HUMAN GENOME

corentin macqueron

HUMAN GENOME Here is our future

NOVEL

CORENTIN MACQUERON

HUMAN GENOME

Translated from french by GABRIELLE LEROY

August 2008

HUMAN GENOME Today still, no one truly understands the appearance of this unlikely molecular arrangement that we call life, and that led to the incredible emergence of mind and conscience.

Everyday, we forget this very truth, so omnipresent that it seems common, in so much that we don’t even bother questioning ourselves.

There is no greater enigma in the whole Universal history though, and this enigma is at the heart of our workaday.

Because everyday, we touch, feel and live the greatest mystery of all time.

We ARE the enigma.

Ultimate causality of our own existence, the mystery of life’s origins still escapes from us, for now and ever.

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INTRODUCTION

At the dawn of a revolution

Earth and life sciences form a complex domain. As every single science, they evolved over the centuries thanks to the work of lots of persons and, here and there, of some geniuses with stunning intuition and dazzling thoughts.

But ideas and theories are never neutral or objective and the greatest scientists are also at times sciences philosophers. From then on, everyone’s affect comes into the picture and hedges the data.

Mathematics never really suffered from it, thanks to their natural abstraction. Physics revealed themselves much more sensible to this phenomenon, drifting often to metaphysics, well inspired to the best, deeply sclerotic to the worst.

Earth and life sciences found themselves so manipulated that they led to the worst atrocities of humankind.

Religion can be partly charged with it.

If its association with Science doesn’t have to be nonsense, its stranglehold has widely proven noxious.

Religion has indeed plunged life sciences into a terribly 3

harmful lethargy for Humankind. Both parts are not unsympathetic though, and would gain a lot by merging. In order to understand well the actual situation, a brief statement about sciences history in general and Biology in particular, turns out to be indispensable; since a science is never truly understood without knowing its history, its glories, its trials and errors, and its past restless wanderings.

Confronted with an environment crawling with life, origin of rich natural resources as well as unsuspected lethal dangers, Mankind has quickly hunted to gain its understanding. Long confined in a simple survival necessity, Mankind knowledge over nature finally turned into a truly intellectual approach with the appearance of the one that we still call today Homo sapiens.

Us. To provide its subsistence, but also for the sake of comfort, sapiens learned how to domesticate beasts and how to cultivate plants. Often injured or sick, modern Mankind went into the fabulous medicine way. Very quickly, magic rituals and other pagan sacrifices started to overrun scientific reflection for such things as healing a warrior or ordaining rain.

The first biologists were not what we would call them now, considering the appellation “biology� appeared only in 1802 with Lamarck. At the dawn of civilization, it is then the doctors, the cultivators, the breeders, the shamans, the naturalists or the philosophers who paved the way. The first anatomic knowledge recorded is the animal paintings from the superior Paleolithic, dating from more than thirty-five thousands years. Medicine tried its first trepanations since 12000 BC along with the first fracture reductions. Cultivators enhanced their wheat yield and the breeders tamed the dog and the horse.

The Greek Civilization’s discoveries on Nature were a scientific breakthrough. The Greeks though, were still persuaded that Mankind was a special case, that he is nature success. Since 450 BC, Greeks had already considered the notion of progressive transformation of 4

living being, from marine fishes to big earth creatures.

They had conscience of the death battle that life has to lead against its environment if she wants to survive.

Transformation and environmental pressure, here are nothing more than the subsumptions of a global living world understanding that will lead, more than two thousands years later, to the magisterial Evolution theory.

Aristotle tried to express the laws of the Living and, despite huge mistakes, his work is still exceptional. Since Antiquity, fossils have been understood as creatures which disappeared in ancient times, leading to the notion of extinction, of apparition and evolution of species. A tremendous march that Middle Age is going to strive to undermine with all the energy of its bad faith; because to the Greek Golden age succeeded the Middle Age stifling obscurantism.

A deep dreadful period of stagnation and regression was setting in.

Monotheist Religions simply took over power, science, research and education. They locked up knowledge.

Questioning yourself became impossible, progress was banned, research, aggravated. The fossil vestiges were not seen anymore as extinct creatures, but as “mineral formations” having “accidentally” taken the shape of organized creatures or as ultimate failures of divine creation. Besides the conspicuous bad faith of such assertions, the world was only understood as God’s work.

Life, with Mankind being its master piece, was only the Almighty’s work, created such as the very first day, and since all its components were immutable, perfectly fixed.

Streams of inanities were taught during centuries, and this, in a blindness as corrupted as guilty.

In Occident, Biology is supposedly elucidated in its back-breaking majority, passed through the extremely distorting biblical indicator. The Arabic World, after having bravely resisted, ended up sinking into Obscurantism, consumed by Islam. Some lucidity islets thankfully subsist and will finish off triumphing. Geniuses such as Leonard 5

da Vinci dared transgressing the religious proscriptions, permitting fabulous marches in Anatomy.

In the XVIIth century, René Descartes and his Discourse on the method proposed a mechanical interpretation of life, the theory of “animals are machines”.

Fertile, in this time, this idea would still have some limits though, falling into a dangerous reductionism, later flayed

by Ernst Walter Mayr, turning Biology into a non-noble sub-science, reduced to its simplest and silly principles, neglecting interactions between sub-systems, and crushed by the almighty explicative power of Physics.

And then, here comes the microscope that will reveal the infinitely small, allowing a dazzling progress in the understanding of the Living mechanisms. In these days, many still believed in the so-called “spontaneous generation” theory, stipulating that, for instance, a snake could gush suddenly from ooze, instantly created by it through a vitalism as obscure as unsound.

The most modern biologists fought fervently this kind of theories, and tried freeing Biology from any desperate recourse to occult forces, black magic and other divinations, to turn it into a full-fledged Science at least as strong and noble as Physics.

In order to explain the original formation of life, then its renewal through breeding, a bunch of improbable theories, all equaling themselves in silliness, will be enacted. The microscope and the discovery of gametes will brighten the breeding enigma. Fossilized species are (re)discovered, calling the divine world creation immutability into question. Geology, on the other side, asserts itself and reveals that earth is far more than the six thousands years granted by the Church and the Flood theory.

The controversy rages. The pressure builds. The millennium is ready to shatter.

In 1859, after a fabulous 5 years journey around the world, and after 20 years of compiling data and maturing its reflection, Charles Darwin finally published On the origin of species. According to him, every single creature 6

follows from one unique original living form which, with time, has slowly evolved and then specialized under environmental pressure. Mankind is no longer an isolated creature.

He is no longer God’s finality.

Mankind is an animal like all the others. It’s an enormous clap of thunder as well as a confirmation of the ideas existing since many dozens of years. Fifty years before, Lamarck was already talking about transformism, and certain naturalists like Buffon, strictly fixists in the early beginning, ended up integrating the notion of varying species, consciously or against their will. But God’s design behind every creature, especially mankind, was still the applied dogma. With Darwin, things are starting to change at last. Evolution, though, is not yet talked about. Even Darwin himself doesn’t use this word before the 6th edition of his founding work. Besides, some discoveries are weakening his beloved theory and it’s only a matter of time before a train of anti-evolutionist thoughts comes into the world, worshiping God as the only Creator.

