On Deception Watch

by David H Spielberg

“But they toiled with me because I knew whom to ask to toil with me. My fellow soldiers. Every one of my men who strove in battles for our country, strove with godsthe gods of death. So they were more than ready to strive with the god of stupidity. Almost everywhere you looked, Emerson, you see stupidity. A stupid blindness to the fouling of our nest, with nowhere to go when we make it unlivable. A stupid blindness to the excesses of the good life, a life of bloat and waste. A stupid blindness to the incompetent governance of petty dictators with delusions of grandeur. A stupid blindness to overpopulation, to religious extremism, to almost every abuse wherever we set our feet. So much stupidity suggests a plan, does it not? Could people really be so blind in so many ways, without some organizing principle or leadership? Am I suggesting a conspiracy, Emerson? Not at all.

  “As a young history student, a professor told my class something I have never forgotten, something that explains many inexplicable actions and policies to me. What was it he said, you ask? He said, “Do not attribute to malicious intent what can more readily be explained by stupidity.” He was speaking of the origins of World War I, the Great War, as if there were anything but horror about war. My professor had a great understanding, you see, for the widespread and rampant application of stupidity. I understand and fully accept that most things that appear stupid are stupid. My professor’s explanation almost never fails me.

  “You know, Emerson, it really didn’t take that many men to beat the system. When you are dealing with dedicated men, amazing things can be done.” Slaider beat a little closer to the wind, laying Blue Belle a little further on her side. “And we have done amazing things.”

  “Yes, you have, General Slaider. Killed a thousand innocent men and women in Holland and used a nuclear weapon for the first time in a peaceful theater.”

  “Ah, a critic to the end! Well, to each his own way. A thousand innocent victims, yes. A big number. You know, the line has long ago been blurred between civilian and military casualties. Really, when you think about it, there never was a line. Oh, perhaps in the Napoleonic wars civilians could sit on the hills and watch the battle from the sidelines. But not for long. Emerson, you and I both know that in the twentieth century there were more than one hundred million war-related deaths. Civilians counted as nothing. And soldiers even less.

  “You never had to throw whole corps into battle. In a serious war, do you think that a thousand dead carries any weight? If you do, think again. We have become so used to this niggling terrorist warfare that we forget what real war is like. There were fifty-one thousand casualties in the battle of Gettysburg. Fifty-one thousand in one battle of a long war. At the Normandy invasion, twenty-nine thousand Americans died. Died, not wounded. Hitler’s invasion of Russia cost the German Army a hundred and sixty thousand men killed, more than half a million wounded. The battle for Iwo Jima cost the lives of seven thousand dead. One island. Need I go on? So please, don’t think too harshly of me for the death of a thousand in a battle for serious stakes for a high purpose.

  “Wars produce deaths, Emerson. And this was . . . is . . . a serious war. This is a war for the whole planet. It doesn’t get any bigger”

  Bending over his knees, Drummond looked at his feet. “I’m tired, General Slaider. I can’t argue with you anymore. I feel like some kind of toy you keep around for amusement, for when you’re bored, or for when you just want to hear yourself think. What is it you want from me? Surely you are not keeping me prisoner, keeping me alive just to have your own captive audience.”

  “Killing you would be the simplest thing to do, especially since you’re already dead as far as everyone else is concerned,” Slaider answered.

  “And so you’d gain no new black mark against your already blackened soul. What is it you want with me?” Drummond repeated.

  Slaider noticed the jib sheet had become fouled. He needed to move forward on the deck to work the sail loose. He ignored Drummond’s despair. He ignored Drummond. Moving forward swiftly, he manhandled the jib sheet until it was free. Then he returned to his position by the wheel. The boat heeled smoothly to starboard, the bow cutting a neat slice through the moderate chop of the ocean.

  Slowly, almost reluctantly looking once again at Drummond, he said, “What do I want with you? That’s why we’re here, Emerson. To decide what to do with you.”

