Dead Wrong Read online

  Suddenly, a tug on his collar catapulted him back, pulling him off balance. Both arms windmilling, his hand slammed into something hard just before his head hit something harder.

  Fireflies danced in his dim vision. He sat against the wall, disoriented, believing he would die soon. He watched Washington kneel beside Maria to check for a neck pulse. He probed again, then shook his head. “Fuck, man, she gone.”

  Sikes nodded, licked his lips, glanced around. “Secure the entrance, disable all communications, phone, wireless, everything. I’ll deal with him.”

  “Roger that.” Then Washington was up, closing the hall door.

  McCarthy was still sitting with his back against the wall, fighting to clear his mind when Sikes leaned down to get directly in his face. “See what you did, motherfucker? You killed her. If you’da cooperated, none of this would’ve happened. Time to get with the program, McCarthy. Where are the documents?”

  “Front office secured, sir.” Washington called, moving behind the reception desk.

  Still in McCarthy’s face, Sikes called, “Communications?”

  Washington ripped the main phone line from the wall. “Disabled.”

  Sikes grabbed McCarthy’s necktie, jerked him to his feet, pulled him down the hall to his office like a dog on a leash, and shoved him into one of two chairs in front of the desk. For a moment Sikes glared, Washington’s large frame appearing behind him in the doorway.

  Sikes bent down, his face an inch from McCarthy. “Listen up, asshole, we will get the information. One way or another. My advice? Save yourself a shitload of hurt. Tell us where they are.”

  McCarthy thought of Maria in the other room, bleeding, most likely dead, but maybe not. Maybe a small chance still remained to save her remained. He had to do something for her. If he could get a second alone … Tell them anything to get them out of here.

  “The computer down the hall,” he said, lying. “In there.”

  Washington muttered, “That fucking workstation? Shit. Might’ve known.”

  Sikes said to Washington, “Guard the front. I’ll check out the computer.” Then to McCarthy, “Don’t fucking move till we get back, hear?”

  “But Maria—”

  Sikes grabbed his neck. “I said stay the fuck put. Keep your sorry ass glued to that chair.”

  “Understood.” Just get out of here long enough to dial 9-1-1.

  Frustrated, Sikes shook his head, took a quick look around the room, stepped over to the wall, and ripped the computer and phone lines from the outlets—then crushed the connectors with his heel. Satisfied, he pointed at the door. “If I see you in that hallway, you’re one dead doctor. Got that?”

  McCarthy said, “Go to hell.”

  Sikes nodded, “Just keep lipping, see what it gets you.” Sikes grunted and started for the door. “When I get back I want the names of everyone you work for and how many copies you passed.” He stormed out.

  McCarthy closed the door just enough to reach his sports coat on the coat hook, pulled out his cell phone, and checked the signal strength. Zero. His office was a cellular dead zone. He dialed 9-1-1 anyway. Nothing.

  Frantic, he scanned the room for a way to summon help. The window? Break the glass and yell? Those two whackos would be on him before he could catch anyone’s attention. There was no ledge, just a nine-floor drop onto concrete.

  He peeked out the doorway toward the reception room where Maria still lay. He blinked: did she just take a breath? At the end of the hall, Washington aimed the gun at McCarthy. “Thought Sikes warned you to stay the fuck down.”

  McCarthy drew back just as bits of drywall sprayed from the jamb, peppering his forehead.

  He brushed a splinter from his forehead and glanced up. He caught sight of the ceiling, then did a double take. A false ceiling actually, made of acoustical tiles and recessed fluorescent lighting, created a space for ventilation ducts, electrical conduits, and plumbing to run to various offices. Could the struts support a man’s weight?

  Good question.

  Quickly, he stepped from a chair onto the desk, pushed up a tile, and poked his head into dense warm darkness. A rectangular grid of inverted steel T-rails bolted into the real concrete ceiling supported the tiles, forming a vertical crawl space three feet high for a maze of pipes, conduits, and heating ducts wrapped in silver insulation.

  He heard Sikes yell something to Washington.

  Okay, here they come.

  4

  CONFERENCE ROOM, THE PENTAGON

  COLONEL CLYDE CUNNINGHAM pressed a button and the fifty-inch plasma screen came alive with the image of a middle-aged male at a table in a small cramped interrogation room, his interviewer sitting across from him.

  Cunningham scanned the eyes of the seven CIA brass he’d handpicked for this highly sensitive meeting—each a trusted friend. That is, if such a thing existed in the intelligence community.

