The Pinocchio Syndrome

by David Zeman

  She paused for a moment, thinking.

  “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I was beginning to have flashbacks to who I was. But every time my identity occurred to me, the memory of what had happened to Jane and me would try to come back. So I would forget, or repress—whatever you want to call it. My mind was sort of going in and out, like one of those electric circuits that isn’t quite connected.”

  She looked at her wrists.

  “I took the bus to Charleston. I was in the bus station when I tried suicide for the first time. I was sitting in the waiting room on one of those molded plastic chairs. I saw the pop-top from a can on the floor. I picked it up and took it into the ladies’ room and cut my wrists with it. I didn’t do a very good job. They found me and took me to a hospital. There was a woman there, a psychiatric social worker named Marie Gervasi. She got them to release me into her custody and she took me to the clinic where she worked. It was a rape and sex abuse clinic.

  “Marie was the first person who really tried to talk to me about myself. She knew something had happened to me. She tried to help me remember. She got me some counseling with a doctor friend of hers, a psychiatrist. A woman, Dr. Henley. She spent a lot of time on me, a lot of appointments. She was very kind.

  “I finally remembered everything, but I didn’t tell the doctor the truth. I just told her I had been raped back home. Gang-raped—I did tell her that much. She tried to help me work through it. To make me understand that it wasn’t my fault. Sometimes I wish I had told her what really happened. She was so nice, so caring . . .”

  Justine looked at Susan. “But I’m glad it worked out the way it did. I kept it to myself. Now the only people in the world who know about it are me and you. That’s the way I want it.”

  Susan nodded, not objecting. She was past the point of protesting Justine’s decisions. She just wanted to understand her.

  “I eventually got a GED and did a program at a local junior college,” Justine went on. “I saw the way Marie helped young girls who had been hurt, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”

  She glanced at Susan. “This was around the time you were first becoming a political wife.”

  These words stung Susan. This woman had known Michael at the same time Susan knew him. While Susan was marrying a hero, Justine was fighting to survive. These were the two destinies Michael had wrought. Justine saw the distress in Susan’s eyes and looked away again, at the blacked-out window.

  “I got a degree. I became a counselor. I helped take care of girls and women who couldn’t handle the world for whatever reason. It was good work for me. It was fulfilling. Nothing is better for your own pain than to help someone else.”

  Justine was looking down at her scarred wrists.

  “Marie stayed with us until she got married again—did I mention that she was divorced?—to a man whose daughter had been a client of ours at the clinic. They moved away. I stayed. Then our funding dried up, and we had to close.

  “I sent my résumé around to other clinics and hospitals, but it was hard to find a job. My résumé was too full of holes. I couldn’t give my full history. The fact that I had been a patient and had attempted suicide didn’t help either.”

  She looked down at her wrists. “All of a sudden the temptation to end my life came back, very strong. The pain was so great, the memories . . . I made up my mind I was going to kill myself for real. I had a little apartment with a gas stove. I sealed up all the windows and doors. I bought a bottle of vodka. I was going to get stinking drunk, turn on the gas, and pass out. Then something happened.”

  “What?” Susan asked.

  Justine smiled at her guest’s curiosity.

  “I had the TV on—I was going to leave it on so the neighbors would hear the sound and think I was still all right in there—and there was a talk show on with several politicians talking about the economy. One of them was your husband. I started looking at him, listening to him.

  “Then, just like that, I saw that I couldn’t kill myself. Seeing Michael Campbell’s face, hearing his voice, was like an epiphany to me. He was an ambitious young politician. He was charming, well spoken. Everyone admired him because of the Olympics. He was going places. He had a beautiful young wife. The sun shone on everything he touched. While I, his victim, was about to kill myself.”

  Justine looked at Susan through narrowed eyes. “I was going to get out of his way, just like every other obstacle that had ever stood in his path. He would go on to greater and greater things, with everyone loving him and looking up to him. And no one would know about the lives he had destroyed.”

  She shook her head. “I decided I was not going to go quietly, I was not going to let him get away with it. I poured the vodka down the drain. I took the sealing tape off the doors and windows. I never did turn on the gas. I had a reason to live now. I had a mission. Your husband gave it to me.”

  Susan said nothing. Her eyes were riveted to Justine.

  “I found another job in a counseling center,” Justine resumed. “I became very skilled as a counselor. There are rape victims, girls and women, who still keep in touch with me. I’ve worked in several places; they’re always having funding trouble. Depends on who’s in the White House.”

  She turned to Susan. “And I studied your husband. I studied him the way a biographer studies a famous person whose origins are obscure, whose private life is a mystery. I learned everything there was to know about Judd Campbell, about the Campbell family. I learned about you. About your mother, about your father abandoning you. About your courtship. About Michael’s friends.”

  Her expression grew colder.

  “Eventually I learned more about his connection with Colin Goss. I found out how far back it went, how deep it went. It was easier for me, you see, because I already knew from my own experience that they were involved with each other. I didn’t have any scales over my eyes, like other people. I didn’t have to overcome my own doubts. That’s more than half the battle, you know, in the search for truth.”

