“Anything mind-altering or mood-altering.”
Then they were outside the room from which the wailing came. Forsyth wondered if Underwood would remember him. But the great thing about a nutcase, nobody believed anything they said.
They peered through a glass observational window. Underwood sat on a cot, hunched forward and staring at the floor. His hair was clipped close and his ill-fitting gown was draped over his gaunt frame.
Forsyth noted that Underwood’s present circumstances were not that different from when he’d been held captive in Sebastian Briggs’s lab and used as a test monkey. The only thing that had changed since then was the name of the zookeeper.
“Is he responding to medication?” Forsyth asked, making conversation.
“He’s on several new antipsychotic drugs,” Dr. Redfern said. “He’s also presenting anxiety and depression, and because he’s such a risk, I’m afraid he doesn’t have much hope for release. He’s got the major first-rank symptom of schizophrenia.”
“What’s that?”
“The belief that his thoughts are controlled by an external force. In his case, he believes he’s been brainwashed by the government.”
“I could make a grand joke of that, but it doesn’t look like a laughing matter,” Forsyth said.
“Still, he deserves the same compassionate care that Central Regional aspires to administer to all its patients,” Dr. Redfern said, once again lapsing into a robo-cheerleader for her facility.
“Of that, I’ve no doubt,” Forsyth said. He took one more glance at David Underwood and was surprised he didn’t feel a twinge of sympathy for the man.
Too goddamned long in politics. Your heart is the first thing to go, and then you lose your soul. God help me. God help us all.
“Did you want to see him personally?” Dr. Redfern asked, eager to please.
“No,” he said, making a show of glancing at his wristwatch. “Is Darrell Silver available?”
Redfern’s mood darkened a little. “Of course. Federal inmates under treatment place a particularly heavy burden on a facility like ours, as you can imagine.”
Add another million to that funding request, Doctor. Maybe we should put you on Daniel’s staff. You would make a mighty fine health secretary and I’d bet you’d say whatever it took to make the administration look good.
And being pretty don’t hurt a bit.
“I understand Silver’s been charged with drug manufacturing and conspiracy,” he said.
“This way.” Redfern led him down the hall and around a bend, passing rooms in which involuntary patients spent their time until the next dose, meal, or change of underwear.
Alone with nothing but their thoughts. Satan has truly been loosed for a season and his millennium is coming up.
Forsyth’s Pentecostal upbringing had softened a little in the face of political realities, melding into a more palatable fundamentalism as he became entrenched in Congress. Extremes of every kind tended to get blunted by the forge and hammer of the corporations, lobbyists, and party leaders.
Still, he felt Armageddon was near-not in the literal sense of a climactic battle in the Middle East, but in a general erosion of the human spirit. Where others saw Satan’s armies attacking from the field, Forsyth believed Satan delivered destruction from the inside out.
Just like those drugs, Seethe and Halcyon, did.
Forsyth wondered if that was more than a coincidence.
Redfern was blithely enumerating all the funding challenges in the face of rising costs and the threat that national health care posed. Forsyth mumbled assurances that one of Burchfield’s top priorities was to revise the landmark legislation, although they all knew that entitlements were nearly impossible to take away once people got used to them.
Soon they came to a thicker door with a security camera and keypad. After Redfern logged in and was identified, they were buzzed into an antechamber where an armed and uniformed guard staffed a desk, surrounded by security monitors and alarm systems. Both of them had to sign another log, and then they entered a second door.
The rooms on this floor were a cross between prison cells and hospital rooms. Another armed guard patrolled the hallway, a tall, sunburnt man who greeted Redfern by name and gave Forsyth a sideways grin.
“Tell Senator Burchfield I’m voting for him,” the guard said. “I’ve voted for him in every election since he ran for the State House, and I’m not about to stop now.”
“I’ll do that,” Forsyth said. “And thank you for your vital service here. Is Mr. Silver ready?”
“In interrogation like you requested.”
Redfern beamed in satisfaction at the show of efficiency. The guard led the way to the room as Redfern explained, “Usually lawyers meet their clients here, and if the inmates are deemed competent, they are sometimes asked questions by investigators.”
Forsyth didn’t want to ask who did the “deeming,” but he was sure the taxpayers were footing the bill for some egghead to write big words that added up to either “Nuts” or “Probably guilty.”
Darrell Silver was seated at a table, shackled to a steel bar that was welded to the table’s edge. He appeared calm and was relatively clean, although Forsyth was surprised the man was allowed to keep his beard and unhealthy-looking dreadlocks. He could have passed for a street musician if not for the orange scrubs and his spasmodically twitching right eyelid.
“Where’s my lawyer?” Silver asked.
“It’s okay, Mr. Silver,” Redfern said. “We’re not interrogating you. Mr. Forsyth is touring our facilities. He’s a member of the president’s bioethics council.”
“Are you being treated well, Mr. Silver?” Forsyth asked, sitting at the table across from him. Redfern joined him while the guard waited at the end of the room.
“Not too bad. They have some awesome drugs in here,” Silver said.
“I understand you worked with Dr. Alexis Morgan,” Forsyth said, watching the way Silver’s eyes narrowed like those of a cornered animal’s. “She served with us on the council for a while.”
“Yeah, I did some research for her.”
“What were y’all working on?”
“I thought you weren’t going to ask any questions.”
Forsyth held up a palm and smiled. “Just making conversation, Mr. Silver. No need to go getting riled up.”
“Well, if you ask me, she ought to be the one in here, not me.”
“Is that so?”
Dr. Redfern gave Forsyth a sympathetic look, as if Silver had just revealed his own paranoid delusions. “Mr. Silver also believes he’s involved in a secret government conspiracy,” Dr. Redfern said.
“Sounds like a contagious idea,” Forsyth said, staring fully into Silver’s eyes. “What did Dr. Morgan do that was so terrible?”
“She did it. She gave me the formula, asked me to cook it up for her.”
“A formula? Some secret government drug?” Forsyth gave Redfern a surreptitious wink.
“Yeah. She called it Halcyon. It’s supposed to make you forget stuff. I played with it, put my own spin on it. That’s my style.”
Dr. Redfern cut in, speaking as if the inmate wasn’t present. “Mr. Silver has a record of illegal drug manufacturing. LSD, meth-amphetamine, OxyContin. His diagnosis states chronic drug use has damaged his perceptions of reality.”
“You call it ‘damaged,’ I call it ‘superduperfied,’” Silver said, swinging his dreadlocks in his exuberance. “What’s in a name, right? I mean, if they called MDMA ‘Funny Puppy’ instead of ‘Mad Dog,’ everybody would be taking it. It’s all about marketing, man.”
Forsyth ruminated while Silver finished his rant, and then said, “Do you think you could recreate this Halcyon?”
“No prob, dude.”
“You have a vast range of experience, Mr. Silver,” Forsyth said. “I think we can work something out.”
He gave a lopsided grin. “You think I don’t know what’s going on here?”
“What?” Forsyth asked.
“You guys are in on it. This Halcyon stuff. She said I had to be careful because important people were watching. People all the way up to the top.”