The Sanctuary

  TWO FLOORS UP from Mia’s room, Kirkwood glanced up from his laptop and half-watched her statement on his TV. He’d already seen it on one of the other local channels. The embassy’s press handlers had done a good job, as had Mia; her mom’s kidnappers would definitely get the message.

  His attention was mired elsewhere, and his eyes dropped back to the screen of his laptop and to the baleful file that his contact inside the UN had e-mailed him. He’d read it once already, and he was about to read it again.

  It was the hakeem’s file.

  The file shed light on Corben, as the agent assigned to track him down. Corben himself was solid. His assignments had been bread-and-butter Agency fieldwork in the Middle East, nothing too vicious or too wet. It was the information relating to the hakeem that had shaken Kirkwood.

  His contacts in Iraq had mentioned someone asking about the Ouroboros on a few occasions in recent years, but he was never able to find out who was behind the inquiries. People were scared to talk under Saddam.

  Even more so, in this case.

  He went through the dossier again, his chest constricting with revulsion. The findings in Iraq were beyond heinous. Autopsies that had been carried out on some of the bodies found after the raid on the hakeem’s compound confirmed, with appalling detail, what the man had been working on. There was little doubt as to what he was after.

  Many of the techniques he was attempting had been tried out on lab animals, mostly mice, and had varying degrees of success in rejuvenating the animals or prolonging their lives. The thing was, the hakeem wasn’t using mice. He was performing the same experiments on humans.

  One such experiment, famously undertaken by Italian and American neuroscientists in the early nineties, was to transplant tissue taken from the pineal glands of younger mice into older mice, and vice versa. Simply put, the older mice got younger, and the younger mice got older. The former looked healthier, were able to run around their cages and spin their wheels with startling vigor and outlived control animals of the same age; the latter’s fur lost its luster, they slowed down to a point where they could no longer perform basic tricks that they could easily manage before the transplants, and they died sooner. Autopsies on the animals also showed that some of the internal organs of the older mice that had received the transplants from the young mice displayed striking signs of rejuvenation. And given that the pineal gland is responsible for the production of the hormone melatonin, the rejuvenation was attributed to an increase in the recipients’ melatonin levels, which sparked the melatonin supplement craze.

  The full picture, however, wasn’t as promising: Scientists who took a closer look at the results discovered that the mice that were used in the experiments had a genetic defect that actually prohibited them from producing melatonin. Attributing their improved physiology to melatonin was therefore patently absurd. But proving that melatonin wasn’t responsible for their healthier and longer lives didn’t negate that they did, in fact, look younger and live longer. Something was responsible for it. It just wasn’t the melatonin.

  The autopsies indicated that some of the hakeem’s experiments were to find out if pineal-gland grafts and transplants had the same effect in humans. Running such experiments on humans wasn’t easy. The pineal gland, which is only the size of a pea in humans, is located at the core of the brain. It’s mostly active up to puberty, then gets calcified in adulthood and is thought to become obsolete. Which means that the only pineal glands worth harvesting had to come from children or teens, and the endoscopic microsurgery to reach the glands was complex, delicate, and carried high risks for the donor.

  Which wasn’t a problem if you had an endless supply of expendable kids.

  The other major problem was that life-extending experiments were mostly performed on species that had short life spans, to be able to actually observe and document the changes within a reasonable time frame. Mayflies were ideal, given their one-day life spans. Nematode worms, which live for two weeks or so, were also commonly used, as were lab mice, although their life spans of around two years made them less than ideal. Humans needed much longer periods of observation for any significant change to be noticeable. This meant that after undergoing the hakeem’s extreme treatments, his test subjects had to remain incarcerated for months, or years, before the results of his experiments were apparent.

  The autopsies showed that the hakeem wasn’t just playing with pineal glands. Other glands such as the pituitary and thymus glands were also part of his repertoire, as were testicular glands in males and ovaries in women. In some victims, he had limited his experimentation to studying the effects of various hormones and enzymes on the test subjects’ bodies. His work was remarkably advanced, encompassing both prolongevity staples such as telomerase as well as more recent fixations such as the PARP-1 protein. The equipment at his disposal was state-of-the-art, and he was clearly a skilled surgeon and molecular biologist.

  Invariably, his test subjects suffered horrible deaths. Some of the men, women, and children who were wheeled into his operating chamber were farmed for whatever parts were of use to him and simply discarded. Others, the recipients, endured long periods of living with the effects of his demented procedures, and when their bodies finally gave out, he clearly had no qualms about opening them up to have a look at what went wrong before chucking their remains into mass graves.

  Kirkwood felt nauseous. A bile of anger burned the back of his throat. He knew of scientists who had decamped to less conscientious countries where they could carry out their grotesque experiments without worrying about activists and ethics committees. But this was different. This went far beyond anything he’d ever considered humanly possible.

  This was true evil.

  The most shocking part of it was that Corben, according to the file, had been tasked with finding the hakeem.

  Not to take him down.

  To harness his talents.

