The God Gene

  “What do you mean?”

  “Get your passports out. Put five hundred meticais in each. If you don’t have enough, ten U.S. will do.”

  “What?” Laura said as Rick began to remove his passport from a jacket pocket. “You can’t be serious!”

  “He waits here every day for cabs from the airport. If they carry tourists, he stops them and checks passports.”

  “Fine.” She pulled hers from her shoulder bag and handed it to Rick. “Ours are in perfect order. We just came through customs.”

  “He can check them quickly or he can take a very long time. Which do you prefer?”

  “I prefer not to be blackmailed.”

  She glanced at Rick, expecting to see that stony look in his eyes turning to steel. Instead she watched him tuck a ten-dollar bill inside each of the passports.

  “Don’t you dare give in! It’s extortion!”

  She knew she sounded self-righteous, but this infuriated her.

  “Bribes grease the axles of the Third World,” he said. “The wheels don’t turn without them.”

  “Doesn’t it irk you?”

  He smiled at her. “Not in the least. You might as well be irked because all these foreign countries don’t use English as their native tongue and have the audacity to develop their own language.”

  “No, it’s not like that at all. It’s—”

  “It’s the way they do things. You’re not going to change it, so go with the flow.”

  The driver pulled up beside the cop. They exchanged some familiar greetings, then the cop stuck his hand through the open rear window.

  “Passaportes.”

  Laura watched as he opened the passports, crumpled the bills in his hand, and handed them back.

  “Proceder,” he said, waving them on.

  “See?” the driver said as the taxi picked up speed again. “No delay.”

  Laura growled; Rick laughed.

  She wasn’t naïve about graft. She saw plenty in Suffolk County and knew New York City was even worse. But having to pay off a cop just to ride down the street…?

  As they penetrated deeper into Maputo, the streets widened and the buildings grew taller and more modern, although some ornate remnants of the Portuguese colonial times remained.

  Their current avenida suddenly morphed into a divided thoroughfare and changed its name to Guerra Popular.

  “Hey!” Rick said a few blocks later. “Did we just pass Avenida Ho Chi Minh?”

  “Yes,” said the driver. “We also have Avenida Karl Marx and Avenida Mao Tse Tung as well. Many communist countries funded our revolution and the civil war that followed. This is how we show our appreciation.”

  “What? No Avenida Che Guevara?”

  “No. But maybe someday.”

  Laura muttered, “I’m sure for the right price you can have an Avenida Rick Hayden.”

  Rick nodded. “Got a nice ring to it.”

  Their driver stopped before a nondescript brick municipal building and got out. As he was unloading their bags from the trunk, he pointed farther down the street.

  “Olha! Our beautiful train station!”

  Beautiful? Well, not exactly. But Laura had to admit the huge gingerbread building had a certain ornate charm.

  “It was designed by Senhor Eiffel who built the tower in Paris.”

  “Fascinating,” Rick said with ill-disguised disinterest as he handed over the fare.

  “Around the corner is the Money Museum,” the driver said with a wink. “Remember that when you are talking to the police.”

  “What did he mean by that?” Laura said as they trudged inside with their luggage. And then it hit her. “Oh, I get it.” She shook her head. “Amazing.”

  They came to a chest-high counter with a uniformed man on a platform behind it.

  “Tenente Souza Mugabe, por favor,” Laura said.

  He rattled off some machine-gun Portuguese.

  “No comprendo,” she said in Spanish, figuring it would be close enough to Portuguese for the guard to understand.

  Eventually, through a combination of the translator app and the guard’s rudimentary English, she came to understand that Lieutenant Mugabe was here but was busy.

  “Tell him we’ve come all the way from the United States with important information on Marten Jeukens,” she said into her phone and let the translator app do its thing.

  The cop gave them a curious stare as he shook his head.

  Rick handed his passport to the cop, who lowered it out of sight to examine. Laura heard the crinkle of paper money, then the passport was handed back as the cop picked up his phone. A long fusillade of Portuguese was followed by two shorter volleys, then he hung up and motioned for them to follow.

