I Am Pilgrim

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Part 2, Chapters 42-51Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Chapters 42-51 Summary

The narrative turns to the United States, to the US government’s top research facility for infectious disease, at Fort Detrick, Maryland. A virologist there, Walter Drax, recognizes the pathogen’s lethal potential instantly and decides to reach out to a personal contact at the NSC, hoping his discovery will make him famous. Only few people verify his lab results and their import. Murdoch says this is useful for his later operation, as al-Nassouri has no inkling he is at risk.

The director of national intelligence, a man nicknamed Whispering Death, or “Whisperer” for his soft voice, alerts the president, James Grosvenor. Whisperer’s famed composure breaks when he is forced to admit how little he knows about the perpetrator or his timeline. The narration then explains Grosvenor’s unique career trajectory: A popular and respected businessman, he went on to hold two cabinet posts and agreed to be the running mate of the first woman to seek a major party nomination, only to find himself caught up in tragedy when she died suddenly. When news cameras found Grosvenor comforting her widower, his compassion and reputation drove him to a landslide victory. His ability to handle a major international crisis is uncertain.

Whisperer arrives at the White House to brief the cabinet and President Grosvenor. The meeting grows tense when it comes to a long-term intelligence-gathering strategy. Whisperer decides that they will leak a false story about a missing nuclear trigger so that increased intelligence activity will be attributed to that event and al-Nassouri will continue work long enough to be caught.

The Echelon intelligence system intercepts a satellite call to a man in the remote region of Afghanistan where al-Nassouri conducts his experiments. Both people speak English, though the bulk of the woman’s words are coded messages using foreign news clips from American media. Sophisticated voice analysis yields no results, however, as the man is “completely unknown to any intelligence or law enforcement agency” colloquially known as a “cleanskin” (251). Whisperer suggests the use of a lone skilled agent to find the woman and thus trace al-Nassouri. The woman’s call originates in Turkey, in the seaside town of Bodrum, the same place Murdoch recalls when he sees the wall calendar at the Eastside Inn.

The point of view shifts to Whisperer’s. As he is combing official reports for recent mentions of Bodrum, he finds Ben Bradley’s report of the Eastside Inn murder. He recognizes Murdoch in the background of one of the crime-scene photos and requests that his assistant trace him.

The narrative returns to New York, as Murdoch prepares for his role at the criminology symposium, adopting the role of Jude Garrett’s confidant and protégé. Murdoch tells the assembled group of Bradley’s heroism. Murdoch then explains the Eastside Inn case and its connection to the tragedies of that day, eager for the group’s insights. Murdoch realizes there are men at the back of the auditorium. He is instantly aware that they are clearly clandestine government employees and that his life in New York is now over.

Part 2, Chapters 42-51 Analysis

In this section, Hayes adopts the role of a director or guide. Though the third-person account of the discovery of the virus may be Murdoch’s, much of the description is more distant, without use of personal pronouns or experience, unlike the occasional personal interjections within the descriptions of al-Nassouri’s activity. The camera or unseen audience, then, is taken into a new world, with a different set of protagonists. The effect underlines the thematic import of secrecy—this viewpoint is a trip into the covert halls of power, not ordinary life. Hayes’s Washington is a world of quotidian ambitions and cynicism, with moments of enduring nobility. Walter Drax, the scientist who analyzes the sample from Afghanistan, is hoping that his discovery will bring him fame and notoriety. President Grosvenor is set up as a sincere patriot and humane man, a true public servant, yet his work depends on the clandestine efforts of his advisers, including Whisperer. Even more than Ben Bradley, the president depends on those who are comfortable with moral compromise, and he is compromised himself when he accepts the need to deceive the public to fully investigate the bioterrorism attack.

The president’s advisory team is quickly confronted with the power of secrecy not merely as a weapon in their hands but also as one their adversary wields with particular skill. The enhanced surveillance of Echelon can do little with a man who has no known criminal record. The very ubiquity of surveillance makes al-Nassouri and his co-conspirator entirely aware of how to subvert it. Just as Murdoch can have his own past erased and rewritten by Battleboi, al-Nassouri relies on the same techniques to conceal himself. Whisperer’s decision to send a “pathfinder” personalizes what would otherwise be an abstract or geopolitical conflict. The reader already knows that Murdoch will be the man sent to confront al-Nassouri, and Whisperer’s discovery of his presence establishes this conclusively. The contest, then, is between not two noble individuals but those who have both led lives marked by tragedy, violence, and loss. Murdoch briefly attempts to live a more connected life, including honoring the heroism of others, but his hopes fade quickly, as if to suggest that his previous attempts at life in Paris and New York were a fight against his essential nature. The world needs him as a cynical observer, a honed investigator, more than it needs him to be an honorable man with friends and personal ties.