Mind Virus

by Charles Kowalski

  The words pierced a hole in Fox that drained all the air from his lungs. For a moment, it was as though his soul had temporarily detached itself from his body, like a hospital patient looking down at his own inert form on the operating table. He saw himself, in the habit of the Franciscan order—one that he had always respected for its commitment to peace and nonviolence—brandishing his improvised weapon in the face of a helpless subject. Who was the true villain in this picture? If Emily saw it, how would she answer that question, even knowing it was all for her sake?

  He released his hold, and lowered his pen. The terrified expression on Aidan’s face, he saw, had its reflection on Donovan and all the police officers who were watching.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”

  “Fox, lad.” Donovan spoke in the voice of calm authority he must have learned at police academy, for use with hostage-takers and bridge-jumpers. “He’s telling the truth. He doesn’t know.”

  Fox nodded. The signs, if his mind had been clear enough to read them, would have told him the same.

  “But maybe,” Donovan went on, “we can take you to someone who does.”

  ...

  The doorbell rang. Emily straightened up in bed as the door opened and her captor entered.

  “It’s been lovely chatting, Ms. Harper,” he said, “but I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news. Mr. Fox has not kept his end of the bargain. I’d imagine he’s probably on his way here, with the police in tow.”

  Emily tried not to let her face show what her heart was saying: Thank you, God.

  “Now, Ms. Harper, I know you’re a woman of deep faith. But what about Fox? He’s a scholar of comparative religions. Do you know what he really believes? Would his faith be as strong as yours, if it were put to the test?”

  “Yes.” But she was saying what she hoped rather than what she knew to be true, and she felt sure that he could hear it in her voice.

  “Well, if I’m to have you both here, perhaps you’ll indulge me in a little experiment.” He took a flash drive out of his pocket, and plugged it into the side of the television. The screen lit up with a few lines of text.

  “If you both say these words, or if you both refuse, then both of you can go free. But if only one of you says them, then the one who does will go free, and the one who refuses will die. What do you think? Will you say them?”

  She read the words silently, and shook her head. “You should know me better than that.”

  “That’s what I thought. Well, we’ll see whether Mr. Fox feels the same.” He removed the flash drive, and keyed in the code to open the door. “I’ll be back presently to bring you your lunch. Do you have any requests? I’d like to make you something special, for the meal that might be your last.”

  ...

  Donovan drove Fox and Adler in the unmarked car, along A40 to Oxford. Ordinarily, Fox would have enjoyed the drive through forests and rolling hills, with stone cottages and fences that looked as though they might date back to Roman times. But all his attention now was turned toward the Great Unknowable. Please, let Emily be all right. Please, let us not be too late.

  “Bugger me up, down, and sideways,” Donovan muttered as he drove. “Here I was thinking I’d seen everything. But I never imagined I’d see the Archbishop of Canterbury spontaneously combust. How in the hell did this Chris of yours do that?”

  “My best guess would be linseed oil,” Fox said. “It would have been ready to hand in the Abbey, for polishing the woodwork. Soak a few strips of cloth in it, put them into a plastic bag, and then, when you can get into the sacristy when no one’s looking, cut a slit in the hem of the Archbishop’s vestments and slip it in. An hour or two later, ignition.”

  “Good odds he was the one behind the fire at Windsor Castle, too.” Donovan shook his head in disbelief. “Bloody hell. Atheoterrorists! Is no one safe now, then?”

  Fox arched an eyebrow. “Had you thought it was only the religious ones who were dangerous?”

  “Hey, I grew up in Belfast, all right? Over the past twenty years, I’ve seen public enemy number one go from the IRA, Provisional IRA, Real IRA, who the hell knew what new offshoot of the IRA back then, to the Islamic terrorists now. I used to think that if we could just do away with religion, I could sit on my arse and read the Times all day. But now comes this bloke, prostrating himself on Darwin’s tomb as if he were praying to bloody Mecca…”

  “And so the fool gets his revenge at last,” Fox recalled. “That’s what he meant. Darwin’s contemporaries called him foolish so often that he took to signing his letters, ‘Stultus the Fool.’ Maybe Aidan thought he was ‘avenging’ him for the offense of burying him in a church. Someone should have told him that Darwin was a deacon.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Donovan sighed, “if the old boy could see what’s being done in his name these days, he wouldn’t be evolving, he’d be revolving in his grave.”