The controversy will keep on raging until the formulation of the synthetic Evolution theory late 40’s, adopting the Darwinian scheme with an overwhelming majority.

Obscurantisms never really disappeared though; racial theories are forging and hardening.

Eugenics is taking off.

Brandishing scientific evolving elements, Nazis were firmly intending to impose the Aryan type during WWII. In the 50’s, Crick and Watson discovered DNA, a major event in history of sciences. Quickly, cells replication mechanisms are discovered, along with genes expression, their multiplication and their mutations. Starting with this basis, the Evolution theory is confirmed with the most brilliant éclat.

The discovery of the architectural genes, which dictate all by themselves the morphologic development, demonstrates that the slightest mutation can affect the 7

whole shape of the organism, fighting at the breach the anti-evolutionists that still don’t believe in the evolving power of mutations.

The genetic genie, the genomic, the genic therapy, and the cloning are the prodigious enfants terribles of DNA discovery.

The universality of the genetic code, in every living form, imposes the idea of descent from a unique original life form.

Today, the power of science is sparkling and seems to have finally triumphed over the rovings of obscurantism.

We pushed back the limits of our existence that has reached a longevity never equaled. With internet, information is available everywhere all the time. We trampled the Moon’s surface and sent robots to explore the ends of the universe.

The old beliefs are falling under the past experiences fire before being crushed by Science’s steam hammer.

Biology unveiled the humble primate hidden in every one of us, taking away our being-special status in Nature Laws. Astronomy showed us that we’re only occupying a minuscule planet, at the boundary of a galaxy of just middle size, drifting in an incommensurable space that contains millions of others. Geology, revealed us the immensity of time. Universe is fifteen billions years old and Mankind just came on. He threatens to disappear already though, auto destructing itself by establishing the record, as incredible as pathetic, of the shortest hegemony of Life history.

In the XXth, science has meticulously destroyed the idea of Mankind having a cosmic importance.

Yet, Science stumbles.

What seemed to be only a small cloud before the ultimate understanding of the world, has finally turned into a typhoon, destroyer of our skill and knowledge.

The quantum behavior of material has indeed shattered any hopes physicians had about understanding 8

the world. It’s appearing to us now, as affected by a disturbing schizophrenia, dictated by a wave-corpuscle duality observed a thousands time, but still never explained.

Particles Physics and cosmology are slowly becoming aware that their unifying problem, already almost unsolvable, is linked to only less than five per cent of Universe global mass. A missing mass exists indeed, bustling about around us, wrapping us, but remaining unobservable, totally evasive. It’s then more than ninetyfive per cent of our Universe that remains out of our understanding.

In 1998, we discovered that the Universe expansion is accelerating, like pushed by a mystical anti gravitational force beyond our comprehension.

On its side, Medicines is trampling on its fight against cancer. It can’t get rid of AIDS, and genic therapy is killing its patients instead of the promised miracle recovery, while the formidable power of psyche over the body has been demonstrated without being explained.

Lost in the middle of this historical stampede, Biology still can’t explain the improbable emergence of life. The appearance of the original cell stays an unfathomable mystery and, with the Big Bang, it simply forms the greatest enigma of all times.

Then the controversy splashes back.

Stanley Miller’s experiences in 1953 on the apparition of amino acids in the primordial soup caused a sensation in their time, but didn’t convince much in the end. No one understands how life splashed. Unable to solve the crucial problem of our origins, Biology is weakened too in her master piece : DNA omnipotence is beaten in breach in the 90’s. Many discoveries makes genetics teeter : heredity laws are broken, clones are not as perfect as expected, and epigenetic phenomenon are spreading confusion. Since 2000, more and more observations have completed to disintegrate the all-DNA theory, already cracked.

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Life seems to use other vectors than the DNA chain, unknown, but probably as powerful.

In parallel, researches on Mankind origins have made appear a pre-human line highly complex, terribly rich and, sometimes, incoherent.

The capital discovery of Abel and Toumaï, new types of pre-human, makes literally theories to implode.

We discovered Homo floresiensis, a new contemporary specie of Homo sapiens and of Neandertal, which seems to bolt from the blue. It’s at once all Mankind history that has to be rewritten. The evolution theory is questioned again.

Mankind and its history are falling again in the fog.

Nothing needed more for the creationist theories to take over science difficulties. Religion is coming back in full force in an ultra technologic world where, in the end, between the ethical questions brought up by human cloning, hazardous genetic manipulations on GMO and the proven fraudulences of certain Asiatic laboratories – the Hwang-woo-suk scandal –, science seems to be mistaken and disturbs. Religious streams are taking advantage of this, coming back to the surface and reveling themselves in with a wobbly mass culture and an appetite for marginal theories, blowing a improper, and for the less doubtful, esoteric wind, without us being able to measure its impacts.

On the top of the Church, besides the quasi historical acceptance of the evolution theory by the Pope John Paul II, it only took his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, a few days to kick in touch and rekindle creationist theories.

Thus, it’s in this non obvious maelstrom that Science will have to impose all its vigor and its belief in experience to have the last word of the story. The triumph of Mankind over Nature is an as utopian as out of sense, but improving our knowledge to crush plagues such as AIDS or genetic disorders is certainly a titanic work, but it might be at our outreach.

Cloning still brings up loads of ethical questions, but with embryonic stem cell, it promises us moon and stars.

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From failing organ replacement to eternal life, including miraculous harvests, clean energy sources or biological warfare, biotechnologies terrify more than firing our imagination.

And today more than ever, they don’t seem to have any limits.

In this weird climate of triumph and suspicion, let’s wager that science will know how to preserve itself, without letting itself devoured by the torments of human passions.

The recent events in Russia, involving the American laboratory Futura Genetics, are the direct result of this need of renewal, alas made with an underdressed blend of ambition and haste. The discoveries of this laboratory might be of the highest importance concerning our future as a species. The new genetic engineering technologies developed by Futura Genetics might indeed redefine research axis in the field of biotechnology for the next 100 years to come. That’s why, despite major incidents that have sadly enameled those events, the works led by Futura Genetics must be analyzed with all the necessary scientific hindsight and rigor.

The temptation is deep today, to rush through the file giving as a pretext the grave breaches of trust concerning ethics that might have showed the research director Nathan Craig and his team.

But it would be as grave to burke a potential discovery of such an impact claiming not being able or not wanting to put things in perspectives. It is not obvious to see things clearly though, considering that the Russian government denies any implications in the works of this American laboratory, keeping the seals and not tolerating any international experts on the crime scene.

Officially, Washington refuses to give any comments even though United States have lost over twenty-nine of their nationals in those dark events; and the White House seems to do everything in its power to break the seals on those rugged labs.

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The present text intends thus to recount the tragic events that happened in Moscow and Daryznetzov, where 43 persons lost their lives.

