“And remember,” Jane said, “bloodsucking insects are major vectors for disease, which would have wreaked havoc on the area’s livestock. In addition, boils would have spread from all those bites.”
“So plagues five and six,” Gray said, looking over Derek’s shoulder at the list.
Derek tapped the next three items. “Hail, locusts, and darkness have a different explanation, one unconnected to the poisoning of the Nile.”
Gray looked at him. “What’s the cause?”
“A volcano named Thera up in the Greek Isles. It erupted about thirty-five hundred years ago, with an explosive force never seen before, casting out billions of tons of ash, which would’ve swept over Egypt. In fact, archaeologists have discovered pumice—rocks formed from cooling lava—throughout Egyptian ruins.”
“And Egypt has no volcanoes,” Jane reminded them.
Derek continued, “The plume from that eruption would’ve produced dramatic atmospheric effects, especially if it coincided with the rainy season. Meteorologists have shown that seeding hot ash into thunderclouds can result in dramatic hailstorms and violent lightning.”
“And I suppose those same ash clouds would have darkened the skies,” Gray said. “But what about the plague of locusts?”
“Locusts prefer damp conditions to bury their eggs,” Jane explained. “With all that hail melting and changes in atmospheric conditions following Thera’s eruption, it could have led to a proliferation of locusts.”
“Which brings us to the tenth plague,” Derek said. “Harold attributed it to the fact that the firstborn sons were revered by their families. They got the most food. So if the locusts ate most of the grain and what was left had turned moldy, those sons would’ve become sick first, dying of fungal poisoning.”
Jane turned to Ileara. “But even my father wasn’t entirely convinced about that last explanation. Many others would have eaten the same contaminated grain and died, too. And it certainly didn’t justify why the firstborn of livestock were also succumbing.”
Derek stared at the laptop’s screen. “Maybe now we have a better explanation, a clearer path to connecting the first plague to the last.”
Seichan spoke for the first time. “But why is number seven circled on the page?” She pointed to where Harold had highlighted that plague, a storm of hail and fire.
Derek shrugged and looked to Jane, who could only shake her head. “We have no idea,” he admitted.
Gray raised another question. “If we’re right about this microbe being the trigger for most of the plagues, including the last one, how did the Egyptians stop it?”
Jane struggled to answer. “It was a different world back then. More isolated. The disease could have burned through the region locally, then died away again.”
Ileara scowled, clearly dissatisfied with this explanation. “Unless there’s another reason. Something hidden out in the desert that your father stumbled across.”
Gray cast a skeptical eye at her. “Do you truly think these ancient people could have found a cure for a disease that challenges the best medical researchers today?”
Ileara shrugged. “It’s happened before. Take MRSA, for example.”
Gray stiffened, looking more sharply at her. “What about MRSA?”
“While that superbug has been the scourge of hospitals, a researcher at the University of Nottingham tested a recipe for an eye salve found in a ninth-century medical text called Bald’s Leechbook. It’s basically a preparation using garlic, onions, and leeks, along with wine and cow bile.”
“Cow bile?” Kowalski muttered. “If that’s the cure, I’d rather be sick.”
Gray ignored him and waved for Ileara to continue. “And what happened?”
“Microbiologists tested the concoction against cultures of MRSA and discovered it was capable of killing up to ninety percent of the bacteria.”
“So it worked,” Gray said.
Ileara nodded. “And who’s to say the Egyptians hadn’t stumbled upon a similar cure? Even if it’s a slim possibility, we must search for it.”
Gray checked his watch. “Then we’d better get moving. Our transport plane is scheduled to be wheels-up in fifteen minutes. We don’t want to miss it.”
Everyone scattered to get ready.
As Derek gathered his pack together, Monk pulled his partner aside. “I spoke to Painter earlier, before meeting you at the airfield. He wants Ileara and me to remain here in Cairo, to coordinate with everyone at NAMRU-3.”
“Let me guess. He wants you to be Sigma’s eyes and ears on ground zero of the plague.”
“He’s also concerned about the political unrest. Religious groups are freaking out. Some are claiming it’s the apocalypse. In a region that’s already a powder keg, all this fiery rhetoric isn’t helping matters.”
“Then it sounds like you’d better grab a helmet and a fire hose.”
Monk clapped him on the shoulder. “Still, I’m better off than you.”
“How’s that?”
“At least I’ll have air-conditioning.”
Seichan joined them, interrupting. “Monk, when you spoke with Painter, did he mention anything about identifying that assassin who attacked us at the church in Ashwell?”
Derek’s ears piqued sharper at this question. He was equally concerned about some killer still hiding out there.
Monk shook his head. “He’s still working that angle with Kat. But trust me, Painter is motivated. That tattooed woman may be the only lead to the whereabouts of Safia al-Maaz.”
Seichan glowered. “Then he’d better find her before I do.”
11
June 2, 3:22 P.M. EET
Cairo, Egypt
Valya Mikhailov lowered the binoculars to the windowsill of her rented room. She continued to watch the C-130 Hercules bank across the blue sky. It turned like a heavy bird toward the south. Earlier, she had used the binoculars to spy upon her targets as they scurried into the rear hatch of the plane. She had to make sure Jane McCabe remained with the group.
