Genocide of One: A Thriller (37 page)

Was Kento Koga calling the shots on the rescue operation from Japan? The CIA suspected
there was one more person of interest in Japan, though they weren’t able to confirm
it. Rubens recalled the question that had been tugging at him for a long time. “I
have one more question for all of you,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“The situation regarding the development of the supercomputer.”

“If you mean Blue Gene, it’s completed,” the third man, Durant, replied. “We’ve beaten
the Japanese to it.”

“Wasn’t that machine created to develop things like three-dimensional structures of
proteins?”

“That’s the level of computing power we were aiming for. If we can understand the
correct structure of proteins, we’ll be able to control most medical patents. America
will dominate the medical field.” Durant shrugged his shoulders. “The thing is, the
biomechanical structure turned out to be more complex than we thought. Even with the
computing power of Blue Gene, we’re no match for it.”

“So you’re not able to accurately determine the shape of receptors, for example?”

“We’re not. We just don’t have enough computing power. We can only hope for a major
breakthrough with algorithms, but right now it’s impossible. I suspect we need another
twenty or thirty years to get to the point where we can do that.”

Since Kento Koga had set out to develop a drug to treat PAECS, there must be a high
chance he’d succeed. With Nous’s intellect involved this was a certainty. The report
the Japanese police had sent confirmed Rubens’s suspicions. When it looked like his
apartment was going to be searched because his father was involved in some crime,
Kento had asked the detective this: “Was it research data he supposedly stole? Not
software?”

Which implied that Seiji Koga had left his son some software. Probably CADD software—a
computer-aided drug design program. If this led to the development of a drug to treat
a disease that contemporary science couldn’t cure, it meant that they had vastly underestimated
Nous’s intellectual capacity. At a mere three years of age, he’d gone light-years
beyond the limits of human intelligence.

But was this really possible? Rubens began to experience an instinctive feeling of
dread toward this unknown being. At the same time, though, a different kind of anxiety
raised its head. Weren’t they overlooking something critical?

“Is everything all right?” Durant asked the silent Rubens. “If you have any other
questions we’d be happy to answer them.”

“Give me a minute,” Rubens said with a smile, trying to pin down the source of his
anxiety.

An incurable disease that strikes children. The development of a special drug to treat
it. He’d investigated both these points thoroughly. A strategy to get one of the mercenaries,
Jonathan Yeager, to betray them. However…Rubens let his thoughts go a step further.
Curing a disease like that was a high hurdle for Nous to overcome. Why didn’t he choose
a simpler method? Like using money to win the mercenaries over to his side? There
must be another reason why he had to develop this drug to treat the disease. The instant
this thought crossed his mind, Rubens felt like his heart stopped.

“You’ll excuse me,” Rubens said, trying not to let his excitement show as he rose.
He asked them where the restroom was, left the conference room, and walked down the
deserted hallway.

Rubens entered a cubicle in the restroom and, standing beside the toilet bowl, pondered
the moral dilemma he was suddenly faced with.

If they pushed on with the emergency response phase of Operation Nemesis and took
Kento Koga into custody, the development of the new drug would grind to a halt. Indirectly,
this would lead to the death of children struggling with a terrible disease. Worldwide,
there were an estimated one hundred thousand people suffering from PAECS, the same
as the number of people killed in the Iraq War, which the Burns administration had
started.

So what are you going to do? Rubens heard this unvoiced question. Nous had, without
doing any moral damage to them, taken one hundred thousand people hostage. And in
doing so was testing his opponents’ conscience, asking Rubens’s side if they were
willing to interfere with the work Kento Koga was doing and turn their backs on the
children suffering from the disease.

For the first time in his life Rubens was confronting an intelligence so profound
it made him tremble. They might rack their brains to come up with a strategy, but
Nous’s response was always shrewder, more acute than they could ever have expected.
And all the countermeasures he was taking had been neatly mapped out before Operation
Nemesis had even been set in motion. The more Rubens felt himself at a disadvantage,
the more his impatience led him in a dangerous direction.

Shouldn’t we wipe out Nous? It’s too dangerous to let him live.

Did Jonathan Yeager understand what was going on? That his animal instinct to protect
his child was being manipulated by Nous?

Rubens left the cubicle, washed his face at the sink, and felt refreshed. The counterintelligence
measures in Japan targeting Kento Koga were beyond his authority to stop. He could
advise Eldridge, the operational supervisor, to put a halt to them, but he didn’t
think this quintessential bureaucrat would listen to him. Eldridge didn’t mind sacrificing
the lives of one hundred thousand children as long as he kept on President Burns’s
good side. It was the same when the cabinet approved the invasion of Iraq. They didn’t
care how many people died as long as they safeguarded their power and position.

