The Doomsday Key

by James Rollins

  Krista did not care which it was, as long as she was on the winning side. She returned to studying the flames, but pictured another fire. One that had almost ruined everything. She had received an update shortly after midnight from a spotter in the English fells. He had reported on the success of the implanted incendiary charges. But the fire had quickly raged out of control, threatening all. She was forced to wait another two hours before she got the confirmation that the others had escaped the woods. That the operation continued as planned.

  If I had failed there…

  A chill swept through her.

  It would have been a disaster, especially with the way matters fared at the Grand Hotel. It had taken her too long to discover that it had been Antonio Gravel who contacted the senator, and he ended up being a more cunning target than she had anticipated. After contacting the senator, the man had vanished. He wasn’t at his hotel or at the summit. Only too late did she learn of his predilection for young hookers, those who didn’t mind a bit of rough play. Unable to find him quickly enough, she had been forced to set up an ambush at the hotel. It was more brazen than she would have liked, but she had little time for subtlety. She had also hoped to take out two birds with one shot. She had ordered her men to kill Antonio as soon as he entered the hotel, then to use the chaos and confusion to assassinate the senator.

  Senator Gorman’s death had not been specifically ordered. He was only supposed to be killed if Antonio spoke to him, but Krista did not like loose ends. Especially loose ends that could recognize her. Jason Gorman, love-struck over his new girlfriend, had sent pictures to his father.

  Such exposure worried her.

  And she didn’t like to worry.

  In the end, the senator had escaped, and not through any fault of her own. She had been explicitly instructed not to pursue the dark-haired Sigma operative. It was not her fault he had shown up.

  Still, anxiety kept her tense and cold. She stayed close to the fire, the belt of her robe snugged tightly.

  At last, her phone vibrated. She immediately brought it to her ear.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “I understand the operation in England continues as planned.” “It does.” She let a little pride shine through.

  “And Senator Gorman escaped.”

  Her vision narrowed, shadowed at the corners. All her earlier confidence evaporated upon hearing the tone of the man’s voice.

  “Yes,” she forced out.

  Silence stretched. Krista’s heart pounded in her throat.

  “Then we can proceed with the second tier of our plan.

  “Krista hid a long sigh of relief, but she was also confused. “Second tier?”

  “To begin cleaning house in preparation for the endgame.”

  “Sir?”

  “Echelon has met and reevaluated the coming scenarios. In the end, there seems little need for a continuing relationship with Viatus. We find Ivar Karlsen growing quickly into more of a liability. Especially after some strange events this past night at his research facility. His best use now is as a scapegoat, someone to draw fire away from us.”

  Krista let her mind go cold, recalibrating her role.

  The man continued. “We have all the pertinent research. What Ivar Karlsen has set in motion cannot be reversed and will serve us in the end, with or without him.”

  “What am I to do?”

  “You’ll accompany him to Svalbard as planned and await further orders. I understand he’s opted to leave earlier than expected.”

  “Another storm is rolling in faster than predicted. He wants to make sure it doesn’t interrupt his plans.”

  “Very wise. Because a storm is definitely brewing out there.” The man’s voice faded. “You have your orders.”

  The line went dead.

  Krista lowered the phone and clutched it between her palms. She shifted closer to the fire but found no warmth. She stood there unmoving, losing track of time. Her breathing grew harder.

  Finally, a voice spoke behind her.

  “Are you coming to bed, Krista?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. Ivar Karlsen stood naked in the doorway to his bedroom. At his age, he remained solid, his belly flat, his legs strong and muscular. And more important, he needed no pill to perform.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  She turned fully to face him. Dropping her phone into a pocket, she undid the sash of her robe and let the garment slither off her shoulders to pile atop the fur rug. She stood with her back to the flames, all too aware of the fire, all too aware of the icy chill of the castle room.

  She stood where she belonged.

  Between ice and fire.

  THIRD

  SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION

  18

  October 13, 8:43 A.M.

  Airborne over the Norwegian Sea

  The sun remained low in the sky as the private jet soared over the Arctic Circle. During the late autumn months, there was little daylight where they were headed. The archipelago of Svalbard lay halfway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. With over half of its landmass buried under glaciers, it was home to little besides reindeer and polar bears.

  Even Saint Nick would have a hard time calling this place home.

  But for the moment, Painter enjoyed the leather and mahogany cabin of the private jet, a Citation Sovereign wangled by Kat. She also had their flight manifest altered to show that they were executives of a coal consortium. It was a decent cover. The major industry of the archipelago was coal mining.

  The jet’s cabin sat seven, so there was plenty of room for the four of them to stretch out. They had all managed to get a little sleep, needing it after the long night, but they’d be landing in less than an hour at Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on the Svalbard islands.

  Painter leaned back in his leather captain’s chair. He sat across a table from Senator Gorman. Monk and Creed shared a neighboring couch. It was time to lay all their respective cards on the table, to firm up the tentative game plan for the coming confrontation.

