Seven Wonders

by Ben Mezrich

  Even more troubling, the woman—girl, really—had moved fast. Exceedingly fast. She had disarmed him of the iták with such ease, hell, he had been little more than a nuisance to her. Jack was certain that if the bus hadn’t come out of that turn at just the right moment, the situation would have ended differently. The way she moved, the precision in her actions—that girl had had combat training.

  Jack had learned to fight in the bush, and before that, he’d trained with his father at a makeshift gym his dad had built in the basement of his home in California. But even with fairly adequate skills, he’d barely gotten the better of her—with Andy’s help, and more than a little luck. If that girl had been a bandit, well, she was the most dangerous bandit Jack had ever encountered.

  “So you think she was after us,” Sloane said as they reached the entrance to the Temple of the Three Windows.

  “I don’t know. But I think we need to start taking better precautions.”

  If someone had tracked them all the way to Peru, then whoever they were up against had impressive resources. If it was the same person or people who had murdered his brother—well, it was a terrifying thought. Calling the police wasn’t really an option; the evidence they had would confuse the situation more than edify it, and besides, what police force would they even try to explain it to? The Boston cops investigating Jeremy’s death would have no jurisdiction in Peru. And once they started down that road, they’d have to explain their expedition into the Taj Mahal, the climb up Christ the Redeemer, and why they were now charging up to the top of Machu Picchu. Jack couldn’t foresee such a conversation going well for any of them.

  He only hoped Andy and Dashia had enough sense to stay out in the open, surrounded by people. It would be just like Andy to go snooping on his own, especially into the Royal Tomb. The tomb was fascinating for a number of reasons—but especially significant considering his and Andy’s most recent research. According to the latest studies, more than eighty percent of the mummified remains buried there happened to be female.

  When Andy had first heard the statistic, he had suggested the peculiarity had something to do with virgin sacrifices—a practice of which the Incas were supposedly quite fond. Another possibility, Dashia had pointed out, was that perhaps the area was a fort built specifically to keep the royal princesses safe from the ravaging Spaniards.

  But Jack couldn’t discard the thought that there might be a different reason. Many times in his research, he’d come across stories about the legendary Brazilian Icamiabas: the South American version of Amazon warriors. He had never heard of an Incan link to the tribe of warrior women, but then again, he’d never before heard of anything linking the Amazons to the Taj Mahal, Christ the Redeemer, or the Colosseum—and yet in his backpack there were now three snake segments and two parchments, all connected to the painting he had photographed beneath the ancient Temple of Artemis.

  Unlike the Temple of Artemis, as far as he knew, Amazons hadn’t built Christ the Redeemer, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum, or, for that matter, Machu Picchu. But it was seeming more and more likely that at one time or another, Amazons had visited all of those sites and left something behind.

  Sloane finally let Jack’s wrist go, and he slowed his pace as they entered the Temple of the Three Windows. It was essentially an open-air rectangle of stone, thirty-five feet long and fourteen feet wide, bordered on three sides by walls of stacked granite. The main focus of the temple was the main wall, containing the three matching trapezoidal windows, each about four feet in height, offering incredible views of the tree-covered mountain peaks that surrounded Machu Picchu on all sides. Jack knew from Dashia’s notes that the Incan viewing windows—alternatively thought to have religious, astronomic, and military uses—were the largest of their kind still in existence.

  “Just like the pictogram,” Sloane said quietly because two of the German tourists had now followed them into the temple and were taking turns sticking their heads through one of the trapezoidal openings. “And the view is staggering. It’s like being on top of the world.”

  But Jack was no longer looking at the windows, or the view, or, for that matter, the Germans. He had turned his attention toward the center of the temple. In the middle of the open-air space were a number of large stones, beginning with a tall monolith, easily equal to Jack’s height, and around its base, a pile of lesser cubes of granite; but it was the stone in between the monolith and the cubes that had caught his attention. He touched Sloane’s shoulder, and she followed his gaze.

  “A Chakana,” she whispered.

  Chiseled from what appeared to be a single block of granite, the Chakana was large—probably a few hundred pounds, if not more—and it seemed to be positioned exactly across from the center of the three trapezoidal windows. Seen from below, the Incan stepped cross would have appeared exactly as in the pictogram, with three windows above the cross.

  Jack looked around and noted that aside from the pair of Germans, they still had the temple to themselves. It was as good an opportunity as they were going to get.

  “Give me some cover,” he said to Sloane as he unzipped one of the pockets of his backpack.

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Improvise.”

  Sloane glared at him, but he was already pulling a small, sealed paper bag out of the pocket. Realizing she had no choice, Sloane walked over to the pair of Germans, and nervously held out her cell phone.

  “Could you please take my picture?” she said. “By the windows? I really want to show my boyfriend the view.”

  Jack was pretty sure the only thing the Germans understood was the extended phone, but nowadays that was a pretty good universal language. Sloane positioned herself next to one of the open trapezoids, so that the Germans had their backs to Jack and the Chakana.

