by Saad Hossain
“Guys, we should really try to find this OM cat,” Hoffman said. “I can’t believe I’ve actually found some weapons of mass destruction.”
“You’ll probably get a promotion for this,” Behruse said. “They’ll make you general or something. I’ll have to salute you probably.” The Dog Boy moaned in the background, promising sexual favors to anyone who would let him out of the cell.
Log 15, Day 34, Al-Rashid, Parking Lot. Office bugged. New male nurse and security guard surely Mukhabarat spies. Must warn Mazra. We must prepare to remove Taha from here. I can continue research on my own, perhaps with Dr. J’s help. Will contact Nur, if necessary. This is too big for one person. Nobel Prizes for everyone! Except Mazra of course. I need some other human subjects to experiment on.
Log 19, Day 38, Al-Rashid, Parking Lot. Long discussion with OM. Pretending to be his lackey. Need to make a move soon. Taha growing increasingly resistant to heavy tranks. He is recovering somewhat from earlier partial lobotomies. Incredible. OM offers key insights into telomerase creation enzymes. He has given me many notebooks. Appears to be translations. Medical notations are strange, even archaic. Annotations from some third person Geber. Also sections written entirely by Geber. A collaborative effort, clearly. OM is almost certainly a biomedical professional of no small power. He is finally taking me into his confidence, I think. Today he told me that he thinks of me like a son.
Log 21, Day 41, Al-Rashid, Bathroom. Geber might be THE GEBER. Jabir Ibn Hayyan of Egypt, the ALCHEMIST. How old is this formula?? The notation matches alchemy notation of eighth century Cairo. How old is OM then?? This is incredible. Might be a hoax. But OM vouched for by the service. And Taha is living proof? PS librarian was very helpful. Must remember to thank him for references.
“Did you dudes know anything about this Geber guy?” Hoffman asked.
Behruse, who had stopped reading and was trying to make some coffee, did not answer.
“Geber lived in the eighth century AD, in Kufa,” Sabeen said absently. “He was reputedly the first and foremost alchemist, the Father of Alchemy. He also invented almost all of the alchemical instruments used throughout.”
“You think this is the same guy?”
“One of Geber’s root interests was ‘Tawkin’: the creation of artificial life. He was particularly renowned for trying to prolong a scorpion’s life or to recreate one artificially. He probably succeeded,” Sabeen said. “Incidentally, there is another scientist called Pseudo-Geber, who anonymously published a lot of alchemical papers in Latin some 500 years after Geber’s purported death. So perhaps he did manage to live for so long.”
“That’s incredible!” Hoffman said. “How can you be so calm?”
“Hush, dear, I’m trying to read.”
Log 23, Day 44, Al-Rashid, Bathroom. Geber notes are amazing. The man is a genius. I wonder if he still lives. He might have succeeded. This is the initial work done on this project, nearly 13 centuries ago. How old is Taha then? Who exactly is OM? Desperate to get OM blood sample, but no chance of that I fear. Do not want to tip him off about this line of speculation. Taha and OM both likely 13 centuries old. Could OM be original collaborator of Geber in development of telomerase project? OM also very interested in something called the Druze watch. Keeps wanting me to interrogate Taha on this subject. He has grown increasingly unhinged for results. Am certain OM plans to kill me after he gets what he wants.
“Woah, guys, this dude knows about the watch,” Hoffman said, “He’s like the mastermind of the whole thing. We got to show this shit to Avi. Speaking of which, did Avi say anything about helping my boys?”
“Yes, I forgot to tell you,” Sabeen said. “He’s gotten in touch with Salemi. Things should be taken care of soon.”
Log 29, Day 53, Al-Rashid, Public Ward 2. Recovering from superficial injuries during break in. Remarkable luck! We were not ready to move, Mazra in particular was very reluctant. But what great luck! So many patients escaped! We smuggled Taha out, sedated, and then destroyed all his papers. I am the only man alive now who knows the full extent of this experiment. It is the greatest single scientific endeavor of human history, stretching over 14 centuries!
