The Genesis Key (17 page)

“Jeremy, where are you?”

“At work.”

“At work? I thought I told you not to come in today. It's a holiday, remember?”

“Actually, I didn't come in today . . . I came in yesterday.”

Kathleen mulled that fact for a second. “You've been there since
yesterday?
”

“Yeah, I've been working on that mummy tooth you gave me.”

“Jeremy—”

“And you're not going believe what I found!”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Vienna, Virginia.

B
ill McCreary sat alone in the study of his modest suburban home, deep in thought, a bound collection of Einstein's essays open in his lap. He flinched when his secure phone line rang unexpectedly. That could be one of only a handful of people. “McCreary,” he said quietly, answering on the first ring.

“It's me,” said Steve Goodwin. “I'm sending you an audio file you should listen to. The guy speaking is Jeremy Fisher, a QLS scientist. The woman is Dr. Sainsbury.”

At that moment, an encrypted e-mail popped onto McCreary's computer screen, with the subject line, “HERE IT IS.”

“Okay, I see it,” McCreary said. “I'll call you back.”

McCreary sat down at his desk, opened the e-mail, and double-clicked on the attached audio file. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as a crackly, intercepted phone conversation played over his speakers:

“Jeremy, where are you?”

“At work.”

“At work
?
I thought I told you not to come in today. It's a holiday, remember?”

“Actually, I didn't come in today . . . I came in yesterday.”

“You've been there since
yesterday?
”

“Yeah, I've been working on that mummy tooth you gave me.”

“Jeremy—”

“And you're not going believe what I found!”

There was a pause. “I'm listening
. . .”

“Well, first of all, I extracted the dental pulp from the tooth. I was surprised there was any left, but there was.”

“Okay.”

“Dissolved the extract in a CTAB buffer solution, let it sit at room temperature for about six hours, then centrifuged it to separate the DNA. I extracted with isoamyl alcohol and chloroform.

“Not phenol?”

“Nope. I used a new workup protocol from a friend of mine at the SFPD. Really cutting-edge stuff.”

“Okay . . .”

“Anyway, I wasn't expecting much because the sample was so degraded. I did the workup protocol that my friend sent me. Removed the PCR inhibitors using a Qiagen spin column . . .”

“Wow, you've been a busy beaver.”

“Like I said, I really wasn't expecting much, but . . . Dr. S, I got a clean sample.”

There was an audible gasp. “Intact?”

“Yep. I just did a quick sequence, and it hit, like,
ninety-eight
percent of the base pairs. It's totally intact.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. It's weird. I didn't want to use the whole sample at once, so I split it into eight aliquots. The first few I tested were absolute garbage—nothing identifying at all. Then on four, five, and six, I got bacterial DNA.”

“Totally contaminated, huh
?
”

“Yep. I figured it was a lost cause, so I just kept going. Seven was a bust. And then,
bam
, on number eight—the
last aliquot I had
—I pulled this perfect strand of human DNA—like it was the last one remaining. I mean, a complete strand from
that
thing. Who would've figured?”

McCreary shifted in his chair and frowned as the recorded conversation continued over his speakers:

“Jeremy, that's wonderful! I mean, truly . . . truly amazing. You've really outdone yourself.”

“Yeah, I couldn't believe it myself.”

“Now,
go home.
”

“Yeah, yeah, I will.”

“No, I mean it. Go home. You need sleep. I know you. You must be completely exhausted.”

“I am pretty tired.”

“Julie will be in tomorrow morning to finish the sequencing. Go home and get some rest.”

“All right, I will.”

“And Jeremy?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm really proud of you.”

“Thanks, Dr. S.”

A
s the audio file ended, McCreary leaned forward in his chair and ruminated over the conversation he'd just heard. “Damn it,” he whispered under his breath, shaking his head. Things were getting out of control. He
hated
when things got out of his control.

And what was this “mummy tooth”
they were talking about?
His thoughts immediately turned to Kathleen's parents.
Archeologists
.

He slid his wireless mouse around on the mouse pad and began navigating through a series of screens on the computer. On a hunch, he logged on to a special DARPA search engine that retrieved academic papers from all around the world. He typed in the name of Kathleen's father, “Daniel Talbot,” and waited impatiently. Fifteen seconds later, a list of several dozen titles appeared on the screen. He scanned the list quickly, focusing on one almost immediately:

Talbot, Daniel J., The Ruins at Tell-Fara—Ziggurat or Not?
, Ph.D. Diss., U. Chicago, Defended June 12, 1968. Hardcopy only—Near East Studies Lib., U. Chicago.

He clucked his tongue, perturbed that an online copy wasn't available.

