On Deception Watch

by David H Spielberg

  But still he did not like it. He felt a parallel effort would inevitably be revealed. And then what? He did not like questions with no good answer.

  This was not a performance he enjoyed playing. He was not a spy or a secret agent. He did not like plotting to deceive the president and the government. America had been his sanctuary. His life had been reborn in America. Yet he knew he had no choice. Business was business, but this was beyond business. No one at AJC Fusion was working just for business. They were all driven by a vision. And Berman knew that inspired people could work miracles. He himself had worked miracles of finance seeing the company and the parent, Nova Industries, through crisis after crisis. He himself had discovered skills of persuasion that time after time attracted or encouraged timely interventions by unlikely benefactors. He too was infused with the vision of AJC Fusion, the vision of power from the limitless sea. For this vision, they had all sacrificed many cherished illusions about themselves, about what they could do and what they would not doabout roles they could and could not play.

  Berman directed the taxi to the airport for the shuttle flight back to New York. He had given a great deal of thought to the most probable parallel path. Arthur Cranshaw had many contacts and his network, nationwide and international, was extensive. Cranshaw’s investor prospects during the final stages of technical development included a number of small American companies looking for a speculative highflier. These would be of no use to him now. However, there was the Lone Star Gas Pipeline Corporation. They were in with Cranshaw for their own survival. The Texas natural gas reserves were dwindling and they would be out of business not much beyond the middle of the twenty-first century.

  Cranshaw’s foreign contacts included Burmese Oil and Gas Exports Ltd. They too would be out of reserves by the middle of the century. In addition, there were nonenergy, high-technology-related companies from Brazil, Korea, Israel, Japan, South Africa, and Sweden. As chief financial officer of AJC Fusion, he had legitimate business dealings with each of these companies from time to time.

  But he was convinced that nothing less than a national government could provide the protection that Nova would need for survival. It must be at that level or it would not be sufficient. The board had concurred. He made his recommendation. The board gave its authorization. A second phone call had been made the same day that he spoke with General Slaider. The mandated Plan B with Brazil was set in motion.

  Arriving at the air terminal, Berman found a telephone and placed a credit card call to New Jersey.

  “Ms. Carlyle, please . . . Sylvia, this is Samuel. I am leaving Washington in about twenty minutes. Tell Dr. Cranshaw the briefing is scheduled for three days from now. The follow-up to today’s meeting will be in ten days . . . I don’t know. We did what we hoped to do. I will report back on the rest of the day later . . . no, not right now. Wait until I call again. Thank you.”

  He placed a second call. It was a direct line that bypassed the main switchboard.

  “Hello, this is Samuel. I will be arriving today at three thirty. I should be at Deloitte’s by four . . . yes, very good . . . I am very grateful for the time you are granting me. It is a great honor. I look forward to our meeting. Thank you . . . yes . . . goodbye.” Berman hung up the phone and looked around. All was as it should be, busy air travelers all in their own little worlds.

  Berman had to assume that from the moment General Slaider informed the president about his call there would be surveillance of his movements and contacts. He could not be observed doing anything suspicious. Even trying to lose himself. Even the act of trying to be difficult to follow would be suspicious. His only way of avoiding suspicion was to act in the most open and transparent manner. He would hide his actions in the open, his intentions, amidst the obvious multitude. What more innocent action could he take than to visit the accounting firm that audits his company books?

  He walked to the shuttle gate, pausing briefly to buy a Wall Street Journal for the flight back to Newark airport.

  8

  Frank Morrison was adamant. The president of the United States could not appear to be promoting the interests of a private company. This was unethical, political dynamite. Thank god they had kept everything secret to this point, he thought, as he caught with a grunt the medicine ball tossed at him by Emerson Drummond. They had gone to the White House workout gym to talk. Drummond wanted the physical activity to stimulate his thinking.