  It wasn’t a first. Governments were always happy to forgive past trespasses, no matter how horrific, and dance with the devil if it meant getting their hands on innovative and valuable research. The U.S. government was one of the early adopters of that model. They did it with Nazi rocket scientists. They did it with Russian experts in nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare. And, it seemed, they were happy to do it with this hakeem.

  Corben’s assignment was to find the hakeem and bring him into the fold. Evelyn’s kidnapping gave him a way to connect with him. But it had to mean that in their eyes, she was expendable. A means to an end. Nothing more.

  He flashed back to Abu Barzan’s unexpected phone call. The surprise bidder. At the same time as Farouk had mortally been wounded.

  While he’d been in Corben’s custody.

  Before he’d died.

  How far were they prepared to go?

  He had to adjust his plans.

  Kirkwood wondered who else was in the loop. Were they all in on it? Hayflick, the station chief—probably. The ambassador—maybe not. Kirkwood hadn’t gotten that vibe from him, but then again, these people did lie for a living.

  He’d need to call the others, inform them of his discoveries. He knew they’d agree. He had to short-circuit Corben’s assignment, even if it meant jeopardizing the project. Evelyn’s life depended on it, as did the lives of countless innocents who could find themselves on the monster’s operating table.

  Images of the hakeem’s victims ambushed his every thought. He knew he wouldn’t be falling asleep anytime soon.

  A FLURRY OF MUFFLED THUMPS jolted Corben awake.

  He sprang up, his eyes barely registering the ghostly 2:54 A.M. reading on the alarm clock on his side table, his foggy brain still booting up and struggling to process some noise at the very edge of his hearing threshold: rapid footfalls, rushing stealthily across the cold, tiled floor of his apartment, coming straight at him.

  He realized what was happening, his hand instinctively diving into the side table’s drawer for his handgun, but just as his fingers felt its grip
, the door to his bedroom burst open and three men whose features he couldn’t make out in the darkness bolted in. The lead man kicked the drawer shut, slamming it hard against Corben’s wrist. Corben reeled with pain, turning back in time to glimpse the man’s raised arm arcing down at him like a lightning bolt from above.

  He thought he spotted a gun in its grasp a split second before the strike connected with his skull and sent him crashing into a sudden and absolute blackout.

  Chapter 48

  T he roof terrace of the Albergo Hotel was soothingly mellow, a pleasant change from the chaotic bustle of the bar at Mia’s previous hotel.

  She hadn’t been here before. Lost among jasmine and dwarf fig trees, a handful of people were scattered in the dark recesses of this suspended oasis that overlooked the city’s rooftops and the sea beyond. She found a quiet corner and was soon in the comforting embrace of a martini. E. B. White had dubbed the drink his “elixir of quietude,” and right now that was working just fine for her.

  She was too lost in her own thoughts to notice that she was the only solo person here. A lot had happened in the previous forty-eight hours, and her mind had a lot to work through.

  She was looking for a waiter to order a refill when Kirkwood appeared and joined her. They shared a round and dabbled in some awkward chitchat, briefly commenting on the hotel’s charms and the city’s contradictions. Mia could see that his mind was elsewhere. His eyes radiated a deep unease, and something was obviously haunting him.

  He was the first to veer them back to the grim tide they were swimming against.

  “I saw the broadcast. You did great. It’ll do the trick. This hakeem will definitely get the message. They’ll call.”

  “But then what?” Mia asked. “We don’t have anything to offer them, and trying to pull off some kind of bluff…” She let the words drift.

  “The guys at the embassy know their stuff,” Kirkwood assured her. “They’ll figure it out. They managed to get to Farouk before the hakeem’s men, right?”

  She could see that he wasn’t thrilled by the prospect either, but she appreciated the effort. “Yeah, and look how well that turned out.”

  Kirkwood found a half-smile. “I’ve got my contacts in Iraq working on it. I’m pretty confident they’ll come up with something.”

  “What? What could they possibly find that could make a difference?”

  He didn’t really have an answer he could give her. A waiter glided over and discreetly replenished their carrot sticks and pistachios, then Kirkwood said, in a surprising change of tack, “I never knew Evelyn had a daughter.”

  “I wasn’t around,” Mia said. “I lived with my aunt. In Boston. Well, near Boston.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He died before I was born.”

  A shadow crossed his face. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “They were together. In Iraq. In that chamber. One month later, he dies in a car crash.” She raised her glance to Kirkwood. All light had abandoned her voice. “This tail-eater. It’s one hell of a good-luck charm, isn’t it?”

  Kirkwood stayed silent, and nodded somberly.

  “I mean, what the hell is this nut job thinking?” she blurted out angrily. “Is he looking to revive some biblical plague, or does he really expect to find a magic potion that’ll let him live forever? I mean, how can you even begin to reason with someone like that?”

  Kirkwood raised an eyebrow. “You think the hakeem’s after some kind of fountain of youth? Where’d that come from? I’ve seen his file. It doesn’t mention anything about that.”

  Mia brushed it off and, almost self-mockingly, mentioned her conversation with Boustany about elixirs.

  Kirkwood took a sip from his cocktail, as if weighing his next words. He put the glass down and looked at her. “Well, you’re the geneticist. You tell me. Is it really that insane?”

