The God Gene: A Novel Read online

  “Hey, I like a lot of Lennon’s stuff, but everybody sharing all the world? Get real, Johnny Boy. Not on this planet.”

  “That’s why he says ‘Imagine.’”

  But Rick had to agree with her. He could imagine peanut-butter swirl ice cream flowing over Niagara Falls and knew he’d have a better chance of seeing that.

  Hari was tapping her watch. “Can we get moving?”

  7

  SHIRLEY, NEW YORK

  Marissa came home and headed immediately to the fridge for a snack. The eight-year-old’s skin was lighter than her mother’s and darker than her father’s, but her eyes matched the blues of both her parents. She had Steven’s strong chin and Laura’s straight jet hair, most of which she’d lost during chemotherapy, but it was growing back with a vengeance since her cure.

  “I want you to get an early start on your homework,” Laura said. “Rick’s coming for dinner.”

  “Yay!”

  “And we’re having steak.”

  “Double yay!”

  After sending her off to hit the books, Laura settled herself in the family room and opened The Ties That Bind, the coffee-table book by Rick’s brother. She found it fascinating and easy to read, but her thoughts kept wandering away to Emilie Lantz and how Laura could get that dose of ikhar into her without anyone knowing—especially Emilie.

  By the time Rick returned, she’d made it halfway through the book—his brother Keith had crammed it with photos. Marissa, still dressed in her softball shorts and jersey, ran to the door to let him in. She heard their voices approaching from the front hall.

  “Did you see the game?” Marissa said. “Did you see?”

  “Only parts of it. Had some work to do.”

  Laura smiled. That meant Rick had watched highlights on SportsCenter.

  “The Metropolitans were awesome!”

  Laura had gathered from Marissa’s cries of “Yes! Yes!” last night that the Mets had won their game.

  “Had some hot bats, that’s for sure. Let’s just hope they stay hot.”

  “They will,” Marissa said. “This is our year.”

  The eternal optimist, she thought.

  “Sure is, kiddo.” Rick deepened his voice into announcer mode. “The Year of the Metropolitans!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Hey, how’d softball go?”

  “Super. Ms. Hernandez says I’ve got a great arm.”

  “Well, you practice enough.”

  “Rick’s here,” Marissa announced as the pair entered the family room.

  Laura closed the book. “Well, that’s a relief. I was wondering who that strange man’s voice belonged to.”

  Rick looked offended. “Who’s strange? I’m not strange.” He looked at Marissa and scrunched up his face. “Do I look strange to you?”

  Marissa thought this was hilarious, as only an eight-year-old could.

  “Finish your homework before dinner so you can just hang out the rest of the night.”

  As Marissa took off down the hall, Laura held up the oversize book.

  “Your brother did a good job with this.”

  Rick shrugged. “Knew he was smart, but never read anything he wrote.”

  “He’s a good explainer. He makes a convincing case that every living thing on the planet is genetically connected. I don’t see how anyone could read this and deny evolution.”

  “Unless you’re someone like Bishop Ussher.”

  Laura couldn’t resist. “When did he become a bishop? I thought he was still rapping.”

  Rick didn’t miss a beat. “Between concerts and recording sessions he calculated that the world is only six thousand years old.”

  “Doesn’t leave much time for dinosaurs.”

  “Everyone knows dinosaurs are a hoax.”

  “Oh, right. Forgot.” She replaced the book on the table. Time to get serious. “So what’s the story with your brother?”

  Rick paced back and forth while he told her about Keith liquidating his assets, about the forensic accountant and the trail of money to Grand Cayman, about the apartment he abandoned, passport and all.

  “So,” she said when he was through, “the consensus is foul play?”

  Rick nodded. “Had everything going for him, and nothing to run from. Can’t see it being much else. Paulette’s sure it had something to do with this monkey he brought back from Mozambique.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Her intuition.”

