Killing Time

CHAPTER 25

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 that 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.