Bred to Kill (37 page)

“Future generations, which would gradually all become infected, and quickly. People dying at the age of twenty or thirty, intoxicated with violence. Tell us what you know. We'll be liaising with the Ministry of Health to set up emergency research teams. We have to move fast. The more time passes, the more we risk losing control of this virus altogether.”

“Tell us,” Bellanger repeated. “We've given you everything we've got. Now it's your turn to pony up.”

Sharko thought for a moment, still shaken by these horrible revelations. He had to play it very carefully. Bellanger, Lemoine, and the other cops knew nothing about Lucie's investigation. The theft of Cro-Magnon, the tapes, Phoenix, the Amazon tribe, the research into Terney's past, the mothers dying in childbirth—how much could he tell without putting Lucie in danger? On the other hand, did he have the right to keep these revelations to himself? Lives were at stake—and God only knew how many.

He looked searchingly at the three sets of pages lying next to one another. To the left, Cro-Magnon, with the virus in its pure form. In the middle, Lambert, with the virus still active but mutated. On the right, the rest of humanity, with the inactive virus.

Three different forms of the virus, because evolution had mutated it over time. So then, three different epochs. But how was that possible, since Lambert hadn't been more than twenty-five years old?

The chain of time
, he suddenly thought. The chain of time with its three links: Cro-Magnon, humans of today, and between them, the Ururu.

As if hit with a blinding light, he suddenly understood.

He slapped his forehead with a groan.

“Félix Lambert and Grégory Carnot didn't catch the virus,” he murmured. “Nor were they injected. No. This filth was already inside them from the moment they were born. They got it from their parents, who in turn . . .”

He stopped short and looked his boss in the eye.

“Just give me a few more hours to check something out. And after that, I promise I'll explain everything.”

“Sharko, I . . .”

Without leaving Bellanger time to answer, he turned to the biologist.

“This sequence comes from a Cro-Magnon man, thirty thousand years old. Call the genome center in Lyon, and you'll get all the answers you need.”

With those words, he backed away, then stopped to ask one last question:

“Tell me something: could the presence of this mutated virus make its hosts left-handed?”

The biologist thought for a moment and seemed to make a connection.

“Lambert was left-handed, as was Carnot. So you think that . . . ?” A pause. “Yes, yes, it's possible. Recent research suggests that there's a gene linked to hand dominance, located on chromosome two, in fact, and right next to those fossilized retroviruses. In genetics, it's common for the expression of certain DNA sequences—the retrovirus, in this case—to influence the ‘behavior' of neighboring genes. This explains the emergence of certain cancers, for instance, such as leukemia or lymphoma. But to understand that, I'd have to tell you about chromosomal translocation, and . . .”

No longer listening, Sharko backed away a few more steps and took off at a run.

P
edro knew how to read the jungle. He interpreted variations, decoded shapes, sensed dangers: insects, snakes, spiders, which sometimes dropped at their feet like writhing clusters. With precise movements, he sliced through tangles with his machete, forging unlikely paths. He, Lucie, and the two Indians had plunged into the green vise, rifles in hand, packs on their backs. All around them, the jungle expanded, contracted, devoured. Endless stalks of bamboo stood together like prison bars, branches of rubber and teak trees stretched their formless webs. Docking the boat along the marsh had been impossible; they'd had to walk up to their knees in the stagnant water for a good ten yards. Lucie was soaked. Her forehead, back, and neck were dripping. Every breath seemed to burn her lungs like ammonia. With a knife, Pedro had cut a small hole in his new shoes so that the water could escape more easily and help avoid blisters. He chopped with his machete at the base of a bamboo stalk. Water poured from the hollow cylinder; he put his flask against it and filled it without a word. His eyes were moving constantly, running down the dark perspectives. Farther on, he bent toward the thick vines wrapped around the black tree trunks.

“Look here—they've been broken off.”

He moved a bit farther forward, showing other breaks. A narrow, unsuspected pathway had recently been opened.

“We call this the Indian path: a thin trail through the jungle . . . No doubt about it, the Ururu are here.”

Anxious, Lucie looked all around her, but she couldn't see more than a few yards. Even the blue of the sky had disappeared, giving way to endless rolls of greenery. Here everything was outsized, including the ants. Pedro poured a little cool water over his curly hair, then looked at his waterproof GPS.

