The Jericho Deception: A Novel

by Jeffrey Small

  Elijah knew that he’d been desperate. He pulled his cell phone a few inches from his ear as his Harvard classmate continued to pontificate. His other hand held an umbrella that wasn’t doing its job of keeping out the mist of cold rain that had kept others inside that evening. He was walking toward his office. He’d only passed one other person so far, a large athlete rummaging through his gym bag on the previous block. With the clouds blocking moon and stars, the only illumination came from the buzzing streetlights, which cast a faint yellow glow on the gothic architecture, reminding him of a scene from a Dickens novel.

  He shifted the phone to his other ear, switching hands with the umbrella as Allen Wolfe continued to speak without letting him get a word in. Funding issues had threatened for months to shut down their project. So when he’d received the out-of-the-blue call from Wolfe, he’d grasped at his offer like a man overboard grabbing for the flotation ring thrown to him by the only person who’d seen him fall.

  He’d rarely heard from his former friend over the decades since they’d been in grad school together. As postdocs they’d shared exciting psychological research, digging deeper into the understanding of the mind than anyone had before. But as the purpose behind their research shifted and the nature of the experiments grew darker, Elijah had distanced himself, while Wolfe had taken up the slack with relish. When the government finally shut down the project in 1969, they’d gone their separate ways. Elijah stayed in academia, while Wolfe entered private practice. How he had ended up heading the NAF, a foundation Elijah had never heard of, was unclear. But when Wolfe called saying he’d heard about their funding problems and wanted to help, Elijah hadn’t asked the questions he should have.

  “It’s just a monkey.” Wolfe’s voice came through the cell phone clearly despite the splashing made by passing cars. “It didn’t have an epileptic fit, right?”

  “Something else has happened that Rachel, the lab tech, can’t explain. She’s looking into it now.”

  “But the other monkeys are fine?”

  “A single complication can reveal a flaw in our programming of the Logos.”

  The contract he’d signed with the NAF was unusual. On the positive side, he’d received the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar check up front. On the other hand, Wolfe had demanded more oversight and immediate reporting of their work than was typical. He’d explained that the foundation’s benefactor was generous with his money, but that he expected results. Truth was, Elijah had had second thoughts as soon as he took the money. Maybe by revealing the new concerns with the capuchins, he could slow down the process.

  “So what exactly is the monkey doing?” Wolfe sighed.

  “He was one of the smaller, more reserved capuchins, but now he’s become aggressive, taking food from the larger, higher-ranking monkeys.”

  “You want to delay further testing because you’re worried about the social standing of a monkey!”

  “It’s not that simple. Rachel believes that Anakin has become unstable emotionally and mentally. I need to understand if he had an adverse reaction to the Logos and why.”

  “It’s just an animal!”

  He recalled hearing a similar tone decades ago in Wolfe’s voice. His former colleague was always the one willing to push ahead in the more controversial experiments, regardless of the consequences, in order to “see where it would lead.” That morning, he’d encountered a similar frustration from his younger partner too.

  “That’s Ethan’s thought as well,” he admitted.

  “At least one of you has some sense. Wasn’t he the one who came up with the protocol for the machine in the first place?”

  “He was, but I’m concerned he’s gotten so close to the project that he’s lost his perspective.”

  Since Ethan had been his graduate student, Elijah had admired the power of his mind to see problems from different perspectives. His work ethic was legendary in the department, especially following the tragic death of his fiancée. Elijah knew all too well how hard he had taken her death; he’d been the only one Ethan had confided in about the exact events of that night. But in his zeal for progress, Ethan could also be insensitive to the nuances of the research process. The problems he had with the university oversight committees were indicative of his lack of finesse with bureaucracy, which was necessary in a large research institution.

  For that matter, Elijah thought, I lost my own perspective when I agreed to take Wolfe’s money. From the day years earlier when he’d published a paper postulating that the brain contained a God area, just as there were parts that processed vision and smell, he’d dreamed of unlocking the code to human mystical experience. Now that he was a year away from retiring, he wanted to see his work completed. But not at the expense of repeating the mistakes we made forty years ago, he told himself as he half-listened to Wolfe rant on about the need for immediate results. Ethan hadn’t even been alive then. His concept about the direction these projects might take was naïve. Elijah’s last two conversations with Wolfe had reinforced his concerns. He’d resisted asking the question he should have posed when presented with the offer: What is the true source of the foundation’s funding?

  “Look, Allen,” he said, stopping in front of the SSS building to fish for his keys. It was after nine and the building was locked. “We need to put the project on hold to study the Logos more.”

  “But why not run a few more human tests? Especially after your spectacular success with the nun.”

  Spectacular success? Elijah had mentioned to him only that they were encouraged by the test, but it was still too early to tell. He’d intentionally played down the results. So how did Wolfe get “spectacular success” from “too early to tell”? Then a disturbing thought occurred to him. Wolfe thought highly of Ethan. Could the young professor be talking to the foundation director behind his back? No, he assured himself, that isn’t Ethan’s style. He inserted the key into the heavy wood door at the top of the stone stairs of the SSS building.