  “Well, never underestimate a mother’s intuition where her child is concerned.”

  “Except he’s not her natural child.”

  “Speaking of which, did you ever hunt down your natural folks?”

  Rick shrugged. “Every orphan’s quest, right?”

  “Not all.”

  “Well, if they’re not looking, I guarantee you they’ve thought about it. Anyway, I wasn’t a true orphan at first. My mother gave me up. But she’d been dead for years by the time I tracked her down. Overdose.”

  Laura laid a hand on his forearm. “How awful.”

  “Giving me up was probably the best thing she could do for me.”

  “And your father?”

  “Unknown. Not listed on the birth certificate.” He sighed. “So … I told Paulette—who’s not my natural mother—that I’d help find Keith—who’s not my natural brother.”

  She was catching a strange vibe from Rick. “You’re not sure how to react about Keith, are you.”

  “If Hari locates him, I said I’d go bring him back.”

  “I get the feeling you didn’t like him too much.”

  Rick shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I worshipped him as a kid—absolutely worshipped him. To my mind at the time, my older brother knew everything. I’d follow him around the yard and into the woods we had in Switzerland and he’d name everything we passed—animal, vegetable, mineral, didn’t matter, he knew the common name and the scientific name.”

  Laura grinned. “Impressive. Maybe he was making them up, trying to impress his kid brother.”

  “But he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was testing his knowledge. And if he’d come across something he couldn’t identify, he’d pull out his little notebook and jot down a description.”

  “So you were close?”

  “Not a bit. I was closer to my sister Cheryl.”

  Laura shook her head. Baffled. “I don’t get it. You worshipped him but—”

  “Oh, I wanted to be close to him but it never worked out.”

  “Was he your mother’s fave? Got a Tommy Smothers thing going here?”

  He laughed. “You mean, ‘Mom always liked you best’? No. Even though she did, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Keith was so self-contained. Didn’t need anybody else. And something like that—not being allowed past the gate—only makes you want to get inside more.”

  “Did you ever get past?”

  He shook his head. “No. And eventually I realized there was nothing for me on the other side. What’s the expression? ‘There’s no there there.’ That fits Keith. Had his own world and wouldn’t let anyone in it.”

  She recalled his brief Wikipedia biography. “Yet he managed to get a doctorate and a position at NYU, and then write a bestseller.”

  “I know. Amazing. That’s why his getting attached to this mystery monkey was so out of character. Maybe it broke through his shell.”

  Laura was developing a mental picture of Keith. She had some half-formed ideas but didn’t want to say anything yet.

  “So let me get this straight. He’s not your real brother and he never let you in, but you’re going to find him and bring him back.”

  He shrugged. “Well, yeah. Still remember the good times. Fond memories of those walks in the woods and how I looked up to him. Sure, I was frustrated that he was so unreachable, maybe even a little hurt.”

  Oh, I’m betting a lot hurt, Laura thought.

  “But he’s my brother. And when someone abducts your brother, you do
something about it.”

  And there it was. This was the Rick she’d come to know. In so many ways an independent spirit and free thinker—some of his ideas were way out of the box—but when duty called, Rick answered.

  8

  After Champagne and steaks and wine, Laura walked Rick out to his car—or truck, rather. He stopped on the walk and looked up.

  “Clear night.”

  He pulled out his phone and took a picture of the sky. She’d seen him do that before—in Quintana Roo, in the Negev, in Orkney—and had never given it much thought. Foreign skies, she’d thought. But here? On Long Island?

  “Going for a Junior Astronomer badge?”

  “I’ve been putting together a collection.”

  “Of sky pics? Why?”

  He looked at her. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Is it involved?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Then I’ll take a rain check. Back here on Earth, when do we start poking into Keith’s disappearance?”

  “‘We’?”

  “I’m helping, of course.”

  “Not necessary. You have that whole residency-matching thing—”

  “—totally under control. I want to do this. I need to do this.”

