The Jericho Deception: A Novel (26 page)

Wolfe reached under his cassock and produced a long skeleton key. “Ah yes; you have now hit on the reason why you are here.”

E
than followed Wolfe across the marble floor of the chapel. Wood buttresses rose from the plaster walls to support the cathedral ceiling. He marveled at the detail that had gone into building the facility. Murals covered each of the walls. Although he hadn’t been to church since his mother dragged him to Sunday school as a teenager, he recognized the depiction of the life of Jesus: the birth in Bethlehem, the baptism by John, the healing of cripples, the feeding of the masses, the crucifixion, and—the final scene, depicted in brilliant hues as if the paint were backlit—the resurrection.

Wolfe placed a hand on his shoulder. “When these men come to us, they’ve already been broken. They’ve been tortured to the brink of death, usually by their own people. We offer them hope, a chance to reclaim their lives.” He dropped his hand and leaned on a baroque-looking throne set on a raised platform in front of the altar. “But we also offer them something one of their ayatollahs never could. We offer them a much more powerful experience.” His grin widened. “We offer them the chance to experience God, in this lifetime, without having to martyr themselves first.”

As if on cue, Ethan’s eyes caught the inscription etched underneath the fifteen-foot-tall stained glass cross over the altar. The chill running across his skin seemed to penetrate to the depths of his marrow. He stepped around the throne and peered up at the inscription written in ancient Greek: Εν αρχη ην ο λογος, και ο λογος ην προς τον θεον, και θεος ην ο λογος.

He imagined that behind the stained glass were lights that would illuminate the cross and the inscription when turned on. Although he wasn’t fluent in the language of the New Testament, he knew immediately the meaning of the phrase. A single word repeated three times in the inscription called out to him: λογος.

Logos.

He recited from memory, “In the beginning was the Word . . .”

“And the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” Wolfe completed.

“The prologue to the Gospel of John.”

Five years earlier, when Elijah first outlined to his graduate student his idea of converting a TMS machine into a device that could induce mystical experiences, he’d also explained why he would call the machine the Logos.

The first verses of John’s Gospel, composed in Greek at the end of the first century, used the term
Logos
to describe the eternal nature of God as the source of all creation. Logos was usually translated as “word.” Elijah had explained that the Hebrew Bible, what Christians called the Old Testament, frequently referred to the power of God’s word as well. In the beginning of Genesis, for example, God spoke the universe into being: “And God
said,
let there be light.”

“But the translation of
Logos
as ‘word’ misses the essence of the term,” Elijah had said. “It’s more like
language
or
discourse
.”

“So
Logos
doesn’t refer to a specific word?” Ethan had asked.

“
Logos
is an organizing structure, like a language. This concept originated from Heraclitus in the fifth century BCE.”

“The Greek philosopher?”

Elijah had nodded. “The universe, Heraclitus observed, is logical and ordered, obeying laws that can be divined through reason. He used the term
Logos
to refer to the organizing principle that lay beyond existence—a principle that gives rise to the physical laws that govern the universe.”

“But you’re Jewish. You agree with a New Testament description about God borrowed from a much older Greek philosopher?”

“While my view on the relationship of Jesus to the Logos is different from John’s, I share his understanding of God as that which gives rise to existence.
And maybe this device”—he’d tapped a drawing sketched on a scrap of paper—“can give us a taste of this Logos.”

“I assume you’re curious about our plans for your Logos machine.” Wolfe’s voice brought Ethan out of his memory.

He turned to the man dressed as a bishop—the man who had funded his research when they were on the verge of going under; the man who he now knew wanted to replicate his machine to convert Muslims to Christianity.

“You take these men who’ve been broken physically and mentally by the torture they’ve endured, then you precondition them through sleep therapy. After they’re shells of their former selves, you re-brainwash them with your fake priests, and now you want to use
my
machine to seal the deal by offering them a mystical experience that they will ascribe to their
conversion
to Christianity?”