“We won't go too far from the boat. In two hours it'll be dark. Let's walk a little farther, just straight ahead. They'll be here before nightfall, I can feel it . . .”

They continued forward, alert. The branches and leaves trembled with every step. Lucie couldn't help comparing the jungle to a human brain: a vast, interconnected network sending signals back and forth, adding to and subtracting from each other, in cooperation or competition. Symbiosis, osmosis, but also predation and parasitism. Each fundamental element constituted a small knot, which formed a larger knot. Death led to rot, rot spawned the bacteria that enriched the earth, the earth created leaves, leaves bred species, species formed an ecosystem—a fragile entity of awe-inspiring richness, in constant equilibrium between life and death, degradation and majesty.

Finally, they reached a kind of clearing, where from below came the rumble of a mountain stream. Everything, even the tree bark, oozed dampness. In the Amazon rain forest, the staggering level of humidity—nearly 100 percent—was the worst adversary. It made it difficult to light fires, rotted the skin off your feet, and fostered diseases. Standing back, Lucie was catching her breath. Her entire body was in pain. Far from Rio Negro, the mosquitoes came fast and furious. Suddenly, she thought she saw a silhouette in the dense trees behind her.

It moved quickly, easily.

Branches began to wave, vines vibrated, on all sides of them. Silence, movement . . . silence, movement . . . As if figures were suddenly gathering around them, dancing to a slow rhythm. Lucie remembered the horrifying faces in Chimaux's book.

They were there, encircling her.

At Pedro's orders, the two Indians set their weapons down at their feet, then raised their hands in a sign of peace. Around them, the shadows came into focus. Eyes, noses pierced with bones, faces appeared among the bamboo, before disappearing again, like floating masks. Then there were cries, shrill chants, bursts of sound that made the monkeys scatter deep into the canopy. Pedro explained under his breath that they must absolutely not move, just wait until Napoléon Chimaux deigned to show himself. Lucie did her best to stand straight, look self-assured, but she was trembling all over. Her life, her future—none of it was hers to decide anymore.

How long did the intimidation last? She couldn't be sure. Here, time dissolved, reference points fell to pieces. Finally, the palm leaves parted and the anthropologist appeared, seemingly alone, apart from the fact that everything around him was vibrating, like a steamroller just waiting to advance. He was tall, powerful; he stood firmly, dressed in khaki fatigues. His head was bald and his large, dark eyes were bloodshot. His forehead and cheeks bore ochre markings in broken lines, like furious zigzags. Hands on his hips, he sniffed the air as would a predator stalking its prey. Lucie recalled the images from the Phoenix tape: the boot nudging the corpses in the huts . . . She wanted to grab a rifle and jam the barrel between his eyes, until he told her the whole truth. But if she so much as twitched, she'd be dead: a good thirty hatchets and lances must have been aimed straight at her, ready to slice her skull clean in two.

Chimaux's deep voice dripped like slow poison.

“Give me one good reason not to kill you where you stand.”

The man ignored the guides, spoke directly to Lucie. She raised one hand in a sign of peace, and dipped the other hand, slowly, cautiously, in the front pocket of her shirt. She held out a photo.

“Here's my reason. Eva Louts.”

She had answered in a dry, no-nonsense tone. She wanted to appear strong, fearless, because she had reached the end. The end of her search, the end of the world. Everything had to end now. Chimaux gave an evil smile.

“Come closer, closer . . . so that I can see the picture better.”

Without hesitating, Lucie walked forward, away from her guides. They were now less than three yards apart. Chimaux held out his arm, a sign for her to stop. Then he squinted at the photo.

“It looks like her. Eva Louts . . . But what else, young lady? Have you no more to tell me? Arouse my curiosity.”

“Arouse your curiosity? Try this on for size: you're waiting for Eva Louts, but she's not coming back, ever. She's been murdered.”

Chimaux raised one eyebrow slightly, but otherwise showed little reaction.

“Is that so?” he grimaced.

Lucie pushed further.