  She didn’t say it, but she owed Rick for Marissa’s life. If he hadn’t sneaked those samples of the ikhar back from Scotland, well … her mind refused to go there.

  “All right, if you insist. But not much to do until the accountant finds the end of the money trail.”

  Laura shook her head. “I disagree. It doesn’t sound like the cops did much. You were with one of the world’s biggest intelligence services, and you and I have already proven we’re a pretty good team when it comes to tracking down something no one else could find. I think we should do our own investigation.”

  “Okaaay,” he said, drawing it out. “You really been giving this some thought, haven’t you?”

  “If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”

  “I appreciate that. But you think we’ll find something the cops missed?”

  “It doesn’t sound like they even looked.”

  “Good point. So where do we start?”

  “Your brother’s apartment, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  THEN

  Tuesday, May 10

  MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE

  After two days of searching, Amaury Laffite had found not a trace of the Afrikaner. He’d checked along the docks where he moored his own boat, and no one had heard of Jeukens. Which was good news. It meant he hadn’t chartered a craft.

  Finally he resigned himself to the probability that Marten Jeukens had moved on, either up or down the coast, in his continuing search for the blue-eyed monkey.

  He found him quite by accident in a bar on Ponto Do Ouro. Amaury stepped in for a drink and maybe some female companionship. Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” was playing softly in the background. He’d always identified with the song, and liked to change the words to his own situation: Got a wife and kid in Oran, Jack. And like the guy in the song, he’d gone out for a ride and never looked back.

  Except he did look back. Not often, but now and then he’d think about his daughter. A dozen years since he’d walked out. She’d be sixteen now. He wondered if she remembered him at all. He wondered if his wife had remarried. Was another man raising his child? Casting secret lustful glances her way? In those moments a pang of guilt would overcome him and he’d send some money—no return address, of course.

  He’d been going through a hard time when he left. Things were better now but he had no desire to go back. He liked the unattached life. Many women in his bed since then, but he limited himself to flings. No strings on Amaury Laffite. Never again.

  He looked around, checking out the women, and there sat Jeukens, a very white man alone at the bar surrounded by very dark locals, a nearly empty bottle of Pinotage before him.

  Typical, he thought. As soon as you stop looking for something, you find it.

  The Afrikaner had set his hat on the bar and presented an odd sight without it: His face was tan below a line that ran an inch above his eyebrows, but above that his denuded scalp was white as a cherub’s behind. The overhead lights gleamed off its glossy expanse.

  Amaury sidled over to the bar.

  “Did you find your monkeys yet?” he said in English as he took the seat next to him.

  Jeukens started in surprise, then gave him a confused, heavy-lidded stare. The blankness lasted a few seconds, then his eyes lit with recognition.

  “Laffite?”

  “That is correct.”

  “I wasn’t sure it was you, what with the hat.”

  “Women like it.”

  He adjusted the compact straw fedora, neglecting to mention that it covered where his hair had begun to recede on the sides.

  “Do they like that ponytail too?”

  “Love it.”

  The women love Laffite and Laffite loves the women.

  The bartender came by and Amaury ordered a Laurentina Preta. He offered to buy something for Jeukens but the Afrikaner shook his head.

  “I’ve still got some of this left,” he said, pointing to the bottle.

  Pinotage … how did anyone drink that swill?

  Small talk first …

  “If I remember correctly, the other day you said you were on a mission.”

  Jeukens nodded. “That is correct.”

  “To save the Giordano Brunos of the world, I believe?”

  “Correct again.”

  “I had never heard of him, so I looked him up. Mon ami, how do you save a man who died in the year sixteen hundred?”

  The Afrikaner’s face twisted. “He didn’t just ‘die.’ He was martyred for science. He was a friar who subscribed to the Copernican theory that the Earth revolved around the sun. For that, the Inquisition burned him at the stake!”

