The Genesis Key (4 page)

Chapter Three

Arlington, Virginia.

D
r. William McCreary pressed his security badge against the infrared scanner that controlled access to a door marked
OSNS
at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He was a youthful fifty-one years old, medium height, athletic build, but a bit pudgy around the middle. The infrared scanner beeped and, simultaneously, the heavy steel door magnetically unlocked with a loud
ka-chunk
. McCreary entered the restricted area belonging to the Office of Science and National Security and headed straight to his office. In an agency notorious for top-secret, black, and off-budget programs, McCreary managed one of the most secretive of them all.

He reached the door to his office and unlocked it with a key—there was no security scanner for this door. The sign on the door read simply L
OGISTICS
A
NALYSIS
. He smiled every time he read that sign, having purposely chosen the most mundane project name imaginable. For the past two years, “Logistics Analysis” had worked like a charm. No one at DARPA seemed to care very much about the boring activities that presumably went on behind this door.

And that was just the way he preferred it.

DARPA was established in 1958 in response to the Soviet's launching of Sputnik. DARPA's mission then—as it was today—was to ensure that the United States always maintained the upper hand in state-of-the-art military technology and was never again surprised by an enemy's technological advances. DARPA was specifically designed
not
to be a bureaucracy. Instead, its goal was to give brilliant (and often zealous) program managers nearly complete autonomy—and considerable financial resources—to pursue cutting-edge ideas that were often viewed as impracticable or downright crazy by the mainstream scientific community. Although many such projects failed, others succeeded beyond all possible expectations. The Internet (formerly DARPANET) was just one example of such successes.

McCreary entered the Logistics Analysis office and closed and locked the door behind him. The reception area was small and windowless. A plain, wooden desk dominated the center of the space, upon which sat the typical paraphernalia of a workaday government analyst—a computer and printer, graphs, charts, reams of data, and various binders and books. Seated at the desk was a large, muscular man of about thirty with bulging biceps and a protruding, square chin. He wore the uniform of a federal bureaucrat: khaki slacks, white, short-sleeve shirt, cheap necktie, and a security badge clipped to his shirt pocket.

“Good morning, Dr. McCreary,” said the bureaucrat.

“Morning, Steve. I've got a secure video conference at nine fifteen.”

“Right.” Steve stood up, walked to the back of the office and typed in a nine-digit code on a small keypad beside a large, white panel in the wall. Suddenly, the panel shuddered and popped open about twenty inches, creating a narrow entryway into another chamber.

“Thanks,” said McCreary stepping through the opening. “This shouldn't take long.”

McCreary was now standing inside a stark, white room, eight feet long by five feet wide, with a seven-foot ceiling. He pressed a button on the wall and the steel door slid shut with a soft thud.

There were no paintings, drapes, or other objects hanging on the walls—nothing that could potentially conceal an eavesdropping device. The floor and ceiling were likewise clean and bare.

McCreary pushed another button on the wall, and the room suddenly filled with the whooshing sound of white noise. The walls were now being permeated with random frequencies so that nothing that was said in the room could ever be detected from the outside, even with the most sensitive eavesdropping equipment.

A Criticom secure video teleconferencing console sat atop the only piece of furniture in the room, a combination desk and chair constructed of high-strength plastic. At precisely 9:15, McCreary sat down at the console and pressed the
ENCRYPT/TRANSMIT
button. The equipment emitted a random series of beeps and blips as it worked through the process of synchronizing the outgoing signal with the recipient's console and authenticating the daily key code. Finally, the image of a man appeared on the screen.

“Good morning, Mr. Secretary,” said McCreary deferentially.

“Morning,” grunted Peter Stonewell, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was sitting in an identical room twelve miles away at HHS headquarters on Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C. “Have you seen this story about the young lady with the mutant fruit flies?” he asked, holding up a folded copy of the
Washington Post
.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that the same Dr. Sainsbury who used to be at NIH?”

“That's her.”

“So I gather she now has her own company?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long have you known about it?”

“About a year and a half, sir.”

“Then how come I'm just hearing about it now!” Stonewell boomed, “and from the goddamn
Washington Post
of all places?”

McCreary swallowed hard. He'd worked for Stonewell long enough to know it would do no good to point out that Stonewell had, in fact, been briefed on Quantum Life Sciences eighteen months ago. Very little in this program was ever put in writing, so there was nothing McCreary could produce to verify that fact. Besides, trying to suggest to Stonewell that he was wrong about
anything
was, quite simply, out of the question.

“We're on top of it,” McCreary said stoically, “and if I failed to mention it to you before, I apologize.”

“All right,” Stonewell said, apparently satisfied with McCreary's mea culpa. “What do you think about her research?”

“We've been tracking her closely, and it doesn't look like she's close to anything right now.”

“How does she compare to the others?”

