The Lucifer Genome: A Conspiracy Thriller

by Glen Craney

  The notion had never occurred to Cas that the Stone fragments might not have come from the lab that Cohanim’s Lightgiver operation had abandoned. He was impressed by the size of Diarmuid’s Celtic balls. “Ol’ Johnny must be stocked up with Guinness for life now. What’d he end up getting for the heist?”

  “Six shots at point-blank range. In a Star of David pattern.”

  Marly perked up, hearing confirmation of what the burglar had told her in her apartment about Baith’s death.

  Cas nodded. “A signature Mossad execution. That would explain why Johnny boy never came back to pick up the Stone for delivery to Mexico.”

  “You might be right about that,” Isserle said with a smile. “Unfortunately, we were a little late in tracing the Stone fragments to Dallas. Jubal got there a few hours before we did. We never did tell the Saudis about Johnny D. Better they believe that one of their own homegrown radicals stole it. That way, they’ll round up the usual suspects and put on a head-lopping show—” Isserle caught himself, remembering what had happened to Cas’s wife.

  Cas took the point. “Sure, let the world think that a Wahabi radical was responsible for the theft. Much more useful to you in future negotiations that might involve, say, Israeli-occupied land for settlements.”

  Marly was still reeling from these revelations. She looked at Isserle and admitted, “I could probably use that drink now.”

  Isserle grinned as he poured a glass of rum straight and handed it to her. He opened the curtains wider to expand their view of the gold-banded Mediterranean, and then raised his glass for a toast. “Here’s to the last sunset you two will ever see in Israel.”

  THAT NIGHT, WITH NOTHING TO do but wait for the Mossad cars that would pick them up before dawn and take them separately to the airport, Cas and Marly sat alone in an outdoor café overlooking the sea. Their armed chaperone stood fifty yards away, watching every move they made.

  Marly dug listlessly through the bones of her grilled red mullet. She hadn’t said a word during the entire dinner.

  Cas had tried to dull the grief over his son’s death with five rounds of cheap Israeli ouzo, but the effort had only made him more maudlin. Finally, he couldn’t take the silent treatment anymore. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” she muttered, picking at her cold dinner. “I should have ordered the risotto.”

  “No, I mean, about all this hassle I caused you on this wild goose chase.” He started to reach across the table, but then withdrew his hand.

  She looked up, surprised to hear him sound even remotely vulnerable for once. “I guess it was kind of stupid of me, jumping on a plane and flying all the way over here to find you. Once the dean finds out I’ve gone AWOL again from my classes, I can kiss that teaching job at Columbia goodbye.”

  Trying to interpret her facial tells through the ouzo haze, he bored in on her with a puppy smile. “So, why did you come looking for me?”

  She shoved her plate away. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Does to me.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “You’ll just think I’m wacky if I tell you.”

  “Uh, hello. You’re sitting next to King Wacky. Don’t even think of trying to take my crown away from me.”

  Through a long pause, she managed a half-smile. “I thought there might have been another reason the Stone was stolen. But I was just freaking out from all the stress, I guess.”

  His brow furrowed in curiosity. “What other reason?”

  “You remember that piece of paper you found in that Dallas lab?”

  Cas squinted to squeeze that bit of information from his brain. “Uh, no.”

  “The one that said something about ‘stutter bands.’”

  “Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten all about that. One of Cohanim’s employees or whoever the hell was renting that office had a speech impediment. So what?”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a photocopied page from one of her textbooks. “Did that paper look something like this?”

  He looked at the copy of the illustration. “Yeah, just like this. What is this, anyway? Some kind of puzzle?”

  “A DNA sample.”

  “You mean like genetic DNA.”

  She nodded. “When DNA is manipulated and amplified, sometimes small glitches are created that look similar to the original components of the genetic material. Scientists call these artifacts stutter bands.”

  “Okay, so somebody was testing DNA in that Dallas lab. Big deal.”

