Leviathan

Peter Aaron, a novelist, opens the narrative with a central mystery: On or around June 28, 1990, an unidentified man blew himself up while building a bomb beside a road in northern Wisconsin. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) cannot identify him because his hands are destroyed and his documents are forged or stolen. Aaron recognizes the dead man as his friend Benjamin Sachs from a brief wire-service article in The New York Times. Two FBI agents, Worthy and Harris, confirm his suspicion after tracing Aaron's initials and phone number from a slip of paper in the dead man's wallet. Aaron lies to the agents and resolves to write the true story of Sachs's life before authorities distort his reputation. He works in secret at a Vermont house owned by Sachs's ex-wife Fanny, letting his wife Iris believe he is writing a new novel.

Aaron traces their fifteen-year friendship back to a snowed-out literary reading at a bar in the West Village, where he and Sachs are the only two people who show up. They spend hours drinking bourbon and talking, discovering an instant rapport. Sachs is a person of extraordinary contradictions: garrulous in conversation yet precise on the page, clumsy yet athletic, deeply social yet capable of intense solitary discipline.

Sachs was born on August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a coincidence he frequently invokes to link himself to the nuclear age. His political convictions are rooted in conscience rather than ideology, modeled on Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience." When drafted during the Vietnam War, Sachs refused to serve, was denied conscientious objector status, and spent seventeen months in federal prison. There, at twenty-three, he began writing The New Colossus, a historical novel set in America between 1876 and 1890 that mixes real figures such as the poet Emma Lazarus and the Lakota leader Sitting Bull with characters borrowed from other novels. Its dominant emotion is anger against American political hypocrisy. Aaron reads the novel shortly after their first meeting, and his admiring letter to Sachs solidifies their bond. Aaron also recalls how Sachs drew a lasting political moral from a childhood visit to the Statue of Liberty: Freedom, if not handled carefully, can be dangerous enough to kill.

Aaron introduces Sachs's wife, Fanny, a poised art historian whose greatest sorrow is her inability to have children. Aaron's own first marriage, to Delia Bond, collapses, and back in New York he meets Maria Turner, a young artist whose work consists of elaborate, self-imposed rituals such as following strangers and photographing them. Aaron and Maria begin a relationship governed by her strict rules.

Maria's history with Lillian Stern, her closest friend from Holyoke, Massachusetts, proves central to everything that follows. After losing touch for years, Maria devises an art project around a lost address book she finds on the street, and while tracking down entries she reunites with Lillian, who has been supporting herself as a prostitute. They switch identities: Lillian carries out Maria's project and through it meets and eventually marries Reed Dimaggio, a graduate student in American history. Maria's encounter with one of Lillian's clients ends in a severe beating that causes her to withdraw from physical intimacy for three years.

While Sachs is in California, Fanny reveals his infidelities to Aaron, and they begin a three-week affair. When Aaron insists she leave Sachs, Fanny refuses. Sachs, upon learning of the affair, is magnanimous, insisting their friendship continue. Shortly afterward, Aaron meets Iris, a graduate student in English literature, at an art exhibition. They marry in June 1981, with Sachs as best man.

During the 1980s, Sachs's career stagnates and his progressive views find a shrinking audience. On July 4, 1986, the Statue of Liberty's centennial, Sachs falls four stories from a fire escape at a Brooklyn Heights party after a reckless attempt to get Maria Turner to embrace him. A clothesline breaks his fall. He survives with serious injuries but later tells Aaron that the fall revealed a hidden desire to destroy himself. He shaves his beard to expose his scars and departs for Vermont, ostensibly to compile a book of essays but actually to begin a novel. Fanny, meanwhile, begins a relationship with a man named Charles Spector.

Aaron visits Vermont in August and reads the first third of the novel-in-progress, titled Leviathan, which he judges remarkable. Less than a month later, Sachs gets lost on a walk and spends the night outdoors. The next morning, Dwight McMartin, a young man who plays softball for the local volunteer fire department, picks him up in a truck. As Dwight drives Sachs home, they come upon a man beside a white car. When Dwight approaches, the man draws a gun and shoots him dead. Sachs grabs a softball bat and strikes the shooter, killing him.

As a convicted felon, Sachs fears no one will believe his account of self-defense. He flees in the dead man's car and discovers a passport identifying the shooter as Reed Dimaggio, bomb-making materials, and approximately $160,000 in cash. He drives to New York intending to confide in Fanny but discovers her in bed with Charles. He flees to Maria Turner's loft. When Sachs shows Maria the dead man's passport, she recognizes the photograph: Dimaggio was married to her old friend Lillian Stern, the woman Maria had brought into Dimaggio's life through the address book project.

This revelation transforms Sachs. He flies to Berkeley to give Lillian the money as restitution for killing her husband. Over several weeks, he becomes the primary caretaker for Lillian's five-year-old daughter, also named Maria, while placing cash in daily installments in Lillian's freezer. Eventually Lillian opens up to Sachs, and they begin a passionate relationship. Around the same time, Sachs discovers Dimaggio's doctoral dissertation on Alexander Berkman, an anarchist who in 1892 shot the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Sachs is struck by the parallels: Both men were shaped by Vietnam and committed to political change, but Dimaggio acted on his convictions. One day, spotting a copy of The New Colossus in a used bookstore, Sachs sees its cover image of the Statue of Liberty and a plan crystallizes: He will carry on Dimaggio's work by bombing replicas of the statue across America. He recovers the remaining cash and departs Berkeley.

Beginning on January 16, 1988, small-scale replicas of the Statue of Liberty are destroyed across the country, twelve in total over eighteen months. No one is ever injured. After each bombing, the perpetrator phones a statement to local newspapers under the name the Phantom of Liberty. The messages grow increasingly poetic, calling on America to practice its ideals.

In August 1989, Sachs appears at the Vermont house at two in the morning and, over two consecutive nights, recounts everything to Aaron: the killings, his time in Berkeley, his transformation into the Phantom of Liberty. He describes a life of constant movement and assumed identities. He asks Aaron to keep his secret, then leaves a note the next morning: "I've finally found something to believe in."

The Phantom strikes twice more before the explosion that kills Sachs in Wisconsin. FBI agent Harris cracks the case by purchasing copies of Aaron's books from a store near Albany. The books bear forged autographs, and fingerprint analysis yields Sachs's prints. Harris arrives at the Vermont house alone and reveals that the dead man is Benjamin Sachs, the Phantom of Liberty. Aaron leads Harris to the studio and hands him the manuscript the reader has just finished.