  “Let’s hope the lieutenant speaks English,” Rick said as they wound their way to a rear office.

  “Let’s hope you don’t run out of cash,” Laura said.

  Rick only smiled.

  A tall, lean man, almost gaunt, met them at the door. He wore an open-collared white shirt with two buttoned-down breast pockets tucked into dark uniform pants. He reminded Laura of Lance Reddick. He stood before a cluttered, battered desk; sitting front and center on it was a six-inch great white shark carved out of ebony—which, Laura decided, made it a great black shark. A large map of Mozambique occupied the rear wall.

  “I must confess I am intrigued,” he said in lightly accented English.

  Laura released a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad you speak English.”

  “It seems one cannot get far in this world without it.” He did not sound too happy about that.

  Rick introduced himself and Laura, and after handshakes and invitations to sit, Mugabe got right down to it.

  “Right. So what can you tell me about Marten Jeukens that I don’t already know?”

  “Well, first off,” Rick said, “he’s not Marten Jeukens.”

  Laura expected some show of shock or surprise, but Mugabe gave only a slow nod.

  “I know.”

  Rick straightened in his chair and saying, “You know? How did you find out?”

  “We tracked down the real Marten Jeukens. It was not hard. The fake Jeukens was renting an apartment not far from here. We traced his credit card back to a Johannesburg bank, and from there back to Cape Town where we found the real Marten Jeukens, a very industrious Afrikaner who has been spending every day at his plastic bottle cap factory. Since he could not be in both places at once, we could draw only one conclusion.”

  “Identity theft,” Rick said, his expression grim.

  “Exactly.”

  Rick looked at Laura. “The plot sickens. But why a South African?”

  “Skin color, obviously. And I suppose because of the open border with Mozambique. Jeukens was completely unaware that he’d been compromised. What I do not know, and what I am hoping you can tell me, is who is pretending to be Marten Jeukens?”

  “A zoologist named Keith Somers. He disappeared from New York City April first. The first time anyone has seen him since then was that picture you put up—your ‘person of interest.’”

  Mugabe began writing in a notebook. “S-u-m-m-e-r-s?”

  Rick gave him the correct spelling.

  “And your interest in this is…?”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Ah. Then you know him well.”

  Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Laura thought.

  “Do you know of any connection between your brother and Mister Jeukens?”

  “None whatsoever and no idea why he would steal this particular man’s identity. I do know my brother has traveled to East Africa many times, so maybe they met here. But that’s just a wild guess. The question of why he’d assume any other identity has been plaguing us.”

  “Was he in some sort of trouble with the authorities at home?”

  “He’s a bestselling author in the States, a respected zoologist with a position at New York University. It makes no sense.”

  M
ugabe looked up from his scribbling. “It certainly does not—in more ways than one. Usually identity theft involves monetary theft as well. Mister Jeukens—the real Marten Jeukens—is not missing a single centavo. Most unusual.”

  “No argument there,” Rick said. “But what about this ‘person of interest’ business with the dead pilot? What that’s all about?”

  Laura detected a change in Mugabe then. He’d been engaging and pleasant when the information was flowing toward him. But now that someone wanted it to go the opposite way …

  He gave his head an emphatic shake. “Sorry, no. I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”

  She had been content to sit quietly during the exchanges, watching, listening, fighting off yawns and longing for a bed. Now she saw a way she might make a difference. She reached into her purse and pulled out one of her cards.

  “I’m with the medical examiner’s office outside New York City,” she said, sliding it across Mugabe’s desktop. “Perhaps I could speak to your coroner about the pilot’s cause of death. You know, doctor to doctor?”

  “The coroner is awaiting toxicology reports and will not be able to tell you anything until they are back.”

  Toxicology … She filed that away.

