Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

Thérésia’s hand gripped Sebastian’s tightly. “Come back to me,” she whispered in his ear.

He took her in his arms and kissed her, then knelt down and kissed his son.

“I’ll do my best” was all he could promise.

And with a tremulous heart, he watched as the ship’s sails unfurled and took away the only true happiness he’d ever known.

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?”

The sight of Evelyn’s bewildered eyes sent an ice pick through Kirkwood’s heart.

“Evelyn, thank God you’re…” He shook head with anguish. “I’m so sorry.”

The hakeem was scrutinizing Evelyn’s reaction with resounding satisfaction. He turned to Kirkwood, his face beaming with the most irritating self-satisfaction, and stepped closer to him until he was only inches away.

“I know plastic surgery does miracles these day, but this…,” he said to Evelyn, waving his hand down Kirkwood’s body, “this is far more than cosmetic, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’re…” The words were catching in her throat. “How is it possible?”

The hakeem nodded to one of his men, who grabbed Evelyn and pulled her back. The hakeem turned to Kirkwood, his face contorted with renewed menace. “You have the formula,” he seethed. “What are you really after?”

Kirkwood summoned any reserves of will he had left and held firm. “The same thing you want.”

“But you have already have it,” the hakeem rasped.

Kirkwood didn’t respond.

The hakeem grabbed a gun from one of his men and shoved it against Evelyn’s head. “You already have it, yes?”

Every nerve in Kirkwood’s body bristled with fury, but he held firm and didn’t react.

The hakeem’s finger tightened against the trigger. “You already have it, yes?” he raged.

Kirkwood just scowled at him mutely.

“Have it your way then,” the hakeem hissed, his sharp voice slicing the air, and he blinked his eyes over to Evelyn, his wrist bending slightly as he prepared to put a round in her head—

“Wait,” Kirkwood yelled.

The hakeem turned, the gun still held there.

Kirkwood looked at Evelyn, then dropped his eyes to the ground. “I have the formula,” he muttered.

Without looking up, he felt everyone’s stare on him.

“I don’t get it,” Corben blurted out. “What the hell are we doing here then? Why are you here? What are you so desperate to find?”

Kirkwood heaved out a ponderous, frustrated sigh. “The experiments in the book we have…they weren’t complete. The formula doesn’t work on…everyone.”

“What do you mean, ‘not everyone’?” the hakeem asked, bringing down the gun.

Kirkwood glanced at Evelyn, then raised his eyes angrily at the hakeem. “It only works on men.”

The hakeem processed his words, his face lighting up with a manic euphoria. “So you’ve been using it?”

Kirkwood nodded. “The book Sebastian found wasn’t complete. It was partially burnt, and the last few pages — who knows how many, really — were missing. The experiments it detailed hadn’t been satisfactorily completed, at least not in the pages we had. There was still this critical flaw. For many years it was pointless to try and figure out the reason for the deficiency and try to fix it. Science wasn’t yet advanced enough, and besides, there were more important problems for our best minds to work on, more urgent diseases to overcome. It’s only in the last fifty years, really, that we’ve felt the time was finally right to devote some serious scientific resources to try and solve this riddle.”