by Fritz Galt
“Including room and board?”
“Hut of your choice and two vegetarian meals a day.”
“Sorry, I’m a cannibal,” Mick said.
“A pity,” the old man sighed.
Lena stretched upward and kissed the old man on the lips.
“The only flesh I eat is women,” Swamiji said with a deep, lusty laugh. “Come, sit down with me.”
Lena offered Mick a fresh banana leaf, and several children and adults found places around them.
“Mick Pierce was asking me about ‘Highest Peace,’” Lena called upward.
Swamiji lowered to the floor of his veranda and folded his stout legs into a yoga position.
“Let me tell you a story,” he began, his voice becoming frail once again and resuming its irritatingly high pitch. “My Dad gave me two things in life. The initials J.P. from his family name, but which reminds me of John Pierpont Morgan, the wealthy banking baron from another time and another continent. The second thing he gave me was the surname ‘Nilayam,’ which means ‘Highest Peace.’ I have been struggling with the contradiction ever since.”
“Well, thanks for that explanation, Mr. Highest Peace,” Mick said. “Good luck on resolving your contradiction. I’m here on a more mundane task. I’m looking for—”
Lena put a finger to his lips and pointed to Swamiji.
He was preparing another explanation, or novella, depending on how Mick looked at it.
“My students call me a ‘guru,’ or teacher. I call what I teach ‘The Way to Peace through Other Reality.’” He paused and inhaled deeply as if he were sniffing a flower. “What does this mean?” he asked rhetorically.
Many of the students, from preschoolers through retired adults, listened attentively with their eyes shut, their backs straight, their legs crossed and their arms crossed over their gently breathing chests.
“I will give you an example,” Swamiji continued his monologue. “I embrace female polygamy, where a woman can have multiple husbands, so that women can see themselves through the eyes of multiple husbands, and husbands can see themselves through the eyes of the multiple eyes of the woman who sees you through multiple eyes, creating an endless reflecting hall of mirrors and mirrors within mirrors, each mirror containing the entire reality.”
“Sounds like the Jain fisherman’s net with infinite mirrors,” Mick said.
“Precisely,” Swamiji said. “My spiritual goal is to unite people from all religions into a pantheistic religion comprised of multiple monotheistic beliefs, as all religions are merely part of other religions, and all spiritual communication is with both one god and all gods.”
“Sounds great,” Mick said. “How about your earthly goals?”
“Earthly goals,” Swamiji repeated. “Each day I strive to achieve the openness of mind that will end the circle of life and death.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
Swamiji opened his eyes and smiled glowingly down on Mick. “Is that why you’ve come?”
“As a matter of fact,” Mick began, and was halted mid-sentence as the Swamiji continued.
“Does he ever pause to take a breath?” Mick whispered to Lena.
Her eyes crinkled with a smile. “Don’t you love him?”
“My earthly goal is to apply healing of souls in their earthly existence through my technological theory of sciences within sciences. Namely, each science is a part of another science and true scientists are those who don’t even know what they are looking for, only who know how to ask questions, since questions raise other questions which raise other questions endlessly.”
“I see,” Mick said.
“Then, can we register you?” Swamiji said, his voice dropping the wavering tone. “We have an opening available.”
Mick was saved by a servant carrying a tray through the squatting group.
“Tea time,” Swamiji announced.
The pupils and their master hungrily grabbed the paper cups and gulped their tea without ceremony. Mick was reminded of the fruit punch served in the Guyanan jungle at Jonestown.
“Namaste. Hi. Did my father send you?”
Mick turned toward the winsome voice. A comely young woman had walked up to him, dishwater blonde hair dangling down over her youthful breasts.
“I’m Keri Butler.”
Chapter 27
Atlanta was just losing its hot steaminess. And its mosquitoes, Natalie hoped.
Broad-leafed trees, long needled pines, lush gardens and extensive lawns still presented her with a profusion of green. Out of jungle-like forests, tendrils of kudzu crept malignantly across the red soil onto the highway.
She left an air-conditioned taxi with an overheating engine and entered the cold, massive CDC headquarters on Clifton Road in Northeast Atlanta. A pretty receptionist verified her name against a guest list, smiled up at her, gave her a map to find the Personnel Office, and said, “Come back now with that badge and see me.”
Natalie found the Personnel Office and plopped into a lounge chair waiting for the director to see her.
During her wait, she flipped through a brochure for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She glanced over a list of centers and offices operated by the CDC. It was an impressive organization with nearly eight thousand employees, offices nationwide and around the world, an institute, and eleven laboratories studying everything from injury prevention to genetics and disease.
Finally, the director rushed out of his office and came up to her. He was a tall man with scrutinizing eyes and a smile so tightly fixed on his face that his lips had turned white. His expression reminded her of many an interagency encounter in DC where she came up against a friendly wall.
“You’re looking for Dr. Rajiv Khan,” he said once they were seated in the utilitarian-looking office. A folder was open on his desk.
“That’s right. The State Department has reason to believe that he knows something specific about the malaria problem in India.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking over the file. “But his work has been discontinued.”
“Where is he now?”
