Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Twenty-One

“Wow,” Steve Schipner says, “this is really great work, Doctor McCabe.”

They are in an examination room. Steve wears a white lab coat. His name is stenciled in below the Apollo Longevity name and logo. To his credit, Steve examines Nadia with professionalism, discretion, and respect. It’s as if he’s a completely different person in here. His voice when he speaks to Nadia is kind, understanding, inviting. He listens to her, pays attention, responds appropriately, asks the right questions. Despite Nadia’s stunning looks — and what could be viewed by some as the salacious medical reason they are here — Steve never, not once, hints at an ogle. He might as well be inspecting two lawn chairs. Maggie is surprised, and she is not. She has seen this before with physicians. It’s not an act on Steve’s part. You don the lab coat, you remember your oath, you get the importance and responsibility of what you are doing. You are everything to a patient — and they have to be everything to you.

Even Sleazy Steve understands that.

When they first met up in the lobby, Maggie had filled Nadia in on the Oleg... stabbing? Maggie isn’t sure what to call it. Nadia had listened raptly. She’d been up in the VIP section and had no idea of any of it. “The one you call CinderBlock. His name is Akim. He was on the plane with me. So was Ivan Brovski. But they aren’t in Dubai anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“On the plane, I got hold of Ivan’s phone when he fell asleep. I turned on his location services and dropped a pin to me.”

Brilliant and yet simple, Maggie thinks. “So you can track him?”

“Yes. Last night, I could see he was at Etoile Adiona, but” — Nadia opens up her phone and clicks on the app — “it hasn’t been active since 5:06 this morning.”

Maggie looks at the screen. “Is that Dubai International?”

“Yes.”

“So Ivan flew out. A location tracker won’t follow him in the air.”

Steve continues his exam with patience and skill. Maggie remembers the first time Trace brought Marc and her to Apollo Longevity. She had scoffed at the excess, at the exaggerated “fountain of youth” promises, constantly touted with the fascinatingly contradiction-in-terms phrasing of “anti-aging.” The wealthiest people in the world flew in just for whatever treatment was currently in vogue, and — Maggie’s personal opinion — even if well-intentioned, the vast majority were modern-day snake oil of one sort or another.

“You can get dressed,” Steve tells Nadia. “We can talk more in the consultation room, but I can tell you now that the operation is a complete success. I see no reason to be concerned.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Nadia meets Maggie’s eyes. Her eyes move to the computer monitor on the desk, then back toward Maggie. Maggie nods.

“We’ll wait in the other room while you get dressed,” Steve says. “Doctor McCabe, a word outside?”

Perfect, Maggie thinks. “Of course, Doctor Schipner.”

Nadia’s plan is simple, though a long shot. There is a computer terminal in the examination room. Nadia knows Trace’s username and password. While Maggie stalls and distracts Steve, Nadia hopes to log on and see what she can find.

Of course, there are a thousand things wrong with this plan. Trace Packer’s login may not work anymore. There is probably nothing important to see — do they think there’s going to be a message saying, “We’ve kidnapped Trace Packer. Here is his current location”? — and there might be trip alarms when she signs on or something like that.

But then again, who knows? She and Nadia are “spies” now, right? This is what spies do.

Steve escorts Maggie down the corridor. Up ahead she sees the one elevator that led down to the WorldCures floor.

“I wasn’t kidding in there,” Steve tells her. “You did great work with her.”

“Thank you.”

“And we both know you could have done this exam yourself. You didn’t need to bring her in.”

“I wanted to make sure,” Maggie says.

“Make sure what?”

“I wanted a true specialist to back up my work,” Maggie says. “And who better than the Boob Whisperer?”

Steve grins. “That’s just marketing.”

“Okay, sure.” Then with a shake of the head she says, “Boob Whisperer.”

“You’re making jokes,” Steve says, “because you don’t want me to ask the obvious.”

“That being?”

