Mind Virus

by Charles Kowalski

  “Are you an American citizen?” No change in his vitals for that either, nor for the Eastern European equivalents.

  “Can you hear me? Testing? One, two, three? Four, five? Six, seven?” Then, with a little extra emphasis: “Eight, eight?”

  No variation. That diminished the likelihood that he was a white supremacist. The number 88, if letters were substituted for the numerals, became “HH”—a code for “Heil Hitler.”

  “All right, let’s try some names. Do you know A.J. Muste? George Fox? Gene Hoffman?” These were control questions. All those names were peace philosophers, whom Fox thought it highly unlikely that he had ever heard of.

  “Venera Goridze?”

  No change in the readout. No flicker of recognition on his face.

  “Do you realize that if you answer our questions, the prosecutors will be much less likely to ask for the death penalty?”

  That finally got to him. The readout showed a slight increase in his vital signs. A normal fear reaction to the threat of death? Or excitement at the prospect of martyrdom?

  And they had also established that he understood English. They would have no further need of Malika’s services. It was just as well; the smell of her perfume in that confined space had been a little overpowering.

  “You know, it must be awfully boring for you, cooped up in a cell all that time,” Fox continued. “I’ve put together a little video for you. I’m curious to see how you’ll like it.”

  He put in a DVD that he had made, a montage of various clips garnered from the Internet. It began with innocuous natural scenes—flowers, mountains, waterfalls—with a background of soothing classical music.

  Then came the scenes meant to show his reaction at times of emotional arousal. A battle scene from a movie, with loud explosions and bursts of gunfire. There was a slight rise in his vitals—the startle reflex—but he soon reverted to baseline, and stayed there as the video switched back to the control images.

  A clip of a shapely blonde model sliding a gossamer silk robe off her shoulders to reveal her lingerie, and then reaching behind her back to unfasten her brassiere. Fox kept his eyes fixed on the readout, ignoring the stern look he got from Kato and the blush on Malika’s face.

  Such an image would usually provoke an involuntary response in any red-blooded young male, but Harpo showed no more reaction than at baseline. Clearly, he was very well trained.

  The control images again, this time alternating with others meant to provoke an emotional response. A sermon by the Reverend Hill. A cross being set alight by white-robed Klansmen. A muezzin intoning the call to prayer from a minaret. The second plane crashing into the World Trade Center. A speech by Osama bin Laden. A speech by President Obama, announcing the death of Osama bin Laden.

  Then came the part that Fox had wanted extra protection for: a clip from a back-alley YouTube video making a mockery of the prophet Mohammed. For this one, he stepped out of Harpo’s reach, anticipating that he might jump up and attack even if he had to drag the entire polygraph apparatus behind him.

  Harpo showed no inclination to move. The readout showed no reaction. If he was indeed a fanatical Muslim, he had a level of mental discipline worthy of a Zen master.

  Fox stepped out of Harpo’s field of view again. “All right, we’re done. You can turn it off now,” he told the technician, while gesturing that he should keep it going. “Very interesting, don’t you think? These results indicate…” He put in a dramatic pause, then looked at Harpo and enunciated ominously: “N-S-R.”

  Harpo’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and he let out a long breath. It was barely visible when you looked at him, but it showed up on the readout. A well-concealed sigh of relief.

  Fox’s suspicions were confirmed. “NSR” meant “No Significant Response,” but there was no way Harpo could know that unless he had studied polygraphy.

  Even so, the results were remarkable. The most common technique for beating a lie detector involved focusing on some frightening or exciting image after every question, to cause an artificial jump in the vital signs. The goal was to bring up the baseline, creating so many false positives that the polygrapher would have trouble distinguishing them from significant responses. Harpo had done the opposite, bringing everything down to a level where hardly any reaction was perceptible. How much mental training had he had to undergo in order to do that?

