The Egyptian (16 page)

T
hrough the indolence of twilight, Grey and Veronica left Veliko along the road to the castle hill. Streaks of lavender illuminated the giant cotton balls littering the sky, the breeze from the surrounding hills distributing the fresh forest air.

After the bridge they turned onto the path at the bottom of the hill, then headed down the long walkway to Stefan’s chateau, hedged on both sides by sculpted cypress. Veronica swayed down the cobblestone drive in high-heeled boots, a knee-length gray skirt and a fitted lambskin jacket.

Grey watched her navigate the uneven ground with amusement. “I told you the chateau was a bit of a hike.”

“These
are
my hiking shoes.” She slipped her arm through one of Grey’s as they walked, and plucked at his black sweater. “You look nice, even with cargo pants and stubble. Would you consider letting me be your wardrobe consultant when we get back?”

Grey chuckled.

“I’m serious.” She swatted at a bug. “Do you think he knows who I am?”

“He knows something’s up. But he’s a civilized man. He knew someone else was staying with me, and it’d be rude not to extend an invite.”

“Do you think we’re in any danger?”

“You wouldn’t be here if I did.”

“What about the goons he had follow us?”

“We know he has an agenda, but it doesn’t involve physical harm to us tonight. Besides the fact I didn’t sense that sort of danger from him, our hotel knows we’re here. It’s too out in the open. Tonight’s about information gathering.”

She smirked. “And that good conversation you told me about. Maybe we can discuss some nice new experiments on Romanian orphans.”

Grey lowered his voice. “Veronica.”

She quieted. They could see the house, and Stefan stood on the doorstep in a pair of jeans, an untucked white dress shirt and a sport coat. He waved and took a sip from a cocktail glass.

“See?” Veronica said. “Something like that could be good for you. Casual but nice. Lord of the relaxed manor.”

“A sport coat is casual?”

She patted him. “We have some work to do.”

Grey scanned the grounds and the chateau. “That we do,” he murmured.

•  •  •

Grey admired the handsome square face of Stefan’s manor. It was a two-story union of wood framing and mauve plaster-covered stone, with oversized windows that brought a nice open feel to the house.

Stefan waited in the doorway, one of those stocky, well-proportioned men who are at ease waving at guests. He pumped Grey’s hand and kissed Veronica on both cheeks. She matched his social vigor with her own charisma, smiling and glowing, casting a spell of feminine charm. Grey stood to the side as Veronica and Stefan flattered each other.

Stefan ushered them inside, and they followed him to the enclosed cobblestone patio Grey had seen a few nights before. Open windows backed the patio, shutters thrown wide, plants brightening the window sills. The wall of the house facing the patio was a faded but colorful mural of castles and monasteries.

Stars filled the sky, and Grey’s eyes slipped towards the blackness in the distance. What secrets, he wondered, was Stefan keeping in those ruins?

Stefan gestured again, this time towards a small table stocked with wine and
hors d’oeuvres
. They sat in cushioned wooden chairs, Stefan across from Grey and Veronica. Stefan made it easy to relax, to forget the night was anything other than a social interlude. Still, Grey felt a subtle tension.

Veronica smoothed her dress, then crossed her legs with the languor women use when they know all eyes are on them. “Grey tells me you work for a company in Sofia.”

“My friends say I am married to my work.” He smiled. “Perhaps that’s why it’s the only thing I’m married to now.”

“And who is this new wife of yours?” Veronica said. “How does she keep you around?”

Stefan smiled to himself, as if lost in his own world. “She is a biomedical company. I work with the science of aging.”

“There’s a science to it? If that’s the case then I need your website. There’re a few things I’d like to order.”

“We do not ship to the young and the beautiful.”

Veronica blushed.

“We’re very serious about the potential of our research. Aging is a disease and, like all diseases, we believe it can be cured.”

“A disease?” Grey said. “Isn’t it more a fact of life?”

Stefan spread his hands. “So say our detractors. But what if I told you the average citizen of ancient Rome lived to the age of twenty-five? That our earliest ancestors lived even shorter lives? What then is the argument? That we must die at 30? 50? 80? 100?”

