Mind Virus

by Charles Kowalski

  For all his exhaustion, sleep had been slow in coming. When it finally did, it was of the shallow kind, full of troubling dreams. He dreamed he was wandering through a huge building—possibly a museum that had once been a monastery—where galleries, corridors and colonnades led one into another in an endless labyrinthine progression. Whichever room he entered, he could hear TJ’s voice coming indistinctly from the next one over. Hundreds of people were milling around, blithely admiring the works of art. He wanted to warn them, to shout that they were all in danger, but no sound would come from his mouth. He knew that if he could only catch TJ, the danger would be averted, but although he could always hear the voice from just out of sight, he could never find him. And as he ran from room to room, he always felt a dark presence following behind him.

  When he woke, he felt scarcely more refreshed than when he had stepped off the plane.

  He went down for breakfast to see three already at the table: Emily, Miriam, and a woman in an abaya and purple headscarf, whom he had only seen in photographs.

  “Morning, Robin,” said a beaming Emily. “I’d like you to meet Leila Halabi.”

  ...

  The variety of breads, cheeses, dips, and salads at the breakfast buffet was enticing, but Fox’s appetite diminished rapidly as he listened to Leila’s account of her time in prison, while Enya played surreally in the background. His stomach progressively tightened as she told of sleep deprivation, hours of interrogation, endless demands to give the names of her nearest and dearest, and constant fear of what would happen to them if she did—in other words, the same routine he knew very well from the opposing side.

  It was a relief when her tale wound down and he could shift the subject slightly. “How on earth did Shin Bet come to see you as a person of interest, anyway?”

  “For trafficking in a controlled substance, Mr. Fox—one called stories. We’ve always believed that for every story heard, an act of violence is prevented. That’s why we make the Israelis nervous. If their monopoly on stories were ever broken—if the market were suddenly flooded with alternatives to the generic ‘all Palestinians are potential terrorists, all Israelis are brutal oppressors’—then we might actually start seeing one another as human beings, and of course, that would be a mortal threat to state security. They’re so terrified of stories that they built a seven-hundred-kilometer wall to keep them out.”

  Fox nodded. “You know something, Leila?” he said. “I’m starting to think that one of you is worth a hundred U.N. resolutions.”

  After breakfast, as they made their way back through the lobby, the young Russian woman at the reception desk called out, “Mr. Fox?”

  Fox turned. “Yes?”

  “Someone left this for you.” She hoisted a department-store shopping bag onto the counter.

  Fox turned to Miriam. “Who knew we were staying here?”

  “Only Rabbi Sternberg.”

  He looked back at the receptionist. “Who left this?”

  “He didn’t leave his name.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  She shrugged, as though recalling such details were not part of her job description. “Tall. Dark hair.”

  “Eyes?”

  “Couldn’t tell. He was wearing sunglasses.”

  Fox peered into the shopping bag. On the bottom, resting in the upturned lid of a cookie tin, was a Bible.

  He cautiously picked it up and gave the sticky faux leather cover a gentle flex. It bent normally, with no sign that anything was concealed inside.

  Unconsciously holding his breath, he carefully opened it to the page marked by a ribbon. One of the verses was highlighted. Luke 13:32: Go and tell that fox that I will keep on healing people and casting out demons today and tomorrow, and on the third day, I will reach my goal.

  With trembling hands, he closed the Bible and put it back in the bag.

  “I think we’ll be checking out today,” he said.

  ...

  They hurried upstairs to pack, Fox asking himself over and over how their adversaries had managed to track them down. Perhaps Shira would be able to give him a clue, if he could make any headway with her today.

  He paused in front of his door. “Would either of you happen to have some mints?” he asked. “I have to do an interrogation today, and I wasn’t expecting so much garlic in the hummus.”

  Emily and Miriam exchanged a puzzled glance. “Garlic?”

  “I didn’t taste it at the time either, but it left a wicked aftertaste, don’t you find?”

  “I’ll see if I have some,” Emily said, with one more questioning look at him.

  Fox opened the door and went straight into the bathroom to wash off the residue the book cover had left on his fingers. When he finished and straightened up, he felt a slight vertigo. He waited for it to pass, but the bathroom spun faster around him, until he had to grip the sink to steady himself. He gasped for breath and his heart pumped overtime, as though he had stepped through a magical door and suddenly found himself on a high Himalayan peak. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and his face was as red as blood.

  “Emily!”

  As soon as her name was out of his mouth, he collapsed to the tiled floor and lay there, convulsing.

  ...

  “The Portsmouth Poisoner.” That was the name the media had given him. It was fortunate that he had conducted his experiments there rather than in his little hometown of Pease Pottage, even though that would certainly have been more alliterative.