Log 29, Day 53, Safe House 1, Office. Ahhh, finally I can write in peace. Met OM, explained breakout by Taha. Told him about the resistance to tranks and other drugs (which is true!). OM was very agitated. He almost smashed the little olive tree. I am on pain of death now. Have to be very careful. Am sending notes to Nur so that some aspect of my research survives. But not the deep end of it, of course. Dr. J knows now. Need his help for the more complex genetic work. How did Geber perform these tests without modern technology?? What a mind! I am no longer sure about Nobel Prizes. This work should not be revealed to the public, maybe. Is it possible to live forever? Geber, at least, added a few hundred years to his life, if not more. Same for Taha. OM, I am sure, is old as sin. I can feel it. The truth is at my fingertips. If Geber and the OM discovered this through alchemy, surely modern science can reverse engineer it. Imagine the work I could achieve with 200 years more?
“Olive tree? Old Man?” Hoffman had his jaw open. “Sab, is it Avi?”
“Hush, dear, keep reading, we’re just at the interesting bit.”
“It’s Avi, isn’t it? Your grandfather.” A cool finger rested on his lips. She was too close. Hoffman breathed in deeply, the light citrus of her skin filling his head. He leaned back, disoriented.
“I’ll explain everything. Let’s just finish, ok?”
Log 35, Day 68, Safe House 1, Office. Subject 1, male, 34 years. Subject 2, female, 29 years. Mazra has finally found some suitable candidates for our clinical trial. So far, the analysis of Taha’s blood and DNA reveals many clues as to the methods Geber/OM must have used. Yet some part is missing, some critical portion. Something that OM himself does not know, presumably. He is pressing me to go over old notes and look for mentions of the Druze watch. I have fobbed him off for now. I am growing convinced that the Druze watch has the missing link of this alchemical immortality. Mazra and I have taken turns questioning Taha, but he is growing very difficult to control. Mazra has him locked in the cell full time now. Taha refuses to answer questions about the watch. I wish I had a professional interrogator to work on him. I have discussed the situation hypothetically with Dr. J. He suspects, of course but can never know the true extent of the situation.
Log 39, Day 72, Safe House 1, Lab. Disaster! Taha has escaped! He overpowered Mazra during feeding time. The tranks must be like water to him now. He’s gone! God knows where. Luckily Subjects 1 and 2 are ok. Mazra has brought in Subject 3, male, 25 years. I must continue the work without Taha. Cancer is a big problem. Subject 2 already showing tumors. The delivery method is another issue. It must be like a disease, like a virus, which can affect almost every cell in the human body. Only a very potent virus would be able to effect wholesale changes in the host human body. Something like herpes simplex, perhaps, which has different latency stages and does not cause immediate cell death. The virus could have a long lysogenic cycle, where it would copy itself into the host DNA and lie dormant, allowing the host cell to multiply normally. I must try to graft the telomerase-making protein code or some similar device to a viral DNA that can successfully penetrate the human body, spread to most of the key cells—perhaps mainly stem cells—and then not cause cancers or other ill effects, but rather, simply prevent senescence. Is this even possible? It boggles the mind to think someone 1,300 years ago might have thought of this.
The problem would be easier to fix if it just caused a genetic mutation in the sperm or egg cells. The beneficiary, of course, would be the offspring. Yet this is not the case. OM, Geber, even Taha most likely were not born but transmuted, as the alchemist would say. I cannot help but wonder: if these alchemists discovered immortality so long ago, then are these terrible old men floating around now, ruling the world in secret?
“Ah, Sawad, the prick knew too much, really.” The vulgarity sounded ill on Sabeen’s lips
, made her face somehow cruel.
Hoffman made to withdraw, uneasy suddenly that Behruse was behind him. BANG! He jumped in the air, half expecting to be shot. The shockwave of the bullet reverberated around the closed space and set Dog Boy off moaning again. Hoffman rolled to a crouching position, his nose bleeding, to see the tree trunk body of the Kurd toppling slowly, a red ruin in the center of his face, a gaping hole that Hoffman could almost see through. Too late, he scrambled for his gun.
“Sorry, Hoffy.” Behruse had the pistol on him, so close, that he could feel the heat from the discharge.
