TWENTY
In spite of its famous name, Frankenstein Castle
is little more than a pile of rubble south of Darmstadt today. But
in the 17th century, it was the home of Johann Konrad Dippel. Born
in 1673, Konrad eventually entered the seminary, where his teachers
and fellow-students alike admired his quick mind. But the adulation
may have been too much, combined with his natural arrogance. Konrad
was said to question the Catechism at age 9, and while in school,
also practiced palmistry, read the Tarot, and discovered what would
become his abiding passion, alchemy. His obsession with mortality
is evident in the title of his 1693 master’s thesis, De Morte
(On Death).
—Chapman and Ainsworth, Lives of the
Alchemists
Konrad wanted relaxation after this pig’s
ear of a day. He pressed his intercom. Laura told him the
contractor was just finishing with the new window. He told her to
go home. Then he checked his watch. He had some time to kill.
Konrad moved into the next room, an opulent lounge
complete with wet bar, where he would entertain celebrity clients
who preferred leather chairs to paper-covered exam tables. He
poured himself a drink and checked his reflection in the mirror
above the bar.
No one could say he looked his age. But there was a
slight sagging to the jowl he didn’t like, and there, a slight
thinning at the crown . . .
He took out his mobile and called Nikki. She was
more than happy to come over to his office, despite the time.
Nikki was a beautiful girl, raised by adoring
parents, pursued by handsome boys in a pain-free suburb of Chicago,
where she did modeling for catalogs and believed everyone who told
her she should be in movies. Los Angeles came after a degree in
communications. She thought she would be an actress, or at least an
anchorwoman.
Two months in, she was working for a “modeling
agency” that specialized in providing pretty, available girls in
the right situations. She moved into Konrad’s orbit after a party
where she’d been hired to dress up the scenery by serving as a
human sushi platter. Naked under carefully placed salmon and unagi
rolls, she’d smiled at him.
She came when he called, and always left with money
and gifts. She would have slapped anyone who called her a
whore.
Konrad was getting bored with her, but she was
reliable.
Within the hour, she arrived. No one saw her enter,
because she used the door that opened into the adjacent alley,
another service Konrad of fered his famous patients.
She entered the lounge, pink and warm from a recent
shower, her tight young body bound up in expensive gym clothes.
Konrad smiled and pretended to care about her difficulty with the
rush-hour traffic.
She was going on about something else while he
stood behind the bar, fixing her a drink. Predictably, she loved
icy, frothy concoctions that required him to use the blender.
That gave him an idea.
He cut her off mid-sentence and called her behind
the bar.
“How would you like to compete in a little game
show?” he asked.
She came to his side, smiling.
“Well, I don’t know. Is it network or cable?”
“It’s right here,” he said, dumping the pink mess
out of the blender, revealing the stainless steel blades. “It’s
called ‘Trust.’”
She giggled. It was her response whenever she
didn’t know what was going on, like a cat grooming itself.
“I will give you—give you—twenty-five
thousand dollars. Cash. I will pay your rent for the next three
months. I will even throw in the lease on a new Mercedes SL”—and
here, he pitched his voice like a TV announcer—“that’s right, a
brand-new car.”
Nikki stood there, her smile going rigid. “What do
I have to do?”
“Almost nothing,” Konrad said, smiling himself now.
“You just have to trust me.
He took her hand in his own and placed it in the
blender. It was delicate and small, and fit easily.
She jerked back, but he held her there. “That’s the
game, dear. Do you trust me?”
She looked into his eyes. He took his hand away.
And she kept her hand where it was.
Konrad nodded. And then he hit the button marked
PURÉE.
Her screams were mixed with the sound of the blades
spinning.
She tried to pull away again, but this time he
grabbed her wrist and wouldn’t let go.
Blood was spattered over both of their faces when
he released the button and her wrist, at the same time. She curled
into a ball, clutching her mangled fingers to her chest,
shrieking.
Konrad let out a deep sigh, savoring it. His
windows were sound-proofed, of course.
“You win,” he told her.
“THERE, THERE,” KONRAD SAID, his tone soothing as
he escorted her into the exam rooms. “It’s going to be fine.”
Nikki sniffled, tears running down her face, her
mangled hand clutched to her chest. It was bleeding through the bar
towel Konrad had wrapped around it.
“You can really fix it?” she asked, for what seemed
like the hundredth time.
Amazing, he thought. Not even a hint of anger. Just
pleading with him to make it better.
At moments like this, Konrad thought he might as
well have been from another world. When he was a boy, everyone was
an enemy. His father had taught him that. Everything his father
had, he had because he had taken it, and killed anyone who would
take it away. Death was everywhere, waiting patiently. Germany was
still a collection of principalities devastated by the Thirty
Years’ War. His father could remember the armies of mercenaries
that scoured the land clean, spreading famine and disease. The
greatest treasure of all was life, he would often say. It had to be
guarded, constantly.
Centuries later, Konrad still couldn’t fathom these
children who grew up surrounded by abundance, unable to comprehend
hunger or desperation. Who put their trust in strangers. Who
expected to be safe as they skipped merrily from their homes and
playgrounds.
Girls like Nikki were so alienated from the idea
that anyone would hurt them, they couldn’t believe it was real,
even when it happened. No matter what their age, they seemed like
infants to him.
“Of course, I’ll fix it,” Konrad said. “You won’t
even know the difference when I’m done.”