  The last fifteen years, however, he had spent in neither of those places, but in the Winchester prison. He held no grudge against the Government for it. In fact, he had treasured the long, solitary hours of reading about his favorite subjects: medicine, chemistry, and toxicology. He would have been perfectly content there, except for the constant barrage of interruptions that Her Majesty’s Prison Service called, with no apparent irony, “Purposeful Activity.” This usually meant either hours of mindless drudgery, or tedious interviews with psychologists engaged in a futile attempt to analyze his actions. He explained to them patiently: “Looking for behavioral patterns and motivation can be useful, but only on the condition that you are cleverer than the subject of your experiment. I’m sure you can probably say that about a rat or a guinea pig, but there aren’t many human beings in this world who can say it about me.”

  Even worse were the religious types, smug and condescending as if their visits were somehow doing the inmates a favor, who droned on endlessly about repentance and redemption. His standard response to such as those was, “Do you visit laboratories as well as prisons? Preach repentance to scientists, for the sin of experimenting on lesser animals?” He rarely saw the same visitor more than once.

  The only moderately interesting one had been an earnest young lady from Oxford, who came with a sack full of books about atheism and freethought. “We know that prisons are among the most religious places on earth,” she had said, “and we understand how people with a different worldview can feel isolated. And we believe wholeheartedly that faith in any kind of God is not required in order to become a good and productive member of society.”

  She was different, certainly, but he had been unable to resist having a little fun with her too. “If you define God as the supreme intellect, with the power to decide when and in what manner any living thing will die, how can you be sure He doesn’t exist? How can you be sure that you aren’t in His presence right now?”

  As he expected, he never saw her again either. But to his surprise, a new visitor came in her place soon afterwards: a man closer to his own age. Unlike the proselytizers, he hadn’t come with a sales pitch prepared. All he did was listen attentively. And unlike the psychologists, his reply showed that he actually understood.

  “You and I both know,” the man had said, “there are only two sorts of people in the world. Those who have a contribution to make to civilization, and those who don’t. Those who advance the evolution of the species, and those who hold it back.
There are billions of people on this planet who are infected with a virus that renders them incapable of rational thought. The only chance they have of contributing anything to the store of human knowledge is as subjects for your experiments.”

  Until that meeting, part of him had been dreading the end of his prison term and the beginning of what was sure to be a long and laborious search for a job that would both pay the rent and give him access to the chemicals he needed. But now, all of a sudden, this stranger was offering him the opportunity to travel first-class around the world, and experiment to his heart’s content.

  He applied for a transfer to Grendon, which the Government, again with a straight face, called a “therapeutic community.” He said all the right things to the neophyte psychologist working his case, and within a year, he was out and ready for his mission.

  First to America, to deal with a traitor to the cause. He had never imagined trying to seduce another man, but with his good looks and affable manner, he had generally been able to make anyone believe anything—a trait indispensable for finding unwitting subjects for his experiments.

  And now to Israel. “Make sure my agent carries out her mission without any interference,” had been his instructions. But he had watched helplessly at the Tel Aviv airport as some unknown American threw a spanner into the works. He had dreaded having to report his failure, but the reply had contained only a new mission: “Follow him, and at the first opportunity, remove him.”

  At first, he was afraid he had failed in that mission too. Once the American was apprehended by the Israeli police, he lost the trail. But there had been two young women with him, and it was a simple matter to follow them to his target.

  All it required was patience. And fifteen years in prison had given him nothing if not that.

  ...

  “Robin, are you awake?”

  Fox stirred. “Emily?”

  “It’s me. Miriam.”

  “I’m awake.”

  He opened his eyes. He was lying in a hospital bed, with an oxygen tube under his nose and an IV drip in his arm.

  “Where am I? Where’s Emily?”

  “You’re in Ichilov Hospital. She’s gone to the embassy with Leila. She wanted to be the one to stay here with you, but I vetoed that. I’m the one to get things done around here. She doesn’t speak Hebrew or meet the chutzpah requirement. They’ll be back as soon as their business is taken care of.”

  Fox tried to sit up, but Miriam’s hand met his chest and pushed him back into his pillow. “Relax,” she ordered in a tone of voice that made him want to do precisely the opposite. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “What happened?”

  “The doctors said it was cyanide poisoning.”

  He struggled to recall his last few minutes of consciousness. “Did anyone else touch the Bible?”

  She shook her head. “No. We’re all OK.”

  “Where is it?”

  “The police took it, of course, for forensic analysis.”

  “I need to have a look at it.”

  “Are you crazy? The book that almost killed you?”

  “We were able to stop this attack because of a clue in the Bible in Thom DiDio’s hotel room. If they’re following the same pattern, the Bible they left for me might contain the only clue that will help us stop the next one.”

  “Did you not hear what I said? It’s in evidence now. No one is touching it except the Israeli CSI’s.”

  “Someone needs to go through it and look for any verse that’s been marked in any way. Not the highlighted one, something more subtle, like a pencil mark under a verse number. If we waited until the forensics techs had time to spare for it, it would take days, and we don’t have days. If there’s anything in there, I need to find it today. I only get one more crack at the subject, and I need any little bit of leverage I can get before I go in.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere.”

