CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
In the week that Fala had been on the island, Colonel McGraw had been a frequent companion. Except for the serenity of living on a beach, she found Diego Garcia a rather boring place. You could hike around the entire island in a single day. She found McGraw’s company enjoyable—picnicking, swimming, and, of course, discussing politics, archaeology, and genetics. She was learning a lot about genetics. Dr. Jaymes had given her free rein of the research facilities, and she had a lot of questions.
Everyone on the island had a mission. McGraw’s mission was to train his army of chimps. And the biotech workers on the island were ecstatic with their life. Their social agenda with their peers was full. And professionally, every day brought the gossip of a new breakthrough. They had given up an academic world of backbiting for limited research dollars in exchange for the incredible freedom of having whatever they needed to accomplish a task whenever they wanted it. The answer to their requests was never, “Why do you need that?” but “How soon do you need it?” Fala also had a mission. She was probing for a way to get off the island. Except for a few select military officers, everyone on the island had contracted to stay there for at least three years. Flights or sailings from the island were few and well secured. The research facility had a world-class library, which, of course, required access to information available on the Internet. She could search out any resource of interest. But the system blocked anyone from unauthorized communication. She did have one idea, though. She serially accessed Joshua Krantz’s Web site. She didn’t know if he would look at it and, even if he did, whether or not he would understand her message. It was unlikely.
After a week of amiable chats and picnics on the beach, McGraw invited her for dinner at his home. His was one of a complex of prefab bungalows set up for officers. The “neighborhood” fronted the beach. But this was a small island; almost every structure fronted a beach. McGraw had only one request.
“Please, do not wear perfume.”
It was a strange request. They had supplied her with a wardrobe and plenty of cosmetics. She often wore perfume. She enjoyed the scents. But perhaps the colonel liked his women unadorned. She wore a simple white summer dress with spaghetti straps. She wore no makeup and no perfume.
McGraw gave his guest a polite kiss on the cheek when she arrived and invited her to sit at a table on a small enclosed patio. A center tapered candle was lit. There were two glasses, an open bottle of wine, and one of Perrier.
“This is an Australian Shiraz,” he said. “It’s very good. I didn’t know if being Muslim, you would drink with me, so I have some water if you want.”
“No, I love wine.”
Link poured for each of them.
“I’m glad you’re not religious. I didn’t want it to be a problem.”
“Oh, I believe I am religious.”
“Really?”
“I believe Mohammad did and said many good things, just as did Jesus. But people who came after the Prophet sometimes made his words into something different. There were very few things that the Prophet called haram, that which is forbidden. Of course, swine meat is one of them—”
“We’re having chicken,” McGraw smiled.
“But I believe wine is wonderful.”
McGraw raised his glass. “Then to your health—and happiness,” he toasted.
“And to yours.”
“I’ve seen them flog people in Pakistan for drinking wine,” he said.
“I have seen that, too. But wine—and I have read the Koran, it does not forbid wine. ‘Draw not near unto prayer when you are drunken,’ it says. It doesn’t forbid wine; it forbids intemperance. It is just that over the centuries the mullahs have made it a sin. Eighty lashes is the standard punishment for drinking a glass of wine. But nowhere in the Koran is such a punishment prescribed. They flog people for drinking alcohol, but in Pakistan alone there are two million drug addicts. You can’t sell alcohol there, but you can buy hashish or heroin right on the streets. The stench of urine on the streets there is from addicts, not drunks.”
“I know,” McGraw began, “that you abhor what we’re doing.”
“And what is that?”
“Training animals to kill.”
“I don’t approve of training men to kill, either.”
“You should know I have discovered other benefits to our research.”
“And what is that?”
McGraw reached under his seat and retrieved a dinner bell. He rang it gently three times. A moment later two chimpanzees came out with dinner plates in their hands. As are all animals, McGraw’s chimps were naturally naked, unclothed—except for white bow ties that McGraw had placed about their necks for a formal touch.
