Entanglements

by Tomorrow’s Lovers, Families

  Agent Morales had described the knockout technique for cutting out one gene and replacing it with another allele of the same gene. Apparently it had been used for decades on mice, in research, then on other animals. Recently something called “Curtis tools” had made a huge leap in gene-altering precision and safety. In the United States, it was illegal to genetically engineer human embryos to birth.

  Every year, as we packed up to leave the Maryland cottage and drive home to North Carolina, Jen and I discussed buying the cottage. Every year we decided against it. The failed IVF attempts, the fees to the Loving Home Adoption Agency, the kids’ college funds. My modest four-partner firm didn’t get the high-profile cases. Jen and I couldn’t afford the cottage.

  Jen shouting at the FBI agents: “I want to know what was done to Kenly! Why are you here if you won’t tell us anything specific?”

  Agent Morales said, “We’re here for your protection, and your daughter’s. The genes that have been altered involve increased risk taking. You need to watch Kenly especially carefully. That’s all we can tell you.”

  It made no sense. Kenly was not a risk-taker. Unlike other children we knew, she didn’t climb trees or her swing set or, like Bobby Cassells, the porch roof. She didn’t swim out farther than we allowed her. She didn’t race her bike down steep hills, unlike her friend Sophie Scuderi, who last month was taken to the emergency room with facial lacerations. Kenly had broken her arm in the most mundane of ways: tripping over a tree root in a neighbor’s backyard. What was “increased risk taking” about that?

  And why would an organization—any organization—go to the expense and danger of altering risk-taking genes in a few random children?

  We wouldn’t be going to the Maryland cottage this August. It had been destroyed by Hurricane Lester, one of the many major storms we’d all come to accept as normal as climate change worsened.

  Mary poked her head into my office. “Tom, your eleven o’clock is here.”

  “Send her in. And after she leaves, get George in here. Tell him—her—damn it, them—that it’s urgent.”

  Mary looked startled as she withdrew her head. I don’t swear in the office, and usually I remember George’s recent switch of pronouns.

  The moment the client walked in, I smelled money. She wore an expensive summer suit—a divorce attorney has to develop knowledge of class markers including women’s fashion, a subject more complicated than torts. Amanda Wells Bryant had the perfectly coiffed blond bob of her tribe, a successful facelift, and discreet bling. She also had the sourest expression I’d seen in a long time.

  “I want to divorce my husband,” she said, in the tone of one used to ordering around luckless servants. “And I want as much of our money and property as possible. Preferably, all of it.”

  “I see,” I said. “Tell me—”

  “You don’t see,” she said. “Our finances are very complicated. They include homes in France and St. Barts, and multiple companies and leveraged holdings. But I’m told you’re a good divorce lawyer and your team won’t gouge me with your fees.”

  Rich and cheap. That’s why she chose me instead of a white-shoe law firm. Some of my clients need hand-holding, some need instructions on basic financial instruments, a few actually want a fair division of assets. She wasn’t any of those types.

  “Tell me your story, from the beginning.” I already knew it from just looking at her, but it turned out I was only partly right. There was another woman, of course, younger and fresher. Amanda had already hired a private investigator and had compromising photos. The surprise was the speed with which she wanted the divorce to happen.

  “I want it all concluded before the bastard is done with his deployment.”

  “He’s in the military?”

  “He’s commander of a nuclear submarine at sea somewhere in the Arctic, a radio-silence tour of duty. Those usually get extended from three months to five, given the situation up there. I want the fucker to come home to nothing, locked out of all our houses, as penniless as you can make him. I’d like to ruin her, too, but I suppose that isn’t possible.”

  “Afraid not.” I’ve had vindictive clients before, but she chilled me as much as the icy welcome she wanted for a man risking his life in the Arctic. Tensions between Russia, Canada, and the United States over the newly ice-free Northwest Passage could escalate at any moment into a shooting war.

  She said, “With any luck, his sub will be torpedoed and I won’t need you at all.”

  George Whelan is the best investigator I have ever worked with. I have others to do the tedious, painstaking computer investigation that so often provides George with financial leads, but for on-the-ground legwork, no one beats George.

