Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Twenty-Four

When she’s left alone, Maggie opens the griefbot app.

AI Marc appears on the screen with a smile. But it’s different to her now. Less potent. She’s not sure why. It’s like she sees the cracks and wires.

“Hey,” AI Marc says. “Where are you?”

“In a vineyard in Bordeaux.”

He smiles. “I wish I was there.”

“You’ve been here before,” she says.

“With you,” he says. “I’ll never forget.”

Neither, Maggie thinks, will I.

“Who picked this place for us?” she asks.

“It was Trace.”

“You knew back then that Oleg Ragoravich was building a facility here,” she says.

His honest answer surprises her: “Yes.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Did you enjoy that weekend?”

She nods. She remembers the morning sun coming into their room, the way it bathed his beautiful face in the yellow glow. Marc opened his eyes and looked into hers and they just lay there, in the bed, side to side, and Maggie remembers an old Joan Baez lyric, “Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there.”

“That’s all I wanted for us,” Marc says. “A weekend together.”

It’s a good answer, a nice line, but there is no way to know whether it’s true or not. In that sense AI Marc is no different from Real Marc. This answer might be Real Marc’s truth, interpreted through data and overheard conversations. But what had Porkchop said about the human condition? You can’t really know what another person is thinking deep inside.

And neither could any AI program.

“Is Trace in Bordeaux, Marc?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he kill you?”

The screen glitches. Maggie expected that. The griefbot doesn’t know it’s dead. It can’t comprehend its own death any better than a human. Sharon had warned about this.

As if on cue, AI Marc says, “I don’t understand.”

Maggie changes up. “This is a hypothetical. Let’s say you’re not Marc Adams. You’re an AI creation of him. You were created by my sister to comfort me because the real Marc Adams was murdered. Your data dump ended three months before your death, so you can’t know for certain. But you can look up the stories online. About your death. Study them, crunch the data, add in what you already know about Marc’s life. And then tell me. Did Trace Packer kill you?”

The screen freezes.

Maggie sighs and stands. Then from her phone, she hears Marc say, “The most likely scenario is that Doctor Marc Adams was killed as reported — during the terrorist massacre at TriPoint.”

“What’s the second most likely scenario?”

“That Trace Packer was involved.”

“How about...?” She stops, swallows, tries again. “Based on what you see, is there any chance that you’re alive...”

The screen freezes up again. Maggie pushes on.

“...that you faked your own death or, I don’t know, that you’re still out there somewhere, alive?”

She waits. But the screen doesn’t unfreeze.

In the morning, Guillaume and Élodie drive Maggie and Porkchop to Château Haut-Bailly. When they arrive, Guillaume says, “We have guns, if you want.”

“Will they do us any good?”

“Only if you want to get killed. We will leave you a bike and wait by the road with our top people. If you give the word, we can be there in minutes.”

Porkchop thanks them. He and Maggie walk the path in silence. She leads. Her plan is a simple one. When they get to the fence, Maggie signals for Porkchop to stop. He does. There are no visible buildings, just overgrown grapevines as far as the eye can see. Maggie moves along the fence line until she reaches the gate.

She stands there and stares up into the camera.

Enough with the pretense.

Trace is either here or not. The answers are either going to come or they are not.

Whatever is going on, this is it. The end of the journey.

So Maggie stands there and stares up at the camera and waits.

It doesn’t take long.

She hears the crunch of footsteps before she sees the hulking form of Ivan Brovski come into view. He walks to the gate. Porkchop eases himself a little closer to Maggie. Ivan doesn’t so much as glance at him. His eyes are locked on her eyes and only hers.

“Come with me,” Ivan Brovski tells her. “He’s been waiting for you.”

Ivan Brovski finally shifts his gaze toward Porkchop and then brings it back to Maggie.

“Just you,” he says to her. “No one else.”

Three armed men come out from the brush. They keep their weapons at their sides, but the meaning is clear. Maggie looks back at Porkchop. She gives him a nod that she’s fine with this and he should stand down. Porkchop doesn’t nod back.

The gate slides open. Maggie steps through. Porkchop stays where he is.

Brovski greets her with a handshake and a smile. “It’s good to see you again, Doctor McCabe.”

She says nothing. Brovski leads her down a path of unruly grapevines, leaving Porkchop and the fence in her rearview. Ivan starts off by her side but as the path narrows from the overgrowth, they’re forced to move single file. Up ahead, half hidden by the heavy foliage, is a building Maggie assumes was once a wine cellar. The exterior is scarred and worn limestone. Moss clings to the walls for dear life. The stones look weak, wet, spongy, as though you could push your fist right on through them.

