PROLOGUE

Southern Iran, 1979

THE DESERT WIND cried like a beast in pain. Ahmad Bashir listened to it as he crouched in the shelter of a hastily erected tent. As the wind howled outside, the tent’s thin walls flapped and strained against the poles and stakes that held them in place. The storm was getting worse, not better.

He tried to ignore it, turning his attention to the excavated grave in front of him. There, illuminated by a lantern and the daylight filtering through the canvas of the tent, a partially excavated skeleton rested at the bottom of a five-foot-deep trench.

A stone tablet had been unearthed near the skeleton’s feet and a tube of some metal remained clutched in its hand. Bashir examined the metallic tube. It appeared to be made of copper, frayed strands of leather still clinging to it in places. Bashir guessed it had once been wrapped in an animal skin of some kind, a fabric that had been devoured by the desert over the last seven thousand years.

Behind Bashir, a sunburned young man with curly blond hair and long sideburns fiddled with a transistor radio, trying to listen to the BBC news over the noise of the storm. Each time he managed to improve the reception slightly, the thrashing wind seemed to rise up a notch and drown it out once again.

“Come on,” the young man said, twisting the dial in tiny increments.

Bashir glanced at him. “Put it down, Peter.” He waved the young man over. “Come look at this instead.”

Peter McKenzie was an American anthropologist just out of graduate school. He and several others had come to southern Iran to work on Bashir’s excavation. The main effort was taking place twenty miles to the east, where Bashir believed they had found one of the oldest settlements in Iran—older even than the city of Ur, across the border in Iraq. They’d also found directions to a trade route, which had led them to the grave they now stood over.

After discovering it, Bashir and McKenzie had erected the tent to protect the site from the elements, but Bashir had never expected to end up sheltered beneath it himself. A raging sandstorm had seen to that, trapping them for the past two days. With nothing else to do, they’d continued the excavation, at least until events in Tehran had distracted McKenzie.

“It’s getting bad,” the young man said.

“How can you tell?”

“I can make out some of what’s going on,” McKenzie insisted. “They’ve shut down the airport. Flights are being diverted to other countries.”

As demonstrations against the shah and American interests grew, most of Bashir’s Americans had left, but McKenzie was one of two who had stayed on. A decision he now seemed to be regretting.

“They want the shah returned to stand trial,” McKenzie announced. “They’re taking hostages.”

There had been unrest for months. After decades of persecution, the tables were turning. And while Bashir thought change was overdue, he had grave concerns about the men who were leading that change.

Some expected them to institute democracy, but most believed they would return Iran to the Middle Ages if they won. Bashir prayed to Allah that it would not be so, but the pendulum had swung so far in one direction under the shah that it was bound to overshoot in the other once he was gone.

“Tehran is a long way from here,” he said. “Do you really think they’re going to drive through a hundred miles of desert in the middle of a storm just to look for a couple of Americans?”

McKenzie looked around, listening as the wind sandblasted the tent. He seemed to find that logic sensible.

“Anyway,” Bashir said. “You’re very tan now. I’ll put a burqa on you, cover your face, they’ll think you’re my woman.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” McKenzie said.

Bashir smiled. “How do you think it sounds to me?”

The young American looked no less distraught, but eventually a smile crept over his face. He shook his head, began to laugh, and put the radio down, careful to leave it on.

He crawled over to the trench. “What are you so excited about anyway?”

“Look closely,” Bashir said, pointing to the metal tube. Markings could be seen on it. Not drawn or painted, but pounded into the surface as if they had been stamped by some great hammer.

McKenzie’s eyes grew wide. “Like the copper scroll from the Dead Sea.”

“Exactly,” Bashir said. “If our theory is right, this could be as old as the dwellings we found. Seven thousand years. It could tell us priceless things.”

Climbing around in the trench, careful not to disturb anything, Bashir moved to the stone tablet. He swept away the sand with a horsehair brush and studied the symbols. Only then did he realize the tablet was not made of stone but was some type of clay or adobe, fired or dried in the sun. It seemed extremely dense but it would still be a far softer surface than stone.

