Authors: Elizabeth Jennings
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Darkness at Dawn (8 page)
Lucy was amazed, but grateful that he’d cleaned her fridge out. She hated leaving food behind when going away. She’d grown up in some very poor parts of the world, where food was precious. Wasting food was something she abhorred.
While eating, he’d been leafing through the folder Uncle Edwin had given him, his eyes tracking back and forth across the page while he stuffed his face. She was a fast reader, but this beat anything she could do. Who knew if he was retaining everything?
He had to. Their lives depended on it.
Nobody knew more than she did about being undercover. You had to live, breathe, eat and sleep your cover story. One slip and you could be dead. Or worse.
Whatever they were walking into at the Palace, a wrong word, forgetting something about his backstory, could be disastrous.
All through her childhood she’d been painfully aware of the fact that letting slip the wrong information could cost her parents their lives. And hers.
Lucy would be fine on this mission. No one in Nhala had ever known her parents were CIA. They’d just been two anthropologists whose hobby was target shooting with a young daughter and who happened to be in Nhala during an attempted coup and reacted very bravely. Lucy would have the great privilege of just being herself.
Captain Shafer—Mike—was the one who was going to be under a lot of pressure. Not only for impersonating a part but also for being responsible for sneaking outside the Palace in the Himalayas in winter to find a flash drive in a million square miles of snow.
He turned the last page as he finished up the second peach. Squaring his shoulders, he stood up. “So. Forth into the fray.” He winked at her. “Honey.”
F
OUR
OUR
THE PALACE
CHILONGO, NHALA
CHILONGO, NHALA
GENERAL Dan Changa studied the large military relief map spread out on the immense, intricately carved desk in his study. A map he knew so well.
How badly land was distributed in this part of the world. His own people had been apportioned a beautiful but tiny slice of the subcontinent, with very little arable land in the valleys.
He traced his finger along the familiar borders, tracing Nhala’s outline. Back and forth, to the north the great upswelling of the mountains that had defined Nhala’s existence since the dawn of time, then over the small scimitar that was the inhabitable land and down, across the border to the south, down to Bihar and Gudjarat, the great Gangetic Plains. Millions of miles of arable land, wasted by the Indians, who had no taste or talent for agriculture.
His forefinger tracked along the black line. The border. But was it? Really?
What was a border except an artificial line on paper? Borders were changed every day. Throughout human history the stronger and the smarter went over borders and prevailed.
Men who had the winds of destiny at their backs prevailed, like him. General Changa didn’t believe in destiny or fate. He was a soldier, not a priest. But events were definitely converging.
His men had noticed. There was a new deference, fear actually, as the king’s disease progressed. King Jomo had wanted to change the nature of the country, which had always had a strong leader. He wanted to be their leader, but he also wanted to “democratize.”
The fool.
Nobody cared about democracy. They cared about full bellies and a sense of strength at the top, something Jomo had never provided. The Boy King, who stopped the Chinese, together with two Americans who’d been studying Nhalan culture and who knew how to handle guns.
Or so everyone believed.
Nonsense. It had been Changa who’d saved his country, the Americans had only bought him time. Changa who’d called in his faithful Sharmas, his warrior tribe, the way the Gurkhas had been warriors for the English empire.
The tribe that would occupy the lowlands and turn Nhala into a world power.
He pulled open a drawer, which had a carved dragon’s head as its pull. He carefully closed his fist over a tiny transparent cylinder as long as the first knuckle of his little finger and laid it gently on his desk.
Such a small object to hold so much death. Truly almost magical.
General Changa was not superstitious as were so many of his subjects, peasants from the dawn of time. He’d studied at Eton and at Caltech, and he considered himself a man of reason, a man of science. But the small hardened plastic cylinder on his desk, divided into two parts by a transparent plastic barrier, filled him with the awe peasants felt for the forces of nature.
