Suddenly, nausea overtook Bondurant. He was in love, but he’d known Domenika for just a matter of weeks. Was it possible that Sehgal had convinced her to go to India for another reason? He’d been told through the rumor mill that Sehgal had eyes for Domenika, and that he had even bragged that she’d confided in him she was a virgin, but Bondurant didn’t want to even imagine the possibility of the two of them together.
“Is she pregnant, Jon? Can I call you Jon?” Joanna asked as she approached Bondurant to within just a few inches of his face. She looked him directly in the eyes, the same way Domenika did.
Bondurant stared at her in disbelief. “Pregnant? What makes you say something so absurd?” he asked.
“Jon, we’re sisters. We talk,” Joanna said calmly. “No, she didn’t tell me she was pregnant. But she told me you two were together. She also said she was wasted and that whatever had happened, she knew it was without protection on her part. I thought she said you were smart.”
“This can’t be happening,” Bondurant said as he turned away from Joanna again and stared out the window.
“She told me the day she returned to Rome,” Joanna said. “And I can’t think of any other reason for her to drop off the face of the earth weeks after sleeping with you. Maybe she wanted to get as far away as possible.”
Bondurant couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“Jon, if she’s pregnant, you have to believe me—given her faith, there is no force on earth that would prevent her from having that child,” Joanna said. “And my father? Well, let’s just say India is not far enough away to hide from him if she is pregnant and unmarried.”
Bondurant turned toward the two of them and said nothing. He had never felt more helpless or confused. He hung his head down for a long minute as though he’d find an answer on the floor.
“You’re supposed to be the genius, Doctor,” Joanna said as she tugged on his collar, pulled him from his trance and stared at him with an expectant look on her face. Her resemblance to Domenika in both appearance and attitude was uncanny. “What are you going to do now?”
CHAPTER 33
Mumbai, India
August 2014
Who was on the phone, my man?” Kishan sang out from behind his brightly lit cubicle at Sehgal Labs in downtown Mumbai. Mumbai was a city where giant building cranes had sprouted like weeds his entire boyhood. Kishan had lost track of the number of high-rises he could count as he looked out his window toward the horizon that was once old Bombay. Sehgal Labs was a modest but modern six-floor building centrally located in the city’s bustling high-tech zone. His work space, cluttered with reference books, motorcycle helmets, a mountain bike with a flat tire, and a large stack of Maxim magazines, had the look of a disaster area.
“That was the boss man, Ravi,” his friend Danvir shot back jubilantly. “He’s stuck in traffic on the Eastern Expressway and won’t be back for at least an hour.”
“You my man, you my man,” Kishan said, delighted at their stroke of good fortune. Traffic jams were now a twenty-four-hour phenomenon in a city where freeways could not be built fast enough to suit the need. He reached toward the boom box sitting precariously atop a giant stack of folders left unfiled and cranked up the volume. 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” began to blare.
“There’s a man coming here at one thirty,” Danvir said, trying to shout above the din and the tall privacy wall that divided their cubicles. “You’re supposed to show him to the warehouse.”
“What’s his name? Who is it?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t say. We gon’ party like it’s yo’ birthday!”
“I said what’s his name?” Kishan hollered as he threw a softball over the divider in Danvir’s direction.
“Like I said, the man didn’t say. He just said you meet the man, you take the man to the warehouse, you leave the man alone. In that order.”
“Now let me ask you this, Mr. Danvir,” Kishan shot back as he turned the volume down slightly. “How am I supposed to let the man in the warehouse when I don’t have a key? You tell me that. The boss man changed the code a month ago after that new equipment was delivered. So let me say again ‘I . . . ain’t . . . got . . . no . . . key . . . card.’ ”
Danvir pitched the ball back over the divider toward Kishan in a perfect arc. He hoped to hit one of the half-filled cups or open cans of soda that sat on Kishan’s desk.
“He said ‘show him to the warehouse,’ Kishan. He didn’t say buy him a warehouse or build him a warehouse. Maybe he has his own key. I don’t know. What I know is that Ravi won the Nobel Prize, so he gets what he wants.”
