The Shadow Protocol (14 page)

Conrad Wilmar, it turned out, was a middle-aged man with large glasses and crinkled, receding red hair. “No, no, that’s fine,” he said to someone off camera. “Okay, so, what do you need me to do? Are you going to ask me questions, or …?”

“No,” said Albion’s voice. “Just tell us about yourself and your area of expertise.” Bianca recognized the background as the lab in which she was standing.

“Sure, sure, no problem,” Wilmar replied. He had squirrelly, fidgety mannerisms, as if his brain were working
slightly faster than his body could handle and dumping its excess energy straight into his nervous system. He looked directly into the lens. “You want me to start? Okay, my name is Conrad Wilmar, and I’m a professor of biochemistry at Carnegie Mellon. I’m currently working with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Resear—Hey, is it okay for me to be talking about this?” He looked toward his interviewer. “I know we’ve all got proper clearance, but I don’t want to take any chances, y’know?”

“It’s fine,” said Albion.

“Okay, right. So, what was I saying? Oh yeah. I’m working with DARPA to develop battlefield treatments and inoculants against biological weapons. Specifically, against weaponized strains of
Bacillus anthracis
and
Neisseria meningitidis
, which if anyone is ever mad enough to employ bioweapons in warfare are likely to be among the prime threats …”

Wilmar kept speaking, but Bianca had already drawn some conclusions about his personality. Very smart, jittery, and seeming socially inept on the surface—but with an inner confidence emerging upon moving on to his specialist subject. An alpha nerd, then; someone who could seem nervous and bumbling when out of their usual element … but anyone underestimating them did so at their own risk. She knew the type. She had worked with quite a few of them.

“Okay,” said Kiddrick. Bianca looked around to see him fitting Adam with the complex skullcap of electrodes from the slideshow, a cable running from it to the PERSONA device. “Tony, can you find Wilmar’s disk?”

Tony went to the cabinet and ran his finger along the cases. “Okay, Vulich, Wagner, Wall, Warner … here we are.” He slipped the box out from its companions.

Bianca regarded it dubiously. “So, how big are these disks if they can supposedly record the complete memories of a human brain? You’d need more than just a blank CD.”

He opened the case to show her. Inside was a flat, dark
gray slab of plastic, about an inch thick. “It’s not really a disk—we just call them that because it’s easier than saying … God, I can’t even remember the full name. High-Capacity Rapid Access Multiplexing Static Memory Module? Something like that.”

She tried to pronounce the acronym. “Hurk … huck-ramsumm?”

Tony grinned. “Yeah, that’s why we stick to ‘disk.’ Anyway, it’s basically a very, very big and fast flash drive.”

“I still don’t see how any kind of computer memory would be big enough to record a person’s entire memories, though. The brain has billions of neurons
—trillions
of synapses. Storing them all would be like trying to fit the entire Internet on an iPod.”

“On a normal, direct transfer, it’s just a matter of having enough bandwidth to push the data through,” Kiddrick explained patronizingly as he finished securing the skullcap. “Which we do. Recording takes longer, though, because it has to encode and compress everything to fit on the module. To continue your iPod analogy, it’s like shrinking a raw audio file down to an MP3. It sounds the same, but takes up far less space.”

“I know some audiophiles who’d argue at extremely tedious length about it sounding the same,” said Bianca. “And doesn’t an MP3 lose some of the data when it’s compressed?”

“The brain interpolates the missing information and fills in the gaps.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea when you’re talking about memories. People have enough holes in their recollection as it is.”

“Well,” said Kiddrick, stepping back, “you’ll see for yourself in a minute. Everything’s ready. Tony, can I have that disk?”

Tony brought it to him, Bianca and Morgan joining them at the table. Kiddrick opened the PERSONA’s screen and waited for the machine to start up, then carefully inserted the disk into the recorder’s slot. He checked
some figures in another window, then returned to the cabinet. “The drug we use to prime the agent to accept a new persona is called Neutharsine. Roger’s name; I’m not keen on it myself. It’s the protein inhibitor I mentioned.” He returned with a jet injector, carefully loading a small vial of liquid. “It suppresses certain parts of the target brain’s memory, and it’s also used after a mission to erase the implanted persona.”

Bianca looked down at Adam. He was still staring silently up at the lights, unmoving. “Are you sure there aren’t any long-term side effects?” she felt compelled to ask. “Especially if you’re giving him repeated doses.”