  “I work with the police all the time back home. I’ve—”

  Mugabe shook his head again. “I am very sorry. It is simply not possible to discuss.”

  And then she saw Rick slipping a hundred-dollar bill into the maw of the carved shark. She wanted to snatch it from him but held back.

  Go with the flow …

  “Then again,” Mugabe said, barely missing a beat, “since you are, in a sense, a fellow law enforcement officer, I can tell you that we have the pilot’s log book. On the last page he scribbled the name ‘Jeukens’ and some coordinates.”

  Rick leaned forward. “Coordinates for where?”

  “That is the problem.” Mugabe started tapping on his keyboard. “Coordinates to nowhere.” After a few seconds he turned the monitor to show a page from a small pocket notebook. “This what we have. As you can see, the numbers were hastily written and hard to read.”

  Laura memorized the sequence as Rick nodded toward the map on the wall behind Mugabe. “Can you point out the spot on that?”

  “It is off the right margin of that map. Do not waste your time. There is nothing there but empty water.”

  Laura wanted to get back to the dead pilot. “You mentioned toxicology studies. Do they think the pilot was poisoned?”

  Mugabe nodded. “The coroner says he appears to have died from a powerful neurotoxin.” He drummed his fingers on his desk, his expression grim. “I have seen the body. Mister Batalheiro died horribly. The idea that someone here has a substance that can kill like that is very frightening.”

  Rick said, “So it’s pretty clear this isn’t some random mugging that went south. Sounds more like your pilot guy was targeted.”

  Mugabe was nodding. “Exactly. And if you are wondering why a police officer from Maputo is handling this investigation, Maxixe is in Inhambane Province and Inhambane does not have the resources for this sort of investigation.”

  “Is there any reason to believe my brother had anything to do with it?”

  “No, but he is wanted for identity theft and is one of the last people to see the pilot alive, though I must say he has not acted like a criminal during his stay here. His movements have been quite transparent—even his trip to Madagascar.”

  “Whoa,” Rick said. “Madagascar? What was he doing there?”

  “He charged hundreds of gallons of marine gas at a dock in Toliara.”

  Rick’s was incredulous. “He took a boat over to Madagascar? He could barely drive a car!”

  “Not his own boat. The Sorcière des Mers, owned by Amaury Laffite.”

  “Sea Witch,” Laura said. “Who’s this Laffite?”

  “A dealer in exotic animals. A man of questionable ethics.”

  Laura exchanged a quick glance with Rick.

  “Keith and an exotic-animal dealer at sea, burning hundreds of gallons of gas. Almost as if they were looking for something.”

  “An island?” Laura said.

  “An island that is not there,” Mugabe said.

  Rick said, “Can we talk to this animal dealer?”

  “Laffite? Yes, we would like to speak to him as well, but he and his ship have sailed again.”

  “When?”

  “Sunday morning. The same morning we lost track of your brother.”

  Rick spread his hands. “Isn’t it obvious? Keith is back on the Sea Witch.”

  Mugabe nodded. “That is my guess as well. We will be waiting for him when he returns. He has questions to answer and charges to face.”

  “We’ll be waiting right there with you,” Rick said, rising and offering his hand. “Thank you for being so forthcoming with us. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. May we stay in touch about my brother’s return?”

  “I will share what I can.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Wow,” Laura said when they’d reached the sidewalk. “You were pretty unctuous at the end there. I was worried I’d slip and slide on my way out. I mean, why? You’d already bribed him.”

  Rick shrugged. “Best to let him think he holds the reins.”

  “Doesn’t he? I mean, are you and I and our cabdriver the only honest people in this city?”

  Rick only stared at her, his mouth twisting as if fighting a smile.

  She sighed. “Did that sound as sanctimonious as I think it did?”

  He nodded as the smile broke through. “Yep. Maybe even more so.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Oh, and our cabbie? He flashed his lights to that cop as we approached. I’m guessing a signal that he had tourists on board.”

  “Aw, no.”

