The Genesis Code (9 page)

Dr. Christian Madison’s Office
34th Floor, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York

“You think this grid of numbers is a message from Dr. Ambergris?” asked Madison. “Why wouldn’t he just write it out?”

“He must have been afraid that someone else might try to read it,” said Grace. “So he sent it in code.”

Madison was skeptical. “A code that only you would recognize?”

Grace examined the printout. “Look, Dr. Ambergris must have anticipated that if something happened to him, I would come to you. The only way this message could be read would be if you and I tried to figure it out together—an additional safeguard to keep his message hidden from others.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Madison. “Only Triad Genomics personnel would have access to the e-mail server or my computer.”

Grace chewed on her lower lip. “It makes sense if he was concerned about a traitor inside the company. Someone who works for Triad Genomics.”

Grace directed Madison’s attention to the eight-by-eight grid of digits, crisply printed in black ink on white paper.

“Let me show you how this works,” said Grace. “Add up the numbers across the top row.”

Madison took a moment to make the mental calculation.

“They total two hundred sixty.”

“Right. Now pick any other row or column and add the digits.”

Madison placed a finger on the third row and mentally tabulated the sum.

“Two hundred sixty,” he said. In quick succession, he added the digits in each of the columns.

“They all add up to two hundred sixty,” said Madison.

“That’s a Magic Square. The numbers are arranged so that every row and column adds up to the same number,” said Grace.

“What’s the significance of two-sixty?”

She pointed to a small statue resting on Madison’s credenza. The stone figure brandished a feathered staff adorned with two intertwined serpents coiled along its length.

“A gift from Dr. Ambergris?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s Mayan—a representation of Chac, the Sky Serpent and Rain God.”

“Ambergris’ father was a tenured professor at Yale, a respected archaeologist and historian.”

“I know this,” said Madison.

“But did you know that the ancient Maya were one of his father’s passions? He spent a lifetime studying the Maya. And he shared this passion with his son. I know that Dr. Ambergris sometimes went with his father on archaeological digs in the Yucatán Peninsula when he was a boy. He even considered a career in archeology, following in his father’s footsteps, before he discovered his passion for science and genetics. But clearly, Dr. Ambergris’ interest in the Maya and other ancient cultures survived as more than just a curious son’s peek into his father’s world.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Madison.

“Dr. Ambergris was an only child. When his father died, he was the sole recipient of his father’s inheritance, including his brownstone uptown, the Ambergris family trust, and his father’s extensive library—a collection of books and manuscripts he spent a lifetime assembling.”

“But—”

“Give me a second,” said Grace, raising a finger. “After his father died, Dr. Ambergris renewed his interest in his father’s work. Maybe it was his way of staying connected to his father, even in death. Who knows? But the point is that Dr. Ambergris began studying his father’s research. He spent hours, days, weeks studying his father’s notes and the books in his library.”

Madison drummed his fingers impatiently.

“Sometimes he talked about it. That’s how I recognized the significance of these numbers,” she said, pointing to the eight-by-eight grid. “The root number of this Magic Square, two hundred sixty, is the number of days in one year of the Mayan calendar.”

Madison was exasperated. “But what does any of this have to do with his genetics research?”

Grace shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“And this line of text. This is the beginning of the ancient word?”

Grace shrugged. “Again, no idea.”

Madison studied the cryptic Magic Square.

“Grace, this grid has sixty-four digits,” he said, in a flash of inspiration.

Grace’s eyes grew wide.

“DNA has sixty-four codons. That can’t be a coincidence.”

Dr. Joshua Ambergris’ Residence
Uptown Manhattan, New York

Arakai quietly slipped through the window and lowered himself to the floor in the dining room, listening intently for any sign that Ambergris’ housekeeper had detected his illicit entry. From the direction of the kitchen, Arakai could hear the housekeeper humming a game-show tune as she cleaned.

The interior of the brownstone was dark and uninviting, but well kept. Brick walls, heavy curtains, and wood floors seemed to absorb most of the ambient light, creating a dreary effect. Arakai gingerly closed the open window and crouched behind Ambergris’ dining room table. He removed the knife from between his teeth and wiped the flat of the silver blade once across his black trousers.