Kiddrick shot a look at Tony—whether seeking his permission to speak or warning him not to say anything, Bianca couldn’t tell—before replying. “There are side effects, yes, but they’re minor and easily managed. Now, watch this.” He moved to the head of the operating table and positioned the injector against Adam’s neck. “Ready?”

“Yes,” said Adam, without emotion.

Kiddrick pulled the trigger. Adam grimaced, then relaxed. Bianca watched him closely. Though it was hard to imagine how, he seemed to become even
more
expressionless, as if the little personality that he had expressed was draining away.

After half a minute, Kiddrick clicked his fingers above Adam’s face. The agent’s gaze instantly locked onto them. “Okay, Adam. Does everything feel normal?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He examined the PERSONA’s screen, seeing a
READY
message. “Okay. Here we go.”

He typed in a command. New windows appeared, one displaying a simplified graphic of a brain. Colored patterns drifted across it—then flared into brilliant, manic life.

Adam’s whole body spasmed. Bianca jerked back in surprise, before leaning in for a closer look. His eyes were flickering rapidly from side to side. She also saw that his
hands had twisted into gnarled fists. “Is he in pain?” she asked, concerned.

She expected Kiddrick to answer, but Tony spoke first. “No. It’s not exactly pleasant, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“Okay, the transfer is in progress,” said Kiddrick, looking up from the machine. “It’ll take six or seven minutes. That’s longer than a direct transfer would take, because it has to decompress the data.”

Bianca kept watching Adam. His eye movements, she realized, mirrored the unconscious flicks of a person recalling memories—but at a far greater speed. “You know, I have real trouble reducing the sum total of a person’s self to just ‘data.’ ”

“Would you prefer if I called it ‘the soul’?” Kiddrick replied sarcastically.

They waited for the device to do its work. The whirlwind of colors on the graphic eventually dimmed and slowed. Kiddrick peered at some numbers on the screen, then nodded. “Okay, it’s done. Now, Dr. Childs.” He gestured theatrically at Adam. “I’d like you to meet … Conrad Wilmar.”

Adam sat up, blinking. His gaze hopped to each person around the table. “Okay, ah … yeah, I can do without the whole staring thing, thanks.”

Bianca was no expert in American accents, but even from those few words she could tell that Adam’s had changed. It
did
sound like Wilmar’s, but she wasn’t prepared to accept that alone as proof that the PERSONA process genuinely worked.

“The memory check?” Tony prompted.

“Yes, yes.” Kiddrick signaled for Adam to face him. “Okay. What’s your full name?”

“Conrad Mathias Wilmar,” said Adam, peering quizzically back at him.

“What was your date of birth?”

“June twelfth, 1959. At twelve minutes past six. So, six twelve on six twelve.” A crooked grin at the quirky coincidence.

“Where were you born?”

“Bridgeport, Connecticut.”

“Your mother’s maiden name?”

“Schumacher.”

Kiddrick nodded, then an oily little smirk crept on to his face. “Now … what’s your most guilty secret? The one that you’d least want anyone else to ever know?”

“I …” Adam’s expression suddenly turned to one of shame, even alarm. “I, I mean he, he … I’ve been unfaithful to my wife. There’s another woman, Meg, I’ve been seeing. We work together.”

To Bianca, it felt as though each word were being forced out of him at gunpoint, so clear was his reluctance to make the admission. She looked at the others, to find that the three men were regarding Adam with anything from mild curiosity—Tony—to Kiddrick’s outright amusement. “Wait a minute,” the latter said. “Not Meg Garner, surely?”

Adam nodded frantically. “Yeah, yeah.”

Kiddrick chuckled. “Well, that should be fun next time I go down to Carnegie Mellon!” Adam’s face expressed utter dismay.

“Wait a minute,” protested Bianca. “You just got Adam—Conrad—whichever, to confess his biggest secret, and you’re treating it all as a big laugh? I mean, he’s …” She stopped, unsure exactly what to say.
Did
she mean Adam, or Conrad? Who was the man in front of her?

“Everything we learn using the PERSONA process remains top secret,” Morgan said. “For reasons of national security. Nothing we discover can be used in a court of law, because we don’t officially exist.”

If he had been trying to reassure her, it had almost entirely the opposite effect. “That implies you’re operating outside the law.” Morgan said nothing.