Co. Ma. La Rochelle – December 2007

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МОСКВА The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.

Charles Darwin

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Blizzard The air was cold.

Cold and harsh. Sergueï Pavlovitch was walking hastily in the blizzard. The mass of ice-cold air coming straight from Siberia had plunged Moscow in a terrible cold. The temperature had dropped under minus thirty-five degrees since a few hours.

A first in forty years.

It is said in vain that earth was warming up, Moscow itself was freezing. The city was literally petrified by the cold.

Sergueï tried to bury his gloved hands deeper in the pockets of his big leather jacket, his fur hat was well glued on his head, ears shot, but nothing changed. The cold was awful and the stinging wind was ploughing his face, not without infiltrating tons of snow in his collar. It didn’t matter. He was tough. Not a mean guy though. He was just tough. And, tonight, he had something to do. He had been entrusted with a mission.

The objective was quite blurry, and Sergueï was suspecting his employers of voluntarily keeping him in ignorance of the real grasp of his mission. In the main lines, he was just supposed to “visit” the facilities of Futura Genetics, a big American research laboratory in the genetic 15

genie, whose high-tech premises where located on the Moskova banks.

Sergueï was working for a private security company; but, he had kept on changing jobs and companies during those past three years, from being a simple bodyguard to being in a political elite corps called in reinforcement for important diplomatic missions.

Recently, he succeeded staying with the same company. He was fed up with commuting for the protection of anonymous persons he’ll never see again.

That’s why, for some time now, even though his official title hadn’t been clearly defined, he had kind of become the security head’s right-hand man, working for the Sini Bojé, Sons of God, a badly known muscovite religious organization. So unknown that before working for them, Sergueï had simply never heard of them. And yet, the more he was learning at their sides, the more he was realizing that their discretion equaled their influence.

This nauseating blend of power and religion, Sergueï didn’t approve. Not that he wasn’t religious. He just found that a little bit inappropriate. But he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at it. It was a hard time. So, all that mattered to him was being paid. And he was well paid. So if those socalled men of God messed around with Russian politics, and fucked whores in the dodgiest banias1 of the capital, he didn’t mind. He was mounting guard.

The Sons of God were supposed to have loads of enemies, as it was constantly repeated to him, but if he gave a thought about it, he would realize he never actually had any real problems. A simple well-paid work all-in-all.

And, in the actual Russia, he was thinking, it wasn’t luxury.

Because everything was going wrong in Moscow. Let’s just don’t even talk about the rest of the country, engaged in an accelerated capitalist phase, going too far, too fast. On the international scene, it was well seen to talk about the accelerated capitalization of the liberal-communist China and its bad effects on population and environment.

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Russian sauna (extremely hot, alternatively wet and dry)

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But it was far worst up here.

In a few years, since the major historical event that was the massive breakdown of Soviet Union on a certain night of August 1991, Russia had everything she had been secretly dreaming of lately. After more than half a century of successive communist dictatorship initiated by Lenin, Russians yield to the occidental world’s mermaids.

In less than ten years, Moscow had turned into a shapeless mass of colorful neon lights and gigantic advertising panels. Mc Donald’s had established themselves two hundred yards away from Lenin’s mausoleum. It was pure anarchy.

Sergueï didn’t miss the soviet era at all, but he couldn’t stop noticing the increase of inequalities between the new riches from gas and petrol, from the mob, the corrupted politicians and the poor Russians, sinking into misery.

Sergueï himself was part of those poor Russians, povertystricken and forgotten, until he was hired by the Sons of God. He was conscious he had been lucky. He wasn’t a former military, or a former member of KGB. He was even less a Spetsnaz. In brief, he didn’t really have the type profile of security agents, who became more and more numerous in Moscow, thanks to the new riches and the mobsters. He had adapted well and was making a good living.

And to go on like this, tonight, he had to sneak in Futura Genetics to bring back a maximum of information to his employers, the Sons of God. He didn’t exactly understand why he had been asked to do this as the Sons of God and Futura Genetics had, somehow, merged a few times ago. But according to what Sergueï understood of it, dissensions had appeared, and the Sons of God wanted to make sure that Futura Genetics was loyal to its “commitments”. Thus he had to collect loads of information concerning the CTC service of Futura Genetics.

Sergueï had absolutely no idea of what CTC could mean, but he didn’t care : he knew where to go, what to search for, photograph and then put back in place. He got 17

all the security access codes for the different building surrounding walls by bribing one of Futura’s agents. This hadn’t been that hard. Those lads were so underpaid.

Moreover the guy who gave away the information risked nothing if he had taken the necessary care, which Sergueï was sure of.

He turned at the street corner and started going along the gigantic premises of Futura Genetics. A poor homeless was mooching in a corner, huddling up under a miserable patched up blanket. He wasn’t moving and was buried under a good quantity of snow, even though he took care of sheltering himself; illusory with such a blizzard. It was hard to say if the poor guy was dead or not. Sergueï felt sad, touched by the destiny of this perfect stranger; but he couldn’t stop to feel sorry for him. If he did it, he would be dead. Moscow abounded with the same kind of individuals, and helping them meant abandon everything to become like them.

So, he passed on. He walked for another hundred feet to reach the small service door. Apart from this bloody blizzard, the night was surprisingly calm. It was around 4 am. During the night, with blocked doors, the building was watched only by CCTV cameras. It was nearly too easy, he said to himself. Although, it was exciting enough, Sergueï wasn’t the kind of guy to complain about a too-easy job.

Doors wouldn’t be a problem, he had the access codes.

Speaking about the CCTV cameras, he just had to hide under a simple hood. The movement captors wouldn’t raise the alarm once the codes entered. A real walkover. Sergueï put over his hood, tapped the codes and entered.

He moved slowly in the first corridor. Neon lights came on. Sergueï was blinded and it took him several seconds to recover sight. He went on quickly following his indications.

As he went along in the gigantic corridors painted in an impeccable sterilized-nearly-medical white, the neon lights were turning on in front of him and turning off right after him, as if the light was following him. He reached a double glass door. Armored apparently.

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On the ground, he read the lettering : CTC AREA He was finally there. After having typed another code, the first door slowly opened. He entered the airlock. The door closed quickly behind him. He waited a moment, slightly uncomfortable being locked in this bright airlock while everything outside was plunged in the darkness. He could only see his reflect on the black windowpane. He was miles away. Then, the other door opened. Relieved, he went out rapidly.

Sergueï was done.

A small hour had been enough for him. Everything went on smoothly. He realized his researches made him visit all the laboratories of the CTC zone.

All but one.

Sergueï went passed it a few minutes ago without paying much attention, apart from the fact he didn’t need to go in. Intrigued, he turned back to the famous door.

He slowly read again the lettering: CTC SPECIAL SPECIES He didn’t understand English well, but he believed reading “Special Specimens”. He stayed like this for quite a while, thinking, and then decided to enter.

