The Genesis Code (19 page)

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

“That’s it,” said Madison, gesturing wildly at the Mayan stela in excitement. “That’s the connection!”

“What, Christian? What is it?” asked Grace.

“All of these cryptic references in ancient mythology. Dr. Ambergris believed that they were attempts by someone in our ancient past to communicate to future mankind from tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years before what we think of as the dawn of civilization. To communicate a warning to us.”

“And the Genesis Code?”

“Dr. Ambergris believed that there are many examples in ancient texts and mythologies that seem to refer to DNA and genetics.”

He pointed to a pictograph on the stela.

“Two intertwined serpents that resemble the double helix of human DNA. That’s what the Genesis Code must be. Another way to send us a message from the distant past. A coded message hidden in our genome that would survive as long as humans survive. Even if the pyramids of Egypt were swept away and our ancient mythologies were forgotten, a message in our DNA would still survive, passed down from generation to generation, awaiting discovery.”

His mind churned with the possibilities.

“An encoded message hidden in human DNA, waiting for the time when humanity developed, or should I say regained, the ability to read our own genetic code!”

The thought took his breath away.

“The ultimate secret message. Carried with us within our own bodies until we discovered the means to unlock it.”

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

Dr. Vasquez placed his hand on Madison’s arm. “I have a confession to make,” he said. “Even before you phoned, I knew that you would be coming to see me.”

Madison tried to conceal his alarm.

“How could you know that?”

“He told me,” said Vasquez.

“He?”

“Joshua. Dr. Ambergris.”

Grace took a step back. “Dr. Ambergris told you that Christian and I would come to see you?”

“Yes, he did. Joshua told me that one day soon, the two of you might come to see me, asking the same sorts of questions that you have asked me today.”

Dr. Vasquez smiled as he stuck his hand into his jacket pocket.

“Joshua asked me to provide you with the answers to your questions.”

Vasquez withdrew a small CD-ROM in a plastic cover from his pocket. He leaned forward to hand the disk to Madison.

“He also asked me to give you this.”

Suddenly Vasquez’s head jerked violently to the side. The disk fell to the floor.

A spray of crimson painted a mist of red across the right side of Grace’s face. The muted thump of a silencer barely reached Madison’s ears.

Before Madison could react, Vasquez’s body fell backward, carried by the momentum of the bullet’s impact. His arms hanging limply at his sides, Vasquez fell against the massive Mayan stela, the full weight of his body slamming into the towering monument.

“Goddammit,” yelled Crowe from across the room.

Grace’s scream split the air. She wiped frantically at the blood on her face.

The stone stela shuddered from the impact of Vasquez’s falling body. A cracking, splintering noise echoed from the platform beneath the stela as its weight shifted.

The massive stone began to sway.

Madison reacted without conscious thought, taking Grace by the wrist and yanking her away from the teetering monument. Throwing a backward glance over his shoulder, Madison thought for a moment that the stela would regain its balance. And then it began to fall slowly and gracefully backward, gathering momentum as two tons of carved rock toppled silently toward the marble floor.

“Move!” yelled Madison, dragging Grace by the arm away from the center of the room and shoving her toward the door. Diving to the ground, he lunged across the floor on his hands and knees toward the computer disk that had fallen from Vasquez’s lifeless fingers.

The impact of the enormous monument against the marble floor was deafening, thundering through the gallery like the roar of a cannon. The top of the falling stela caught the edge of a tall glass display case, shattering the glass and crushing its wooden frame beneath the stela’s tremendous weight.

The stela shattered as it struck the floor, sending spinning slabs of rock hurtling across the smooth marble. Fragments of stone and shards of glass cut through the air, showering the gallery with a storm of debris.

A billowing plume of dust and pulverized stone engulfed the fallen stela like a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. Knocked off their feet by a hail of bits of glass and rock, Madison and Grace fell in a heap on the floor, the backs of their shirts soaked with the blood of a hundred tiny gashes.

Madison twisted in pain, his eyes searching through the cloudy haze in the room for the shooter. In his bloody fingers, Madison clutched the computer disk.

Grace’s crumpled body lay still.

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

Madison breathed a deep sigh of relief when Grace finally stirred. Her eyelids fluttered open. She gingerly touched the grape-sized lump on the side of her head with an index finger.

“Come on, Grace,” hissed Madison, rising to his feet. “We have to get the hell out of here.”

Grace struggled to stand up, cringing against the sharp pain that felt like an army of needles piercing the skin of her back. Fifty feet to the south, Crowe banged open the double doors leading into the gallery.