“Ah, we have a bleeding heart in our midst,” said Kiddrick. “I suppose you’re going to say we should
reach out
to terrorists”—an airy wave of one hand—“and try to empathize with their issues, rather than putting Hellfire missiles through their windows.”

“I suppose you’re going to say we should bomb them because ‘they hate us for our freedoms,’ or something equally idiotic,” she shot back. Morgan was less than impressed, but Tony seemed to have a more nuanced outlook, giving her a small smile.

“We’re not here to argue about politics,” Morgan said impatiently. “Dr. Childs, what do you think of PERSONA? The results, I mean—not the ethics.”

“Damn, and I was just about to start a ten-minute rant about that,” she replied, before turning back to Adam. “It’s still hard to believe. I mean, I can’t imagine why you
would
, but you might just be acting.” If he was, she had to admit, he was delivering an Oscar-worthy performance. His anguish at exposing Wilmar’s affair had appeared utterly genuine and heartfelt.

“It’s not an act,” said Kiddrick. “To all intents and purposes, right now Adam Gray
is
Conrad Wilmar. Whatever Wilmar knows, he does. That’s one reason I picked Wilmar’s persona for this test. He doesn’t work in quite the same field as you, but there’s some crossover. Agent briefings don’t go so far as to give them a doctorate in biochemistry, so test him for yourself.”

“If he’s now Conrad Wilmar, then where’s Adam Gray?”

“Oh, I’m still Adam,” said Adam, swinging himself off the table and standing up. “It’s not as if I’ve, y’know, disappeared? Or been subsumed, anything like that. I’m still me, I’m always in control. It’s just that now there’s this whole temporary other me in here too.” His hands flicked excitedly in time with his words, as if trying to fan them toward her more quickly. “So, yeah, test me. What do you want to know?”

He certainly had Wilmar’s mannerisms and rat-a-tat speech pattern. “Okay,” Bianca said hesitantly. “You said you were working on treatments for biological weapons?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Specifically, meningitis?”

He nodded. “We’ve encountered a strain of
N. meningitidis
that’s a lot more virulent than normal, and resistant to the standard vaccines. Nasty little SOB! Not sure where it came from, but we’ve got our suspicions.
Da, comrades!
” He tapped the side of his nose.

“What’s the effect on the brain?”

“What you’d expect: swelling of the meninges, particularly concentrated in the pia mater. It has a tendency to spread to the spinal pia too, but only once the initial infection is firmly established.”

“What’s the treatment?”

“Straight in with empirics, of course, backed up by an adjuvant course of corticosteroids. The doses need to be higher than normal, but at this stage we’re just trying to stabilize things.” His speech quickened. “Then we’ve got a suite of new antibiotics that we can tailor to the exact results of the CSF test—I can’t tell you the specific compositions, though. You don’t have clearance. Sorry.” He seemed genuinely apologetic.

“That’s okay.” What he had told her was accurate enough, rattled out without hesitation, but Kiddrick clearly wanted to test
her
as much as she was supposed to test Adam. She drew on her own memories to devise something particularly probing. “There was a paper that came out about two years ago, on the effects of new-generation cephalosporins on brain chemistry, particularly enzyme—”

“Oh yeah, yeah!” Adam interrupted, with great enthusiasm. “Hartmann and Yun’s paper. Yes, I read it. Helped a lot with the transpeptidation issues of our new drugs. Smart guys.”

“Yeah, they are.” Bianca was startled that not only had he heard of a decidedly esoteric scientific paper, but he had also correctly—and instantly—identified its authors based on only a most general description. That was definitely beyond anything she could imagine his having been briefed on.

Kiddrick regarded her smugly. “Convinced?”

“I’d have to say … yes,” she admitted.

“Good. Adam, there’s nothing else we should know about Wilmar, is there? He’s not selling secrets to the Chinese or plotting to release anthrax on the New York subway?”

Adam shook his head. “Nothing like that. Jeez, suspicious much?”

“It’s best to be sure while we have the opportunity,” said Morgan. “Okay, Dr. Kiddrick, bring him back to normal.”

Kiddrick picked up the injector again and told Adam to return to the operating table. Another hiss from the gun, and Adam closed his eyes. Bianca watched in fascination as Wilmar’s twitchiness seemed to dissolve, returning him to the same blank, unrevealing state as before.