  Until six months ago, they were Georgiana, named for a distant ancestor who was actually a notorious British duchess. Now gender-fluid and with a new pronoun, George could blend in anywhere as male, female, or androgen, conventional-looking or flamboyant, teenaged rocker or thirtysomething businesswoman. When they want to, they could also be invisible. I have passed George on the street without recognizing them. The three other attorneys in my firm envy me George, who can find anything, anywhere. They are expensive and worth it.

  Today George wore jeans, a faded blue hoodie, a man bun, no detectable makeup. Actually twenty-nine, they could have been nineteen, somebody’s nephew visiting the office. “What’s up, Tom?”

  “Something off the firm payroll. For me personally.”

  Blunt as always, George said, “Can you afford me?”

  “Yes. Usual hourly rate plus usual expenses.” It would be a stretch, but the vacation cottage was gone anyway.

  “This isn’t . . . I can’t believe . . . Is Jen cheating on you?”

  “Cheating? God, no! George, the FBI came to our house and I’m not supposed to tell anyone what they said. But I’m going to tell you. You okay with that?”

  “Sure. Are you? You’ll be the one breaking the law, taking on the Fibbies.”

  “Only if they find out. I need to investigate the Loving Home Adoption Agency, find a girl somewhere in Raleigh-Durham who gave up her baby to the agency seven years ago, and, from what you can get her to tell you, determine where her pregnancy actually came from. The child is Kenly Sarah Linton, my daughter. I have some names and dates, but not many. Are you in?”

  “Absolutely. Tell me everything, every small detail, from the beginning.”

  My usual phrasing, but this time I was on the other side of the interrogation. George recorded me. It was the only time I ever, in all our investigations, saw their eyes widen. When I finished, they said simply, “Why?”

  “That’s part of what I want you to find out. Who, where, and the fucking why.”

  There are diffrent kinds of leopards like snow leopards and clowded leopards and African leopards. Leopards eat other animals. Once a African leopard killed a babune to eat it. But the babune had a new tiny baby! The leopard didnt kill the baby babune. It put it in a tree to save it from higheenas. It licked the baby babune. You can see the video on line. Look it up!

  3.

  When I got home, Jessica, our teenaged occasional babysitter, was changing Brady, Kenly was watching TV—usually forbidden on weekdays—and Jen was at the computer in my study, still in the bathrobe she’d worn that morning. She scowled at me.

  “It’s so confusing! Some studies say that genes for dopamine receptors like DRD4 influence risk taking, especially if you have seven repeats of the gene. Other studies say no, it isn’t dopamine, it’s glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid, neurotransmitters in the brain. Some scientists say there are more than a hundred genetic variants linked with risk taking, but even combined they account for only about 2 percent of differences in risk taking among people. How the hell can they figure out that? Then more studies say none of those studies are reliable because they use self-reporting, and people lie. I don’t . . . I can’t figure out . . .”

  She was trembling. I took her in my arms. Her hair smelled
dirty. I held her closer. Jen and I do this for each other: switch roles from comforter to one who needs comforting. I see a lot of broken marriages, and I know how good it is that we aren’t each locked into one role.

  When she stopped trembling, I said, “Tell me everything from the beginning, every little detail.”

  She pulled away and smiled wanly. “You want to take a deposition?”

  “Yes. You want a lawyer present?”

  “Fortunately, I have one.”

  We talked for a long time. She told me about the research she’d found on risk taking, which was confusing, although presumably not to scientists. I told her about George, and how much they were going to cost us.

  Jessica knocked on the door. “Kenly wants to go to the park. Is that okay? Brady’s asleep.”

  “Sure,” Jen said.

  We resumed our conversation, minutely examining Kenly’s behavior for all of her seven years, comparing it to other children’s, and ending up as baffled as before. “I want to have a full gene scan done on Kenly,” Jen said. “Not the kind that just tells you where your ancestors are from—the full real thing. So I can compare it online to that of a normal seven-year-old girl.”

  “Honey, I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘normal.’ The alleles—”

  “You know what I mean! Don’t nitpick!”

