The Lucifer Genome: A Conspiracy Thriller

by Glen Craney

  Marly nodded and sighed as she slid exhausted against the stones and brought her knees to her chin. “And there’s something else you’re not going to want to hear.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s probably too late to stop him. Even assuming we could find this surrogate Virgin Mary, it would take us years to comb through the medical records and track her down. Cohanim could have hidden her anywhere in the world.”

  Cas became distracted by a passing procession of Christian pilgrims who were carrying crosses on their shoulders down the Via Dolorosa in a reenactment of Jesus’ final agonizing hours. He watched as one of the wailing women in the group, dressed as the Blessed Mother, fell to her knees and reached for her imaginary Son.

  Marly sensed that he was troubled by something. “What’s wrong?”

  “Cohanim built his lab in Galilee.”

  “So?”

  “You think that was just a coincidence?”

  “The Israelis keep most of their livestock farms up there,” she said. “Probably just a good cover for his cattle-breeding scam.”

  “Maybe, but our Stetson-shady fundamentalist impresses me as the kind of guy who doesn’t stray far from his Bible.”

  “You think he’s trying to keep all the experimental variables the same?”

  “Whatever that means in English,” Cas said. “All I know is, Jesus was born of an unmarried virgin from Galilee. And scientists are pretty unimaginative when it comes to creativity.”

  She shot him a wry smile. “Thanks.”

  “Besides, Cohanim has apparently gotten used to getting the best of everything. If I know him—and we did share a plane—I’m pretty sure he’d demand an unmarried virgin from Galilee for his surrogate. If not just for old-time’s sake, then to replicate the original God DNA injection as closely as possible.”

  Inspired with another idea, Marly rose to her feet. “How old was the Blessed Mother when she gave birth in the manger at Bethlehem?”

  Cas opened his phone and punched up the Web browser. “Says here that most biblical scholars think she was between thirteen and sixteen. That was the Jewish custom at the time.”

  “I wonder how many unmarried girls from Galilee in that age bracket would be giving birth this week?”

  Cas flashed her that familiar lunatic twinkle. “Maybe we should find out.”

  RUSHING THROUGH THE MINISTRY OF Health building, Marly briefly flashed her old Columbia University ID card quickly and palmed it back into her wallet. She extended a hand to the young Ministry bureaucrat inside the second-floor office marked Information Services; Cas had already flirted their way past the baffled female security guard in the lightly fortified lobby.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. McKinney. Sorry I’m late.” She turned to Cas, who stood behind her, and ordered him around as if he were her valet: “Push back my meeting with the Prime Minister to four. And tell the Secretary General that the worst of the situation appears to be contained north of Tiberias.”

  The medical official, confused, glanced down at her calendar book. “I’m sorry. Did you have an appointment?”

  Marly affected an air of indignant authority, “My dear, the World Health Organization does not make appointments. Now, I’ll need an office and a computer. The equipment must be wiped down and disinfected. When I’m finished with them, the components should be destroyed. I’ve been to some rather dangerous hot spots in the last forty-eight hours. No chances should be taken. My life is expendable. But the lives of innocent workers here are not.”

  The desk official fumbled with her phone. “My boss is away for lunch.”

  “Of course he is,” Marly said with a threatening sneer. “I’ll just advise my superiors at the UN that the Ebola outbreak has spread another forty kilometers while your superior”—she swiped a surreptitious glance at the nameplate on the corner office—“Mr. Shechter thoroughly enjoyed his falafel.”

  The woman reached for a bottle of hand sanitizer on her desk and rubbed a squirt on her palms. “Ebola?”

  Marly moved closer to examine the woman’s eyes. “Have you been feeling a little under the weather? Itching a lot, as if your skin is being eaten?”

  The woman reflexively scratched at her forearm. “I thought I was just …”

  Marly ordered Cas, “Take this down. The potential contactee presents with dilated pupils and labored breathing. She is obviously itching.” She turned back to the horrified woman. “Have you been around raccoons or had sex within the last two weeks?”

