The Jericho Deception: A Novel

by Jeffrey Small

  “Uh, where am I?” He turned toward a reception window that was almost two inches thick. Another metal door was located beside the window. The receptionist was another solidly built American, dressed, like his driver, in a dark suit.

  “Is Dr. Allen Wolfe here? I’m supposed to be meeting him.”

  “Please, come in.”

  The receptionist reached under the desk. Ethan heard a buzzing noise, followed by the click of the metal door unlocking. His driver opened the door for him. As odd as the situation seemed, he took comfort in the politeness these men conveyed. He passed through the door, which, like the front door, appeared to be made of metal and was an inch or so thicker than a normal office door. Then the environment fell into place—the security, the solid men with short hair, their formality and efficient mannerisms. Everything struck him as military.

  The door closed behind them with an authoritative clunk. The reception guard emerged from a door to the right and stood before him.

  “If you don’t mind, please raise your hands to the side. This is a secure facility.”

  He did as he was told—not that he had a choice—and received a pat down more intimate than any airport security search he’d ever experienced. He flinched when the man removed his wallet and cell phone from his pocket.

  “These will be kept in a safe until your departure, Professor.”

  “My wallet too?”

  “Everything will become clear soon.”

  Feeling naked without his cell phone and ID, he followed the driver down a corridor that could have belonged to any office building in the US. They passed closed doors on both sides of the hall. When they reached a door on the left that was slightly ajar, he hesitated, assuming that this was where he was going to meet Wolfe, but his driver closed the door instead of opening it.

  Before his view was cut off, he glimpsed an unusual sight inside. The room behind the door was filled with electronics. He saw over a dozen flat-panel monitors on desks and along the walls. Three men sat in chairs studying them. The sight that surprised him was not the high-tech monitoring suite, but the way one of the men was dressed. Two of them wore black pants and white shirts, but the third was a priest.

  After passing a single elevator door on their right, they stopped at the end of the corridor. The driver knocked on the final door. Another security camera watched him from the corner above. The sound of an electronic lock clicking open echoed in the bare hall. The driver opened the door but didn’t go inside. He motioned for Ethan to enter and then closed the door behind him.

  He now stood in a large office decorated in stark contrast to the plain surroundings of the rest of the building. The floor underneath his feet was a soft blue-gray carpet. The furniture was all of a sleek Scandinavian design, something one might expect to see in the office of an architect in a high-rise office tower, not in a warehouse in the middle of the desert.

  Allen Wolfe, wearing a purple tie and matching pocket square, looked up from the papers he was reading behind the glass desk.

  “Professor Ethan Lightman, welcome to the Monastery!”

  Wolfe rose from his chair and extended a hand. Ethan shook it, hoping his palm wasn’t too sweaty. His chest felt tight, as if a belt had been cinched around his rib cage and was allowing him to inflate his lungs only halfway.

  “You must be full of questions.” Wolfe’s voice was deep and soothing.

  “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  He settled into a shiny black leather chair with polished stainless steel armrests opposite the desk. The chair looked fashionable but was uncomfortable, causing him to sit upright on the hard straps.

  He inhaled as deeply as the imaginary belt around his torso would allow and jumped in. “Is the NAF a front for the CIA?”

  He wasn’t sure why he chose to suddenly articulate the suspicion he’d suppressed in the recesses of his mind since the night in Sterling Memorial Library three days ago.

  “You got me.” Wolfe smiled and spread his hands. “You put the pieces together after finding the book on MKULTRA?”

  How does he know about the book?

  Then the realization hit him: Muscleman. He’d dropped the book when being chased by the huge man.

  “James Axelrod,” Wolfe said, reading the expression on his face, “my head of security. But don’t call him James when you run into him here. Goes by Axe.” He chuckled. “I asked him to keep an eye on things in New Haven. We were making quite an investment in you and Elijah. I apologize if he gave you a start. He has a penchant for the dramatic at times.”

  Ethan thought about Axe’s presence in his lecture a few weeks back. He felt only somewhat relieved at the knowledge that this guy had been sent to spy on him rather than accost him.

  “So you and Elijah worked on MKULTRA as grad students.”

  “We were just a few years younger than you are now. We made a good team. He was the idealistic one, I the practical one. The government offered us a chance to take our research into the human psyche in directions that had never been explored.” Wolfe pointed at him with a manicured finger. “Much in the way you’ve been doing with the Logos.”

  “I just don’t see Elijah working for the CIA.”

  “It was an exciting time to be a psychiatrist.”

  “But the experiments—brainwashing, sensory deprivation, hallucinogenic drugs—were conducted on unsuspecting subjects without their consent.”

  “Times were different. We were in the midst of the Cold War. The Soviets were doing the same research we were.”

  “But the research never panned out.”

  “Our methods were too crude. The drugs unpredictable. We could extract information from our subjects, but we never could control them. The Manchurian Candidate was a myth.”

  “But you also rendered some catatonic, others had permanent amnesia, and at least one killed himself because he thought he was going insane.” Elijah had been one of the most ethical and caring men he’d known. How could he have been involved in such research?

