Mind Virus

by Charles Kowalski

“My students sometimes call it that.”

  “Black coffee would be just fine, thank you.”

  Adler took a seat in the armchair. Fox put in enough coffee for four cups, in case the interview went on long enough to require refills. As he prepared it, Adler glanced around the room at the Tibetan tanka scrolls, Russian icons, Arabic calligraphy, and other ornaments that Fox had acquired during his wanderings.

  For a moment, Fox struggled to recall whether he had seen him somewhere before. Then he realized that it was not the man himself who looked familiar, but his eyes. They bore the look he had often seen in military interrogators, a mixture of remorse and defiance, which came from spending years inflicting more cruelty under orders than they ever would of their own volition, and a lifetime afterwards trying to justify it. The lines around the eyes spelled out the words, “I did what I had to do.”

  Fox wondered what a television executive had had to do.

  “Now, how can I be of assistance?” Fox asked, as he set the cups on the small table. “Is it my research in world religions you’re interested in, or my work with USPRI?” He referred to the United States Peace Research Institute, where he served part-time as a research fellow.

  Adler shifted slightly. “Actually, Mr. Fox, it’s the expertise you gained in your previous career.”

  Fox’s smile abruptly deserted him. He suddenly regretted making so much coffee, because three cups was more than he could drink by himself, and this was going to be a very short interview.

  “You aren’t representing a television network, I take it.”

  “Sorry for the deception. The fact is, I’m representing your country.”

  Well, Fox thought, if Adler was a specialist in weapons of mass destruction, the “NBC” hadn’t exactly been a lie: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical.

  “What do you want with me?” Fox’s voice had lost its cordial tone.

  “Do you know about the HIG?”

  Fox shook his head.

  “The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.”

  Fox supposed there was really no way to make an elegant acronym for that.

  “A joint task force run by the FBI, CIA, and military intelligence,” Adler went on. “We’ve been working on the Verizon Center suspect for three days now, and he hasn’t said a word. We can’t even tell whether he speaks English. No pocket litter except a few dollars in cash—no passport, driver’s license, credit cards, nothing that could identify him. His biometrics don’t match anything in our database. We’ve sent his picture to the news networks and offered a reward to anyone who could give us any information about him. You must have seen it.”

  Fox had. The picture had been reappearing endlessly on CNN: a pasty white face, with scraggly blond hair, and piercing, ice-blue eyes.

  “So, what does this have to do with me?”

  Adler leaned forward in the armchair. “CDC has confirmed that the virus used in the attack was encephalitis Z,” he said, giving Fox a significant look. “The Zagorsk virus.”

  Fox winced internally. The name of Zagorsk used to be a pleasant one for him, evoking the hauntingly beautiful chants from the fourteenth-century Russian Orthodox monastery. Now, he could no longer hear it without recalling an episode in Iraq that he wished he could forget.

  “And so,” Adler continued, “we would like you to join us as a consultant on this case.”

  Fox had seen the blow coming, but that did nothing to soften its impact.

  “Mr. Adler, as you’ve no doubt noticed by now, I’m no longer in the military. There must be plenty of expert interrogators on active duty who can help you.”

  “But none who have experience with Zagorsk. As far as anyone knows, only once before has anyone attempted to use that as a weapon. It could have started a terrible epidemic…but fortunately for us, a certain sharp-eyed intelligence officer caught it in time.”

  “Clearly, you know my record,” Fox said. “So you must also know that I left the service as a conscientious objector.”

  “With a Bronze Star.”

  “And before I had been out of the service a month, I would gladly have traded all the stars in the Pentagon for a single night of sleep without nightmares.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Fox…but if ever your country needed you, it’s now. Not just because of your skill as an interrogator, but because your perspective on any intel we get just might supply the missing piece that allows us to stop the next one.”

  To stop the next one. That was a phrase Fox had heard too often, to justify too many barbarities. “Please, Mr. Adler. 24 is off the air now—and your ‘ticking bomb’ scenario has never materialized outside of the TV screen anyway. What makes you so sure there’s going to be a next one?”

