Killing Time

CHAPTER 26

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 east-bound 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 graceful 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."

I paused in confusion for a moment. "I didn't think a hoax could be 'too good.' "

"A hoax that's designed to be exposed can," Malcolm replied. "Has that thought occurred to you yet, Gideon?"

"Which?"

"That our work has yet to be refuted."

My confusion deepened. "I thought that was the whole point."

"Hardly the whole point." Malcolm sounded deeply disappointed, an impression that was increased when he spun his chair around in frustration. "Scarcely half the point!" he went on, the medication reviving both his strength and his passion. "Eventual discovery was part of the overall plan — we've disseminated these fabrications as a method of exposing the dangers of this age, not to fill people's heads with more meaningless information!"

I shrugged and tried to calm him down: "It's an inherent dilemma, Malcolm. Only sound hoaxes will demonstrate your point — yet sound hoaxes will, at the same time, prevent that point from being recognized. In the end, I suppose, you yourself will have to reveal what you've done."

"I've tried!" he shot back. "Surely Larissa's told you — we as good as revealed to the Americans that the Forrester images had been doctored. And what happened? They still unleashed those damned pilotless monstrosities on Afghanistan! And just last week I sent messages to the English and the German governments about the Churchill letters, but what was their response? Dismissal from the Germans, who have no interest in exposing the hoax — and the English say they are not prepared to present the public with refutations that are bizarre, self-serving, and therefore utterly without credibility!" He attempted to get a grip on himself. "I have not voiced these thoughts to the others, Gideon, and I would ask you not to repeat them — but there are times when I have doubts about this entire scheme. Something else, something far more drastic, may be called for."

Remembering his passion for secrecy, I tried not to sound as curious as I felt. "Is that what you've been working on?"

"No." The hardness of his tone was startling, as was the way in which his features became utterly still; then he shook his head several times, looking very uncomfortable. "That is — perhaps." He banged a hand on the arm of his chair. "I don't want to discuss it! The point is, I want you and the colonel to build some kind of guarantee into this one. I want to be sure—" He spun his chair to face me and held up a finger. "I want to be very, very sure that this thing will eventually be exposed. This goes much deeper than the Forrester job— we're tampering with the very psyche of the most powerful nation on Earth, a country that no longer has to even risk the lives of its young people to enforce its political morality. We must get this one right."

It was a little difficult to absorb this idea after so many days of trying to ensure that our hoax would be more plausible than anything the group had yet done; and with my thinking warped by those days of work, I think I might actually have tried to argue the point with Malcolm, had Tarbell's voice not suddenly come over the address system:

"Gideon — where are you, in the turret?"

Giving Malcolm another bewildered glance, I touched a nearby keypad. "In the observation dome, Leon. Do you need me?"

"No, stay, I will come up," he answered. "I have something that may interest you."

For almost a full and very awkward minute neither Malcolm nor I spoke; then he said, very quietly and a bit contritely, "I know all this must sound odd, Gideon. And I know how you must feel, given the effort you've put in. But there's a great danger in this work of becoming overly enchanted by the ability to deceive people en masse. I've been as guilty of it as anyone. That's why—"

"Ah, there you are!" It was Tarbell, bounding up the stairs from the control level. "And Malcolm, as well — you may also find this of some interest, as it concerns our old friend Mr. Price."

The blackness that had seized Malcolm's features moments before returned, even more quickly this time. "What are you talking about, Leon?" he said apprehensively.

"Gideon here — or rather his friend Mr. Jenkins — happened on the results of some other project for which Price had been engaged. We assumed it was a film, but now, Gideon, I'm not so sure." Shooting over to a terminal, Tarbell sat before it and called something up on the screen, while I followed behind quickly; not as quickly, though, as Malcolm. "Here," Leon eventually said. "Transcripts. After that evening, Gideon, I programmed the global monitoring system to pick out any messages involving combinations of the keywords 'Dachau' and 'Stalin.' " Malcolm took in a sudden breath, which, though not loud enough for Tarbell to hear, caused me to turn to him.

He was pressing his body against the back of his chair, looking worse than I'd ever seen him; but it was very apparent that this time his trouble was not physical.

"I had no luck until today," Leon continued. "And then, in a cluster, several hits came up. All from Israeli intelligence." With a sickening droop of my own insides that I didn't really understand, I suddenly thought of the night when Colonel Slayton had sat listening to Mossad agents feverishly talking about terrorists and a German concentration camp. "Apparently they know about the images," Tarbell went on, very amused. "Though the odd thing is that they seem to think that they are entirely genuine! They've got dozens of operatives out now, looking for one of their men who was the first to get hold of a finished version of the sequence." His amusement subsiding, Tarbell's eyes narrowed. "And that's the puzzling part. Why would they be looking for one of their own people—"

"His name." It was Malcolm, who'd finally conquered his shock long enough to speak.

Tarbell turned. "I beg your pardon, Malcolm?"

"His name, damn it!" Malcolm cried, his knuckles going white as he clutched his chair.

Tarbell recoiled a bit. "I — don't know. They make no mention of his name. Deliberately so, I would say."

With one quick move of his arms Malcolm propelled his chair to the screen. He examined its contents for a moment, then grabbed Leon's shoulder hard. "Gather everyone downstairs, Leon," he said, trying to control the inner tempest that was obviously tossing his emotions about. "Right away, please."

Tarbell knew enough to comply quickly, and after he withdrew, Malcolm, eyes wide and empty, turned his chair away from the screen and rolled slowly back over to the transparent hull.

"Malcolm?" I eventually said. "What is it?"

"You were able to break the encryption of those images?" he asked, in the same low voice.

"Max was, yes," I answered.

Nodding for a moment, Malcolm murmured, "He was very good at his job, your friend Mr. Jenkins…"

"Would you like Leon to bring the disc up?"

Malcolm held up a hand. "Unnecessary. I have a complete version."

As the situation began to clarify, I felt my gut ripple again. "Then Price did create them for you."

"Yes," Malcolm whispered with another nod. He paused for what seemed a long time, then went on, "Well, Gideon, I'm afraid your Washington project will have to wait. If I'm right—" He lowered his head and placed his hands on either side of it. "But I must not be right. In fact, we must pray, Gideon, that I am as mad as I sometimes seem…"