Bred to Kill

by Franck Thilliez

Bellanger took a deep breath.

  “The three sheets of paper you handed in—those letters are the genetic code of an absolute monster.”

  The young chief looked Sharko straight in the eyes and added:

  “A prehistoric virus.”

  51

  The river was dark and acidic, like a foretaste of hell. Inky waters leaching tannin from plant debris, logjammed streams from wooded isles, tangles of vines, knotted roots. Rio Negro widened and narrowed, strangled by the walls of the forest. The rising dawn could barely filter through the leafy canopy, where colonies of monkeys shrieked, attracted by the rumbling of the motor. The Maria Nazare, a small riverboat, looked like a steamboat in miniature, with a maximum capacity of six people. Lucie was one of four on board—herself and three crewmen. There was her guide, Pedro Possuelo, as well as Candido and Silverio, two young Baniwa Indian brothers who, according to Pedro, lived in São Gabriel with the twelve members of their family. Three men armed with rifles, machetes, and knives, sitting among coils of rope, jerry cans of gasoline, pots, and scattered food supplies. Individuals whom she knew only by their first names. She wasn’t entirely reassured, but her guide seemed honest enough: he had come to pick her up at the hotel, chatted with the staff, and told them she’d be with him from now on. People knew the man, and knew she was with him.

  At regular intervals along the banks, imposing signs appeared, announcing the presence of Indian territories: ATENÇÃO! AREA RESTRITA. PROHIBIDO ULTRAPASSAR . . . Customs notes punctuating the waterway. Pedro came and leaned his elbows on the stern next to Lucie. He was eating small crackers made from cassava—everything here was made from cassava—and offered her one, which she accepted. It was good, chewy, slightly salty. It put something in her stomach.

  “I picked up Eva Louts at the airport exit, the same as I did with you,” said Pedro. “I told her I could bring her out there, to the edge of the Ururu territory.”

  “How did it go, ‘out there’?”

  After swallowing another mouthful, Pedro plunged his hands into a basin and ran clear water over his face. The air was thick, saturated with humidity, marking the transition between the rainy and dry seasons. Ahead of them, the sun was just rising: a fat, severed fruit the color of blood.

  “The first time I tried to go to the Ururu territory must be about fifteen years ago. This millionaire anthropologist, kind of an eccentric, wanted to try his luck.”

  He showed a wide scar on his left collarbone, as well as tiny buckshot under his skin, around his thighs.

  “Buckshot from a rifle . . . I’ve kept it as a souvenir of my years battling poachers. I was young and fearless then. The man paid me a fortune to go there. Exploring conditions were a lot harder than they are today. The boats weren’t as good, no GPS, and the Ururu were buried way back in the jungle. Today they’ve come closer to the riverbanks. A few hours after we got out of the boat, Chimaux and his savages came this close to killing us—he just had to snap his fingers—like that . . . But he realized he had more to gain by letting us live than by slaughtering us. These days he uses guides like me as messengers.”

  Nervously tapping the tips of her tall hiking boots on the metal stern, Lucie watched the black, peaceful flanks of the river. She imagined the gray faces watching her, armed with bows and blowguns. She imagined giant serpents rising from the waves. Too many horror movies and other idiocies from the West, giving her a false image of this lost world.

  “Messengers? How so?”

  “These days, we’ll bring anybody who wants to go up to the edge of the Ururu territory, no questions asked. I don’t care what you plan to do over there. As long as I get paid enough to keep the wheel turning, you understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Those foreigners . . . Chimaux likes to terrify them. He hides in the jungle, prowls around them, sometimes wearing this hideous makeup. Sometimes he attacks them, just as a warning, to show whose territory it is. He’s completely crazy.”

  Lucie’s fingers clutched the ship’s rail. Pedro spoke in a natural tone, as if death and horror were his daily bread.

  “He spins a wheel of fortune to decide what fate they’ll suffer. Every adventurer knows how it works, knows the rules, the dangers, but they all want to try their luck, because that’s what exploring is about. Everyone wants to learn the secret of the Ururu. Chimaux’s book had the opposite effect of what he’d intended. Instead of scaring people off, it just made them more curious. There’s no shortage of people on this earth who want to see horror close up.”

