The Pinocchio Syndrome

‘You mean the calls for a special election?’ Kraig asked.

‘There could be a lot of ambivalence about a thing like that,’ the doctor said. ‘Especially in these troubled times.’

‘I see what you mean.’ Kraig knew that Dan Everhardt was a career legislator who probably would never have dreamed of running for high executive office if the president had not chosen him as his running mate five years ago. Now that the president was under attack, Dan Everhardt had to absorb the same blows from the media and from hostile forces in Congress.

‘You’re saying that he has a strong motive to be sick,’ Kraig offered. ‘Because it would get him off the hook politically.’

‘That’s correct,’ the doctor said. ‘Not that it’s a conscious decision on his part. The symptoms wouldn’t be this convincing if it was.’

There was a silence. The doctor started to say something, but stopped himself.

‘Yes, Doctor?’ Kraig asked.

‘Did you hear about that strange epidemic out in Iowa?’ the doctor asked.

‘You mean the people who can’t talk?’

‘Yes. It’s just a hunch on my part, but the vice president’s symptoms remind me of the reports about those people. I think it would be worth checking out.’

‘I’ll take care of it,’ Kraig said, making a note on a small spiral pad.

The doctor looked worried. ‘If this thing wasn’t confined … If it was a communicable disease of some sort …’

‘Yes?’ Kraig raised an eyebrow.

‘We wouldn’t know how to combat it,’ the doctor said. ‘We wouldn’t have a clue.’

Kraig looked at him in silence.

‘Of course, that’s very unlikely,’ the doctor went on. ‘What happened in Iowa is probably some kind of mass hysteria.’

‘Probably?’ Kraig asked.

‘Probably,’ the physician concluded. ‘In any case, we’ll work with what we have.’

‘Thank you for seeing me, Doctor.’

‘The hospital administrator tells me the media are waiting for a statement,’ the doctor said. ‘I waited to hear from you. From the government, I mean.’

‘I appreciate it. We can draft something together,’ Kraig said.

An hour later Joseph Kraig stood beside the hospital spokesman, an administrator named Dr Cobb, as he faced a large group of reporters outside the main hospital entrance. Video cameras were running, the bright lights making Kraig squint.

‘Dr Cobb, how is the vice president?’ The question came from several directions at once.

‘The vice president is well,’ Dr Cobb said. ‘We’ve been running a lot of tests today, and the patient is understandably tired. The tests will continue tomorrow.’

‘What is the current diagnosis, Doctor?’ Again several voices shouted this at once.

‘We’re not prepared to make a definitive diagnosis until a full battery of tests has been run.’

Every word so far, Kraig reflected, had been approved by the White House. This was no time for ad-libbing. Kraig’s eyes scanned the mob of reporters and video men. They looked like jackals closing in for the kill. The microphones on their poles were like the proboscises of oversized insects who fed on the pain of humans.

‘Doctor, is there any truth to the rumor that Vice President Everhardt’s condition has baffled your physicians?’

The question was asked by a young female reporter with dark hair, a woman Kraig did not remember seeing before.

‘No truth,’ Dr Cobb said.

‘Doctor, is it true that the vice president is mentally incapacitated?’

‘Not true,’ Cobb answered with some irritation.

‘Doctor, is there truth to the story that the vice president’s illness is connected in some way to the epidemic in Iowa?’

The questions were coming from the same reporter, who outdid even her Washington peers in rapid-fire attack.

‘Not at all,’ Cobb said.

To Kraig’s surprise, the next question was addressed to him.

‘Agent Kraig, are you concerned about protecting the health of other federal officials?’

Kraig narrowed his eyes at the reporter. Who was this hound, anyway?

‘It’s our job to protect the president and those who work alongside him,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how the vice president’s condition affects that.’

‘Does Vice President Everhardt’s incapacitation make you worry about the safety of other government officials?’

‘I wouldn’t call it incapacitation,’ Kraig said.

‘Have you interviewed the vice president yourself, Agent Kraig?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And how did you find him?’

‘I have nothing to add to what Dr Cobb has told you.’

‘Agent Kraig, isn’t it true that Vice President Everhardt hasn’t said a single word since he became ill?’ The reporter’s dark eyes seemed to bore into Kraig.

Kraig frowned. He had had enough. ‘I repeat, I have nothing to add to what Dr Cobb has told you.’

