The Tree of Knowledge

by Daniel G. Miller

  Turner, Ying, and Albert hurled themselves through the back door. The field in back issued a vacant, haunting silence in contrast to the cluttered chaos inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but peering through the darkness, Albert could see the fence surrounding the backyard with a small gate at its center and, beyond, silhouettes of hay bales. The stars and moon shone bright across the lawn. Albert wished they’d taken the night off to give them cover. The group tiptoed through the straw grass toward the gate, each crunch of earth under their feet louder than the one before.

  As Ying opened the latch on the gate door, the creak of old wood and stiff hinges screeched through the crisp night air.

  “Freeze,” shouted a deep male voice.

  Before Albert could freeze, Turner shoved him through the swinging gate and down to the ground.

  “Albert, listen to me,” Turner whispered as they lay, faces buried into the ground. “Take Ying out to the range and hide behind the hay bales. Brick, Gabe, and I will grab the van from the maintenance shed and pick you up there in a minute.”

  “What about Salazar and Ariel?”

  “Trust me. They can take care of themselves.”

  Albert couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Professor. I’m not leaving y—”

  “Puddles, now is not the time for debate.”

  Albert lifted his face off the cool, prickly blades of grass, grabbed Ying, and the two of them sprinted down toward the hay bales. He shuffled behind her but then looked back and stopped. He could smell a faint whiff of tear gas as it billowed from the farmhouse. It was dark, but Albert could make out Turner backed up against the fence, both hands clutching his walking stick parallel to the ground.

  The nose of an FBI agent’s gun poked out through the gate door.

  Albert braced himself to shout a warning to Turner, but before the words could leave his mouth, Turner snapped his stick against the butt of the gun, launching both the gun and FBI agent attached to it forward toward the ground. The one opening that the professor needed. He grabbed the gun from the agent’s hand and used it to hurl him against the fence. The agent’s black-uniform-clad body sent wood planks scattering to the ground.

  “Freeze,” said another agent from behind Turner. “Put your hands—”

  In one seamless motion, Turner jammed the butt of the assault weapon into the agent’s helmet and then swiveled back to the other man he had just tossed against the fence.

  The aging academic then looked up and noticed Albert staring at him from the field.

  Turner took a deep breath, adjusted his sport coat, and brushed his hair back into position. With the same leisurely composure that he adopted to offer lemonade to guests at his home, Turner said through clenched teeth, “Dr. Puddles, I would greatly appreciate it if you would adjourn to the firing range. I will meet you out there after I speak with our friend from the FBI.”

  Chapter 2

  “What the hell is taking so long?” snapped Eva to Agent Beel.

  The two of them were stashed inside a black Suburban while the rest of the FBI team assaulted the farmhouse. Eva was not used to being a bystander, but the bureau had demanded that she be excluded from any tactical operations as a condition of her involvement. A condition that she was rapidly regretting. The stale air in the air-conditioning-less SUV stifled Eva, and the presence of Beel and his aura of Axe body spray exacerbated her claustrophobia.

  “Would you relax,” said Beel, loudly slurping on a Diet Coke, his fifth of the day. “It’s a big farm, so it’s going to take them a little while to track everybody down. Trust me, within five minutes, they’re going to be coming out either the door on the left or the door on the right in handcuffs.” He pointed to the east and west side of the main house, each of which was guarded by an agent.

  At that moment, two agents exited the east side of the house with a short, stocky man in a cowboy hat and a tall blonde woman in tow. Eva couldn’t help but notice that the man in the cowboy hat seemed to possess a knowing smirk.

  “See, I told you they’d be fine.” Beel ran his palm against his over-gelled hair in self-satisfaction.

  Eva suspected Beel was right, but she couldn’t ignore the nausea that had crept over her since they arrived at the Travis Farm. She folded her arms across her stomach and stiffened in the black leather seat. It’s too easy. Turner’s too smart to go out this way.

  “I don’t like it. It feels like the riddle of the two guards,” she mumbled to herself.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just talking to myself.” The last thing Eva wanted was more conversation with Beel.

  “What’s the riddle of the two guards?” Beel asked, taking another slurp from his can.

  “Nothing. It’s just a logic puzzle I liked when I was a kid.” Eva looked out the tinted passenger window into the darkness, attempting to signal that the conversation was over.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Can we focus on the operation?”

  “Oh, c’mon. We’re just sitting here with our thumbs up our asses. We might as well entertain ourselves.” Beel crushed the pop can, tossed it on the floor in the back seat, and pivoted toward Eva. He wasn’t going away.

  Eva sighed and spat out the riddle. “You are trapped in a room with two doors—not unlike how I’m trapped in this car with you right now—each being protected by a guard.”

  “OK.”

  “One door leads to certain death, the other to freedom. You don’t know which door, but the guards do. Here’s the catch . . . one of the guards always tells the truth, and the other guard always lies, but you don’t know who is who. So, the riddle is, how do you figure out which door to choose?”

  The agent leaned back in his seat and ran his palm across his slick hair in silence.

  If I had known that all I had to do to shut him up was tell him a riddle, I could’ve saved myself a lot of pain, thought Eva.