  “You’re right, of course,” she sighed. “My imagination just ran wild. Like I said, I’ve been freaking out recently.”

  He waited for her to explain more, but she fell quiet again. He tapped the table to regain her attention. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?”

  “You promise not to laugh?”

  “Out with it, McKinney.”

  “This stutter-band thing got me thinking about an article that I read a few months ago.”

  “What about?”

  “A colleague at Stanford found uracil and xanthine in an Australian meteorite.” She continued through his baffled silence, “Before he died, Carl Sagan suggested something like this was possible, but this was the first hard evidence to confirm the theory.”

  Cas shook his head. “Sorry, I need the Meteorites for Dummies version.”

  “Uracil and xanthine are nucleobases. The foundations of RNA. They also may have been stepping-stones to DNA, which is needed to create protein in organisms.”

  He leaned closer. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  She wouldn’t look at him directly, afraid of his ridicule. “The raw ingredients for human life on Earth may have first arrived inside a meteorite.”

  Cas took a slow drink from his ouzo and let it soak his brain. “That sounds like something out of the National Enquirer. Look, I flunked science in high school. But how could any living anything survive the heat on entering the Earth’s atmosphere?”

  Marly fiddled with the mood candle on the table. “The theory is that these molecules were protected by a kind of heat-shield shell inside the meteorite.”

  “So, if I’m understanding this, Sagan said that these space rocks were like seeds that planted life here?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And it was just sheer luck that these surviving DNA strands spawned what ultimately became”—he pointed to her then to himself—“us?”

  “You’d have better odds winning the lottery on Mars, but yeah.”

  Cas looked up at the café’s covered awning, as if he could see through it all the way to the solar system. “That means meteorites could have fallen on other planets in other galaxies … and created life there, too.”

  “Hard to say,” Marly said. “Those other planets would have to have just the right combination of hydrogen and oxygen for the DNA seeds to take root.”

  Cas swilled the ouzo, marinating the idea around his tongue. “You didn’t come all this way just to tell me about some new out-there discovery.”

  She leaned back in her chair and turned away from him, gazing off toward the lapping waves of the Mediterranean.

  He sat up and forced her to look at him. “You think there’s DNA inside the Black Stone, don’t you?”

  She flicked a quick glance at him, unable to hold it.

  “And now you think somebody hired Johnny Diarmuid to steal the Stone not for the ransom, but for the DNA.”

  Marly made sure the waiter remained out of earshot. “That old squeeze of yours at INTERPOL told us that the infrared picked up high levels of phosphate.” Seeing that she was already starting to lose him on the complication scale, she dumbed it down. “Phosphate is an essential component for life. I considered the idea then, but dismissed it as too …” She waved toward the stars to indicate that the theory was, as Cas had just said, "out there."

  “What made you to change your mind?”

  She looked guilty. “When you were rummaging around
in that garbage bin in Dallas, I broke off a small piece of one of the fragments and kept it.”

  He pushed out his chair and came standing over her. “You did what?”

  She glanced over at the guard, who was about to march over, until she waved him away, indicating that all was okay. “Hey, I needed a little something to sell to cover my expenses.”

  “You were skimming off the top? And you weren’t going to even tell me!”

  “Sue me.”

  He sat back into his chair and took another long drink to steady his nerves. “The Saudis don’t have their entire Stone back. That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “Don’t soil your Speedo,” she said. “Your Mossad buddy already told us that the Saudis still think some jihadi wingnut stole the rock. They’re aware it was probably mishandled—”

  “Do you have any idea what those Bedouins are gonna do to us if they find out about this? Why are you telling me this now?”

  She thrummed her fingers on the table, until finally admitting, “I may have done a little testing on the fragment I saved.”

  “May have done a little …” He pinned her with a hard stare. “And?”

  She turned even more serious. “Positive for uracil and xanthine.”