A grandfather clock in the living room chimed the quarter hour. The sound brought a flash of childhood memories to Arakai’s mind. Many nights, Arakai had listened to an antique clock chime away the dark hours as he lay awake in his bed, alone, waiting for his mother to return home from work, stinking of gin and cigarettes. He had never known his father. The clock had belonged to Arakai’s grandparents, a family heirloom passed to Arakai’s mother after their death in 1945.

Arakai’s grandparents had lived in Japan, on the outskirts of Nagasaki, for decades. On the day that America unleashed hell on the city of Nagasaki, Arakai’s grandparents had been entertaining neighbors for dinner at their home. Spared the horrific death that consumed tens of thousands in the epicenter of the thermonuclear blast, Arakai’s grandparents instead lingered in agony for weeks, suffering from terrible radiation sickness, before finally crossing the void in a makeshift hospital hastily erected by the defeated Imperial Army on the outskirts of the ruins of Nagasaki.

There was a faint sound from Dr. Ambergris’ kitchen. Arakai forced his thoughts to return to the present. He slowed his breathing, relaxed his grip on the handle of his knife, and crept across the dining room toward the kitchen.

Dr. Christian Madison’s Office
34th Floor, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York

The phone on Madison’s desk chirped. A blinking red light indicated an incoming call.

“How are you getting a call? What about the security lockdown?”

“I don’t know,” said Madison.

The phone chirped again. Reluctantly, he answered it, placing the telephone receiver against his ear.

“This is Dr. Madison.”

“I want you to listen very carefully.” The voice on the phone was slightly garbled and had a flat, synthetic sound.

Digitally disguised,
thought Madison. “Who is this?”

“You are in danger. Your life and the lives of thousands of others are in jeopardy.”

Grace pointed to the speakerphone button. Nodding, Madison pushed it and gently set the handset back into its cradle.

“Tell me who this is,” said Madison, “or I’m hanging up the phone.”

“Dr. Madison, by now you must be aware of the murder of Dr. Joshua Ambergris.”

“Yes.”

“The same individuals who plotted Dr. Ambergris’ murder have set in motion a plan to detonate a bomb in the Millennium Tower on the first day of the Biogenetics Conference.”

Grace’s jaw dropped.

“What? Are you insane?” said Madison.

“Dr. Madison, I assure you that I am perfectly sane. I have risked my life to convey this warning to you. I will not call again. The detonation will occur at nine-thirty
A.M.
on the first day of the conference.”

Madison’s face went white.

“Who is doing this? Who killed Dr. Ambergris?” he asked.

Grace screamed as the door to Madison’s office swung open and slammed into the wall, punching a hole in the plasterboard with a loud bang.

Crowe’s immense form filled the doorway.

“Good luck,” said the voice. Then the line went dead.

Quiz’s Office
Subbasement, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York

Quiz finished off his Diet Coke and leaned back in a black leather executive chair. On a flat-panel display to his left, a music video featured waiflike blondes with thick blue eye shadow and Lycra body-suits undulating to the rhythms of trance music in a postindustrial urban wasteland. Hi-fi speakers hidden around the room pulsed with futuristic electronica.

Quiz had located the error in his programming and quickly corrected the flaw in the code.

“No need to tell anyone about that one, eh, Barkley?” he said to the diminutive canine. Barkley opened one eye, then closed it again.

Another flat-panel display silently played a pirated copy of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. On the screen, Harrison Ford used his coiled whip to brush a herd of tarantulas from the back of his unsuspecting companion. Torchlight cast flickering shadows against the walls of a cavern passageway enshrouded with spider webs.

On a third screen, a three-dimensional chessboard slowly rotated against a black background. The chess pieces were fashioned from the characters of
Alice in Wonderland
. Quiz glanced up to see a black bishop float across the board and descend on a square next to his queen.

“The French suck at chess,” he muttered. With two keystrokes, his queen swept in to capture his opponent’s only remaining rook. “That’s five moves to checkmate.”

A fourth screen displayed an ongoing conversation in an Internet chat room with
RIGHTSEDFRED
and
SCULLY
2000.

Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs from his brain, Quiz turned his attention back to the errant program he had just fixed.

