Deadly Disclosures
Page 22
Dinah briefly massaged her reeling head and then tried to gather her composure. “Firstly,” she began, “I need to warn you, in absolute confidence, that Whitfield’s contact at IAFSI, Damon Mason, has been found murdered.”
Sandra had brought in a tray with coffee and overheard Dinah’s words. She shot a worried look at her husband, who was shaking his head. “What happened?” Andy asked.
“Without going into gory details, suffice it to say that we believed he was killed for talking to us,” Dinah said, taking a sip of coffee and almost scalding her tongue. “There seems to be a pattern emerging, and I need to remind you that you may also be in danger.”
Andy nodded. “Yes, we’ll keep that in mind. Doesn’t it seem strange to you, though, that the murder victims are all on the other side?”
“What do you mean?” Dinah asked, trying the coffee again.
Andy glanced at his wife. “Special Agent Harris, the scientific community in this country isn’t a large one. We all know each other and what each of us stands for. One of the problems with such a tight-knit community is that there is an expectation that all will follow the status quo. There is no room for tangential thinking. There is certainly no room for challenging or questioning the senior scientific authorities. I am a prime example of what happens when one does challenge the established thinking.”
“Go on,” said Dinah, intrigued.
“I have two science degrees,” said Andy, “both from prestigious universities. I have studied and published more than many of my contemporaries. But I am consistently and publicly written off as an uneducated quack, trying to line my own pockets. I will never be published in any of the major scientific journals because I don’t subscribe to their way of thinking. I will never be offered tenure or a doctorate at the mainstream universities because I have challenged and rejected the accepted scientific theories. I will be publicly exiled pretty much for the rest of my life. I will always be an outcast within the community I serve, because I think differently than everyone else. And it’s not just me. I have people in my organization who are qualified in quantum physics, astronomy, geology, molecular biology, chemistry — all the major disciplines of science, and the same thing has happened to them.”
“Okay, but why?” Dinah asked, frowning. “Isn’t science supposed to be a field where you question and challenge? Isn’t that how scientific discoveries are made?”
“You’re right,” agreed Andy. “But the scientific community has some powerful alliances with some hard-line groups, such as IAFSI. In return for their support, IAFSI requires that any scientific thinking that does not agree with them be shut down. IAFSI is motivated by their own beliefs, and they want everyone else to have those beliefs, and they use the scientific community to help achieve that goal.”
“I don’t mean to sound rude,” said Dinah. “But that sounds like religion to me.”
Andy nodded. “Again, you’re exactly right. It is a religion, a fundamentalist religion, much like the one I’m accused of being associated with. If you watch the evening news, you will know how strident they are in trying to wipe out any reference to Christianity within schools, courthouses, and the government.”
“Humor me a little,” said Dinah. “Why would they care?”
“Because they don’t like being challenged or questioned,” replied Andy. “Christianity is their biggest threat, and they hate it, particularly in the educational environment. You know, as a Christian I am often labeled as a fundamentalist, but neither I nor my organization have ever advocated that creationism exclusively be taught at schools or universities. Yet that is exactly their aim. They do not want young people to question what they are taught, and the best way to achieve this is to ensure that young people never hear an alternative viewpoint. My organization would be happy if both viewpoints were taught as explanations for the origins of the universe, because it would be pretty clear which explanation is most reasonable and rational.”
“Okay,” said Dinah. “So you’re telling me that IAFSI and the scientific community are powerfully aligned, and that they are actively trying to destroy or alienate any streams of thought that differ from theirs. But does this extend to murder? That’s a pretty big leap.”
Andy shrugged. “I don’t know. All I’m saying is that the people associated with that alliance have a pretty bad mortality rate right at the moment.”
“Does IAFSI have any influence politically?” asked Dinah.
“They try to keep it all pretty secretive,” replied Andy, rubbing the stubble on his cheeks. “But over the years I’ve gathered that IAFSI does fund certain politicians. I’ve heard rumors that they contribute to election campaigns and that sort of thing, on the understanding that the particular politician will support their views.”
Dinah nodded. “And what I want to know is, what does it have to do with Thomas Whitfield? What happened after you met with him in Colorado?”
“He started following me,” said Andy with a wry smile. “By that I mean, every school shooting tragedy that happened after Colorado where I would be speaking at a local church, we’d meet. It was the only time we could have a frank one-on-one discussion.”
“What did you talk about?”
Mount Morris, Michigan, 2000
— Thomas’s story
This time, the student responsible for killing a fellow student was just six, the youngest in United States history. He had arrived at class with his father’s gun and killed a six-year-old girl. The township was shocked. What do you do with a six-year-old boy who has just become a murderer?
Halfway through Andy’s sermon at the Baptist church, he noticed a familiar figure, who had tried to hide behind a hat and sunglasses, but who was still clearly Thomas Whitfield.