  Cas sucked a deep breath, his head aching from trying to understand the possible implications of this revelation. “So you mean that the DNA from all those people over the centuries who touched and kissed it—”

  “No. What I mean is that I found molecules deep inside the igneous.”

  He took time to think about what she had just said. After the long pause, he shrugged and took bite of fish from her plate. “That makes a great story. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Johnny Diarmuid and those Mexican gangsters and Earl Jubal, or whoever the really stole the Black Stone—they all have two things in common.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “They were all spawned from primordial pond scum.”

  She crossed her arms. “And the second thing they have in common?”

  “None of them, I can assure you, ever gave a rat’s ass about DNA.”

  She huffed, as if having expected that reaction. “I told you it was a crazy idea. But, no, you just had to hear it. Satisfied now?”

  Cas tried to rub the sting of exhaustion from his eyes. “I’ll tell you, Marly”—he never remembered having ever called her by her first name; he liked the sound of it—”my brain right now is more fluffy than a twice-baked potato. Too many tokes over the years, I guess. Whatever. I’m actually starting to pay attention to these conspiracy theories.”

  She gazed out at the sea.

  He couldn’t imagine what she could be thinking. Getting no reaction, he called for the bill. After paying, he stood up, staggering from the effects of the booze. After finding his balance, he walked with her down to the beach. For what seemed like eternity, they stood side by side looking up at the Mediterranean stars. Night had fallen, and the November evening had taken on a chill. His flight to Los Angeles was scheduled to leave two hours after hers to New York. They both understood that if either wasn’t around for their pickups the next morning, they could count a Star of David pattern being left with bullets on their foreheads, too.

  “I guess this is really it this time, huh?” she said.

  He wanted so badly to hold her. “What are you going to do now?”

  She shrugged. “After this little fiasco? You pretty much guessed that I’m toast at school. The university won’t renew my contract. I’ve missed too many classes. I’ll finish out the semester and then start job hunting again.”

  “You could always come out to California. I have some contacts at Pepperdine.”

  She smiled sadly, but shook her head. “I’m an elite East Coast snob. Just a good ol’ Southern girl, really.”

  He moved in, but she pulled away. “Look, Cas … I know you’ve had a rough time of it these past few days. With the news about Farid, and now this.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  She kept looking off, as if not wanting to meet his eyes. “I need something a little more …”

  “Flexible? Look, I can do my thing and—”

  “Stable.”

  He blinked hard. “Stable? Why not just say ‘boring?’”

  “Boring sounds pretty good right now. There’s no easy way to put this, so I’ll just be honest. I don’t think you’re good for me. My friend Paul Brady warned me—”

  “Paul Brady? That egghead who has been sucking for years on the CIA’s tit? What’d he say about me?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell me.”

  She looked over at the Mossad guard in the distance, wondering if he would pull his gun if things got overheated. She lowered her voice and admitted, “He said you’re a train wreck. And that I should stay away from you at all cost.”

  “I’d like to see him spend a week in the field. See how he’d come out in the rinse cycle.”

  “Cas, you don’t act like normal people.”

  “Last time I checked, I still have all the normal bodily functions. You mind giving me an example?”

  She fidgeted in her chair, looking uncomfortable with the direction the discussion was going. Finally, she said, “Not to bring up a sore subject again … but all along, while your son was in mortal danger, you’ve been hitting on me like a teenager in heat.”

  “How long ago did your fiancé die?”

  She bristled. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

  “You’ve running around the world chasing prize money while he’s still warm in the grave. That sounds pretty callous to me.”

  She was dumbstruck. “It’s not the same at—”

  He moved in for kiss, silencing her for an extended moment.

  She surfaced, flustered. “Did you not hear me just say—”

  He kissed her again, twice as hard and passionate.

  She pulled back, gasping. “Enough, okay?” She stood up abruptly and pushed her chair away from the table. “It’s over.”

