A tall blond man took the aisle seat in Aboud’s row. It was Vlad. The doctor and the weapons broker nodded at one another, but neither spoke. The doctor casually scanned the rows of seats behind him, now nearly filled with spectators. He didn’t spy a black suit among them. That was good. In the event his benefactor was having him watched, Aboud knew a Nephilim would never cross the threshold of a theater. It was tantamount to passing through the gates of hell. The cult held a particular horror of public entertainments. It was laughable really that the same men who were commissioning him to develop a deadly plague could be routed so easily by a bevy of ballerinas. Aboud chuckled to himself at the paradox. The lights dimmed. The performance was about to begin.
***
When the house lights came up for intermission, Aboud followed Vlad out to the bar.
As they waited for their drink orders, Vlad asked, “How are you enjoying it so far?”
Aboud could offer no critique on the finer points of the performance. “This is the first ballet I’ve attended.”
“Ah, this is nothing,” Vlad waved his arm dismissively. “You haven’t seen The Firebird until you’ve seen it performed by the Bolshoi. There are no words to describe it in any language. Pure poetry in motion.”
“Perhaps one day I shall see a performance in Moscow,” the doctor agreed noncommittally.
They took their glasses of champagne and wandered off to a quiet alcove on the mezzanine where they could speak more freely.
Vlad glanced at their champagne flutes ruefully. “Perhaps we ordered the wrong drinks. We have nothing to toast yet, do we?”
Aboud took a seat on an ornately carved sofa. “It would seem I was too thorough in my work,” he remarked cryptically.
Vlad took a seat next to him. “Meaning?”
“My benefactor wanted the most virulent strain of pneumonic plague possible. One that could kill in a matter of hours.” The doctor shrugged philosophically. “And that’s what I created. I succeeded in developing a strain so lethal that even I can’t stop it.”
“So that means you haven’t developed a vaccine yet?” Vlad sounded mildly annoyed.
“Oh, I have tried to develop a vaccine,” the doctor countered. “A great number of them, in fact. I tested every conceivable type of vaccine on my last twenty subjects, and still they perished.”
The Russian leaned in closer, his demeanor slightly menacing. “You need to appreciate my position. I have lined up half a dozen buyers, all eager to start bidding on your weaponized plague. I can only string them along for so long before they become impatient. Money is burning holes in their pockets, but that money will go elsewhere if you don’t hurry up. And that is a best-case scenario. These men do not like to be disappointed. They have a very low tolerance for frustration and for those who are the cause of it.”
“I am well aware of the need for haste,” Aboud concurred dryly. “My benefactor reminds me of that fact every week.”
Vlad took a sip of champagne, his attention temporarily diverted to another topic. “You still don’t know who his target is?”
The doctor shook his head. “He’s been very tight-lipped on that subject. He says he’ll let me know when it’s time to design a delivery device. Of course, I won’t be ready to do that until the vaccine has been perfected.”
The lights flashed, signaling that intermission was nearly over.
Vlad finished the rest of his champagne in a single gulp. “So what am I to tell our prospective buyers in order to hold their interest?”
Aboud pondered the question for a moment. “You may tell them that I’m very close to a breakthrough. I should have an effective vaccine within a month. Two months at the very most.”
Vlad stood, towering over the little doctor. “For your sake, I hope you are right. When they run out of patience, we both will have run out of time.”
Chapter 14— A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Steppe
Cassie and Griffin sat motionless in the trove keeper’s office in Lanzhou eyeing the crude carving of the horse’s head compass which lay in the middle of the desk. They were waiting for an explanation.
Zhang Jun leaned back in his chair. “It’s a strange thing about archaeology,” he mused. “Often a small, insignificant find can lead to something much bigger. In this case, a discarded piece of a mechanical compass brought us to our first physical trace of the Yellow Emperor. But let me begin at the beginning. Do you remember when we were in Shenyang I mentioned the original rulers of ancient China?”
“You told us about the three sovereigns and five emperors,” Cassie replied readily.
“Quite so. As you’ll recall, the serpent goddess Nu Kwa was the first sovereign. She created the universe. The second sovereign was Shen-Nung. He is called the Divine Farmer because he taught the people agriculture and the medicinal uses of plants. The third sovereign is known as the Yellow Emperor. He is credited with devising numerous inventions and has the dubious distinction of being named the inventor of warfare. All of the subsequent five emperors traced their lineage back to him. Of course, modern scholars dismiss all eight figures as mythical, but evidence has been coming to light about other legendary figures who have been proven to actually exist.”
“Still,” Griffin objected. “Do you seriously believe the man in Cassie’s vision was your fabled Yellow Emperor?”
Rou nodded gravely.
Jun continued. “Asia is a huge land mass and not all its inhabitants are of Mongoloid ancestry. Some are Caucasian, but nobody seems to remember this. China has, for a
