The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 16

Hawker crossed the tarmac of Paris — Charles de Gaulle Airport beneath a dark and threatening sky. Danielle walked ahead of him as they approached the NRI Citation that had brought them in forty-eight hours before.

The plan was to get to Beirut, find out what Ranga and Bashir were looking for down there, and see if they could develop a lead as to who’d kidnapped them and why. It was thin as hell but it was all they had.

As she looked up, a figure stood by the aircraft waiting for them, a sturdy gray-haired man in a green overcoat: Arnold Moore.

Great, Hawker thought. He looked like an angry parent come to collect his wayward children.

“Done remodeling Paris, you two?”

“For now,” he heard Danielle say. “Come to chaperone us?”

“As if it would help,” Moore replied.

A short time later, the three of them were airborne and headed to the southeast, toward Beirut.

Danielle explained their misadventures to Moore. Hawker noticed that she left out any mention of the deal with Lavril. It was a kindness he hadn’t expected and didn’t really deserve. It made him realize how some of the things he’d said must have sounded to her; hurtful and selfish, and yet she protected him. It reminded him of the argument with Keegan and the fact that he seemed to have better friends than maybe he warranted at times.

As Danielle finished, Moore spoke his own piece. His voice was grave.

“The French shared the letter with us,” he said. “We ran everything we have on these people through the database. Using the letter of responsibility, the manner of Ranga’s death, and the religious branding, we’ve come up with a profile.”

He handed them a pair of matching dossiers.

Hawker scanned the front sheet: a Mossad report on a group that called itself the Cult of Men.

“They’re an extremely obscure group. Responsible for several killings over the last year or so, but nothing before that.”

“Whose side are they on?” Hawker asked.

“Their own, it would seem.”

Danielle was reading further. “They’ve claimed responsibility for the deaths of Israeli settlers, Hamas militants, and even Christian pilgrims trying to bring about the onset of revelation. The first attack claimed and attributed to them was the bombing of a building in Belfast.

“Consistent with the letter,” Danielle said. “A lunatic fringe, even to the lunatics.”

“The thing is,” Moore added, “Mossad doesn’t believe they were responsible for any of those things.”

“Then why claim them?” Danielle asked.

“Cobra’s hood,” Moore said. “It makes them look bigger than they really are.”

“So why do we think they’re involved in this, then?” Hawker asked.

“One of their few known members was photographed with Ranga six months ago.”

Hawker suddenly wished he hadn’t asked.

“Mossad has them pegged as antireligionists. Blaming God for the state of the world.”

“Whose God?”

“Any God.”

“Any God?”

“Yes,” Moore said. “Their position is that God or the concept of God is the enemy of man. Religion causes war, death, subjugation, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Great,” Hawker said. “Everyone’s killing in the name of God. Now we have a group killing in the name of no god at all.”

“How does this connect with the attack on the UN?” Danielle asked. “They’re not a religious organization.”

“We haven’t figured that out yet,” Moore said. “But no one says these people have to be rational or consistent.”

She nodded.

“Truth is, this group has been extremely secretive,” Moore added. “We’re trying to back-trace them but it’s almost like they came into existence out of the blue. We know where Al Qaeda trains and where they’re based and who they recruit. We know the same information for the IRA and the KKK and Hamas, but no one seems to have any idea who these people are, how they’re funded, or even how many members they might have. It’s like they have no history.”

“Even that tells us something,” Hawker said.

“What’s their goal?” Danielle asked.

“It’s a little murky,” Moore said, “but the theme is simple: Religion is bad. In their propaganda it’s always religion that has corrupted men, not saved us. One threat announcement concluded with the words: You have listened to the lies and gone forth and multiplied — and you are now a plague upon the face of the earth. Too many, too fast — you starve your brother or kill him for food. Greedily you engorge without restraint, and know not that you are eating death.”

Hawker listened to Moore. The words sounded familiar to him. As if he’d heard them before.

“Is that a quote? Tennyson or something?”

“It’s a corruption of Milton,” Moore said. “From Paradise Lost.”

“Referring to Eve eating the apple,” Danielle said.