“You trained them to be waiters?”
“It wasn’t very hard. They’re very bright. They pick up tasks quite quickly.”
The chimps carefully set dinner plates in front of their guests, and for just a brief moment Fala made eye contact with her waiter. The animal had the classic high-sloped forehead and great overriding arched brow with the close-set eyes of his species. But there was also an electricity in his gaze, Fala thought, almost as if there was—what was she thinking?—a soul behind those eyes. She flashed back at memories of her earliest studies as a young archaeologist.
The chimps stepped back, like diligent waiters, as their “guests” began to dine.
“What are you thinking?” McGraw asked.
“I was just remembering an internship I did with a French paleontologist during my early training in the nineties. We were at a dig in the Algarve, in the south of Portugal, where he thought he had found remains of Spanish sailors from the 1500s. The men had short, sturdy skeletons with small skulls, prominent arched brows, and coarse features. Not unlike your chimpanzees. But they weren’t sixteenth-century sailors. It wasn’t until we did carbon dating that we determined the skeletons were those of Neanderthals.
“Neanderthals are classified as a separate species. They disappeared about thirty-five thousand years ago. The first human fossil remains—the first homo sapiens—were found in Africa and date from about one hundred thousand years ago. So, the Neanderthals and modern humans lived together for thousands of years. The guy I worked with, and several other paleontologists, believe that Neanderthals—a not too distant relative of the chimpanzee—interbred with the earliest humans. And I think it’s obvious that a lot of people today still have those same prominent features—sloping forehead; heavy brows; stocky, big-boned physiques.”
“Yeah, I know a few modern-day Neanderthals,” McGraw said cynically.
“I was just thinking how chimp faces look a lot like the Neanderthals.”
Fala caught the glimpse of a smile from her “waiter” and reflexively she smiled back.
“For centuries,” Fala mused, “the cliché admonishing bad human behavior has been ‘don’t act like an ape.’ How ironic is it to see apes act like men… gentlemen.”
Fala took a taste of her dinner. “This is very good.”
“You’re surprised?”
“Don’t tell me they cook, as well?”
“My chimps? No. At least not yet. I cooked.”
“Well, I figured you could open a can. But this is a surprise.”
“I’m a soldier with a lot of talents—besides culinary.”
“And what would those be?”
“We’ll have to see where the night takes us. You look very beautiful, by the way.”
“Oh, and now it starts. Flattery is one of your talents. And maybe seduction?”
“Is that haram?”
“I gather you prefer your women plain. No makeup, no perfume.”
“Is that what you think?”
“‘No perfume’ was the only request you made of me for tonight.”
“I love beautiful women—and makeup and perfume just enhances their beauty. Nothing wrong with that.”
Without asking, one of the chimp waiters moved forward and f
illed each of their wineglasses again. Fala was surprised. Even McGraw seemed a little taken aback.
“The scientists here have been working a decade to enhance the genetic capabilities of these chimps,” McGraw began explaining. “But it’s been millions of years since chimps and humans parted on the evolutionary tree, and during that time they developed different survival mechanisms from us. We have no interest in removing those attributes. You see, while we don’t rely on smell to survive, chimps do—in detecting enemies, seeking out food, choosing a mate. In a way, I think we’ve been robbed of a wonderful sense. I’ve been told my chimps have thirty percent more genes dedicated to the sense of smell than we have. So, it’s not your perfume I didn’t want. I just felt that this evening was not the time to provide them with extra olfactory stimulation. I think you’ve already seen how some visual stimulation can excite them.”
Fala recalled their first day cavorting in the water and watching the chimps onshore playing with “red” objects. She blushed with that enlightenment.
The evening progressed with more wine, pleasant conversation, and finally something she knew was haram. The punishment for this, she thought, would be stoning.
War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is the sooner it will be over.
