Was she serious? Sometimes he found it hard to tell. Was she playing the cure-for-cancer card just to get him on board with her tagging along, or did she mean it?
He decided she meant it. With Antso and his chopper a dwindling dot in the sky, she was already here and she was coming along.
As if, after last night, he could deny her anything.
And even if last night had never happened, like he could stop her anyway.
“All right. We’re going. But I go down first. You stay right above me.”
That way if anything dangerous was waiting down there, he’d meet it first.
She snapped to attention and saluted. “Sir, yes, sir!”
He sensed she was wired … dying to see what was down there. And he wanted her to see it. But he also wanted her safe.
The jungle wasn’t the problem—she knew jungles better than he. Humans were his worry. Those below were interested in trapping animals; he and Laura had no intention of interfering but they might not see it that way. The remaining human was Keith, and he was no danger to anyone but himself.
Rick returned to the place where he’d begun his previous descent and started backing down the slope. Between narrow ridges and small outcroppings for footings, and ferns and saplings for handholds, the going was fairly easy. But about twenty feet down he had to call a halt.
“Can we stop a sec?” he said.
“Bushed already?” she said with a smile.
He turned and waved an arm at the massive trunks looming among all the greenery. “You’ve seen your share of jungles. Have you ever—ever—seen anything like this?”
“Never. I’m sooo glad I didn’t let you talk me out of this. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
He was glad for her. Her eyes fairly glowed with excitement. She was eating this up.
“It’s deeper than you’d think. I guess that allowed those trees to grow so huge. Look at those trunks—like bridge supports.”
“That’s normal size for this species of baobab. Don’t they look surreal with all their leaves at the top? When I first saw the canopy, I didn’t realize it was composed entirely of baobab leaves. We’re now between the canopy and the subcanopy, which starts about another twenty feet down. I can see various palms down there. Below that, where there’s less light, the understory should be sparse and spindly. The floor will be thick with low-light, high-moisture grasses and undergrowth.” She waved her hand in a get-moving gesture. “Come on. I’m dying to see the rest.”
What he really wanted to do was grab her and pull her close and kiss her. He found her overwhelmingly attractive, now more than ever.
Despite all the warnings to himself to keep his distance—warnings for her sake, not his—they were now involved. What to call it? An affair? Okay, fine. He’d fallen headfirst into their affair and saw no easy way out. Truth was, he didn’t want out. The only thing that eased his conscience was the conviction that he’d wear on her after a while and they’d drift apart, and then she’d be free to find a worthy mate and he’d never have to tell her the whole truth about Düsseldorf. When it was over he’d watch her from a distance and feel privileged to have spent any time at all with her.
Is this me? he thought. Really me?
Yeah, this was who he’d become.
They continued down, with Laura maybe five feet uphill from him, offering a nice view of her delightful butt every time he looked up.
“Are you staring at my butt?” she said as if reading his mind.
“I wouldn’t say ‘staring’ exactly. I might be catching an occasional glimpse in passing.”
Suddenly Laura was much closer.
“Hey, what’re you—?”
“It’s farther down than I thought,” she said. “And you’re going too slow. Beep-beep!”
Now she was beside him, grinning.
And now she was passing him.
“F’chrissake, be careful!”
She kept going. “Come on, slowpoke. Time’s a-wastin’!”
He wasn’t going to play this game. If they both fell and broke something—
Oh, hell, she was getting way ahead. If he let his feet slip on the mulch he could sort of shoe-ski down and—
No. Somebody had to be the grown-up. Usually it was Laura, being the mom and having the MD degree and all, but not today, apparently. She—
“Stop!” shouted a male voice. “Who are you?”
“I’m—” Laura started to reply but was cut off.
“You can’t be here!” A very agitated voice, speaking some kind of accented English. “You’ve got to leave!”
Laura cried, “Hey, put that down!”
Rick broke through a tangle of ferns just in time to see someone in a floppy hat aim a dead tree branch at Laura’s head. He was swinging for the fence but Laura was too quick. She ducked, then stumbled back. Rick wasn’t about to allow a second chance. Rage flaring, his instincts prompted him to land a haymaker on the guy’s bearded face, but training took over, reminding him how that was a good way to break some of his own bones. So he switched to a backhanded chop against the base of the neck where it joined the shoulder.
The hat flew off and hit the ground beside the dropped branch as the guy wailed and fell to his knees, clutching his shoulder.
Still raging, Rick was about to add a kick to the gut for good measure when the guy looked up at him. He froze.
“Keith!”
A surge of elation gave him a buzz. Keith was alive and well and Rick had found him. If he knew a victory dance, he’d do it right now.
His brother looked pained and puzzled. “That’s not my name,” he said through a groan.
His shaven head was sprouting a little bit of brown fuzz, his scuzzy beard hid much of his face, and he’d lost a lot of weight, but the eyes hadn’t changed. This was the guy in the photo Mugabe had posted. This was his wandering brother, in the flesh.
The brother who’d just tried to crack Laura’s skull.
“Keith, you dumbass!” He pointed to Laura, watching wide-eyed a dozen feet away. “You could have killed her! What the fuck were you thinking? And how did you just happen to be waiting here when we arrived?”