  “Kill your president! You’ve violated every other oath of loyalty and trust. Why not that? What are you expecting? A promise not to make trouble if you let me go? If that’s it, you’re a bigger fool than I imagined. Don’t you know me better than that? Do you think I would sell my soul the way you sold yours?”

  “Oh, Emerson. You’re right. There’s a reason you were president. You are a great and principled man. That’s why I cannot bring myself to kill you. You are my president. But this is not France and I am not Louis quatorze where I can keep you in an iron mask forever. On the other hand, you are so blinded by the effrontery of my actions that you cannot see beyond your anger and your pride. You do not appreciate what I have accomplished.

  “Past is prologue, Emerson. George Bush at the turn of the century talked of a new world order, but it failed to materialize. The world quickly slipped back into the old world order. Some would even say ‘the older world order’ of constant religious strife and power brokerage, petty self-interest and governance by force and terror. I changed all that. Today there is a new world order. Does my saying I did this strike you as a bit over the top? Well, if not for me, how did this all happen? Of course it was me.

  “The world now has moved the closest it has ever been in history to a world government. And the charter of that government is based on enforceable rules of human rights and equity. People now will do the right thing because it is an economic necessity to do so. A much more motivating force, wouldn’t you say? What price is that worth, Emerson? What’s a few thousand dead to produce this glorious moment in history compared to the hundred million dead in the last century for lack of this new world order? Have we become so jaded that nothing is worth dying for? Or killing for? Have Thomas Jefferson’s words lost their grandeur ‘that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants? It is its natural manure.’ Have we lost the spirit to fertilize that tree? Emerson, think about where we are, not how we got there. Open your mind.”

  Drummond stood up and holding on to a rail looked silently into the sea.

  “Open your mind, Emerson. You are my president and I cannot kill you. But I cannot let you go either if you would work against what I have started. It is too new, too fragile to resist a sustained attack at its roots. So, do you see my dilemma? I cannot kill you and I cannot let you go.”

  Drummond remained silent.

  “Help me, Emerson.”

  “I have no answer for you, General Slaider. I can’t as easily as you dismiss the past and the process. The argument that the ends justify the means sickens me. It’s the lie told by every dictator in history. My stomach turns every time I hear that argument. It’s the argument of fanaticsof men who leave a trail blood and destruction behind them. I can’t help you, General. You’ve stacked the deck not only against me, but against yourself.”

  Suddenly, two porpoises breached the water alongside the boat. Falling back into the water they swam along with the boat, shooting through the sea a few inches below the surface. The motion caught Slaider’s attention and his gaze drew Drummond’s attention as well to the porpoises. Not more than a dozen feet from the boat, their silver-gray bodies streaked along with the boat. The lead porpoise chose that moment to breach again, followed quickly by the second animal. They are magnificent in their design, Slaider thought. Form and function were ideally matched and isolated in their ways. He took them as a propitious sign.

  “I cannot release Emerson Drummond back into the world. It is too dangerous. There are too many people whose interests we’ve smashed to give them fodder for their machinations. Emerson Drummond must remain dead forever.”


  “General, you would not have brought me out here if you did not already have a plan. Let’s stop beating around the bush. What is it?

  “Alright. Here it is. There is a small village in India where I want you to live out the rest of your natural life. I have made arrangements with the matriarch of the village to let you live there. You would be there as an American teacher doing research for a book. And you will stay there. You will make a life for yourself there, to whatever extent you can, until you die. No one will know who you are. There are thousands of such villages in India, every one isolated from the central government, or really any government. You will not be known or recognized. No roads to speak of. Almost every village has its own language. You will have to learn theirs the old fashioned way.” He paused for a moment so Drummond could assimilate what Slaider was proposing. Then he continued.

  “You must give me your word you will not try to leave that village or make your identity known. You must make no effort to contact your wife or in any other way attempt to change the understanding that Emerson Drummond is utterly dead. You will be brought there and left there entirely on your own. No one in that village, including the head of the village, will know your true identity.”

