by Alton Gansky
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Perry is in California, not here. Why would he be standing at the door looking down . . . ?”
Realization hit Claire like a flash of lighting. Seizing the picture, she ripped it from the table and raced to the door. She had to move Joseph to the side to make room for herself. Kneeling, she offered a prayer as she pushed the picture under the door and into the hall.
She stood and took a step back, wondering if she had just done a wise or foolish thing.
Joseph moved to the door and once again leaned his forehead on its smooth surface.
“WHICH DOOR?” Jack asked. “I can see half a dozen doors down this hall.”
Perry and Jack moved away from the elevator opening. “I don’t know,” Perry admitted. “I’m just guessing that they’re on this floor. Maybe we should try each door, just turning the knob. If the knob turns, we move on. I don’t think they would be in an unlocked room.”
“Makes sense,” Jack said.
They came to the first door and Perry turned the handle. It moved freely. Slowly, he let it return to its resting position and moved on. Jack did the same on the other side of the corridor. As Perry was about to try his third door, he saw a piece of paper slip out from beneath the door a few feet from where he was standing. He walked to it and saw an image drawn in crayon: a picture of him standing in front of a door and Joseph on the other side. Perry softly called for Jack and showed him the drawing.
“Bingo,” Jack said. He reached forward and turned the doorknob. It didn’t budge. “Tight as a drum.”
“We should have started here,” Perry said as he pointed to an electronic keypad. It was set low so that someone in a wheel chair could reach it.
“Hindsight is always clearer.”
Perry studied the keypad. “It’s high-end tech,” he said. “Not only do you need to know the code, but it reads your fingerprint. We’re not going to crack that.”
“Step aside for a second,” Jack said. He examined the door, the doorknob, and the frame. He then looked at the picture he still held in his hand. “Joseph would recognize your voice, wouldn’t he?”
“He should, and Claire’s with him,” Perry answered.
“Tell her to move Joseph away from the door. I’m going to provide a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem.”
“Claire? It’s Perry, can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can, Perry,” came an excited but muffled reply.
“Move Joseph away from the door,” he said. He placed his ear to the door and heard Claire talking to her son.
He heard her say, “Okay.”
Perry turned to Jack. “Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”
“It’s a wood door, solid core no doubt, but I should be able to persuade it to open.” Jack took a step back, raised his right foot, and let fly a brutal kick. The force of the kick against the solidly hung door forced Jack back a step. “Give me a little support here.”
Perry took a position behind his big friend and placed his shoulder into Jack’s back. “What you do, do quickly. We’re making enough noise to wake the dead.”
Jack kicked again . . . then again . . . and again. Perry could feel the force of each blow as the door resisted Jack’s attempts. “It’s giving,” Jack said. “A couple more ought to do it.”
“How come it always works the first time in the movies?”
Jack answered with another kick, and this time the wood splintered. Perry came to the door and saw that it gave way at the lock. Shards of wood lay in the carpeted hall. Perry charged in and was greeted by Claire, who threw her arms around his neck and began to weep. Joseph stepped forward and laid his head on Perry’s shoulder. Perry threw one arm around Joseph and the other around Claire.
The embrace lasted only seconds. “We have to get you out of here, quickly.”
“Perry, we have company,” Jack said. “Get them moving.”
Perry turned, but Jack was gone. “Follow me.” Perry entered the corridor and saw Jack marching toward two people. One he recognized as the intruder at his site, dressed in yet another suit. The other was a mahogany-haired woman, dressed in a beige pant-suit and carrying a small purse.
“To the stairs,” Perry commanded, pointing away from the approaching duo. He guided Claire out of the room and down the hall. Alex was coming from the direction of the elevators.
“We meet again.” The words came from behind Perry. It was Jack. “We never finished our little chat.” There was a thud. Perry turned and saw the well-dressed man bounce off one of the corridor walls. “I’m not napping this time, partner,” Jack said. “You only get to sucker punch me once.”
Perry could barely believe what he saw next. The thief had hit the wall hard enough to drop several men, but he didn’t go down. He straightened himself, unbuttoned his suit coat, and started for Jack. Perry’s friend remained in the middle of the hall like a giant defending his horde against thieves. His attacker was shorter by half a foot, but he seemed unfazed by the mismatch. He threw a brutal punch, but Jack deflected it, as he did the next punch. The fists came faster and faster, and to Perry, the man’s hands seemed to blur.
Jack was backing up now, having more difficulty fending off the blows that came at him so quickly that he could mount no offensive of his own. A punch landed hard enough that the sound of it echoed down the hall. Jack staggered back and threw a fist of his own, something Perry knew he wouldn’t do unless he felt his life was in danger. The attempt was not even close. The well-dressed man moved to the side just enough to avoid being hit and threw a right hand of his own. It caught Jack in the side. Another punch followed, connecting with the big man’s jaw. He spun around and stumbled.
Perry froze for a moment and then started for his friend.
“No,” Jack shouted but only managed a hoarse whisper. “Get them out.”
The man stepped forward and threw a blow into Jack’s back. A kidney shot. Jack dropped to his knees. “Run . . .” Perry watched helplessly as the impossibly strong man brought a sweeping backhand to the side of Jack’s head. Jack crashed forward, landing face down on the carpet.
