The Lucifer Genome: A Conspiracy Thriller

by Glen Craney

  Yes, now it came back to her.

  Receiving no answer at the Maronite’s door, she had staggered to a nearby shop to beg for something to ease her nausea. The shopkeeper, an old man, had kept looking at her suspiciously, as if he had wanted to despoil what little honor she had left. He had asked about her origins and family, and when she had unthinkingly mentioned growing up in Lebanon, he shot a knowing look at some men drinking coffee in the shop. Though she was careful not to mention the name of her village, she still felt a jolt from his insistent gaze at her grimy clothes and distended belly. Sensing danger, she retreated outside, only to find herself surrounded by several toughs. They had taunted her with hisses and had called her a whore, making certain they weren’t loud enough for anyone in a concrete building to hear. Then they started pelting her with rocks, delivering vigilante justice.

  After that, she remembered nothing.

  How many hours had she been lying out here? She reached a hand under her abaya and felt below her extended womb for blood, checking if she had expelled the fetus. Dying from a miscarriage would have been a blessing, she told herself. She wanted nothing to do with what was growing inside her. But no such luck. All she felt were the bruises from the stones.

  She lurched toward the entrance to the Maronite apartment compound and heard the screech of an iron gate. She tried to make herself invisible by pressing against the shell-pocked wall of an abandoned building, but a middle-aged man who had just opened the gate noticed her.

  He approached slowly with his hands up. “I am not here to hurt you.”

  Zaynah risked a step closer. “A cab dropped me on that corner there.”

  “Yes, we have been waiting for you. My name is Michel.”

  Zaynah blinked hard. He knew I was coming?

  Had the kind taxi driver called this man? With a trembling hand, she held out the note the cabbie had written his address on.

  The man took the paper and smiled as he read it. He beckoned her to him.

  She took a step—and collapsed. Something in her womb didn’t feel right. She grabbed her abdomen and moaned in pain. Were these contractions? She was gripped with terror.

  The man pulled a cell phone from his pocket, flipped it opened, and dialed a number. He shouted into the phone. “Ambulance!”

  While the man assisted her, Zaynah struggled to sit up. She saw two dark shapes turn the corner into the alley. Pushing with all her might, she staggered to her feet and craned her neck in time to see the strangers closing in on her. She cried, “Mr. Halifi!”

  The attackers—in black hoods and masks—slammed her benefactor to the street with a blow to the back of his shoulders. They grabbed her arms and began dragging her toward the alley.

  She screamed and fought at them, kicking and biting.

  An oncoming siren wailed—an ambulance barreled toward her.

  Her abductors froze. One of the goons pulled a pistol from under his vest and aimed it at her. The chilling wop-wop-wop from a police car followed behind the ambulance.

  “Son of a bitch,” one of the masked attackers muttered.

  Zaynah was stunned to hear the local religious enforcers speak English. She glared at the man on top of her—he sounded American. She screamed at him, “Go ahead! Kill me! May Allah curse you! Death cannot be worse than what I now suffer!”

  The second masked man tried his accomplice away. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Zaynah staggered to her hands and knees. Raging, she crawled after them and cried, “American bastards! What did you do to me?”

  The ambulance turned the corner and careered into the alley. Recovering from the blow to his neck, the Maronite Christian man who had offered to help her rose unsteadily to his feet and feebly waved at the headlights.

  Illuminated by the beams, the black-clad gunmen backed away and scampered off into the blown-out warrens.

  Two paramedics leapt from the ambulance and came hovering over Zaynah.

  She felt a needle prick her arm … an oxygen mask came over her face.

  In seconds, she passed out.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Coast off Southern Israel

  AS THE PROTEST FLOTILLA OF ferries and small yachts from Istanbul approached the militarized border coast of Gaza, hundreds of Muslim volunteers with the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights surged toward the bows and waved Palestinian flags in support of their oppressed brothers and sisters trapped beyond the coastline near Ashqelon. In the storage bins behind them lay humanitarian aid that included ballistic vests, night-vision goggles, gas masks, and stacks of Turkish lira.