  “What?” Again, he tried to sit up, and met the opposing force of Miriam’s hand.

  “They said you need to be kept under observation for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “We don’t have twenty-four hours! You saw what was in the Bible. ‘Today and tomorrow, and on the third day, I will reach my goal.’ I need to get out of here and into that booth.”

  Miriam rolled her eyes and exhaled sharply through her nostrils. “Any other miracles you’d like me to perform? I should maybe drop by the Prime Minister’s office while I’m at it? See if I can broker a two-state solution before lunch?”

  “Just look at it as a test to see whether you meet the chutzpah requirement.”

  ...

  Fox lay in his bed, watching the clock in an increasing state of panic. Every tick meant one second closer to the next attack, and one more second’s head start that their adversaries had over them.

  A male nurse came in, his white uniform tightly buttoned unlike the doctor’s coat at the Kfar Saba hospital. His hair was cropped short enough to make Fox wonder whether he had recently been discharged from the military medical corps.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Fox?” he asked. His accent sounded British, perhaps from somewhere in South Central England.

  “Better. Still light-headed.”

  “Headache?”

  “A little.” Fox paused. “Listen. I need to be discharged today. It’s a matter of national—of international…”

  “You’ll have to take that up with the attending physician,” the nurse interrupted. “I’m just here to give you your medicine.” He began preparing a hypodermic syringe.

  “Is that an Estuary accent I hear?”

  The nurse gave him an approving look. “Good ear.”

  “When did you—what do you call it—do aliyah?”

  The nurse paused. “Oh, a while ago.”

  He hadn’t corrected Fox’s “do” to “make.” And the answer he gave was vague enough to make Fox wonder whether he really understood that he was being asked when he had naturalized in Israel.

  As he took hold of the IV bag and prepared to inject, Fox said: “Before you do that, just one more question?”

  “Yes?”

  “What did you use on Thom DiDio?”

  The putative nurse froze, then ran for the doorway—just as Emily and Leila were coming in. It was on the tip of Fox’s tongue to shout, “Stop him!” But he still had the loaded syringe in his hand, and even a slight scratch might be enough for whatever poison was inside to do its work. Fox’s protective instincts won out, and he shouted instead: “Look out!”

  The two of them backed away from the doorway as the poisoner ran out and disappeared down the corridor.

  ...

  Emily and Leila were allowed to stay, at Fox’s insistence, but the hospital placed a guard outside the door. By that time, however, all it accomplished was to give a frustrated Miriam yet another opportunity to ply her skills at arguing with Israeli security.

  “You owe me dinner when we get back to Washington,” she told Fox once she was inside. “I’m thinking Circa at Foggy Bottom. With a bottle of wine. Make that two bottles. I don’t like to drink alone.”

  “I take it you passed the test.”

  “The report from forensics says that the cover of the Bible was coated with a solution of cyanide in dimethyl sulfoxide. A mixture that lab techs apparently call ‘liquid death.’ The DMSO, they say, explains how it could be absorbed through your skin so quickly, and also the garlicky taste in your mouth.”

  “Any markings in the pages?”

  Miriam heaved a theatrical sigh. “Oh, that was the fun part. It took me forever to persuade them to let me have a look, and when I finally did, it had to be with a technician watching and trying to chat me up. I’m sorry if I didn’t spend as much time or look as closely as you might have. But I found three verses that looked as if they might have been marked. Or it might just have been stray marks on the paper, I couldn’t tell. Anyway, here goes.” She took out a piece of paper and read from it. “Proverbs 21:9. �
�Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.’”

  The other three exchanged glances of mild amusement. “I don’t think so,” Fox said. “That sounds like either a stray mark or an indication that our boy needs a good marriage counselor.”

  Miriam read the next one. “Luke 12:49. ‘I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already burning.’”

  There was silence as they processed this. “What’s the last one?” Fox asked.

  “Romans 6:4. ‘Therefore we are buried with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.’”

  “Baptism,” Fox echoed pensively.

  “The site of Jesus’ baptism is in the West Bank,” Miriam said.

  “Or the East, if you ask the Jordanians,” Fox countered. “And neither of them feels like a likely target. You would want a high concentration of people, preferably indoors. TJ talked about ‘the main reservoirs.’”

  “Mr. Fox?” Leila said. “Look at the rest of the verse: ‘We are buried with him.’”

  Emily looked at Fox. “Death and resurrection.”

  “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” all four of them said in unison.

  As soon as the name was spoken out loud, it seemed blindingly obvious. On the Saturday before Easter, the church would see thousands of visitors throughout the day, as Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians took turns holding their services there. The miracle of the Easter Fire—in which the Orthodox prelate carried an unlit torch into Jesus’ tomb, where it would supposedly be lit with miraculous flame—drew thousands of pilgrims from around the world. And if it became the site of the next attack, all of them would unwittingly take the Zagorsk virus back to their home countries and spread it among their families and church members. It would make the Washington attack look like a practice run.