The Paris Betrayal by James Hannibal (beach read .TXT) 📕

Jupiter’s chair out for him. He walked to the rail. “I expect the Behemoth at any moment—the Clementine, as her hull paint shows now. And yes, we booked her reservation here, not Baltimore. A digital shell game.” He pointed at Norfolk’s long harbor. “There. Can you see her?”

Ben squinted, trying to focus through the blur in his eyes. Lights drifted on the horizon, a city skyline on the move. “I see her. Floating death.”

“Life, Ben. Not death. New life. Perfect control born of controlled chaos. Order created by a structured and well-planned apocalypse.” Still gazing out at the ship, Jupiter held up a pistol grip with a trigger and toggle switch for Ben to see. He flicked the switch up, and an LED on top flashed from green to red.

Ben stiffened. That thing had only one possible purpose.

Jupiter flicked the toggle down again. The light went green. “We gave the captain a manual detonation switch on the bridge, of course, but now that the ship is in range, I have full control.”

“You wouldn’t.” Ben put all the strength he could muster behind his voice. “If Giselle told me the truth in Spain, the volume CRTX you packed into Behemoth carries the explosive power of a sixty-kiloton nuke. We’re in the blast radius.”

“On the edge, actually. We might feel a hot wind and suffer a few broken windows on the lower floors, but nothing more. CRTX creates no ionizing radiation. The rest of downtown, however . . .” He flicked the switch up and down, over and over like a bad pen-clicking habit. Red, green. Red, green. A game. “I’m tempted, Ben. Half of Norfolk and Portsmouth will need new office space, including that hospital over there. And we’re standing at the top of a brand-new building. I’d make a fortune.” He stopped flicking, ending with the toggle up and the LED red—armed. His finger caressed the trigger.

“But that isn’t what you want, is it?” Ben hurried the statement, causing a fit of coughs. He held out a finger to stop Jupiter from taking any action before he managed to speak again. “A bomb even as big as this one and laced with plague is no apocalypse.”

“No,” Jupiter said, voice thick with disappointment. “This world has become too accustomed to death. A sixty-kiloton bomb and one or two cities filled with plague are not enough to overwhelm the system. Distributing the Behemoth’s tanks to recycle yards and storage lots across the nation is more elegant, and will allow the disease to strike with far, far more terror. No one will know the source. Invisible. Unstoppable.” He turned and gestured with the remote at Ben. “You see? We think alike, you and I. Visionary. You could go far with Leviathan.”

Another nod from Jupiter brought Giselle to Ben’s side. She lifted him from his chair and walked him out onto the grass.

“I appreciate that you came to me,” Jupiter said, “even though you took some prodding. The gesture means a lot. But we have a long way to go in the trust department. If you deliver, you’ll advance fast. If not—” He shot a glance at the bloodstain on the grass. “Show me your loyalty now and start this relationship off right.” Jupiter showed Ben a second device, an injector like Tess’s but with white, cloudy fluid showing through its window. “I am your cure, as I am the cure to all that ails this world. Come, Ben. Receive your first reward.”

Ben felt Giselle’s warm whisper on his ear. “Go. You can take these last steps on your own. Kneel like a knight of old. He likes that. Then you will be healed and we can be together.” She ducked out from under his arm and eased him onward.

Ben’s every wheezing breath came shallower than the last. The city lights and the harbor merged into a muddled yellow-orange haze. He took one shaking step toward Jupiter, then another. The third step cost him the last strength in his legs and dropped him to his bad knee.

“Closer. And down on both knees, if you can,” Jupiter said, looking down at him. “It’s an older tradition, but important to me. It is a sign both to me and to my enemy of where your allegiance lies. Trust me. This act alone will show him the folly of treating good operatives like you and me as fodder for his designs. This act will hurt him, as I know we both want to do.”

“Yes. I’ll do it.” Ben bowed his head and shoulders, using the movement to hide the movements of his hand. He held Tess’s kick tightly in his palm, where it had been since the pat-down at the elevators. A touch of a button extended a three-inch needle from the injector and primed the CO2 charge.

The remote trigger, still armed, had become a red blur in Jupiter’s right hand, and the delicate antidote injector barely a shadow in his left. A promise of death and the hope of delaying disaster in one hand. A promise of the life Ben deserved in the other.

Ben fixated on the shadow. The life he deserved. Justice. He’d suffered so much injustice and answered it with so much rage. His ears rang with his own rasping voice shouting at the Director hours before. I deserve better!

The Director hadn’t answered—not then, and not now. Instead, Ben saw the Korean girl from the train. He felt her gentle fingers touching the swollen knee that now throbbed beneath him. Stop asking what you deserve, Ben. Try asking, What is my purpose?

What is my purpose?

Ben put his full weight on the bad knee, gutting through the pain to bring his leg into a better position beneath him, then plunged the kick’s needle through his own sternum, straight into his heart.

70

For the first time in days a full breath of oxygen filled Ben’s lungs, accompanied by the scorching sting of a needle stabbed into his heart. His falling blood pressure surged. Adrenaline and painkillers coursed