  She got up and stood looking down at Susan.

  “I found out that the building where Jane and I had been raped was Goss’s Boston headquarters. I did some research about Goss. I learned things that shocked even me. I thought I knew most of what there was to know about sexual perversion, about abuse, about cruelty. Goss surprised me. He wrote the book on sadism.”

  She touched Susan’s hand gently. Susan saw the burns on Justine’s arm as she felt the warmth of her touch.

  Impulsively Susan asked, “What about love?”

  “Love?” Justine asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you ever loved someone? Been in love?” Susan asked. Then, “Made love?”

  “I haven’t had sex since that night, if that’s what you mean,” Justine said. “I was a virgin that night. So was Jane. We were very young. Babes in the woods. As for love . . . When you go through a thing like that, especially at a tender age, you stop believing that anyone could ever love you. The taint goes all the way to your core. You don’t even dream of love. That door is closed.”

  There was a long silence. Tears welled in Susan’s eyes as she pondered the depth of the wound inflicted on Justine. The tiny cuts at her wrists, the burns on her arms were mere ripples on the surface of a black ocean of pain. They reminded Susan of the Holocaust survivors she had met in Michael’s company. They looked just like anyone else, they talked in normal tones. But underneath they were scarred in a way that ordinary people could not imagine. Empathizing with them was difficult, because their suffering took you out of your depth.

  Justine seemed to be reading Susan’s thoughts.

  “You’re a good girl,” she said. “You feel the pain of others. You care about people.”

  Susan said nothing. She was staring at the scarred hand that held hers.

  “I’ve been watching you all these years,” Justine said. “I’ve seen you with your husband, I’ve heard the way you talk about him. You’re not happy with h
im, are you? Sexually, I mean.”

  Susan hesitated before answering. Then she breathed a hopeless sigh.

  “I’m frigid.”

  “Were you always?” Justine’s voice was gentle.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “Were there other men before Michael?”

  “Yes. Boys, students . . . But they didn’t mean anything. Michael was the first, in the only important way.” Susan looked at Justine. “I was young, too,” she added. “He’s all I’ve ever really known.”

  Justine patted her hand. “Poor Susan,” she said. “You have a lot to overcome.”

  She stood back. “We haven’t much time. You need to know the plan.”

  “What plan?” Susan asked, a fearful note creeping into her voice.

  “After Michael gets into the White House, the president will be eliminated,” Justine said. “Michael will become the youngest president in American history.”

  Susan’s eyes were wide. She could not take in what she was hearing. Not even after everything that had happened this year.

  “Michael will replace the president’s Cabinet members,” Justine went on. “He will bring Colin Goss into his administration. Some sort of non-Cabinet post that doesn’t need Senate approval. Foreign policy or national security, something like that. He’ll use as an excuse Goss’s record on terrorism. The pundits will say that Michael is trying to gain the confidence of the voters by appointing someone tough on terrorism at this sensitive time.”

  Justine stood looking at Susan. “The rest of the plan is too terrible for me to tell you today. Suffice it to say that the illness, the Pinocchio Syndrome, is part of it. A great many people will die if Michael Campbell becomes president.”

  Susan was thoughtful, staring straight in front of her.

  “So that’s why you took me,” she said.

  Justine nodded. “Michael Campbell is famous as a man who loves his wife. The kidnappers of Susan Campbell have asked him to do a simple thing in order to get her back—to refuse the president’s nomination. Any loving husband would agree to that. The president can always find another man for vice president, it isn’t that crucial a position.

  “But Michael can’t refuse. He and Goss are too deep into the plan to back out now. Everything hinges on Michael becoming vice president. Remember also that in two years, or six years, conditions may change. There could be war, a depression, whatever. The other party may be in the White House. This is the moment. Michael must become vice president. That’s why Everhardt and Palleschi and Stillman were removed. That’s why Michael will refuse to withdraw.”

  Susan was looking at Justine. “Am I going to die?”

  Justine shook her head. “No. Not if I can help it. But when Michael refuses my demand, he’llassume you’re going to die. That’s part of my plan.”

  Susan lay back against the pillows like a very sick hospital patient. Justine’s revelations were like so many body blows.

  “How do you know all these things?” she asked weakly.

  “I know them because I have eyes to see them.” Justine smiled. “Have you ever heard the parable of the emperor’s new clothes?”

  Susan nodded. “Yes. The emperor has been duped into buying a suit of clothes that is supposed to be very beautiful. But the clothes don’t exist. The emperor is really naked.”

  “And when the emperor shows off his new clothes to the courtiers and commoners of his kingdom,” Justine finished for her, “they all bow down in homage to the beautiful clothes. Except for one small child who points at the Emperor and cries out,‘The Emperor is naked! He has no clothes on at all!’ That’s how the story goes.”

  Susan nodded.

  Justine smiled. “The child cries out the truth because it is naive, it is innocent. All those around it are motivated by self-interest or fear or both. That’s why the cry is so scandalous.”

  She looked at Susan.