  “Mr. President . . . Emerson, I know this could be the most exciting thing to happen since tapioca pudding, but I just want you to consider all the possibilities. I did some checking at Energy with Jim Benson. We, that is, the federal bureaucracy, have been making life tough for this company for years. We’ve inspected them and harassed them and interfered with them in every way possible. We’ve thrown rules and regulations at them that from the beginning of the atomic age we have never enforced. Frankly, Mr. President, we’ve made their job as private entrepreneurs in the atomic energy research business a hell on earth. Right now there’s no love lost between AJC Fusion and the U.S. government. This could all be a setup to embarrass your administration.”

  “Frank, don’t ever censor yourself with me. Just let me know exactly what you’re thinking,” the president said, laughing. “The one thing I value more than anything else you do for me is you make me crazy with every downside scenario your fertile mind can imagine. I mean it, Frank, don’t ever stop. I’m too trusting. Someday you are going to save me from a really tragic mistake. I mean it, sincerely.” For emphasis, he tossed the ball to Morrison with extra force.

  “Okay, boss . . . I guess. Seriously, Mr. President, they have been raked over the coals by our guys. I guess it was because they weren’t dealing the government in, like all the other big research outfits . . . you know, that’s what made our boys crazy. They wouldn’t take our money so they weren’t beholden to the American people. I guess it didn’t strike our fellows as patriotic so they really busted their nuts to undermine their operations.” He tossed the ball back to the president.

  “And you think because of that they would stage this elaborate deceit to embarrass me?”

  “I’m just suggesting it as a possibility.”

  “Okay, Frank. I’m warned. Let’s continue to other possibilities now. Have you got the technical team set for the briefing at AJC? How are they to be chosen?”

  “The team is set. Four from Lawrence Livermore, three from Sandia. We also have a Dr. Copak from the CIA. He’s out of the University of Rochester. The National Science Foundation wants to send a Dr. Thornton. I believe that will help politically, if we need it, so I agreed. They are the best in their fields and they cover the spectrum. The boys at Lawrence Livermore are especially eager to see their shuttering system that keeps the laser from getting destroyed by the back-reflected light. By the way, Thornton is a world-class expert on nuclear chemistry. Birdwell, at Sandia, is the expert on telemetry and monitoring the dynamics of implosion. He’ll be the best bet at deciding if this is real or just instrumentation gremlins. The others are there to pick brains. Birdwell is the lead man in the group. I also called Dick Scully at the Courier and he promised to send an advance on their first article. We should get it tomorrow morning. Also, Cranshaw is holding a news conference in two days.”

  “Very good, Frank. The briefing will take care of itself for a while now. Let’s talk about politics for a second. Are we vulnerable so far with what we’ve done?”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. President. Not yet, anyway. I’m concerned about an ethics argument. I’d like to get your counsel in on this as soon as possible though. It’s really the follow-up meeting I’m worried about. You know the power industry is not going to take this lying down. This isn’t just the TVA all over again. We’re not just talking about selling power locally to a depressed area. We’re talking about putting these guys out of business. The folks at AJC Fusion are worried someone there could get killed. Well, I’m worried that you could get killed.” Morrison tossed the
medicine ball aside.

  9

  The president turned onto his side, facing away from Emily, so his breathing would not disturb her sleep. He was tired, but his racing brain would not let him sleep. He was a man who normally slept easily and well.

  He was a practical man, he felt—a man untroubled by false pride or controlling, secret, personal agendas. He was a man with principles, and he was a good politician and proud of it. He smiled as he lay in bed assessing himself. Emerson Drummond knew that the office would exact its toll, and like a sensible man he attempted to pace himself. And he retained his sense of humor and perspective—recognizing that he was only a man, in spite of the mirage of awesome power and authority that went with the title.

  Yet recently, against all his sensible expectations and his lifelong custom, he was having increasing difficulty falling asleep. More and more he found himself relying on sedatives to help himself get to sleep. It was a practice he abhorred.

