The Tree of Knowledge

by Daniel G. Miller

  Seeing a potential opening, a reporter from the Times followed up. “That’s interesting. And how has MacArthur’s experience affected your career?”

  “It’s quite simple,” said the general with quiet condescension. “In every military situation I’ve been placed in, whether it was reconstruction in Haiti or the war in Iraq, I’ve made sure that we had full control over all the machinery of power, not just the military. Because if you’re an occupying force, it’s not enough to just scare people with guns; you’ve got to show them that you can make a real difference in their lives. You’ve got to build schools, pave roads, give people clean drinking water, keep them safe. That’s what MacArthur did in Japan, and that’s what I’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  The reporter scoffed. “Of course, MacArthur was derisively called ‘Gaijin Shogun’ or ‘foreign military ruler’ by the Japanese, and you have been called ‘King Isaac’ by the Iraqis, haven’t you?”

  The general’s face reddened, and a vein began to creep out of his large, weathered forehead. He leaned forward over the lectern, and his body appeared to gain several inches in height. He extended his long, bony, pale pointer finger.

  “I agree with you that they have used those names. But I disagree that it was derisive.” His voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “I think if you spoke with any Iraqi or Japanese person from those particular eras, they would be thankful for the work that General MacArthur and I did.”

  Silence permeated the room, and the enterprising reporter quietly returned to his seat.

  Over the next half hour, the assembled media continued to offer up inane backward-looking questions. “What was your most memorable moment? What was your most difficult campaign?”

  When the general thought he could stand it no more, he turned to his left and pointed to a newsman who had written favorably about him in the past and snarled, “Last question,” hoping to close on a positive note.

  The reporter obliged. “General Moloch, your career has been a seemingly endless string of awards and honors. Upon graduating from West Point military academy you became an army ranger, the army’s most elite unit, and were a distinguished honor graduate. After graduating with a PhD, you commanded missions in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, along the way earning the Bronze Star, the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and the NATO Meritorious Service Medal, not to mention becoming a four-star general. Your ‘surge’ in Iraq is widely credited with winning the war—”

  “Do you have a question or are you just reading my resume?” interrupted the general with a wry smile.

  “My question to you is this . . . what’s next? There are rumors that you may be a candidate for president.”

  The general paused and grinned, his yellow teeth flashing coyly.

  “No, I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be much of a politician. But, I’ll tell you what . . . there’s a lady running for governor out there in California whom I’m awfully excited about. I might just join her team.”

  And with that, the press conference was adjourned.

  Chapter 5

  As the hollow desert sun dropped beneath the taupe horizon line, Albert’s mind began to clear. The raw minimalism and crisp air of the desert gave him peace. He listened to the quiet crunch of sand and rock beneath his feet as he sipped a burnt motel coffee, nibbled on his Clif Bar, and meditated on the past few days.

  Turner’s army had driven nonstop for forty-eight hours after their run-in with the feds and had finally taken refuge at the aptly named Desert Motel outside of Barstow, California. During that time, Turner and Brick had come to the unpleasant conclusion that training time was over and that the team had no other choice but to go on the offensive. They needed to see what exactly Eva was planning, and they hoped to clear their names.

  Albert doubted that this was the right choice.

  He wasn’t naïve about the danger inherent in his situation. He could still visualize the cold end of the FBI agent’s pistol pointed at his head and the shrill pangs of bullets glancing off the shield as he and Ying had escaped. Rather, it was the absence of reason in it all that shook him.

  I know Eva. There must be a way to reason with her.

  Albert watched flustered families packing up their station wagons and SUVs for the next leg of their road trips and thought back to his encounter with her in the parking lot back home. It seemed so long ago. He remembered looking into those gunmetal eyes. They weren’t the eyes of a madwoman. They were the eyes of a woman of logic, a woman with whom one could reason.

  If I could talk to her . . . one more time.