“Yes, my brother, he does. That warehouse is full of what he wants since that prize money came in.” He took a small sip of cold coffee and shuddered. “Did you see that load of stuff that came in those crates last month? A new centrifuge? Inverted stereo microscope? Incubator? Freezer? Laminar flow hood? What’s he planning on growing in there?”
“I thought you said he told you not to open those boxes,” Danvir said.
“He said ‘Do not open.’ He did not say ‘Do not open and close.’ ” The ball flew Danvir’s way over the wall once more and landed harmlessly behind him.
“You the man.”
“Hey, you want to see something strange, dawg?” Kishan called out.
“You on that nasty site again?”
“No, no. Come over here. I’ve been banging my head over this all morning. It doesn’t make sense. No sense at all,” Kishan said. He sounded mystified.
“I’m not dragging my tail over there for a porn site,” Danvir warned.
“No, seriously. Come over here and check this out.” Kishan had dropped the Hindi Ebonics entirely, and Danvir knew from experience that meant he was serious. He got up and walked around to Kishan’s work space.
“When are you going to start selling maps so people can find your desk in here?” he said as he kicked aside the take-out trays and coffee cups that lay strewn about the floor near the trash can, the result of a half-dozen missed shots.
“Okay, look at this,” Kishan said. He wheeled his chair closer to his computer. “This morning I was browsing on the S-drive and I found a folder for—”
“You’re kidding me, right? We’re not supposed to be on the S-drive. Ravi strictly forbids it.”
“Yeah, I know. But he’s not here, and I can’t find the file on stromatolites we were looking for all yesterday.”
Danvir stood up and looked around for any sign of life to ensure that no one could eavesdrop. A virus had invaded the lab’s computers the previous year, and Ravi’s instructions on limiting access to the central S-drive was absolute. It was a fireable offense.
“Okay, what is it? Fast,” Danvir pleaded as he took a knee next to Kishan.
Arrayed before them on Kishan’s desk amid stacks of documents were two large flat-screen monitors. Kishan moved several folder icons back and forth between the screens effortlessly.
“All right. First, I still can’t find the stromatolites file. It’s not there.”
“Yeah, so?” Danvir began to tap the desk nervously.
“But check this out. In Ravi’s alpha folder under ‘S,’ there is a locked zip file. It’s unnamed, like someone didn’t want it to be searchable, which is strange. But in it, there are a ton of folders, all with the label ‘Shroud.’ Look here.”
“What do you mean it’s locked, Kishan? If you don’t have the password, how did you open it?”
“My father might have won the Nobel Prize, but his password is his birth date.” Kishan pitched his empty coffee cup toward the trash can and missed by a foot. “I love him, but he’s not that smart.”
“Okay, so what’s so strange?” Danvir asked, now as curious as he was nervous.
“Look. Here’s an entire array of DNA charts labeled ‘Shroud Sample.’ And look. All of them—there are sixteen—stem from repeat trials derived from a single source—a blood sample. See? They’re all identical.”
“So w
hat? Sixteen trials from the same source are going to produce sixteen identical results.”
“Uh-huh. Now look at the blood type,” Kishan instructed.
“ ‘NI.’ What’s that?” Danvir asked as he leaned over and looked down the row of cubicles once more to ensure that they were alone. “There’s no such thing.”
“Uh-huh. That’s Ravi’s shorthand for ‘Not Identifiable.’ Now let me ask you another question. You ever read the papers or watch TV? I know you watch TV.”
“Every day.”
“Okay,” Kishan demanded, “then why isn’t this chart screaming ‘baaaaaaah’?”
“What do you mean, ‘baaaaaaah’?”
“Baaaaaaah,” Kishan said in a low, guttural tone. “Like a goat.”
“That’s a sheep, fool.”
“Sheep, goat—they all sound alike when they’re mouthing off,” Kishan protested.
“I’m not getting it,” Danvir said as he braced himself for yet another of Kishan’s know-it-all lectures.
“Okay, let me put it this way. What do pigs say?”
“Oink.”
“How about cows?”
“Moo.”
“Okay. What do goats with Not Identifiable blood say?”
