Killing Time

CHAPTER 24

As I took my place by the colonel, he said, "In some priestly and monastic orders the custom of self-flagellation is still practiced. Do you find such behavior aberrant, Doctor?"

"Extreme," I replied, looking up with him at the monitors. "But not aberrant. Is that what this is for you — self-flagellation? With painful light and sound taking the place of the whip?"

"In some way, I'm sure it is," Slayton answered with a frankness that was, like everything else about the man, very impressive. "For most of my life, Doctor, this world" — he indicated the screens— "was the wilderness into which I traveled, battling to bring the faith of democracy to the heathens. Until…" His attention began to wander, but he soon caught himself. "It's one thing to discover that your god has feet of clay. It's quite another to find that those feet are soaked in blood. Not only the blood of your enemies but of your comrades, as well. And to realize that you yourself were complicitous in their deaths. Complicitous — by omission…"

I watched as tears welled up in his eyes again, then said, "Colonel, you're thinking of the Taiwan campaign. But you can't—"

"Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq, Colombia, and yes, Taiwan," he interjected quickly. "Or any of the half-dozen other places where I killed and let my troops be killed in the name of freedom. Can you imagine what it was like to discover that the only freedom my superiors were ever really interested in was the freedom of their moneyed masters to do business in those places? I'm not a fool, Dr. Wolfe. At least, I don't like to think of myself as one. Why, then, didn't I see it? Any of it? The international trade organizations and security alliances whose authority we guaranteed — did they ever stamp out tyranny, exploitation, or inequality in any of the places we were told they would? Did they ever bring real freedom to a single country that didn't already have it?"

Slayton shook a tightly clutched fist. "And yet we continued to obey. To shed our enemies' blood for them and let our own soldiers die. Then in Taiwan, it became obvious that we were there only to die — that Washington had no intention of stopping Beijing's takeover, that they were actually in league with the commu-capitalists. I held no brief for the government of Taiwan then, Doctor, and I still don't. But why should my troops have died for that kind of cynicism? And above all" — Slayton's chest heaved mightily—"why didn't I see it?"

I shrugged — there was no point pulling punches with such a person: "Mundus vult decipi, " I said quietly.

His fleeting smile returned. "Thank you, Doctor."

"I'm sorry—"

"No, I'm perfectly serious. Thank you for not patronizing me with false rationalizations. Yes, everyone wants to be deceived, and so did I. I wanted to believe the lessons I'd learned as a boy. When my father came home from the Persian Gulf in a bag and we buried him at Arlington, I wanted to believe that his war hadn't been one of blood for oil. Somewhere deep inside me the genes that had been passed along from an African slave told me I was being a fool, but I didn't listen. I fought every attempt to expose the deception. And then, in Taiwan… it all fell apart. By the time I went to work in the Pentagon I was a ghost, one who, having been deceived, learned to deceive. And I would have stayed a ghost if I'd never met Malcolm. Yet even during my time with this team, something's been missing." He turned to me, his face full of purpose. "Something that you, Doctor, are going to help me put right."

Somewhat taken aback, I asked, "Why me?"

In reply Slayton stood and moved around the room. "Psychology and American history, Doctor — I require your expertise." He folded his hands together once and wrung them hard. "It would surprise you, I think, to learn that I lobbied very hard to get you on this team."

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.