  Drummond stood and moved closer Slaider in the cockpit. Slaider put his hand in his jacket pocket. “Do you have anything to drink on this boat?” Drummond asked. Overhead, he could see the contrail of a jet as it lowered toward Dulles International Airport to the southwest.

  Slaider smiled. “Of course, of course I do. Bourbon isn’t it? It just happens I have a bottle of Hirsch, sixteen year old reserve. Splendid idea, Emerson.” Slaider headed the boat up into the wind and let the sails luff. The sails spilled the wind, flapping now in the fresh breeze. He motioned for Drummond to move to the ladder down into the boat. He followed Drummond down the steps. Once below deck, he motioned for Drummond to move toward the bow end of the cabin, giving him clear space by the galley near the ladder.

  Reaching down to a small cabinet, Slaider opened the door and, looking inside while carefully noting, Drummond’s position, he reached inside and pulled out a bottle. Reaching into another cabinet above the stove, he pulled out two glasses and poured three fingers in each glass. Looking at Drummond he asked, “Ice?” Drummond shook his head “No” and took the glass as Slaider reached out offering it. Slaider put two distilled water ice cubes into his glass. Both men took a long sip.

  “Or else?” Drummond asked.

  “What?”

  “Or else what? What if I don’t take you up on your offer?” Drummond asked.

  “Well, that’s the part I don’t exactly have worked out yet. I was sort of hoping you would be reasonable and agree to my offer,” Slaider said with a smile. “Or else perhaps I dump you there anyway and just don’t give you a cover story about being a teacher. You will have to fend for yourself in the middle of India in a village of sixty-eight people with no understanding of the language or the customs or the jungle for that matter. The result will be the same, only less pleasant.”

  Drummond took another sip of his bourbon. “I get the picture,” he said.

  At that instant the boat received a sharp bang. A whale had struck it, rocking the boat. Slaider turned, trying to locate the source of the sound. At the same instant Drummond threw his glass at Slaider, striking him in the head, sending him to the floor. In an instant Drummond was on him, reaching for Slaider’s pocket and the pistol. Slaider was only stunned and fought back, rolling onto his side with the empty pocket, their tangled bodies trapping the pocket with the pistol between them. Neither man could get a grip on the gun. Each man fought desperately to get into Slaider’s pocket to grab it. But Slaider had been weakened by the blow to his head and Drummond soon had the gun out. Slaider grabbed for Drummond’s hand and they struggled for control of the weapon. The boat was bumped again by the whale and it rocked violently. Again, the two men rolled, locked in each other’s arms. They rolled into the support legs for the galley table, collapsing it. The bottle of Hirsch’s Reserve crashed to the floor. When the boat was bumped a third time, the pistol, hidden in the folds of arms and legs of the two struggling men, went off.

  Suddenly the tensed muscles relaxed and the struggle went limp. Slaider rolled to the side, pushing Drummond off him and away. The pistol lay between them. A pool of blood began to form under Drummond’s body. Slaider slowly gathered himself up, stunned by the suddenness of events. He moved over to Drummond and felt for a pulse in his carotid artery. This time the president was truly dead. Slaider sat on the deck of the cabin, still shocked by what had happened, legs crossed, slowly rocking back and forth. After a few moments he got up to inspect the boat. The fiberglass hull appeared to have withstood the whale attacks and not been damaged.

  Returning to the cabin, he sat and looked at Drummond lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He sat next to the body until dark began to settle on the sea.

  As the lighting dimmed in the cabin, Slaider raised himself. He made no effort to move Drummond’s body or to straighten up the cabin. Instead, he went to the communications equipment and turned it on. He thought for a few moments and turned off the equipment. He did not know what he wanted to do yet. Once again, he thought, the law of karma. This happened because that happened.

  He returned topside and sat in the cockpit for a long time.

