The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (69 page)

“The Karaites still held Jewish tenets, however they found the Islamic concept of
Mu’tazilah
applied to their religion as well.”

“Again,” Brandt stated, “not quite following.”

Scrolling back, Rebecca found the passage she was looking for. “
Mu’tazilah
allowed philosophers to apply logic and principle to scripture. That even ‘perfect’ texts could be examined for God’s deeper meaning. No word of God was immune to man’s inquiry.”

Davidson found his voice again. “At first this was applied against the teachings of the rabbis, then spread to the examination of the Torah.”

“Okay,” Brandt said, “still not getting it. What is so shocking about studying different interpretations of the Bible?”

“Um,” Rebecca stalled, knowing how Brandt loved both the Old and the New Testament, “it isn’t so much the Karaites studying the Bible as them deciding that the Jewish establishment had been lying to its followers for millennia.”

Brandt frowned. The last time they had investigated a religious conspiracy they had barely made it out with their lives. Rebecca and Davidson still bore the secret of that night. She glanced over to the private, whose features seemed heavier than a moment before. The patchwork of scars more purple.

But for all his doubt, Brandt ultimately was the most pragmatic person Rebecca knew. “And you think this Osip and my Amed crossed paths in Moscow.”

Rebecca brought up a search of documents containing both Osip’s name and the phrase “The Word.” While they were over a decade old, it did prove his area of research had honed in upon the concept.

“It’s rumored that Osip left Moscow to revive an old shtetl in Pushchino, but it closed down. The only address I can find is in some state housing.”

Brandt turned his full attention to her. “Pushchino? Are you certain?”

Rebecca wasn’t quite sure why the sergeant was so amped up. Pushchino was a small town just south of Moscow. “Yes. The village had a high Jewish population until Catherine the Great’s decree of the Pale that forced mass emigration to western Russia…Why?”

“We believe that the Pushchino biological storehouse is where Amed stole the bioweapons.”

The gravity of the situation hit Rebecca. It was all well and good to have theorems and postulating historical relevance. It was quite another to find out your obscure Jewish scholar may have something to do with the theft of weapons of mass destruction.

“What did he steal?” Davidson asked.

CHAPTER 3

══════════════════

Undisclosed Location, England

9:23 p.m. GMT (Daylight Savings)

Brandt pulled up short answering. And not just because it was Davidson asking. There were “need to know” facts and then really, really “need to know” facts. Not even the rest of the team knew the biologicals that Amed had stolen.

“Let me guess,” Rebecca said. “Rinderpest.”

“How the hell—”

Rebecca pointed to her screen. “Dude, it’s right here in a WikiLeaks document. Russia has been accused of hording and weaponizing Rinderpest at Pushchino. And the US knows it because they were doing the same thing in the nineties.”

Sometimes Rebecca was a bit too smart for her own good. The other problem? She knew it.

“Plus it makes a great terrorist weapon,” Rebecca continued. “Even though the Rinderpest virus doesn’t kill people, it kills virtually all the livestock it comes into contact with. So it destroys entire communities, even countries from the inside out. Rioting, starvation, anarchy.”

Like he said. Too smart. Although she didn’t have all the information. The Russians had supposedly broadened Rinderpest’s range of hosts. Modifying the virus to be more like its cousin the measles with the ability to infect humans. Primarily the young and the old.

If anyone infected a country in the Middle East with this? Israel? Syria? World War III would not just be possible but probable.

“So was I close?” Rebecca asked.

“Close enough,” Brandt responded.

Rebecca was about to push it when Talli stuck his head in the room. “We’ve got company.”

Brandt stood up, indicating Rebecca and Davidson get behind him. Raising his weapon, he watched Talli and Harvish get into position to aim at the front door. A key clanged in the lock as the doorknob turned.

“Hold your fire,” Brandt whispered as the door opened.

A man and a woman walked in, both in pressed suits. The man however wore a grin as an accessory. “Well if it isn’t Sergeant Vincent Brandt,” the man said in a heavy Scottish accent.

Brandt lowered his weapon. “A good day to you too, Agent Vanderwalt.”

The two shook hands until Vanderwalt pulled Brandt into a bear hug. So very un-British-like. Brandt didn’t resist though. It was nice to see a trustworthy face in all of this.

