I almost laughed in amazement. “I’ll admit that it would.”
“Not that it was a tough sell, once they read your book.” Slayton picked a copy of that same Psychological History of the United States up off the console and began leafing through it. “And saw your picture,” he went on, sounding for a moment like a knowing, mildly disapproving father. “Your selection at that point was guaranteed. But I was the one who brought you to their attention.” He stopped his leafing and focused on one page of the volume, then gave me a bemused look. “Do you really think that the death of Jefferson’s mother had something to do with his writing the Declaration of Independence?”
I chose my words more carefully than I had in the book: “The timing of the two events always struck me as too close to be a coincidence. They had a difficult relationship, by all accounts.”
Slayton nodded. “There was a time when such an idea would have disgusted me, Doctor. When this entire book would have disgusted me. You force the American nation onto the couch and find it laced with neuroses.”
“A good deal more than neuroses,” I ventured.
“Yes,” Slayton said. “And as I say, once I would have cursed you for it. But now . . .” His voice trailed off again as his eyes fixed on the dancing light on the floor.
“Colonel,” I said, “please don’t take this as any diminution of your own feelings, but—surely you realize that what you’re going through is nothing new in the American experience? The ‘deception’ you’re describing is only the need to believe in the inherent philosophical and ethical superiority of the United States—what’s generally called our moral exceptionalism. And it’s been with us since the beginning. Any country commits great crimes to reach a position of unchallengeable power; ours was no exception. A method of rationalizing those crimes has to be devised for people to be able to live with themselves.”
“All true,” Slayton said, still looking at the floor. “But you and I are going to shake the foundations of that exceptionalism.”
My comforting little sermon suddenly went out the window. “We are?” I said.
Slayton nodded slowly, then snapped out of his reverie, turned his chair to face mine, and sat down. “I spoke with Malcolm an hour ago. He was deeply angered by the Afghanistan raid, even though we got the people out. He’s agreed to my suggestion—the same hypocrisy that has rationalized everything from the enslavement of my ancestors to that same Afghan raid will be the target of our next job. He’s leaving it to you and me to work out the details.”
“Oh.” I took it in as best I could: I’d expected to be part of the next effort, but to design it . . . “Well—did you have any specific thoughts?”
“Not yet,” Slayton answered. “I’ve been sitting here with your book trying to come up with something, but every time I start to consider it my mind gets so swept up in—”
He stopped suddenly, his head cocking as he listened to the noises coming from the monitoring equipment. “There it is again,” he murmured. “That’s three times tonight.”
“What’s three times tonight?”
Slayton shook his head, still listening; and it dawned on me that what he’d called his “finely tuned” ear was actually capable of picking individual messages out of the confusing din. “It’s the Mossad,” he said. “Israeli intelligence. Three times tonight I’ve caught pieces of wireless calls from or to several of their European operatives. They keep talking about some kind of terrorist activity that’s focused around a German concentration camp.”
I considered it. “Might be the militant wing of New Germany,” I offered. “Ever since the Freedom Party took over in Austria, their friends across the border have been getting mighty obstreperous.”
“It’s possible,” Slayton said, clearly unconvinced. “But the Israelis seem much too worked up for it to be just European head butting. Well”—he reached over and shut off the room’s audio and visual monitors altogether—“we have our own work to attend to, Doctor.”
And thus did another clue to the staggering tragedy that was shortly to engulf us appear and fade very nearly unnoticed. Even now I cannot speculate on how many lives might have been spared had Slayton and I chosen at that juncture to listen more closely to the mysterious messages that were speeding through our monitoring systems—for contemplating such lost opportunities would surely lead to madness.
C H A P T E R 2 5
How ingenious, how vital did the scheme that Colonel Slayton and I concocted over the ensuing days seem at the time—and how proud was I to be working alongside a man whose deeds had inspired young boys and shamed grown men! Though there was never any question of actual equality in our partnership, Slayton was a more-than-indulgent (if occasionally cutting) tutor, and we quickly established an effective working rhythm that allowed us to outline a plan of attack within the first twenty-four hours. The next forty-eight fairly flew by, and by the end of the third day we were certain that we had contrived a plan that would more than serve our purpose—although the only way to be certain was to test it on our colleagues.
We waited a day longer to do so, until Tarbell returned from his excursion. Grinning in deep satisfaction and walking with an exhausted, limping gait, Leon entered the room in which the rest of us (save Malcolm) had gathered for dinner to announce that he was ready for a decent meal—“How can the Scots exist on such food?”—and a productive conversation (apparently it was only after he’d spent a few days with women of “immense sexuality” that he was possessed of truly sound judgment). With that assurance, Slayton nodded my way: he’d earlier decided that I should be the one to actually propose the plan, saying that he lived in the world of action, not words, and would only wind up making a hash of it. In view of its source I allowed the implied slight to roll directly off my back and began to outline what we’d come up with.
