“You chose that life.”
“What will pass through my mind when I die? Conversations with the love of my life? Time spent with my wife? Fishing with my children? Parties with friends? Dinner with family? I never experienced any of that.”
“And it’s not too late to do so.”
A deep laugh came from Feldman’s lips. “I’m 73 years old. Next month I’ll turn 74. Look at this hand. The veins are showing, and there are blemishes all over. My eyesight is poor, and my joints ache in the morning. More than half of my teeth are false. My hair is white. These are the ravages of time. I’m sure you can picture what my hair used to look like. It was a beautiful brown. But by the time I left the camp when I was 10, it had turned the color it is now. I was silver-haired as a boy. From then on, hunting Nazis was all I could think about. Can that be called a full life? That is why I’ve decided to start anew.”
“It’s your fault for not letting go of your hatred. You chose that life for yourself.”
“I had no other choice.”
“Bullshit!” Max cried. “You did have a choice, Joe! Everything stemmed from the choices you made.”
“The Nazis said they would return the lives they took. I’ve made up my mind. I will live a second life. And this time it will be my own life.”
“So, you made a deal with the Devil.”
The gun pointed at Max’s chest moved a little. “Eternal life and wealth. You could live alongside Katya. Continuing your research is everything to you, I imagine. You can continue for decades, even centuries. It would be a whole new life. Why don’t you join us? They will make it possible for us.” Feldman sighed lightly and stared at Max.
“You have plenty of reasons to accept the offer.”
“I’ll decline, Joe. I want to live my own life, the one life I’m fated to live. If I’m lucky, I can forge a new destiny for myself.”
“All you have to do is close your eyes a moment. You have talent. The world won’t begrudge you an extended life, no matter how you choose to go about it.”
“That’s not the issue. There are many ways people choose to live on. And that includes the way they live their lives.”
“The ends justify the means. There is value in living on. If you die, you simply cease to be.”
“Stop this. This isn’t like you. You saw Father Yunov. Living was more painful than death for him. I’m sure he’s feeling relieved right now.”
“Then you’re just waiting for death. The symptoms of your condition have already begun, haven’t they, Professor?”
“I’ll cure myself my way. I won’t sell my soul like you. That’s how I’ll live my life on my terms.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Feldman heaved a sigh.
“Let’s return to the real issue,” Gerhard said. “Shoot him! It’s your ticket to eternal life, Joseph Feldman!”
Feldman’s hand trembled. Max knew Feldman was suppressing the shaking by sheer willpower.
“Stop! Don’t kill him!” Aska shouted.
Beside the compressor, Katya looked tearfully at Aska.
“Do it!” Gerhard looked at Feldman and Max in turn.
“I’m begging you, Professor. Throw away the gun and listen to him. I don’t want to shoot a friend.”
“You can’t shoot me.” Max slowly lifted his gun.
A gunshot rang out. A crack formed on the surface of one of the huge glass cylinders.
“No!” Gerhard shrieked.
Max kept pulling the trigger. Soon the magazine was empty. Cracks in the glass cylinders expanded, fluid broke through and gushed out. Glass shattered and tinkled all over the floor. Fluid flooded the room. The bases of the other three glass cylinders swayed in the deluge, and slowly tilted to their sides. The guards stared down in disbelief.
Silence.
All eyes were focused on the man on the floor. His body shuddered a few times before he got to his feet. His dripping skin glistened like a thin pink membrane. Countless veins showed through.
The man slowly looked around the room. His eyes fell on Katya, and he reached for her.
Katya’s shriek and the ring of the bullet were nearly simultaneous. Feldman stepped back with his gun still trained on the man. Blood poured from the holes in the man’s forehead and chest. The man pressed down on his chest and looked at the blood in his hand; he fell to his knees and fell forward.
“My clones!” Gerhard’s face grew pale, and dark blood vessels rose to the surface. In a matter of seconds, he had become unrecognizable.
The deluge smashed the cylinder containing the head and brain. Blood mixed with the fluid and colored the floor deep red. The brain quivered on the ground.
“Kill them! Kill them all!” Gerhard’s face contorted with rage. He grabbed an automatic rifle from the hands of a guard and pointed it at Max.
“Stop!” Katya screamed as she leapt in front of Max.
A shot rang out.
Gerhard slowly turned to Feldman. He looked at him, mystified. Feldman lowered his gun. Gerhard staggered over to the railing. The gun dropped from his hand and clattered to the first floor. Gerhard tumbled over the railing. His skull cracked, releasing black fluid that spread across the atrium’s floor.
“Why?” Max looked up at Feldman.
Aska shook off the guard’s arms and bolted toward the staircase.
“Over here, Aska!” Katya shouted.
The lights went out again, and darkness engulfed them.
CHAPTER 32
The door swung open, and the lights switched on. The intensity of the light hurt Max’s eyes.
Several men were standing in the light. Three of smaller stature were in the front, and Max couldn’t tell how many were in back, but there were probably more than ten. Under the stairs, Katya and Aska were crouching and hugging each other.
“The man of the hour is finally here.” Feldman got to his feet and stood by Max’s side. Blood flowed down his right cheek from where a bullet had grazed him. “Benchell, I presume.”
