Raising Abel: An International Thriller Read online

  That accent. American, yes, but from the southern states if Avi was any judge. Why? Why were they here? His troubles had always been with the ultraorthodox Jews, Israel's own bigoted fundamentalists.

  "So," the dark-haired man said, and smashed the framed photo on the table. "You thought you were smarter than God? You and the rest? Or did you think you could be gods?"

  Then, with a shiver of fear, Avi knew. His breath caught in his throat as the tall blond slid a gleaming knife from his belt.

  "Repent your sins, Jew! God is coming!" The blond leaned down.

  Avi's scream strangled itself against the sticky tape.

  The sun, rising above the treetops, cast morning light through narrow, white-framed windows and onto the red-white-and-black Navajo rug that lay on the living room floor. Ceiling-high bookcases covered each wall and were filled with volumes necessary to the trade of an anthropological geneticist: anatomy, primatology, paleoanthropology, human genetics, and statistical analysis. Two large four-door file cabinets, both antiques, looked time-worn and battered, their brass fittings use-polished. An oak table, topped with a lace tablecloth, dominated the room; piles of Xeroxed journal articles had been pushed to the side to clear a space for two plates. An empty bottle of Chianti dominated the bit of virgin tablecloth; two wineglasses had been left, their rims touching intimately.

  The slanting light illuminated dust motes on the still air and gleamed on the stereo as Dr. Scott Ferris leaned down, sorted through the discs, and selected Loreena McKennitt. Inserting the disc, he pressed the "play" button and as the gentle strains filled the room, stepped back through the arched doorway into the kitchen. The Capresso machine hissed and buzzed as streams of French roast dribbled into two reproduction Anasazi cups. He stared for a moment at the black-and-white designs, fondly remembering the trip to Santa Fe when they had bought them from a sidewalk vendor on the Plaza.

  He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked out the kitchen window at the big cottonwood in his yard. Early June in Fort Collins was his favorite time of year in Colorado. This was the eighth: Finals were over, his grades were turned in to the department, and the university slowed into a mellow lethargy before summer session. For three months he would have nothing with which to occupy himself except the continuing research. Not only were reports coming in on the children, but Bryce Johnson had just about finished another gene sequence. With that in hand, Avi Raad could begin the laborious task of synthesizing the base pairs in his PCR machines.

  People said that the tall and athletic Scott looked more like a ski bum than a professor. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a dislocated knee. The way women watched him pass had never ceased to amuse him. Amanda always preened when she was with him, stepping a little straighter, giving a slight toss to her gleaming black hair. They made a pair, Amanda and he. His blue eyes would twinkle with amusement, and her dark eyes would flash in Mediterranean jealousy. After all these years they still played that little game, though Amanda knew that he'd never consider another woman in his life. Careers and half the country might separate them, but mind, soul, and spirit, they were joined as no man and woman on earth.

  This morning he wore a loosely belted terry-cloth robe with the Harvard escutcheon on the left breast as he lifted the brimming cups from the machine. He placed the coffees on the silver tray Ostienko had sent them from Russia and hummed in time to McKennitt's music as he half waltzed down the hallway to the bedroom.

  Amanda lay under the twisted sheet, one bare leg and arm exposed. Her thick black hair made swirls across the pillow. He smiled at the profile she presented: something like a Greek goddess in relief. The sheet might have been sculpted of marble by Phidias himself.

  "Good morning, lover," Scott said gently as he set the tray beside the bed and bent to kiss her cheek.

  She murmured and stirred, stretching in a most feline manner. She almost purred as he teased her with the coffee cup, wafting the aroma past her nostrils.

  "What time is it?" she asked, voice sultry with sleep.

  "Seven-forty. Your flight doesn't leave for another five hours. That's time for coffee, breakfast, and me. And not necessarily in that order."

  She cracked an eye open, giving him a suspicious glance. "What makes you think I'd want you? I hate sex first thing in the morning."

  "Okay. But we don't get to see each other for another what...two months?"