“Forgot to take my Ritalin this morning, Barkley,” he said.

That’s what two nights of no sleep will do to you,
he thought.
Things get a little blurry around the edges.

The edited program quickly located four suspicious files. Quiz examined each one in turn.

You’ve been busy, Dr. Ambergris,
he thought.

He began reading.

An alarm sounded on Quiz’s computer. Punching at the keys on his keyboard, he opened a secure socket to the Triad Genomics security server. He reviewed the latest entries on the security logs.

That’s a restriction on the entire floor. Authorized by OC. Omar Crowe. What’s going on?

Shaking his head in dismay, Quiz keyed off the alarm and refocused his attention on the computer screen displaying Dr. Ambergris’ research journal. After the fourth paragraph, his mind was spinning.

Dr. Christian Madison’s Office
34th Floor, Millennium Tower
Manhattan, New York

“Crowe, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” yelled Madison.

“Dr. Nguyen,” Crowe said. “Would you care to tell me why you were in the building last night between four-eleven and four forty-six
A.M.
?”

“What? I was nowhere near the office last night,” said Grace. “I was home sleeping, like normal people.”

Crowe’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. “The security logs place you on the thirty-fourth floor at four-eleven
A.M.
You were the only one on the floor around the time Dr. Ambergris was murdered.”

“Bullshit,” yelled Grace. “Did you review the tape from the security cameras?”

Crowe shook his head and smirked. “As I’m sure you already know, that data has conveniently been erased from the server. For all of the cameras on that floor, from four
A.M.
to five
A.M.
Quite convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

Madison tried to interject. “Crowe, wait a minute—”

“Stay out of it, Dr. Madison,” Crowe snapped.

“You know me,” said Grace. “I had nothing to do with this.”

“No,” said Crowe. “It’s quite apparent that I don’t know you at all.”

“Crowe,” said Madison, raising his voice in anger. “Just stop for a minute. Listen to me! I just got a telephone call warning me that the same people who killed Dr. Ambergris are planning to detonate a bomb in the Millennium Tower on the first day of the Biogenetics Conference. Grace has nothing to do with this!”

“I warned you to stay out of it, Madison,” yelled Crowe. “And I’d like to know why Grace is here in your office. What’s your interest in defending her? Perhaps you’re involved in this as well?”

Grace started to back away from Crowe.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” he said, grabbing her roughly by the arm.

Grace cried out in pain and twisted her body away from Crowe, trying to free her arm from his painful grip.

“I said stop!” yelled Crowe, pulling hard on Grace’s arm. She stumbled and fell, banging her head against the wall.

Madison, outmatched by at least eighty pounds, grabbed Crowe’s wrist and tried to release Grace from his grasp. Crowe backhanded him across the face with a loud smack, sending Madison crashing to the floor.

Grace twisted her upper body, bringing her teeth within range of Crowe’s arm. She bit down hard on the meaty muscle of his inner forearm.

“Goddamn you,” roared Crowe, turning toward Grace and grabbing a fistful of her hair.

Rising to his feet, Madison took advantage of Grace’s momentary distraction and launched himself at Crowe’s back.

He wrapped one arm around Crowe’s neck, pulling hard on it with the other, trying to fasten a chokehold around his throat.

“Let her go,” he yelled, jamming his knees into Crowe’s kidneys.

Crowe brought both hands to his neck and fastened his fingers around Madison’s arm with a viselike grip. Struggling for breath, he began to spin around the room, smashing Madison’s body into the walls and furniture in a desperate attempt to dislodge him.

Grace, suddenly free, grabbed a brass reading lamp from Madison’s desk. Crowe spun around, slamming Madison’s legs into the desk.

Grace raised the heavy lamp above her head and jumped at Crowe, smashing the lamp down on the back of his head.

Crowe dropped like a rag doll. Madison fell to the ground beside him.

“Christian!” yelled Grace. “Are you okay?”

Madison, his chest heaving with exertion, pulled himself up onto his knees. He took a quick inventory of his pains and injuries.

“I don’t think I broke anything,” he said, pressing on his ribs.

Madison crawled over and checked the back of Crowe’s head for a skull fracture. He felt a knot the size of a golf ball. His hand came away red with Crowe’s blood.