“Mutilated in a chimpanzee's cage. Stéphane Terney is also dead, with his iliac artery slit. Does that remind you of anything? I know about the mothers who died in childbirth, the brains that turn to sponge and drive people to murder. I saw the first Phoenix tape. When Eva Louts came here, you accepted her because she was able to surprise you. She knew the Ururu were left-handed and violent. She'd found a link that no one who came before her had suspected. So you decided to let her into your world. You forged a trusting relationship with her, and you sent her back to France with a mission: bring you back the names of extremely violent left-handed prisoners. You're looking for those cursed children who are starting to slaughter for no reason, is that it? Why? Is it because they're the final fruit of Phoenix, and the killer is preventing you from coming out of the jungle to see their faces? I've come here to find answers. Finish with me what you started with her.”

Chimaux tilted his head to one side, then the other, his eyes open wide, as if he were trying to read deep within Lucie. He looked like a strange animal suddenly confronted with its own reflection. His face and forearms were a maze of scars. His chest swelled under his military shirt, and he gave out a long, raucous cry. Instantly, dozens of naked silhouettes surged from the trees, hatchets in hand, and ran screaming toward Lucie. Paralyzed, she didn't have time to react. A hideous creature, twice as heavy as she, grabbed her. Another opened the palm of his enormous hand and blew a white powder into her face. Lucie felt a burning in her nostrils and windpipe. A second later, her legs gave way. Hands kept her from falling. Damp skins pressed against her. She smelled plant odors, mud, and sweat. Everything started spinning; trees and faces seemed to twist out of shape, melt away like wax. She saw herself lifting away from the ground, unable to move. And then, as the black flies poured into her skull, she felt Chimaux's warm breath against her neck.

“You wanted to know what Phoenix looks like? We're expecting a birth tonight. You'll be in the front row. And afterward . . . I'll drink your soul.”

They carried Lucie into the jungle.

The palm leaves closed behind them, like a theater curtain. A few cracking branches. Then silence.

A
virus, handed down from the father or mother to the child. A monster cleverly hidden in the DNA, interacting with the hand-dominance gene, just waiting for the right moment to awaken, proliferate in the brain of the host organism, and destroy it. Sharko didn't know much about viruses or their strategy, but the ten days he'd spent on this case had led him to a crazy hypothesis. A hypothesis he absolutely had to test.

It was a tired-looking man with a gaunt face who answered the door, on the fourth floor of the Haussmann-style building where Sharko had already come with Lucie to question the sister of Félix Lambert. The inspector introduced himself without showing his fake ID. His firm voice and impassive expression did the job.

“Police, Homicide division. I'd like to speak to Coralie Lambert. We've already met.”

“Masson. Her name is Coralie Masson. We've been married for over a year.”

The man, Patrick Masson, was not even thirty years old. He invited Sharko into the huge apartment without asking questions. The young woman was lying on a sofa, a pillow under her neck and hands on her stomach. She was watching television. She tried to sit up at the cop's entrance, but Sharko walked forward quickly, palm outstretched.

“No, please, don't get up. I won't be long.”

The inspector asked Patrick to leave them alone for a few moments.

“I'll be outside having a smoke,” the young man said to his wife. He waved his iPhone, latest model. “If you need me, just call.”

Sharko pulled up a chair so he could sit facing Coralie and looked at her swollen belly. He rubbed his hands together: he had to play it close to the vest. And especially, nothing about his discoveries in the laboratory.

“It's almost time for the birth,” he said calmly, with a half smile.

Limply, Coralie aimed the remote and turned off the TV. She had pearlescent skin and dark rings under her eyes. She was so young.

“I don't think you came here to talk about my baby.”

Sharko cleared his throat.

“You're right. The question I came to ask might seem strange, Mme. Masson, but are you lactose intolerant like your brother?”

The young woman finally sat up with a small grimace and made herself comfortable amid the cushions. Her ankles were swollen, surely an effect of a pregnancy whose impending conclusion promised to be difficult. In a dish on the floor lay some apple cores, empty biscuit packages, and an open jar of strawberry preserves.

“Yes, I am, but why do you ask?”

“Because, as I said last time, our investigation has led us into medical territory, and it's not just about Félix. It's bigger than that. That's all I can say for now, but I promise I'll tell you more as soon as I can. Were your father and mother intolerant?”

“My father could drink milk with no problem, but my mother was intolerant as well.”

“Did you know that in Europe, lactose intolerance is mainly found in immigrant populations and their descendants?”

