The Gene of Life Read online

  Max tried to get up, but a dull pain stabbed in his head.

  “The pain ebbs quickly,” Feldman said, signaling with his eyes at his men. “You know that better than I.”

  All but one of the men left the room. When Feldman turned his head, Max caught a glimpse through an opening in his scarf of a patch of reddish-brown scarred skin going from his right ear to the nape of his neck.

  Max tried to get up again. This time, however, Feldman offered a hand.

  “I never thought they’d use a rag on you. But though they’re a little rough, they are a dependable lot.”

  “Dependable for what?” Max sat up, his headache receding. The pain had jolted his brain awake.

  “Meet my assistant, Jake Horowitz,” said Feldman, pointing with his eyes to the other man in the room. “He’s American.”

  Jake smiled bashfully and cast his eyes down. He looked to be around forty. Bulky and plump, he only reached to Feldman’s shoulders, but he commanded attention all the same. He was the only one among them who seemed to have any emotions, as he flashed his softhearted eyes Max’s way.

  “Would you like some coffee? Or maybe some tea? We have scotch and brandy, too.”

  “Coffee.”

  Jake nodded and left.

  “Let’s go to the office.” Feldman pointed to the door beside the writing desk.

  Max stood up. He was unsteady, and Feldman swiftly stepped in to hold him up. His muscular arm was strong for a man his age. They entered the adjacent room. A bookshelf took up two walls, and the remaining walls held rows of filing cabinets. Under the window was a large desk, in front of the desk was an expensive-looking table and sofa. It looked more like a tasteful library than an office.

  Feldman’s eyes invited Max to sit. Max took a seat on the sofa.

  “Now then,” Feldman began, “I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “This isn’t how people ask for favors.”

  “I know. But we are being constantly surveilled.”

  Max looked at Feldman’s face. He was well-mannered, and had a classy, sophisticated air. But when he fixed his gaze on him, he saw a glint of danger in his eyes.

  Jake entered with a cup and coffeepot on a tray. He placed the cup on the table and poured. When Max brought the cup to his lips and took a sip, he started feeling more at ease.

  “Please be discreet about what I’m about to tell you.”

  “I haven’t agreed to anything.” Max put down his cup.

  Feldman signaled Jake with his eyes. Jake wordlessly walked behind the desk and unlocked a drawer. He retrieved a glass cylinder four inches in diameter and a foot tall. He placed the vial in front of Max.

  Max gasped, his eyes glued to it. He would have stood back up, but Feldman pressed his shoulders. Max looked up at Feldman, who gently nodded.

  The bottle was filled with cloudy liquid. A white object was floating in it.

  Floating in the liquid was a human left hand, a severed cross section with bone and flesh exposed.

  “What is it that you want from me?” Max’s voice was still hoarse.

  “You heard about the neo-Nazi rally bombing at Dörrenwald two days ago, I’m sure? The Schwarzes Kreuz (Black Cross) rally.”

  Max nodded. Everyone in Germany knew about it. The news had been covering it for days. A bomb had detonated at a rally of the world’s largest neo-Nazi group at Dörrenwald, 125 miles west of Berlin. More bombs had gone off after the first explosion, and there had been shooting as well. Sixteen had died, and over fifty were wounded.

  An ultra right-wing group, Schwarzes Kreuz was gaining support among the young, and had grown to more than seventy thousand members. They were willing to do anything to expel refugees and to stop migrants entering from Africa, the Arab world, and elsewhere. An attack on a refugee detention center in southern Germany a month prior was said to be their work, leaving five dead and thirty wounded. Among the dead were a mother and her three-year-old daughter.

  The Dörrenwald bombing was one of the worst acts of terrorism in German history. The fact that a neo-Nazi organization, regarded as a violent terrorist group, was the target of attack was unprecedented.

  “Were you the ones behind it?”

  “If that were the case, we wouldn’t be here now. But we were close by.”