  The somnolent swish of the lapping waves suddenly gave way to a distant but ominous whop-whop-whop. The protesters braced for another round of violence, trying desperately to hide their fear. During their previous attempt to break the Israeli blockade, six of their comrades had been killed and hundreds arrested by the Israeli navy.

  A lone scream on the deck was followed by a rush of feet to the starboard side. Five Super Frelon copters swooped down on the lead boat and dropped toward the deck from the gray horizon like hawks targeting prey.

  This time, the protesters were prepared for the onslaught. Many of them quickly changed from their lifejackets into bulletproof vests and handcuffed themselves to form a human chain to prevent the Israelis from arresting them individually and take them off the ship to be interrogated or arrested. They began chanting an anti-Israeli mantra from their Friday prayers:

  “Go to Jerusalem! Go to Jerusalem!”

  Israeli speedboats raced toward the flotilla from every direction.

  The protesters loosed a curdling wail of apprehension, sounding like an ancient army just before the first clash of spears. Sirens blared, and the Israeli officers on the speedboats shouted bullhorn demands in Turkish for the flotilla to stop. Hearing bullets whizzing over the hull, the chained protesters surged forward and waved their fists at the Israeli commandos converging on the lead boat and tossing grappling ropes across its railings. They lurched to the sides and fought to unleash the hooks, but they were too late.

  The commandos were already climbing the ropes.

  In the midst of this mayhem, two protesters who had neglected to chain themselves to the others slipped away and eased down the ladders leading below deck. They rushed into the cabin nearest the stern and locked the door behind them.

  Cas stripped off his khakis and protest T-shirt. He opened the duffel bags they had brought and pulled out the scuba gear and wetsuits he had purchased in Istanbul before signing up for this human-shield mission as a cover to get into Israel.

  Marly glared at his Speedo briefs, hoping they weren’t the same pair he had been wearing the first time they’d met. “Please tell me those have been washed.”

  “We don’t have all day to discuss laundry.” He signaled for her to get with the program, but when she crossed her arms, he tried to hurry her up. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Turn around.”

  Huffing at her annoying modesty, he angled away and stepped into his wetsuit. He heard her peeling off her blouse and pants. Just as she got down to her skimpy two-piece undergarments, he spun back around, his wetsuit still at his ankles. He whistled at what he saw. “Smoking bod.”

  She tried to cover herself. “You jackass!”

  He gazed at her, up and down. “Go to the gym much? Da-aamn.”

  “I work out on punching bags. Want a demonstration?”

  He reluctantly returned to the task of pulling up his wetsuit—until the zipper on the back slipped its teeth. These second-rate Soviet-era relics zipped clear down to the small of the back, making it a challenge for someone less flexible than a ballerina—like him—to zip himself up. “Oh, come on!” he growled, trying to twist himself around to fix the snag with the wetsuit still at his knees. “No wonder half the Russian Navy sank in World War Two.”

  The commando assault had already put Marly on edge. Now, startled by his shout, she glanced up and saw
the bulge in his Speedo. “You have got be kidding me!”

  “Uh …” Cas looked down helplessly at his boner, which was also impeding his progress getting into the suit. “I could use a hand here?”

  When she finally had her own wetsuit on and zipped, she moved to him, her eyes avoiding his crotch. She stood behind him and tried to re-track the zipper.

  Gunfire pinged against the ship’s hull and railings. Through the overhead deck, they heard muffled screaming that was turning from outrage to terror.

  Marly stomped her feet in impatience. “We have to get the hell out of here!”

  Cas was turning red. “What am I supposed to do about this damn zipper?”

  Marly saw that the waistband of his Speedo was caught in the teeth of the wetsuit’s zipper. “When did your mother stop dressing you?”

  Cas anxiously eyed the door, expecting Israeli commandos to burst in any second now. If that happened, his Mossad pal, Avram Isserle, wouldn’t stop this time at a garden-variety beating. Seeing that Marly was getting nowhere with the stubborn zipper, he yanked his wetsuit down to his ankles, his Speedo going along with the sweat-slicked neoprene and rubber. “Cut the damn thing off!” he yelled, pointing past his unflagging turgidity.

