by Layton Green
“Somax has a record of questionable research.”
“They do, but that’s not what tipped the scale. I did some thinking: your company is tiny compared to the giants on this list.”
“Yes.”
“So who could’ve known about your product? Are you aware Somax reportedly conducted biological experiments on villagers in Africa?”
“I do not concern myself with outside affairs.”
“Well this one was close to home. It happened in Sudan. If I wanted a fairly stable, international base of operations in that area, I’d choose Cairo over Khartoum.”
Al-Miri didn’t respond, and Grey continued, “What are the chances that Somax’s people spent some time in Cairo? It’s easier to compile research, get supplies, stay anonymous, reach the outside world.”
“I see.”
“They had opportunity to stumble across your company, if one more fact fits: was your company in possession of this technology three years ago, or was it at least in development? That’s when Somax was in Africa.”
“It was,” Al-Miri murmured.
“Is there any chance Somax might’ve heard about your product?”
“There are the inevitable leaks and rumors.”
Grey paced the room as he talked. “I think it’s time to take a chance. I can be in Bulgaria by tomorrow evening. We don’t have any other leads, and the African connection is compelling. I can stir something up, even if it’s just to rule Somax out.”
“I agree. Please move quickly. I’ll await word of what you find.”
Grey held the phone away and frowned at it. He’d expected at least a little resistance. “Tell me more about what was stolen. I’ll try to get up to speed.”
There was a pause on the phone. “The solution in the test tube involves the telomerase enzyme. Telomerase is instrumental in the reparation of DNA.”
Grey asked him to spell the name of the enzyme, and scribbled it down.
“The telomerase enzyme has been studied in detail. We believe we have uncovered previously unknown properties. Those properties are extremely technical.”
“I just need to be familiar with it for now,” Grey said. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Yes.”
• • •
Grey called Viktor and relayed the conversation with Al-Miri. Viktor told him to watch his step in Bulgaria, as a corporation like Somax probably had the local authorities, or worse, under its thumb. Viktor also promised to take a closer look at The Lazarus Foundation.
Grey didn’t know what he’d expected when he agreed to work for Viktor, but it wasn’t a foray into the underworld of biomedical gerontology. Not that he minded: he was thankful to be working, and had to admit the whole affair intrigued him.
And Bulgaria? He’d seen more than fifty countries, but Bulgaria wasn’t one of them. He needed to get a rudimentary handle on the Cyrillic alphabet, and learn as much as possible about local customs and language. English had spread like a mutating virus to every back alley and lost peninsula on the globe, but then there was Bulgaria.
However, Bulgaria didn’t bother him. Al-Miri bothered him. Something about the bizarre CEO gnawed at Grey, something unrelated to cultural differences or Al-Miri’s odd mannerisms. Something to do with his speech, the neutral inflection of his voice that somehow managed to convey extreme urgency concerning that test tube. Urgency that, to Grey, seemed to go beyond simple greed. Grey was not a greedy man, however, and understood that money affected some people far more than others. To some it could become a religion.
He bought a phrasebook and a map of Sofia, and picked up some research on gerontology. He returned to his hotel, grabbed a beer and settled into a chair. Before opening the phrasebook his eyes swept the personal contents of the room: a stack of books stood in one corner, philosophy and martial arts theory and a few crinkled novels. On a bedside table was a picture of his mother, and next to that a present Nya had given him, a tiny soapstone carving of two intertwined lovers.
He finished his beer with distracted slowness, his mind already hovering above the Atlantic.
– 10 –
Professor Viktor Radek cradled the reservoir glass with one massive hand. He laid a cube of sugar on the slotted absinthe spoon and placed the spoon across the top of the glass. He drizzled absinthe over the sugar, then lit the cube with a match. He watched the sugar caramelize and drip through the spoon into the glass, then he dunked the flaming spoon. She ignited briefly, and he smiled. A true and wanton lover she was, fiery and pure.