The man stepped over him and started quickly toward Perry.
“Get in the stairway and run,” Perry commanded. “It will lead to the first floor. Go . . . go.”
Perry was not going to wait for the man, nor was he going try and exchange blows. After seeing how easily he felled Jack, Perry knew he stood little chance of surviving a toe-to-toe encounter. The man he faced was stronger and clearly a trained fighter, but physics was physics.
Perry charged, lowering his head as if to make an open field tackle on the football field. He saw the man set himself. At the last instant he changed his course, aiming not for the assailant’s middle but for his head. Perry dipped his shoulder and launched himself.
It worked. Perry’s right shoulder landed squarely on the head of the other man. The force of Perry’s forward motion sent both men toppling and twisting to the floor, Perry on his back, the other man face down.
Perry scrambled, not to his feet, but to his hands and knees. Before the well-dressed fighter could move, Perry was on top of him, putting his full weight on the man’s chest. It was a struggle, but Perry got one leg on each side of the other man’s torso and grabbed at his head. Knowing that where the head went so went the body, Perry placed both hands on the attacker’s skull and leaned forward with all his weight, pinning it to the floor. Since he was on his stomach, the thief could throw no punches. For the moment he was incapacitated. If Perry could hold him long enough, Claire and Joseph might escape. He heard the door at the end of the hall open. Claire had made it to the stairs. He heard something else.
There was a loud pop, and Perry jerked reflexively. A startled scream rolled down the hall; then Perry felt something hot and hard touch the back of his ear—a gun barrel.
“Come on back, Mrs. Henri, and bring your son with you. I won’t miss next time.” The barrel was pushed into
Perry’s neck. “As for you, I suggest you get off Alex.”
“THIS IS THE way you’re supposed to use the elevator,” Alex said.
“It’s cleaner,” Perry replied.
They rode in the elevator car with Jack, who now walked with a limp and was having trouble straightening up. Claire and Joseph stood in one corner, the dark-haired woman standing next to them, gun pointed at Joseph’s side.
“Mind if I ask where the gun came from?”
The pistol was small, just a little larger than the hand that held it. Perry thought it might be a .25 caliber, one of those dangerous hide-almost-anywhere weapons.
The woman patted the small purse she had hung over one shoulder. “Got everything I need right here: lipstick, mace, handgun.”
“Where are you taking us?” Claire asked, her voice shaking with fear.
“Someone wants to meet your friends.”
“Rutherford Straight,” Perry said.
“You know of my brother?”
“Brother?” Jack said. He was still struggling to get his full breath. “Well, that explains what a nice girl like you is doing in a place like this.”
“It’s his building,” Perry explained. “And it was his company’s jet that flew from Bakersfield to Seattle.”
The elevator doors parted after descending only one floor. Alex grabbed Perry and shoved him through. He did the same with Jack. The woman led the other two out. A few moments later they passed through a door that led to a room with one glass wall.
Near the window sat a frail-looking man in a wheelchair. He leaned precipitously to one side, kept from falling by a strap around his chest. Hearing the door open, he pushed a lever on the arm of the chair, and it turned in place. His hair was a mixture of gray and black, and his head bobbed continually.
“You must be Perry Sachs,” the man said. His voice was thready. A small trickle of drool lined his chin.
“I am,” Perry said. “You are Rutherford Straight.”
“Guilty as charged. I see you’ve met my sister and my right-hand man.”
“He’s a pretty good left-hand man too,” Jack said, rubbing his ribs.
Perry turned his attention to the room beyond the glass and the sight made him sick. A man in a baggy white suit and hood with a face shield moved around a bench. On the bench was the chrysalis. The man was reaching inside the cocoon-like shape with a pair of tweezers.
“Interesting, isn’t it, Mr. Sachs?” Rutherford said. “That is quite a find you made. It may change the world.” The man offered a weak smile that looked more like a grimace. “Change the world in a way you never imagined.”
“Do you know what that is?” Perry asked. He made no attempt to conceal his anger.
“Of course I do,” Rutherford said. “I read the same document as you—”
“The one you stole,” Perry interjected.
“Yes, that would be the one.” Rutherford seemed unbothered by the accusation. “We’re looking at the linen wrappings of Christ. Extremely valuable in its own right; more valuable to me in other ways.”
“What are you doing?” Perry asked, as he watched the strangely suited man take what looked like a long Q-Tip, dip it in a small bottle of solution, then rub it on the linen shell. He focused on the dark blood-stained area.
“Sampling DNA,” Rutherford said. “We would prefer tissue samples of course, but we take what we can get.
“You want DNA from Jesus?” Perry was astonished. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” Rutherford asked pointedly.
“It’s two thousand years old,” Perry said. “Surely it’s not viable.”
“You’d be surprised, Mr. Sachs. DNA has been harvested from mummies around the world, and many of them are far older than two millennia. DNA has been taken from ancient insects, reptiles, humans, and other mammals. This is no different. In fact, it’s not even much of a challenge. Did you know that DNA testing was done on two mummies to evaluate whether King Tut was truly of royal blood? That was DNA over 3,300 years old. That work was conducted back in 2000.”
