Forty-Eight X

by Barry Pollack

  “I think we’ve got a problem,” Senator Berger told the president as he was preparing to board his helicopter. “The Israelis know about Lemuria.”

  “They’re allies,” the president responded. “I think I can shush it with the prime minister.”

  “And people are calling their congressmen about it. Congressmen who are not our friends.”

  “You are Congress. You need to meet and figure this out before the press makes it a headline. And put General Shell on it. It’s his baby.”

  The “people” calling their congressmen were easily identified. They were Margaret Wagner and Nathaniel Stumpf. A dozen select FBI agents were tagged with a simple mission—gather them up. They first knocked on their doors, and then, with no answer, they broke them down. Lots of inquiries were made; phone records and credit cards were checked. Surveillance monitors in the neighborhood were reviewed. They were not to be found in the “usual places.”

  One of the benefits of being pretty near broke was that Stumpf had never bothered to register his motor home when he took it over several years before from a deadbeat client. So, of course, the feds never thought to check out the beachfront motor home sites along the California coast. Stumpf’s rundown twenty-four-foot motor home was one of several dozen parked at Carpinteria State Beach, just twelve miles south of Santa Barbara on Highway 101. Krantz felt right at home. It reminded him of the some of the beaches in Israel. And the climate was very much like Israel’s. Los Angeles and Tel Aviv shared the same latitude.

  That same evening, two senators and four congressmen, the leadership from the Armed Services Committee, met in secret to discuss Lemuria. They met after hours at Ciao, an intimate Italian restaurant in Arlington owned by the senator from Rhode Island. Everyone agreed that what they said there would be more private than any speech could be in the Capitol Building, where past talk held in “secret sessions” had ended up as quotes in front-page headlines. There were, nevertheless, no guarantees to secrecy anymore with an increasing array of sophisticated listening devices—that ranged from a tie clip to microwave antennae on satellites a thousand miles up. And while these men all felt they were “honorable,” they were all worldly enough to know that too many elected officials had sworn to uphold the nation’s secrets and later simply decided that they had a special privilege to ignore that oath. Secrets leaked and oaths were no longer sacred. They were confident, however, the words said here would be as secret as possible because to reveal them would be political suicide and these men were all professionals—professional politicians. Not one had spent less than two decades in one high political office or another. And they were disciplined professionals—meaning they knew how to raise funds, were comfortable in the business of coddling special interests, and could adjust their positions to run with any political wind. It was not that they didn’t have strong opinions; they did. But they were survivors. If the game of politics was like playing rock, paper, scissors, they would always win—because they were water.

  Most of the men in the room were septuagenarians. The youngest, Congressman Adler from California, was sixty. All were balding or gray haired. They sat around a long table in the empty restaurant and picked at several huge bowls of baked ziti set in the middle of the table. And there was plenty of wine. They looked more like Mafia bosses planning a hit than a congressional committee in secret session.

  Theodore Berger, the senator from Rhode Island, the committee chair, and their host, began the discussion. Although he was a Republican, the conservatives in his party still thought of him as some East Coast liberal—and he probably was except for when it came to the armed forces. He gave the military anything they wanted. And General Shell and his fellows in the joint chiefs wanted Lemuria.

  “People who shouldn’t know, know,” Berger began. “The Israelis know. And Dr. Wagner’s daughter has probably figured it out.”

  “The Israelis are allies,” Congressman Adler entered the fray. “And eventually we share information with our allies.”

  “And this Egyptian woman we’re holding,” the congressman from Wyoming asked, “does that mean the Egyptians know and by extension the rest of the Arab world? Maybe we should think about shutting this business down.”

  “I don’t know,” Berger responded solemnly.

  “We ought to shut nothing down,” Senator Leland Bruce spoke up. He was the senior senator there. Of all the congressmen sitting around the table, he was perhaps most intimate with the results of the Lemuria Project. He had arranged to receive firsthand reports on progress from the “formerly disgraced” Colonel McGraw, whom he admired very much. Senator Bruce considered McGraw a maligned hero who had risen, phoenix-like, to an even greater heroic status.

  “Nobody likes to say it,” he began, “but we’ve been involved in one war or another since the end of World War II. We’ve gone from the Nazis, to the Communists, to petty dictators, and now we’ve got the fanatic Islamo-fascists to deal with. Would any of you boys have shut down the Manhattan Project if the secret got leaked and a few pussies in the press made scare headlines about the dangers of radioactivity? Or if the environmentalists objected? Secrets don’t stay secrets forever. What’ll count in the end is results.”

  “I agree with Leland,” another congressman entered the conversation. He used a common political ploy of announcing agreement and then disagreeing. “Any new weapon will have its detractors. And this one will, too. But an awful lot of people in both our parties are not going to like this. We should step back a bit and maybe introduce the idea more slowly, over a few years, to adjust the public. Maybe later—”

  “Congressman,” Leland responded. He only used first names when he liked people. “Horses have been battle scarred for centuries. We’ve given medals to dogs for heroism on the battlefield. Animals have always been used in war—horses, camels, elephants, dogs, cats, birds, and now chimps. We can’t go backwards on this.”

