The Genesis Code Read online

  Happy thou who the riddle readest.

  —Tabula Smaragdina

  One

  4:32 A.M., June 11

  Manhattan, New York

  The clock on the bedside table read 4:32 A.M.

  And still no sleep.

  Again.

  Dr. Christian Madison, Ph.D. in genetics from Stanford and nonlinear mathematics from Columbia, hated taking pills.

  Especially sleeping pills.

  They left him with a sleep hangover in the morning, feeling groggy and dulled. So he tossed and turned, hour after hour, longing for a few hours of unconsciousness.

  Time heals all wounds.

  How many well-meaning friends and colleagues had trotted out that sad refrain? Madison had lost count.

  Time had brought no healing. His memories of Justin were as sharp and penetrating as ever. Most nights, after the world became still, he would just lie in the darkness and remember.

  Madison would remember the crushing sense of helplessness that tortured his soul as his six-year-old son’s withered body consumed itself.

  Madison hated cancer.

  He HATED cancer, with terrible raging anger buried in unexamined quarters of his mind.

  The sheets were damp from night sweats. Madison kicked off the down comforter. He flipped his pillow, exposing the cool side beneath.

  Madison closed his eyes and prayed for dreamless sleep.

  Across town on the thirty-fourth floor of the Millennium Tower in lower Manhattan, Dr. Joshua Ambergris peered at a flat-panel plasma screen with weary eyes. He punched at his computer keyboard with two index fingers.

  An antique mahogany desk clock ticked away the minutes toward four-thirty A.M. The silence of the early morning hours was deafening.

  How long have I been awake? Forty-eight hours? Fifty-six?

  Ambergris wiped a trail of perspiration from his forehead and pushed his fingers through a mop of dark hair, longish and peppered with invading streaks of gray marching outward from his temples. At forty-three, Ambergris was an undeniable giant in his profession. A Nobel Prize–winning geneticist and a founding partner of the global biotech titan Triad Genomics, he was both rich and revered.

  A faint noise broke the silence.

  Ambergris froze, his eyes darting toward the open door of his office. His heart thumped in his chest.

  Seconds passed.

  The noise did not repeat.

  Dr. Ambergris glanced nervously around the room. His spacious office was a study in contrasts. A sleek, state-of-the-art computer workstation adorned a seventeenth century French desk. Leather-bound volumes rested on metal bookshelves next to stacks of technical journals. On the desktop, piles of books on Hebrew mysticism, the great Pyramid of Giza, and ancient mythology held down the corners of computer printouts detailing lengthy sequences of genetic code: ACT GCT GAG TCT AGC TGT CAG AGC TGT GAA GTC GAG CTA GTC ACT GCT GAG TCT AGC TGT CAG AGC TGT GAA GTC GAG CTA GTC ACT GCT GAG TCT AGC TGT CAG AGC TGT GAA GTC GAG CTA GTC. The margins of the printouts were filled with Ambergris’ handwritten notations.

  For a moment, Dr. Ambergris’ eyes lingered on a framed photograph on the wall opposite his desk. The image captured his father, Maximillian Ambergris, a prominent historian, shaking hands with President Lyndon B. Johnson at a reception at Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.

  Hanging next to the photo was a reproduction of images from the Dresden Codex, a pre-Columbian Mayan text. Rows of Mayan hieroglyphs were arranged in a grid above a rendering of two intertwined serpents. On the credenza below, a diagram of the Mayan calendar rested atop an astronomical chart detailing the precession of the equinoxes.

  Dr. Ambergris turned his attention back to the computer screen.

  Almost finished.

  With several rapid strokes, Ambergris finished typing. His finger hovered over the enter key.

  Perhaps the most astounding discovery in the history of mankind.

  Humanity’s oldest secret.

  A shadow fell across the plasma screen. From the corner of his eye, Ambergris was startled to see a figure standing in the doorway. He quickly pressed the enter key.