  When Harpo had been disconnected and returned to his cell, Fox went back to the conference room to watch the video, together with Kato and Adler. The first time through, Fox kept his eyes on the readout. Neither the Klansmen nor President Obama did anything for Harpo; he appeared to feel no particular animosity or affinity toward either. The most noticeable reactions came with the images of the Reverend Hill’s sermon, the muezzin, and the Twin Towers.

  They played the video again, this time concentrating on his face, looking for microexpressions—facial reactions that may be as brief as one twenty-fifth of a second, but are almost impossible to suppress. Harpo was very good at keeping his face impassive, but not perfect. He could have won big at poker but was not quite ready to stand guard at Buckingham Palace. With the Reverend Hill’s sermon, his upper lip curled in a slight but unmistakable expression of scorn.

  Fox thought he noticed a very slight microexpression at one point, during the clip mocking Mohammed. It was so unexpected that he thought he must be imagining it, and backed up the video a couple of times to make sure.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Kato said in a voice that sounded as mystified as he felt. “That looks like Action Unit 12A, neutralized.”

  “Which means?” asked Adler.

  “A trace contraction, quickly suppressed, of the zygomaticus major and risorius.”

  “In English, please?”

  “She said,” Fox translated, “that he was hiding a smile.”

  5

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  SUNDAY, MARCH 29

  PALM SUNDAY

  The Reverend Hill divided his time between Arlington Bible Church, “ABC,” a megachurch in an affluent Virginia suburb where he served as associate pastor, and the church he had recently founded in a run-down neighborhood in Anacostia, playfully named “Hill City Church.” Fox took the Metro to Anacostia, climbed a staircase masquerading shamelessly as an escalator, and followed the directions from the church’s website.

  The faces Fox saw around him were of many hues, but his own was the palest among them. This was unusual. His grandfather had come back from the Pacific Theater with a Filipina bride, and Fox carried enough of her legacy in his face that whichever country he went to, people tended to assume that he was from one of its neighbors. This trait had often come in handy in countries where white visitors were the favorite targets of thieves and con artists, where the prevailing rule was “fair hair, fair skin, fair game.” Even so, he felt conspicuous, and the suspicious stares he drew made him feel that he was somehow trespassing.

  The church grounds were surrounded by a brick wall, decorated with an elaborate graffiti mural of Biblical scenes. Fox joined the line at the gate, which extended a good way down the block. He wondered whether the line was always this long, but then saw the reason: two ushers at the gate, in double-breasted suits that were bulky enough, even on their already burly frames, to suggest bulletproof vests underneath. They greeted every arrival with a polite smile and a “Good morning, brother! Good morning, sister!” as they subjected each person’s bag to a thorough inspection.

  At how many other churches across America, Fox wondered, would this be happening today? And how far would it escalate? How long would it be before the Department of Homeland Security established a second TSA—a Temple Security Authority, tasked with defending every place of worship in the country?

  If Harpo had been hoping to diminish either the size or the enthusiasm of the Reverend Hill’s following, his plan had backfired dramatically. Spacious as it was, the church was filled to capacity with men in
suits, women in elegant dresses, and young people in blue jeans and white hoodies silkscreened with wings, a halo, and the words “Hill’s Angels.”

  Now that, Fox thought, was just a bit much.

  After the service, Fox found the pastor’s office, which took up most of the top floor of the parish hall. The dark wooden walls were covered with banners bearing Scripture verses, and a line of portraits: Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, and the Reverend Hill. Evidently, he had already decided on his place in the pantheon.

  The Reverend Hill rose from behind the massive desk. “Professor Fox. Thanks for coming.” He had shed his voluminous black robe embellished with strips of Ghanaian kente cloth, and was now wearing a gray suit, wine-colored shirt, and gold cross.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, Reverend.” Fox shook his hand. “You must be very busy, and I appreciate your making the time for me.” He looked around. “This is quite impressive, I must say.”

  “Well, the Lord has looked with favor on the works of my hands. Please, have a seat.”

