Or, more accurately, almost nothing ever did.
For thousands of years—throughout virtually all of human evolution—in the wild and away from the cosseting care and advances of the civilized world, humans and animals hardly ever reached old age. They were ravaged by predators, disease, starvation, and weather.
They didn’t get a chance to grow old.
And nature’s preoccupation has always been to make sure its organisms reproduce, to perpetuate the species—nothing more. All it asked of our bodies, all we were designed to do from an evolutionary point of view, was to reach reproductive age, have babies, and nurture them until they were old enough to survive in the wild on their own.
That’s it.
That was all nature cared about.
Beyond that, we were redundant—man and beast alike. All of the cells that made us up had no reason to keep us alive beyond that.
And since we didn’t stand a chance of surviving much beyond the age of reproduction, then nature’s efforts were—rightly—concentrated on stacking the odds for us to reach that age and replicate. Natural selection only cared about our reaching reproductive age, and—rightly, and again unfortunately for those of us who wanted to stick around a little longer—it chose a short life span for us to reproduce in because that was more efficient: It made for shorter time between generations, more mixing of genes, which gave greater adaptability to threatening environments. All of which meant that a process—aging—that never actually manifested itself in nature, in the wild, couldn’t have evolved genetically.
Nature, while it was evolving us, didn’t know what aging was.
In other words, aging wasn’t genetically programmed into us.
This had led to a radical new outlook on aging.
If we weren’t programmed to die, if we were killed by wear and tear—so the argument now went—then maybe, just maybe, we could be fixed.
Chapter 49
A burning twinge of smelling salts assaulted Corben’s senses and shook him back to life.
He was immediately aware of a sharp pain that throbbed at the back of his head, and he felt oddly uncomfortable. He realized that his hands and feet were all tied to each other behind his back, his legs bent all the way backwards in a reverse-fetal position. He was also still in his boxers. His mouth and cheek were pressed against something hard and prickly that felt like sandpaper, and his throat felt parched. Instinctively, he tried to lick his lips, but found dry soil instead. He spat the grit off and coughed.
His eyes darted around, rushing to process his surroundings, and he saw that he was lying on the ground, on his side, out in some kind of field. Somewhere quiet. The headlights of a parked car were beating down on him; beyond them, he could see that it was still night, although the faint glimmer of a morning sun was hinting from behind a mountain range to his right.
A mountain range. To the east. He archived the thought, guessing that he must be somewhere in the Bekáa Valley. And if it was almost dawn, it meant he’d been out for at least a couple of hours. Which tallied with how long it would take to drive there from Beirut, especially at that time of night when the roads were deserted.
As his nerves endings flickered awake, more pains and bruises announced themselves across his body. He tried to shift to a position that was less awkward, but his effort was rewarded with a sharp kick from a booted foot to his ribs that sent a searing pain through his side.
He coiled forward, straining against the nylon cuffs on his limbs, still on his side, his face and side digging into the rough soil. He turned upwards and saw the pockmarked man leering down at him.
“Khalas,” he heard a voice snap. Enough.
He sensed movement from the corner of his eye. The man who owned the voice was approaching through the glare of the headlights. From his low vantage point, Corben could only make out the shoes—leather moccasins, expensive-looking—and the dark slacks. The face towered far out of reach.
The man stepped right up to him until his feet were inches from Corben’s face. Corben tried to roll slowly, awkwardly, slightly more onto his back, but his bent legs blocked the move. The man just stood there, staring down at him as if he were an insect. Corben couldn’t really make out his features, but he could see that the man was slim, clean-shaven, and had longish silvery hair.
The feeling of vulnerability and helplessness was disconcerting. As if to confirm it, the man raised his foot and brought it over Corben’s face, then casually pressed down, slowly, resting the sole of his shoe on his nose, not really putting his weight into it at first, then gradually leaning down harder, crushing his nose and cheeks, sending an excruciating pain shooting across his face as his head was mashed into the ground.
Corben tried to wriggle free, but the man’s foot had him pinned down. He let out a tortured, half-muffled yell for him to stop.
The man didn’t, prolonging Corben’s agony a few more seconds before finally pulling his foot away. He glowered down at him, studying him. “You have something I want,” he said, his voice laced with a mocking disdain.
Corben spluttered the sand and grit out of his mouth. “And you’ve got something—someone—we want.”
The man raised his foot again, hovering it just above Corben’s face, threatening. Corben didn’t flinch. The man just held his foot there for a beat, as if he were about to squash a bug, before pulling it back. “I don’t think you’re in any position to play hardball,” he told him calmly. “I want the book. Where is it?”
“I don’t have it.” Through his daze, Corben registered the man’s accent. Southern European, for sure. Italian, possibly. He stored the thought.
The man nodded to someone behind Corben. Before he could see who it was, another sharp kick plowed into his side.
Corben screamed out with pain. “I’m telling you I don’t have it, God damn it.”
The man seemed surprised. “Of course you do. You have the Iraqi.”