“I followed the sound of your copter, of course,” he said, still gripping his shoulder as he jammed his hat back on his head and struggled to his feet. “And stop calling me Keith. My name is Marten—Marten Jeu—”
“Jeukens. Yeah, right. Cut the crap, okay? We tracked down the real Marten Jeukens and you ain’t him.”
Keith looked genuinely confused. “What … what are you talking about?”
Aw, no. Did Keith actually believe he was Marten Jeukens? If so, how was Rick ever going to convince him to come home? His brother would need a psychiatric hospital and all sorts of therapy to bring him around.
Rick looked at Laura. “What do you think?”
She shrugged. “I’m not a psychiatrist, but he could have had some sort of break. Or he’s a very good method actor.”
“Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here. Or as if I’m insane. I’m perfectly sane!”
“Yeah. It’s everybody else that’s crazy.”
“And I’m not acting.” He looked at Laura. “Who is she, anyway?”
Rick motioned her forward. “This is Laura Fanning. She’s a doctor.”
Keith looked at her. “A medical doctor?”
“Yeah. The MD kind, not the Ph.D. kind.” Rick decided to leave out the medical examiner part.
“No, I don’t think you’re acting,” Laura said, staring at him. “You’re so different from Keith. I’ve seen interviews with Keith and he rarely makes eye contact. But you have no problem with that, do you, Marten?”
Why was she calling him Marten? That only reinforced the delusion.
“Why should I have a problem?”
“And your English,” she said. “You’ve developed an accent … almost like German, but not quite.”
“More like Dutch,” Rick said. He spoke fluent German a
nd Keith’s accent was different.
“I’m a South African,” Keith said. “Afrikaans is a daughter of Dutch.”
Laura looked at Rick. “It’s like he’s become a completely different person.”
“Yeah, whatever. Look…” He wanted to add Keith but figured he’d play along like Lauren. “Whoever you are, you owe Doctor Fanning an apology for almost—”
“I will not apologize for trying to drive you off!” he blurted. “You can’t stay here, either of you. It’s too dangerous. You’ve got to leave, get off the island!”
“Fine. But if we do, you’re going with us.”
His gaze shifted back and forth between them. “You’ll take me?”
“Sure. That’s why we’re here.”
“Wonderful! Can we leave now?”
The response rocked Rick. No way had he seen that coming. But hey, he wasn’t complaining. If Keith was going to come along willingly, they’d have no problem getting him back to New York. They simply had to avoid Mozambique, which would be easy enough. Once home, an army of shrinks could get his elevator going all the way to the top again.
“It’ll be a few hours before we can leave.” He turned to Laura. “How long you think?”
She glanced at her watch. “Antso should be landing within the hour. If he can refuel and head back immediately, we’re talking two, three hours.”
“Okay,” Rick said, turning back to Keith. “You heard her. And while we’re waiting, let me ask you something: Do you know who I am?”
“Of course. You’re Keith’s brother Garrick.”
“Really? How do you know that … Marten?”
“I know everything about Keith. Everything.”
His brother had been Keith up to the day he’d disappeared. When had he changed? Maybe the exotic-pet guys he came with could shed some light on how long he’d been like this.
“The guys from the boat,” Rick said. “Where are they?”
“Keep your voice down,” he said, looking around. “They could be anywhere.”
“And that’s bad?”
“They tried to kill me.”
“They what?” This was taking a turn for the worse—way worse. Laura was here, damn it. Or was this just another delusion? “Why would they want to do that? Because of that hat?”
“It’s hardly a joking matter. It’s true.”
Okay, it might be true. Might.
“Why?”
This wasn’t the why Rick most wanted answered—Why are you calling yourself Marten Jeukens? topped the list—but it seemed of the most immediate concern.
“They want to capture dapis and—”
“Dapis?”
“They’re little adapiform primates with big blue eyes.”
“You mean like Mozi?”
His eyes widened. “You know about Mozi?”
“Yeah. All about her. Your research assistant Grady gave us the lowdown.”
“Keith’s assistant, you mean.”
Rick did a slow count to three. “Okay, Keith’s assistant. Anyway, you say these guys want to catch these—what did you call them?”
“Dapis.”
“Right … dapis. You must have known that when you boarded their boat.”
“Of course I did. I came along to stop them. I can’t allow a single dapi to leave this island.”
“Why the hell not?
“The world isn’t ready for them.”
“Hey, you had one and the world didn’t end.”
“Keith had her. He couldn’t do what needed to be done, so I did it for him.”
“Did what?” Lauren said, her expression saying she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear. “What did you do?”
“I killed her.” He made a twisting motion with his hands. “Snapped her neck. And then Keith had her cremated.”
“Kind of cold-blooded, don’t you think?” Laura said, looking offended.
“You do what you have to do for the greater good.”
“Why?” she said. “What was the reason? Her genome?”
He jumped like he’d been poked hard in the ribs. “What do you know about her genome? You know nothing about her genome!”
Laura had zeroed in on something here—touched a raw nerve.
“I know it spooked Keith.”
