The Gene of Life

by Tetsuo Ted Takashima

  When he felt her warm breath on his cheeks, he looked up to find Katya peering into the screen. Max pulled back slightly and turned off his computer.

  ● ● ●

  II

  * * *

  LADY OF MYSTERY

  CHAPTER 4

  He was being sucked into a drifting, spongy mass of black. No—he was that black mass—a hideous, meaningless lump of meat. He existed only to decay with the passage of time until he ceased to exist.

  His body was rigid; he couldn’t move. He was plummeting down a bottomless pit. Where was he? This was a world he knew well, and the place he feared most. The final destination. The land of the dead.

  He was melting. His head and limbs were dissolving into the darkness. His existence was fading as the darkness absorbed him, until, at last, he was annihilated.

  He knew this was just a dream, but he couldn’t wake himself up. He felt so alone. A vise was clamping down on his heart. The eternal silence that was death was what he dreaded most.

  His cellphone rang. By force of will, he pulled his consciousness out of the ocean of darkness and reached for it.

  “We found her.” Feldman’s voice was calm.

  “She’s alive?” Max sat up in bed. His back and neck were sweaty. He unbuttoned his pajamas while holding the phone to his ear.

  “We’re heading to her location right now.”

  “I’m coming too.” He looked at the clock. It was 1:15 a.m. He looked out the window, and sure enough, it was still dark.

  “Please wait at the office. We’d like you to join us when we question her.”

  “No, I’m going with you. If you refuse, I won’t help you anymore. I’m serious.”

  “It’s too dangerous, Professor.”

  “The bomb blast should have wounded her. I imagine it’d be a good idea to have a physician like me there.”

  He could hear Feldman cover the mouthpiece for a few seconds. “Very well. On the condition you do as we say. Is that clear? We’ll pick you up in front of the hotel in fifteen minutes. Be careful; I don’t know what might happen.”

  He hung up before Max could reply.

  Max threw on some clothes and looked down from the window; the street looked hazy in the glow of the streetlights. Every few minutes a car zoomed at high speed down the road. He grabbed the first aid kit that he always had ready. He wanted to be prepared for minor incisions and sutures.

  As soon as he stepped in front of the hotel, a Volkswagen van appeared from around the corner. Jake was in the passenger seat. The sliding door opened, and Max saw Feldman looking at him from one of the backseats. Max got in and the van drove off.

  The air was thick with tension. Feldman was staring silently ahead. The van had three rows of seats occupied by six men, including Max. This was the first time he’d seen the two sitting in the very back; both were around forty, with lean but muscular frames.

  “Where is she?” he asked Feldman.

  “A farmhouse about an hour away.”

  “Is she wounded?”

  “We don’t know any specifics.”

  “Let’s do it the legal way this time.”

  “No matter what transpires, don’t interfere.”

  “That depends on you guys.”

  “We may be living in the twenty-first century, Professor, but we still face Nazism. And we are Jews. Anything can happen.”

  Max had no answer to that. Feldman’s face was stiff and nervous, and his tone was severe.

  Thirty minutes later they were outside the city. They left behind high-rise buildings as they drove by tidy single-family homes on both sides of the road. Then, those disappeared. A rural landscape stretched out before them, although they could only see its silhouette under the dim starlight. Farmhouses dotted the fields.

  It was already after 3:00 a.m. A Mercedes sedan was parked by a tree. The van slowed down and parked behind it.

  “Please wait here, Professor.” Feldman and three members of his entourage got out, leaving Max and the driver inside. After they spoke with the two who had stepped out of the sedan, Feldman returned to the van.

  “She’s in that farmhouse.”

  Across the field was a typical German farmhouse with a barn next to the main building.

  “There are three guards. She’s on the second floor. Wait here with the driver and follow our orders.” Feldman walked back to the sedan.

