Bat out of Hell

by Alan Gold

  He’d constructed WEL so that nothing the organization did to shove aside humanity in his efforts to save the global biosphere could be tracked back to him. Long before Al-Qaeda became a household word, Stuart had constructed an organization that was so tightly controlled that it was impenetrable. It was impossible for security agencies to breach because nobody knew more about anything or anybody in WEL than who was at the same level. Even from the beginning of the era of the Internet and cell phones, Stuart had quickly realized that while they may be brilliant methods of communication, they would also allow governments to follow and listen in on the conversations and thoughts of its citizenry; so all communications from the very beginning of WEL were whispered, face-to-face and in parks and open spaces.

  And from the early days, there’d been a surprising number of successes—closing down animal research laboratories, killing several high-profile medical researchers who experimented on nonhuman species, bombing the headquarters of food companies that factory farmed animals . . . the list of covert crimes his organization had committed was growing longer and longer. And the genius was that the blame almost always centered on other organizations like PECA, PETA, and CHAT. Best of all was the fact that the organization headed up by the vacuous airhead PECA boss Candice Shar, who ran People for Ethical Co-existence with Animals as though it were her personal fiefdom, and a number of other animal welfare NGOs were now under scrutiny for the recent murder of Secretary DeAnne Harper.

  But just yesterday morning, the world seemed to have caved in on Stuart’s head. The president of the United States himself had identified Stuart by name, at a White House press conference, as a person under suspicion. Since then he and WEL had been hounded by the media and just an hour ago, he’d been summoned to attend a meeting of the board of regents of the University of Wisconsin, where he was head of the Philosophy Department of The School of the Mind.

  Okay, so most of the board were worthies from the local area and probably had little more than Bachelor’s degrees; they almost certainly watched Fox for their news and information and thought that the Republicans were too socialist as a political party; but they had the power to close him down if they suspected that there was any fire behind President Thomas’s smoke.

  As he walked over to the administration block where the board of regents was meeting, he practiced what he’d say, assuming the nature of the questions he’d be asked.

  The administrative secretary showed him in. The room made an unconvincing statement of a faux British university senate meeting room, replete with dark mahogany wood tables, dressers, walls lined with thousands of unread books, the obligatory oil paintings of previous regents, and patriotic flags unfurled in corners. At its center was a vast refectory table. Sitting around the table were twenty worthy men and women, dressed in somber clothes as though attending a funeral . . . his funeral. An empty chair had been placed at the end of the table, opposite where Professor Matthew Wadick, the president of the university, sat.

  “Thank you for joining us, Professor Chalmers,” he said. But there was neither courtesy nor warmth in his voice. “It must have come to your attention that the president of the United States yesterday identified you as a suspect in the dastardly murder of the Secretary of Health DeAnne Harper. I find it beyond belief that this university has been dragged into the very epicenter, the vortex, of such a treasonous terrorist act. This is one of America’s finest universities, and for a senior member of our staff to be accused, by the president of the United States, no less, of a crime of the most amoral proportions is . . .”

  “Perhaps,” interrupted the professor of English, a man Stuart hardly knew, “we could ask Professor Chalmers what he knows, rather than make provocative statements that merely reiterate the content of today’s newspapers. I was invited to a meeting of the board of regents, not to Torquemada’s Inquisition. I would like to hear what Professor Chalmers has to say before we hang, draw, and quarter him.”

  Chalmers nodded to the professor of English. “For a man who has committed no crime, who has been falsely accused by the organs of governmental authority, who has been vilified by the media before I’ve even had a chance to state my side of the situation, I can honestly say that right now, I feel somewhat akin to Alfred Dreyfus.”

  He glanced around the table. Some of the men and women were frowning. From their quizzical expressions, it was obvious that they hadn’t heard of Dreyfus. “He was the French army intelligence officer who was accused of treason in 1894. None of the evidence pointed toward him. He constantly protested his innocence and love of France. But because he was Jewish and France was a hotbed of anti-Semitism, he was found guilty and sent to Devil’s Island.

