Genesis Code

by Jamie Metzl

  “Understand what?”

  “That there are forces bigger than all of us, that God’s plan will lead us.” Her words echo Becker’s power.

  I am floored, unable to imagine how her daughter’s death could be part of that plan.

  Maurice steps in. “Thank you so much for your time, Mrs. Stock. Godspeed,” he says, pulling me away.

  Panic overtakes the receptionist’s face as we march past her toward the hidden door to Becker’s office. “You can’t go in there,” she orders. We beat her to the door, open it, and walk through.

  “Come back here right now. You cannot go in there,” she shrieks frantically.

  By the time she reaches us, we are already in. I’m almost surprised to see Becker at his desk, transformed from the charismatic magician he seemed just minutes before into a man. He looks up calmly and assuredly, then stands.

  “Mr. Azadian,” he says, his voice resonates through my head. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” His cold tone undermines the surface generosity of his sentiments.

  I can’t find the words to answer.

  “And you are?” he asks, walking toward Maurice.

  “Maurice Henderson, KCPD, sir,” Maurice says. I’m not sure where the “sir” is coming from, but somehow it makes me feel even smaller before Becker.

  “KCPD,” Becker mulls. “And what brings you to Springfield?”

  “I’d hoped to make it to the day of prayer with Senator King and you,” Maurice says flatly, “but it looks like I’m a day late, so I thought I’d ask you about the death of MaryLee Stock.”

  “Are you investigating this, Mr. Henderson?” Becker asks. “And you’re working with the Kansas City Star?” he says, looking at me.

  “Look, sir,” Maurice says, “MaryLee Stock is dead. You know that.”

  “I do,” Becker says calmly.

  “We all want to know what happened to her,” Maurice continues.

  Becker stares at each of us in turn, then speaks with his ministerial tone. “Can’t you let this poor girl rest in peace? Haven’t we been through this already? You’ve obviously seen the autopsy report. I beg of you, show some respect, some decency.”

  “We think MaryLee Stock was murdered.”

  Maurice’s words halt Becker’s momentum.

  “She was poisoned with potassium cyanide. She was pregnant,” Maurice fires his sentences at Becker in staccato succession.

  The words push Becker back. “Have a seat,” he says quietly.

  The receptionist slinks away as we sit.

  “How do you know?” Becker says after a pause.

  “Lab results, sir,” Maurice says.

  “But I thought—”

  “They were wrong.”

  Becker thinks for a moment. “So what brings you here?”

  “We are investigating what happened,” Maurice says.

  “You meaning KCPD and the Kansas City Star?”

  Maurice hesitates.

  Becker senses the shifting momentum and leans forward forcefully. “If you are here representing KCPD and the Star, I’d like to get Chief Roberts and Wes Morton on the phone to confirm.” He casually pulls back his sleeve to expose his u.D.

  My body tenses.

  “Call them if you want,” Maurice says coolly, “but they’ll just tell you what we’ll tell you now.”

  “And that is?” Becker asks condescendingly, moving his left hand toward the u.D on his right wrist.

  “That neither of us is officially on this case. That both of us have been specifically told not to pursue it.”

  “So why are you here? Why shouldn’t I just have you escorted out?”

  “Because we think MaryLee Stock’s baby may have been yours, sir,” Maurice says, the “sir” sounding quite a bit less deferential this time.

  A look of disgust flashes across Becker’s face. “That’s outrageous. Get out of here.”

  Neither of us moves.

  “I don’t need to answer your questions,” Becker says. His eyes burn like a bull preparing to charge but he still doesn’t tap his u.D.

  “You don’t, sir,” Maurice says, then lets the silence hang. “And you might be able to shut us up. But then again you might not.”

  Becker stares us each in the eye before speaking. “I don’t need to explain myself to you, but let me make one thing clear. I did not have relations with MaryLee Stock nor ever would I have. She was like a daughter to me.”

  I read the anguished look on Becker’s face and maybe even believe him, but not enough to pull back. “I visited Rapture Grove Ranch yesterday,” I say softly, “but you already know that.”

  Becker does not respond.

  “I spoke with your veterinarian, I believe his name is Dr. Barkley.”

  Becker glares.

  “We know you are trying to breed a red heifer.”

  “I’ve nothing to hide about that,” Becker says coolly.

  “I agree,” I say, “but we have reason to believe that the fetus, the baby, inside of MaryLee Stock had also been genetically mutated.”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other?” Becker spits out. “What are you getting at?”

  “It had an extra chromosome.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Let me put it to you this way, sir,” Maurice says. “We have reason to believe that the fetus inside MaryLee Stock may have been your genetic offspring and that you were somehow involved in making this happen through an association with the Bright Horizons fertility center.”

  “That is outrageous.”

  “Because we believe this,” Maurice escalates, “we can’t help but think you may have had something to do with the murder of MaryLee Stock. Does that help explain why we are here, sir?”

  Becker’s heavy breathing punctuates the silence. “Let me tell you this,” he says, controlling his rage and looking down at the coffee table. “These are outrageous and completely unfounded allegations.”

