The God Gene

  He took the heavy gloves from Rick and slipped them on. The dapi screamed when he wrapped his hands around its body and pulled it from Laura’s arms. Carefully, gently, he returned it to the cage and latched the door closed.

  Remembering Mozi, Rick thought about suggesting a better lock, but decided against it. Let Laffite learn the hard way. Not that this dapi would be doing much tree climbing for a while.

  “I’m back,” said a voice. “In more ways than one.”

  Rick turned to see Keith strolling into camp from the opposite end.

  “Jeukens!” Laffite cried.

  “No, not Jeukens,” Keith said, looking Rick’s way but not making eye contact. “I’m really back. It’s me. Keith.”

  Laffite turned to Razi and shouted something in Portuguese. Razi looked cowed but his brother reacted with fury. He charged Keith.

  Rick reacted, stepping in front of Bakari and thrusting the heel of his hand into his solar plexus. The man’s forward momentum enhanced the force of the blow, dropping him to his knees.

  “No,” Rick said, wagging a finger at him. “No touch.”

  It took Bakari a good half minute to catch his breath. He got to his feet and glared past Rick at Keith. He pulled his knife from its sheath in his belt; holding it in a forehand grip, he pointed the six-inch blade at Keith.

  “He die.”

  Rick kept his eye on the blade as he shook his head. “No touch.”

  “Laffite!” Laura cried. “Stop this! Please!”

  Rick noticed that Laffite had drawn his revolver but held it down against his thigh.

  “I tried to prevent this,” the Frenchman said, “but his brother would not cooperate and stay out of sight. So here we are. This has been brewing. It is time it is settled.”

  Bakari switched to a reverse grip, not the usual choice of experienced knife fighters, because it shortened the blade’s reach. Maybe Bakari had been in close-up knife fights where it worked for him. Maybe he’d found it had an intimidating effect. If close enough and fast enough, a backhand slash against an opponent’s throat before he could react would end the fight then and there. But Rick would be ready for that. And maybe he could use the shorter reach to his advantage, making Bakari switch his grip.

  “Amaury,” Keith called from behind him, “if you don’t want to stop this for my sake, do it for yours.”

  “Mine?” Lafitte said through a laugh.

  “The dapis are watching. Your man is giving them a course in the use of a knife against humans.”

  Rick tuned him out and concentrated on Bakari’s blade. His SEAL training had involved armed and unarmed confrontations with knife-wielding opponents. Ideally you wrapped something like a shirt around your non-dominant hand as a shield of sorts. Rick had nothing handy and couldn’t risk removing his bush jacket just now.

  So he’d do the unexpected instead.

  Bakari crouched and shuffled forward, elbow flexed, the knife held close at mid-chest level. Rick put his hands on his hips and held his ground as he lifted his gaze and stared into Bakari’s eyes. He saw confusion. The usual response from an opponent would be shuffling backward in an arc to Bakari’s left, away from the knife hand.

  When Bakari lunged with a throat slash, Rick danced back a step. As the blade passed harmlessly by, he knocked the arm down with his left hand and landed a right jab on Bakari’s already broken nose.

  That had to hurt.

  Bakari roared and switched to a forehand grip.

  Thank you.

  When he lunged at Rick’s chest, Rick slammed his right palm into the inside of Bakari’s wrist and his left against the back of Bakari’s hand.

  The knife went flying.

  But Rick didn’t stop there. He used Bakari’s continuing forward momentum to flip him off his feet, through the air, and flat onto his back. He landed hard and lay there groaning.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Razi start forward but Laffite stopped him. The Frenchman raised his revolver to waist level.

  Pretending not to notice, Rick picked up Bakari’s knife and stood over the supine man. Here was a delicate moment. Things couldn’t go on this way. Either he killed or crippled the man, or tried to arrange some sort of détente.

  Even without Laffite’s gun at his back, he would have opted for détente. He’d done enough killing. And Laura was here.

