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This is a novel of asymmetric warfare. I have long wondered what the enemy has learned watching us on the field of battle for what is now twenty years of sustained combat. What lessons have they learned, and how have they altered their tactics and strategies to incorporate those lessons? If I were the enemy, what would I have learned? These are questions I pondered while in uniform, and continue to contemplate as an author. Our adversaries have observed us at the poker table for twenty years while having the benefit of seeing our cards. They have studied our tactics and seen our technologies evolve. They have observed our shifting goals and objectives. They have taken notes as we fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other flashpoints around the globe. Our response to a pandemic and the civil unrest plaguing our cities at a time when domestic political ideologies seem irreconcilable has not gone unnoticed. They see a country divided. Have they accounted for that division in their battle plans? It has been almost twenty years since that September morning. Our enemy has been patient. They have been watching, learning, and adapting. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, terrorist groups, and super-empowered individuals have been waiting, identifying gaps in our defenses and refining plots that exploit our weaknesses. It is my sincere hope that the operation you read about in the following pages is not currently being planned by a foreign intelligence service. You would be wise to remember that the Athenian historian Thucydides, in the Melian Dialogue of his History of the Peloponnesian War, characterizes hope as danger's comforter. In modern military and intelligence parlance, the ancient Greek general's text translates as Hope is not a course of action. While this is true, hope is oftentimes all one has in times of despair. The lesson is one as old as time. Be prepared.
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When he came to Fifth Avenue, Eddie Willers kept his eyes on the windows of the stores he passed. There was nothing he needed or wished to buy, but he liked to see the display of goods, any goods, objects made by men to be used by men. He enjoyed the sight of a prosperous street, not more than every fourth one of the stores was out of business, its windows dark and empty. He did not know why he suddenly thought of the oak tree. Nothing had recalled it, but he thought of it and of his childhood summers on the Taggart estate. He had spent most of his childhood with the Taggart children, and now he worked for them, as his father and grandfather had worked for their father and grandfather. The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at the tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball on the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree's presence. It was a thing that nothing could change or threaten. It was his greatest symbol of strength. One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell. Its heart had rotted away long ago. There was nothing inside, just a thin, grey dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it. Years later, Eddie heard it said that children should be protected from shock, from their first knowledge of death, pain, or fear. But these had never scarred him. His shock came when he stood very quietly, looking into the black hole of the trunk. It was an immense betrayal, the more terrible because he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself he knew, nor his trust. It was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound. Then he walked back into the house. He never spoke about it to anyone, then or since.
Script:
6 a.m. Saturday, New Jersey Turnpike. Mass murder was traveling south on this beautiful April morning. Hakeem Farooq, known to his fellow radical Islamic brothers as the Destroyer, locked the speed on the 24-foot rental truck at exactly 5 miles above the posted speed limit. It was enough to prevent impatient drivers traveling behind him from becoming annoyed, yet not so fast as to attract the notice of a New Jersey state police trooper. Farooq hated the United States. He hated everything about it. He hated the smell outside the Queen's apartment where he was staying, when he awoke each day before sunrise to say his morning prayer. He hated the stale taste of the overpriced coffee that he purchased in a neighborhood shop called Good Eats. He hated the brick-and-carved stone churches with crosses atop their spirals that he passed, the giggling schoolchildren chasing one another behind tall chain-link fences, and the teenage boys with odd haircuts who brushed by him on skateboards. He especially hated the Sons of Zion whom he encountered at the nearby subway stop with their black Hasidic hats and tzitzits dangling from their white prayer shawls.
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It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived, it haunted me, day and night. Object? There was none. Passion? There was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold, I had no desire. I think it was his eye. Yes, it was this. He had the eye of a vulture, a pale, blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold. And so, by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever. Now, this is the point. You fancy me mad. Mad men know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded, with what caution, with what foresight, with what dissimulation I went to work. I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it. Oh, so gently. And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed that no light shone out. And then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in. I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay up on his bed. Would a mad man have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously, oh, so cautiously, cautiously, for the hinges creaked. I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And thus I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight. But I found the eye always closed, and so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye.
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After you murder someone, life is never the same. Ron Jameson found himself thinking about this all the time. He couldn't get over the before and after differences. Before he'd been a hard-working mid-level attorney, billing his mega-hours, fair to both clients and opponents, responsive to his partners, honest to a fault. Before he had been a compassionate, yet somewhat stern father to his two children, a righteous man who both taught and modeled the importance of respect for property, for their mother, for other political, social, and religious viewpoints. Before he'd lived a circumspect, modestly successful, controlled existence, neither particularly happy nor sad, vaguely content most of the time, occasionally a bit bored going through the motions. Before he'd been half alive. That had left the other half. After he'd murdered the man who slept with his wife, it had taken him a while to get his bearings. Most of that time was spent worrying about what would happen if he were caught. About what he would tell his children and his wife. How he could justify himself and what he'd done to those he loved. Every day he had lived with the constant fear that the police would catch on to him. That in spite of his best efforts, he'd left a clue somewhere. Key evidence that would convict him. He worried about going to jail, about spending the rest of his life in prison. He was the sole support of his family. How would they all survive? After above all, he worried about how he could have turned into the man who could have actually done what he had done. When the police had found the incriminating evidence, a shell casing from the same make and caliber of the gun he'd used, on the boat of Jeff Cook, his former best friend and partner in the law firm, it had taken him a while to understand. Mystifyingly, Jeff had apparently then used the same weapon to kill himself, which meant that the case was closed. The police no longer believed that he'd done it. He was no longer a suspect. It appeared that his law partner had in fact killed the philandering bastard. When in reality, he came to understand, it had been his wife, expertly shifting the blame from him to Jeff, protecting him and their marriage and their family, shooting his law partner, and convincingly making it appear to have been a suicide, then planting the incriminating shell on Jeff's boat. Which meant that both of them, husband and wife, were killers. And after you murder someone, life is never the same.
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The next morning, Miles asked Dorian to take a walk with him. Once outside the building, she said, I don't have the DNA test back yet. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. OK. You know, I don't have that many people I can talk to, he said. Gilbert, yeah, he's my brother, but there are issues there. Again, Dorian said, OK. I want to know whether he's got the disease because there's a high probability, 50% chance that it gets passed down. So if one of our parents had it, then there's just as much chance he's got it as I do. Yeah, I googled it. They'd reached a small park that bordered a creek. Miles steered them onto the grass and headed for a bench. My brother's not the only one I've been thinking about, he said. They reached the bench and sat. Dorian studied her boss and nodded slowly. Miles could almost see the light bulb come on over her head. You have a kid, she said. I mean, you've never mentioned it, but did you just find out? Some girlfriend from years ago? Not like that, Miles said. And it's not just one kid. You have a couple of kids, Dorian said, unable to hold back a wry grin. The thing is, Miles said, I have no idea how many there might be. Dorian blinked. Say again? Miles laid it all out for her. That nearly 24 years ago, desperate for cash, he went to a fertility clinic. It wasn't like they paid you a fortune for donations, a few hundred. But back then, when I was broke, that was a lot of money. And you had to meet all sorts of criteria. Couldn't smoke, good lifestyle choices, college education. You couldn't just walk in off the street, go into a little cubicle and... I get the picture, Dorian said. So there could be a hundred little Miles or Millies out there today? Miles said he'd been told by the clinic that they wouldn't use his sperm more than, say, a dozen times. But had they kept their word, might there be more? And even if they'd kept their promise, someone might have had twins or even triplets. Which was why Miles had no idea how many biological children of his might be out there.