  The woman felt her own forehead. “I … yes, I met this guy.”

  “Don’t worry. If we can stop this in its tracks, you may yet survive. Now, I’ll need to see records of all hospital admittances in Israel during the past week.”

  The woman began coughing. “But that’s confidential.”

  “Of course it is.” Marly turned as if preparing to leave. “It’ll take a day to get a court order. Meanwhile, if you start experiencing the least bit—”

  “Wait!” The woman glanced around the office, making sure that no one was around. Holding a Kleenex over her mouth, she motioned Marly and Cas down the hall and led them into an empty room with a computer station.

  Marly handed her some surgical gloves. “Probably best that you put these on before logging me in.”

  Gratefully accepting the gloves, the woman punched in a few numbers and letters. A database of hospital admissions appeared on the screen.

  “Tell you what,” Marly said. “Just to be safe, I’d better let you do the typing.”

  The woman scrolled down the list.

  Marly hovered over her. “We think we’ve isolated the source of the outbreak to a pregnant girl, age thirteen to sixteen.”

  “Poor child,” the woman said. “Is there any hope of saving her?”

  “We’re doing everything we can,” Marly said.

  The woman ran the filter through the admissions-updating database. “Looks like twenty cases fit those parameters.”

  Marly closed her eyes in despair. “That many?”

  Behind her, Cas muttered, “We’ll never be able to track down all of them in time.”

  Marly shot him a warning glance to shut up. Then, she leaned over the woman’s shoulder again and studied the list.

  The receptionist noticed her kindled interest. “These are not their real names. Our law requires minor girls to be admitted under an alias.”

  “Who decides what alias to use?”

  “The family, or the admitting guardian, chooses.”

  Marly did not respond to that revelation.

  Cas noticed that she kept staring at the woman’s neck. “Something wrong, Doctor?”

  “You wear a Crucifix,” Marly observed to the woman. “You aren’t Jewish?”

  “I am a Palestinian Christian.”

  Marly studied the names of the girls on the list again. Having learned a thing or two about how Cohanim’s demented mind worked, she tried to remember something that the friar had told them back at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She asked the woman, “You wouldn’t happen to know who the Virgin Mary’s mother was, would you?”

  “Of course. St. Anne.”

  Marly slumped, her hope dashed.

  “In Hebrew, she is called Hannah.”

  Marly suddenly revived. That was one of the names. Trading a suspecting glance with Cas, she pointed to the screen. “Could you pull up the file on this admission, the one with the alias of Hannah?”

  The woman hit a key and brought up the digital records with a photo of the pregnant girl. “She looks quite healthy to me.”

  “Does it say where she’s from?” Marly asked.

  The bureaucrat scanned the chart. “She came from a small Alawite village near our border with Lebanon.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cas said. “If she’s Syrian Alawite, why was she brought to an Israeli hospital?”

  The bureaucrat studied Cas suspiciously. “Who is this man again?”

  “My assistant,” Marly said, glari
ng a silent order for him to play his prearranged part of silent stooge. She turned back to the woman. “But he raises a good point. I thought relations between Syria and Israel were quite strained, especially with the civil war, and ISIS is only making things worse.”

  “Oh, relations between the two countries are still terrible,” said the ministry employee. “It is complicated. This girl’s home village is situated in disputed and occupied territory. Some villagers in Ghajar have accepted Israeli citizenship. Others have refused. This patient was found in Beirut. The Lebanese Ministry of Health made a determination that she was Israel’s responsibility.”

  “Big surprise there,” Marly remarked bitterly. “Who would want to help an unwed pregnant girl?”

  Cas whispered to her ear, “This is a dead end. Cohanim wouldn’t care about some Muslim girl. Let’s get out of here.”

  Defeated, Marly began backing toward the door as she told the woman, “Thanks for your help.” She turned to leave with Cas, but then caught the young woman dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. “Are you okay?”