  Stupid loyalties, he thought. It would seem that he too could be part of that vast pool of stupidity in the human race. Now he saw the whole idea of the village in India as naively stupid and perhaps he had allowed Drummond to live simply because he did crave his own captive audience. Well, fate had stepped in and resolved his dilemma for him. And Drummond’s.

  It is what it is. Karma, he thought.

  Slaider went below and found some canvas to wrap Drummond’s body in. He looked for some chain but could not find any loose chain that he could use. He found instead heavy nylon rope that he used to bind the canvas around Drummond’s body. He used his spare anchor as a weight and used a length of the rope to tie the anchor to Drummond’s neck. He preferred the picture of Drummond plunging to the ocean floor head first rather than feet first, beyond the continental shelf, into the abyss.

  127

  The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It is about two hundred miles long. At its narrowest point, it is about three miles wide and at its widest point it is about thirty miles wide. The Bay and its major tributaries cover an area of about forty-five hundred square miles. Its shoreline, because of the extreme raggedness, is almost twelve thousand miles. If you were not concerned with having to arrive by land and were satisfied with access by boat alone, a person could easily use those twelve thousand miles to get lost, or better, to find a hiding place. That’s what Slaider had done when he sequestered Emerson Drummond at that little cottage.

  It was absurdly safe from prying eyes. Water on one side, along a winding and tangled tributary, and forest on the other sides with no road to the property. The cottage had been built years ago by the Central Intelligence Agency, bringing supplies in from the water to maintain its marginally accessible status. No roads meant it was easier to control. The agency abandoned it in the wake of budget cutbacks five years earlier. Slaider became aware of it during those budget discussions and kept his knowledge of it tucked away in the back of his mind until suddenly there was an appropriate use for it again.

  It was to the cottage that Slaider returned. He tied Blue Belle to an oyster boat already tied to the dock. He stepped from the deck of Blue Belle to the deck of the oyster boat where he was greeted by one of the fisherman. The men quickly exchanged military salutes. Slaider quickly gave instructions for the Blue Belle to be checked more thoroughly for damage from the whale attack than he had been able to do. He ordered that all loose items on the boat be removed. He wanted the boat in factory condition, with nothing on or in it that did not come with the boat from the factory. Slaider ordered the entire boat, inside and deck-side, washed down with a dilute
bleach solution. He told the men he would inspect the work in the morning. He then went to the cottage where he called Marion to let her know he would be returning home late the next day, that he had decided to spend one more night on Blue Belle.

  128

  Special Agent London had followed his man for several days. From time to time he would lose him but he had enough extra resources now that someone was able to reconnect with the subject and inform London of his whereabouts and evident heading. He was not a man that could blend into a crowd. His height and physical stature made Sandy Campbell a relatively easy subject to follow. Although this morning, Campbell got going early, out and on the road by 6:30, he was even easier to follow as he was pulling a trailer carrying a fifteen-foot Boston Whaler with a small Mercury outboard motor.

  London watched as Campbell launched his boat from a ramp on Cape Henry and headed toward the upper Chesapeake. Not prepared for trailing Campbell by water, London called for satellite coverage of Campbell’s boat. Campbell’s boat was tracked to a location off Shady Point where he motored to the shore and pulled the Whaler into the bushes. London quickly consulted his map and found he could get close to where Campbell had landed if he took Everett Lane and then hiked two miles to the shore of the Bay.

  London didn’t know how long or why Campbell planned to stay where he went ashore. Satellite imagery downloaded to him showed a small cottage and a dock with two small boats present about a quarter mile downstream from where Campbell landed. The cottage had to be where Campbell was going.

  By the time London parked his car by the side of Everett Lane, it was almost 9:00 a.m. He didn’t know what he would need once he left his car, so he took his binoculars, his service pistol, and his communicator. After thinking about it, he decided to take a canteen as well. No telling how long he would be there. London was uncertain where to head, to the cottage or to where Campbell left his boat. He could try to pick up Campbell’s trail if he started at the boat or he could wait for Campbell by the cottage, which was almost certainly his destination. He opted for the cottage.