  It was a practice, however, that he could no longer avoid. The demands of office required a sound night’s sleep. He had tried long enough. So once again, the president reluctantly took two tablets from the pill bottle on the night table. He swallowed them without water. He never used water. Having water on the table by the bed seemed too premeditated to him—as if he expected to need the pills. He resisted giving them that much control over his life. So he took them without water when he needed them.

  It was separation anxiety, he told himself, in his self-deprecating way that helped to keep him humble in spite of all temptations of high office. Six years as president and he had to deal with the inevitable end of his administration and the end of his moment in history. It was to be expected, he told himself. He took comfort in this realization. He lay back against his pillow.

  Slowly, the governor in his brain began to throttle back. His eyes soon closed again, but now with tranquility rather than disciplined resolve. He leaned back against his wife’s comfortable, familiar body as he drifted from a restless torpor into a shallow and agitated sleep.

  10

  It was a very different sort of arrival, this cold November night in Delhi, than when Ranjit Lal last returned in celebration of his election as the secretary-general of the United Nations. This trip to India was not to be a choreographed state visit. This was instead a welcome and unheralded visit to his family.

  Ranjit Lal left the plane and walked alone along the tarmac. He wound his way through the eerie, severely lighted forest of multicolored Airbuses, which stood in sharp contrast with the surrounding blackness. In the unexpected cool night air, his frosty breath, illuminated by the blazing airport lights, preceded him—an enveloping brume of his own creation. Pulling his light jacket tightly around his neck, he hurried to the terminal entrance.

  Ranjit Lal was a large man for an Indian, over six feet, making him an imposing figure in any gathering of his countrymen. However, his straight black hair, parted neatly on the side—like a schoolboy off to opening day—his smooth, round face and earnest smile, and his bright, friendly eyes all provided an unexpected contrast to his imposing size.

  He moved through passport control with gratifying dispatch even for 3:00 a.m. Beyond the checkpoint were the ragtag porters who seeped from the milling crowd, making vague, graceful, supplicating gestures and soothing sounds that belied their rough appearance. With a mumbled concurrence from Lal an agreement of uncertain terms was made and his possessions were entrusted to one who for all appearances was a vagrant of doubtful dependability. With his makeshift porter’s help Lal made it quickly through the terminal, hired a taxi and struck out for Old Delhi.

  During his careening nighttime ride through Delhi’s streets, the speeding taxi gave him only the briefest opportunity for observing the familiar scenes flashing by him.

  The streets were well-lit, wide and clean. Quite modern, in fact. Really too modern for the traffic they would bear by daybreak. Missing until morning were the taxi drivers honking every few seconds from habit more than need, the rickshaws, the buses, the animal-drawn carts, the camels, the occasional elephant, the bicycles, heavily loaded with people or possessions.

  Along the sides of the road he could glimpse construction everywhere. Buildings were rising like mushrooms after a rain. Except these buildings were surrounded with scaffolding made of logs lashed together to form massive, lopsided, improbable exoskeletons for the modern skyscrapers rising within their embrace—the symbol of an emerging nation, a nation with awakened purpose and energy.

  Everywhere he looked, illuminated with the harsh glare of street lamps and construction lights, he could see people living: scattered among the construction storage and debris, under makeshift shanties, in large-diameter concrete sewage pipes, even in holes in the ground, virtually anywhere that a claimed space could be alleged.

  The taxi sped on. Suddenly, coming around a turn in the road, horn blaring, Lal’s taxi scattered a crowd of perhaps fifty men loitering in the middle of the street, all more or less alike in their drab brown ragged costumes. Some of the men gathered around metal barrels burning scrap wood for relief from the unexpected chill. As those spectral figures were left in the taxi’s wake, a reluctant memory remained of a tide of futility that had spread from the sidewalk and overflowed into the street. By custom, however, even now, he only vaguely acknowledged the presence of these men and the challenge they represented to his conscious awareness.