  He stood over the supine Bakari as the Mozambican pushed himself up on his elbows and looked up at him, eying the knife. Rick switched it to his left hand and extended his right. Bakari looked like he was going to spit on it, but did nothing. Rick bent, bringing his hand closer.

  He hoped he was doing the right thing. Where he came from, this was a gesture of respect for a fellow warrior. He hadn’t turned his back on the fallen man in contempt; instead he was offering a hand up. But Bakari’s culture might see it as something entirely different.

  To his relief, Bakari gripped his hand and allowed Rick to pull him up. Now, the biggest risk: He held the knife by the blade and offered it to its owner. A ton of anger in this guy—certainly justified against Keith for trying to poison him, but he seemed to have lots more to spread around.

  “Brother bad man,” he said.

  “No. Brother good man. Do bad thing. He is sorry.”

  “He no say.”

  “Keith!” Rick called, keeping his gaze fixed on Bakari. “Are you sorry for what you did?”

  “Yes!” cried a voice behind him. “God, yes! That wasn’t really me. I am terribly sorry, Bakari.”

  The Mozambican’s pockmarked face remained impassive, but he took the knife and slipped it back into its sheath. With one last glare for Rick and Keith, he turned and strode back to where his brother stood.

  “Thank you, Garrick,” Keith said. “I think I owe you my life.”

  “You ‘think’?” Laura said, stepping closer to Keith. “I thought Laffite was exaggerating when he said you were safer in exile. I guess I was wrong.”

  Laffite slipped the revolver back into his waistband and ambled over. He appeared to have no idea how easily Rick could take that from him if he wanted. But the situation seemed to be morphing into a more agreeable balance. Better not to jeopardize that unless he had to.

  “You handled that remarkably well, monsieur. For a moment there I thought you might attempt a more permanent solution.”

  Rick forced a smile. “Then I’d have to deal with his brother and you. I chose not to.”

  Laffite looked mildly surprised. “You speak of consequences. Killing him would not weigh on you?”

  Rick didn’t feel a need to answer that. The truth was, if Bakari had threatened Laura with that knife, it would be lodged in his throat right now. And Rick wouldn’t give it another thought.

  He tried the diplomatic route: “Well, he’s the one who drew the knife. But I remember hearing somewhere that showing kindness to an enemy is like pouring burning ashes on his head. Or something like that. Forget who said it.”

  Staring at the ground, Keith said, “It’s from ‘Romans’: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’”

  Rick realized his Afrikaner accent was gone.

  Laffite turned on him. “You! You are the cause of all this dissension. I hid you away to bring peace, and you come back and almost cost your brother his life!”

  “It’s very complicated,” Keith said.

  The Frenchman turned to Laura. “Your hélicoptère should be back soon, yes?”

  Crap, Rick thought as Laura fumbled for a reply. No way to lie their way out of this. Better to come clean.

  “Actually,” he said, “we’re supposed to call him when we’re ready to go back.”

  Laffite looked from Rick to Laura, frowning. “But I thought you said…” He shrugged. “No matter. He knows the way here without you along?”

  Rick nodded. “I assume he still has the coordinates we gave him on the way out.”

&nb
sp; “Bon. You will call him now and have him come immediately.”

  Laura’s expression was dubious. “You’re letting us go?”

  “It was never my intention to hold you prisoner.”

  “What about my brother?”

  “Yes! Take him! Please! He is nothing but trouble. The sooner the three of you are off this island the better. Then my men and I can get on about our task.” He turned away. “I will give you your phone.”

  “Oh, can I have mine?” Keith said.

  Laffite gave him as suspicious look. “Which one? You have two.”

  “Uh, well, both.”

  “You may have them when you leave.”

  “But I—”

  “Only the good doctor uses her phone, and only for one call.”

