The Lucifer Genome: A Conspiracy Thriller

by Glen Craney

  “Unless what?”

  “That woman in Lubbock you talked to on the phone.”

  “The dead girl-crone’s mother?”

  Marly remembered the coven ring she had found on Bridget Whelan’s decomposed finger. “Didn’t she say that her daughter was into paganism?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Covens and witches. They worship the Goddess, right?”

  “Hey, you’re the witch expert on this team.”

  Marly was so focused that she didn’t hear the taunt. “A Goddess worshipper who happens to have a graduate degree in genetic engineering. That’s a pretty dangerous combination, don’t you think?”

  “Cut to the chase, McKinney. What exactly are you getting at?”

  She glanced again at Zaynah’s swollen abdomen. “It’s never been done, at least not that I know about. But I’ve read in the scientific journals that several biotech companies have been trying for years to perfect the process. It’s the Holy Grail of genetic engineering for those who hope to see the world populated by women only.”

  Cas’s jaw dropped open to a wide grin. “Sounds like Paradise, as long as I’m grandfathered in to provide the bedroom services.”

  “The idea is to reshuffle the DNA strands to isolate and remove the ‘Y’ chromosome. Or, in laymen’s terms … the end of the Patriarchy.”

  Cas leapt to his feet. “You’re saying this Whelan girl sabotaged Cohanim and turned his God embryo into a Goddess embryo?”

  Marly’s head was pounding from the heat. “That must be why Cohanim has been trying to kill his modern Virgin Mary here. He probably only found out about the DNA reshuffling by Bridget Whelan after the implantation. He wants to eliminate both mother and fetus … and start over.”

  “The guy’s ruthless, all right. But why would he do that?”

  “No fundamentalist Christian could accept God coming back as a woman. It would defy every prophesy in the Bible. And if the Antichrist turned out to be female, well—”

  “Damn, of course! The unreliability of God’s word would be exposed.”

  She let that sobering revelation sink in. “Didn’t your snitching friar friend say that some of our Israelite forefathers felt it was appropriate to render stillborn certain offspring … ” Her words trailed off. She glanced up at him with a stricken look. “Where did the Bible say those abandoned babies were tossed?”

  He scratched his head. “I think he said ‘Geenon or Geenom.’”

  “Which was Hebrew for—”

  His eyes rounded. “The Valley of the Abomination.”

  Her voice quavered. “What the hell are we going to do now?”

  Cas didn’t have a clue. He mumbled something to the brick walls enclosing them, as if they could whisper a way out of this maze. Receiving no oracular guidance, he woke the pregnant girl and led the women through a series of alleys. They passed only a handful of wandering tourists—lost Americans mostly—and moved quickly toward the rising sounds of vehicles and markets.

  He stopped at a two-story building that faced a heavily trafficked boulevard. A black-and-white tile on the stone façade of the edifice read: Patriarchate Road. “That’s promising.”

  Marly looked around but found nothing unusual. “Why?”

  “At least the good friar didn’t lie to us about this route leading into the Armenian section.” He peered out on the avenue that led to the Jaffa Gate, the closest exit from the walled Old City. A line of freshly vacated tour buses, with diesels humming to keep the air conditioners running, waited just beyond the bustling tourist traps. He noticed amid the bustle of shoppers an Israeli police cruiser and a few heavily armed soldiers standing on a corner. A pair of black BMWs with tinted windows sat parked behind the police car. He signaled for Marly to take the trembling girl deeper into the darkness of the alley, out of view.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed.

  He motioned them both into a crouch. “Stay here. I saw something I want to check out.”

  CAS INCHED HIS EYES AROUND a corner and studied a man with cropped black hair and a cheap navy-blue suit who stood leaning against the hood of an Israeli patrol car. Likely a detective. Two other muscle-bound apes lingered nearby, enjoying smokes. They wore baggy black cargo pants with their hems stuffed into combat boots. High-powered pistols sat in their holsters, and—

  Nah, it couldn’t be.