  "That's a point." She took the coffee cup from his hand, cradling it as she sat up, the sheet falling to puddle in her lap. She gave him a wry if sleepy smile when his gaze fastened on her bare chest.

  "Don't strain your eyes that way. And drooling isn't considered flattering."

  He chuckled and seated himself beside her. "I was just overcome. Males, as you know, are visually stimulated."

  "And women, as you know, can be melted by a good cup of coffee and rapt male attention. The dilation of your pupils gave you away. Sex is starting to sound better." She sipped her coffee appreciatively, then added, "Assuming, that is, that you have anything left after last night. Males, as you are well aware, find performance to be a problem as they age."

  He had opened his mouth in retort when the phone on the bedside stand gave off its warbling ring. Scott grunted, reaching with one hand to snag the receiver. "Hello?"

  "Scott?" The accent betrayed the caller.

  "Pietor?"

  "Da! I think there is problem. Two men. They come to find me."

  "I don't understand."

  "You know Avi is dead?"

  "What?" Scott felt something grow cold inside him.

  "Da! I learn last night. He is killed. The laboratory...it is burned. Israelis think terrorism. Now, with two men following me, I think it is something else. I think project is compromised. Someone knows, Scott."

  "Pietor, you're sure you're not being a little paranoid?"

  "This is Russia. We have history. You do not. You call paranoia mental disorder; we call it selective advantage. I learned in good old days. Same reflexes are telling me this is not good. First Avi, and now two men are watching me? No, old friend. Someone is wishing to stop us. Be careful."

  "Pietor?"

  "I will be in touch. For time being, I use old escape route. See you soon."

  "Pietor? Wait, I—" The dial tone indicated the connection had been cut.

  "What was that all about?" Amanda was watching him through sloe eyes, fully awake now.

  "Pietor. He said Avi's dead and two men were after him."

  "Avi's dead?" Amanda asked, disbelieving. "Dead how?"

  "I don't know." Scott frowned. "Let's see, it's a quarter to eight here; that would be three p.m. in Tel Aviv."

  "It's Saturday. Avi would be at home." Her face had turned serious.

  Scott dialed the international code and punched in Avi's number from memory. The familiar but foreign beeping told him that it was ringing in Avi's apartment. It rang and rang.

  "Not there." He hung up and tried the lab, where to his surprise, not even the answering machine picked up. Hanging up, he rose, stepped over the wadded blankets they'd kicked off the foot of the bed, and awakened his computer. Logging on, he checked his email, found several communications about the children, but nothing from Avi or Pietor. Accessing the world news, he clicked on Israel, and after two reports on the peace process and the recent religious meetings, there it was: World-Renowned Geneticist Feared Murdered. Hamas Suspect.

  "Son of a bitch," Scott whispered, cold fingers of dread playing along his spine. Amanda had come to read over his shoulder, strands of her black hair tickling his ear.

  "I don't believe it!" She shook her head. "His body was found in his burned lab? What do they mean the fire was accelerated with thermite? That's like phosphorus or something isn't it?"

  "It burns really hot." Scott's vision seemed to waver. "This can't be happening."

  As the article downloaded, a photo image of a blackened and gutted building formed. Fire hoses were snaked over the smoking mess, rescue wor
kers picking through the debris. From the background, Scott could recognize the familiar university buildings behind the lab. In the foreground he could see the remains of centrifuges, electrophoresis tables, the big scanning electron microscopes, and the refrigeration unit, all covered with the fallen wreckage of the burned roof.

  "Oh, my God." Amanda sank down, her hands on his shoulders. "We knew they would be upset, but, Scott, not like this."

  "They're not supposed to know," he said softly, a welling emptiness spreading inside him. "We need years, Amanda. Time to prepare them—not just the kids, but the world as a whole."

  "God, Scott, you're not thinking of calling the police, are you? You're not going to tell anyone? They'd call you a lunatic!"

  He shook his head. "Wait, think! Damn it, Amanda, we don't know for sure what's happened. This could be...maybe...well, just an accident, you know?"