“But we still die,” Grey muttered, thinking he’d just had the same conversation with Veronica.

“I agree that a few years of life extension, decades even, is a cruel joke, a drop in the ocean of eternity.” He put his hands on his knees and leaned in. “That is why our goal is to cure the disease altogether.”

“But is that possible?” Veronica said.
She really does wide-eyed wonder marvelously
, Grey thought.

“There are many obstacles, some of them quite formidable. But strides have been made, and many more are on the horizon. I won’t spoil this lovely evening with the scientific details.”

“It’s not boring at all,” Veronica said. “I’ve bought every anti-aging miracle on the market. What are some of these great strides? Can you give me a specific one?”

Stefan laughed. “Really, a scientific discussion is not appropriate conversation—”

“Oh, I insist!”

Stefan raised his glass in salute, and Grey wondered who was playing who. “You’re too kind to indulge a host,” Stefan said. He pursed his lips and studied his glass. “You’re aware, no, that without cell division within the human body, there is no growth, no life?”

“I think I remember that from freshman biology,” Veronica said.

“In the 1950s, a series of experiments began in your country, at the Wistar Institute. At this time it was still thought a virus was responsible for cancer. A scientist at the Wistar, Leonard Hayflick, decided to grow human cells and expose them to cancerous tissue to see if the malignant tissue would convert the normal tissue. Mr. Hayflick decided that his experiments needed human fetal tissue, as virtually all adult human cells contain numerous viruses. He had to have fetal organs from Stockholm—where abortion was legal—sent through airmail to the Wistar. He chopped the organs—”

Veronica winced, causing Stefan to pause. “Sorry,” she said weakly. Grey rolled his eyes to himself. Veronica missed her calling on Broadway.

“My apologies. He grew the normal cells in a controlled culture, and after a time he noticed that certain cell populations
stopped dividing
. You must understand that before these experiments, scientists across the globe—everyone—had assumed that human cells were immortal. That they would divide indefinitely, like cancerous cells. The immortality of human cells was thought to be an impregnable scientific fact. Cells had of course died before, but the deaths were attributed to poor lab conditions, inadequate or toxic growth media, and various other reasons.”

Grey watched the two of them as he digested the science. Stefan was absorbed in his story, and Veronica was egging him on with attentive smiles.

“In 1961, Mr. Hayflick published a controversial paper demonstrating that human somatic cells replicated, or divided, no more than fifty times before undergoing cellular senescence, which leads ultimately to death of the cell.”

A tingle ran through Grey.
Cellular
s
enescence
. The word Al-Miri had told him to watch for. Aging at the cellular level, he remembered from his research.

Stefan continued, “At first no one believed him, but his research proved correct. This limit on cell division is known as the Hayflick Limit.”

“Why do they stop dividing?”

“It was discovered that when a cell divides during mitosis, the double helix of each chromosome must unravel, like Rapunzel’s hair, so that a copying enzyme known as polymerase can travel down each single strand like a train running along its track, copying the DNA that will form the new cell. But when this train comes to the end of its track, the piece directly underneath where the train comes to rest fails to get copied. This happens each time a human cell divides.”

Grey said, “Sort of like trying to chop the end of the carrot you’re holding onto with your own hand. You always leave a little bit.”

Stefan cocked his head. “Something like that, yes. Human chromosomes are linear and, after fifty such divisions, the DNA in the cell’s telomeres—the region of the chromosomes we’re discussing—has been critically shortened, and can no longer replicate. We knew this,
da
, but no one could explain why somatic human cells were subject to the Hayflick Limit, and why human cancer and germ-line cells, and the soon to be discovered embryonic cells, were not. It is a great puzzle—these other cells are, in essence, immortal. How do they make it past the Hayflick Limit?”

He paused to attend to his wine and cheese. Grey found himself waiting for Stefan to continue, sensing the story connected to the missing test tube in some way. But why tell them about it? To gauge their reaction? Find out how much they knew? Grey enjoyed Stefan’s company, but he also knew he had his motives.