  Amaury wanted to probe further but he was thinking this man might be a little crazy. Really, how do you get upset about something that happened centuries ago? He backed off.

  “That is a terrible thing. I am glad we don’t do that anymore.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “Well, anyway, I am glad you are still in town. You are a hard man to find.”

  “From that I gather you’ve been looking for me?”

  “Yes. All over.”

  “You found me just in time. I won’t be here for long.”

  “Oh? Should I assume that means you have found your monkey?”

  Jeukens shook his head. “No. But I will. They’re out there somewhere. Sooner or later I’ll find them.”

  “Which is why I have been looking for you.”

  Amaury’s beer arrived with a glass that he pushed back. As he sipped from the bottle he caught a woman looking at him. She had dark mocha skin and bleached kinky hair piled atop her head. She’d squeezed her curvy body into a tight red dress. She smiled, he smiled back. He’d come here with the intent of meeting someone just like her.

  But first … Jeukens.

  “I have a proposition,” he said.

  Jeukens emptied the last of the bottle into his wineglass and swirled the deep red liquid. Keeping his gaze fixed on the mirror behind the bar, he drank deeply, then wiped his beard. Amaury winced. He supposed you had to be born in South Africa to stomach Pinotage. He, however, had been raised in France …

  “I’m listening.”

  Amaury had rehearsed his spiel as he’d searched through Maputo, so he was prepared.

  “Business has been slow of late in the exotics trade. I have a boat—”

  “Do you, now?”

  “Yes. It is old but solid.”

  “How old?”

  “Its keel was laid in 1988—a forty-eight-foot Krogen.”

  “That’s pretty old.”

  Spoken like a typical landlubber. Lots of aged ships still toiled the seas. They built them better in the old days. Amaury had s
ailed the Sorcière des Mers back and forth to Madagascar countless times, returning with the belowdeck brimming with exotics—mostly lemurs, but with a sampling of sifakas, tenrecs, mongooses, and even flying foxes.

  “Not if you take care of it. She’s a sturdy ship. If your island is findable, we will find it.”

  Jeukens’s eyebrows lifted. “At what cost?”

  Just then the bar band started playing, blasting something with a frenetic marrabenta beat. The woman in red began gyrating. Amaury smiled at her again and held up a finger—wait one minute. Then he picked up his beer and leaned toward the Afrikaner’s ear.

  “Let us go outside where we can hear each other,” he said, gesturing toward the door.

  Jeukens nodded and drained his wineglass. He wiped his beard on his sleeve, replaced his hat, and followed Amaury out.

  On the bustling sidewalk, they took up a position beside the entrance and leaned against the stucco wall. Amaury watched the constant flow of club people in various stages of inebriation and levels of high. Maputo had the best nightlife in all of Africa. Better than the Muslim countries, of course; better even than Cape Town and Johannesburg.

  “How much?” Jeukens said.

  Amaury had already decided on the price he wanted but he started higher.

  “Four thousand a week.”

  Jeukens laughed. “You’re crazy! I could rent ten boats for that.”

  “Ah, but not for the distance we must travel. And you would not have Amaury Laffite guiding you.”

  “Lafitte … like the pirate?”

  “Two f’s and one t—the way he spelled it, the proper French way to spell it. The Americans changed it.”

  “Any relation?”

  Amaury nodded. “Distant but direct.”

  A complete lie, but one he wished were true. In many ways he was like his namesake, who made his living as a smuggler before becoming a privateer. Amaury smuggled too, but his contraband was alive.

  “Anyway, I know the Mozambique Channel. We do not know where your island is, but I know where it is not. That will save us much time.”

  Jeukens considered this, then said, “I’ll go two thousand and that’s it.”

  Just what Amaury had been hoping for. He’d have settled for less. If those monkeys were out there, he wanted to know where. They’d be worth a fortune on the exotics market—especially if they all had blue eyes. But still, it couldn’t hurt to push now for just a little more.