The Pinocchio Syndrome

by David Zeman

  “And it might make them a lot better,” Judd countered. “Your brother is a national hero, is case you’d forgotten, Ing. And remember, the brass ring may only come around once. There’s no telling what may happen in the next eight or twelve years. There might be an unbeatable incumbent in the White House when Michael’s day comes. There might not evenbe a White House. I never heard it said that the way to get something you want is to wait for it. You take it.”

  Ingrid sighed. “I don’t know what we’re arguing about. Tom Palleschi has the job. There’s nothing we can do but wish him the best.”

  Judd Campbell said nothing. He brought the glass of dark ale to his lips, gazing out pensively at the waves.

  Ingrid left the porch without a sound. She moved well for a big woman.

  25

  —————

  BY THE New Year the mysterious syndrome that had felled Dan Everhardt had spread around the world.

  Outbreaks of the illness had been observed in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America, with a slight preponderance in North Africa and the Middle East. The World Health Organization estimated the total number of victims at over 75,000. In the United States alone some 6,500 people had been affected.

  Public health authorities were working overtime to identify the pathogen behind the disease. The media were full of reassuring stories from medical experts and government officials who promised a prompt offensive against the epidemic.

  The stories were planted to prevent panic. In reality the authorities had no clue as to the cause of the illness, or how to treat it.

  A paramedic in Australia had come up with the grim nickname “Pinocchio Syndrome,” which referred to the victims’ initial appearance of mulelike stubbornness, and to the horrifying metamorphosis of their hands and feet into hooflike appendages not long before death. The media had jumped on the name. The Syndrome was capturing the public imagination as no disease had done in a century.

  The president could not give a news conference without having to answer a dozen questions about the sickness. His stock answer was to defer to the doctors and public health specialists in charge of investigating the epidemic. He expressed deep sadness and concern over the thousands of families affected, and strongly advised Americans not to panic.

  “We will lose a lot more by giving in to fear than by continuing to lead our normal, productive lives while the experts find a cure to this disease,” he repeated.

  But the spreading illness had spawned an epidemic of fear. Parents were keeping their children out of school and away from public areas like shopping malls and movie theaters. Families were drinking bottled water and avoiding fresh food from supermarkets. Restaurants were losing business because potential customers were afraid of exposure to tainted food and to other customers.

  People were wearing surgical masks when they went shopping or to work. The more hypochondriacal were staying at home entirely. Some of the affluent were studying the map of the world and moving their families to areas that were not yet touched by the disease, like Hawaii, the southern tip of South America, and Greenland.

  The public was aware that no medical treatment had been found that could slow the relentless progress of the disease as it killed individual victims. From diagnosis to death the Syndrome took between seven and nine weeks, with coma supervening after the first month and the hideous physical changes appearing during the last weeks of life.

  The AIDS epidemic had planted in the public mind the fear of a “Doomsday Disease,” incurable and always fatal, that would find a more universal and unstoppable means of transmission than mere sexual intimacy. A disease you didn’t have to court through behavior or choice. A disease that would find you wherever you were, whoever you were. A disease that would wipe out the human race. This fear, having lurked beneath the surface of public awareness for a generation, now exploded uncontrollably.

  Coming on the heels of theCrescent Queen attack, which had been neither explained nor punished, the epidemic had an apocalyptic quality. The memory of the fatal mushroom cloud over the Mediterranean mingled in the public mind with images of Pinocchio victims with their rigid bodies and their fixed visionary stare. It did not require much imagination these days to fear that the end of the world was at hand.

  The political effect of this panic was unfortunate for the president. As the incumbent he was perceived as the man who had allowed the chaos to happen. The same went for his party, whose influence nationwide was at an all-time low.

  The administration’s denials that Dan Everhardt had the dread disease had not kept rumors at bay. There was a public perception—not echoed out loud by the media, but trumpeted on countless websites—that Everhardt was a victim of the Syndrome.

  Colin Goss, in radio and TV ads that played in prime time across the nation, announced that it was “time for a change,” that the current administration followed a “policy of failure,” that it was past time for Americans to cease living under a “politics of fear.” Goss’s ads exploited the epidemic without alluding to it directly. The technique was effective.

  Goss’s face, shorn of its old hateful expression and carefully modeled in a paternal look of competence and strength, was to be seen on billboards across America. A face that had once frightened many, it now reassured people. And they expressed their feelings in opinion polls that showed Goss well ahead of the president in popularity.

  Like the despair that had swept Franklin D. Roosevelt into the White House during the Depression, and Ronald Reagan into office after the oil crisis and hostage crisis of the late 1970s, the current hysteria was making Colin Goss’s campaign into a snowball that might be impossible to stop.

  Time for a change, said Goss’s ads. Their subliminal message was all too clear. The change had already occurred. The question was how much time remained.

  ————

  IN THIS climate of intense anxiety Karen Embry’s article about the disease sparked a firestorm of condemnation.