Afterward, they drove separately to a 24-hour diner on the freeway, where the coffee was bad and the food greasy enough to instigate an immediate heart attack, but where no one from their respective organizations would find them.
“Well, Thomas, I must admit this is a surprise,” said Andy, after they’d been served a pot of terrible coffee. He had been doing a lot of traveling of late, however, and was glad for the caffeine.
“My family is having a bad time,” admitted Thomas. “You remember that my niece was killed in Columbine? It’s been nearly a year and we’re all still trying to come to terms with it. It’s been pretty hard.” Thomas didn’t mention that his brother Billy had told him he often drove around the city looking for a good place to commit suicide. Or that his sister-in-law, Emma, was drinking pretty heavily now. Or even that he himself, who could once explain everything according to the unvarying laws of nature, was badly shaken by an event nobody could explain.
“My guess would be that you don’t have any hope,” said Andy softly.
Thomas considered this. “You know, you might be right.”
Andy weighed his words carefully. “The reason I say this is not because I want to preach. My family and I have had some terrible things happen to us too — the sickness and death of loved ones that didn’t make any sense at the time. The only reason I think we could accept it is because we have hope in God.”
“I guess I understand what you’re saying,” said Thomas. “But doesn’t that validate my argument that people use religion as a crutch?”
“You know what? Just humor me for a moment,” suggested Andy. “In your honest opinion, do you think I’m stupid?”
“No, I certainly don’t! I’ve debated you enough to realize that you are far from stupid,” said Thomas with a rueful grin.
“Do you think I would put blind faith in God, severely affecting my reputation and career and earning capacity, if such faith contradicted what I’ve learned as a scientist?”
Thomas was silent for several beats. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s what I’ve never understood.”
“I can tell you the answer, I wouldn’t,” said Andy as the food arrived. He bit into a pastry. “I have a brain very much like yours — it’s rati
onal and logical. I don’t have a lot of understanding of feelings and emotions. What I found while I was at college was not that the Bible contradicted science, or the other way around. In fact, what I found was that the Bible confirmed science. In fact, I tried to find holes in the Bible, and I couldn’t.”
Although Thomas had several answers on the tip of his tongue, he waved at Andy to continue.
“Here’s why: we look at the same evidence. You use fossils and rock layers in your evolution arguments; I use the very same fossils and rock layers in my creation arguments. The problem lies not with the evidence, but with the human interpretation of that evidence. You approach each fossil with the desire to fit it into evolution somehow, and I approach each fossil on the understanding that it confirms biblical creation and the Flood of Noah’s day.”
“Okay, so how does the Bible directly confirm science as we understand it today?” challenged Thomas.
“Okay, let’s look at one of the first verses in the Bible itself,” suggested Andy. “In Genesis, we read that God created every living thing according its kind. We would rightly interpret that to mean that the dog kind, or family, will always produce dogs, though there could be different species or varieties within the dog kind. The same would be true of the cat family, elephant family, and human kind. The evolutionary concept is that all these different kinds evolved over millions of years, from one kind into another, until human beings came into existence. Supposedly, natural selection and mutations and other mechanisms are the driving forces behind all this. If I look at this from using observational science and apply what we know about genetics, then the evolutionary concept has a great number of problems.
“In genetics, mutations only operate on the information that is present and never lead to brand-new information that would be required for molecules-to-man evolution. Most mutations are detrimental anyway. Let me just ask one more question: is there a single example where brand-new information has been added into DNA?”
Thomas knew instantly that he had no answer but tried valiantly to think of a way to negate the argument. Eventually, he shook his head.
“Back to your original question,” continued Andy. “I am not filled with despair when bad things happen, because I believe in God and His book, the Bible, which says that He has ultimate control of this world. I believe that our life span of 70 or so years pales in comparison to the eternity that follows. I believe that what we choose to believe determines what happens to us after we die. I don’t believe that we are all here by way of a random accident, or that there is no purpose to our lives, or that there is nothing after death.”
“Listen, I appreciate what you’re saying,” said Thomas. “But I’m not the sort of person who believes in God just because you tell me I ought to.”
Andy broke into a wide grin. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” he said. “Let me leave you with one more thought then — something you and others who’ve chosen to believe the idea of evolution have often said to me. It’s that religion is not compatible with science, and an example of this is that the Church vehemently believed that the earth was flat for many years. It was science that finally corrected that myth, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, absolutely,” agreed Thomas.
“Actually, the Bible is the source of truth. The Book of Isaiah in the Bible, written hundreds of years before Christ, mentions the circle of the earth. Not the flatness or squareness of the earth, but the circle of the earth. The Bible was, and always has been, totally correct. It’s the people who get things wrong. So that’s one more example of science corresponding with the Bible.”
They sat in silence for several moments while Thomas absorbed this. He had a thousand questions and arguments and challenges for what was being said, but he couldn’t help but realize that he’d never actually given any credence to what Andy had been saying over the past several years. Yet he couldn’t deny the plausibility and intelligence of the man’s case. This, of course, gave rise to a disconcerting possibility.
