Bred to Kill

by Franck Thilliez

  “And why does the retrovirus mutate?”

  “Because of evolution. If it’s harmful to humans, if it contains more drawbacks than advantages, the evolution of the human race will do everything it can to eradicate it. So over thousands of years, the virus progressively finds itself unable to do what it was designed to do, in other words manufacture a complete viral envelope that lets it forge its destructive path from cell to cell. But that doesn’t mean it’s dead. Certain mutated retroviruses were tamed by evolution and now play a very advantageous role in certain physiological processes. For example, a mutated retrovirus from the HERV-W family participates actively in the formation of the placenta. Stéphane Terney was among those who claimed that if this particular retrovirus hadn’t invaded living species a long time ago, mammals would never have existed. Females—including human females—would have given birth outside the body, most likely in eggs. The mutated retrovirus thus played a major part in the evolution of these species of animals.”

  Sharko tried to pay attention. Certain words, like “placenta,” “virus,” “Terney,” kept ringing little warning bells in his mind.

  “So Terney was knowledgeable about retroviruses?” he asked.

  “As an immunologist and with regard to what I just explained, yes. I’ll give you one more example of evolution taming a foreign body in humans: sickle-cell anemia. It’s a hereditary illness fairly common among African populations, which hasn’t been eliminated by evolution because it confers a greater resistance to malaria. The advantage gained from it—the antimalarial protection—is deemed to be greater than its disadvantages.”

  Lemoine set down two sets of three printed sheets in front of the inspector. The one on the left was in Daniel’s handwriting. Each sheet contained an infinite series of A, T, G, C.

  “Let’s cut to the chase. On the left you’ve got the mysterious retroviral sequence you gave us, and I hope you can tell us where you got it.”

  “How do you know it’s a retrovirus?”

  “All retroviruses have the same signature, the same starter initiating the sequence. When you see a pistol, you can identify the make, right? Same for me with DNA.”

  He pressed his finger onto one of the sheets on the right.

  “These pages show the sequence of one of thousands of fossilized retroviruses found in the junk DNA of all of us—yours and mine. We know this retrovirus belongs to the HERV-W family. We find it somewhere in the first third of chromosome two. Until today, we had no idea what its function might have been in past millennia. All we knew was that this sequence had appeared only in the hominid branch, because we don’t find it in the genome of any other animal, vegetable, or fungus.”

  “A virus specific to humans . . .”

  “So it seems. We know nothing about it. Its function, its virulence, its destructive power at the time. But the case you’re working on is about to mark a turning point in genetics and molecular biology. I’d even say a turning point in human evolution.”

  Sharko was stunned by such grandiose claims. He looked at the twin sets of papers, put the two top pages side by side. The sequence on the right was practically identical to the one on the left, apart from the occasional extraneous letter that the biologist had highlighted in Day-Glo blue. The difference occurred roughly once every hundred letters.

  “Some of these anomalies, we’re not sure which, rendered this retrovirus inert,” Lemoine explained. “It’s now just a piece of debris in our DNA and has no influence on our organism.”

  He moved the two sets of papers apart and put a third between them.

  “Now take a look at this middle sequence.”

  Sharko squinted. The new sequence was again nearly identical to the others. But there were far fewer highlighted letters, at most about twenty per page. A sequence very close to that of Cro-Magnon but not entirely identical either. Sharko looked at Lemoine with a concerned face.

  “This is the virus that infected Félix Lambert, isn’t it? It’s what you found in his brain.”

  The biologist nodded.

  “Precisely. On the left is the sequence you brought us. In the middle, the one we found in Lambert’s brain cells. And on the right, the harmless sequence we all share today. Moving from left to right, you see an increase in the number of anomalies. Now come have a look through this electron microscope.”

  Sharko put his eye to the lens. He saw a large, black ball in the center, surrounded by twisted filaments like barbed wire, with two longer strands that made it look like a jellyfish, a Portuguese man-of-war. It was ugly, monstrous, and seemed to be gliding calmly in a sea of oil. Sharko’s hair stood on end. The microscopic world was glacial and frightening.

