The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

“No!” echoed from both Gray and Rosauro.

With a wounded frown, Kowalski returned and ducked into the back of the limo. Rosauro followed.

Before joining them, Gray searched the sidewalks, the streets. No one seemed to be paying attention. Hopefully they’d shaken their tail completely. He craned around and stared across the curve of the river.

Off in the distance, the white marble of the mausoleum glowed with sunlight, peaceful and eternal, slumbering beside the bright water.

Gray turned his back on the Taj Mahal.

Only the dead slept so peacefully.

As he entered the back of the limousine, Masterson let out a gasp of outrage. “What did you do to my cane?”

Gray fell into his seat. The eighteenth-century ivory handle was bloody. The fine detail of the carved crane had been ground smooth from its ride across the braided wire.

“The cane is the least of your worries, Professor,” Gray said.

Masterson glowered at him as the limo pulled from the curb.

Gray pointed to the man’s bandaged ear. “Someone’s trying to kill you. The question, Dr. Masterson, is why.”

10

September 6, 7:45 A.M.

Washington, D.C.

“Loose ends,” Trent McBride explained. “There are too many of them.”

Yuri saw the man glance in his direction, but he didn’t flinch. Let them kill him. It did not matter. Yuri sat in an office chair. They’d allowed him to dress again after removing the electrodes. His fiery torture had continued for another twenty minutes. Yuri had not held back. He’d divulged much, confessing more details about the genetics of the children, the secret he and Savina had kept from the Americans.

He even admitted why the Russians had not objected to Dr. Archibald Polk’s recruitment. Yuri admitted that Polk had been getting too close to the heart of the genetic secret. Savina had already planned to orchestrate an accident while the man was at the Warren, to silence him.

But in this game of scientific brinkmanship, neither he nor Savina imagined that Polk’s own colleague and friend would arrange his escape, all to lure one of their children out into the open.

And Savina had taken the bait. She cared little that Polk had escaped with the skull, which McBride had given him. It was the genetic secret he held that had panicked Savina into sending Yuri and Sasha into the hunt for the man. She had fallen cleanly into the American’s trap.

“Loose ends?” Mapplethorpe asked, drawing back his attention. He shook his head, unconcerned. “I see only three. The girl, the skull, and Polk’s trail in India. The last is already being handled. And I’ve heard rumblings through intelligence channels that our missing skull might mysteriously turn up.”

“How did you manage that?” McBride asked.

“Get waters boiling just right, and you’ll be surprised what will come to the surface.”

“And the girl?”

Yuri paid more attention. Mapplethorpe’s gaze flicked to him. Yuri knew the only reason he was still alive was because of Sasha. Mapplethorpe needed him, knew about her medical condition, about a problem seen in all the children. The stress of the mental manipulation was not without physical consequences to the subjects. In fact, few lived far into their twenties, especially those with the most savant talent. It was a problem that required harvesting eggs and sperm to keep the strongest genetic line viable.

Mapplethorpe sighed. “We should have the girl before the sun sets…if not sooner.”

And you’ll still be too late, Yuri thought.

So simple these Americans, so quick to assume that what was tortured testimony was the whole story. While Yuri had not lied, he had committed one sin: a sin of omission. In fact, McBride hadn’t even known the question to ask, so secure was he in his superiority and his sadistic trust in the power of pain.

Yuri kept his face stoic. They sought to break him with their tortures, but he was an old man, one used to keeping secrets. All they’d accomplished was to harden his core for what was to come. In the past months, Yuri had started to have reservations about Savina’s plan.

It was only natural.

Millions would die in horrible ways.

All for a new world to be born.

A new Renaissance.

Yuri stared at Mapplethorpe’s self-satisfied smirk and at McBride’s bright-eyed confidence.

All hesitation died inside him.

Savina was right.

It was time for the world to burn.

2:55 P.M.

Southern Ural Mountains

General-Major Savina Martov knew something was wrong. She felt it in her bones, a nonspecific anxiety. She could no longer remain in her office. She needed reassurances.

With a radio held to the side of her face, she led two soldiers through the dark and abandoned streets that cut through the old Soviet-era apartments that filled the back half of the Chelyabinsk 88 cavern. The featureless concrete blocks that rose to either side were the original housing for prisoners who worked the mines and refinement plants. The men had traded life sentences in the gulags for five years’ work here. Not that any of them ever saw that fifth year. Most died from radiation before the end of their first year.

A foolish gamble, but then again, hope could turn any rational man desperate. This was the legacy she had inherited. It served as a reminder.

Others thought her cruel, but sometimes necessity could wear no other face. The children were well fed, their needs attended. Pain was minimized as much as humanly possible.

Cruelty?

She stared around at the hollow-eyed apartments, cold, dark, haunted.

All she saw was necessity.

The radio fritzed at her ear as Lieutenant Borsakov came back online. So far she had heard only negative reports from the second in command. He was still searching the surrounding mountains and foothills for the children. He’d been led astray by several false trails, discovering a discarded hospital shirt.

“We found two dead dogs,” Borsakov said. “By the river. They’d been torn to shreds. Bear attack. But we’ve picked up a strong trail.”

“And what about the cats?” she asked, speaking into a radio.

Silence stretched for a moment.

“Lieutenant,” she said more firmly.

“We were holding off sending them until we had a clear trail. Didn’t want to risk the dogs with the tigers ranging the hills.”

He kept his voice practical, but Savina recognized the strained edge behind his words. The lieutenant was not so much concerned with the dogs as he was the children.

Why did she always have to be the hard one?

She spoke crisply. “You have a strong trail now, do you not, Lieutenant?”