  “As I said, our methods were crude then.” Wolfe shrugged. “But we learned from our mistakes.”

  “Who killed Elijah?” The question came out before he had a chance to filter it. Since learning of his mentor’s early involvement with the CIA, and in light of the way he’d been acting about the NAF and of the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, Ethan had all but confirmed for himself that his friend’s murder was related to the recent strange events.

  An expression of genuine remorse passed over Wolfe’s face as he shook his head. “Elijah was one of my oldest friends. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but we had that bond you never lose from pulling all-nighters with your best friend in school.” He opened a manila folder on his desk and flipped through the pages. “The police reports indicate that it was a robbery attempt that the murderer tried to disguise in an amateurish way by putting him into the Logos. New Haven can be a tough place.” He paused as his voice cracked. “I just wish I had sent Axe there to protect him that night.” Wolfe cast his steel gray eyes to the floor by his desk.

  He’s lost a friend, just as I have, Ethan realized, but a seed of doubt remained. He glanced around the office. Despite the expensive modern furniture, the walls were blank other than one that held a bookcase filled with various psychology texts.

  “Why am I here?”

  The CIA had funded his research, and now he was at some facility in the Middle East. With Wolfe’s history of mind-control experiments, he felt sure that they had something in mind that had to do with the Logos. But what?

  “What do you know about commercial tuna fishing?”

  “I don’t under—”

  “Sometimes, when you cast a wide net, you catch dolphins when what you really want is tuna.”

  “What does that have to do with my machine?”

  “In the war against Islamic fundamentalism that began after 9/11, our military and intelligence services, as well as those of friendly Arab nations, have
rounded up suspected terrorists in an attempt to prevent future catastrophes. Our efforts have been largely effective. But sometimes, in addition to the hardcore terrorist leaders, we pick up lower-level operatives who we ultimately discover are not an immediate threat.”

  “We hold innocents in prison?”

  “Innocent?” He chuckled. “In this world, I’m not sure if that word has any meaning. Suffice it to say that these prisoners are eventually released, but before they can be sent back to their homes, many need to be rehabilitated from their time in captivity. We are here to integrate the dolphins back into society after the harrowing experience of being caught in the net.”

  “You mean they’ve been tortured?”

  “The things some of these men have been through.” A shudder passed through his body. “And not by our people,” he added quickly. “Our allies in this part of the world have different rules than we do.”

  “What about our use of waterboarding and sensory deprivation?”

  “We may interrogate terrorists using various psychological means, but our methods don’t cause real harm—nothing like the electricity to the genitals, the beatings, the pulling of fingernails that they do here. The atrocities these men have suffered are difficult to imagine.” He shook his head. “What these governments don’t understand is that physical torture is too blunt an instrument to use on a committed ideologue. The torture is often carried out by crude people who enjoy the barbarism.”

  The isolated location of the warehouse in the middle of the desert, the high security, and the American guards—it all started to make sense to him. “So this place is some kind of covert psychological rehab facility for suspected terrorists?”

  “When they come to us they are no longer prisoners. They are on their way home—after we have counseled them and nursed them back to health both physically and mentally.”

  “So where are these men?” He guessed that he’d seen about a quarter of the warehouse building, but he had a hard time imagining that the rest would hold enough room for the type of operation Wolfe was describing.

  A twinkle appeared in Wolfe’s eyes. “I think you’ll find this interesting.” He stood from his desk. “Follow me.”

  Despite his unease, Ethan was curious. How was Wolfe rehabbing these prisoners, and what did the Logos have to do with it?

  He followed the doctor out of the office to the elevator he’d passed earlier. Wolfe removed a lanyard from around his neck and swiped the attached card through a reader beside the elevator. The glass pad beside the reader came to life, glowing blue. When Wolfe pressed his palm against it, the light intensified around the edges of his hand, and the elevator door opened. The elevator was hospital spec, long enough to accommodate a stretcher. Inside, Ethan noted the lack of any buttons. They descended a short distance and stopped.

  The knowledge that they were now underground increased his tension.

  The door opened into a concrete tunnel that was only eight feet in height; he could reach up and almost touch the curved ceiling. He followed Wolfe to the left, ducking his head to avoid bumping into the various metal pipes and plastic conduits that crisscrossed the ceiling. When they turned a corner after walking about thirty feet, Wolfe stopped beside a glass window along the wall. All of the light in the corridor came from the window rather than the fluorescent fixtures suspended from the ceiling, which were powered off. Wolfe waited by the window.

  The sight stopped Ethan in his tracks. He could sense the director grinning beside him.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  The scene before him was in stark contrast to everything else he’d seen in the building. The window looked into what appeared to be a replica of one of Yale’s college dining halls. The room on the other side of the glass was rectangular in shape with three long rows of wooden tables with matching benches that could seat over a hundred people. The floor was a dark oak, as were the thick timbers that rose from the walls to support a cathedral ceiling. Even stranger than the dining hall were the groupings of people eating. At least twenty men, all Middle Eastern in appearance, were dressed in the brown cassocks of Franciscan monks, while about ten others, all Americans, were dressed in the flowing black robes and white collars of priests.