  “Mmmmm . . . that coffee smells goooood. Whatchya doin’?” said Ying as she shuffled up next to Albert. Her oversized glasses were sliding down her nose, and her floral tank top fluttered in the wind. The long road trip had produced a fierce sunburn on one of her arms.

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about Eva.”

  “Oh boy.” She rolled her eyes. “What is it with you and that girl?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just . . . well . . . I just can’t accept that she’d be involved in something like this. There has to be a reason.” As he said this, Albert paced back and forth, kicking pebbles from the Desert Motel’s landscaping.

  Ying paced right with him. “Yeah, there is a reason. You heard Ariel. She’s caught up in this ‘Society’ and wants power.”

  Albert shook his head and continued to kick the pebbles at his feet. “I know what Ariel said, but that just doesn’t fit. I know Eva. She’s not like that. She’s more rational, more thoughtful than that. There has to be something more to it.” Albert paused and once again looked out at the horizon bathed in dull orange light. “I don’t know . . . maybe it has something to do with her mother?”

  Ying slapped Albert’s chest with the back of her sunburnt hand, nearly spilling his coffee all over him. “Albert, I don’t understand why you keep defending her. I mean, wake up. In the less than a month, she’s framed you and shot at you. What more do you need? Her mother may be a good woman, but Eva isn’t.”

  Albert snorted and stopped his pacing. “Oh really? What about you? You seem to think that Cristina Culebra is some type of saint, when everything else points to her involvement with whatever it is Eva’s doing.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Ying, now reversing course and pacing away from Albert.

  Albert stammered, his face reddening. “You really believe that Eva is engaged in a manhunt across the country, and her very smart, very powerful mother knows absolutely nothing about it? C’mon.”

  Ying wagged her head back and forth in defiance and began to blurt out a rebuttal, but stopped herself. She pursed her lips and walked toward him. She stared into Albert’s eyes.

  “You’re right. Maybe I’m wrong about Cristina Culebra. But you have to understand, when my parents were growing up in Singapore, they had nothing. My grandparents were killed in the Japanese occupation, and my parents had no family. They weren’t educated and didn’t have any money. The country was poor, and there were no opportunities for people like them. Then a man named Lee Kuan Yew came to power and everything changed for them. His government provided free housing and adult education programs. My dad was able to get a scholarship. And my mom got a loan to start her own clothing business. Lee cleaned up the government, so they didn’t have to pay bribes. None of that would have been possible without him. It was because of Lee Kuan Yew that I was able to come to America.”

  Ying resumed kicking the dirt. The light was fading, and Albert could barely see her face, but her voice was clear. “When I look at Cristina Culebra, I think I see the same thing that my parents saw in Lee Kuan Yew. Or that you see in Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. Someone who can really make the world better. When I see how rich this country is, and then I walk around the city and see all of the homeless people, or drive on roads that feel like they’re going to break at the sea
ms, I’m embarrassed.”

  Albert was struck by the intensity of her feeling. He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was drowned out by Brick Travis’s harsh bark.

  “Puddles! Stop wandering around kicking pebbles with your girlfriend and get in here. We need to go over the game plan,” he shouted from inside motel room eight.

  Albert turned red and said, “She’s not my girlf—” but Brick had already slammed the door and headed inside.

  Chapter 6

  Eva stood at attention next to her mother and marveled at the army she had built. Over seventy-five thousand people gathered at the Rose Bowl to watch the latest graduating class of the Red Army march in perfect order along the sun-soaked field. Row after row of straight-backed men and women goose-stepped onto the field, snaking their way to the podium where their leader would finally address them as full members in the Red Army. The silver buttons and bayonets shimmered in the sunlight, and the thud of soldiers’ boots shook the ground around them. Eva recalled the first class of the Red Army that she had trained. Just ten men graduated that year as she struggled to teach the most basic principles of the Tree of Knowledge. In many ways, today was her graduation day as well, for her mother’s army was now complete. Over fifty thousand men and women stood ready to serve the woman they simply called “Cristina.”