Moore nodded. “It’s not the only reference they’ve made. In the first letter they borrowed another phrase of his. He who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.”

“Sounds like they’re trying to tell us something,” Hawker suggested.

“They seem to be choosing the role of Satan,” Moore said. “Defeated by God, now trying to destroy his creation: mankind. And yet from the letter to the UN and this reference they seem to imply we’ll do it to ourselves.”

Hawker considered what was being said. There was something else to it. The bitterness in the words, the choice of verses. The choice of referencing Milton in the first place. It seemed almost … He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was certain there was more to what was being said than met the eye.

“Great,” Danielle said. “So what do these people want? Are they against God or are they against man?”

“Religious influence on man,” Moore said. “That’s the best we can distill it down to. All classic religions seem to want their people to reproduce as rapidly as possible, perhaps because failure to do so makes you weaker in numbers than your enemy. But synthesizing the UN letter and these other letters together it seems they blame the world’s problems on this and on the overpopulation resulting from it and Western introduction of medicines and other technologies that have reduced infant mortality and the death rate, while not reducing the birthrate equally.”

“So the plague is for culling the herd,” Danielle said.

“The logical response in livestock.”

“Humans are not livestock,” she said.

“Perhaps to this cult we are,” Moore said.

Hawker remained silent. He’d seen too much of man treating his fellow man worse than livestock to doubt it.

“Ranga’s notes suggested he was working on something that would drastically reduce life span,” Danielle said. “It appeared as if he was getting close. Could that be culling the herd?”

“Perhaps,” Moore said.

As Hawker listened, it became clear they were facing a group with dangerously warped minds. His deal with Lavril likely didn’t matter. These were not the kind of people who came in from the cold or allowed themselves to be arrested. He was all but certain they’d have to kill these men to defeat them. So be it.

“Ranga got caught up with these people somehow,” Hawker said. “If we could retrace that avenue, maybe we find out where they hide. Hit them before they hit us. Act instead of react.”

Moore looked at him thoughtfully. “I think we know what avenue Ranga connected with them on,” he said. Without elaborating he cued something up on the screen on the bulkhead of the aircraft.

Hawker turned to watch. At first he couldn’t tell what he was looking at. The video was poor and the room shown was badly lit. It turned out to be an auditorium of some kind. And then, as the camera zoomed in on a group of people sitting onstage, he recognized Ranga. He was younger, slimmer, wearing a white shirt and a thin black tie.

The moderator was talking, saying something about the challenge of feeding growing populations through the use of genetically modified crops.

The question was posed to Ranga as to what progress could be expected in the next twenty years.

“Drought resistance is important,” Ranga insisted, “for lost crops mean no harvest at all, which is the worst-case scenario. But you must understand that all things in nature are compromises. Drought resistance comes with a price: It can result in smaller yields under normal circumstances. Just the same, designing crops that yield more food per acre brings a risk: They require more water and more fertilizer and are often at the highest risks of failure under stressed conditions.”

A question from the audience prompted him.

“So what’s the answer, Dr. Milan?” someone asked. “Is there hope?”

Ranga cleared his throat. “In some sense we are searching for the impossible,” he said. “The best answer would be a crop that resists stressed growing conditions, produces more food per acre, and does not drain the soil or water table excessively. We are looking for ways to do this,” he said proudly, then continued less energetically. “But it’s a bit like trying to make an elephant fly without asking him to lose any weight.”

Laughter spread through the crowd.

“It’s problematic,” Ranga continued. “We do what we can. But if you must know, we are really attacking the issue from the wrong direction. It is often said that the world produces too little food. But rarely is it stated that we consume too much.”

Hawker sensed the pause. Ranga had always paused before stating his most important point.

“There will soon be seven billion people on this earth. In twenty years that number will near ten billion. And despite slowing growth rates, some projections go as high as twelve to fifteen billion by 2075. The earth cannot sustain such numbers. Especially if we all wish to live like Americans.”

A grumble went through the crowd.

“Make no mistake,” Ranga continued. “In every corner of the world people dream of living like an American. But that means each person consumes six times as much food, water, and fuel as the worldwide average. That would be the equivalent of a planet with fifty billion people on it.”