  The neo-Nazi movement that was rearing its head all over Europe was worrying Jewish communities in Germany, and some speculated the bombing was their plan to wipe it out. Others thought it could be the work of an enemy neo-Nazi organization. Still others believed it marked the revival of a far-left group named Schwarzer Tiger (Black Tiger). Rumors were circulating, including that the attack had been a plot by a government at a loss for how to control the movement’s meteoric rise. And reports were in that the police had already arrested a number of suspects.

  Max had been in Italy at the time, and when he touched down at Berlin Tegel Airport, he’d been surprised by how tight security had become. The airport had been crawling with officers, police dogs, and automatic weapon-toting military personnel. He saw several youths in leather jackets and Mohawks being dragged off with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

  “This hand belonged to someone who attended that rally,” Feldman said. “The man must have been close to the blast radius. We’ve no idea where the rest of his body went. We looked in the hospitals the dead were taken to, but we couldn’t find him. And the police reports haven’t helped, either. Presumably, the rally organizers collected the body. In any case, the situation was out of our hands.”

  Max pulled his eyes off the vial. “It’s got nothing to do with me.” He attempted to get up.

  “Not so fast,” Feldman said, holding him down by the shoulder again, surprisingly powerfully. “I’m sure this will be of interest to you. We looked into this hand’s fingerprints and identified whom it belonged to,” he continued quietly, never taking his hand off Max’s shoulder but relaxing his grip. “It belonged to one Carius Gehlen.”

  Max looked up at Feldman. “Never heard of him.”

  For an instant, Feldman’s eyes exhibited an odd glint. Max saw that expressionless face of his contort slightly with what looked like anger. Or was it just his imagination? Feldman had already reverted to his usual composure.

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  Feldman placed a faded sepia-tone photo on the table. Five German military officers in uniform were standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. The Eiffel Tower could be seen in the background. On the right edge of the photo, the date was printed: July 14, 1940. A month after Germany seized Paris. Feldman pointed at one of the people in the photo. “He was a colonel in the Waffen-SS.”

  Short and stout, the man was glaring at the camera, his chin pulled in and his chest puffed up.

  He then placed a second photo on the table for Max to see. It showed a single man in the same uniform striking the same pose. “For a time, he served as the commandant of a concentration camp for Jews in Paris. He would gather up Jews from all over Paris to be sent to camps across Europe. He directed the slaughter of 200,000 people, including children from orphanages and residents of old-age homes. Even months-old babies were killed. All of them were ordered to the camps. To the gas chambers.” Feldman’s tone was dispassionate and his expression didn’t change. He must have had to rattle off these facts countless times. “After the war, he was charged as a war criminal and sentenced to death in absentia during the Nuremberg Trials. The Allies continued to search for him, and we are currently picking up where they left off. Yet he has eluded us to this day.”

  Max looked up from the photo at Feldman’s face. “Are you with the Z Commission?”

  The German governmental agency known colloquially as the Z Commission is a storehouse of publicly available documents concerning Nazi war crimes, which have no statute of limitations. Thanks to the commission’s efforts, over ten thousand individuals have been investigated, over seven thousand have been found guilty, and a further twenty thousand are
still actively being hunted.

  “No. I’m with an organization in Israel.”

  “Are you an intelligence guy, then? Mossad, is it?”

  “There was a time we enjoyed the support of the state, but now we are a civilian organization. With the deterioration of relations with Arab countries, it seems the government can no longer concern itself with chasing Nazi ghosts. But we are getting the full support of Jews around the world.”

  “So, you’re a Nazi hunter?”

  Feldman nodded. Max had heard that there was a group out there funded by Jews all over the globe that was still pursuing escaped Nazi war criminals. A chill ran down Max’s spine: “Then this hand is a Nazi war criminal’s!” he exhaled, glancing at the hand and then the photo.

  “I trust you understand now,” Max heard him say from above his head.