There was nothing natural in what was in that cylinder. It was the upshot of years of research furtively carried out in mobile labs—nothing more than trucks, really—driving from sandy outpost to sandy outpost to avoid discovery.
It wasn’t until he had understood what a world-changer they were working on that he accepted the offer of a Pakistani emissary who’d come two years earlier. For a goodly sum of money, which was even now accruing interest on a sunny Caribbean island, he’d agreed to let them build an underground laboratory in the mountains, beyond the software parameters of spy satellites programmed to control India and Pakistan.
No one would suspect a laboratory above the 45th parallel, at ten thousand feet, and yet there it was, twenty miles north of the Palace.
The scientists were from all over the world, but the money was Arab, the plan was Arab, the head scientist Pakistani.
General Changa didn’t care. Arab-Israeli-American. It didn’t make any difference to him. Let them all blow themselves up. There was now a weapon to do it, and he was looking at it.
He held it lightly in his hand, knowing that it had been precisely calibrated to initiate a breaching sequence at 150 psi. In the back of a drawer was a compressed-air gun, and he drew it slowly out, delighting in the precisely engineered machinery. It had the look of a gun from the future, only it was very much in the here and now.
The gun shot cylinders into the shoulder or thigh, calibrated to penetrate one centimeter, compressed gas breaching the plastic barrier, imbedding in the other half of the cylinder and injecting a slow-acting acid into it. In precisely twenty-four hours, the second part of the cylinder dissolved, dispersing what the Arabs called the
Ghibli
, the Wind from the East.
Ghibli
, the Wind from the East.
The wind that kills.
General Changa knew that the Arabs were planning on sending soldiers on a suicide mission into Israel and New York.
He had no intention of endangering his brave warriors. He’d had one of his bioengineers in the lab design delivery canisters, like the one the Arabs had designed, only much smaller. Tiny, in fact, so tiny thousands could fit into a backpack.
His men would seed the north of India with them when the Arabs’ attack occurred. Whether the first target was Israel or the United States didn’t make any difference. His men would slip across the border, place thousands of the canisters and be back well before the twenty-four hours were up.
They would wait out the epidemic, which would burn itself out inside of a day, and march into the emptied out land bringing medical supplies and food.
And then, just stay.
He had recruited hundreds of agronomists, thousands of engineers. The Indians didn’t know what to do with all the land they had. Rich, alluvial plains, large, navigable rivers, and they were still poor. Why, Nhala was richer, and they were an isolated strip of land surrounded by granite mountains with only one arable river valley.
The Indians didn’t deserve their land. But he and his brave soldiers did. They’d turn it into a garden within a generation.
Yes, the winds of history were indeed at his back. It was as bold a plan as Alexander or Tamerlane had ever dreamed of. Better, even, because no blood would be spilled.
The only blood spilled would be from the infected ones, and it would come out of their own bodies. Neither Changa nor his men would ever touch them. It would be their own bodies that would betray them.
There was even a legend, the Snow Dragon. A Nhalan legend recounted from generation to generation since the dawn of time, until it was in his people’s DNA. In the Time Before Time, Nhala had occupied the entire Himalayas and the Indian subcontinent. Nhala had ruled over the peoples of the mountains and valleys with grace and mercy, ensuring peace and prosperity throughout the land.
A thousand generations ago, invaders drove the Nhalan people back into their small valley.
But one day, a Snow Dragon—a creature of immense power and wisdom—would emerge from the north and lead the people into a new age of peace, a new dawn. There were tattered flags on prayer wheels fluttering in the wind, that had been in that exact same spot for a thousand years, replaced every decade or so, calling upon the Snow Dragon to return from the mountains to the valley and to restore the empire. Return the people to peace and prosperity.
General Changa doubted there was even a shred of historical truth to the legend. His people were, alas, ignorant and superstitious peasants. But that was no reason not to use the legend for his own purposes.