  “I got it,” exclaimed Beel. “I would ask the guard if he was telling the truth.”

  Eva frowned while keeping her eyes trained on the east and west exits. Agents scrambled around the yard, but there was no sign of Turner’s army. “No. That’s not even close. If you ask the liar if he is telling the truth, he will say yes. If you ask the truth teller if he is telling the truth, he will say yes as well, so you’re screwed.”

  For the next five minutes, Beel alternated between offering up incorrect suggestions and sitting in silence. Eva continued to stare straight ahead, waiting for a sign of Turner and his gang. Finally, after the windows in the Suburban had almost fogged completely, Beel cracked.

  “Alright, just tell me,” said the exasperated agent.

  The woman in black smirked, continuing to stare ahead. “That’s it? That’s the best you’ve got? I hope you FBI guys put more effort into chasing criminals than you do solving riddles.” She steadied herself, trying to recover her patience like a mother with two unruly toddlers. “The answer is you ask one of the guards, ‘What door would the other guard tell me leads to freedom?’ and then go out the opposite door.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Beel.

  I’m not surprised, thought Eva. In her most condescending tone, she continued, “OK, let’s say door A is the door that leads to freedom. If you ask the truth teller what door the liar would tell you to go out, the truth teller will tell you door B. Likewise, if you ask the liar what door the truth teller would tell you to go out, the liar will tell you door B as well. Therefore, regardless of who you’re talking to, you get the same incorrect answer, so you do the opposite and go out door A.”

  As the agent pondered the riddle, his walkie-talkie crackled. A panicked voice reverberated through the speaker.

  “Agent down. I repeat, agent down. Suspects have exited the rear of the west barn.”

  “Shit,” yelled Beel, slamming the walkie-talkie into the cup hol
der and jamming the accelerator of the black SUV. Eva said nothing, clenching her jaw in an iron vise.

  The SUV roared over the curb and onto the soggy green landscape, spraying mud and grass in its wake. Beel and Eva sped across the farm toward the back of the building. As they reached the rear firing range, the two pursuers peered through the moonlight to see what looked like a giant chessboard made of hay bales.

  Immediately, Eva’s mind jumped back to the marathon chess sessions at Turner’s house in Princeton. Turner. He’s been training them. Through the darkness, Eva could see the crouched figures of Puddles, clad in T-shirt and shorts, and his assistant scrambling along the hay bales. Seeing Puddles with his tiny partner forced unpleasant memories back into Eva’s mind. A current of anger danced up through her core. The fibers of her turtleneck sweater constricted around her throat.

  “Stop here,” said the woman in black. “I’m in charge now. Follow my lead.”

  Eva emerged from the vehicle. She calmly cocked her stainless-steel pistol and trained her eyes on Puddles and his partner.

  Training is over.

  Chapter 3

  Albert and Ying peered over the hay wall at the far side of the field. The pair could see the dilapidated maintenance shed in the distance. Just to the right of it was a large black SUV. The fog lights of the vehicle poured over the field of hay bales like fog on a pond. At first, Albert and Ying had thought that the cavalry had arrived, a hope extinguished as Eva Fix and her partner exited the car.

  “Oh my God, she’s got a gun,” screeched Ying breathlessly, sliding back behind the safety of the hay wall.

  Albert continued to look on as the woman in black and her partner cocked their respective pistols and surveyed the empty field like sportsmen preparing for a hunt. The glint of moonlight on one of the pistols pierced the night air.

  This is it. She’s really going to kill us, thought Albert.

  He glanced over at Ying and saw that she was shaking. Looking at the terror in her eyes, Albert felt a burst of emotion more powerful than any he had ever felt before. It was as if some ancient evolutionary reaction had just catalyzed in his body and was telling him just one thing: “Protect this woman.”

  “Ying, listen to me,” said Albert without thinking. He slid over to the girl, gently grabbed her by the hands. His eyes locked with hers. Her palms were soaked in sweat, and she clutched him like she was never letting go. “We can do this.” He pointed to the maintenance shed on the other side of the firing range. “See that shed?”

  Ying nodded and wiped her eyes, smearing the tears across her cheeks.

  “There’s a van in there that’s going to get us out of here. All we need to do is get across this field and we’re home free.” He hoped that Ying couldn’t see his finger trembling.

  “But they’ve got guns.”

  “I know, but we’ve been training for this. Brick had a gun, and he hasn’t hit us for over a week,” said Albert, offering his best reassuring smile.

  “They’re not shooting paintballs!”

  “I know that, but you have to trust me. I’ve envisioned this scenario a thousand times. You’ve seen my room. I’ve got a game tree that looks like wallpaper. I’ve seen every scenario in my mind. There’s nothing that Eva’s going to think of that Turner hasn’t prepared us for . . . Now, do you trust me?”

  Ying searched Albert’s eyes. “I trust you.”

  “Good. Now here’s the plan . . .”

  ***

  On the other side of the firing range, Eva was quietly stalking her prey with Beel trailing. Her black boots gauged the soft ground with every step. She observed Albert and his assistant, and envisioned a game tree in her mind. What’s the goal of the game? To stop Puddles and his assistant. My first move? To approach him with weapon visible. His response? To run? To attack? She shook her head. Lack of information. This is just like that security guard. I don’t have enough information. Does he have a weapon? What are his exit options?