Karen Embry nodded with a politeness tinged by lingering suspicion. She looked crisp and professional in her dark suit and blouse. Her hair had been brushed with care, and her makeup accentuated her delicate features. There were a lot of female reporters present, from the wire services and cable stations as well as the local media, but none was quite as attractive as Karen. It would have been hard for an observer to recognize in her the young woman who had dragged herself out of bed at seven o’clock this morning with a crushing hangover. But there was no such observer. Karen made sure that no outsider ever saw her without her professional armor on. And her beauty was part of that armor.

The news conference lasted another twenty minutes, all of them uncomfortable, as Dr Cobb parried questions from dozens of reporters. Finally, citing the late hour, the doctor called a halt to the session.

Grateful to make his escape, Kraig left the hospital and drove back to his office.

Since the attack on the Pentagon of September 11, 2001, many of the major federal agencies had been covertly moving around the city. The Secret Service was presently located in a nondescript office building a block away from HUD, in the shadow of Interstate 395. From the weedy parking lot full of unmarked vehicles no one would have guessed the place was a government facility. Only the name tags the agents and secretaries clipped on as they approached the entrance betrayed the true nature of the operation.

Most of the agents were out, but Kraig’s boss, Ross Agnew, was in. It was Agnew who had gotten Kraig this assignment. They had known each other as trainees twelve years ago. Agnew, a graduate of the University of Virginia and a former FBI agent, was a natural-born administrator and a gifted politician. He was the temperamental opposite of Kraig, a field agent who liked solitude and distrusted authority. But they got along well.

‘How is Everhardt?’ Agnew asked.

‘He didn’t look good to me,’ Kraig said. ‘But I’m not a doctor.’

‘Not good in what way?’

Kraig shook his head. ‘A sort of paralysis,’ he said. ‘He can’t talk, and he can’t obey simple commands. So far they can’t find anything wrong with him physically. If it’s mental, it’s bad mental.’

‘I take it he’s not in any condition to go back to work,’ Agnew said.

‘No way.’ Kraig shook his head.

Agnew thought for a moment.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell the White House. They’re not going to like it. Deep concern at the top level. You know what I mean.’

Kraig nodded. He cared little for politics. If it weren’t for that maniac Colin Goss angling to get into the White House, Kraig would not have cared who occupied the place.

‘Do you think the president will have to appoint another man?’ Agnew asked.

‘If Everhardt goes on this way, I’d say so,’ Kraig replied. ‘He’s incapacitated.’

‘Who do you think it might be?’

‘Search me.’ Kraig sat down.

He thought for a moment before saying, ‘Everhardt’s doctor was wondering about the epidemic in Iowa. There are some symptoms in common.’

‘Really?’ Agnew asked. ‘Which ones?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Kraig frowned. ‘I don’t know that much about Iowa.’

There was a silence.

‘Does the doctor think this might be something communicable?’ Agnew asked.

‘He doesn’t know. He seemed worried by the prospect.’

Kraig sat listening to the muted hum of the traffic on the expressway. He looked at the pictures on Agnew’s walls, most of which showed sailboats or fishing boats on the Chesapeake Bay. Agnew was leaning back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other. His knee stuck up well above the desktop. He was immensely tall, six feet eight or nine, and had once had the misfortune of guarding Chris Webber for three quarters in the NCAA semifinals.

Then he asked, ‘Do you see this changing our drill about the president or the top executive people?’

Agnew raised an eyebrow. ‘Why would it change anything?’

‘I had a reporter ask me that question at Walter Reed,’ Kraig said. ‘It was a strange question, but it had me thinking in the car. What if it were possible to incapacitate a public official intentionally, as a form of terror?’

‘Hmm,’ Agnew mused. ‘The Ipcress File. Is that what you’re thinking of?’

‘Yeah. If you can’t kill a guy, or force him out through scandal, you mess up his mind somehow.’

‘Science fiction,’ Agnew mused. ‘But anything is possible.’

There was a silence.

‘Why don’t you fly out there and see what you can learn?’ Agnew asked.

‘Iowa?’

‘Yeah.’

Kraig nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘But first go home and get a good night’s sleep,’ Agnew said. ‘I have a feeling the next few weeks aren’t going to be fun.’