“We don’t know. If you find him, we’d like to know ourselves.” He closed the folder and stared at her sharply.
“Why’s that?”
“Because he left behind a few untreated human subjects.”
“What did they have?”
“Malaria.”
“And?”
“They died.”
“Oh my God,” she said. She collected her thoughts. “Is the FBI looking for him? Is he a fugitive?”
“I suppose he’s a wanted man. You’ll have to check with them. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”
He stood up.
His direct eye contact was overly aggressive.
“Aren’t you the least bit interested in finding Dr. Khan?” she asked.
“We’re not a law enforcement agency.”
“Dr. Khan could help you find a cure for the epidemic in India.”
His lips remained pressed into a smug smile. “Ms. Pierce, we’ve got scientists working on that around the clock.”
As Natalie passed down the hall from Personnel, she made out voices on a television positioned around the corner in a lounge. A CNN commentator had just announced that a Middle Eastern suspect had escaped custody at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport and was leading police on a high-speed car chase through the streets of Atlanta.
She had a few minutes to burn before checking in at the FBI regional headquarters in Atlanta, so she fell into a crushed velvet sectional to watch a little live-action guerilla journalism with a local flavor.
She half-expected Ambassador Ford to have leaked news of his hostage ordeal. If not Ford, the coups in the Indian Ocean might make top billing. But no, she watched from a helicopter’s viewpoint as a bus cut across intersections, cars slammed into each other, and squad cars raced in a long line of flashing lights. The bus screeched to a halt and a gunman herded what looked lik
e tourists out of the bus and across a parking lot.
The program returned to the newsroom, where two anchors beamed confident smiles. Behind them, she saw computer screens and TV monitors glowing in a shadowy, near-empty room.
The news production team visible in the newsroom seemed agitated. Shirtsleeves rolled up and ties askew, they placed frantic phone calls.
“You have just been watching live footage from Atlanta, Georgia, where a police drama is unfolding this very minute outside CNN Center. Welcome,” a strikingly attractive blonde anchorwoman said. “This is Andrea Mouliani with Jim Rider, and this is the CNN Noon Report. Good afternoon, Jim.”
“Good afternoon Andrea.”
“Now for more details on our breaking story,” Andrea said. “A suspected terrorist has entered CNN headquarters here in Atlanta and is currently spreading, well, what would you call it, Jim?”
“Terror?” Jim said with an inquisitive smile like a contestant on a television game show.
“That’s right, Jim. He’s spreading terror. Jim, you have the latest on that. Where is he at the moment?”
“I think if you turn around right now, you might be able to glimpse him running through our newsroom. Yes, that’s him right now.”
Natalie leaned forward to study the screen. Over the past decade while she had lived abroad, American news shows had certainly become more entertaining.
The two veteran anchors spun their chairs around, revealing microphone wires, Interruptible Feedback earpieces and one big, shocking bald spot.
A heavy-set young man with a wild, disoriented look crouched behind computer consoles, then suddenly broke for the distant panel of TV monitors. There he stopped uncertainly, his large, menacing frame outlined against the luminescent glow of himself shown onscreen from various camera angles. He suddenly seemed to focus on his goal. He whirled toward Studio-A, the booth where Andrea and Jim sat and took a wild gunshot at a spotlight.
Glass tinkled from the high studio ceiling onto the floor before the startled anchors. The sudden absence of light from one angle cast an unaesthetic shadow over Andrea and Jim’s faces.
Andrea spun back to the live camera and smiled. In the harsh sidelight, deep vertical lines stood out on her cheeks. “Very good,” she intoned. “Thank you, Jim.”
From A-Control, a soundproof control booth, veteran director of News Hour Tucker Woods shouted, “Get another light on her, quick.”
“Billy, hit numbers three and fourteen,” came his assistant’s calm voice over the headset.
On the television screen, Andrea’s wrinkles disappeared.
“That was close,” Tucker said. “Let’s keep studio damage to a minimum.”
Ducking under a desk just behind Andrea, a news writer reached up, felt for his keyboard and typed words that shot across Andrea’s TPT. Her eyes followed the TelePrompTer as words emerged letter by letter somewhere in space before her.
She shook her head and smiled as if amused by the scene that had just transpired behind them. “We have confirmed reports of a single gunman at large in CNN Center,” she read. “We will continue to monitor his movements as well as possible under the present conditions.”
“This looks all wrong,” Tucker said. “What’s the matter with Andrea and Jim?”
“What d’you mean? Nothing’s wrong,” his assistant’s cool voice replied over the headset.
“Look at them. They’re grinning from ear to ear. They’re smiling like stupid bozos.”
“Why do you think we hired them?”
“Well, can’t they act? Let’s see some sweat.”
“Not through all that makeup.”
“Well, make ’em sweat,” Tucker ordered. “Turn up the studio lights. Flip off the air conditioning. I want to get across some genuine fear.”
“Okay. I’ll turn up the sweat.”
Andrea’s long eyelashes blinked under an additional glare of light. She fixed a smile on her pouting lips. “Jim, where should we go next?”
‘How about our man on the street?” Tucker asked.