  “Like Dreyfus over a century ago, I’ve been accused of a hideous crime I didn’t commit. In the place of anti-Semitism, we have a national epidemic of fear caused by microbes whose origin we don’t know. That fear has mutated, like the virus we’re trying to fight, into an irrational hatred of those of us who believe in a whole and integrated earth where every living organism, sentient or not, is precious. And this irrational hatred is being used by this government and this president to assail those of us who stand up for the rights of animals who can’t defend themselves . . .”

  “Professor Chalmers,” interrupted the president of the university, “it is not appropriate for you to lecture us on ecology or environmentalism. We’re here to listen to your response to the terrible accusations made against you by President Thomas just yesterday. And I must warn you that your very tenure, your role as teacher and researcher at this university, is hanging by a thread.”

  Chalmers fought back a smile. It was all so boringly predictable. He had practiced his response. “Might I remind you, President, and you ladies and gentlemen regents, that this very university was founded on the bedrock of truth—of teaching the young the principles of discovering that very truth by research, learning from it to become truly great citizens of this nation; that the underlying statute of this great university is to listen with an open mind, to learn from established facts, to dispense with falsities and misrepresentations and instead use the power of our minds to discover the very essence of certainty.

  “Yet I am prejudged by you, President Wadick, as a guilty party who has to prove his innocence. All right, let me prove to you that I’m innocent of the crime perpetrated against this government when Secretary Harper and her family were murdered. I was teaching in New York at the time. Three hours after she and her family were killed two hundred miles away in Washington, DC, I was dragged out of my bed in Manhattan by federal agents and cross-examined about any association I might have had with this deed. My clothes were forensically examined and nothing whatsoever was discovered. And after intense questioning, I was released with an apology.”

  “Then why did the president name you as a suspect?” asked President Wadick.

  “Because the organization which I have created, the Whole Earth League, has become the fall guy for the militant and insane animal liberation organizations which do commit terrorist acts. Organizations like the Campaign for Humane Animal Treatment have, to my certain knowledge, killed people and bombed laboratories. And because they can cover their tracks so brilliantly because they’re Machiavellian in their behavior, they’ve managed to tar and feather my Whole Earth League in the eyes of the authorities. I’m a one-man band. They’re a multi-million dollar organization with vast resources, with PR departments and people who can advise them on explosives and bombing and such. Me? I’m just a professor teaching brilliant and beautiful young men and women how to think.

  “These organizations do the crimes, and I become the monster. But ask yourselves one simple question: if I’m guilty as charged, why haven’t I been arrested and imprisoned long before now? Not because I’m an arch criminal who can cover his tracks. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I’m just a philosopher, an innocent abroad. Yet I’m accused of running such a covert organization that not even the sophistication of the investigative a
uthorities with all their electronic surveillance and cyber connectivity, can uncover what I’m doing. And no, ladies and gentlemen, I was not party to murder and mayhem, which I find ethically and morally abhorrent. No, the truth is that like Dreyfus, I’m a scapegoat. And if you fire me, then I become your scapegoat.”

  “Fine words, Professor, but you’ve still dragged the university into being front page news in the worst possible way, and . . .”

  “And it’s my responsibility to extricate you from this mess. Fire me and you’ll go halfway to absolving yourself, but there’ll still be questions about how much you knew and why you condoned a terrorist in your bosom for so many years. And if I resign and issue a statement of innocence, the smell will still attach to the university. But . . .”

  Stuart Chalmers looked around the table. All eyes and ears were on him. Oh, it was all too easy, he thought. He was playing them as though they were eager parents sitting in the audience of a sixth-grade musical. “But if I call a press conference and publicly close down the Whole Earth League by denying any involvement with terrorism, if I say that this terrible disease which is ballooning out of control needs drastic and draconian measures to solve it, and animals and plants have to take second place in the scheme of things to the needs of humanity, then I’ll come across as a voice of moderation and concern. And if I go further and speak on behalf of the university to assure the American public that we will throw the enormous weight of our scientific community behind all efforts to eradicate this terrible virus or bacillus, then we’ll come across as the good guys.”

