The Genesis Conspiracy

by Richard Hatcher

  As they walked toward the building complex below the helipad, the same thought kept floating across Gorsky’s mind. He had only seven months before retirement. Whatever this German didn’t want him to discover onboard the helicopter would have to remain a mystery. His future was in a fishing boat on beautiful Lake Baykal.

  40

  When they pulled into the driveway of a small ranch house which was partially shaded by two large palmettos and a grove of tall pines, Jake glanced over at Katie with a blank expression.

  “You’re not looking forward to this, are you?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “It’s been decades,” Katie urged. “I’m sure she’s realized by now that her brother is not coming back.”

  “But,” Jake frowned, “it’s only going to open old wounds, and I’m really bad at this sort of thing.”

  “You’ll do fine,” she said with an encouraging nod. “Let’s go talk to her.”

  After getting out of the Jeep, Jake and Katie went up to the front entrance and knocked. A lazy tomcat looked up from his nap atop a wicker loveseat beside the door. As Katie petted him under his chin, a small figure appeared at the screen door.

  “Mrs. Cochran,” Jake greeted. “I’m Jacob Evers from TERA. My boss, Bill Hendricks, phoned you yesterday about your brother.”

  “I’ve been expecting you,” she replied, unlatching the door. “Please come in. You’ll have to forgive my housekeeping. It’s just me now, and sometimes things don’t get put away like they should.”

  Standing less than five feet in height, the silver-haired lady displayed a warm smile that reminded Jake of Katie’s grandmother. Her bright blue eyes were lively and engaging.

  “This is Katie Petrovich,” he introduced. “She’s the one who actually found the capsule.”

  “Petrovich?” the woman asked with a sudden look of surprise.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Katie answered softly.

  “How interesting. Please come and have a seat.”

  “Mrs. Cochran—” Jake began hesitantly.

  “Please call me Carol. I know I’m not as young as I once was, but in my mind I’m still not old enough to be addressed so formally. I also spent 30 years being called Mrs. Cochran when I taught high school here in Pensacola.”

  “OK,” Jake nodded, feeling somewhat more at ease. “We don’t have all the evidence to say for certain that we have found your brother’s body, but if we have, I’m terribly sorry for your loss. I know this must have come as a shock to you after all these years.”

  “Yes,” she smiled. “But I am so thankful to finally know the truth. I deeply loved Peter. He was such an exciting person. My brother loved flying and every other kind of adventure for that matter. Our poor parents could never keep up with him. When he went missing, it was a terrible shock. It brought back a lot of memories when I received the call that he’d been found.”

  “You sound pretty certain that we have found your brother,” Katie noted.

  “If you are related to Dmitri Petrovich,” the older lady answered, “then I know without a doubt.”

  Katie’s eyes widened and she snapped an astonished glance at Jake. “You knew my grandfather?”

  “No, but my brother did. I’ve never told anyone about this,” she said in a hushed tone, “but Peter was an intelligence agent for the government, although I don’t know which agency it was. Before he disappeared, he sent me two rather strange letters and told me that I could never share the contents of them. I think it would be OK now.” She smiled. “Don’t you?”

  Katie looked wide-eyed at Jake.

  “That’s entirely up to you, Mrs. Cochran,” Jake replied. “er, Carol. We know a little about your brother’s employer. It was the CIA. My boss used to work in that world too. That’s how we learned about your brother.”

  “Let me get the letters then,” she said before disappearing into a back room. When she returned, she handed them an envelope which had slightly yellowed with age. The cancellation stamp read:

  CAPE CANAVERAL APR 8 A.M. 1964 FLA.

  On the left side was a photograph of a spacecraft and a rocket. Beneath the photo was written:

  PROJECT GEMINI, 1ST GEMINI SPACECRAFT ORBITED FROM CAPE KENNEDY, FLORIDA

  “This envelope makes a lot more sense now,” the older lady said. With Jake looking over her shoulder, Katie opened the letter.