  Adler was tapping the screen of his phone. “Speaking of which, I’ve got something on Chris Warndale. There’s a blog and a Facebook page under that name, with plenty of subscribers to both.”

  “I don’t suppose he was obliging enough to post a photo?”

  “No such luck.” He showed Fox his phone, with Warndale’s Facebook page on the screen, and the profile picture was an artist’s rendition of a DNA helix. “But look at some of the stuff he writes: ‘The time for rational debate is past. Again and again, we have seen that those infected with the God virus are immune to logical arguments, popular condemnation, and even legal action. They operate outside the law and all the constraints of civilized society. And unless we wish to be tortured, stoned, beheaded, burned at the stake, or simply stripped of our freedom of thought by the disciples of idiocy, intolerance and insanity, we must do likewise.’”

  “Clearly the rhetoric of a sane, rational, scientific mind,” Fox commented.

  “There’s something about this guy I don’t get,” Adler said. “He went to a lot of trouble to cover his tracks. He trained his agents in counterinterrogation. And yet, he left clues for us in the Bibles. What was that about?”

  “He’s playing a game with us,” Fox replied. “It’s more exciting for him if the game is close. He fancies himself as a chess grandmaster playing against a novice. He can suggest a good next move for us, confident that he’s still going to trounce us anyway. I’ll bet that he’s planning to boast about it afterwards to his online followers. ‘I gave them all these hints, and they still couldn’t stop me. Look how stupid they are, and how clever I am.’”

  “Well,” Donovan decreed, “he’ll be eating those words before he ever writes them.”

  Fox looked out the window at the approaching spires of Oxford. “Say that after we’ve caught him.”

  ...

  They stopped outside a white house on a tree-lined street. When they rang the doorbell, the door opened to reveal a gray-haired figure in a blue cardigan, who looked curiously from one of them to another. It took him a moment to recognize Fox. When he did, his eyeballs threatened to jump out of their sockets and shatter his wire-rimmed lenses.

  “Hello, Professor,” Fox said. “Sorry to bother you on Easter Sunday, but somehow we didn’t think you would be in church.”

  “Well, well, Mr. Fox! This is an unexpected honor. Have you come for a rematch?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Donovan took his badge out of his pocket and held it up for inspection. Adler remained motionless and expressionless, possibly hoping Dickinson would assume that he was also with MI5. Dickinson’s eyes widened again, and he took a step back.

  “We’d like a word with you, if you don’t mind,” said Donovan.

  Dickinson ushered them into a bright and spacious living room. Fox glanced around the shelves that covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Curios from the professor’s travels—African masks, birds’ nests, wooden horses from miniature carousels—shared space with a variety of scientific treatises, an equal number of literary works, and one whol
e shelf full of copies of his bestselling antitheist manifesto, The Greatest Delusion on Earth.

  “So, Professor Fox,” said Dickinson once they were seated, “is this what you Americans do when you lose a debate? Show up at your opponent’s door with MI5 in tow? Rather over the top, I must say.”

  “Professor,” Donovan said, “if you’ve been following the news, you’re aware that in the past two weeks, there have been four incidents involving the genetically engineered encephalitis virus known as Zagorsk. A prayer rally in Washington. The airport in Tel Aviv. Easter Vigil Mass at St. Peter’s, and Westminster Abbey this morning.”

  “Well, it’s just as I’ve always said, isn’t it? Going to church is hazardous to your health.”

  “You may also be aware that the suspects apprehended in each case are Oxford students, and members of OAF. You’re the faculty advisor for that group, are you not?”