Danvir cocked his head for a moment and thought about it. His eyes grew wide. “They don’t,” he said as he banged the desk. “Trick question. It’s not possible. There are only three goat blood types. No outliers. The series is—”
“Z-1, Z-2, and Z-1/Z-2,” Kishan said, beating him to the answer.
Kishan moved his cursor and double-clicked to open another folder from the lab’s central database. This one was labeled “Animal Types” and was located on the screen on the right. A massive list appeared. He scrolled down the alphabetical list until he came to “Goats.” As he double-clicked on the link, a list of more than three hundred different breeds of goats appeared. He scrolled down and stopped his cursor at “Goat, Bezoar.” He dragged the DNA chart for a Bezoar goat over and double-clicked so that it expanded before them. Then he placed it side by side with the chart labeled “Shroud Sample.”
“So like I asked,” Kishan murmured as he leaned in carefully to compare the two charts, “do you watch TV?”
“Whhooooaaaaahhhh,” Danvir said.
“Uh-huh. What’s my pop doing on TV telling everyone the sample from that Shroud is from a goat?” Kishan asked, now totally confused. He leaned back in his chair and put one foot up on the desk. “There’s no relation to a goat’s blood type—not even close. One ‘Unidentified’ from the Shroud that looks to be human, but who knows? The other, clearly an animal, this old goat. And compare their spectrums. Not even close. You couldn’t find two DNA profiles more unrelated than this.”
The two of them sat transfixed and quietly studied the differences in the DNA charts open beside each other, not saying a word. Danvir got up from his chair and peered around the corner of the cubicle one more time to make sure no one was nearby. The offices were still deserted at lunchtime. He was the first to break the silence. “Kishan, are you positive the charts you pulled up on the Shroud are the real deal? Could you have made a mistake?”
“No way. Look here. There’s an entire inventory of Shroud items here. Really extensive. All of them in Ravi’s subfolder, and all of them locked by password. ‘Shroud Collection Regimen’ . . . ‘Shroud Background’ . . . ‘Shroud Research’ . . . ‘Shroud Blood Sample.’ ”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Danvir said as he rose. He was confused.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The entry buzzer at the front door of the office sounded and jolted them both. It caused Danvir to leap like a frightened cat from Kishan’s work space. He scrambled back to his own desk and put his head down to make himself look busy.
“Kishan, close out that file and get to the front door. That has to be Ravi’s guest.”
“Why don’t you go up there, dawg?” Kishan said, now obviously preoccupied with the mystery and back in his groove.
“He said you, my man,” Danvir shot back. “He said you take the man to the warehouse.”
Kishan got up slowly from his desk, grabbed another empty coffee cup, and spiraled it like a football toward Danvir, who caught it expertly as he had a hundred times before. Kishan turned right and sauntered down an aisle of cubicles toward the front of the office. Danvir peeked over the cubicle wall and watched.
As he reached the reception area, Kishan pulled his ID from his pocket and casually swiped it in front of the electronic keypad. Danvir heard the familiar clunk of the magnetic lock release, and Kishan swung the door open. An impeccably dressed middle-aged man in a gray suit holding a suitcase stood before him.
“Wassup, my man,” Kishan greeted the stranger.
“I believe Dr. Sehgal is expecting me,” the man said with a French accent. “My name is Dr. François Laurent.”
CHAPTER 34
Mumbai, India
August 2014
Kishan pried open the window and slipped easily through it, as he had a dozen times before. Outside the temperature had reached 110 degrees. Inside the industrial-type warehouse it was a pleasant 72. He knelt on the cold, gray cement floor of the lab’s large warehouse and peered carefully from behind a stack of huge cardboard boxes he had purposely arranged there the day before. His plan was to eavesdrop and unravel a mystery. What he saw was beyond anything he had imagined.
Kishan could see an ambulance idling outside the large rear warehouse door. A woman who appeared to be unconscious was wheeled from the vehicle on a gurney by two orderlies. Starched white sheets covered the woman. Her arms were folded over the top sheet and revealed several IV tubes that ran to infusion bags that hung above her. A man wearing pale-blue scrubs trailed behind the gurney with a small dolly that held two stainless-steel gas cylinders, one white, one blue. The woman’s face was obscured by an oxygen mask attached to breathing tubes beside her.