  Feldman and Jake, who was carrying a large backpack, the two other middle-aged men, and the two men from the sedan made up a squad of six. They ran to the house in the dark. Max could see that they had on night-vision goggles. The driver was also looking through night-vision goggles to follow their movements. Max quietly opened the sliding door. The driver was too focused on Feldman and the others to notice. Max stepped out of the van with his med kit, snuck behind the van, and crossed the field, approaching Feldman’s group. When he glanced behind him, he saw the driver’s silhouette, gripping a walkie-talkie. He’d been caught.

  Max walked up to Feldman. Feldman grabbed Max’s shoulder and stopped him in his tracks. The men ahead of them were crouching by a fence. Max saw someone step out of the door onto the porch. He was in shadow until he went to light his cigarette—he was young, and wore a leather vest over his bare skin. The man next to Max pulled something out of his coat pocket. A handgun. Then he took out a silencer and attached it to the barrel. He aimed at the man on the porch.

  “Stop!” Max whispered, clutching the man’s arm. He looked at Max and brushed his arm away.

  “You promised not to interfere,” Feldman hissed in his ear.

  “There’s no need to kill them.”

  “We need the woman and will do what it takes!”

  Max held up his hand to silence Feldman. The man was no longer on the porch.

  At Feldman’s command, three men crept along the fence to the back of the house. The others jumped the fence and ran over to the house and up to the doorstep. Max heard the faint sound of metal scraping from the back door, but that soon stopped.

  One of Feldman’s men removed his goggles and knelt in front of the keyhole. A few minutes later, he turned around and signaled for the rest to come. The door opened without a sound. The room was lit only by a single lightbulb.

  Something clattered to the floor in the kitchen.

  A voice called from the floor above: “Was ist los, Hans?” (What’s the matter, Hans?)

  Footsteps; someone was coming down the stairs. Max’s group hid behind the sofa.

  A burly man with a shaved head turned on the lights and strode into the kitchen. Max watched from behind the couch, sweat beading on his forehead.

  Max heard a muffled bang. The Nazi convulsed, and his giant frame toppled forward to the floor. Max squeezed his eyes shut; he expected the man’s body to make a loud thud. But all he heard was dead silence. He opened his eyes to find one of his comrades holding the skinhead up. He’d gone behind him and stopped him from hitting the floor—and without a second to spare.

  The man gently laid the skinhead onto the floor. Max looked at Feldman, but Feldman’s expression hadn’t changed. He and his men were used to this world.

  “One more upstairs,” whispered the man who’d shot the skinhead, pointing up.

  The young man in the leather vest lay in front of the kitchen sink, blood pouring from his throat, staining the floor.

  The assassin put on his goggles and headed up the stairs. Max went to follow, but Feldman grabbed him by the arm.

  The wait was suffocating. Then, a thud and a muffled shriek.

  “Come,” said the man from the second floor.

  Max followed Feldman up the stairs and into a dimly lit room. There was a bed by the window, and in that bed was the woman they were searching for.

  Max turned away. A woman with short hair and a stern expression lay on her back between the bed and the chair, blood pooling from a hole in her forehead. She’d been killed the instant she’d turned to face her assailant. Her eyes were wide o
pen.

  Feldman turned to Max. “You’re up, Professor.”

  The woman in bed was naked above the waist, except for the bandages from her chest to her abdomen.

  “Give me some light.”

  Feldman brought over the lamp from beside the desk.

  She was covered with wounds, which meant she’d taken the blast head on. Some of her wounds were full of metal shrapnel. Max checked her pulse and heartbeat. Neither was erratic, but both were weak. He removed the bandaging to find her chest and abdomen covered with blood-soaked gauze. When he peeled off the gauze, he discovered suture traces. Judging by the size of her wounds, her internals were probably damaged as well. She needed an X-ray. It was a miracle she’d survived with injuries like these.

  The suturing was crude, but the wounds had already begun to close up.

  “What’s wrong?” Feldman asked.

  “Nothing.” Max pulled cardiotonic drugs and antibiotics out of his bag.

