The Jericho Deception: A Novel (10 page)

“You always were the cautious one, Elijah. I see nothing has changed in all these years.” The director’s fingers drummed on the leather of the recliner. “Certainly we want to ensure that all necessary safety protocols are followed, but you need to understand that the NAF works differently from other foundations. Our principal benefactor made his billions through decisive action and taking risks. Now that he’s dedicating himself to philanthropy, he wants to bring the same spirit of entrepreneurialism to the staid and slow-moving world of academic research.”

A man of action
, Ethan thought. The more he heard about the NAF, the more he realized what a perfect fit they would be.

Wolfe continued, “Your work is exactly the kind of bold genius we’re looking for. I haven’t seen this kind of thinking since our grad school days, Elijah. You have certainly outdone yourself.”

Elijah gazed at the ground, fidgeting. Ethan had never seen his mentor awkward before. Usually Elijah was the passionate salesman about their vision. He wondered again about the history between the two men at Harvard.

“So this software tycoon, does he have a name?” Elijah asked.

“He prefers to remain anonymous. I’ve really given you too much information already. A foundation with a three-hundred-million-dollar endowment receives many requests for its funds. The last thing he wants is to be lobbied personally.”

“Hmmf,” Elijah grunted.

Wolfe walked around to the rear of the machine. “So this really works?”

“We think it does,” Ethan said. “We’ll know as soon as we start our human trials.”

Elijah nodded. “Ethan has devised a new software algorithm that’s a significant advancement from our earlier versions.”

“Yes, Dr. Lightman’s involvement in this project, particularly his work with epileptics and hyperreligiosity, sealed the deal for us. But as I said, we are concerned with results, not theory. We aren’t afraid to put out money as long as the projects are moving along.”

Wolfe reached into his jacket, produced a white envelope, and handed it to Elijah. “This contains a check for two hundred and fifty thousand, as well as our signed agreement, all as we discussed.”

Ethan struggled to keep his jaw from dropping. Project funding never happened like this. They usually submitted detailed draw requests on a quarterly basis. Allen Wolfe had just given them an amount that would sustain them for over a year and half. He thought of the rejections they’d received from countless other foundations, the roadblocks put in front of them by Sam Houston’s HRPP, the skepticism of their colleagues. All of that was in the past. He and Elijah would revolutionize the field of psychology and the study of religious experiences at the same time. His mind jumped to his tenure hearings, which would come up next year.

Then one small thought intruded on his euphoria:
the Logos needs to work
. He pushed the thought aside. Of course it did, and their human trials next week would prove that.

“Your project here”—Wolfe swept his arm through the air above the Logos—“is as important as anything done by Freud or Jung. Now let’s get the ball rolling, shall we?”

Ethan couldn’t suppress what had to be a ridiculous-looking grin. Allen Wolfe was the first person who really understood their work. Then he glanced at Elijah. His mentor was twirling the envelope with the check, a curious expression on his face—as if contemplating whether he should keep it or give it back. Whatever reservations Elijah had, he was the one who had approached Wolfe’s foundation first. So why was he acting so strangely?

T
he screams at night were the worst.

The previous day the rap music had stopped. Mousa had been thankful at first, thinking he could finally sleep. Lack of sleep was causing him to hallucinate. Then the screams started. Judging from the voices, all in Arabic, begging alternately either to be spared or to be killed, Mousa guessed that five new prisoners had been brought in. He wondered if that was how his own screams had sounded during his torture.

As he lay in his cell on a thin mattress that reeked of urine, Mousa palpated his hands over his body, checking his injuries. He had no broken bones, yet. Most of his skin, however, was bruised gruesome shades of purple and green. His right shoulder had been dislocated, which he’d fixed himself by leaning over the porcelain sink in his cell and jerking downward while twisting his arm with his left hand. Putting the shoulder back in place had been just as painful as when it had dislocated: he’d been hung from the ceiling in the interrogation room by chains wrapped around his wrists.

