by Graham Brown
“The Tree of Life?” he said. “As in Adam and Eve, don’t eat from this tree or you’ll die, Tree of Life?”
“Actually,” she said, “Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from the Tree of Life. And in doing so they remained young and healthy and immortal. It was the Tree of Knowledge that they were warned against eating from.”
“Right,” Hawker said, trying to remember his Sunday school teaching from so long ago. “And your father thought this was real?”
A question came from Savi. “Don’t you believe in the Garden of Eden, Mr. Hawker?”
“On a physical level?” he said. “No.”
“Interesting,” she said. “So the Fall of Man, the doctrine of Original Sin, God’s punishment for us: Are these not things you accept?”
The last thing Hawker had expected this evening was a discussion of religious doctrine. Still, he felt the need to answer, as if Savi was testing him somehow.
“The fall of man—I see it every day,” he said. “But we’re capable of great good and righteous sacrifice ourselves.” This was something he’d almost lost belief in until recently. “As far as Original Sin goes, I have enough of my own to worry about.”
“And God’s punishment?” she repeated.
There was definitely a test in her words somewhere. As if she was probing for an answer.
In truth, much of what religious groups called God’s punishment made little sense to Hawker. The soldier guarding the Ark of the Covenant getting hit by lightning for touching it as he tried to stop it from falling to the ground. Moses doing everything God asked but being forced to wander the desert for forty years and then barred from entering the Promised Land because he had one moment of arrogance. It all sounded a little harsh to him. A little too human, like the men who wanted to instill a doctrine of absolute obedience regardless of right and wrong. Something he had always railed against.
“I’ve done plenty of things God would be right to punish me for,” he said. “But Adam and Eve? They took the apple—or whatever it was—after being tricked by the serpent. If I remember rightly, the Bible even mentions that the serpent was filled with guile the likes of which Adam and Eve had never seen.”
“The serpent was the devil,” Savi noted.
“I know that,” Hawker said. “But my point is this: If God is all-knowing, then He had to know what would happen when the devil found Adam and Eve in the Garden. And if He’s all-powerful, then He could have stopped the serpent from getting in there in the first place by snapping His fingers. So Adam and Eve made a bad choice. But to some extent—if you believe it all really happened that way—then somehow God was partially responsible. And punishing humanity for that makes no sense to me. Would you punish your child for being tricked by a predator that you allowed into their world in the first place?”
Savi smiled. “You seem very intense on this point.”
“Men twist God’s words,” he said. “And it’s usually those who claim divine authority.”
“But you believe?”
“In God, yes. In man’s descriptions of Him, some of them very much. Others don’t seem like they’re talking about the same guy.”
Savi looked at Sonia and then back at Hawker. “So you are a man of faith, but you reject some teachings and accept others,” she said suspiciously.
“To accept everything you’re told or to reject everything you hear are the two signs of fanaticism,” he said. “And I reject that above all else.”
She nodded. “I see. And so if God didn’t know what would happen in the Garden, then He’s fallible. And if He did know, then He’s culpable. Is that what you’re saying?”
Hawker was done playing games. “I’m saying the least He could have done was hire a gardener to kill the snake.”
Sonia laughed and Savi’s smile continued. “And if He didn’t?” Savi pressed.
Hawker wondered what she was getting at. “Then it’s because the whole thing is a metaphor. We’re all innocent till we fall. We all make our own choices. You, me, everyone. We’re all Adam, we’re all Eve.”
Sonia looked over to Savi, who suddenly seemed less excited. Perhaps it wasn’t the answer she was looking for.
“He sounds like Father,” Sonia said.
With that, it came to Hawker that he’d had a similar conversation with Ranga a decade earlier. Right before Ranga had left Africa. Had he already been thinking along such lines back then?
“Yes he does,” Savi agreed, the slightly sour look remaining on her face. “He also sounds like Pelagius, who suggested a similar thought in the fourth century.”
“I don’t know who that is, but he sounds like a smart man,” Hawker said.
“He was a British monk who became very influential,” she said, “until Saint Augustine and the Council of Carthage declared him a heretic in 418.”
Hawker nodded ruefully; he’d walked into that one. “Too bad I wasn’t there, I could have backed him up,” Hawker said, willing to offer assistance based on his general distrust of authority and a high esteem for anyone who questioned it.
“I’m thinking your help will be of much higher value here,” Sonia said. “And at any rate, it’s not the theological argument that matters to me. Or that mattered to Father. It’s the physical reality we’re interested in.”
“Right,” Hawker said, remembering where they’d started. “You’re telling me the Garden of Eden was a real place. Where God put Adam and Eve until they sinned. And your father and Bashir had figured out how to find it.”
Sonia took over. “Not exactly,” she said. “God may have had nothing to do with it.”
Hawker stared at her.
“Let me explain it this way, so that you won’t think were crazy,” she said. “How much do you know about genetics?”
It was the second time in three days someone had asked him that question. Since he’d answered Danielle, some guy named Yang had given Hawker a two-hour crash course before sending him to Dubai. It hadn’t helped much.
