The Jericho Deception: A Novel (33 page)

He glanced at the Arab taking slow bites from the apple as if he were alone in the room. Ethan knew he spoke no English. “I programmed the Logos to stimulate the left temporal lobe, the dominant side of the brain in right-handed individuals, at more intense frequencies. I theorized, based on Liz’s EEG and on the brain scans Elijah and I did on the monks and nuns, that the difference in the signals between the two temporal lobes of the brain created the feelings of spaciousness and the sense of otherworldliness that mystics describe. One half of the brain sensed something different than the other half.” He grimaced. “I made the assumption that the relationships between the left and right temporal lobes would be similar for our future test subjects.”

“But,” Chris said, “in left-handed people, the left and right brain hemispheres often have reversed subspecialties.”

“The overstimulation of the non-dominant hemisphere in these other subjects must have caused their feelings of panic, claustrophobia, and loss of control. In a religious setting, especially with someone preconditioned to see evil in a personalized form, they interpreted these feelings as being influenced by devils rather than God.”

He turned to Rachel. “I should have taken your and Elijah’s concerns more seriously. If only—”

She put her hand on his arm. “There will always be
ifs.
All that’s important is what we do now. Anyway, I don’t think anything you could have done would have changed Wolfe’s actions here.”

“She’s right,” Chris said.

The sight of the two students looking up at him opened a void of sadness in Ethan’s heart. He missed Elijah. Not just for his brilliant mind, but for his counsel and his friendship. But now he was the one in charge. He wasn’t at all sure about his plan. Too many contingencies could go wrong. But he knew two things with certainty: he had to stop the madness that was Project Jericho, and he refused to let anything happen to Rachel.

E
than wiped the sweat from his eyes. Unlike the computer server room directly over his head, the utility room on the monastery level where he knelt had no air-conditioning. He’d discovered this room yesterday when inspecting the cable connections from the Logos server in the computer room that led to the machine in the chapel. He looked up. A gray conduit disappeared into the ceiling and the server room above it. He traced the conduit across the ceiling, down the far wall, and into the floor—where it ran into the chapel and then into the cathedra. Other than the conduit, the room contained two humming HVAC units that served the chapel and the dining hall. His attention, however, was focused on another piece of equipment.

He opened the tool bag he’d borrowed from one of Wolfe’s goons. The tools were necessary, he’d explained, for the repairs to the Logos. Fortunately the guards had no idea whether the problems with the machine were mechanical or software-related. The one positive of his role here in the Monastery, he thought, was his access to off-limits areas.

The water heater was much larger than what he had in his New Haven apartment. This commercial model held one hundred and twenty gallons. It had been over a decade since he’d spent two of his undergraduate summers working for a local remodeling contractor to help pay his tuition. On one job where he’d helped to replace an old water heater, the foreman had regaled him with a tale of incredible destruction he’d seen years earlier when a heater had failed catastrophically. Ethan didn’t buy the story until years later, when one
of his favorite Discovery Channel shows confirmed the possibility of truth behind the foreman’s urban myth. He hoped he remembered how the heater worked.

He selected wire cutters, pliers, and a Phillips-head screwdriver from the tool bag. His two concerns fell on opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, what he was attempting might not work, and then they’d be stuck in the Monastery. On the other, it might work too well and kill him and the others he was trying to save.

He glanced at his watch and pushed both concerns from his mind.
Nine thirty
. The modifications should take no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Chris would bring Rachel and Mousa to the chapel at ten. The other problem with his plan, though, was that its timing was unpredictable.

Ethan unscrewed the metal plate from the side of the water heater. Inside was the electronic thermostat that controlled the temperature in the heater, which was set for one hundred and ten degrees. He unscrewed the thermostat and followed the path of the wires leading from it. He stood and hit the electrical breaker on the wall that supplied power to the heater.

Checking that the LED light on the thermostat was no longer lit, he used the wire cutters to clip the black and red wires that led from the thermostat to the heating element of the tank. Once he’d disconnected the thermostat, he stripped the plastic coating from around the copper on the wires. He then twisted the wires together with the pliers. Now power would be fed to the tank’s heating element continuously, regardless of the temperature of the water. He put the defunct thermostat into the cavity of the water heater and replaced the metal plate. On the off chance that one of the guards inspected the utility room in the next half an hour, he would find everything in place.

The thought of a guard doing an inspection sent a shiver down Ethan’s spine that overrode the heat of the room. He glanced at the closed door. While he could explain his presence in the room—the wiring from the Logos ran through there—he couldn’t explain why he was working on the heater. He had to move faster.

With the water heater wired to overheat, he turned his attention to the small pipe at the base of the heater. The pipe led to a floor drain. Between the
pipe and the heater was a valve known as a TPR—a temperature-pressure relief valve. If the thermostat failed, the valve was designed to open and release the pressurized, overheated water.

He removed the soldering iron from the tool bag and began to disable the heater’s secondary safety backup. Once he finished, he flipped the circuit breakers. The water heater began to vibrate subtly. It was heating again. He packed up his tools, hit the light switch, and left the room. He turned down the corridor toward the chapel, his rendezvous site with his friends.

“Working late, Professor?”

He jumped at the voice behind him. After inhaling sharply, he turned to face James Axelrod.

