On Deception Watch

by David H Spielberg

  “What you didwhat we diddoesn’t trouble me, Morgan, for exactly that reason, the reason that I believe we were acting out something bigger than both of us. I think there is associated with every human being a big balance sheet. These are the things I have done. These are the reasons I have done them. These are the bad results of my acts. These are the good results of my acts. I make those calculations to the best of my ability and judge myself accordingly. That’s how I live with my decisions and if God doesn’t like the balance sheet, well, I will take the consequences like a man.” Llewellyn stepped off the treadmill, realizing this conversation was not over, and he didn’t like the slightly elevated position it put him in with respect to Slaider.

  Slaider continued. “As a military man, I’m all too familiar with those types of calculations. Whenever we initiate an action, people die. The military machine is not a subtle instrument. I understand and accept that completely. Alex, a lot of innocent people died for what I believed then and still believe now had to be done. But even for the greater good, they still died. You know the commandment, of course—‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It’s actually a mistranslation, you know, and is more properly rendered ‘Thou shalt not murder.’ An interesting distinction, don’t you think?

  “When soldiers die in the course of doing their job, they have been killedand I use the word advisedly. When innocents die as unintended ‘collateral damage’ in a military operation, they too have been killed. When innocents die because their deaths were planned and they died to advance that plan, they were not killed. They were murdered.” Slaider paused for a moment before continuing his train of thought.

  “I don’t regret anything I have done, especially as things seem to be working out as we hopedbut I do believe I have committed murder, Alex. I understand that one of the burdens, or is it a prerogative, of leadership is sometimes to flout the rules, even the lawssometimes. And this belief, I don’t think, betrays a kind of megalomania on my part or the corruption of power. It’s about getting something done that needs to be done that would not get done otherwise.

  “You know, Alex, the story in the Bible about Abraham and his being commanded ritually to offer his only son’s life to God. I’ve hated that story because it seemed to justify in so many religious people’s mindspeople who claimed or thought they were following a commandment from Godacts of unspeakable violence or depravity. Abraham is the symbol for me of unthinking, uncritical obedience to a belief. Killing Isaac did not need to be done. It was just God power-tripping and Abraham ego-tripping. None of it was needed. As a test of faith, who needs child killers as followers?”

  “It’s not easy,” Slaider continued, “when you’re aiming high, not to wonder sometimes if one is just being delusional, as I believe Abraham was being. I found no honor or nobility in that story. If he had gone through with the sacrifice, in my mind, he would have been a despicable child-killer. It’s a problem though. How do you distinguish delusion from vision, Alex?”

  The president had been listening carefully to what Slaider was saying. At this point he said, “Now you tell me you’re delusional. Bad timing, Morgan,” Llewellyn said, straight-faced.

  Morgan Slaider was stunned and his face showed it.

  “Stop. I’m only kidding you, Morgan,” Llewellyn said. Then he said “What do you want to know? How you distinguish delusion from vision? It’s simple, really. You look at the people who agree with and follow you. If they look like Jonestown recruits or spend most of their time drilling with toy rifles, then you are probably delusional. If they look like the leaders of the community, the critical thinkers, or the royal pains in the ass because they question everything, you probably are a visionary. At least that’s how I would do it.”

  “Hmmm. Alex, I’ve always hated expressions like ‘collateral damage,’ as if a euphemism can sanitize what it really is. Or ‘sacrifice for the greater good.’ These are loathsome expressions for me precisely to the degree that they evade what they really are referring to. When even one innocent person is killed knowingly, intentionallythat is murder.

  “I said I don’t regret what I have done. I also made choices—not to believe in your invisible god of faith, but to accept that no matter how worthy my goals may be there will be consequences for murder. There will be—must be—an accounting. That is my belief and I choose to accept the consequences. Personally. You believe in a personal god. I believe in a personal karma.”

  Morgan Slaider reached for his bottle of water. It was empty. He took it to the water fountain and refilled it. President Llewellyn respected the silence and the dilemma.

