Even Sleazy Steve understands that.
When they first met up in the lobby, Maggie had filled Nadia in on the Oleg... stabbing? Maggie isn’t sure what to call it. Nadia had listened raptly. She’d been up in the VIP section and had no idea of any of it. “The one you call CinderBlock. His name is Akim. He was on the plane with me. So was Ivan Brovski. But they aren’t in Dubai anymore.”
“How do you know?”
“On the plane, I got hold of Ivan’s phone when he fell asleep. I turned on his location services and dropped a pin to me.”
Brilliant and yet simple, Maggie thinks. “So you can track him?”
“Yes. Last night, I could see he was at Etoile Adiona, but” — Nadia opens up her phone and clicks on the app — “it hasn’t been active since 5:06 this morning.”
Maggie looks at the screen. “Is that Dubai International?”
“Yes.”
“So Ivan flew out. A location tracker won’t follow him in the air.”
Steve continues his exam with patience and skill. Maggie remembers the first time Trace brought Marc and her to Apollo Longevity. She had scoffed at the excess, at the exaggerated “fountain of youth” promises, constantly touted with the fascinatingly contradiction-in-terms phrasing of “anti-aging.” The wealthiest people in the world flew in just for whatever treatment was currently in vogue, and — Maggie’s personal opinion — even if well-intentioned, the vast majority were modern-day snake oil of one sort or another.
“You can get dressed,” Steve tells Nadia. “We can talk more in the consultation room, but I can tell you now that the operation is a complete success. I see no reason to be concerned.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Nadia meets Maggie’s eyes. Her eyes move to the computer monitor on the desk, then back toward Maggie. Maggie nods.
“We’ll wait in the other room while you get dressed,” Steve says. “Doctor McCabe, a word outside?”
Perfect, Maggie thinks. “Of course, Doctor Schipner.”
Nadia’s plan is simple, though a long shot. There is a computer terminal in the examination room. Nadia knows Trace’s username and password. While Maggie stalls and distracts Steve, Nadia hopes to log on and see what she can find.
Of course, there are a thousand things wrong with this plan. Trace Packer’s login may not work anymore. There is probably nothing important to see — do they think there’s going to be a message saying, “We’ve kidnapped Trace Packer. Here is his current location”? — and there might be trip alarms when she signs on or something like that.
But then again, who knows? She and Nadia are “spies” now, right? This is what spies do.
Steve escorts Maggie down the corridor. Up ahead she sees the one elevator that led down to the WorldCures floor.
“I wasn’t kidding in there,” Steve tells her. “You did great work with her.”
“Thank you.”
“And we both know you could have done this exam yourself. You didn’t need to bring her in.”
“I wanted to make sure,” Maggie says.
“Make sure what?”
“I wanted a true specialist to back up my work,” Maggie says. “And who better than the Boob Whisperer?”
Steve grins. “That’s just marketing.”
“Okay, sure.” Then with a shake of the head she says, “Boob Whisperer.”
“You’re making jokes,” Steve says, “because you don’t want me to ask the obvious.”
“That being?”
“Why did you do this surgery in the first place?”
“I could ask you the same question,” she says.
“Pardon?”
“This is a longevity clinic, not a cosmetic surgery center.”
“You don’t see the natural partnership? I mean, when you think about it, what I do here is one of the things that actually does reverse aging.”
“What about ozone therapy?”
He laughs. “Ozone therapy is old news. We have twelve rooms that do EBOO therapy now.”
“EBOO?”
“Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation Therapy,” Steve says. “Doesn’t that sound good for you?”
“It does.” She needs to stall for Nadia’s sake — and she’s also sort of interested. “How does it work?”
“You lay back on the most comfortable recliner imaginable. Your blood is drawn from a vein into a tube and through a dialysis filter where it gets exposed to medical-grade ozone and oxygen. As the blood circulates through the EBOO machine, it removes heavy metals, pathogens, debris—”
“Debris,” Maggie says. “I love that term.”
“Me too.”
“So all-encompassing. And meaningless.”
“Exactly. Oh, and EBOO also rids your bloodstream of my other favorite all-encompassing term.”
“What’s that?”
Steve smiles. “Toxins.”
“Oh yes.”
“Nice and vague. Anyway, after this, your same blood is returned to your body via another vein. So it cycles. Then you throw in some buzzy terms — immunity support, detoxification, inflammation reduction, enriching, regeneration, infusion...”
“Sounds perfect for the jet-setter who has everything,” Maggie says.
“Except immortality.”
“Which is what they sell here.”
“And we sell, to be fair.”
“Yeah,” Maggie says. “But what we sell is real. It isn’t quackery.”
Steve mulls that over for a moment. “I’m not sure it’s fair to call it quackery. There are some quality physicians who swear by these treatments, but here’s the problem: All of them profit from it. That’s not to say that they are charlatans — they’ll cite iffy studies and anecdotal evidence — but none of us think clearly when it comes to our wallets.”
“We are all the hero in our own story,” Maggie says.
“Exactly that.” Steve reaches an office door. “Are you done stalling?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re still not licensed, are you?”
“I’m not, no.”
“So how did you end up being Nadia’s surgeon?”
“You’ve probably guessed.”
“You were paid,” Steve says. “A lot.”
“Yes.”
“So some rich guy thought Nadia was too skinny.”
Maggie smiles. “I guess you’ve dealt with this before.”
“I have.”
“How do you handle it?”
“I insist on talking to the patient alone. If they say no, I flat-out refuse to do it. If I feel she is being coerced, I try to help her find a way out.”
“How?”
“First, I try to persuade the rich man in her life that he doesn’t want her to have bigger boobs.”
“Does that ever work?”
“Almost never,” Steve admits. “It’s like trying to convince a man he wants a smaller flatscreen.”
“What’s second?”
“I take a lot of photographs. I keep a lot of records.”
“Why?”
“Do you want to hear the ugly truth?”
“That’s always better than the pretty lies.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Steve says. “But let’s take your Nadia as an example. Nadia is a mistress to a rich man. The rich man wants her to have a larger chest. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. But there’s not a lot to be done in that case. So we just do it. But other times, well, the mistress is being discarded.”
Maggie swallows. “Discarded?”
“The rich man grows tired of her. If the girl is lucky, he just breaks it off, maybe gives her a few dollars. But sometimes — the rich man wants the woman to disappear.”
“I’m not following.”
“The world is about making a buck. We both get that, right?”
“Sadly, we do.”
“So if the rich man wants to get rid of the mistress and make a profit, what’s the best way to do that? You traffic the girl. Coming here is like turning in a leased car. They get her refurbished and send her back out.”