He added ice water to quench the flames, just enough to release the wormwood and anise oils, just enough to reach that sensual milky color that signified the ritual transformation of La Louche.
He swirled, caressed, divined her depths. He tipped her into his throat and she slid downward and carried his mind, troubled and willing, to her familiar home.
He moved to the window of his hotel room and saw Berlin, his mind perked by the strangely lucid effect of thujone. A strong city, Berlin. A marvel of evolution. Stripped of pride, it had survived, adapted and become a new creature, a modern thing, a melting pot of unity and progress. War humbles cities in that way, he mused: they rebuild wiser and kinder, arms spread wide to those they once would shun.
Wars, or any transient affairs of state, had never interested Viktor. He saw the universe as a gigantic puzzle, the earth one planet among billions, the petty struggles of its inhabitants a diversion from greater truths. Those greater truths drove him—what did it all mean, where do we go, from whence do we come? He did not have an ethos, a theology, but he had devoted his life to research and personal experience, the glimpses into what he viewed as pieces of that puzzle: the strange, the inexplicable, the uncanny, the divine. This sense of faith or religion or simply ontological being—it affected billions of people on a daily basis.
The Berlin case bored him. It was another band of disaffected youth who believed they were Satanists. They hadn’t even bothered to do their research; they knew nothing of the true Satanic cults. They knew enough, however, to cause senseless harm and misery. They had murdered a classmate, crucified him in a forest. The ritual was sloppy, amateurish. Viktor was happy to help, but the Berlin police didn’t need him. They needed a psychiatrist.
His thoughts turned to the case Grey was working. He had never met someone quite so… isolated… as Dominic Grey. He didn’t know much about Grey’s past, except to know that Grey didn’t like to discuss it.
What he knew about Grey’s present was that he had the mind, heart and ability to be an excellent investigator. Viktor had long needed someone like Grey to complement his own skill set. The few investigators Viktor had hired in the past either didn’t have the stomach for the kind of cases Viktor worked, or they couldn’t handle the travel demands. Grey had no problem with either.
Grey’s case was proving more interesting. Viktor toyed with the information he’d learned as he would pieces on a chessboard, arranging them in every possible position. The game was too early, the possible moves too many. He didn’t even know his opponent, though he had hints.
The obvious choice, the connection Grey had found by following the money, was the Lazarus Foundation. The Lazarus Foundation was the child of a parent organization, spun off a decade ago to keep pace with new developments in biotech. The Lazarus Foundation concerned itself with modern scientific research into anti-aging techniques: biomedical gerontology, nanotechnology, cryonics, modern mummification, even something dealing with uploading a human mind to a computer, which made Viktor shake his head and stop reading.
The parent organization was a group with which he was familiar. It was an organization with roots in medieval times, a society which had latched onto the coattails of history and hung on for dear life. In Viktor’s mind, they were of the same ilk as the modern-day Templars, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and other secret societies: obsessed with ritual and appearance, guardians of ancient gossip, purveyors of charity events and domestic escape. Organizati
ons of serious intent and real threat conducted their business without fame or needless pomp. They made their bed in a nest of shadows.
The parent organization to the Lazarus Foundation had changed its name over the years, and had now assumed that symbol of progress, the acronym. They called themselves the W.G.A.A, the Worldwide Guild of Advanced Alchemists, or, as Viktor knew them better, The Guild.
The Guild concerned itself with two purposes. The first: preservation of the legacy and traditions of the ancient alchemical sciences. Alchemy had a fascinating and important past, and deserved its place in history.
The second purpose of The Guild was the same goal the alchemical world had maintained, as far as Viktor knew, since the beginning of the art.
They were looking for the elixir of life.
Viktor was not too concerned about the possible involvement of The Guild. The Guild enjoyed its history, its costumes and its esoteric references. It was harmless, and he was relieved one of the more radical pro-aging groups wasn’t involved. What surprised him was that The Guild gave money to Somax. Usually it exercised more discretion with its donations and business associations. Had the Guild grown more brazen in its timeless search for immortality? Or perhaps more desperate?
