The denouement: Novelists kill off their arch-villain

An obviously staged photo op accompanying a Reuter's story


By Richard Edmondson

So the novelists employed at the Mossad and CIA finally decided to kill off their main character. You can hardly blame them. All the secret “bin Laden communiqués” were starting to wear a little thin, and a skilled novelist is ever sensitive to points in the plot where reader interest might be apt to wane. Besides that, it was clear the character was no longer important to the story, so one may as well go ahead and write him out of it. Question is—how do you do so?

We could have him die in a drone attack, but it’s obviously much more dramatic and effective to create a battle scene, in which the “master terrorist,” along with members of his gang, perish in a gunfight with U.S. “elite forces,” and of course we’ll have one of these dastardly al-Qaida fiends grab the nearest woman and use her as a “human shield” in a futile effort to escape this carefully laid trap. Sure—this fits right in with the story. It also serves another purpose: it makes for a nifty distraction, without which nagging questions might be liable to pop into the heads of more alert readers. Questions such as, “If U.S. ‘elite forces’ were on hand, why wasn’t an effort made to take Bin Laden alive and have him stand trial for the crime of the century?”

Of course, we all know why the Bush/Obama administration would wish to avoid a trial. Suppose “bin Laden” took the witness stand and testified about his past connections with the CIA? Or suppose evidence was introduced about the five dancing Israelis or how the buildings could have collapsed in their own footprints. Or what if—and this is the real cruncher—some of the engineers or pilots for 911 truth were subpoenaed to testify? That would have required having the trial judge suppress an awful lot of evidence, which would have been embarrassing, to say the least. To the extent that they aren’t completely staged, trials these days can get messy, and we would have run the risk of having our plot racing off in undesirable directions. So far better for our evil protagonist to die in this enthralling and dramatic firefight. But now we have a new hurdle to get over: identifying the remains. More specifically the problematic venture of “bin Laden’s” numerous relatives possibly coming forward and giving testimony as to whether the body with the hole in its head indeed is—or is not—that of their loved one. Hmm…let’s think about this one for a moment. Well, it seems the novelists have hit on the best solution: burial at sea!

It turns out that a sea burial serves a dual purpose: a) it enables U.S. officials to get the body disposed of within 24 hours, in accordance with Islamic law (after tearing up Korans and throwing them into toilets at Guantanamo, U.S. officials are now finally showing some sensitivity to the concerns of Muslims, and that’s good!!!), and, b) it prevents the burial site from becoming a monument or shrine. Yes, we’d want to avoid that at all costs. But will the readers buy it? Sure. Er…well…probably. But just for good measure, we can have a U.S. official or two announce that our heroic team of “elite forces” also included a crew of forensic specialists whose job was to gather “evidence proving that bin Laden was caught in the raid.”

And there you have it—what fiction writers refer to as the “denouement.” We have reached the point in the story where we come to a revelation, an occurrence or outcome, in which the true nature of the plot is revealed, a point which brings us also, conveniently, to the solution of a complex situation. How might we justify torture? Why, by merely having our erstwhile U.S. officials announce that it was no less than the “enhanced interrogation”—of some of those god-awful, “worst of the worst” prisoners at Guantanamo—that led our beloved “elite forces” to the monster’s lair. And just for good measure, we can have some secret U.S. government files leaked, oh, say, about a week before the villain is slain, documents containing an absolutely stunning revelation—that it was the torture of Guantanamo inmate Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, the notorious “KSM,” through which our gallant intelligence gatherers were able to obtain the name of “bin Landen’s” trusted “personal courier.” Ergo, torture is necessary and the war on terror is justified!

Well, that’s it: a perfect denouement! Now time to wrap up all the loose ends (Obama’s crowded weekend schedule, details about how the gunfight was tweeted live, and then of course a nice human angle is always good, so let’s have a few psychiatrists come out and advise people how to deal with their complicated emotions. And now, finally, we transition into the epilogue. Here we toss in a few paragraphs depicting Americans celebrating, and voila! We’re ready to send our novel off to the publisher!

Richard Edmondson is a novelist and author of The Memoirs of Saint John, a fictional account of the life of St. John, the “beloved disciple” of Jesus.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian