The Pinocchio Syndrome

by David Zeman

  Karen had left Atlanta in a depressed mood. On the plane, however, she had reminded herself that even if she could not reconstruct the entire journey of Justine Lawrence after her rape at the hands of Colin Goss, she did know the final leg of that journey. It led to Washington, where Justine had participated in the abduction of Susan Campbell.

  In all probability Justine had lived in Washington during the last phases of the plan. Or if not Washington itself, then Maryland or Virginia. Lived under an assumed name, no doubt.

  Left traces, though. Traces Karen could pick up.

  Susan Campbell had now been missing for three weeks. Assuming she was still alive, she was sequestered in a hideout that Justine Lawrence had perhaps helped to arrange. Karen felt she had a reasonable chance of locating it.

  She had an advantage over the authorities. They knew that Susan’s captor, or at least one of her captors, was a woman. They had heard her voice. But they were working in the dark. They only knew what had happened. Karen knew why it had happened.

  And if they had a voice to go on, Karen had a voice and the face it belonged to. And a photograph of that face.

  The airport bus stopped beside the C-3 pole, where Karen had gotten on it three days ago. The Honda was halfway down the line of cars. It was dark outside already, and the temperature was dropping. Karen shivered as she opened the trunk and threw in her overnight bag. Her lack of sleep made her feel even colder. She would take a long bath when she got home.

  She opened the driver’s door, slid into the seat, and put the key into the ignition.

  “Go ahead, turn it on.”

  Karen jumped, startled by the voice from the backseat.

  “Turn it on, but don’t drive away yet.”

  Karen’s hands were trembling. She had turned pale. A hundred times over the years she had approached her car and worried that someone might be inside it, waiting to rob or harm her. And now, too busy to entertain such fears, she had walked right into the trap. She thought of the little can of Mace that was buried under countless other items in her purse.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “You,” said the voice.

  ————

  Atlanta

  COLIN GOSS sat behind the executive desk in his Atlanta office. The curtains were closed, and all the lights were out except the reading lamp on his desk. His secretaries had been told to hold all calls. He wanted to be able to concentrate.

  The bottle of mineral water was on the desk. He poured a glass and took a long drink. The water seemed to calm his nerves. It was odd, he realized, for a master of pharmaceutical technology to believe in the healing benefits of mineral waters. But he could not suppress this bit of superstition on his own part. He felt better when he drank the water.

  In his hand was a small piece of note paper. On it was a phone number.

  It was the number of the new phone line that had been installed at the Judd Campbell house, a second unlisted number to be used only by the family. The line was not tapped.

  Goss dialed the number. After several rings Michael Campbell answered.

  “Yes?”

  “Michael? Is that you?”

  “Yes.” Relief sounded in Michael’s voice as he recognized the caller.

  “Are we secure?”

  “Yes.” Michael knew that Judd was out of the house, meeting with his detectives. Ingrid was out shopping, having left at six to drive the housekeeper home. “Yes, we’re secure.”

  “Son, I have painful news.”

  There was a silence over the line.

  “Yes?” Michael asked. “What is it?”

  “Our evidence strongly suggests that the people who have Susan are from the past,” Goss said. “They know about you and me, son. About Harvard, about the girls. Something along those lines. They’re not politically motivated. They’re after you because of what happened in the past. That’s why they want you to withdraw.”

  Michael thought this over.

  “How sure are you of this?” he asked.

  “Not a hundred percent,” Goss admitted. “But with so much at stake, with the whole plan in danger, I think we have to take the conservative course and assume the worst.”

  “Do you think they’ve told Susan?” Michael asked, a fearful note in his voice.

  “I suspect they may have,” Goss said. “If they know about the past, it may mean as much to them to have her know as it does to threaten us with her death. For instance, if she knows about the girls in New England, she may have turned against you. If she gets out she might tell what she knows. That would be the end, you see. Because even if we tried to cast doubt, it would be Susan doing the accusing. She has very strong PR. The dirt would be too thick to wash away in time, son.”

  He thought for a moment. “If it were only sexual, that would be one thing,” he said. “But we’re talking about voluntary manslaughter, son. Mass murder, in effect. That’s too much to overcome.”

  Michael was thinking. He remembered the night when Susan had asked him, with that strange look on her face, “Did something happen at Harvard?” He had denied it convincingly, but he had not liked the look in her eyes.

  Then there was Kraig. Kraig had asked him about crank phone calls in which Harvard was mentioned. Michael had denied it again.

  He should have told Goss about those two episodes. He hadn’t. He wanted the past to stay buried.

  Goss cleared his throat nervously. “There’s one more thing, son. I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but I suspect there may be a videotape of some of what happened. If they have that, and if Susan has seen it . . . Well, you can imagine.”

  Goss cursed the impulse that had made him videotape the episodes. But it had been a good impulse at the time. He knew the tapes would make powerful blackmail material against those who had played the game, should he ever need it. It turned out that he never needed it. And now it was coming back to haunt him.

  There was a silence as Michael pondered what he had heard.

  “I’ve always trusted your judgment,” he said at last.

  “I know, son. I know you have.”

  “I don’t want to wreck a plan you’ve worked so hard on,” Michael said.

  “No, son. We can’t allow anything to stand in the way of the plan.”

  There was a painful silence.

  “What will happen?” Michael asked.

  “No one will come out alive,” Goss said. “Not the kidnappers, not Susan. That’s how it will have to be.”

  Michael was silent.

  “Son, I want you to think of the bright side as well as the dark,” Goss said. “As a martyr to terrorism Susan will be even more valuable to you than she would have been as a beautiful First Lady. You’ll be able to present yourself as a man who’s made the supreme sacrifice. You’ll be unbeatable. You lost your wife to terrorism. You’ll be Lindbergh. You’ll be king of the world.”

  After a pause, Michael said, “Yes, I see.”

  Another silence.

  “It’s painful, I know,” Goss said.

  “I love her,” Michael said in a reflective tone.

  “Son, think of her as a soldier who’s given her life in a war, a soldier who has died for a great cause. When you think of it, that’s what it is, really. A great cause. I know you would be willing to give your own life for it. Think of it that way.”

  “Yes,” Michael said. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  “You’ll remarry, son. You’ll survive. And we’ll win this war together.”

  “Yes. All right. All right.”

  “Thank you for being so brave, son. I love you. You know that.”

  “Are you sure you can . . . ?” Michael asked.

  “Arrange it? Yes, I’m sure. Don’t lose a minute’s sleep over that, son.”

  Goss hung up.

  Michael stood for a long time with the phone in his hand. The new line had been installed upstairs, in the corner library adjacent to the bedrooms. He looked out at the Bay.


  He was thinking of Susan. Of their first times together, when he was a college student. Of her peculiar charm, her brittle humor, her wonderfully complicated personality. Her loyalty to him when he was getting ready for his second operation. Her devotion all these years. He loved her dearly. True, their relationship had never been quite as close as he might have wished. There were parts of her he had never touched, never understood. And, of course, she had not given him a child. That was another thing to think about, in the event she did not survive this. He would need a new wife, he would need children.

  Still, he would miss Susan. She was so beautiful . . . Tears were in his eyes as he finally hung up the phone. He turned to go to his room, where some of the framed pictures of Susan from the early years were on the dresser and the walls. He wanted to look at those images of her, to think about how much she meant to him.

  When he entered the hallway he saw Ingrid standing there, blocking his way to his room.

  “What, no shopping?” he asked, smiling.

  “I had a headache. I came right home,” she said.

  The look in her eyes left no doubt that she knew. Ingrid was not a woman who hid her emotions. Tears were on her cheeks. Her eyes shone with reproach.

  “Michael, how could you?” she asked.

  72

  —————

  “DON’T BE afraid,” said the man in the backseat. “It’s me. Grimm.”

  “Who?” Karen asked.

  “Your pen pal.”

  Karen breathed a sigh of relief. “Christ. You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Drive into the city.”

  Karen turned on the engine. She found the parking lot ticket in the little dashboard nook where she had left it.

  “Do I get to see your face?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She drove out of the lot and paid at the little booth. When she reached the ramp leading to the expressways a man sat up in the backseat. He wore a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Wraparound sunglasses hid his eyes.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “Never mind that,” he said. “Just listen.”

  “All right,” Karen said.

  The man took a deep breath.

  “About thirty years ago, when he was patenting his first pharmaceuticals, Colin Goss did a lot of research on cancer, and on aging. Goss was terrified of cancer because his mother and two brothers died of cancer. He was also terrified of getting old, of losing his health and his potency. He wanted to find a way to stop cancer cells from metastasizing, and to stop normal cells from deteriorating through the aging process. Naturally he knew that a cure for cancer, like a cure for aging, would make him the king of the medical and pharmaceutical worlds.

  “To make a long story short, as he tried to figure out a way to prevent changes in certain cells, Goss stumbled on a new way tocause changes in cells. I won’t bore you with the details. Most of it takes place on the submolecular level. It concerns a certain dissymmetry in the closure of every living particle, including the building blocks of plant and animal cells. It is this dissymmetry that leaves the cell open to adaptation or change. Unlike the geneticists, who see cells as automatons carrying out a blueprint laid down on the chromosomes, Goss understood that cells areliving entities. Entities that can do the unexpected.”

  He pushed his dark glasses higher on his nose. “Goss wrote a paper on the concept, called ‘Proximity and Dissymmetry in Cell Closure.’ The paper would almost certainly have won him a Nobel Prize had he published it. But he wanted to keep the concept secret, so he never published the paper.” Grimm smiled. “He let me read it, though. Made me read it, in fact, when I came on board.”

  Karen said nothing. This was Greek to her, despite her years of education in biochemistry.

  “Goss learned that he could intervene at this level and fool a cell into thinking that its survival depended on a certain chemical behavior that was not in its normal nature,” Grimm said. “A sort of forced mutation, if you will. Like evolution, only based on a false premise, and enormously speeded up. Are you following me?”

  “Trying to,” Karen said. “Do you mind if I smoke?” She reached for the pack of Newports in her purse.