Vanderwalt’s partner though took out her phone, acting as if she just got a message.

“Put it down,” Brandt said. “I’m onto your tricks.”

The agent tried to look all innocent as Brandt turned to Talli. “Check for bugs again.”

The sensor blinked red over and over again.

Brandt smiled. “Come on. Like M-I-Five is going to give a foreign operative, even an
American
foreign operative, the credentials to a safe house and
not
have heavy surveillance?”

“Ah,” Vanderwalt breathed out, his hands spread open in defeat. “We had to try.”

“Yes,” Brandt replied, “yes, you did.”

Brandt made sure though that Vanderwalt not only gave the order to the female agent to disable the bugs, but that Talli double-checked that fact. Sure Vanderwalt was trustworthy, yet he was still a British agent. Brandt couldn’t fault Walt for doing his job. However, Brandt had his own job to do.

* * *

Rebecca watched the two men’s bromance reunion with a skeptical eye. She’d never seen Brandt so affectionate with anyone else but her…and supposedly some random chick named Maria, before.

But there Brandt was patting Vanderwalt’s back, beaming away. Rebecca hadn’t even heard Vanderwalt’s name until just now. For a man she thought she knew inside and out, Rebecca had barely scratched the surface of Brandt.

“Dr. Rebecca Monroe?” Vanderwalt asked as he extended a hand in her direction.

Taking the agent’s hand, Rebecca shook it. “That would be me.”

Vanderwalt’s smile revealed a set of crooked yet endearing teeth. “Well, Brandt, there are two bones I must pick with you, chap.”

“And those would be?” Brandt asked.

“First, you did not tell me how absolutely lovely a creature your wife-to-be was…”

Heat rose in Rebecca’s cheeks. Yet one more person to inform that Brandt and her great sweeping love affair had ended like a used-up firework. Dead and burned out, swept away with the trash. The humiliation never would end, would it?

“Yah,” Brandt said, stumbling for the words. “About that—”

“But the second,” Vanderwalt continued, “is the fact the American government assured us that the threat of the Knot was over and the Institute was at no risk housing Dr. Monroe,” he inclined his head toward Rebecca. “No offense, Doctor.”

Rebecca went to answer, but Brandt overrode her. “That’s the thing, Walt, it wasn’t the Knot.”

“Exactly who else but the Knot would bomb Dr. Monroe’s office?” the female agent asked, still seeming a bit put off that Brandt had caught her red-handed earlier.

Brandt didn’t seem to notice the woman’s brusque manner or more than likely didn’t care as he explained to the agents that the lab bombed had not been Rebecca’s.

“What?” Walt said. “We still have Monroe in laboratory one fifty-eight.”

“That was my old lab,” Rebecca corrected. “Since I wasn’t faculty and they converted one fifty-eight into a student practice lab the Institute never…” Rebecca meant to say “reclassified me,” but the words couldn’t make it past her suddenly swollen throat.

To think those students, probably working on Saturday to catch up on their lab assignments, had died in her stead. Just like the tribe in Ecuador or the plane passengers in France last year. So many dead because she lived.

Brandt and the MI-5 officer didn’t seem to notice her distress as they went on to discuss who might have launched such an attack. Her research
was
controversial. Searching for the “smart” or “God” gene had gotten her kicked out of nearly every research facility in America. Hence why she had come to London. Where there would be dozens of British funerals because they happened to be working in a laboratory labeled as Dr. Monroe’s.

A touch on the shoulder came from an unexpected source. Davidson. Or was it so unexpected? If one person in this room knew what it felt like to have death upon your shoulders it was this young man.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he whispered.

Rebecca wiped away a tear that clung to the edge of her eye. “Okay, now I know how lame that sounds from this side,” she whispered back.

The tiny corner of Davidson’s lip that wasn’t damaged, tugged upward. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

God, she hoped so.

* * *

Out of the corner of his eye, Brandt watched Rebecca and Davidson’s whispered exchange. The two had become close during their last mission, but now?
Damn.
They were over there making a dozen pinkie-promises or something.

“We’ve checked the chatter from the usual ultraconservative suspects that would take issue with Dr. Monroe’s subject matter,” Walt said, bringing Brandt back to the matter at hand. Like who the hell was trying to kill them.