“But what can you hope to accomplish?”
“Think, Mr. Sachs, think. What is the one primary difference between Christianity and other world faiths?”
“Many things.”
“Pick the one you think is most significant,” Rutherford urged.
“The resurrection. The fact that Jesus rose from the dead.”
“Very good, Mr. Sachs. For an architect, you’re pretty smart.”
“You believe in the resurrection?” Perry asked, puzzled. “How do you reconcile that with, with? . . .”
“My business practices?” Rutherford suggested. A gurgle poured from his mouth. It took a moment for Perry to realize the man was laughing. “There’s nothing spiritual in all this, Mr. Sachs. I have no time for the mumbo jumbo of faith. I just happen to believe that an unusual and unexplained event happened, that’s all.”
“And you want to explain it.”
“I want to capitalize on it, first personally, then financially.”
“But why?”
“Look at me, Sachs. Take a good look.” Rutherford’s words were as sharp as his emaciated body would allow. “I’m a dying man. I die faster than most. I’m also the most brilliant biologist in the world, and the second most gifted is in that other room doing what I can no longer do. I want my life back, Sachs. I want to live and to do my research. I want to walk again. If I can find out what happened to Jesus, then maybe I can find a way to defeat this disease.”
“That seems impossible,” Perry said.
“When you have no hope, the impossible looks pretty good.” Straight turned back to the viewing window. “We will sample, we will analyze. I’ve developed some techniques that may allow some DNA replications and transfer. We do things here other scientists can only dream of. Bioengineering is the current wave, Mr. Sachs.
“Industry has had its day, as has the Information Age. The present and the future belong to those who can manipulate life. Here we make artificial skin for burn victims; we are close to finishing the development of a technique to grow a new pancreas.
“Do you know anyone with diabetes, Mr. Sachs? If you do, then I may be that person’s best friend. We’ve made crops safer, food last longer, grain grow larger heads, pigs that produce low-fat meat, and more. Oh, we can also improve the functionality of humans. You may have noticed that Mr. Olek is stronger than anyone you’ve ever met?” He turned his wheelchair and looked at Perry and Jack.
Jack answered. “It seems he may have done a little working out.”
The choking laugh returned. “He has no need to work out, at least not to get stronger. I’ve fixed that. My good friend is genetically improved. Like some doctors do gene therapy to treat certain diseases, I created a way to improve the human reaction time, energy usage by muscles, and overall strength. It has caused quite a stir among the military types. My sister, Julia, is his only competition.”
That explained Alex’s ability to beat a man taller, younger, and physically superior—except Jack wasn’t physically superior. It was a wonder he wasn’t dead.
“Do you know what chimeraplasty is, Mr. Sachs?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Gene therapy is generally done through an altered vector such as a virus. A virus is altered so that it cannot hurt its intended host or replicate. Some of the patient’s cells are removed, injected with this altered virus, and then the cells are replaced. If things work right, the cells replicate, and a cure is achieved. That’s the simple version, but you get the idea.
“The problem is the technique is cumbersome and slow. That’s where chimeraplasty comes in. A Chimera is a mythical creature made up of parts of different animals. By taking short segments of DNA known as oligomers, defective genes in a cell can be identified, causing the cell to undertake its own repairs.
“That’s what I want, Mr. Sachs. I want my body to heal itself, but
I need the right catalyst to do that. Soon we will be able to genetically treat hemophilia and cystic fibrosis. Closer to my heart, of course, is ALS.”
“And you think you might find it in scraps of DNA taken from Jesus’ burial linens.” Perry was aghast.
“That’s the idea. If anyone can make it work, I can.”
Perry looked at the chrysalis and felt a heavy ache of sadness. No wonder Dr. Henri had been so frightened about the material falling into the wrong hands. Perry could understand the emaciated man’s desire to live, to be healed of the horrible disease, but so far he was responsible for two deaths, two kidnappings, assaults, and probably more than Perry could know. And Perry felt sure the number of murders was going to increase by four in the near future. There seemed little he could do about it.
“That’s a remarkable boy you have there, madam,” Rutherford said. “Idiot-savant is the term, I believe.”
“Just savant. Thinking people don’t use the outdated term.”
“Danger has made you grow feisty, I see. He’s perplexed me some, I must confess. I’ve been a proponent of genetic treatment. I still am for the most part. Had you gone through the process, you might have been able to spare yourself the burden of his life.”
“He’s no burden. And if genetic testing told your parents that you would have ALS, they might have aborted you.”
There was a loud slap, and Perry spun to see Claire holding a hand to her face. Julia had backhanded her.
“Still,” Rutherford continued as if the assault had not occurred. “He is an enigma. Do you remember that piece of paper Julia brought to you earlier today?”
“Yes.” Claire sputtered softly. “She gave it to Joseph.”
“Correct, and he drew a picture based on it. Most people would have missed the subtle change, but I didn’t. That paper I sent down was a detailed print of my DNA. Your son not only copied it, he corrected it. That’s right, he corrected it. How does he do that?”