  She nodded. "That's right. Maybe it was Hamas? Or the Mea Shaarim people. They attacked him once before. A fertility clinic is still a target, even in Israel. It doesn't have to be related to the project." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  "Even if it was," he whispered hoarsely, "they shouldn't react this way. Dear God, Amanda, what kind of beings are we? Humans, I mean. Are we really that afraid?"

  Her large dark eyes were on his, answering in a way words could not. In addition, she said, "Are you forgetting why we got into this in the first place? Are you forgetting why you walk with a limp, Scott? How you got that scar on your forehead? You know the power of blind faith over the human mind. It led to Crusades, to Inquisitions, to genocide and holocaust. Why couldn't it lead to this?" She pointed at the screen where Avi's face—an image taken from an old Time magazine article—had formed beside the burned clinic.

  "We need more time," Scott's voice was pleading. "Meanwhile, we've got to be careful. Hide the records. We've got to pull the plug and scatter the—"

  "Scott," she said, slipping around beside him to stare into his half-panicked eyes. "Relax. The point I'm making is that we should be careful. Israel is a volatile place. Until we have proof that this is related to the project, we assume this is an accident—which it might well be. That means we stick to the original timetable. We publish the articles over the next couple of years like we had planned. We continue to document how they develop, and then we slowly disseminate that information so that it doesn't come as a huge shock to anyone. We stick to the plan!"

  "So you're going to fly back to Ohio, even after hearing about Avi?"

  "I paid too much for those tickets. They're nonrefundable." She paused. "Sure you don't want to come? It would give us time to come to grips with what happened to Avi. A jazz festival would make a great change of pace for you. Allow us to think."

  He shook his head, aware that grief over Avi was going to come welling up from the depths and overwhelm him. But not yet. For the moment, he had a mountain of new data to analyze. He owed that to Avi, who had dedicated his life and soul to the project. It was more important now than it had ever been.

  "I love you," Amanda whispered, lacing her arms around his neck. "Come on. Let's go back to bed. I just need you to hold me. Sometimes in life, that's the rarest gift of all. Just to be held when your heart is breaking."

  He nodded as she overcame his resistance and pulled him to his feet. The computer monitor continued to display the blackened ruins of the lab and Avi's gentle-eyed face.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Late on the night of June 9, Scott Ferris rolled back on the throttle and used two fingers on the front brake lever. As the bright red Ducati slowed, his boot tapped the shifter lever, dropping the machine into third gear. With a glance into the mirror, Scott wheeled off the dark highway and into the lighted parking lot of a convenience store. The road behind him remained dark, thankfully empty under the midnight mountain sky.

  The Ducati's engine settled into that off-canter burble of an idle, and he shifted to neutral. The clutch made its characteristic rattling as Scott lowered the side stand and killed the engine. In the silence that followed, his hearing echoed from helmet roar and the rich thunder of the Ducati's exhaust.

  He looked up at the night sky, frosted with a billion stars. The sky was so clear here in the high country. He stepped off the machine, unlatched his helmet, and propped it on the handlebar. Walking to the illuminated pay phone came as a relief, his leather pants chafing from the long ride. The Ducati ate into a man's butt after a couple of hours. Tonight was no exception.

  As his tingling extremities enjoyed the freedom of standing, he tapped in his phone card number and then Amanda's home number.

  On the third ring, her answering machine said, "You've reached Dr. Alexander's residence. Please leave your name and number along with a short message, and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you."

  At the beep, Scott said, "Amanda? Scott. Listen, I've been worried—"

  "Scott?" her sleep-muddled voice interrupted. "It's the middle of the night. I'm supposed to leave for Cincinnati in what... four hours? What's wrong?"

  "I don't know. Maybe it's the hours I've been keeping. Maybe it's that Avi's really dead and Ostienko's disappeared, but I've been getting more and more nervous. I could have sworn that someone had been in my office. Then, this morning, I saw two guys sitting in a van outside my office. Just sitting there, watching. They were probably waiting for someone in the building. I'm just going nuts. But it got me thinking. So, I've taken a precaution. I put a copy of the basic research someplace safe."

  "Where?"

