The Genesis Key

by James Barney

  Stonewell grumbled an acknowledgment.

  “The INDY researchers don’t have that luxury, Mr. Secretary. Because, as far as we know, there’s no one walking around today with an intact INDY gene in their DNA. That’s why there’s no easy way for them to find it in the human genome. They have no road map.”

  Stonewell sighed. “All right. Well, I’m sure you’ll keep me posted if anything develops.”

  “Of course, Mr. Secretary.”

  Across town, Peter Stonewell turned off his secure videophone and returned to his office through a narrow metal door. His secretary—a petite, mousy woman in her sixties—quickly drew a set of dark blue drapes over the metal door after it shut.

  Peter Stonewell was a dinosaur in Washington—big, old, and powerful. He’d weathered five administrations as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Strategic Research and Planning, serving under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Other administrators at HHS had come and gone like the seasons, but Stonewell—shrewd, powerful, and at times ruthless—had always managed to stay put. His twenty-six-year tenure at HHS was an unprecedented feat in Washington, and one that had allowed him to amass considerable power.

  The Department of Health and Human Services was a massive organization with vast governmental resources. Officially, it was the agency charged with protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. The department administered more than three hundred government-funded programs, covering a wide spectrum of activities, including basic scientific research, immunization and disease prevention, food and drug safety, and medical preparedness for bioterrorism and other emergencies. HHS also controlled the National Institutes of Health, the world’s premier medical research organization.

  In Washington, power stems from money. And, by that measure, HHS had grown to be a very powerful agency indeed. It now consumed fully a quarter of all federal outlays, administering more grant dollars than all other federal agencies combined. Its Medicare/Medicaid program was the nation’s largest health insurer, handling more than a billion claims per year and providing health-care insurance for one in four Americans. HHS employed more than sixty thousand people and controlled an annual budget of more than 700 billion dollars.

  To say that HHS cut a wide swath through the U.S. economy was no understatement.

  “What else is on my calendar today, Judy?”

  “You have a nine forty-five with Michael Tate of the American Millennium Foundation, an eleven o’clock with Max Schneider and Roger Glick of Westpharma Corporation, and lunch with Senator Morris at the Army-Navy Club at one thirty.”

  “Christ, barely time to take a crap,” Stonewell muttered under his breath.

  Chapter Four

  Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

  “I must say I’ve never eaten dinner in a chimney stack before,” Kathleen said, gazing up from her grilled scallops.

  Bryce Whittaker smiled and nodded knowingly. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  They were seated in the Chimney Stack Room of Fahrenheit, one of Washington’s most fashionable restaurants, near the Georgetown waterfront. The small, circular room circumscribed the base of a 130-foot brick chimney, built in 1932 as an incinerator. A skylight at the top admitted a small circle of moonlight, which mixed with the candlelight at their table to create a flickering, otherworldly glow.

  “I’m impressed,” Kathleen said.

  “So am I. With you.”

  “Aw, c’mon.” Kathleen looked bashfully at her plate.

  “No, really. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you run your own company. How could I not be impressed?”

  Whittaker was tastefully dressed in a black suit with no tie. He was clearly at ease in the rarified atmosphere of Fahrenheit’s exclusive, private dining room. After telling Kathleen to trust him, he’d confidently ordered lime-cured salmon and quail en croûte for appetizers and a 160-dollar bottle of wine, a 2000 Château Clinét.

  “So tell me about yourself,” he said, refilling her wineglass. “Where’d you grow up?”

  “Great Falls, mostly,” said Kathleen, referring to Great Falls, Virginia, a semirural suburb of Washington.

  “Mostly?”

  “Well, I moved there when I was seven.”

  “And before that?”

  Kathleen poked nervously at her food with her fork.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “I’m a reporter, you know. I never know when to stop asking questions.”

  “It’s okay, really.” Kathleen took a deep breath and launched into the same explanation she’d given so many times in her life that it now seemed rehearsed. “I was born in Boston. My parents were archeologists, so I moved around a lot when I was a kid. We lived in Egypt for a while. And when I was six and seven, we lived in Iraq.”

  “Iraq? Wow.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty wild. Anyway, my parents died when I was seven, and after that, I lived with my grandparents in Great Falls. They adopted me, and I lived there until I graduated from college.”

  Whittaker’s relaxed smile had turned to an expression of concern. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s okay. No big deal.”

  By age ten, Kathleen had adopted “no big deal” as her official motto whenever someone expressed sympathy about the death of her parents. “No big deal” always came in handy to save her the embarrassment and awkwardness of others’ pity. In fact, she’d said it so many times in her life that she almost believed it herself. Almost.

  “Well, anyway,” Whittaker said, “I shouldn’t have pried. Both of my parents died in a car accident while I was in college. I know how hard that is.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Kathleen.

  Just then, a waiter entered the dining room, and Whittaker raised his hand to call him over. “The crème brulée here is amazing,” he whispered across the table, “but we have to order it now because it takes forever to prepare. You want one?”