  He remained silent, waiting for the response.

  ***

  “You’re kidding.”

  Ted Marmoullian, head of White House security, shook his head and showed the president a copy of the press conference. Nathaniel Thomas read it in a few moments, skipping much but picking up on the main points.

  “The unctuous, smarmy, rotten bastard. Okay, what does this mean?” he asked.

  “It means he’ll go even further underground. Now he’s dumped WEL, he’ll cut loose the few of the organizational cells we’ve been able to trace to him that we’re currently monitoring, and we won’t know what they’re up to. It’s been hell’s own job in tracking his activities because he doesn’t use the Internet, and we’re pretty sure that when he uses the telephone, he buys a once only throwaway that is impossible to trace. But now he’s made such a public demonstration of closing down his group, we’re going to have to call in every favor the National Security Agency owes us even to find out where he buys his coffee in the morning.”

  “Dear God,” shouted the president, “we’ve got the world’s most sophisticated tracking and monitoring devices, we’ve got spy satellites and drones and vast arrays of everything, and we can’t even find out what one philosophy professor is doing.”

  “Mr. President, if he presses a button connected to a wire in any part of the world, we can trace him instantly. But our entire monitoring and tracking system is built on the use of electronics and not human intelligence. If the guy doesn’t communicate by any means invented since the eighteenth century, we’re blind and dumb.”

  “Then for God’s sake use human intelligence. The type that we used to use when Russia was the enemy and James Bond was the good guy.”

  “We’re on it. But he has very few friends, never associates with other faculty, lives alone on a rented five-acre property, doesn’t use gas or electricity but just burns wood, only rides his bicycle to school to teach and rides it back home again afterward. When he gives lectures, he travels coach at the back of the plane; if the ticket’s purchased for him, it’s somebody else’s money but if he buys the ticket himself, he pays cash. He takes public transport to his hotel, talks to virtually nobody, and returns by public transport.

  “He has one or two friends on faculty we know about, but we’ve hauled them in for questioning and they haven’t given us a thing. He’s Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, all over again.”

  Nathaniel Thomas thought for a moment, digesting the information. “So do you think that he’s out of the picture now he’s said he’s closed down his organization?”

  Marmoullian shook his head. “Never in a million years. He’ll just activate resources we know nothing about. When he was questioned by the cops in Manhattan, he made a joke about you being the next target. They didn’t take him seriously. I am.”

  ***

  It was a large park and a cold day. The wind, originating in the air above the massive inland sea that was Lake Michigan, was funneled down to Lake Monona, skimmed over the surface, and bit into their skin. But they were far enough from Wisconsin’s state capital of Madison and its police and any Feds or NSA listening posts to ensure that what they had to say to each other couldn’t be overheard.

  Professor Jim Towney was a worried man and had demanded to meet with Stuart Chalmers sooner rather than later.

  “First off,” he said, still whispering behind his hand, despite the distance of the park bench from any lip-reader who could have been observing them, “you had no right to make the statements you did at the press conference without consulting me. And secondly, you . . .”