  Jack quickly unsealed the paper bag, and held it carefully over the stone cross. He tipped the bag over, and let a thick, sparkly powder rain down over the granite, covering as much of the stone as he could.

  Making sure the Germans were still occupied with Sloane, who was going through a series of dramatic poses in front of the window, he pulled a box of matches out from one of his pockets.

  He waited for a lull in the breeze coming in off the nearby mountains, then struck one of the matches and tossed it at the granite cross. There was a sharp hiss—and suddenly a bright red flame leaped across the stone, the blast of heat knocking Jack back on his heels. Almost instantly, the flames began spreading outward, creeping from one leg of the cross to the next until the entire thing was engulfed. The color shifted from bright red to blinding orange, and plumes of sparks began spraying into the air, caught by the gusts of wind coming through the three windows.

  And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the flames began to dissipate, the brilliant orange shifting once more to something close to purple. Jack felt the heat disperse, and he took a step forward, squinting through the lessening flame at the sizzling granite beneath.

  Even though Jack had mixed the powder himself, he was amazed at how well it had worked. Strontium salts harvested from four of his emergency flares, cut with powdered sugar to control the resonance, and mixed with methanol, an accelerant. Chemistry 101—the perfect concoction to light a stone on fire. The entire process had lasted less than three seconds; the Germans were still snapping photos, though Jack was sure if they’d looked carefully, they would have seen quite a startling reflection in the curves of Sloane’s eyes.

  Another few seconds, and the flames had entirely disappeared. Jack moved even closer, noting that the surface of the granite looked exactly the same as before. He ran his eyes over the staggered arms of the cross, then shifted his attention to the center—

  And that’s when he noticed the crack, directly in the middle of the Chakana, right at the heart of the Incan cross.

  Jack took a deep breath, the acrid hint of burnt methanol stinging the tip of his tongue. He peered even closer and watched as the crack began to grow larger, spreadi
ng outward from the center, widening in concentric circles like a fracturing pane of glass.

  “Christ,” Jack whispered to himself.

  And suddenly, the Chakana trembled—and the entire stone cross collapsed with a groan, spewing up plumes of thick, gray dust.

  Jack heard one of the Germans shout, but he didn’t care. He was already diving forward into the clouds of dust, dropping to his knees, his hands sifting through the rubble. A moment later, he felt Sloane’s hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him back to his feet; there were more shouts from somewhere outside the temple, but Jack kept on digging, his hands scraped and bleeding from the broken stones—

  And then his fingers touched parchment, and an almost electric thrill moved through his arms.

  “Got it,” he hissed, using both hands to dig the object free.

  He tucked the object into his jacket and sprang back, nearly knocking Sloane over. The two Germans were still standing in front of the windows, pointing at the pile of rubble, shocked looks on their faces.

  “I guess that’s why they call them ruins,” Jack said.

  Then he grabbed Sloane by the hand and took off toward the exit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I assume this is where you keep the dinosaurs,” Jendari said as she followed the squat, spark plug–shaped man in the white lab coat out through a cylindrical air lock and into a painfully bright, windowless lab.

  The man looked at her from beneath the few wisps of graying hair that still clung to his shining scalp. His thin lips were pressed tightly together, his pinpoint eyes dancing over dark rings of skin. From the expression on his face, his brilliant pedigree had not included pointers on developing a sense of humor.

  “Dinosaurs? We don’t have any of those. Although I think Dr. Jenkins in lab C-33 is working on a mammoth sample that one of the research teams brought back from Antarctica.”

  Jendari sighed, stepping past the fool and into the front area of the state-of-the-art lab. As genetics facilities went, it was near the top of the food chain; she was pleased to see that the tens of millions of dollars she had poured into this complex, housed in a series of nondescript, single-story cement-walled buildings in a dingy North London warehouse district thirty kilometers away from Heathrow International Airport were worth it. From the outside, the complex was boxy, gray, and purposefully unremarkable; the only external evidence that it was more than just another collection of warehouses filled with cargo designated for the airport was the twelve-foot-high electric fence and the dozen armed guards stationed at the single entrance gate.

  The interior of the complex was another story, especially the main laboratory building, which consisted of over a dozen air-lock secured labs similar to the one Jendari had just entered. Even though her background was in engineering, she could appreciate the detail that had gone into designing what had to be one of the premier genetics labs in Europe, if not the world. From the pristine, black granite counters filled with assay stations, pewter sinks, and rack after rack of glassware, to the pair of centrifuges in the far corner, to the fully functional MRI machine on the other side of a Plexiglas wall to her right, the lab was shiny, new, and fully stocked with every modern toy in the field. Although Dr. Benson, the head of the biogenetics wing of her empire—and her glorified tour guide—had made sure the lab was off-limits during her visit, she knew that the place was usually pulsing with people; at least a dozen top scientists she had culled from the best university programs all over the world, eager to be part of her incredibly well-funded research and development initiative.

  Over the past decade, Jendari’s cadre of eggheads had made unbelievable advances—many of which had led to commercial successes, such as the DNA security panels and the various disease therapies and testing kits. But recently, she’d pushed Dr. Benson and his minions in a different direction. The regular updates she’d received over the past few months had hinted at spectacular possibilities, but this was her first visit to see the progress for herself.