“Why did you do this surgery in the first place?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she says.

“Pardon?”

“This is a longevity clinic, not a cosmetic surgery center.”

“You don’t see the natural partnership? I mean, when you think about it, what I do here is one of the things that actually does reverse aging.”

“What about ozone therapy?”

He laughs. “Ozone therapy is old news. We have twelve rooms that do EBOO therapy now.”

“EBOO?”

“Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation Therapy,” Steve says. “Doesn’t that sound good for you?”

“It does.” She needs to stall for Nadia’s sake — and she’s also sort of interested. “How does it work?”

“You lay back on the most comfortable recliner imaginable. Your blood is drawn from a vein into a tube and through a dialysis filter where it gets exposed to medical-grade ozone and oxygen. As the blood circulates through the EBOO machine, it removes heavy metals, pathogens, debris—”

“Debris,” Maggie says. “I love that term.”

“Me too.”

“So all-encompassing. And meaningless.”

“Exactly. Oh, and EBOO also rids your bloodstream of my other favorite all-encompassing term.”

“What’s that?”

Steve smiles. “Toxins.”

“Oh yes.”

“Nice and vague. Anyway, after this, your same blood is returned to your body via another vein. So it cycles. Then you throw in some buzzy terms — immunity support, detoxification, inflammation reduction, enriching, regeneration, infusion...”

“Sounds perfect for the jet-setter who has everything,” Maggie says.

“Except immortality.”

“Which is what they sell here.”

“And we sell, to be fair.”

“Yeah,” Maggie says. “But what we sell is real. It isn’t quackery.”

Steve mulls that over for a moment. “I’m not sure it’s fair to call it quackery. There are some quality physicians who swear by these treatments, but here’s the problem: All of them profit from it. That’s not to say that they are charlatans — they’ll cite iffy studies and anecdotal evidence — but none of us think clearly when it comes to our wallets.”

“We are all the hero in our own story,” Maggie says.

“Exactly that.” Steve reaches an office door. “Are you done stalling?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re still not licensed, are you?”

“I’m not, no.”

“So how did you end up being Nadia’s surgeon?”

“You’ve probably guessed.”

“You were paid,” Steve says. “A lot.”

“Yes.”

“So some rich guy thought Nadia was too skinny.”

Maggie smiles. “I guess you’ve dealt with this before.”

“I have.”

“How do you handle it?”

“I insist on talking to the patient alone. If they say no, I flat-out refuse to do it. If I feel she is being coerced, I try to help her find a way out.”

“How?”

“First, I try to persuade the rich man in her life that he doesn’t want her to have bigger boobs.”

“Does that ever work?”

“Almost never,” Steve admits. “It’s like trying to convince a man he wants a smaller flatscreen.”

“What’s second?”

“I take a lot of photographs. I keep a lot of records.”

“Why?”

“Do you want to hear the ugly truth?”

“That’s always better than the pretty lies.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Steve says. “But let’s take your Nadia as an example. Nadia is a mistress to a rich man. The rich man wants her to have a larger chest. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. But there’s not a lot to be done in that case. So we just do it. But other times, well, the mistress is being discarded.”

Maggie swallows. “Discarded?”

“The rich man grows tired of her. If the girl is lucky, he just breaks it off, maybe gives her a few dollars. But sometimes — the rich man wants the woman to disappear.”

“I’m not following.”

“The world is about making a buck. We both get that, right?”

“Sadly, we do.”

“So if the rich man wants to get rid of the mistress and make a profit, what’s the best way to do that? You traffic the girl. Coming here is like turning in a leased car. They get her refurbished and send her back out.”

“Oh my God!”

“Or maybe that’s an inept analogy: They just do whatever they can to make their property more desirable. And we both know that a trafficked woman with bigger breasts or buttocks—”

“—is worth more,” Maggie finishes for him.

“Yes.”

They both stop and let that hang in the air for a moment.