  Slaider took a long drink now from the water bottle. Then he went on.

  “Alex, there’s a story I heard once about karma and reincarnation. A man asked a Buddhist priest just what was it that got reincarnated. The man said to the priest, ‘If we have no recollection of our former life, it’s not our consciousness that is reincarnated. So what is it that is reincarnated?’

  “The priest was silent for a moment and then finally answered, ‘All your evil deeds, thoughts, and words for you to neutralize in this, your next life.’ All your evil deeds, thoughts, and words. Like Marley’s chains, we all carry that load from life to life. It’s a sobering thought.

  “It always comes down to choices, doesn’t it, Alex? You chose to believe in your god and in my vision. We share the same understanding that history does not often present opportunities for radical change. When those opportunities appear it is the obligationthe burden, perhapsof leadership to seize the moment. You know the old saw that history is what is written by the victors. If this had turned out badly, undoubtedly I would have been judged criminally insane.”

  Llewellyn did not know how to respond to this.

  “Because I know this, can I take this as evidence that I’m not insane?” Slaider said with a smile. They looked at each other and both let out a hearty laugh.

  “It would be nice to know for sure, Alex.”

  126

  Morgan Slaider went to his room and showered. Then he put on his sailing outfit—his jeans, sweatshirt, captain’s hat and Docksiders. It was early Wednesday morning. Although it was still brisk out, the sun was shining and there was a fair wind. With luck he would have the whole day mostly to himself on the water. Marion had packed his favorite nautical lunch the night before, just before he went to Bethesda Naval Hospital for a checkup and an overnight stay.

  Slaider drove the fifteen miles to his boat, listening to a tape of Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”—his triumphal ode to joy. Although Slaider mostly preferred to drive with the windows open, this time he made the trip with the windows closed to better hear and appreciate the wonderful music that filled his car.

  He purchased some ice, a six-pack of cold Yuengling Black and Tan, and some light snacks from the yard store. After placing these on board, he went back to his car for his lunch and a small canvas supply bag that he quickly stashed in the galley. He checked the gasoline level in the tanks. There wasn’t all that much to do, really, to set off. That’s why he liked Blue Belle. She was easy to get going, big enough to go somewhere interesting and small enough and rigged smartly enough that he could single-hand her. By nine in the morning he was rounding the last harbor buoy and was pointed directly out to the center of Chesapeake Bay.

  It was just the day he had hoped for. The wind was steady out of the southeast and would stay that way all day. And at eighteen knots it was a fair breeze, indeed. The thrill of the spinnaker breathing deep gulps of air and the bow slicing through the waves left him exhausted. Or beating to windward, the hull healed over, water pouring across the deck, the rigging stretched and taut, the tiller pulling slightly to leeward (he meant to reposition the mast), gave him a body-soaking sense of happiness that only sailing the bay was able to arouse in him.

  Around one o’clock he pointed into the wind, luffed the sails, and had Marion’s hearty lunch with a generous dose of cold beer to wash it down. He listened t
o Grieg’s piano concerto while he ate. He took an hour-long nap, setting his wrist alarm to awaken him. By three o’clock, he was under sail again. He continued until dusk.

  As the last pink glow of the sunset was fading from the sky, Slaider felt that life could not get any better. He was exhilarated by such a day on the water, the primal excitement of wind-driven power, the intellectual challenge of conflicting force vectors. He was a lucky man, he thought. He had experienced many days like this. He recalled his conversation with Alex Llewellyn as his body shifted effortlessly with the pitch and yaw of the smoothly running sloop. The discussion brought to his mind then—as it did now—the karmic law of cause and effect. Even the Buddha admitted that the law of karma was beyond himit’s way too complex for successful predictions. Unskillful acts accumulate, leaving their seeds. Skillful acts leave their seeds as well. How they ripen no one knows, but ripen they doin this life or the next. This happens because of that. There is no escape from the clutches of the karmic law of accountability. Why good things happen to bad people is a question the Buddha would not understand. By his understanding there was always payback.

