The Syndrome (51 page)

“She was distraught. She said her husband was struck by a car outside the hospital last night. The police are looking for the driver.”

Though the three of them were sitting on the floor, McBride felt his stomach drop, as if he were in a plane, and the plane had flown into an air pocket. “Will he be all right?”

Shapiro looked at them. “No.”

McBride replenished the wood stove and stacked wood outside as the old scientist cooked dinner for the three of them—a simple meal of Jasmine rice and homegrown vegetables, served up with a bottle of Old Vine Red. It was delicious. While they ate, Shapiro reprised the sordid history of the CIA’s mind control program.

“Most people think it was a response to what the communists were doing in Central Europe and Korea. There was a show trial involving a priest named Mindzenty, and lots of talk of ‘brainwashing.’ But the truth is, the program began long before that.”

“‘The program’?” Adrienne asked, recalling the Web site on her sister’s computer.

Shapiro frowned. “That’s what we called it among ourselves. But whatever the name—and it had a lot of names—it began in Europe during the Second World War, when the OSS was searching for a ‘truth drug’ they could use in interrogations.”

Pouring himself a glass of wine, the scientist explained that the project expanded after the war, with funding from the newly created CIA. By 1955, more than 125 experiments were under way in some of the country’s best universities and worst prisons. Still other research was carried out in mental institutions, and in “civilian settings” using “unwitting volunteers.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” McBride asked.

“It means we set up cameras in whorehouses, and tested drugs on the johns—without their knowledge,” Shapiro replied. “It means that we used drug addicts like Kleenex—and homosexuals, too. Communists. Perverts. Hoodlums.” He paused, and added with a smile, “Liberals and Dodger fans.” Then he turned serious again, and went on to explain that in the climate of the times—which is to say, amid the permafrost of the Cold War—America’s cultural conservatism was such that “transgressive personalities” were regarded as
“fair game.” “We didn’t need ‘informed consent,’” Shapiro pointed out, “because our research was classified. It was in the ‘national interest’—which made it, and us, exempt from normal constraints.”

“So it was easy to hide,” Adrienne suggested.

“We didn’t ‘hide’ anything—it was
secret.
And while some of us had ethical concerns about testing drugs and medical procedures on unwitting subjects … well, those concerns became irrelevant when you realized you were dealing with the enemy.”

“I thought the Soviet Union was the enemy,” McBride remarked.

“Of course. But the Cold War was as much a domestic jihad as it was an international one. It was a war for the American Way—which, I can assure you, did not (at least not at that time) include gays, lunatics, junkies or … sinners, even. They were all fair game.”

“What kind of research are we talking about?” McBride asked.

The old man hesitated, thought about it for a moment, and shrugged. “Well,” he said, as much to himself as his guests, “it’s hardly secret anymore. There were hearings twenty years ago. Books and lawsuits.”

“Right. So what kind of research are we talking about?” McBride repeated.

“Drugs and hypnosis, telepathy and psychic driving. Remote viewing. Aversive conditioning—degradation and pain.”

“‘Degradation and pain’?” Adrienne asked, her voice disbelieving.

“How to induce it, endure it, use it—how to measure it,” Shapiro replied. “Not that the pain experiments were particularly productive.”

“Why not?” McBride wondered.

The scientist sighed. “We had difficulty finding reputable
psychologists to do the research. And those we did find weren’t as objective as we’d have liked.”

McBride looked puzzled. “How so?”

“The studies kept getting mixed up with sadism—just as the drug experiments got mixed up with sex. In fact, it
all
got mixed up with sex. And that colored the results.”

“You mentioned ‘psychic driving,’” Adrienne said.

Shapiro shifted uncomfortably on his cushion. “Yes.”

“Well …?”

The retired CIA man considered the question. Finally, he replied, “‘Psychic driving’ refers to … how should I put it? Terminal experiments in which the subject is given relatively large doses of a psychedelic drug and placed in a dark and sealed environment … where he … or she … is exposed to a continuous loop of recorded messages.”

“‘A sealed environment’?” Adrienne wondered.

“We used morgue drawers,” Shapiro explained.

