The Jericho Deception: A Novel (24 page)

The flight had been uneventful, but his mind still revolved over and over the question of why Wolfe was flying him to Egypt. His questions to the captain had resulted in a shrug and a quip that “I drive where I’m told.” He’d considered getting off the plane as soon as he found out where he was headed—but other than Rachel, what was there to keep him in New Haven? He had been relieved of his teaching duties, and the Logos project had been suspended. But now more than ever, the book Elijah had pointed him to was taking on an ominous importance.

He glanced at his watch, but then he realized that he had no idea what time zone he was in. He lifted the shades covering the two windows behind the sofa and blinked his eyes against the piercing light that filled the cabin. The orange glow from the sun warmed his face.

The plane banked to the right. His only trips out of the country had been backpacking in Europe before starting med school and a couple of spring
break trips to the Bahamas. When he thought of Egypt, he imagined pyramids, sphinxes, and tombs. The view out of the window, however, was of an endless beige desert that stretched as far as he could see. As the plane continued to bank and then descend, a break in the desert came into view. Blue fingers stretched into the undulating sand. Soon the source of the fingers appeared beneath the wing: an enormous lake.

As they passed over the lake, he saw that the northern edge was defined by an immense concrete dam, beyond which a wide river disappeared into the horizon.
The Nile
. He recalled some details about the river from his high school geography class. For thousands of years, the annual flooding of the Nile had deposited minerals for miles along the edges of the river, creating a rich soil that supported the cradle of ancient civilization. In the 1960s, the Egyptian government, under the leadership of President Nasser, had decided that the damage caused by the annual flooding outweighed the benefits for a society that had now developed cities along the banks. They’d dammed the river and created Lake Nasser, thus allowing the government to regulate the river’s water flow.

After they passed over the lake, the topography returned to desert. The lush vegetation around the lake and the Nile transitioned to lifelessness as if a line had been drawn in the hot sand; life was permitted on one side, but on the other not even a single weed grew. They passed directly over a cluster of five or six warehouse-looking buildings that appeared abandoned. A dirt road led from the buildings back to the lake.

Minutes later, the plane touched down. When they taxied past the main terminal, the large white letters on the side of the small building announced Ethan’s destination: Aswan. Although his knowledge of Egyptian geography was limited, he remembered that Aswan, along with Luxor, was one of the great Egyptian tourist destinations along the Nile because of its many ancient ruins. But when he caught a view of the far end of the runway, he felt a twinge of apprehension. A row of fighter jets was parked in front of two large bunkers built into the sand dunes at the end of the concrete. The small commercial airport also served as a military base.

“Hope you had a comfortable flight, Professor,” Captain Hart said as he exited the cockpit and unlocked the cabin door. The copilot stayed seated, flipping switches and shutting down the engines.

A blast of dry heat rolled in as if the pilot had just opened an oven door.

“Do you know when you’ll be taking me back?” He adjusted the bag on his shoulder.

Hart shrugged. “We’ll hang around until Dr. Wolfe says we’re needed again.” He pointed to two black dots approaching through the wavy heat rising off of the concrete. “Your next ride is here.”

As he stepped onto the runway, the two black SUVs continued toward them until they pulled up to the plane. The driver from the first one exited, walked around the car, and opened the rear door for him. He was an American with short hair, sunglasses, and a dark suit that seemed out of place in the desert. After Ethan climbed into the backseat, he turned to wave to Captain Hart. A movement from the rear of the plane behind the smiling pilot caught his eye.

Did the window shade just open?

He squinted against the reflection of the sun on the fuselage, but before he could confirm the vision, his driver closed the car door. The windows of the SUV were blacked out. His pulse quickened. The backseat was luxurious, limousine-like, with a divider between it and the front, but he suddenly felt trapped.

He buckled his seatbelt. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in the bedroom behind the locked door. Or were the sun and his jet-lagged mind just playing games with him?