  Slaider was not a Christian believer. He felt that the Eastern ways were closer to whatever truth lay within the ken of man to fathom. Yet he did not know if he believed in reincarnation and the endless round of birth, death, and rebirth of classic Buddhism. Samsara, it was called.

  He liked the use of the expression “unskillful behavior” instead of “sin” that so much obsesses the Christian collective unconscious. To a Buddhist all behavior was simply skillful or unskillful. He liked that a lot. It conformed more to his mechanistic view of the world. Unskillful behavior was something like not following the owner’s manual, he thought. The Buddha said, “Don’t simply trust me. Don’t follow my path because I said to. Try it and see what happens, he said. Test it. Prove for yourself whether it works for you or not.” Or words to that effect. Slaider had read so many books on Buddhist thought that the sources had become a blur.

  He once again spilled the wind from his sails bringing Blue Belle to a stop. He was just off the opening to Old Plantation Creek and Red Bank. This time he dropped anchor. Methodically, he placed everything in order, furling the sails, and bending all lines and sheets and switching the lights for a nighttime anchorage. He went below deck and put on Haydn’s “Cello Concerto in C.” It had always been a favorite of his, especially the second movementone of the most moving and ethereal in all of music, he thought. He returned to the cockpit and plugged in a set of earphones to a jack he had installed there so he could listen to music and watch the night sky. From there he would combine mystery and awethe mystery of genius and awe for what man, that pebble in the cosmos, had learned to understand and master. It was a peaceful interlude before sleep.

  The whump-whump sound of the helicopter woke him early the next morning. It set down near his sloop. Morgan Slaider lowered the dinghy and rowed slowly over to the helicopter.

  The helicopter door slid open and Emerson Drummond slipped into the opening, preparing to enter Slaider’s dinghy. The man in civilian clothes standing behind Drummond saluted Slaider as he approached, sliding up to one of the helicopter’s pontoons. Slaider nodded to the man in response and said nothing. He was watching Drummond. Drummond made no response to Slaider’s slow appraisal of him. He noted Slaider’s presence and that was all. His view roamed over the whole scene before him. Calculating. Estimating.

  At a word from the man behind Drummond, he appeared reluctantly to drop onto a pontoon. Slaider offered his hand to help Drummond make the tricky transition to the dinghy, but Drummond ignored Slaider and his offer completely. Moving carefully, he lowered and centered himself and swiftly stepped into the craft. Without a word Slaider pushed off and rowed silently back to the sailboat. When he and Drummond were safely on board and the dinghy once again stowed, Slaider signaled the helicopter pilot. In a moment the helicopter blades increased their angular speed and finally the craft lifted off and away. Slaider and Drummond were alone on the boat and alone on the sea. There was no visible shoreline.

  “Well, Emerson, it must feel good to be getting so much fresh air.”

  Drummond looked around, searching for a weapon. It was just the two of them. That was a hand he felt he could win with. His eyes roamed the cockpit and the rigging looking for a weapon of any kind, although he would use his bare hands if necessary. What was Morgan up to? he wondered. Why would Slaider take this risk, just the two of them? Better find out what he has on his mind before trying anything.

  Anticipating Drummond’s thoughts, Slaider said “Relax, Emerson. There’ll be plenty of time for you to make a move of some kind. Right now just enjoy the ride. We’re going to have a lovely day on the water. The breeze is perfect and we can round Fisherman’s Inlet in about a half hour and then it’s just us and the Atlantic Ocean and the blue sky and my beautiful Blue Belle. You can help me with the sails. Here, haul away.”

  Drummond made no move to take the line Slaider was offering him.

  “No? Well, okay. I’ve sailed this boat solo many times. One more time is fine with me.”

  Drummond watched him as Slaider raised the jib and then the mainsail. “What is all this bullshit, Slaider? What are we doing here?”