A collective gasp escaped from the audience.

“Like any population growing out of control, be it animals, insects, or bacteria, such growth ends in a crash. Our species will eventually crash as we destroy the host and starve.”

“The host?” It was one of the other panelists.

“The earth is our host,” Ranga replied, then turned back to the crowd. “The real solution lies not in growing more food but in reducing the population. The sooner we take action the less radical it will need to be, but based on religions that demand we all go forth and multiply and on both cultural and secular morality of reproductive rights, we will likely only act when it is far too late. At that point the action will have to be drastic. Beyond voluntary birth control, beyond individual decisions, beyond the Chinese one-child rule.”

An uneasy question came from somewhere off camera. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

Ranga cleared his throat again. “Just as it is possible for us to engineer crops, it is within our grasp to engineer humankind. A virus could be created that would spread randomly from person to person. It would bring with it genetic coding that would either sterilize some percentage of those it attached to, or reduce fertility or drastically shorten life spans. If the average life span were forty to fifty years — as it was once in this world — population growth would be severely curtailed if not reversed.”

“What!” someone shouted.

“Are you out of your mind?” a second voice said.

“Please,” Ranga said, speaking over a murmuring, restless crowd. “This may be the only real solution. There are either too many of us making too many babies, or we live far too long. One variable must change. It is up to us which one.”

It was an academic argument, delivered to the wrong crowd. They broke into jeers and shouts.

“You’re a freak,” someone shouted.

“Nazi!”

“Calm down,” the moderator requested.

Other shouts came forth, but Ranga did not back down.

“You live here in a big country, with plenty of space. But go to other places. See the crowds in the slums. See the children naked and begging. That is overpopulation. Not a crowded freeway or a line at a restaurant. It’s hundreds of thousands begging. People crawling on each other like ants.”

A shoe came flying onto the stage, barely missing Ranga’s head. He ducked and then looked out into the crowd. The discord was so loud it became hard to hear him, even with the microphone.

“You have to understand!” he shouted, trying to get his point across. “If we don’t do this ourselves, nature will eventually do it for us. Nature will always cull the herd.”

More shouts and accusations came from the crowd. The moderator took the microphone and started pleading for calm. People began to walk out, others pressing up onto the stage pointing and shouting. The room became chaotic; something crashed into the table, and then the tape ended.

Hawker stared at the static on the screen, blindingly aware that Ranga had used the very term written in the cult’s letter. If the jury was still out on Ranga, they had to be leaning toward conviction now.

“I’m sorry,” Danielle said.

He appreciated her words, appreciated that there was no “I told you so” tone to her voice.

“Not your fault,” he said.

His thoughts turned back to the tape, and the friend who now sounded like some version of the Nazi regime’s Dr. Mengele. Ranga looked awfully young, thinner, smoother face, fuller head of hair.

“When was that tape made?”

“In ’98,” Moore said. “At a conference on food production, two years before he went on the run.”

Hawker looked up at the ceiling and exhaled. “Well, my old friend certainly sounds like a lunatic,” he admitted.

He looked at Danielle and tried to telegraph his regret without saying it. She turned to Moore.

“So what are we dealing with here?”

“Walter Yang and the CDC are analyzing the data you pulled off the computer. I’ll let you know what we can find.”

“And this group?” Hawker asked. “Can they really be capable of what they’re threatening?”

“They wouldn’t be the first to try,” Moore said. “Jim Jones poisoned more than nine hundred of his own people with cyanide in Guyana. He and his thugs shot everyone who tried to interfere, including a U.S. congressman. The Aum Shinrikyo cult dumped Sarin nerve gas into the subways of Tokyo. Twelve people were killed, thousands more injured, but the scary part came when police raided the cult’s headquarters. They found anthrax and Ebola cultures, explosives, hallucinogenic drugs, and storehouses of chemical precursors. Based on what they had on-site, they could have manufactured enough Sarin to kill four million people.”

“I remember that,” Hawker said. “I didn’t know they had anthrax and Ebola. Why didn’t they use them?”