“I don’t have it yet, alright? I’ll have it tomorrow.” Corben’s voice bristled with rage. He tried to get a clearer look at the man’s face, but his vision was still warped from the pressure of the man’s shoe, and the car’s headlights were blinding the little eyesight he had. “He didn’t have it on him,” he added angrily.
The man studied him from above. “I don’t want any more games. Get me the book, or I’ll make your life a living hell. Which, as you can see, is well within my ability.”
Corben glared up at him with fierce resolve. “I’ll get you the book. I want you to have the book. But I want something else.”
A puzzled tone infected the man’s voice. “Oh?”
Corben could feel his pulse throbbing in his ears. “I know what you’re working on.”
The man’s lips pursed with doubt. “And what am I working on?”
“I saw your lab. In Saddamiya. The mass graves. The body parts. The blood bank.” Corben studied him. His vision was clearing up, and the man’s features were coming into focus. He concentrated his gaze on him, then added, “I was there, hakeem,” and spotted the flinch, the tell of recognition.
And in that instant, he knew he’d found his man.
Up until that point, he’d suspected it, he’d assumed the doctor from Baghdad was also behind Evelyn’s abduction, but he wasn’t sure. He’d never seen a picture of the hakeem nor heard his voice, let alone met him in person. And although this wasn’t how he’d hoped to have his encounter with the beast—far from it—there he was, standing before—or rather, over—him.
A confusing rush of horror and elation surged through Corben. “We had some forensic experts take a look,” he went on. “They checked out the dead bodies, the traces of the surgery, the equipment you left behind. The body parts in the jars. Their conclusions were…startling.”
He paused, gauging the man’s reaction. The hakeem just looked down impassively, his mouth and eyes narrowed to thin slits. Corben gave him a moment to let his words sink in, then asked, “Do you have it figured out?”
“You want my research, is that it?” The hakeem mocked dismissively. “You’re here to offer me the blessing and patronage of the American government in exchange for sharing my work with you?”
“No.” Corben’s eyes hardened. “Not the American government’s. Just mine.”
Chapter 50
“F rom what I’ve read,” Kirkwood told Mia, “identical twins have the exact same genes, but they don’t live as long as each other or die of the same causes—and I’m not talking about the ones that get hit by a bus. Studies have shown that the DNA of each twin develops its own harmful mutations. If aging was genetically coded into us, then they’d age the same way. But they don’t. The damage in their cells accumulates randomly, just like the rest of us.”
Mia took another sip from her glass, grinding over his questions. “You do realize what ‘fixing’ us entails? We’re talking about cells like brain and heart cells that don’t replace themselves when they die, chromosome mutation leading to cancer, protein accumulation inside and outside the cells…There are several distinct ways in which our body falls apart with time.”
“You mean, with wear and tear.” Kirkwood grinned.
“Yeah, well, life’s about wear and tear, isn’t it?” Mia shrugged. “I’m not about to move to some stress-free monastery in Tibet and spend my days humming show tunes and meditating in order to gain a couple of decades.”
“After Beirut—might be a tad boring,” he joked.
“Actually, on second thought—I’d happily take boring right now.”
Kirkwood nodded empathetically, then his expression went serious. “All I’m saying is, it’s possible. We just don’t know how yet. Cancer is believed to be curable, right? We’re working on it. We might not find that cure for another hundred years, but the odds are, one day, we will. It’s part of our MO. Not so long ago, infections ranging from simple viruses to flu pandemics were the main causes of death. The plague was considered a curse from God. We learned different. Now we’ve tamed those illnesses, we live long enough to experience heart disease and cancer. A hundred years ago, they were thought to be incurable, unlike infections. They were believed to come from within us. We now know that’s not the case. And once they’re tamed, who knows what the effects will be for the rest of the body.”
Mia studied him curiously. “You seem to know a hell of a lot about this.”
Kirkwood smiled. “I kind of have a vested interest.”
She looked at him, unsure of how to take that.
He paused, as if encouraging her moment of uncertainty, before adding, “We all do, don’t we? I don’t think anyone wants to die any sooner than they have to.”
“So you’re really into this? Do you also starve yourself and pop a couple of hundred pills a day?”
Many leading biogerontologists followed a regular exercise regime—the single universally accepted way to a healthier and longer life. They also self-medicated themselves with vitamins and antioxidants and were careful with what they ate. The latter was occasionally and unwisely taken to extremes, as severe calorie restriction was known to extend life—in animals, not in humans—although most would agree it had serious shortcomings in the quality-versus-quantity department.
“I look after myself, sure,” he conceded. “What about you?”
She held up her glass sarcastically. “That, and bullets—kind of not ideal if you’re hoping to break that hundred-year barrier,” she scoffed. She put her glass down and scanned the man’s face. There was something unsaid in his expression, a guardedness that she couldn’t really penetrate. “Seriously, though,” she insisted. “You’re more keyed into this than someone who’s just looking after himself.”