—William Tecumseh Sherman
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
During the first weeks and months that McGraw had assumed his unusual command, General Shell had been a daily visitor to his encampment, surveying his successes, his failures, his skills. And when progressively more political duties took him away, McGraw still exchanged daily reports and received useful suggestions from his general, and his patron. And he remained quite aware that this was the one duty that kept him out of Leavenworth prison.
When he had only six chimps in his command, and the first had reached maturity after years of research, genetic manipulation, and breeding, he had four enlisted men assisting him as handlers. They provided for the chimpanzees’ shelter and feeding, and they performed the unpleasant tasks of cleaning up their toilet. When his troops reached one hundred, he still had those same four enlisted men. He didn’t need any more. And now, with a force of nearly two companies, his human crew had little work to do at all. His chimpanzees had their own chain of command. McGraw had given the brightest of them rank. And the chimps trained each other in the tasks he had taught them. There was one recent element in their training that McGraw had wanted to communicate with General Shell. The general, however, was just too preoccupied lately. He had pressing business in Washington. McGraw put his comments in a report and wondered if the general was even reading them anymore. He wrote:
“Training has progressed with my second company at a pace far faster than the time required by the first force. Their peers have been instrumental in teaching them the required behaviors and preferred techniques. Recently, however, several of the animals have made dramatic adaptations to their training that have clearly improved the team’s performance. They are no longer copying behaviors; they are inventing new and better ones.”
“What other animal can do that?” McGraw wanted to say in his report. But he didn’t. He knew the obvious answer already—humans.
General Mack Shell had been ordered to appear at a secret session of a joint congressional oversight committee. He sat alone at a mahogany desk whose edges had been gouged by the fingernail scratches of the myriad of people who had nervously sat there before him to face scrutiny. Congressional oversight committees have existed since the Revolutionary War, ostensibly to weed out abuses in government. They were formed when the flames of scandal became public and disbanded when they smoldered away. But since 1976, in the wake of the Nixon Watergate abuses, congressional oversight committees had been made permanent as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Their interests had stepped beyond just monitoring the intelligence community and began intruding on other committee jurisdictions, like budgets, military appropriations, and homeland security. Many of the folks in the intelligence community and most in the military felt that congressional oversight was counterproductive. Members of the oversight committees were elected officials who acted out of partisan political interests and were swayed by the winds of fickle public opinion. Serving the national interest most often seemed secondary to serving their own.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the committee chair began, “we are here to seek a vigorous review of military activities and expenditures that have not been privy to the vast majority of our colleagues or to the public.”
Shell looked about the room. There were a dozen congressmen on the dais. He was the only witness. No one was in the gallery behind him except security guards at the door. This was a secret session of a congressional committee, and yet its chairman was speaking as if he was talking to the press. Shell locked his jaw and again reminded himself to hold his temper and give a reasoned explanation and review of his project. But he knew he sat before a bunch of shortsighted meddlers in a business they didn’t understand. And he knew that what was said here—in secret session—would not be secret very long.
The questions were fired at him rapidly, and he was frequently interrupted. These men and women seemed more interested in making a point than in listening to his explanations.
“It has come to our attention,” one began, “that you are not just doing genetic research, but rather creating chimeras—composite animals.”
“Are you introducing animal genes into humans?”
“Are you crossing spiders with chimps so that they can weave webs?”
“By introducing human genes into animals, aren’t you creating an entirely new being with a significant human component?”
“Why are we spending billions of dollars for the army to play God?”
General Shell had formulated his answer in a fashion he thought they would understand most—dollars and cents.
“I didn’t make up these numbers, Mr. Chairman,” the general began. “These are conservative figures from a Nobel Prize winning economist. In 2006 dollars, it cost $400,000 annually to put a soldier in the field. For every casualty sustained in combat, it costs $2,000,000 for care and rehabilitation. What is the cost to your communities when we call away your firemen, policemen, salesmen, and farmers? When a soldier is sent abroad to fight our battles, what does that cost in the damage done to marriages and families? The cost in lost productivity, lost life, and the renting of our social fabric? I would measure it in the trillions.