  “Well, consider this: With the crazy guys acting alone, usually you can’t get them to shut up. They leave behind videotaped messages or write thousand-page manifestos. They want the world to know why they did what they did. Our suspect, on the other hand, hasn’t said a word. He has something to hide. What else do you suppose it might be?”

  Fox had to admit the justice of the question. He said nothing.

  “Mr. Fox,” Adler went on in a gentler tone, “it’s not as though we’re asking you to put your uniform back on and hop aboard a C-130 to Iraq. All you need to do is take a short ride on the Metro to the Hoover Building, and spend some time with him. You realize it’s not every day that we consult civilians on such a sensitive matter. You must understand what an honor it is. And if you say yes, you would be doing a great service for your country.”

  He gave Fox his card, with the CIA emblem in the corner. It seemed the time for cover stories was past. “Think it over. Whenever you come to a decision, call me on my cell phone.”

  He stood up to leave. “Just one request, Mr. Fox: Don’t think too long.”

  ...

  Emily Harper lifted her eyes to the window, several stories tall, that offered a commanding view of the Tidal Basin and the cherry trees still in bloom around it. The architects of USPRI’s bright and airy headquarters had designed it to take full advantage of this vista, presumably to help the staff to feel more peaceful. Most days, it worked. But not today.

  She turned her eyes back to the monitor, and typed the final sentence of her e-mail.

  The United States Peace Research Institute urgently requests your cooperation in locating her and ensuring her safe travel to the United States.

  She pressed the “send” button, then printed out a hard copy to send by fax, unable to stop herself from wondering whether any of it was going to do any good.

  She took a deep breath, and touched the pendant that hung around her neck, the one Robin Fox had given her at their graduation. A cross and circle, Celtic style, to remind her: Let your faith bring you peace, and it will spread out from you to the entire world.

  The two of them had been such close friends in college that everyone assumed they were a couple. And they probably could have become a very happy one, had he not been in the ROTC. A childhood spent watching her father struggle with his demons from Vietnam had convinced her that one military man was enough for one lifetime. When he graduated and got his commission, they gradually drifted apart, until a miracle brought them both to USPRI years later.

  “Emily.” As if the universe had been reading her thoughts, she heard his voice behind her.

  She turned, and gave him as much of a smile as she could manage. “Hi, Robin.”

  He took a seat next to her. “You feeling all right?”

  She ran her fingers through her long red hair, and massaged her temples. “Yeah, OK, I guess. How about you?”

  “If I said yes, then we could both be liars together.”

  She allowed herself a chuckle. “What’s up?”

  “Ladies first.”

  She sighed. “Leila has disappeared.”

  Leila Halabi was a Palestinian peace educator whom USPRI had invited as a panelist for their upcoming symposium, Reaching Across the Wall: Peacemakers of Israe
l and Palestine. Miriam Haddad, from the Middle East section, had left Tuesday on what should have been the routine errand of escorting her to Amman, and then to Washington.

  “How could that happen?” Fox asked.

  “It seems they got separated at the Rachel’s Tomb checkpoint, on the way to Jerusalem. Miriam waited around for hours, but Leila never made it through. She tried and tried to find out what happened, but they pushed back so hard she started to worry that if she tried any harder, they would deport her—or else disappear her too.”

  Miriam was the daughter of a Jewish mother and Arab father. With her Jewish faith, American passport, dark complexion, and Arabic-sounding name, she never knew from one visit to the next whether the Israeli authorities would decide to treat her as an honored guest or a suspected terrorist. This time, it evidently suited their purposes to choose the latter.

  “Snatching her out from under the nose of a USPRI observer?” asked an incredulous Fox. “What did the Israelis expect to accomplish by that, other than stepping on Washington’s toes?”

  “The way things have been going lately, I think they’ve stopped caring whose toes they step on.”