He moved carefully, blowing air into the crevices and using delicate strokes to reveal the carved markings beneath.

McKenzie aimed a flashlight at the surface.

With the added illumination Bashir could make out the style of writing.

“What do you see?” McKenzie asked.

A wave of elation rose through Bashir, mixed with melancholy disappointment.

“Proto-Elamite,” he said, referencing the writing on the stone. Proto-Elamite: one of the most ancient forms of writing known to man. Unfortunately, it was also unreadable. It had never been translated.

Bashir ground his teeth. Whatever secrets were contained on the clay tablet would remain just that. He glanced back at the copper scroll, guessing the information clutched in the skeletal hand would be written in the same style.

“Bad luck,” McKenzie said, obviously realizing the same thing. “But it’s still an incredible find.”

Bashir nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. His eyes had been drawn to a mark in the center of the tablet. A circle with four notches on it, like a compass rose. Within the circle was a square and within that square was a vertical rectangle.

The symbol was different from the Proto-Elamite script, in both the way it was drafted and the depth of its carving. Certainly it matched nothing else on the tablet. And yet he’d seen it somewhere before.

The sound of a zipper racing upward and the sudden blast of wind distracted him. He turned to see Jan Davis, the other American, standing in the entryway, holding the flap open. He looked panic-stricken.

“Close the tent,” Bashir said as sand and dust came blasting in.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Davis said, ignoring Bashir and talking straight at McKenzie.

“Jan!” Bashir shouted.

“They’re coming,” Davis replied. “They came to the other dig looking for the Americans.”

McKenzie looked at Bashir.

“They’re coming here next,” Davis insisted. “Men with guns, riding in trucks. We have to leave.”

“Are you sure?” McKenzie asked.

“They shot Ebi and Fahrid, accused them of being traitors. The rest of us ran.”

“Are they okay?” he asked.

Davis looked haunted by what he’d seen. “I don’t think so.”

Bashir turned back toward the tablet, his mind spinning. He felt instantly sick. Ebi and Fahrid were Iranian like him, from his own university. Two of his best students, now dead at the hands of the revolutionaries.

“Ahmad, we have to leave,” McKenzie pleaded.

Bashir knew Peter was correct. Knew he had misjudged the extent to which his country had gone mad.

“Listen,” Davis said, turning the radio to full.

Through the static they heard the reporter intermittently.

“… they’ve taken the American embassy now, they’re parading around in the streets, burning flags, shouting death to America …”

“We have to go.”

Bashir nodded, slowly coming to terms with it. But as McKenzie stood and gathered a few things, Bashir found his mind drifting inexplicably back to the tablet. Where had he seen that symbol before?

Jan Davis disappeared from view. McKenzie was halfway out of the tent. “Ahmad, you have to come.”

“I’ll be all right,” he said.

“You won’t,” he said. “They know you work with Americans. They’ll take it out on you when they can’t find us.”

Bashir couldn’t fight the logic, but he did not want to leave. He felt they were close to something important, something that mattered more than revolutions and guns and the ugly transfer of power.

“This symbol,” he said, pointing to the tablet. “I’ve seen it.”

The wind howled and the tent shook and Bashir’s mind whirled.

“It doesn’t matter,” McKenzie said.

“It does!”

“Not if you’re dead.”

McKenzie looked away and then stuck his head back inside. “The truck’s leaving.”

There was no choice. Bashir knew he had to go. He looked at the symbol one last time, burning it into his brain, and then he went to leave. At the last moment he turned back and grabbed the copper scroll from the skeleton’s grasp.

Stepping out of the tent, Bashir was determined not to let the revolutionaries destroy what he’d found. He ripped one stake from the ground and the wind did the rest, filling the tent like a balloon and carrying it across the desert like a kite.

Forty yards away, a big diesel truck waited. McKenzie and Davis were already running toward it.

“Come on!” McKenzie shouted.

