Killing Time (15 page)

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.

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?"