  I have to admit that I respect the way he handles himself.

  “But,” he continues, looking me straight in the eye, “I will tell you with everything I am, I had nothing to do with the death, the murder, if that’s what you say, of MaryLee Stock, and”—his voice shifts lower and seems to come from the depths of his soul—“I will do everything in my power to help you find out who committed this monstrous act.”

  Cobalt Becker never ceases to amaze me.

  Maurice’s tone conveys less amazement. “In that case, sir, we need your help.”

  Becker focuses on Maurice and lifts his eyebrows.

  “We need you to get the feds off our backs,” Maurice says.

  “What feds?” Becker asks.

  The question startles Maurice. I step into the gap. “The feds who have taken the case from the KCPD and forced the Star to drop the story. We need you to reverse that.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about, but I can try,” Becker says.

  I don’t know if I believe Becker or not.

  “I need you to do better than that,” Maurice says, getting up to leave.

  I follow.

  At the door, Maurice turns back. “But if we find out that you were involved in this murder, I will personally haul you in.”

  Becker stands erect and defiant, his fierce eyes fixed upon us as we march out the door.

  43

  “We’ve got to talk right away,” Jerry says nervously. His voice is frazzled.

  “Okay. So let’s talk,” I say into my earpiece as Maurice drives us back to Kansas City.

  “This is, is big. It’s a big deal.”

  “Jerry,” I say, frustrated, “tell me.”

  “We need to talk in person.”

  “We’re in Belton. We can meet you in forty-five minutes.”

  “We?” Jerry asks.

  “I’m with Maurice Henderson. We can meet you at—”

  “Stop,” Jerry orders. “I’m sending you a Frankly message on your u.D. It will disappear i
n ten seconds. So will your response.”

  That Jerry is being so cautious when he’d earlier been so confident about our encrypted u.Ds sends a cascade of worry through my mind.

  The message arrives on my u.D.

  Lewis and Clark statue, 8th and Jefferson. The message vanishes.

  “Got it,” I say as I tap off the call.

  “What the hell was that?” Maurice asks.

  “I have no idea, but it doesn’t sound good.”

  I don’t see Jerry when we arrive. Maurice’s car idles in the circle surrounding the statue of Lewis and Clark surveying what was once the wilds of the Great Plains. The explorers are surrounded by a mournful Sacajawea, a nondescript black guy with a gun, and a trusty and loyal dog, all now condemned to gaze in perpetuity over the crumbling highway, a series of abandoned factories and underused warehouses, and the semiretired Wheeler municipal airport.

  The sound of Jerry’s Tata Neo screeching to a stop pulls me back from 1804.

  Jerry jumps from his car, his right hand waving wildly over his tablet as if he’s controlling a marionette dance routine inside the machine.

  I reach back to open the door and he jumps in.

  “I told you that Bright Horizons clinic is owned by Bright Horizons Holdings LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Corporation,” Jerry says feverishly, “which is 100 percent owned by Sunrise Holdings, the Cayman Island shell company.”

  “Go on.”

  “But the real question is who owns that. I’ve been trying to crack the code for the Cayman Island company registration. It’s impreg-nable.”

  “You said.”

  “I found the date when the company officially started doing business and when references to the company started appearing.”

  “Go on,” Maurice says.

  “So I looked for law firms and accounting firms that handle this kind of work to see if I could cross-reference dates. I found that there was one main registration service. Their computer system was well defended but not perfect.”

  “So you hacked it?” Maurice asks.

  Jerry looks at Maurice and keeps going with this narrative. “In the three days before the new company was established thirteen new requests were made to the registration service. I tracked these thirteen companies and eleven of them were actually real companies setting up subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands.”

  “And this means?” Maurice says.

  “That anyone trying to hide something would at least try to be more careful.”

  “Which leaves two,” I say.

  “So I tracked the two and one led me to a home computer I easily cracked. It was a guy in Long Beach, New York, registering a porn site. The other was protected with SHA eight.”

  “What’s that?” Maurice asks.

  “Secure Hash Algorithm version eight, the most sophisticated encryption algorithm in the world. Someone has gone to great lengths to protect this thing.”

  “Just like the malware on MaryLee’s computer,” I add.

  “But there was one glitch. They didn’t erase their acquisition code for the encryption program.”

  Maurice and I perk up.

  “The newest encryption algorithms come from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. When someone downloads the program from them, a code gets attached to the downloaded copy as a tracker. Smart users then erase it.”

  “So do we know who downloaded it?” Maurice asks.

  “The trail led me to the office of a tax attorney in Switzerland, Viktor Brueller.”

  “Why is a Swiss tax attorney using highest-end encryption systems to transfer money to a Cayman Islands holding company?” I ask.

  I interpret Maurice’s look as telling me not to be an idiot.

  “But Brueller was sloppy,” Jerry says. “I had one of the guys from OpenNet probe his system, and it didn’t take that long to find the vulnerabilities.”

  “And?” I say impatiently, annoyed that Jerry keeps pausing at the end of his sentences.