Kraig gave Agnew a long look. ‘Right,’ he said.

Kraig stood up and left the office.

6

Kraig didn’t get home to his Virginia condominium until after eleven. He was looking forward to a shower and an evening of reading and music.

His profession forced him to read newspapers avidly and to be aware of current events and the trends behind them. He got so sick of the real world after a day of work that he couldn’t bear to watch television at home. He listened to a lot of music – Coltrane and Miles Davis when he was younger, but increasingly Beethoven and Mozart – and read novels. He looked for stories as far removed as possible from this time and place. Mark Twain was a favorite. So were Balzac and Dumas. He liked to immerse himself in the longer Dostoyevsky novels, and sometimes even read Shakespeare.

He had weights in his basement, and always found time to do some bench pressing and curling. He ran in the mornings to keep his legs in shape. Since his divorce he found concentration and work easy, but sleep difficult. In some ways the loneliness of his profession suited him. In other ways he felt empty and rootless, adrift in a life that didn’t really belong to him.

He e-mailed his daughter in Florida every day, and spoke to her on the phone once a week. She was ten now, and very busy with her own life. He spoke to his ex-wife as seldom as possible.

The apartment building loomed before him with its combined aura of home and of homeless-ness. Lights were on in all the units except his own. Sighing, he turned off the car.

There was a girl sitting on the steps. As he drew closer, carrying his briefcase, he recognized the aggressive young reporter from the foyer at Walter Reed.

‘No comment,’ he said. ‘I’m off duty.’

‘My name is Karen Embry,’ she said, getting to her feet and holding out a hand. ‘I don’t want a story.’

Kraig stood looking at her without taking her hand. She was of medium height, maybe five five, but she seemed smaller because she was visibly underweight. The journalist’s typical lean-and-hungry essence was evident in her, but there was something else as well, something downright undernourished and, Kraig thought, sad. She had long dark hair, which she obviously made the most of. Her complexion was fair, her eyes large and dark. She was very pretty, or would have been had she been anything but a reporter.

These impressions kept him from sweeping by her into the condo without a word.

‘If it isn’t a story, what do you want?’ he asked.

‘Just a couple of minutes of conversation,’ she said.

He looked at his watch. ‘It’s been a long day,’ he said.

‘I work long hours,’ she said. ‘My sources tell me that Everhardt is really sick. That there’s no way he’ll be coming back.’

Kraig shrugged. ‘I really couldn’t say. I’m not a doctor, Miss – what did you say your name was?’

‘Embry. Call me Karen.’ Now that his eyes were adjusting to the dim light Kraig saw that there was something unusual about her features. Something European, perhaps – though there was no trace of an accent in her voice.

‘How come I haven’t met you before?’ he asked.

‘I moved down here from Boston fairly recently,’ she said. ‘I’m working freelance. I specialize in public health stories.’

‘That’s nice,’ Kraig said.

There was a silence. The reporter knew Kraig wasn’t going to give her anything she could use. But, like any good journalist, she wanted to establish him as a contact.

‘I heard it was something about the decision-making process,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Everhardt. Something to the effect that he can understand things – some things at least – but can’t make decisions based on what he knows. So he can’t act. He’s paralyzed.’

Kraig turned toward the parking lot, beyond which a sad vista of apartments and two-story office buildings blocked the horizon.

‘No comment,’ he said.

‘I heard the White House is really worried,’ she said. ‘Without Everhardt for the polls, they’re not sure the president can hold off Colin Goss.’

‘I’m not a pollster,’ Kraig said.

She nodded. ‘A lot of people are concerned about the viability of the administration. The voters are terrified of another nuclear attack like the Crescent Queen. Goss has been pulling a lot of strings in Congress. If anything happens to make the president look weaker than he is already, there might be a resolution asking him to resign. This Everhardt thing certainly doesn’t make him look stronger.’

Kraig said nothing. He knew Colin Goss was putting pressure on the administration. Frankly, he thought it would be better for the country if Goss was in that hospital bed instead of Dan Everhardt. Goss was a true menace. In this sense, Kraig did have a political mind.

‘That’s not my department,’ he said.

There was a silence.

‘I heard that some of the doctors think Everhardt’s problem may be functional,’ she said.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Kraig asked.

‘Mental. Emotional. Everhardt has been under a lot of stress recently. Maybe he cracked under the strain.’