  The man in the doorway cleared his throat.

  Ambergris pivoted in his chair.

  A wiry Asian man dressed all in white leaned casually against the door frame. His hands were covered by latex surgical gloves. The intruder’s silky black hair fell across his muscular shoulders in long braids. Inscribed in red on the snowy white fabric of his left pant leg was a single character from the Japanese alphabet.

  Ambergris felt a cold chill dance across his clammy skin.

  It’s over. My time has come.

  The intruder held up a long syringe, tapping it several times with the nail of his forefinger. A thin stream of liquid spurted from the long needle as he cleared air bubbles from the murky fluid.

  “Good evening, Dr. Ambergris. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” said the man with the needle.

  He smiled pleasantly. “You may call me Mr. Arakai. In fact, I insist that you do.”

  Ambergris clutched the arms of his chair with white-knuckled hands.

  “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with,” said Ambergris.

  Arakai smiled. His amber eyes glinted with malice.

  “Have patience, Dr. Ambergris. Let’s have a little chat first. The killing will begin soon enough.”

  Arakai removed a long, thin knife from within the folds of his jacket. His fluid movements revealed a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist.

  A tattoo of two intertwined serpents.

  Two

  Apartment of Christian Madison

  Manhattan, New York

  It always began with the screaming. Before the horrific visions of billowing smoke, orange flames, and hulking ruins of concrete and steel assaulted his mind, before the acrid smell of burning wood, paper, and plastic affronted his beleaguered senses, Madison always heard the screaming.

  In the haze of early morning, replayed in vivid detail in his recurring dream, he watched helplessly as a tremendous explosion rocketed through a mammoth skyscraper, blasting a maelstrom of dark smoke, glass, and concrete into the dawn sky. Above the deafening roar of the blast, the screams of men, women, and children echoed in his mind.

  One screaming voice always rose above the din.

  Justin, his son, calling out his name, pleading for rescue, begging for redemption.

  Justin, who had died only a year ago, his small body hollow and broken from the leukemia that consumed him.

  And as always, Madison could only watch, helpless, as the towering skyscraper imploded, falling inward on itself, collapsing into a massive pile of twisted steel and debris.

  A shrill ringing filled the air.

  Madison fumbled for the phone, the sounds and screams of his recurring nightmare still echoing in the hollows of his head. Beads of cold sweat dripped from his hairline into the dampness of his pillow.

  He rubbed his eyes and pressed the phone to his ear.

  “Hello.”

  “Good morning, Christian. It’s your mother. Are you up? It’s after seven…”

  Madison took a deep breath and tried to ignore his heart pounding in his chest. He wrestled with the dingy white cotton sheets twisted around his torso.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  He wiped a sweaty palm across his face.

  “I’m up,” Madison lied. “Been up since six. Just finishing the paper and a cup of coffee.”

  A pause on the line.

  “I just wanted to check in. Make sure you were okay,” she said.

  “I’m fine, Mom. Don’t worry. And tell Dad not to worry. I’ll be fine.”

  She sighed softly. “Are you sure you won’t come up to the house for a day or two? Stay in the guest room. Let me feed you some home-cooked meals. You shouldn’t be by yourself today.”

  Madison squinted at the digital alarm clock on his nightstand with one eye.

  7:04 A.M.
<
br />   June 11.

  Justin’s birthday.

  Next to the Sharper Image alarm clock was a framed photograph of a small boy in a gray Scooby-Doo sweatshirt, at least one size too big, grinning at the camera from astride an old trail horse at the base of the Grand Canyon. Madison’s gaze lingered on his crooked smile and bright blue eyes.

  “Christian, are you there?”

  For a moment he considered, and then rejected, the offer.

  “Thanks anyway, but I’ll be okay. Besides, I’ve got the Biogenetics Conference just around the corner. I really can’t afford to be away.”

  Another uncomfortable pause.

  “Did you get the card I sent?”

