But such thoughts of danger are foolish. Paranoid. Unnecessary.
Everything is basically all right.
I could hear Rossi speaking to me calmly from hundreds of miles away.
“If I were in your position, given what’s happened to you, I’d no doubt feel the same way. You think nobody knows-you don’t quite believe it yourself. Sometimes you’re elated at what you’re suddenly able to do; sometimes you’re scared out of your mind.”
“I don’t have the vaguest idea what you’re referring to,” I said, but my words came out flat and unconvincing, as if by rote.
“It would be much simpler, much better for all of us, if you cooperated instead of being antagonistic.”
I said nothing.
A moment of silence, and then he spoke. “We’re in a position to protect you. Somehow there are others who are aware of your participation in the experiment.”
“Experiment?” I said. “You’re referring to your MRI ‘polygraph’ device?”
“We knew there was a one in a thousand-at best, one in one hundred-chance that the MRI would have the desired effect on you. Certainly we had good reason to believe, given the full medical evaluation in your Agency file, that you had all the necessary attributes-the IQ, the psychological profile, and particularly the eidetic memory. Precisely the right profile. Obviously we couldn’t be certain, but there was significant cause for optimism.”
I absently traced a pattern on the burgundy-leather-upholstered seat.
“You weren’t careful enough, you know,” he said. “Even someone with your training, your skills, can be sloppy.”
All my alarms were ringing now. I could feel the skin on the back of my neck prickle unpleasantly. Yet my lazy, serene mind seemed utterly separate from my bodily instincts, and I felt myself nodding slowly.
He said, “… won’t be at all surprised that your office and home telephones were tapped-all quite legally, by the way, given your possible involvement in the First Commonwealth debacle. Electronic devices were placed in several rooms of your house as well-we left very little to chance.”
I just shook my head slowly.
“Needless to say, we were able to monitor everything you said aloud-and you were somewhat indiscreet, both in your meeting the other day with Mel Kornstein and certainly in your conversations with your wife. I don’t mean to be at all critical, because you had no reason whatever to suspect that anything was amiss. There was no reason to resort to your Agency tradecraft training, after all.”
I lowered my head to increase the blood supply to the brain, but that only made me dizzier. My head was swimming, and the headlights of the passing cars seemed far too bright, and my limbs felt heavy.
He said, his voice tinged with concern, “It’s a good thing, too. If we hadn’t had you under such close surveillance, we might not have picked you up in time.”
I stifled a yawn, tensing the tendons in my neck. “Alex,” I started to say.
He said, “I’m sorry we had to do this. You’ll understand. It was a matter of protecting you from yourself. You’ll understand when the ketamine wears off that we had to do this. We’re on your side. We certainly don’t want to see anything happen to you. We simply need you to cooperate with us. Once you listen to us, I think you’ll cooperate. We can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I guess good legal help… scarce,” I mumbled.
“You represent a great hope to some very good people.”
“Rossi…” I said. My speech was slurred; my mouth and tongue seemed lazy. “You were… the project director… the CIA psychic project… Oracle Project… your name…”
“You’re very, very valuable to us,” Rossi said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I said, “Why… you sitting up there… what do you have to hide?”
“Compartmentalization,” he said. “You know the golden rule in the intelligence business. With your ability, it would be dangerous for you to know too much. You’d be a threat to all of us. Better to keep you as ignorant as possible.”
We had pulled up now before some unmarked terminal at Logan Airport.
“In just a few minutes there’s a military aircraft departing for Andrews Air Force Base. Soon, you’ll want to sleep, and you should.”
“Why…” I began, but somehow I couldn’t finish my sentence.
Rossi replied, a beat later, “Everything will be explained soon. Everything.”
TWENTY-TWO
The last thing I remembered was talking with Charles Rossi in the van, and then I found myself groggily awake in some sort of barren airplane cabin that looked very much like a military plane. I became aware that I was strapped down horizontally, to a seat or a stretcher or something.
If Rossi was on the flight, I couldn’t see him anywhere, certainly not from this angle. Seated nearby were men in some sort of military uniform. Guarding me? Did they think I planned to escape at ten thousand feet? Didn’t they realize I was unarmed?
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 him… I heard.
I smiled, knowing what that was all about.