  Hey Sis,

  I’m back in Florida and intended to come by, but my project here has hit a snag. I hope you, Bob, and the kids are all doing well. I may be out of town for a while. When I get back, I’ll drop by. I have something really interesting to share with you, but I’d better do it in person.

  Love,

  Pete

  Katie folded the letter and placed it back into the envelope. Jake took it from her and studied the cover.

  “The postmark and illustrations clearly indicate his involvement with the Gemini mission,” he noted.

  “But this is the really odd one,” Carol spoke as she handed them a second envelope. “I found this stuffed under my door a few months after I got the NASA one.”

  Unlike the letter from Cape Canaveral, the second envelope was not addressed. Instead, the name Carol was written in pencil just below a postmark, which read:

  WORLD’S FAIR APR 22 1964 N.Y.

  Additionally, there was a cancellation stamp, FIRST DAY OF ISSUE, and a cover illustration of a giant globe and statue. Above the artwork were the words NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR.

  “Pay no attention to the date,” the older lady said. “Peter left it sometime during the summer of that year. He knew I collected stamps and cachets like this one. I’m sure he purchased it from some novelty shop.”

  Jake opened the letter.

  Hey Sis,

  When you look outside this morning, you’ll see that I’ve left a surprise in your driveway. Would you have Bob move that old jalopy of his out of the garage and park it for me? It needs to stay out of sight. I’ll explain later. Right now, I’m headed to Asia to find something that we lost here at work. I’d like to tell you all about it, but you know my situation. I’m going to share something with you, however, that you can never tell anyone. You have to promise. A couple of years ago, I met a man named Dmitri Petrovich who shares our beliefs about the Bible. He made an incredible discovery that we’re going to make public as soon as we have all the facts.

  My new job is testing out a high altitude camera that’s very important to our country. Before we snap the photos that we’ve been assigned to take, I’ve planned a checkout pass over an area that Dmitri mapped out on foot a couple of years ago. It’s called the Eurasian Steppe Route, and it’s part of the Silk Road.

  Dmitri is a zoologist. He believes that this ancient route was once an animal migration path which was followed by early people. It makes sense because animals would have taken the easiest, most fertile path as they moved along. The amazing part is that Dmitri has found one of these animals, a camel-like creature. It was frozen in a glacier in Tibet along with two of her calves. Dmitri classified the animal as a Procamelus, an ancestor to the modern day camel, but without a hump. Her calves were completely different, however. One had a longer jaw line and was in the early stages of developing a hump. The other distinctly had two humps. Dmitri believes this is evidence of something he calls Single Generational Species Distinction.

  I know all this sounds a little weighty, but in short, Dmitri may have found a link which shows that all the species of the world came from a few kinds of animals—the ones from Noah’s Ark. If this can be proven, the theory of evolution goes out the window. We’re determined to prove it. As for the photography I mentioned, I’ll tell you about that when I get home. That’s the part that will knock your socks off. It might even surprise old Bob.

  I love you, Sis,

  Pete

  “Bob was my husband,” Carol offered with a smile. “He and Peter were always taking jabs at each other. They were actually good friends. Peter was the one w
ho introduced us.”

  Jake looked at Katie and nodded. Turning to Carol, he said, “We’re slowly starting to learn more about Katie’s grandfather and his research. One of Katie’s old professors knew about this camel ancestor. His lab in Russia did some DNA analysis. Peter was right. Their analysis showed a real potential for understanding how animal species originated.”

  “It must not have been too earth shattering,” the older lady suggested. “I believe evolution is still taught as fact in our classrooms. I know it was something I had to deal with when I taught school.”

  “My grandfather’s work was never finished,” Katie replied. “The DNA work was stolen, and in Soviet Russia, it would never have been published anyway.”

  “I see,” Carol said dropping her eyes. “So Peter’s death was for nothing?”