“What do you do when you see that?” she asks.

“There’s a charity I can call. They’ll come to the back door. I try to get her to sneak out. But most of the time, well, the patients don’t want that. They think it will be okay. They’ll use their new body to get another rich man. So I keep their DNA on file. In case it’s needed for later.”

She shakes her head. “It’s a messed-up world.”

“Dark,” Steve agrees.

Silence.

Then Maggie says, “WorldCures used to have offices here.”

“Yeah, I know. On the lower level.”

“Can you take me down to see them?”

Steve wants to ask why, but he doesn’t. He brings her to the elevator and then uses the ID on his lanyard to access the elevator. They head down in silence. When the doors slide open, Maggie knows the way. Steve lets her lead. The place feels abandoned. Their footsteps echo in the quiet.

“We don’t do much down here anymore,” Steve says. “Just EGF facials.”

“EGF?”

“Epidermal Growth Factor.”

“Meaning?”

“They use a foreskin extract.”

“Pardon?”

Steve nods. “They buy foreskin from neonatal circumcisions.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m not. Hospitals sell baby foreskins to biomedical companies.”

She shakes her head. “I thought selling human tissue was illegal.”

“It is in a lot of places. But — and don’t ask me to explain why — it is legal to sell products derived from human tissue. EGF is also called the penis facial, but uh, that nickname is problematic for a lot of reasons.”

Maggie slows when she gets to the door. It’s ajar. She slowly pushes it open. The room is empty. She steps inside. The tile floor has been replaced with hardwood. There used to be a drain in the center. That’s gone now too.

She thinks back to that terrible day, her last one in Dubai. The three of them had tried to save a life. That’s what they told themselves. It had been a long shot. A sixty-two-year-old man named Kabir Abargil. Kabir had been brought in from a refugee camp — failing heart, weeks to live. Kabir was poor. He was on no waiting list for a heart.

Enter the THUMPR7.

Maggie wanted to exercise more caution — walk before you run — but Trace and Marc insisted that this was the perfect opportunity to launch their new technology. There are two major new research avenues focused on making heart transplants not only safe but more readily available. One school involves improving artificial hearts so that they are more than a temporary, stopgap measure. At Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, five patients have successfully transitioned from the BiVACOR artificial heart to donor hearts, but in Australia, one patient lived with the BiVACOR TAH for over a hundred days. There have been amazing advancements in robotics using AI, much of which they used in creating the THUMPR7.

The other school is made up of cell therapies and regenerative medicine. The idea is that one day we will be able to repair the damaged cells or even grow new ones. This regenerative technology is, of course, being worked on for all organs. There are many scientists who consider this the footpath to a potential fountain of youth. Think about it — once perfected, you could create new hearts, lungs, livers, and constantly (and safely) replace your own. To use a car analogy, if you keep replacing the engine, transmission, tires, brakes, suspension, body, a car could theoretically run forever.

Marc and Trace — and to a lesser extent, Maggie herself — believed the answer lay in blending these schools: taking the latest in robotics via the THUMPR7-TAH and inserting regenerated cell tissue that has gone through the proper DNA sequence coding so it can not only help prevent rejection but also make the transition inside the body seamless.

Yeah, it’s a lot.

In short, scientists could add cell tissue and certain DNA sequencing to make artificial organs integrate in the human body to the point that the recipient’s immune system does not recognize them as foreign and avoids attack.

The first step, which they weren’t able to do with Kabir Abargil, should have been to use a donated heart — that is, a real heart — and implant it inside the scaffolds of the THUMPR7. It would be better still if they could make it a “beating-heart” transplant — that is, where the donor heart never stops beating, eliminating ischemic time and reducing cell damage. If that worked, yes, in a few years’ time, they could move on to doing transplants with just the THUMPR7 and regenerative tissue. But first, try it with a donated heart.

Walk before you run.

But that wasn’t possible here.

