The Sanctuary

by Raymond Khoury

  She was about to leave when Kirkwood put his hand on her arm. “Please, Mia. Trust me on this. Don’t confront Jim about this. Not yet. Not until we know we have the book safely. I don’t want to give anyone any chance to screw us on using it to get Evelyn back.”

  She made a quick study of the man. His eyes shone with sincerity. He was either telling her the truth, or he was a spectacularly effective liar.

  Either way, she’d soon find out.

  She nodded and headed back to the elevator.

  KIRKWOOD WATCHED her leave with a knot in his stomach. He was now committed. There would be no turning back.

  He checked his watch and decided to initiate a precaution he’d been mulling. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number of the scout in Iraq who had first brought Abu Barzan’s find to their attention.

  The man could be trusted. Years of collaboration, a couple of passed trust tests, and a healthy retainer had proven that.

  He couldn’t risk calling Abu Barzan himself. He knew that if Corben had in fact been the counterbidder for the book, he and his minders knew about Abu Barzan and had his phone number. They could be monitoring it. And Kirkwood preferred not to announce his real interest to them just yet.

  The scout picked up quickly. Kirkwood told him what to do. He had to do it quickly and be brief. He also had to make sure he didn’t spook Abu Barzan. He asked the scout to call him back from another number and let him know where the new meeting would take place.

  He hung up, picked up the attaché case and the backpack, and headed for the door.

  Chapter 53

  F ifty miles further east, Corben was lying down on a narrow bed, looking around his stark white cell. The small room was windowless, and he had no idea what time of day it was, but he hadn’t really slept and he didn’t think more than a few hours had passed since they’d shoved him into the trunk of the car and driven him off.

  He tried to imagine what the other prisoners of the hakeem’s compound were going through. He pictured Evelyn Bishop and wondered how close she was, and whether she’d ever make it back into the sun’s embrace again.

  A picture was forming in his mind, and all the pieces seemed to fit. He was either in some town in north Lebanon or in Syria. He thought the latter more likely. The accent of the pockmarked thug and the rest of his cronies gave away their nationality pretty clearly. Corben didn’t speak much Arabic, but the little he did know allowed him to identify the different accents—Lebanese, Iraqi, Gulf Arab, Palestinian, Syrian. Now that he’d heard them speak, he was able to place the accent. Also, the car ride fit the profile. The second leg, at least, the one he’d been awake for. A winding road up a mountain and back down, a stop and some chatter—probably the border crossing—followed by more winding roads leading to a city that reverberated with a deafening cacophony of prayer calls, far more noticeably than Beirut.

  It had to be Damascus.

  The thought angered him. The city had actually been his first—and obvious—guess, back in 2003, when his assignment was officially live, when he’d tried to figure out where the hakeem had escaped to. A lot of Saddam’s cronies had made their way there to avoid getting shocked and awed. Despite the deep, long-felt animosity between the two countries, timely conveniences and dovetailing objectives meant that bitter enemies occasionally found reasons to help each other out.

  In the case of the hakeem, however, Corben knew the arrangement had nothing to do with politics.

  It also made sense for the hakeem. He would find patrons who could provide him with the same level of support that he’d enjoyed in Baghdad. Whatever he needed would be provided. His little guesthouse would run at full occupancy. And, when complications—or opportunities—such as those of the last few days arose, the expert, ruthless manpower was readily available.

  Speaking of which, the lock clicked open. The hakeem stood at the cell’s door. The pockmarked killer, Omar, and two other armed men were with him.

  “Time for you to sign in,” the hakeem announced. He gestured to Omar, who pulled out Corben’s cell phone and snapped the battery back into place. “You need to get the precise GPS coordinates of the Iraqi dealer,” he added, then raised a cautioning finger at him. “Remember, thirty seconds. No more.”

  Corben got up, still in his boxers, and did as told. He got through to Olshansky. No one at the embassy seemed to have noticed anything amiss. Not that they had any reason to. As long as he signed in on time, no alarms would go off.

  “Your target hasn’t moved since last night,” Olshansky informed him. “He’s still at the same location in Diyarbakir, but something else came up. Someone called him from Iraq.”

  “Who?” Corben asked.

  “I don’t know,” Olshansky replied. “The call was too brief to lock it in. The caller just told him to hang up, remove the battery from his phone, and call him back from another phone.”

  Corben didn’t allow the unexpected complication to perturb his countenance. He kept his cool and, without a tremor in his voice, asked Olshansky for the Iraqi cell phone’s last GPS coordinates.

  “You sure you want them?” Olshansky asked. “He’s got to know he’s being tracked by now, after that call. He’s probably long gone.”

  “Just give me the coordinates,” Corben said simply.