Fighting the wind and shielding his eyes, Bashir made his way to the truck. He climbed into the back along with the two Americans and three others. The cab up front was already full.

In the distance behind them, he could see sunlight reflecting off several vehicles. There was no time to spare.

The truck lurched forward and Bashir lost his balance. He stumbled, put a hand out to brace himself, and dropped the scroll. It hit the back edge of the truck bed and tumbled out onto the sand as the truck accelerated away.

Bashir cringed. He stepped to the edge, ready to jump, but the truck was moving too fast. He grabbed McKenzie. “Tell the driver to stop. Tell him to stop.”

Between the roaring of the diesel engine and the howling of the wind, his words were barely audible.

“It’s too late!” McKenzie shouted.

“No!” Bashir said.

Desperate beyond reason, he tried to climb out but McKenzie held him back.

“Let me go!”

“No, Ahmad. It’s too late.”

By now the truck was rolling away at thirty miles per hour. The revolutionaries were approaching from the east. There would be no jumping free, no stopping or turning back.

As this reality seeped into Bashir, he stopped straining. McKenzie relaxed his grasp and then cautiously released him. Bashir squinted through the storm at the scroll, and his heart sank.

It might take hours or even days for the grave to fill with sand, but the scroll would be buried in minutes. And without any marker to lead the way, it would disappear from the world as if it had never existed.

CHAPTER 1

New York City

Present day

CLAUDIA GONZALES FLASHED her ID badge at the security checkpoint outside the United Nations General Assembly building. There was no real need to do so; the guards knew her well and at this hour of the morning—just after six on the East Coast—she was one of the few diplomats on the scene.

They waved her through posthaste. With a briefcase in one hand and a tall mocha latte in the other, Gonzales made her way to a secure elevator and up to the eleventh floor of the iconic monolith.

Reaching her office before any members of her staff did was a habit she’d kept since graduating from law school. For one thing, it set a good example; it was difficult for her staff to slack off or complain when the boss was working harder than anyone else. It also had a practical purpose. Not only did the early bird catch the worm, but for the busy people of the world, the early morning hours were often the only available moment to actually look for the proverbial morsel.

In an hour the phones would start ringing. Shortly after that, the appointments would begin and then the afternoon teleconferences, followed by press briefings and public hearings. In the blink of an eye it would be closing time, and the pile of work on her desk would look exactly as it had eight hours before.

To Claudia Gonzales, that was the equivalent of running in place.

She stepped into her office, set down the latte, and turned on her computer. As the machine booted up, she stepped outside, checking the items on her assistant’s desk that had come in during the night hours. The world ran 24/7, even if government offices didn’t.

There was a report on the continuing blockade of Gaza, another on a human rights situation in East Timor, and an internal-use envelope that lay unopened.

It read “Diplomatic Materials, Private and Confidential.” It was listed as coming from the secretary general’s office, with Gonzales’s name scrawled in the recipient’s slot. She grabbed all three items and returned to her office.

Fairly certain there were no earth-shattering details in the two reports, she placed them in her inbox and proceeded to open the big manila package.

Inside was a legal-sized envelope on the secretary general’s stationery. Intrigued, she took a sip of her latte, placed it down, and used a letter opener to slice the top of the envelope. There was an odd rubbery feel to the envelope, almost as if it were waterproof. It made her wonder how much the secretary general spent on his office supplies.

She pulled out a folded sheet of paper and began to read.

You will be punished. You will all be punished. We have waited and suffered too long.

Her mood instantly changed. The UN got a hundred threats per week, mostly from crackpots and mentally unstable individuals who imagined the UN taking over the world with black helicopters. What made these people think the UN was even remotely capable of dominating the world boggled her mind. In the best of times, they had trouble keeping the peace in remote, undeveloped areas.

She read on.

Your efforts have not helped us. You plunge us deeper into despair every day. In the name of progress you enslave us, in the name of charity you starve us, in the name of peace you slaughter us. We can no longer wait for your help, we will change the world ourselves.