  For a fleeting moment, he felt his legs go weak—and it wasn’t just from the ouzo. He recovered his wisecracking armor and, affecting indifference, quipped, “You mean something had started? News to me.”

  Marly held a hurt look that suggested she was thinking about answering him, but then she turned away and hurried toward the Bauhaus building where they were being confined. She took the stairs in twos and raced to one of the bedrooms, locking the door behind her.

  Abandoned—except for his Mossad guard—Cas shrugged and turned to stumble down the quiet, narrow lanes of Neve Tsedek, trying to come to terms with the hard reality that he would probably never see Marly McKinney, doctor of stones and stony hearts, ever again.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Upper West Side, Manhattan

  MARLY DREW AN ‘X’ ACROSS the July square on her Meteoroid Of The Month calendar, marking off the eighth month since she had escaped Tel Aviv. She hated to admit it, but once in a while, on slow Sunday mornings like this, she actually missed the adrenaline rushes from her crazed adventure into the world of espionage. Ever since that escapade, she had become as sedentary and isolated as the space rocks she studied.

  She shook her legs and shuffled to the kitchen for a cold beer. Fired from her teaching job a week after her return, she still had no prospects for employment. Sure, there was that paper, whose deadline she missed, for the Journal of Meteoritics and Planetary Science, but she just couldn’t get motivated to finish it. Bored out of her mind, she picked up the TV remote and clicked on CNN. Tens of thousands of protesters were chanting for the downfall of some dictator in some Third World hellhole. She didn’t even bother to check the news ticker to find out where. Who cared anymore?

  She switched the channel, hoping to find an old episode of Pawn Stars. She loved that show. Heck, she had even toyed with the idea of flying out to Vegas to sell those guys some of he
r rocks for a little cash to help pay the rent. Who knew? She might even become their go-to expert on minerals. She paused the remote on an infomercial touting a timeshare resort in Baja.

  Suddenly, a face with a California tan flashed through her mind—the face with those same smirking features that she had tried to banish from her memory. Despite her brutally honest smackdown, she now felt an awkward desire, which she was comfortably able to dismiss in a single heartbeat. “Cas Fielding. In the land of brainless mussels, the one-lobed crustacean is king.”

  She looked up at the clock. It was ten in the morning in California. He was probably up to his armpits in booze right about now. That is, if he hadn’t drowned in a surfing binge. She felt horrible, thinking such a thing about a man so broken and violent. Still, she had to admit that he was passionate about life and what he believed. Never mind that he’d almost gotten her trampled to death in Mecca. Then, of all the nerve, he had tried to make nice with her on that beach in Tel Aviv. She hummed an old Talking Heads tune that had weaseled into her head.

  “Psych—Psych—Psych—Psycho Killer.”

  He deserved it, sure, but she had been awfully hard on him during their last dinner together. Truth was, the more she thought about him, the more she’d come to realize that his insufferable juvenile antics and inappropriate attempts at seduction were probably just a defense mechanism to cover for deep emotional hurt. But all that was Freudian water under the psychological bridge now, thank god. The Malibu rock star was long gone.

  And she had to be honest: she was no picnic at the relationship beach, either. She had her own head-shrinkable problems. For one, why couldn’t she keep a steady job?

  “Psych—Psych—Psych—Psycho Woman.”

  Don’t go down that rabbit hole again, Marly.

  Anxious for a distraction, she clicked the tube back on and checked out Fox News for high entertainment. Great, another riot somewhere in the Gulf. The whole damn Middle East seemed to be imploding at warp speed.

  I wonder what Cas thinks about—for the love of god, stop it!

  She sighed, weary of her own internal wrestling. Screw the Middle East. If the Muslim world had discovered the Black Stone was missing, the entire Gulf would now be one giant Scudarama. That whole experience made her wonder how many other scandals had been kept secret throughout history. And why would somebody steal one of the world’s most conspicuous and highly charged religious icons, only to return it less than a week later?