  She was a tinderbox, and I was not going to light a match. “Yes, I know. We’ll do it.”

  “I’ll find some place and make an appointment for tomorrow, I—”

  The kitchen door slammed and Jessica’s voice, uncharacteristically loud, said, “Don’t you ever do that again!”

  Jen and I raced to the kitchen. Kenly stood with her purple backpack at her feet, and Jessica—Jessica!, eighteen, mathlete, Jane Austen lover—held a Glock subcompact handgun.

  Jen grabbed Kenly by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I hate Jessica!”

  “No, you don’t. Jessica, what happened?”

  I said, “Are you licensed to carry that weapon? And did you fire it?” Please, God, let her say no. But my mind raced through names of criminal defense lawyers, state gun laws, and bail bonds.

  Jessica, pale but coherent, said, “I’m licensed for conceal carry in West Virginia, and North Carolina honors all other states’ permits. I fired the gun into the air just to scare him off.”

  “Scare who off? Jessica, can you tell me everything from the beginning, every small detail? Sit here, at the table. You’re not in trouble, we just need to know.” I used my most reassuring voice, but I’m not sure Jessica needed it. She was clearer and more thorough than 90 percent of the adults I put on the witness stand.

  When Kenly’s TV program had ended, she started her math homework on the coffee table. Jessica had put on the news, part of some homework assignment of her own. When Kenly’s multiplication worksheet was done, she wanted to go to the park. She’d gone upstairs first and put on her backpack, which Jessica thought was odd but harmless. The backpack was new, purple with tiny mirrors sewn in a flower pattern, and Kenly loved it. They’d walked to the playground, and then abruptly Kenly had run from Jessica and wouldn’t return. Jessica ran after her, but Kenly was fast and Jessica, overweight and no athlete, was not. Kenly had run straight into the homeless camp at the edge of the park.

  “How did she know the—”

  “It was on the news. She must have been listening. They said there were children there, and they didn’t have toys.”

  Kenly started emptying her backpack of American Girl dolls, stuffed animals, and last Christmas’s prize toy, Astronaut Jane Genuine Flight Control Console, $96.99 if you could find it at all. She called out for kids to come get toys. No kids appeared. But two men were there and one of them grabbed Kenly and said, “What else you got, girlie? Money?” The other said, “Let her go, Sam, you’re drunk,” but the man started to reach into the pockets of Kenly’s jeans.

  “That’s when I fired into the air,” Jessica said. “I think the other guy would have made him let her go, but I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  A siren sounded, distant but coming rapidly closer.

  All at once the self-assured junior superhero vanished and Jessica looked scared. “Will they arrest me?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll talk to them. And you will, too, exactly as you told me. It’ll be okay, I promise.”

  “And you,” Jen said to Kenly, “if you ever do anything like that again, we’ll—”

  Then Kenly shocked us more than Jessica’s gun, more than Kenly’s mad flight toward the homeless camp, more than the man in the park. Kenly stamped her foot and glared at us all. “I will do it again. Those are kids with no toys, not even one tiny damn mirror.”

  She burst into tears.

  I didn’t expect to hear anything from the FBI, and I didn’t. RICO investigations can take years. I did expect to hear from George, but all I got for a month was a staggering expense bill. I wired the money to Miami.

  A week later, I wired more funds to Georgia.

  I was going to need a big partial payment from Amanda Bryant, whose commander husband must still be alive on a submarine gone quiet, since the navy had not notified her otherwise. Each day the situation in the Northwest Passage got worse. The United States sent warships, the Russians sent warships, Canada filed protest after protest, the ice continued to melt. So far the shipping lanes were still open, the warships’ guns silent. So far.

  “I hope his sub is sunk,” Amanda said. “And did you find documentation for that Ukrainian shell company I told you about?”

  “Not yet. We’re looking.”

  “Well, find it. I want that money before we go to court!”

  “Amanda, I’ve told you that Commander Bryant will be entitled to time for his lawyer to prepare his side of the case.”

  “There is no ‘his’ side. He can have his whore. I get everything else.”

