Hazor took a new grip on his gun, and Martin turned toward him. The captain had his hood up. His poncho didn’t reflect the firelight the way the plastic rain slickers did. He was virtually invisible out there. They’d been glancing speculatively at each other off and on throughout the long stormy night.
Just get it over with.
Martin rose to his feet and walked through the drizzle. When he stood looking down at Hazor, he said, “Can we talk, Captain?”
“Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”
Martin propped his fist on his holstered pistol. “I wanted to thank you. For tonight. I froze. The sight of the children on deck was just so … Thanks. For trying to snap me out of it.”
“You just weren’t thinking well, Nadai. Been there plenty of times myself.”
If Martin hadn’t turned the boat away, they’d all be dead and the ancient jar in his pack would be resting on the bottom of the ocean right now. Martin broke out in a cold sweat, and unconsciously rubbed his hands together.
Hazor glanced at Martin’s hands. “Pontius Pilate syndrome?”
Martin stopped and stared at his fingers. Was he subconsciously trying to wash his hands of the responsibility for what might have happened?
“Christ, you’re too observant.” Martin slumped to the sand beside Hazor.
As the storm rolled in from the ocean, wind drove breakers against the hull of their boat where it rested on the shore. If the waves got any worse, he’d have to go stake it down on the beach—which he did not want to do. In case of attack, they needed to be able to shove it into the water fast.
Hazor said, “There’s something I need to ask you, Nadai.”
“What?”
“Anna mentioned the Angels of Light. Who are they?”
Martin let out a breath. “Well, they’re an obscure religious construct. Do you want the long answer or short?”
“I want to know everything.”
“That, my friend, would take a few semesters, but I can give you a decent synopsis in a few minutes.”
“Thanks.”
Martin rubbed his brow, trying to decide where to start. References to the Angels of Light were found in the Bible and throughout noncanonical literature.
Hazor said, “Start with Satan, okay? He was an Angel of Light, right? I vaguely remember that from Sunday School.”
“What you remember is 2 Corinthians 11:14, ‘Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of Light.’ But that’s a much later interpretation.” Martin tugged his fedora lower over his eyes to shield his face from the rain, which had started to fall harder. It sheeted from his slicker, creating a dented ring in the sand around his body. “Originally, the Hebrew word for satan could mean a sort of evil inclination which infects humanity. But it was also a common noun for an opponent and related to the verb that meant ‘to accuse.’ The opponent, or accuser, could be either human or supernatural.”
Hazor’s brows drew together. “I had the feeling Anna meant that there was a Satan out there who appeared as an Angel of Light. A bad guy. Or guys. What did you think she meant?”
“Wish the hell I knew.”
Anna rolled over, as though she’d heard her name, and the sea breeze flapped her hood around her face, creating that distinctive plastic crackling sound. Martin’s anxiety eased a little. So long as he could see her, he felt better.
“Can you venture a guess?”
“I think she actually believes the end is upon us. The Angels of Light are pouring God’s wrath all over the earth. That was their primary duty.” He extended a hand to the falling rain. “Judgment Day.”
Hazor looked like a man who’d just been tapped on the shoulder by a ghost. “Pretty gloomy.”
Martin couldn’t help it. He laughed. “Well. Yeah.”
Firelight reflected in Hazor’s eyes. His hands must have tightened on his AK-74 beneath his poncho, because the barrel shifted. “Nadai, what are you and Anna doing out here?”
Martin wiped the rain from his face. “This is all about the Marham-i-Isa, Hazor. I’ve always wanted to find it, or at least to understand it. I’ve written extensively about its history, the ancient medical practitioners who mentioned it, and its probable formula. But I never thought it actually existed, until Anna walked through my door.”
Hazor cocked his head. “So, fame?”
“Well, there may be some of that going on in the back of my mind, though I hope not. More than anything, I suppose I actually believe it cured the sick.”
Hazor’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And raised the dead?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
Hazor paused and seemed to be quietly examining the ocean while he thought about that statement. “Is Anna in love with Hakari? When she talks about him, there’s always a softness in her voice.”
“I think she is, yes.”
He nodded. “So Anna may be thinking with her heart, rather than her brain.”
“If so, it makes our situation even more precarious. No one—and I mean no one—knows the secret information that Anna does.”
“Not even you?”
“Certainly not me. She doesn’t really trust me. For whatever reason, she doesn’t think she can trust anyone.”
Rain beaded on Micah’s dark cheeks. “Then it appears that we’re playing a high-stakes poker game, and she’s the only one who can see the cards.”
“That’s pretty much how I’ve got it figured.”
Hazor reached into one of the interior poncho pockets, and pulled out a small computer. A faint blue glow flashed in his eyes.
“If you like that electronic gadget, you’d better not let Anna see it. She’ll throw it in the ocean.”
Hazor glanced down at the device, then his gaze shot upward as though searching the sky for aircraft.
“Do you see something?”
“Drone.”
“What? Where?”
