‘No, thanks,’ Flaherty said.
‘Ms Thompson?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, trying to reconcile how this charismatic televangelist had sent an assassin to kill her.
Stokes sat behind his desk and folded his hands over his chest.
‘You actually would make a handsome couple,’ Stokes admitted. ‘But why are you really here?’
Flaherty got to the point. ‘Our intelligence shows that during the past twenty-four hours you’ve been communicating with US Marine Colonel Bryce Crawford. He’s been making encrypted calls to a landline in this building. That phone there, perhaps?’ He pointed to the phone on Stokes’s desk.
‘Perhaps,’ Stokes replied.
‘So you’re aware that Colonel Crawford’s platoon is assisting an extraction effort currently under way in the Iraqi mountains?’
‘I am.’
Stokes’s candour surprised Brooke.
‘I assume you’re also aware that Frank Roselli was killed in a freak car crash today. Not far from here, in fact.’
Stokes paused before replying. ‘Very unfortunate.’
‘Funny thing is, the coroner suspects foul play since Roselli died of asphyxiation behind the wheel before careering into a telephone pole.’
‘Not a heart attack?’ Stokes said.
‘No. But I’m sure that’s what you’re gunning for,’ Flaherty said. ‘You don’t seem too broken up for a man who just lost a close friend.’
‘I’ve seen plenty of death in my day, Agent Flaherty. After a while, one gets numb to it.’
‘Seems you’ve killed plenty in your day too.’
Keeping his composure, Stokes responded with, ‘I killed lots of bad guys so kids like you could eat McDonald’s, drive SUVs and have 3.2 children. Liberty comes at a price. The only thing I’m guilty of is being a diehard patriot.’
‘But why did you try to kill me?’ Brooke asked.
Not ready to completely tip his hand, Stokes grinned.
‘Hold on, Brooke,’ Flaherty said. ‘You see, Stokes, at roughly the same time Frank Roselli was killed, an assassin tried to kill Ms Thompson in Boston. But he died trying.’ He noticed that this titbit made Stokes’s jaw muscles ripple. ‘Our office had a tough time working through the guy’s multiple identities. Naturally, his fingerprints and dental records were non-existent too. He did, however, have a marine tattoo on his arm. A tattoo common to most guys in 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Division Expeditionary Force, in fact. So we tried running his prints through the CIA database instead. Lo and behold, we found that Corporal Lawrence Massey trained at Camp Pendleton. And wouldn’t you know it … he served under Bryce Crawford.’
‘Go on,’ Stokes encouraged, intrigued by Flaherty’s apposite deconstruction. He steepled his hands under his chin.
Flaherty was amazed how Stokes could be so cavalier given the seriousness of the accusations. ‘In 2003 Ms Thompson was hired by one Colonel Frank Roselli to assist in a covert excavation in the Iraqi mountains, a project for which the Department of Defense has no formal knowledge. The same cave, as it turns out, that Crawford is so intent on protecting. Everyone commissioned to work on that dig, present company excluded’ — he tipped his head towards Brooke — ‘has turned up dead in the past twenty-four hours. And of course there are those bone samples Roselli had brought back from the dig and studied at Fort Detrick. All those teeth. Bottom line is that a common thread pulls all this together. And it’s not a cave.’ Flaherty got up from his chair and paced over to the trophy wall, pointed to the framed picture of Stokes, Roselli and Crawford. ‘You’re a smart man, Stokes. So I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.’
Then a coughing fit struck Stokes. He snatched the pocket handkerchief and held it over his mouth. When he was done, he stared at the bloodied linen and struggled to catch his breath. Shaken, he shook his head and laughed.
‘Are you all right?’ Flaherty couldn’t help but ask, trying to avoid looking at the bloodstained handkerchief.
‘Actually I’m not okay, Agent Flaherty,’ Stokes said, mopping his chin, then chucking the vulgar handkerchief in the waste-basket beneath his desk. ‘Which makes this your lucky day.’
‘How so?’ Flaherty asked.
‘You see, I’m not just a smart man. By tomorrow, I’ll be a dead man. Which means I have no reason to hide anything from you. So you’ll get your answers. All of them. You’ll hear things you’ll wish you never heard. But first I’ll need to show you a few things to help you sew your thread.’ He rose to his feet, came around the desk and hesitated. ‘And you’re wrong about one thing.’