“Gentlemen, what is the essential quality of humanity? How do we differ from other animals? I’ll tell you how. We have the ability to make rational decisions, to reason. We have the ability to use our brains and not just our brawn. Over the years, humans have all agreed that it is unreasonable for a man to do the work an animal can do, and so we had oxen pulling plows. As technology evolved, we made machines to do the work. But to fight our political and economic battles, we still use and bloody young men and women. What a waste. We made the ox pull our plows. Why not have a distant relative, the chimpanzee, fight our wars? Patton said it best: we go to war not to die for our country, but to make the other guy die for his. I’m in the business of winning wars, and the Lemuria Project is one way to win.”
There were a lot of nods of assent about the room. But after listening quietly for most of the session, the senator from South Carolina, who had served longer than most of his colleagues had been alive, made his remarks, his accent exaggerated with buttery smooth long vowels, and agonizingly slow.
“General, I remember other generals who have come here. Long ago, they said the tank would win our wars, then the airplane, the aircraft carrier, then missiles. It was always a new technology. And now you have another new technology of sorts—the genetic manipulation of an animal to fight our battles. But you have talked about this ‘new technology’ using interesting words. Let me see, I have it here, you say these new soldiers are
‘smart, adaptable, determined, decisive.’ They have some innate intelligence. Maybe they don’t have a system of ethics, or morals, religion, a written word, or a spoken language yet, but they think. Do they not?”
“Yes. But they’re trained and bred to—”
The South Carolina senator interrupted. “This is the same debate we’ve had for years about what’s more important, ‘nature or nuture.’ But I want to cut through the rhetoric here. I want us all to remember that regardless of this genetics business, or breeding, or training, what we as humans do in life is still determined by something else. And what we decide here is determined by that something else. And that’s free will. I don’t care if you’ve been born in a ghetto or born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Each of us has free will to decide what’s right and wrong. And so I want to know, General, before we exercise our free will here, what happens if your chimps ever come to have free will? Who wins, if they ever think about fighting us?”
Shell was used to being decisive. After all, he was a general who made decisions that put men’s lives at risk. When he spoke, his answers had to be unequivocal. Men don’t fight well, and certainly don’t fight to die, when their leaders express doubt.
“Who wins?” the senator asked again.
“We do,” Shell finally answered, after some hesitation. “We win, sir.”
But Shell could tell he had left doubts in the room, and some of them were his own.
Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.
—Ernest Hemingway
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
The Gulfstream 350 filed a flight plan from Van Nuys Airport in Southern California to Pretoria, South Africa. The only passengers listed were Sulli Key, his pilot, his bodyguards—two lovely black transvestites—and Nate Stumpf. Although Sulli had a pilot’s license and was instrument rated on his jets, he preferred to copilot the business jet so he could socialize with his guests whenever he wished. The private plane cruised at 45,000 feet, flew nearly Mach 1, had a range of 3,800 miles, and could accommodate a dozen passengers in decadent, beyond-first-class luxury. Sulli had his own aft stateroom with exercise bikes designed to handle two-G bank angles. The cabin was soundproof. You could speak in whispers. There were wide plush leather armchairs and couches that folded out into beds, multiple flat-panel video monitors and a surround-sound entertainment system, and a full bar and galley suitable for preparing gourmet meals. Not bad for a kid born in a small brick row house in northeast Philadelphia. As a child, his mother removed him from the temptations of the streets by taking him on long, tedious bus and subway rides to a charity arts school downtown. There he learned to play piano and guitar, to sing and dance. He even took art and fencing lessons. The more talents he acquired, his mother admonished, the better his chances for success in life. He performed in cafés and bars, on street corners, anywhere people would watch and listen. And just as his mother had promised, fame and fortune arrived. He had been a “star” for more than thirty years, and still everything he touched turned to gold.
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