The three shadowy figures didn’t answer. “Sorry, but we’re going to put an end to this little game,” said the small man in the center.
A gun was aimed at them from among the backlit silhouettes.
“Stop!” Feldman shouted at them.
“Gerhard’s dead. If this man dies, eternal life will slip away forever. The only researcher of the gene of life that can replace Gerhard is Professor Knight.”
The small man in the center looked to the small man to his left, who nodded slightly. “How about you help us, and we don’t kill Aska or the woman.”
“I told you already. I have no intention of lending a hand to evil.”
The small man trained his gun at them again.
“Wait!”
Feldman thrust Max away and raised his gun at the exact same moment the small man’s gun fired. Feldman shuddered and crumpled in a heap.
“Joe!” Max ran to Feldman and lifted him off his back. A red spot was spreading in the right shoulder of his suit.
“There’s another gun in my right pocket,” Feldman whispered, his eyes shut. “Shoot the short one on the right.”
“But why?”
“Just trust me, Max.”
Max gently stuck his hand in Feldman’s pocket. It was there all right.
“I can’t shoot a man.”
“Save the world, Max,” he wheezed, his eyes opening slightly.
“On your feet, Professor Knight!” yelled the small man in the center.
Max laid Feldman back down and stood up. He looked down at the old man, whose eyes were piercing him even through his heavy eyelids.
“One shot’s all it takes.” Feldman’s lips were quivering.
Max aimed and fired. The small man on the right fell to his knees, bleeding from the left side of his chest.
The group gathered around the fallen man. Max lowered the gun, the shot still ringing in his ears.
“What happened?”
“The man on the right
is Benchell.”
“Come!” Feldman shouted to Katya. “Hurry!” He took the gun from Max and pointed it at the circuit breaker. He fired. Sparks flew from the breaker, and the lights went out. Now wrapped in darkness, they could hear the men shouting among themselves.
“Catch them! Kill them if you have to!”
The sound of footsteps mixed with shouting as the beams of their flashlights crossed and intersected. Some of the lights rushed down the stairs. Feldman fired off a few rounds in their direction. The lights vanished, and the sound of their footsteps ceased.
“Block the exits! Don’t let them get away!” a voice shouted from the darkness.
A door at the end of the corridor opened. Light from the hallway lit the room.
Max put his arms under Feldman’s and pulled him to a dark corner.
“There’s a small box in my chest pocket,” Feldman said, as he trained his gun on the corridor. “Hit the switch. It’s a tracker. It can transmit radio waves to the outside even from inside this place.”
Max took it out and flipped the switch.
“That was the end-operation signal. Now go to the roof. A rescue copter will be there in fifteen minutes. The copter will stay for five minutes before taking off.”
Katya dragged Aska by the hand, and they rushed to where the other two were.
“Go! There’s no time. I’ll fend them of—”
But Feldman didn’t get to finish before a guard stepped out from behind the demolished cylindrical base. Feldman pulled the trigger and drove hot lead into the guard’s chest. The man collapsed in front of them. Feldman took his gun and his flashlight.
“Take the gun!” he shouted at Max, before firing blindly at the corridor. Max picked up the gun by Gerhard’s corpse and slipped behind the damaged cylinder base.
The men were no longer in the hallway. The small man who’d been bleeding from the chest was gone, too.
“Hurry to the roof. They ran to call for backup.”
Max rushed over to Feldman.
“They only got me in the shoulder. I can walk,” he said, brushing Max’s helping hand away and staggering to his feet. He left his gun since it was out of bullets, and took a gun from Max.
Katya gripped Aska by the arm as Max pushed them into an adjacent room. The lights were out there as well, since they shared the same circuit breaker.
“Do you know where the stairs leading to the roof are?” Max asked Katya.
“The third floor’s central staircase goes up to the roof.”
“How do we get to the third floor? We can’t get into the hallway.”
“There must be a fire escape. We should be able to get to it from the next room.”
The four moved to the next room. The guards were still nowhere in sight. Feldman’s flashlight lit the wall; there was a door with a plate that read EMERGENCY EXIT. It was locked. Feldman pointed his gun at the keyhole, but Katya pushed him away, picked the lock, and opened it. They rushed up the fire escape to the third floor. The whole floor seemed empty. The guards were rushing through the first and second floors. Sure enough, there was a staircase at the center of the hallway. Max, now at the head of the group, ran toward the stairs, and Aska and Katya followed.
When they got to the roof, Max squinted. The sunrise had dyed the area bright red. The sun-drenched waves were sparkling. As the sea winds blew against them, they heard the helicopter, which had already landed at the edge of the building. They also heard angry shouting from below. Several men appeared on the roof of the neighboring building.
“Hurry. They found the chopper—”
Gunshots. The men were firing at them. Max grabbed Katya and Aska and dove for cover behind the guardrail.
“Get low and run toward the chopper.”
“Where is Joe?” Katya asked. They couldn’t see Feldman from where they were.
“You two go first.” Max returned to the third floor. The door to the room beside the fire escape opened, and there stood Feldman. “Hurry, Joe. The chopper’s here!”