McBride gaped, even as he tried to formulate the question on his mind. “When you say ‘terminal experiments’—”

“No one died,” Shapiro assured him. “But the subjects weren’t expected to recover. And most of them didn’t.”

“So we’re talking about—”

“Six hundred micrograms of LSD—daily,” Shapiro said. “For sixty to one-hundred-eight days. In darkness.”

Adrienne and McBride were silent for a long time. Finally, Adrienne whispered, “How could you
do
that?”

Shapiro looked her in the eye, and deliberately misunderstood the question. “As I recall, we catheterized the subject, fed her intravenously, and gave her a colostomy to facilitate things.”

“Jesus Christ,” McBride muttered.

“Refill?” Shapiro asked.

Adrienne shivered, and looked away. McBride shook his head. Shapiro just closed his eyes and sat there, savoring the Old Vine Red, the fire, the company, and his own regrets. When, after a while, he opened his eyes and began to speak,
the effect was unsettling—as if he’d been watching them all the time. Indeed, the transition was so fast, it made Adrienne think of a bird of prey, an eagle or hawk winking at her with its nictitating membrane. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

“You do?”

“Of course,” Shapiro told them. “You’re thinking I’m a war criminal.”

Neither of them said a word.

“Well,” Shapiro concluded, “I suppose you had to be there.” He sipped his wine, and looked at them. “It’s easy, now, to condemn what was done then. But the truth is, the program was built by people whose motives were as pure as the driven snow.”

Adrienne couldn’t help herself: she rolled her eyes.

“They knew what men like Hitler could do. And it made them ruthless in the defense of freedom. I know it sounds corny—’freedom’ always sounds corny—but it’s true.” The scientist paused, placed his left hand on the floor and sprang to his feet with surprising agility. Crossing the room to the woodstove, he opened it up, stirred the coals with a poker and put in a fresh log. Then he turned to his guests. “From the very beginning, the idea was to find ways to identify and eliminate men like Hitler and Stalin—
before
they came to power.”

“So it was an assassination program,” McBride suggested.

Shapiro shrugged. “In part. The idea was to develop behaviorally-controlled agents who would carry out an assignment, even if the outcome was counterinstinctive.”

“And what’s
that
supposed to mean?” McBride asked.

“It means they didn’t care if they lived or died,” Adrienne guessed.

Shapiro inclined his head in reluctant agreement. “The agent’s survival wasn’t a critical issue—except in the sense that deniability was paramount. If the agent survived, and the agent was caught—well, that was a problem. And people
will
get caught. Not the first time. Not the second time. But, eventually.”

They looked at him.

“Guns misfire,” he explained. “Policemen become unexpectedly, even irrationally, interested in the most innocuous-seeming things. That’s how it starts. And the next thing you know, your man’s hanging by the balls from a hook in the cellar of somebody’s Ministry of Defense, entertaining questions from one and all. So quite a lot of research went into the issue of building an agent who was deniable from the get-go.”

“Let me guess,” McBride suggested. “You drove them nuts.”

Shapiro thought about it as he walked back to the table, and sat down. “No. If we’d done that, they wouldn’t have been able to function. We spent years—and quite a lot of money—studying differential amnesia and ways of engendering multiple personalities. In the end, we decided that screen memories were the optimal solution—though, even there, we had problems. They tended to destabilize the personality, so you needed a therapist figure to provide reinforcement.”

Adrienne glanced at McBride, then turned a puzzled eye on Shapiro. “What’s a screen memory?” she asked.

The scientist considered the question. Finally, he said, “It’s a memory that’s verifiably false and inherently ridiculous—so that anyone who claims that it’s real is discredited, simply on the face of that assertion.”

“Give me an example,” McBride suggested.

“‘I was kidnapped by aliens and flown to an underground base in the Antarctic,’” the scientist replied.

“‘Satanists tortured me as a child,’” Adrienne suggested.

“Exactly,” Shapiro said. “It pigeonholes the speaker—in this case, the assassin—as a ‘lone nut.’ Which, as you can imagine, is reassuring to everyone involved.”

“‘Reassuring’?” Adrienne spat the word at him. “You’re talking about people’s lives. You’re talking about my
sister’s
life!”

The old man was startled by her sudden intensity. “I’m
talking hypothetically,” he told her. “And, anyway, it’s as I said: unless your sister was a lot older than you, this program had nothing to do with her.”