“Grace!”

Raising his arm, Crowe took aim.

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

Madison and Grace charged forward as Crowe prepared to fire a second shot, reaching the double doors leading to the next hall only an instant before Crowe pulled the trigger. The bullet whined like an angry wasp as it sliced through the air and slammed into the doorframe with a loud crack, mere inches from Grace’s head.

As they burst through the dooway into the next room, Grace saw an etched glass sign suspended from the ceiling above.

BABYLON.

Madison’s eyes roamed wildly around the large room, searching for an exit. The rectangular exhibit hall was a recreation of the ancient city of Babylon. Along each wall, facades of mock stone created the illusion of stone buildings lining a long street.

Directly ahead, a recreation of the Ishtar Gate rose twenty-five feet into the air, framing the entrance to Processional Way through the center of the imperial city of Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of the second great Babylonian empire. The clay bricks of the gate were painted a vivid blue and decorated with rows of bulls and dragons.

Grace grabbed Madison’s hand.

“We can’t just leave Dr. Vasquez in there,” said Grace. Her voice trembled.

Madison stopped and looked at Grace. The crimson spray of Vasquez’s blood on her face had become a smear of dark red. Grace’s eyes darted about.

“Grace…Dr. Vasquez is dead,” said Madison. “He was shot in the head.”

She trembled.

“Y-you can’t be sure,” she stuttered. “What if he’s still alive?”

Madison took both of Grace’s hands and held them tightly.

“Grace, Dr. Vasquez is dead. I saw it. I’m sure.”

A tear ran down her cheek.

“It was Crowe,” said Madison. “I saw him at the other end of the hall after he shot Dr. Vasquez. He took another shot at you. He’ll be coming after us. We can’t stay here.”

Grace absently chewed on her bottom lip. She swayed gently on her feet, her expression vacant.

“Come on. I’m going to get us out of here.”

He led Grace by the hand through Nebuchadnezzar’s gate and onto the cobblestones of Processional Way. As they ran down the avenue, the fog in Grace’s mind began to lift.

On the south side of the hall, a scale model of the Temple of Marduk jutted high above the surrounding buildings. A glass display case held a facsimile of Hammurabi’s Code carved into a diorite pillar. On the north side of the hall, the biblical Tower of Babel towered above. The great ziggurat was a narrow, stepped tower reaching upward toward heaven.

Grace took deep, ragged breaths as they ran. “Why would Crowe shoot Dr. Vasquez?”

“I don’t think Crowe was aiming for Vasquez,” said Madison. “He just got in the way.”

The imperial palace of Nebuchadnezzar stood at the end of Processional Way. The palace was an impressive stone edifice, guarded by a mock moat and wooden bridge. Two imperial Babylonian guards stood immobile at the foot of the bridge, garbed in leather armor and brandishing sinister-looking weapons, curved blades affixed to long stout poles. Where the entrance to the palace should have been, a pair of doors led into the next exhibit.

“MADISON!” yelled Crowe, his voice ringing out from the Egyptian gallery.

Madison and Grace ran toward the imperial palace, skirting around a large etched-glass map of Hammurabi’s Babylon of the Old Kingdom. Eight feet tall and ten feet wide, the transparent glass diagram was intricately etched with the winding streets of Old Babylon sitting astride a branch of the Euphrates River. In the upper-left corner of the pane, two intertwined serpents were carved into the thick glass.

Crowe appeared at the entrance to the Babylonian exhibit hall behind them. Madison and Grace had almost reached the small bridge spanning the shallow moat around the imperial palace.

As Crowe raised his pistol, they ran behind the freestanding etched-glass diagram of Old Bablyon.

Crowe squeezed the trigger, sighting down the length of his right arm. The bullet smashed into the glass panel with a loud crack. For a fraction of a second, Crowe could see a spidery web of cracks radiate outward from the point where the bullet impacted the glass. Then it imploded, raining shattered glass onto the cobblestones beneath.

Madison and Grace dashed across the moat, barreling through the doors in the center of the palace facade.

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

Anger boiled behind his eyes as Crowe watched Madison and Grace escape from the Hall of Babylon. With great effort, he tried to still the raging storm in his mind, forcing his frustration to subside. His eyes scanned the room.

Observe.

Orient.

Decide.

Act.

Crowe slowed his breathing, drawing upon his military training to control the adrenaline coursing through his veins. With cold, calculating determination, Crowe crossed to the room in pursuit of his prey.

