The Cradle of Life by Dave Stern Page A

faces.
    â€œEnhanced cholera,” Stevens said.
    Lara nodded, and flipped again.
    The third and final picture was from a battlefield somewhere—Africa, most likely, the soldiers were all black men. They were all dead, as well, sprawled unnaturally on the ground.
    Calloway took the pictures back.
    â€œReiss’s creations have been at the heart of every act of bioterror in the past fifteen years,” he said.
    â€œHis disdain for life is legendary. He has no political agenda, doesn’t care who his weapons kill or why,” Stevens put in.
    â€œA modern-day Doctor Mengele,” Calloway said.
    Lara nodded, her mind racing as she absorbed what the two agents were telling her. Reiss, after the Orb. The mati —the key to a terrible secret. What did he think he was going to find?
    She paced the length of the room, once, twice.
    It had been a day of surprising revelations. The Shay Ling, and Jonathan Reiss. Shadow guardians, and smatterings of the Maasai language in a Greek temple.
    Her eyes fell on the fax she’d sent Kosa. The drawing of Alexander’s army lying dead on the battlefield.
    The picture Calloway had just shown her—the army of bloated, disfigured corpses—flashed before her eyes.
    The connection struck her like a physical blow.
    A plague, she realized. Alexander’s army had perished from a plague.
    Stevens started talking again.
    â€œWe know Chen Lo followed you to obtain the Orb. We also know that he’ll deliver it to Reiss soon. What we don’t know is why. Candidly, that terrifies us.”
    Lara was listening—barely. Her eyes were still on the drawing of Alexander’s army.
    On the soldier holding the small box in his arms. What she’d thought to be a treasure chest of some kind.
    Not a treasure chest at all.
    She thought of the objects the temple had been rumored to contain, and a chill went down her spine.
    â€œPandora,” she whispered.
    The ultimate biological weapon—the sum of all evils contained in this world.
    â€œReiss is not to be trifled with,” Stevens was saying. “The doctor—”
    â€œPandora’s box,” she repeated, louder this time.
    Everyone in the room turned to her.
    Hillary cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon?”
    â€œPandora’s box—that’s why Reiss wanted the Orb,” Lara said. “He’s going to use it to find Pandora’s box!”
    A long silence followed.
    â€œUmm,” Bryce said. “Pandora? Like in the fairy tale?”
    â€œYou mean the Greek myth,” Stevens said. “Pandora is given a box by the gods, told not to open it. She does and unleashes pain in the world?”
    Lara nodded. “I’m afraid that’s the Sunday school version.”
    â€œThere’s another?” Calloway asked.
    â€œSeveral. There are analogues to the Pandora story to be found in almost every culture.”
    She crossed to the far wall, to her father’s prized Loring—a globe close to a hundred years old. Until a few months back, she’d kept it in the room that used to be his study, where Lara had sat at his feet, enchanted, as he spun her bedtime stories night after night, tales of the long-vanished kingdoms that dotted the ancient globe. Stories of gods who walked the earth, secret societies that controlled mankind’s destiny…
    Creation myths from every corner of the world.
    â€œHow do you think life began?” Lara asked, spinning the globe. “Shooting stars, meteor, primordial ooze…”
    Stevens and Calloway shook their heads, waiting for her to continue.
    â€œActually,” Bryce said. “It’s fairly well known that—”
    Hillary whacked him.
    â€œMy father told me a story once,” Lara said. “In 2300 B . C ., an Egyptian pharoah found a place he named the cradle of life; where we, life, began. There he found a box. The box which brought life to earth. The pharoah opened it,