  Dickinson shot Donovan and Adler a wary glance. “Now wait a minute. Do I stand accused of something?”

  “Relax, Professor,” Donovan reassured him. “No one is accusing you of anything. We just think you might be able to give us information that would be helpful in solving the case. Were you aware that any members of this group were involved in planning these attacks?”

  “Of course not! If I had been, I would either have put a stop to it or reported it to the authorities immediately. I never advocated violence of any kind.”

  Fox stood up. “If I may?” He pulled down a copy of Dickinson’s book from the shelf and read aloud. “In 1980, in a feat of international cooperation one could wish to see more often, the World Health Organization finally succeeded in ridding the world of a deadly scourge that had plagued it for centuries: the smallpox virus. And we could have done the same for polio, had it not been for a handful of imams who concocted the story that the vaccine was an American plot to sterilize Muslim men. If only viruses of the mind could be eradicated as easily as those of the body.” He slammed the book shut and hurled it onto the coffee table.

  Dickinson looked down at the book, then back up at Fox. “I meant, through education.”

  “Someone must have missed that part.”

  “My teachings have been twisted. Perverted!”

  “Well, that could happen even to Jesus Christ, couldn’t it?”

  Dickinson’s glare made it clear that he did not find the comparison at all flattering.

  Donovan resumed his questioning: “All the suspects were on campus together within the last two years. Thaddeus James Moresby-Stokes. Shira Yavin. Mairead ‘Peg’ O’Mullany. Aidan Kelly. And an Ahmad, whose last name we don’t know, but he’s Pakistani.”

  “I know one Ahmad in OAF, Ahmad Ghilzai. He’s actually Afghani, but his family fled to Pakistan.”

  “To escape the Taliban?”

  “Why else? Maybe it was when they cut all the pictures out of his father’s medical texts, saying that any likeness of the human form was forbidden. Or maybe it was when his mother was grabbed off the street and publicly flogged, for the heinous crime of laughing out loud while talking to a friend at the market.” He turned to Fox. “Are you still interested in defending these people?”

  “I was never interested in defending the Taliban, Professor, you know that. And this is hardly the time for a continuation of our debate. The leader of this group is someone who uses the aliases Rashid Renclaw and Chris Warndale.”

  “I’ve never heard either of those names.”

  “He graduated a couple of years ago, and still makes occasional appearances at OAF parties. We think he lives somewhere in London.”

  Dickinson shrugged. “Sorry. I wish I could be of more help.”

  “He probably majored in microbiology or something like that, and is most likely now working in medical research—someplace where he would have access to a high-containment laboratory. He was president of OAF some years ago, but probably not within the memory of any current student. John, our source in Georgia said he looked like a more handsome version of TJ, correct?”

  At a nod from Adler, Fox continued: “So, blond hair and blue eyes. Flamboyantly rich. He drives a red BMW and has a big Victorian house in an upscale neighborhood of London. Highly intelligent, with an ego to match—expects admiration from everyone and reacts badly to any little criticism. Very charming, probably has a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man, but isn’t the type to have stable long-term relationships. Who do you know that fits that description?”

  “Who do I know that fits that description?” Dickinson repeated the question, and shrugged a shoulder. “I do not know any such person.”

  Fox felt the same rage welling up within him that he had in the van with Aidan. “Professor,” he said in a voice of ice, “may I remind you that withholding information would make you an accessory?”

  Dickinson glared at him over the rims of his glasses. “I’m aware of that. One does not withhold information from the Security Service.”

  “I may not be as skilled in debate as you, Professor, but one thing I’ve been trained to do is to spot when someone is lying. Now, I will ask you one more time. You have someone in mind. You know someone who might be the person who goes by the aliases of Rashid Renclaw and Chris Warndale. Who is it?”

  Dickinson looked down and to the right. The “internal dialogue” direction. The answer was waiting at the gate of his lips, and he was debating with himself whether to open the gate and let it out.