  “I am not advocating going backwards. Just going forward more slowly.”

  The congressman from Wyoming, a real cowboy, with big pointy-toed fancy alligator boots and a thousand-acre ranch back home, finished off a tall glass of wine and decided to confront the old man.

  “I don’t disagree, Leland, that we’ve benefited from using animals in war, but what nobody has talked about here is that we’ve gotten ourselves onto that proverbial ‘slippery slope.’ The one the religious right has been so noisy about. Everybody is for using genetic research to cure disease but scared at the same time that we’d use it to engineer a new human being.”

  “We’re not engineering a new human being,” Leland corrected.

  “Maybe what we’re doing is worse,” the Wyoming congressman continued. “We’ve created a chimera.”

  “A what?” Senator Berger asked.

  “I’m not ignorant of all this scientific stuff. I’ve been reading the reports. They’re doing research that people call transgenesis, the creation of a chimera. A chimera is a composite animal.”

  “Like a mule?” Senator Bruce cut him off. “Half horse, half donkey. What’s the big deal? We bred mules for special jobs and nobody ever got in an uproar about that. There are hybrid cattle and sheep and, well, we’re just breeding chimps to have special characteristics, to do a special job, as well.”

  “Leland,” the cowboy said, softening his speech. “We all know we’re not making another mule. Half horse, half donkey. We all know the half and half they’re making on that island.”

  The conversation quieted. Everyone knew what the cowboy meant, but no one was ready to speak the words aloud: “half man, half chimp.”

  Halfway around the world, Colonel McGraw was having a similar conversation with a “guest” on his island.

  Fala had spent the morning watching him train with his troops. Nearly two hundred chimpanzees ran along the beach with McGraw in the lead. She was familiar with monkeys in a zoo and monkeys in the wild. They scampered around in haphazard ways. They were either playful or sedentary. But McGraw
’s chimps were different. She had never seen animals like this exhibit such discipline. They were larger than chimpanzees she had seen in the past, at least five feet tall. They also exhibited more of a bipedal motion and stood more upright. And their right hands wore special gloves that never touched the ground. The Alexander battle scythe she had seen had been a right-handed weapon. But what was most curious was their chant. It was almost as if these animals could speak. As McGraw ran, he sang out army running cadences.

  “One, two, three, four. If you don’t sing, we’re gonna run some more. One mile—won’t get it,” McGraw sang out.

  “Oon mah,” the chimps responded.

  “Two miles—stickin’ with it.” Again McGraw.

  “Too mah,” the chimp company answered.

  “Three miles—lookin’ good,” McGraw sang.

  “Tree mah,” they responded.

  “Four miles—knew you could.”

  “Fo mah.”

  The company came to a halt on the beachfront where Fala sat on a knoll. McGraw’s chest heaved from the exertion. His T-shirt was drenched in sweat. His chimps weren’t winded at all, and in fact, they seemed eager for more. Colonel McGraw brought his troops to a disciplined attention and then dismissed them. They instantly appeared more like monkeys, scampering into the sea to play, back into the jungle to their tents, or into nearby trees. McGraw sauntered over to her. Curiosity piqued, Fala was the first to talk.

  “They speak?” was her first question.

  “They mimic speech, like parrots,” Link answered.

  “They stand more upright and they’re larger than any chimpanzees I’ve ever seen.”

  McGraw smiled. “Good breeding.” And he changed the subject. “Are you enjoying your stay on our island?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Sure you have a choice.”

  “It’s been interesting,” Fala conceded, somberly.

  McGraw sat next to her. “Well, we don’t all get dealt the cards we want. You can choose to be happy with your lot in life right now or simply be miserable over things you can’t change.” He picked up a handful of sand and let it flow in a slow trickle out of his hand. When it emptied, he picked up another handful. “Unlike an hourglass where time seems so finite, it can seem endless here. You ought to try to enjoy it.”

  “Well then, I can’t think of a more beautiful place to be a captive.”

  “I knew I’d find an optimist in there somewhere.” Link smiled.

  “So, you are using these animals to fight your wars,” Fala got instantly to the heart of the matter.

  “Why not?” McGraw quickly conceded. “Man has always used animals to fight. It may have even been your relatives who started it. The ancient Egyptians loosed leopards and hawks and snakes on their enemies.”

  “But you are creating a new kind of animal.”

  “We’ve made a hybrid.”

  “No. A mule is a hybrid, a cross between a horse and a donkey. You’re creating a chimera.”

  “A chimera? That’s just mythology. Man has always worked to breed better animals—faster horses, fatter cattle, hardier chickens. Chimeras are bizarro things, like animals with the body of a goat, the head of a lion, the tail of a serpent.”

  Fala added her wisdom. “The Greeks had centaurs—half man, half horse; and harpies, a falcon with the head of a lion; and the minotaur with the head of a bull on the body of a man.”

  “Exactly. My soldiers look just like chimpanzees to me. We don’t have a chimera here.”

  “Just a smart chimp?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But with the body of a chimpanzee and the genes of a man.”

  She was not so dumb, McGraw quickly realized. And she was beautiful.