  Pedro nodded at the inaccessible riverbanks.

  “The Indians are dangerous. Not that long ago, it wasn’t warning signs you saw posted along the river, but heads on spikes. The natives are out there, all around us. Most of them despise us. Whenever whites have come, they’ve brought only wars, hardship, and disease. These natives have been massacred, enslaved; they’ve seen their women raped. Years have gone by, but the old wounds remain. Today, the nice Westerners think they’ll win them over with hats or iPods, but they’re still the invader.”

  Lucie realized how fragile the world was, with its sensitive borders, constantly moving like the boundaries of vegetation. Pedro stared deep into her eyes.

  “You’re like that girl—you don’t look like the kind I usually bring out here. You know there’s no life insurance with me, right, and that you might leave a few feathers behind too?”

  “Yes . . . Yes, I do.”

  Lucie let the silence and the emerald light envelop her. She was afraid, not of dying, but of leaving the world without saying good-bye to those she loved. Despite everything, she felt it was in this luxuriant blend of life and decay that her fate awaited her.

  The engine backfired, startling her out of her reverie. A dead log floated downriver, rolling slowly on itself like a wounded crocodile.

  “Was Louts able to make contact with Chimaux and the Ururu?”

  He nodded.

  “Something happened in the jungle, with her. I don’t know how she did it, but she got through. Chimaux took her with him for three days. I’ve never known him to allow anybody onto his lands. My crew and I waited for her at our camp, outside the territory, keeping our rifles handy.”

  He spat in the river.

  “She didn’t say anything on the return trip. She knew how to keep a secret. But she did let me know she was coming back and that she’d be in touch when she did. Then she left for France and we never saw her again.”

  Pedro Possuelo turned around at a signal from one of his men. He headed to the prow, with Lucie following. A blast of the foghorn. The Brazilian pointed toward a large hut at the edge of a distant pontoon dock, which nearly blocked the river.

  “We’re coming to the FUNAI outpost. They control all access upstream. Don’t forget, officially, you’re touring along the Indian reservations.” He shoved a camera into her hands. “Photojournalist. Okay?”

  “Okay . . .”

  He held out his hand.

  “Two hundred.”

  Lucie gave him the cash that would spare them too many questions, searches, delays. The engine changed gears; fat white billows of smoke curled from every side of the boat. Gradually, black, human shadows appeared in the haze. Machine guns slung across the shoulder, fatigues, combat boots: soldiers. They walked slowly on the dock, while one had remained in the hut, a huge satellite phone to his ear. The sides of the Maria Nazare slowly butted against the fat mooring buoys. Pedro jumped onto the pontoon dock and shook hands: these men knew each other. A few words exchanged in Portuguese, checking papers, money passing from one hand to the other, a few questioning looks toward Lucie. Then smiles, pats on the shoulder: they were through. Pedro hopped back onto the boat, called for them to leave.

  Gas to the motor, starting off . . .

  At that moment, the man from inside the hut came out and stood in the middle of the dock, hands
flat between his belt and his stomach. Through the wisps of fog, he fixed Lucie with a cold smile. Two thick, reddish scars, still fresh, striped his face.

  Lucie swallowed hard. The man with the black widow.

  As the boat gathered speed, she saw him bring his index finger to his throat and make a slow, horizontal movement, while moving his lips.

  Lucie didn’t need to understand Portuguese.

  You’re dead . . .

  His thick shadow finally dissolved in the fog. Pale, Lucie looked at Pedro distrustfully as he sat cross-legged on the deck, scaling fish with his knife. The soldier had let them pass. Why? Should she be wary of her own guides? What was waiting for them at the end of the trail?

  “Who was that man in the hut?” she asked.

  Pedro answered without looking up, busy with his fish.

  “Alvaro Andrades. Here they call him the Lord of the River. I saw what he did; I think I got what he said to you. ‘When you come back, you’re dead.’ What’s going on with him? I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You won’t have any. Are he and Chimaux in touch?”