  Jerry hardly hears me. “We went through his records and found that two days before the Cayman Islands holding company had been created $280 million were transferred to his office by a private company in Wilmington, Delaware, called Talonsmark,” he says breathlessly. “Talonsmark, it turns out, only existed for a month. It was an office with no people. The names listed on their office lease forms don’t even match records of people living in the Delaware region or anywhere.”

  “Which means . . . ?” I say.

  Jerry completes my sentence. “That someone is trying to set up two front companies.”

  He lets the words hang in the air for a moment. “But that’s harder to do in these days of electronic records than it used to be.”

  Maurice has had enough. “Tell us what you know,” he commands.

  “A $280 million money transfer is hard to mask.”

  Maurice’s look could wilt lettuce.

  Jerry breathes in again as if preparing to drag the information out from deep inside of him. He looks at us, making sure we are prepared to hear what he is about to say. “I won’t bore you with the details of how we figured this out—”

  “Don’t,” Maurice commands in his voice of God.

  Jerry nods, lost in his thought before snapping to attention. “It came from the US Department of National Competitiveness.”

  44

  There are moments in life when something hits you with a force so profound it almost alters your constitution. It scrambles you. They don’t happen often.

  I’ve had three the past week.

  That MaryLee Stock was carrying a genetically enhanced embryo was one. That I may just love Antonia Hewitt was two. That the genetically enhanced embryo was inserted into MaryLee Stock at a fertility clinic owned by a front company apparently controlled by the United States government is a whopping number three.

  The revelation is too big to be swallowed in one gulp.

  The word slowly leaks through Maurice’s clenched lips. “Why?”

  I put my palms together and hold them in front of my face. “What do we know about the DNC?”

  “Created by Congress through the National Competitiveness Act of 2021 to help America compete with China,” Jerry pipes in. “Bundles reform recommendations vetted through the National Competitiveness Board for an up-or-down vote by Congress . . .”

  Maurice and I both zone out from this civics lesson that anyone who lives at all consciously in America could repeat. The National Competitiveness Act was the signature act of President Lewis and Vice President Alvarez’s national unity government. Before it, America seemed to be on a path of inevitable decline in the face of China’s rise. The grand bargain of the National Competitiveness Act had begun to turn things around. Each year, the Department of National Competitiveness puts together a list of necessary fixes, Congress holds hearings and debates the substance, and the entire list is voted on in an up-or-down vote. And what a difference it’s started to make.

  In the two years since the act was passed, the US has pushed back the retirement age for Social Security, allowed all Americans to buy in to Medicare, limited the power of unions, eliminated unfair loopholes from the tax code, massively expanded opportunities for skilled immigration, and instituted world-class educational standards. We slapped tariffs on targeted Chinese goods and made it clear that they would go up unless China started actively protecting US intellectual property rights and guaranteed reciprocal market access. People once said it could never be done, but America instituted a carbon tax that’s helping alternative energy investment boom in the US. If there is one government agency that is a hero of this process, it is the Department of National Competitiveness.

  And now this.

  “We may think that the DNC owned the clinic,” Maurice says matter-of-factly, “that MaryLee got impregnated there, but we still don’t know who killed her. Until we do, all we’ll be able to say is that the US government may own a chain of fertility clinics, which we can only try to prove cir
cumstantially based on illegal hacking. It’s not much to go on.” Maurice pauses reflectively. “It’s just enough rope for us to get hanged with. We need more information.” He takes out his u.D.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Your friend,” he says to me before speaking into the earpiece. “Put Reverend Becker on,” he orders gruffly.

  I watch Maurice listening intensely to the response. “Hmm,” he says insincerely. “Well, I’m just going to tell you this once, ma’am,” he continues. “This is Kansas City Police Department Inspector Maurice Henderson, and if you don’t get Reverend Becker on the line in one minute I can guarantee you’ll be hearing the sirens any moment now.”

  His voice softens after a short pause. “Why, of course I’ll wait. Thank you, ma’am.”

  Another pause.

  “Hello, sir . . . Sorry, sir, I needed to get their attention . . . I’m sure that’s true, sir, but that’s not my concern right now . . . Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. Only you can decide how you want to play your hand. . . . That’s a better approach, I think. What have you done so far to get the feds to stand down?. . . Really? I find that hard to believe. We’ve actually met the federal marshal . . . I hear you . . . Call me when you know more.”

  Maurice taps off.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “He says Senator King’s chief of staff called the Justice Department.”

  “And?”

  “They didn’t know anything about a News Protection Act enforcement action.”

  45

  “Somebody out there is showing a complete willingness to kill,” I tell Maurice as he drives me back to Toni’s friend’s car, “and your plan is for us to announce ourselves?”

  “Not us,” Maurice says dryly, “you.”

  “So you want me to be a goat tied to a stake to attract predators?”

  “This isn’t about finding out what happened to MaryLee anymore. If there’s a link—”

  “I know, Maurice,” I say, cutting him off.

  Maurice squints. “I think they call it a lamb in this context. We’ve got to learn more about Gillespie and we’re not going to know if there are other MaryLees out there until we figure out what happened here.”