The Bone Labyrinth (32 page)

Lena also nodded.

With Clara’s permission granted, Roland stood and stepped aside, leaving the young nun to the care of her fellow sisters. He faced Gray and Seichan. He was uncertain where all of this would lead, but he held firm to one clear conviction.

I will not break that promise.

15

April 30, 7:22
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. CST

Beijing, China

“Now where are they taking us?” Kowalski grumbled under his breath.

Maria shook her head, as much in the dark as he was. She sat next to the big man in the back of an electric cart that whisked through the depths of the subterranean complex. She noted Kowalski picking at the bandage on his face, remembering his story of Baako attacking him. She also remembered his furtive signal that undercut this story.

[
I’m lying
]

Worry for Baako burned in her gut, along with guilt. She pictured her little boy alone in this strange foreign place. He must be terrified. She wished she could go to him, console him, but that was not where they were headed at the moment.

After revealing the fossilized bones of the newly discovered hominin species—
Homo meganthropus
—Major General Jiaying Lau had ordered them to be transported to a new destination. The general sat in front beside the driver, talking on her cell phone. From her clipped and angry tones, it sounded like she was browbeating the caller.

Finally the electric cart slowed before a tall set of double doors. A familiar figure in camouflage-colored fatigues waited for them, standing stiffly, his expression stoic. It was Gao’s brother, Chang Sun.

Jiaying twisted in her seat to face them. “Remain here.”

The general climbed out of the cart and drew Chang several steps away.

“Where does she think we can go?” Kowalski said, slumping deeper in his seat.

A second cart pulled up behind them, carrying Dr. Dayne Arnaud and a pair of armed soldiers. Arnaud was prodded out of his cart and marched over to them. The paleontologist eyed the tall set of double doors. A steel track system ran along the ceiling and passed through the top of those doors.

Arnaud sighed. “It appears we are getting closer to the reason you were brought here, Dr. Crandall.”

Maria sensed the same. After seeing those remains, she knew the Chinese must be pursuing ways to harvest specific sequences of DNA from the giant’s bones, all in order to engineer a stronger soldier.

But how far along had they gotten?

Arnaud crossed his arms, likely worried about the same. “As I understand it, your research—and your sister’s—was all about proving that the Great Leap Forward in human intelligence was due to the introduction of new genes gained from the interbreeding of early man with Neanderthals.”

“That’s basically our hypothesis. That this hybridization produced a small tribe of individuals who were capable of greater intuitive leaps, who looked at the world differently than either of their parents.”

“And it was from these few unique souls that the Great Leap Forward was driven.”

She heard the incredulous tone in his voice and pushed back against it. “Multiple statistical models support such a theory. Knowledge is like a virus, capable of growing exponentially under the right circumstances. It would take the creativity and innovation of only a small population of super-enhanced individuals to alter the world: to spread new insights, to share new tools, to teach new methods of art and ritual. In fact, it’s one of the dangers of exploring this path. If such super-enhanced individuals could be engineered today, the result would be world-altering.”

“Or
-ending
,” Arnaud added, staring toward Jiaying. “Especially in the wrong hands?”

Maria understood.

“How close were you and your sister to achieving this goal?” he asked.

She pictured Baako, a model of that same Neanderthal hybridization, and the astounding learning curve he had already demonstrated. While she and Lena had made significant steps in that direction, much still remained unknown.

She admitted that aloud. “Genes that affect intelligence are still poorly understood and likely involve a complicated interaction of multiple sequences. What we are exploring is a new frontier.”

“But you and your sister are pioneers who have begun to blaze a trail into that territory.” His gaze remained on the pair of Chinese officers. “Now you must be wary of who follows.”

As Maria watched, the exchange between Jiaying and Chang grew more heated. She heard Lena’s name several times amid the flurry of Mandarin. Clearly something had gone wrong. But what did this mean for the fate of her sister?