“They weren’t ready,” Moore said. “Rumor had it the police were about to raid them, so they went suicidal. Same with Jim Jones. He was getting a lot of heat about keeping people trapped there; that’s what Congressman Ryan went to check out. When things start to look bad, the leaders of these groups snap. Suicide pacts, murder suicide, mass killings. The endgame is always the same.”

“Whoever’s leading this cult, he sounds a lot like Shoko Asahara,” Moore added. “The guy who led the Japanese cult. His obsession was bringing about some type of apocalypse that combined the writings of Revelation with Buddhism and the predictions of Nostradamus.”

“Another lunatic,” Hawker noted.

“Like I said, they don’t have to make sense,” Moore noted. “They just have to get others to follow them. In Asahara’s case those who didn’t were jailed in cells at their headquarters or killed. In Guyana the same thing. Waco was the same.”

“We’ve seen that they’re capable of murder,” Danielle said. “And torture as well, in a very direct one-on-one style. Releasing a bioweapon might be easy by comparison.”

Moore nodded. “And if Ranga’s work went the way it seemed to, they might be close to possessing one: a weapon with the power to either sterilize a good portion of the human race or cut their life spans in half.”

For the first time in a long while Hawker felt a wave of uncertainty. He couldn’t imagine his old friend being part of such a group, but he’d obviously been just that. At least he’d tried to break away. “We have to stop these psychopaths, whatever it costs.”

He looked at Danielle, who nodded.

“So what do we do in Beirut?” she asked.

“Bashir was a known dealer in stolen art,” Moore said. “Beirut is one center of that trade. Gateway to Europe, as it’s often been called. We know somebody there who might be able to help. Might be able to get you into the party.”

“For what?” Hawker asked, thinking it sounded like an absurd waste of time.

“To follow the lead,” Moore replied sternly.

Danielle took the middle ground. “You think they were using stolen art to fund Ranga’s experiments, or even the cult itself?”

Moore shook his head. “We thought of that. And we haven’t been able to link anything else to them, so maybe. But the word is Ranga was a buyer, not a seller. Why? We have no idea. One of you is going there to find out.”

“One of us?” Danielle said.

“Our other lead is in Dubai,” Moore explained. “A venture capital fund-raiser for a start-up drug company called Paradox. They once claimed Ranga as one of their founders.”

To Hawker that sounded even thinner than the Beirut lead.

“A land with bombed-out buildings and dangerous black-market activities or a high-tech ball in one of the most luxurious cities on earth,” he said. “Guess I know where I’m going.”

Moore nodded. “You’re going to Dubai.”

Hawker tilted his head. He wasn’t sure he’d heard that right.

“We got a call this morning on your line,” Moore explained. “Sorry it didn’t go through. But once you two got plucked we had to shut things down, divert all data to Central Communications. A man named David Keegan called you. Former MI-5 striker, if I’m not mistaken.”

Hawker nodded. “He gave me the information on

Ranga.”

“Yes, well, he found the person you asked him to look for,” Moore said.

Moore reached over and clicked an icon on the laptop in front of him.

Keegan’s voice came from the speakers. “Listen, mate, I’ve found your girl. Told you, you should have married her, she’s some big shot at a pharma company now. You’d done like I said and you’d be sipping champagne and buying polo horses instead of dodging bullets and hanging out with the likes of me. Anyway, she’s in Dubai for a shindig with her company, Paradox. I’ll text you the info. You take it from there. Let me know if you need anything else.”

The playback ended. Hawker looked on as Moore clicked the x and closed the program. Whatever doubts they’d had about his objectivity could have only been confirmed by the words Keegan had chosen to use. Perhaps that was even why Moore played it. A preemptive shot, like Danielle’s the day before. Hawker understood.

“Were you really going to marry her?” Danielle asked, sounding half-shocked, half-amused.

“It’s just Keegan. He thinks he’s funny,” Hawker said.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, smiling. “Does sound kind of funny.”

“Sonia is now a geneticist in her own right,” Moore said. “She’s also part of Paradox. She’ll be in Dubai giving a speech to potential investors. You’re going to meet her, Hawker. And you’re going to find out what she knows.”