“I didn't. But what exactly are you trying to say?”

“That at a certain point, there was probably some foreign blood in your family lineage. Blood that brought this intolerance and . . . uh . . . unfortunate side effects. And I believe it was relatively recent.”

Coralie looked outraged. She ran her tongue over her dry lips and knit her brow. She stood up with difficulty, went to open a drawer, and came back with a photo album, which she handed to Sharko.

“We are not immigrants, Inspector. We have been pure-blooded Frenchmen for many generations. Some members of my family drew up a family tree, with roots stretching back to the 1700s. You'll find it in there, at the beginning.”

Sharko opened the album. Large sheets of paper had been glued and folded inside, showing an extensive family chart.

“I'm not disputing the truth of your lineage,” said Sharko. “What I mean is, well, a child can just as easily be born from an extramarital affair, without it appearing on the family tree. A cheated-on husband, perhaps.”

Coralie kept silent, her lips pressed shut. Very quickly, Sharko spotted the branch for Coralie and Félix Lambert. Their mother, Jeanne Lambert, an only child who had died on the delivery table . . . Their grandparents . . . Dates, names, places of birth, all very French. According to the tree, Jeanne Lambert was born in Paris in 1968. The date immediately sent up a flare in the cop's mind. The “Phoenix no. 1” tape, shot in 1966 . . . The smuggling of test tubes between the Amazon and France, in 1967 . . .

Like an implacable machine, everything fell together logically in the cop's brain. His theory seemed to check out. He looked Coralie in the eye.

“You are lactose-intolerant. Your mother Jeanne was, too, but not your father. So the intolerance comes from the maternal side.” He pointed his finger at two boxes: Geneviève and Georges Noland. “Here's my question: were your grandmother or grandfather on the maternal side also lactose intolerant?”

Coralie thought for a few seconds.

“My grandfather drank coffee with milk a few days ago, exactly where you're sitting now. He divorced my grandmother a long time ago, but she drank milk too. They . . . they aren't intolerant.” She paused a moment. “So that means . . .”

Sharko could barely remain seated. He had, before his eyes, the genetic break in Félix Lambert's lineage. He ran a hand over his lips, realizing the breadth of his discoveries and all the horror they implied.

“Do you have any pictures of your mother and her parents?”

Coralie took the album and leafed through it, before giving it back to the inspector.

“Here, that's my mom and my grandmother. And here, Mom and Grandpa. You won't see any of the three together—my grandparents had already separated well before that. In these photos, Mom must be about fifteen. She was so beautiful . . . She was nineteen when she had me, and twenty when Félix was born.”

Sharko looked carefully at the color photos. Jeanne was a black-haired teenager, with dark eyes, certain features that clearly took after her mother, like her nose, the way she smiled. Coralie said aloud what was running through Sharko's mind.

“My mother doesn't look like my grandfather, that's what you're thinking, isn't it? It's . . . inconceivable!”

Sharko pressed his lips shut. The child wasn't Georges Noland's, he was now certain of it. A certainty took shape in his mind, relating to the Ururu, the smuggled blood, the business about viruses and evolution: as crazy as it seemed, Coralie and Félix's grandmother had received, probably without her knowledge, the semen of an Amazon Indian who was lactose intolerant, massive, and violent. Spermatozoa carrying a virus. The horror had taken place between 1967 and 1968. A horror intended to be spread from one generation to the next.

His mind reeling, the cop shut the album and slowly handed it back to Coralie, forcing her to stretch out her arm. He noted which hand she used to take it.

Her left.

His heart sank. In a halting voice, he said, “Tell me your child is a girl.”

Coralie looked at him strangely, then shook her head.

“No, it's going to be a boy.”

Sharko tried to keep calm, but inside he was falling apart.

“Are . . . are you being seen by a doctor?”

“Yes, but I . . .”

“What do the sonograms say? Is everything normal?”

Coralie seemed at a loss before this policeman who asked such direct, personal, and seemingly pointless questions.

“Of course everything's normal! The baby is nice and big, in perfect health.” She smiled. “He . . . he's always moving! I've never had such an appetite, I can't stop eating, he's such a little piglet. There's only that minor problem with my placenta, but it's not ser—”

“Hypervascularity?”