  His country was a nation of contrasts and contradictions. That he knew very well. It was within the Indian temperament to accept such things with equanimity. His faith had taught him patience and forbearance. Yet, his mind wandered as he traveled this familiar path. He remembered how little his strict upbringing and faith had prepared him for the onslaught of worldly pleasure that had overwhelmed him in his youth, as it had his brothers who preceded him.

  Ranjit Lal remembered his father’s disappointment when he learned that his oldest brother, Dalip, had married an English girl while studying business administration in London.

  His second brother, Hira, was sent to Germany to study engineering. To his father’s horror, Hira fell in love and married a German girl. When it was Ranjit’s turn to study abroad, his parents took no chances. Ranjit was married off before he left India.

  Ranjit had always been an obedient and faithful son, quieter and less impulsive than his brothers. So a match was arranged with a young, timid, deferential, and religious girl, a source of comfort to any Hindu father-in-law. She became pregnant and Ranjit went off to London. Mother and child were to stay home, amongst family, as was the custom.

  Ranjit Lal sighed, remembering those formative years in London. He remembered the seductions of European city life—the corruption of honor in the young man Lal, away from the stabilizing influence of family and community.

  His father had said to him “My son, bring honor to our faith. Do not bring shame to me or your wife or your unborn child. Remember our ways and live by them.” And Ranjit Lal had tried to honor them.

  But after three years his loneliness was too great and he met a woman with whom he was not honest. He did not tell her of his wife and son in India. He said nothing about these things and it was enough. She gave him friendship, affection, and intimacy; he gave her his simple good nature, his exotic ways, and his Indian serenity, and he charmed her completely.

  Love grew between them and his heart was sick with his hidden shame of deceit. When he ended it because the inner pain was greater than the outer pleasure he knew that he would never again hurt another person as much as he had hurt this innocent woman.

  Lal was roused from his thoughts of the past by the sudden stopping of the taxi. For this trip Lal was staying at the Maidens Hotel rather than the more luxurious and conspicuous hotels of New Delhi: the Taj Palace, the Metropolitan, or the Maurya.

  Instead, he chose this quiet, former British headquarters building in Old Delhi. He would refresh himself and see his mother and his brother later in the afternoon. By tomorrow, he reasoned,
he will have taken whatever respite this trip would offer and he would be on a British Airways jet for London and New York.

  Lal checked in using the identity of Pratap Gupta. He saw his security escort in the lobby, but did not acknowledge him. Following the bellhop, he took the small elevator to the second floor. His room overlooked the large rear lawn and garden and was well-lit, providing a cheering atmosphere for his ablutions. He lay down afterward and slept.

  When he awoke it was 7:45 a.m., local time, and he decided he would have breakfast after all. He went down to the outdoor dining courtyard and ate alone except for the bird that joined him at his table, eating crumbs from his pastry while he had his tea, papaya, and soft-boiled egg. The day was sunny by then and already hot. The rustling mimosa trees in the courtyard provided a soothing whisper of sound, stirred by a refreshing breeze drifting between the building walls.

  After breakfast, he read the newspaper over another cup of tea. He then went to his room to finish the reports he had brought with him for reading on the flight over. Endless reading. Endless excerpts of abstracts of summaries of reviews—a haunting amalgam of the repetitious and the revolutionary.

  Why, he thought, must it ever be thus? The indescribable brutality, the endless misery over irreconcilable ethnic or national differences, the senseless sacrifice of human life from incompetence, greed, egoism, fanaticism—these sometimes were too much for him to bear. He had not yet inured himself to the frustrations of his office, nor learned to curb his growing sense of hopelessness.

  Placing the report from the Panel of Field Observers on his lap, Lal’s mind wandered once again to his youth and to his father. His father had always been a mystery to Ranjit Lal. He knew that as a child, to him, his father had been a monumental figure, a man of character, a man of important convictions, a man for whom tradition was the stabilizing influence in his life and his source of strength and confidence. And yet, his father had also been a surprising innovator, a creative thinker, a man who could see beyond the walls, and was not afraid.