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
“From 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.”