Sergueï was running, panting and out of breath, in a maze of white corridors. His head was terribly painful; blood was running on his temples and on his forehead, dripping in his eyes. He had a blurred vision. And the other loony was still running after him, at less than one meter behind.

He had found this guy in a tiny room linked to the other lab, just sited on a bed, wearing green medicalpapered clothes. The shaved headed guy had jumped on him and had creamed him with a superhuman strength.

Although Sergueï wasn’t a shrimp, he had terribly struggled to push him back.

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Quickly realizing that he could only run away, Sergueï had ran in the corridors, trying to shake off his pursuer who he hadn’t succeeded blocking him behind the multiple doors. He couldn’t remember well, but the man had succeeded smashing him really violently in the face.

It hurt. It really hurt.

He had to flee. And shake off this loony. Sergueï finally reached the building exit, still pursued by a few meters by the guy wearing torn up and covered by blood green medical-papered clothes. Sergueï ran, crossed the road, ran along the residential buildings at top speed, crossed a big road, and reached the Moscova’s banks.

The blizzard was still as strong. He was constantly looking back, and could only see a few meters behind him, wondering where the hell his pursuer was. His speed was slackening down. His lungs were on fire. He decided to stop, sure to have shaken off this whacko.

Blood was beating to break in his temples. Melted snow, mixed with blood, was dripping on his forehead.

Sergueï heard suddenly a demented howl, just had the time to turn around before being hit at full speed by his pursuer.

The latter didn’t really know how to fight, fact which Sergueï found odd, but he was incredibly strong and seemed to really hold it against him. Sergueï received a terrible blow in the gorge, suffocated, and then jumped on his aggressor, trying to overcome him.

The man became raving mad and trying to get rid of Sergueï, he bumped into the guardrail, pushing them both in the Moskova.

Sergueï couldn’t get over it.

They were going to break their neck height meters lower on the ice.

The impact was tough, but not as tough as Sergueï expected it. Both men were instantly plunged into the Moskova’s dark waters. Still not over it, Sergueï, seized by the intense cold, managed to reach the surface.

An outflow pipe, he said to himself.

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That’s why the ice was so thin. Moscow wasn’t into energy savings, and sometimes pipes were carrying waste waters that were amazingly hot towards the Moskova. Not hot enough to warm it up, but warm enough to thin down the ice.

Sergueï saw his chaser piercing the surface as well. He was now petrified. Apparently, he was swimming as bad as he was fighting. But all that didn’t really matter anymore.

They were going to die.

No way of climbing up the peak, no way of climbing back on the ice. Sergueï felt his fingers going numb.

He was going nowhere. He couldn’t hear the other head case anymore. He had certainly drowned already.

Sergueï had a last thought. But he didn’t know who to think about anymore. He felt the water submerging him totally, but there was nothing he could do anyway. He didn’t even feel like struggling.

He was just sinking in a deep lethargy from which he would never wake up.

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2

Abby Abigail Lockart opened her eyes.

The digital display of her clock showed 06:59.

One minute left. Even less.

Maybe just a few seconds.

It was always the same torture. Abby was waking up systematically once a night, praying each time that the clock would show her she had at least two hours left to sleep. But, apparently, that wouldn’t be the case this time.

Abby pounced on the enormous prominent button of her clock, unpriming in advance the death engine, with as much violence that her sleepy body allowed her to. Another tough day.

She had to take the stock of the situation. It was now eleven months that she came living alone in Moscow. She had left Chicago to come here working for The Moscow Times. Journalist was a hard job. She had studied literature and philosophy, and nurtured the dream of becoming a writer one day, even though she never wrote anything that satisfied her enough to attempt a publication.

It had been years since she was trying to write a novel. But she was jammed. So, while waiting, she was writing press articles. She had tried everything: from literary chronicles to cinema critics, including editorials, a few scribbled portraits illustrating interviews of a heaps of common 22

unknowns, crosswords, and even Sudoku presentations.

She knew that all that was far from brilliant, but she always had good comments about her texts.

Really good comments sometimes.

No Pulitzer price, no big other nomination of course, but a sum of small sincere and touching recognitions which, put end to end, comforted Abby in the idea that she was a good journalist, empowered with a truly sense of style.

And if her career wasn’t taking off and, so to speak, was even brushing the shallows of the trade; it was simply because Abby was, with a constancy so astonishing that it became despairing, systematically in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A year ago when her boss nominated her for The Moscow Times, she said yes. She thought that it was time for her to change scene, and to end up being on the other side of the planet could only be salutary for her career.

Getting out of a deceiving relationship, but still young and full of energy, she hadn’t hesitated long. On the contrary, she even felt an envy, as irresistible as sudden, to go and discover Russia, this big country that scared so much mankind.

Of course, it wasn’t the big cold she came looking for.

Chicago was as well served as Moscow on this aspect, with its Northern continental climate, with winters so harsh that sometimes permanent ways conked out. Abby was still coming back to the same point: she had come here to change her mind. To get out of her doldrums. To find inspiration. And also maybe, somehow, to solve Russia’s enigma. And after a few months, she liked it here. Of course she didn’t mean to spend her whole life here, but Moscow was such a gigantic city and Russian people was so full of surprises, that each day brought something new, something of wonder, something of perpetual change of scene.

Yes. Abby liked it in Russia.

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Besides the intensive Russian lectures that she was still attending, with her enormous book and with a charming little old lady always dwelling on events from soviet era – which was, by the way, absolutely fascinating –, Abby still couldn’t understand much about Russian conversations.

Not speaking the language was terribly incapacitating, and extremely embarrassing as a journalist. But she was living well with it. She was taking it as a game.

She enjoyed deciphering the gigantic Cyrillic-written ads that covered almost every square meter of the capital skyscrapers, and was playing with her explosive blend of inexperience and total philosophy of the will to attract people’s sympathy.

Russians were extremely cold people at first sight, and this coldness was always maintaining for a while, sometimes with a stab of contempt, not to say meanness.

But Abby always ended up making those, usually morose, people smile; and for her each time was a small victory.

When Russians understood all the effort she put into speaking the language, despite her well-known incompetence, she was always rewarded for her perseverance. Even though, for this, she had to come back every night on her last legs, worn-out, to sleep during ten hours straight.

But this morning she hadn’t had her ten hours of sleep, and she told to herself that it was going to be a really tough day. She let herself slowly filled in by hope and motivation, increasing this warm attitude that was going to allow her to survive the day. But today, that didn’t look to work well.

Whatever, she told herself, it couldn’t work all the time anyway.

So Abby got up wearily.

A stifling and terribly dried heat was reigning in her tiny flat. That was a part of the solution to the Russian enigma: this country owned so much energy resources, in the form of gas and petrol, that no one here cared about energy savings. What a surprise for her when she realized that heaters simply had no thermostat at all! They were heating. Full power.

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And that was it.

So Abby did like anybody else, when she was too hot, she just fully opened the windows. Simple. That behavior that appeared to her in the beginning so hare-brained, was now a routine, a movement that she from now on almost mechanically. An absolutely icy draught rushed into the room. Abby happily breathed that fresh air full of frost, left the mass of air entering for a few moments, and then closed the window when she started shivering under a thin dressing gown.