  Painter knew they would have to move fast, to jump as soon as their tires hit the tarmac. They had fled Oslo knowing two things. First, that with Painter’s cover blown and the senator being hunted, the place had grown too hot. Second, that their major suspect had already abandoned the city and was headed to the same frozen islands. It was their best chance to corner Karlsen and get some real answers.

  The CEO of Viatus was leading a group of summit leaders to view the famous Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It was the Noah’s Ark for seeds, meant to protect its precious cargo—over three hundred thousand seed species—against wars, pestilence, nuclear attack, earthquakes, even drastic climate changes. Designed to last for twenty thousand years, this Doomsday Vault was buried five hundred feet under a mountain, in what was considered to be the most remotely populated place on earth.

  If they wanted a private conversation with Karlsen, far from prying eyes, this was the place for it. But such a meeting wasn’t without significant risk.

  “Senator,” Painter pressed one last time, “I still think it might be best if you stayed in Longyearbyen. If we need you, we can pull you into the investigation.”

  Painter continued to maintain the ruse that the three of them were from the office of the Inspector General, working for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. They even had the badges to prove it.

  “I’m going with you,” Senator Gorman said, nursing a cup of coffee.

  Painter had noted that he’d spiked it with some brandy from the stocked bar. Not that Painter blamed the guy. Gorman had taken a series of hard blows in the past few hours. He had been a close associate, bordering on friends, with Karlsen.

  Gorman’s voice hardened. “If Ivar truly had a hand in the death of my son …”

  “We still don’t know how much ties directly back to him,” Painter offered thinly.

  The senator wasn’t buy
ing it.

  “He fucking shook my hand.” Gorman slammed a fist on the table, rattling the coffee cups and saucers. He glared across the table. Plainly the senator would not be swayed from coming. Painter could only imagine the pain of his loss, followed by such a betrayal, but at the moment Painter didn’t need someone flying off half-cocked.

  Still, the man had one solid argument and stated it again. “You’ll need me to get close to Ivar.”

  Painter folded his hands in his lap, recognizing the truth. Karlsen had left an hour before them, racing ahead of a storm blowing in from the pole. He would likely already be at the seed vault by the time they landed. And security there was tight, especially with the arriving dignitaries from the summit.

  Senator Gorman continued. “To get inside, you’ll need both me and my ID pass. Even your badges won’t get you past security. With my invitation, I can get at least one of you into the vault.”

  It had already been decided that Painter would be that one. Monk and Creed would maintain a defensive perimeter outside and offer backup.

  Painter had also reviewed the security at the seed vault. The place was sealed behind steel-reinforced doors, monitored by a sophisticated video-surveillance system, not to mention patrolled by the couple of thousand polar bears that roamed the island. Additionally, for this event, a contingent of the Norwegian army would be on hand to bolster security.

  So crashing this party without the senator would be as hard as cracking into Fort Knox.

  Recognizing all this, Painter finally relented. He straightened in his chair and eyed everyone. “Then before we land, let’s figure out what we know—and, just as important, what we don’t. Once we hit the ground, we’ll need to jump.”

  Monk nodded. “Where do we start?”

  “With our primary target, Ivar Karlsen.” Painter focused on Gorman. “You’ve worked with him for years. What can you tell us about him?”

  The senator leaned back, clearly trying to rein in his anger, but his expression remained black. “If you’d asked me that yesterday, I would’ve said he was a rugged, stand-up sort of guy, someone who knows how to make a buck, but also knows the responsibility behind such wealth. Sort of Rockefeller crossed with FDR.”

  “And how did you first meet?”

  “Through the Club of Rome. I joined simply to make political and business connections. What better way to firm up my career than to hobnob with an international group of industrialists, politicians, and celebrities.” He shrugged, shameless about his ambition. “But then I met Ivar. His passion was electric, his rhetoric compelling. He firmly and wholeheartedly believes in preserving the world, safeguarding mankind’s future. Sure, some of his suggestions for managing population growth may be extreme. Mandatory birth control, sterilization, paying families not to have children. But someone has to make those hard choices. It’s what drew me to him to begin with. His no-nonsense manner and sensibility. But I wasn’t the only one in his inner circle.”

  Painter’s interest sharpened. “What do you mean?”

  “Within the Club of Rome, Ivar gathered like-minded people, those who also believed tough choices were needed. We were sort of a club within the club. Each of us worked on special projects for him. Mine, like I said, was to use my political clout to expand biofuel development. But there were other projects overseen by various members of the circle.”

  “Like with bees?” Monk asked, referring to the test hives he had seen in the subterranean lab. He rubbed at a stinging welt on his cheek.

  The senator shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. We each ran our separate projects.”

  “Then let’s talk about the project that started this whole mess,” Painter said. “Where all the bloodshed seemed to originate. It all flows back to the genetic research done at Viatus, specifically the testing of its drought-resistant corn. We know Viatus funded the research into extremophiles and that they discovered some fungal organism in the mummies preserved in the English peat.” Painter nodded to Monk. “And we know that research continues today and that those bodies found at the mushroom lab were likely from the test farm in Africa.”

