Killing Time
Page 10
It seems a dream now, a dream to which I would gladly return if only I could forget the horror that woke me from it.
That horror was not without its warnings, though in those early days I was far too swept up by emotional and intellectual excitement to recognize them. The first still stands out vividly: one evening, with the sun bouncing off the cove outside the leaded bay window in my room (at that time of the year it became truly dark on St. Kilda for only about three hours each night), I happened to be going through the jacket I’d been wearing during the jailbreak just days earlier and found the original computer disc that Mrs. Price had given me. Staring at it, my first thoughts were of Max: not as I’d last seen him, with much of his head removed by a CIA sniper’s bullet, but alive and as full of banter and laughter as he’d always been. Then, slowly, I recalled the information that was on the disc—all the information. I’d been so focused on matters surrounding the Forrester assassination that I’d completely forgotten that Max had managed to crack the encryption of a second set of images: the old footage of a Nazi death camp, through which wandered the digitally inserted silhouette of an unidentifiable figure.
Popping the disc into a computer terminal that sat at a rustic desk by the bay window, I called up those images and reviewed them once again.
“Anything good?”
I started a little at the sound of Larissa’s voice and turned to see her striding quickly through my open door. I let out a small, pleased groan as she threw herself into my lap, kissed me quickly, and then turned her dark eyes to the monitor. “What in the world is that? Trying your hand at a little revisionism, are you?”
“You mean you don’t recognize it?” I said, surprised.
Larissa shook her head. “Doesn’t quite look finished, whatever it is.”
“No,” I said, replaying the images. “Max found it on the disc that Price’s wife gave us. I’d forgotten about it—and when I saw it again I assumed it must have been another job Price did for your brother.”
“If it is, I’ve never heard anything about it.” Larissa leapt up and went to a glowing keypad by my bed. “Maybe Leon knows something.” She touched a few of the keys. “Leon, come over to Gideon’s room, will you? He’s found something odd.”
In a few minutes Leon Tarbell came shooting in, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “Well, what is your mystery, Gideon?” he said. “I was rather busy when you—” He stopped suddenly when he saw the images on the screen. “What the devil is that?” As I explained the origins of the disc once again, Tarbell’s gaze focused ever more intently on the gray figure on the monitor.
“I know who that is,” he said, fascinated yet frustrated. “Yes, I’m certain I know who that is, but I can’t seem to—there, you see? When he turns in profile. I know I’ve seen that silhouette somewhere before.”
“That’s exactly how I felt the first time I watched it,” I answered with a nod. “But I couldn’t place—”
“Wait!” A look of sudden recognition came into Tarbell’s satanic features, and then he rushed around to the computer’s keyboard. “I believe I may be able to . . .” His words trailed off as he went to work on the keyboard. Then a new succession of images began to rapidly appear and disappear on the screen.
“What is it, Leon?” Larissa asked. “Was Price doing something other than the Forrester job for Malcolm?”
Tarbell shrugged. “If he didn’t tell you, Larissa darling, he certainly wouldn’t tell the rest of us. But as for this mysterious fellow—” He pointed to the screen, where the footage of the concentration camp reappeared, frozen on one frame. Tarbell tapped at the keyboard a few more times with a bit of a flourish. “Here . . . he . . .is!”
The mysterious silhouette was suddenly filled in perfectly by a photograph of a man whose name we all knew well:
“Stalin,” I said, more confused than ever.
“Yes, it’s Stalin, all right,” Larissa agreed, looking as perplexed as I felt. “But what interest could Price have had in placing him at a Nazi death camp?”
Tarbell only shrugged again, while I asked, “Do you think it’s important? I mean, maybe we should ask Malcolm—”
“No, Gideon,” Larissa said definitively. “Not now. I’ve just come from him. He worked all night and drove himself straight into another attack.”
My attention diverted to Malcolm’s condition, I wondered aloud, “What does he do in that lab, anyway?”
Larissa shrugged in frustration. “He won’t say, but he’s been at it for months. Whatever it is, I wish he’d drop it—he needs rest desperately. As for this business—” She reached over to shut off the terminal screen, then removed the disc and tossed it to Tarbell. “I’d say it was just some movie that Price was working on. Forget it, Dr. Wolfe.” She turned my face toward hers and moved in to kiss me. “Right now I require your full attention.”
Tarbell cleared his throat. “My cue,” he said, pocketing the disc and leaving as quickly as he’d come. “I told you once, Gideon—you’re a lucky man . . .”
Perhaps I was. But luck is, of course, transitory; and had I known how close mine was to changing at that moment or how much the disc I’d rediscovered would have to do with that change, I would never have let myself be distracted, even by Larissa. For a completed version of the images we’d been watching would all too soon trigger a crime so incomprehensible that it would bring even our senselessly hyperactive world to an astonished, bewildered halt. It would also propel me into this, my jungle exile in Africa, where I await the arrival of my former comrades with the most profound confusion and dread I have ever known.