‘What might that be?’
‘The cave is the common thread.’
59
Randall Stokes ushered the two guests across the office to an ordinary-looking door centred between two floor-to-ceiling bookcases. He punched a pass code into a keypad mounted on the doorframe to disengage the vault’s pneumatic locking system. He clasped the door handle, paused, and turned to Brooke and Flaherty. ‘Few have ever been in this room. This is where I keep my personal collection,’ he confided in a whisper.
When Stokes pulled the door open, a motion sensor activated the lights in the space beyond.
‘Come and see,’ Stokes said, leading the way inside.
The tantalizing possibilities had Brooke’s heart beating triple-time. She could tell Flaherty’s curiosity was equally piqued.
‘After you,’ Flaherty said to Brooke. As she slipped past him, he paused at the threshold and gave the formidable security door closer consideration. He noted the deadbolt on the door’s inside face. Giving the spacious vault a cursory once-over, he detected no other doors or windows. The air in here was thin. One word came to mind: asphyxiation.
As she moved deeper into the vault, Brooke was rendered speechless by the incredible assortment of Mesopotamian relics Stokes had amassed. Display cases and shelves filled with jaw-dropping specimens: dozens of cuneiform tablets inscribed with the same characters she’d deciphered in the cave; ancient tools from the early Bronze Age, including an axe, chisels, hammers and knives. ‘Are these reproductions?’ she asked Stokes.
‘All originals,’ he said like a proud father. He looked back to the door. ‘Will you be joining us, Agent Flaherty?’
‘Just taking it all in,’ Flaherty said, and made his way over in small steps. The smooth soles of his loafers caught the slick surface of a wide swath of carpet in the room’s centre. A trace of chemicals wafted up into his nostrils. Cleaning solution. The area had been scrubbed very recently. Flaherty had a sneaking suspicion as to why.
‘Oh wow,’ Brooke muttered. She stared in wonderment at the huge monolith carved in bas-relief with two winged Mesopotamian protective spirits, or apkallu, facing one another in profile, as if courting for a dance — each half human, half lion. Raised broad wings and intricate rosettes adorning ceremonial dress depicted their divinity. ‘Is this from Babylon?’
‘No. That was the seal that we removed from the cave entrance.’
‘Really.’ She quickly tabulated that it predated Babylonian works by at least fourteen centuries. Ye t its quality was equally stunning. ‘It’s magnificent.’
‘Indeed. Even more impressive than what came centuries after it. Just like the writing you transcribed for us — far more sophisticated than anyone ever expected.’
In the obelisk-shaped display case next to the seal, Brooke spotted a highly unusual clay tablet etched not only in writing, but schematic designs. ‘This text … these images,’ she said in awe. ‘Is this what I think it is?’
Stokes nodded. ‘The world’s oldest map. Given to me by a dear friend.’
For a long moment, Stokes stared at the artifact. More than anything, this keepsake symbolized the incredible spiritual transformation he’d undergone after the monks had found him disfigured on the roadside all those years ago.
In the sanctuary of a hilltop monastery, it had been Monsignor Ibrahim himself who’d overseen Stokes’s physi
cal and spiritual rehabilitation. The monsignor had brought Stokes to the looming mountain that marked Lilith’s ancient tomb and imparted to him a haunting tale of civilization’s first Apocalypse that transformed what had once been a lush paradise. By torchlight, they’d stood side by side in the cave’s entry passage as the monsignor recounted Lilith’s journey, immortalized in stone. He’d shown Stokes the chamber where Lilith’s victims had been buried en masse. Then he’d brought Stokes to the demon’s tomb, deep inside the mountain.
‘Like you, Lilith’s bold venture into the unknown realm had not been in vain,’ Monsignor Ibrahim had told him. ‘Her predestined journey merely marked the beginning for many changes yet to come. Everything you need is here. Now it is time for your destiny to begin.’
And from that humble beginning — that tiny mustard seed — sprang Operation Genesis.
Stokes punched a code into the base of the display case, then unhinged the lid. He removed the tablet, admired it and offered it to her.
