The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 42

Arnold Moore was used to facing difficulties head-on. Troubles didn’t go away on their own; if ignored they grew. If pain was to come, let it come and get it over with. If hard decisions were to be made he favored making them quickly rather than putting them off. Perhaps that’s why no one had ever asked him to run for office. Those traits did not work for politicians.

And yet he found himself in a precarious position of having to balance his natural instincts and the actions that would follow if he acted on them.

Part of him wanted to call Danielle and Hawker and authorize the use of any force necessary to get information out of their prisoner. History would surely judge him harshly if this plague hit and he’d done less than all he could.

On the other hand, it would be an illegal order anyway, perhaps just enough to cover Danielle, assuming she would even follow it, and Hawker, who most undoubtedly would.

But he had chosen to put off the decision in hopes that some other avenue would appear. In a world of black and white he was hoping for a third way. Hoping the trouble would go away on its own.

It was an uncomfortable feeling and it didn’t free him of any angst or even protect him really.

The fact was, Hawker and Danielle were holding a foreign prisoner as a hostage, torturing him in minor ways already, some of which would not pass the Geneva Convention. That they were doing it in a foreign country, violating not only American law but also the laws of Iraq, made it worse.

The NRI had no police power. They didn’t even have the wink-and-nod status that had been granted to the CIA. If the truth came out it would be disastrous. Especially for an agency with as checkered a recent past as the NRI.

Two and a half years earlier the Brazilian mission that had included Danielle and Hawker had turned into an unmitigated disaster. Later investigations showed the NRI’s then director, Stuart Gibbs, to be up to his neck in fraud, embezzling from the institute accounts, responsible for at least one murder and for attempting to kill Arnold Moore days later. Gibbs was proven to be in league with a radical billionaire who wanted to steal what the NRI was looking for and was suspected of planning to kill the entire team in some “accident” once they found it.

After the whole thing blew up, it was widely believed that the NRI would be shut down, but a last-minute reprieve put Moore in charge and kept the doors open.

Two years later Moore had been forced to break ranks with everyone in Langley and the West Wing in an attempt to avert a worldwide calamity. Disobeying direct orders, he’d gone all out to do what he believed was necessary, being proved right only at the very last moment — and after being shot and run over by the director of the CIA.

By inches, the NRI had avoided death a second time. The current situation looked like a third fastball coming right down the pipe. They’d fouled the other two off, but miss this one and they were out. Miss this one and the whole world might be out.

Tired of running it over in his mind, Moore considered contacting the president, informing him, and letting the nation’s elected leader make the call. But as weak as Moore felt about the inability to make any choice, he felt even weaker passing the buck.

He, Danielle, and Hawker were closest to the situation. If they couldn’t decide, how could someone who saw the events only on paper make a good decision? He might as well just flip a coin, or close his eyes and swing away.

Thankfully his intercom buzzed. A time-out to interrupt his circular reasoning.

“This is Moore,” he said.

“Mr. Moore, this is Walter Yang,” the voice on the other side said. “I’ve found something odd in the virus code. I’m wondering if we have any further information from the field operatives.”

Moore had promised Yang data from Sonia’s corporation, but the hit on their lab had stopped it from coming in.

“I’m afraid not,” Moore said. “What do you have?”

“Just some patterns in the inert section that seem very odd.”

“Dangerous?”

“No,” Yang said. “They’re still inert. But they aren’t random. At least I don’t think they are.”

“Any guesses?” Moore asked, still convinced there was something in that code that mattered.

“Not yet.”

“We’re running out of time, Walter.”

As if to emphasize that fact the intercom buzzed again. Moore’s assistant spoke. “It’s the president’s chief of staff,” she said. “Line two.”

“Get me something, Walter. Anything.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

Moore hung up, took a deep breath, and hit the button for line two.