  “Meet GATACA,” said Lemoine. “It’s the name we’ve provisionally given the pathogen present in Lambert’s cell tissue. This is an ancestral virus, slightly mutated, since it shows a few anomalies, as you saw on those pages. Its genome contains exactly eight hundred thousand twelve ATGC bases—it’s barely smaller than AIDS. Naturally, we still don’t know how it works or replicates itself. Looking at what we found in Félix Lambert’s organism, we think GATACA slowly and quietly invades the cells of the human body—and more specifically, the brain cells—over a period of years, like HIV. Then it moves into attack mode when its host reaches adulthood, somewhere around twenty. It’s too early to tell if it’s the secretion of hormones that triggers it, or the biological clock, or cell aging. All we know is that, from that point on, it begins a highly accelerated cycle: it multiplies at a prodigious rate in the brain’s nerve cells, especially the surface areas, and disrupts everything in the host, a little like MS or Alzheimer’s. We know what happens then. The individual has problems with balance, he becomes aggressive and commits violent acts . . .”

  Sharko empied his coffee with a grimace. His throat felt dry.

  “Is it contagious?”

  “Not by breathing or through contact, but perhaps sexually. We just don’t know. Another thing we don’t know is if it works differently in men and women. We don’t know how or when GATACA got into Félix Lambert’s system. Nor do we know who created GATACA. According to Terney’s book, Grégory Carnot was carrying the virus, and at least five others are in the same boat. But why them in particular? We’ll need weeks, even months to understand all this and figure out how to stop it. Can you imagine the damage it could cause, especially if it is transmitted through sexual contact? The number of people infected could grow exponentially.”

  He picked up the pages Sharko had given him.

  “What you’ve discovered here is fundamental. This sequence you gave us seems to be the original, pure, unmutated form. It might be even more violent and harmful, and it might spread more easily. Today we know how to manufacture and grow viruses. Given what we already know of the damage GATACA can cause, can you imagine the monstrosities that could be unleashed by someone holding the recipe—the genetic sequence—for such a prehistoric virus?”

  “You mean administering it to people without their knowledge? Contamination?”

  “Sure. As well as being spread through sexual activity or handed down genetically.”

  “From parents to children . . .”

  “Future generations, which would gradually all become infected, and quickly. People dying at the age of twenty or thirty, intoxicated with violence. Tell us what you know. We’ll be liaising with the Ministry of Health to set up emergency research teams. We have to move fast. The more time passes, the more we risk losing control of this virus altogether.”

  “Tell us,” Bellanger repeated. “We’ve given you everything we’ve got. Now it’s your turn to pony up.”

  Sharko thought for a moment, still shaken by these horrible revelations. He had to play it very carefully. Bellanger, Lemoine, and the other cops knew nothing about Lucie’s investigation. The theft of Cro-Magnon, the tapes, Phoenix, the Amazon tribe, the research into Terney’s
past, the mothers dying in childbirth—how much could he tell without putting Lucie in danger? On the other hand, did he have the right to keep these revelations to himself? Lives were at stake—and God only knew how many.

  He looked searchingly at the three sets of pages lying next to one another. To the left, Cro-Magnon, with the virus in its pure form. In the middle, Lambert, with the virus still active but mutated. On the right, the rest of humanity, with the inactive virus.

  Three different forms of the virus, because evolution had mutated it over time. So then, three different epochs. But how was that possible, since Lambert hadn’t been more than twenty-five years old?

  The chain of time, he suddenly thought. The chain of time with its three links: Cro-Magnon, humans of today, and between them, the Ururu.

  As if hit with a blinding light, he suddenly understood.

  He slapped his forehead with a groan.

  “Félix Lambert and Grégory Carnot didn’t catch the virus,” he murmured. “Nor were they injected. No. This filth was already inside them from the moment they were born. They got it from their parents, who in turn . . .”

  He stopped short and looked his boss in the eye.

  “Just give me a few more hours to check something out. And after that, I promise I’ll explain everything.”

  “Sharko, I . . .”

  Without leaving Bellanger time to answer, he turned to the biologist.

  “This sequence comes from a Cro-Magnon man, thirty thousand years old. Call the genome center in Lyon, and you’ll get all the answers you need.”