The ethical lines on such operations are iffy at best. We all know the slow but crucial rules of the FDA and the dangers in rushing experimentation and implementation. But if a patient gives informed, voluntary, and competent consent and no other remedies are left, isn’t it ethically permissible to try something experimental, especially if the alternative is certain death?

Hard to say. Probably not. But they were going ahead with it no matter what, and Maggie knew that the best-case scenario, which was still a terrible-case scenario, would be if she participated.

So she did. In this very room.

“Maggie?”

“‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.’”

“What?”

“I did a surgery down here,” Maggie says.

Kabir Abargil, the so-called “poor man,” had no chance — and still he survived another twenty-one days. But they were awful days. And after that, Maggie wanted no part in any of this. Her mom had taken a turn for the worse. She headed home.

“I’ve heard rumors about that,” Steve says.

She looks at him.

“I started working here a year ago,” he continues. “WorldCures wasn’t the only one down here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there were other, shall we say, secretive medical research facilities? All in separate offices in this building.”

“So where are they now?”

“They vanished. Overnight. Packed up and moved.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

His phone buzzes. Steve checks the screen and frowns at what he sees. “I have no idea, but after what happened, they felt like this location was compromised.”

“What happened?”

He glances up from his phone’s screen and meets her eye. “You really don’t know?”

“Why would I?”

The phone buzzes again. “Shit.”

“What?”

Steve gives her a baleful eye and leaves the room. “Damn it, I should have known.”

Maggie quickly follows. “Steve?”

“Oh my God.” He stops, turns to Maggie, and now she can see the fear in his eyes. “Did Trace Packer send you?”

“What? No. Wait, do you know where Trace is?”

He turns and starts back down the corridor. “Jesus, how could I have been so stupid?”

She hears the ding of the elevator. The doors open. Two beefy men in blue blazers step out. Between them is Nadia. One man is holding her left arm, the other her right. Her wrists are held together by what looks like a plastic zip tie.

What the...?

Both men, Maggie can see, have weapons strapped to their waists. The beefier one also has Nadia’s passport and some other kind of ID in his hand. Keeping a grip on Nadia’s elbow, he gives them both to Steve. Steve studies the ID and then starts paging through the passport.

“Let go of her,” Maggie snaps. “And cut that tie off her wrists. Now.”

When they don’t, Maggie storms over and pulls at Less Beefy’s arm. The arm doesn’t move, but Less Beefy does look over at Steve.

“I got this,” Steve tells the two guards.

Both men reluctantly let Nadia go, though she remains zip-tied.

“She broke into your computer,” More Beefy says.

Steve holds up his phone. “Yeah, I know. I got the report.”

“We’ve contacted Malik,” Less Beefy says. “He wants to handle this personally.”

Steve swallows. “I’ll watch them.”

“I think we should stay.”

“I got this. Go upstairs and wait for Malik.”

More Beefy doesn’t like that. He looks at Less Beefy. “You stay right here. No one gets on or off that elevator.”

Less Beefy nods.

“I’ll head back up and wait for Malik.”

More Beefy steps in, and the elevator doors close. Less Beefy gives them all hard eyes.

“I’m going to take them to the EFG room,” Steve tells Less Beefy.

Less Beefy responds with more hard eyes. Maggie wants to roll hers, but there’s no reason to make this situation any worse.

When they are back inside, Steve closes the door and says, “Tell me everything. Fast.”

“Who’s Malik?” Maggie asks.

“Head of security. Ex-military. He’s going to want to know why Nadia was trying to break into my computer — and he’s not going to ask nicely.” He opens a desk drawer, rummages through it. To Nadia, he says, “How the hell did you get my password anyway? Never mind, I don’t care.”

Steve pulls out a large pair of scissors. He moves toward Nadia. She sticks out her wrists. Her hands are turning blue. The zip tie is too tight. Steve carefully eases the tip of the scissors through the gap and cuts the plastic.

