Ted Dekker - Circle Series 4-In-1

THE
CIRCLE
SERIES

TED DEKKER

teddekker.com

DEKKER FANTASY

BOOKS OF HISTORY CHRONICLES

THE LOST BOOKS (YOUNG ADULT)

Chosen

Infidel

Renegade

Chaos

Lunatic (WITH KACI HILL)

Elyon (WITH KACI HILL)

The Lost Books Visual Edition

THE CIRCLE SERIES

Black

Red

White

Green

The Circle Series Visual Edition

THE PARADISE BOOKS

Showdown

Saint

Sinner

Immanuel's Veins

House (WITH FRANK PERETTI)

DEKKER MYSTERY

Kiss (WITH ERIN HEALY)

Burn (WITH ERIN HEALY)

THE HEAVEN TRILOGY

Heaven's Wager

When Heaven Weeps

Thunder of Heaven

The Martyr's Song

THE CALEB BOOKS

Blessed Child

A Man Called Blessed

DEKKER THRILLER

THR3E

Obsessed

Adam

Skin

Blink of an Eye

Black, Red, and White 2004 by Ted Dekker
Green 2009 by Ted Dekker

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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Published in association with Creative Trust, Inc., 5141 Virginia Way, Suite 320, Brentwood, TN 37027.

Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-59554-922-8 (SE)
ISBN: 978-1-59554-792-7

Printed in the United States of America
10 11 12 13 14 WC 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Green
(with new alternate ending)

BLACK
THE BIRTH OF EVIL

Switzerland

CARLOS MISSIRIAN was his name. One of his many names.

Born in Cyprus.

The man who sat at the opposite end of the long dining table, slowly cutting into a thick red steak, was Valborg Svensson. One of his many, many names.

Born in hell.

They ate in near-perfect silence thirty feet from each other in a dark hall hewn from granite deep in the Swiss Alps. Black iron lamps along the walls cast a dim amber light through the room. No servants, no other furniture, no music, no one except Carlos Missirian and Valborg Svensson seated at the exquisite dining table.

Carlos sliced the thick slab of beef with a razor-sharp blade and watched the flesh separate. Like the parting of the Red Sea. He cut again, aware that the only sound in this room was of two serrated knives cutting through meat into china, severing fibers. Strange sounds if you knew what to listen for.

Carlos placed a slice in his mouth and bit firmly. He didnt look up at Svensson, although the man was undoubtedly staring at him, at his face at the long scar on his right cheekwith those dead black eyes of his. Carlos breathed deep, taking time to enjoy the coppery taste of the filet.

Very few men had ever unnerved Carlos. The Israelis had taken care of that early in his life. Hate, not fear, ruled him, a disposition he found useful as a killer. But Svensson could unnerve a rock with a glance. To say that this beast put fear in Carlos would be an overstatement, but he certainly kept Carlos awake. Not because Svensson presented any physical threat to him; no man really did. In fact, Carlos could, at this very moment, send the steak knife in his hands into the mans eye with a quick flip of his wrist. Then what prompted his caution? Carlos wasnt sure.

The man wasnt really a beast from hell, of course. He was a Swiss-born businessman who owned half the banks in Switzerland and half the pharmaceutical companies outside the United States. True, he had spent more than half his life here, below the Swiss Alps, stalking around like a caged animal, but he was as human as any other man who walked on two legs. And, at least to Carlos, as vulnerable.

Carlos washed the meat down with a sip of dry Chardonnay and let his eyes rest on Svensson for the first time since sitting to eat. The man ignored him, as he almost always did. His face was badly pitted, and his nose looked too large for his headnot fat and bulbous, but sharp and narrow. His hair, like his eyes, was black, dyed.

Svensson stopped cutting midslice, but he did not look up. The room fell silent. Like statues, they both sat still. Carlos watched him, unwilling to break off his stare. The one mitigating factor in this uncommon relationship was the fact that Svensson also respected Carlos.

Svensson suddenly set down his knife and fork, dabbed at his mustache and lips with a serviette, stood, and walked toward the door. He moved slowly, like a sloth, favoring his right leg. Dragging it. Hed never offered an explanation for the leg. Svensson left the room without casting a single glance Carloss way.

Carlos waited a full minute in silence, knowing it would take Svensson all of that to walk down the hall. Finally he stood and followed, exiting into a long hall that led to the library, where he assumed Svensson had retired.

Hed met the Swiss three years ago while working with underground Russian factions determined to equalize the worlds military powers through the threat of biological weapons. It was an old doctrine: What did it matter if the United States had two hundred thousand nuclear weapons trained on the rest of the world if their enemies had the right biological weapons? A highly infectious airborne virus on the wind was virtually indefensible in open cities.

One weapon to bring the world to its knees.

Carlos paused at the library door, then pushed it open. Svensson stood by the glass wall overlooking the white laboratory one floor below. Hed lit a cigar and was engulfed in a cloud of hazy smoke.

Carlos walked past a wall filled with leather-bound books, lifted a decanter of Scotch, poured himself a drink, and sat on a tall stool. The threat of biological weapons could easily equal the threat of nuclear weapons. They could be easier to use, could be far more devastating. Could. In traditional contempt of any treaty, the U.S.S.R. had employed thousands of scientists to develop biological weapons, even after signing the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in 1972. All supposedly for defense purposes, of course. Both Svensson and Carlos were intimately familiar with the successes and failures of former Soviet research. In the final analysis, the so-called superbugs they had developed werent super enough, not even close. They were far too messy, too unpredictable, and too easy to neutralize.

Svenssons objective was simple: to develop a highly virulent and stable airborne virus with a three- to six-week incubation period that responded immediately to an antivirus he alone controlled. The point wasnt to kill off whole populations of people. The point was to infect whole regions of the earth within a few short weeks and then control the only treatment.