Shadow Hunt (A John Kovac Thriller Book 3) (John Kovac Thriller Series) by David Caris

Author:David Caris [Caris, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35

Kovac found himself both horrified and fascinated by these revelations. Here they were, sitting in a cafe in Hong Kong, and the very ordinary man sitting opposite him had, it appeared, changed the course of human existence.

The sheer fucking hubris of it…

Outside, in a dreary, drizzly street, life went on without a care for what was in effect a willful act of vandalism against the human genome. Against the very code that supported all human work, all talking, laughing, flirting, eating, drinking, walking, thinking.

If what Kovac was being told was true – and he had no reason to think it was a lie – Shenzhen was the geographical center of one of the greatest atrocities in recorded history.

The problem was permanence. These changes to the germline cell would now inexorably pass from parent to child. They would spread down through generations, across families, communities and countries. They would be hard-baked into humankind forever, though any irreversible damage could remain hidden for years, even decades.

And then Kovac realized he was wrong. About all of it. His mind ran over the research Bishop and Amy had handed him. His long night spent reading up on all this. There was an almost surreal moment for him as it all clicked. There was nothing at all here that couldn’t be corrected, providing someone was willing to kill.

‘Who’s cleaning up this mess for you?’ he asked.

‘Not for me,’ Tang said, before adding, ‘Anatoly Group. That’s what Shola told me before he disappeared. A man called Crow.’

Kovac was familiar with the group. They were very much in his line of work, and they explained the Slav.

‘Okay, that’s more than I thought we had. What else can you tell me?’

‘About Anatoly? About Crow?’ Tang gave him an unexpected snort, like a burst of pressurized air from the nose. ‘I don’t know anything more than what I just told you. They’re hunting me, my two boys. I know that much for sure.’

‘Why? What edits did you make?’

‘I can’t discuss my work at that level. For one thing, you wouldn’t under –’

‘Simplify it for me.’

‘It’s classified.’

Kovac waited.

Tang rolled his eyes, took a deep breath, looked around for the millionth time. His paranoia was palpable. ‘Fine. But know this. Your disgust at what I have told you already is most certainly misplaced. There is no sacrosanct human germline. It’s a fantasy. We choose the genetic makeup of our offspring, do we not? Isn’t choice of sex partner a form of editing? What if I had have married the lover in America? Completely different children. Then there’s chemical mutagens, radiation. Compared to all that, the changes I made aren’t even a drop in the bucket. Our genomes are naturally in flux, and the work I did was only ever intended to make the world a better place.’

‘The world or China?’

‘The world.’

‘Quit stalling, Tang. What edits?’

‘We worked on curing disease. We worked on curing cancer.’

‘Yeah yeah. I saw all the happy babies in the pamphlet. What else?’

‘We…’ He balled one trembling hand in a fist and wrapped the other around it.

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