“Of the eight groups we're still watching, I'd say she ranks third or fourth in terms of likelihood of success. The University of Connecticut group is still the closest, but, as I've explained before, they're still several years away, in our opinion.”

“Well, just last week, your friends at DeCode linked a form of glaucoma to a particular gene in the human genome, and it took them less than twelve months to do it. How do you explain that?”

“That's different, Mr. Secretary. DeCode is working with a small, heterogeneous population in Iceland, which shares much of the same DNA. When they set out to target a disease like glaucoma, they begin with a DNA sample from a person in the population who actually
has
that disease—in other words, someone who has a mutated gene in their DNA that causes the disease. By sequencing that person's DNA and then comparing it to members of the Icelandic population who don't have the disease, they can quickly pinpoint the genetic source of the disease.”

Stonewell grumbled an acknowledgment.

“The INDY researchers don't have that luxury, Mr. Secretary. Because, as far as we know, there's no one walking around today with an intact INDY gene in their DNA.
That's
why there's no easy way for them to find it in the human genome. They have no road map
.
”

Stonewell sighed. “All right. Well, I'm sure you'll keep me posted if anything develops.”

“Of course, Mr. Secretary.”

A
cross town, Peter Stonewell turned off his secure videophone and returned to his office through a narrow metal door. His secretary—a petite, mousy woman in her sixties—quickly drew a set of dark blue drapes over the metal door after it shut.

Peter Stonewell was a dinosaur in Washington—big, old, and powerful. He'd weathered five administrations as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Strategic Research and Planning, serving under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Other administrators at HHS had come and gone like the seasons, but Stonewell—shrewd, powerful, and at times ruthless—had always managed to stay put. His twenty-six-year tenure at HHS was an unprecedented feat in Washington, and one that had allowed him to amass considerable power.

The Department of Health and Human Services was a massive organization with vast governmental resources. Officially, it was the agency charged with protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. The department administered more than three hundred government-funded programs, covering a wide spectrum of activities, including basic scientific research, immunization and disease prevention, food and drug safety, and medical preparedness for bioterrorism and other emergencies. HHS also controlled the National Institutes of Health, the world's premier medical research organization.

In Washington, power stems from money. And, by that measure, HHS had grown to be a very powerful agency indeed. It now consumed fully a quarter of all federal outlays, administering more grant dollars than all other federal agencies combined. Its Medicare/Medicaid program was the nation's largest health insurer, handling more than a billion claims per year and providing health-care insurance for one in four Americans. HHS employed more than sixty thousand people and controlled an annual budget of more than 700 billion dollars.

To say that HHS cut a wide swath through the U.S. economy was no understatement.

“What else is on my calendar today, Judy?”

“You have a nine forty-five with Michael Tate of the American Millennium Foundation, an eleven o'clock with Max Schneider and Roger Glick of Westpharma Corporation, and lunch with Senator Morris at the Army-Navy Club at one thirty.”

“Christ, barely time to take a crap,” Stonewell muttered under his breath.

Chapter Four

Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

“I
must say I've never eaten dinner in a chimney stack before,” Kathleen said, gazing up from her grilled scallops.

Bryce Whittaker smiled and nodded knowingly. “Amazing, isn't it?”

They were seated in the Chimney Stack Room of Fahrenheit, one of Washington's most fashionable restaurants, near the Georgetown waterfront. The small, circular room circumscribed the base of a 130-foot brick chimney, built in 1932 as an incinerator. A skylight at the top admitted a small circle of moonlight, which mixed with the candlelight at their table to create a flickering, otherworldly glow.

“I'm impressed,” Kathleen said.

“So am I.
With you
.”

“Aw, c'mon.” Kathleen looked bashfully at her plate.

“No, really. You're smart, you're beautiful, you run your own company. How could I not be impressed?”

Whittaker was tastefully dressed in a black suit with no tie. He was clearly at ease in the rarified atmosphere of Fahrenheit's exclusive, private dining room. After telling Kathleen to trust him, he'd confidently ordered lime-cured salmon and quail en croûte for appetizers and a 160-dollar bottle of wine, a 2000 Château Clinét.

“So tell me about yourself,” he said, refilling her wineglass. “Where'd you grow up?”

“Great Falls, mostly,” said Kathleen, referring to Great Falls, Virginia, a semirural suburb of Washington.

“Mostly?”

“Well, I moved there when I was seven.”

“And before that?”

Kathleen poked nervously at her food with her fork.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to pry—”

“No, it's okay.”

“I'm a reporter, you know. I never know when to stop asking questions.”

“It's okay, really.” Kathleen took a deep breath and launched into the same explanation she'd given so many times in her life that it now seemed rehearsed. “I was born in Boston. My parents were archeologists, so I moved around a lot when I was a kid. We lived in Egypt for a while. And when I was six and seven, we lived in Iraq.”

“Iraq? Wow.”