Normally Claudia took these threats with a grain of salt, but this letter had come to her internally. Whoever sent it had access to things they should not have had access to. She began to feel sick, her face and hands flushed and sweating.

In our pains we have grown. And you have fed off us. You think you have beaten us, but he who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.

We cannot reverse what you have done but we mete out your portion of suffering, we bring you down with us. And it is you who will deliver the master stroke for us. That is correct, Ambassador Gonzales, you are the method of our vengeance. If you have read this far, you are carrying the plague already.

Her heart went cold as she read the words. With her hand shaking lightly, she jabbed at the intercom switch on her phone.

“Security,” a voice said.

“This is—” She stopped midsentence, noticing some type of reddish liquid left behind on the phone key. She glanced at her hand, turning her palm up. The tips of her fingers and her thumb were stained reddish brown.

She noticed a strange smell and heard a quiet sizzling sound. Her left hand, still holding the sheet of paper, felt as if it were burning. She flung the letter to the floor with a shout, pushing her chair backward. She jumped up out of the seat, knocking the latte off her desk.

Her palm and fingers were red and bubbling with the crimson liquid. Her heart was pounding.

“Madam Ambassador?” the voice called over the phone. “Are you okay? Madam Ambassador?”

Unable to speak, she stared at the sheet of paper, watching as a red stain soaked through the page from the corners like blood or dye. Despite this strange effect, the words remained clearly readable. The last sentence, in large bold font, read:

Welcome to Hell.

CHAPTER 2

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Twelve hours later

THE SPRAWLING WAREHOUSE looked to be buttoned down for the weekend. No activity, no traffic on the inadequate, narrow road that ran in front of it, no noise coming from inside. Even a row of parallel loading docks that stuck out behind it sat empty, their garage-style doors down and locked.

A man wearing dark sunglasses and a black leather jacket hopped up on one of the platforms. Despite the apparent lack of operations, he expected that one pallet of goods would be waiting for him.

He approached the door, briefcase in one hand, a .45-caliber pistol in the other. He looked through a small window that rested at eye level.

At first all he saw was his own reflection: close-cropped dark hair, crow’s feet streaking from eyes now hidden by sunglasses, two days’ worth of stubble coating his face. He noticed the small horizontal scar that ran across one cheek.

He pressed forward, bringing a hand up to block the light. The distorted image vanished, and inside the warehouse he saw four armed men looking bored and impatient. He tapped the window with the barrel of his gun and stepped back.

The men he was meeting would know him as Hawker, a name that had become his persona during ten years spent living on the run. Once he’d been a fast-rising star in the CIA, but an incident he’d pressed too far had spiraled out of control and wound up costing him everything. He’d spent the years since plying his trade as a mercenary, an arms dealer, and a hire of last resort for people who got into situations they had no hope of getting out of.

In a violent world where he could trust precious little to be what it actually seemed, Hawker had learned to hide even from himself. And his real name, like any thoughts of living a normal life, had disappeared like whispers into a swirling wind.

It was a fate he’d come to accept, a self-inflicted wound that had scarred over but would never really heal. And yet, just when he’d thought all hope was lost, a door had opened, a deal had been made with the very government figures who considered him a loose cannon. If he would act on their behalf, he would be taken in and freed from his past.

There was hope now. Hope that one day he’d be able to take up his real name again and that meetings like the one he was about to attend would become the distant, if not forgotten, memory.

Latches clanked as someone released them from the inside. The door began to slide up. As it rose above his head, Hawker took a calming breath and stepped inside.

The four armed men remained where he’d seen them. To his left, a fifth man slammed the door back down and locked it into place.

“This way,” the man said.

Hawker followed as they crossed the warehouse floor. Expensive goods filled the place. Crates of electronic equipment by one wall, fur coats hanging in rows, even a pair of pearl-white, twelve-cylinder, turbocharged Jaguars, still wrapped in protective plastic like they’d just come from the factory.

The guide seemed to notice his stare. “They fell off the back of a truck.”