  On screen, the man—visibly uncomfortable with what he was about to say—started speaking:

  I stop at the curb in front of this tacky joint that claims to be a sports bar on account of they got these bigscreen TVs for watching ESPN. Call it what you want, it’s still a piece of shit tavern filled with alcoholics who think hanging there’s a social outlet. This pale, skinny chick, about twenty, comes over to the passenger window, leans down so I can see her tits, says, “Looking to party?”

  I noticed her on my first pass. Picked her out from the others on account of she’s more attractive and younger. More important, she’s too fucking strung out to be task force. I mean, seriously, how stupid, the cops telling the media about the decoys. What’d they think? It’d scare me off ? Fuck no. Only thing it does is make it more exciting.

  I can still see the red and blue neon on her pale skin. Gave her a kinda punk look. She had this silver ring through her eyebrow and this bar through her lower lip. Always wondered how one of those would feel on my cock.

  I tell her, “Got that right. Wanna come?” Emphasizing the last word, seeing if she’d catch it and say something witty. But she didn’t. Dumb bitch.

  Instead, she fakes this smile. I always know when they’re faking it and I hate that.

  She says, “This girl is always looking for a party. What’d you have in mind?” She’s wearing cutoffs, a skimpy halter, and dirty white low-top deck shoes. It was warm that night. But she’s got this ugly acne on her chin the makeup can’t hide, and her breath stinks. She had to be less than twenty but, Jesus, the meth makes her look more than thirty, especially with two lower teeth gone and these really rotten gums.

  So I tell her, “Hey, you tell me,” ’cause then I knew for sure she’s not a cop. Besides, no cop would be that skanky.

  She opens the door, slides in, puts her hand high on my thigh. “Hundred for a suck and fuck. Fifty for a blow. But you gotta use a rubber to fuck.”

  Way too high. I know damn well I can get her down to twenty, she’s so desperate. But hell, she ain’t leaving with it anyway, so why bother. Instead, I tell her, “Shut the door and let’s party. I know just the place.”

  AS THE INTERVIEW continued, Cunningham studied his guests’ faces, their eyes riveted on the man’s story. But, could he sell it? Any brilliant concept has a downside. Would they accept this one?

  The interviewee finished his story, his eyes to the floor, face painted with disgust and self-loathing. Cunningham stopped the video, freezing the image on screen.

  Mike Lawson, the most senior agency official, flashed a what-the-hell-was-that-all-about look.

  “This discussion,” Cunningham began, “is highly classified. What I’m about to tell you will not leave this room. If any of you have a problem with this, leave now. Anyone?”

  No one moved.

  “Shall I continue?”

  All the CIA brass nodded in unison. Two shifted in their chairs, impatient.

  “This man,” Cunningham said with a nod at the screen, “describes murdering a prostitute. Okay, so what? We’ve all seen videotaped confess
ions. This one’s different. Because in spite of vividly describing his memory of the incident, he wasn’t there and he’s not the murderer. He doesn’t know, and has never met, the person who actually committed the crime. The man you see on screen is, instead, a volunteer in a small study code-named Operation Cuckoo’s Nest. The experiment is designed to test the feasibility of transferring memories from one person to another by transplanting small homogenates of the brain. As fantastic as this may sound, the experiment you just witnessed proves that memory transfer can be done.” He paused to sip water, allowing this last statement to sink in.

  Lawson started to say something but Cunningham raised a hand, cutting him off. “Before you ask how we know his story isn’t total fabrication—one that he drummed up from watching CSI: Miami or Dexter, or even hearing it from the real killer—let me finish.”

  Lawson wasn’t the only one who appeared to have doubts.

  “The man the police believe is the killer had a tiny bit of brain removed before he died. This brain matter was transplanted into the man in this interview.”

  Lawson started, “Still—”

  “Please, Mike, let me finish. His description contains information never released to the media. And,” raising his voice to emphasize the point, “there’s no evidence that the recipient ever met the murderer in person or via any other means of communication.”

  “If the facts were never released, how can you attest to their validity?” asked Tony Hennessey, the least senior agency member present.

  “Because I verified them with the King County police. King County, as in Washington state, that is.”

  Hennessey began drumming a ballpoint against his free hand. “Wouldn’t they be suspicious of someone verifying unpublicized details? I certainly would.”

  “I have a contact within their department.” Cunningham rubbed his thumb and fingers together in the universal sign of money. “He checked the case files to validate the details. Also, I emphasized this was a classified issue with national security implications.”

  Cunningham let Hennessey and the others chew on that a few seconds. “Granted, it’s impossible to prove my claim beyond any doubt—especially to a group of intelligence officers—but take my word for it: the memories he described were embedded in the man here,” he said, pointing to the screen, “from a small bit of brain tissue instead of any firsthand experience.”