T
wenty minutes later the SUV stopped. Where, Ethan had no idea. When the driver opened the door, a wave of dry heat hit clashed with the air-conditioned interior, just as it had when he’d exited the plane.

“Professor, if you would follow me.”

He stepped onto a sandy gravel drive beside the black-suited driver. They weren’t in the town of Aswan. His unease grew. They were in the middle of the desert, surrounded by a sea of sand and rock. Unlike the desert of Arizona, where he’d spent time visiting his aunt, there wasn’t a single bush or cactus to break up the beige landscape. The only structure in sight was a rectangular warehouse with concrete walls the same color as the desert sand. The metal roof magnified the sun, whose intense rays were unobstructed by clouds in the indigo sky. He followed the driver toward a metal door in the center of the building’s front wall.

The building was longer than a football field but had no windows. He recalled the warehouses he’d seen from the plane. He looked over his shoulder in the direction they’d just come from, but there was nothing more than compacted sand forming a road that disappeared over a dune on the horizon. He recalled that it led to the lake a couple of miles away.

“This way please, Sir.” The driver held the thick metal door open for him.

Before he entered the building, he caught the sand-worn sign hanging above the door: “MDH Trading, Intl.”

An import-export company in the middle of the desert?

The foyer was small—a fifteen-foot-square room with a speckled vinyl tile floor and white walls that were empty except for a single framed poster that read “Customers first! MDH Trading.” A black leather sofa sat underneath the poster, and the glass coffee table held several issues of
Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies
and
World Trade Magazine
. In the upper left corner of the room, a security camera pointed at them.

“Professor Lightman, welcome! We’ve been expecting you.” The voice came from behind a Plexiglas window to his right.

“Uh, where am I?” He turned toward a reception window that was almost two inches thick. Another metal door was located beside the window. The receptionist was another solidly built American, dressed, like his driver, in a dark suit.

“Is Dr. Allen Wolfe here? I’m supposed to be meeting him.”

“Please, come in.”

The receptionist reached under the desk. Ethan heard a buzzing noise, followed by the click of the metal door unlocking. His driver opened the door for him. As odd as the situation seemed, he took comfort in the politeness these men conveyed. He passed through the door, which, like the front door, appeared to be made of metal and was an inch or so thicker than a normal office door. Then the environment fell into place—the security, the solid men with short hair, their formality and efficient mannerisms. Everything struck him as military.

The door closed behind them with an authoritative clunk. The reception guard emerged from a door to the right and stood before him.

“If you don’t mind, please raise your hands to the side. This is a secure facility.”

He did as he was told—not that he had a choice—and received a pat down more intimate than any airport security search he’d ever experienced. He flinched when the man removed his wallet and cell phone from his pocket.

“These will be kept in a safe until your departure, Professor.”

“My wallet too?”

“Everything will become clear soon.”

Feeling naked without his cell phone and ID, he followed the driver down a corridor that could have belonged to any office building in the US. They
passed closed doors on both sides of the hall. When they reached a door on the left that was slightly ajar, he hesitated, assuming that this was where he was going to meet Wolfe, but his driver closed the door instead of opening it.

Before his view was cut off, he glimpsed an unusual sight inside. The room behind the door was filled with electronics. He saw over a dozen flat-panel monitors on desks and along the walls. Three men sat in chairs studying them. The sight that surprised him was not the high-tech monitoring suite, but the way one of the men was dressed. Two of them wore black pants and white shirts, but the third was a priest.

After passing a single elevator door on their right, they stopped at the end of the corridor. The driver knocked on the final door. Another security camera watched him from the corner above. The sound of an electronic lock clicking open echoed in the bare hall. The driver opened the door but didn’t go inside. He motioned for Ethan to enter and then closed the door behind him.