  Olshansky sounded a bit puzzled, but acquiesced. “One more thing,” he then added. “The Geneva cell phone I’ve been trying to lock onto—it’s not in Switzerland anymore. Its signal bounced off a jumble of satellites and servers before disappearing into a digital netherworld, but its trail definitely indicates a change of region. I’m liaising with a contact of mine at the NSA who’s prioritized the trace for us. My guy thinks he might be able to get a lock on his position before the end of the day.”

  “Do it sooner than that. I need it,” Corben replied curtly as he vaulted the information.

  He had his suspicions about where the caller might be headed.

  The hakeem looked at him suspiciously and gestured for him to hang up, which he did after telling Olshansky to keep him posted if the Iraqi signal changed location. Omar was quick to take back the phone and pull out its battery. These guys were well versed in covering their digital tracks, Corben thought. They’d kept Ramez’s phone live not to miss Farouk’s call, but they wouldn’t make that mistake with Corben’s phone. He wouldn’t be able to work backwards to pinpoint the hakeem’s lair beyond the broader confines of the city.

  He gave the hakeem the coordinates, which he knew were probably worthless, but he didn’t have much choice. He had to wing it from here. As he did, Omar punched them into a handheld device—the killer evidently spoke English, Corben noted—and it zoomed to a map of the Syrian-Turkish border, and to the town of Diyarbakir. Omar nodded with satisfaction.

  A thin smile broke across the hakeem’s aquiline features. “Time to go,” he ordered, gesturing for Omar to bring Corben.

  Omar gestured to one of his men, who handed him a folded batch of clothes and some boots. He threw them at Corben’s feet. Corben slipped them on over his boxers—baggy khaki pants, dark gray sweatshirt, and military boots. Omar pulled out some plastic cuffs and motioned for Corben to put his hands together. Corben grudgingly acquiesced. Omar snapped them into place, then pulled out a black cloth sack. He grabbed Corben’s shoulders and spun him around harshly, preparing to slip it over his head. “Yalla, imshi,” he grunted. Move it.

  Corben had had enough of being pushed around for one day. “Back off, asshole,” he snapped back, pulling his arm free and shoving Omar back. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Omar grabbed him, pushing him against the door, yelling, “Imshi, wlaa.” Corben resisted, but the hakeem interceded, ordering his man to stand down. Omar glared angrily at Corben, then shoved the hood into his hand and stepped back.

  WITH AN EAR GLUED to the door, Evelyn listened intently to the noise outside her cell. She’d heard the door being unlocked and had feared another victim, like her, being brought in or, worse
, being collected for another torture session with her demented host.

  Instead, she heard a man speaking in English. An American. She couldn’t really make out what he was saying, but he seemed to be in solid health.

  And now she heard a tussle and realized they were taking him away. The man had resisted.

  Her mind flooded with panic. She wasn’t sure what to do. Part of her wanted to cry out, to make her presence known to the other prisoner. If he escaped, if he was freed, he’d let the world know she was still alive. But another part of her was terrified. Terrified of getting the man into trouble, terrified of being punished herself for the insubordination.

  She couldn’t let the opportunity pass.

  Screw the consequences.

  “Help me,” she shouted at the top of her voice. “My name’s Evelyn Bishop. I’m an American citizen. I was kidnapped in Beirut. Please let the embassy know.” She banged her hands repeatedly against the solid, unyielding door. “Help me. I need to get out of here. Please. Tell someone, anyone.”

  She stood still for a moment, her nerves frazzled by the effort, her weary body taut with fear and tortured by desperate hope, and listened for a reaction.

  Nothing came back.

  She slunk down to the floor, a nervous quake in the corner of her lips, and wrapped her shivering arms around her.

  CORBEN FROZE at Evelyn’s screams. He turned and cast his eyes over the series of doors on either side of the long corridor, wondering which cell she was in. She sounded as if she was close by, but the muffled sounds could have come from any of the adjacent rooms.

  Not that it really mattered anyway.

  He wasn’t in a position to do anything about it.

  He glanced at the hakeem. The man was unflustered. He seemed to be studying Corben’s reaction.

  A thin smile broke across the hakeem’s thin lips. “It’s up to you,” he said sardonically. “Do you want to be a hero? Or do you want to live forever?”

  Corben let the words sink in. He hated that this freak, this insanely evil monster, could mess with him like that, goad him, tempt him. He hated the hakeem for it; more than that, he hated himself for succumbing to it. A pact with the devil. It never worked out, did it? If he had the opportunity, there and then, to gain the upper hand on his captors, to blow their brains out and free Evelyn and the rest of them, would he have done it?

  He wasn’t sure.

  But if he had to choose, he had to admit he probably didn’t think he would.

  Too much was at stake.

  The prize was too big.