  Kathleen declined, so Whittaker ordered one just for himself. “Last chance,” he warned.

  Kathleen shook her head.

  When the waiter left, Kathleen seized the opportunity to change the subject. “So, where are you from?”

  “Originally, Upstate New York. I went to college at SUNY Buffalo, and journalism school at NYU. I interned for the Wall Street Journal while I was at NYU then landed a job there when I graduated.”

  “Impressive,” said Kathleen. She was happy to have turned the conversation away from herself.

  “Thanks.” Whittaker smiled humbly. “Anyway, I spent eight years at the Journal. It was a great job, but eventually I felt . . . you know, like I needed a change. So I sent out some feelers and, boom, I ended up at the Post. That was, let’s see . . . about two years ago. I’m hoping to move from business to the national desk soon.”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “Sure. There’s a lot of opportunity at the Post. It’s not like the Journal, where you have to wait until someone dies before you can move up—”

  Kathleen interrupted, “I meant do you like living in Washington?” She smiled as she recalled Jeremy’s comment a few nights ago about Whittaker’s business card.

  “Washington? Absolutely, it’s a great city. It’s not New York, mind you, but I really like it.”

  Thirty minutes later, as predicted, the crème brulée arrived, and the waiter blowtorched it beside their table with great fanfare. He also set two glasses of twenty-year-old Graham’s Tawny Port on the table, which Whittaker insisted Kathleen try.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day,” Whittaker said, cracking the caramelized top of his dessert with a spoon.

  “What’s that?”

  “You said when evolution finds something that works, it tends to stick with it, right?”

  “In general, yeah.”

  “Okay, then why would a fruit fly have a suppressed gene that essentially cuts its life
expectancy to a third? I mean, what possible advantage could that be for the fruit-fly race?”

  Good question. Kathleen mulled it over awhile before answering. “Well, evolution theory would suggest there’s some advantage to having the INDY gene suppressed.”

  “Right, but what could that possibly be? I mean, how could dying younger be an advantage?”

  “Hey, I didn’t say I knew the answer.” Kathleen took another sip of her port wine, which was surprisingly tasty—and potent. “Maybe,” she continued half jokingly, “the short-lived flies work harder because they know they have less time to live.”

  “Or maybe,” Whittaker suggested, “it was just a mistake in the genetic code. You know, a mutation that got passed down through the generations.”

  Kathleen shook her head no.

  “Why not?”

  “According to evolution theory, there would still have to be some natural advantage to the short-lived mutation in order for it to completely replace the long-lived class over the course of millions of years. Otherwise, the short-lived mutation would eventually die out, or, at the very least, the population would become a mixture of long-lived and short-lived flies, with the ratio reflecting their relative ability to survive and procreate.”

  Whittaker smiled coyly. “You biologists and your theory of evolution.” He formed air quotation marks as he said “theory.”

  Kathleen took the bait. “What, you don’t believe in evolution?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who said evolution can’t entirely explain the suppressed INDY gene in fruit flies.”

  “No. What I said was, I don’t know the answer right now. That doesn’t mean the theory’s flawed. It just needs further study.”

  “Fair enough.” Whittaker held up his hands up in faux surrender. “But I do have another theory about those fruit flies.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  Whittaker savored the last bite of his dessert. Then he spoke in an absurdly dramatic tone, separating each word for emphasis. “God . . . hates . . . fruit flies.”

  Kathleen laughed. “What?”

  “You heard me. God hates fruit flies. Admit it, they’re annoying. They buzz around, eat people’s fruit. They’re a menace. So, my theory is, God hates them. And he punished them by shortening their life span.”

  Kathleen smiled and shook her head. “Interesting theory, but . . . I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? It’s just as viable as your theory of evolution.” Whittaker once again formed air quotation marks around the word “theory.”

  Kathleen shook her head resolutely.

  “What, you don’t believe God would do that to the poor little fruit flies?”

  “No,” said Kathleen without missing a beat, “I don’t believe in God.”

  Chapter Five

  Bethesda, Maryland.

  Kathleen unlocked the door to her apartment, stepped inside, and locked it behind her. She kicked off her high heels and hung up her cashmere overcoat, all while replaying the night’s events in her head.

  Dinner had ended just after at ten o’clock. Afterward, Whittaker had waited outside the restaurant with her while the valet retrieved her car. She’d insisted on meeting him at the restaurant instead of having him pick her up at her apartment. Just in case the date goes badly, she’d reasoned.

  When it came to relationships, Kathleen had long accepted one unchangeable fact in her life. Namely, despite her numerous accolades, including being a brilliant scientist and founder of a high-tech company, she had a terrible track record with men. “Book smart, man dumb,” one of her girlfriends had teased her in college. It was still true.

  Kathleen recalled the precise moment at the end of the date, just as they were about to say good night, when Whittaker leaned into her car and surprised her with a quick peck on the lips. “Good night,” he said softly. Predictably, Kathleen froze and said nothing. She drove away without another word, leaving Whittaker standing befuddled in the street.

