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  Edy said, “Dr. Kentson. We are with the CIA and we need to ask you a few questions about your activity. We hope you will cooperate.”

  Kentson said what only a doctor would say at a time like this.

  He said, “I’ll miss my plane. You can’t do this to me. I’m a doctor.”

  Isn’t that just like doctors? A lot of them, when they get their degree, act as if they’ve just been made a god since they now supposedly have the ability to make life or death decisions. Now I make life or death decisions all the time, but I don’t have that kind of an attitude. Maybe it’s because the decision is clear cut in my case. It’s usually either my life or their death. Although Dr. Kentson did not have his own life at stake, he apparently was planning to take the lives of thousands of people if he could. Imagine what that would do to his malpractice insurance rate and the malpractice insurance rate of all other doctors. And who pays for that increase in malpractice insurance? We all do, because it all gets passed on to everyone in the form of higher medical fees, which means the cost of health insurance must go up because everyone will be required to have health insurance because of the new health care law. So not only will Dr. Kentson’s life and death decisions affect all those he will kill, it will affect all of us adversely whether he kills us or not. And he expects to get special consideration because he’s a doctor. What arrogance.

  And talking of arrogance, I think the only other group with as much arrogance is politicians. They also expect special treatment and go around saying arrogantly, “I am a Senator” or “I am a Congressman,” and they adversely affect a lot of lives also and more so than most doctors. I think our legislators don’t really appreciate how much damage they do with all the unintended consequences of all the legislation they pass. Every law they pass, except maybe naming post offices, causes a lot of people problems. And they can’t resist making those laws. I mean, that’s what they are supposed to do, and they can’t resist doing it, even if the whole country would be better off if they did nothing. They should have the motto that doctors do, “first do no harm.” But it seems that all they do is harm. Every time there is a study showing that something is bad for you, they pass a law. The next study may show that same something is really good for you after all, but the law is passed and they are on to the next one.

  They are doing that with food and drinks now. The first thing they banned was Nehi grape soda many years ago. That may be a bad example because I am making an assumption that probably isn’t true. I don’t know what a Nehi grape soda is. I’ve never seen one and I don’t know if they are real. But I heard people in Charleston say that they hadn’t seen a Nehi grape soda in years so maybe they were real once. And the only reason I can think of that they aren’t around is because Congress banned them like they banned a lot of other things that are no longer around. But if it isn’t banned because it is flying under the radar of the legislature, then maybe one day it will come back after they have banned everything else and the whole country will only be allowed to have Nehi grape soda and popcorn.

  Chapter 16

  Ben said to Dr. Kentson, as he got into the SUV and put on his seat belt,

  “We would like to ask you some questions about the work you are doing and your relationship with Al Qaeda. I hope you will co-operate and make it easy on yourself.”

  “You’re crazy,” was the reply.

  Ben continued, “We know you were working with Jack Doff, also known as Zakhar Dragunoff, to produce a weapon of mass destruction based on programmed cell death, and we would like to find out who else is involved, who is in charge, and who is responsible for developing the delivery system besides Rhong Dong.”

  Kentson knew he was caught when Ben mentioned the other two. He said,

  “I refuse to say anything and I demand a lawyer. I’m an American citizen and I know my rights.”

  Edy, who was the cleverer one of the CIA duo said,

  “Does that give you the right to kill other Americans in the name of Allah? You are a Muslim, aren’t you? We know you are.”

  I don’t know if Ben and Edy had information in that regard because Kentson didn’t look like what most people stereotype Muslims as looking like, which just shows that people shouldn’t be stereotyped at all because you just can’t tell.

  But Kentson replied, “If you are persecuting me because I’m a Muslim, then you are in even more trouble than you are now, and I want a lawyer.”

  By the time he said that, I was pulling away from the Resort and heading north on I-19.

  “Where are you taking me? Let me go. I demand it.” Anya nudged him with the gun and he said, “You won’t shoot me. Even the CIA isn’t allowed to kill American citizens in the U.S.”

  “Who do you think killed Jack Doff?” asked Anya.

  “Certainly not you,” replied Kentson.

  “That’s right. She didn’t. I did,” said Edy.

  Kentson looked around at her. “How can you just kill an American citizen like that?”

  “Let’s just call it self-defense. He had a gun. And there are three witnesses. So please don’t try anything or I’ll have to shoot you in self-defense. Even an offensive remark on your part could result in an act of self-defense, if you know what I mean. So behave,” she said and followed it by saying, “now why don’t you tell us what we want to know and make it easy on yourself?”

  About this time I pulled off of I-19 and started to head out into the desert. Kentson asked,

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To a re-enactment. Have you ever been to a re-enactment? I know there are a lot of those taking place in the South,” I replied.

  “To a re-enactment? You mean where they re-create some historic battle? What are you talking about? Are you trying to say that if I watch a re-enactment, I will feel patriotic and tell you what you want to know? This is crazy. You must all be crazy.”

  “You won’t have to go to the re-enactment if you will tell us what we want to know.”