What if Thomas was wrong?
Chapter 16
When Dinah arrived rather sheepishly but sober to work the following morning, Ferguson seemed to be over — at least temporarily — his anger with her. He beckoned her with an excited expression on his face.
Dinah had been expecting a lecture at the very least but was relieved to avoid the difficult conversation. As she followed her partner into one of the small conference rooms, she glanced over at the glass enclosure where George Hanlon had his office. He was standing behind his desk, staring at her. Dinah suddenly realized with a shudder that he knew about the previous day’s incident.
Zach was sitting in front of a laptop almost bouncing with excitement. “We’ve done it,” he crowed. “Well, in all honesty, I didn’t do anything. The dudes at Homeland Security did it — but we finally have Thomas Whitfield’s hard drive!”
Dinah and Ferguson crowded around the screen. Dinah momentarily forgot about her career issues. “What happened?” she asked. “I mean what was so difficult about retrieving it?”
Zach was booting up the programs and while they waited, he explained that the hard drive had been erased with a program far more sophisticated than was commercially available. Most commercial deletion programs were low level, getting rid of data that the common person could no longer find. They were used when computers were resold or reused or generally cleaned up. Other computer programs existed that could recover that data relatively easily. However, organizations such as the military, certain sensitive government departments, NASA, the FBI, and the CIA used far more powerful data deletion programs, wherein the data could be recovered only by programs developed by the same organizations, who didn’t allow the general public or corporations access to such programs. His lab, Zach continued, routinely used their recovery programs in investigations. In this particular case, the deletion program was so powerful that the only organization with technology advanced enough to recover the data was the Department of Homeland Security. This didn’t bode well for the investigation, Zach warned. Somebody with access to such a deletion program was likely to be either extremely powerful or influential or both.
“Computer systems,” mused Dinah. “Ken MacIntyre would probably have access to some reasonably high-level computer systems given his connections in government.”
They sat in silence, digesting this fact, while the computer finally whirred to life. Zach had carefully gone through the computer’s hard drive to discover what had upset Whitfield’s abductors so much. Whatever the perpetrator had attempted to delete didn’t amount to much — one PowerPoint presentation and a Word document that looked like the associated speech.
“That’s it?” Dinah wasn’t impressed. “This is what they were trying to hide?”
Zach shrugged as the PowerPoint presentation appeared on the screen. Silently, the three read. It was apparent that Thomas had intended to present it at the meeting before Congress at which he’d failed to appear. Suddenly, the reason for his death became bizarrely clear. The secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the most famous natural history museums in the world, no longer believed in evolution. He had become a Christian and now wanted to introduce creationism into the museum as an alternative explanation to the origins of man. He would no longer be available for debate where he would espouse an evolutionary viewpoint. He questioned the accepted dating methods of fossils and natural phenomenon. His vision for the museum included equal presentation of evolution and creationism. It was time, he argued, to disallow the religion of atheism to dominate scientific thought.
Dinah had to reread the presentation to ensure she understood it. Was it possible Thomas Whitfield was murdered because he’d converted from an atheist to a Christian?
“Okay, let me try to understand this,” Ferguson said, thinking aloud. “Whitfield had the most recent part of his career sponsored by IAFSI, which is one of the more prominent atheist organizations in the country. He was their poster boy in public debate. How up
set would IAFSI be to learn of his conversion to Christianity?”
“Upset enough to kill him?” queried Dinah. “It’s such an extreme measure.”
“What about the board at the Smithsonian?” continued Ferguson. “The museum might be neutral, but I’ve been there and I can guarantee you that they do not acknowledge creationism as a valid explanation for the origins of man. So presumably the board would also be pro-evolution?”
“It would certainly account for the high levels of tension and conflict between Whitfield and the board,” agreed Dinah. “Again, would they take the extreme measure of killing him?”
“Maybe they gave him some warning,” theorized Ferguson. “He refused to back down on the Christianity thing.”
“So what do you think about Lara Southall and Damon Mason? Why were they killed?”
“Southall is easy — she was killed because she knew about the conflict between the board and Whitfield, and she was about to tell us why. I would think Damon Mason was killed for the same reason — because he would potentially talk to us.” Ferguson nodded as he spoke, as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
“So there is a connection between the board and IAFSI, but we still really don’t know what it is.”
“Right. More correctly, we don’t know who that connection is.”
They sat in silence, both thinking hard.
“So the crux of the matter is that Whitfield converted to Christianity,” said Dinah at length. “They took extraordinary lengths to hide it — by wiping the hard drive and killing Southall and Mason.”
“Now we’ve worked out perhaps why the three of them were killed,” added Ferguson. “Now we have to work out who.”
Zach whistled long and low. “Good luck to ya, dudes.”