  “Poor child,” the woman whimpered as she stared at the computer screen. “It says here she had to be brought in constrained and sedated. The admitting physician called for an emergency psych consult. The patient was diagnosed as delusional and taken to the mental-health wing of the Baruch Padeh Hospital in Tiberias. She was placed under psychiatric care there.”

  Cas was trying to pull Marly out the door. “Happens to the best of us.”

  The bureaucrat kept staring at the screen. “The girl claims that heavily armed strangers have been chasing her and trying to kill her.”

  Marly and Cas, nearly through the door, stopped in their tracks.

  “I’m sorry,” Marly said, turning back. “You said ‘heavily armed strangers?’”

  The ministry woman nodded with a sigh. “The paranoid hallucinations must have been caused by the strain of the pregnancy.” Shuddering with empathy for the girl, she turned to Marly. “Does that help you—”

  Marly and Cas were already running for the elevator.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Tiberias, Israel

  CAS AND MARLY SLIPPED INTO the basement kitchen of the local hospital and sniffed at the large pots of lentil soup simmering on a long panel of industrial burners.

  Spotting them, the head cook barked something unfriendly in Hebrew.

  “We were sent by the temp agency,” Cas said.

  The cook, apparently able to understand English when he wished to, pointed to a notice board above a time-card punch machine. “No jobs today!”

  Marly huffed in mock anger. “We drove all the way down here from Tel Aviv! They said you needed food-delivery personnel.”

  The cook stomped and loosed a flurry of curses. Suddenly remembering that they did not understand him, he switched languages in mid-shout, “Lazy Americans! Come to our country to experience the triumph of Zionism! Then you go back home and get fat on your McDonald’s double-cheeseburgers-and-bacon-super-sized! We do not want you fair-weather goyim-turned-Jews on holiday here! Get out of my kitchen!”

  “You’ll have to explain that to the man upstairs,” Cas said.

  The frenzied cook whirled to a stop. “What man?”

  Cas produced a document with the letterhead of the Caesarea Manpower company. As the chef read the letter, Cas stole a preening glance at Marly, proud of the forgery that he had created in just two hours at a local print shop. The requisition order for two new kitchen staffers held the fake but remarkably realistic signature of a Mr. Hiram Beracha, deputy director for the hospital, who fortunately was out of the office that week.

  The cook muttered a word that sounded like a chicken hawk screeching.

  Marly told Cas, “I’m no linguist, but I think that might have been ‘shit’ in Zion-speak.”

  Cas produced two more forms from his pocket. “If you don’t want us, you’ll have to fill out this paperwork. We get paid for the day, plus travel expenses.”

  The lids on the soup pots began popping from the boil. Staffers ran around the kitchen performing tasks as if a drill horn had just been sounded for a raid.

  The cook, already behind on lunch, threw the letter and forms into the garbage. “Get dressed! Smocks in lockers! You take tray carts to third floor!”

  CLAD IN GREEN STAFF UNIFORMS, Cas and Marly pushed their cart of lunch trays onto the hospital elevator and waited with a couple other riders until the doors closed.

  “Floor?” a nurse asked.

  Cas winged it, hoping they had one. “Psychiatric.”

  The nurse looked at the trays. “They don’t allow silverware up there.”

  Cas nodded. “Right. Some big machers from the Ministry of Health are here today. I guess they’re too high and mighty to eat with their fingers, like the patients and we have to do.”

  The nurse stared at him—and laughed coarsely. She punched in the fifth floor and grumbled, “This country is being ruined by the politicians.”

  Marly chimed in, “You got that right, sister!”

  When the doors opened, Cas and Marly nodded in comradeship to the nurse and wheeled the cart out. An armed police officer stood guard at the desk. They held their breaths and rolled by him and past the security desk. Marly held back a few steps as Cas approached the nurse’s station with the cart.

  The officer behind the desk glared up at him.

  Cas kicked the bottom rung of the cart and sent it toppling over. Trays and food scattered across the floor. Nurses and doctors stopped what they were doing and looked toward the source of the clanging.