  Corben scowled at the hakeem, and gave him his answer. He slipped the hood over his head. And in the darkness of the shroud, he hoped that the haunting sound of Evelyn’s scream wouldn’t remain branded into his consciousness for too long.

  Forever was far too long for that.

  Chapter 54

  T he Beechcraft King Air skirted the lush Mediterranean coastline, its twin turboprops powering it north towards Turkey.

  Mia hadn’t had much trouble sneaking out of the hotel unnoticed. Kirkwood’s car was parked around the corner. At the airport, there were no formalities to go through; she and Kirkwood were driven straight to the small plane that was waiting for them, its props spinning. Its wheels lifted off virtually as soon as they reached it. Clearly, the UN held sway in Beirut, even more so since several thousand of its troops were currently keeping the peace in the south of the country.

  Diyarbakir was northeast of Beirut, and the direct flight path would have cut across Syria diagonally, but Syrian airspace was tightly controlled. Kirkwood had decided on a more discreet, if slightly longer, course. They would fly north, keeping well out of Syrian airspace, until they reached the Turkish coast. There, they’d bank right and head east, inland, to Diyarbakir.

  She turned away from the distant coast shimmering along the horizon as Kirkwood came back from conferring with the pilots. He sat down opposite her and opened up the map in his hand.

  “Farouk’s friend is called Abu Barzan,” he informed her. “He crossed the border point here, at Zakho, and drove into Turkey yesterday.” Kirkwood pointed at the map, showing her the border crossing that was close to the tip where Turkey, Syria, and Iraq met. “He’s in Diyarbakir.” He indicated a town that was around fifty miles north of the Syrian border.

  “Is that where he’s meeting his buyer?” she asked.

  Kirkwood nodded. “We’ve got a couple of private contractors meeting us there. They’ll take us to him.”

  It was happening too fast. She wasn’t sure what to make of the sudden development. “How did you manage to track him down?”

  Kirkwood hesitated. “He wasn’t too hard to trace,” he offered as he folded up the map. “Mosul’s much smaller than Baghdad, and he’d boasted about making a big score.”

  “How are you going to get the book from him?”

  Kirkwood seemed uncomfortable with her questions. “He’ll hand over the book and the rest of the pieces, in exchange for us not shipping him back to Iraq for prosecution.”

  “What about his buyer?” Mia asked. “He could be part of this, couldn’t he?”

  Kirkwood shook his head. “He’s probably just some antiquities dealer from London or Frankfurt,” he speculated dismissively. “Hardly our concern. We just need to get the book to trade for Evelyn.”

  Mia frowned. She hadn’t heard anything on that front since making her televised plea, and she wasn’t hugely comfortable with being out of touch with the embassy—or even with Corben. “We don’t know if the kidnappers have made contact yet,” she noted.

  “They will. We can set up another press conference, say we caught some smugglers, make sure the book’s front and center.” Kirkwood looked at her with fierce determination. “Don’t worry. They’ll call. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Mia nodded and looked out the window, lost in her thoughts.

  After a moment, Kirkwood’s voice brought her out of her daze. “What is it?”

  Weariness lined her face. “It’s hard to imagine. That we’re doing this. That something like this could actually exist.” She shook her head and scoffed, but it was more out of tiredness than anything else. “It’s like Frodo’s ring. Tempting man with its power over nature, with its promise of long life. Toying with our easily corrupted hearts.”

  Kirkwood pursed his lips doubtfully. “I wouldn’t call it a corruption at all. Dying is such a huge waste of talent. And wisdom.”

  As the King Air skimmed the thin wisps of cloud, they discussed the profound changes a potential “magic bullet” of longevity would trigger, the seismic shifts in the way we live. Overpopulation was the obvious problem. From the hominids’ first appearance on the planet, it had taken us 80 million years to hit the billion mark in the early 1800s. It took well over a hundred years to hit the second billion in 1930, but ever since, we’ve been addding a billion more every fifteen years or so. This increase comes almost entirely from less developed countries; the more developed countries, in fact, are barely producing enough babies to maintain their current population levels. Still, having five or ten generations of the same family surviving concurrently would cause all kinds of upheavals. More natural resources, food, and housing would be needed. The welfare and pension systems, among others, would require even more of an overhaul than the one they already need. And human relations would be drastically, dramatically different.

  Marriage—would the institution still mean anything when no one would really expect to stay with one other person for a couple of hundred years? Children—how would they age and behave relative to their parents? The changes would also extend to work. Careers. Retirement. Would people have to work throughout their longer lives? Probably. Could they cope with that, mentally? What happened to the notion of the old moving on so the young could find their place in life? Would there be room for anyone to ever get promoted? And what about less obvious implications, such as on prison sentences, for instance? Was the threat of a thirty-year sentence a
s much of a deterrent to someone who expected to live a couple of hundred years?

  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.”