He examined the skin on his wrists: still shredded. Even worse were the burn marks on his nipples from where the electrodes had been attached. The knee with the torn ACL from the mall’s ski slope was still swollen, but he could put weight on it now. He could walk, maybe even run in a straight line if he had to, but any twisting or sideways pressure would cause it to slip out of place.

But running was the last thing on his mind. He doubted he would ever run again. He was going to die in this cell. During the interrogation sessions with
the mustached man, he had prayed to Allah for death more than once. As a doctor, he had treated terrible injuries—a broken leg where the tibia jutted through the skin was one he particularly remembered—but he had never before experienced true physical pain himself. During the beatings that both preceded and followed the daily interrogation sessions, the mustached man never touched him. He let the two guards handle that. But he always watched. He watched as if he enjoyed it, like he was looking at pornography.

Worse than the physical pain, the hunger, or the lack of sleep was the psychological torture of not knowing what had happened to Amira. When he’d asked the mustached man about his daughter, his interrogator had laughed, telling him that he would never live to see her again. He was going to die in the prison never knowing the fate of his beloved child, never again feeling the embrace of his beautiful wife, never seeing his newborn son grow into a man.

Despite his repeated denials and his giving the interrogator all of his personal information about his medical practice in Amman, the man refused to believe that he was not connected to the plot to blow up the mall.

“You Jordanians are jealous of our prosperity, no?” the mustached man had taunted him before his last brutal session, one that involved whipping the bottoms of his feet until they were bloody and then beating him with hoses until he slipped into unconsciousness.

That session had been a couple days earlier, as best as he could tell. Since then, he’d heard nothing but the disembodied screams of his fellow prisoners. As guilty as the thought made him feel, he was thankful that the guards had turned their attention on others. His tormentors had given him an unexpected rest. Maybe they were afraid they would kill him too soon, or maybe it was because during the last session, he’d finally given in. Weeping, he’d told them that he would admit to anything they wanted. He would sign any piece of paper they put in front of him.

As he lay on the stained mattress, which had neither sheet nor blanket, his eyes wandered around the tiny cell. The gray concrete walls were cracked and chipped in some places, stained with blood and excrement in others. He looked to the bucket in the far corner that acted as his toilet. The only way he had to empty it out was into the porcelain sink attached to the wall opposite
the door, the same sink that also was his only source of drinking water. He imagined that the sink at one time had been white. One advantage of having his nose broken during an interrogation was that he could no longer smell the stench of the prison—it reeked of death.

He glanced to the wall above his sink. High up was a window. Only six square inches, with rusty iron bars crossing the opening, it was his only connection to the outside world and the only source of fresh air in the fetid cell. From the pale light filtering in, he guessed that it was dawn, time for the
salat al-fagr
—his morning prayer. He grunted as he rolled off the cot onto the floor and crawled toward the sink. The three-meter-long chain attached to a metal collar around his ankle dragged behind him. Using the sink, he pulled himself to his feet and then washed his hands and face. He ran his wet fingers through his hair and then shuffled to the center of the concrete floor. His injured knee and bruised body made getting into the proper position difficult, but he did the best he could to face the window, kneel, and then touch his forehead to the ground.

When he finished reciting his prayers, he opened his eyes but remained sitting on the floor, too spent to move. A single word popped into his head:
Islam
. The name of his faith also carried a crucial meaning: true peace through surrender.

Haven’t I surrendered, Allah?

He had given up hope that he would ever see his family again. The only reality left to him in the wretched cell was the Beloved One, the Source of his very existence.
Yet where is my peace?

Then a tiny movement caught his eye.
Something on the wall by the bucket
. Maybe he was having another hallucination. But then he saw it clearly.