Kraig was looking at her face now. There was an odd concentration in her eyes, almost an animal concentration. He wondered for a split second whether she was on something, some sort of upper. But he rejected the idea. She was simply a newshound, ready to knock down any obstacle that stood between her and a story. Her kind didn’t need uppers. The stories themselves were their drug.

‘Everhardt is a good man,’ she said, ‘but he’s not really cut out for the presidential wars. Consider the way Colin Goss had him buffaloed on Washington Today. Maybe the pressure was getting too great for him.’

Kraig cut her off. ‘I don’t have anything for you,’ he said.

‘As I say, I don’t want you to leak anything,’ she said. ‘I just want …’

Kraig gave her a dark smile. ‘What is it you want, Miss Embry?’

‘Call me Karen. Please.’

Kraig was not taken in by her friendliness.

‘What is it you want?’

‘I don’t want to chase windmills,’ she said. ‘I would like to have a contact who can help me stay on the right track. I really don’t want to print things that aren’t true.’ She hesitated. ‘Call it a friend I want,’ she said. ‘And I can be a friend in return.’

Kraig gave her a long look. A tough reporter, wise to every angle an evasive government would try to pull on her. Looking for a scoop, and willing to trade. Trade what?

Something told him not to blow her off completely.

‘Then stop jumping to conclusions,’ he said, ‘and start looking for better sources.’

‘That’s why I’m here.’ That intent look was still in her eyes.

‘I have work to do,’ Kraig said, taking out his keys. ‘See you.’

He went inside and closed the door. The ceiling light in his foyer sent dim rays into the empty apartment. He felt an urge to turn on all the lights in the place and fill it with music, as quickly as possible.

But after hanging up his coat he looked out the window to see if the girl was gone.

She was standing on his steps, looking at the closed front door. She had pretty shoulders under that long hair. She must be cold out there.

He felt an impulse, half sexual and half pure loneliness, to let her in and give her a drink. He hesitated for a long moment. Then he reached for the doorknob. At that instant she started down the steps to the parking lot. She moved quickly, all business, her car keys in her hand. Yet as she opened the car door she looked younger, almost girlish.

Sighing, Kraig turned back to the emptiness of home.

7

November 17

Eighteen hours after she left Joseph Kraig’s apartment Karen Embry stood in a hospital ward in Des Moines, Iowa, staring at a little girl.

The girl’s arms were curled around a ragged teddy bear. Her fingers were frozen against the fur. The creases in her hospital gown remained exactly as they were when it was put on, for she had not moved since they brought her in. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling of the ward, as though the answer to a long-pondered riddle would appear there at any minute.

The ward was crowded. There were no medical facilities in the affected part of the state capable of handling the victims. The majority had been taken by ambulance or National Guard transport to hospitals in Sioux City and Des Moines.

The epidemic that had spread through a dozen towns in five counties now seemed to have stopped. No new victims had been found since the initial outbreak. This fact came as a relief to the public health officials, but did little for the harried medical professionals who were struggling to deal with fifteen hundred gravely sick adults and children.

A cold front was sweeping across the Midwest and the Plains states, bringing wind chills below zero. Local inhabitants were wearing down jackets and parkas they had not expected to need for another month. Visitors, like Karen, found themselves underprotected against the intense cold.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta had sent a team of specialists to investigate the epidemic. Unfortunately for them, there were no unaffected citizens to interview. Every man, woman, and child in each affected town had been struck down by the mystery illness.

Karen learned all this upon her arrival at the university hospital in Des Moines from the CDC official in charge, Mark Hernandez. Though Hernandez was not happy to see Karen, he had been instructed by his superiors that good relations with the press were crucial at this sensitive time.

He helped Karen put on anticontamination gear. ‘It’s almost certainly unnecessary now,’ he said, ‘but we’re still being careful.’ He took her to a quarantined ward lined with beds occupied by immobile, empty-eyed patients of all ages. Overworked nurses were busy feeding and caring for the patients.

It was a disturbing sight. Men, women, and children, still looking healthy and well fed, lying silent in their beds. They looked like film extras hired to play the role of the sick.

Karen was struck by the look in their eyes. They seemed to be hypnotized from within. It was a fixed stare, but not suggestive of dementia. There was something almost visionary about it.