So there was only one way to protect these sick children, Rubens concluded—successfully
carrying out the original aims of Operation Nemesis. Destroy Nous, and once this threat
to the United States was eliminated, they would most likely back off on the investigation
into the Japanese grad student.

When he arrived back in the conference room, Jurgens was holding an STE secure phone,
a digital phone that encrypted phone conversations in real time. “You have a call,”
he said.

“Thanks,” Rubens said, and took the phone. The call was from the operations center,
from the DIA representative, Avery.

“I can’t get in touch with Eldridge and was wondering if he’s with you,” Avery said.

This was a primitive code they had agreed on ahead of time. If Nous happened to intercept
their conversation, he wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the meaning.

“No,” Rubens replied, to which Avery said, casually, “Maybe he went to the movies.”

So the emergency response phase of Operation Nemesis had entered stage two. If Eldridge
had supposedly “gone to a museum,” that meant a problem had arisen. “The movies” signified
that all the preparations for the operation were complete.

“We need the supervisor’s approval,” Avery said, asking Rubens to green-light it.

“If it isn’t a pressing matter, then proceed.”

“All right,” Avery said, and hung up.

This short conversation set in motion a second sweep by the American air force stationed
in Kenya. They had made preparations for this without going through the usual communications
channels, so chances were slim that Nous had gotten wind of it. This operation would
most likely mean that Nous, the anthropologist, and the mercenaries would all be annihilated.

Rubens pictured their dead bodies rotting in the jungle. He tried his best to summon
up a sense of shame. He hoped he never got used to a job in which he had to order
the deaths of other people. The last thing he wanted was to turn into another Gregory
S. Burns. But he knew he was just deceiving himself, and he forced any sense of guilt
from his mind. This was the only way to save the lives of one hundred thousand sick
children. And among those children was Justin Yeager. Jonathan Yeager was going to
die in exchange for his son’s life.

“Pierce, get up.”

It was 5:00 a.m., and Yeager, on guard duty, shook the anthropologist as he lay curled
up on a bed of leaves. Pierce let out a small groan and opened his eyes. The other
men and Akili were all asleep.

“What is it?” Pierce asked grumpily.

“I hear drums,” Yeager said in a low voice, and Pierce turned to the darkness in the
east. A low, percussive sound penetrated the predawn jungle and reached them.

“Can you make it out?”

Pierce listened to the faint sounds, but shook his head. “It’s too far away.”

The day before they had barely shaken off their armed pursuers, but they’d been pushed
back deep into the Ituri jungle. They were more than fifteen kilometers away from
the nearest village.

“Are the armed insurgents on the move again?”

Pierce didn’t answer, but poured out some water from his canteen into his hand and
splashed it on his face, then took his small laptop out of his backpack. As if this
were a signal, Akili, lying next to him, sat up. His big eyes shone in the darkness.
Before he’d even realized it, Yeager had assumed a defensive posture.

Pierce booted up the computer and received some new information. An e-mail sent by
his Japanese “ally.”

“Any news?”

“Nothing important. Just an e-mail to Akili.”

“To Akili?”

Pierce turned the laptop toward Akili. Akili put on a headset and gazed at the display.

Yeager was getting good at reading the boy’s expressions. Right now the odd-looking
child’s face showed he was happy, as though he were entranced by some children’s TV
show. His interest aroused, Yeager peered at the screen, where he saw a strange sort
of writing, different from an alphabet.

“What is that?”

He meant to ask Akili, but Pierce replied. “He’s practicing language.”

“What language? Chinese?”

“It’s a form of Japanese.”

Akili, headset on, nodded from time to time. It seemed he was hearing a spoken lesson
as well.

“What does it say?”

“I don’t know Japanese.
Arigato
and
sayonara
, maybe?” Pierce stood up and listened again to the talking drums. “But we should
be leaving soon. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Agreed.”

The two of them split up and went to wake their colleagues. They’d been in the jungle
a week now, and the men were all starting to reek.

Yeager brought Mick over to the spot where Akili was intently gazing at the screen
and had him take a look. “Is this Japanese?”

Mick followed the writing with his eyes. “I think so,” he said.

“What’s it about?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Can’t you read?”

Mick glared at Yeager. “What’s written here is all about chemistry or numbers. But
the content is too difficult. And some of the sentences are kind of weird.”

“You can’t translate even one word?”

“It’s impossible. It’s all technical vocabulary.” Mick looked at Akili uneasily. “What’s
up with this guy’s brain?”

“Don’t interrupt him when he’s studying,” Pierce said. They left the three-year-old
alone.