Under the burning hot trickle of the shower, Abby assembled the elements she had for her article. She had been asked to take an interest in a certain Nathan Craig, head of a gigantic American research company in the genetic genie. This figure was regularly in the headlines of the local newspapers. Craig was a handsome and seducing man, slightly reaching its forties. On everyone’s opinion, Craig was a genius. Brilliant scientific, the kind of eternal class leader that would disgust you with his resounding and perpetual success, Craig was also well known for his great managing qualities. He had funded Futura Genetics about ten years ago, and, today, he was reigning absolutely on the biotechnologies world. Because, despite some intense controversies, it seemed he had been the first one having sequenced the integrality of human genome. And since this fundamental breakthrough in sciences history, he had gone on multiplying feats, constantly discovering new secrets hidden in our genes.

To make it simple, Craig was a winner.

He was leading with an iron hand hundreds of scientists and had always made the right choices to make sure that Futura Genetics stayed at the summit of the discipline. He had moved in Russia for purely economical reasons; he had a gift for prospecting new funds for his researches, and even if his methods did often look a bit fishy, the great majority of researchers had agreed to say that Craig was a true man of science and that he had always produced conclusive and honest results.

25

To overcome a little bit her subject, Abby had had to plunge herself in numerous pieces of work on science vulgarization. She knew nothing about it, she had learnt loads on genetics, cloning and even genic therapy. But it wasn’t clearly in her field, and what Abby wanted to unveil, was what was behind the scene.

She wasn’t into sensationalist at all, and knew that she couldn’t expect Craig to be a very different man, mixed up in many different shady activities, but she still wanted to bring to light certain points kept in total darkness. For instance, she was looking to clarify the narrow relations that seemed to link Craig and Ivan Rokov, atypical CEO of Gazpran, the Russian gas giant. And she still couldn’t understand why the hell Futura Genetics had another laboratory in Daryznetzov, eight hundred kilometers away in the East of Moscow. Craig might not be hiding corpses in his cupboards, but certain points needed to be clarified.

Abby looked at her watch. The display showed 07:14.

She massaged her nape one last time under the burning hot trickle, making her cervical vertebras crack, not without raising a long and intense groan of satisfaction, and then went out to get dressed. She was going to be late.

She pushed one of the heavy steel doors and dived into the underground, creating a dried and burning draught that smoked toward the outside with a force beyond belief.

She then submitted to the habitual ritual. As the underground was over-heated and as she was dressed for the external bitter cold, she had to remove all those extra layers that risked stifling her from heat. That was really a pain in the ass. Why the hell those morons heated that much?

Abby crossed, always with the same irrepressible apprehension, the control system that was on the blink half the time and that destroyed your hips to block you from passing; then she took the escalator which took her at top speed on a incredibly steep slope towards what looked like the center of earth. The underground was in fact buried at seventy meters under the surface, the reason why was 26

simple : it was indeed a gigantic fallout shelter conceived during Cold War times.

The underground was a fallout shelter.

This very observation always chocked as much.

Once she reached the depths, Abby went under the massive anti-blast steel door, more than one meter thick, today blocked up in the open position. In case of a nuclear alert, she was supposed to seal the shelter. Abby didn’t have to wait long : the train was passing every thirty seconds at the infernal speed of a hundred and ten kilometers per hour.

Everything here was sweating outrageousness, like this oversize quay, cut in marble, those miniatures in gold, those enormous statues to the past soviet glory, those colossal frescos and those crystal luminaries.

Yes, that was an impressive underground.

Shaken by the violent vibrations of the metro train, encased in a rather unappealing air mass packed with stenches of piss and over-heated rails, Abby noticed a stack of The Moscow Times nonchalantly lying on the floor, certain copies completely swimming in a puke puddle.

All that for that.

The Moscow Times wasn’t even read. Except by the Occidentals. Not by the Russians. It was raging. No one, almost, was reading their work. But it was, in fact a terrific chance. Because in this country supposedly democratic and republican, censure exerted by the president Vladimir Meskine shut up every serious worthy newspaper and all what was left were indigestible propaganda puppets.

The failure of The Moscow Times was such that Meskine didn’t even bother censoring them, or exerting any single pressure on them. They could thus work freely in the greatest honesty. The Moscow Times was of absolute reliability. Then, in Moscow, only strangers were really well informed. The Russian people stayed drowned under a pack of lies and propaganda.

27

Abby sighted and went out of the train, fitted in with the continuous moscovite mass, mixing with big guys with dirty old faces covered by dirty old beat-up chapkas. Here and there, some women, typical of the freed Moscovite in the executive-women-just-entering-post-soviet-capitalism way, always dressed with sartorial tricks of a more or less questionable taste. It didn’t change the fact that those women were really hot women. Of course, Abby didn’t have to blush about their slave beauty, she was deliciously charming in her way, if, at the present time, from her small meter sixty, she had the truly unpleasant feeling of being submerged in a sad and monotone human magma.

She trampled on for long minutes before reaching the gigantic escalator which was supposed to bring her to the world surface again, in an impeccably lined-up row, testifying the moscovite rigor. Once at the top, she sighed hard, put her gloves and her scarf back on, to face again the bitter cold that felt on Moscow and its inhabitants.

28

3

Craig Nathan Craig finished engulfing his copious breakfast packed with added vitamins. Fresh fruits, cereals, fibers and diary, Craig was very style-conscious about his food.

He took care of his body like no one on earth, he liked to think.

Between daily bodybuilding sessions, his supra healthy diet and all his sport activities like climbing, apnea, squash, fencing or even the K1, Craig was an incredibly well-built man. He wasn’t doing it for vanity, but as pure pleasure. He loved sports and extreme sensations and did everything he could to drive his organism into a corner.

With his one meter ninety and his nice virile face, Craig was a rock, a true monument of savage beauty, and he knew it.

His professional successes, his outstanding gift as an orator, his culture of great finesse and, of course, being full of money didn’t change a single thing. He had had the most beautiful women on earth.

And had totally enjoyed it.

He liked to think back to his achievement, to recall how the hell he got there. Craig hadn’t been born in what we could call a humble family, but he wasn’t coming from a really wealthy environment either. His father was a general practitioner and his mum taught philosophy in college, 29

insuring reasonable incomes to their home. Craig was born and had grown up in breathtaking landscapes in Montana.

He had inherited his father’s sciences addiction, while his mother had initiated him to the “joys” of human conditions and philosophy. The great spaces where he had loved riding horses had offered him moments of intense reflection, grandiose and privileged at the same time.

Gifted student, he had gotten interesting funds to follow studies that made him even more brilliant. He had left Montana when he was sixteen years of age to go to Harvard to study Life Sciences. He had worked like a total workaholic, for his studies as well as for his student jobs that were bringing him enough money for his trips.

Because, leaving his native Montana, Craig had in mind to discover the world.

