“You’ll have to excuse Dr. Diaz,” Mendoza said. “I’m afraid he’s not much on social graces.”
“Is this the pathogen?” Diaz asked, his question thrown to the air and aimed at no one in particular.
“Yes, it is,” Lev said, glancing around the room. The fact that they possessed an image of the pathogen had not yet been discussed with the new Spanish members of the team. Normally, this would have been considered a serious breach of security, but in this case time was of the essence and soon it would become necessary for the Bible Code Team to share everything they had learned about the virus with their new Spanish friends.
“We just received that image this morning. Have you ever seen anything like it before, Dr. Diaz?” Lev asked.
Diaz looked shaken. “Uh … no … no I haven’t.”
Lev shrugged as he watched Evita pull a pair of thick, black-framed glasses from her purse and take a seat next to the heavyset Spanish scientist. Looking back over her shoulder, she smiled at Lev. “Nice yacht.”
“I’m glad you like her.”
Watching her, Lev thought how much she reminded him of his late wife-beautiful, yet down to earth and all business when it came to getting things done.
A slight shudder beneath his feet signaled the start-up of the twin turbines in the engine room below. Ten minutes later, the big yacht began easing out of the harbor.
CHAPTER 25
A pod of dolphins took turns surfing the crest of a wave created by the Carmela’s bow as it sliced through the sparkling blue water of the Mediterranean Sea. In an effort to avoid coming into contact with the virus, the team had decided that the yacht should remain at sea, sailing just off the French coast.
It was noontime, and lunch was being served outside on the main deck. All the major players had gathered at a long table lined with pitchers full of iced tea nestled between baskets full of freshly baked bread and heaping platters piled high with grilled fish and vegetables.
“For the benefit of our new team members, I think this would be a good time to go over everything,” Leo said.
The others nodded their approval.
“What have we learned so far about the Acerbi Corporation?”
“Well, we were able to do a computer analysis on the napkins found at the crash site,” Lev said. “As we suspected, the Acerbi Corporation’s logo is an exact match with the painting on the chapel wall. To me, this is the most puzzling connection to date. The images we found at the chapel last year portrayed actual events that came to pass … but this … it’s an enigma. There’s the biohazard sign, which by itself is significant, but nothing to connect it to a specific event. We believe it’s a general warning. I did some checking, and the Acerbi Corporation is a multi- national conglomerate begun after World War II by a man named Eduardo Acerbi. His son, Rene, now runs the company and is one of the richest men in the world. Agriculture is only one of many divisions within the company. They also have oil, pharmaceutical, chemical, and green technology divisions.”
“The aircraft that crashed in Spain belonged to the corporation,” Alon added. “It was registered in France. I called Morelli this morning, and he said that Cardinal Orsini often accepted rides on corporate jets, but he seemed to favor the Acerbi Corporation for some reason.”
“Their agricultural division houses one of the largest genetics research labs in the world,” Lev continued. “Have you ever heard of them, Dr. Diaz?”
All heads at the table swiveled toward the molecular biologist. “Yes. Anyone in the field of genetics has heard of the Acerbi labs. They have labs outside Washington D.C., as well as in France and Switzerland. They also donate huge sums of money to various political entities on both sides of the Atlantic. Because of all the controversy that seems to surround any form of genetic engineering, they employ a dozen lobbyists to patrol the halls of Capitol Hill in Washington. It’s been estimated that most of the wheat in the world is now grown from genetically altered seed that’s been developed in their labs.”
“Are they capable of altering anything other than plants?” Leo asked.
“Of course.” Diaz set his cup of coffee on the table and leaned forward. “Genetic engineering is a wide-open field. Basically, any human modification of an organism’s genetic material that does not occur in nature is genetic engineering. The technique involves the manipulation of recombinant DNA instead of the traditional way in which animals and plants reproduce. The first organisms to be genetically engineered were bacteria in 1972.”
“What about viruses?” Mendoza asked, casting a sideways glance at Leo.
“Yes, viruses have also been altered. Just recently a virus was genetically modified to produce a more environmentally friendly lithium-ion battery by a division of the Acerbi Corporation in Switzerland.”
Leo noticed Mendoza looking straight at him with his eyebrows arched. The cardinal knew that the time for secrecy had passed.
“Ok, Javier. I’m pretty sure you’ve already guessed what I’m about to tell you, and since we’re all going to be working together, we’ve decided to lay all our cards on the table. The pathogen is manmade. It’s a virus artificially engineered to target the specific DNA code within a certain target population.”
Mendoza leaned back in his chair and looked at the other two Spanish scientists. “We know, Cardinal. It’s true, I am an anthropologist, but for the past five years, the three of us have been working for the CNI.”
“CNI?”
“The Centro Nacional de Inteligencia. It’s a counterpart to your CIA in America and the Mossad in Israel.”
“You’re a spy?”
“He’s an analyst,” Lev chimed in. “He’s one of their resident experts in pattern recognition.”
Mendoza practically choked on his coffee. “How did you …?”
Lev lit a cigar and blew out the match. “You forget, Senor, I was once a Mossad officer. So was Moshe. Surely you knew we still had connections within the Israeli intelligence community. No one comes on this boat unless I know who they really are. You revealed yourself the night we all had dinner together in Spain. Not too many people in the world know about Institute 398, even in the scientific community, so I had you checked out by some old friends. I knew all about you thirty minutes after we returned to the yacht the day we met.”
“Wait a minute,” Leo said, looking at Lev. “Just what’s going on here? And what in the world is pattern recognition … was anyone going to let me in on any of this?”
“I was waiting for Javier to tell us himself. The fact that he’s admitted who he’s really working for proves to me that he’s on our side. Sorry, Leo.”
“Yes, Cardinal. I apologize for not telling you sooner, but the people I work for also have rules I must go by. In answer to your question, the science of pattern recognition is the study of random events … meaningless bits of data that coalesce into a recognizable pattern. In the intelligence community, we’re constantly on the lookout for seemingly unrelated events and activities by individuals or groups that come together in a point of focused activity … a goal as it were. There are actual mathematical algorithms that ferret out such things, but in many cases we get our best intel from a working knowledge of human behavior along with our intuitive gut instinct. In the past, we had psychologists performing this kind of work, but we found that they were usually too far off the mark when it came to matters of intelligence because they were working on a model derived from abnormal behavior. Our decisions are based on what any normal person would do in a given situation. As an anthropologist, I’ve studied cause and effect based on decisions made by literally hundreds of different civilizations throughout history, and that enables me to see patterns in a historical perspective. It’s very useful for deciding what kind of action a particular group is going to take when they’re seeking to achieve an outcome that is in their best interest.”
Leo sat back for a moment and tried to take in all of what Mendoza had just said. The man was obviously brilliant, and he was exactly what they needed right now.
“What about Dr. Diaz?”
“Also CNI, as is Dr. Vargas. We’re fighting a war right now, Cardinal, and we’re here to help. Dr. Diaz is one of the world’s premier molecular biologists, and like me, he’s also an expert in pattern recognition. The only