  Fox sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you suppose Rick could help? Find some way to put pressure on them?”

  Emily shook her head. Naturally, her husband had been the first person she asked. “He said that USPRI was a non-governmental organization, and a member of Congress couldn’t intervene on its behalf.”

  “That didn’t stop him in Colombia.”

  “Crossing swords with Colombia wouldn’t cost him any votes. With Israel, it’s another matter.”

  Fox’s mouth contracted, in the way it usually did when politeness was preventing him from speaking his mind. Emily continued: “I’ll just keep calling the Israeli embassy, sending faxes, and generally making myself as much of a nuisance as possible. Miriam is doing everything she can over there, and Rabbi Sternberg has been a huge help. I’ll do what I can, wait to hear from Miriam, and hope for the best.”

  She looked at her monitor with a sigh, then turned back to him. “Your turn.”

  For a moment, his eyes took on the hunted look that she had often seen in her father’s. The one that saw the house, the yard, all of suburban America only as canvas stage sets, which the slightest push might topple over to reveal a jungle full of snipers.

  “I’ve been called back to Nineveh.”

  The capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire, where Jonah had been sent to prophesy, was also the site of Mosul in Iraq, where Fox had been stationed. It had become their code word for anything having to do with the military or intelligence work.

  Her horror must have been visible in her face, because he hastened to add: “Not physically. It’s just that the Feds and the Agency together haven’t been getting anywhere with the Verizon Center suspect, so they asked me to come in as a consultant.”

  She suddenly felt the same chill she had when she first saw him in uniform, and remembered the thought that had flown through her mind that day. There goes a sheep into the midst of wolves. Please, dear God, keep him safe. Protect his body from the enemy, and his soul from his fellow soldiers.

  “Why is the CIA involved? And why, in heaven’s name, do they want you involved?”

  He hesitated long enough that she answered herself: “I suppose you’re not at liberty to tell me. Oh, God! You’d think that when you left, you had sent them a clear enough message.”

  “You’d think so. But it looks like they just couldn’t manage without me.” He managed a wry smile. “Ordinarily, I’d be flattered that someone thinks I’m indispensable.”

  “Someone already does. So be careful, all right? And remember, just in case they try to make you forget: you’re a free civilian this time. If they ever ask you to do anything against your conscience…”

  “I know.” He glanced at his watch. “Hey, are we still on for Thom’s book signing?”

  “Oh, my God.” Emily looked up at the clock. “I got so wrapped up in this that I completely lost track of time.”

  “We can still catch the tail end of it. Come on. You need something to change your mood.”

  ...

  Fox and Emily slipped unobtrusively through the door of Barnes & Noble Downtown and merged with the standing-room-only crowd. The face that beamed from the lectern, and from the poster for Common Good: What Humanism and Religion Can Learn from Each Other, had scarcely changed since they last saw him, at their graduation from Harvard. The rings in the ears and eyebrows were still there, as was the sparkle behind the glasses. The main difference was that his collection of tattoos had grown, the most conspicuous addition being the Japanese character mu, “nothingness,” just visible through the V-neck of his shirt. Fox guessed that he had acquired it during his flirtation with Buddhism, but it still suited him in his present incarnation as a born again humanist.

  “…in terms of what we do believe. Life is just too short to spend it tearing things down. The question that we all need to ask ourselves is: what do we want to build? And personally, what I’d like to build is a world where each one of us, no matter who we love or what we believe, can find a place where we’re accepted, valued, and loved. I finally found mine, and I hope you find yours. Thank you.”

  He acknowledged the applause with a bright smile and a theatrical bow. As a long line formed at the signing table, Fox and Emily hung back, intentionally taking the tail end. It took the better part of an hour before Fox reached the head of the line and laid his copy of Thom’s book on the table.

  “You meant to say ‘whom we love.’”