Nadia rubs her wrists. “Thank you.”

“I don’t get it,” Maggie says. “Nadia is a patient who sneaked a look at her doctor’s computer. Why would they go so crazy?”

“Are you serious? She didn’t just sneak a look. She tried to sign in as Trace Packer. Trace Packer, for crying out loud. Oh man, I’m totally screwed.”

“Why?”

“They suspected me of helping him the last time.”

“Helping Trace?”

“Yes.”

“Helping him how?”

“Why did you come back?” he asks Maggie.

“Steve, please, listen to me. Trace is missing.”

“I know. They’ve been looking for him.”

“Who?”

“Everyone. Look, when I first got hired, WorldCures still had an office here, but, I mean, with Marc dead and you out of the picture, there wasn’t much to it. But Trace Packer still showed up every once in a while. You know this, right?”

“Pretend I do.”

“Trace and I hung out a little. We weren’t friends or anything, but when it all went down, well, people thought I was involved, because of my connection to you.”

“I’m not following. What went down?”

“One night, I’m lying in bed, dead asleep, and suddenly Malik is there. In my locked apartment. Sitting on the edge of my bed. He starts asking me if I know where Trace Packer is. I say no. He doesn’t believe me. So then he starts with the interrogation. He says stuff like ‘You went to medical school with Maggie McCabe, right? When did you last talk to her?’ Like that. I found out later that Trace broke in here after hours. He stole, I don’t know, something to do with WorldCures research — and then he flew out to Washington.”

Washington. Nadia and Maggie share a glance.

“When was this?”

“Five, six months ago. Hold up. You live, what, an hour or two from Dulles. Did Trace go to you, Maggie?” Steve snaps his fingers. “Of course he did. That would make perfect sense. Oh shit, this is bad. This is really bad.”

“He didn’t come to me. Steve, listen to me. Trace is missing. That’s why Nadia and I are here. Yes, he flew to Dulles five months ago. But I never saw him. In fact, as far as we can tell, no one has seen him since.”

“If that’s true—”

“It is.”

“—then maybe they found Trace.”

“No,” Nadia says. “Trace is smart, resourceful. He’d have found a way.”

Nadia’s words sound hollow with false hope. Maggie’s mind starts racing. She remembers the bill for the Wells Fargo safe deposit boxes she opened in Trace’s apartment.

Whoa. Slow down a second. Maybe that’s it.

Maybe whatever Trace had snatched from this building before leaving Dubai is now in those boxes.

That’s why Trace had to come back to the United States. Not to see Maggie. But to make sure he kept control of their innovations. So, okay, Trace goes into Apollo Longevity at night. He nabs the THUMPR7 and accompanying machinery. He heads to Dubai airport, flies back to the United States, and then...

What?

Steve’s phone buzzes again. An incoming call. He puts the phone to his ear and says, “What’s up?” His face loses color. “Wait, what, right now?” Pause. “Hold on a second.” He looks over at them. “What have you gotten me into, Maggie?”

Maggie offers up an elaborate shrug. “No clue, Steve.”

Steve heads to a monitor on the desk. He leans over, still standing, and types into it. As he does, he keeps glancing at the door behind him. “Someone is at reception asking for you by name.” He finishes and turns to her. “Do you know who he is?”

He flips the monitor so Maggie can see the live CCTV footage he’s brought up. The camera is focused on a man with a...

Big Mustache.

The cop from last night. He is in plainclothes but flanked by two men in olive-green police uniforms with matching berets.

Steve says, “Well?”

“I saw someone stabbed on the dance floor last night. He’s the cop who showed up.”

“Are you serious?”

“No, Steve, I’m making it up.”

“No time for sarcasm, Maggie.”

“Always time, Steve. Anyway, he didn’t believe me.”

“Well, he believes you now. I recognize him. He’s tight with Malik.”

“Maggie.” Nadia taps her on the shoulder. “Take a look at this.”

