by Kyle Mills
Richard tensed when the door began to swing open, but it was only Chris, wearing a pair of jeans and an old Penn State sweatshirt. For a moment, it felt like none of this had ever happened. Like they were there for lunch.
He seemed confused for a moment, but then recognition registered on his face. “Oh my God! Carly, you’re alive!”
He opened his arms to throw them around her, but before he could, Richard stepped out and shoved him back hard enough that he nearly fell to the floor of his foyer.
They entered, and Carly slammed the door shut before taking a position by a window with an unobstructed view of the driveway.
“Jesus,” Graden said. “Where the hell have you two been? Everybody thinks you’re dead.”
Richard slipped one of Burt Seeger’s pistols from his waistband and aimed it at his old friend. The regret and nostalgia he’d worried would paralyze him didn’t materialize. In fact, the idea of pulling the trigger had a certain undeniable appeal.
“I’m asking the questions.”
“What are you doing? It’s me. Chris. We’ve been—”
“Shut the hell up,” Richard said. “Is anyone working here today?”
“What? No. It’s Sunday.”
Richard motioned with the pistol. “Go.”
“Where?”
“The den.”
“Put the gun away, Richard.”
“If you don’t turn around and start walking, I’m going to shoot you. I’m planning to start with your leg and work my way up.”
Graden just stared at him for a moment but then started obediently toward the back of the house. Richard glanced back at Carly as he followed, and she rewarded him with a weak smile. It looked like it was about all she had left.
“Seriously, Richard. Put the gun down. You’re acting crazy.”
The den was just the way he remembered it—a dusty explosion of books, old newspapers, and antique furniture. Strangely, most of the photos on the walls depicted Graden alone, but a few included what appeared to be friends. Richard wondered if he was spying on them too. If he would send someone for their children one day.
“Where have you been all this time?” his old friend said, keeping his eye on the pistol.
“You tried to kill us,” Richard responded.
“What are you talking about? The jet? That was—”
“I called Ray Blane. He was looking into some of the same things Annette and I were. You stopped his research too.”
“Ray Blane? I got him a huge grant. The people supplying the money wanted him to concentrate. And what do you mean ‘too’? I supported your research, remember? Shit, I wrote you a personal check for it and then got you out of jail.”
It was an incredibly convincing performance, made stronger by their long history together. But it was too little too late.
“You’ve been trickling in just enough money to keep your eye on me—to make sure I was staying focused on progeria and not looking into anything broader. Then I ended up with Annette’s research notes, and you got worried. Worried enough to try to kill my daughter. My daughter, Chris.”
“Kill Susie?” he stammered. “Are you listening to yourself, Richard? For God’s sake—”
“Where’s August Mason, Chris?”
“What?”
“The papers say he was on your plane when it went down. But we both know that isn’t true.”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Really? I do. We tracked him down in Argentina. And South America must really agree with him. He looks great.”
“You’re babbling,” Graden said, sweat beginning to glisten on his upper lip.
Richard tossed a hard copy of the photo Carly had taken onto a side table, and Graden looked down at it, his face melting into an emotionless mask.
“Don’t move!” Richard said, holding the gun out in front of him as his old friend started toward a wet bar in the corner.
Graden ignored him and poured himself a scotch. “Can I get you one? For old time’s sake?”
Richard suddenly felt a little weak. He’d come there blind with anger and tormented by hope, but somewhere deep in the back of his mind he’d expected Graden to have an explanation. A series of unlikely but plausible coincidences that they’d missed. Something that didn’t involve their best friend being a spy and a genetic therapy that could reverse millions of years of evolution.
But it was clear that no explanation was forthcoming. This wasn’t a paranoid delusion dreamed up by a desperate mind. It was real.
31
1,800 Miles East of Australia
May 6
Oleg Nazarov opened the door and stepped through, stopping short when Karl held a hand up. The room was windowless and expansive to the point of being nonfunctional.
Almost a hundred feet in length, it looked more like an art gallery than an office. Sculptures of various sizes dotted the floor, and original masterworks hung on the stone walls. Karl was sitting behind a glass-topped desk flanked by two tall cabinets that appeared to be made of wood, but were, in fact, elegantly disguised safes. The acoustics were abysmal, perhaps purposefully so, and from his position near the door Nazarov couldn’t make out anything Karl was saying into the phone.
It was hard not to wonder about the man. Who was he? How old had he been when he’d taken the therapy? What would it be like to feel yourself becoming young again?
In theory, it wouldn’t be long before he would be able to answer that last question. With the help of the group’s contacts, his possessions and investments were being reconfigured, liquidated, and transferred in ways carefully calculated to make them untraceable. When it was all done, he would have a painstakingly choreographed accident in which his body would never be found.
