The Eden Prophecy (3 page)

He held his tongue as if the words meant nothing.

“Then again,” La Bruzca added, laughing, “I don’t believe even one-quarter of what is said.”

La Bruzca offered a hand, while the fifth man and another worker began to open one of the crates.

Hawker glanced back at the larger crates. Based on the size and dimensions they had to be larger missiles. But what type? Longer-range SAMs or even surface-to-surface missiles. He’d only been given information and authorization to bid on the Stingers, but if he could find out what they were, that might be of value.

“Additional merchandise,” he noted.

La Bruzca nodded. “I carry many things.”

“Care to take a bid?”

“No,” La Bruzca said firmly.

Hawker cocked his head. “You sure?”

“You are jealous,” La Bruzca said, “perhaps because they are bigger than yours.”

La Bruzca laughed so hard at his own joke that he began to cough.

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Hawker said. “But the people I work for might be interested, depending on what type they are.”

“They are sold. But if I become interested in taking additional offers, I know how to reach you.”

Hawker nodded. No more questions. He tried to memorize the dimensions and color of the crates and then stood his briefcase on a table and popped it open.

“That’s a very small case,” La Bruzca said. “I hope you brought large denominations.”

Hawker pulled out a small set of tools and a pair of electronic devices that looked like testing equipment.

“I brought a down payment,” he explained. “And before you get that, I have to inspect the guidance, warheads, and propulsion.”

La Bruzca nodded as if it was standard procedure. “Of course you do,” he said. “Of course.”

Fifteen minutes later, one of the missiles lay on a cradle. A trio of examination ports had been opened. The two ports near the front revealed the guidance system and the battery pack that powered it. The port near the missile’s tail gave access to the propellant stage.

Hawker tinkered for a moment, visually inspecting the circuit board and the status of the chargeable battery pack. Then he turned to the tail end of the rocket. Holding a magnifier against the yellow, claylike substance that made up the solid fuel of the missile, he switched on
a UV light. He studied small sections carefully, squinting and looking closely at what the magnifying glass was revealing.

The longer he looked, the closer La Bruzca and the fifth man came.

Finally, Hawker stood back. He shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” La Bruzca asked.

“How old are these things?”

“Why?” La Bruzca said defensively.

“Because they’re junk,” Hawker said bluntly. “And you know it.”

“These are top-of-the-line American missiles,” La Bruzca said. “Just ask the Iraqis, the Syrians, or the Russians. They’re deadly.”

Hawker stared at La Bruzca. “Were deadly,” he said.
“Were.”

“What do you mean?”

The question came from the fifth man, the guard who’d walked him in.

“Someone shafted you,” Hawker said.

“This is a lie,” the fifth man raged, pointing his gun at Hawker.

Hawker glared back at him, wondering how far he could push this without having someone snap. He looked at La Bruzca.

“Did you really get rich by killing all your customers?”

La Bruzca turned to his subordinate. “Put it down,” he said, then turned back to Hawker. “You’d better explain your statement, friend.”

Hawker turned the UV light back on. “See for yourself.”

La Bruzca took the magnifier from Hawker’s hand and held it above the propellant as Hawker angled the light.

“This thing sat in a bunker for years before it disappeared,”
Hawker said. “And you and I both know they’ve been hidden for half a decade since then.”

Hawker handed the light to La Bruzca’s associate and then pointed to the section of propellant he’d been studying.

“See those hairline cracks? They’re your problem, or someone’s. The fuel won’t burn evenly. Probably detonate on ignition.”

La Bruzca leaned in closer. He seemed strangely accepting of Hawker’s statement.

“Sorry,” Hawker said. “But the only people this thing’s gonna kill are the ones who launch it.”

As La Bruzca and his man studied the propellant, Hawker turned back to the guidance section. He reached in through the port, using an electrical detector to measure the power supply. He fiddled for a second and then looked at the gauge.

“Guidance looks good. And you seem to have new batteries,” he said. “But those are easy to get. A lot easier than military-grade solid rocket fuel.”