  Marly unclipped a diving knife from the buoyancy-compensator vest at her feet. She stood staring at him—all of him. “Don’t tempt me.”

  He tried to cover his groin like a soccer player waiting for a foul kick as she sliced at his underwear with the knife, splitting the elastic band. Finally freed, he yanked the sliced-up Speedo from the wetsuit, stepped back in, and zipped it up. “Pervert!” He snarled with mock outrage. “Hope you got an eyeful!”

  Boots thudded down the metal passageway.

  Cas picked up one of the scuba tanks and smashed through the narrow porthole. Then, he slipped the air canister back into the buoyancy-compensator vest. He inflated each BC with some oxygen from the tanks, clipped their masks, snorkels, and weight belts to the vests, and pushed both sets of gear through the small opening. He helped Marly up to the porthole. After she had wiggled through and splashed into the sea a couple dozen feet below, he followed her through the hole and into the water. They swam to their floating scuba equipment and slipped into the inflated vests and fins.

  Thirty yards from the boat, they looked up from the water and saw riot gas canisters rolling off the railings and splashing around them. Near the stern, the Israelis were cutting the protesters apart and herding them down a rope ladder to a waiting incarceration boat.

  He pointed for her to put in her regulator and slide on her black mask.

  Ready at last, she gave him the “okay” sign.

  One of the Israeli commandos on the deck caught the glint in the water from their face masks. He shouted at them in Hebrew, “Dai! Dai!”

  Shots whizzed all around them, slicing through the water. They deflated their vests and sank.

  MARLY SNEEZED AND COUGHED HER way through the crowded livestock auction yards at Bet She’an, the largest cattle exchange in Israel. The smells were unbearable, but at least they were keeping her awake. She hadn’t slept in two days, not since their swim to the coastal beach and the ride on the local bus inland. Now, as she and Cas passed stall after stall of farting cattle and hovering ranchers checking for signs of disease, she held her breath against the onslaught of knee-buckling aromas. Finally, she exhaled and managed to gasp, “What the hell was that one?”

  Cas sighed with mock ecstasy. “I’m guessing ammonia. Maybe a little bacterial disinfectant thrown in. Has a bit more fruity bouquet than cow. Not as blowzy, but it certainly outranks urine for the full aftertaste of acidity.”

  Marly kept scanning the straw-strewn aisles, half expecting Isserle to show up and drag them off to break rocks in the Sinai. Cas’s insane plan to join the humanitarian flotilla in Istanbul had succeeded by sheer luck alone. Yet this idea—posing as American ranchers exporting red-heifer meat—took the blue ribbon for lunacy. They simply could have asked representatives of the Israeli Cattlemen’s Foundation why anyone would want to develop an all-red cow. But seeing as how they were Americans, that might have raised red flags. So, Cas had to have things his way, working the operation undercover with hyper-discreet surveillance. She stopped and glared at him again. He was having way too much fun, dressed in that damned cowboy hat and swaggering around like John Wayne on weed.

  “Howdy,” Cas drawled as he tipped his brim to a passing Israeli businessman in a suit. “Huckle Hickabee from Tennessee. Might I take a moment of your time and flint your interest in the newest breed of beef in America?”

  The Israeli stared blankly at him.

  “Red meat,” Cas said. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. Well, ain’t all cattle beef red meat? This here meat I’m talking about is real red meat. And I mean cut from a red heifer. That’s right, did you hear me? I said a heifer that’s red. All over. Even the whites of its eyes are red. Now you might be asking what—”

  The Israeli man shook his head and walked away.

  “Yeah, this is working brilliantly,” Marly muttered. “How many satisfied customers have we scored already? Hmm, let’s see. I’m drawing a blank.”

  Cas pulled his hat farther down over his eyes, more determined than ever. “Somebody in this damn place has to know something about red heifers.” He saw that Marly looked distracted. “Cattle prod got your tongue, Doc?”

  Roused from her thoughts, Marly whispered, “You know, something’s been bugging me ever since we left Texas. If Cohanim is so hell-bent on winning some lottery by breeding red heifers, how does he prevent bulls from being born? Males would be useless to him. They’d be a huge waste of time and resources.”