  As Laffite walked away, Keith turned and wandered to a corner of the little clearing, as far as possible from Bakari. He stood at the foot of one of the giant baobab trees and stared up at its pillar of a trunk.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on with him?” Rick said in a low voice. “He’s back to the Keith I remember. Well, sort of. And that weird accent is gone.”

  “Right,” said Laura. “And did you notice how he’s making only minimal eye contact? Marten looked you square in the eye.”

  “So what’s he got? A multiple personality disorder?”

  “They call it ‘dissociative identity disorder’ nowadays. Movie hound that you are, you’ve seen The Three Faces of Eve, I assume?”

  “Sure. Creeped me out.”

  “Well, the concept of separate and distinct personalities operating independently of each other and unknown to each other is considered controversial at best, and BS by most. I think this is different. I think Keith created Marten to do something he hasn’t the stomach for—to give him a skewed worldview and morality—and crawled into his skin. More like method acting than a psychotic break.”

  “You mean killing Mozi? Marten said Keith ‘couldn’t do what needed to be done,’ so he did it. He killed Mozi.”

  Laura shook her head. “I think it goes beyond that. He said the world wasn’t ready for the secret hiding inside Mozi. And ‘you do what you have to do for the greater good.’ That’s kind of scary.”

  “Ya think? Marten’s one scary guy. I’ve got this awful feeling he killed that helicopter pilot he hired.”

  “Right. He was poisoned. Possibly with the same stuff.”

  They both looked over to where Keith was standing alone, staring into the trees.

  “I’m so sorry,” Rick said.

  “For what?”

  “For getting you into this mess.”

  If anything happened to her …

  “I don’t recall giving you much choice. You had me started on my way back to Morondava when I jumped out.”

  “Still…”

  Yeah. Still. Still he should have put the kibosh on her coming along back in Shirley. If he had, that’s where she’d be right now: safe at home. But the idea of the two of them together on the road again had been irresistible. The time they’d shared last month hopping from country to country and continent to continent just might have been the best days of his life. The hunt for Keith had offered a second helping of that and he hadn’t been able to say no.

  “Look,” she said. “It’s been a little messy, yes—”

  “A little? That guy over there, a guy I grew up with, someone I thought I knew, is a pretty safe bet to have murdered somebody, and then tried to kill three more. And then one of the guys he tried to kill just tried to knife me because I was standing in the way of his killing Keith. In my book, that’s more than ‘a little messy.’”

  “Okay, but we’re on our way home, or at least on our way back to Madagascar.”

  “Almost.” He looked at his brother again. “Need to talk to him and find out what started all this madness. He was just about to tell us when Laffite had him dragged away.”

  “Don’t you dare leave me out of that conversation,” she said. “Remember the last thing he said: how none of this is about what he found in Mozi’s genome, but all about what he didn’t find.”

  “Yeah.” It had been driving Rick crazy wondering about it. “You think he really meant it, or was he just screwing with our heads?”

  “Oh, I think he meant it. I just don’t know what he could have meant by it.”

  Rick was at a loss. “You know more about this stuff than I do. What gene in Mozi could have been conspicuous by its absence?”

  She shook her head, looking baffled.”I haven’t the faintest. He found a human gene that didn’t belong, but that didn’t seem to bother him. But he didn’t find … what?”

  “Well, it’s a long trip back to New York. He’ll have plenty of time to explain.”

  And Rick would throttle it out of him if he held back.

  “The first leg of that trip is a step closer,” she said. “Here comes our phone.”

  Laffite arrived and handed Laura her phone.

  “One call only,” he said. “I will wait.”

  Laura turned on her phone and waited. “We’ve got service,” she said, then tapped a couple of buttons.

  “You know this pilot’s number so well?” Laffite said.

  “It’s in recently dialed.”

  After a short wait, she started babbling in French. Apparently what she heard was not to her liking because she raised her voice and began an angry tirade. Rick had no idea what she was saying, but Laffite understood and it seemed to amuse him. Finally she hung up and slapped the phone back into his palm.