  At that point, silence was the most effective tool. Sometimes a subject would let valuable information slip just to break an uncomfortable silence, but one inopportune word could send the answer scurrying back into the deepest recesses of his brain, never to resurface. Even though every tick of the grandfather clock in the corner sounded to Fox like the blow of an axe against the branch where Emily was standing, all he could do was wait.

  16

  MOSUL, IRAQ

  2005

  Evening had turned to night. Fox was exhausted, but sleep would be out of the question with so much at stake tomorrow. He rubbed his temples, and tried to focus on the sheaf of papers on his desk. The resourceful MJ had procured several reports from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Iraqi Poultry Producers’ Association, and he was now in the process of learning more about the poultry industry in Iraq than he ever wanted to know. Wearily, he ran his eyes down the long list of places that had recently placed orders for large quantities of eggs.

  A children’s hospital in Ramadi. A veterinary vaccine plant near Karbala. That one raised a momentary red flag, since the old regime had often used vaccine factories as cover for bioweapon sites, but Karbala was the heart of Shi’a territory, enemy country for the Sunni AQI. Numerous schools, bakeries and restaurants in Baghdad and the surrounding area. He came to the end of the list wondering whether he was any further ahead.

  As he read, he cast surreptitious glances around the gator pit, waiting for a moment when Browning, Newcomb, and Mendes were all away from their desks. Finally, around midnight, he had his opening. He picked up the phone and called the guard at the cells.

  “Could you get Ibrahim ready for me, please?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He allowed the guard five minutes to get Ibrahim ready, then went to the interview room.

  “Assalam aleikum, Ibrahim,” he greeted him with hand over heart. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better, al-hamdulillah. Maybe even better than you. You look exhausted. I thought sleep deprivation was something you only did to us.”

  “No, we do it to ourselves too. As a gesture of solidarity.”

  He gave a wry smile. “I appreciate that.” With his face still turned toward Fox, his eyes darted in the direction of the video camera. He lowered his voice and spoke in Arabic. “And I appreciate…what you did, back in that room.”

  Fox kept his voice neutral as he answered in the same language: “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Fox’s exhortation to “Look at him!” had diverted the attention of the oth
ers for only a split second, but it had given him enough time to disconnect an essential cable. And after “Remember how you writhed, remember how you screamed,” the Arabic words he had spoken next meant, “And do it, when you hear me say the word ‘hajji.’”

  Ibrahim had proven himself a very skilled actor. And Fox’s outburst at the end, with the dramatic gesture of pulling all the cables from their sockets, ensured that no one would discover the truth. Between them, they had run a reversed version of the Milgram experiment, in which the ones who thought they were in control were really the test subjects.

  Fox switched back into English. “Ibrahim, why do you choose to stay here when you don’t have to?”

  “Because I know you will never be happy until you beat me at chess.”

  “You have a family and a mosque to take care of. All you need to do is answer our questions, and you could be back with them tomorrow.”

  Ibrahim sighed. “So we come back to that. You want me to tell you what I know of Zuhairi.”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well, my friend, this is what I know of Zuhairi. His father fought in the war with Iran. He was always feeding the boy on his own idea of jihad. I tried to teach him a better way. You may defend yourself when attacked, but do not repay an evil with a worse evil. And to whoever bears persecution with patience, Allah promises three hundred layers of recompense, each one equal to the distance between the earth and the sky.”

  He sighed again. “But I failed. During the war in Kuwait, Zuhairi’s father was killed. When you Americans came back to invade Iraq, he saw his chance for revenge, and ran off to join the insurgency. And now, every day, I see his mother in my mosque. She has lost her husband, and her son is gone she knows not where. There is nothing left for her but to pray that one day, he will come to his senses and come back to her. And I have made her prayer mine, too. How, then, could I deliver him into your hands?”

  “So you’re just waiting for him to see the error of his ways, and come back of his own will?”

  “Do you know the ninety-nine names of Allah?”