  Like everything else in Kathleen’s life, Bryce Whittaker had proven to be a mixture of good and bad. A bit too smooth for her taste, she decided. But, then again, he was handsome, smart, sophisticated, and funny—not bad qualities in a man, she reasoned.

  These thoughts were all swirling in her head as she walked into her small galley kitchen for a bottle of water. The message light on her answering machine was blinking. She pushed “play” on her way to the refrigerator. The machine beeped loudly, then a man’s voice began speaking in an odd accent—part British, part Middle Eastern. It was one of those vague, “international” accents that typically identified a person as highly educated and well traveled.

  “This message is for Kathleen Sainsbury,” said the voice in a slow, deliberate meter. There was a long pause, as if the man were struggling for words. Meanwhile, Kathleen opened the refrigerator and searched for a bottle of water. “My name is Tariq Al-Fulani,” the voice continued. “I was a friend of . . . your parents.”

  Kathleen stood upright and spun around, leaving the refrigerator door wide open.

  “You may remember my daughter . . . Farhana.” Another pause. “You used to play with her at our house . . . on Rashid Street . . . in Baghdad.”

  Kathleen raised a hand to her mouth. A vague memory flashed of her and an Iraqi girl playing with dolls in a large townhouse in Baghdad. She was six or seven years old then. Her parents were downstairs at a dinner party. She remembered the reassuring hum of adult conversation wafting upstairs, punctuated by laughter, as she and the little Iraqi girl enjoyed a game of make-believe house in two different languages.

  “I have something . . .” The voice trailed off, followed by another long pause. It was clear the man was having difficulty choosing his words. “I have something for you,” he said finally. “It is very important. My address is . . . 1810 U Street . . . in northwest Washington. Please come tonight if you can.” There was another long pause. “It is very urgent. Thank you. Good-bye.”

  Kathleen stood motionless as the answering machine beeped three times and turned off with a click. More than thirty seconds passed before she realized the refrigerator door was still open. When she finally regained her senses, she replayed the message and jotted down the address. Then she checked her caller ID to see if there was a phone number she could call back. But the incoming number was identified only as UNLISTED, WASH DC.

  The digital clock above her oven read 10:33 P.M. A dozen thoughts ran through her head at once. Who is he? Why did he call me? What did he mean it was “urgent”? She sat down on the sofa and tried to clear her head, which was now churning with thoughts of her childhood, her parents, and the mysterious voice on the answering machine. After several minutes of sitting and standing, she finally made a decision—at least a partial decision.

  She would drive to U Street and decide what to do when she got there.

  She stepped back into her high heels, put her overcoat on again, and left the apartment.

  Five minutes later, Kathleen turned right out of her parking garage onto Sandalwood Street, paying no attention to the black Lincoln Navigator pulling away from the curb a block behind her at precisely the same moment.

  Chapter Six

  U Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.

  Kathleen parked in front of 1810 U Street just after 11:00 P.M. It was a three-story brick row house in a once rundown neighborhood that was now gentrified, though still not free of the bums and loiterers who had populated its street corners and parks for decades. The street was relatively quiet at this hour, save for an occasional passing car and the faint shouts of revelers several blocks away.

  In its heyday, U Street had been known as Black Broadway and was home to some of the most important jazz venues in the country, including Club Bali, the Crystal Caverns, and the Howard Theatre. All the greats—from Billie Holiday to Louis Armstrong—had played on U Street at one time or another. The legendary Duke Ellington had grown up just a block away on T Street. In the 1960s, however, the D.C. race r
iots and widespread economic depression drove the U-Street corridor into shambles. It was not until the mid–1990s that it finally began to reemerge as the premier artistic, musical, and cultural center of the city. Today, U-Street was home to an eclectic mixture of residential row houses, avant-garde galleries, jazz clubs, and numerous funky bistros.

  Kathleen sat behind the wheel of her car, debating in silent anguish for nearly five minutes. Twice, she put the car in gear to drive away but changed her mind each time. Eventually, she turned the ignition off and got out of the car. Her pulse was racing, her palms damp despite the chilly air. She looked both ways and saw no one on the sidewalk. Then she cautiously climbed the brick steps leading to the front porch of the house, ascending slowly until she stood in the yellow glow of the house’s solitary porch light. It was a clear, breezeless night. The faint aroma of burning firewood from a nearby tandoori restaurant hung in the air.

  The front door to the house was shiny and black. A polished-brass plaque beside it read:

  DR. TARIQ KHALID AL-FULANI

  TURKISH AND MIDDLE EASTERN ANTIQUES

  BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

  There were no lights on inside the house, and no sound. Kathleen took a deep breath, held it tightly in her lungs, and rang the doorbell.

  A half-minute passed without any sign of life inside the house. With every passing second, Kathleen’s anxiety grew more intense until it was nearly unbearable. She glanced repeatedly at her car on the street, reassuring herself that it was still there. Then, just as she was about to leave, the foyer light flicked on. Seconds later, the doorknob rattled, and she watched with breathless anticipation as the shiny black door swung slowly open.