There is a heavy iron-banded wooden door with rusted hinges. Brovski opens it to let them in. The interior is musty, dingy, lit dully by a string of yellow lights tied to the ceiling beams. Two-tone oak wine barrels are stacked on their sides along the right-hand wall. Brovski heads to the back and pushes a stack of barrels away, revealing a blue door. He puts his hand on a control panel, and the blue door slides open with a Star Trek whoosh.

They head down a set of stairs to a matching blue door. When Brovski opens this one, Maggie is greeted by a sudden cold gust. The air has a stale, metallic tang to it. They step into a strange bunker or tunnel — a sterile underground artery of white tile and polished chrome. Humming LED lights form a stripe down the ceiling’s center. Brovski leads the way. His shoes clack and echo. Maggie looks down at the shiny floor and sees her own distorted reflection staring back.

As they make their way down the artery, Maggie begins to see faceless people dressed in white lab coats — faceless because they all wear oversize surgical masks and caps and opaque goggles, and Maggie wonders whether the getup is to protect or disguise. She keeps walking. Walls become windows to laboratories of some sort. Various faceless lab-coated people perform various experiments.

At least, that’s what it looks like. Maggie doesn’t really know. She also doesn’t really care.

She wants to see him.

This bunker is trying very hard to look — time to say it again — “cutting edge” and “state of the art.” And yet it doesn’t. The “hidden lair” has something of a faux vibe to it, the feeling of an overwrought reproduction, as if this is a Hollywood version of what a secret medical science lab should look like. She, Marc, and Trace were all involved in cardiology — and right now, this place may be well-kept and clean and sterile and sleek and even beautiful, but there is no beating heart. That’s how it feels to her.

The people in lab coats — doctors? scientists? — startle when she walks past. They look up furtively, not wanting to make eye contact, even through the opaque goggles.

Maggie wonders about that.

Ivan Brovski stops at a metal door. No windows. No door handle — handles carry germs. Yet another faceless individual approaches her with a blue isolation gown, disposable gloves, and face shield.

“Put them on over your clothes,” Brovski orders.

“What about you?” she asks.

“This is as far as I go. Put them on.”

Maggie does as he asks. When she’s done, Brovski waves his hand in front of a screen. Everything is touchless. The door opens with a sucking hiss. Maggie tentatively steps inside, and the door reseals behind her.

A deep voice says, “Hello, Doctor McCabe.”

A big man sits in some makeshift throne on a riser in the middle of the room. A nasal cannula — the kind of mask you always see on television shows — delivers oxygen. There’s an IV in his arm. A medical monitoring device displays his vitals — heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation. He wears what is either a smoking jacket or a velvet robe — hard to know which — like something from a Playboy Mansion documentary. His is appropriately enough bloodred.

There is a Mona Lisa on the wall behind his head.

Oleg Ragoravich.

He smiles and spreads his thick, soft arms. “Surprised?”

Maggie takes a step toward him. “Would it hurt your feelings if I told you I’m not?”

“It would indeed.” Ragoravich’s breathing is labored, his chest rising and falling with a little too much drama. “Tell me how you knew.”

“Lots of little things — why you threw the ball, the timing of the surgery — but the big thing is, I found an old photograph of you online.”

“They’re supposed to have all been deleted.”

“Yeah, but you know there are always ways.”

Ragoravich nods. “I do. Which photo?”

“Your military portrait.”

“That has to be forty years old.”

“I was given two photos to replicate before the surgery — Photo A and Photo B. Both were grainy black-and-whites. Photo A was the chin. Photo B was, well, your prominent nose. Both, I know now, were blowups of that military portrait. You wanted me to think the surgery was to change your identity. But in reality—”

“It was the opposite,” he finishes for her. “You were making him look more like me, not less. Fattening him up for the kill.”

Awful way of putting it, Maggie thinks, but not untrue. “The Oleg I knew — the one I did surgery on and got murdered in Dubai — he was some kind of imposter or body double.”

“Body double,” he says. “Or decoy. Not an imposter. His real name was Aleksander, by the way. He was my cousin. We look alike, no?”

Maggie nods. “Similar enough. From a distance.”

“Aleksander has been my double for the past twenty-three years. Can you believe that? He played the part well.”

“He did,” Maggie agrees.