And then he would begin his life again—a new identity, an opportunity to leverage what he’d achieved and learned into so much more than he’d ever imagined. This time the incessant ticking of the clock would be silenced. This time it would be forever.
Karl hung up, and Nazarov started forward, reminding himself how quickly it could all end. His power and money were of no value at all on this island. There was only Karl. His decisions were final, and people followed his orders without question. Maybe it would have been wiser just to learn to enjoy old age.
“You have good news for me?” Karl said.
There were no chairs in front of his desk, and so Nazarov stood, clutching a leather portfolio with nothing of importance in it.
“I’m sorry to say that I do not.”
“Then what?”
“A trespasser was discovered on the property in Argentina.”
“This is important? See that security is tightened.”
“They saw Mason.”
Karl leaned back in his chair, staring up at him. Despite the unlined face and youthful body, there was still something in his eyes that hinted at his real age. Nazarov wondered if they were all like that—all the ones who had been transformed.
“How clearly? His condition is still intermediate isn’t it?”
Nazarov had rehearsed this conversation in his mind a hundred times before arriving at Karl’s door. There was no way to soften what he had to say. And no way to protect himself from the fallout.
“I believe that the trespasser was Carly Draman.”
Karl froze in the corpselike way he always did when he received bad news, and Nazarov decided to keep talking. The questions were obvious enough that they didn’t need to be said aloud.
“She took a photograph and ran. One of our people was killed trying to stop her, and another was severely injured. She and a man who fits her husband’s general description escaped.”
Karl rose slowly from behind his desk. He was at least four inches taller than Nazarov, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist that were the gift of his newfound youth and obsessive workout schedule.
The Russian found himself experiencing a sensation extremely rare for him: inferiority. He was nothing but an increasingly decrepit old
man standing in front of something completely new. Something that even God had never contemplated.
“Where are they now?”
“They managed to get to Santiago, Chile, probably by hitchhiking. There’s a record of them flying to New York, where we have security video of them getting into a cab. According to the company, they were dropped off at a bus station. We haven’t been able to trace them any farther than that.”
“You lost them?” Karl said. The volume of his voice rose for the first time in their short relationship. “You lost them again?”
“There are practical limitations on how quickly we can get information from the airline computers, and those delays are even longer in South America. Their flight was an eleven-hour direct paid for with cash at the counter.”
“Did she recognize Mason? How did they track him to Argentina?”
The questions had a rhetorical feel, so Nazarov decided to try to redirect the conversation down a more favorable path.
“We’ve shut down everything relating to Mason’s new identity, and he’s been moved. The house has been burned. There’s nothing left—”
“Nothing left?” Karl shouted. “All your expertise, all our money and planning isn’t worth anything. A poverty-stricken biologist and his wife have outsmarted you over and over again! And now they know. They know what we’ve done.”
“We’re doing everything we can. We—”
“I’m not interested in you doing everything you can,” Karl said, slamming a palm down on the desk. When he raised it again, Nazarov could see the sweaty outline left on the glass. “I’m telling you to get them. Bring them in alive and find out who they’ve talked to. Do it now.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Do you? Are you certain? If this goes much further, it could become impossible to contain. And then I’m not sure what use you’ll be to us.”
Nazarov was trying to formulate an appropriate response when the satellite phone in his pocket began to ring. He checked the number and then immediately picked up.
“Yes?”
“We’ve had activity at Chris Graden’s house,” the voice on the other end said.
Nazarov let out a long breath, and the pounding of his heart slowed a fraction. “Are you moving?”
“Our ETA is less than five minutes.”
32
North of Baltimore, Maryland
May 6
“Mason found what he was looking for,” Richard Draman said. “He found his fundamental truth.”
Chris Graden finished pouring his drink and stared silently into it.
“Say something, you son of a bitch!”
“Like what? Yes, Mason found what he was looking for and turned it into…well, you know what he turned it into.”
“How does it work?”
Graden smiled. “Why would they tell me?”
“They?”
He didn’t respond. It was probably true that he didn’t know. His rise through the ranks of the pharmaceutical industry had been based on his Harvard MBA and uncanny business acumen—not his grasp of biology.
“OK,” Richard said. “Then tell me something else, Chris. Tell me why.”
“Why what?”
“Why all this? Mason makes what may be the most important discovery in the history of our species, and instead of patenting it, getting another Nobel, and making a hundred billion dollars on patents, he disappears for twenty years to turn it into a therapy that he keeps to himself.”
“Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?”
Richard lifted the gun higher, aiming directly at Graden’s face. “Answer the question, Chris.”
“You already know the answer. The world isn’t ready for this.”
“What?”
“Come on, Richard. More than half of people in the U.S. don’t even believe in evolution. They think a carpenter from Nazareth created the universe. And now you want Mason to roll this one out? To take his little petri dish on TV and show everybody how to create life? That’s not playing God, Richard. That’s replacing God.”
