James Rollins - THE DEVIL COLONY

He didn't bother asking how she'd gotten into his locked apartment or why she presented herself in such an abrupt and unannounced manner. She was a skilled assassin, formerly employed by an international criminal organization called the Guild-but even that name wasn't real, only a useful pseudonym to use in task-force reports and intelligence briefings. Its real identity and purpose remained unknown, even to its own operatives. The organization operated through individual cells around the world, each running independently, none having the complete picture.

After betraying her former employers, Seichan was left with no home, no country. Intelligence agencies-including those in the United States-had her on their most-wanted lists. The Mossad maintained a kill-on-sight order. But as of a year ago, she now worked for Sigma, recruited unofficially by Director Crowe for a mission too secret to be on any books: to root out the identities of the true puppet masters of the Guild.

But no one was fooled by her cooperation. It was driven by survival, not by loyalty to Sigma. She had to destroy the Guild before it destroyed her. Only a handful of people in the government knew of the special arrangement with this assassin. To help maintain that level of secrecy, Gray had been assigned as her direct supervisor and sole contact within Sigma.

Still, it had been five weeks since she'd last reported in. And then it had only been by phone. She'd been somewhere in France. So far, all she'd been hitting was dead ends.

So what is she doing here now?

She answered his silent question. "We have a problem."

Gray did not take his eyes off her. While he should be concerned, he could not discount a spark of relief. He pictured the beer bottle in the fridge, remembering why he had needed it. He was suddenly glad for the distraction, something that didn't involve social workers, neurologists, or prescriptions.

"This problem of yours," he asked, "does it have anything to do with the situation in Utah?"

"What situation in Utah?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.

He studied her, searching her face for any sign of deception. The bombing had certainly stirred up Sigma, and Seichan's sudden appearance struck Gray as suspicious.

She finally shrugged. "I came to show you this."

She stood up, passed him a sheaf of papers, and headed toward the door. Clearly he was meant to follow. He stared down at the symbol on the top page, but it made no sense to him.

He glanced up to her as she reached the door.

"Something's stirred up a hornet's nest," she said. "Right here in your own backyard. Something big. It may be the break we've been waiting for."

"How so?"

"Twelve days ago, every feeler I've been extending around the globe suddenly jangled. A veritable earthquake. In its wake, every contact I've been grooming went dead silent."

Twelve days ago...

Gray realized that this time frame coincided with the day the Native American boy had been killed out in Utah. Could there be a connection?

Seichan continued: "Something big has piqued the Guild's interest. And that earthquake I mentioned... its epicenter is here in D.C." She faced him from the door. "Even now, I can sense unseen forces mobilizing into position. And it's during such chaos that sealed doors get cracked open, just long enough for bits of intel to blow out."

Gray noted her eyes sparking, her breathing sharpening with excitement. "You found something."

She pointed again at the papers in his hand. "It starts there."

He stared again at the symbol on the top page.

It was the Great Seal of the United States.

He didn't understand. He flipped over the next pages. They were a mix of typed research notes, sketches, and photocopies of an old handwritten letter. Though the letter's ink was faded, the cursive script was precise, written in French. He read the name to which the letter was addressed, Archard Fortescue . Definitely sounded French. But it was the signature at the end, the signature of the man who wrote the letter, that truly caught Gray's attention, a name known to every schoolchild in America.

Benjamin Franklin.

He frowned at the name, then at Seichan. "What do these papers have to do with the Guild?"

"You and Crowe told me to find the true source of those bastards." Seichan turned and pulled open the door. He noted a flicker of fear pass over her features before she looked away. "You're not going to like what I found."

He stepped toward her, drawn as much by her anxiety as by his own curiosity. "What did you find?"

She answered as she stepped out into the night. "The Guild... it goes all the way back to the founding of America."

May 31, 6:24 A.M.

Gifu Prefecture, Japan

The data made no sense.

Jun Yoshida sat in his office at Kamioka Observatory. He stared at the computer monitor, ignoring the aching crick in his back.

The source of the data on the screen came from a thousand meters below his feet, at the heart of Mount Ikeno. Buried far underground, shielded from cosmic rays that could interfere with detecting the elusive subatomic particles, rested the Super-Kamiokande detector, a forty-meter-tall stainless-steel tank filled with fifty thousand tons of ultrapure water. The purpose of the massive facility was to study one of the smallest particles in the universe, the neutrino-a subatomic particle so small that it held no electrical charge and contained almost no mass, so tiny it could pass through solid matter without disturbing it.

Neutrinos continually shot straight through the earth from space. Sixty billion passed through a person's fingertip every second. They were one of the fundamental particles of the universe, yet they remained a mystery to modern physics.

Belowground, the Super-Kamiokande detector sought to record and study those elusive passing particles. On rare occasions, a neutrino would collide with a molecule-in the detector's case, a water molecule. The impact shattered the nucleus and emitted a blue cone of light. It took absolute darkness to detect that brief, infinitesimally small burst of light. To catch it, thirteen thousand photomultiplier tubes lined the massive water tank, peering into that pitch-black tank, ready to mark the passage of a neutrino.

Still, even with such a huge shielded facility, it was a challenge to find those particles. The number of neutrinos captured by the photomultipliers had held at a fairly steady pace over the course of the year-which was why the data on the monitor confounded him.

Jun stared at the graph on the screen. It displayed neutrino activity over the past half day.

He ran a finger across the screen, tracing the graph. His fingertip spiked up as it reached the three o'clock hour this morning. It marked a sudden and massive burst of neutrinos that occurred three hours ago, a level never recorded before.

It has to be a lab error. A glitch of some kind.

For the past three hours, the entire facility had been troubleshooting every piece of equipment and electronics. Next month, his team was scheduled for a joint experiment with CERN, a Swiss facility.

If that had to be canceled-

He stood up to stretch his aching back and crossed to his window. He loved the light at this early hour, perfect for photography, a hobby of his. Adorning his walls were pictures he'd taken of Mount Fuji at sunrise, reflecting in Lake Kawaguchi, another of the Nara Pagoda set against a backdrop of fiery maples, or his favorite, a picture of Shiraito Falls in winter, with skeletal ice-encased trees scattering the morning light into rainbows.