A group was gathered around the patient and framed within a semicircle of tables that held an array of lab equipment and a host of hospital supplies. Some of the faces were familiar to Kishan, others not. At one end of the gurney was Ravi, who looked as nervous as Kishan had ever seen him. He paced back and forth as the orderlies dressed in white moved a few small pieces of equipment into place. Ravi briefly stopped his pacing and looked directly at the small tower of boxes Kishan had assembled for his hiding place. Momentarily Kishan’s heart leapt to his throat in fear. Had he already been discovered?
Kishan reminded himself it was impossible for Ravi to see him. The day before, he and Danvir had tested the hiding place and determined it was perfectly constructed. There was not even a remote possibility of being discovered. But the stakes were high. If he was exposed like a rat in hiding, he knew it would mean the end of his employment at Sehgal Labs, or even worse, the end of his relationship with his father. Mercifully, Ravi detected nothing beyond large boxes of reagents stacked atop one another. He turned his glance away from Kishan’s corner and focused his attention on the patient at hand.
Kishan calmed his breathing and began to identify the others. Centered over the patient was Dr. Laurent. He recognized him from the day he’d first escorted him to the warehouse a week before. Laurent had buried himself in the lab with “confidential” work, off-limits to all. Now he was dressed in light-green hospital scrubs and wore white sterile surgical gloves below the elbow.
Next to Laurent, Kishan could see the figure of a man he could only describe as grotesque. He wore a dark-blue suit and an odd fedora, the kind Kishan had seen in old-time American movies. He had a bulbous nose and a beet-red complexion that stood out in sharp contrast to his starched white collared shirt. In his left hand he carried a small device about the size of a lunch box, which was connected to a cord he held in his right hand.
Kishan had waited in his hiding place for almost an hour to see what secret events would unfold. He was intensely curious as to what work Laurent had been conducting in private since
he had arrived. It was only when he heard that his father had canceled all appointments for the day, two of them critical, that he knew the moment had come. That, and the ever-growing mobile hospital setup he had spied Laurent preparing, were sure giveaways the mystery was about to unfold.
Laurent was the first to speak. “Is the patient fully sedated?” he asked as he stepped toward the gurney.
“Yes,” an orderly responded. “Fully under.”
“This is your virgin, Dr. Sehgal?” the hideous figure asked through a microphone tied to the machine that amplified his nightmarish voice. The sound so frightened Kishan that he nearly gasped out loud.
“As I promised,” Ravi said. “We’ve attempted and failed with many others. Most much younger. But certainly none as devout.”
“She looks fine to me,” Laurent said. “Vitals are excellent. Otherwise in good health? No abnormalities?”
“None,” Ravi replied.
“Looks to be early thirties. Perfect candidate,” Laurent added as he briefly pulled the mask away from her face.
“Praise be to God,” Ravi whispered.
Kishan leaned in toward the boxes he crouched behind and craned his neck to get the best view possible. He watched as Laurent fully pulled back the top sheet to reveal the woman in a hospital gown, her chest heaving slowly up and down with each breath. Otherwise, she was motionless. Laurent pulled her gown above her waist.
“Help me move her down toward this end of the gurney,” he said to the orderlies. Within a few seconds, they had slid her carefully into place toward the end of the bed. Her calves now dangled off the edge. Laurent pulled his surgical mask into place.
“What I would give to get myself a piece of this,” the strange man gurgled into the machine he held. He stepped forward, tucked the microphone under his arm, and started to stroke the woman’s upper thigh with his free hand.
“Get your filthy hands off her, you pig!” Ravi shouted as he grabbed the man by the wrist and pulled him away from the woman.
Laurent was also not amused, and his face clearly showed it. “I’d like both of you to step back,” he said. He then nodded to the two orderlies. He sat down on the small stool in front of the bed and placed himself between her legs. “Someone mark the time, please.”
The Shroud Conspiracy Page 24