‘A map for what place?’ Brooke asked as she cautiously accepted the tablet.
‘That, Ms Thompson, is the map to what later mythology would call Eden. A treasure map that points to the beginning of humanity and civilization. A thriving city in the northern mountains of ancient Mesopotamia. It is how we found the cave.’
Once again, Brooke was overcome by wonder.
‘You can see here,’ Stokes said, ‘the river that once led to the Zagros Mountains. But the real clues are written here.’ He indicated the wedge-shaped symbols.
The way the symbols repeated suggested to Brooke that it was a numbering system. If so, the established timeline of recorded history had again been turned upside down. The earliest known numeral system had been developed in southern Mesopotamia in 2000 BC by the Sumerians — a sexagesimal system that used the number sixty as its base (with ten as a subbase). With sixty being the smallest number divisible by every factor from one to six, it could easily be separated into halves, thirds and quarters. Thus it simplified common measurements, such as time, geometric angles and geographic coordinates. The Sumerians annotated numbers one through nine with Y-shaped wedges (e.g., three: ‘YYY’, six: ‘YYYYYY’), and tens were sideways Vs that looked like less-than signs (e.g., twenty: ‘<<’, fifty: ‘<<<<<’).
What appeared on this tablet looked much different — much more sophisticated than the Sumerian numbering system. ‘These are numbers?’ Brooke said.
‘Yes. Geographic coordinates based on astrological measurements,’ Stokes said. ‘Ingenious for its time.’
‘Is that possible, Brooke?’ Flaherty asked.
She considered it, then nodded. ‘The Mesopotamians were obsessed with the celestial cycles. So I’d say, yes.’ But without fully transcribing and testing the number system she had to accept what Stokes was saying. ‘And this was what led you to the cave?’ she asked Stokes.
‘Yes.’
If he’d truly been able to decipher this tablet, she thought, then why would he have commissioned her — an outsider — to assist in the excavation? It didn’t add up.
Flaherty was losing his patience. ‘This is all very nice, Stokes. But let’s talk about the other things you found in the cave. The real reason behind your excavation. We know about the skeletons. So why did you study all their teeth?’
‘Yes, the teeth,’ Stokes said. He reflected for a moment to choose his starting point. He directed his response to Brooke. ‘As you know, the emergence of civilization was long, uneven, violent, and marked by many false starts and setbacks. And every major turning point … every conquest in history, was determined by nature’s most potent equalizer: disease. Pestilence is the planet’s survival mechanism. The means not only for maintaining equilibrium, but for genetically selecting winners and losers.’
Flaherty said, ‘I thought guys like you didn’t believe in evolution?’
‘Creationism may make for good sermons, but it certainly doesn’t make good sense or good science,’ Stokes admitted. ‘Ms Thompson, the story you deciphered on the wall of that cave chronicled one of the most profound events that shaped modern civilization. It told of a thriving, technologically advanced people who’d effectively been wiped out shortly after the arrival of a foreign visitor.’
‘Lilith,’ Brooke said.
‘That’s one of the names later mythology ascribes to her,’ he conceded. ‘Lilith was responsible for a wholesale extermination at the dawn of the earliest civilization. A theme that would play out many, many more times throughout our history.’
‘But only the males died, right?’ Brooke said.
Stokes raised his eyebrows. ‘Every one of them. Which begged the question: how could pestilence selectively afflict only men? It seemed impossible. But the remains found in that cave substantiate the story. At that time Frank Roselli was overseeing Fort Detrick’s Infectious Disease lab. His top virologists and geneticists studied specimens from the cave — traces of ancient DNA left behind from a most unusual virus. Of course, I’m not a scientist,’ Stokes said, ‘so the nuances are lost on me. However, I do understand the basic mechanics.’ He paused to marshal his thoughts. ‘The majority of conventional viruses are coded in RNA and replicate within the cytoplasm of host cells. But some viruses, like Lilith’s plague, are coded in DNA and penetrate deeper into the host cell’s nuclear core to replicate.’