  “Yes, I mind. No smoking. Just listen.”

  “All right.”

  There was a silence. Karen turned on the directional signal.

  “Where are we?” asked the voice.

  “Getting onto 595.”

  “Go in to 395 and drive to the Mall.”

  Karen said nothing as she accelerated along the ramp.

  “The changes in one cell ramified through neighboring cells and cell groups,” Grimm said. “Controlling this larger change was an enormous chemical engineering challenge. Thousands of experiments were performed within The Goss Organization over the years. Some of them actually produced pharmacological innovations, such as the treatment for hypertension that made Goss famous. Others produced more sinister results, which Goss of course had to keep secret.”

  Karen was silent, listening hard.

  “The most important of these results was a paralysis of the function of will or decision. Goss found that he could intervene chemically in the constitution of a human being in such a manner that the subject could not act on his perceptions or thoughts. At first this effect seemed pointless and even undesirable. What would be gained by paralyzing a person’s ability to act? The person would become useless, both to himself and to others. But over time, Goss found a use for his discovery.”

  “What use?” Karen asked.

  “Think for a moment about the enemies of society,” Grimm said. “Murderers, rapists, arsonists. Gangbangers. Terrorists. Why do these people do what they do? Because they havedecided to do it. Because they are able to act on that decision. What would happen if that ability was removed? They would become harmless. No matter how evil their intentions, they wouldn’t be able to hurt a fly.”

  “Uh-huh,” Karen said. “Okay . . .”

  “Think of it as a chemical variation on the theme of the prefrontal lobotomy,” Grimm said. “A designer disease, radical and irreversible. This is what Goss discovered.”

  He paused. “Where are we?”

  “About five more minutes to 395,” Karen said.

  “There were other symptoms as well,” Grimm said. “Nothing in biology is simple, you know that. Since the intervention was so profound metabolically, most of the subjects went into coma and died.”

  “Human subjects?” Karen asked.

  “Related species at first, especially chimps and gorillas. But then, yes, humans.” Grimm paused. “Not volunteers. If you know what I mean.”

  Karen thought of the sick girls in Boston. But she did not want to interrupt Grimm.

  “The process was gradual, like all applied science,” Grimm said. “Goss wanted predictable results. It took him another decade to settle on a single substance as the most effective and the easiest to administer. It produced the disorder we now know as the Pinocchio Syndrome.”

  Karen’s breath caught in her throat. She should have known, she mused. All winter and spring she had felt this truth coming, but had not been prescient enough to see it. The spreading disease with no apparent cause, the sick political leaders, Michael Campbell, Colin Goss . . . the countless victims of the Syndrome, stopping in their tracks, unable to move or to speak.

  “Now, Colin Goss hates terrorists,” Grimm went on. “That’s not a political pose. He sees them as a far greater danger to civilized society than criminals.”

  “Why?” Karen asked.

  “A serial killer can only kill forty or fifty people in a lifetime,” Grimm said. “A terrorist can kill a thousand with one bomb planted in a large enough building. Or three thousand with an airplane that slams into a tall building. A whole country full of violent criminals can function quite nicely. But terrorists can reduce civilians to panic and cripple institutions almost at will. The impact of a small group of terrorists on international po
litics can be enormous. Also, in the latter part of the twentieth century, terrorists came into possession of the means and the expertise to take human life on a large scale. Biological weapons, sophisticated explosives, and so on.”

  Karen nodded. “Okay. I see.”

  “Once you remove the terrorist from the political landscape, everything falls into place,” Grimm said. “Government can function, industry can function. Society can function. What was chaos becomes business as usual. All because of that one simple step.”

  “And that was the purpose of the Pinocchio Syndrome?” Karen asked.

  “The fundamental aim was achieved when the subject’s will was paralyzed,” Grimm said. “Without the capacity to act on one’s motives, the capacity todecide —no terrorist. The other features of the disease—the apparent stubbornness, the changes to the hands and feet, the onset of coma at a predictable stage of the illness—these arose from repercussions in the cell structure that were painstakingly objectified and replicated by Goss.”

  “Really,” Karen said.

  “Goss is a bit of a poet. He liked the symbolic aspect of the physical changes. Also, he knew it would cause widespread terror. Which it has. The Pinocchio Syndrome would never have captured the primitive imagination the way it has if it weren’t for the hands and feet.”

  Grimm smiled. “You should see him in the laboratory, or at the microscope. It’s like watching Rembrandt add brush strokes to a masterpiece. The subtlety, the refinement of his eye . . . But an artist seeks to create beauty. Goss seeks to create evil. That’s the difference.”

  Karen thought for a moment.

  “You said it was easy to administer,” she said.

  “Very simple. Through air or water. It can even be done at a distance, or with a time lapse. You simply place a module containing the chemical in the desired location, and then pop it open by remote control.”

  Now Karen understood why the leukemia patients in their sterile bubbles escaped the Syndrome when all other people in the affected areas got sick. The patients were not exposed to fresh water or air.

  “You mean,” Karen asked, “that for every outbreak of the Pinocchio Syndrome there were people who engineered the outbreak by contaminating the air or water?”