The more they talked it through, the more Mia realized that if this was real, every aspect of life as we knew it would need to be radically redefined. She’d never really explored its ramifications beyond scientific conjecture and idealized what-ifs, but thinking about it as potentially real, it was as daunting, even frightening, a prospect as she could imagine.
“We’d be living in a ‘posthuman’ age,” Kirkwood said. “And that terrifies the conservative and the religious establishment. But then, that fear is irrational. It wouldn’t happen overnight. It would be a gradual change. The ‘fix,’ if it were ever discovered, would be announced and people would just, well, not age. Or they would age very, very slowly. And the world would adapt. We were already hugely different from those who lived a hundred years before us. To them, we’re already ‘posthuman.’ And we seem to be handling the improved longevity, the medical advances and the technological innovations pretty well.”
But then, Mia knew, common sense and the greater good didn’t necessarily always prevail. Fear of change, combined with a patronizing, arrogant, and pontifical worldview, was already aligned to block such a discovery. Beyond its dogmatic, conservative mind-set, the government was daunted by the potential costs — never mind the huge potential savings in health-care costs due to chronic age-related diseases — and organizational changes that significantly longer life spans would incur. Big pharmaceuticals were happy to watch our bodies fall apart and sell us disease-management drugs. The antiaging creams, supplements, and hormones that didn’t really work were also highly lucrative—$6 billion a year’s worth, in fact.
“The people against it,” Kirkwood concluded, “they’re usually either deeply religious, or they’re philosophers who don’t live in the real world anyway. They compare us to blooming flowers or use some other inane analogy to celebrate the importance of death, they quote Greek and Roman thinkers or, inevitably, scripture. For them, life is defined by death. I’d say it’s the exact opposite: Life is defined by the ambition, the need, the urge, to avoid death. That’s what makes us human. It’s why we have doctors and hospitals. We’re the only species that’s aware of our own mortality, we’re the only species that actually has the capability, the intellect, the awareness, to aspire to defeat it. It’s been an ambition of man ever since we’ve walked on the planet. It’s part of our evolutionary process.”
Mia studied Kirkwood and nodded. She agreed with him, but an uncomfortable thought was clawing at her heart. “And in order to get Mom back, we might be handing it all to a psycho?”
Kirkwood watched the confusion and uncertainty clouding Mia’s face.
He’d been wondering about that too.
He hated having to lie to her, and delaying the inevitable. He wanted to tell her the whole truth, then and there, but every time he tried, something pulled him back. He knew he’d have to. He knew he would. But he still found it staggeringly hard to face her and tell her what she didn’t know.
He had a lot to make up for.
Compounding his turmoil was the hakeem’s file. Kirkwood had flown to Beirut with a clear mission: to assist in getting Evelyn back, while trying to keep the secret safe. Reading the hakeem’s file had thrown those objectives into disarray. Countless victims had died horrible deaths, and many more were at risk.
He had to be stopped.
Kirkwood and his partners were all agreed on this. It had to supersede all other considerations.
Including Evelyn. Including the secret itself.
The hakeem couldn’t be allowed to carry on his murderous quest.
Where that left him, Evelyn, and Mia was another matter altogether.
Chapter 55
Through the cloth shroud covering his head, Corben concentrated on the whir of the chopper’s turbine. The sound was throatier, lower-pitched, very different from the Hueys, Blackhawks, and Chinooks he was used to. The seat he’d been shoved into confirmed his suspicion. It was positioned sideways, along the outer wall of the cabin, and its fabric was rough and starchy, its padding thin, its metal frame biting into his thighs uncomfortably.
The chopper was military.
Russian-made. A Mil, no doubt.
He’d know soon enough, as he sensed the machine slowing down and banking heavily, both of which suggested an imminent landing. Sure enough, it lurched and began its descent.
He wasn’t sure how long the flight had taken, but the feeling he’d gotten of it tallied with the journey he assumed they were making: two hours of flight time or so. Comfortably within the range and airspeed of the big choppers.
They were soon on the ground. He was hustled out of the cabin and heard some shouted orders before the big turbines strained back to full power and the brunt of the rotor wash plowed into him. As the chopper lifted off, he used the likely moment of distraction among his captors to raise his nylon-cuffed hands and pull the sack off his head. Omar spotted it and barked out angrily at him, but it was too late. Corben glimpsed the Mi-25 as it banked and headed back south. He couldn’t make out any markings on its camouflaged flank, but it was a military helicopter, and only one country within a few hours’ driving range of Beirut had them.
He gave Omar a small grin, an unspoken middle finger, then looked around. Omar had brought three other men with him. They were toting some impressive gear: Corben spotted two sniper rifles, several submachine guns, and a couple of packs of additional gear. All of which confirmed that whoever the hakeem’s sponsor was had some serious muscle. The man seemed to have access to significant support and firepower, as well as a seemingly inexhaustible supply of drones. They’d been able to chopper straight into Turkey at the drop of a hat, no doubt aided by the symbiotic, enemy-of-my-enemy relationship between Turkey and Syria, which were both engaged in an ongoing struggle to subdue the nationalistic aspirations of the stateless Kurds.
Corben realized that any ideas he’d entertained about possibly collaborating with the hakeem were seriously misguided. Besides being a hard case himself, the man clearly had some heavyweight sponsors to answer to. Whoever they were, they were heavily invested in him. They’d have serious issues with inviting an American intelligence agent to their party.
It didn’t necessarily displease Corben. He’d taken a serious dislike to the man and to the leather sole of his hand-sewn moccasin. He looked forward to possibly ramming it down the man’s throat if this mystery buyer proved useful.
He noticed Omar pulling out the phone they’d taken from him and snapping its battery into place before pocketing it and checking a handheld GPS device. Corben scanned their surroundings. They’re been dropped off in a clearing on a small hill, at the edge of a vast plain of arid land. Small patches of greenery dotted the edge of a river, the Tigris, that cut through it, snaking south, where it would eventually cross all of Iraq. About a mile north of their position, looming down on the parched flatlands from its elevated mound, was the ancient city of Diyarbakir.
Omar walked over and handed Corben his phone. “No messages for you,” he said in a heavily accented tongue. “So the position of Abu Barzan is still the same.”
“Still the same,” Corben confirmed. “But we’d better keep it on from here on, in case they call with any changes.” If Olshansky didn’t come through for him soon, things might get tight. He just had to find an opening and take it.