  “Please,” Mia scoffed.

  He wasn’t scoffing back. He was serious.

  “You’re really asking me if it’s possible?” she said.

  “I’m just saying, face transplants were considered impossible a few years ago. They’re doing them now. If you think about the medical advances that have been achieved in the last few years…it’s staggering. And the hits just keep on coming. We’ve mapped out the human genome. We’ve cloned a sheep. Heart tissue has just been successfully created from stem cells. So, I don’t know. Maybe this is possible.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” Mia replied dismissively.

  “I saw this documentary once. About this Russian scientist, back in the fifties—I think his name was Demikhov—he was researching head transplants. To prove it was doable, he grafted the head and upper body of a puppy onto a bigger mastiff and created a two-headed dog. The thing ran around happily and survived for six days.” He shrugged. “And that’s just one we know about.”

  Mia leaned forward, her eyes bristling with conviction. “Transplants are about reconnecting nerves and veins and, yes, maybe even spinal cords one day. But this is different. This is about stopping the damage that happens to our cells, to our DNA, to our tissues and organs, with every breath we take. It’s about errors in DNA replication, it’s about molecules inside our body getting bombarded by free radicals and mutating wrongly and just degrading over time. It’s about wear and tear.”

  “But that’s my point. It’s not the years, it’s the mileage,” he said pointedly. “You’re talking about cells getting damaged and breaking down, which is very different from saying they’re programmed to live a certain length of time, and then die. It’s like, if you buy a new pair of trainers. You wear them, you jog in them, the soles wear out and the shoes fall apart. If you don’t wear them, they don’t just disintegrate after a few years in their box. Wear and tear. It’s why we die, right? There’s no ticking clock that tells our body its time is up. We’re not programmed to die, are we?”

  Mia shifted in her seat. “That’s one line of thought.”

  “But it’s the one that’s carrying the day right now, isn’t it?”

  Mia knew it was. It was a specialization she had flirted with, but she’d ultimately veered off into another direction, knowing that antiaging research was the embarrassing relative no one wanted to talk about. Biogerontology—the science of aging—had been having a tough time since, well, the Jurassic era.

  In official circles, it wasn’t far removed from the quackery of alchemists and the charlatanry of the snake-oil salesmen of yesteryear. Serious scientists, clinging to the traditional belief that growing old is inevitable, were wary of pursuing something that was doomed to failure, and even warier of being ridiculed if they attempted to explore it. Governmental bodies wouldn’t fund it: They dismissed it as an unachievable pipe dream and were loath to be seen funding something that their electorate didn’t really believe—because of what they’d been told and taught—was achievable. Even when presented with compelling arguments and breakthroughs, the holders of the purse strings still wouldn’t go near it because of deeply held religious beliefs: Humans age and die. It’s the way of the world. It’s what God intended. It’s pointless and immoral to try to overcome that. Death is a blessing, whether we realize it or not. The good will become immortal, of course—but only in heaven. And don’t even think about arguing it with the President’s Council on Bioethics. The prevention of aging is, even more than Al Qaeda, an evil threat to our dignified human future.

  Case closed.

  And yet, in a broader context, scientists had been spectacularly successful in prolonging human life so far. Average life expectancy—the average number of years humans are expected to live—hovered between twenty and thirty years for most of human history. This average was skewed downwards due to one main cause: infant mortality. Three or four infants died for every person who managed to evade the plague, dodge the blade of a sword, and reach eighty. Hence the low average. Medical and hygienic advances—clean water, antibiotics, and vaccines—allowed babies to survive to adulthood,
allowing this average to increase dramatically over the last hundred years in what is referred to as the first longevity revolution. It hit forty in the nineteenth century, fifty in 1900, and it was now around eighty in developed countries. Whereas early man had a one-in-twenty-million chance of living to a hundred, that’s now one in fifty. In fact, since 1840, average life expectancy had been growing at a quarter of a year every year. Demographers predicting an upper limit to our expected life spans had consistently been proven wrong.

  The crucial difference was that life extension had been achieved by developing vaccines and antibiotics that weren’t conceived with the aim of prolonging life, but rather, to help combat illnesses, an unarguably noble goal. The nuance was critical. And only recently had a paradigm shift occurred in the medical-research community’s attitude towards aging, from perceiving it as something inevitable and predestined, to considering it something far less draconian:

  A disease.

  A simple analogy was that, until recently, the term Alzheimer’s was only used when referring to sufferers of that form of dementia who were under a certain age—around sixty-five or so. Any older than that, and they didn’t have a disease—they were just senile, and there was no point in doing anything about it. It was part of growing old. This changed in the 1970s, when a demented ninety-year-old was treated no differently from a forty-year-old with Alzheimer’s—both were now equally considered to be suffering from a disease that medical researchers were working hard to understand and cure.

  Much in the same way, “old age” was now, more and more, being viewed as an illness. A highly complex, multifaceted, perplexing illness. But an illness nevertheless.

  And illnesses can be cured.

  The key realization that triggered this new approach was a deceptively simple answer to the fundamental question “Why do we age?” The answer was, simply put, that we age because, in nature, nothing else did.