“You mean rolled,” Hawker said.

The man smiled. “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”

They continued on, passing the stolen cars and other items and then stopping near the center of the building. Two different sets of long rectangular crates rested there. NATO designations on the crates had been hastily covered with spray paint but were still partially visible. The alphanumeric code FIM-92 was easily readable.

These were the weapons Hawker had come to see, Stinger surface-to-air missiles. An XR designation that hadn’t been painted over meant these were extended-range variants. Deadly up to five miles.

The weapons had disappeared from a NATO convoy several years before. The CIA figured they’d been taken for a prearranged buyer or that the thief quickly realized they were too hot to move, for until now they’d never cropped up for sale. But the black market never closed, and eventually rumors began to circulate about a shipment of such weapons.

Hawker glanced at the longer, broader crates to the left.

“Reserved for another buyer,” a deep voice said from the shadows.

As Hawker turned, the owner of that voice stepped forward. Bald head polished and shining; jowls, neck, and shoulders forming one great slope. He wasn’t overly fat, just incredibly compact, short and stocky beyond what seemed reasonable. He might have been five foot four and two hundred pounds. A tank, a fire hydrant, a bulldog of a man.

His name was La Bruzca, and the ease with which he’d hidden himself reminded Hawker that the building was essentially a maze and he was a rat in the center of it, with no way of knowing how many men were hidden in the labyrinth. Despite the weapon he carried and his own considerable skills, there would be no fighting his way out of this. He slid the .45 into a shoulder holster.

La Bruzca studied him. “I have heard much about you. They say you are a lost soul, and until you are found, woe unto anyone who gets in your way.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Hawker said.

“If I believed even half of what I’ve been told, you’d be dead,” La Bruzca replied.

Hawker wasn’t sure what to make of the taunt, but there was something ominous in La Bruzca’s words. He wondered if it was a jab at the number of times Hawker had survived near-certain death. Or if there was some greater meaning.

Could La Bruzca know who Hawker was working for? Hawker doubted it. Then again, this meeting had come about suddenly, through a third party that Hawker didn’t know. The middleman was a ghost broker, an unseen player who communicated with both sides for a fee. The possibility of a setup was not beyond reason.

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?”

CHAPTER 3

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.

CHAPTER 4

THIRTY 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.

She flashed her eyes at Hawker as he passed, an act the man with her seemed to notice with disdain. Hawker ignored them both and continued on toward his table at the end of the row.

Halfway there, a red-haired patron turned. The man stretched out a hand and, using a cane, blocked Hawker’s path like a toll gate.

Hawker looked down at the cane and then over at the man who held it. Powerfully built, with shoulders like Olympus and steel-gray eyes that seemed out of place beneath tangled hair the color of tomato sauce, David Keegan was a former member of the British SAS and onetime agent for MI-6. Before all that and before an explosion that had torn half his guts out, Keegan had been an alternate for the British national rugby team. What he did now was anyone’s guess. Hawker had a few ideas, none of them good.

A porcelain-skinned woman sat across from Keegan, picking at some sashimi, her eyes hidden by mirrored aviators. She dressed the part, but unlike the trophy sitting at table number two, this woman might be as deadly as either of them.

Keegan smiled. “I would have sat at your table, mate, but the view is just crap from there.”

“Depends what you’re looking for,” Hawker said.

The Brit shrugged in agreement. “I suppose it does.”

Hawker glanced around. He had no reason to expect trouble from Keegan, he’d even saved the man’s life once, but Hawker didn’t believe in coincidence, and Keegan’s brash manner suggested more than a casual meeting.

La Bruzca’s words began running through his mind again. If I believed even half of what I’m told, you’d be dead. Could Keegan have known who Hawker worked for now? Could he have given that information away?

With the cane still blocking his way, and damn curious as to what Keegan might be doing there, Hawker grabbed a chair. He pulled it up and sat down in the only spot available: right between the two.

With Keegan on his left, the girl on his right, and his back to the glass wall and the goings-on in the restaurant, Hawker became painfully aware that he was now in exactly the position he didn’t want to be.