“More than I want to at this point,” he said. “And that we’re all related to viruses.”
“Genetics teaches us things,” she said. “It lets us track the migration of Homo sapiens by following mutant genes. A mutant gene that misses a population tells us that population has branched off before the gene appeared in human code.”
“Okay,” he said. “And …”
“And it tells us there are different ways to attack different problems. For instance, with aging, some animals have slower rates of aging and thus longer lives. There’s a trade-off in what they are able to accomplish in those lives, but the fact of the matter is they live longer.
“Other animals have extremely short lives but reproduce rapidly, ensuring the survival of the DNA. Plants live tremendously long lives in some cases. There are trees on some ancient mountains that were alive when Christ walked the earth.”
“So trees live long lives,” Hawker said. “That doesn’t mean they’re the Tree of Life.”
“No,” Sonia said. “Only that they’ve found one of the secrets. Another form of life that’s found a different type of the secret is Turritopsis nutricula, a kind of jellyfish that grows into adult stage, reproduces itself, and then, instead of dying, reverts back into a juvenile phase. Instead of a linear life span, this creature lives a circular one. Old then young, and then old and then young again. Ad infinitum, at least until something eats it.”
Hawker remembered Lavril, the French commandant, mentioning that Ranga was covered in jellyfish stings. Could this have been the reason?
“Did your father work with these everlasting jellyfish?”
“He did,” Sonia said. “But they act on a different principle than what Nadia needs. Turritopsis nutricula reaches maturity and then reactivates its stem cells. Starting over. In essence, it’s not that it doesn’t age, it just ages in both directions. Nadia, and all of us, we’re far more complex organisms. While reactivating our stem cells might help, the problem in Nadia’s case is that
the new cells they create will still have the same genetic code and thus the same genetic defects as the old ones.”
“She needs something more,” Hawker said.
“We can’t just turn her aging switch off, or start her cells over. We have to rewrite her genetic code so that the new generation of cells she produces are free of the progeria defect. Over time she will grow young again, even as she grows to maturity.”
“And how do you do that?”
“You find a gene that resets the telomere chains in Nadia’s cells and then implant it into every cell in her body.”
Hawker considered the data Danielle had discovered in Ranga’s Paris lab and the information Moore had given him on the UN virus. The gist of it was viruses being used to infect people. A 90 percent cellular infection rate or something. He guessed this was what they were getting at.
“You use a virus to do the implanting.”
Sonia nodded. “With the right kind of virus, a virus that attaches to human cells but does not destroy them, we can implant whatever we want into human DNA.”
Hawker thought again of the data Danielle had found, including a trial that indicated 90 percent success rate in infectiousness but was rejected because the mortality rate was unacceptable.
He, Danielle, and Moore had assumed that meant human mortality. And that it had been rejected as unacceptable because the mortality rate was not high enough to achieve this perfect weapon. Now he was thinking just the opposite. Perhaps this trial had been deemed unacceptable based on the cellular mortality rate. And not because it was too low, but because it was too high.
“You have the first part done,” he said, guessing but pretty certain.
Sonia nodded. “Father did. He sent me the data a month ago,” she said. “I swear I haven’t seen him for ages, but he contacted me out of the blue.”
A desperate act, like reaching out to Hawker. Most likely Ranga knew or feared what was coming and didn’t want it to end.
“Trial 951,” he said.
She looked surprised.
“I saw it on your presentation.”
Her face relaxed. “Yes. Exactly. We have the delivery vehicle, the carrier. Now we just need the DNA patch to put inside it.”
“Trial 951 shortened life spans in your father’s tests,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to,” she said. “We can engineer it to do the opposite. We just need to find the right payload.”
“In the Garden?” he guessed.
“All viruses have a host,” she said. “A reservoir where the virus rests not destroying or harming them. Ebola, Marburg, all of them, they exist somewhere, dormant or semidormant until they come into contact with people. Why do you think they called it the swine flu or the bird flu? Because those animals are the reservoirs.”
“And in this case?”
“Somewhere in the ancient world there was a tree,” she said. “And from that tree came a fruit, and within that fruit rested a virus. A virus that changed the DNA of those who ate it, lengthening their telomeres and giving them incredibly long, maybe infinite lives.
“The ancients didn’t know why,” she added. “All they knew was that those who ate from this tree seemed to live forever. They prescribed it as a miracle sent down from God. They called the place where the tree grew the Garden of Eden and tree itself was named Life.”
Hawker understood now where they were going. Sonia spoke once more to clarify.
“It’s not mysticism,” she said. “It’s not religion, it’s not spirituality. It’s science. And if we can find it, we can save Nadia.”
CHAPTER 32
Barton Cassel stepped out of an elevator into the basement garage beneath the CPC building. The tension in his body had been undeniable all day long. He hadn’t eaten, he hadn’t slept, several stiff drinks had done little to calm him down.
After making a good show of work for three hours it was time to go, before anyone noticed what he was desperately trying to keep from telegraphing to the world: fear.