“We’ve got this small division in the UN—the World Health Organization?” Kirkwood ribbed her. “I’ve sat on some committees. We have a whole range of initiatives dealing with aging, but it’s mostly to do with improving the lives of the old. But we also host debates and prepare some in-depth studies, which I take the time to read—having a vested interest and all.” He looked at her intently. “You know all about the advances in molecular biology that are taking place. Science and technology are experiencing exponential growth. This accelerating growth rate has the potential to shrink distant projections to a tangible near future. What we think might take hundreds of years to achieve could only take a few decades. Replacement organs could be grown from stem cells; stem cells themselves could be injected into the body to repair it. The possibilities are endless. And I’m not even talking about distant dreams like artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. I’m talking about what we know is doable. And if our bodies are fixable, if the cellular wear and tear can be stopped or repaired once, there’s no reason why the process can’t be repeated. It would be like having your car serviced every ten thousand miles. It could just make us live much longer, or, if you push that notion to its logical conclusion, we could even be—in fact, it seems to me that a lot of scientists now seem convinced that we are—on the threshold of achieving medical immortality. And if that’s what this hakeem is after…it would explain a hell of a lot, wouldn’t it?”
Mia’s face pinched together as she considered the possibility. “You really think some primitive alchemists working a thousand years ago could have figured out something that we’re only starting to realize might be possible?”
Kirkwood shrugged. “Mold was used as an antibiotic in ancient Greece. Less than one hundred years ago, scientists perfected it and named it penicillin, but it’s been around for thousands of years. Same for aspirin. I’m sure you know your Phoenicians used it, as did Assyrians, Native Americans, and countless other peoples. After all, it’s not rocket science. It’s just a simple oxidation process of a powder taken from the bark of willow trees. We now think everyone should take a small daily dose to keep heart disease at bay. Just yesterday, I was reading about how the people of Chile are rediscovering the remedies of their indigenous Mapuche tribes for all kinds of diseases, and how well they work. There’s a lot out there we don’t know about. All it takes is one compound, maybe some powerful free-radical scavenger that can repair the oxidative damage to our cells. One compound. It’s not that impossible to imagine.”
“But still,” she countered, “with everything we know, with all our knowledge, we haven’t been able to work it out.”
“It would be a fair point if a lot of effort was going into preventing aging, but it’s not. Very few people are actually working on it. Scientists aren’t exactly motivated to go into that field. Government gurus, church leaders, and “deathist” scientists tell them it’s not possible, and even if it were, they keep telling us it’s not something we should want. The media’s quick to jump on anything that sounds promising, which has the effect of turning any serious enterprise into an apologist joke. Any serious scientists considering the field are—rightly—worried about being lumped in with the army of charlatans out there selling youth and getting nominated for the Silver Fleece Awards. They know they won’t get funding the minute they mention their work has to do with antiaging—they don’t even use the word anymore, it’s now cloaked under the term longevity medicine. They’re worried about working on something that, if you’re going to prove it works on humans, takes decades to show results, which can be hugely disheartening when the odds are you’re going to fail, and if you’re going to be mocked along the way…You’re a geneticist. Would you go into it?”
Mia shook her head glumly. It was too close for comfort. Her whole field, it seemed, was a minefield these days.
“You see my point,” he went on. “You know how the government feels about your line of work. They’re not even ready to back stem-cell research. Same goes for the Church. So the funding and the incentives aren’t there. But things are changing. The new megarich are getting older. And they’re interested. They don’t want to die unnecessarily. And to figure out something like this either happens by fluke, or with a lot of hard work and a lot of money. How much did we spend on the Manhatta
n Project? On putting a man on the moon? On the war in Iraq? Doesn’t seeing if we can fix the human body and eradicate the diseases and ravages of old age deserve one-tenth of the same funding? One-hundredth even? We don’t even have that. Do you know how many people die of age-related diseases every day? One hundred thousand. One hundred thousand deaths a day.” He paused and shrugged. “Maybe it’s worth thinking about.”
He set his drink down and gave his words a moment to sink in. “Don’t get me wrong. If that’s what this hakeem’s working on, I’m not saying he’s justified. His methods are beyond insane. He’s a monster who deserves to be drawn and quartered. But maybe—just maybe—what he’s after isn’t that insane. And if it isn’t, imagine what would happen if it were discovered.”
Mia finished off her drink and sat back. She was drunk with the possibilities. “I think I’m starting to understand his level of commitment. If he thinks it’s even remotely possible…” Her face brightened with a realization. “He’s got to be desperate to get his hands on that book. Which might give us an advantage in getting Mom back.”
“Absolutely.” Kirkwood paused. “Have you discussed this with Jim at all?”
She shook her head. “Up until an hour ago, I wasn’t really sure there was anything to discuss. Why?”
“I was just wondering what his take on it was. We’ve only talked about the operational details of what was going on.”
“He thinks the guy’s working on a bioweapon. Maybe he should know about all this too. I’ll call him in the morning.”
Kirkwood winced with discomfort. “I’d leave it. It doesn’t really affect his plans.”
“Yeah, but if this is possible, if that’s what the hakeem is after…maybe it changes things.”
Kirkwood’s expression darkened. “Not in a good way, as far as getting Evelyn back is concerned.”
Mia felt a sudden ripple of worry at the sudden seriousness of his words. “What do you mean?”