In the newsroom behind the two anchors, a young man picked himself off the floor, his voice still barking instructions into a telephone. He righted himself before the affiliates desk, stood up and gave a cut sign to the control booth.
“Damn, no man on the street. Get us a tape then,” Tucker ordered.
Seated beside the affiliates man, the national and international assignment desks and the satellite and feeds departments sat in paralyzed silence. Beyond them, the tapes department scrambled to action.
“Thank you, Andrea,” Jim said. “At this moment we will bring you a live feed from our Atlanta affiliate where Mike Webber is following this story on the street. Oops, we will bring you his report as soon as it’s available.”
Behind him at the rear of the newsroom, two women in the tapes production department clawed through their short-term archive for a specific interview tape.
“Okay, run the tape,” Tucker said.
Jim continued. “For now we have an interview taped earlier this year about renewed risks of foreign terrorism on American soil.”
Tucker tore off his headset and jumped to his feet behind the control panel. “We don’t need interviews, damn it. We want freaking live footage. Here we are in the center of the journalistic universe, a story has fallen into our laps, and we can’t even dig up a live camera.”
“Sending one out right now, sir,” his assistant said without looking over his shoulder. He calmly muttered something into his microphone.
A camera crew comprised of a producer, cameraman and soundman trotted across the newsroom floor in the direction of the gunman. Andrea and Jim beamed. “We will have that taped interview for you in a moment,” Jim said.
Tucker scooped up his headset and bellowed into it, “Jaysus, stay on the air.”
Jim winced slightly and said, “Andrea, we’ll stay live on this story to keep our viewers abreast of the dramatic situation here in our very studio.”
“I’ve got Webber standing by,” the affiliates man said over the ear piece.
Jim continued without pause. “We now turn to Mike Webber who has joined us live with the story on the ground. Mike?”
The picture showed a handsome young man standing outside in bright noonday sunlight. Behind him, Georgia State Patrol officers cross-checked their reports between parked squad cars. “Jim, local and state police sources inform me that they have been pursuing this individual for over an hour. He is a young male from the Middle East, and his identity has not yet been released.”
“Mike, can you tell us the details of the pursuit?”
“According to officers who have just spoken with me off the record, agents for the FBI attempted to apprehend the suspect upon his arrival at Hartsfield International Airport. At that point in time, the suspect managed to escape custody and commandeer a tour bus. A high-speed pursuit ensued randomly across downtown Atlanta until the bus suddenly veered into this location at Marietta Street and Techwood Drive, at which time the suspect, hidden by a human shield of tourists, managed to enter CNN Center. Jim.”
“Do you know the crime for which the suspect is accused?”
“We don’t have that information at this moment, although we do know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had endeavored to apprehend this individual immediately upon his arrival at the airport. According to sources within the police department, the suspect is considered to be armed and dangerous. Jim.”
“Okay, thanks, Mike. Andrea?”
“Thanks, Jim. Please stay with CNN where we plan to bring you continuing coverage of ‘Pursuit in Atlanta.’”
Her face dissolved into a collage of black and white images: the Georgia dome, Centennial Olympic Park, a prominent CNN logo and the twin fourteen-floor stone and glass towers of CNN Center. The camera showed the center's opulent hotel and shopping center and the studio complex. A close-up of the gunman lumbering across the newsroom dissolved into handheld footage of feet running in p
anic before a television camera.
Natalie stared in fascination at the screen.
A soundtrack of panting breath crescendoed, a gunshot rang out and the black and white images were splattered with an animated screenful of deep crimson blood. A blurry image of the crouched, nervous suspect returned to view, followed by a rat-a-tat-tat snare drum and the image of a sniper’s crosshairs superimposed on the image.
That composition slid diagonally off to the bottom left of the screen, and the hand-scrawled title “Pursuit in Atlanta” appeared.
Natalie pulled her phone card out of her purse and reached for a desk phone on a table by the lounge sofa.
She had to reach the government’s expert on counterterrorism. She had last spoken with Bronson Nichols in that clipped conversation over the phone at JFK, when Bronson was too busy to debrief her on her success in Afghanistan.
“Bronson, you watching CNN?”
“No, why?”
“There’s a terrorist on a rampage at CNN Studios right now. I don’t know whom he represents. All I know is he’s gone postal, and he doesn’t look like any Southern boy I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll call the FBI at once and find out what’s going on.”
“Sir,” whispered Joe Putter, the producer with the camera crew following the gunman. “We have him trapped at the top of the emergency staircase opening onto the roof.”
“What’s it like up there?” Tucker asked, his voice tense. He could sense an Emmy in the offing.
“Dark. Lights are off.”
“Do we have portable lights?” Tucker asked his assistant seated beside him.
“Not available at the moment. We’ve got to bring them up from Headline News or CNN International.”
“Crap, take the Weather studio lights. Who’s gonna care about the weather right now?”
“That would work. How about more cameras, sir?”
“How many cameras do we have on him?”
“One at present.”
“Only one frigging camera?” Tucker said. He looked at a dark screen with a dim outline of a man sitting atop stairs. “Is the FBI up there? Can we get the negotiations on mike?”
