‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Mike sputtered, coughing in the petrol fumes.
Ben drew his own chair closer to the draught of fresh air from the doorway. ‘Peaceful here, isn’t it?’ he said, taking out his Gauloises and Zippo. ‘Nippy sea breeze, though. They say it might warm up quite a bit later. Smoke?’ He flicked open the lighter and tutted. ‘This damn thing’s run empty on me again. Looks like I’m down to matches.’
‘No,’ Mike said, turning white. ‘Please.’
Ben replaced the lighter in his pocket and came out with a matchbox. He struck one and flicked it into Mike’s lap, where it fizzled out in a tiny puff of smoke. ‘Whoops. Sorry.’
‘No! Oh, Jesus! Don’t do that!’
Ben paused, about to strike another match. ‘You’re right, Mike,’ he said, putting the cigarettes away. ‘These things’ll kill you.’
‘What do you want?’ Mike asked, panting hard.
‘Just a few simple answers,’ Ben said. ‘You tell me who you really are, who you work for and where they’ve taken Carl, and you stand a chance of seeing tomorrow. If not …and by the way, there are three more open cans of fuel under the caravan, right below where I nailed your chair to the floor. You’re in the hot seat, Mike. How about we start with your real name and go from there?’
‘Simonsen. Dr Mark Simonsen.’
‘Nice to meet you, Dr Simonsen. You won’t mind if I go on calling you Mike, though, will you? So tell me, Mike. You’re not really a “development consultant” for an optics firm. What are you?’
Mike’s head hung down to his chest. ‘I’m a clinical psychologist,’ he admitted.
‘And not just any old one, either, not with a fancy PhD and such an important job to do. They must have been queuing up to move in with a nice-looking woman like Jessica Hunter, get paid to sleep in her bed every night with nothing else to do except send reports back about her son’s, shall we say, unusual abilities? Where were you about to sneak off to, now that the job was finished? Your next assignment?’
After a long pause, Mike gave a reluctant nod. ‘Germany first. Then onto North Carolina.’
‘Quite the globetrotter, aren’t you, Mike? I’m sure your accent would go down well over there in the States, with whatever divorcée or single mother whose life you were planning on worming your way into. Does she have a psychic kid too?’
Mike sighed heavily. ‘So you know everything.’
‘No, but I soon will. Who’s paying you?’
‘Linden Global. They’re …they’re a provider of technology solutions.’
‘When I hear vague euphemisms like that, I get stressed out,’ Ben said. ‘When I get stressed out, I get this overwhelming urge to light a cigarette.’
‘All right, all right,’ Mike said. ‘They’re a private military contractor, okay? One of the biggest. Urban population control technologies. Surveillance and counter-surveillance. Defence systems. They’re into everything. Recruit from all sectors. Ex-military, intelligence, science. I …I’m just a low level operative. I barely know anything that goes on—’
‘Then I’m wasting my time talking to you, correct?’ Ben said, taking out the matches again.
‘Remote viewing,’ Mike spat out in a hurry. ‘ESP. The Indigo Project. That’s what it’s all about, okay? Please don’t burn me. I can tell you everything.’
‘Then you’d better get on with it. Starting with this remote viewing.’
‘It was researchers at the Stanford Research Institute who came up with the term decades ago,’ Mike explained, nervously eyeing the box of matches in Ben’s hand. ‘Basically, it’s the practice of seeking impressions about an unseen or distant target using extra-sensory perception. When the Americans launched their Stargate Project in the seventies, the goal was to determine the potential military or domestic application of psychic phenomena. They funded a series of rigorously controlled trials at a think tank called The Science Applications International Corporation.’
‘Go on,’ Ben said.
‘The results were classified at the top level, because they were so incredible that even the project leaders could hardly believe them. The first successful remote viewer who came out of the program was Joseph McMoneagle, codenamed Psychic 001, who went on to work for thirteen years with the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory in California. During his time with Stargate, he provided intelligence data that no regular spy could have fed back. Months before a top-secret new Soviet submarine was even completed, he predicted accurate launch data and in-depth design details that were so revolutionary at the time that nobody but a handful of Russian engineers could have guessed at them. All his predictions turned out to be correct, down to the last detail. Later, when a US army general was kidnapped by the Red Brigade, he was able to pinpoint the exact location where they were holding him captive.’
Mike swallowed anxiously, then went on: ‘McMoneagle wasn’t the only remote viewer who showed extraordinary abilities. Another predicted the release of a hostage in the Middle East three weeks before the kidnappers let him go, with a description of the medical problem that had brought about his release. Yet another, Pat Price, made detailed sketches of Russian weapons manufacturing plants that conformed to US intelligence photographs he’d never been shown. Stargate was declassified in the 1990s to give the impression that nobody took the research seriously any more. The Americans claimed it was history, axed, discredited as never anything more than a joke. The truth is, that was just a disinformation exercise, to make it look as if they were cleaning house while in reality they had no such intention.
‘And it’s not just the Yanks,’ Mike continued. ‘Russia. China. The big players in Europe, as well as emerging powers like North Korea. They’re all at it. Now the floodgates are wide open for private corporations vying to secure billion-dollar contracts from any nation with deep enough pockets. The public has no idea this is happening. But it’s a serious part of classified military intelligence R&D programmes worldwide, and competition is intense. In the days of Stargate, an effective remote viewer could be expected to make contact with a target with about 65 percent reliability. Nowadays the expectations are far higher.’
‘What’s the Indigo Project?’ Ben demanded.
‘A secret initiative founded in 1999 by Linden Global, with the long-term aim of cornering the market in ESP research for defence and espionage,’ Mike replied nervously. ‘Its purpose is to locate and research children with extra-sensory potential, as studies have repeatedly shown a higher incidence of extraordinary psychic perception among the young. It often seems to fade with the onset of adulthood. A global network of scouts are employed to find these gifted children, by infiltrating schools, scouring local media reports and other sources, sometimes just from hearsay.’
Ben stared at him, appalled, as the pieces fell into place. The Spanish chess incident that had drawn public attention to Carl’s abilities; the newspaper clipping hidden in Mike’s briefcase. Everything Drew had said was true. Carl had been deliberately targeted by these people. ‘And that’s where you came in.’
Mike nodded miserably. ‘Where possible, field agents with psychology training are inserted to gain further evidence. There’s a 99-plus per cent elimination rate due to all the false claims and new-age bullshit that’s out there. Early assessments strongly indicated that Carl was one of the genuine ones.’
‘So what happens to the genuine ones?’ Ben said through gritted teeth.
‘The extent of the research needed isn’t possible within the home environment. The subjects are removed to a secure location with the necessary facilities.’