  “Thank you.” Fox sat down in one of the leather chairs facing the desk. “You’re also associate pastor at Arlington Bible Church, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That sounds like a pretty big job in itself. And yet, you seem to be spending most of your energy these days on this church.”

  He nodded and smiled. “ABC would be a thriving church with or without me. But this one…” he spread his hands, “…is my baby.”

  “Hence the name, Hill City Church?”

  “You know what the Bible says. ‘A city on a hill cannot be hid.’ ”

  “ ‘Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel,’ ” Fox finished for him. “Can I ask what inspired you to choose this neighborhood for your baby to grow up in?”

  “I was born not too far from here, in Washington Highlands. If you’ve seen the church’s website, you probably know my story. I hung with a bad crowd, took some wrong turns, landed in jail. And I probably would have stayed there if my uncle, who was a pastor, hadn’t kept coming to visit me. Thanks to him, I ended up going to college instead. Ever since then, I’ve had a dream of starting a church like this one back in my old neighborhood, hoping that I’ll be able to do for some of the young people here what my uncle did for me.”

  “From the looks of things, you’ve been succeeding.”

  He nodded. “Our outreach programs…”

  “Like Hill’s Angels?”

  The Reverend smiled. “Yeah, like that. During the day, they run our after-school programs, make visits and deliveries to shut-ins, that sort of thing. And at night, they go in groups on night patrols. The police tell me that crime in Ward 8 has gone down almost twenty percent since we started that program. You know, Jesus told us to visit the sick and the prisoners, all of that, but I’ve always felt that He’ll be even happier if we can keep people out of the hospital or prison in the first place. Don’t you think so?”

  Fox nodded agreement.

  “Reverend, I’m sure the FBI has been over this with you already, but can you think of any reason why you might have been targeted? Has anyone been making threats against you lately?”

  He replied with a chuckle and a shake of the head. “I could show you a whole drawer full of fan mail. Of course, there are always the skinhead types that have nothing better to do than try to keep the black man down. When I talk about how being born again is the only way to salvation, I hear from the Jews and Catholics. When I talk about marriage and the family, I hear from gay rights groups. But you know what Jesus said, right? ‘Blessed are you, when men shall revile and persecute you, and utter all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.’ By that standard, I must be the blessedest brother this side of the river!”

  They shared a laugh.

  “I was interested in your choice of texts this morning,” Fox said. The Reverend Hill had preached on the story of Joseph at the end of Genesis, and how his abduction into slavery at the hands of his brothers was a necessary first step on the road to saving both Egypt and Israel from a devastating famine. “Do you feel like Joseph? What good do you see coming out of this evil?”

  He spread his hands. “Well, we can’t answer that question while we’re still prisoners, can we? All we can do is to have faith that it will, someday, somehow.”

  Fox nodded, rose, and extended his hand. “Thank you for your time, Reverend. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

  “Likewise.”

  Fox’s hand was on the doorknob when Hill called after him, “Professor Fox. Any chance that I can see him? The suspect.”

  Fox paused. “Why?”

  The look Hill gave him over the rims of his glasses said, Do you really have to ask?

  “I’ll see what I can arrange,” he promised.

  ...

  Thom’s family in Missouri had expressed the hope for a small, quiet funeral, but that proved to be no more possible than bringing him back to life. The ubiquitous “God Hates Fags” brigade, showing detective skills worthy of the FBI, had found out the time and place and shown up at the cemetery, with signs ranging from the wearyingly predictable No tears for queers to a devil gleefully proclaiming Thom is in “H.”

  Anticipating them, atheist and gay rights demonstrators had also flocked to the site from as near as St. Louis and as far as Boston. The police erected a barrier between the protestors and counter-protestors, but the tension was palpable, and not just across the line. Relations between the atheist and LGBT camps were not always cordial, and angry words flew even between some on the same side, such as when a couple bearing the signs Homophobia is a sin and Jesus had two dads too passed too close to an atheist whose No God, no hate sign was somewhat belied by his neighbor’s Euthanize Christians.