By way of introduction, I noted that the team’s successes to that point seemed to me to have rested on one element above all: plausibility. Each hoax had been accepted by the public because it had made some kind of fundamental sense. American politicians, for example, really were little more than televised ciphers to most people; whereas anyone who was aware of Winston Churchill’s remarkable cunning and willingness to sacrifice human life in pursuit of his political goals would have had no trouble accepting the Princip letters. As for Jesus, little about his life had ever been verifiable; and even the thousands of fossils that archaeologists and anthropologists had unearthed over the years had not provided any absolutely indisputable proof of the evolution of man. Finally, of course, with respect to the Forrester footage, people had always been willing to blame just about anything on Islamic terrorists. Therefore, our first goal was to put our plan on a sound historical footing, in order to maintain that same power of plausibility.
The others accepted all this without much comment, at which point things got a bit trickier. I announced that Colonel Slayton and I proposed to use, as our jumping-off point, the murder of George Washington, a statement that was greeted by a host of blank expressions that clearly said that either our colleagues didn’t know Washington had been murdered or that they had forgotten the story. I explained that their lack of awareness was understandable, since the murder was an ugly chapter of American history that was usually swept under some collective psychological carpet. But yes, I continued, he had indeed been murdered: he’d come down with a throat infection, for which several doctors had prescribed bleeding. Those doctors had, however, been secretly bribed by a group of businessmen and politicians—including several of the other Founders—who wanted the Father of His Country shut up for good. During the last months of his life Washington had come to realize the extent to which the fledgling United States had been sold to the moneyed and merchant classes, and he intended to say something about it—publicly. But the powers that were, being remarkably similar to the powers that currently be, were having none of it. The result: assassination by bleeding knife.
Fouché reacted to this tale by saying th
at it seemed to present an excellent core event for a hoax, speaking, as it did, to the originating moment of the United States while at the same time containing immense potential for controversy. But what, he asked, was the hoax we intended to build around the story? At that point we had to come clean: the story was the hoax. Slayton and I had determined that while Washington’s being murdered by corrupt politicians in the pay of big money certainly represented an apt parallel to the current condition of the United States, it had no basis in historical fact. A moment of silence ensued; and then the table erupted with howls of laughter and mock indignation, followed by a healthy round of applause. Larissa, never one to be nonplussed, declared that she’d known I was lying all along; but she didn’t maintain the act for long, and when everyone had calmed down we began to discuss just why the idea held such potential.
First of all, if our goal was to strike a blow at American moral exceptionalism there was no point in mounting a hoax that would concern modern American leaders. The citizens of the United States had long since recognized their national and local representatives for what Slayton had called them, the paid servants of the corporate class, and any attempt to foster a widespread philosophical crisis by ascribing vicious or corrupt motives and actions to such people was doomed to fail. Nor could we reference facts and personalities that were excessively obscure, given the low regard in which history was held by the general public. But while most people might not be able to say just when or how the United States had been born, the vast majority of them still nurtured the vague yet essential idea that its birth had been a good thing, openly and honestly achieved—with George Washington leading the way. Toy with those notions in an unabashedly tabloid manner, and the resulting scandal might well stand a chance of grabbing the national spotlight and making Americans rethink some of their fundamental moral preconceptions about their country.
A murder plot seemed much the best way to go about this, better even than a good sex scandal. After all, the words “president” and “sex scandal” had long since become inextricably associated in the popular consciousness, while assassination conspiracies—as evidenced by what Malcolm and the others had been able to do with the footage of Emily Forrester’s death—still moved the public to extremes of fascination and emotion. And while the fact that Washington, like so many of his day (or, for that matter, our own), had been killed by incompetent doctors was fairly well-known, the further “revelation” that this act had been the result of a plot would likely raise as little skepticism in the country and the world as it had around our dinner table. In short, plausibility would once again sow controversy.
By the end of the evening there was general agreement that the plan was sound enough to be taken to Malcolm. Slayton volunteered for this duty, which he undertook the next day. I spent the hours he was closeted with our ailing chief pacing the floor of my room, with Larissa lying on the bed assuring me that things would go off without a hitch. And so they seemed to: Slayton emerged from the meeting quite pleased, telling me that Malcolm had approved the idea and wanted the others to start preparing the false documents we would need to pull the business off.
Yet it seemed strange to me that Malcolm should not have come out of seclusion long enough to give his approval personally. I asked Slayton if he had been entirely satisfied with our chief’s reaction, and he claimed that he had; but I could see that he too was at least mildly disappointed at the reception our work had received. And while I tried, during the busy days that followed, to attribute such feelings to Malcolm’s ongoing physical battles and the emotional as well as intellectual volatility that accompanied them, doubt would not be expelled from my mind altogether: during random idle moments I found myself wanting to ask the man just what was behind his attitude.