  For a second there, he thought he’d caught a glimpse of CrossArrow insignias embroidered on the men’s gray Polo shirts. He shook his head, trying to shake some oxygen into his brain. When his eyes jostled back into focus, he inched his head around the corner again and stole a second look at the gaggle of gun-wielding human bloodhounds.

  This time, a Semitic-looking young man—wild shocks of black hair, forlorn eyes, slender to the edge of emaciation—was walking toward him from across the street. A synapse of recognition sparked: Was that somebody from his past?

  Deciding there was more safety out in the open, he sauntered out from his hiding place and walked straight toward the young man, locking onto his face.

  The stranger stopped and stared at him with a knowing but jangled look. After a hesitation, he reached out his hand.

  Cas shook it in an awkward grasp. “Do I know you?”

  The stranger reacted as if that question hurt him.

  Before Cas could ask again, a hand slammed his shoulder from behind.

  “Of course you know him.”

  Staggered, Cas spun around.

  Earl Jubal stood grinning at him. The CrossArrow chief shoved him into an alcove, out of sight. Another shadow filled the tight space, pressing against him, too.

  A drawling voice whispered, “I oughta throw you off these walls.”

  A blast of sunlight hit that speaker’s weathered face. Cas recognized the man who had boarded the plane in Riyadh. “Well, if it isn’t the Lone Star Frankenstein. I hear you cook up one hell of a red veal barbecue.”

  Seth Cohanim rubbed the sharp bevels of the impressive Houston Baptist University ring on his fisted finger. “Where’s the girl, wise ass?”

  “Beats me.”

  Jubal landed a haymaker on Cas’s chin. “If that’s the way you want it, Casbo. Took us a week to track you down. Lucky for us, that woman you conned at the Health Ministry got suspicious about why an American doctor would have a middle-aged assistant who acts like Mel Gibson on speed. So, she called it in. And we got the tip.”

  Cas wiped a trickle of blood from his lip. “Mossad again.”

  Jubal nodded. “We used to have prosperous business relationship with those Jewish boys. … Now, answer my friend here. Where’s the Virgin Mary?”

  “Have you checked all the mangers around Bethlehem?”

  The next fist came twice as fast.

  Cas licked the blood from his nostrils, in time to be doubled over with a ham hock of clenched fingers to the gut.

  “That was downright blasphemous,” Cohanim said. “And in the Holy City, too. You should be ashamed of yourself, son.”

  Cas spat blood at Cohanim. “You kinda botched that whole Second Coming thing, didn’t you, Tex? We’ve already picked out a name for the baby. How’s ‘Christiana’ sound, you murdering guttersnipe? Or should it be ‘Anti-christiana’? We’re planning on announcing you as her godfather.”

  Cohanim purpled. “I’m gonna ask you one more time.”

  “You owe me two million bucks, you rodeo clown.”

  Jubal tightened his grip on Cas’s neck. “Mr. Cohanim here is a godly man, Casbo. A man of his word, a man of the Word. Now, the two million dollars is in the Swiss account, just as I promised it would be at the start of this mission.”

  Cas slapped away Jubal’s hand. “Well, then, I’ll just be on my way to Geneva.” He glanced at his watch. “I think there’s a nonstop flight leaving at two.” He tried to walk away—until Jubal clamped his biceps to stop him.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Oh yeah,” Cas said. “The account num
ber.”

  “The deal was,” Jubal reminded him, “I deposit your fee in a joint account.”

  Cas lurched to within a bullet’s width of his face. “Yeah, well, that’s going to be a little difficult now. Considering those Saudis murdered my son!”

  Jubal nudged up the young Semitic-looking man who had been cowering behind him during the confrontation. Grinning evil, Jubal patted the hesitant stranger’s head. “This is the city of resurrections, remember?”

  “Abba?”

  Cas’s eyes bulged. “Farid?”

  The young man hugged him, crying and nearly falling to his knees.

  Cas fought to hold it together. “They said you were—”

  “You really have gone soft,” Jubal told Cas. “You actually thought the Saudis were going to tell you the truth?”

