Red (37 page)

He flicked the blade. Martyn didn't respond to the small cut on his neck. Red blood seeped from the surface wound.

“You think he won't bleed the way my men have bled? I say we send him back to his Horde in pieces.”

Justin ran past Thomas, grabbed the general's hood, and yanked it back.

Martyn's face was ashen. A curving scar ran down his right cheek. He blinked pale eyes in the sudden light. He was hardly human, and yet he was fully human. But there was more.

Thomas knew this man.

His heart crashed in his chest.

Johan.

He yanked his sword back.

Johan? And the scar . . . Why did this scar surprise him?

“Johan,” Justin said.

Thomas saw Rachelle over the man's shoulder. She was at the crest and she'd heard the words.

“Johan?” she said.

Then she was running. Down the slope. She raced around the general and stared at his exposed face.

“Johan? It's . . . it's you?”

The general showed no emotion at the sight of his sister. His mind had been taken by the disease, Thomas knew. He hadn't been killed in battle as they'd all assumed. He'd been lost to the desert and become a Scab three years ago. It was why the Horde's strategies had become so effective. They were being led by one of the old Forest Guard who had lost his mind to their disease.

Rachelle reached out to him, but he withdrew. She stared at him, grieved. Horrified.

“You must let us go,” Justin said. “It's the only way.”

William edged closer. “Sir, he's diseased. We can't let him—”

“Then wash him!” Rachelle cried.

“You can't force a man to bathe,” Thomas said. “He is what he chooses to be.”

“He will bathe! Tell them, Johan. You will wash this curse from your skin. You'll swim in the lake.”

His eyes widened with a momentary flash of fear. “If it is peace you want, I can give you peace.” Thomas recognized the voice, but barely. It was now deeper. Pained. “Otherwise we bring a curse you have never known to this forest.”

William grabbed the man's cloak and drew back his sword. “Enough of this!”

“Let him go!” Thomas ordered.

“Sir—”

“Release him!”

William let the robe go and stepped back.

“I will not kill my own brother!”

His Guard would never agree to the terms of any peace Justin and Martyn drew up, but a truce might stall the Horde long enough for the Guard to prepare if truly there was an army in the plains.

Behind them, Ciphus was silent. Why?

Thomas faced Justin. “Take him. Broker your peace, but don't expect me and my men to go along with it. If we see a single Scab within sight of the forest, we will hunt you both down and drain your blood.”

Rachelle gripped his arm. She was trembling.

Martyn replaced his hood and turned. William wouldn't move.

“Let them go, William.” Then louder. “These two have my personal word of safe passage from our forest. The man who touches them will face me.”

His men parted.

Justin and Martyn, the mighty general of the Horde whose name was also Johan, walked up the slope into the trees and vanished.

19

THOMAS STARED at the man he now knew had masterminded the virus. A thick Frenchman with fat fingers and greasy black hair who looked like he could stand in the face of a hurricane without batting an eye.

This was Armand Fortier.

They had been sedated, Monique told him. Within an hour of him passing out, they'd both been given shots. Men were dismantling the laboratory. They were going to be moved; she got that much from one of them. But to where she didn't know.

Then
she'd
passed out. Neither of them knew how much time had passed since then.

They'd awakened here, in this windowless stone room with a pool table and a fireplace. They were both handcuffed with impossibly tight cuffs, seated in wooden chairs, facing the Frenchman and, behind him, Carlos. Monique was still dressed in her pale blue slacks and blouse, and Thomas still wore the camouflaged jumpsuit.

Thomas had tried to deduce their possible location, but he had no memory of being moved, and there was nothing in this room that couldn't be found anywhere in the world. For all he knew they'd been out for two days. If he was right, the reason he'd dreamed at all was because he hadn't been drugged for that first hour after Carlos had tortured him.

That first hour, he'd dreamed of the inquiry where he'd fought Justin and discovered that Martyn was Johan . . .

“Just so you know, the Americans did try to rescue you,” Fortier said. He seemed to find the fact interesting. “And I know from a very reliable source that they were after more than the antivirus. They want you. Everybody seems to want Thomas Hunter and Monique de Raison.”

His eyes moved to Monique. “You have this solution in your head. You'd think I would just kill you and eliminate the risk of them finding you. Fortunately for you, I have reasons to keep you alive.”

His eyes shifted back to Thomas. “You, on the other hand, are an enigma. You know things you should not. You gave us the Raison Strain, and then you inadvertently gave us the antivirus, both sides of this most useful weapon. But it doesn't stop there. You continue to know things. Where we are. What we will do next, perhaps. What should I do with you?”

Thomas's mind returned to the dream of Justin's challenge.

Johan. The man who'd led the Horde against them so effectively had been Johan. And Johan had a scar on his cheek. Thomas had watched the duo walk into the woods to broker peace with Qurong, a peace that was somehow entwined with betrayal.

The crowd had erupted in fierce debate. Thomas had returned to his Guard, and the Council had joined them to berate his decision to give Johan safe passage from the forest. But how could he kill Johan? And hadn't Justin won the inquiry? They had no right to undermine him now.

The festivities that night had been more dissension than celebration—a strange mix of exuberance by those who believed that Justin was indeed destined to deliver them from the Horde with this peace of his, and animosity by those who argued vehemently against any such treasonous betrayal of Elyon.

Thomas had finally collapsed into a fitful sleep.

“What are you thinking?” Fortier asked.

Thomas focused on the thick Frenchman. He had no doubt that this man would succeed with his virus. The Books of Histories said he would. And, as it was turning out, changing history wasn't as easy as he'd once hoped. Impossible, maybe. All of this—his discovery of the virus in the first place, his attempts to derail Svensson, and now this encounter with Fortier—might very well be written in the Books of Histories. Imagine that:
Thomas Hunter's attempt to rescue Monique de Raison at Cyclops failed
when the transport he was flying in was shot down . . .
If he'd been successful in retrieving the Books from Qurong's tent, he could have read the details of his own life! But it seemed that the path of history was continuing exactly as it had been recorded, and he knew its final destination if not the precise course it would take.