  “The Monastery, or as we refer to it, Project Jericho,” Wolfe said, as if that explained everything.

  CHAPTER 34

  THE MONASTERY

  “I don’t understand,” Ethan said for what felt like the tenth time. “These former prisoners”—he motioned through the window—“are Muslims, but they’re dressed as Christian monks.”

  “Precisely.” Wolfe beamed.

  “And the American priests?”

  “Do you know why our intelligence services have failed so miserably in predicting, much less stopping, fundamentalist Islamic terrorist attacks?”

  Ethan recalled the post-9/11 criticism of the American intelligence services missing the obvious signs of the impending attack. “Because we didn’t put enough resources behind the task after the Cold War ended?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “A popular but mistaken view.” He paced in front of what Ethan assumed was a one-way window as the monks and priests dined on the other side. “During the Cold War we faced an enemy who ruled its population through coercion based on an economic ideology—communism—that ultimately proved unsustainable. In a country where you had to wait in line for toilet paper, bribing a government official to pass us secrets was easy. Our enemy today, however, is motivated by a drive stronger than money, sex, or even political power.”

  “Religion?”

  “Exactly. Look at the populations of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran: you have a handful of elites in power and then masses of uneducated people with little hope for advancement or prosperity. The men in these societies are often at dead ends, barely scraping by. Multiple wives are permitted, but only the wealthy can afford a single one, much less more. This leaves little hope for these young men to earn more than a menial living, not enough to support a family. Then they go to a mosque and they hear the promise of the paradise that Allah will deliver to them. In these barren landscapes, paradise is depicted not only as overflowing with abundance, like an oasis in the desert, but as offering the promise of young virgins. How does one enter this paradise, the mullahs preach?”

  “Through martyrdom.”

  Wolfe nodded. “These men are indoctrinated from a young age, when their futures look hopeless. They are brainwashed by a form of Islamic fundamentalism that we’ve found almost impossible to penetrate. When dying for your cause is believed to be the ultimate reward, there’s little earthly persuasion we can use to change their minds.”

  Ethan looked through the window at the men dressed as Christian monks. “So you’re trying to convert them?”

  “What if we could take a religiously polluted mind and clean it as one might clean the bacteria from a kitchen counter after a piece of raw meat sat there?”

  He saw where this was heading. An unease passed through his gut as the image of Sister Terri reclining in the Logos flashed through his head. “But Islam isn’t the problem. It’s illiteracy, poverty, dictatorships, and ego-driven mullahs who distort its teachings.”

  “We can never eliminate the inequality and poverty in these countries. But what if we can eliminate the religious reaction to it? What if we have a way to wipe the infected counter down and then serve healthy food there?”

  The unease grew in his stomach like a widening gulf, but at the same time the scientific side of his mind was curious. He knew that deprogramming someone who had been brainwashed was a time-consuming and inexact process. He recalled the case studies he’d read in medical school of people who had been kidnapped and kept prisoner for extended periods of time. The victims often began to identify and even grow to love their captors, a condition known as Stockholm syndrome. Undoing the psychological damage could take years.

  “How?”

  Wolfe turned from the window and continued down the
corridor. He stopped beside a row of metal lockers. He opened the first one and withdrew a long silken robe of silver and gold that he pulled over his head. Next he attached a white-banded collar around his neck. The rosaries that went last completed the picture.

  “You look just like—”

  “Inside they call me ‘The Bishop.’” He winked.

  Then he opened another locker door and removed a simple black cassock. “Put this over your head. The arms go here and here. And then tie the belt around your waist.” After some fumbling with the material, Ethan did as instructed. Wolfe then retrieved a white collar from the locker. “Let me do this. These can be tricky.”

  When Wolfe snapped the collar into place, Ethan had to resist the instinct to tug on it. He felt the stiff material when he swallowed. When Wolfe stepped aside, he stared at the three-quarter-length mirror hanging on the inside of the locker door. The image reflected back at him was as foreign as this strange place. He’d never been comfortable in churches, and yet here he was, the image of a pious Catholic priest.

  “Around the brothers—that’s how we refer to our guests here—please do not ask questions. We must carefully control their experiences.”

  Wolfe moved to a door on the far side of the lockers. Rather than the electronic locks of the elevator, this had a simple numeric keypad. He pressed the numbers quickly, his body shielding the pad from Ethan’s view.

  Behind the door, the utilitarian concrete tunnel transformed in a way that rivaled what Disney Imagineers might have designed. They stepped into what appeared to be a centuries-old European monastery with stone floors, a plastered groin vaulted ceiling, and sconces of candles along the long wall. The soothing sound of chanting echoed through the hall. When Ethan inhaled incense, his body seemed to relax of its own accord. He couldn’t guess what it had cost to construct such a space underneath the Egyptian desert. Then he thought about how quickly Wolfe had handed the check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Elijah.