  Cas wasn’t listening to Jubal. He couldn’t let go of his son. “I’m sorry for everything. I tried to get back, but …”

  Farid coughed with emotion. “I know.”

  That Customs officer at the Saudi airport lied to me!

  Jubal nodded, as if reading Cas’s mind. “The Saudis wanted to slice and dice him after we returned the Stone, but I figured I owed you one from the old days. So I convinced them to put him in my custody as part of the bargain.”

  Cohanim ripped Cas and Farid apart. “This is all very touching. Nothing would warm my Christian heart more than to see father and son reunited. But we have a little business to take care of first.”

  “I need to tell my son something in private!”

  Jubal dragged Farid from the alcove. “All in good time.”

  Cas fought to reach his son again. “Wait! Your mother—”

  Jubal silenced him with an uppercut to the jaw. “Apparently you still have that little hearing problem.”

  Yanked back, Cas barked at Jubal and the Texas rancher, “You can have the damn money! I don’t care about it anymore!”

  Jubal tapped Cas’s cheek with his palm, each stroke a little harder. “Normally, I’d just follow you to the girl and then kill all three of you. But I know you’re to smart to let that happen. So, this is what’s going to go down. We get the Madonna and child, and you get your son back, along with the money.”

  “What about—”

  “Rock Lady?” Jubal shook his head. “Nah, she knows too much.”

  Cas swallowed hard. They were forcing him to choose between Marly and his own flesh and blood. “How do I know you won’t put a bullet in my head?”

  “Once a soldier works for me, he’s family for life,” Jubal said. “You and I have had our differences over the years, Casbo. But I don’t abandon men on the battlefield. If I did, and word got out, my reputation would be ruined.”

  Cas was too ashamed to look his old boss in the eyes. Finally, he nodded his agreement to the deal. He reached for Farid to bring him home.

  Jubal raised his pistol to prevent the reunion. “Not yet, pappy. First, you have to get the professor and the pregnant girl out of Jerusalem.”

  Cas was thrown on his heels. “What … why?”

  Cohanim shrugged. “We’ve developed a little problem with Mossad.”

  “Avram Isserle has stopped playing ball with us,” Jubal said. “He’s watching every move we make. Seems he got in some hot water when a certain prisoner escaped because of a paperwork snafu. As a result, he’s jonesin’ to get all three of you back into custody. We’re not about to let that happen.”

  “What are you going to do with the professor and the pregnant girl?”

  Disgusted, Jubal shook his head. “Do I need to spell it out for you? Let’s just say I always leave the world a better place than I found it, particularly when it comes to witnesses.”

  He had no doubt that these two meat grinders would follow through on their plan to kill Marly and the girl. But if he didn’t go along with the trade, Farid would get the bullet, or worse, a return to a Saudi torture cell.

  “You get the two women past Isserle’s goons,” Cohanim told him. “Then meet us at Masada in the morning.”

  Masada?

  He couldn’t fathom why they wanted the exchange to take place so far away. Masada was hallowed ground in Jewish history, the rugged rock plateau where hundreds of rebel zealots and their families committed suicide in the First Century rather than surrender to besieging Romans. “Hell, that’s sixty miles from here. And the place is teeming with Israeli forces. They go there to train.”

  Jubal mocked a look of horror. “Right you are, Casbo. Thousands of tourists go there, too. It’s the last place Mossad and the cops will expect to find us.”

  Cohanim grabbed him by the collar to make the plan crystal clear. “Listen closely, you heathen dipsomaniac. I’m only going to explain this once. Two cable cars transport tourists up and down the mountain to the fortress. The first ascent and descent each day are always dry runs to test the cables. Have the women on the first car. It leaves at six in the morning. Don’t be late.”

  “Your son here will be on the car coming down,” Jubal promised. “Halfway up, we’ll arrange for the cars to stop side by side. You’ll get him back when we get the two women. Clean exchange. No one’s the wiser.”

  “And if I can’t get them out of the city by tomorrow morning?”

  As Jubal checked the rounds in his pistol, he glanced over at Farid. “I have every confidence you will. Let’s not contemplate the alternative.”