  “But it’s only a parable, Susan. In the real world, the child would be shushed by its mother. None of the commoners would heed its little voice. The courtiers would be too far away to hear. The emperor’s new clothes would continue to be admired by all. That’s how the story would end.”

  Susan was listening intently. Her eyes were locked on Justine’s.

  “I am that child the world will ignore,” Justine said. “When I die, my voice will be silenced. No one will know the truth about Michael Campbell.”

  “You’re going to die?” Susan asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Justine smiled. “I won’t come out of this alive. He won’t allow it. Neither will Goss. They’re coming to find me right now. I’m Lee Harvey Oswald in this scenario, Susan. Jack Ruby is coming to find me, and no one will stop him. I’ll be dead, my voice will be stilled.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Susan asked.

  Justine did not answer.

  Susan had now begun to understand. “And me?” she asked.

  “You’ll be the one to stop him,” Justine said. “They can’t make your voice go unheard. That’s why you’re here.”

  62

  —————

  Alexandria, Virginia

  April 12

  JOSEPH KRAIG sat in the battered armchair in his living room, the day’s classified briefing before him. The search for Susan Campbell was not going well. Experts had analyzed the audiotape of the abductors’ demand without success. The noise of the cheap recorder had obscured much of the background sound. The voice of the abductors’ spokesperson, whoever she was, had been printed. But there was no library of voiceprints to match the fingerprint files that identified millions of individuals.

  A thousand terrorists and would-be terrorists had been arrested and questioned in connection with Susan’s disappearance. More than a few had been subjected to rough treatment by state and federal law enforcement agents frantic to save Susan at all costs. Interpol, in conjunction with the intelligence agencies of the major Western powers, had arrested as many more, particularly in the Arab world, and grilled those already in custody, using methods the Americans did not dare employ.

  The results were nil. No one with a political motive for Susan’s abduction could be found. Her whereabouts remained a mystery.

  The nation waited for Michael Campbell’s response to the kidnappers’ demand. So far the abduction of Susan Campbell had not hurt the president in the polls. But if Michael were to withdraw the president’s stock would probably drop again, and the Colin Goss forces would renew their assault on the White House.

  The media resounded with talking heads debating the issue and making predictions about the outcome. Michael’s image, or that of Susan, was on every TV screen in America. But only Joe Kraig knew that Michael was sequestered in his bedroom in Judd Campbell’s Chesapeake Bay house, refusing sedation, staring out the window in a daze. Kraig visited him almost every day and found him completely uncommunicative. The loss of Susan had left him an empty shell.

  As for Kraig himself, he was having more and more trouble sleeping. Devoured by his worry about Susan, he remained awake into the wee hours. In the past week he had taken to intentionally staying up until two or three, just to tire himself out. It wasn’t really working, but he kept at it. It was better than going to bed at midnight and lying awake until five or six.

  It was 1:30A .M. when a soft knock came at the front door. Irritated, Kraig strode through the living room to the foyer and flung the door open. Karen Embry stood in the darkness. She was wearing a skirt with a cotton top, no coat.

  “What are you doing here at this hour?” Kraig asked.

  “I thought you’d be up. I want to talk.” The reporter’s no-nonsense manner had not changed.

  “Are you sober?” Kraig asked cruelly.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to be.” She smiled.

  Kraig shook his head in annoyance. Nowadays his solitude was all he had left, and that only for a few hours each night.

  “Come on,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”


  “Why didn’t you wear a coat?”

  “Come on, Kraig. Let me in, for Christ’s sake.”

  Kraig stood back to let her in. She darted gracefully through the door, as though afraid he might slam it in her face if she didn’t hurry.

  She preceded him into the living room, where the TV was tuned to CNN, the volume turned all the way down.

  Karen stood with her weight on one leg, half turned toward the TV. She looked surprisingly vital, even sporty. She had brought a breath of the cool night air in with her. Her hair was its usual schizoid self, full-bodied and pretty, but needing a trim.

  “What are you drinking?” Kraig asked.

  “Bourbon if you have it,” she said.

  He mixed her a stiff Early Times over ice and put it on the coffee table. She took a long sip as he opened his bottle of Guinness stout.

  “Mind if I smoke?” she asked.

  “Why should I mind?”

  She lit up a Newport and left the pack on the table along with her small butane lighter. She sat down cross-legged on the couch, the smoke curling around her head.

  “My parents were both drunks,” she said. “Did I tell you that?”

  Kraig shook his head. “You must have forgotten to mention it.”

  She smiled, taking another swig of the bourbon. “My mother was half Chinese and half German. My father was half Jewish and half Irish. They were both alcoholics. He killed himself in a one-car accident. After that she married an Italian guy, a car salesman. Also a drunk. He drank himself to death.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Died of heart failure,” Karen said. “Before she was fifty.”

  “I wondered what your ethnicity was,” Kraig said. “You’re very exotic looking.”

  Karen darted him a small glance. “I suppose, yeah. I always thought of myself as a mutt.”

  Now that she had told him about her background he saw the faint Asian tinge of her eyes, as well as the delicate Semitic undercurrent that graced her fair Irish skin. The knowledge made her seem prettier to him. More vulnerable.