The Lucifer Genome: A Conspiracy Thriller

by Glen Craney

  She reached into her pocket and slid out the sliver of the Black Stone that she had grabbed on her way out of the apartment. It seemed to glow in the dim halo cast by the green accountant’s lamp on her desk. Why was everybody so hell-bent on possessing it? What could possibly be embedded in this cosmic chunk that would be worth enraging more than a billion people? Glancing over her shoulder into the dim corner of her office, she caught the outlines of the equation that she had scrawled across her chalkboard:

  87Srnow = 87Sroriginal + 87Rbnow * (elt - 1)

  She had forgotten to erase the isotopic imprints she had written when that crazed Malibu freak stood here in nothing but a banana hammock. She shook her head, wishing she could take back that moment of lunacy and avoid all of the trouble he had caused her. Desperate to take her mind off her problems, she decided to catch up on her igneous research. She tapped the hibernation-release key on her computer, which was always on. Her side business selling meteorites had been all but dead during these recent weeks. If, as she feared, her teaching job was in jeopardy because of her many absences that semester, she figured she’d better start earning some more money on the side.

  She typed into the Google Search box: Recent meteorite sightings.

  More than nine million results came up, topped by a Wikipedia entry that would tell any layman pretty much all anyone would ever want to know about space chips. The next entry down caught her eye. She clicked on the News link at the left side of her screen.

  “I’ll be damned,” she whispered with a low whistle. She read the rest of the news transcript:

  LLANO COUNTY, TEXAS (CNN) - Houston’s Johnson Space Center confirmed local reports here that something strange lit up the winter horizon last month.

  “Oh, yeah, we caught a glimpse of that sucker,” said astrophysicist Erin Trocker, who told CNN that she was “enthralled, delighted and not a little bit worried” about what she thought she had seen fly across NASA’s radar and telescopic screens. “We’re not sure, obviously, but the consensus here is that it was a brown dwarf star that soared across Earth’s atmosphere somewhere west of Dallas.”

  She had been so close to that little star, and hadn’t even known. Part of her wished she were still in Texas to track down its leftovers. A meteorite from a dwarf star that visible would probably be worth at least ten thousand bucks. She dropped the Black Stone sliver into her top desk drawer and locked it. Never mind that just about anybody, it seemed, could get into anything any time around Manhattan anymore.

  After flipping through her backlog of journals for an hour, she checked her watch. If anybody else had been staking out her apartment, surely they would have given up by now. She really needed her bed. Flicking off her lamp, she opened her office door. All the fluorescent hallway lights were out. Strange.

  Before she took another step, two men jumped her.

  She screamed and scratched at them, but her clawing nails caught only their thick woolen coats. She couldn’t get a hold of anything. Blood began pounding her brain, and the contusions, cuts, and bruises that spotted her body started throbbing. With her adrenaline drained, and fear and pain overwhelming her, she passed out.

  SHE CAME TO CONSCIOUSNESS ON the street. How much time had passed? The muggers had taken her watch, cell phone, and the new keys that she had recently cut for her apartment. At least she still had her wallet and her credit cards. Why didn’t they take those? Rising to her feet, she staggered out of the biological-sciences building and looked down Amsterdam Avenue. The sidewalks were nearly empty except for a few homeless people sleeping in doorways. It had to be well after midnight.

  Damn it! Now they’re assaulting me twice a day?

  Did the entire world have it in for her?

  Groggy and disoriented, she wobbled up to West 118th Street, determined to get back to her apartment and find out once and for all who the demented mastermind was who kept sending these thugs after her. When she finally reached her six-story walkup, she buzzed the intercom outside for the super’s apartment.

  “Whaddya? Hey, you have any idea what time it is?”

  “Irving, it’s Marly from Four-A.” Her voice was so feeble, she wondered if he could even hear her.

  “Oy, you! Whaddya, meshuggah? Out this time a night, cold as it is? D’ja lose ya keys-a somethin’, henh?”

  “Yeah, Irving, I’m crazy as a bat in a belfry. And, yeah, I somehow misplaced my keys, maybe left them at the office. Had to work late.”

  At least, part of that was true.

  The old superintendent shuffled down the marble stairs and let her in.

  “Hey, listen, I owe you,” she said, hiding behind her black woolen scarf as if she’d been freezing, to prevent him from seeing the bruises on her face. “Thanks, okay, and tell Mrs. Irving good night for me.”

  The moment she turned toward the second-floor landing, she could feel something was amiss again. Was she now so paranoid that she heard gun clicks around every corner? Without even taking out the spare keys that the super had handed over to her, she crept up to the third floor and pushed on her door.

  It was unlocked.

  The door creaked wide open in a terrifying arc. She tiptoed into the dim living room. She had left only her bedroom light on, and she kept the shades open to let in the silver glow from a street lamp. In the thin light pooling over her apartment, she gasped in horror. Everything in the room had been destroyed. Her computer was smashed to bits, and her futon was overturned, slashed with its cotton batting strewn among her shredded books. Her refrigerator and freezer were open, their contents thrown all over the kitchen.

