioning for Scindo to follow. He shuffled through and she shut and locked the door behind her.

“Come with me,” she said, heading toward the front door and wrapping a coat over Scindo’s taped hands.

She opened the front door, her heart sick, her mind spinning. She hadn’t wanted to do this, but Hawker had forced her.

“Down the stairs!” she shouted. Scindo hesitated as muffled sounds came from the interrogation room, where Hawker was shouting at the top of his lungs and slamming something against the locked door.

“Move!” Danielle shouted.

Scindo complied, hustling down the stairs as fast as his shackled feet would allow. Danielle followed, wondering where the hell she was going to go and not even wanting to think about what would happen now.

D
anielle found an abandoned building two miles from the safe house. It looked like it had once been a garage for large vehicles or a military depot, but heavy shelling or bombs from above had obliterated much of it. Half the roof was gone and the place was filling with sand and desert plants.

She pulled into the most sheltered part and hid her car. She ordered Scindo out and forced him into an abandoned office. File cabinets in one corner sat scorched and partially melted from the heat, either from the bombs that fell or the fires that must have followed.

She helped Scindo in, leading him to a place against the wall, where he sat knees up, hands in front of him, the bandaged hand Hawker had fired a round through bleeding heavily once again.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Shut up!”

She pointed the gun at him.

She thought of Hawker’s words, the devil always fights by dividing, dividing people against each other, Eve from Adam, mankind from God. She felt as if she’d been torn apart herself.

“The people you’re protecting are murderers,” she said, glaring at Scindo. “Even if you didn’t kill Dr. Milan or the French policemen, you’re part of it.”

“Then why did you save me?” Scindo asked defiantly.

“I was trying to save him,” she said.

He went quiet.

“Why are you protecting them?” she asked.

“They took me,” he said. “I am part of them.”

He spoke English well, but with something of a French accent.

“If you were part of them they would have come back for you,” she said, trying to gain the upper hand.

“They did.”

“Not here they didn’t,” she said. “And they’re not going to, unless it’s to put a bullet in your brain and keep you quiet. Like they did to your friends in France.”

This seemed to hit near the mark. “You shot those men,” he said sharply.

She shook her head. “Did we kill you when we had the chance? No, we captured you. We interrogated you. Murdering people is not what we do.”

He glared back at her. He didn’t believe her, she could see that. Or he didn’t care. “What do we gain by killing off people who can tell us things? Huh? We didn’t kill your friends. We would have interrogated them if we could have. So would the French. One of your people murdered them to keep them quiet.”

Scindo stared. He seemed to be drifting toward anger. Whether it was at her or the feeling that she might be speaking the truth, she couldn’t guess. She had to push.

“There’s no rescue for you here,” she said. “They left you out there once they had what they wanted. You’re expendable, whatever your name is.”