  “Not yet,” Jake answered quickly. “And that’s also the case with Katie’s grandfather. Dmitri Petrovich disappeared the same year as your brother. We’re determined to find out what happened and why.”

  “I appreciate everything that you’ve done already,” she replied.

  Katie put her arm around her. “I can certainly understand what you’re going through,” she offered.

  While the women talked, Jake glanced back down at the letter and read through it once more. Based on what they knew already, there was little to glean from it other than confirmation of what Wade had discovered—the location, Tibet. Dmitri’s journal indicated that he had spent a good bit of his adult life there. Jake could guess that he had made his discovery during his explorations, maybe even by accident. The letter did present another mystery, however. Whatever Peter Jensen could not discuss in the letter to his sister was clearly separate from the frozen animal find. That was likely at the heart of their problems, Jake concluded. Until they explored the area themselves and learned what happened to Dmitri Petrovich, the mystery would go unsolved.

  “So what was the surprise in the driveway?” Jake asked, referencing the opening lines of the second letter.

  “Do you like old cars?” the older lady replied.

  “What guy doesn’t?”

  “I still have it,” Carol said. “I know it sounds silly, but I always hoped that Peter would come back for it someday. My husband was a mechanic and kept it serviced until he died two years ago. Come out to the garage with me.”

  After leading them through the kitchen, Carol opened the door and flipped on the lights.

  “Whoa,” Jake responded. “A 1965 Mustang.” He walked around the car slowly. “And it’s in mint condition. It is a ’65, right?”

  “It’s a 1964 and one-half,” Carol smiled, “at least that’s how my late husband described it. He loved cars too. Bob rarely drove it, especially in recent years when people started trying to buy it every time he went out. It was missing a side-view mirror when we found it. Pete must have bumped into something. Not surprising coming from him.”

  “It’s a nice car,” Katie said as she ran her hand along the bright red fender. Except for a fine layer of dust, the car was showroom clean.

  “My brother liked sports cars,” Carol explained. “He’d always talked about settling down and getting into auto racing down at Sebring. I suspect this was the car he planned to race.”

  “It must be worth a good bit of money,” Jake said, “especially in this condition.”

  “It’s worth nothing to me now. I was hoping you might be interested in taking it off my hands.”

  “What?” Jake wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly.

  “You and Katie have given me the one thing I wanted most—an answer to what happened to Peter. I have no use for a sports car. I doubt they let old ladies race at Sebring.” She winked at Katie.

  “But,” Jake replied, “we could help you sell it. You’d probably make enough money off of it to take a cruise around the world.”

  “The ladies at the bridge club would be too jealous.”

  “But…” Jake muttered, not knowing what to say.

  “Please accept it. It’s a gorgeous day out there, and I’ll bet this beautiful young lady would enjoy a drive down to the beach.”

  Jake looked back at the car. “I should at least try it on for size.” He opened the driver’s side door and slid into the bucket seat. The jet black interior was also pristine. There were no cracks in the vinyl, and it even had a somewhat new car smell to it. “Fresh from the factory,” he muttered. “Sam would love this.”

  As he glanced back at the rear seats, he noticed the corner of a magazine protruding nearly out of view in the floorboard beneath the passenger side seat. Picking it up, he found that it was a Life magazine dated May 1, 1964. On the cover was the same giant globe he had seen on the second letter that Pete had sent his sister.

  “This was the 1964 World’s Fair,” he said half questioning as he showed the magazine to Carol.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But how did that get there? With the car so clean, I guess Bob never thought to look for trash in it.”

  Jake studied the cover and found a note written in pencil across the pastel green spray of a fountain standing in the foreground. It read, “Where the orbits meet, Livingston went home.”

  “Is this your brother’s handwriting?” he asked.

  Carol studied the message for a moment but then shook her head. “No, it’s much too neat.”

  Katie stepped over to examine the magazine as well. “Do you have any idea what it means?” she asked.

  The older lady gave a puzzled look and then shrugged. “I’m afraid not.”