“Lots of powerful men have had doubles. Stalin. Noriega. Saddam Hussein. Some say Putin, but I think he’s too paranoid to allow someone who looks like him that close. I had two others over the years, but Aleksander, he was the best. I loved him, really.”

“And yet,” Maggie says.

“And yet he had to die, yes. I need the world to think I’m dead — too many people are after me.”

“So you sacrificed your cousin?”

He grins and steeples his hands. “Let me ask you something, Doctor McCabe. Is life about quality or quantity? It’s a question you physicians ask every day, no? Do we measure life by the years — or the quality of those years? Aleksander grew up in poverty. Without me, he would have spent his life in drudgery, as a low-level factory worker, barely scraping by. Instead, Aleksander lived a life of luxury even kings couldn’t dare have imagined — big mansions, private planes, fancy cars, the finest cuisine, and of course, beautiful women. So you tell me. Was I a curse in his life — or a blessing?”

“I guess we would have to ask him.”

“None of us get to decide how we die, Doctor McCabe.” He separates his hands, points the palms toward the sky. “Why should Aleksander be any different?”

Maggie nods. “Fascinating albeit sociopathic rationale,” she says. “I assume you didn’t share your plan with Aleksander.”

“I did not, no.”

“But he figured it out. Too late. After the surgery was done, when he saw the work I’d done, he realized you were — how did you so poetically put it? — fattening him up for the kill. That’s why he ran.”

“Yes. I think he deluded himself into believing that Nadia had true feelings for him. So we had people watch the club, figuring he would show up.”

Oleg Ragoravich — the real one — tilts his head back, closes his eyes, struggles to swallow. She can see he’s in pain. Maggie waits for him to continue.

“My main passion has always been in medical innovations because I have spent so much of my life in poor health. Health is everything — but we know that, don’t we? You can have all the riches in the world, but if you don’t have your health... Well, it’s an old saying, but that’s because it’s so true. I’ve always had a congenitally weak heart in the physical sense — but the heart of a lion when I want something. And I wanted to find a way to cure me — and in the process, help others like me to live longer.”

“Others like you,” Maggie says.

“Yes.”

“You mean the rich and powerful?”

“Don’t be naive. It’s always been that way. Medical research is held back by archaic rules. I don’t have time for any of that. Mankind doesn’t either. And you Americans especially have grown so lazy and stupid. You think you’d be healthier if you relied on your” — Ragoravich shakes his head as he says in pure disgust — “‘natural immunities.’ Please. Natural immunities. It makes me laugh.” His voice goes up an octave in mimicry: “‘Oh, we don’t need modern medicine, we just need to meditate and trust our “natural immunities” like in the old days!’ Bah. Do you know what the global life expectancy was in 1900? Thirty-seven years. Thirty-seven! That’s what your natural immunities got you.

Do you know what life expectancy is today? Seventy-three. Think about that. And do you know why? Of course you do. You’re an intelligent physician. We live longer because of modern medicine — antibiotics, vaccines, control of infectious disease, new treatments for cancer, stroke, and yes, cardiovascular disease. We live longer because we stopped relying on our ‘natural immunities.’”

He is panting by the time he finishes the rant. He takes a second, starts breathing again, looks at her. “What do you think?”

“I think the other Oleg didn’t talk this much.”

That makes him chuckle. “Very good, Doctor McCabe. But you know I’m right. Science and medicine work. The rest... They call me corrupt, but these so-called ‘wellness influencers’ preying on your gullibility, buying in bulk, repackaging junk as a ‘health supplement,’ jacking up the price...” He waves his hand dismissively in the air. “But you didn’t come here to listen to a sick old man rant about humanity’s innate stupidity.”

“True, I did not,” she says.

“Tell me what you already know, Doctor McCabe, and I’ll tell you the rest.”

Maggie doesn’t hesitate — she dives right in. “Like a lot of your competitors, you laundered money through charities. But you did it with a dual purpose. You focused on charities that had connections to medical innovations, especially if they featured cardiology or cellular regenerative advancements. So-called ‘fountain of youth’ medicine. As you just explained, nothing with placebo supplements or scam therapies. Only charities involved in true medical innovations.”

“Yes.”

“It was common knowledge that WorldCures was doing major work on heart transplants via THUMPR7. You would have been all over that.”

“WorldCures was my number one priority.”

“So you donated to us and several other like-minded charities. You started the corruption with the money laundering. Then you moved on to black-market organ donation. And then, because you hated the — what do you call them, archaic rules? — some form of human experimentation. I assume that’s what’s going on down here?”

“Close,” Ragoravich says. “You know we bought a kidney from Nadia when she was Salima?”