  When he turned to enter the building, he noticed that the athlete he’d passed earlier was across the street, bent over tying his shoes. At least he thought it was the same student he’d seen earlier, judging by his tremendous size. With only a light shell on, he’s got to be cold, Elijah thought as he shook out his umbrella. Then he refocused on the unpleasant task of his call.

  “Look, I appreciate all you have done for us, but maybe this isn’t the right fit.”

  “You want to pull out of our agreement?”

  “Maybe I was hasty in accepting your offer.”

  “Have you checked with Ethan about this?”

  “I am the one with ultimate responsibility. He’ll be disappointed, but we’ll find a way to make it work.” He sighed. “I’ll have to report my concerns to our Institutional Review Board.”

  “Don’t do anything rash.” Wolfe’s voice was measured, calmer than Elijah would have expected. “If that committee thinks you have a problem, they’ll file forms with the FDA. Spooking the government serves neither of our purposes.”

  “We have procedures we have to follow for the safety of our subjects. I’ll have the university lawyers get back to you on how we can unravel this relationship.”

  He hung up the phone and let the heavy door close behind him. Proceeding up the gothic staircase, he walked with a new spring in his step, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. As happy as he’d been to get the funding, his former colleague and the Texas foundation rubbed him the wrong way.

  This new hiccup would worry Ethan, but they had proven the concept of the Logos. Now they just had to work out the kinks. First, they would investigate what had so disturbed the monkey. Although he hated to admit it, he was sure the problem had been caused by the Logos. His intuition was usually accurate. They’d missed something important—something fundamental that was right in front of them. But he was confident that they would correct the problem. Getting new funding would be easier then. He would just be more careful. If Allen Wolfe was w
orking with the group Elijah suspected he was, he was the last person he wanted to be involved with again.

  CHAPTER 18

  SSS, YALE UNIVERSITY

  Elijah scrolled through the website. Other than the blue glow of the laptop’s LCD screen, the only other light on in the lab was the lamp on his cluttered desk. He knew that Ethan tried his best to organize him, but he felt that if his life was too regimented, he would lose the creative spark that had driven him all of these years. He’d never been one of those professors who was happy to sit back after receiving tenure and teach the same class for twenty-five years. His work infused his soul.

  “Ah, there it is,” he said to himself. He clicked on the link on the university’s website.

  Ethan would take the news about their latest setback hard. His former student, now colleague, was like a son to him. He was proud to see how he’d matured into one of the department’s most popular lecturers. He felt confident about Ethan’s chances for tenure next year. Three years earlier, after the tragedy with his fiancée, he’d worried he might lose his brightest pupil, but Ethan had worked through his sorrow. Elijah had tried to comfort him with words about the larger meaning of life and death, but Ethan, like many of their colleagues, held more of a biological than a spiritual worldview. Unlike the others in the department, however, Ethan had been fascinated from the beginning about what made spiritual people the way they were.

  They shared a belief that the human mind was hardwired for belief in God. Ethan, however, saw this hardwiring as a leftover evolutionary mechanism, while the ability of the human mind to transcend ordinary consciousness and enter into mystical states had fascinated Elijah from a young age, when he’d listened to the stories of the Hebrew prophets’ experiences with the mysteriousness of the divine. For him, something more than coincidence, more than an evolutionary blip, explained why each of the world’s religions contained mystical traditions. He believed that an ultimate and absolute reality existed in the universe, and that this reality was what people called God. Because this reality was beyond human comprehension and language, the only way to speak of it was through metaphor and symbols. The problems occurred when people began to believe that the symbols were the reality. Thus, various religions claimed to be the absolute truth, rather than being different expressions of the infinite.

  He turned his chair and glanced at the machine sitting in the dark. The Logos held the potential to unlock the God-consciousness within the human mind, to give the elusive mystical experience to the common person who did not have the will or inclination to dedicate his or her life to prayer, meditation, chanting, fasting, and the other disciplines that brought about such experiences. The Logos could transform the way we view reality, he thought.

  He turned back to his desk, removed the top Post-it note from the thick yellow pad, and smiled when he read the words he’d written a few days earlier: Faith is NOT believing in the unbelievable but trusting in the unseen. He leaned to his left and stuck it on Ethan’s immaculately clean desk. Then he glanced at the computer screen and scribbled on the next blank yellow square. Ethan would understand once he confided in him about the dark history he shared with Allen Wolfe. Then he clicked his web browser back to his email. Next would come the unpleasant part: emailing Sam Houston about the hiccup in their plans.

  The creaking of the door caused him to jump in his seat.

  When he swiveled his chair, he expected to find either Ethan, who often worked late since Natalie’s death, or one of the janitors. Instead, a man dressed in athletic sweats, who was almost as broad as the doorway, blocked the lab’s entrance.

  “May I help you?” Elijah asked. Then he recognized the man as the athlete he’d seen on the street earlier, but something about his appearance caused a shiver to run up the back of his neck. He straightened in his seat as the man strode into the room.

  “Professor Elijah Schiff?” He barked out the name as if doing a roll call.

  “Are you a student?”

