Extraordinary Powers (20 page)

The ketamine that had been injected into me on the street must have been extremely potent, because even now I was unable to think clearly.

Nevertheless, I tried.

Destination was Andrews Air Force Base. Likely, I was headed for CIA headquarters. No. That would make no sense. Rossi knew I had the ability to read thoughts, and so the last place he’d want to bring me was Langley. He seemed to know what I couldn’t do—couldn’t perceive brain waves through glass, or at a distance of more than a few feet—which told me that he had been through this extraordinary thing before.

But was the ability still in effect? I had no idea now. How short-lived was it? Perhaps it had faded as quickly as it had come.

I shifted in my seat, pulled against the restraints, and noticed my guards turn their heads, tense.

Had that been Molly in the cab or not? Rossi had said they had her, safe and sound. But a cab! And parked down the street? It had to have been a decoy, someone who looked very much like Molly placed in the cab in order to lure me down the block. But had Rossi’s people done it? Or the unnamed, unspecified “others”?

And who were these others?

I managed to croak out, “Hey!”

One of the guards rose, came near me (but not, I noticed, too near).

“What can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly. He was in his early twenties, crew cut, tall, and massively built.

I turned my head toward him, looked him directly in the face. “I’m sick,” I said.

He furrowed his brow. “My instructions—”

“I’m going to vomit,” I said. “The drugs. I just want to let you know that. Do whatever the fuck you’re instructed to do.”

He looked around. One of the other guards frowned and shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

I moaned. “Water? Jesus. What’s that going to do? There has to be a John around here.”

The guard turned back to the other one, whispered something to him. The other was gesticulating with what seemed to be indecision. Then the first one turned toward me and said, “Sorry, buddy. The best I can do is offer you a pan.”

I shrugged, or tried to, bound as I was by the restraints. “Have it your way,” I said.

He went to the front of the cabin and returned shortly with what looked like an aluminum bedpan, which he placed alongside my head.

I did my best to simulate the sounds of nausea, coughed and retched as he held the pan next to my mouth, his head no more than a foot and a half away, a look of deepest distaste curling his mouth.

“Hope they’re paying you well for this,” I said.

He didn’t reply.

I did my best to focus my muddled, ketamine-befogged brain. not hit men … I heard.

I smiled, knowing what that was all about.

I coughed again.

Then: what for … And, a few seconds later … what he did it’s Company business never tell us probably some espionage conviction doesn’t look like the type looks like a god damned lawyer.

“Guess you’re not so sick after all,” the guard said, pulling the pan away after a few seconds.

“What a relief,” I said. “But don’t move that thing too far away.”

I knew, number one, that it was still working; and, number two, that there was nothing I could learn from this guy, who had been kept deliberately ignorant of who I was and where I was going.

In a short while I drifted back to a dreamless sleep.

The next time I awoke I was seated in the back of still another vehicle, this one a standard-issue government Chrysler. My limbs ached.

The driver was a tall, late-thirtyish man with a salt-and pepper crew cut, wearing a dark blue parka.

We were entering a particularly rural section of Virginia now, somewhere outside of Reston, leaving behind the International Houses of Pancakes and the Osco Drugstores and the hundreds of little shopping malls for wooded, twisty two-lane roads. At first I wondered whether we were headed for Langley by some circuitous route, then I saw we were headed in another direction entirely.

This was safe-house country—the part of Virginia where the CIA maintains a number of private homes used for Agency business: meetings with agents, debriefing defectors, and such. Sometimes they’re apartments in large anonymous suburban buildings, but far more often they’re unremarkable split-level ranches with cheap furniture rented by the month, one-way mirrors in garish frames, vodka in the freezer, and vermouth in the refrigerator.

Ten minutes later we pulled up to a set of ornamental wrought-iron gates set into a wrought-iron fence over fifteen feet high. The gate and fence were spiked and looked high security. Probably electrified. Then the gates swung open electrically, permitting us to enter a long, dark wooded expanse that suddenly ended after a few hundred yards, giving way to a long, circular drive in front of a large brick Georgian house that in the evening darkness seemed almost foreboding. One room on the third floor was lit up, a few on the second floor, and a large room on the first floor whose curtains were drawn. The outside entrance was lit up as well. I wondered what it cost the Agency to rent this impressive residence, and for how long.