It surely looked a bit like a cliché, but Craig didn’t give a damn. He really wasn’t the kind of guy who would say he was travelling to discover new people and cultures. No, that really wasn’t his little thing. In fact, he even had a sweet aversion for all those ultra-preconceived ideas on the world discovery, on the pursuit of a human ideal, civilizations discovery, culture exchanges and other bullshit. No, he wanted to travel the world for himself and only for himself.

It was selfish, but he knew it.

And he absolutely didn’t give a fuck.

To do this, nothing was better than a good singlehanded trekking, far from everything, at the end of the earth, lost in the middle of stones, with as only partner a stinky yak or lonely ibex. To feel alive. To feel. To know who you really are, to know what you really love.

To know what you want.

So, of course, in the background, that included meeting those famous “people”, and those as famous “cultures”. He could go on saying it was all bullshit, but in fact, Craig had to be honest with himself: he liked those moments. Really.

He just couldn’t stand the self-righteous speeches on this subject, and he was approaching every single encounter under a more or less opportunist angle. He wanted to be 30

spiritually enriched. But was it more linked to spirituality or… getting enriched?

There was all the character’s ambiguity.

He didn’t care if his approach was fundamentally honest or not, because for him, as a good geneticist, the very nature of Mankind was precisely to be selfish. And he wasn’t the kind of guy that was going to hide it. Not even trying to fight against it.

On the contrary, he was openly flaunting it.

His detractors liked to say that he was stinking pushiness. That he was sweating opportunist by all his skin pores.

It was clearly exaggerated, but this expression contained some truth. Of course, he preferred to say his behavior was only the blazing reflect of his perfect spiritual honesty. Was he selfish? Maybe a little. But at least, he thought, he wasn’t hiding it.

Craig had always struggled to find the necessary funds to his trips. He had done some washing up, sold some hamburgers in a whole bunch of fast-foods, stuck posters, did inventories, moved out stuff, and carried stuff. And with all those silly student jobs, even though he wasn’t bad, it hadn’t been that easy all the time to maintain himself in college.

Especially since he also had to build a physique in reinforced concrete. Because his body, in spite of being relatively well built by the hardcore horse riding he practiced for years, had painfully failed him during his first trekking in Tajikistan.

He had come back on his last leg. Totally liquefied.

The tiredness, immense, total, and the multiple injuries had encouraged him to build an athletic body to be able to resist. Yes, that was why. His amazing physique only came from a will of resistance. Of physical resistance.

To pain, to tiredness. To cold. To exhaustion.

So he started running like a mad, swimming like a nuts, lifting paint buckets in a pall’s garage, strapping his 31

feet to a post to do some sit-ups. And other deliriums that he couldn’t remember properly. Once, he almost thought he had a part in the next Rocky. Today, he was far from all those students do-it-yourself, as he owned his own bodybuilding room in a gigantic luxury flat in Moscow. But he was still at his early stages; he had to force himself to be able to cross, without any effort, the following expeditions, which led him to countries like Honduras, Costa-Rica, Island, Patagonia, and so many others.

But in the end, all those adventures across the world were silly ridiculous parenthesis of just a few weeks, drowned in the immense ocean of years of studying during which Craig had become an emeritus geneticist.

Passionate, if not haunted by Life mysteries, he decided to go back to the very origins of the Living to tempt grasping its core.

To tempt to decipher the great enigma of Life.

He had known how to sell his abilities and his passion to be hired for decisive placement in laboratories of genetic genie.

He had built his exceptional competence on an encyclopedic knowledge and on a rare sense of resourcefulness for experimental protocols. His great verbal easiness and his ambition, palpable but always measured, had rapidly opened all the gates.

That’s how, in 1996, he had ended up integrating the renowned team of Human Genome Project, required by President Bill Clinton and implemented by the Research Minister. Once there he didn’t do as brilliantly as expected.

More than the lack of budget, Craig had deplored the blatant incapacity of his colleagues to do better with less.

The poor tiny budget was dwindling rapidly, bled dry on all parts by uselessly pricy and repetitive experiments. But the worst for Craig, was definitively the conceptual orientations of the sequencing algorithms. They didn’t pleased him at all.

To be perfectly clear, he had them in total aversion.

32

The Human Genome Team had decided to sequence only a small part of the entire human genome, claiming that “he would know” how to focalize on the interesting segments. For Craig that was pure nonsense. How the hell do you want to pretend understanding the mechanisms reigning on our species knowing only a tiny percentage supposedly representative? It was as stupid as illusory.

So Craig had preferred giving it up.

But he hadn’t left the project empty-handed. He had known how to surround himself with a small team of geneticists who, exactly like him, were revolted. Managing to raise funds, selling his team and his talent to sponsors seduced by his intelligence, his nice virile face and his promises that of course couldn’t be more fabulous, Craig had finally funded his own genetic genie research laboratory. The objective was simple : sequencing the integrity of the human genome ASAP. Craig wasn’t afraid of the competition with Human Genome Project.

He knew he was going to crush them.

That’s why the name of his company had to be perfectly eloquent. Quickly, the name Futura Genetics was adopted, presenting clearly a progress ambition in the field of genetics.

And it worked.

Him and his team had literally atomized competition.

During the sequencing, Craig had been deeply hurt by the accusations hanging over him about the appropriation of the human genome.

Like he would dare! Who could have pretended to appropriate the content of the human genome? He had said nothing and had let the worst rumours ever propagate themselves. And once the work had been done, he had contented himself with soberly publishing the results on the net, making the access to the genome sequence free and unrestricted, wringing the neck of his detractors without a single word.

And once the genome sequenced, Craig had naturally started his analysis. But money didn’t flow like during the 33

short period of sequencing. The master stroke almost too rapidly played, it was hard to raise funds. Craig should have pretended going slower in order to get more resources.

In fact, he had literally too-well played his stroke.

Deprived of budget, Futura Genetics’ researches had then been in a neutral.

But Craig had known how to be reactive enough to get his laboratory out of a dead end. He had known how to diversify the Futura Genetics’ activities, to make sure its decline wouldn’t be like its dazzling ascension. The new research axis had led him to interest himself to genic therapy, to synthesised organisms and to the production of stem cells. By doing so, he had collided head-on into the difficulties linked to cloning ethics.

To lighten his loads, to increase tenfold his financial power and to shrink from ethical laws to some extent, Craig had offshored Futura Genetics in Russia. Everything was working perfectly again, and this time, success was tight to last years.

Craig finished meticulously the morning washing. It was absurd to do it by himself as he owned a luxury fully equipped flat, but he enjoyed it. It relaxed him. He dried his hands, and put on his large dark leathered jacket, ran his hand trough his blond locks, and left his flat. Craig was a born winner who always had everything he wanted.

And nothing of that should change.

Taking off his vehicle like a shot, throwing a glance at his reflect in the rear-view mirror, he smiled at this delicious idea.