They quickly washed up, wolfed down breakfast, then scanned the map to decide on their
route. The sound of the drums was coming from the route they had originally planned
on taking, so they gave up on going toward Komanda and switched to the southeast,
with Beni as their objective. “At the airport near Beni we can arrange for a small
airplane with supplies on board,” Pierce informed them.

The drumming continued while they buried any traces of their camp and prepared to
leave, and Yeager got uneasy. For drums to go on like this for so long, transmitting
a message from village to village, something really huge must have happened. But no
matter how carefully he listened he couldn’t make out the sound of gunfire or bombardment.

They hoisted their backpacks, and Pierce explained the route they planned to take
to Esimo. Akili, eyes glued to the computer, suddenly stood up. He motioned Pierce
over.

“New data?” Pierce asked. As he stared at the display his expression grew visibly
gloomy.

“Did something happen?” Garrett asked.

“The emergency response phase of Operation Nemesis has entered stage two. A large-scale
sweep of the area,” Pierce said, taking out a map and explaining it to them. “Five
armed groups have left the road and advanced into the jungle. Four thousand troops
altogether. They’re heading west, searching for us.”

He pointed to the route the enemy was taking, which cut across north of where they
were.

“That’s good for us. Then the south is completely clear. We head straight for Beni.”

Pierce shook his head decisively. “No. This isn’t good at all. This route intersects
the Pygmy camp. They plan to smash the Mbuti band.”

The mercenaries exchanged looks. They were all remembering the awful story they’d
been told in their briefing. About Pygmies being preyed on and cannibalized.

“It’ll be genocide,” Pierce said miserably. “The Pygmies in this region may be wiped
out.”

Perhaps sensing something wrong, Esimo started asking a question in a high-pitched
voice. Akili stared fixedly at his upset father. As Pierce reluctantly began explaining
the situation, Garrett slowly asked, “What do we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Mick answered at once. “We can’t fight four thousand
troops.”

“So we’re just going to stand by and watch all of Esimo and Akili’s people be slaughtered?”
Meyers asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Mick spat out. “Don’t you remember what happened yesterday? We
stood by and watched the villagers in Amanbere get wiped out.” He laughed scornfully.
“You’re such a hypocrite.”

“You bastard!” Meyers started to grab Mick, but a shrill voice brought him up short.
Esimo, gesturing with both hands, was complaining about something.

“He wants us to let him go back,” Pierce translated. “He wants to go back to his people.”

Yeager shook his head. “Out of the question. He’ll be killed.”

“But can’t we do something?” Pierce said, speaking on behalf of Esimo and his pent-up
anger. “There’s got to be a way to save the Pygmies.”

“The only thing we can do is escape,” Yeager said. Considering the enemy’s strength
and position, it was the only choice. “If he wants to save Akili, we have to abandon
the other Pygmies.”

“Hold on,” Garrett said. “Everybody slow down and take a deep breath. There is one
way we can save Esimo’s tribe.”

“How?”

“By turning on our GPS.”

The mercenaries silently considered his idea, but Pierce couldn’t follow. “If we turn
on our GPS,” Garrett explained, “Zeta Security will know our position. And that information
will go through the Pentagon to the enemy forces north of us. They’ll reroute to the
south and should miss the area where the Mbuti camp is.”

Pierce understood, but he also realized the risks involved. He looked grim. “If that
happens, then four thousand enemy troops will be headed straight at us.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Yeager looked at the map and calculated the distance between them and the enemy. “The
closest troops are more than ten kilometers away. We might be able to escape.”

“Think we should?” Garrett asked.

“Let’s do it,” Meyers replied, forestalling Mick’s objections. “If you don’t want
to, then go ahead and escape on your own.”

Mick gave a thin, sullen smile, but didn’t object.

Garrett laid down his backpack. He kept only the wireless headset and left the other
satellite communications equipment they wouldn’t need. He took some of Pierce’s equipment
to lighten the older man’s load. Garrett picked up the GPS. “I’ll turn it on for just
ten seconds,” he said. “Then let’s get out of here. It’ll be a race against the enemy.
I’ll read out the GPS number, so could somebody write it down?”

Meyers took out a pencil and waterproof memo pad. “Go.”

Garrett turned on the device and read out the latitude and longitude on the small
display. As Meyers wrote down the figures, Yeager spread out his map and plotted their
present position. At that very moment, Zeta Security in South Africa must be hurriedly
making contact with the Pentagon.

“Okay, let’s get out of here.”

Garrett switched off the GPS, and the soldiers formed up in their usual diamond-shaped
battle formation and headed southeast. They would try to cover as much distance as
possible today. Yeager, covering the right flank, had just done a safety check of
the area when there was a sudden, huge explosion. No warning, no whistle of a shell.
The shock from behind ran right through him, and the heat and blast waves sent him
flying forward.