  “I did. Sorry. I meant to call and tell you thanks for the card. And for the money.”

  Mrs. Madison always sent a crisp ten dollar bill in each greeting card to her son, delivered well in advance of holidays and other noteworthy occasions by U.S. mail.

  “And I promise to buy something that will cheer me up.” That was the perennial condition of Mrs. Madison’s maternal cash gifts, folded between the front and back covers of Hallmark greeting cards. She required that the cash be used to purchase an item solely for the purpose of self-gratification.

  “You better,” she replied.

  Madison could hear the smile in her voice.

  After another beat of silence, she asked the dreaded question.

  “Have you spoken to Kate?”

  Madison’s stomach knotted instantly. He flopped back sideways on the bed, hanging his head upside down over the edge of the mattress.

  “No. Not for quite a while.”

  “Maybe you should call her again.”

  “I don’t think so, Mom.”

  Christian and Kate had separated shortly after Justin breathed his final breath. The loss of their only child had ripped apart the marriage in a way that Madison now knew could never be mended.

  For once, his mother let the issue drop.

  “Christian, I’m going to light a candle for Justin at mass. You should start going to church again. Attending services would be good for you. Father Donovan always asks how you’re doing.”

  Madison hadn’t been to church for years. Raised Catholic, he had stopped going to mass after graduating from high school and going away to college. The only time he had set foot in a church in at least the past decade had been the day of Justin’s funeral service.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “Okay. Well, I won’t keep you. But call me tonight. Just to let me know you’re okay,” she said.

  Madison shifted the phone to his other ear.

  “Okay, Mom. Deal. I’ll speak with you soon.”

  “Have a good day, Christian.”

  Madison placed the phone back in the receiver and sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his eyes. Memories of his son’s final days surged into his thoughts.

  Justin was a ghost of a child, lying thin and frail under the starched white sheets of a hospital bed. A tangle of tubes and wires crisscrossed his chest, connecting his dying body with IV bags, monitors, and machines.

  “No,” said Madison. He pushed the memories from his conscious mind. Madison looked around the bedroom of his small apartment.

  It was an absolute mess.

  A pile of dirty laundry dominated one corner of the room. Boxes of books were piled against the wall opposite his queen-sized bed, partially obscuring the large window overlooking a tiny park three stories below.

  On a large mahogany desk, surrounding a laptop computer in the center of the desktop, haphazard mountains of paper and research materials marked with a riot of yellow Post-It notes threatened to spill off their precarious perch and onto the floor.

  Stretching his arms above his head to free the kinks from his neck and shoulders, Madison forced himself out of bed and onto the polished wood floor. He caught sight of his reflection in the antique mirror above his mahogany dresser. The reflection, staring back at him with vague curiosity, looked tired.

  His pale blue eyes, framed within red-rimmed eyelids, were slightly puffy from too many nights of fitful sleep. His strong jaw-line bore the stubble of a day’s growth of beard, and his dark hair stuck up in several different directions above a handsome but weary face.

  This, he could tell already, is not going to be a pleasant day.

  Three

  Deserted Parking Garage

  Harlem, New York

  A man in a dark Italian suit sat behind the wheel of a 700 series BMW parked in a row of empty spaces in the derelict parking garage. He kept the windows rolled up to keep out the stench of stale urine. The car idled softly, its engine running to keep the AC cool. The man checked his watch and sighed impatiently.

  Within moments, the passenger door opened and Takeyo Arakai sat down on the black leather passenger seat. The interior of the BMW smelled faintly of expensive cigars.

  Arakai paused a moment before speaking.

  “It’s done,” he said, cracking the knuckles on his left hand.

  “You’re certain?”

  Arakai turned and flashed a cold smile. “Quite.”

  “And the rest?”

  “The stage is set,” Arakai replied.

  “Excellent. The Council will be pleased.”

  The man reached into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and removed an envelope. He handed it to Arakai.