He would soon find out, as he happened to know one of their members. But first, it was time to turn his attention to the piece of the puzzle that intrigued him far more than The Guild: Al-Miri and his golden medallion. He didn’t know many CEOs that engraved their corporate logo and wore it on a medallion around their neck, especially when that logo contained pagan iconography.
It was rare that Viktor encountered a religious figure of which he was not aware, and the thought excited him. He eyed the stack of books before him with pleasure, an array of tomes on Egyptian religion he had gathered from a local used and rare bookstore that specialized in religion and the occult. It had been a while since he had delved into ancient Egypt. He wished he was at home in his personal library, as his collection dwarfed that of the bookstore, but this would do for now.
He took a long sip of absinthe, released a sigh of pleasure, and got to work.
– 11 –
The plane thrust off the ground with a stomach-wrenching surge, and Grey watched some of the other passengers murmur quick prayers. Grey put his own faith in the human spirit, and his strength of mind and body had seen him through life’s trials.
Until Zimbabwe, that was.
Until Grey had been assigned to investigate the kidnapping of a retired diplomat, and the investigation had led him and Viktor and Nya to a series of religious ceremonies in the bushveld of Zimbabwe, and to events for which he had no explanation.
The babalawo, the Juju priest Grey had faced, had toyed with Grey’s mind and left Grey on his knees, broken, in a filthy pit. Had it not been for the brave intervention of a village boy, then Grey, along with two people he cared for very much, Viktor and Nya, would have died.
They lived to tell the tale, but Grey’s worldview had been shaken. His mind, and perhaps his soul, no longer seemed content on that linear humanist highway.
Viktor had provided a convincing alternate explanation for the priest’s disturbing ability to control people. Powers of the mind, Viktor posited. They are real, very real, and they are potent beyond anything which you have ever imagined.
Grey wasn’t so sure.
Grey hadn’t thought about the notion of God with anything except disdain since his mother’s death. Not after sitting at her bedside for six straight months when he was fifteen, holding her hand while she convulsed in pain. Not after watching her refuse medical attention because of her beliefs, and then pray every single second of every goddamned day to a God that didn’t exist or, worse, didn’t care. Not after watching her die in his arms while his father was in the arms of a prostitute down the street.
His father caught Grey crying over her body, a taboo act in Grey’s house. It wasn’t until halfway through the beating that his father realized Grey’s mother wasn’t just sleeping. Grey had let him continue, numb to everything, a part of him shattered that he knew he would never get back.
• • •
Grey took off his boots for the flight. He’d tried for the exit row, but these days that was like waiting for a democracy in North Korea. He guessed Viktor traveled first class, but Grey wasn’t going to put his own comfort on Viktor’s dime.
He’d brought a stack of books on biomedical gerontology. He pored through half the first one, then his eyelids fluttered with sleep. As he reclined he caught a glimpse of what the teenage boy next to him was reading. One of those mixed martial arts magazines. Although Grey loved all things associated with the martial arts, he rolled his eyes at this one. It was harmless, he supposed. There were rules, doctors, public scrutiny.
Not like when he’d done it.
Grey’s father had been a champion boxer and a trained soldier, and he started passing on the family skill when Grey was five. As his father taught, he demanded Grey hit him back, and when Grey complied, his father hit harder. Grey’s mother tried to intervene, and his father hit her as well.
When Grey was ten, after years of base-hopping, his father was assigned to Japan. Believing traditional Japanese karate wasn’t good enough for his underweight and introspective son, his father found Zen-Zekai, one of the most violent and effective forms of the ancient art of Jujitsu. Brutal fighting took place in class on a daily basis.
The theory behind Jujitsu was to use an attacker’s energy against him, rather than oppose it, and to attack the weakest parts of the human body: joints, pressure points, organs, digits, soft tissue. Grey’s coordination, quick hands and sharp mind lent themselves well to the art. Shihan, the principal instructor, knew more about pain and suffering than most knew about breathing. And Grey became his star pupil.