He crawled to the corner of the room, training his eyes on the insect, a black beetle with a yellow stripe down its back. The bug explored its surroundings, feeling with hair-like antennae along the cracks in the concrete. It seemed content, going about its life, oblivious of the larger meaning of its surroundings. Mousa reached out and placed his palm up on the wall next to the insect. The bug stopped when it reached his thumb, testing the skin with its antennae. The tiny creature crawled onto his hand, tickling him. He brought
it close to his face and stared at it. The bug seemed to stare back. All of a sudden, he was transported out of his cell.

He was on a hill in Gilead, a couple of hours’ drive north from his home in Amman. The sun warmed his face and a soft wind blew the grass like waves in the ocean. The hills around him undulated out to the mountains on the horizon. White limestone rocks and boulders dotted the grass. He sat on a blanket, eating a handful of green almonds. Laughter filled his ears. Amira rolled on the grass, giggling uncontrollably, as Bashirah tickled her and laughed just as hard. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a bug, a large black ant, crawling across the blanket, heading for the plate of bread and cheese. He flicked it off of the blanket. The memory faded.

Although he grasped for the images, willing them to reappear, all he saw was the insect crawling across his palm. He rose on shaky legs, careful not to disturb the bug. Bracing his free hand on the sink for support, he rose onto his toes and extended his hand toward the window. He stretched farther, ignoring the aching in his bruised rib cage and the soreness from his shoulder dislocation. He couldn’t quite reach the window, but the bug got the idea. Maybe it smelled the fresh air or saw the light. It scurried off of his hand onto the wall.

The screeching sound of metal against metal echoed through his cell. He threw himself onto his mattress. Someone was pulling back the heavy bolt locking his cell door. If they caught him reaching for the window, they might think he was testing it for an escape attempt. Who knew what brutality they would inflict upon him then? He didn’t know if he could survive another session.

As the door rolled back on its track, he waited for the mustached face of his tormentor or the two guards who carried out the torture with enthusiasm. Instead, four new men entered his cell. Dressed in all-black commando gear, they looked similar to the officers who had arrested him at the airport, but with one terrifying difference: these men wore ski masks covering their heads and faces. A deep nausea rolled through his gut. He had to focus so that he wouldn’t lose control of his bowels. He knew what was coming.

His interrogator had realized that he’d extracted all he would get, and today was the day he’d told him about: his execution. After the torture, death would
come as a relief. He almost wished for it, but then the image of the wide, terrified eyes of his daughter at the airport came to him. He thought of his wife’s radiant smile, and the innocent expression of his baby boy, who would grow up without a father. As much pain as he was in, he didn’t want to give up.

When the man closest to him spoke, shock replaced the fear.

“Down on the floor!” the man commanded,
in English
.

He recognized the accent as American. Since he’d been taken captive, he’d heard nothing but Arabic. He complied with the order. Lying on his stomach, he waited for the inevitable stomp of a boot in his back, but it never came.

Instead the man said, “Don’t move.”

He kneeled on Mousa’s back, which was uncomfortable but not painful. The man brought his hands around and handcuffed them with a plastic tie. One of the others bent over and unlocked the shackle around his left ankle. Then they attached leg irons, which meant only one thing: they were taking him somewhere. Were his captors using the Americans to carry out the execution, or did they have a new level of torture designed for him?

With his left cheek pressed against the cool, hard concrete, he could only make out the movements of the men with his right eye. Their actions were coordinated, more practiced and efficient than the brutal handling he’d received from his fellow Arabs. Their uniforms were devoid of markings, and they communicated with each other using nods and hand gestures rather than speech. After the man finished with the leg irons, he approached Mousa’s head. Mousa saw that he was carrying a black sack in his hand, about the size of an extra-large bag of rice. The man kneeling on his back shifted his weight and then lifted Mousa’s upper torso off the ground.

Just before they pulled the bag over his head, he noticed a movement high up on the wall. The beetle had reached the edge of the window. He watched as it crested the edge of the sill and disappeared through the iron bars into the light of freedom.