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a risk that he feared might be too great. He’d come out of hiding and into the open; he was a target.
    Dizzy from gazing upward, Ranga lowered his eyes and moved toward the elevator. He edged into a crowd of tourists, fighting every urge to hurry. Rushing would only draw attention. The wrong kind of attention.
    From the outside looking in, Ranga had little need to worry. Nearly sixty, of average height and build, he had nondescript features and short dark hair. He was a common-looking everyman. No one ever looked twice.
    His background was more impressive. A genetics expert, a former fellow at the prestigious Advanced Genetics Lab of Johns Hopkins University and a onetime Nobel Prize candidate, Ranga had once been a pillar of the community.
    Now he was a fugitive.
    Listed on Interpol’s high-priority register, this nondescript everyman was considered one of the most dangerous people in the world. Not for anything he’d done, for he had committed no crime greater than fraud and theft, but for what they knew he was capable of doing.
    In his prior life, Ranga had done research for all the top labs, as well as the U.S. government. His success in manipulating genetic codes and creating new forms of life was legendary, and he had intimate firsthand knowledge regarding the creation of biological weapons.
    Beyond that, it was well-known that Ranga Milan needed money. What it was for remained a mystery, but Interpol, the CIA, and other Western security services had long feared he would trade his vast knowledge for the wealth he sought.
    So far
, Ranga told himself,
I have done no such thing
. It was a partial truth, one he’d risked his life to maintain. But a partial truth was also a partial lie.
    He shook the thought away, focusing on the meeting. By holding it here, in the most public space in France, he hoped he would be safe from the people he’d once worked for. He’d believed in them once, believed they had similar desires, but as he discovered the truth he had no choice but to run. Otherwise they would take what he wanted to create and turn it into a weapon like no other that had ever been built.
    Ranga shuddered at how close they’d come before he broke away. He cringed in fear that they might find a way to finish what he had already given them. He couldhave destroyed the research, should have destroyed it perhaps, but it was his life’s work.
    And there was still a need
.
    “Excuse me,” he said, brushing past a group of Japanese tourists.
“Merci, merci.”
    He squeezed by the group, fitting himself into the front of the crowded elevator. He clutched a computer case to his side and waited as the doors lingered while several more passengers fitted themselves in.
    Across the crowded plaza, he saw a gendarme turn his way. Just a casual tilt of the head and then a moment of hesitation, but the hesitation bothered Ranga. The policeman began walking toward the elevator, not hurrying, just strolling, not even really focused on the elevator anymore, but headed his way.
    And then the doors closed, the gears whirled, and the elevator began to rise.
    As the car raced upward toward the observation deck Ranga exhaled, relaxing for the moment. The computer case slung over one shoulder weighed heavily. Inside lay every ounce of funding he’d been able to put his hands on and it was still ten thousand euros short.
    He guessed his contact would do little besides glance at the cash, but the man had his own needs and if an argument ensued Ranga had come prepared for that as well.
    A ceramic object in his pocket that looked like a cellphone was actually a handgun. Barely bigger than his palm, it carried four shots. And though Ranga had never fired a gun, under no circumstances would he leave this place empty-handed.
    The elevator doors opened and the tourists pushed their way out. Ranga moved with them, wiping a sheen of sweat off his upper lip. He spotted a figure in the southwest corner, at the very edge of the decking. A patch