His head landed in a small stream, and though his face was scraped, he remained conscious.
He slapped the side of his head, trying to get his hearing back. He struggled to his
feet and saw that the spot where they’d been, fifty meters behind him, had been turned
into a ragged crater carved out of the jungle, the mowed-down bushes radiating out
from the core of the blast.

He got down in a prone firing position, but he had no idea where the enemy had opened
fire from. He looked up, saw the branches of the trees above him snapped away, and
shuddered. The enemy was in the air. An unmanned reconnaissance Predator drone, six
hundred meters up, had fired a Hellfire missile at them. The pilot was at an air force
base in Nevada, remotely piloting the drone on the other side of the world as though
he were playing a video game.

The other mercenaries, collapsed on the ground, were moaning and cursing.

“Akili! Akili!”

Esimo, at the head of the formation and the least injured, yelled out his son’s name.
Akili’s small body had been thrown away from Pierce, and he was seated on a layer
of fallen leaves, crying his eyes out.

“Take care of Pierce! And watch out for UAVs!” Yeager yelled to the other three. Then
he tossed his backpack aside and raced to Akili’s side. The tree canopy above the
boy was sparse, and there was nothing to block the view from above. If the infrared
camera acquired him, another Hellfire missile would zero in on the three-year-old.

Yeager scooped up Akili in his arms, scrambled behind a large tree, and at that very
instant the second explosion hit. Traveling at supersonic speed, the missile made
no sound at all until it hit, at the exact spot where Akili had been sitting. The
large tree covered them, and they were able to withstand the blast wave and flames,
though Yeager’s insides were shaken by the shock wave.

“Predators only carry two missiles!” Meyers shouted. He was hugging the ground behind
another tree. “He won’t fire again! But don’t let them see you!”

Yeager was trying his best to calm Akili. As he used to do with Justin, he held him
in his arms and gently rocked him. He’s as warm and soft as my son, he realized. He
patted the boy’s head, and the thought suddenly struck him: he’s exactly like Justin.
He would have been born a normal child but for a genetic mutation that made him have
to flee for his life. Through no fault of his own, through no desire of his own.

“Akili! Akili!” Esimo shouted as he ran over. Behind him, Pierce and the wounded mercenaries
limped their way over.

Yeager handed the still-shaken Akili to his father and turned to Meyers. “You okay?”

Blood was trickling out of Meyers’s mouth. “Yeah. Just a small cut.”

Both of them still had a ringing in their ears and had to shout. Meyers lowered his
medical bag and started checking out the others’ injuries. Akili, Esimo, and Mick
had no visible wounds. Their eardrums were fine, too. Pierce, who’d lost consciousness
for a brief moment, had suffered the same sorts of bruises and lacerations that Yeager
had, but he was okay. The most pitiful-looking of the group was Garrett, who’d been
in the rear of the formation. The backs of his legs were bloody, ripped apart with
shrapnel. Fortunately his backpack had protected the rest of his body.

“No broken bones. And your major blood vessels are fine,” Meyers said as he tested
Garrett. “When we stop the bleeding you should be okay.”

“Do you think you can walk?” Yeager asked, and Garrett nodded.

Pierce, looking stunned, took out the small laptop he used for communication. He pushed
the on switch, and when the display came on he breathed a huge sigh of relief. This
small machine was, for all of them, a lifeline.

“As soon as Garrett’s patched up, we’ll get out of here,” Yeager said, and Mick cut
in.

“What the hell is going on here? I thought we were supposed to know what the Pentagon
was up to!”

Pierce came over and shot Mick an annoyed look.

“There’s a limit to what information we can gather and process,” Pierce said. “The
enemy is taking advantage of our blind spot.”

“Damn it. From the very beginning you didn’t know anything, did you? You trust this
guy, and nothing’s going to go right.”

“Shut up, you son of a bitch!”

At Pierce’s angry shout, even Garrett, getting his wounds treated, looked up in surprise.

“We’ve done the best we can!” Pierce shouted. “An idiot like you doesn’t have the
right to criticize me!”

“What the hell? Say that again, you shithead!”

Mick’s English wasn’t always good, but he had a wealth of swear words. The shouting
match immediately escalated.

“Enough!” Yeager shouted, pushing his way between them. He pinned Mick’s arms back
and tried to pull him away. But the fight was quickly over. Pierce, still yelling
his threats, suddenly grimaced and broke down in tears. Since the massacre at Amanbere
village, he had found his life in danger a number of times, and his nerves couldn’t
take it anymore. Yeager put his arm around the anthropologist and led him away from
the others.

“I’m sorry,” Pierce said, muffling his teary voice. “I know something’s wrong with
me.”

“You’ve never gone through this before. You’ve got to hang in there. If you fall apart,
we’re all in big trouble.”