The Eden Prophecy by Graham Brown

embassy. Their papers had been confiscated and they hadn’t even been questioned yet. The situation could go either way:They could be released, or if a pissing match developed, they might not see the outside world for months.
    To be honest, she wondered why they were being held in this office and not some dark cell. It made even less sense that they were being held together. Perhaps the commandant did not want the world to know they were there. Perhaps he was watching or listening, hoping they would give something away.
    At that moment the door swung open. In walked Commandant Lavril, chief of the Paris police. He eyed them with some disdain and closed the door gently before walking to the chair behind his desk.
    It was a massive, incredibly impressive desk, the kind that told anyone sitting across from it where the power resided in this particular room, the kind that might protect one from a bomb blast or a tornado or a meteor strike if one hid underneath it.
    Danielle wondered how the hell they’d even fit the giant desk into this small room. Maybe the walls had been built around the monstrosity.
    “Your papers check out,” the commandant said, flipping through the pages of their passports. “Your consulate confirms that you are here as part of your embassy’s security detail.”
    He dropped the passports and glared at them.
    She and Hawker had been given covers. No one at the embassy would recognize them on sight, but they’d been told what to say if something happened—as it quickly had.
    “So that gives you the right to carry guns in my country,” Lavril said. “But not the right to use them on French citizens or to blow up our buildings.”
    “You seem awfully concerned with the people who tried to kill us,” she said.
    He shrugged. “They are French, you are not.”
    “I promise you if a Frenchman was mugged on thestreets of Washington, we wouldn’t be asking him what he did to provoke the attack.”
    “You might,” Lavril said, “if he blew up half a block in Georgetown.”
    The brawl was coming; she could feel it. She would go for the high ground and the commandant would stand and defend it. But begging was not her way.
    “I don’t know how long you intend to hold us,” she said, “but you and I both know what’s going to happen. Sooner rather than later, a call is going to come in. From the right person in my government to the right person in yours. And after long conversations, which you will never know about, someone else is going to call down here and you’re going to be forced to release us whether you like it or not.”
    Lavril simmered and she wondered if she’d hit close to the mark. Maybe that call had already come in.
    “So are we free to go?” she asked.
    Hawker smiled and held up his hands as if Lavril might just unlock them right then and there.
    “No,” Lavril said drily, “you are anything but free.”
    Hawker’s false smile faded and he dropped his hands with a noticeable wince from the shoulder pain.
    Lavril continued. “At best, I will allow you to contact someone. But not until I find out what you were doing here. And what exactly is going on.”
    “What’s going on,” she began, “is that two American citizens were almost killed at the hands of the terrorists on French soil. It can’t look good for the Sûreté that we had to save ourselves.”
    Lavril laughed confidently. “We are no longer called the Sûreté, madam.”
    Strike one.
    “But since we are freely offering opinions, I will share one of mine: I have had two terrorist incidents in threedays. Both involving Americans. It would take much to make me believe they are unrelated.”
    “What you believe is irrelevant to me,” Danielle said.
    “What I believe will prove to be incredibly relevant to you,” Lavril corrected. “I assure you of that.”
    He looked at her oddly and then at Hawker.
    “What about you?” he asked. “Do you speak?”
    Hawker glared at Lavril. “Better to hold one’s