“How can you say that?” Adrienne demanded. “You’ve seen the implant—”

“We lost our funding thirty years ago—and, by then, most of the work had moved offshore. So, the handwriting was on the wall. I mean, it was the Sixties, for God’s sake! Every idiot in the country was conducting his own mind control experiments!”

Despite himself, McBride smiled. “When you say the work moved offshore …?”

“Most of the studies were carried out at universities and research institutes. The funding was laundered through foundations and institutions we knew we could trust. As the years went by, and the Agency came under scrutiny from Congress and the press, some of the more sensitive studies had to be moved overseas. By the time the Rockefeller Commission began its investigation, the activity had been shut down. I retired soon afterward.”

None of them said anything for a while, but sat where they were, watching the firelight play across the ceiling and the floor. Eventually, McBride cleared his throat. “So what about me?” he asked. “Where did the implant come from?”

Shapiro shook his head.

“And my sister!” Adrienne insisted. “What about her?”

Shapiro turned his palms toward the ceiling. “You’re talking to the wrong person,” he told them. “You’re talking to a dinosaur.”

“I think I’m talking to someone who won’t face facts—even when they’re staring him in the face,” Adrienne replied. “You saw his file. You saw the implant.”

“I saw a photograph.”

“Do you think we made it up?” McBride asked.

“No,” the scientist conceded.

“Then … what? Obviously, the program never ended,” Adrienne insisted. “The CIA—”

“—had nothing to do with this.” Shapiro shook his head slowly. “Trust me: if the Agency was involved, I’d know.”

McBride was trying to understand. “Then—”

“It’s a Frankenstein,” Shapiro told them.

Adrienne and McBride looked at each other, uncertain if they’d heard him right. “A what?” McBride asked.

“A Frankenstein.” The old scientist finished his second glass of wine, and sat back with a strange little smile on his lips. “An agent or operation you can’t control. Something you create that takes on a life of its own.”

“So …?” Adrienne looked to Shapiro to finish the sentence.

“I’m guessing,” Shapiro admitted. “But seeing that implant, I’d say the program was privatized.”

“‘Privatized’?” McBride repeated.

“I mean it’s been taken over by someone in the private sector—or someone who went
into
the private sector. In other words, it looks like someone’s continued the research on his own—outside the Agency.”

“Who are we talking about?” Adrienne asked.

Shapiro shrugged. “I haven’t a clue.”

“It would take a lot of money to do something like that,” McBride mused.

Shapiro nodded. “It would take millions. Then again, what doesn’t?”

“But how could they keep it secret?” Adrienne wondered.

Shapiro considered the question. Finally, he said, “Set it up offshore. Keep it small. Put it in a clinical setting where the patient’s privacy would be paramount.” The scientist pursed his lips, and thought for a moment. “You know,” he said, “if they’ve been working on this for thirty years—my God!”

“You said they’d put it in ‘a clinical setting’?” Adrienne asked.

“Yes.”

She leaned forward. “Then, tell me something: have you ever heard of the Prudhomme Clinic?”

The scientist furrowed his brows, thought for a moment, and shook his head. “Not that I recall.”

Adrienne turned to McBride, who was looking at her with a question mark in his eyes, wondering where she was going. “What about you?” she asked.

McBride was taken aback. “What-about-me-
what?
Have I
heard
of it?” The question was out of the blue—he hadn’t a clue as to what she was up to, but sensing her seriousness, he searched his memory. After a bit, he said, “No. There’s that chef in Louisiana, but … I don’t think that’s what you’re driving at.” He paused. “So what’s the Prudhomme Clinic?”

She ignored the question, and turned back to Shapiro. “You keep referring to ‘the program’ and …” She stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, and organized her thoughts. “A few days ago,” she said, “before Lew had the implant removed, I found him sitting in front of my sister’s laptop. He was logged onto this very weird Web site: theprogram dot org. (Theprogram is one word.)”

“Yes?”

“He was in a trance state—completely out of it. I mean, he was totally unresponsive—but not to the Web site. Which was interactive. He was typing in answers to questions that appeared on the screen. One of them was, ‘Where are you?’”