  “Swim?” he asked her, taking off his shirt. He was prepared to swim in the buff and hoped she’d do the same. He looked down on her. His eyes—and his six-pack lean, muscled abdomen—enticed her.

  “I’ll have to change.” She smiled.

  “You’d have to drive halfway across the island. You can swim in your underwear.” And he was down to his.

  This soldier made her uncomfortable. But he was beautiful, she thought.

  “Don’t worry,” McGraw added. “There’ll be no monkey business with me.”

  “No monkey business?”

  “Absolutely not. This is a great place to swim.” He had goggles and snorkels in his backpack. He handed her a pair. “We can snorkel off the reef. It’s shallow and just about fifty meters offshore. There’s a world of colorful fish down there. And who’s gonna see? Just me and a bunch of chimpanzees. Come on.”

  He smiled one last time, then quickly took off his shorts and ran naked into the surf. She watched his torso and buttocks undulating, butterflying through the surf. She could not help but look. This man was testing and teasing her. She had never done anything like this before. She thought for a moment that she would strip down to panties and a bra and run after him into the sea. Or should she just become naked like him? Oh, what crazy thoughts this man had her thinking. She imagined what her uncles would think. They would stone her. Allahumma-gh fir-lee, she thought. God forgive me. She took her shoes off but left on all her clothes. She was a Muslim woman who could be respectable and enjoy life, too, and she ran into the surf after the handsome colonel.

  They swam together for a while pointing out to each other the drama of the world below. Fala looked up when she heard the loud regular staccato yells of animals onshore: “Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.” She saw several chimps in the trees holding some bright red object in their hands. She swam over to McGraw, who seemed oblivious to the racket, and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “What are they doing?” she asked.

  McGraw lifted off his goggles, wiped the saltwater from his eyes, and looked ashore. Then he looked closer at Fala. The water had pasted her blouse taut to her body. Her breasts were high and full, her nipples erotic beacons. From the trees onshore, his chimps were watching Fala and masturbating.

  “They’re just playing,” he lied, and to divert her attention turned her seaward to urge her to watch a manta ray below.

  Like Ptolemy and all great generals of history, McGraw knew leading troops involved both discipline and reward. When they performed well, he rewarded his soldiers with leisure time, better food, more comfortable shelter, and at times—the company of females. McGraw clearly had anticipated all the needs of his soldiers. Although the scientists of the Lemuria Project were somewhat chagrined over his request, they nevertheless provided him what he needed. The colonel had a bevy of infertile chimp prostitutes at his disposal. It was one duty that he didn’t fancy—being the chief “chimp pimp.” And, as he watched his soldiers dealing with their needs, he realized he was feeling needs, as well.

  The congressmen were finishing their meeting at Ciao. The ziti and the wine were long gone, and Senator Berger summed up the consensus.

  “Genetic research is not going to stop even if we close down Lemuria. I remember people playing with genetic manipulation as early as the sixties. Remember that guy who collected sperm from Nobel Prize winners to create super-intelligent kids? It ain’t going to stop. We’ve just got to convince our colleagues that we’ve achieved the best balance possible between science and ethics. And I think we have.

  “Gentlemen, the most abused animals in the world are young men. Why should there be any outrage if we manipulate an animal to fight our wars instead of manipulating our young men—and women? Is it better to brainwash kids to pursue our political and economic goals on the battlefield or genetically modify an animal to do it for us? To me, there’s no question. I don’t care if these chimps are chimeras or not. All I care about is whether or not they can save our children and preserve our nation.”

  And so, they all agreed. The Lemuria Project would continue, fully funded. They would give the scientists more time to create new soldiers and General Shell more time—to patch a leak. But Berger was a practical politician. After the me
eting, both he and Senator Bruce spoke personally with General Shell. They were emphatic: “One more leak, Mack, might be the straw that breaks the monkey’s back.”

  Things don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.

  —Garfield

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  While Stumpf kept “house” in their beachfront motor home, Maggie and Krantz spent several days moving from one local library or Internet café to another, in Carpenteria, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. They wrote e-mails to congressmen, sent text messages, started fires in some blogs, all in an effort to “rattle some cages” in Washington. By bringing what they knew out in the open—and possibly making those in the know furious or others simply curious—they hoped they would learn more about the Lemuria Project. When they did get a reply to their persistent inquiries, however, they were usually automated responses about some bill a congressman was sponsoring that had nothing whatsoever to do with their inquiry. They figured the government could monitor their computer use, even from a library, so they limited their time at each site. They kept an eye on the newspapers and listened to the news. But Lemuria did not appear to spike anyone’s interest.

  Their efforts seemed to have come to a dead end, and in the back of his mind, Krantz wondered if Fala was even still alive. But that doubt disappeared over morning coffee and a danish at an Internet café in Isla Vista, the seaside student residential community of the University of California, Santa Barbara. He logged on to his own Web site just to see if there was any activity there. If Fala was a captive, he didn’t expect her to be able to communicate with him. But somebody might be trying to contact him. And somebody was. Rushing back to Stumpf’s motor home on Carpenteria Beach, he felt as exhilarated as if he had dredged up some priceless relic of a long lost civilization. The past—and hopefully his future—had come alive.