Sabeen lit a cigarette and pulled deeply. Her eyes were cold. “It could have played out differently.”
Hoffman sprawled on the ground, hands out. “Sawad worked for you.”
“Yes, from the start,” Sabeen said. “He betrayed us, of course.”
“Who pushed him off the roof?”
“That would be me,” Behruse laughed. He did not appear so kindly anymore. “I was supposed to capture him, but he made a run for it—to the roof. I swear, what the fuck did he expect to find there? A stairway to heaven? The idiot practically jumped rather than get caught.”
“You fucked me, Behruse.”
“Hey, Hoffy, it was just pure bad luck,” Behruse smiled and then his boot came down, smashing into Hoffman’s knee. “You shouldn’t have fucked my bitch wife.”
“Enough!” Sabeen’s voice was a whiplash; it left in no doubt who was master here.
“Sab, what the hell was this?” Hoffman asked from the ground. “Why play me for so long?”
“We needed you, sweet one,” Sabeen said. “We needed you to take us places where we could not go. We needed to find out the full extent of Sawad’s betrayals. Grandfather saw the potential in you, and he was right.”
“Dr. Nur?”
“Dead, strangled by you,” Sabeen said.
“Dr. J?”
“Soon to be shot using your gun. You also pushed Dr. Sawad off the roof, in case you were wondering.”
“My friends?”
“Salemi knows where they are hiding. He’ll take care of them,” Sabeen said. “And return the watch if they have it.”
“He’ll kill them.”
“Lucky, if they die quick,” Behruse said. “Hassan Salemi likes to toy with his food before eating it, I hear.”
“So you win everything,” Hoffman said. He let his head fall back flat on the ground. Ali Mazra’s blood pooled nearby, steaming.
“Taha is still loose,” Sabeen shrugged. “He will return here, one day soon. It is the only refuge he knows. We’ll take him then.”
“Oh yeah, and your men,” Behruse said. “They’re dead. Salemi got them two days ago. IED. Islamic Jihadi Grand Council of Shulla took responsibility on the radio for it.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Hoffman cried. “They didn’t know anything.”
Sabeen shook her head. “You think grandfather takes chances anymore?”
“I shoot myself now, I guess?” Hoffman asked. “You want me to write a note?”
“I’m not going to kill you, dear,” Sabeen said. “You’re far too precious. Grandfather wants to know who you really work for. And again, you might have to stand trial for all those murders.”
“At least give me some more pills,” he said, panicked at the sudden thought of all that poison eating up his insides.
“Oh, Hoffman, you’re addicted to them,” Sabeen said. “You’ve taken so many that I think you’re impervious to all poison now.”
“That won’t help if I put a bullet in your gut though. Get up. No bullshit now.” Behruse kicked Hoffman in the back, not in anger, more with a sort of professional force, enough to hurt, not enough for permanent damage.
Hoffman curled up, whimpering. He felt no compulsion to hold up under torture of any kind. He knew very clearly that he would blurt out any and all truths at the first opportunity. Behruse swore disgustedly, grabbed him under the armpits, and started to drag him away. The sound of the Dog Boy’s incoherence got louder.
“Wait, wait!” Hoffman shouted. “Do not put me in with that freak! Behruse! Behruse! Aarrrggghh.”
30: BURNING BOOKS
YAKIN GRIPPED HIS AK47 WITH TRUCULENCE. IT WAS JUST HIS LUCK to get a bum weapon. He had asked for the Bulgarian gun with the beechwood stock because that was the best, but of course, he had been overruled. They hadn’t even given him a Chinese one. No. Instead, he was holding some mangled reject made in Bangladesh, which didn’t even have a gun manufactory. It was probably made on some boat by a fisherman. The gun had a 75% misfire rate! 75%! It was actually safer to give the gun to the enemy and let it blow his hand off.
Even though he was shadowing the imam, and therefore probably going to be the first one to die, he still did not garner the respect he deserved. The others called him names behind his back and were trying to kill him. They hated him and wanted him out of the way.