Roselli had explained to him how the nucleus of human cells stores the entire genetic code — the genome. The genome has twenty-three chromosome pairs, twenty-two non-sex chromosomes, and one pair of sex chromosomes. The female sex chromosome is noted as ‘XX’ and the male’s is ‘XY.’ At the genetic level all humans are 99.9 per cent identical. Mutations passed on from one generation to the next make up the remaining 0.1 per cent of the genetic code. These ‘single nucleotide polymorphisms’ recode one of the four nucleotides — adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) — along the gene, changing an ‘A’ to a ‘C’ or a ‘G’ to a ‘T’. And in those slight mutations, ancestry can be traced back along a 100,000-year genetic tree to one man and one woman in Africa — the genetic Adam and genetic Eve. ‘Which means we’re all distant cousins,’ Roselli had explained. Roselli inevitably sided with science by refuting the notion of a truly common variant among any ethnic group. Yet Roselli’s scientists clearly demonstrated that a high frequency of specific genetic variations were common among different ethnic groups.
Stokes’s interpretation of the genetic data was simple: the Middle East was a hotbed of genetic variation, and Lilith’s plague was capable of pinpointing the specific genetic sequences that accounted for it.
And Stokes was sure that Lilith’s plague wasn’t mere science — it was a mechanism put into play by God Himself to destroy the wicked early civilizations in the Middle East. He’d learned that from the man who’d given him the map to Eden.
‘When Lilith’s virus enters the host cell’s nucleus, replication can only occur when the viral DNA successfully binds to a matching gene sequence found on the male Y chromosome. And we believe that that gene sequence is specific to males of distinct Arab ancestry. In the absence of this specific Y chromosome gene marker, the virus remains dormant. So a female, or a male of non-Arab descent, can carry the virus, but not manifest its symptoms.’
‘Come on, Stokes. I’m no scientist, but that sounds a bit outlandish to me,’ Flaherty scoffed. ‘I’ve never heard of anything like that. There’s no “Arab” gene. That’s ridiculous.’
Stokes was undeterred. ‘The Y chromosome makes up less than half of one per cent of the male genome. But unlike most other genes, the strands of the Y chromosome do not recombine over successive generations. Quite simply, that means the Y chromosome is transcribed almost perfectly from father to son with virtually zero mutation.’
‘He’s right,’ Brooke said. ‘It’s how ancestral lineage is determined.’
This aspect of genetics, Brooke knew firsthand, had been widely adopted even by anthropologists. Human migrations out from
Africa brought ancient peoples first into the Middle East. There, climate and other environmental factors caused slight adaptive mutations. The Middle East became a nexus for successive migrations pushing out across Eurasia and eventually across land bridges to the American continent and as far south as Australia (thanks to intercontinental land bridges resulting from dramatic drops in sea level brought on by the Ice Age). And every step of the human journey brought greater diversity — including slight changes both in the paternally transcribed Y chromosomes and the maternally transcribed mitochondrial DNA.
Stokes added, ‘Mapping the Y chromosome is how scientists know that 16 million men living today are direct descendants of Ghengis Khan. A distinct genetic marker unites 8 per cent of all men living in the former Mongol Empire. Similarly, the skeletons we found in that cave were among the earliest ancestors of modern Arabs. When we compared their Y chromosomes to modern Middle Eastern men, the similarities were startling. So that brings us to a most compelling crossroads.’ He held out his hands like a magician. ‘You’re a smart man, Agent Flaherty. So I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.’
Flaherty certainly understood what Stokes was implying, though he wasn’t buying it. ‘You’re hoping to recreate Lilith’s plague.’
‘Bravo,’ Stokes said, grinning.
‘You can’t be serious,’ Flaherty scoffed. ‘If you’re bitter about losing your leg, you might want to consider psychotherapy instead.’
‘I assure you this is no joke, Agent Flaherty,’ Stokes said.
Brooke, too, was incredulous. ‘You’re saying you’ve created a plague that kills only males of Arab ancestry?’
‘Give or take,’ Stokes said.
‘Give or take?’ Flaherty said, horrified. ‘So you’re playing around with a virus that you don’t even understand?’
‘It’s impossible to account for every mutation. We can’t anticipate every scenario,’ he admitted.
‘But you developed a vaccine, right?’ Brooke said. ‘I mean if this virus is from six thousand years ago, there’s no guarantee that anyone will be immune.’
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