  Had she once loved him? Had they ever laughed together, touched each other fondly, shared daily news over cups of coffee? Hard to believe.

  “You better win this case,” she said.

  “I will.” It was my job, my oath as an officer of the court, to represent my client’s best interests. Even when my client was a bitch.

  Kenly had turned sulky with us but otherwise behaved as usual. Not that she had much chance to do otherwise—Jen accompanied her everywhere, even if she had to lug Brady along. Kenly’s gene scan showed nothing abnormal in the markers that science had already decoded. Some of the genes tentatively identified for risk taking were present, some weren’t. “But you understand,” the genetic counselor said for the third time, “that we have only identified proteins made, diseases caused, and genes cross-interacting for a small percentage of the codons. Genomics is in its infancy, but it’s evolving rapidly. There are groups working on genomics at universities, pharmaceutical companies, government laboratories.”

  Jen and I glanced at each other. The glance said, . . . and an illegal lab of unknown purpose in an unknown country doing unknown things to human embryos.

  In the car on the way home, after a long silence, Jen said, “They must at least be a hell of scientific group. To do that and still produce healthy kids. Or else the FBI is just wrong about the whole thing. Or lying to us.”

  “Why would—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  Leopards know a lot. They know how to hunt and have baby leopards and gard their teratory. Sometimes leopard mothers will take care of babies that are not even theres. I think leopards are good but I wish they didn’t eat babunes. When I grow up I will be a animal trainer and train leopards to eat something else and be nice to babunes. Maybe nuts and berrys which are helthy anyway. Or bananas, like babunes do. Or leafs.

  4.

  George, like Kenly’s leopards, knew a lot.

  They strolled into my office, this time as Georgiana, with lipstick, earrings, and a maxiskirt with combat boots. I told Mary to postpone whatever
was on my calendar for the rest of the afternoon.

  “Good,” George said. “I’ve got a lot to tell you. And a surprise.”

  “The surprise first.”

  “No, it’s arriving separately. Tom, this is a big operation. But first, I have to tell you that the FBI caught me snooping, grilled me for a few days, and forbid me to poke around anymore or they’ll charge me with interfering with an ongoing investigation, obstruction of justice, and anything else they can make stick. So I’m off the case, but you won’t need me after the surprise arrives.”

  “Fuck it, George—”

  “Georgiana.”

  “—I don’t want any games! Just tell me what you found!”

  If George was startled at my uncharacteristic tone, they didn’t show it. “Okay. I found Kenly’s biological mother and made her talk. It didn’t take much, just mild intimidation, since these girls—and yes, I found more and I’m coming to that—are poor and vulnerable. They’re all in the country illegally and terrified of being deported. The money you paid Jimena was supporting her entire family in the Dominican Republic. She birthed another genetically engineered baby after Kenly, and she’s now pregnant with a third.”

  “The group doing the engineering is based in the Caymans. I found it, which is how the Fibbies found me. I never got inside—let me tell you, the Pentagon doesn’t have security as good as this place. But my team photographed and checked out everybody going in, and it’s an impressive list of scientists from four different countries, all with sterling reputations in genetics. I’ll give you the list. A lot of truck activity. Some go to the airport, and then biological coolers are hand-carried aboard planes going all over the Southeast United States, France, England, and China. Scientists in the organization, which seems to be nameless, are from those countries. They—”

  “But what are they doing to the embryos? And why?”

  “I don’t know yet. Wait for the surprise to arrive in”—George checked their watch—“about twenty minutes. And let me finish. This organization is big, and that takes big money. It’s filtered through so many shell companies and Swiss accounts that I don’t think even the FBI is going to be able to trace it. Although maybe they can—they have resources that my team doesn’t. The point here is that this group is furiously altering embryos, impregnating young girls, taking excellent care of the surrogates, and adopting out the infants through legitimate adoption agencies that, so far as I can determine, might not be aware of the source of the pregnancies. Or maybe some know. The Caymans organization must have excellent cybersecurity because my guys couldn’t hack their records, which frustrated the hell out of them. One actually threw his monitor against a wall.”