The Sanctuary

Chapter 66

They were marched out of the house at gunpoint — Kirkwood, Corben, along with the mokhtar and his family — under a patchwork sky of purples and grays. Frothy clouds scudded along the horizon, backlit by the setting sun.

The cemetery was at the far end of the village. Simple gravestones clustered around the mazar, a small, conical local funerary monument. The mokhtar led them through the rough, barren ground until they reached a small headstone. He stopped there and, with a morose expression etched across his face, pointed it out.

Kirkwood knelt down and examined the old marker. The austere piece of limestone barely jutted out of the ground. It was bare, except for a small, circular carving in its center. Kirkwood reached out and brushed the moss and dust away from its edges. The head of the snake appeared more clearly, its simple detail eaten away by the passage of time.

He noticed something else below it. He passed his fingers over the etching, clearing the detritus of time off it.

It was a date, in Arabic numerals.

“Eighteen oh two,” Kirkwood read out in a hollow voice.

His mouth felt dry as a feeling of infinite loss came over him.

So this was where his journey had ended.

The hakeem’s voice broke through Kirkwood’s swirling memories, scattering them. “Eighteen oh two,” he repeated, thinking aloud. “My ancestor died in 1771. Not a huge difference, you might say. Except for one minor detail. Our ancestors met in the middle of the eighteenth century, around 1750 or so. At the time, your ancestor, according to di Sangro’s diary, seemed to be a contemporary of his, that is, approaching the age of forty. Which means that, at his death, he would have been, oh, close to a hundred years old. But here’s the thing. My ancestor died an old man. Your ancestor, well…according to the story that was passed down, the man who came down from the mountain and died here wasn’t an old man. He had walked down the mountain, alone. And it was a fever that killed him, not old age. The mokhtar was very clear about that. Which either means that your ancestor found something up in those mountains that kept him young, or — and this is the explanation I favor — that, as the principe suspected, he’d been using the formula for years. Only you said he didn’t have the complete formula. Which I find confusing. He abandoned his wife and his child to travel to this dangerous and distant corner of the globe, to search for something he already had?”

Kirkwood stiffened. “He didn’t have it.”

The hakeem took a menacing step forward, and his brow darkened gravely. “You know something? I think you’re lying. I believe he had it,” he said acidly. “I believe my illustrious ancestor was right all along. I believe Sebastian Guerreiro used the formula to live an extraordinarily long life. And,” he added fiercely, “I believe you’re doing the same.”

Kirkwood tried to rein in his anger and his fear. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice didn’t waver.

He felt Corben’s eyes on him, but didn’t dare turn to him. The hakeem was watching him too closely.

“Really?” the hakeem coldly observed. “Let’s see.”

He barked an order to his men. Two of them trudged off and disappeared behind one of the houses. The remaining guards raised their machine guns cautiously, watching over Corben and Kirkwood like hawks.

Moments later, the two men returned, bringing back a prisoner who was dressed in camouflage fatigues and whose hands were cuffed. The prisoner’s head was concealed under a black cloth sack, like the one they had used on Corben. They stood the prisoner next to the hakeem and backed off.

Even before the hakeem made his introduction, Kirkwood saw through the baggy outfit and the mask. The realization paralyzed him. He glanced sideways at Corben, but he couldn’t read the agent’s shuttered expression.

“You were saying…?” the hakeem asked gruffly, before yanking the sack off his prisoner.

Evelyn’s eyes squinted a few times, adjusting to the light. Then she saw Kirkwood standing before her, and her jaw dropped.

“My God…Tom?”