“Well, sir,” the driver said. “Here we are.” He spoke with the soft twang you hear in so many government employees who have emigrated to Washington from the Virginia environs. “Right,” I said. “Thanks for the lift.” He nodded quite seriously. “Best of luck, sir.” I got out of the car and walked slowly across the gravel drive and the flagstone entranceway, and as I approached the front door, it swung open.

PART 3.

THE SAFE HOUSE THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The CIA in Crisis President Reportedly Close to Naming New CIA Head

Some Wonder Whether a New Broom Can Really Sweep Clean Is Spy Agency Out of Control?

BY MICHAEL HALPERN STAFF REPORTER OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Amid ugly rumors swirling in Washington of vast illegal activity within the Central Intelligence Agency, the President is said to be close to naming a new director.

The latest speculation centers on a career Agency officer, Alexander Truslow, who is generally well regarded by Congress and the intelligence community.

But many observers are concerned that Mr. Truslow faces the difficult, even insurmountable, challenge of attempting to reign in a CIA that is widely believed to be out of control.

TWENTY-THREE.

I should not have been at all surprised to see the man in the wheelchair, regarding me calmly as I entered the vast, ornate sitting room. James Tobias Thompson I’ll had aged terribly since I’d last seen him, the incident that had ended my Agency career, but, far more tragically, had ended a wonderful woman’s life and paralyzed a man from the waist down.

“Good evening, Ben,” Toby said.

His voice, a low rasp, was just barely audible. He was a trim man in his late sixties, wearing a conservatively cut blue serge suit. His shoes—which rarely if ever touched the ground-were black brogues, polished to a high shine. His full head of hair, worn a little long for a man of his age, especially an Agency veteran, was pure white. In Paris, when I had last seen him, it was jet black with dabs of gray at the temples. His eyes were hazel; he looked both dignified and dispirited.

Toby’s wheelchair rested against an immense stone fireplace, in which, oddly, a great artificial fire blazed. Oddly, I say, because the room in which I stood, which must have been some fifty feet across and a hundred feet long, with a ceiling almost twenty feet high, was air-conditioned to an uncomfortably cold temperature. For .-some reason I remembered that Richard Nixon liked crackling fires in the air-conditioned Oval Office in the middle of the summer.

“Toby,” I said, approaching him slowly to shake his hand. But instead, he gestured to a chair that was a good thirty feet away from him.

Seated in a wing chair to one side of the fireplace was Charles Rossi.

Not far away, on a small damask-upholstered sofa, were two young men in the cheap navy suits I always associated with the Agency’s security types. Almost certainly they were carrying weapons.

“Thanks for coming,” Toby said.

“Oh, don’t thank me,” I said, masking my bitterness. “Thank Mr. Rossi’s people. Or the Agency chemists.”

“I’m sorry,” Toby said “Knowing you and your temperament, I didn’t think we could bring you in any other way.”

“You were quite clear,” Rossi interposed, “that you were unwilling to cooperate.”

“Well done,” I said. “That drug really saps the will. Do you plan to keep me on a drip to ensure compliance?”

“I think once you’ve heard us out fully, you’ll be more cooperative. If you decide not to cooperate, there’s nothing we can do about it. A caged animal makes a poor field agent.” “Then go ahead,” I said.

The straight-back chair in which I sat seemed to have been placed especially for me in such a way that I could see and speak to Rossi and Thompson. Yet it was, I noticed, at a great distance from all of them.

“The Agency found you folks a nice safe house this time,” I said.

“It’s actually owned by an Agency retiree,” Toby said, smiling. “How’ve you been?”

“I’m fine, Toby. You look well.”

“As well as can be expected.”

“I’m sorry we’ve never had a chance to talk,” I said.

He shrugged and smiled again as if I’d made a flippant, foolish suggestion. “Agency rules,” he said. “Not mine. I wish we had, too.”