  “But how . . . ,” Max’s voice turned shrill. His eyes were fixed on the hand.

  “This hand is from two days ago. But yes, there’s something I’m sure you’ve already realized. Carius Gehlen would be 111 years old today.”

  Feldman put a hand on Max’s shoulder again. Max didn’t want him to notice how he was shaking, so he pulled away and pushed his hand off.

  “As you can plainly see, this is the hand of a man in his forties—and his early forties at that. His skin is spotless.”

  “The fingerprint ID must be wrong,” said Max.

  “That’s what we thought, at first. We ran the cross-check again, and even requested an analysis by a professional. We searched for the detective known as the Fingerprint God, which took some doing, since he retired a decade ago. In the end, it was no error. That is why we need you.”

  “Are you asking me to examine his DNA?”

  Feldman nodded. “When the Allies occupied Germany after the war, they compiled any and all materials relating to those thought to have had a hand in war crimes. Yet Gehlen, like many other high Nazi officials, had disposed of any trace of his past. Fortunately, a portion of the relevant records remained untouched at the Gestapo’s French subdivision, including Gehlen’s prints and dental impressions. It was likely due to some internal act of betrayal, rather than coincidence. Rising to the upper echelons made you enemies. Things happen when a war is lost. Apart from those records, we couldn’t find anything on Gehlen in military or government documents.” Feldman sighed and turned to Max. Max saw the profound weariness on his face. “As luck would have it, the man’s hair was not lost. Hair and nails from when he was a boy were found in his mother’s home.”

  “How well-preserved are they?”

  “Very. There are even hairs with the roots attached. They were kept in a wooden box, so light exposure was minimal. A mother’s love is a mother’s love. She treated those keepsakes with care.”

  “You should leave it to a lab, not me. The results will be accurate, and it will take less time. Plus, we wouldn’t have had to go through this whole annoying mess.”

  “No. It has to be you,” Feldman’s bespectacled eyes shone with determination.

  “What exactly is the deal with this hand?”

  “That is what we’d like you to discover,” he said, without averting his gaze.

  Max glared right back at him. “I refuse. It’s got nothing to do with me, and I’m not interested.”

  “You refuse to help a Jew, is that it?” An old man was standing behind Feldman. He seemed to be around the same age, but the furrows in his face were far deeper. “You hate Jews, huh? Well you Yankee pigs make me wanna vomit almost as much as a Kraut does. And they say all Jews care about is money. They’ve never met Americans!”

  “Enough, Simon.” Feldman stepped to the man’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder in sympathy. Simon’s hostile eyes were still trained on Max as he left the room. “Please forgive him. His name is Simon, and he is my comrade who has been at this longer than I have. This discovery has upset him terribly.”

  “I don’t see race or nationality.”

  “But as long as there are people, there will also be races and nationalities. Personally, I like Americans. They saved us from the hell that was the Nazi regime. As I’m sure you know, many of our fellow Jews live in America. They support us and provide for us. And I’m grateful to America for allowing that.” Feldman moved in closer to Max. The fragrance of cigars wafted in the air. “There is a reason you can’t refuse.”

  “If I refuse?”

  “You would regret it for the rest of your life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  Max studied the vial. Before he knew it, he’d shut his eyes. The hand floating in the liquid almost seemed like it was beckoning him.

  “Can we count on you?”

  “On one condition,” Max said, before he could stop himself.

  “Whatever you desire.” Feldman looked slightly relieved.

  “I want more info. You’re not telling me half of what you know.”

  “You will know more when the time comes. I know you won’t regret it.”

  A flame began burning in Max’s heart, and its heat spread through his body. He might finally get what he longed for! He couldn’t help but feel excited. Then he looked at his watch, and gasped. “You are taking me back now, right?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I had plans at seven.” It was already past eight.

  “We will escort you back.”