That was the only answer. How was he supposed to get on in life if his own side was trying to kill him? He had asked for a bulletproof vest and a helmet, but the imam had laughed him away, and their de facto quartermaster had given him a red scarf. A red scarf? How the hell was that supposed to stop bullets? In fact, it would probably attract bullets. The enemy would single him out as a champion warrior because he was the only idiot wearing a red scarf. Of course, Yakin reflected bitterly, if he now refused to wear the red scarf, they would all gang up on him and call him disloyal, and a traitor, and unwilling to die for God.
This was the one epithet to be avoided at all costs in this crew. To be eager to die for God was the one credo the imam consistently loved, no matter what kind of madness was the current flavor of the month. To be fairly lukewarm about the idea of dying for God was a surefire way of getting pressed into the front lines.
The imam was on a roll. Things had been going very well for him after the initial disappointment of having his house blown up. This was bad news for Yakin, who had realized some time ago that whenever things went well for people around him, it meant inevitably that he was somehow going to land in the shit. This, he reflected bitterly, was the story of his life.
The partnership with the Old Man had borne fruit. The imam’s bomb squad had just taken out a group of American soldiers, without any reprisal from the Americans. At the current market rate of 1 white body equaling 78.3 olive-skinned bodies, this was a massive coup in the streets, and his name was being touted for the state legislature.
The bomb squad had even brought back a Humvee, that most prized possession of American soldiers and rap stars alike. And now, they were on the way to the abandoned safehouse to correct the one blot on the imam’s record, the final and just punishment of the murderer of his son. Yakin, by this point, was heartily sick of the imam’s dead son, who in life had been a fickle dilettante of lost causes, not much good to anybody, and most likely impotent to boot. In life the imam, too, had hated him. In death, however, he had developed some kind of inconceivable status, an unlikely martyrdom imbuing him with all sorts of virtues.
Fanatics on the street now claimed that he was 6'6", when he had in fact been 5'8". They said he had had a full beard of unusual lustrousity, when he had in fact worn a womanish pencil thin goatee. They said that he had been a devout Shi’a, when in fact he had on many occasions declared his disbelief in any deity higher than the US dollar.
Now they were bouncing along on a half-sprung truck, going to avenge this good for nothing. Yakin had his Bangladeshi gun, his pistol, and an old knife. He sat in the back of the covered van with half of their force. The imam was an egalitarian. He rode in front with the driver, wearing a vest, but no helmet. It was unusual for him to go murdering in person, but this was an issue of family honor, and he had lost a lot of face over the continued defiance of these petty criminals.
Yakin wanted to pee, but there was no way they were going to stop the truck for him. People in the neighborhood had gotten wind of this upcoming disaster and were making themselves sca
rce. Like rats. Fleeing, craven rats. How he wished he was with them.
All too soon, the truck ride was over. It was a dead-end street, and among some abandoned buildings there was an old blue door. Yakin loitered behind, pretending to tie his laces until the others had leapt out. He was sure Kinza would recognize him and shoot him first. Having seen them fight, he had no doubt that this would come to a bloody end. The imam couldn’t imagine how a single man could bring his house down and so believed erroneously that this was actually a splinter insurgency band, probably foreigner Sunnis trying to muscle in. Yakin had explained that this was nothing more than the black malign will of Kinza, which had a gravity of its own and could pull innocent bystanders into its bizarre, violent vortex.
The chaos started right away, as the first Fanatic kicked in the door, while the imam chanted obscure suras Yakin had never heard before. Two rifle butts and the blue door slammed back, splintered. Two of the men leapt in, directly into the flaming muzzle of an M60, a swiveling, racketing nightmare of a gun, manned by a cackling ten year old. Splinters and bullets sprayed outside, and Yakin rolled on the floor. Salemi’s soldiers were Gulf War veterans. They returned fire, and soon the boy was thrown back from his perch in mangled pieces.
Yakin had no sympathy to waste for the kid. His enemies were already propelling him forward, and all too soon he was clambering over the carcass of the smoking M60. The second he entered, he felt the hair on his neck rise. This was a cursed house. There was an eeriness not entirely produced by the ringing in ears. Yakin tried to position himself into the middle of the convoy following Salemi, whose calm authority had quelled the panic of the Fanatics for a space.