C H A P T E R 2 3
As the rest of us continued to wait for Malcolm to emerge from his laboratory and announce that it was time to move on to some new deceptive enterprise, patience at times became difficult to sustain—though I’ll admit that it was, as Leon Tarbell repeatedly pointed out, easier for Larissa and me than for the others. In fact, so agitated did Tarbell become over the mere thought that members of our group other than himself were engaged in a physical relationship that he first almost fatally electrocuted himself in a supposed “virtual reality sex suit” (really nothing more than thin rubber long johns embedded with powerful electrodes) and then, a few days later, took a small jetcopter that was stored in one of the mock barns of the compound and headed off for Edinburgh. As he prepared to lift off, I pointed out that Glasgow was closer, but this only brought a look of supreme disdain to his mercurial features.
“Drunken laborers and heroin addicts!” he bellowed. “No, Gideon, the prostitutes of Edinburgh service sex-starved lawyers and deviant politicians—they have immense sexuality, they are for me!”
And with a roar of the aircraft’s engines he was gone.
So began a most remarkable evening. I was, unusually, alone, because Larissa had decided to keep watch through the night by her still ailing brother’s bedside, to make sure that he spent the time resting rather than working in his laboratory. Again I found myself speculating about what could possibly be consuming the man so ravenously; and it occurred to me that while Larissa had said she didn’t know, the ever-secretive and reticent Colonel Slayton might. On asking around I discovered that Slayton had ensconced himself in the compound’s communications monitoring room. So I set off to see whether or not, with my supposed psychological guile, I could maneuver him into revealing something about Malcolm’s activities.
The monitoring room was located in a mock tavern opposite the church that housed the projection unit of Malcolm’s ozone weapon. Beneath the tavern was an underground chamber some hundred yards square, which housed the equipment that did the actual work of listening in on the world’s electronic communications, both official and private. The governments of the United States and its English-speaking allies had for decades operated a similar system called Echelon that required several such monitoring installations, each made up of acres of equipment: once again, Malcolm had achieved the next level of technological development.
The overhead lights in the room were out, but the darkness in the windowless chamber was cut by the light of some twenty monitors, most not particularly large but a few taking up the better part of a wall. The flashing shapes on these screens at first appeared nonsensical, but as my eyes adjusted to the gently stroboscopic light I realized that they were rapidly changing bodies of text, both encrypted and decoded, as well as an occasional blueprint or diagram. Each screen’s contents varied from the next, and the cacophony that I’d heard outside, which became quite deafening once I entered, was being produced by dozens of audio signals—again, some intelligible and some encoded—that were playing at the same time.
Slayton sat at a console in the midst of all this, facing the largest pair of monitors and staring at them, even though the information that was flashing across their screens was clearly moving too fast for him to comprehend fully. Wanting to ask what in the world he was doing and unable to gain his attention even through the loudest and most absurdly theatrical of throat clearings, I took one or two steps further into the room. But then I froze:
As I came around his side, I could see that the long scar on his face had been moistened by a thin stream of tears. His expression, however, was as dispassionate as ever: only the slightest quiver of his grimly set jaw indicated any emotion at all. In such a man, however, even so tiny a movement bespoke volumes.
It was a moment of profound embarrassment for me, and I tried to end it by slowly retracing my steps to the door. But before I’d gotten halfway there I saw the colonel’s hand reach slowly for a keypad, and touch one of its glowing keys with a finger. The volume in the room came quickly down to a level that only intensified my embarrassment. Then, without turning, Slayton said quietly:
“What you’re hearing and seeing, Doctor, are the transmissions of various defense and intelligence agencies around the world.”
“Ah” was all I could think to answer.
“Tell me,” Slayton went on. “Is it true that the human ear is not sensitive enough to detect dishonesty?”
There seemed to be nothing to do but continue the conversation. “Most of the time, yes,” I said. “Those kinds of interpretations are usually emotional judgment calls, not perceptive certainties.”
The colonel grunted. “Perhaps. Perhaps my ear has simply become finely turned over the years. But I can tell you with absolute certainty, Doctor, that this”—he raised the volume in the room again—“this is the sound of lying . . .”
I don’t know how long I stood there, watching Slayton’s rigid form as he continued to stare at the enormous monitors. Eventually he reached out to knock the volume back down, and then, after quite openly dabbing at his scar as well as his opposite cheek with a handkerchief, he turned his chair to face me. “Something I can do for you, Dr. Wolfe?” he asked, scrutinizing me with curiosity.
“I—I was wondering—” As I fumbled for words, it occurred to me that Slayton might be taking pleasure from my discomfort; but further inspection of his features revealed nothing to support such a suspicion. “I was wondering about Malcolm, actually. If I could be of any medical assistance.”