So a parchment had been conveniently found in a cave in the north of the country. He’d had it buried in wet soil for a couple of weeks to age it, and the text—written by a scholar in the Old Language—spoke of the return of the Snow Dragon in terms that clearly pointed to him.
When Princess Paso had timidly suggested that Lucy Merritt—the daughter of the two American anthropologists who’d happened to be at the right time at the right place and were legends in the countryside—was a famous manuscript restorer, he’d nearly laughed aloud.
The child of the Merritts, harmless scholars who happened to know how to shoot, would be the agency by which he would rise to power.
Though he didn’t really believe in this nonsense, goose bumps had risen on his arms, because having the daughter of the Merritts—whose names were now regularly included in the prayers of half the country—“restore” the document would give it enormous legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
Of course, if she were anywhere close to being competent, Merritt would soon discover it was a fake, but
her
fate was definitely to die young.
her
fate was definitely to die young.
Changa would see to that. Just as Jomo’s fate was to die young and soon, and Princess Paso’s fate was to marry him, so that the new leader of an enormous new country would not only have military credentials, but be part of the line of the Royal Family that had ruled his country for centuries.
He didn’t believe in the winds of fate, but nonetheless he could feel them blowing at his back, propelling him into a glorious future.
WASHINGTON, DC“What’s your name?” Lucy Merritt asked, perched on a hassock at his side, looking cool and collected in the middle of the frenzy.
A lock of his hair drifted down onto the floor and Mike winced. It lay there like a long, dark snake on Lucy’s pristine light-colored hardwood floor.
“Don’t worry, sir, we’ll sweep it all up,” the guy cutting his hair said behind him, as another lock fell, then another.
He was at the center of five people fluttering around him, one cutting his hair, one preparing some sharp tools, one stropping a razor—Mike was keeping an eye on that one, he’d been sent by Montgomery—one pulling out clothes and one doing his goddamned
nails.
nails.
“Michael Everett Harrington. Born March 6, 1977—which makes me a Pisces—in New York City, of Lorraine Everett Harrington, attorney, currently with the offices of Singleton, Weinstein, Locke and Harrington, and Rupert Harrington, retired banker.”
None of that was true, of course. He’d been born on January 19, 1976, of Sally Hughes Shafer, homemaker, who died when he was two, and Bob Shafer, owner of Shafer Demolitions. And Mike was a Capricorn.
“Other hand, sir,” the manicurist said, and he looked at his right hand. A manicure. A frigging
manicure
, the first of his life. He kept his nails short and clean, but that was it. Now his nails looked like shiny little works of art. He held out his left hand, resigned.
manicure
, the first of his life. He kept his nails short and clean, but that was it. Now his nails looked like shiny little works of art. He held out his left hand, resigned.
Lucy was tracking his file, nodding at his answers. “What are your hobbies?”
“Polo and golf, they’re my favorites.” Mike would rather have his nuts caught in a thresher than play polo or golf, two asinine activities if ever there were any. Chasing balls around, what the fuck? No, he loved the outdoors, always had, always would. White-water rafting, backpacking and above all mountain climbing, something Michael Harrington would probably never do in his entire pampered existence. “As a matter of fact, I was polo champ—what are you
doing
?” he asked in alarm. Someone was fitting little foam thingies between his fucking
toes
!
doing
?” he asked in alarm. Someone was fitting little foam thingies between his fucking
toes
!
The girl at his feet looked up, startled. “Giving you a pedicure, sir.” She held his foot up by his big toe in disgust, as if his foot were a big, hairy rat. “No one would ever believe you were anything but a homeless man with feet like these. Sir.”
Lucy elbowed him in the ribs. “Be a man. Honey.”
“I have no intention of walking around barefoot,” Mike grumbled, but it was a lost battle. He looked at her equipment. “Do what you do, but no polish. Hands or feet.” The girl’s chin firmed in a mulish pout. He put real command in his voice, a tone guaranteed to make his men snap to. “I trust that’s clear.” She nodded, expression rebellious.
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