  “It’s the way of life here, Laura. You’re too much of a straight shooter to ever accept it, but that’s what makes you you.”

  Sometimes it’s a drag being me, she thought.

  He pushed on. “Here’s how I think it went down. Keith came here looking for another Mozi. He hooked up with an exotic-animal dealer who owns a boat and they went searching for Mozi Island. They found it at those coordinates—which I memorized, by the way.”

  “Me too.”

  “Took it for granted you would. Now the two of them are headed back to capture a bunch of Keith’s favorite little primates.”

  “It fits,” she said, “but what’s the motivation? And you’re leaving out the copter trip. Why make a day trip back to a place you just left?”

  Rick smiled. “Well, we’ll just have to ask him when we meet up with him.”

  “You mean when he comes back? But Mugabe—”

  “Mugabe shmoogabe. We’re gonna catch up to Keith on that island.”

  3

  DAPI ISLAND

  With gravity now on their side, lowering everything to the caldera floor was immeasurably easier than hauling it up. Marten was glad Laffite had brought extra-long ropes. On his earlier journey inside he’d been shocked to find the floor a good eighty feet down. But when he thought about it, he realized nothing said the floor of an oceanic volcano’s caldera had to be at sea level. In fact it rarely was.

  But what a floor … what a sight.

  On Saturday, Marten’s first view had stunned him with its beauty. Today’s view was just as mesmerizing. The huge, thick, smooth trunks of the magnificent Adansonia grandidieri baobabs, spearing toward the sky like massive Romanesque columns, the greenery at their apices exploding eighty feet above the floor to form the main canopy. Their leaves let through enough light for a luxurious subcanopy of various species of twenty- to forty-foot trees, including traveler’s palms and a few banana palms that had been stripped of their fruit. A thin, eight- to ten-foot understory of spindly trees, ferns, and clumps of bamboo overhung the grasses and underbrush carpeting the floor. Colorful parrots flitted from branch to branch. He
noticed a large leaf nearby start to move, but a closer look revealed only a two-foot Malagasy chameleon, its green perfectly matching the leaves around it.

  Marten closed his eyes and swallowed back a surge of bile at the thought of what he was here to do. That was a residue of Keith reacting. But he was Marten. He had no such compunctions.

  He looked around. Had anyone seen his momentary queasiness?

  No. The other three were busy setting up the camp. Even though the work was progressing quickly and relatively easily, Marten had to hide his frustration at the delay. He had to be circumspect. Caution was the byword here. Laffite had already caught him staring at the northern quarter of the caldera where he’d rolled the canisters off the rim.

  Had one or both ruptured when they hit bottom? He prayed not. All his plans would be ruined. He’d have to be extremely careful when he finally did get a chance to go looking for them. VX was non-volatile with a high persistence factor, clinging to leaves and grasses, hanging around and contaminating everything. Since plants had no nervous systems, and no acetylcholinesterase to block, they remained unaffected. But anything that moved under its own power had better beware of brushing against that innocent-looking greenery.

  Such carelessness on his part—caught looking away from the dapis. Stupidity, really. Laffite was no dummy, and a career criminal to boot. To stay ahead of the law, suspicion bordering on paranoia had to become second nature. Because everyone was a possible traitor. A trusted co-conspirator yesterday could be turned by the authorities today, or suddenly decide he no longer needed a partner.

  Laffite probably wasn’t worried about Bakari and Razi. Marten had made an effort to get to know them. The language barrier made communication difficult, not helped by their distrust of his skin color, but he had come away with the impression they were a pair of barely educated back-country Bantu Shangaans who had migrated to the capital with no ambition beyond simply getting by in the big city.

  Laffite seemed to understand the brothers, but clearly did not understand Marten, which hardly surprised Marten because he was still trying to understand himself. He suspected the Frenchman would have been more comfortable if Marten had demanded an equal share in the profits from the dapis trade. That he’d understand—not as a threat, but as the start of a negotiation.