Satisfied now, she pulled her Bluetooth receiver closer to her lips. “They are en route to Khartoum,” she reported to her younger brother.
Anton’s voice whispered in her ear. “Then all is going as planned. Our best chance to secure the professor’s daughter without raising an alarm will be out in the desert. I’ll have an extraction team waiting for you at the rendezvous site.”
“Understood.”
She ended the connection.
For the past two days, Valya had trailed her quarry. Few could match her skill at tracking, a talent honed from decades of training with the Guild. She bore the crisscrossing of scars on her back as proof, punishment from whenever she was spotted by her prior masters. To avoid such punishment, she had learned to become the true ghost that her pale skin and countenance portended.
Pairing that skill with the resources of her new employers, she had easily followed her targets from the train station in Ashwell to their hotel in Cairo. At every step, she had sought a way of separating the young woman from her guardians. But Valya had learned patience during her training. To move with haste only earned one another scar.
But there was a better reason for such caution now.
Moya sestra . . .
Valya had studied the woman who caught her off guard in Ashwell and who so efficiently dispatched her men. Valya had spotted her briefly across the pond behind the church, but it wasn’t until she was tailing her targets that she came to truly recognize her adversary. Less from her features than from her manners and skills. Three times the woman had come within a breath of spotting Valya.
No one did that—not unless they shared her past.
So the truth slowly grew to a cold clarity inside her.
She knew whom she faced: a dark sister, a shadow of herself.
Valya had heard stories of a woman who had betrayed the Guild, someone of Eurasian descent, one of the Guild’s most skilled assassins. The consequence of that traitorous act had l
eft her and her brother destitute, near ruin, scrabbling to hide from those who sought to cleanse the world of the Guild.
But luckily I know how to hide.
So she and her brother had escaped that purge. Eventually, they had found a new employer, but it would never be the same. She owed that traitor for her suffering, for her loss. Fury stoked inside her—along with a measure of excitement.
Valya longed for a true challenge.
Now she’d found it.
She stepped over to her room’s table, where her knives lay bared, freshly honed to a razor’s edge. She picked up the oldest dagger. It had belonged to her grandmother, who had lived in a rural village in Siberia before being recruited to fight the Germans during World War II. She had been part of an all-women unit, the 588th Night Bombers Regiment. They had flown old biplanes—Polikarpov Po-2 Kukuruzniks—which puttered too slowly for daytime runs. Instead, the women pilots took to the air after sunset, gliding quietly across Nazi antiaircraft batteries to drop bombs on the unsuspecting enemy encampments. Their deadly efficiency earned them the nickname Nochnye Vedmy, or the Night Witches.
Valya smiled, knowing why her grandmother had been so attracted to that particular unit. She turned the old blade in her hands and ran a finger over the black handle. Her grandmother had carved it from a living Siberian spruce under a full moon. It was an athamé, a dagger used in magical ceremonies. Her grandmother had been a well-respected babka, a village healer. She had eventually passed this skill and its tools to her daughter, Valya and Anton’s mother.
Which proved to be unfortunate.
Rural areas were notoriously superstitious and insular. A few bad seasons in such a harsh climate and people looked for someone to blame. A widow with two strange, pale children quickly became a target. They had been forced to flee their home, making their way to Moscow. Penniless, their mother had turned to prostitution. Mercifully, she died within the year, murdered by one of her patrons. Valya had come upon this crime and in a fit of rage stabbed the man with her grandmother’s dagger, turning a tool of healing into one of death.
Afterward, she and Anton—only eleven and twelve at the time—fended for themselves on the streets, becoming savage and wild, until the Guild found them and turned that anger into skill.
Valya stared at the mirror above the desk. She had powdered over her tattoo to hide this distinguishing mark, but the dark sun still shone through. She and her brother had disfigured their faces in this manner, as a promise to forever be there for each other.
But nothing lasts forever, she thought bitterly.
Anton had found someone else.
She lowered her eyes from her reflection, still holding the athamé blade. The tip of the knife was normally used to carve powerful symbols into candles and magical totems. She had turned it to darker purposes, marking her victims’ foreheads with an evil eye, one derived from these very lands, a stylized version of the Eye of Horus.
She pictured the woman who had destroyed the Guild, who cast her and her brother out onto the streets, and dug the tip of the dagger into the desktop. She slowly carved a new promise into the wood, determined to anoint the traitor with this same mark.
Once done, she stared down at her handiwork.
Unlike my brother’s oath to me, I will keep this promise.
12
June 2, 11:44 A.M. EDT
Washington, D.C.
“Gray and company landed safely in Khartoum,” Kat announced as she entered the director’s office, noting the scatter of Starbucks cups across his desk.
Too many for just the morning.
Painter lifted up a hand, silently asking for a moment. He sat with his sleeves rolled up, hunched over a thick file, while the three wall-mounted screens behind him displayed various feeds. One was a muted BBC broadcast, another displayed a live map scrolling with data from the CDC, and the last puzzled her. It appeared to be a webcam feed from a bare office. The oddity drew her attention. There was a chair pushed back from a desk. She noted a bookshelf to one side, with the texts bearing titles in both English and Arabic.