  Thom looked up. “Oh, my cosmos!” He jumped up from his chair with a force that knocked it over, and looked as though he were about to vault over the table and do the same to the stack of books beside him, but decided at the last second to take the more earthbound route around the table. “Could it be? Robin Hood and Maid Marian?” He flung his arms wide to embrace them both, and planted a noisy kiss on each cheek.

  “Thom-with-an-H!” Emily returned, laughing.

  He let go, but kept a hand on each of their shoulders. “It’s been for-ev-er! How are you?” He gave Emily an admiring up-and-down glance. “Emily, you’re more beautiful than ever! So I guess you’ve decided that aging is for lesser mortals? I…” His gaze suddenly fell on her ring, and his mouth opened wide enough to reveal his tongue piercing as he looked from one of them to the other. “OMC! Did you two finally end up getting married?”

  “One of us did,” they said in unison.

  After a slightly embarrassed pause, Thom turned to Fox. “And Robin! What have you been up to?”

  “Long story.” Tours of duty in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, followed by a dark night of the soul that took me from mountain temples in the Himalayas to island abbeys in the Hebrides, from sitting with Zen monks to whirling with Sufi dervishes, all in search of something I’m still not at all sure I’ve found. “But it eventually brought me to GWU, to the religion and peace studies departments.”

  “That’s fan-tas-tic. I always knew you would be a teacher. To inspire and enlighten the world, that’s what you were born to do. So have you finally figured out what you believe?”

  Fox gave a wry chuckle. “If I had a dime for every time someone asked me that question, I could retire next year. Or even this year, if you made it a quarter for every time it came from some sweet Southern girl who looked as though I’d break her heart if I didn’t say, ‘That the one and only way to salvation is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior.’”

  Thom displayed his tongue piercing again as he let out a laugh that reverberated through the store. “So how do you answer?”

  Fox glanced over his shoulder. Although they had been last in line, there was still a tall, dark-haired man standing by the door, watching them and clearly waiting for them to finish. “The ten-second version? First John chapter four pretty much sums it up for all faiths, as far as I’m concerned. God is love. Anyone who
loves is in God. Anyone who hates and claims to be in God is a liar.”

  “That John dude’s a trip sometimes, but he really nailed it with that one, didn’t he? I only wish more Christians would actually read that far into their Bibles.”

  “Are you doing anything after this?” Emily asked.

  “I am, I’m afraid,” he said with a regretful downturn in the corners of his mouth, although his eyes twinkled with anticipation as they flicked briefly to the tall figure by the door. “And I’m taking off for Chicago at God o’clock tomorrow morning. But I’ll be back for the American Humanist Association convention. Believe it or not, I’m one of the keynote speakers! We’ll have to catch up then.”

  “Definitely. When is it?”

  “May first. National Day of Reason. Mark your calendars.”

  “Congratulations, Thom,” Emily said. “I’m so happy for you. I know it’s been a long, hard journey for you, and I’m glad to see everything’s finally been coming together.”

  “It so has. It couldn’t possibly be any better.” He stretched out his arms for another group hug, and his face took on the rapturous expression they had often seen when he was enjoying a glass of fine wine, a Bach concerto, or a bite of fusilli integrale al pesto at their favorite restaurant in Cambridge: the one that said there was nowhere in the universe he would rather be than right here.

  “Ah, with moments like these, who needs Heaven?”

  2

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 27

  The clock was approaching pick-up time as quickly as the bacon, eggs, pancakes and coffee were approaching room temperature. Emily had just started to head for the bedroom to fetch her husband when he burst into the kitchen, pulling on his suit jacket as he went, and skidded into his chair, his fork in his right hand, his anxious eyes on the Omega on his left.

  “Thanks, Em.” He looked wistfully at his plate. “My last American breakfast for ten days.”

  She took her seat opposite him. “I wonder what you’ll get for breakfast in China.”

  He grimaced, and grunted around a mouthful of pancake. “Last time, it was waterlogged rice with seaweed and crap coffee. On the bright side, maybe I’ll lose some weight.”