“How did you know that? What does it mean?”

Sharko's last doubts dissipated. Coralie was carrying GATACA within her. After obliterating his mother, Coralie's baby would grow up and transmit the retrovirus to his own child in turn, before his brain began eating itself and set him off on a violent rampage. A cursed cycle, destined to repeat as long as children were born in this family. Feeling devastated, Sharko squatted down in front of the young woman, searching for the right words.

“Is your maternal grandmother still alive?”

“Of course. But what's going on? Please, tell me!”

Sharko had trouble grasping the subtleties of the virus: the mothers seemed to die giving birth to boys, but were they spared when they had girls? Why? How? So many questions crowding to his lips.

“I'm aware of certain facts that I can't divulge at the moment, since we don't yet have proof. I can only tell you that something happened between your maternal grandparents. Something genetic, related to your mother's pregnancies. That's where the flaw started, if I can call it that, which was passed down to your brother Félix . . .”

He fell silent a moment, not wanting to tell her that she, too, was affected, and that a monster shaped like a man-of-war was nesting in her DNA and in that of her baby.

“I need to question your grandparents. I need to know what happened during your grandmother's pregnancy, and which doctors might have treated her.”

“Did you say a flaw? What flaw? We've never heard anything about a flaw. My grandfather would certainly have said something about it to the family. He's a geneticist, that's his specialty. He's the one who cared for my grandmother during her pregnancy. Repairing genetic flaws is his job, and there's no one better at it.”

Sharko felt as if he'd been punched in the face.

“Did you say . . . a geneticist?”

“A great geneticist. I don't know a lot about it, but I know he discovered some important genes, a long time ago. He became quite famous for it. For years, he's been the head of a major lab that specializes in helping couples who are having trouble conceiving, hormonal insufficiencies, that kind of thing. He helps them become pregnant. What do you want with him? What's going on?”

Sharko stood up, not sure if his legs would hold. It all seemed so clear now. Inseminations . . .

He also understood the attempt on Lucie's life in São Gabriel. Georges Noland had been present when Lucie questioned Coralie. Sharko remembered asking if anyone in their family had Amerindian origins, and Noland had cut him short. At that moment, the geneticist must have realized how far they'd gotten, and imagined one of them would end up going to Brazil. Lucie had even given him her card with her phone number. Without realizing it, she had delivered herself to the monster, who must have used his army contacts in the Amazon to try to get rid of her quietly by making it look like an accident.

The inspector stared at the young woman in horror, unable for a moment to gauge the breadth of his discovery and, especially, the measure of Georges Noland's perversity. The man had injected a virus into the body of his own wife, thus placing a curse on every succeeding generation. He had killed Louts and tortured Terney. In the shelter of his laboratory, he had inseminated who knew how many women with hormonal problems, embedding a deadly virus in their own DNA. How could any human being do such things?

With a trembling hand, he took out a pad and pen from his pocket.

“I'd like to talk to him. Could you please tell me his address?”

A long silence. Coralie sighed. She caressed her belly to regain her calm.

“At this hour, he must still be in the lab. My grandfather never stops working. The company is called Genomics and it's based in Villejuif, near the cancer institute.”

Sharko wrote down the information, teeth clenched. Behind him, the husband reappeared, a lighter in his hand. The inspector pocketed the notepad, then gently shook the young woman's hand.

“Please take good care of yourself.”

He left her in a state of great confusion, pulled her husband into the hallway, and spoke to him in an urgent voice.

“Has Coralie ever told you about her mother? Her death from massive internal bleeding when Félix was born?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then listen carefully: you are going to take her to the hospital immediately, because it's very likely that what happened with her mother will happen to her as well. Tell the doctors every detail you have about Jeanne Lambert's death, and tell them that if they don't do something, the same thing will be triggered when Coralie gives birth to her baby. Something that will cause her to die of a massive hemorrhage. The whole thing is genetic.”

The man was on the verge of collapse. Sharko laid a hand on his shoulder.

“There might still be a chance to save her, but you have to go now. And, whatever you do, do not let her talk to her grandfather. I'm heading to Villejuif. This whole thing is his doing.”

He ran down the stairs three at a time. Once in his car, he drew his Smith & Wesson from its holster, loaded it, and sped away from the curb.