  “All in good time, Emerson,” Slaider answered and then studied the mainsail, watching the telltales to judge the direction of the wind. In twenty minutes, the Blue Belle was rounding Fisherman’s Inlet, having sailed beneath the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The bow was pointed directly to the open ocean and the Atlantic Continental Shelf.

  Drummond made a sudden rush at Slaider but the large stainless steel steering wheel and pedestal stood between them, giving Slaider the time he needed to draw a pistol from his jacket pocket.

  “Easy, Emerson. None of that now. Sit down. Please.” Drummond stood motionless. Finally, he returned to his seat in the cockpit.

  “What would you do if you did manage to overpower me? You’ve never sailed a boat, any boat, much less a thoroughbred like the Blue Belle. You wouldn’t get two miles before you sank the boat and killed us both.” Content that Drummond had regained his seat, Slaider put the pistol back in his pocket.

  “We’ve been through a lot, Emerson. Just enjoy the time we have together. Smell the air. Can you smell that ocean smell? A billion years in the making. It’s not just salt in that spray. It’s historythe history of earthfrom when the atmosphere was a poisonous brew and volcanoes not dinosaurs ruled the world. A billion years of minerals dissolving in the mountains and being washed to the sea.

  “Can you feel the vibration in the hull, how the wind and water make her sing? Can you feel that power, Emerson? Listen to the sails. Do you hear it? Do you feel them driving the boat forward, tearing it from the grip of apathy? My god, it’s a great day to be alive.” Slaider turned from Drummond and once again focused his attention on the sails and the sea.

  After a while, Slaider turned to Drummond and asked him, “Do you like poetry, Emerson? In spite of all the years I know you, I don’t know the answer to that question. I admire poets and the magical way they make words clutch at your brain, surprise you or delight you or shake you up from your lethargy. I was glad, yes actually glad, when I learned that the Spanish poet Gabriel Garcia Marquez was killed during the Spanish Civil War because of his writings. I was heartened by the fact that someone would take a poet’s words seriously enough to kill him. Wonderful! And Tennyson! Ulysses. I love it. I know it by heart. Any part of it moves me.

  -you and I are old;

  Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.

  Death closes all; but something ere the end,

  Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

  Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

  “Yes, there were gods in those days, Emerson, who walked with mortal man, who shared the same time and place with us and looked us in the eye. Giants! Yes, giants walked the earth then. It’s been a long time, now, si
nce giants walked the earth.”

  Drummond looked at his feet. “You’re mad,” he said to his shoes.

  “No, I’ve covered that territory with Llewellyn. President Llewellyn, actually. No, you’re only mad if you lose. If you win you are a genius.”

  “And I suppose you are one of the new giants walking the earth, is that right, General Slaider.”

  Slaider rubbed his bald head back and forth several times, shaking his head as if trying to find something he lost inside, shaking it to see if it would rattle. “Yes, that’s true. I’m held in pretty high regard by the peopleby everyone actually, even those who fear me. Yes, I am one of the giants. But so are you, Emerson. Your popularity with the public has not wavered, even though you’ve been dead for what? About nine months now. Again, nine months, and again, a new baby is born. Hmmm. Never mind that, Emerson. It will only lead us down the wrong path.

  “But never fear. You are one of the giants. You arewerea great man, Emerson. Your legacy will be one of martyrdom and a vision of a world united to do the right thing. Except what happened was not your vision but mine. It was mine, not yours, because your vision had no engine in it, nothing to make it go in such a way that it would last. Your vision depended on a human nature that has never existed on a national scale. It depended on nations doing the right thing because it was right. No vision without a system of overriding incentives would succeed for any length of time beyond the charismatic life of its founder. Your vision had no such system and was doomed to inevitable failure. My vision is fated to inevitable success.

  “However, as a martyr, your legacy is secure. And as a kingmaker. You made me a king when you died. Or should I say that you made it possible with your death for me to make myself a kingmaker. For all that, I thank you.

  “And those who followed me and my vision, I thank them as well. They are like Ulysses’ mariners, Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me