“What the hell you doing here?” he asked.

Keegan flashed a smile across the table to the girl.

“How’s that for a greeting?” he said. “We come all the way from merry old England to find him and he ain’t even got a simple hello for us.”

“We were at your place in Greece,” the girl said flatly.

“Quiet, love,” Keegan said. “And order something else, will you. You know I can’t stand that stuff.”

She smiled at him and took another bite.

“Fish is meant to be cooked,” he said. “Now hold this.”

As Keegan handed the cane over, Hawker tracked it from the corner of his eye, watching as the girl rested it against the edge of the table.

“So you two are here on your honeymoon?” Hawker said.

The girl sucked at her teeth as if the idea was absurd. Keegan scowled. “Who’m I gonna find to marry me?”

“Only half the women in London,” Hawker said.

Keegan looked appalled. “Don’t believe a word he says, love; it’s more like a third.”

“Of course, the other half want to kill you,” Hawker added.

“That part might be true,” Keegan admitted.

The girl did not seem to care.

“Neither of which explains what you’re doing here.”

“I’m here to find you, mate.”

“I guessed that,” Hawker said. “Why? And for that matter, how the hell did you know I was here?”

To do what Hawker did—and survive for any great length of time—took an unusual set of skills: brains, brawn, and quick reflexes. It also required an ability to think two steps ahead of everyone else and doses of absolute confidence and healthy paranoia. Let the ratio get out of whack in either direction and you ended up walking into a bullet or paralyzed by fear.

“Listen, mate,” Keegan said. “This is my stomping grounds now. And you’ve been walking around in it lit up like neon. The whole world knows you’re here, because you wanted them to know you were here. Now whether you’re buying or selling or—”

Before Keegan could finish, Hawker’s left hand shot out, swinging around his old friend’s shoulders, grabbing him by the back of the neck, and slamming him forward. At almost the same instant, Hawker’s right hand shot inside his jacket, hitting the grip of his pistol, tilting it, and jamming the barrel against Keegan’s ribs.

As Keegan grunted in shock, Hawker glanced back. The girl had grabbed the cane. Hawker kicked it with his heel, knocking it out of her hands and sending it flying across the balcony’s stone floor.

Buried inside that cane, Hawker knew, were two 9 mm shells that could be fired at the touch of a button and a knife that could be pulled from the handle.

The girl went to move.

“Don’t,” Hawker growled, flashing enough of the gun for her to see.

The commotion had stirred the other patrons and Hawker realized he was in a precarious situation. But he couldn’t let Keegan spit out what he was probably about to say. Most likely, the girl knew everything Keegan knew, but on the odd chance she didn’t, Hawker needed to shut him up.

A few tables down, Mr. Thousand Euro Suit had stood up, tossed his napkin down, and begun coming their way.

“One of yours?” Hawker asked.

Keegan shook his head.

Hawker cut his eyes at the man. “I’d sit down if I was you.”

The man stopped in his tracks. Whether he’d seen or guessed that Hawker was holding a gun or just realized this wasn’t a person to mess with, he walked back to his table, grabbed his date, and left.

The rest of the balcony began to clear out and Hawker figured he had a minute or so before security showed their faces. He’d dropped enough money on the important people at the hotel that it wouldn’t be a problem, but the conversation would be over and the cops might follow.

He leaned close to Keegan’s ear. “Tell me who you’re working for and what you want, or I’ll blow what’s left of your guts out and dump your sushi-eating friend over the balcony.”

Keegan glanced up at him and then pulled from his grasp. Even now he was strong as an ox.

“Choose your words carefully,” Hawker added.

“Same old Hawker,” Keegan announced. “Can’t tell a friend from a foe.”

“Can you?” Hawker said.

Keegan looked across the table at his girl, ignoring Hawker.

“I ever tell you about the time Hawk here found me half blown to bits in the desert. He pushed my intestines back in, wrapped me up, and dragged me a half mile through enemy fire to a waiting air evac unit.”