Drops of blood dotted the stone floor.

One of them is injured
.

Crowe silently cursed himself for allowing emotion to hinder his abilities. He fingered the trigger of his pistol. He would not miss again.

With quick, long strides, Crowe rapidly covered the distance across the hall. He passed between the silent imperial guards, their weapons raised in warning. Passing beneath a mock stone arch above the entrance to the imperial palace, Crowe cautiously pushed open the pair of double doors and stepped through into the Tomb of Tutankhamen.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Dark and shadowed, the chamber contained an exact replica of the tomb of King Tutankhamen just as it was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter beneath the desert sands of the Valley of the Kings.

Illuminated in a circle of white light, stylized lettering on a sheet of papyrus anounced,
Tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen: The Living Image of Amen.

A quick visual survey of the interior of the chamber revealed no movement.

The room was heavy with the smell of damp earth and the faint perfume of spices. Crowe increased the pressure on the laser grip of his pistol, and a razor-thin beam of red light cut through the gloom. A small red dot appeared on the far wall.

Crowe swept the ghostly red line of laser light in a slow arc around the chamber, probing the dim interior of the room.

Behind glass to his left, a plaster casting that had once sealed the entrance to Tutankhamen’s burial chamber was displayed against a backdrop of black velvet. Impressed in the plaster were seven cartouche seals, showing depictions of Anubis engaged in different ritualistic activities. One of the seals showed Anubis above nine captives kneeling with their wrists bound behind them.

The pinpoint of red laser light raked across divine lotus blossoms sprouting from the bindings of the nine captives.

Crowe listened intently.

There was only slience.

If Madison and Grace were running through one of the adjacent rooms, he should be able to hear them.

They’re hiding somewhere.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Crowe realized that he was standing in some sort of antechamber. It was packed with objects lining the walls from floor to ceiling. Four finely decorated chariots lay dismantled against the southeast wall.

Three large gilded platforms with handles used to transport sarcophagi lined the west wall, each adorned with the image of a goddess.

Sekhmet, daugher of Ra, the Sun God.

Hathor, the Mother-Goddess.

Thoueris, the patron Goddess of Women in Childbirth.

Stacks of wooden boxes against the wall contained dried meats. A pair of life-sized wooden figures stood guard on either side of an open door.

Hanging above a tarnished brass lantern, a hand-lettered wooden sign was written in the simulated handwriting of archaeologist Howard Carter.

On the sign were two words.

BURIAL CHAMBER.

The Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago, Illinois

The gallery was a complete recreation of King Tutankhamen’s burial chamber and treasury. The thick stone wall that orginally separated the burial chamber from the treasury had been replaced with a Plexiglas partition, providing a panoramic view of both chambers.

An opening in the partition allowed museum guests to walk between the two rooms.

The burial chamber was dominated by Tutankhamen’s elaborate sarcophagus. When it was originally discovered, the mummified body of Tutankhamen was entombed within the smallest of four sarcophagi, placed one inside another. The museum exhibit displayed a cross-section cutaway of the tomb, permitting guests to view each of the nested sarcophagi as they were originally stacked.

A plaque near the door caught Crowe’s eye as he passed. It indicated that 144 objects were discovered interlaced and woven in the layers of bandages wrapped around Tutankhamun’s mummified corpse.

One hundred and forty-four.

The same number found inscribed on the forehead of the Mayan Lord Pakal lying in his tomb in Central America.

The same number of millennia in one baktun of the Mayan calendar—a hundred and forty-four thousand days.

Crowe recalled a Bible verse from the Book of Revelation he had memorized as a teenager under the strict supervision of a particularly cranky Catholic nun.

In the center of the nested sarcophagi, in a solid gold coffin, the mummified remains of King Tutankhamem were bound in long strips of gray cloth. The mummy wore a golden mask, made from solid gold inlaid with opaque pieces of blue glass.

Around Tutankhamen’s neck was a beaded necklace, woven in a complex pattern of six tiers resembling the rays of the sun. On his breast was an intricately crafted brooch of a scarab pushing a solar disk.

A gold placard near the mummy stated that the necklace contained 400 beads, and lines radiating from the center of the solar disk to its outer edge divided the disk into 360 degrees.

400
×
360
=
144,000.

On the north wall of the burial chamber, a colorful mural depicted Tutankhamen commencing his journey to the stars, where he would be reborn.

Crowe moved silently through the burial chamber and into the treasury.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.