  As Benson took position next to her at the front of the room, she felt her attention drawn to a glass tank in front of the closest of the centrifuges. The tank was huge, about the size of a small automobile, with a chain-link cover. The floor of the tank was covered in what appeared to be yellow straw, and Jendari also noticed a small water bowl in one corner. In the direct center of the tank stood a white calf.

  The animal was no more than two feet tall, and just about as long from tail to snout; there were tiny black spots along its spindly legs and hindquarters and a bright orange tag was pinned to one of its pointy pink ears. Jendari stared at the calf for a full beat, then turned to Benson.

  “Impressive. You’ve invented veal.”

  “Um—” Benson started, confused, but Jendari cut him off.

  “Just get on with it.”

  Benson coughed, then quickly reached for the nearby light switch. There was a loud metallic click, and then the fluorescent lights flickered off, bathing the windowless lab in darkness. Almost immediately, a dull blue light rose from within the glass tank. Jendari realized, with a start, that the glow was coming from the calf.

  “Veal that glows in the dark,” Jendari whispered.

  “SCNT subject A23,” Benson said. “Our twenty-third generation clone, approximately three months old. Perfectly healthy—and, of course, an exact match to the other twenty-two generations, as well as the source material.”

  Jendari took a step closer to the tank, letting the blue glow splash across her cheeks. The creature was much more beautiful in the dark. She didn’t need Benson to explain the process by which the calf had earned his designation; she was quite clear on the advanced cloning process, somatic-cell nuclear transfer, that had first been perfected by South Korean geneticists a half decade ago. Basically, the nucleus of an organism’s—in this case, a cow’s—somatic cell was harvested, then placed within a deprogrammed embryonic casing. Electroshocks caused the nucleus to begin to divide, mimicking the mitochondrial division that occurred naturally during cellular gestation. Eventually, the process formed a blastocyst—a group of living embryonic cells—that contained exactly the same DNA as the original organism.

  At the end of the process, you got a clone of the original. Or, for that matter, twenty-three clones.

  “And the glow?” Jendari asked.

  “We spliced in a fragment of DNA from a deepwater jellyfish with photoelectric properties. It took a few tries, but we’ve managed to perfect the process.”

  Jendari stopped right in front of the glass, so close she could see her own reflection in the eerie bluish glow.

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  “We can also make him in red.”

  Jendari looked back at Benson, but his face was still devoid of any hint of humor. Still, he did look pleased with himself, and Jendari didn’t blame him. She understood the significance of the glowing lamb. Not only was the creature a living, healthy clone, grown in this laboratory in a petri dish from a single cell, but Benson and his scientists had also managed to enhance the animal at the genetic level, changing its DNA, the very essence of what it was, forever.

  When Jendari closed her eyes, face inches from the glass, she didn’t see a glowing calf. She saw a million microscopic double helixes, the very signature of the calf’s soul, the history of its species, forever changed. All by men in white coats, men on her payroll—men under her command.

  She immediately found herself reminded of the dossier she had been reading on the flight from South America to London, the pages prepared by Vika on the woman, Sloane Costa, who had joined Jack Grady in Rio and accompanied him to India and apparently back to South America. The botanist with the shaky professional standing and peculiar scientific curiosity that seemed to have inadvertently driven her into Jack Grady’s sphere. An unimpressive woman, really, in terms of her accomplishments; had she submitted her résumé to Saphra’s HR representatives, she would never have been granted an interview with Dr. Benson and his staff, let alone
been offered any level of employment. Even so, one small undertaking had stood out. During her graduate studies in genetics, the woman had written a paper on the theoretical work behind the concept of Mitochondrial Eve.

  Jendari didn’t consider Sloane Costa’s résumé-filler as any great coincidence; there was hardly a geneticist who had trained in the nineties who hadn’t spent some time considering the theoretical discovery. It was quite a spectacular notion, focused on what many scientists called the Holy Grail of DNA studies: the idea that somewhere in the past, there was a single woman from which all living humans had evolved. Not a man, because mitochondria were inherited along matrilineal lines, but a woman, a single Eve containing perfect, essential DNA. Eve, mother of all who came after her; and every living soul on Earth could trace their own degraded, mutated DNA back to her.

  According to the theory—and literally tens of thousands of historical genetic samples—this female ancestor had lived around two hundred thousand years ago in sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps in a jungle, not a garden—but still, the religious, scientific, and cultural implications were staggering.

  Mitochondrial Eve—the original woman—with her perfect DNA, her perfect double helix. And since then, a thousand, thousand generations had endowed that double helix with millions upon millions of mutations—defects, leading to nearly every disease that existed all the way to the cellular deterioration commonly known as aging, and through aging, to shortened life spans. Everything that mankind had become—perhaps even the mortality alluded to in the Judeo-Christian Bible, the result of a misuse of the wondrous Tree of Life—was due to transcription errors that had built up, generation to generation, over the ages.