When Carol Jesler saw the Lada arriving in the car park, she felt a light shiver running through her nape. After all these years, nothing had changed. Behind the great picture window of the 27th floor, she saw the door opening and Craig getting out of his car. He would be there in a minute.

34

The lift doors opened slowly, uncovering a Nathan Craig all black dressed, impeccable in his sublime Italian suit. Beard falsely badly-shaven, brown clear hair, short, dishevelled, scattered with blond locks, perforating blue steel look, and, always this same old winning smile.

- Good Morning Carol. How are you? He asked full of energy.

- Good, thank you. How are you? She answered as quick as a flash.

- Admirably good. Anything special?

- Well… Mr Youri Tchoukov is in your office. He said it was important.

- Good, he said, looking suddenly scowled.

Carole saw Craig getting in his office and locking the door behind him. She let out a long sight. The same during all those years. My god this man was handsome, said she to herself. Like everyday during the past ten years she had been working for him. When he offered her to follow him in Russia, she could have only said yes. Short women, lonely with few friends, nothing held her back in United States. She sighted, feeling miserable having abandoned her country just to be able to catch sight for a few seconds of the man she would never have. She tried to get rid of those dark thoughts befuddling her mind to refocus on the present situation. She had noticed that, like everyday, with his magnificent suit, Craig was wearing armoured rangers.

In case of trouble, he had joked one day. With his rustic Lada, his sublime suit and his sharp rangers, Craig was obviously the man of all contrasts.

Craig found Youri Tchoukov, the Futura Genetics’ head of security, pacing in his office. They briefly shook hands.

Tchoukov waited Craig to be sited.

- So, Youri? Is there a problem? He asked, still scowled.

- An unfortunate accident Sir. Last night. I don’t know yet what happened, but we don’t know where is number 101.

We found traces of fighting, and blood. Apparently not his.

Some pieces of ripped clothes. That’s all. I don’t get it.

35

Craig remained silent for a moment.

- You don’t know what happened? He asked, rather irritated. You have lost number 101?

- Well…

- Shut up! I want Mikhaïl immediately! And you’d better sort that out quickly, or I’ll…

- Very well Sir! Interrupted Tchoukov, almost standing at attention. He turned his heels and left the office.

36

4

Corpses It was a passer-by who raised the alarm.

The scene was totally unusual. Nikolaï Paliakine shouted out a few orders to his men who hurried up quickly to get out the two bodies prisoners of the ice. Two new victims of the Moskova. It wasn’t the first time that Nikolaï found corpses in the frozen river, but, this time, he had a funny feeling.

The scene looked odd. One of the two men was naked and, on his frozen face, astonishment could be read. But terror as well. It wasn’t the fear of a dying man. No. It was something else. This man seemed not to understand what was happening to him.

And why the hell was he naked?

As for the other one… It was more classical yet. The two men had been laid down on the pavement. The rubbernecks had gathered and everyone was adding his small comments. Some felt sorry; others were having a good laugh uproariously. This made Nikolaï quiver with horror.

What did these men know to have such a laugh about them?

Death had become a kind of weird spectacle those last years. Recently again, Nikolaï had been called on the scene of a dreadful road accident bang in Moscow. A poor guy 37

had been reduced to a pulp, just in front of a trendy terrace were organized a mundane reception. And when certain guests came to see the removal of the bodies and the rubble, in full dress with a champagne flute in the hand, Nikolaï felt sick. Some were making fun of the poor sprawled man. The ambulance men had to intervene to stop Nikolaï from beating them up.

He had been sickened by their behavior, by their lack of self-consciousness, by their total contempt for life.

So, when he saw two passer-bys trying to take a picture of the two frozen men with their cell phone, Nikolaï did what he had learnt to do for a while : he ignored them.

But that didn’t solve his case : who were those guys?

Two new victims of the mob, like suggested one of his assistants?

Nikolaï doubted about that.

Of course, the mob was quite fond of filling the Moskova with corpses, but they wouldn’t proceed that way.

Usually, mafia’s killers would do things well, trussing up their victims to a perpend, before throwing away their package in the middle of the river.

Here, it wasn’t consistent at all.

Unless the killers were caught unprepared? The case was really eerie. Nikolaï always came back to the same point : why was this guy naked? And what meant this terror look coming from another world?

- Search him! He said to his men, pointing the corpse of the dressed guy.

Technicians started on picking the victim’s pockets, but his clothes were frozen. They had to go for it using clippers.

Very quickly one of the technicians found a small camera of a funny model and brought it to Nikolaï.

- It’s all we found Sir. No ID. - Very well then. See if you can save those pictures. The films must be dead, but you never know.

- Yes Sir. 38

5

Komarov Mikhaïl Komarov was Futura Genetics’ head of Research department. Craig had seen in this young twentyseven years old Russian all the necessary talent to this vast function. But things were not that simple.

In fact, since he arrived in Russia, Craig had been very careful about winning the support of the powerful of this country. He managed to be seen in a good light by those who led Russia with an iron hand. Alas, it turned out that those leaders had the sick nostalgia of the great soviet times, and had only two things in their mind.

The first one was to make money – loads of money – and they got down to it with such a fervidness and such a passion that it was literally turning into obsession. The second great idea of those leaders, and for once, it was more effectively an idea than an obsession, was to restore the past grandeur of Russia. And even if Craig couldn’t remember ever feeling that way about his country, it was just a very understandable patriotic will. Not to say very laudable.

Whatever it was, certain thinking heads of Russia had forced Craig into hiring a maximum of Russians in his team – just to be able to say that researchers from newborn Russia were totally up to measure themselves to high-tech scientist freshly arrived from America. Craig strongly doubted of such an assertion, but he didn’t really have the 39

choice. He thus accepted to integrate a few Russian scientists in his team, under one condition though – he had been very clear on that aspect – they had to satisfy all the excellence criterions. Hoping to repel any kind of pretenders as well as showing all the manners of openness and goodwill towards the leaders of the “Great” Russia, Craig thought he would be able to conclude the business quickly without having to hire the least bloody sputnik.

That was without counting on this famous Mikhail Komarov.

Spotted by his recruiting team, Mikhail had shown himself to be shy, almost hesitating. Thinking he’d eat it all in one gulp, Craig had decided to go trough his file quickly on the way between his office and the interview room.

But he had had to stop on the way.

This Mikhail had succeeded in intriguing him to the highest degree, and as he was listing the feats of this young Russian originally from Siberia, it’s Craig’s turn to feel hesitating.

After all, why not?

If this young idiot, Craig really didn’t like the look of him, had succeeded in ending up being the first of his year in his studies in Genetic genie, while becoming famous for having hacked the FSB – ex-KGB – and multiplying the prowess in sequencing algorithms; after all, Craig might have found an interesting colleague here. Yes, Mikhail Komarov turned out to be super talented in Genetics doubled by being a genius in informatics and more specifically in sequential, multi task and real time algorithms. Craig didn’t think much about the problematic, because for him, it wasn’t one in the end : no way was he going to deprive himself of this kind of talent.

And he always congratulated himself for having taken the right decision.