  With those words, he backed away, then stopped to ask one last question:

  “Tell me something: could the presence of this mutated virus make its hosts left-handed?”

  The biologist thought for a moment and seemed to make a connection.

  “Lambert was left-handed, as was Carnot. So you think that . . . ?” A pause. “Yes, yes, it’s possible. Recent research suggests that there’s a gene linked to hand dominance, located on chromosome two, in fact, and right next to those fossilized retroviruses. In genetics, it’s common for the expression of certain DNA sequences—the retrovirus, in this case—to influence the ‘behavior’ of neighboring genes. This explains the emergence of certain cancers, for instance, such as leukemia or lymphoma. But to understand that, I’d have to tell you about chromosomal translocation, and . . .”

  No longer listening, Sharko backed away a few more steps and took off at a run.

  53

  Pedro knew how to read the jungle. He interpreted variations, decoded shapes, sensed dangers: insects, snakes, spiders, which sometimes dropped at their feet like writhing clusters. With precise movements, he sliced through tangles with his machete, forging unlikely paths. He, Lucie, and the two Indians had plunged into the green vise, rifles in hand, packs on their backs. All around them, the jungle expanded, contracted, devoured. Endless stalks of bamboo stood together like prison bars, branches of rubber and teak trees stretched their formless webs. Docking the boat along the marsh had been impossible; they’d had to walk up to their knees in the stagnant water for a good ten yards. Lucie was soaked. Her forehead, back, and neck were dripping. Every breath seemed to burn her lungs like ammonia. With a knife, Pedro had cut a small hole in his new shoes so that the water could escape more easily and help avoid blisters. He chopped with his machete at the base of a bamboo stalk. Water poured from the hollow cylinder; he put his flask against it and filled it without a word. His eyes were moving constantly, running down the dark perspectives. Farther on, he bent toward the thick vines wrapped around the black tree trunks.

  “Look here—they’ve been broken off.”

  He moved a bit farther forward, showing other breaks. A narrow, unsuspected pathway had recently been opened.

  “We call this the Indian path: a thin trail through the jungle . . . No doubt about it, the Ururu are here.”

  Anxious, Lucie looked all around her, but she couldn’t see more than a few yards. Even the blue of the sky had disappeared, giving way to endless rolls of greenery. Here everything was outsized, including the ants. Pedro poured a little cool water over his curly hair, then looked at his waterproof GPS.

  “We won’t go too far from the boat. In two hours it’ll be dark. Let’s walk a little farther, just straight ahead. They’ll be here before nightfall, I can feel it . . .”

  They continued forward, alert. The branches and leaves trembled with every step. Lucie couldn’t help comparing the jungle to a human brain: a vast, interconnected network sending signals back and forth, adding to and subtracting from each other, in cooperation or competition. Symbiosis, osmosis, but also predation and parasitism. Each fundamental element constituted a small knot, which formed a larger knot. Death led to rot, rot spawned the bacteria that enriched the earth, the earth created leaves, leaves bred species, species formed an ecosystem—a fragile entity of awe-inspiring richness, in constant equilibrium between life and death, degradation and majesty.

  Finally, they reached a kind of clearing, where from below came the rumble of a mountain stream. Everything, even the tree bark, oozed dampness. In the Amazon rain forest, the staggering level of humidity—nearly 100 percent—was the worst adversary. It made it difficult to light fires, rotted the skin off your feet, and fostered diseases. Standing back, Lucie was catching her breath. Her entire body was in pain. Far from Rio Negro, the mosquitoes came fast and furious. Suddenly, she thought she saw a silhouette in the dense trees behind her.

  It moved quickly, easily.

  Branches began to wave, vines vibrated, on all sides of them. Silence, movement . . . silence, movement . . . As if figures were suddenly gathering around them, dancing to a slow rhythm. Lucie remembered the horrifying faces in Chimaux’s book.

  They were there, encircling her.