When she remarked on this to Dr Hernandez, the doctor shrugged. ‘It is strange. But so far we haven’t been able to attach any significance to it.’

‘I’m puzzled by the symptoms,’ Karen said. ‘Shouldn’t there be fever or chills or nausea, or something to indicate the internal disorder?’

‘Off the record?’ the doctor asked.

Karen nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I’m puzzled myself.’ He shook his head. ‘The symptoms make no sense. All the vital signs are normal. The patients seem conscious, but their will seems to be paralyzed. Their power to act, even to feed themselves.’

‘Were any of them able to walk?’ Karen asked.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Judging by where we found them, the illness stopped them in their tracks. If they were sitting, they just stayed there. If they were standing, they remained standing until weakness made them keel over. It’s like being struck by lightning. They just froze.’

Karen was thinking of Vice President Everhardt, lying helpless in a bed at Walter Reed. She wondered whether he looked like the patients here.

‘What is your people’s thinking on this?’ she asked.

Hernandez shrugged unhappily. ‘Frankly, we don’t know what to think. We’re concentrating on life support, nutrition, and so forth. We’ve quarantined the communities involved. We’re analyzing water and soil samples, even the air. It’s possible that something got in there and affected the whole population. Whatever it was, it didn’t affect anyone else. Each pocket of infection is completely encapsulated. People in the surrounding communities are healthy.’

He looked at Karen. ‘But even if we find a vector, we still don’t understand the symptoms. They’re not like anything infectious I’ve ever seen or heard about. The body keeps functioning normally, but the patient is incapable of action.’

‘Have you heard about the vice president’s illness?’ Karen asked.

‘Yes, I have. Why?’

‘It presents some intriguing parallels to this one,’ Karen said. ‘Lack of voluntary motor capacity, inability to respond to commands, but apparently normal perception and vital signs.’

‘Really,’ the doctor said. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I never reveal my sources,’ Karen smiled. ‘It was told to me off the record in Washington. You might want to talk to your people there, though Walter Reed is buttoned up tight.’

‘I’ll think about it.’ The doctor shook his head slowly as he scanned the ranks of helpless victims. ‘If it’s the same disorder, that could be a bad sign.’

‘For Everhardt?’ Karen asked.

‘For all of us.’ The doctor shook his head. ‘If a thing like this ever started to spread … and us without a clue as to how to treat it …’

As they were leaving the ward they passed the bed in which the little girl lay holding the teddy bear.

‘How did that get here?’ Karen asked.

‘I think they found her at home,’ said Dr Hernandez. ‘She was in her playroom. I suppose one of the paramedics brought it along to keep her company here.’

Karen looked more closely at the child’s eyes. Did she know where she was? From her glassy stare the reporter could not tell.

For the first time the tragedy around her struck Karen. What if this little girl never moved again, never spoke again?

Karen took her leave of Dr Hernandez and went downstairs to the hospital cafeteria. Her stomach was rumbling, for she had eaten nothing since early this morning. Unfortunately smoking was not allowed in the hospital. She would have to wait for a cigarette until she was outside.

She put a tuna sandwich, a granola bar, a container of yogurt, and a bag of potato chips on a tray and filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee.

As she was carrying the tray toward a window table a familiar voice sounded in her ear.

‘Miss Embry. You get around, I see.’ It was Joseph Kraig, the Secret Service agent she had talked to last night. He was sitting alone at a table for four. He looked unhappy and somewhat more tired than the first time she saw him.

‘So do you,’ Karen said. ‘May I join you?’

‘Why not?’ He pushed back a chair for her. She threw her coat over one of the unoccupied chairs and sat down.

‘That doesn’t look warm enough for you,’ Kraig said.

‘I haven’t been outside much,’ she said. ‘Have you?’

‘Now that you mention it, no.’

He watched her peel the top off her yogurt.

‘You don’t look as though you eat enough,’ he said.

She shrugged off the comment, sipping at her coffee with a look of distaste. ‘I hate hospitals,’ she said. ‘My grandmother was in a succession of them when she was dying. If I never see one of these cafeterias again, it will be too soon.’

Kraig nodded. He had his own hospital memories. He did not care to revisit them.

Karen ate a few spoonfuls of yogurt, then sat back to study Kraig’s face.