Rossi was watching me silently. I continued: “I can’t tell you how sorry “Ben,” Toby interrupted. “Please don’t. I’ve never blamed you. These things happen. What happened to me was lousy, but what happened to you, to Laura … “

We fell silent for a moment. I listened to the hiss of the deep orange gas flames as they licked the ceramic pine cones.

“Molly,” I began.

Toby put up a hand to silence me. “She’s fine,” he said. “Fortunately-thanks to Charles you are, too.”

“I think I’m owed a little explanation,” I said mildly.

“You are, Ben,” Toby agreed. “I’m sure you understand that this conversation isn’t taking place. There is no record of your flight to Washington, and the Boston police have already buried a report of random gunfire on Marlborough Street.”

I nodded.

“I apologize for placing you at such a distance from us,” he resumed.

“You understand the need for the precautions.”

“Not if you have nothing to hide,” I said.

Across the room, Rossi smiled to himself and said, “This is a highly unusual situation, one we didn’t entirely plan on. As I’ve explained, keeping you out of physical proximity is the only way I know of to ensure the sort of need-to-know compartmentalization this operation requires.”

“What operation is that?” I asked quietly.

I heard a low mechanical whir as Toby adjusted his chair to face me squarely. Then he spoke, slowly, as if with great difficulty.

“Alex Truslow brought you in to do a job. I wish Charles hadn’t engaged in the trickery he did. He’ll be the first to admit, he’s no den mother.”

Rossi smiled.

“It’s an ends-and-means game, Ben,” Toby said. “We’re after the same end as Alex; we’re simply employing a different means. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is one of the most exciting and important developments in the history of the world. I think that once you hear us out, you’ll choose to go along with us. If you choose not to, that’s fine.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“We selected you some time ago as our most likely subject. Everything about your profile seemed right, the photographic memory, the intelligence, and so on.”

“So you knew what would happen,” I said “No,” Rossi said. “We’d failed time and time again.” “Hold on a second,” I said. “Hold on. How much exactly do you know?” “Quite a bit,” Toby said calmly. “You now have the ability to receive what’s called ELF—the extremely low frequency radio waves that the human brain generates. Do you mind if I smoke?” He took out a pack of Rothmans—I remembered now that Rothmans were the only brand he smoked when we knew each other in Paris—and tapped it against the arm of the wheelchair until one slid out

“If I did mind,” I replied, “I doubt the smoke would bother me at this distance.”

He shrugged, and lighted the cigarette. Exhaling luxuriantly through his nostrils, he continued. “We know this … talent, for want of a better word, has not abated since it emerged. We know you’re sensitive only to thoughts that are occasioned at moments of strong feeling. Not yours, but those of whomever you’re trying to ‘.” This gibes rather neatly with Dr. Rossi’s long-standing theory that the intensity of thought waves, or ELF, would be proportional to the intensity of one’s emotional reaction. That emotion varies the strength of the electrical impulses discharged.” He paused to inhale again and then said huskily, through the exhaled smoke, “Am I in the ballpark?” I only smiled in reply.

“Of course, Ben, we’d be much more interested to hear your experiences than to listen to ourselves gas on like this.”

“What led you to think of using the magnetic resonance imager?” “Ah,” Toby said, “for that I turn to my colleague Charles. As you may or may not know, Ben, for the last few years I’ve been on the DDO staff at home.” He meant that he was serving in the Deputy Directorate of Operations the covert-action boys, to oversimplify at the CIA’s Langley headquarters. “My area of responsibility is what they call special projects.”

“Well, then,” I said, feeling an odd sense of vertigo. “Perhaps one of you gentlemen can explain what this … project, as you seem to be calling it, is all about.”

Toby Thompson exhaled with a finality, and stubbed his cigarette out in a crystal ashtray on the carved oak end table next to him. He watched the plume of blue smoke rise and curl in the air, then turned back toward me.

“What we’re talking about,” he said, “is a matter of the highest security classification.” He paused. “And it is, as you can imagine, a long and rather complex story.”

TWENTY-FOUR.

The Central Intelligence Agency,” Toby said, his eyes fixed on some middle distance, “has long had an interest in … shall we say … the more exotic techniques of espionage and counterespionage. And I don’t just mean that wonderful invention, the Bulgarian umbrella, whose tip injects deadly ricin.