Next, he typed in “Rebecca Talbot” and pressed enter. “0 Records Found” was the result several seconds later. Dismayed, he leaned back in his chair and thought for a while, hands behind his head, eyes closed. Then, in a burst of energy, he quickly typed in a new search term: “Rebecca Sainsbury.”

Five seconds later, a half dozen results popped onto the screen. McCreary arched his eyebrows as he quickly skimmed the list and found one in particular that caught his interest. “What's this?” he said quietly.

Sainsbury, Rebecca A., An Anthropological Study of the Origins of the Nephilim in Sumerian Mythology
, Ph. D. Diss, Harvard U., Defended May 12, 1971.
Available online
.

He clicked the hyperlink for the online version, entered his DARPA user name and password, and began printing out Rebecca Sainsbury's 1971 dissertation on the Nephilim.

A
n hour later, McCreary put down Rebecca Sainsbury's dissertation, immediately picked up the secure phone and punched in ten digits.

“Yeah?” answered Secretary Stonewell in a raspy voice.

“Sorry to bother you at home, sir. It's Bill McCreary.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I need authorization for a special operation.”

“Military or—?”

“Military.”

There was a pause. “Hold on. Let me patch in Defense . . .”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Route 50 West, Maryland.

“S
omething exciting going on at work?” asked Bryce Whittaker, trying in vain to start a conversation. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of Kathleen's Subaru, which was traveling westbound on Route 50 toward D.C. Kathleen had been lost in thought ever since leaving Annapolis. It was dark outside, and the highway was relatively empty.

Whittaker's question interrupted Kathleen's private reverie. “What? Oh sorry. Yeah, something really exciting.”

“Care to share it?”

Kathleen glanced at Whittaker and reflected on how things had changed between them tonight. The trip to Garrison Manor, it turned out, had been a revealing experience. She'd discovered something unexpected in Whittaker, something she liked very much—a sensitive, compassionate side she hadn't noticed before. She loved how kind he'd been to her grandfather, so understanding of his condition. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? I keep secrets for a living.”

“Oh really?” She shot him a disbelieving look. “And here I thought you were a reporter.”

“Ouch, that hurts.”

“Bryce, I'm serious. This is big. You can't tell anyone.”

“My lips are sealed.”

Kathleen sighed heavily and braced herself for what was going to be an awkward conversation. “Have you ever heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh?” she asked finally.

“Gilgamesh? No, can't say that I have.”

For the next twenty-five minutes, Kathleen told Whittaker everything that had happened to her in the past week. She began with her meeting with Dr. Sargon. She explained what she'd learned about her parents. She explained about the Tell-Fara temple, where they were killed. She told him about the silver box and its bizarre contents.

“Wow!” Whittaker exclaimed.

“Wait, it gets weirder.” Kathleen continued outlining the details of Sargon's apparent suicide, her trip to Boston to meet with Dr. Eskridge, and finally her decision to test the tooth for DNA. The only thing she left out was her meeting with the FBI.
Bryce doesn't need to know that
, she decided.

For the most part, Whittaker remained silent during her long narrative, interjecting only the occasional “uh-huh” or “wow” at appropriate intervals.

Kathleen glanced over occasionally to gauge his expression. This was a lot to lay on him all at once, she realized. But it felt great to get it off her chest. “I know it sounds crazy,” she said, “but this could really be huge.”

“Do you think it's true?” Whittaker asked. “I mean, the stuff about the Nephilim and the super-long life spans and all?”

“Well, it's not as crazy as you might think. We already know there's a gene in fruit flies that controls their life span. That's the INDY gene I told you about at the lab. So it's not inconceivable that a similar gene exists in humans—or at least did exist at some point.”

“Yeah, but what happened to that gene? I mean, nobody's lived more than about a hundred and twenty years in modern history. At least not that I'm aware of.”

“You're right. The longest known life span in modern recorded history was a woman in France who lived to be one hundred and twenty-two. She died in 1997. The oldest person currently alive is about a hundred and fourteen.”

“Okay, so that's my point,” said Whittaker. “I mean, if there was this Nephilim gene floating around somewhere in the human gene pool, wouldn't it have surfaced by now?”

“Not necessarily. I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of days, and I have a theory.”

“What's that?”

“I'm thinking it could have been a virus.”

“What
could have been a virus?”

“The source of the DNA that gave those Nephilim such long life spans.”

“A virus?”

“Sure. There's been a lot of research lately showing that a good percentage of our DNA is actually made up viral DNA that entered the human genome millions of years ago and has simply come along for the ride all these years.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. For instance, researchers have found precursors to the HIV virus that exist in all of our DNA. Every single one of us. They've been there for millions of years, passed on from generation to generation.”

“So how come we don't all get sick?”