  The master of ceremonies took the podium. Clad head to toe in a uniform that brilliantly covered the extra pounds that crept along his beltline in old age, he addressed the breathless crowd and stoic cadets. His eyes shone with pride as he spoke of the virtues of their leader while Cristina and Eva looked on from behind.

  “You’ve done well, Evalita, my girl,” said Cristina Culebra as she watched the troops file in front of her. She wore a rich-charcoal suit with a simple red scarf around her neck. It was Cristina’s tradition to wear red at her biggest events. It reminded Eva of how sharks perked up when blood was in the water.

  “Thank you, Mother, but we still haven’t located Turner’s army.”

  Cristina smiled smugly and placed her delicate yet powerful hand on Eva’s shoulder. “Ahhhh, but we have. Those mice have been flushed from their holes, and now all we must do is set the cheese in the trap.” As she said this, her other hand closed into a crushing fist.

  Eva scowled and pulled the hair off her forehead. “Wait, if we’re setting a trap, why did you send me across the country to find them?”

  Cristina shook her head and began to fuss over Eva’s outfit, a mother’s old habit. She picked lint off the shoulder of Eva’s jacket, straightened her daughter’s hair. “Oh, Evalita, please. Sometimes you think like a child. The only people on the planet that can stop us now are Angus Turner and his associates.” She paused to let her anger dissipate. “As long as he is free, we are in danger. He has associates that know of the Tree of Knowledge, so as long as they are free, we are in danger. But now that you’ve sent them on the run, the enemy is in broad daylight. We know who his associates are and can neutralize the entire threat.”

  Eva dropped the stiff pose that she had adopted for the crowd and turned to the great woman. Despite her best efforts, her voice took on the tone of a child’s plea rather than an impassioned argument. “But some of those people aren’t even involved in this. They’re just acquaintances of Turner. They don’t know anything about the bigger picture.”

  Again, Cristina turned away from the crowd and looked her daughter in the eyes. The spark in her irises had grown to fire, and her lips turned deep red as she spoke. “Eva, you don’t understand. Anyone who has even a glimpse of the Tree is a threat to us. It was not Jesus who spread the gospel; it was his disciples. Until we have Turner and his disciples, our success cannot be certain.”

  Eva opened her mouth to speak but was drowned out by the explosion of crowd noise as the master of ceremonies announced the candidate’s name.

  Chapter 7

  The inside of Ying’s motel room, which had been turned into the headquarters of Turner’s army, looked more like the playroom of a schizophrenic than a well-coordinated war room. Every inch of the laminate-paneled wall was covered with an elaborate game tree that mapped out all the potential avenues for retrieving the book. Over the past day, Turner, Albert, and Ying had methodically developed the tree with one objective: find the book. Should the journal be obtained openly or surreptitiously? Should it be obtained through force or persuasion? With each move, how would the opponent react? The team even briefly considered having Albert meet with Eva and use Ariel’s seduction skills to get the information from her. However, after considering his performance with Sarah at the singles bar, that idea was jettisoned in favor of a more auspicious approach.

  Brick Travis was stewing. “I don’t like it. In fact, I hate it.” The flattopped military man clad in a green ARMY T-shirt and jeans stood staring at the game tree laid out on the wall while the rest of the gang perched on Ying’s bed munching on vending machine candy and soda. The motel’s vending machine failed to offer nutrition bars, so Albert was reluctantly feasting on something called “Mike and Ike.”

  “What are your issues, Sergeant?” replied Turner from the one armchair that the Desert Motel provided.

  Brick clenched his fists and puffed his chest out as if he could overpower the group’s will through sheer physical strength. “What are my issues? Where do I begin? First, your plan delivers the three of you right into the hands of the enemy. Of course, I don’t mind giving Puddles up, but you two are a different story. Second, you’ve got a seventy-year-old man and a hundred-pound woman breaking into a secured R&D division, while the guy in the unit that has actual combat experience is on the sidelines.”