  The man paused when he reached the Logos. He surveyed the machine. Then he reached out and squeezed the arm of the chair, as if testing a melon for ripeness. Elijah realized what about the man’s appearance was puzzling. His face. He wore mirrored orange sunglasses that clung to his wide cheekbones, but seeing a kid these days with the pretension to wear sunglasses at night wasn’t odd; it was the deeply tanned, verging on burnt, complexion of the man’s face itself. Thanksgiving break wasn’t for another two weeks, and his classmates were all pasty from the gray New Haven fall, yet this man looked as if he’d just stepped off a tropical beach. He was also the largest person Elijah had ever seen, like something from a superhero comic. His neck appeared as if it had been woven together by thick chunks of rope, while the veins on his forearms stood out like cords stretched across a generous cut of steak.

  “Elijah Schiff?” he repeated, now just a few feet from the professor’s chair.

  Elijah felt a lump form in his throat. His intuition told him something was wrong. Then he noticed the blond crew cut and the erect posture of the man. He didn’t walk with the bored sloppiness of a student. He moved with a military precision. Elijah thought about his conversation with Wolfe and the concerns he’d only tonight come to terms with.

  Then an idea came to him.

  “Yes, that’s me,” he replied with a steady voice and a forced smile. “But can you give me a minute?” He reached into his pocket. “My phone’s vibrating.”

  The bluff seemed to work. The man stopped four feet from him, cocking his head to the side.

  “Hello, this is Professor Schiff.”

  While nodding his head as if listening to the other person, he searched with his thumb for the numbers 911. To disguise his actions, he stood as he was dialing, pushing himself from his chair. But with his focus on the monster of a man, he pushed backward on his chair at too great an angle. The chair rolled away from him. With his weight moving forward, he lost his balance.

  He flailed his arms in a vain attempt to right himself, but in doing so his cell phone flew from his hand. He cringed as he heard it hit the hardwood floor and splinter. He, however, didn’t hit the ground. A calloused hand shot out and cinched around his upper arm so tightly that he felt pins and needles in his hand.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, both embarrassed at his clumsiness and concerned about his cell phone.

  He gathered his feet underneath him and stood upright. His nose was inches from the man’s inflated chest. The thick fingers still encircled his arm. Then he noticed the man’s free hand. He felt the breath suck from his chest as if it had been vacuumed out.

  Dangling from the man’s palm was a white, plastic-covered clothesline about an eighth of an inch in diameter and several feet long.

  CHAPTER 19

  KOFFEE, NEW HAVEN

  “Look, Rachel, I really could use your help here.” Ethan’s voice was quiet but firm as he leaned across the circular iron table at Koffee, the café at the corner of Audubon and Whitney, a five-minute walk from his office. At seven thirty in the morning, only two other early risers occupied a nearby table.

  He was concerned that Elijah might do something rash. His mentor wanted to inform the Texas foundation that they were having complications. But jumping to that conclusion is premature, he thought. His programming of the Logos had worked just as they’d hoped with Sister Terri. Elijah was being overly cautious, and Rachel’s position that one of the monkeys was having psychiatric issues wasn’t helping.

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Are you asking me to lie to Professor Schiff?”

  “Certainly not.” He toyed with the edge of the folded-up Yale Herald newspaper. “We don’t know if anything is wrong with Anakin, much less whether any change he may have undergone is a result of the Logos.”

  She leaned across the table so that her face was close to his. He couldn’t help but notice the flowery fragrance of the hair that framed her face in loose curls. She jabbed a finger
into his paper.

  “I know my monkeys. They live in strict hierarchical groups. Anakin was docile, even submissive to the others. Suddenly he’s displaying dominance behavior that’s totally out of character.”

  He suppressed a sigh at the thought that the future of his research could be determined by one monkey taking grapes from another.

  “Professor Sanchez returns from her study at Yerkes next week. Maybe we should get her opinion before—”

  “You want to delay further capuchin testing too?”

  “Professor, I’m not trying to be difficult here.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “The capuchins aren’t just animals to me. They’re family. CapLab’s restriction on invasive medical research was one of the reasons I came to Yale.” Her voice softened. “They certainly act more like a family than the one I had growing up.”

  As frustrated as he felt, he couldn’t help but be drawn to the passion she radiated when she spoke about her work. Involuntarily, his eyes dropped down her torso. Her cream turtleneck clung to her curves, just as her black pencil skirt clung to her stocking-covered thighs. Catching himself, he darted his gaze back to her face. She flashed a knowing grin, revealing small but perfect teeth behind full lips. He felt his neck flush. He chastised himself for even allowing his mind to go down that road. She was a grad student, and now she was also another speed bump in the progress of his study.

  “You had a challenging home life?” He changed the subject since he wasn’t getting anywhere with his pleas not to slow his research.

  “Dad was distant physically and emotionally. He worked such long hours that we only saw him on Sundays, and then we weren’t allowed to be too noisy until he finished the Times crossword puzzle.” She glanced down at the Herald. “Mom was an alcoholic. I can’t count the times my two younger brothers and I carried her to bed when we came home from school and found her passed out at the kitchen table with an empty bottle of vodka rolling around on the floor.”