“Precisely.”

“But the Logos is about studying religion, about understanding its neurological sources.” He struggled to keep his voice even. “Our purpose is exactly the opposite of what you plan on doing. The Logos can unlock the mystery of religious experience and expose the ideological baggage of the Church.”

Wolfe patted his shoulder. “Do you think the military scientists who invented the Internet in the 1960s as a way for the government to remain in communication after a nuclear strike had any idea that today we’d be buying shoes or watching our favorite movies with it?” He paced around the throne. “Often it takes one kind of genius to invent something, but another to see its true value.”

Ethan thought back to the origins of Elijah’s vision for the Logos and their early experiments comparing SPECT analysis on the brains of Christian nuns like Sister Terri and Buddhist monks. “But the Logos isn’t a Christian machine at all. If anything it shows the nonexclusivity of religious experience and emphasizes how religious doctrine is culturally conditioned. Our research shows that mystical experiences are common across faith traditions because they share the same neurological pathways regardless of beliefs.”

“Hence the importance of context.” Wolfe gestured to the chapel. “That is why we immerse the men in a Christian monastery, so that they attribute the experience from your Logos machine to the Christian faith.”

“But you’re increasing religious conflict here—substituting one form of fundamentalism for another.”

“Actually, it’s just the opposite. Your Logos has the potential to be a peace machine. Think of what we’re doing as viral marketing. But before the viral message can spread, it needs to be seeded in the right communities.”

“So these men here are supposed to be the Christian seeds you plan on returning into an Islamic society?”

Wolfe grinned.

“But you’re dealing with nations of millions. You could never produce enough men to make a difference.”

“A giant river starts somewhere as a tiny spring.”

“But what if this becomes public? You could ignite a religious war and a wave of terrorism against the West that would make 9/11 seem like a warm-up.”

Wolfe held up a hand. “That will not happen.” The warmth in his voice turned icy. “We take our security very seriously.”

He thought of the solid men he’d passed upstairs. Then he realized that as accommodating as Wolfe had seemed so far, the man was working for the CIA, and he was isolated in a secret facility in the middle of the Egyptian desert.

His stomach twisted at the thought of what was coming next. The missing piece in Wolfe’s plan was the Logos. He would never go along with such a misuse of his research. But then his gaze was pulled toward the chapel’s doors, and much like the irresistible urge to look at a horrible accident on the freeway, he wondered,
What does Wolfe’s lab look like?
With all the money the CIA had spent on this place, he was curious where they planned to put the Logos. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, a part of him was drawn, like a moth to a flame, to see where it would lead.

“Where is your lab?”

Wolfe ran his hand along the elaborately carved back of the throne. Ethan glanced at the purple velvet seat cushion. The pomposity with which church officials conducted themselves turned him off almost as much as their teachings of superstitions and myths as historical facts.

“You’re standing in it.”

“What?”

Rather than reply to the question, Wolfe moved away from the throne and gestured to it.

Could it be possible?

He stepped forward and looked more closely. The chair’s back was constructed above the head level of the person who would sit in it. Near the top, where one’s head would rest, it curved inward. The sides of the headrest were carved in a circular design and gilded in bronze. Then he remembered Wolfe’s earlier comment about the importance of the setting in which the psychological programming took place. He ran his fingers along the curved design. What appeared to be wood felt like plastic.

“Incorporating your Logos into the
cathedra
, the traditional chair in which a bishop would sit, wasn’t as hard as it might seem. The base is constructed out of steel for support with a mahogany veneer. We used a strong but lightweight composite for the headrest that conceals the solenoids while at the same time allowing the magnetic field to pass through undiluted.”

“This is the Logos?”

“The mechanics of the machine are concealed in the base here.” Wolfe knocked on the seat. “We’ve insulated it so the hum is not as noticeable. The wiring for the controls runs underneath the floor and then up the wall to our control room on the floor above us. That’s where the processor sits that holds your programming.”