The question now was
when
. When would they finally kill him? When would Monique die? When would the antivirus actually be released to the chosen few? When would the rest die their hideous diseased death?

“They searched for you with nearly a hundred aircraft loaded with enough electronic equipment to power Paris for a week,” Fortier was saying. “It was quite a spectacle, not all at once or to one region, of course. In circles and to airports throughout the South Pacific. They blocked the air-traffic routes between Indonesia and France. To be quite honest, we barely made it out.”

His lips twisted in a small grin. “We wouldn't have if I hadn't foreseen exactly this possibility. You see, you're not the only one who can see the future. Oh, your sight might be different from mine based on this . . . this gift rather than solid deductive reasoning, but I can promise you that I have seen the future, and I like what I see. Do you?”

“No,” Thomas said. “I don't.”

“Very good. You still have your voice. And you're honest, which is more than I can say for myself.”

He turned away.

“I need to know something, Thomas. I know that you know the answer, because I have ears inside your government. I know the president has no intention of actually delivering the weapons that are just now entering the Atlantic. What I don't know is how far the president will carry his bluff. I need to know when to take the appropriate action. We are now fully prepared for a nuclear exchange, you must know. Knowing if and when they might attack would be helpful.”

“He won't fire nuclear weapons,” Thomas said.

“No? Maybe you don't know your president as well as I do. We anticipate it. Any knowledge you give me won't change the outcome of this chess match; it will only determine how many people must die to facilitate that outcome.”

Fortier glanced at his watch. “We are going public in France in three days. Over a hundred less-progressive members of the government will meet untimely ends between now and then. A Chinese delegation is waiting for a meeting with President Gaetan in his office, and I've been asked to join them. Evidently news of the altercations with you in Indonesia have leaked and are causing a stir. The Australians are threatening to go public and must be calmed. One of our own commanders is asking the wrong questions. I am a busy man, Thomas. I have to leave. We'll talk again tomorrow. I hope your memory serves you better then.”

He regarded Monique, dipped his head barely, and left the room.

Thomas's mind spun with the details that the Frenchman had just given him. The world was indeed rushing to its well-known end. While he was off dreaming about the Gathering and how it could possibly be that the great general Martyn was really Johan, complete with scarred—

Thomas stopped. He stared at Carlos, who had crossed the room and opened a door that led into darkness.

He turned in profile to Thomas. The scar. Right cheek. Curved like a half-moon, exactly as he remembered Johan's.

“Let's go,” the man said. “Don't make me drag you.”

No, Carlos wouldn't want to drag them. It would mean getting too close—an opportunity for Thomas to do something. The man knew to play things safe.

But none of this interested Thomas at the moment.

The scar.

What if Rachelle was right about how the realities worked? Thomas might be the only true gateway between the realities, but if someone was aware of both realities, then both realities had potential to affect that person. For instance, now that Rachelle believed in both realities, if Monique was cut, Rachelle would also wake up with a cut. And if Monique was killed, Rachelle would also die. Would Monique die if Rachelle did? Thomas hadn't convinced Monique to believe yet. Nor had Monique ever come into contact with Thomas's blood.

The link between the realities was belief? Or Thomas's blood?

Perhaps both. It did make a strange kind of sense. Life and blood and skills and knowledge were all transferable between realities—he'd already experienced that much. Proven it. But why?

Belief.

If someone with even the slightest belief came into contact with Thomas's blood, then their belief would be enough to connect them to his reality with him. It would explain everything! And it wouldn't require that Rachelle and Monique be one and the same.

It was as good a working theory as he'd come up with yet.

“Now. Please,” Carlos said, indicating the room.

There was still a hole in his theory. Primarily, why he was Thomas in both realities, why he didn't share this experience with someone else.

Thomas stood. “I have something to say,” he said. “Can you get the Frenchman?”

Carlos studied him. “You'll have to wait.”

“What I have to say he will want to hear before he meets with the Chinese.”

“Then tell me.”

“It has to do with how I knew where you were keeping Monique. You knew I'd come, didn't you?” Thomas walked forward a few paces and stopped ten feet from the man. Behind him, Monique kept her seat.

“You could have tracked me down in Washington, but you chose to go to Indonesia and wait for me there, because you knew that I would know,” Thomas continued. “Am I right?”

“What does this have to do with the Chinese?”

“Actually, it's not tied directly to the Chinese per se. I just said he should know this before he meets with them.”

“And this is?”

“That I am going to escape before he meets with them.”

Thomas didn't have any such knowledge, but he needed the man's full attention, and this was the first step.

“Then it would have been a wasted call,” Carlos said. “I have no intention of letting you escape. This isn't a useful discussion.”

“I didn't say you were going to let us escape. But our escape will involve you. I know this because you're not like them. You're a deeply religious man who follows the will of Allah, and I know you well. Much better than you think I might. We've met before.”

Carlos shifted. “If you know me so well, then you know that I'm not easily swayed by a fool who speaks in riddles.”

“No, you aren't. But you have been swayed. Deceived. I know that without a doubt. Do you think that Svensson and Fortier have any intention of allowing Islam to thrive after they gain power? Religion is their enemy. They may set up their own, they may even call it Islam, but it won't be the Islam you know. One of the first to die will be you. You know too much. You're much too powerful. You are the worst kind of enemy—they know that. You must as well.”

He didn't respond.

“You're not curious as to
how
we met before?” Thomas asked.

“We haven't.”