“Maybe we are looking at this backward,” Talli suggested. “Maybe they knew our team was headed to London and guessed where we would be headed after Amed. Maybe we were the targets and the Institute was just collateral damage.”

That was Talli for you. Coming to the party a little late and with only half the food you asked him to pick up.

Walt looked to Brandt. “Clearly something about Amed triggered the attack, but Rebecca holds some key knowledge, so they struck at us all at the Institute.”

“The classic two birds, one stone solution,” Walt said. “MI-5 will be following up on this act of terrorism.”

“Of course.” Brandt not arguing to take part in the investigation. Why would he? Even though MI-5 and even Scotland Yard would be all over the bombsite, if the organizers of that attack were as slick as they seemed, they wouldn’t have left behind any evidence. Brandt’s team had their own leads to follow up.

The MI-5 officer raised an eyebrow at Brandt’s easy capitulation. “So you aren’t going to argue that we should get you off British soil as quickly as possible?”

“Not at all,” Brandt stated with a fierce grin.

Walt cocked his head, scanning Brandt’s features, clearing trying to figure out his angle. “Well with such eager anticipation, we will escort you to one of our RAF bases and get you winging home.”

“Actually,” Brandt stated, “we’re going to be heading east rather than west.”

Now Walt full-on squinted at Brandt. “East? Following a clue from Amed?”

“Let’s just say I’m in the mood to hit the docks.”

“You are planning on boating to Europe?” Walt asked, the surprise clear in his voice.

“Actually I was thinking of something a little more under the radar,” Brandt said, relishing just a little bit the confused look on his old friend’s face.

The female agent took a step forward. “And exactly why would we help you do anything? You brought terror to the heart of London. And given all evidence, Amed’s bioweapon is not a British concern.”

Brandt was about to speak up, however Walt beat him to it. “We have a very special relationship with our American counterparts,” he hurried on over his partner, “that I believe
predates
your tenure.”

The woman hardly seemed satisfied with Walt’s answer, however she did not seem quite so brave enough to speak out in front of this crowd. Which was just as well. Beyond their two country’s bonds, Walt and Brandt had forged a friendship during one of those missions that “never happened.” Once you scrounge the countryside eating bugs and nasty tasting fish with someone for nearly two weeks on the Tumen River, desperately trying to keep out from the under eye of the Chinese and North Korean border patrols, you kind of developed a fondness for them.

A fondness that allowed Walt to take Brandt on his word.

“Where to then?” Walt asked.

As a honk came from curb, Brandt grabbed his belongings. “We’ve got transportation, so we just need—”

“We didn’t arrange any car.” The female agent moved a curtain aside to look out at the street.

However, Walt smiled. “Lopez?”

Brandt nodded, urging his group toward the door. “I just need you to put in all the paperwork as if we were being transferred to an RAF base for transport to the States.”

“Thrown them off your tracks, chap?” Walt said, heading to the door. “Done.”

However, the female agent blocked their exit. “Before you go, I must ask who is in attendance with you. In particular the man standing next to Dr. Monroe.”

Brandt could feel Rebecca tense behind him.

“Obviously I can’t run facial recognition on him,” the agent continued.

* * *

Rebecca stepped forward, trying by sheer force of will to drain her face of the magenta that had risen to her cheeks. She did not want to sound desperate, even if she was.

“He is my research assistant.”

The agent went back to her tablet. “We don’t have anyone on the Institute’s payroll matching his
general
description.”

Okay, Rebecca usually tried to have solidarity with her gender, but this chick was making it hard. Rebecca tried to keep her tone firm yet still respectful. She wasn’t sure she accomplished either. “That is because I pay him from my own research funds.”

“And why would you do that?” the agent asked, studying Davidson like he was a lab rat rather than Rebecca’s assistant.

“That is a valid question,” Walt said. “We do need to know if he is a person of interest in this case.”

Rebecca stifled a gulp. The two British agents were trained to smell deception, and panic must be wafting off of her like sweat on a hot Ecuadorian night. She looked to Brandt, begging, truly begging with her eyes for him to intervene. Davidson wasn’t just wanted by the US government. Even presumed dead he had been flagged by Interpol, Mossad, and of course MI-6, Walt’s sister agency. It had only been through Davidson’s horrible disfigurement that he hadn’t been found out…until now.