“Well, what happens is, over time the viral DNA becomes neutralized. It becomes what some biologists call junk DNA, which means it doesn't do anything at all. It just comes along for the ride, generation after generation, slowly deteriorating into randomness.”

“Seems strange that our DNA would be loaded down with junk like that.”

“I know. But our DNA is actually chock full of these viral remnants, most of which entered the human genome tens of millions of years ago, literally while we were still monkeys.”

“How come I've never heard of this before?”

“I guess it's not something people like to think about. I mean, there's this misconception that our DNA is a perfectly engineered blueprint for human life. Concise and well tailored in every way. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Our DNA is patchwork quilt of all sorts of stuff. Parts of it work, of course, but a lot of it's just filler.”

“Like spaghetti code.”

“Exactly! The system works, but it's not elegant.”

“Okay, but how does this relate to these . . . Nephilim you were talking about?”

“Well, like I said, when viral DNA enters the human genome and begins to be passed down from generation to generation, it may start out being pathogenic.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it causes some perceptible symptoms. AIDS, for instance. Or leukemia.”

“Okay . . .”

“But over a period of time, the viral DNA begins to lose its effectiveness. It might take one generation; or it might take many. Scientists aren't quite sure how this happens, but it appears that, somehow, the rest of the genome is able to neutralize the invading species . . . contain it, so it becomes progressively non-pathogenic.”

“All right . . .”

“So, I've been thinking . . . what if these Nephilim were infected with a virus that injected the INDY sequence into their DNA? The symptom of that virus would be an abnormally long life span—just like the fruit flies in my lab.”

“Uh-huh . . .”

“But over many generations, the pathogenic effect of that virus would fade as the viral DNA became progressively neutralized. The INDY sequence itself would degrade to the point where it was no longer functional. After thousands of years, it wouldn't even be recognizable—just random, junk DNA.”

Whittaker thought for a moment. “Like what happened to the Nephilim . . .”

“Yes. Their life spans became progressively shorter over a period of several hundred years until, finally, they became entirely asymptomatic.”

“You know,” Whittaker said with a crooked smile, “that actually makes some sense to me.”

“Yeah . . .” Kathleen's voice trailed off. “Anyway, now you understand why I'm so excited about this DNA sample. We may have found an actual sample of human DNA with an intact INDY gene!”

Whittaker was silent for a long while, obviously lost in thought. “So . . . when will you know? I mean, how long will it take to confirm that you've actually found the INDY gene?”

“We have to sequence the sample and compare it against a modern reference sample. That could take a few days . . . or weeks. It really depends on luck.”

“Then you'll know?”

“We should.”

“Wow,” said Whittaker, rubbing his chin.

After that, they both became lost in their respective thoughts.

Whittaker was the first to break the silence. His tone was academic and deliberative. “You know, there's a real religious angle here. Have you given any thought to that?”

“Frankly, no. Religion's not really my thing.”

“Okay, but I'm just thinking out loud here. You mentioned some passage in the Bible that talked about these Nephilim, where God said that man was just flesh and would be confined to live no more than one hundred and twenty years, right?”

“Something like that. I think it was in the Book of Genesis.”

“And didn't you say that, even with all our modern medicine, the longest any person's been able to live is one hundred and twenty-two years?”

“Yeah.”

“Almost like there's a limit to our life span or something?”

“Okay, I see where you're going, but—”

“Hold on, just think about it for a moment. For the devout . . . they might see this as a violation of, I don't know . . . God's will or something.”

Those words hit a sharp chord in Kathleen's mind. Dr. Sargon had used that exact phrase the other night. “God's will.”
Why does it keep coming back to that?

“Do you see what I mean?” Whittaker asked.

“I guess so. But you could use that same argument to challenge just about every scientific advance. For instance, you could say that cancer is God's will. AIDS is God's will. Leukemia. Diabetes. Gallstones. You could chalk up every conceivable human ailment to God's will and oppose any form of treatment. And you know what? There are people who believe exactly that. They'll sit there and refuse medical treatment as their children suffer painful illnesses that are totally treatable. Well, I just don't subscribe to that nonsense. Frankly, I think it's bullshit!”

Kathleen rarely cursed, and she was surprised by her vitriol on this topic. But this was something she believed in strongly. Science could not be handcuffed by outdated superstitions about “God's will” and biblical fairytales. “I can't accept it,” she declared firmly.

“All I'm saying is, there's a debate there. And even if you don't agree with it, there are millions of people out there who might see this as an affront to their most closely held beliefs.”

“Well,” said Kathleen with a shrug, “they're wrong.”

Whittaker laughed. “Maybe so. But I'm telling you, you could really be opening Pandora's Box here.”