  Pedro got up, bringing his fish and his basin.

  “Andrades controls the river. Word around here is that he’s looking for Chimaux. He searches all the boats heading the other way, toward São Gabriel, top to bottom. He’ll search us too on the way back. That’s why what he did worries me. What’s he got against you?”

  “I have no idea, I’ve never met him.”

  He headed down to the lower passageway, leaving Lucie alone with her thoughts. So Chimaux was trapped in the jungle. After the failed attempt on his life, the killer had bought the military, no doubt putting a stiff price on the anthropologist’s head.

  From then on, time seemed endless. Jungle gave way to more jungle, ever more compact and oppressive. The beauty of the bone-white foothills of Pico da Neblina yielded to endless rows of trees, flat as shingles. A lost, desolate horizon.

  Eleven hours later, the engine slowed. Meanwhile, they’d had a meal of fish cooked in spicy broth, some porridge, and home-brewed beer. Before them, the river was like a Russian doll: ever narrower confluences, nested one inside the other, right to the end. Occasionally something shone on the banks—mica, fool’s gold—or else caimans disappeared beneath the waves. Lucie found Pedro more and more surprising by the minute. How was he still able to navigate in this labyrinth of swamps choked with rotting tree trunks? The guide didn’t mind boasting: he was the only one who dared come this way, which saved them precious time. Vegetation had invaded everything: water, earth, and sky. Roots drank, dug deep, crept forward. Vines hung in the water like endless stalactites; twisted branches scraped the black surface. A universe without frontiers, hostile to any form of human existence.

  Pedro turned the boat about thirty degrees until he was only a few yards from shore.

  “This is where we drop anchor,” said the guide. “We won’t get any farther in the boat. In three hours, it’ll be nightfall. We’ll sleep here and tomorrow we start walking.”

  There were cracking sounds, birds the color of fire took wing, and Lucie’s attention was drawn by small monkeys with white faces. The capuchins from the video, watching them . . . Pedro was looking toward the jungle. His eyes narrowed. He picked up his rifle and checked to see that it was loaded. With a shiver, Lucie followed his gaze.

  “What is it? Did you see something?”

  The guide motioned discreetly toward some large banana leaves, which trembled on the right, then on the left, before regaining their chilling quiet.

  “I don’t think we’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow or walk very far. They’re already here.”

  52

  A virus . . . The word echoed over and over in Sharko’s brain like a tape loop.

  A virus from another age, as old as humanity, that had probably infected the Cro-Magnon in the cave and made him drunk with violence. What could it be related to? Had it also contaminated Grégory Carnot and Félix Lambert? Where did it come from? How had it spread?

  The inspector and the Homicide squad leader arrived at their destination. On the way, they had spoken only a few words, each one sunk in his private torment. Sharko was thinking of Lucie. By then, she must have been at the edge of the unknown, powerless and fragile. How would she make it back out? What if something happened to her? If she were wounded or . . . how would he even hear about it?

  In a locker room adjacent to the lab, the two men put on sterile coveralls.

  “Are you sure it’s not dangerous to go in there?” Sharko finally said. “That virus, I mean . . . It can’t infect us, can it?”

  “It isn’t airborne and it can’t spread by touch, if that’s what you’re worried about. And besides, it’s a controlled environment.”

  Sharko slipped on a pair of overshoes.

  “What about the investigation? What’s happening? Anything new?”

  “You ready? Let’s go in.”

  After passing through an airlock, the two men entered the molecular biology lab. The room was filled with every variety of microscope, from electron to scanning tunneling, enormous machines set on antivibration platforms, hundreds of pipettes, stacks of petri dishes. At nearly 4 p.m., things were agitated in that universe of the infinitely small. People were running back and forth, conferring animatedly.

  “Their orders are not to tell anyone about what they’ve found here,” Bellanger whispered. “With what’s going on under their microscopes, they’re all on edge and aware that they might be making the discovery of the century.”

  Jean-Paul Lemoine rushed up to them in a state of high excitement. He firmly shook Sharko’s hand.

