Martin stood guard just inside the doorway with a pistol in his hand and sweat running down his face.
Three paces away, Anna leaned over Zandra Bibi’s shoulder, studying the computer screen. Dried blood streaked Anna’s right arm. Both rifles hung by their slings over her shoulder. Her white T-shirt and khaki pants were coated with dirt and grime, as though she’d been rolling around on the floor before she’d come to rescue him. Not only that, strands of auburn hair had been torn loose from her braid and straggled around her face.
“See what I mean?” Zandra Bibi leaned back in her chair and looked up at Anna. She wore camo and a holstered pistol. Her rifle leaned against the wall to the rear of her computer table.
Anna frowned. The sequence kept repeating, then it would pause, and the cursor would flash. “Yes, he used the double helix architecture of DNA, purines and pyrimidines, to design a photonic message.”
Martin said, “What does that mean?”
“Well, imagine a long string of Christmas tree lights spiraling around the tree, but the light bulbs are shaped like hexagons and pentagons.”
“Which are the building blocks of life, right? Adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine?”
“Correct. However, in this case, each light bulb, each hexagon and pentagon, is actually made up of thousands of tiny points of light.”
“Photons?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, the string of lights is turned off right now.”
Zandra nodded. “And when we turn it on, we’ll see the photons spinning, up or down, and we’ll be able to read the message in the same way that we’d read the message of a conventional computer written in ones and zeroes—like opening your email.”
“How do we turn the string of lights on?”
“We need a key: the quantum key code.”
Anna looked at Martin for several seconds, as though deep in thought. “I wonder if the QKC is our maze.”
“Our maze? How?
“Think of the QKC as an ordinary key that fits into a door lock. The jagged edge of the key, when inserted into the lock, clicks over tumblers, and unlocks it. The zigzagging course around the shapes of our maze may be the jagged edge of the key.”
“How do we insert it into the lock?”
“I don’t know.” Tears of frustration briefly glazed her eyes. “Let me try something. Major, can you cross-reference every known version of LucentB with Hazor’s most recent DNA sample?”
Bibi moved her chair forward again and put her hands on the keyboard to input the commands. “Sure, but I don’t understand what relevance—”
“You will.”
Anna paced while they waited. Those few instants seemed like forever.
Zandra Bibi suddenly leaned forward. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”
“Show me.” Anna leaned over her shoulder to study the monitor.
“Here and here. Do you see? Hazor’s nuclear DNA has been rewritten to add a specific mutation of the HERV-Kde27 sequence. My God, he has the plague.”
“No, I suspect he was vaccinated with a live form of the virus.” Anna suddenly bent down to stare more closely at the screen. “Major, would you mind if I sit down? I need to decode the geometry of that virus.”
“Sure.”
Bibi vacated the chair and Anna sat down. It didn’t take long with a quantum computer to generate a visual model. As it appeared on the screen, she slowly leaned back in the chair. “My God, LucentB is beautiful.” She straightened and turned to Martin. “Can you see this?”
“Yeah, it’s a weird sphere, kind of like a geodesic dome.”
Zandra shoved back her chair and started to rise. “We need to tell Cozeba what we’ve found ASAP.”
“Wait.” Anna held up a hand. “Please, give me a little more time. We’re almost out of the maze, but not yet. I need to figure out how the Divine Word might fit into all this.”
“What’s the Divine Word?” Bibi asked.
Martin wiped his face on his dirty sleeve. “We don’t know that, either.”
“Okay, just tell me how this relates to Hazor’s DNA. Were the Russians testing a hypothesis on him?”
“Maybe,” Anna said. “Clearly, someone developed a live vaccine and gave it to him to see if it made him sick.”
With the silence of a cat, Anna rose and walked away from the screen. She stood so still, it was hypnotic. “But why isn’t Micah sick?”
“Neither is Major Bibi. Neither are you.”
Barely audible, as though speaking to herself, Anna whispered, “If Micah is pure sub-Saharan African he may not have Neandertal or Denisovan genes. Think of AIDS. Some people carry the retrovirus all their lives but never get the disease.”
“I don’t understand. Does that mean sub-Saharan Africans—”
“Are immune?” Micah said as he appeared just outside the doorway. He looked like a tall, broad-shouldered Grim Reaper. His dark skin had a turquoise tint in the light cast by the computer screen.
Martin was so surprised by Hazor’s sudden appearance he leaped backward. “I didn’t even hear you, Hazor! Jesus Christ!”
Hazor held up a hand and softly said, “Lower the gun, Nadai.”
Martin instantly lowered the gun. “S-sorry.”
Hazor remained standing just outside the door, his gaze continually flashing between Anna and the hallway. “Toss me one of the rifles, Anna.”
She did it instantly.
Hazor caught it. Tucking the pistol into his belt, he cradled the rifle. “All right. Talk to me about the DNA sequences.”
Anna took a step toward him.
“Here’s my hypothesis: the long photonic sequence Major Bibi has been receiving is the cure. I think the maze is the key to decrypt it, but I’m not sure how to insert the key into the lock—”
“So you’ve been in contact with Hakari?”
She shook her head violently. “No, but my partner may have. Yacob is probably the person who developed the vaccine you were given. He was brilliant at vaccine development. I don’t know how much you heard out there, and I don’t have a lot of time to explain! Just, for now, the point is, we almost have the cure, and we have to protect it!”
“Protect it from whom?”
“Russian troops are on the way.”
“Come on, Anna,” Martin said. “This isn’t the twentieth-century Cold War. Do you really think the Russians would just steal it and let the rest of the world die?”
Hazor turned to look at him as though he could not believe Martin had said that. “Yes. I do.”
“Well, if you’re right, then who on earth can we trust with the cure if we ever find it? Maybe every nation will hoard it for its own people.”
The room went so quiet that Martin could hear himself swallow. He felt like he’d just matter-of-factly revealed the death knell of the world.
“And so…” Micah said in a low deep voice, his gaze pinioning Anna. “Hakari left clues for the only person who might be able to decipher his genetic maze. The only person he trusted. You.”
“He didn’t trust me, Micah. He was too terrified to trust anyone. That’s why the maze exists. Besides, there were ten of us. Not just me. If he’d—”
“Ten,” Martin whispered. As certainty surged through his body, he felt suddenly feverish. It had to be! “Dear God. I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out when we were in Bir—”
Hazor suddenly turned to look down the hall, and yelled: “Get down!”
In Martin’s mind, the man moved in slow motion, pivoting like a well-oiled machine, crouching slightly, aiming his rifle down the hallway. Hazor fired a brief burst, then leaped into the room just as bullets shattered the stones outside and screams shredded the afternoon.
Stupidly, Martin stood riveted to the floor, his paleographer’s brain inanely cataloging their language. Russian, but a particular southern regional variation with hints of …
Martin skidded back into the corner to the right of the doorway where he stood shaking so badly he could barely keep his grip on the weapon. He’d never been this scared in his life. I don’t want to kill anyone.
“If they come through this door, you be ready to use that pistol!” Micah ordered.
“I—I will.” He prayed that was true.
Anna ran to take one side of the door, while Hazor covered the other. At the same time, Zandra Bibi grabbed her laptop and the notebook-sized device, shoved over the table to act as a shield, and leveled her pistol across the top.