  She inched into her bedroom and saw that it had been given the same treatment. Frantic, she found her line phone and called the only person she knew she could trust. “Paul,” she said, holding back the urge to cry. “It’s Marly. Again.” She couldn’t catch her breath. “God, I’m sorry! I really am, but—”

  “Calm down.” Dr. Brady spoke with that same tone of reassurance he had adopted during his visit to her in the hospital. “Just slow down. Take a few deep breaths and talk to me.”

  She decided against telling him about the break-ins and assaults. Recovering her composure, she said with fake serenity, “Listen, I’ve run into a bit of a dead end on some research. I’ve been doing a little freelance work for an intelligence type.” She hesitated, trying to figure a way to ask for what she needed without revealing that she had gotten involved with the DIA operative he thought was long dead. “I’ve lost his contact information. I was hoping you could call in a favor in Washington and find out how I can get hold of him.”

  “Would this have anything …” He cut off that question to ask another. “Good God, Marly what are you thinking? After that last mix-up in Queens?”

  She appreciated his paternal concern, but ignored it. “I need to find him.”

  “Who?”

  She braced for the reaction. “Cas Fielding.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. “Are you suffering some sort of breakdown? I told you, the guy is dead. And why—”

  She was starting to wonder if perhaps Brady, being so close to the CIA, had been intentionally kept in the dark about Cas’s relocation under an alias. After all, she had heard enough small talk from Cas to know that the Pentagon’s intelligence operation wasn’t particularly keen on trading national security secrets with the CIA. “Actually, I think he might still be alive.”

  There was another long pause on the other end. “That would be news to my friends at Langley.”

  “Is there some way you could double-check for me?”

  Brady released a heavy sigh of irritation. “Even if Fielding had somehow managed to escape the Saudis years ago … Listen to me closely. I’m only going to say it once more. Damn near everybody who ever got close to that lunatic ended up dying. Sometimes in the most excruciating ways. Or they’ve found themselves rotting in some Third World prison.”

  “Professor Brady,” she said, resorting to a desperate formality, �
�I am grateful for your concern, truly I am. But this is important to me.” She gritted her teeth. “Please. Just this time. Again. Dinner on me, I promise—soon as I get the chance.”

  “Okay,” he said, clearly annoyed, “I’ll check it out, just to put your mind at rest. But I want to know absolutely nothing about any of this. I’ve already told you I can’t vouch for your safety.”

  “Of course.” She was already way ahead of him on that front.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Two minutes later, he called back. “Marly.”

  “Yes?”

  He sounded shaken. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but apparently Cas Fielding has arisen from the tomb. He was reported last seen on a plane bound for Tel Aviv. I can’t tell you how we know this, but here’s a surprise”— his voice rang with sarcasm—“he stole a passenger’s boarding pass. The Israelis are planning a rude welcome for him when he lands.”

  She stifled a gasp. He jumped on a plane as a stowaway? Was he that broke?

  “Hello, Marly? You still there?”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “I had my one of my contacts email me the essentials on this guy over a secure account. You really need to know what you’re getting into.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Here’s for starters,” he said.

  She could picture him sitting at his computer, scrolling through what likely was some sort of encrypted dossier.

  “Fielding was a Goat at West Point.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He graduated last in his class. So did Custer, and we all know what kind of monumental screwup he was. Apparently, Fielding still holds the record for cadet demerits.”

  She had no trouble believing that.

  Brady seemed to be thoroughly enjoying whatever he was reading. “Thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.”

  “That seems to go with the uniform, doesn’t it?” She caught herself defending Cas. What was that all about?

  “Ranger school, then a stint at the Defense Language Institute. He learned Arabic. Flamed out, apparently, after the one very severe solo deployment with the DIA. We already know where that took place. His psychiatric debriefing—”

  “What?”

  “You heard me right. It was filled with more anagrams than are listed in the index of the DSM Handbook for Mental Disorders. Still, he managed to get an honorable discharge. Left the United States Army with a gold-leaf cluster—a major, headed straight for light colonel, maybe even higher-up. Shudder that particular thought.”

  He sounded like he was shuffling through some papers.

  “Anyway, he imploded. So with a doctor’s note, four years at the Point and cobbling together the ‘right’ amount of time served, thanks to pulling a few strings, of course, he managed to squeeze out just enough of a pension to keep him permanently surfing out in Malibu. At least, that’s what it says here. I hope that little list of horrors scares you straight.”

  She was still lingering on the psychiatric briefing.

  “Marly, am I talking to a wall here?”

  She roused. “Thanks, Paul. I have to run.”

  “Remember what I said. Don’t get within a thousand miles of—”

  She hung up and picked herself off the floor. Grabbing her handbag, she angled back down the stairs and raced back down Amsterdam Avenue, praying to get back to her office before the creeps who had destroyed her apartment found her again. Breathless, she turned into the campus and found a security cop. She asked him to escort her to her office.

  The guard led her up the Fairchild Hall stairs and brought her to her door. “You sure you’re okay, Professor? You seem a little rattled.”

  “No, I’m fine,” she lied, still trying to calm her breathing. “My sister was mugged last week. It’s got me a little on edge, is all.”

  “Understandable.”