  “Give him the details,” said Bellanger, “so that he can grasp the full import of this.”

  “Everything? Even the part about Félix Lambert? I thought you said . . .”

  “Everything.”

  The head of the laboratory rubbed his chin, probably wondering where to begin. He pulled Sharko over to a quieter area in the back of the room.

  “Hmmm . . . It’s not easy to explain. First thing, do you know what a retrovirus is?”

  “Tell me.”

  “AIDS is a good example. Basically, a retrovirus is a little wise guy with some scissors and paste, and using these he integrates his genome—his own sequence of A, T, C, and G’s—into the DNA of the cells he’s contaminated, and hides there. As such, he becomes invisible to the body’s immune system, which then becomes powerless to fight it. Thanks to the cell mechanism, the virus’s hidden genome is read and analyzed by our little internal engineer, who goes over every letter of the DNA. This little engineer, who doesn’t realize he’s got an intruder on his hands, does what he’d normally do with any sequence he reads: he makes a protein, which will serve to build human tissues. Except that in reality, this protein is a new virus let loose inside the organism, which will go infect another cell and start the process over again, and so on ad infinitum. This propagation occurs to the detriment of the other cells, like the decrease in lymphocytes in HIV, and therefore of the body’s immune defenses. Broadly speaking, that’s how a retrovirus works. Oh, one last thing: a retrovirus is called ‘endogenous’ if it’s transmitted from generation to generation. It hides in the embryo and can stay dormant for twenty or even thirty years.”

  An embryo . . . Sharko recalled the tragic deliveries of Lambert’s mother and Amanda Potier, the fatal hemorrhages. Could this be related to that? Bellanger brought them hot coffee. The biologist took a small sip, then continued:

  “So, as I was saying. Until not so long ago, we thought that ninety-eight percent of the DNA molecule had no particular use. We called that part—and still call it—‘junk DNA.’ All of our genetic heritage, the thirty thousand genes that make up our blue eyes, dark hair, or stocky build are distributed over only two percent of useful DNA. The rest is just . . . filler, waste.”
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  “Two percent? So in a way, you could . . . burn almost the entire encyclopedia of life without causing any genetic damage?”

  “That’s what we believed for a long time.”

  Sharko imagined Daniel’s vast library reduced to a single shelf.

  “But the fact is, nature never creates anything useless. And we finally realized, when we decoded the genome, that an earthworm had almost as many genes as we do. And yet we’re infinitely more complex. Which must mean that the so-called junk DNA contains a number of secrets. Today we know that certain portions of that junk DNA participate in the organism’s functioning, interact with the genes we’ve identified. They’re the keys to a whole multitude of locks, if you will, which could never be opened without them. Most of all, we’ve recently understood that more than eight percent of junk DNA was composed of genetic fossils. The fossils of thousands of retroviruses from past generations, which we call HERVs, for human endogenous retroviruses.”

  Sharko sighed, a hand on his forehead.

  “I had a miserable night last night—can you put that a bit more plainly?”

  The biologist gave him a pinched smile.

  “More plainly? All right, let’s see. There are thousands of ‘aliens’ in our genome, Inspector. They live among us, hidden in a dark corner of our DNA. A kind of ancient AIDS, prehistoric monstrosities, mummified microscopic serial killers, which infected our ancestors millions of years ago, then were transmitted from generation to generation and now lie dormant in the DNA of every person on this planet.”

  This time Sharko got a clearer picture, and the horrible thought of it made him shiver. He imagined the DNA molecule as a kind of net dredging up everything that lay around, storing it all away without ever purging itself, just getting fatter and fatter.

  “What keeps all those fossilized retroviruses from waking up? How come they aren’t infecting us now?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. Every time, the process is the same: the infectious agent inserts itself into the cell’s DNA, including the reproductive cells, then is transmitted through procreation like any other genetic heritage. Over time, the HERV undergoes several mutations—its A, T, C, and G’s change—and it gradually loses its ability to be harmful. Like all those volcanoes that became extinct over geological time.”