  At Pedro’s orders, the two Indians set their weapons down at their feet, then raised their hands in a sign of peace. Around them, the shadows came into focus. Eyes, noses pierced with bones, faces appeared among the bamboo, before disappearing again, like floating masks. Then there were cries, shrill chants, bursts of sound that made the monkeys scatter deep into the canopy. Pedro explained under his breath that they must absolutely not move, just wait until Napoléon Chimaux deigned to show himself. Lucie did her best to stand straight, look self-assured, but she was trembling all over. Her life, her future—none of it was hers to decide anymore.

  How long did the intimidation last? She couldn’t be sure. Here, time dissolved, reference points fell to pieces. Finally, the palm leaves parted and the anthropologist appeared, seemingly alone, apart from the fact that everything around him was vibrating, like a steamroller just waiting to advance. He was tall, powerful; he stood firmly, dressed in khaki fatigues. His head was bald and his large, dark eyes were bloodshot. His forehead and cheeks bore ochre markings in broken lines, like furious zigzags. Hands on his hips, he sniffed the air as would a predator stalking its prey. Lucie recalled the images from the Phoenix tape: the boot nudging the corpses in the huts . . . She wanted to grab a rifle and jam the barrel between his eyes, until he told her the whole truth. But if she so much as twitched, she’d be dead: a good thirty hatchets and lances must have been aimed straight at her, ready to slice her skull clean in two.

  Chimaux’s deep voice dripped like slow poison.

  “Give me one good reason not to kill you where you stand.”

  The man ignored the guides, spoke directly to Lucie. She raised one hand in a sign of peace, and dipped the other hand, slowly, cautiously, in the front pocket of her shirt. She held out a photo.

  “Here’s my reason. Eva Louts.”

  She had answered in a dry, no-nonsense tone. She wanted to appear strong, fearless, because she had reached the end. The end of her search, the end of the world. Everything had to end now. Chimaux gave an evil smile.

  “Come closer, closer . . . so
that I can see the picture better.”

  Without hesitating, Lucie walked forward, away from her guides. They were now less than three yards apart. Chimaux held out his arm, a sign for her to stop. Then he squinted at the photo.

  “It looks like her. Eva Louts . . . But what else, young lady? Have you no more to tell me? Arouse my curiosity.”

  “Arouse your curiosity? Try this on for size: you’re waiting for Eva Louts, but she’s not coming back, ever. She’s been murdered.”

  Chimaux raised one eyebrow slightly, but otherwise showed little reaction.

  “Is that so?” he grimaced.

  Lucie pushed further.

  “Mutilated in a chimpanzee’s cage. Stéphane Terney is also dead, with his iliac artery slit. Does that remind you of anything? I know about the mothers who died in childbirth, the brains that turn to sponge and drive people to murder. I saw the first Phoenix tape. When Eva Louts came here, you accepted her because she was able to surprise you. She knew the Ururu were left-handed and violent. She’d found a link that no one who came before her had suspected. So you decided to let her into your world. You forged a trusting relationship with her, and you sent her back to France with a mission: bring you back the names of extremely violent left-handed prisoners. You’re looking for those cursed children who are starting to slaughter for no reason, is that it? Why? Is it because they’re the final fruit of Phoenix, and the killer is preventing you from coming out of the jungle to see their faces? I’ve come here to find answers. Finish with me what you started with her.”

  Chimaux tilted his head to one side, then the other, his eyes open wide, as if he were trying to read deep within Lucie. He looked like a strange animal suddenly confronted with its own reflection. His face and forearms were a maze of scars. His chest swelled under his military shirt, and he gave out a long, raucous cry. Instantly, dozens of naked silhouettes surged from the trees, hatchets in hand, and ran screaming toward Lucie. Paralyzed, she didn’t have time to react. A hideous creature, twice as heavy as she, grabbed her. Another opened the palm of his enormous hand and blew a white powder into her face. Lucie felt a burning in her nostrils and windpipe. A second later, her legs gave way. Hands kept her from falling. Damp skins pressed against her. She smelled plant odors, mud, and sweat. Everything started spinning; trees and faces seemed to twist out of shape, melt away like wax. She saw herself lifting away from the ground, unable to move. And then, as the black flies poured into her skull, she felt Chimaux’s warm breath against her neck.