  Watching the drama unfold on CNN, Fox hoped that Thom could at least be laid to rest without bloodshed. But that hope, too, was dashed when the bearer of a sign reading Whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone sustained a scalp wound as someone on the other side took him up on it.

  Fox’s phone rang. He pressed the mute button on the TV remote and picked it up.

  “Robin Fox.”

  “Mr. Fox, this is Agent Kato. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday. Is this a good time?”

  Not remotely. “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Mr. Adler just called and said he had some important news. Can you come in?”

  Fox looked back at the screen, and switched it off before the chaos got any worse. “I’m on my way.”

  He arrived at the Hoover Building to find Kato alone in the conference room. “Evening, Mr. Fox. Sorry to interrupt your day off.”

  “That’s all right. You saved me from having to watch Thom DiDio’s funeral become the flashpoint for a second Civil War.” He collapsed into a chair. “And let the record show that I was working today. This morning, I went to Anacostia to interview the Reverend Hill.”

  “Really. You actually caught him there? Not fleecing his flock in Arlington, or jetting off to some fundraiser in Beverly Hills?”

  “I’m not sure that’s quite fair. Yes, it’s clear that he loves the spotlight, and seems a little more fond of the sound of his own name than you would expect from a spiritual leader. But still, he’s serious about helping his community…”

  “Oh, please. He’s branded himself as the miracle man of the mean streets—‘I found Jesus in jail, and look at me now’—but if he’s so serious about this one-man Harlem Renaissance he’s planning for Anacostia, then why isn’t he living there instead of a McMansion in McLean?”

  “I take it this touches a nerve with you.”

  “I’ve seen his type before. He’s no different from the one who conned my mother out of money that should have gone for my brother’s and my education, and did nothing for her in return except keep her terrified that my father was going to hell. In a way, I suppose I should be grateful to him. Thanks to him, I decided that I’d rather live my life one hundred percent natural, no a
dded fear, no added guilt. And everything I’ve seen since has only confirmed me in that. If there really is a God up there, sitting back and allowing people to do all the things they do to one another, then I’d want to see him indicted as an accessory on about a trillion counts.”

  A whistle came from the door. “And I thought the docket was crowded now.”

  Fox turned toward Adler. “Evening, John.”

  “Am I interrupting a theological discussion?”

  “Not exactly. Agent Kato was just debriefing me about my visit to the Reverend Hill’s church this morning.”

  “What did you find out?”

  Fox gave him a brief recap of the interview. “He said he wants to see Harpo.”

  “What for?”

  “Presumably, he wants to offer forgiveness.”

  “First things first,” said Adler. “We need to figure out who the hell Harpo is and where he’s from, and then start building a case against him. Once he’s been tried and sentenced, then there’ll be plenty of time for pastoral visits. Plenty of time.”

  “And I hope,” said Fox, “you’re going to tell us we’ve just come a big step closer to doing that.”

  “Would you believe we have? I’ve just gotten word from the Georgian Intelligence Service.” He beat a drum roll on the table. “They’ve caught Venera Goridze.”

  Kato and Fox both applauded, and Adler acknowledged it with a theatrical bow. They exchanged high fives all around.

  “They got her to admit that…”

  “Got her to admit?” Fox suddenly remembered hearing that the Republic of Georgia, despite many vehement denials, was suspected of hosting a “black site,” a secret detention and torture facility for the CIA.

  “Do you want to hear this, or don’t you? She freely chose to reveal, if you like, that she had stolen samples of Zagorsk from her old workplace. And last year, she made a little hop across the border to Turkey to make a sale, to someone by the name of Rashid Renclaw. The description she gave matched Harpo on nearly all points: age, height, hair color, eye color. The only difference was that she said he was handsome. But hey, maybe to a sixty-year-old Georgian woman, anyone looks good. And she said he spoke English with a British accent.”