  “I won’t tell you anything and I don’t believe you killed Doff. You’re only trying to scare me but you’re wasting your time.”

  “In that case, we will have to make you participate in the re-enactment.”

  I know by this time that Kentson was really confused, and I didn’t blame him. But it would make sense when we got to the re-enactment.

  He started to yell and complain and make a general nuisance of himself, so we finally had to handcuff him and put a gag in his mouth.

  You know re-enactments are very popular. They are usually re-enactments of various battles of the War of Independence or the Civil War. And they are not just large and well-known battles either. There are a lot of re-enactments of small battles near to where they occurred and often performed by local people in honor of their history. There was a small re-enactment like that outside of Charleston on Johns Island which Anya and I went to watch. Usually it is just two opposing groups dressed up like the soldiers of the time and they fire black powder muskets at each other. Now black powder, when ignited, lets off a lot of black smoke, and after one volley the air is usually so filled with smoke that one group can no longer see the other group unless or until there is a breeze and the smoke clears. And some of those old muskets had to be reloaded and it took a long time. So a lot of those re-enactment battles consist of one large volley of shots after which everyone falls down. And then they all get up and go have a beer.

  That’s why the old cowboy movies you watch that have gun-fights in them, like the gun fight at the OK Corral, are so inaccurate. Smokeless powder did not appear until the end of the nineteenth century. At the time those old cowboys fights were supposed to have taken place, after each cowboy took one shot, the air was so filled with black smoke that they could no longer see the other cowboy or cowboys. They had time to retire to a local saloon and drink beer until the air cleared and someone would come in and tell them whether or not they had hit anyone. If they hadn’t, they would have to go out and do it all over again or may
be not if they had drunk too much beer. The old west has been so romanticized over time, but it really wasn’t that way at all. Now we were going to an old west re-enactment, but not like the ones I described. We were going to a re-enactment of a Native American Indian ritual and Ben and Edy had hired a band of real Apaches to help us with it and make it authentic. I don’t know where they found them, but they turned out to be really bad actors, which were just the kind of actors we needed as you will see.

  We drove the rest of the way to our destination in silence. Kentson was not going to talk until after the re-enactment, so we knew there was no sense in trying to get any more information out of him. As we drove in silence I thought of this some more about this whole business of the way Congress works and the unintended consequences. One of the things that always results in them passing a new law is when they discover that something happened that caused the death or injury of some child or irresponsible adult. Then the whole Congress will go on a mission to save the irresponsible people from themselves at a great price and inconvenience to everyone else in the country. One example is the child-proof caps on drug vials. Most prescription drugs are sold to senior citizens and this is a real burden on them. The older the senior citizen is, the harder it is for them to open those vials because the old people lose their strength and their dexterity as they age. And the older they get, the more drugs they tend to use. Some of them use over a dozen pills a day, or need a dozen pills a day but can’t get to them because they are in child-proof containers that they can’t open and are really senior-citizen-proof containers.

  And you know that almost any child can open one of those child-proof containers, don’t you? Just leave one near a four year old and watch. So what do they do? Many senior citizens just don’t get their medicine as a result. Do I think it is a government plot to kill senior citizens and save Medicare? Maybe, but I don’t think so. It’s one of those unintended consequences that all of the laws seem to have. And all for what? Because a few careless parents won’t accept their responsibility and watch over their kids like they’re supposed to do. And instead of making the parents accept that responsibility, Congress condones their bad behavior and punishes old people instead. And end up killing more old people than the few children that may have been affected by the pill containers and were really affected by their parent’s bad behavior and not because the pills weren’t packaged properly.

  The reason I thought of this was a story I read in the paper that morning about Mary Smythe-Jones and her four-year-old great grandson Mickey. Mary was eighty-two and debilitated with a variety of problems for which she took about twelve or fourteen pills a day. But some of those pill containers she couldn’t open. As she went through the pills during the day, she took the ones she could and thought she would come back and take the rest later if she could get them opened, but she never did because her memory, like most old people’s memory, was not that good. One of the pill vials that she just couldn’t get open contained her blood pressure medicine. When she went in for her check-up, her blood pressure was high, and the doctor asked her if she took her pills, and she said yes. He doubled the dose, but she still couldn’t open the container, so she didn’t take it. On her next visit he added a second blood pressure medicine, but she couldn’t open that container either so she didn’t take it.

  And then her granddaughter came to visit with her son Mickey. Mickey’s mother went out for a while and left Mickey with his great grandmother. When it came time for Mary to take her pills, Mickey wanted to help so she said he could try and open the child-proof containers and he opened every one, so she took all her pills for the first time. Her blood pressure plummeted and she just made it over to the couch and collapsed before she passed out and died. And what did Mickey do? He had all the pill containers opened and, since he wasn’t being supervised properly, he poured all the pills out into a big pile and played with them. Did he eat any of them? No. What child wants to eat medicine? He may have licked one and found out that it tasted bitter, but he didn’t swallow a single one. That didn’t prevent the doctors from pumping his stomach at the local hospital when his mother came home and found her grandmother dead and Mickey playing with a pile of prescription medicine pills. And Mickey learned one of life’s valuable lessons at an early age. No good deed shall go unpunished.