Feldman took his gun in both hands, pointed it inside the room, and fired. The shots echoed across the floor.
The magazine was already empty, but he kept pulling the trigger, a dazed look on his face. Max put a hand on his shoulder, but he was stiff as a rock. Inside the room, a man in a gown lay on the floor with his back facing them, riddled with bullet holes.
“What are you doing? Hurry!” He dragged the unmoving Feldman from the room. “We’ve got no time. They’ve seen the chopper.”
By the staircase leading to the roof, Katya pulled Aska by the hand, and signaled for them to hurry.
“Go!”
“I can’t just leave you here,” Katya said.
Max grabbed Feldman’s arm and ran while dragging him along. Feldman followed Max’s lead, like a doll without its own will. They made it back to the roof. The chopper was hovering about twenty inches above the concrete. The gunfire had intensified, and the guards were shooting from the neighboring building’s roof. Two men were firing back from the copter using automatic rifles, but they were outgunned. They saw one of the men whipped back. He’d been shot. The whir of the rotors grew louder. The chopper was lifting higher.
“Don’t go! We’re over here!” Katya shouted, but the rotors drowned her out. “It’s gone.” Katya hugged Aska.
Feldman watched the chopper as it flew off, his face empty of emotion. The men on the roof of the other building were pointing at them and shouting.
“Come on! We need to get out of here!” Max smacked Feldman on the cheek.
Feldman came to his senses. “Let’s go back to the room.” He grabbed Max’s arm and went back down the stairs.
Katya was about to enter the room, but she held Aska tight and covered her eyes. A man was lying in a pool of blood. Feldman looked around.
“What are you looking for?” Max asked.
“There must be something that will help us escape. He’ll have secured some sort of escape route for himself,” he muttered half to himself as he looked at the wall.
“This is the research building’s east side,” Katya said. “There should be a three-foot-square space close to the wall that leads to the basement.”
They gathered in a corner by a large closet. Feldman opened the closet door and pushed the clothes to either side. “It’s an elevator!”
Just then, they heard people running and yelling.
“Hurry!”
“Where does it go?”
“Just get in. They’re coming!” Feldman pushed Katya and Aska into the closet. Max followed them, and the second the elevator closed, they heard the door to the room open.
“Geht es Ihnen gut? Bitte antworte!” said a man’s voice. “Are you okay, sir? Please answer!”
The elevator went down, and stopped underground. A concrete passageway, too cramped for two or more to stand side by side, stretched before them. Feldman picked up a flashlight from the elevator and started walking. The concrete looked cold to the touch. Five minutes later, they reached a staircase. When they lifted the hatch at its top, they found themselves inside a boathouse on a private beach.
The engine hummed. Feldman rested his arm on the motorboat’s side as he looked at the laboratory. At Feldman’s signal, Max turned off the motor.
A hush fell over the ocean. All they could hear was the gentle licks of the waves on the boat.
“We’re going to let the current take us into the open sea,” Feldman said. “Then we’ll turn the motor on again. The laboratory must be in quite the uproar.”
“Now you can tell us what the hell happened back there. Benchell, he . . .”
“Death always hangs over Nazis like a shadow. No, they themselves were death incarnate. That’s why they were always afraid of their own repugnant death-shadows. They were trying to run from it. That explains why they wanted to obtain eternal life.”
“What a pitiful existence,” Max said. “So, how did you know Benchell was the guy on the right?”
“His purpose in life was to take lives. He delighted in dealing death, and in seeing the panic and anguish of those who died by his own hand. He never delegated the killing if he could help it. They say he even cut open people’s chests and ripped out their still-beating hearts. And then he’d—” Feldman noticed Aska and Katya staring at him, and swallowed the rest.
Max wiped his hands on his pants. Shaken, he could still feel the gun in his hands.
“We hunted Benchell down five times in the past. During two of those encounters, we shot him to death. Another time, we killed him and made it look like a car accident.”
“I don’t understand, Joe.” The word “clones” came to mind, but it wasn’t possible. He was talking about the 1950s and the 1980s.
“Benchell was cautious. He hardly ever showed himself in the presence of others. When he had to appear in the open, he used decoys. He would search for men with similar physiques and facial features and perform plastic surgery on them. It was impossible to determine who was really Benchell by the face alone. More than sixty years have passed.”
“So, you killed body doubles?”
Feldman paused. “More or less. But we only found out after the fact. Benchell sightings typically occurred years apart from each other, and intel that he was still alive never stopped coming in.” Feldman paused again. “It was my last resort. I didn’t know what Benchell looked like anymore. That’s why I had to sneak into their midst.”
“But sneaking into their midst wouldn’t be enough to find out,” Katya said as she stared at Max, waiting for him to back her up. Max didn’t know how to reply.
Feldman nodded slowly. “He changed everything about himself. He altered his face with plastic surgery, replaced his fingerprints with skin grafts, and changed his eye color and vocal cords. He lost weight to change his frame, and even trained himself from being left-handed to right-handed. He transformed into a completely different person. In fact, I’m sure even he forgot what he ‘truly’ looked like. But there was one aspect he could never change.”
The Gene of Life Page 34