Keegan turned to Hawker, locking eyes with him.

“I don’t care what you think, mate, that makes us blood. Understand? I’d go to hell and back for you. So take that damned gun out of my ribs and listen to me for a minute.”

Hawker eased off. The fact that no other thugs had appeared and the girl hadn’t shot or stabbed him was somewhat reassuring, but he held the gun on his lap just the same.

“You’ve got sixty seconds,” Hawker said.

“You still into helping friends?”

“You need help?”

“No,” Keegan said. “I’m in the information trade now. I run a legitimately illegitimate business these days. Just like you. I’m here for another friend, a less capable friend. A guy I helped you spirit out of Africa five years ago.”

A name came to mind: Ranga Milan, a Spanish geneticist he’d met in Africa a decade ago.

“Haven’t heard from him in years,” Hawker said.

Keegan raised his eyebrows. “What about Sonia?”

For reasons Hawker could never fathom, Ranga’s twenty-year-old, American-born daughter, Sonia, had been with him. She was a budding scientist in her own right, but the Republic of the Congo was a dangerous spot, no place for a beautiful young girl. Then again, the whole situation had been a little odd.

Ranga and his daughter were supposed to be working on genetically modified crops, but the paymasters were military men. Whatever the original deal was it seemed to change over time. Veiled threats became outright demands; the generals wanted a bio-weapon.

While Ranga lived in denial, Hawker made escape plans, spending all his time guarding Sonia. Both he and Ranga knew she’d be the target if the generals needed more leverage. They grew closer during that time and she’d convinced herself that she loved him.

Hawker recalled trying to dissuade her from the idea, though he wasn’t sure that he’d tried that hard. Either way, when they’d finally cleared the border and made it to safety she’d begged Hawker to come to Europe with them or to take her wherever he was headed. Hawker had put her on the plane with Keegan and had never seen or heard from her again.

“She was in love with you, mate,” Keegan said. “You telling me you haven’t spoken?”

“Not since the three of you left Algiers.”

“Too bad,” Keegan said grinning. “Thought you’d have found her, run off, and had a bushelful of kids by now.”

“I think she deserved better.”

Keegan nodded. “Probably right about that.”

“Did she come to you?” Hawker asked.

“No, mate, Ranga did. He found me in Athens. Don’t ask me how. He wanted me to find you. Said he was desperate. Someone was trying to put a bullet in his head.”

“Why didn’t you help him?”

Keegan looked insulted. “I offered,” he said. “Even offered to stake him if he needed cash. But he said money wouldn’t do it. And he didn’t trust me the way he trusted you.”

Hawker remembered Ranga being troubled in his own way. He lived in some brooding world in his own mind, alternating between dark spells and manic euphoria as he chased whatever it was that possessed him. How such a brilliant man could seem utterly clueless, Hawker didn’t know. But Ranga had pulled it off.

Forcing him to see what was about to happen in the Congo had almost broken him, as if giving up on what he was doing would drive him to madness. After that, mostly silence and then a simple thank-you when he realized what Hawker had saved him and his daughter from.

Apparently Ranga had become no better at choosing his partners.

“What the hell did he get himself into now?” Hawker asked.

“Don’t know,” Keegan said. “Loose grip on reality, that one. But he looked bad when I saw him. Halfway to dead. Swore there were devils after him. And that he’d done something …” Keegan seemed to struggle. “He used the word unforgivable.”

“He say where I could find him?”

“He said to make your way to Paris. Check in to the Trianon Palace Hotel. He’d find you there.” As he finished, Keegan reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a flash drive.

“He gave me this,” Keegan said, handing the drive over. “Said you’d understand.”

Understand. Right now Hawker didn’t understand anything. He had the sickening feeling of a moment spinning out of control.

In many ways, Keegan couldn’t have picked a worse time or place to find him, or worse news to tell him. But even with a hundred questions racing around in his head, Hawker knew the bell was about to ring. Time to go.

He stood. “Was she with him?”