  “Please hurry. We need to take her to the office.”

  “Her heart’s weak. It’s too risky to move her.”

  One of the men pushed Max away and went to pick her up.

  “Go get some plastic wrap from the kitchen,” Max said, knowing they were determined to move her.

  Max applied disinfected gauze to the wound and wrapped the woman’s body in the plastic wrap. “This will close the wound, but move her as gently as possible.”

  Two men gently lifted the woman from each side and carried her from the room. Jake removed his backpack and took out a black nylon bag. He tossed in all the stuff in the room he could get his hands on. Photo frames, notebooks, books—he opened drawers and rummaged through them. When he finished with the bedroom, he moved on to the next room. One of the men grabbed a suitcase next to the bed. Feldman stood by the door, scanning the room. Then he tapped Max on the shoulder; Max had been staring at the corpse on the floor. Max and Feldman went out into the yard and started walking toward the van. Jake followed them with a full bag.

  “What about the corpse?” asked Max.

  Feldman barely shrugged.

  As soon as they got in the van, it zoomed off, the sedan following behind. The woman was unconscious, sandwiched between the two men in the backseat. Every few minutes she moaned with pain.

  “That went unbelievably well. The enemy wasn’t expecting us to act so quickly.” Feldman put his night-vision goggles in his bag. In that bag, Max caught a glimpse of a gun larger than any handgun. It was a submachine gun.

  “We killed three people.” Max looked up at Feldman.

  “And those who shared those three’s ideals killed six million of our compatriots.”

  “You’re no different from the Nazis. This is the kind of wanton murder . . .”

  “Let’s not debate this at the moment. Let us instead rejoice that we are unharmed, and the operation was successful.”

  “She needs to be taken to a well-equipped hospital.”

  “Don’t worry, Professor. Just do as you’re told.” Feldman’s tone was unwavering. He closed his mouth and looked away; the discussion was over.

  CHAPTER 5

  The van veered off the main street into a narrow road, and eventually reached the back entrance of the office. The woman was regaining consciousness, and the gauze under the plastic wrap was red with blood. They carried her to the guest room. She was totally still. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse was weak.

  Jake took the contents out of the bag and put them on the table. The men began to examine them. They found two passports and gave them to Feldman.

  “Italian passports. They’re fakes, but they’re good ones.”

  Feldman inspected the passports under the lamp. “The woman’s name is ‘Maria Tinari.’ It looks as though she’s the wife of one ‘Gugliermo Tinari.’ That means Gehlen and this woman are married.” He gave Max the two passports.

  The woman claimed she was born in 1971, which would make her 37 years old. The other was definitely a photo of Gehlen. The date of birth listed was December 3, 1964. That would make him 43.

  The door to the next room opened, and a plump middle-aged woman came in. She was the first woman among Feldman’s allies that Max had seen. She knelt next to the bed and took a syringe out of her bag. She popped the lid off an ampoule and withdrew the liquid with practiced hands.

  “What is that?” He tried to read the ampoule label, but it was peeled off.

  The woman prepped Maria’s arm for the injection. Max tried to stop her, but was restrained from behind. The woman stopped and looked up at Feldman for instructions.

  “I’m not trying to kill her. You also want to know the truth, don’t you?”

  “What’s in that syringe? Is it a cardiotonic?”

  “It’s an analeptic. It’s harmless.”

  “Not when she’s like this it’s not. It’ll put too much strain on her heart.”

  Feldman signaled the men behind Max with his eyes. They pulled Max away from the woman.

  The woman casually pricked Maria’s arm; she moaned faintly in response. Her head wriggled for a while, but eventually she opened her eyes. They were dark. Blearily, she looked around before her eyes fell on the woman.

  “Maria. That’s the name on your passport,” Feldman said in German, “but it isn’t your real name. What is it?”