Hazor held up the device to show Martin the screen. What a marvel. The terrain was crystal-clear and the sky was alive with motion. Satellites and space junk filled the spaces between the stars. Martin’s eyes widened when he saw a dark spot moving through the sky above them. He craned his neck to look up. “What’s it doing up there?”
“Probably cataloging the effects of the CW.”
Hazor pulled his AK out so that anyone watching them could see it, and aimed it at the drone.
“Think they’ll be afraid of one guy with a rifle?”
“If I survived the spray, yes. They’ll want to remedy the situation.”
Panic warmed Martin’s blood. “Oh, right. Jesus. Time to go.”
He sprinted back to the fire to wake Anna.
CHAPTER 34
OCTOBER 19. 0400 HOURS. ABOARD THE USS MEAD.
The small cramped lab gleamed around Maris, the walls too white, the stainless steel tables and equipment too reflective. Military doctors hurried around her, checking monitors, speaking in low ominous tones. She saw the doctors’ movements reflected in the shiny tabletop where she sat hunched over her microscope. When she took a deep breath, the room smelled astringent, having been recently sterilized for the thousandth time that day. Though they placed the dying in a quarantine camp onshore, a few experimental cases moaned or wept in the room next door.
Private Madison, their guard, stood outside the door watching nervously as a soldier was pushed by on a gurney. They’d strapped the man down, but he kept crying, “Stop! Let me die! Don’t experiment on me! Just let me die. Please!”
Maris gritted her teeth harder. Being here was far more agonizing than she’d thought it would be. How did the meager medical staff do it? Day after day, watching people die and knowing there was nothing they could do to help them? She could see it in the doctors’ and nurses’ eyes when they shouldered past her to look at the monitors displaying the latest information from their testing programs. They came into the room, leaned over the computers, then all the strength seemed to drain from their bodies. For a time, they just stood with the
ir eyes closed, as though they couldn’t bear to look at the results any longer.
Maris swiveled around on her stool when the medic, Corporal Janus, walked back into the room holding two cups of coffee. Dressed in a white plastic jumpsuit, he had red hair and large freckles.
“God bless you,” Maris said as she took one from his extended hand. “I’m half blind from staring into this microscope. I need a break.”
“And coffee is the one thing there’s still plenty of, so there’s more when that’s gone.”
Janus sank down atop the stainless steel stool in front of the glowing computer screen where he’d been working; it filled one corner of the lab. Glancing at his screen, he said, “Still correlating data. It’s taking a long time.”
Janus took a drink of coffee and let his gaze drift around the room. Fatigue lay in every line of his face. “Speaking of data, have you had a chance to wade through all the Leipzig documents?”
“About half of it. There’s a lot there.” Maris glanced at the foot-high stack of papers. “I’ve been concentrating on trying to replicate their most important results, but I am confused by many of the notations in the reports.”
“Like what?”
Maris lifted her coffee and sipped it. It tasted wonderful. “The first thing that struck me was the names. Cozeba told us this new information came from a German scientific team in Leipzig, where I’m stationed. I work with the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology all the time, but I don’t recognize any of the researchers’ names.”
Janus shrugged. “It may have been a highly classified project related to bioweapons research.”
“Doubtful. The geneticists in Leipzig were afraid they had created it.”
Janus just stared at her for a couple of seconds. “What?”
Maris’s gray lab coat bore stains from the reagents she’d been working with for the past twenty straight hours. She brushed at them. “They had a top secret laboratory dedicated to the study of ancient DNA. They found something very similar to LucentB in bones from Denisova Cave in Siberia.”
“You mean it’s Denisovan?”
Maris nodded. “Pretty sure. Not positive yet. Denisovans were close relatives of Neandertals—”
“Over thirty thousand years ago, right?” Janus propped one elbow on the tabletop to massage his throbbing temple. “I love Scientific American. That’s where I read about them. Why did the Leipzig team think they’d created LucentB?”
“Patient Zero, the Frenchman, had been working in their lab for two years. He was a graduate student studying the ancestral forms of viruses. The researchers suspected that the Frenchman, Marc Braga, had accidentally contaminated the equipment, maybe it hadn’t been washed well, and when he’d added his latest Neandertal DNA sample, it had blended with another ancient DNA fragment in the tube.”
“What other ancient DNA? From what species?”
“Braga had been working with so many, they weren’t certain. Most of their time was spent trying to identify what he’d created and how.” Maris shook her head. “They could never identify the sequences that may have mixed.”
“But, I don’t understand. Why couldn’t they identify them? They should have known—”
“I think they were wrong, Janus. There’s a lot about DNA that no one understands, but I don’t think it happened in their lab. They were just so guilt-ridden they kept running the same tests over and over trying to find it so they could clear their consciences.”
“Which means Leipzig wasted a lot of time.”
Maris used her coffee cup to point to the documents again. “But I want you to read everything for yourself. You may come to different conclusions than I did.”
“Maybe, but I’m a medic, not a microbiologist.”
Flashes of the Neandertal child’s skull appeared behind Maris’s eyes. The boy kept staring up at her, his empty eye sockets pleading, as though trying to get her tired brain to make the connection. Someone put the skull in that ossuary for us to find. They wanted us to know that there was a link between the skull and LucentB. And the cure Anna had been looking for. Was it based on that child’s DNA?