  “He is coming?” Laffite said.

  Still seething, Laura said, “You better believe he’s coming. Or else.”

  Still grinning, Laffite turned and walked away.

  “Something wrong?” Rick said.

  “Antso tried to hold us up for more money, or he wasn’t going to pick us up.”

  “Really? Maroon us here?”

  “Oh, he said he knew there was a boat here that could take us back to civilization, so he wouldn’t be abandoning us.”

  “So how much extra are we paying?”

  “Nothing. I told him yeah we had a boat and we’d sail it directly to Morondava. I told him I hope he remembered the man I was with because immediately upon our arrival in Morondava that man was going to kill him.”

  Rick wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly or, if he had, if she was telling the truth.

  “You really said that?”

  “Damn betcha.”

  “And did you really just say ‘damn betcha’?”

  She grinned. “Damn betcha.”

  God, he loved this woman. He wanted to wrap her in a bear hug right now and never let go.

  But this was not the place so he had to make do with: “You’re pretty cool for a medical examiner, y’know.”

  “The cool coroner. That’s me.”

  11

  Laura headed back to the clearing after emptying her bladder in the bushes. She’d found a spot she thought was private but a horde of dapis had followed her through the branches above and watched with rapt attention while she’d relieved herself. She’d never had such an audience before.

  Just as she stepped from the underbrush, she heard Laffite start to shout something in Portuguese. He sounded frantic and upset.

  And then Laura saw why. A large female dapi was bounding across the clearing with a smaller male clinging to her back—a male with a splinted leg. She leaped for the trunk of a palm and scampered up out of reach of the three humans close on her tail.

  Laffite roared incoherently and did a furious dance before the palm. The brothers stood by, gaping at the swarming dapis above, while Rick strolled toward her, grinning.

  “Only a matter of time before that happened.”

  She nodded. She’d thought the same thing when she’d seen the simple latch on the cage. She was tempted to say “damn betcha” again but thought she’d gotten enough out of that.

  She returned his smile. “Not a matter of
if, just a matter of when.”

  “Exactly.”

  Laffite quickly cooled, then began giving orders in Portuguese. As the brothers got moving, pulling out the large canvas bag Bakari had brought back from the boat, Laffite came over to them.

  “You two and the brother—Jeukens or whatever his real name—will come with us.”

  “Where?” Rick said.

  “We go to catch dapis. We have wasted enough time.”

  Laura glanced at her watch. “But our helicopter will be here in an hour or so.”

  “You will not miss it. Its noise fills the air down here. But I do not wish to leave you three on your own while we are in the field.”

  “We’re not thieves,” she said.

  He shrugged. “So you say. I do not trust any of you out of my sight. So you will come and be silent and watch. Get your brother and be over by the cage in ten minutes.”

  As Laffite strode away, Rick looked at her and shrugged. “No point in raising a fuss. We’ll be on our way back to civilization soon and never see him again. And to tell you the truth, I’m curious to see how they plan to outsmart these little guys.”

  Laura had to admit to some curiosity in that regard herself. She was rooting for the dapis.

  They pulled Keith away from his reverie by the baobab, regurgitating Laffite’s dictum along the way. He accepted it without question. He seemed to be in a fog. Laura wondered if he was transitioning personalities again.

  Bakari and Razi had gone ahead. Laffite met them by the cage. Keith seemed to notice for the first time that it was empty.

  “What happened to the Prisoner of Zenda?”

  Laura listened for the Afrikaans accent but it all she heard was northeastern United States.

  “Escaped,” Rick said. “Where were you?”

  Keith looked confused. “I … I’m not sure.”

  “Come,” Laffite said and led them toward the center of the island.

  They’d walked maybe a hundred feet when Laura heard a clatter behind her. She turned to see a horde of dapis swarming the campsite. Laffite rushed back, waving his arms to chase them away. After they’d retreated into the trees, he started back toward them.