  Though the article was entitled “What If . . . ?” and appeared only on editorial pages, it brought countless outraged letters to the editor. Readers felt that things were bad enough already without irresponsible reporters cranking out paranoid ramblings about conspiracies. Public outrage was so vehement that the editors who had published the piece had to print apologies.

  “Our goal as journalists,” wrote one editor in a published retraction, “should be to report things as they are in a constructive fashion. To invoke far-fetched scenarios at a time when they can only cause great distress is not responsible journalism.”

  So intense was the outcry that even the president’s press secretary felt compelled to respond publicly.

  “We are at a difficult moment in our history,” he said. “The president feels it is vital that all Americans pull together in the face of this public health challenge. We need to believe in ourselves and in each other, now more than ever. The president deplores those irresponsible rumormongers who, for the sake of their own self-interest and with no sensitivity to the pain and grief of the victims and their families, are making a stressful situation worse.”

  No further mention of Karen’s article or its contents was to be found in the media. Every editor in the nation cooperated in covering the embarrassing episode with silence.

  However, the Internet was subject to no such scruples. Chat rooms around the world buzzed with excited talk about the conspiracy theory. Web surfers, who tended to be paranoid in any case, leaped on the theory hungrily. They blamed the spreading epidemic on the Russians, the Chinese, the CIA, the Martians, the Venutians. In her attempt to get at the truth Karen Embry had unwittingly tapped into the most primitive level of human fear. Her article was now a tool of the lunatic fringe.

  Karen now found herself persona non grata in Washington. No elected official would talk to her. Even those in government who privately sympathized with her were too frightened to open their doors to her. The sources who had helped her when she first moved to the ca
pital now dried up.

  Her agent strongly suggested she move away, perhaps to the West Coast, and publish under a pseudonym from now on. Privately he thought it was time she abandoned journalism altogether and found a new profession.

  ————

  THE CIA director called in Mitch Fallon, his press secretary, in a rage.

  “I thought I told you I didn’t want to hear from this bitch again,” he said.

  “It’s a free country,” Fallon shrugged. “I did what I could. No one on the federal level cooperated with her, I can guarantee you that. But we can’t stop newspapers from printing whatever they see fit. And the Internet is—well, the Internet. They do whatever they want.”

  Fallon had never seen the director this angry. His eyes were bulging, his face red. “I’ll make her regret this,” he said, “if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  “Cheer up,” Fallon coaxed. “No one printed it as news. It only appeared on the opinion page, and only in a handful of newspapers at that.”

  “That’s not the point,” the director said. “I knew that bitch was trouble the minute I laid eyes on her.”

  “What can we do?” Fallon asked.

  “Tail her,” the director replied. “Bug her apartment.”

  “Do you really want to bother?” Fallon asked. “Her name is already Mudd all over town.”

  “I want to make sure it stays that way.”

  “That’s harassment,” Fallon argued.

  “No, it’s not,” the director fumed. “It’s protection of the national security. A paid agent of a hostile power couldn’t be more dangerous than she is. The last thing we need in this country is panic. She’s a menace.”

  Fallon said, “Okay.” He left without another word.

  The director looked at the small photo of Karen’s pretty face that had been published alongside her article in thePost . His eyes lingered on her delicate features for a moment. Then he crumpled the article and, with a single expletive, threw it into his wastebasket.

  ————

  THE NEWS from Walter Reed was that Dan Everhardt was near death from the Pinocchio Syndrome. Dan would be the first famous person to die of the disease here at home. His death would come as a symbolic blow to the authorities’ claim that the situation was “well in hand.” Now everyone would know that even the famous and powerful were not immune. It was a chastening realization.

  For Tom Palleschi, the situation was worrisome. Not on his own behalf, but because of his wife.

  From the outset Theresa Palleschi had been against Tom replacing Dan Everhardt. She was worried for his safety.

  “There’s something wrong about this whole thing,” Theresa told Tom. “Colin Goss, and this epidemic, and Dan Everhardt getting sick that way . . . Something is wrong, and I don’t want you involved in it.”

  Theresa had always been philosophical about being a political wife. She understood that Tom was devoted to public service. All these years she had tolerated his long hours, his occasional preoccupation, and sometimes mental exhaustion, because she knew he loved his work. She listened willingly to his passionate conversation about the issues of the day, and shared his pride when he contributed to solving some of the problems facing the country. Tom Palleschi was a born public servant, and a gifted one. Theresa accepted this.

  But the illness of Everhardt and the spreading epidemic had changed her attitude.

  “Your children need a father,” she told him. “They’re more important than any job.”

  “Terry, the president needs me. Can’t you see that?”

  “They needed Everhardt, too,” she retorted. “And where did it get them?”

  “Terry . . .”

  “It’s not worth it,” she insisted. “I was willing to share you with the federal government when it was just a question of long hours and overwork. But I’m not going to let you get yourself killed just to make things easier for the administration. They can find somebody else.”

  “Terry, I have an obligation here,” he had remonstrated.

  “You have an obligation to your children,” she insisted. “And to me.”

  “What about my country?” he asked. “Doesn’t that mean something?”

  To his surprise, Theresa was unmoved.