  "The condo. I think I showed you where Sis used to hide her dope."

  "Scott, that's paranoid."

  "Ostienko said that it can be a selective advantage."

  "Where are you?"

  "That little convenience store outside of Ward on the Peak-to-Peak Highway. Remember? I bought you a soda here about a year ago. I remembered the phone."

  "It's...good grief, Scott, it's after two a.m. here, so it's after midnight there."

  He nodded out at the night, seeing the gleaming Ducati under the store lights. "Yeah, I know. I thought I saw that same white van when I pulled out of town. It stayed with me, three cars back as I headed south on 1-25. I took the Berthoud exit, and sure enough there it was, about a half mile back. It followed me all the way to Lyons, so I blitzed my way around a string of cars and ground off the pegs taking the back road to 1-70. One thing about a Ducati ST4: On a twisty mountain road, there's no way anything with four wheels is going to keep up with you."

  "Scott, I'm worried about you."

  "Yeah, well, if we're going berserk because of guilty consciences, it will all pass. If there's really someone after us, well..."

  "You're thinking like you're in a movie, Scott. This is the real world. We've done nothing illegal. We've planned this all out so that an old wrong is made right and no one gets hurt. We've covered this ground over and over and over again. We're doing the right thing. It isn't a matter of us acting irresponsibly. We've begun laying the groundwork, publishing articles on methodology. All we need is time to educate people, and in the end, a hundred years from now, it will be so normal no one will think twice about it."

  "Maybe we should tell Bryce. Let him know what he's really been doing."

  "Why?"

  "So he can have time to think about it. To prepare himself."

  "Scott, we agreed a long time ago. The fewer who really knew—"

  "Just consider it. If people have found out, if they are going to accelerate the timetable, Bryce is going to have to know."

  "I'll consider it. In the meantime, be patient. If anyone comes around asking questions, we'll rethink it."

  "Yeah," he whispered, hearing the breeze through the night-blackened fir and lodgepole pine. The scent of conifers carried on the cool air. High in the sky, a climbing jet blinked against stars. "All we need is time. Time for us, the kids...hell, for the whole human species." He paused. "Tell me, Amanda, how does it feel to know that we're no longer
alone?"

  "As good as it did when I gave birth, Scott. Now, I'm going to sleep. I want you to ride safely on your way home. I love you and don't want you wrapped around a rock or tree on some sharp corner." A pause. "It will work out, my love. You just have to trust me on this."

  "I love you," he said wistfully.

  "Love you, too," she answered. "Good night."

  He listened as she hung up, then replaced the receiver. His breath misted in the chill high-country air. The stars still shone down in a dusting of light against the blackness. He walked over to the Ducati and pulled his helmet on. No, he had no regrets, and someone had to pull humanity's proverbial head out of the sand. If that meant paying a price, then he would pay it, and gladly. He, Amanda, Avi, and Ostienko—they'd known the risks from the beginning. It just had to be done. For the future and the past, and for all of humanity, if not just for himself and his bad knee.

  At the stab of the button, the Ducati roared to life. Snugging his helmet strap, Scott flipped up the stand, tapped the bike in gear, and let out the clutch. The rear wheel spun a couple of times on the gravel, then hooked up and catapulted him onto the narrow strip of blacktop. The echo of the exhaust was lost in the trees as he chased the headlight's white cone into the night.

  Rain left the streets of Manchester, New Hampshire, shining under the streetlights on that dark tenth of June. Drops spattered the windshield of Dr. Bryce Johnson's Dodge Durango. The worn wipers smeared more water than they squeegeed from the glass.

  On his way home from his genetics lab at the University of New Hampshire, Bryce hummed along to the strains of Puccini's Tosca. The music had reached the crescendo in the second act: for Bryce's money, the high point of the opera. As the string of traffic slowed to a stop in a succession of brightening brake lights, Tosca dramatically plunged her knife into Scarpia's heart.

  "Die, you bastard!" Bryce thumped the steering wheel, braking to a stop. Maria Callas sang out, "Questo é i bacio di Tosca."