La Bruzca turned back to him, placing the magnifier down as Hawker snapped the power bus back into place and closed the guidance section.

“And if I don’t believe you?”

“Then we disagree,” Hawker said, shrugging. “Doesn’t mean we can’t do business.”

“You have other needs?”

He nodded toward the larger crates. La Bruzca shook his head.

“What about Spiders?” Hawker asked, referencing an Israeli missile.

“I can ask around.”

“You do that,” Hawker said. “The people who hired me will buy anything like that you can get your hands on. British, Israeli, French, even Russian, but nothing Chinese. And the damn things have to work.”

La Bruzca did not appear overly fazed. He nodded, appearing to be calculating something, perhaps considering future profits from sales to Hawker’s friends. He nodded toward the Stinger.

“This should not get out,” he said. A warning to Hawker.

“I’ll give them another reason,” Hawker promised. “But if I was you,” he added, staring hard at La Bruzca, “I’d sell these to someone you don’t want to see again.”

Hawker snapped the briefcase shut. This was the moment of truth. Would they let him leave?

“Till next time,” he said. He was not interested in asking for permission to depart, just in taking it. He turned and began walking across the warehouse floor.

Behind him, La Bruzca and the fifth man discussed something. The words were sharp but whispered, too hard for Hawker to make out.

Hawker kept walking. Trying not to think. Trying not to hope, but silently praying that these men hadn’t noticed his sleight of hand. The door was a long way off.

La Bruzca’s voice rang out. “Wait a minute, friend!” he shouted. “We are not done here.”

Hawker froze. It was not a question. He took a breath and turned.

La Bruzca smiled and rubbed his hands together, then stepped toward Hawker. “Perhaps I can interest you in something else?”

Hawker cocked his head to the side. “Like what?”

La Bruzca smiled generously and for a moment Hawker saw a shopkeeper, a vendor in the market and not an international arms dealer.

“Tell me,” he said. “What exactly are you driving these days?”

A
half mile from La Bruzca’s sprawling warehouse, a craggy hill covered in thick trees and exposed gray rock loomed over the valley. Locals called it the Martyr’s Hill, as the dome-shaped rise had been shelled and bombed repeatedly during the Serbo-Croatian War and had been a bloody battleground in the ethnic struggles of this land for a thousand years before that. It stood quietly now, at peace like the rest of this land.

Sitting amid that stillness, huddled under a camouflaged cloak, a man watched from this hill. Pale as bone, with a shaven head, sunken eyes, and the skin on his face stretched and taut, he held up a pair of binoculars, scanning the street in front of the warehouse.

No movement yet, no shooting or shouting. Just as he’d suspected. But no answers, either. And he’d come here in search of answers.

At great expense, this ghost of a man had uncovered the information about La Bruzca and his missiles. He’d leaked it to the right parties and the right parties only. And then he’d come to learn the truth.

With nothing to do but wait, he lowered the binoculars and rubbed at a dark tattoo that marred his neck. It covered a scar where someone had tried to slit his throat eighteen months earlier; a reminder to him that he had enemies on all sides.

Once he’d been a man of power and prestige, carrying a well-known name and a title. Others listened to him, obeyed his orders. But like the man he’d come to watch, the tattooed man had been cast out. Unlike the man below, the world at large would not forgive him his crimes. And that burned the very depths of his soul.

So be it, he thought. To be hated and feared by all was something he could embrace. Far better than a worm begging from the dust.
Far better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven
.

Upon leaving the hospital with his neck sewn together, he’d killed the man who cut him. Shot him and then stabbed him with his own knife and left him in the street in front of his house for others to find. It had been a moment of liberation.

During his life the tattooed man had been responsible for dozens of dead. Men, women, even children had died under his watch. Most had been killed collaterally. A few on direct order. But they were distant actions twice removed. At the time he had felt like a king sacrificing pawns. But to avenge himself in person brought a satisfaction and a wave of giddy power.

Now he would bring revenge to those who had wronged him. If he could not be part of the world, then he would destroy it and all that was good in it.