  “Your children mean more,” she said. “Let the president find another partner and fight off Goss if he can. Then they can offer you whatever job they like, and I won’t say a word. But I don’t want you on that hot seat with all this other stuff going on. There’s something evil about this business.”

  She would not listen to his arguments. She was scared for him, and for their six growing children if anything happened to him. The Palleschis were hardly poor—Tom’s business successes had left them well fixed financially—but the children needed a father. Theresa was convinced Tom would be in real danger, physical danger, if he became vice president.

  In the end Tom had to refuse her. He accepted the president’s offer and was currently awaiting Senate approval as vice president.

  On the night before his return to work after the holidays, Tom tried to make love to Theresa. She refused.

  “I can’t take you for granted when you might not be here next week,” she said. “I can’t have you touch me when those are the stakes.”

  “Terry, you’re exaggerating. For God’s sake, there are Secret Service agents watching everybody in the executive branch.”

  “Did they help Dan Everhardt?” she asked.

  Tom sighed. “I admit, there’s been some bad luck. But you can’t build it up into a conspiracy without evidence.”

  “There is enough evidence for me,” she insisted.

  She turned away from him and closed her eyes.

  Tom lay beside her, waiting futilely for sleep, until the clock on his bedside table said four-thirty. Then he gave up and decided to go out running earlier than usual. He did his best thinking while running. Perhaps things might seem clearer if he did six or seven miles before breakfast.

  He brushed his teeth quickly and put on sweats and running shoes. He wore out a pair of good running shoes in two or three months. Theresa worried that he would have a heart attack while running. To oblige her Tom had regular cardiovascular checkups. He was in perfect health, of course. Running all those miles for so many years had helped.

  He passed the hall mirror and looked at his face. It was more lined now, and somewhat heavier. The eyes were worried. But there was also a barely disguised look of excitement. Could this be the face of the next vice president of the United States?

  He put some food in the dog’s bowl and looked out the front window. A car was parked on the street in front of the house. Secret Service. He recognized the agents, and nodded to them as he jogged past the car.

  After checking his stopwatch he took his usual route through the suburban streets, planning to end his run at the 7-Eleven on the corner of Waldron Avenue for a cup of coffee. He enjoyed chatting with the owner, a feisty Italian immigrant who considered Tom hispaisan . The fellow had a large family, like Tom, and enjoyed discussing the issues of the day. Unfortunately, he was a rabid Colin Goss supporter, and believed that only Goss could “save the country” in this perilous time.

  The government agents following in their unmarked sedan were talking politics as they shadowed Palleschi. Both men liked Palleschi and had been invited in for a drink by him when they were first given this assignment. The more liberal of the two thought Palleschi should be president. The other agent, though he could not say it out loud, intended to vote for Colin Goss if a special election was called. The country needed a strong leader right now. Goss was the strongest man available.

  As he started the fifth mile Tom felt a pulse of weakness, barely noticeable, in his midsection. It spread slowly upward toward his chest. There was a ringing in his ears.

  He decided not to do the last two miles, which would have taken him around his favorite group of blocks one more time. Perhaps the stress had taken its toll. He did not fe
el as strong as usual.

  He looked at the 7-Eleven down the block, which was just coming into view. For an instant it seemed the building cringed away from him, shrinking in upon itself.Strange, he thought. Then the store’s lights, reflected by the wet street, seemed to be crawling up his body and into his mouth. He choked, coughed, shook his head to free his lungs, but it was no use. Even the sky was coming down upon him, slithering into his mouth, leaving no room for air.

  He stopped, leaning an arm against the brick building next to the 7-Eleven. He wanted to call out to the agents following in the car, but the words would not come. Nor could he now move his arm.

  “Hey, look, he must be tired,” said the younger agent.

  “I thought he was in better shape,” his companion said. “He cut two miles off the run. Maybe he’s got a hangover.”

  “Are you kidding? On one glass of wine a day?”

  Palleschi did not move. His posture looked less natural now. The agents pulled their car up and got out. The Italian proprietor of the 7-Eleven was just coming out the door to greet Palleschi.

  “Hey, your coffee’s not ready yet.”

  The agents met the proprietor at the wall against which Palleschi was standing. They were already worried.

  They became more worried when they saw the look in Palleschi’s eyes.

  “Mr. Secretary?” asked the older agent.

  Palleschi did not respond. The agent tried to take his arm, but Palleschi was rigid. He seemed stubborn in his immobility.

  “Jesus,” the younger agent whispered.

  “Get on the radio,” barked his colleague. “We need an ambulance.”

  26

  —————

  Georgetown

  January 15

  THE MEDIA reacted to the news of Tom Palleschi’s illness like sharks smelling blood.

  The White House was besieged by reporters demanding to know whether Palleschi had fallen victim to the Pinocchio Syndrome, like Dan Everhardt before him.

  White House spokesmen, aware of the potentially disastrous fallout from the story, denied emphatically that Palleschi had the Syndrome. His illness, they insisted, was hypertension related and already under control. A quick recovery was expected.