  When Jake opened the cover of the magazine, a yellow piece of paper decorated in an orange diamond pattern fell out into his lap. It was an adult admission ticket to the World’s Fair.

  “I think I know where your brother picked up the envelope,” he said. “It looks like he visited the fair. There’s a date stamped on it: 8/26/64.”

  “If I remember right,” Carol said, “it was late in August when he left the car here. He must have come straight from New York.”

  Jake got out of the car and placed the magazine on the hood. “Do you know what this globe on the cover is?” he asked. “It looks familiar.”

  The older lady nodded. “It’s called the Unisphere. It was built for the 1964 fair. I’ve seen it several times when I’ve chaperoned groups of mischievous high school students on field trips to New York. It’s located at a park in Queens.”

  “U.S. Open,” Jake blurted. “That’s where I’ve seen it. Whenever they show the tennis matches at Flushing Meadows, they always show this globe in the background.”

  “Do you think the note’s reference to orbits has something to do with these bands going around it?” Katie asked. “If so, they meet over the southern part of Africa.”

  Jake looked at the intersection point. “Livingston,” he read from the note. “David Livingston?”

  “The missionary,” Katie responded. “David Livingston was a missionary to Africa. He also died there.”

  “And therefore went home,” Carol added.

  “But what does it mean?” Jake asked, tapping the intersection point with his finger. When he did, he felt a small bump in the paper. He quickly lifted it into the light and examined the spot. “There’s a small hole in the cover,” he said, “right at the intersection of these orbits.”

  “Turn the page,” Katie suggested.

  Jake flipped the cover page over and saw that the pinhole went through the next page as well. He continued turning the pages until he came to page 49, which was not perforated. It was a scotch whiskey ad with two dogs. On the adjacent page was a General Electric advertisement for televisions.

  “Look there,” Katie said. “Look at the white dog’s fur. Is that another note?”

  Jake rotated the magazine under the overhead light. “Your best Christmas present. Alexi,” he read. “How did you know….?”

  “I’ve seen this before,” Katie said, resting her hand against her forehead, “somewhere in Baba’s things. My grandfat
her had a friend named Alexi. Yes, I remember. Alexi Zukov. I found an old magazine of his in the stuff that Baba saved from our apartment. I never had time to read it, but the odd thing I found was that it had a small hole that ran through several pages.”

  “A way of covertly passing along information?” Jake suggested.

  Katie nodded. “Possibly. I’ve read that the Cold War was filled with all sorts of tricks like that.”

  “So what information was being passed along to my brother?” Carol asked.

  Jake reopened the magazine to the GE and scotch ads. “We have something now that the Cold War folks didn’t,” he said looking at Carol. “The Internet. Do you have a computer with Internet access?”

  “It’s in the kitchen.”

  With Katie and Carol on either side of him, Jake pulled up the Google search engine on the woman’s computer and typed scotch, general electric, and world’s fair. They looked down the list of possible websites that popped up on the screen, but nothing of interest caught their attention.

  “Try dog instead of scotch,” Katie suggested.

  When he pushed the enter key with the replaced word, the first choice from the search results was a Wikipedia article on the Carousel of Progress. The next three also listed the attraction. He opened the article and the three began to read.

  “It had a Christmas scene,” Katie noted.

  “And some robotic dogs,” Jake added.

  “Look,” Katie said excitedly. “The ride is still operating. It says here that it moved to Disneyland in California after the world’s fair closed and then to Disney World here in Florida. It also says that the attraction is pretty much the same as it was when it first opened. The sets and characters are mostly all original. If Alexi left some clue for Carol’s brother to follow, it could still be there.”

  A doubtful look came across Jake’s face. “Don’t you think that’s kind of a long shot?” he asked. “I don’t want to be a party pooper, and while I agree with you about the Carousel of Progress being the most likely answer to the riddle, don’t you think Pete would have taken the information with him?”