  Before Eva could finish her thought, Albert hurdled over the hay bale and sprinted directly at her. What is he doing? This is suicide. She raised her pistol and put him in her sight. He looked stronger and broader than the last time she saw him. As she prepared to take a shot, she observed that Puddles seemed to be jogging with an awkward stride. Was he hurt? Had the FBI already hit him?

  A shot cracked throughout the firing range, followed by a metallic clang and the spice of gunpowder. Eva ducked and spun to see smoke billowing from Beel’s gun.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she screamed.

  “What? I had the shot.”

  Eva’s eyes darted back to the firing range, expecting to see the prostrate body of Albert on the field. To her shock, he kept coming. How is that possible? Did Beel miss? Something isn’t right.

  As Puddles crossed the field, moonlight struck his outline, and she knew what was wrong.

  “He’s carrying a police shield,” shouted Eva.

  As she looked at Beel to make sure he’d heard, another shot boomed through the night silence, and the agent screamed as his neck burst, spraying dark liquid. “I’m hit,” moaned Beel, falling to the ground.

  Eva pivoted back to Albert, who was three-quarters of the way across the field but now sprinting at a diagonal toward an abandoned shed. He doesn’t have a gun? Where did that shot come from? The woman in black couldn’t believe what she saw next. Hanging upside down from the academic’s shoulders by her legs was his assistant. She had a gun in hand and a mischievous smile on her face. The assistant raised her gun with furious determination and aimed directly at her.

  Eva dove behind a hay bale as projectiles slammed the hay bale. Beel groaned, and Eva moved to examine him. His face and neck were covered with a dark, thick liquid, and Eva placed her hand on his neck to find the wound, hoping to stanch the bleeding. As her fingers touched the liquid, Eva noticed that the blood felt wrong. It was cool, and the consistency was off. There didn’t seem to be an entry wound. Then the familiar smell hit her.

  “This isn’t blood! This is paint. Get up, you moron.”

  Eight cylinders roared in the distance, and Eva looked up to see Puddles’s assistant diving into a minivan. Albert had not yet entered the van, and the woman in black raised her gun for one last shot, bringing his moppy brown hair into her sight. As if he could feel her, Albert turned and looked back, face fully in the pistol’s sight . . .

  And then he was gone.

  Eva stared, frozen, as the freckle-faced man dove into the van and his square-jawed associate methodically leaned out the window and with four distinct shots crippled every tire on her SUV.

  “What the fuck? Why didn’t you take the shot?” yelled Beel, now recovered from his imaginary injury.

  The woman in black simply stood and stared, mouth agape, uttering not a word.

  Chapter 4

  The eyes of General Isaac Moloch squinted before the bright lights of the Pentagon press room. The general flashed an eerie smile and surveyed the abnormally full room of overweight, underslept reporters through snakelike eyes. Deep lines sprang out across his face like river tributaries. A patchwork wall of medals dangled from his deep-green uniform. Normally, he loathed his interactions with the media, the way they typed on their keyboards, the way they smelled, like their bodies had never known fresh air.

  But today was different. Today, he was officially resigning as the general in charge of the United States Central Command, the military unit with responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as all of Central Asia, and all the press had come out to watch him ride off into the sunset.

  Typical of the media. Host a press briefing on progress on the war or casualties, and you get a half-empty room, but a four-star general retires, and everyone’s here, thought Moloch.

  A mousy-looking reporter raised his hand. With one look, the general sensed that this man could be int
imidated. He had seen men like this in war. They were usually the first to die.

  “Yes, you,” said Moloch in his trademark dry rasp.

  The reporter rose from his seat and faced the general.

  “General, earlier this week, to the great dismay of many of the powers that be in Washington, you announced your retirement as head of the United States Central Command, ending a career of over thirty-five years in the military. My first question is: When you look back over your career, who were the men or women that inspired you the most?”

  Good. A softball.

  The general’s tongue slithered across his thread-thin lips as he considered the question. “The first man that comes to mind would be General Douglas MacArthur. One of the things that has been completely overlooked in our history is what General MacArthur did in Japan after the war. When the US defeated Japan, the country was in chaos. No one knew who was in charge, and nothing could get done. Fortunately, President Roosevelt had the foresight to understand that the only way that something was going to get done was for us to put our democratic instincts on hold and let General MacArthur take charge. As you may recall, Roosevelt gave MacArthur total authority over Japan in 1948, and by 1951, the Japanese had a new constitution and a democratic government. And land that had been previously held by the emperor and his cronies was distributed to the folks who farmed it. The army had been completely disbanded, and the constitution committed the country to peace. In addition, a whole industrial machinery was created that paved the way for Japan to become an economic power. None of that could have been done without MacArthur having full control over the Japanese government.”

  When the general spoke, he emanated a polished authority that gave the listener the sense that what they were hearing was an indisputable fact, regardless of whether that was the case. His colleagues used to whisper behind his back that the general could say that the sky was purple while you were staring at it, and you’d start to question yourself.