  Arakai took the envelope without comment and deposited it into a pocket in the folds of his jacket.

  “What about Ambergris’ notes and papers?” the man asked.

  “Not to worry. I’ve destroyed his papers. Removed his hard drive. Unfortunately…”

  The man raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “I was unable to access the Triad Genomics mainframe. We have no way of knowing if Dr. Ambergris stored any of his notes on the main server.”

  The man removed his eyeglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “There is also one loose end left to tie up,” said Arakai, holding up an electronic key card he had removed from Dr. Ambergris’ office.

  “Very well. But remain accessible. We may require your services again shortly. I will contact you within the next twelve hours.”

  Four

  Millennium Tower, Street Level

  Manhattan, New York

  Flavia Veloso was going to make it big. Fresh out of journalism school at NYU, she had recently landed a much-coveted job as a field reporter for the morning news on WXNY, Channel 10. With her exotic Brazilian good looks and driving ambition, Flavia was determined to climb to the top of her profession.

  And yesterday, her producer had dispensed her biggest assignment yet, a series of reports on the much-anticipated International Biogenetics Conference at New York’s premier convention facilities in the Millennium Tower.

  Flavia was tired from a night of only four hours of sleep, but her late-night Internet research session had paid dividends, providing useful background information that she could include in her on-the-scene reports. She reviewed the facts catalogued in her mind.

  Built in tribute to its own stunning global success, and the resulting dizzying heights of its stock price, biotech conglomerate Triad Genomics’ seventy-five-story Millennium Tower dominated lower Manhattan. The elegant high-tech tower, designed by the most prestigious architectural and engineering firms from a dozen countries, was the latest jewel in the New York skyline.

  Constructed from high-strength concrete, a material twice as effective as steel in reducing the wind sway that plagues modern skyscrapers, the Millennium Tower’s immense weight was supported by an inner ring of thick concrete cores and an outer ring of widely spaced “super columns”—a sophisticated structural system that accommodated its slender profile.

  The Millennium Tower boasted a full forty floors of palatial office suites, fifteen floors of luxury hotel rooms, twenty floors of multimillion-dollar apartments, a
nd was the chosen address for the headquarters of a dozen Fortune 500 companies.

  But perhaps the most acclaimed feature of the massive postmodern structure was the colossal, six-story atrium in the base of the tower, featuring five-star restaurants, high-end retail, and a perfectly manicured mini–rain forest, complete with misting falls and hooting tropical birds. Prominently displayed in the first-floor colonnade of the cavernous lobby, a large, slowly spinning hologram of the Triad Genomics’ logo incorporated a colorful representation of the intertwined double helix of human DNA.

  The Millennium Tower had become the preferred convention spot for business and scientific conferences, hosted in internationally renowned convention facilities overlooking the financial district and downtown Manhattan. On this particular day, Flavia noted a marquis in the lobby that heralded the upcoming arrival of the week-long Ninth Annual International Biogenetics Conference. Hundreds of the world’s top geneticists would gather to present their latest research and discuss new discoveries that promised to usher in a new era of human history.

  Standing on the sidewalk across the street from the Millennium Tower’s magnificent main entrance, Flavia smoothed the front of her cherry-red suit as she surveyed the scene, looking for the best location to film the lead-in to her report. Randy, her cameraman, lounged patiently on a bench sipping a café mocha as Flavia deliberated.

  As she considered several different alternatives, Flavia’s attention was drawn to a small crowd that was gathering across the street near the enormous glass doors leading into the Millennium Tower’s atrium. Several posterboard signs on wooden sticks poked up above the motley-looking group.

  Now, this might be interesting, Flavia thought as she interrupted Randy’s morning coffee, dragging him across the street with his camera in tow.

  Five

  34th Floor, Millennium Tower

  Manhattan, New York

  Madison was late for work. Again. It was three minutes after eight when he finally drove into the ground-floor entrance to the parking garage in his black Jeep Cherokee.