He chose a new name:
Draco
—Latin for the Serpent. Those who helped him now did not work for him but worshipped him. They were pariahs like he was. Lost souls. He took them in and became their Master, the one who would show them a new way. It complicated things, but it was necessary; a man could not punish the world alone. He needed an army.

When his plan came to fruition the whole world would feel the pain, even those who devoted themselves to him. They would not understand until it was too late; such
was the fate of those who followed. But the others would see and they would know who had bested them.

He wanted one group in particular to bear the brunt of his wrath. And to be sure he had the right targets, he had to know the truth, he had to see the face that had answered La Bruzca’s call.

A garage door opened on the side of the warehouse and La Bruzca’s thugs pushed a white sedan out onto the drive. It caught the sun, gleaming like polished marble.

Draco raised the binoculars and watched as one man filled the tank from a plastic can while another removed something from the trunk.

La Bruzca came out next, followed by the man in the leather jacket, who opened the sedan’s door as if he owned it. He paused with a foot on the sill of the door, one arm resting on the roof, and the other clasping the open door frame.

Focusing the eyepiece, Draco could see their lips moving and watch them laughing, all without sound or context. A smile from the man in the leather jacket breathed arrogance and stirred the bile in Draco’s heart. And then he turned and looked directly up the hill, almost right at Draco.

The truth was shown forth. The others called this man Hawker, but Draco knew his real name. And if he had come for La Bruzca’s missiles, there could be no denying whom he worked for now.

Draco had his answers. The Serpent would devour the Hawk, but not before destroying everything he might hold dear.

T
hirty minutes after leaving the meeting, Hawker pulled up in front of the Excelsior Hotel driving the gleaming Jaguar. He got out, tossed the keys to the excited valet, and walked inside.

He crossed the lobby quickly, making his way to a broad staircase that led to the second floor and a five-star restaurant that overlooked the harbor.

The view was stunning. The hotel sat on the waterfront, jutting up from the seawall and rising several stories as if it were part of the battlements that ringed the harbor. Dorade was the flagship restaurant of the hotel and included a thin balcony that ran the length of the building overlooking the harbor and the Lovrijenac fortress.

The food and service had won awards across Europe. A shame, Hawker thought, as it would honestly be wasted on him. Food was food, you ate it to survive, and if it tasted good that was a bonus, but in general he paid little attention to it.

On the other hand, he needed a place to sit and wait and watch. Departing Croatia immediately would look suspicious, but on the slim chance La Bruzca discovered his deception, Hawker wanted to see the trouble coming, and the table at the end of the balcony would give him a view of the sea and the road leading up to the hotel,
all while allowing him to keep his back to the proverbial stone wall.

He would sit and eat and linger. A bottle of wine on the table would go mostly untouched and then he’d retire to his room, arrange for the Jaguar to be shipped somewhere, and take a cab to the airport, leaving his room paid for but empty during the night.

If he lasted that long it meant La Bruzca had no idea that he’d attached a transmitter to the guidance system of the Stinger missile. It meant that La Bruzca had buttoned up his crates and begun looking for another, less sophisticated buyer.

Hawker was
almost
certain this would be the case. It had gone well at the warehouse. And even if La Bruzca chose to check the missile in question, he or his men would have to know exactly what they were looking for. The transmitter itself was all but identical to the rest of the circuit board. A well-schooled technician might miss it.

In fact, he would have been
completely
certain of the operation’s success, had it not been for La Bruzca’s odd comment and vague threat regarding what he knew or believed about Hawker.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Hawker turned. He passed the host’s stand with a nod to the employees he’d paid handsomely to reserve his table and then strode down the narrow aisle of the balcony.

Evenly spaced tables sat pressed against a waist-high wall on his right. On his left a glass partition kept the remainder of the restaurant out of the ever-changing weather.

He passed a lone patron at the first table and a continental power couple dining at the second. The man wore a thousand-euro suit, while a watch that cost twice that dangled from his wrist. The woman might have walked off the runway somewhere. Dressed in couture, way too
skinny, she looked entirely bored as she sipped champagne.