It wasn’t entirely untrue.
Konrad took her back into his private operating
room, the one where he did his real work. No patient was ever
allowed to see this part of the clinic.
“Why do you have those animals in cages?” she
asked.
“Testing,” he said. “An unfortunate reality of
medicine. We can’t test on humans.”
“What’s wrong with that one?”
She shivered. It wasn’t shock, or blood loss. He
had to move.
“Please,” he said. “We have to hurry. Lie
down.”
She hesitated, biting her lip. Her tears had erased
most of her makeup. She looked like a child now.
“I think you did it on purpose,” she said.
Konrad tried not to sigh or roll his eyes. “No,” he
insisted. “It was an accident. My finger slipped. I told you
before.”
“Maybe we should just go to the emergency room,”
she said.
“All they will do is stitch you up,” Konrad said.
“I’ll make you beautiful again. Flawless.”
Nikki waited a moment more, then nodded. She got on
the steel table, on her back.
Konrad took a syringe out of a drawer and shot
Nikki up with a combination sedative and paralytic. She began to
doze off immediately, her eyes fluttering.
Konrad went into the corner and took a heavy sheet
off a piece of equipment.
Nikki’s eyes snapped open again when he wheeled the
machine into view. Of course by then she couldn’t move.
Her breathing quickened. “What is that thing?” she
asked, struggling to raise her head. “Why can’t I move?”
“Shhhhh,” he said, stroking her hair. “It will all
be over soon.”
Again, not entirely untrue.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was little more
than a whisper now.
“I’m sorry, Nikki,” Konrad said. He kissed her
forehead. “I need something from you.”
She tried to scream, but the drugs would barely
allow her to breathe. He had to get started. He needed her alive
for this procedure.
Konrad maneuvered the machine into place. It looked
like an industrial press mated with a Portuguese man-of-war: tubes
unrolled from the main body of the machine, slithering over her
body. He flipped a switch and the tentacles came to life, writhing
over her skin, seeking purchase. Flat disks at the end crawled into
position, on her arms, legs, neck and chest. Then, with a sudden
snap, they burrowed in.
Nikki felt it, despite the drugs. He could tell by
the widening of her eyes.
The machine began to drink. The tendrils began
drawing her life, her actual essence, from her, along with all the
cells and vital fluids that carried it.
Nikki’s arm hung limply off the table. The bar
towel had come unwrapped, and her blood dripped onto the tile
floor.
The machine kept working. In less than a minute,
the blood slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely.
Konrad watched the dials and monitors as the vials
within his machine filled. Another process was already starting,
which would concentrate the harvest down into its purest
form.
Konrad had what he needed. But there was still
plenty left. He never believed in wasting anything.
From the center of the tentacles, another hatch
opened. The machine sprouted a bouquet of gleaming steel: scalpels,
saws and blades, each on its own mechanical arm, arranged in a
circle.
They whirred to life, almost merrily, as they
lowered to the body and began slicing.
The skin, which came off in great strips, could be
reduced to slurry and made into collagen filler to plump up sagging
body parts for his patients, to restore lips to the fullness of
youth, or even inflate a man’s penis to the size he thought he
deserved.
The bone, chipped away and captured by the extended
probes, would be used to rebuild noses, chins and jawlines. The
meat of the muscle and cartilage could repair ruined joints and
tendons. And of course, there was a booming market in organ
replacement for those who didn’t want to wait on a transplant
list.
The machine carved it all away and collected every
piece, sucking it away to vacuum-sealed jars and plastic containers
for freezing.
Konrad didn’t have to watch. The machine did
everything almost by itself now. He’d been at this for years,
perfecting its mechanisms. He could have gotten himself a
coffee.
But he enjoyed the show.
A small light—dignified, restrained, Konrad
thought—signaled that the fluid had been processed. While his
marvelous machine stored away Nikki’s tissues and organs, he
prepared a syringe.
The vital fluid filled less than 2 cc’s. Still, it
was enough. He loaded the life-essence into the needle, then
injected it into his veins.
He shuddered. Felt hair growing on his scalp. Felt
skin tighten, the paunch at his belly flatten out.
Konrad had wrested the secret of eternal life from
corpses, stolen from their graves centuries before.
Eternal youth, however . . . that required
something a little . . . fresher.
Konrad disposed of the needle in a sharps
container, put on his jacket and walked to the door. He glanced
back at his machine, just before he switched out the lights. The
steel table gleamed as if nothing had ever been there.
AT ABOUT SEVEN P.M., Zach watched from the sedan
as Konrad left the elevator and strolled to his car. The Ferrari
sounded like a jet fighter about to take off. Konrad slid out of
the parking space as if greased, and the car vanished down the
ramp.
The GPS locator on Zach’s phone began blinking
immediately, showing a red dot moving away on a grid, farther from
his position.
The thing was idiot-proof He could follow Konrad
all over town if he wanted.
And really, why shouldn’t he?
He wasn’t Cade’s sidekick or errand boy. He was an
officer of the President of the United States, and he was damn sure
going to act like it.
He started the engine of the sedan—the fender Cade
had kicked rattled loudly—and then took off after Konrad.
ZACH’S CAR HIT THE STREET. A black car waited in a
metered space half a block away.
Its windows were tinted, and from outside, it
looked as if it were filled with a liquid darkness, blacker than
ink, deeper than oil.
When Zach turned the corner, the black car merged
into traffic and followed.