Kowalski mumbled under his breath, “Sounds like the shit hit the fan out in Italy.” He crossed his arms with a slight satisfied sneer to his lips. “And I can guess who was throwing that shit around.”

7:29
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.

“And you have no idea where they’ve gone?” Jiaying asked. She kept her arms crossed, waiting for Lieutenant Colonel Chang to explain his latest failure.

He kept his head bowed, his silence answering her question.

The recent intelligence out of Italy was bleak. Not only had Lena Crandall slipped through the snare set up by Chang’s handpicked team, but SISMI—the Italian Intelligence and Military Security Service—had recovered the team’s bodies.

“The Italians may have their suspicions of who sent those men,” Chang said, “but we still have full deniability. The men I commissioned were ghosts, shadows with no official record with the People’s Liberation Army. And no locals were killed, so the matter can easily be spun as a terrorist attack against a Christian target.”

Though Chang’s assessment would likely prove correct in the long run, it still did not diminish his larger failure. Maria’s sister had once again escaped.

Knowing this, Chang attempted to dilute his culpability by spreading the blame wider. “If you had told me that you had an asset on site, perhaps the operation would’ve had a more positive outcome.”

Jiaying set her lips into a hard smile. “
Duì,
” she agreed. “But at least First Lieutenant Wei
survived
that assault, and she is in active pursuit of the targets as we speak.”

First Lieutenant Shu Wei was one of the youngest members of the Chengdu Military Region Special Forces, a unit code-named Falcon, which specialized in target acquisition, along with sabotage operations and offensive strikes. Shu Wei was also Jiaying’s niece, daughter to her sister. Jiaying had used her contacts in military intelligence to covertly enlist Shu Wei for this mission, to infiltrate and intervene as necessary.

Jiaying continued, “First Lieutenant Wei has also learned
who
is accompanying Lena Crandall and that Croatian priest. They’re Americans, likely a covert group tied to their military. From talking to a nun prior to your assault, Wei also learned what Lena’s group was searching for.”

“What was that?” Chang asked, his tone more subdued now.

“Information regarding a seventeenth-century priest named Athanasius Kircher.”

Chang frowned, plainly confused—as was Jiaying, but she maintained a passive expression as she continued.

“Wei will be pursuing this course. To determine how this unusual angle of investigation might threaten our goals . . . and to eliminate Lena Crandall.”

“But I thought we wanted to capture the geneticist alive.”

“After so many failures on your part, I’ve come to the conclusion that such a plan is too risky. To safely acquire her requires a delicacy that we can no longer afford. So Shu Wei is gathering a strike team from her own unit to hunt down and eliminate this threat once and for all.”

Chang straightened his back. “Then with my support, I’m sure—”

She turned on a heel, dismissing him. “That won’t be necessary. Clearly you have more than enough to handle on site here.”

She walked away, imagining his face going dark. She took a final moment to goad him further.

“With your attention fully focused here, I have confidence that you can at least keep our facility secure.” She glanced back to him. “Of course, any further failure will require a harsher reprimand.”

She nodded toward the double doors.

Though Chang’s face remained angry, his eyes shone with a measure of fear as his gaze flicked in that direction.

Good.

She turned to Maria and the others.

Now to teach these newcomers the consequences of failure
.

7:27
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Here comes trouble
.

Kowalski watched the Chinese general stalk back over to their group. The woman looked much too pleased with herself for his liking.

“Come,” she said as she rejoined them. “Let me show you what we’ve accomplished—and how you might help.”

She waved for them to follow her while brusquely ordering their two armed escorts to fall in behind them.

“Guess this isn’t an optional tour,” Kowalski said to Maria as they set off after the general.

She didn’t respond, but he read the nervousness in her pale face. She fingered the tattoo of the double helix under her ear, marking her profession and likely the source of her worry. The Chinese wanted her genetic expertise for something—but what?

Jiaying crossed to the tall set of steel doors, which glided open before her. A puff of air washed out, bringing with it the musk of animals, along with the scent of antiseptic and bleach.