The chance to do so would not come, however, until we had once more boarded the ship and headed out over the Atlantic to actively pursue our goal of altering the world’s perception of the birth and national character of the United States. During that voyage I would discover that Malcolm’s seeming lack of enthusiasm had nothing to do with Slayton’s and my plan in particular; rather, it sprang from worries of a much more comprehensive nature, worries that would soon be validated by, of all things, that same little computer disc that I’d found in my jacket pocket.
C H A P T E R 2 6
The main thrust of what we took to calling the Washington hoax was embodied in two sets of forged documents. The first was a group of deathbed confessions from three guilt-racked conspirators involved in the murder: Thomas Jefferson (his personal peccadillos and hypocrisy concerning slavery having long since laid him open to almost any indictment in the public’s mind), John Adams (whose passionate, at times irrational, Federalism had established him as a perennial target of populist wrath), and finally one of Washington’s knife-wielding physicians. The second batch of bogus documents consisted of several letters to intimate friends from Washington himself, in which he announced his intention of making a warning address to the nation concerning the rising power of those who controlled the country’s wealth.
By the time Slayton and I finished composing the texts, Leon and Julien had already altered the necessary ink and paper; the completed documents were soon ready. And so we boarded the ship and headed off for New York and Washington, to secrete our creations in various archives. The Kupermans were already hard at work planting manufactured documents and journal articles on various Web sites, all of which would support our fabrications once they were found. Soon after our departure it was decided that since the skies might still be full of patrols searching for the mysterious aircraft that had eluded them over the North Sea, we would do well to cross the Atlantic beneath the waves: we reentered those lonely waters soon after our departure, moving southwest just above the ocean floor until we hit the continental shelf, at which point the world itself seemed to drop away beneath us.
Descending further, we crossed over the hump of the great undersea ridge called the Porcupine Bank, heading on toward Porcupine Plain at a depth of nearly three thousand feet: an unheard-of accomplishment for most conventional submarines but apparently just another remarkable feat for our vessel. The landscape of the ocean floor was spectacular (much more so than when we’d crossed the first time because of our greatly increased depth), yet the continued and dispiriting absence of any appreciable signs of life was only pointed up all the more by the heightened beauty. The same odd mixture of rapture and sadness that I’d experienced during the eastbound crossing quickly returned, and when Malcolm’s voice came over the ship’s address system, asking me to join him in the observation dome, his melancholy tone seemed to match the plaintiveness of my own inner voice.
He was alone when I entered the dome, sitting in his wheelchair and watching the powerful exterior lights of the ship play off the dramatic seascape. I approached him quietly, and he indicated a nearby chair. “Sit down, Gideon,” he said. “Please.” He was massaging his forehead in what seemed deep discouragement, but then he started suddenly, touched my arm, and pointed through the hull at a magnificent sight: a lone fish about twenty-five feet long, a strange creature that appeared to be some sort of shark. But its movements seemed too slow and sluggish for that family, while its eyes, far from being the dead black one generally associated with sharks, were brightly luminescent.
“It’s a sleeper shark,” Malcolm explained, his face gladdened by the sight of it. “A deepwater fish.” Suddenly his features darkened again. “It’s being driven up by the sonic herding emitters that fishing fleets drop on the ocean floor. There must be a trawler up above—this creature will probably be dead before the day’s out. The meat doesn’t fetch much, but the eyes, like so many things, are believed to enhance virility in various parts of Asia.” He sighed in exasperation. “I never have understood why people who can’t stop breeding are always so worried about virility.”
I was about to reply, but Malcolm held up a hand to ask for silence as he went on watching the sleeper shark execute its g
raceful but fatal swim up toward the surface and death. When he spoke again it was in a murmur: “To view the wonders of our world clearly, Gideon, without the effects of medication, is so remarkable.” In a few seconds I noticed that his teeth had begun to grind and his brow was arching in discouragement. “And yet so painful,” he whispered. The whole of his body began to quiver noticeably. “How pain telescopes time . . . minutes, hours, days—obliterated.” He leaned forward toward the glass and gasped, “How long have I been watching you, my poor, doomed friend?” It seemed to me impossible that he could endure his agony with such control for very much longer; but it wasn’t until the shark had disappeared from view that he finally gave up the struggle and pulled his transdermal injector from one of his pockets. “I trust you’ll excuse me, Gideon,” he said, placing the thing to a vein in his left hand and releasing its contents into his bloodstream. He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Malcolm,” I said carefully. “If you don’t mind my asking, have you found the rate or severity of these attacks to be increasing?”
He nodded. “If I could get more rest,” he said, opening his eyes. “But there’s no time. Not now.” He took a deep breath and finally turned to me. “You did very good work on the island, Gideon. The others, too, of course, but given that it was your first attempt I wanted to tell you personally—an excellent job.”
I smiled with relief. “Colonel Slayton and I were worried that maybe you didn’t really think so.”
“Because I didn’t participate? Yes, I’m sorry about that. But I only have so many hours of work I can do now, and I must—budget them. But that’s no reflection on your efforts, which were exceptional. In fact, my main concern about the project is that it may be too good.”