“Yes.”

“And she thinks we sold it on the black market for transplantation.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. We needed a kidney with her DNA markings for a certain medical experiment. That’s what I mean. Imagine how much faster you can make progress if you just buy real human organs instead of having to spend years trying it with pigs or in labs.”

Maggie doesn’t even know what to say to that.

“We’ve bought dozens of organs like this. Some, yes, we sold for transplantation. For profit. Others we kept for important experimentation. We took everyone’s blood at refugee camps all over the world. You helped with that, as a matter of fact, for us. Now we have all that DNA stored in our own data banks. We can get exactly what we need when we need it — and when we see a match, well, everyone has a price.”

“Who removed Nadia’s kidney?”

“I wouldn’t normally know. We did so many.”

“Normally. But in this case?”

“You’re wondering whether it was your husband.”

Maggie shakes her head. “I know it wasn’t.”

“Because he was too good a man?”

“Because there are lines he wouldn’t cross.”

“Ah, but selling her kidney wasn’t a bad thing. It was pure commerce. It saved the donor’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, Nadia explained all that to me. I don’t need to hear it again. Who removed her kidney?”

“You know now, don’t you?”

She nods. “Trace Packer.”

“Yes. Packer did many. He believed that innovation in organ donation was the future of medicine. He was willing to push the boundaries.”

“In a dangerous way. I was at Apollo Longevity when we tried to implant the THUMPR7 in Kabir Abargil, a poor man—”

“A poor man who consented,” Ragoravich interjects. “A poor man who was going to die and knew the risks and made an informed decision—”

“Yeah, okay, whatever.”

“No, no, you listen.” Ragoravich makes a fist and shakes it at her. “We have always sacrificed our fellow human beings for the greater good. Always. Wars, of course, but every advancement we humans have made — when we first created aqueducts for water, when we first traveled, built bridges, explored, pioneered, literally everything throughout history we ever did to advance civilization and—”

Maggie holds up her hand and says, “Oleg?”

“Yes?”

“I get it. You are extraordinarily creative with your self-justifications. But I don’t really care.”

“And in truth, neither do I. I want to live. That’s all that matters to me in the end. It’s why I focused on the heart. That’s the immediate need. But we work here on every organ because there is overlap in the research — and because eventually I will need those too. Once we can replicate organs and tissues, a human could live theoretically for hundreds of years. And no, this isn’t for the masses. We can’t have everyone living that long. Even the knowledge that the possibility exists would end the world because, yes, people would kill to get it. That’s not justification, Doctor McCabe. That’s fact. God — if you are superstitious enough to believe in that man-made delusion — created a world where the only way to survive is to kill. You watch a lion take down a gazelle. The lion will try to keep the poor creature alive while he eats it so it stays fresh. The gazelle slowly dies in agony. That’s the ‘perfect’ world designed by a just and kind deity.” He chuckles. “And I’m the one delusional with self-justification?”

Maggie tries to catch him off guard. “Did you kill my husband?”

“No.” There is no hesitation. “I needed him alive to work on that artificial heart. His death was a tremendous blow to me.”

She tries again: “Did Trace kill him?”

“Could be,” he says in too casual a way. “Marc found out about Trace organ harvesting. It upset him. Trace might have killed Marc to protect himself. But I don’t know.” Oleg’s breath grows raspier. “I’m getting tired, so I need to get to the point. My latest heart is failing. I have run out of time. We have the latest THUMPR7 here. We have the DNA sequencing machine and all the other equipment. We both know what went wrong the first time you tried the operation on that ‘poor man’ in Dubai — you didn’t have a heart. We have an ideal, healthy one now from a brain-dead man in a coma. The heart isn’t being shipped either. I’ve paid to have the brain-dead man brought here. Your husband and Trace Packer wrote quite a bit on the advantages of ‘beating-heart’ transplantation when developing the THUMPR7. We will have the ultimate version of that. The heart will be taken out by a team just minutes before insertion. In short, the conditions are finally perfect for the transplant that can save my life.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

Oleg Ragoravich gives her a sharklike smile. “Why do you think?”

And then she sees it. “You want me to do the transplant?”

“Yes. Of course. That’s why you’re here.”

Silence.

“Your husband is dead. Trace Packer, well, we don’t know where he is. No Marc, no Trace... That leaves you, Doctor McCabe.”