Then a familiar figure dropped into the chair. Her breath caught in her throat at the unexpected surprise. It was her husband.
Monk leaned closer to the webcam, spotting her and grinning. “Hey, honey, I’m home.”
Kat stepped around the corner of Painter’s desk, drawing nearer to the screen and microphone. “Where are you?”
He glanced around the room. “The folks at NAMRU-3 were kind enough to lend us an office. It’s in the basement, but it’s not far from the facility’s medical library, which comes in handy.”
Monk tilted back his chair and whistled off to the side.
Kat frowned. “What are you—?”
Another face leaned into view. “Hi, Kat.”
It was Dr. Ileara Kano. She was dressed in a waist-length lab coat, with her dark hair modestly secured under a scarf. She carried a pile of journals under one arm.
Kat grinned at her friend. “Ileara, it’s good to see you. I trust my husband hasn’t been too much trouble.”
“Not at all.” Then she added, “Well, he could stop hogging all the jelly babies. With the shortages out here, they’ve become a premium.”
Monk showed no sign of remorse. “What can I say, I’m a growing boy.”
Kat felt a surge of affection. “He does have an insatiable sweet tooth.”
“That’s why I married you, the sweetest woman I know.”
Oh, brother . . .
“Feel free to punch him,” Kat said.
“Maybe later,” Ileara answered. “Especially if that candy jar is empty when I get back from the library.”
She waved and departed.
Kat had so much she wanted to say to Monk, to share with him, about their two daughters, about how much she missed him. He had been gone only a few days, but she could not discount what a huge presence he was in her life, how much she needed him, if only to sit quietly with her at night after the girls were put to bed.
“I miss you, too,” Monk said, his grin softening with sincerity.
She wanted to hug him and inadvertently took a step forward, but she wasn’t alone.
Painter shifted his chair away from his desk and stood up, stretching his back with a pained grimace. She knew he had been in his office all night. With his wife, Lisa, off visiting her brother in California, he had claimed he had no reason to abandon his station during this crisis.
But Kat suspected the real reason had nothing to do with his empty house, but something closer to his heart.
Safia al-Maaz still remained a ghost, and he would not rest until she was safe.
Painter stepped next to her, stifling a yawn with a fist. “Monk was catching me up on events in Cairo. Then he had to—”
“—talk to a man about a horse,” Monk finished. “Even at the epicenter of a pandemic, when nature calls, a guy has to answer.”
“And it proved to be a timely call,” Painter said. “While he stepped away, I received a report from an Interpol office in Moscow. I’m not sure it’s relevant. But it’s something I’d like you to follow up on.”
“Of course,” Kat said.
“Sounds like you two kids are busy,” Monk said. “And I have a medical briefing in ten minutes with the Research Science Directorate here. I’ll report back if there’s any significant news.”
Monk gave her a wink and ended the feed, but not before grabbing a fistful of jelly babies.
Kat shook her head and faced Painter. “What did you hear from Moscow?”
She suspected it involved Seichan’s tattooed assassin, a woman who might share her past ties to the Guild, but Kat refused to get her hopes up. For the past forty-eight hours, she had been hitting one dead end after the other in her attempt to identify her. Seichan had only known the woman by her reputation. Like Seichan, the assassin had been a notorious hunter-killer for the Guild. Kat remembered Seichan’s description of the woman’s skill.
Once she
has your scent, you’re already dead.
Seichan surmised the only reason her group survived back in Ashwell was because the assassin had been caught off guard by Sigma’s involvement.
But it’s not a mistake she’ll make again, Seichan had promised.
Painter pulled a sheet of paper from the file he had been reading and slid it toward her. “Kat, you may’ve been right about the significance of this symbol.”
Kat recognized what was illustrated on the page. After the attack, Seichan had transmitted a sketch of the woman’s tattoo. It looked like half of a sun. The dark mark was the only concrete clue to identifying the pale woman. Kat had run that information through various criminal and police databases, but nothing had turned up.
After twenty-four hours, with no new leads, Kat had played with the symbol, wondering if it could be half of a whole. So she had mirrored those two halves together to form a full sun, which was printed on the page before her.
The sun’s rays were kinked at the ends, forming a wheel-like shape. It hadn’t taken long for Kat to identify the symbol. It was a Kolovrat, a pagan solar symbol from Slavic countries. It had once been tied to witchcraft but was later co-opted by nationalistic parties, including Neo-Nazis.
Using this information to narrow her search parameters, Kat had concentrated her investigation on Slavic countries. Through her network of contacts in the intelligence communities, she had reached out to Interpol offices in those thirteen nations and asked them to canvass local police records in smaller towns, records that might not have reached the Interpol’s main database in Lyon. To be thorough, she had also requested the same of Moscow’s office, as many Slavic countries had once been part of the former Soviet Bloc.
That had been twenty-four hours ago.
“You got a hit on this?” Kat asked. “Has someone found a record of a woman with half this symbol on her face?”
“No,” Painter admitted, squashing her flicker of hope.