“Keith was a pussy. He couldn’t handle it. That was why he turned to me.”
“What was it?” Laura said, pressing. “What couldn’t he handle?”
Keith’s gaze suddenly averted, roaming the ground, the underbrush. Was the real Keith coming back, or did Marten simply want to avoid giving an answer?
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me. I’m a doctor.”
He sneered. “Doctor! What are you—an internist? A gynecologist? A pediatrician? Unless you’re an oncologist or a geneticist, you couldn’t begin to understand. So forget about it. Just trust me, no way is the world ready for the secret hiding inside these little primates.”
Rick remembered Laura saying something to the same effect—that genetics had advanced so far so fast since she’d graduated that it was like she’d never studied it at all.
But now, more than anything, Rick wanted to know the answer. He was sure someone could reduce the explanation to kindergarten level for him. But another question reared its ugly little head.
“Just how are you planning to keep the dapis secret?”
“Don’t worry your head about that, Garrick Somers. Aaaaall taken care of.”
Something about the certainty in his tone tightened the muscles in the back of Rick’s neck.
“And what about these trappers you’re with? What—?”
He stopped as he sensed movement in the thick surrounding greenery. Someone here …
He heard a twig snap behind him, and as he turned, a beefy black man charged in from his left. He roared as he bulled into Keith, knocking him clean off his feet. Then he leaped on him and began pummeling him. Rick didn’t know if the guy was mad at Keith or at Marten, but either way, somebody was putting a beat-down on his brother, and where Rick came from, you didn’t stand around and let that happen—even to a someone who was adamant about not being your brother.
Rick hauled the guy off Keith and slammed the heel of his palm into his nose. Blood shot from both nostrils as bone and cartilage broke. The guy staggered back. As Rick watched, waiting to see how much fight was still in him and if he’d have to hit him again—he hoped not—he felt a pair of strong arms wrap around his chest and lift him off his feet. Rick wriggled a few inches lower, then rammed his head back. Once again came the familiar crack of a nose flattening. The second guy cried out and relaxed his grip just as the first shook off his pain and began to charge.
The second stood with his hands over his nose, and behind him, Laura swung the same branch Keith had tried to use against her. It landed square atop the second’s head, shattering in the process and doing minimal damage. Seemed it had been on the ground too long, with termites doing their thing.
Before the splinters could settle, Rick grabbed Number Two by an arm and swung him in an arc like a hammer-throw into Number One. They both went down in a tangle.
And damn, they looked alike. Brothers?
He guessed these were the trappers who’d brought Keith.
The worst thing Rick could do now was let them regain their feet and get organized. Time to start wrecking knees. Number One, the one with a pockmarked face, seemed the closest to standing again. Time to nip that in the bud. Rick had completed one step of a charge when a shot rang out behind him. He skidded to a halt and turned.
A skinny, dark-skinned guy with a ponytail held a bruised Keith by the collar with one hand and had a revolver—looked like a Smith & Wesson Model 10—pointed in the air with the other. Rick stepped closer to Laura and pulled her behind him.
“Everyone stop!” he shouted with a thick French accent.
The pockmarked guy didn’t seem to hear. He charged straight at Keith again. But halted when the Frenc
hman lowered the gun and pointed it at his face.
“Stop!” He looked around with a dismayed expression. “What is happening here? What has happened to my beautiful island?” He shook Keith. “Bad enough you try to poison us! But now you bring strangers?”
Whoa. Keith tried to kill them? Someone was lying. Who? The Frenchman seemed genuinely distraught, while Keith looked guilty as hell.
Rick remembered what he’d said a few moments ago: You do what you have to do for the greater good.
Had poisoning these guys seemed like a greater good?
The Frenchman shifted the revolver toward Rick. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”
As much as he didn’t like to have a gun pointed at him, Rick saw no reason not to tell him. He said, “We took a chopper out of Morondava.”
“And you simply found this place?”
“No, we had the coordinates.”
Frenchie’s eyes bugged. “Where did you get them?” He shook Keith again. “Did he give them to you?”
“No. The police found them—”
He cut off as Laura squeezed his back. He’d used the squeeze technique on her during an interrogation in Israel when he’d wanted her to keep quiet. Was this the same?
Aw shit! They’d got the coords off the dead pilot’s notebook—dead from suspected poisoning. And Frenchie here just said Keith had tried to poison them.
Sickened, Rick stared at his brother. Really, Keith? Really?
“What police?”
“Maputo. It’s complicated.”
“Ah, oui. It must be très complicated, monsieur. You find coordinates in Maputo and decide to hire a helicopter to go there and when you find an island where none is supposed to be, you decide to explore it?”
Laura stepped out from behind Rick and said, “Look, there’s a logical explanation.” She looked back at Rick. “Okay? I think it will simplify everything if we just lay the cards on the table.”
She winked the eye that only he could see. He got it: Trust me.
Well, he trusted her like no one else in the world. And she was smarter than he’d ever be.
“Do it.”
She turned to the Frenchman and pointed to Rick and Keith in turn. “This man and that man are brothers. I don’t know what you’re calling him, but that man’s real name is Keith Somers—”
The God Gene: A Novel Page 26