“Yeah, it was pretty wild. Anyway, my parents died when I was seven, and after that, I lived with my grandparents in Great Falls. They adopted me, and I lived there until I graduated from college.”

Whittaker's relaxed smile had turned to an expression of concern. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“It's okay. No big deal.”

By age ten, Kathleen had adopted “no big deal” as her official motto whenever someone expressed sympathy about the death of her parents. “No big deal” always came in handy to save her the embarrassment and awkwardness of others' pity. In fact, she'd said it so many times in her life that she almost believed it herself.
Almost.

“Well, anyway,” Whittaker said, “I shouldn't have pried. Both of my parents died in a car accident while I was in college. I know how hard that is.”

“Gosh, I'm sorry,” said Kathleen.

Just then, a waiter entered the dining room, and Whittaker raised his hand to call him over. “The crème brulée here is amazing,” he whispered across the table, “but we have to order it now because it takes forever to prepare. You want one?”

Kathleen declined, so Whittaker ordered one just for himself. “Last chance,” he warned.

Kathleen shook her head.

When the waiter left, Kathleen seized the opportunity to change the subject. “So, where are you from?”

“Originally, Upstate New York. I went to college at SUNY Buffalo, and journalism school at NYU. I interned for the
Wall Street Journal
while I was at NYU then landed a job there when I graduated.”

“Impressive,” said Kathleen. She was happy to have turned the conversation away from herself.

“Thanks.” Whittaker smiled humbly. “Anyway, I spent eight years at the
Journal
. It was a great job, but eventually I felt . . . you know, like I needed a change. So I sent out some feelers and, boom, I ended up at the
Post
. That was, let's see . . . about two years ago. I'm hoping to move from business to the national desk soon.”

“Do you like it here?”

“Sure. There's a lot of opportunity at the
Post
. It's not like the
Journal
, where you have to wait until someone dies before you can move up—”

Kathleen interrupted, “I
meant
do you like living in Washington?” She smiled as she recalled Jeremy's comment a few nights ago about Whittaker's business card.

“Washington? Absolutely, it's a great city. It's not New York, mind you, but I really like it.”

Thirty minutes later, as predicted, the crème brulée arrived, and the waiter blowtorched it beside their table with great fanfare. He also set two glasses of twenty-year-old Graham's Tawny Port on the table, which Whittaker insisted Kathleen try.

“I've been thinking about what you said the other day,” Whittaker said, cracking the caramelized top of his dessert with a spoon.

“What's that?”

“You said when evolution finds something that works, it tends to stick with it, right?”

“In general, yeah.”

“Okay, then why would a fruit fly have a suppressed gene that essentially cuts its life expectancy to a third? I mean, what possible advantage could that be for the fruit-fly race?”

Good question.
Kathleen mulled it over awhile before answering. “Well, evolution theory would suggest there's some advantage to having the INDY gene suppressed.”

“Right, but what could that possibly be? I mean, how could dying
younger
be an advantage?”

“Hey, I didn't say I knew the answer.” Kathleen took another sip of her port wine, which was surprisingly tasty—and potent. “Maybe,” she continued half jokingly, “the short-lived flies work harder because they know they have less time to live.”

“Or maybe,” Whittaker suggested, “it was just a mistake in the genetic code. You know, a mutation that got passed down through the generations.”

Kathleen shook her head no.

“Why not?”

“According to evolution theory, there would still have to be some natural advantage to the short-lived mutation in order for it to completely replace the long-lived class over the course of millions of years. Otherwise, the short-lived mutation would eventually die out, or, at the very least, the population would become a mixture of long-lived and short-lived flies, with the ratio reflecting their relative ability to survive and procreate.”

Whittaker smiled coyly. “You biologists and your
theory
of evolution.” He formed air quotation marks as he said “theory.”

Kathleen took the bait. “What, you don't believe in evolution?”

“Hey,
you're
the one who said evolution can't entirely explain the suppressed INDY gene in fruit flies.”

“No. What I said was, I don't know the answer right now. That doesn't mean the theory's flawed. It just needs further study.”

“Fair enough.” Whittaker held up his hands up in faux surrender. “But I do have another theory about those fruit flies.”

“Yeah? What's that?”

Whittaker savored the last bite of his dessert. Then he spoke in an absurdly dramatic tone, separating each word for emphasis. “God . . . hates . . . fruit flies.”

Kathleen laughed. “What?”

“You heard me. God hates fruit flies. Admit it, they're annoying. They buzz around, eat people's fruit. They're a menace. So, my theory is, God
hates
them. And he punished them by shortening their life span.”

Kathleen smiled and shook her head. “Interesting theory, but . . . I don't think so.”

“Why not? It's just as viable as your
theory
of evolution.” Whittaker once again formed air quotation marks around the word “theory.”

Kathleen shook her head resolutely.

“What, you don't believe God would do that to the poor little fruit flies?”

“No,” said Kathleen without missing a beat, “I don't believe in God.”