The Cradle of Life by Dave Stern

knuckles stinging. She didn’t mind a bit. Hitting things was much more viscerally satisfying than squeezing a trigger. Part of her even hoped that whoever MI6 sent would give her a hard time.
    She wouldn’t mind dealing out another punch or two.
    Â 
    Lara burst through the door into the long hall, and saw two men—strangers to her—sitting at the table.
    Bryce and Hillary stood over them, looking uncomfortable. Hillary was talking.
    â€œPerhaps you gentlemen would like some tea while you wait—”
    â€œNo, they wouldn’t,” Lara interrupted. “Tea is for guests. The door is for intruders.”
    She nodded to the entryway behind her.
    Give them credit—neither of the two men blinked.
    â€œLady Croft,” one said.
    â€œOr should we call you Lara?” the other asked.
    â€œIn any case,” the first continued, “we need your help. I’m Agent Calloway. This is Stevens.”
    Bryce edged closer to her, lowered his voice. “Lara, these men are from M-I-Six—”
    â€œI know that, Bryce,” she said, folding her arms across her chest, not lifting her gaze from the two intruders for a second. “It’s clear from their soft hands and pressed suits that these are men who make decisions then leave the dirty work to others. I have no interest in—”
    Calloway reached into his pocket and dropped a photo on the table.
    Lara glanced at it quickly, then froze in place.
    Her mouth dropped open in shock.
    The photo was of the Asian man—Jimmy Petraki’s killer.
    â€œThis man’s name is Chen Lo,” Calloway said, nodding at the picture. “Along with his brother Xien, he runs a ring of Chinese bandits known as the Shay Ling.”
    â€œI know the Shay Ling,” Lara said, which wasn’t exactly the truth; she knew of the Shay Ling, knew their reputation, she’d come close to run-ins with them once a few years back, and had only on the advice of a certain person who at that point in her life she’d trusted stepped aside to avoid that runin, which was neither here nor there.
    What was important was what had happened in the Luna Temple.
    â€œThen you know what they do,” Calloway said. “They deal in guns, diamonds, antiquities…anything Chen Lo can sell on the black market. They followed you from the moment you arrived in Santorini—”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œFor this.” Stevens stood and handed her a piece of paper—a fax.
    It was a drawing of the Orb.
    â€œAfter you were picked up at sea, a listening post in Malta intercepted that fax,” Stevens continued. “It was sent from Chen Lo to a man named Jonathan Reiss.”
    Lara nodded. Another name she knew.
    â€œThe scientist?” she asked. “Won the Nobel Prize?”
    â€œOne and the same,” Calloway replied. “He’s now the foremost designer of biological weapons in the world.”
    She frowned. “No. That can’t be right. He’s a respected man, I’ve seen him at—”
    Calloway handed her a sheaf of photos.
    The first she recognized instantly—it had run on the front page of every newspaper, worldwide, two years ago last August sixth. The anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. There had been an attack on a group of tourists visiting the museum that commemorated the bombing. Two hundred and ten people killed—most of them Americans—by a nerve gas that had disrupted brain function in the most painful way conceivable, before death followed.
    Lara stared at the image of the two women lying on the floor, their faces frozen in a rictus of horror, and flipped to the next picture.
    It was of a small village—one-and two-story houses, some of them with chunks of building missing. The image brought to mind someplace in Europe, the Balkans most likely. The focus was on the burning stack of bodies at the center of the image, and their blackened, bloated