His mind raced. He’d thought through being discovered in the utility closet, and he’d rehearsed his explanation so it would sound natural. But with the hulking man dressed in the black robes of a priest glaring at him, the practiced justification vanished from his head and was replaced by a mixture of fear and rage at the man who had killed Elijah and kidnapped Rachel. He struggled to keep his face neutral.

“Um, I . . .”

“You’re sweating.” Axe moved closer, invading his personal space. “Do I make you nervous?”

“Of course not.” He held up the bag of tools. “I was just double-checking the connections to the Logos.”

Axe cut his gaze to the utility room door. His jaundiced eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“I think I have the problem figured out,” Ethan added, hoping to distract the spook from investigating the room. “I’m going to run some tests now.”

He walked away from the utility room toward the end of the hall where the closed doors to the chapel beckoned him. “Director Wolfe is adamant that I have it working when he returns.”

“The machine is working?” Axe’s bloodshot eyes danced between him and the end of the corridor. Ethan thought he detected a note of apprehension in the man’s voice.

“I’m making progress.”

“Why was it broken?”

He hesitated. He had no plans to fix the Logos. Indeed, in a few minutes it would be destroyed and they would escape. Telling the truth, he decided, would come across as more genuine.

“The machine was tuned only for right-handed people. In left-handed individuals, like the two subjects who had psychotic breaks, the wiring of the temporal lobes is often different. I overlooked this when I was programming the Logos. All I had to do was design a separate protocol for left-handed people.”

Axe’s eyebrows peaked. “What about subjects who are ambidextrous?”

An insightful question,
he thought, surprised. “Most ambidextrous people have left-handed brains. So yes, I would use the alternative programming on them as well.”

“I’ll watch your tests.”

A pit formed in Ethan’s stomach. “Maybe next time. Let me do some preliminary runs, and then I’ll get you when I know it’s working right.”

He continued walking toward the chapel.

Heavy footsteps fell beside him. Axe walked so close he could feel the heat from his body.

“I’ll watch now.”

Ethan wiped his palms on his lab coat. The last thing he needed was Wolfe’s chief of security hanging around during their escape attempt. He paused at the doors to the chapel.

“Actually, I could use your—”

Before he could get the word
help
out of his mouth, Axe brushed past him and flung open the doors. Rachel, Chris, and Mousa looked up at the abrupt entrance. Their eyes widened at the sight of the broad-shouldered man striding toward them.

“What’s going on here?” Axe directed the question at Chris, who, like Axe, was dressed in his priest’s robes and collar.

“I asked—” Ethan began, but stopped when Axe raised his hand.

Axe’s eyes bored into the young grad student.

“Oh, hey, Father James,” Chris answered in a casual tone. “Dr. Lightman asked to observe one of my prayer sessions with Brother Mousa this evening.”
He motioned to Mousa, who stood next to the cathedra, dressed in his brown cassock. “I explained to our Brother that we are considering bringing nuns into the monastery to help with our work”—he nodded to Rachel—“and that Sister Rachel just arrived from the States to inspect our chapel.”

He’s smooth
, Ethan thought. Then he caught sight of the expression on Rachel’s face. She looked as if she might be sick. He imagined what the stress of seeing Axe was doing to her body. Her endocrine system had probably jumped into overdrive from the trigger of confronting her kidnapper. Then he chastised himself for the clinical direction of his mind, and he met her eyes. Although it was hard to tell in the dim light of the chapel, he thought her pupils were dilated more than normal. Her breath came in short, rapid bursts. He nodded imperceptibly.
You can do this,
he willed to her. She was strong, he knew. It was one of the qualities he admired most in her. Her eyes locked onto his and after a moment her shoulders dropped. She seemed to relax.

“Thank you, Father Christopher,” Axe said. “Feel free to continue your services. Please don’t let us intrude.”

Chris led Mousa and Rachel to the altar, where he handed each of them long candles that they used to light the votives lining the stone table.

Axe lowered his voice so that Ethan had to lean in close to hear him. “What is she doing here?”

Ethan had to repress the urge to punch the man in the gut when he saw his eyes track Rachel’s body as she bent over to light the candles. He matched the conspiratorial whisper. “She helped me figure out how to reprogram the Logos. I need her to observe the session with Mousa. But now that you’re here”—he glanced at the three figures who were kneeling at the altar—“I could use your help.”

“How?”

“There is always a possibility of an adverse reaction.”

“Like the other guys who went crazy.”

“A psychotic break from reality is a risk, as is a seizure.” He opened the tool bag and removed the LCD remote that controlled the Logos. “I’ve programmed a switch here where I can toggle between settings for right-handed and left-handed individuals. I wanted to test a right-handed subject like
Mousa first to make sure that my new programming didn’t corrupt the original settings. Then we’ll try it on a left-handed subject.” He leaned closer. Having to feign camaraderie with the man took every bit of his willpower. “Can you go upstairs to the medical supply room and bring me a syringe and a vial of Ativan?”

“To sedate the Arab if he has a bad reaction?”

“Exactly.”

Axe looked toward the others and then back to him as if considering whether they could be trusted with only Chris. “I’ll be right back.”

Ethan exhaled when Axe left the chapel, and then he checked his watch. Twenty minutes had passed since he’d rigged the water heater. The anticipation of what would happen in the next few minutes made him feel nervous but alive at the same time.

He glanced at his watch again. Twenty-one minutes. Time was moving too slowly.