Black Rose

CHAPTER 11

Nick left his apartment and took the elevator down to the first floor. Things were quiet. Unless the pager on his belt brought him to Virginia, the team had a rare day off. He was meeting Selena for breakfast and after that, they had an appointment with a real estate agent. Nick was looking forward to the morning. Things were going really well between them. Selena had come around to the idea of a new place and now she was enthusiastic about it.

He stepped out of his building and felt the cold bite into him. A black Cadillac limo idled by the curb. There was only one Cadillac that ever waited for Nick.

Adam, Nick thought. It has to mean trouble. What now?

The driver held the passenger door open for him. Nick got in the back. The driver closed the door.

The Cadillac had been modified with a thick panel of opaque, black glass that split the rear into two separate compartments. The driver was out of sight behind a similar panel in the front. Nick's door window was blacked out and impossible to see through.

Nick had never seen Adam's face and had no idea who he was. He'd never heard his voice, except through the distortion of electronic masking. For all he knew, Adam could be a woman. A speaker allowed for communication between the two sides of the rear compartment. A drawer could be opened in the glass if something needed to be passed from one side to the other.

Aside from Adam's modifications, Cadillac had designed the Presidential model for people with a serious need for security. The turbocharged diesel engine produced over 500 horsepower. The car had five inch thick armor plate. Nothing less than a .50 caliber round could trouble the bullet proof glass. Run flat tires with steel sidewalls and special compounds would keep rolling long after they'd been shot and punctured. The engine compartment, the underside of the car and the trunk were all armored. The Cadillac was a luxury tank.

"Hello, Nick."

Adam's electronic voice sounded in the speaker by Nick's ear. There was something in the speech pattern that made Nick think Adam was an older man.

"Adam."

The heavy car began to roll silently through the streets of Washington.

"Please look in the compartment on the side of your door," Adam said.

Nick reached into the compartment and took out a sealed envelope.

"That envelope contains a phone number you can use to reach me in case of an emergency."

Adam had never given Nick a way to contact him before. "You anticipate trouble?"

"I always anticipate trouble. Especially now. AEON is planning a terrible adventure."

"I thought they were finished after the last time."

"Your efforts set them back but they've recovered."

"What are they doing now?"

"Are you familiar with the Bible?"

The question seemed to come out of the blue. "What do you mean? If you want to know if I can quote chapter and verse, no."

"How about the Book of Revelations? The Four Horsemen?"

I don't like where this is headed, Nick thought.

The heavy car slowed, then picked up speed. The electronic voice echoed from the speaker.

"The Four Horsemen are Conquest, War, Famine and Pestilence, in that order." AEON has decided to shift things around a little."

Nick shivered, for no good reason. "What do you mean?"

"You know about the plague the North Koreans were working on."

It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes."

"A Spetsnaz unit from Vysotsky's Zaslon group raided the Korean lab and took the plague samples."

"The Russians? But what's that got to do with AEON?"

"AEON took it from them in turn. They intend to target specific countries and release it."

"What? Why? What advantage is there in that?"

"A plague epidemic would create chaos and confusion. In the target countries, it would disrupt everything. Government services, transport and food supplies, infrastructure maintenance, anything and everything where people have to work together to accomplish something. There would be massive quarantines, internment camps, martial law. The economy of a target nation would collapse. That's one goal."

"They have more than one?"

"AEON wants to establish a world where those who are considered less desirable will be eliminated or used as labor. They believe there are too many people in the world. They want to reduce the world population."

Nick let the words sink in. "You're saying they want a population die-off and are going to use this disease to make it happen?" His voice echoed with doubt. "That's hard to believe."

"You're having trouble believing it because an idea like that doesn't fit with who you are," Adam said. "A decent person can't really grasp the idea that someone would plan the deaths of hundreds of millions."

"Who do they plan to go after?" Nick asked.

"China, for one. That's what the Indian misadventure you were involved in was about. If that missile had gotten through, it would have destroyed most of their central banking system. Brazil, Russia and India are also on their list. Africa is a potential target. There are vast resources there, inconveniently tied up by governments that won't cooperate in being plundered."

The car halted briefly. Nick wondered where he was. Nothing could be seen through the opaque glass. For all he knew, they were just driving around the block.

Adam continued. "AEON's leader is a banker named Johannes Gutenberg. The four countries I mentioned have been working on creating a new currency standard to challenge the dollar's supremacy. China has already established the Asian Industrial Bank to compete with the IMF and the World Bank. If they succeed, Gutenberg and the others in AEON will lose billions. He can't allow that to happen. China is the primary target. If he brings down Beijing, the BRICS alliance will fall apart. The plague is a means to an end. Gutenberg doesn't care if millions die in the process."

"That's evil," Nick said.

"Yes, it is."

"What's to keep them from getting sick themselves, once they let this stuff loose?" Nick asked. "Our understanding is that there's no cure."

"They're looking for ways to cure and prevent it," Adam said. "They haven't got it yet but my information is that they're close to a breakthrough on a vaccine. When they have something that works, they'll release the plague."

"What are you asking me to do?"

"Your group has to destroy the labs and samples before they can release it. The labs are in Switzerland and India, part of the Dass pharmaceutical complex. There are a lot of separate facilities. I don't know which ones have the samples."

"Dass. Krivi Dass?" Nick said. "He was part of that attempt to launch a missile at China. We couldn't prove his involvement."

"That's him," Adam said. "He's part of AEON's leadership."

The car stopped, started up again. The ride was quiet, comfortable. It was a strange conversation, surreal. He was riding in total luxury and talking about madmen who wanted to unleash death upon the world.

"I don't think there's much time to stop this," Adam said. "There's something else."

The drawer between the two sides of the rear compartment slid open. Inside was a gold coin.

"Please take the coin, Nick."

Nick picked it up. It felt heavy in his hand. The coin was a little larger than a quarter. One side bore the image of two knights riding a single horse. The other side depicted a domelike structure with a cross imposed upon it.

The seal of the Knights Templar.

The drawer closed and Adam's electronic voice came through the speaker. "If anyone approaches you in the future and gives you one of these coins, you will know they come from my organization."

The car came to a stop. Nick's door clicked open.

"Good hunting, Nick. I'll be in touch."

Nick got out and found himself back in front of his building. He watched Adam's limo ease out into the street. From somewhere in the heavy traffic, a powerful red motorcycle with two riders wearing black leathers and helmets with smoked face shields came up fast behind the Cadillac. The passenger tossed a dark object onto the roof. It stuck to the top of the car with a metallic clang. The bike accelerated away.

Nick opened his mouth to shout a warning when an explosion ripped the car apart and knocked him to the sidewalk. Windows shattered all along the street.

The burning, twisted remains of Adam's armored car drifted to the curb and stopped. Nick got to his feet and looked at the wreckage. There was no chance anyone inside the car had survived.

I could have been riding in that.

He took out his phone and called Harker.