  “Without consulting you?” said Chalmers. “And just who the hell do you think you are in this organization? You sit there in your academic gowns talking and plotting about saving the world, but you never stick your neck out. You never take risks. You’re all talk, Jim. The most dangerous thing you’ve done in all your time as my second-in-command at WEL is to ride shotgun in the early days when I was planting explosives in cosmetics laboratories, or being my lookout when I was blowing up the offices of food companies using genetically engineered products. Don’t get on your fucking high horse with me. I’m the one whose neck was on the chopping block when that idiot President Wadick hauled me in to the board of regents. I’m the one who was identified by the president of the United States as a terrorist. Me, Jim. Not you. So don’t you ever fucking tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, because you’re nothing more than a myrmidon, a foot soldier, a subordinate who isn’t paid to think but just to take orders, a yes-man who does what I say, when I say, and how I say.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Towney said as he stood to leave. But before he stormed off, he turned and said, “I was hauled in by the police yesterday. I was told that my association with you would be on my record. They said that unless I told them everything about you and your activities, my family, and my academic and personal life would be over. So don’t fucking tell me that I’m just a subordinate. We run WEL together. Okay, so you’re the big man out front. You’re the guy who makes the speeches and who’s written about in Time Magazine, but don’t ever think that I don’t take the heat for you. Because I do.”

  “Sit down, Jim. Stop making an asshole out of yourself. I’m sorry if what I said hurt you, but it’s been a rough couple of days since . . . well, you know since when . . . and I’m feeling the strain. I shouldn’t have said what I said. You’ve been a fantastic sounding board and a wise and valued deputy. But I had to do what I did yesterday. For all our sakes, if we’re to have a future and stop mankind from destroying every plant and animal in his manic drive for supremacy. No organization is more important than the planet, Jim, and you and me, we have to save the planet from people.

  “So I had to tell the world that WEL is no more. That we’re supporting the president in his desire to save the human race. By doing that, the spotlight will fall on the other liberation and environmental groups. CHAT will be in trouble, not us.”

  He sat but was still upset by his friend’s remarks. “So it’s all over then. WEL is no more.”

  “Yep,” said Stuart. He nodded and patted his friend’s knee. “In the eyes of the media and the government, that’s it. Good night and sweet dreams. But as far as you and I are concerned, we’ll regroup after the virus or whatever it is has been cured. We’ll get back together again and fight the good fight, but with so much media attention it’s best that we just disband
, cut the ties, and wait for the shit to stop hitting the fan. And I think it’s best we don’t meet again. If we do, the Feds will assume we’re planning something.”

  Jim Towney nodded. “I’ll leave first. You . . . you take care of yourself. We’ll see each other again in better times.”

  They shook hands and Stuart watched Jim Towney walk briskly across the park to his car. When they’d first met all those years ago, everything had seemed easy. Humankind was destroying the ecosystem, exterminating species, employing its cruel and selfish mind to experiment on helpless animals, and creating monster species of pets and farm animals to supply itself with playthings or food for its own use. It was all so unnatural, and he, Jim, and a handful of others were the only ones who could see how evil and destructive the human race was. It, humanity, was the bacillus, the vast preying organism that was annihilating all the natural things in the world, and the human race had to be stopped.

  All those years ago, it had seemed so easy when they’d been plotting and planning how to end the amorality of the human race in its manic destruction of the environment and plant and animal life. They’d been energized to do things. But over the years, it had been Stuart who had maintained the driving force and guiding light; Jim was little more than a hanger-on. He could have been so much more. He could have been one of the few, the very few, who’d had the foresight to try to save the biosphere. But he’d become prematurely old in mind and weak in resolve.

  The animal kingdom knew what to do with those who were too old to contribute to the welfare of the pack or to fight for dominance in the tribe. The animal kingdom knew no mercy. And what was man if not a member of the animal kingdom?

  A pity, in a way, that it had to happen to Jim Towney. But he was ineffective and a weight around Stuart’s neck. He was running scared, and it wouldn’t be long before the Feds returned and put pressure on him. Unrelenting pressure. And with absolute certainty, he’d cut himself a deal to save his neck at the expense of WEL and of Stuart. So he had to go. But which way? It had to look like suicide or an accident. And when it happened, Stuart had to be on the other side of the country—perhaps meeting with the FBI and becoming an informant against CHAT or one of the other groups. He smiled. What delicious irony—when the number two in WEL was taken out, the number one would be in a meeting with the Feds. Oh, it was a delicious and sweet mockery of the system.