He now stood in a large office decorated in stark contrast to the plain surroundings of the rest of the building. The floor underneath his feet was a soft blue-gray carpet. The furniture was all of a sleek Scandinavian design, something one might expect to see in the office of an architect in a high-rise office tower, not in a warehouse in the middle of the desert.

Allen Wolfe, wearing a purple tie and matching pocket square, looked up from the papers he was reading behind the glass desk.

“Professor Ethan Lightman, welcome to the Monastery!”

Wolfe rose from his chair and extended a hand. Ethan shook it, hoping his palm wasn’t too sweaty. His chest felt tight, as if a belt had been cinched around his rib cage and was allowing him to inflate his lungs only halfway.

“You must be full of questions.” Wolfe’s voice was deep and soothing.

“I don’t even know where to begin.”

He settled into a shiny black leather chair with polished stainless steel armrests opposite the desk. The chair looked fashionable but was uncomfortable, causing him to sit upright on the hard straps.

He inhaled as deeply as the imaginary belt around his torso would allow and jumped in. “Is the NAF a front for the CIA?”

He wasn’t sure why he chose to suddenly articulate the suspicion he’d suppressed in the recesses of his mind since the night in Sterling Memorial Library three days ago.

“You got me.” Wolfe smiled and spread his hands. “You put the pieces together after finding the book on MKULTRA?”

How does he know about the book?

Then the realization hit him:
Muscleman
. He’d dropped the book when being chased by the huge man.

“James Axelrod,” Wolfe said, reading the expression on his face, “my head of security. But don’t call him James when you run into him here. Goes by Axe.” He chuckled. “I asked him to keep an eye on things in New Haven. We were making quite an investment in you and Elijah. I apologize if he gave you a start. He has a penchant for the dramatic at times.”

Ethan thought about Axe’s presence in his lecture a few weeks back. He felt only somewhat relieved at the knowledge that this guy had been sent to spy on him rather than accost him.

“So you and Elijah worked on MKULTRA as grad students.”

“We were just a few years younger than you are now. We made a good team. He was the idealistic one, I the practical one. The government offered us a chance to take our research into the human psyche in directions that had never been explored.” Wolfe pointed at him with a manicured finger. “Much in the way you’ve been doing with the Logos.”

“I just don’t see Elijah working for the CIA.”

“It was an exciting time to be a psychiatrist.”

“But the experiments—brainwashing, sensory deprivation, hallucinogenic drugs—were conducted on unsuspecting subjects without their consent.”

“Times were different. We were in the midst of the Cold War. The Soviets were doing the same research we were.”

“But the research never panned out.”

“Our methods were too crude. The drugs unpredictable. We could extract information from our subjects, but we never could control them. The Manchurian Candidate was a myth.”

“But you also rendered some catatonic, others had permanent amnesia, and at least one killed himself because he thought he was going insane.” Elijah had been one of the most ethical and caring men he’d known.
How could he have been involved in such research?

“As I said, our methods were crude then.” Wolfe shrugged. “But we learned from our mistakes.”

“Who killed Elijah?” The question came out before he had a chance to filter it. Since learning of his mentor’s early involvement with the CIA, and in light of the way he’d been acting about the NAF and of the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, Ethan had all but confirmed for himself that his friend’s murder was related to the recent strange events.

An expression of genuine remorse passed over Wolfe’s face as he shook his head. “Elijah was one of my oldest friends. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but we had that bond you never lose from pulling all-nighters with your best friend in school.” He opened a manila folder on his desk and flipped through the pages. “The police reports indicate that it was a robbery attempt that the murderer tried to disguise in an amateurish way by putting him into the Logos. New Haven can be a tough place.” He paused as his voice cracked. “I just wish I had sent Axe there to protect him that night.” Wolfe cast his steel gray eyes to the floor by his desk.

He’s lost a friend, just as I have
, Ethan realized, but a seed of doubt remained. He glanced around the office. Despite the expensive modern furniture, the walls were blank other than one that held a bookcase filled with various psychology texts.