My programming?

The spacious chapel seemed to close in around him. The only copy of that programming was on his laptop in New Haven. Studying the throne again, he realized that it would have taken them weeks to build it. They would have started construction well before the first test with Sister Terri in his lab.
They would have started the cathedra even before they started funding us! How did they get the design?

Then he thought of Elijah’s odd behavior in the days before his death. Had his mentor been feeding his old friend the design of the Logos from the beginning? He knew that Elijah had been under extreme pressure to finance their research, but he couldn’t imagine him agreeing to what he’d seen here.

He chose his words carefully. “We only just tested the Logos a week ago. How did you get my algorithm?”

“Yes, your programming. That’s what we need to talk about. Out of the twenty subjects we’ve tested it on—”

“You’ve tested it on twenty!”

“About three a day since your successful test on the nun. While you and Elijah were debating about retesting monkeys, we were moving your research forward.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I share your frustration with the bureaucracy of academia.” He shook his head. “Ethan, I brought you here to give you a unique opportunity.” His tone deepened as his voice rose. “An opportunity to change the world. To bring peace to a region that hasn’t seen it in centuries. To secure the future of our nation.” He dropped his voice again. “And to conduct your research free from the oversight and restrictions that have prevented you from reaching your potential.”

The image of Sam Houston’s balding head popped into Ethan’s mind. The chair of Yale’s Human Research Protection Program had been trying to shut down his work from the beginning. Wolfe’s offer tugged at his scientific curiosity, as well as his innate desire to see his and Elijah’s work brought to fruition. But another voice in his head, a voice that sounded like Elijah’s, blared an alarm. What the director was proposing was frightening, and the consequences if something went wrong were too terrible to even think about.
But
, he wondered,
what happens if I refuse his offer?
He had just been given a tour of one of the government’s most top secret projects. Wolfe’s words about the security of the project echoed in his head. The memory of finding Elijah’s cold body in their lab sent another shiver across his skin.

“Why do you need me? You’ve been using the Logos more than I have.”

Wolfe shifted to the side. For the first time his air of confidence deflated. “Well, you see”—he fidgeted with his white collar—“we’ve discovered a few anomalies in our tests.”

“You’ve had complications with the subjects?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he recalled Rachel’s concerns about one of her monkeys.

“In eighteen of the subjects, we’ve had varying degree of success. We’ve learned that it often takes a number of exposures to the Logos to achieve its full potential, in addition to the counseling with our priests.”

“And the other two subjects?”

“They’ve had extreme negative reactions to your protocol.”

“What kind of reactions?”

“It might be better if I showed you.”

Wolfe spun on his Italian wingtips and led Ethan out of the chapel and down the cloistered hallway. Five minutes later he stopped outside the door of one of the monk’s rooms.

Ethan peered inside the square window. The room appeared much like the ones he’d seen an hour earlier, but with an important difference: The man lying on the bed was neither sedated by IV drugs nor being read to by a priest. He was restrained by thick leather straps around his wrists and ankles. Even with the restraints, the man thrashed on the bed to such an extent that Ethan thought he might turn it over. He realized that the room must be soundproofed because the Arab was shouting, yet he heard nothing.

At first, he worried that the man was having a seizure. The fear that his protocol had carried a greater risk of seizure than he’d predicted played through his head. But then he realized that the movements weren’t uncontrolled as one would find in a grand mal. The Arab flailed about of his own accord.

Suddenly the man stopped moving and lifted his head to the extent allowed by his restraints. His jet-black hair was disheveled. His olive complexion glistened with sweat. But it was the eyes Ethan couldn’t stop looking at. The Arab stared straight at him. Even though he suspected that the window in the door was one-way glass, he felt his own heart rate accelerate in his chest as his limbic system kicked into gear. He wanted to look away, but the Arab’s eyes drew him into his tortured soul. He had heard the expression that someone
looked as if he’d seen the devil
. Now he knew what that expression looked like.