  “Beats the hell out of me. For spooks, press ‘One’. For science, press ‘Two’. You would be in Department Two.”

  Marly searched the herds of bowlegged men who were migrating past her. “Maybe we should find someone around here who does know.”

  Cas glanced at the nametags passing by until one looked promising: Baruch Arons, Hebron Technologies. He nodded to cheer Marly on, “Go do that voodoo that you do.”

  Given her cue, Marly caught up with the bald man, whose rotund physique and deep-set eyes gave her the impression of a human bowling ball. Swallowing back her revulsion, she twirled her hair flirtatiously at him and purred, “Excuse me. Do you speak English?”

  Annoyed at the interruption, the man nodded brusquely.

  “I wonder if I might ask you a question?”

  “Toilets are in Pavilion Three, the next one over.”

  She resisted the urge to kick him in his Rocky Mountain oysters. “No, I mean, a question about cows. I’m a single mom—don’t even get me started on that! Anyway, I’m here with my daughter on her semester abroad from Columbia … do you have kids, by the way?” When he shook his head, she tsk’d under a charming smile. “The thing is, she’s two weeks late on this paper she’s doing for science class on cattle breeding.”

  The cattleman huffed. “What is the topic?”

  “Why, thank you for asking. Something to do with how ranchers decide whether they want to have a cow with testicles or one with—” She blushed and crossed her arms, looking as coy and bashful as an embarrassed débutante—“you know … breasts.”

  The cattleman couldn’t stifle a scorning laugh. “The term you’re groping for is ‘utter.’”

  Cas stood several feet away, trying to look inconspicuous while grudgingly admiring Marly’s acting chops and the cattleman’s skill with metaphors.

  “I grew up in Manhattan,” Marly told the cattleman, fluttering her lashes. “So, you’ll have to forgive my ignorance of all four-legged creatures.”

  “Tell your daughter to go online and look up ‘semen sexing.’”

  “Eww!” Marly put her hand to her heart in faked horror. “Oh, but my, she’s only sixteen! I’m just not sure—”

  “No, it’s completely innocent,” the cattleman insisted. “Until last year, ranchers had no way o
f improving the odds of birthing more heifers—a heifer is a girl cow—to increase their dairy production. But scientists recently developed a new technology.”

  “Did they?” She looked up at him in phony curiosity and reached out to touch his forearm.

  “It gets a little complex, so stay with me. There’s something called a Y chromosome, which produces male offspring, and an X chromosome, which produces females. Now what we’ve invented is a dye that is mixed in with the bull’s semen and sticks to the X chromosome.”

  “Kind of like a liquid magnet?” she asked.

  “That’s a crude analogy, I guess,” the cattleman said. “A machine detects the dye and sorts the sperm so that the Y chromosome can be filtered out. Then the semen is frozen and sold to farmers. It increases the production of heifers by ninety percent.”

  She gasped. “That is just fascinating! I can’t wait to tell my daughter!”

  The Israeli rancher reached for her hand and wouldn’t let it go of it. “Perhaps we could get together—”

  Her cell phone rang, just in the nick. She slipped her hand from the guy’s meaty paw to answer it. “Yes, honey. I’m coming back to the hotel right now. I just need to stop at a drugstore and pick up my bipolar prescription.” She turned to thank the man again, but he was hurrying off down the aisle between the pens.

  Cas sauntered up with his phone at his ear. “Nice work.”

  She seemed distracted. “I wonder if this semen-sorting works on humans?”

  “Should we get started on the experiment?”

  Pulled from her troubled thoughts, Marly rolled her eyes. Cas just couldn’t help himself. He suffered a kind of emotional Tourette’s Syndrome, she figured, always taking refuge in crass sexual jokes whenever he got nervous or felt threatened. Ignoring the remark, she looked over her shoulder at another Israeli a few steps behind them. “That guy over there has been following us for the last ten minutes.”

  Cas bent down as if to rub some cow dung off his boots. He glanced under his armpit at a bearded man who wore black trousers, a white shirt and a long black rekel jacket. Cas rose and spat at a bale of hay, mimicking the breeders around him. He whispered to Marly, “You’re a world-class actor, but you’d make a damn poor intel op.”