“Captain, is it possible that the Neandertal child’s skull we found in the ossuary was actually Denisovan?”
“Could have been.”
“All right,” he whispered in awe. “I finally understand the mass migrations of people trying to get to Africa. It must have appeared to be a refuge. The last place on earth safe from the contagion.”
Maris gave him an exhausted nod. “Yes, I made that same connection about an hour ago. I remember in 2010 when my own laboratory in Leipzig sequenced the Neandertal genome and discovered that the only pure modern humans left on earth were sub-Saharan Africans. All Europeans and Asians have some level of Neandertal or Denisovan contribution to their genomes. We are all impure hybrids.”
“Does that mean sub-Saharan Africans are immune?”
“Possibly, but it could simply be that the retrovirus takes longer to mutate among sub-Saharan Africans—though I suppose some may be immune.”
Maris wondered about the pockets of people around the world with sub-Saharan African ancestry. Had they banded together to protect themselves? They’d better have. In a world of humans dying like flies, those who did not immediately get sick would be the objects of hatred and murder.
“General Cozeba is going to demand ironclad proof, Captain.”
“Believe me,” she said softly, and looked around to make sure no one stood close by to hear him. The fluorescent gleam in the room turned his skin chalky. “I understand the horror of what I’m saying. That’s the test I’m running right now. If everyone with archaic genes is doomed to get the plague, that’s virtually the entire world. If we can just figure out the specific archaic sequence—”
“Captain, how is it possible that Cozeba only recently discovered these reports? America had teams of scientists all over the world—the best geneticists, microbiologists, and virologists on earth—working on this. Don’t you think the U.S. government would have—”
“Don’t go there. Trust me. I’ve been poring over the Leipzig information for hours. They were terrified.”
That comment seemed to rattle Janus. He sat forward. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see? LucentB starts by attacking people with Neandertal or Denisovan genes. People of European and Asian descent are the most vulnerable. But the first U.S. campaigns against the plague were launched in Africa. We laid waste to most of northern Africa.”
Janus didn’t quite grasp the implication. “I guess we had to draw a line in the sand somewhere.”
Maris filled her lungs, before saying, “General Cozeba’s scientists knew that the plague started in France and radiated outward from there. The logical solution to stop the plague would have been to bomb Europe, but he launched Mount of Olives in Africa. Think about it, Corporal. Why Africa?”
His gaze bored into Maris. “Are you suggesting that Mount of Olives had nothing to do with the plague?”
“Exactly the opposite.”
Janus sank back in his chair. “Do you mean…” He took a breath. “It was common procedure to test vaccines in Africa. Is it possible that Cozeba’s scientific team recommended—”
“They must have demanded extensive testing, and Africa would have been a good choice. In fact, I would have started with a control population of sub-Saharan Africans, people without Denisovan or Neandertal genes, and therefore supposedly immune. I would have used them as a control group.”
“Vaccines are usually created from the killed virus—a chemically inactivated virus that the immune system can still recognize—which is why they often only provide short-lived immunity. That’s why you have to be revaccinated over and over. You don’t think they were desperate enough to develop a vaccine from the live virus, do you?”
Maris was reasoning it out behind her eyes, shaking her head in denial. “No. No, they could not possibly have been so careless. The virus could have r
everted to virulence, and they already knew how deadly—”
“They were in panic mode.”
“Yes, but they knew that a live vaccine could mutate in the host to create a far more lethal form of the disease, or even several new…” Her voice faded.
They stared at each other.
Maris lowered her voice. “Dear God, are you suggesting that live virus vaccines may be responsible for the various strains we’ve seen? Maybe that’s the answer for why Cozeba started bombing in Africa. He was trying to cover up the evidence of his catastrophic error?”
“I’m just wondering, that’s all. And if I were you, I don’t think I’d mention that to anyone, until we have evidence to support it.”
“Of course not.”
Was the goal of Operation Mount of Olives twofold? First, to stop the newly mutated viruses that originated with the live vaccines, and second, an attempt to eliminate the evidence?
Maris laughed suddenly, and it made Janus look at her as though she’d gone insane.
“What is there to laugh about, Captain?”
“I was just thinking that you and I have European ancestry. We have a lot of archaic genes. We don’t have long to figure this out, my friend.”
Janus had a stoic expression. “I can’t die, Captain. I have a wife and four-year-old daughter at home. They need me. You must have someone, too.”
Maris propped her elbows on the table beside the microscope, and stared at the gleaming stainless steel, wondering if the corporal’s family was still alive. That question must be tearing him apart. “An old arthritic dog that I love with all my heart. Every time I have to leave, Jeremiah won’t eat for days. I think the only thing that keeps him alive is the knowledge that I always come home for him.” Be realistic. We might have seven days left. What can we accomplish in one week with limited resources?
Maris straightened on her stool. “All right, I need to arrange a meeting with Logan and Cozeba to tell them what we’ve found.”
Maze Master Page 18