nameless dead or he came here and set up under a different identity. I’d place my money on the latter. From the way things have played out, it’s likely he died here before passing along the records in his possession; otherwise the Cabal would have sought them out decades ago. My guess is that his nephew recently uncovered some reference to it among family papers and that started the race to Deep Iron.”
“I can see why Haeckel and his Nazi buds would want the records,” I said, “but who’s the other team? The guys I tussled with in Deep Iron?”
“Unknown. Possibly a splinter faction, or freelancers looking to steal the material and sell it on the black market. We don’t know enough yet to make a solid guess.”
“Was Gunnar a scientist, too?” Grace asked.
“No,” said Church. “He was muscle.”
“You thought you killed him,” I said, “but now he’s alive and well in Brazil, where he’s taking Rotary Club lunkheads on safaris for mythological animals.”
“Yeah,” said Bug, “how’s that stack up to a grave threat to humanity?”
“The unicorn,” I said, and Hu nodded agreement.
“Okay, I’m missing something, so spell it out for me.”
Church said, “Science has come a long way since the Cold War, and genetics is a booming field. However, there are limits to what can be discovered during modern research. International laws and watchdog organizations are moderately effective, and a master race research program would need a huge database, including a massive number of tissue samples and test subjects. That would be virtually impossible nowadays without the cooperation of an entire government.”
“Right,” Hu said. “The Nazis had the cooperation of an entire government during World War Two, and they had millions of test subjects. Everyone who passed through the camps. Those records you found probably include extensive information on ethnic background, gender, age, and many other variables. The boxes of index cards with brown fingerprints… those are blood samples. Thirty years ago DNA mapping wasn’t possible. The first DNA typing was accomplished in 1985 by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester in England. The Cabal had been torn down by then. What we stopped was a first step in gathering information that could be used when science caught up to the dreams of a master race.”
“Can we do DNA typing from dried blood?” Grace asked.
“Sure,” said Hu. “DNA typing has been done from Guthrie cards, which are widely collected at birth for newborn screening for genetic diseases and saved by many states. I read about a case where the paternity of a car accident victim was determined using blood from a seventeen-year-old Band-Aid.”
“So those cards and the records help them regain their info on bloodlines,” Grace said.
“Yes. Crafting a race of genetically perfect beings is the core ideal in eugenics,” said Hu, “but it isn’t quick. It’s extreme social Darwinism, which means that it’s a generational process. Quicker than natural evolution, but by no means quick. Unless, of course, you have access to genetic design capabilities that include transgenics. By remodeling DNA they could create more perfect humans in one or two generations.”
“Unicorns…,” Bug prompted.
“Captain Ledger already sorted that out,” said Church. “It’s a moneymaking scheme not out of keeping with the Cabal mentality. Charge the superrich millions to hunt a trophy no one else can possibly have. It satisfies certain desires and it provides vast operating capital for a group like the Cabal. But more important, it demonstrates the advanced degree of genetic science they have at their disposal.”
“The bloodline information, the advanced science, the money,” I said. “It not only looks like the Cabal is back… but now they have a real shot at accomplishing what it took a world war and forty years of the Cold War to try and stop.”
“Yes,” said Hu. “These maniacs may well have the science to accomplish both challenges implicit in the eugenics ideal.”
“Which are?” Bug asked.
“Not only do you have to make one race stronger,” Hu said. “You have to make the other races weaker.”
Grace gave us a bleak stare. “Or you have to remove them entirely.”
We sat in horrified silence for a long moment before Bug asked, “How do we stop it? We don’t even know who’s involved, or how far along they are, or-”
Before he could finish, the phone rang. Church answered, and even with his typical lack of emotion I could tell that it wasn’t good news.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Deep Iron Storage Facility
Sunday, August 29, 5:36 A.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 24 minutes E.S.T.
Lt. Jerry Spencer, head of the DMS forensic investigation division and former Washington police detective, sat on the edge of a desk in the main office of Deep Iron. He felt old and tired and used up. He held his cell phone in one hand and drummed the fingers of his other hand in slow beats on the plastic shell. His eyes were bloodshot from working the Deep Iron crime scene-which was really a collection of related crime scenes-for a dozen hours, and that had been on the heels of working the ambush scene in Wilmington. There was a call he had to make, but his heart had sunk so low in his chest that he didn’t think he could do it.
He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and punched in the numbers.
Mr. Church answered on the third ring.
Spencer said, “I found Jigsaw Team.”
He said it in a way that could only mean one thing.
Church’s voice was soft. “Tell me.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, August 29, 5:37 A.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 23 minutes
Church set down his phone and placed it neatly on the table. Then he stood up and walked to the far end of the room and stood looking out at the choppy brown water of the harbor. His back was to us, and I could see his broad shoulders slump. We all looked at one another.
“That was Jerry Spencer,” Church said without turning. “They found Jigsaw.”
We waited, not asking, not wanting to hurry bad news.
“Spencer found sets of tire tracks out in the foothills. He figured the Russian team drove to within a mile and walked in, and he followed the tracks back into the hills and found their vehicles. The Russians had come in a couple of vans. But there were two DMS Hummers there, too. Spencer said it looked like both Hummers had been taken out with RPGs. Hack Peterson… his whole team. They never had a chance, probably never saw it coming. The vehicles had been sprayed down with fire extinguishers-probably so the smoke wouldn’t attract attention-and then covered with broken tree branches.”
“
Grace closed her eyes. Her hands lay on the tabletop and slowly constricted into white-knuckled fists. Hack Peterson was the last of the DMS agents who had worked for Church as long as Grace had. They were friends who had shared the line of battle fifty times. Without any bit of exaggeration it was fair to say that together they had saved America-and a big chunk of the world-from some of the most dangerous and vile threats it had ever faced. Hack was a genuine hero, and those were in damned short supply.
I took her hand. “I’m so sorry,” I said softly.