  Maria’s eyes moved to Feldman, and a look of horror dawned on her face. She tried to get up. The men holding Max let go in order to pin Maria down. Feldman stooped down and drew in close to her. “Answer our questions, and we will not harm you. When we’re done with you, we will take you to the hospital for treatment,” he said in a gentle voice, but her fearful expression didn’t change.

  Feldman said the same thing in English, and finally in Spanish. Maria didn’t respond to any of those languages. She just looked on, as frightened as ever. Seconds passed, and the men grew impatient.

  “We are not your enemies. You had nothing to do with the past actions of the man we are looking for, so we have no reason to hate you. Rather, we are allies. I want to help you. I want you to cooperate with us,” Feldman said slowly in all three languages.

  Maria’s breathing slowed slightly, but terror was still written all over her face.

  “Who are you?” he asked again.

  Maria bit her lip and closed her eyes.

  “Let’s use more of that drug,” croaked an old man in English; Max had met him the first time he’d been brought here.

  “Simon, please wait outside.” Feldman noticed Max’s gaze and stood between the two, concealing Simon behind him. Simon was still looking at the woman.

  “Hurry up. Benchell may still be in Europe.” Simon pushed Feldman away and stood by the bed. Feldman stepped back in resignation.

  “You know Gehlen, right? He’s your husband. So where’s his friend Benchell?” he asked, grabbing her shoulders. Maria’s forehead shone with sweat, and she was breathing hard.

  “Stop. Her body can’t take it.” Max tried to move forward, but once again, someone grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

  “If you interfere one more time, I’ll have to ask you to leave the room.” Feldman stopped the men from dragging Max out.

  “With wounds like those, she should probably be dead already. If you make her exert herself, she’ll die. That is my assessment as a doctor. You need to let her rest for two or three days, and then you can ask her all you like. That would serve your purposes more than recklessly killing her.” Max’s shoulders were still in the men’s grip.

  Feldman and Simon muttered to each other. Eventually, Feldman gave the men a look, and they let Max go.

  “I’ll leave it to you. You have until five o’clock tomorrow morning. Twenty-four hours. After that, we will do it our way.” Feldman looked at his watch.

  Maria’s eyes closed; she was out again. Max took off the plastic wrap and gauze and checked her wounds. “The wound in her abdomen is open and bleeding. You forced her to walk, and this is what you get. She
may even have blood in her abdomen. An incision needs to be made so her abdomen can be examined.”

  “I will arrange for whatever you need.”

  “I can’t operate on her here.”

  “So, you’re a competent surgeon as well?”

  Max nodded. “I’ll give her emergency treatment for now, and then she has to be transferred to a hospital within twenty-four hours. Can you promise that?”

  “Can I question her before we transfer her?”

  “I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen.”

  “Very well.” Feldman looked to Simon for his approval, but Simon remained silent.

  “Her blood pressure is terribly low.” Max looked at her travel insurance card. “She needs a blood transfusion, but we really don’t want to be going through red tape for one.” Max turned his eyes to the men in the room. They looked at each other. Feldman took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeve.

  “Any infectious diseases?”

  Feldman shook his head.

  “One more person,” Max said.

  At Max’s prompting, one of the men stepped forward.

  The streetlights shone through the gaps in the curtains. The bedside clock said 4:20 a.m.

  “I’m going to call my assistant. I need medical supplies and an assistant’s hand. She’s a doctor too.” Max took out his cellphone from his jacket’s inner pocket, but Feldman pointed to the landline phone.

  “You can’t use your cellphone in this room. It’s shielded to prevent wiretapping, so you don’t have to worry about being overheard.”

  Katya picked up after ten rings. “Dr. Knight?” she asked, half-asleep.

  Max apologized for the early morning call, and told her how to get the medicine she needed to bring him.

  “What’s the address?” he asked Feldman.

  “We’ll pick her up.”

  He hesitated for a moment, before instructing Katya where to wait. “Dr. Lang will be waiting in front of the research facility. She’s a woman, so don’t be rough.”

  Feldman spoke to one of his men in hushed tones. The man nodded and left.