  So I thought to myself, why can’t Congress come into session and do nothing since most of the laws they pass damage the economy or damage people’s lives? Why can’t they just come into work like other government employees and do as little as possible. You know, have a long coffee break, a long lunch and then leave early to go home. Actually I do think they do that in general, but every once in a while they sneak in, quickly pass a law that no one wants, and sneak out again just so they can say they did something to deserve to be re-elected. And then they will go on a junket to see how the beach looks in Hawaii because they want to personally check to see if they can tell if global warming is causing the water to rise on Waikiki Beach. And they have to watch it for a very long time, at least a week or two. Still another question I have is: why do you suppose that doctors and politicians are so arrogant? I think the answer is because everyone who they encounter tells them how wonderful they are. And since they are too god-like to associate with mere mortals, the only people they encounter are the sycophants who they hire to work for them and who would get fired if they didn’t constantly tell the doctor or politician just how wonderful they are no matter how many people they killed that day, the doctors and politicians, that is, and not the sycophants.

  Chapter 17

  We arrived at our destination in the middle of a very isolated part of the desert and parked our SUV next to two pickup trucks on a small ridge. We walked down the slope to meet a band of Indians who were standing in a depression below the ridge. The band of Indians we met in the desert consisted of four members, and it was an equal opportunity band of Indians because there was a female member. The first one we met was Big Bear and he introduced us to his wife Little Beaver. I don’t know if she had a little beaver, although I assumed that she did, and I didn’t know if that’s how she got her name, but I wasn’t going to ask. And then Big Bear introduced us to their son, Little Bear, and that meant Little Beaver was really Mama Bear. Now Little Bear wasn’t little. I don’t know how Indians determine who is little and who is big as far as names are concerned. In fact Little Bear was bigger than Big Bear, which was very disconcerting. He really was the biggest Bear. Finally we met the Chief of the band whose name was Golden Hawk. So there they all were, Golden Hawk and the three Bears. Now Golden Hawk was really experienced in recreating the old traditions, which is why we had wanted him to help us. He was going to show us one of the Apache’s favorite re-enactments of the traditional way of treating a prisoner they had captured, and he would be training the three Bears in the process. One of the things that Apaches liked to do after capturing an enemy, and what we were going to watch them do that day, was strip the prisoner naked, stake him out on a strip of sand in the hot sun near at least one, and preferably several, fire ant colonies. Then the Apaches would sit around and watch the fun while discussing neighborhood gossip until the screams drowned out all chances of conversation.

  Golden Hawk was the instructor. After they stripped Kentson down to the uniform he had come into the world with, they tied each limb to one of four stakes pounded into the ground and each Indian was in charge of tying one limb to one of the four stakes. Golden Hawk went first and demonstrated how he liked to tie the prisoner so he couldn’t get away, and then he checked how the others had done. This was like a teaching seminar similar to the one Kentson had just attended, so I knew lying there, he more than any of us, could appreciate what was happening. First Golden Hawk tested Big Bear’s ropes, but they were too tight, so he had to loosen them. Then he tested Little Bear’s ropes, but they were too loose, so he had to tighten them. And then he tested Mama Bear’s ropes, and they were just right so he complimented her by telling the other
two that he liked Little Beaver’s best.

  When Kentson was securely staked out, we took the gag out of his mouth, and he immediately started to complain loudly and threaten us. Just like Gopang had done recently, he said he wanted a lawyer and he knew his rights. He said he was an American citizen and we couldn’t treat an American citizen this way in the United States, and this was considered torture, and we were going to be in big trouble.

  So I said to him, “Actually, we are no longer on American soil. We are, in fact on Apache land, on a reservation that isn’t technically American soil, and the laws of the United States don’t apply. We are only following Apache custom and doing what they have done throughout history with prisoners. And we’re only participating in a Native American Indian ritual that is part of this tribe’s heritage and they are only trying to preserve that heritage in difficult times. To deny them that right would be considered a hate crime if we were in the United States, so it is a good thing that we aren’t. Besides,” I told him, “if you want to cooperate and tell us a story that we can all believe in instead of a fairy tale like Little Red Riding Squaw and the Three Wolves, then maybe we can convince our friends to shorten the ritual re-enactment.”

  I think he was beginning to get the picture that we were serious, and he wasn’t going to get away, and the god-doctor thing wasn’t going to work with us. And I told him he wasn’t licensed to practice on the Apache reservation anyway. They didn’t consider him a true medicine man. In actual fact we may not have been on an Apache reservation. I can’t say if we were and I can’t say if we weren’t. Actually I could have said, but Ben and Edy would have been unhappy if I did say, so I said I can’t say. That was just a little white lie of convenience, which is like a little white lie with gray around the edges. Anyway, I continued my conversation with Dr. Kentson who was tied up at the moment (I bet his secretary used that line on more than one occasion) and said,