Beyond the threshold, a white room full of stainless steel equipment stretched half the length of a football field. One side held a towering wall of cages; along the other wall stretched a row of ten steel tables. The place reminded him of an oversize morgue. Except the closest pair of tables had been equipped with elevated stirrups, like something one might see in a gynecology office.

One of these tables appeared to have been recently used. A white-smocked worker was using a small hose to wash blood and tissue down the inclined table, jetting the gore into a stainless steel bucket at one end. Even more disturbing, stacks of glass jars were lined on a counter behind the table. Organs floated inside, including what appeared to be an oversize heart.

Kowalski swallowed back his disgust and looked away.

As they entered, technicians scurried about performing other chores, most of which seemed to involve getting clear of Major General Lau’s way.

Maria studied the stainless steel cages to the other side. Several held what Kowalski would expect to see in such a research lab: white rats twitching pink noses at them; a pen of rabbits; and a lone chimpanzee who huddled near the back of a larger cage. The latter’s arms had been shaved to his pits, along with the crown of his head.

Before Kowalski could even wonder about the reason for such a haircut, the answer appeared in the next cage. A young chimp stared at them, its large brown eyes tracking them as they passed. Eyes were all the poor creature could move. A perforated steel shelf had been clamped around its neck, clearly meant to immobilize it and to keep it from reaching higher than its shoulders. The need for such a restraint was obvious. The top of the chimp’s skull was missing, exposing the surface of its brain. A pincushion of colored electrodes protruded from that moist pink surface, wired to equipment hanging outside the cage. A small whimper continually flowed from its lips, which were stretched tautly over its teeth.

“Motherfu—” he started, then clamped his mouth shut as General Lau glanced back to them. Now was not the time to offend their host—at least not yet.

“It’s a vivisection lab,” Maria whispered, her eyes glassy with shock and maybe a few tears.

In the next cage, a small ape—maybe an infant gorilla—clung to a wooden pillar with a ratty rug tacked to it, as if the object were its mother.

The Frenchman slowed enough to look closer at the tiny figure, its frightened face tucked hard to its only solace in this place of horrors. Arnaud’s brow furrowed as he cast Maria a worried look, but before he could speak General Lau hurried them deeper into the lab.

“This way,” she insisted.

Her goal appeared to be a large window at the far end of the lab. It encompassed the entire back wall. A larger chamber, lit from above, opened beyond the thick glass.

They were marched forward.

“Thanks to the techniques you and your sister perfected, Dr. Crandall,” General Lau said, “see what we’ve been able to accomplish already.”

As they reached the window, Kowalski stepped closer, flanked by Maria and Dr. Arnaud. He stared down into the cavernous space and couldn’t hold back an outburst this time.

“You motherfuckers . . .”

7:48
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Monk sat with Kimberly Moy on a bench in the parklands that bordered the Nanchang River. The dark waterway, lit by occasional streetlamps, cut directly through the center of the Beijing Zoo. Nearby, a ferry stop, closed at this hour, offered tours through the park and out to the Summer Palace. Monk had a nice view along the river’s course, which was periodically forded by arched stone bridges.

“What do you think?” Monk asked softly.

Kimberly rubbed her calf. It had been a hard three hours of walking: first through the park, then afterward on a slow circuit around the outside. They had finally reached the northernmost edge of the park, having made almost a complete circle around the zoo grounds.

Without looking up, she said, “Definitely one of the Chinese army’s newer helicopters. A Z-18A utility chopper, if I’m not mistaken, for transporting troops and cargo.”

Definitely large enough to haul a crated gorilla
.

Monk had noted the helicopter parked on a pad in this nondescript corner of the park, not far from the zoo’s large aquarium building. From outside the fence, he had only caught glimpses of the aircraft’s bulk. Trying not to arouse suspicion, they had continued to this riverside park and settled on the bench, where they still had a patchy view of the military chopper.