The Eden Prophecy by Graham Brown Page B

anger she couldn’t believe he would do such a thing.
    As she went silent, Hawker finally stirred, which seemed to please Lavril. “And the man in the street?”
    “Do you even have to ask?” Lavril said.
    “I shot him in the leg,”
    “And in the head.”
    “I shot him once,” Hawker said. “I had no reason to see him die.”
    “And if you had such reason?”
    “Then I’d have killed him with the first bullet,” Hawker replied sharply, no doubt confirming the commandant’s belief that they were some kind of hit squad.
    A smile curled across Lavril’s face as he weighed Hawker’s statement. Whether he believed what he’d been told or not, Danielle couldn’t tell, nor did she really care. Herthoughts were now occupied with the dead men who’d been alive when they left.
    Someone else had to have shot him, either the French police—which seemed unlikely, since that wasn’t their reputation to begin with and the building had been surrounded by onlookers long before the police arrived—or …
    Another member of the group. One who had remained unseen, one who had escaped. A trailer. A control
.
    “You have our weapons,” she said. “Neither were twenty-five caliber.”
    “You drove five miles,” Lavril said. “He went into the water. Easy to lose a weapon doing such things.”
    “You don’t believe that,” she said, “so why don’t you just drop all this, tell us what you want, and we can get this game over with.”
    “You are very direct,” Lavril said. “I admire that.”
    He looked down at her. “You know, much has been made of the rift between your country and mine. We agree as often as an old married couple. It is easy to understand. European soil has been soaked with blood for five hundred years as men from Paris, Berlin, and London tried to control the world. We have finally let it go. But you … Your country is younger, only now feeling the pain that comes from reaching beyond your grasp.”
    Lavril smiled, then went on. “You see our reluctance as weakness and you resent it. We see your confidence as arrogance. But in truth, it is only time that divides our perspective.
    “In time you will see things as we do now,” he continued. “Perhaps that will be unfortunate. There are times for caution and discretion, and there are times for anger and for … revenge.”
    Slowly Lavril’s focus shifted from her to Hawker. And Danielle sensed a moment that she had begun to fear. Hawker’s own anger had remained beneath the surfaceso far, but she had no doubt that the fires of vengeance were smoldering inside him.
    Lavril reached into his desk drawer, grabbed a file, and then fished out a photograph. Leaning forward he pushed it across the desk. She and Hawker stretched to see it.
    It was Ranga, naked and bloodied, on his knees with his arms held up, tied in ropes. His head drooped and his body sagged, held only by the rigging that bound his arms. Bruises, welts, and blood covered his face. Slashing cuts covered his chest and torso, and burn marks left his skin peeling and blackened.
    “We believe the burns were done with a blowtorch,” Lavril said. “In places, they were down to the bone.”
    Danielle felt as if she was about to be sick. She saw Hawker from the corner of her eye, staring unblinking at the image as if looking away might indicate some weakness.
    Mercifully, Lavril took the photo back.
    “Whoever killed him could have easily dumped his body somewhere, but instead they left him like this. It is for a reason.”
    “A message,” Hawker said.
    Lavril nodded.
    “To who?” Danielle asked.
    “To the whole world,” Lavril said.
    He glanced at the photo. “There was a strange mark burned into his chest. Very hard to make out.”
    He pushed another photo toward them, this time a close-up of Ranga’s chest. It looked like he had been branded.
    “Numbers and letters,” Lavril said. “G, E, N, two, one, seven.”
    “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Hawker