  Released from Cohanim’s grasp, Cas stared at the two men, trying to determine if they would really go through with the deal. He glanced at Farid and saw tears in his son’s eyes. Realizing that he had no choice but to trust them, he nodded and reached to hug his son. He whispered the same promise he had failed to keep years ago, “I’ll see you soon. Then we’ll go home.”

  A HALF-HOUR LATER, AFTER CLEANING himself up and wiping the blood off his chin, Cas ducked back down into the alley. Marly and the pregnant girl were still huddled there, waiting for him. He signaled for Zaynah to give him some space to talk to Marly alone.

  The girl crawled into a corner. She studied him with raw suspicion.

  “Where have you been?” Marly demanded. “I was beginning to think … ”

  He kept looking beyond her shoulders, refusing to meet her searching eyes. “Remember those Beemers in the Dallas industrial park?”

  Marly nodded, not certain she wanted to hear the rest.

  “Apparently you can fly to Germany now, buy a new BMW, and take it on a Holy Land cruise before returning to the States.”

  She was about the ram her fingernails into his face. “Just tell me what—”

  “Looks like Earl Jubal decided to upgrade his fleet.”

  Her jaw dropped. “That CrossArrow wacko?”

  “He must have tailed us.”

  “So now we have Mossad and those crazy paramilitary guys chasing us?”

  “It gets worse.”

  “How could it possibly get worse?”

  “Jubal’s men are talking to an Israeli detective. They’re all standing just on the other side of this alley.”

  Marly pulled at her hair. “Why would Jubal still be after us? He knows we don’t have the Black Stone now.”

  “Same thing everyone else is doing here.” Cas jerked his head toward Zaynah, who was cowering against the wall. “Looking for the Blessed Mother.”

  After a long pause, Marly tugged on his sleeve. “Y’know what, Cas? Let’s just go home.”

  He’d never seen such fear in her eyes, even on that tense day in Mecca. She wants to abandon the girl?

  “It’s not like there’s a pot of gold waiting for us at the end of this bloody rainbow anymore, you know?” She darted her eyes toward Zaynah. “She’s only going to get us killed.”

  He realized that the scientist in her was trying to create some sensible rationale for what to do next. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  She nodded. “Go find Isserle and make a trade with Mossad. They get their witness. And we get out of the c
ountry.”

  He couldn’t believe it. Sure, to save Farid, he was considering a similar option—not with Mossad, but with Jubal and Cohanim. Yet he was disappointed to see that Marly could be as ruthless and mercenary, and she didn’t have a son whose life was on the line. “You know what they’ll do to her, right?”

  She looked away, ashamed.

  “Listen to me.” His eyes bored deep into hers. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose …” He remembered that her fiancé had returned home in a body bag. “I’m sorry.” He brushed at the tears cascading down her cheeks. “I just can’t throw this girl and her child to those wolves.”

  She turned back on him suddenly, as if seeing something now in a new light. “What happened to you while you were gone?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My God, I’ve become you … and you’ve become me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Cas Fielding who stalked into my office at Columbia would have left that girl over there in this alley like a disposable lighter.”

  He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew she had him pegged pretty accurately. “Look, I let my Farid down once. Maybe I can make it up to him if I save this girl.”

  “You do believe in God!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “No, you’re really buying into all of this give-up-your-life-for-another stuff.”

  He snuck a peek into the alcove’s cool darkness. Zaynah hovered on her knees, in palpable discomfort. “Look at her. She’ll never be able to go back home. What if we helped her out and took her to the States with us?”

  Marly fought back tears. “What you’re saying is …” She shook her head in amazement, looking down at her finger, which hadn’t worn an engagement ring for over a year. “I’ve never heard you—”

  “Things have kinda changed.” Cas was about to reveal that Farid was still alive. Instead, he decided to tell her another version of the truth, one more nuanced. “You’re my family now. You’re all I’ve got left in this world. And this child that girl is carrying … Maybe we were brought together to help that baby.”

  Marly began sobbing.

  He held her closer. “Don’t you want children of your own one day?”