  She dug out her keys. She hesitated, then cranked open the door. “Would you mind checking inside for me?”

  The guard brought his hand to his holster. “No problem.” He turned on the light and found the office empty. “Looks like you’re good to go, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” she said as she stepped inside. “Sorry for the trouble.”

  “Not at all. You’ve got the campus security number. Give us a call when you’re finished, and we’ll send someone over.”

  She nodded and shut the door behind the guard. When she got to her desk, she pulled her computer out of hibernation again and clicked opened her Gmail account.

  Strange … an email from herself.

  Of course! She’d forgotten all about it. Earlier that night, she had sent the results of the keyword-mining scan that she ran from her home computer. She hurriedly scrolled down the rotating list. All the files involved test results for chemical and biological compounds found on meteorites.

  Phosphate.

  Her memory fired. Hadn’t Cas’s old girlfriend in Brussels told them that INTERPOL’s heat-sensitive radar picked up traces of phosphate and carbon on the Black Stone meteorite? She hadn’t given it a second thought at the time, but now a major piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place for her: Those thieves in Dallas didn’t give a damn about the Black Stone! What they really wanted was—

  Someone pounded on her door.

  No way. Not three in one day.

  Where was that damn guard? She backed toward the window. The only way out was down the fire escape, three stories of rusty ladders and landings. She moved toward the phone to call—

  The pounding grew louder.

  She didn’t have time for campus security to get back up here. Hell, for all she knew, Mossad could have paid off those damn rent-a-cops to tell them where she was hiding. They sure as hell weren’t doing anything to keep her safe. And she couldn’t risk calling Brady again, not after she had repeatedly ignored his warnings.

  She slid open the window and stepped onto the narrow iron grate. She avoided looking down as she carefully descended the ladder and leapt to the sidewalk.

  Above her, a gunshot rang out. A bullet zinged past her head.

  She sprinted across campus to Broadway and flagged a cab. Pressing a hand to her pocket to make sure she still had her wallet, she shouted to the cabbie, “JFK! Fast!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  THE EGYPTAIR PLANE TAXIED TO the gate at Ben Gurion International Airport, and the pilot cut the engines. Seated in the rear, Cas was forced to cool his heels while an old biddy reeking of cheap cologne struggled to lift her bag from the overhead bin. Cohanim, standing up in First Class, was about to get a big head start off the plane. Cas knew if he didn’t catch him before he got to Customs, the Stetson-crowned thief would be out the terminal doors and gone with the wind.

  Customs … hmmm. He hadn’t exactly given that one enough thought.

  How would he get past Document Control? The last name on the ticket he had stolen in Riyadh said Rhys, not even close the name in his passport. And this was Tel Aviv, not Mogadishu, so there was no bribing his way in. The Saudis had probably notified Israeli airport security that a notorious freeloader was on board. That’s why the attendants had been unusually solicitous. They knew who he was but didn’t want him to become suspicious. He’d likely be greeted by a phalanx of Uzi-toting Hebrews the second he stepped off.

  He moved farther back in the cabin until he was face to face with the prettiest flight attendant, the one who understood English. “Could I bother you for some water?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  He noticed that her hands shook slightly, belying her forced hospitality. The airline personnel were all playing coy, waiting to nab him when the other passengers were gone to avoid a scene. When the attendant turned for the rear cabin to get a plastic cup, he reached for the cubbyhole next to the fire extinguisher and pulled out the crew sheet that, while boarding, he had lifted from the co-pilot’s blazer hanging in the cabin’s fron
t closet. He slid the sheet into his front pocket, out of sight.

  The attendant returned and handed him the water with both hands to keep it steady. “There you are, sir. Are you here to visit the Holy Land?”

  Impressed by her attempt to make small talk to delay him, he flashed her the grin that had launched a thousand one-night stands. “Hon, I reckon wherever you are is the Holy Land.”

  She blushed, apparently forgetting that he was a dangerous fugitive.

  He looked over his shoulders and saw that the seats had all cleared. Off the plane now, Cohanim had a good five-minute jump on him. Ignoring the attendant’s inquiry if he would like more water, Cas sauntered down the aisle, acting nonchalant as he tried to hustle. He casually lifted the crew sheet from his pocket again, unfolded it, and reviewed the itinerary that would tell him the names of the pilots and all the hotels where they would be staying that night. His only hope to avoid arrest was that the flyboys up in the bubble hadn’t been sent a mug shot of him during the flight.

  At the exit, he stuck his head inside the open cockpit. The co-pilot wasn’t there—likely in the head—but the pilot was finishing up his paperwork.

  He stepped a foot inside. “Barry? Barry Morris? Well, I’ll be double-damned. How long’s it been? I thought you flew for United.”

  The pilot looked up from his seat, confused. “Do I know you?”

  “Cedar Rapids.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, man! This is embarrassing.” Cas slapped his forehead then gazed at his shoes. “I’d always meant to call and apologize.”

  “Apologize? For what?”

  Cas snuck a glance at the rear cabin. The attendants were loading their baggage to exit the back of the plane. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it. I banged your girlfriend back when …” He reached for the door. “Do you mind if I close this? Y’know, kind of a personal issue here.”