  Gabe grabbed a slice of day-old pizza and chimed in with half a slice in his mouth and the rest of it on his T-shirt. “He does have a point.”

  Turner grabbed his walking stick and approached the far wall of their hotel room. A series of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven papers combined to form a game tree from floor to ceiling. He sighed, pointed, and tapped a section of the tree with his stick.

  “I don’t know if I’m more disappointed in Sergeant Travis’s lack of faith in me or that Gabe is endeavoring to eat that day-old pizza. Good Lord, man, have some self-respect.”

  Gabe’s face flushed as he quietly gulped down the crust and finally noticed the pizza stain on his T-shirt.

  “Sergeant, let me tell you a brief story. When I was a young man, I was quite good at chess. Most of the time I played, I disposed of my opponents with ease. However, like any young man, I was impulsive and prone to mistakes. It happened rarely, but when I did make a mistake and found myself in a lost position, I would become furious and quickly concede the game in frustration.” The professor smiled. “A time or two, chess pieces may have been sent flying as a result.”

  Ying and Albert smiled at each other. Turner’s stories calmed them.

  “One day, I played a younger chess player named William Wessel. He was a mousy-looking British boy, but he was a tremendous player, and eventually, I found myself once again in a lost position. Knowing that he had me at a profound disadvantage, I forfeited the game. After the game, Wessel took me aside. And in his peculiarly quiet voice, he said to me, ‘Why did you forfeit?’ I laughed and said, ‘Because I was in a lost position. You had me beat.’ He just smiled, shook his head, and said something I’ll never forget.”

  Turner paused for effect, and then crouched forward and spoke just above a whisper as though he were divulging a secret. “He said, ‘Lost position is the best position to be in,’ and then walked away.”

  He paced the room and continued, “I went home that night and tossed and turned, trying to understand what he meant. The next day I saw him at the tournament and asked, ‘William, what did you mean when you said “lost position is the best position to be in”?’ He said, ‘If you know that you are in a losing position, then the pressure is gone. All that remains is the game in its purest form. You’
re expected to lose. You should lose, so you never have to play with the fear of losing. You play to win. You have nothing to protect, so you can play your best chess, whereas your opponent has everything to protect. That is what makes a swindle—the art of winning from a losing position—possible.’”

  Gabe and Brick leaned forward in their chairs and stared at Turner, searching to find the professor’s meaning.

  “Sergeant, we are in a ‘losing position’ right now. The police are after us. We are short on friends, resources, and time, and our enemy knows we are coming. If we attempt to infiltrate the compound by force, they will be ready, and they will capture us or kill us. In life as in chess, the way to win is a ‘swindle.’”

  “Hmmmph.” Brick growled his assent and made his way to the diagram, signaling Turner to return to his seat. Turner, knowing Brick’s distaste for losing, obliged.

  “Thank you for those inspirational words, Professor. OK, let’s review one more time. Both the book and everything we want to know about Cristina Culebra are at Fix headquarters. Our friend Gabe here has been kind enough to duplicate a top-clearance employee key card, which will give us access to the building at night.”

  Gabe sarcastically bowed from his wheelchair.

  “All you have to do is swipe and you’re in the building. Puddles, even you can’t screw this up. Now that I think about it, do I need to go over swiping with you?”

  Albert rocked his head back in mock laughter. “Har, har, har.”

  Brick pinned a blown-up image of the building and a rudimentary layout of Fix headquarters to the wall on top of the game tree. Albert marveled at the sheer footprint of the building. The entrance, made of polished steel, formed a trapezoid from which sprang massive glass corridors divided into three sections, like the body of a moth or other winged insect. The building’s design affected a unique sleek beauty, but Albert couldn’t help but sense a certain isolation and emptiness to the complex. As though a giant alien spaceship had set down years ago undisturbed.