His bulletproof Lincoln Town Car coasted to a stop beside him. One of Cassel’s bodyguards climbed inside. Cassel followed.
The car made its way through the parking garage and out onto the main street. Cassel reached for the decanter in the center console nook, hoping the fifth dose of Glenfiddich 40 might do what the other four had failed to.
He’d gone against the wishes of his psychopathic and now unwanted associate—the man who called himself Draco. He’d tried to grab Ms. Sonia Milan during the one moment she popped up to the surface, her fund-raiser in Dubai. And he’d failed.
It had all gone terribly wrong. And while no one had put the details together, the CNN broadcast looped endlessly, replaying the sight of a burning helicopter at the base of the tower, security forces racing around with machine guns and walkie-talkies, and then the dead bodies, including one that had fallen from the tower with a bullet hole in its skull.
Cassel poured the whiskey. The $2,600 bottle was supposed to be sipped, allowed to evolve and breathe like a wine. Cassel gulped it down and tried to remind himself of the layers of insulation between him and the men who’d raided the tower.
His contact worked with a middleman, and that person had hired the leader of the group; the leader had in turn hired the rest of the men.
If the group’s leader was among the dead, that might break the trail right from the start. But if the man had survived and rolled over on the middleman … He wondered how long trouble would take to work its way up the line.
The fact that his contact was no longer reachable scared the hell out of him. What other reason could he have for not answering?
Glancing out the window, Cassel hoped the leader of the commandos was dead. That would do it. That bastard dying would do just fine.
Another sip of the Glenfiddich and a few deep breaths calmed him. It would be all right, he told himself. Someone down below would be sacrificed and the rising tide would never reach him.
The rising tide.
He could see the ocean out the window. This wasn’t the route to his home; it was the coast road that wound its way east along the cliffs.
“Driver!” he shouted. “Where the hell are we going?”
The driver turned and Cassel heard a spitting sound.
Thew! Thew!
The bodyguard slumped forward. Blood spattered on Cassel. He dropped the glass.
“What the hell?”
The car leapt forward, snapping Cassel’s neck back and throwing him off balance.
Fear coursed through Cassel’s body. He grabbed for the door handle, planning to jump, but they were doing sixty miles per hour, with a thin guardrail that might cut him in half if he hit it and an eighty-foot drop to stony beaches if he didn’t.
“Go ahead,” the driver growled. “Jump.”
The Lincoln whipped through a turn that threw Cassel to the other side of the car. He ended up on top of his bodyguard, who was still alive but gurgling blood.
He pushed off. As the car reached a straightaway he regained his balance.
“Jump!” the driver shouted again. “Jump, damn you!”
This time Cassel recognized the sinister voice.
He looked forward and saw the tattoo peeking out of the driver’s collar. “Draco!” he shouted. “Are you insane?”
“Your words,” Draco said. He pressed a switch and the sound system came on. Cassel recognized his own voice over the speakers.
“… I’m not listening to this psychopath anymore. Find some guys, grab Ranga’s little girl, and bring her to us.”
Another voice replied, distorted by some type of voice-changing technology. “It won’t be that easy. She stays underground almost like her father.”
“She’s going to be in Dubai,” Cassel heard his own voice say.
“That’s high stakes.”
“Just do it! I don’t care what it costs.”
“What about Draco?” the distorted voice asked.
“I want that fre
ak watched 24/7,” Cassel’s voice said.
“He gets near this building again, kill him.”
Draco whipped the car into another curve. And then he threw something into the backseat with Cassel. The object landed next to him and Cassel looked at it out of reflex.
Partially wrapped in bloody white cloth were human fingers.
“He laid a hand on me,” Draco said. “It was a big mistake.”
Feeling like he might throw up, Cassel pushed the cloth onto the floor out of sight as the Lincoln accelerated more.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to jump,” Draco said.
“Go to hell!”
Draco slammed on the brakes. Cassel wasn’t ready. He slammed into the divider between the back and front seats. A tooth flew, his lip exploded in a spray of blood, and then the accelerator slammed down again and Cassel was whiplashed into the back.
“Remember your seat belt next time,” Draco said, laughing maniacally and pinning the accelerator to the floor.
Dazed, exhausted, and scared to death, Cassel resorted to the only thing he had left. “I’ll pay you. Two million, just like you asked.”
“Too late.”
“Five million, ten million!” he shouted. “Whatever you want!”
Draco slammed on the brakes again and threw the wheel over. The Lincoln skidded a hundred feet before coming to a stop by a cliffside view.
Cassel went for the door but Draco turned and fired.
Pain shot through Cassel and he grabbed his gut. Blood trickled from a small wound, oozing between his fingers.
Draco stared over the barrel of his pistol, made all the more menacing by the long suppressor attached to the front.
“Call,” he said. “Make the transfer.”
Cassel reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out his phone. He dialed, his hands shaking. He spoke a code.
“How much?”
“Ten million ought to cover it.”
Cassel spoke another code. “Transfer ten million,” he added. “Yes,” he said. “Ten million. Immediately.” A third code confirmed his authenticity.