  Jake brought in a thermos-shaped container and carefully put the vial inside it. He then put the container in a canvas bag. Max took the bag and stood up. Jake led him to the building’s rear entrance. A different blue car from the one he was taken in was waiting for him on the backstreet.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was ten minutes to nine by the time Max arrived at TU Berlin’s genetic research facility. It was still light out thanks to Germany’s summer, and people were out in the streets. The research facility’s main entrance was closed, so Max went to the guardroom.

  He took the elevator to the eighth floor and walked down the dimly lit hallway toward his office. He felt a heaviness in his chest. The photos that Feldman had shown him and the sight of the hand floating in the vial were seared into his brain.

  The heavy bag he carried on his shoulder weighed his whole body down—in more ways than one. He had been doubtful earlier, but the implications were becoming clearer. Max shook his head in an attempt to banish the emotion. The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. He had gone through that many times before. And above all, he didn’t want to think about anything at the moment.

  He turned the corner and stopped.

  A shadowy figure was squatting by the door. He adjusted the bag on his shoulder and stepped in front of whoever it was. A woman in her early twenties, perhaps a student, was sitting on the floor with her knees bent and both arms hugging her shins. Her head was hanging down. As he drew closer, he noticed the smell of sweat, and could hear she was sleeping. He noted her soft, chestnut-colored hair, the delicate curve of her neck and pale skin. A battered backpack was beside her.

  Max shook her lightly by the shoulders. She looked up at him. “Professor,” she murmured. She jumped to her feet. She was about as tall as Max, but didn’t weigh nearly as much. She was wearing small gold earrings. She had delicate features, and her expressive eyes were open wide. In the dim light, her face could be mistaken for a young boy’s.

  She took a pen from her pocket and thrust it in front of Max’s eyes. “Here’s your pen back. I had you sign a book earlier. But then you gave me your pen and rushed off. I called to you, but you didn’t hear me. It happened four hours and ten minutes ago.” She looked at her watch.

  “Thank you very much.” He remembered now. He’d been focused on the man with the sedan, so he hadn’t gotten a good look at her face.

  He unlocked the door and entered, and the woman followed him in without being asked.

  “So, you managed to infiltrate the lab,” Max said.

  Two armed
guards stood by the entrance to check after-hours visitors. People without ID cards or appointments were not allowed entry.

  Genetic science often led to research that generated huge sums of money. Companies around the world competed for the information, and some were very aggressive about getting their hands on it. Also, there was always the risk that genetic modification could create unknown pathogens and organisms. For all these reasons, TU Berlin’s genetic research facility had a vitally important P4 laboratory equipped with the highest level of containment equipment in the event of a biohazard or bioterrorism. Protecting facilities from bioterrorism as well as biohazards counted among their vital functions.

  “Thanks to an acquaintance of mine, Dr. Cindy Smith. Do you know her? She’s doing neurotransmitter research on the first floor.”

  Max shook his head no. There were over three hundred researchers working in this institute. He had met a handful of well-known scientists, but the others he knew only in passing. He put the bag on his desk and looked up. She was standing there, staring at him.

  “Do you have some other business with me?”

  “I . . .” She hurriedly rummaged in her bag for an envelope and fished it out.

  Max scanned the document. “Dr. Katarina Lang, eh? Are you the brilliant researcher that Professor August Michaels was telling me about?”

  “I don’t know whether I’m ‘brilliant,’ but I am the one who requested the professor’s recommendation,” she said in fluent English.

  “So, it was a young female researcher he was talking about . . .”

  “Yes, I am a woman. I obtained my degree—”

  “Sorry, that came out wrong. I’m just surprised. Professor Michaels used the words ‘brilliant researcher.’ I heard you completed graduate school as a Pauling Scholarship student and now receive grants from Cosmo Pharmaceutical Research.”

  “The scholarship ended when I stopped being a student, and the grant money stopped coming in last year.”

  “You have your degree, and you can get more research grants if you want. Going by your career up till now, I don’t think you should be going back to being a research student.”