Because Komarov, this bloody idiot with his eternal teenager face, had managed to increase drastically the convergence speed of certain Futura Genetics’ homemade algorithms, which had made the company’s pride as it had 40

been highly relying on them to finally sequenced the human genome. With Komarov as the head of the calculus department, Futura Genetics was going to, without a doubt, to wreak havoc. And, in the end, Mikhail had quickly sympathized with Craig, highly anti-Russian at his arrival though, had quickly changed his mind on the country’s culture.

That’s why, since a while, both men were having a drink together on a regular basis, a drink that ended up more and more often in a spadeful of empty bottles. It was also thanks to Mikhail that Craig, and he was sincerely indebted to him, owed the discovery of bania, a kind of blend between sauna and hammam in the Russian way, where you were dying of heat like in a chip shop while being whipped by beautiful green fir branches from Siberia.

A priori absurd, not to say SM, this practice finally turned out to be, for Craig, extremely beneficial since it was also incredibly energizing and invigorating. This wasn’t a luxury, considering the immensity of his chore and his responsibilities. However that may be, Craig and Komarov had become, not the best friends in the world for sure, not just friends either, but good comrades.

Good tovaritch.

You needed more to enter the very private circle of the pretenders to Craig’s friendship. You always needed more.

This man was a rock, a truly armored titan against bonds and feelings, and his natural mistrust coupled with his frank paranoia didn’t make things better, cutting short any potential friendship attempt. In the end, Mikhail had become the head of Futura Genetics’ research department, mainly managing the “calculus” section, and was part of The close and privileged acquaintances of Craig, as long as this expression made sense, since Mikhail knew it: they might have discussed for hours and hours drinking millions of liters of Vodka, he would never be a truly close acquaintance.

That was why, as he was extremely preoccupied by the loss of number 101, Komarov knew pertinently that he was 41

really going to cop it, since he had no idea about what the fuck could have happened.

Craig was going to give him a monumental telling-off and there was nothing he could do about it.

He would just be able to acquiesce in silence and to wait for the storm to pass. Craig could sometimes fly into a towering rage likely to pulverize the stars. And Komarov felt like, in a deep despair that affected all his being, today Craig could go for the galaxy. Especially since Mikhail didn’t tell him everything.

But could he only do it?

He waited for the lift doors to open. He walked straight towards Craig’s office, contenting himself with a simple nod for Carole.

- Did you ask for me Mr. Craig? Said Mikhail, very calm.

- Here you are! You don’t call me Nathan anymore? Said Craig with a stab of sarcasm.

- It’s because…

- I know. You screwed up so you’re hugging the walls.

- Screwed up?! No, not at all, but you… said Mikhail loosing his temper knowing it wasn’t the best thing to do at all.

- Who was number 101? Who? Interrupted Craig.

- What do you mean by who? It was… Nobody! Nobody special for god’s sake! Said Mikhail, trying to reassure Craig without really knowing if his lie was credible.

- Really? I heard a different story… I thought I had been very clear about this, hadn’t I? - Very clear Sir. Nothing has been done in that way.

- Very well then. So it’s the average Joe who’s wandering there outside?

- Of course. But it’s not…

- I KNOW!!! Interrupted Craig. That will be all, I’m done.

We’ll wait for Youri to learn a little bit more. Go back to your Gulag now.

42

- Very well Sir, concluded Mikhail, before leaving the office, literally liquefied, without showing it.

43

6

Espionage Youri Tchoukov was pacing. He had inspected twenty times at least the meager elements he had. Number 101 had disappeared from his room where a fight seemed to have burst out. Thus, someone had broken in here last night without raising any alarm. This special someone must have had the codes. Youri knew very well that any one could have obtained the codes from the few men that were assuring daylight security. Security for nothing much, for that matter.

Nothing had ever happened.

But Craig wanted his personnel to be “protected”. A rich American’s whim. Whatever it was, Youri was worried sick. Craig was demanding explanations and he had none.

And what the hell could was number 101 doing? Hopefully, he was frozen to death and everything would stop there.

But Youri had the funny feeling that he wouldn’t be that lucky. He was suddenly interrupted in his thoughts by his cell phone. The display showed : CRAIG - Mr. Craig?

- We know what it is : espionage. The police called me earlier. They found two frozen bodies in the Moskova. The spy and, probably, number 101.

44

- A spy? Choked Youri.

- Apparently, this guy was investigating on the CTC works.

I didn’t think we would reach this point one day, but from now on you and your men will assure security during night time as well.

- Don’t you trust alarms and CCTV cameras anymore?

- Look where it led us.

- Very well Sir. Craig had hanged up the phone.

Youri was shocked. He glanced outside, like if he was looking for something beyond the window.

At less than a hundred meters from here, under a thick layer of ice, peacefully flowed the Moskova.

45

7

Documents Mikhail Komarov had just reached his desk when Craig biped him again. Son of a bitch! He mumbled before turning back. He thinks that harassing me is going to improve things? Komarov was in mad rage, but far worse, he was terrified. What could have happened that night?

Komarov had just entered the office that Craig swung to his face an attaché case that he was able to catch clumsily in mid-air.

- What’s this? He asked, stupefied.

- Go on! Open it!

Mikhail complied. His heart missed a bit when he recognized the CTC logo. His logo. His special files. Those very files Craig wasn’t supposed to see.

- So, Mikhail?

- I… Komarov calmed down rapidly. The documents were blurry. Except the logo, imposing, the rest was totally unreadable.

- Well, started Mikhail, those are my reports. Or at least a part of my reports. On the CTC works.

- I can see that. But do you know even where I got them?

I’ve always trusted you. I don’t have to check them myself.

So, what are they doing here according to you?

46

- I… - Those bloody coppers have just brought them to me, said Craig, really slowly. They retrieved them on the beat-up film from an old shabby camera, a kind of funny spying relic from Cold War. Camera that they just found less than two hundreds meters from here.

- I… I don’t get it.

- On a cadaver! They found those pictures on a fucking cadaver frozen in the Moskova! A spy! And you know what? Number 101 is with him, at the morgue. I told them I knew nothing about those guys. We can’t disclose anything.

But go and make sure it’s really number 101. Pretend you have to check if, by any chance, you wouldn’t know this scumbag of a photographer a little bit too curious.

Without a word, Mikhail Komarov left the office.

TRANSLATION TO BE CONTINUED

47

corentin macqueron

HUMAN GENOME Moscow, present time.

Two corpses were found frozen in the Moskova.

Abigail Lockart, young journalist for the Moscow Times, managed to establish a fragile link between this incident an Nathan Craig, enigmatic CEO of Futura Genetics, a company responsible for the human genome sequencing. But the investigation is trampling and the excellent relationships maintained by the American giant of Genetics with the Russian giant of oil are alarming. To crown it all, a mysterious religious group joins in, and eerie data on mankind evolution seem to be confirmed.

In a climate of doubts and suspicions are emerging the contours of terrific discovery.

Here is our future NOVEL