Page 139 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)
Katherine sat up abruptly on the ambassador’s couch, realizing she had drifted off. Robert had not yet returned, and the ambassador was at her window, staring blankly into the darkness. Hearing Katherine stir, Nagel turned back into the room and checked her watch.
“Half an hour,” she said. “They’re still talking.”
“It could be a good sign,” Katherine offered. “Robert can be…meticulous.”
“I’ve noticed,” Nagel said, coming over to sit with Katherine. “He took me aside earlier and interrogated me from every angle about your missing manuscript, demanding I order the CIA to return it.”
“And?” Katherine pressed, hopeful.
Nagel shook her head. “Sadly, the director confirmed that Q’s operations team destroyed all copies.”
Katherine scoffed. “I don’t believe them.”
“It tracks, unfortunately. After WikiLeaks, we implemented rigid new protocols governing the immediate disposal of information the agency deemed damaging. I’m sorry, but I do believe the book is gone.”
Katherine picked at the couch, trying not to think of all she had lost. “You know, it’s pretty ironic the CIA destroyed the book. In reality, the ideas in it could have given the agency a fresh perspective on terror management theory.”
Nagel looked surprised by the comment. “You wrote about TMT?”
“It’s quite relevant to my work.” As it is to yours.
Terror management theory was utilized by military intelligence to predict a population’s reaction to certain threats.
Its findings were well established. Human anxiety had countless sources—fear of nuclear war, terrorism, financial ruin, loneliness—and yet TMT had established that the predominant fear and strongest motivator behind human behavior was, undeniably…
the fear of death. When a person was terrified that he or she might die, the brain employed extremely well-defined strategies to “manage” that terror.
Under normal circumstances, our unpleasant knowledge that we will die—known as “mortality salience”—was managed through a wide range of strategies, including denial, spirituality, mindfulness practices, and various types of philosophical reflection.
Under extreme circumstances, however—war, crime, violent confrontations—people behaved predictably across all demographics; they would either battle to the death to save themselves…
or flee the threat. This was known classically as the fight-or-flight response, and for military strategists, it was particularly helpful to predict which of the two would occur.
“As it turns out,” Katherine said, “fight or flight is not the brain’s only response to the fear of death. There is something more gradual that occurs, over many years, as we begin to fear our world is unsafe…as so many people now do.”
“It’s a fear based on sound logic,” Nagel said.
“Every day, we’re exposed to graphic media coverage reminding us of our collapsing environment, increased threat of nuclear war, coming pandemics, genocide, the world’s endless atrocities.
All of this triggers the brain’s terror management strategy to run in the background, at a low level—not yet in fight-or-flight mode, but…
anticipating the worst. In essence, the more terrifying our world becomes, the more time we spend preparing subconsciously for death. ”
Nagel looked uncertain where all this was going. “Prepare for death… how ?”
“I think the answer to that will surprise you,” Katherine said. “It certainly did me. While researching mortality salience and the brain, I found that an increased fear of death produced a consistent array of behavioral responses—all of them selfish. ”
“I’m sorry?”
“Fear makes us selfish, ” Katherine said.
“The more we fear death, the more we cling to ourselves, our belongings, our safe spaces…to that which is familiar. We exhibit increased nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance. We flout authority, ignore social mores, steal from others to provide for ourselves, and become more materialistic. We even abandon our feelings of environmental responsibility because we sense the planet is a lost cause and we’re all doomed anyway. ”
“That’s alarming,” Nagel said. “Those are precisely the behaviors that fuel global unrest, terrorism, cultural division, and war.”
“Yes, and that make the CIA’s job so difficult. Unfortunately, it becomes a hall of mirrors. The worse things get, the worse we behave. And the worse we behave, the worse things get.”
“And it’s your theory that this troubling pattern stems from humans’ fear of death?”
“It’s not my theory,” Katherine said. “It’s scientifically proven in mountains of statistical evidence gathered through observational analysis, behavioral experiments, and scientific polling.
The most important point in the research, however, shows that those who do not fear death, for whatever reason, tend to exhibit behavior that is more benevolent, accepting of others, cooperative, and caring about the environment.
Essentially, this means that if we could all free our minds of the burden, of the terror we feel about death… ”
“Then we would find ourselves in a dramatically improved world.”
“Precisely,” Katherine said. “To quote the great Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, ‘The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual’s way of being in the world.’ Grof believes that a radical inner transformation of consciousness might be our only hope of surviving the global crisis brought on by the Western mechanistic paradigm. ”
“Well, if that’s true,” Nagel offered as she poured more coffee, “perhaps we should spike the world’s water supply with antianxiety meds.”
Katherine chuckled. “I’m not sure Xanax is the existential answer, but there is hope on the near horizon.”
Nagel paused mid-sip. “Oh?”
“As I wrote in my manuscript, I believe our views on death are about to change. Top scientists around the world are increasingly convinced that reality is not at all as we believe. This includes the provocative idea that death is, quite possibly, an illusion…that our consciousness survives physical death and lives on. If this is true, and if we can prove it, then within several generations, the human mind will function under an entirely different premise—the belief that death is not so terrifying after all…”
Katherine’s voice was brimming with passion.
“Just think about that. The one universal fear that drives so much of humankind’s destructive behavior…
would evaporate. If we can hold on long enough to arrive at that paradigm shift without blowing ourselves up or destroying our planet, then our species may well turn a philosophical corner that ushers in an unimaginably peaceful future. ”
The ambassador fell silent, and Katherine sensed in her eyes a deep desire to feel encouraged despite all she had witnessed of the world. “How I hope you are right,” she whispered.
Moments later, Robert finally materialized in the doorway.
Nagel leaped to her feet. “How did it go?”
He entered with a weary smile. “Ambassador, I believe it’s time you call the director.”
It was late afternoon in Langley, Virginia, when Director Gregory Judd ended his second video call of the day with his former lead counsel, Heide Nagel.
I was a fool to fire her, he thought—not because Nagel had come back to haunt him, but because she was so damned good at what she did.
Few people cut through the bullshit like Nagel.
While most attorneys lived in a black-and-white world ruled by the letter of the law, Nagel lived in the real world, as it truly was—a shifting, complicated landscape, rendered in shades of gray.
With clarity, humility, and surprising emotional transparency, Nagel had shared with him the unexpected developments pertaining to Sasha Vesna, as well as the obvious implications for the inevitable reconstruction of Threshold.
Like any good negotiator, Nagel had helped Judd arrive at her conclusion, while making it seem the idea had been his own.
The director was not a scientist, but the CIA’s research into the human mind had certainly unveiled a reality unlike anything Judd had imagined as a younger man.
Fortunately, Judd’s job was not to comprehend the nature of reality, but rather to harness its power to best serve his nation and to protect it.
On occasion Judd allowed himself to dream about a future where programs like Threshold unveiled proof of the interconnection between all human minds, ushering in a global community bound not by fear and rivalry, but by empathy and understanding…
a world where the concept of national security was a relic of the past.
For the moment, however, there was work to be done.