“You expect me to believe that all this—killing Annette, coming after me and my family, spying on anyone doing research in this area—is about the fact that you don’t want to offend people’s religious sensibilities? Aging kills a hundred thousand people a day. It creates unbelievable human suffering. It costs more than every other disease combined.”
“But it’s not a disease, Richard. Are you sure people want it cured? You know how hard it is to get money for aging research— you’ve spent the last six years squeezing blood out of that stone. If old age kills so many people, why isn’t the money there?”
“Because people don’t understand. They—”
“And who’s going to make them understand? You? Can you imagine how this would divide the country and the world? What if, in the end, the politicians didn’t approve the therapy? Then people who use and supply it would be criminals. And the people who don’t would fade and die.”
Richard opened his mouth to speak, but Graden cut him off. “And what if it were approved? We’re talking about a change like our species has never experienced. But human nature isn’t going to change. Our government isn’t going to suddenly become responsible and thoughtful. How would we pay for it? My understanding is that there’s no way to make this therapy cheap, even on a large scale. Would only rich people get it? But what if we did make it cheap? What about overpopulation? And what about the million issues you’ve never even considered? How would you punish criminals? Would you put them in prison for a thousand years? Because ten isn’t going to matter anymore. And worse, how would you tell bad candidates that they can’t have it? That they have chronic diseases that we can’t afford to maintain forever or genetic defects that we can’t have passed on to the twenty-five children they’ll eventually have.”
“What gives you the—”
“No, no, Richard. I’m not finished. Are you sure that people have the psychological capacity for immortality? Is there some mental clock that Mason hasn’t considered? Will our brains get full? Will—”
“So we should all thank you. Is that what you’re saying? We should be grateful to you for being willing to play the guinea pig? What a load of shit. Why do you get to choose? What makes a man who would murder his friends—who would murder children—so deserving?”
Graden swirled the drink in his hand. “Who said anything about deserving? I know I’m not deserving. What I am is expedient. For now, it’s all about fitting the profile. I have money and the right contacts. I don’t have a wife or children—”
“What about us, Chris?”
He sighed quietly. “My affection for you and your family wasn’t a lie, Richard. I had—”
“I want the data. I want to be able to make it.”
“I’m sure you do. But I don’t have it.”
“Then you’re going to help me get it.”
He laughed. “You’re a genius in every sense of the word, and I’ve always admired your devotion to your daughter. But you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself involved in.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
“OK, I will. Other than Mason, I don’t really even know who the people involved are. I mean, I’ve met some of them, but I don’t know their names or where they come from. What I can tell you, though, is that combined they have more money and power than an average European country. They know…”
Graden’s voice faded when the muffled sound of a car engine became audible through the open door. Carly’s panicked shout rang out a moment later.
“You think you’re the only one who was being watched?” Graden said, indicating around the room. “They watch everybody, listen to everything. I’m no exception.”
Carly’s shout was even more piercing the second time. “Richard!”
He grabbed Graden and pushed him toward the door with the gun barrel jammed against the back of his neck.
“When they thought you were dead, you
had a chance. But now—”
“Shut up,” Richard said as they emerged into the entry. “How many are there, Carly?”
“One car, four men,” she said, peering through a small slit in the curtains. “Two are going around back. They all have guns.”
Richard wrapped an arm around Graden’s throat and moved the gun to his temple. “Get behind me, Carly.”
“If you don’t think they’ll shoot me to get to you, then you have no idea who you’re dealing with,” Graden said.
“At least we’ll go down knowing you went first, you piece of shit. Now open the door.”
Graden hesitated, but then seemed to conclude that he was better off at the mercy of the men outside than at the mercy of his old friend.
Richard squinted into the sunlight as they stepped outside. There was an SUV parked sideways in the driveway and two men angling toward the front door with pistols in hand. The car Seeger had rented was close enough that the fake temporary tag was legible through the back window. It might as well have been in the next state.
“Drop your weapon!” one of the men ordered. They were spreading out, getting into positions where Graden’s body would no longer offer protection.
“Drop it now!” the other one shouted, but his command was less a request than a diversion to allow his partner time to line up on Richard’s head. There wasn’t going to be a negotiation.
A shot rang out, and Graden pulled away, expecting the arm around his neck to go limp.
Instead, the back window of the SUV the men had arrived in shattered, and they both dove to the ground, their attention immediately refocused on the trees behind them. A second shot ricocheted off the asphalt only inches from the man to their right, and both scrambled for cover, shooting blindly behind them as they went.
Richard shoved Graden aside as Carly made a break for the passenger side of their car. She was already turning the key in the ignition when Richard jumped behind the wheel and slammed it into drive. The Chevy Aveo didn’t have enough power to spin its tires but managed to put itself on two wheels as they sped around the circular driveway and headed toward the vehicle blocking their path.