“It was later discovered that a particular enzyme helped repair and maintain the ends of telomeres of cancer and germ-line cells. This enzyme, also known as the immortalizing enzyme, was named telomerase. The point of my story, and the great stride for which my lovely guest has asked: not too long ago, the two genes that code telomerase, the enzyme which allows certain cells to surpass the Hayflick limit and thus potentially avoid cellular senescence, were identified.”

Veronica was staring so rapturously at Stefan that Grey couldn’t tell if she was still acting. She said, “Why haven’t we heard about this?”

He laughed lightly. “Because you’re a vigorous young woman, and don’t bother with dry biomedical journals. There is also a large problem. While science has identified telomerase in the human body, we have failed to reproduce it, or to activate the two genes that code for it. Without this knowledge, there’s no way to repair the telomeres of aging cells.”

She pouted. “And is your company working to change that?”

“We have ideas,” he said evasively.

“You’re worried someone will steal the research,” Grey said.

Stefan gave an embarrassed shrug.

Veronica leaned in. “Can you make any predictions? Tell me my life span will

double? Something to make me sleep better?”

“I predict that within our lifetimes, we will see significant advances.
Very
significant.” He leaned back and smiled. “Enough of me. You have yet to tell me what brings you across the world. It is difficult to find a global perspective in Veliko, and I enjoyed my conversation with Grey very much the other evening. But I ignore my duties; would you care for another drink?”

“That’d be lovely,” Veronica said.

Grey stood. “Can you point me to the restroom?”

“But of course.” Stefan pointed towards a hallway. “Turn right at the end, then the first door on the left.”

Grey gave Veronica an intimate squeeze on the back of the neck as he left the patio. He wanted to take a look inside the house, although he didn’t think there was anything to find.

He reached the end of the hallway and turned right, and a huge room spread out before him. A woven rug covered the floor, and wooden bookcases stretched from floor to ceiling on the walls to his left and right. Wide French doors on the far wall provided a view of the surrounding forest.

Grey had planned to do a quick search of the house, but he could only stare at the forest. It was going to be nearly impossible to get a look at the lab without Grey taking action he wasn’t willing to take in these circumstances. He had enough circumstantial evidence to take to Al-Miri. Al-Miri didn’t need Grey anymore, he needed a lawyer. It was time to return to the patio, enjoy the evening, and call Viktor and Al-Miri in the morning.

He turned to reenter the hallway, and then stilled. He thought he had heard a faint mechanical click coming from the opposite end of the hallway, towards the front door.

He edged closer, and the noise grew louder, now unmistakable.

Someone was picking the lock.

A
l-Miri sat cross-legged on the floor of his suite, atop a buttery Persian carpet. Incense from four golden bowls placed at the cardinal points swirled and perfumed the air. Four candlesticks, set in perfect formation between the bowls, illuminated the room. A small stone statue, similar to the image on his medallion, faced Al-Miri from a short pedestal in front of his feet.

He was faint from hunger and thirst; he had partaken of no substance for thirty-six hours. The silk of his fresh robe felt cool against his oiled skin, and the iridescent green shimmered in the flickering candlelight.

He had washed, oiled, fasted, prayed. He was purified. He was ready.

At precisely noon Nomti entered the room, carrying a golden cup on a golden tray. He approached Al-Miri, head bowed, and sank to his knees. Al-Miri reached out with a delicate hand and plucked the cup off the tray. Nomti retreated, and Al-Miri took the cup in his hands. His lips hovered over the cup as he recited a litany of words in a forgotten tongue.

He closed his eyes and, with a reverent shudder, drank from the cup. The contents slid down his throat with a viscous, almost slimy, consistency. It did not burn, or cool, or quench. It had no taste. It simply was.

He breathed deeply and rose to his feet. Nomti supported him and led him to the dining room, where a full table awaited. Al-Miri slipped into a chair and sighed. His body felt no different.

But he knew.

Al-Miri indicated for Nomti to join him at the table. “That was the last vial,” Nomti said.

“I must return. You will join me when it’s done.”

“Yes.”

“Soon we drink together.”