“You think he needs psychiatric help?” Oddly enough, the question seemed entirely sincere.
“That wasn’t what I meant,” I answered. “But I am a doctor, I can recognize chronic pain when I see it. And Larissa’s told me his—story.”
“Has she?” Slayton’s eyes narrowed. “Well, if she’s told you that, Doctor, then you must already have concluded that there’s nothing you or anyone else can do. Pain medication and rest—that’s all there is for him. That’s all there ever has been.”
“And clearly he has no trouble taking medication,” I said, detecting an opening. “But why isn’t he getting enough rest?”
Something vaguely approximating a smile seemed to creep into one corner of the colonel’s mouth. “Clever, Doctor,” he said. “But I can’t answer that. None of us can. For the simple reason that none of us, not even Larissa, knows what work is keeping him from sleeping.”
“I see.” Glancing around the room I asked, “And you?”
The phantom smile seemed to gain some substance. “Jonah and I have been assembling and installing a holographic projection mechanism for the ship. It should allow us to move about unseen and avoid messes like the business in Florida.”
“That’s possible?”
Slayton inclined his head judiciously. “We were close at the Pentagon. Malcolm believes he’s worked out the details.”
“Ah.” I stood my ground, shuffling a bit. “But that—that really doesn’t explain all this, does it?” I indicated the screens.
I don’t know what kind of a reaction I expected to such a direct question, but it certainly wasn’t the one I got. Slayton chuckled good-naturedly, then held one hand out to an empty chair that was next to his. “Sit down, Doctor, and I’ll explain,” he said. “Since the entire idea depends on you . . .”
C H A P T E R 2 4
As I took my place by the colonel, he said, “In some priestly and monastic orders the custom of self-flagellation is still practiced. Do you find such behavior aberrant, Doctor?”
“Extreme,” I replied, looking up with him at the monitors. “But not aberrant. Is that what this is for you—self-flagellation? With painful light and sound taking the place of the whip?”
“In some way, I’m sure it is,” Slayton answered with a frankness that was, like everything else about the man, very impressive. “For most of my life, Doctor, this world”—he indicated the screens—“was the wilderness into which I traveled, battling to bring the faith of democracy to the heathens. Until . . .” His attention began to wander, but he soon caught himself. “It’s one thing to discover that your god has feet of clay. It’s quite another to find that those feet are soaked in blood. Not only the blood of your enemies but of your comrades, as well. And to realize that you yourself were complicitous in their deaths. Complicitous—by omission . . .”
I watched as tears welled up in his eyes again, then said, “Colonel, you’re thinking of the Taiwan campaign. But you can’t—”
“Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Colombia, and yes, Taiwan,” he interjected quickly. “Or any of the half-dozen other places where I killed and let my troops be killed in the name of freedom. Can you imagine what it was like to discover that the only freedom my superiors were ever really interested in was the freedom of their moneyed masters to do business in those places? I’m not a fool, Dr. Wolfe. At least, I don’t like to think of myself as one. Why, then, didn’t I see it? Any of it? The international trade organizations and security alliances whose authority we guaranteed—did they ever stamp out tyranny, exploitation, or inequality in any of the places we were told they would? Did they ever bring real freedom to a single country that didn’t already have it?”
Slayton shook a tightly clutched fist. “And yet we continued to obey. To shed our enemies’ blood for them and let our own soldiers die. Then in Taiwan, it became obvious that we were there only to die—that Washington had no intention of stopping Beijing’s takeover, that they were actually in league with the commu-capitalists. I held no brief for the government of Taiwan then, Doctor, and I still don’t. But why should my troops have died for that kind of cynicism? And above all”—Slayton’s chest heaved mightily—“why didn’t I see it?”
I shrugged—there was no point pulling punches with such a person: “Mundus vult decipi,” I said quietly.
His fleeting smile returned. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m perfectly serious. Thank you for not patronizing me with false rationalizations. Yes, everyone wants to be d
eceived, and so did I. I wanted to believe the lessons I’d learned as a boy. When my father came home from the Persian Gulf in a bag and we buried him at Arlington, I wanted to believe that his war hadn’t been one of blood for oil. Somewhere deep inside me the genes that had been passed along from an African slave told me I was being a fool, but I didn’t listen. I fought every attempt to expose the deception. And then, in Taiwan . . . it all fell apart. By the time I went to work in the Pentagon I was a ghost, one who, having been deceived, learned to deceive. And I would have stayed a ghost if I’d never met Malcolm. Yet even during my time with this team, something’s been missing.” He turned to me, his face full of purpose. “Something that you, Doctor, are going to help me put right.”
Somewhat taken aback, I asked, “Why me?”
In reply Slayton stood and moved around the room. “Psychology and American history, Doctor—I require your expertise.” He folded his hands together once and wrung them hard. “It would surprise you, I think, to learn that I lobbied very hard to get you on this team.”