Gone Before Goodbye, page 27
She looks at Porkchop’s profile and thinks she sees a tear on his cheek.
“You okay?” she asks.
He nods. “Guillaume and Élodie tell me that there is no way into that abandoned vineyard. The area is remote and very well protected. CCTV. Motion detectors. Barbed wire. Round-the-clock armed guards.”
Maggie takes another sip. “I’m not surprised.”
“Everyone knows that it’s more than a vineyard. The most prevalent rumor is that it’s a secret military base. Some of the more conspiracy-minded think it’s housing biological or chemical weapons.”
“Even better to keep people away.”
“Do we have a plan?”
Maggie thinks about it. “I think so, yeah.”
They both sit back and stare out.
“There are things Marc didn’t tell me,” Maggie says.
“Which reminds me.” Porkchop grabs hold of his satchel, puts his passport in the side pocket, and starts to dig through the main pouch. “Sharon told me to give this to you.” He pulls out a phone. “Your griefbot.”
He hands it to her. Maggie takes it. Porkchop turns and stares out again.
“You never told me about it,” he says.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
He nods. “Because there are things you don’t tell me.”
“Yeah, I thought you might be going there. It’s not the same thing.”
“Actually, it is. You trust me, right?”
“With my life.”
“And yet you keep things from me. And I keep things from you.”
“What do you keep from me?”
“You’re missing the point.”
“Also you’re not my husband.”
“Marc told you what he knew. What he could.”
“He didn’t tell me about Oleg Ragoravich.”
“Do you think that means he loved you any less?”
“Now who’s missing the point?”
“Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex—no one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of—and yet we are convinced we can read other people. We think that we know what’s going on inside others, what they are really feeling or experiencing or thinking, but they can’t tell the same about us. That’s obviously impossible. You and Marc…” Porkchop stops and shakes his head. “You guys were the best couple I’d ever seen. But you weren’t”—he puts his palms together—“‘one.’ That’s new-age bullshit. It’s also undesirable. Marc didn’t tell you everything about Ragoravich because he wanted to protect you. Like you and me with the griefbot. Only yeah, fair—more so. Marc knew that if he told you the full truth, you wouldn’t go home and take care of your mother. You’d want to stay by his side and fight with him. And then maybe you’d be dead now.”
Maggie gets it. And doesn’t. “Do you really think Trace had something to do with Marc’s murder?” she asks him.
He just stares out.
“Porkchop?”
“No one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of.”
“Quoting yourself?”
“Who better?” Porkchop lets loose a deep sigh. “It’s late. I’m going to bed.”
“You slept the whole train ride here.”
“But you didn’t. Get some rest. We have a big day tomorrow.”
“Suppose Trace is there?” she asks.
Porkchop’s eyes close.
“What will we do then?”
He opens his eyes, leans down, and kisses the top of Maggie’s head. “We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.”
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.”