  Painter had already set in motion an order to search those underground labs. But Viatus was one of the largest corporations in Norway, with massive global and financial ties. By the time some judge okayed a search, Painter suspected that the corporation would have purged those labs, leaving behind only sterilized, empty rooms.

  “So I think it’s safe to conclude,” Painter finished, “that the mysterious genes noted in the corn seeds by Professor Malloy at Princeton were from that fungal source. And that apparently those genes are unstable. Possibly making the corn dangerous to consume.”

  Gorman shook his head. “But why massacre the village? The corn wasn’t even meant for human consumption.”

  Painter had one explanation. “It was a refugee camp. Food was scarce. Hungry people get desperate. I wager some locals sneaked into the fields at night and stole an ear or two of corn for their families. And maybe those who were running the farm turned a blind eye to such trespasses. It would offer the corporation the perfect chance to conduct real-world human studies without needing to acknowledge it.”

  “Only no one anticipated the gene altering itself,” Monk said with a grimace. “After learning that, they had to wipe the slate clean, but not before collecting a few test subjects along the way. Who would miss a refugee or two, especially in a firebombed camp?”

  Painter noted that the senator had grown pale, that his gaze had slipped into a thousand-yard stare. Grief shadowed his eyes. But it was more than that.

  “Viatus is already shipping their new drought-resistant corn seed,” Gorman said. “They have been for the past week. Fields are already being planted for the season across much of the southern hemisphere and equatorial latitudes. Millions of acres.”

  Painter sensed something worse coming. Gorman had gone pale. It suddenly struck Painter. To mass-produce the seed for global distribution, Viatus had to have already grown it somewhere and harvested it.

  But where?

  “The production fields for this new corn seed,” Painter asked. “Where are they?”

  Gorman would not meet his eye. “I helped broker the deal for Viatus. GM seed production is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. It’s like pouring money into cash-strapped areas.” His voice went dull with shock. “I spread the money out. Throughout the U.S. corn belt—Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, Michigan … thousands and thousands of acres, in a patchwork across the Midwest.”

  “And this is the same corn that they were testing in Africa?” Monk asked.

  “Not exactly, but it was in the same genetic line.”

  “And probably just as unstable,” Painter added. “No wonder they burned down that test farm in Africa. The cat was already out of the bag.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Monk said. “How could that seed already be planted? What about safety studies?”

  Gorman shook his head. “Safety studies on genetically modified foods are a joke. Food additives get more testing. GM foods have no formal risk assessment guidelines and rely mostly on self-regulation. Approvals are based on filtered or outright fraudulent reports by the industry. To give you some idea, of the forty GM crops approved last year, only eight have published safety studies. And in the case of the seeds being shipped by Viatus, they are not meant for human consumption, so they’re even less on any agency’s radar. And besides … I helped push it through.”

  The senator closed his eyes and shook his head.

  No wonder Karlsen needed him, Painter thought.

  “Still, if the corn’s not meant for human consumption,” Monk said, “maybe the danger can be contained.”

  Creed finally spoke up and quickly quashed this hope. “It will still get into the human food supply.”

  All eyes turned to him.

  The newest member of Sigma seemed to shrink a little under their combined attention, but he held up. “After what happened in Princeton, I
looked a little deeper into GM crops. In 2000, a GM corn called StarLink, a corn not approved for human consumption like the Viatus strain, ended up contaminating food products across the country. More than three hundred brands. It was suspected of triggering allergic reactions and resulted in a massive recall. The Kellogg Company had to close its production line for two weeks just to clean out the contamination.”

  The senator nodded. “I remember. The government had to buy up Kellogg stock to keep the industry afloat. Cost us billions.”

  “And that was only one of many such reports of foreign GM products ending up in the human food supply.” Creed glanced over at Painter. “There remains a much larger concern about all this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pollen migration and genetic contamination.”

  Frowning, Painter waved for him to explain in more depth.

  “There is no way to contain pollen movement of a GM crop. It blows in the wind, gets washed into neighboring fields. Some seeds have been found growing as far away as thirty miles from a planting. So don’t be fooled. Wherever fields are planted with the Viatus corn, it will spread from there.”

  “And genetic contamination?”

  “Even more concerning. There have been cases of genetic modifications passing from engineered species into wild ones, spreading the contamination at the genetic level into the biosphere. And with the instability noted by Dr. Malloy in the Viatus corn sample, I think that likelihood is even greater.”

  “So what you’re saying is that the whole Midwest could be contaminated?” Monk asked.

  “It’s too soon to say that,” Painter said. “Not until we have more answers.”

  Still, Painter remembered what Gray had discovered in England. The mummies in the peat bog had been riddled with mushrooms, just like the bodies found at the lab. Had Karlsen unwittingly unleashed that organism back into the world?

  Worse, what if it wasn’t an accident?

  Karlsen had clearly manipulated the senator to his own ends. But what was his goal in all of this?

  Only one man could answer that.