  Cas stood over the mess, shaking his head. “Oy vey! What a klutz I am!”

  Several angry-looking nurses marched toward him.

  Amid the disruption, Marly hovered in front of the fire alarm near the elevator. When no one was looking, she punched it with her elbow.

  Red bubbles on the walls began flashing and a piercing blare filled the floor. Those patients who were not restrained rushed from their rooms and began screaming, their ears punished by the sirens. Overwhelmed, the orderlies tried to herd them back.

  Forgotten in the chaos, Cas and Marly slipped away and speed-walked down another hallway, looking into every room for a pregnant teenager.

  Marly realized they would never find “Hannah” this way before the nurses restored order. She stopped one of the orderlies running past them toward a wailing patient. “I have meds for Hannah. Which room is she in?”

  Cas glared at Marly, aghast that she would take such a brazen chance.

  But the orderly was too preoccupied with trying to corral patients to question her reason for asking. With a huff of disgust at his predicament, he shouted, “Seventy-two eighteen.”

  Cas and Marly waited until the orderly disappeared around the corner. They rushed to a wall map of the floor plan. The girl’s room was across the ward.

  They raced down the corridor.

  CAS CLOSED THE DOOR TO the patient’s room and quietly propped a chair against its latch to prevent anyone from entering.

  Marly approached the bed and found a sleeping girl who looked no older than sixteen. She figured the poor thing must really be sedated to have slept through the fire alarms. Her wrists were connected to intravenous tubes, and her belly was distended. She hadn’t given birth yet, but it looked as if the baby could arrive any moment.

  Cas tiptoed over to the bed, and whispered, “Is that her?”

  Marly glanced at the patient’s wristband, and nodded. She stared at the girl’s abdomen and wondered what was growing inside. Could this child really be carrying … she couldn’t bear to think of it.

  Cas quickly scanned the patient’s chart, written in Hebrew.

  “What’s it say?” Marly whispered.

  “From what I can remember from my Rosetta Stone tapes, looks like they’ve got her on a lot of sedatives.”

  Marly studied the clear bag hanging from the IV pole. A pump was pushing the liquid into
the girl’s veins. She read the label, which was marked in Hebrew and English. “Lorazepam. That’s prescribed for anxiety. She must have been through Hell and back.”

  Cas reached across her and turned off the valve on the drip.

  Marly gasped, “What are you doing?”

  “We need to get her coherent.”

  Marly watched the door, waiting impatiently for the sedation to wear off.

  The girl slowly opened her eyes—and recoiled from the two strange faces.

  Marly tried to calm her. “It’s okay. Do you understand English?”

  The girl nodded uncertainly, her eyes straining with alarm.

  “We’re here to help you,” Cas said, trying to calm her. “What’s your name?”

  Finally, the girl muttered, “Zaynah.”

  Cas jostled her gently to speed the recovery. “Where are you from?”

  “Ghafar.”

  “Has someone been trying to kill you?”

  The girl nodded again, this time with a little more animation.

  Marly was relieved that the girl spoke passable English. She grasped her hand in reassurance and whispered, “This is a very personal question. I am sorry, but we need to ask it. … How did you get pregnant?”

  The girl’s eyes watered with pain. “I do not know.”

  “You’ve never had relations with a man?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Who brought you to this hospital?”

  “A Christian man … he lives in Beirut.”

  “Was he your priest?”

  The girl looked shocked. “I am Muslim.”

  Before Marly could get a confirmation of that unlikely claim, the exhausted girl slipped back into sleep. She turned in disbelief to Cas. “Why would Cohanim choose a Muslim girl as the surrogate mother for the God embryo? He’s a fundamentalist Christian. There would have been plenty of Jewish or Palestinian Christian girls in Israel for him to target. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Cas looked at the chart again, flipping through several pages until he found a photocopy of a sonogram. He brought it closer to his eyes and studied it closely.