Maggie turns. Nadia shows her the screen on her phone. It’s the headline from a new article:

“We have to get out of here,” Nadia says.

Steve takes the lead. Maggie stands on Steve’s left, Nadia behind him so that Steve blocks Less Beefy’s view of her hands. She keeps them together at the wrists so as to sell that she’s still zip-tied. Less Beefy gives them tough-guy vibes by the elevator. Steve smiles and says, “Hey, I need a favor.”

There is no hesitation.

That’s the key. Maggie learned this in military training. There are many things that make a great fighter — size, skill, athleticism, quickness, adaptability, experience, heart — but one thing can often overcome all that.

Surprise.

Maggie smiles. Casual as can be. She doesn’t call out. She doesn’t offer up or even hint at a warning. She doesn’t tense up or slow down or rear back or any of that. She just keeps walking, arms swinging, almost breezy.

Less Beefy isn’t worried. He’s a big man. She’s a small woman.

No threat to him at all.

The whole thing takes less than five seconds.

Maggie picks up speed as she gets closer, her smile grows into something almost flirty. It throws him off, distracts him, and then, before Less Beefy can react, Maggie attacks.

The Web Strike — also called the Y Strike — uses the web between your index finger and thumb. Coming from below, Maggie bends her knees, powers up pistonlike with her legs, and drives the “Y” with as much force as she can muster into his trachea.

It’s a dangerous blow, designed to incapacitate. Maggie doesn’t relish hurting anyone — the physician in her cannot stand to see a person in pain — and yet there it is, the grin on her face, the undeniable thrum in her blood, the adrenaline spike she knows she will never stop craving.

Hello, darkness, my old friend...

Her blow lands clean, unimpeded. Maggie can feel his windpipe give way a little. A gurgling sound escapes his lips. He staggers back, both hands protectively on his throat. But now it’s Nadia’s turn. They had planned this in the seconds before coming out here. It isn’t a complicated plan. It relied on the three S’s — speed, simplicity, surprise.

Nadia jumps toward him like a feral cat. With both his hands out of the way, the path is free. Nadia’s hand darts toward his waist, unstraps the holster, and pulls his gun free. She steps back and points the weapon at the man.

Steve puts his hands up too. “Please don’t shoot me.”

Maggie tries not to make a face at Steve’s overbaked performance. It’s her turn again now. She opens the pouch on the other side of Less Beefy’s belt. According to Nadia, that’s where he keeps his zip ties. She pulls them out. Nadia puts the gun hard against the big man’s temple. There is crazy in her eyes.

“Put your hands behind your back,” Nadia commands.

The man complies. Maggie throws on the zip tie and tightens it. She uses her knee to make his collapse so that he’s now sitting on the ground.

Nadia moves in closer. “Make a sound. Please. Because then I can pull this trigger and blow your head off. I’ll have the excuse to kill you, see? And I want that. So go ahead. Call out.”

Less Beefy seems to be holding his breath.

Nadia gives him one final smile before she turns the gun toward Steve. Steve throws his hands even higher in the air. “Don’t shoot!”

“Call for the elevator,” Nadia orders him.

Steve nods to please and uses his lanyard to get the elevator. He knows, of course, Nadia isn’t going to shoot him. This act of pretending to hold Steve at gunpoint is to peddle the fiction that Steve didn’t cooperate with them, that he too was taken by surprise.

Nadia may be acting, but that gleam in her eye is enough to make Steve glance at Maggie and make sure that they are all on the same side.

The elevator arrives. Only one elevator comes to this floor — this one — so once it is occupied, it will take whoever wants to reach them that much longer to use the stairs and figure out exactly where they are.

“Move,” Nadia says, pushing Steve in the back with the barrel of the gun.

The three of them enter the elevator. Once inside, Nadia points the gun at Less Beefy until the doors close.

When they do, they hear him shout for help.