Even that wasn’t enough for his father. Grey would never forget the first time his father took him to an underground fight in Tokyo. He was fifteen and scared as hell, even though he was already a black belt in Zen-Zekai. Grey was very talented, he was tough, he’d been in countless street fights with the local thugs. But he’d heard about these underground circuits. They were human cockfights. The men who fought in them were gladiators, seasoned brawlers who fought for the blood and the thrill as much as for the meager winnings.
His first fight took place in a glorified basement. He remembered the sickly lighting, the leering faces, the pumping fists stuffed with yen, the wood-floored ring stained with blood.
Grey’s opponent was twice his age and twice his size. There was no bell, no ring girl, no referee, no rules. Grey vomited into a cup from nerves, then his father pushed him forward.
The other guy moved like he had some judo skill, maybe some karate, but Grey knew from the cruel light in his eyes that he was a thug. True masters would never dishonor themselves like this. Grey took him down with a sweep, but the guy grabbed onto him and brought Grey to the ground with him. Grey was scrambling to get position when the guy grabbed his hair and bit him on the neck.
Whatthehell?
Grey was so shocked he lost concentration. The guy scrambled on top of him and started throwing elbows to Grey’s head. Grey fought back with a vengeance, but the guy was far too big for Grey to have a chance with wild swings. Grey’s blood slopped onto the floor like tomato sauce.
Grey finally hooked his legs and rolled his opponent to the side, face-to-face. The next five minutes, an eternity in a fight, consisted of spitting, pinching, striking, slipping in blood and sweat, avoiding eye gouges, the dead silence in Grey’s head, the bestial roar of the crowd, wondering if he was going to survive, seeing his father’s iron stare and crossed arms.
His training didn’t save him that night. What saved him was his fierce will, and his past. As hard as this brute was hitting him, his father hit him harder at home. Grey could see it in his opponent’s eyes: why wouldn’t Grey quit? It gave Grey an obscene energy, the knowledge that he could take it more than this guy could. What was this kind
of pain compared to being hit by your own father?
Something in Grey snapped and then fused together that night, a cold hot focused forging he’d never experienced before, the welding of his prodigious Jujitsu skills with his inner rage. He scrapped and clawed and fought his way to a side straddle, his chest on top of the other guy’s chest, legs splayed out to the side. His opponent reached up to throw him off, and Grey grabbed his arm and spun into an arm bar. He saw the shock in his opponent’s eyes at the speed of the move.
Grey stopped himself at the last second, back arched, knees locked, his arms pulling and extending his opponent’s right arm. Grey’s hips extended against the bottom of the isolated elbow, his whole body concentrated on one arm, negating the size advantage. The essence of Jujitsu.
Grey’s opponent tapped the mat to avoid the break, and his corner threw in the towel. The crowd booed. They wanted to hear the limb snap.
Grey vomited again, on the street outside. His stomach churned with the dopamine that was coursing into his pores like a white water rapid. He learned later that it was genetics, nature’s reward to the king of the jungle, the primeval enemy of man’s moral conscious. Right then, he only knew that he hated the part of himself that liked it.
When they got home, Grey risked addressing his father. Maybe his dad had just been trying to help his son in the only way he knew how. Grey knew it was twisted, knew it didn’t account for a lifetime of physical and mental abuse, but maybe, just this once, it could be okay. Grey asked him, eyes hopeful and flush with victory, what he thought about the fight.
His father turned to him, coldly. What do I think? Why didn’t you break his arm?
Grey licked his lips. I… I didn’t need to. It was over.
You’re a goddamned coward, son. When you have an opportunity to end a fight, you take it, you hear me? You don’t wait for a towel, or some damn referee. In the real world that shit doesn’t exist. A real fighter would have ripped you apart when you hesitated. You have to be able to finish it. Why do you think I took you?