“But I’m a plastic surgeon—”

“Oh, you’re more than that. Let’s not play the false modesty card. I made a mistake back then. I relied on the two men. Old-world sexism on my part. I should have focused on you. You are the best surgeon of the group. Women often are better at focusing on what matters, at understanding the mission. They don’t let their egos get involved the way men do. When you were around, Marc and Trace were better doctors, researchers, and humans. When you left, it all went to hell.”

And if she hadn’t left, Maggie thinks, Marc would still be alive.

“Whose heart is it?”

“I told you. A man in a coma.”

“Someone from a refugee camp?”

“Does it matter?”

“Depends. Did you put him in a coma?”

“If I needed to, I would have. But I didn’t. He’s been brain-dead for months. If it makes you feel any better, I paid his caretaker a fortune to get him here.”

“I need reassurances—”

“No, Doctor McCabe, you don’t. You will do the surgery. You will be well paid. And after it is over, you will have both the satisfaction of completing your husband’s work and the guarantee of safety. I have assembled the finest cardiothoracic surgery team possible — surgical nurses, perfusion technologists, a cardiac anesthesiologist, and two top heart transplant surgeons to assist you. This will all be over for you after you do this transplant tomorrow.”

“It won’t work,” Maggie says. “The THUMPR7 isn’t ready.”

“The decision’s been made.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Do we need to play this game, Doctor McCabe?” Ragoravich sighs. “I showed you the carrot, so I might as well show you the stick.” He steeples his hands again and rests his forefingers on his chin. “If you refuse, the other surgeons will still proceed with the procedure. But instead of the brain-dead comatose man’s heart, I’ll use your father-in-law’s, which will be ripped out of his chest with no anesthesia while we make you watch.”

He grins. “Do I make myself clear?”

Porkchop can’t help but laugh.

“He actually used those words? Ripping my heart out of my chest?”

“It’s not funny.”

“Except it kinda is. Oh, and without anesthesia? Did he really say that too?”

“While he makes me watch.”

“That’s a nice touch. Such a flair for the dramatic.”

“Or the sadistic. What do you think we should do?”

Porkchop puts his hand to his chest. “Hell, Mags, I don’t want my heart ripped out of my chest.”

“Stop that.”

They are back on the porch of the guesthouse at Smith Haut Lafitte, watching the sun set so majestically you figure it’s showing off.

“You’ll do the surgery,” Porkchop says. “Like the man says, you have no choice. You do the surgery, we go home, we put this behind us.”

“And Trace?”

“What about him?”

“We still don’t know where he is.”

“A problem for another day.”

She takes a sip of wine. “None of this makes sense.”

Porkchop says nothing.

“It’s like they knew I was coming. It’s like they led me here.”

Porkchop still stares out in silence.

“Do you think Nadia set me up?” Maggie asks.

“How so?”

“She told me about Brovski landing in Bordeaux.”

“How did she know where he was again? Oh right, she stole his phone and dropped a pin.”

“Which is a little suspicious in itself, right? Maybe Nadia made that up. Maybe she’s on their side. I don’t know. But think about it. They were ready for us, Porkchop. Ragoravich had a surgical team prepared. He has the THUMPR7 and all our equipment. All he needed was me — and voilà, here I am.”

Porkchop takes another sip. “You asked this Ragoravich guy if he killed Marc.”

“Yes.”

“And he said no.”

“Right.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I do. He only cares about the THUMPR7. He needed Marc for that.”

“Did he?” Porkchop asks. “Or did he need you?”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“Neither do I.” Porkchop lifts up the empty wine bottle. “Probably a little too much grape.”

“So what do we do now, Porkchop?”

“We finish our glasses. We stroll up the path to La Grand’Vigne. That’s the vineyard’s two-star Michelin restaurant. We sit at a little wooden table outside. We don’t look at the menu. We ask Chef Nicolas what we should order and his sommelier for the proper wine pairing. We finish watching this glorious sunset, and we think about Marc.”

The tears start pushing into her eyes again. “I shouldn’t have gone home. I should have stayed with him in Dubai.”

“Then you’d both be dead,” Porkchop says. “You would have gone to that refugee camp with him. You would have stayed by his side during the siege. And whoever killed him would have killed you too.”

“And whoever,” Maggie repeats. Then: “You think it was Trace.”

“Yeah, Mags, I do. But either way, you’re alive. Marc is dead. He’d want you to move on.”

“You don’t believe in life after death, do you?”

Porkchop shakes his head. “We get one ride. This is it.”

“So Marc is gone,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Forever.”

“Forever.”

“How do we accept that, Porkchop?”

“We don’t,” he says. “We can’t.”