  Lawson still appeared skeptical.

  Cunningham continued, “There are other facts that help validate this experiment. For example, the interviewee’s wife swears he never mentioned those memories prior to receiving the implant. And believe me, he would’ve. Why? Because, as I think, as you all appreciate, they’re extremely upsetting to him.”

  “I would hope so. If he were normal.” Frowning, Linda Rasmussen, a Middle East analyst, leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands clasped tightly. “Which brings us to the next question. Why on earth would you do this to him?”

  Cunningham suppressed a smile. She was listening.

  “In this particular case the transplanted memory turned out to be an unpleasant one, which is an admittedly unfortunate outcome. Believe me, that wasn’t our intent. I wish to emphasize something I touched on earlier: This was only a feasibility study to explore if memory could be transferred. It is not the endpoint of this work, not even close. But because this is exploratory, we had no control over which memories might be transferred. My collaborator and I talked long and hard about whether or not to use this particular example for this demonstration. We decided to use it precisely because of one very compelling reason: It makes a very crucial point, and does it well. The man is so convincing. And this is specifically because of being so tormented by the memory. Even the Hollywood actors couldn’t match his sincerity. This fact alone should help persuade you the results are real, that these specific memories were embedded in him.”

  Rasmussen shook her head in dismay. “Who is your collaborator?”

  “Bertram Wyse. A neurosurgeon in Seattle. Have any of you heard of him?” It’d be a surprise if they had, but it was flattering to be asked. And sucking up to the person you were trying to sell to never hurt.

  No one answered.

  “PTSD has been his field of research for years. His focus is to find an effective treatment. He’s made quite a name for himself in the field, I might add.”

  “Posttraumatic stress disorder?” Lawson seemed bewildered.

  “As you know,” which, Cunningham figured, they didn’t, “there’s no effective treatment for it. Not only that, but an increasing number of vets are suffering from it. This is the reason the VA has supported his research. Two years ago, before leaving DARPA, I heard about this work, so I visited him in Seattle. In a nutshell, he believes PTSD is triggered by memories of the traumatic event. He contends that if he can pinpoint where the memory is stored in the brain and remove that area, the PTSD will vanish. No different from removing a bad appendix.”

  He paused to let that point sink in before moving on to the next one. “I started wondering, if that little chunk of brain that’s removed still contains the memory, is it possible to somehow retrieve that memory? Like playing a DVD on a different device than it was recorded on.”

  The room remained silent, all eyes on him now.

  “You can see where this is going, can’t you?” Another dramatic pause. “Each one of you knows too well one of the biggest problems in intelligence work is evaluating the validity of information obtained during an interrogation. Especially when using stress-inducing techniques such as water boarding. How valuable would it be to have absolute faith about the validity of the information obtained from a terrorist?”

  He let that percolate a moment before dropping the bomb.

  “What if there were a way to physically pluck specific memories from a terrorist and read them with total accuracy?” He was on a roll now, his voice rising, reflecting his passion for his plan. “What a win-win that would be for us! Picture it—the insurgent no longer remembers the information because we have it. Not only that, but the validity of our newly obtained information is as good as it gets. Obtained directly from the terrorist’s mind. Think about it.”

  Lawson shook his head. “Aw, Christ. Congress shit all over us for water boarding. I can just imagine how they’d react to—” He shook his head, at a loss for words. “These volunteers,” he said, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “how does Wyse recruit them?”

  Cunningham said, “Keep in mind this work is still early stage, so like I said, what you see here doesn’t model the real situation as we envision it. At the moment, he obtains small bits of brain from trauma patients. The ones who, unfortunately, are not expected to survive.”

  “Such as?” Lawson persisted.

  “Severe motor vehicle accidents, gunshot wounds, cases like that.”

  Rasmussen shook her head. “Hold on. Help me out here. If they’re going to die, why are they operated on?”

  Cunningham smiled. He and Wyse had anticipated and prepped for this question. “That’s the beauty of Wyse’s setup. Picture this: Paramedics bring in a gangbanger with a gunshot through the center of his head. Wyse knows for sure he’s a goner, but only God knows exactly how long it’ll take before his heart stops and he’s officially declared dead. Hours? Days? When a case like this rolls in, Wyse has two options: Do nothing, parking the kid in the intensive care with an open wound that will become infected and start festering. Or, he can do the right thing and take him to surgery to clean up and close the wound. If we were talking about your wife or husband, what would you want done?”

  Rhetorical, of course, but he and Wyse had chosen the example for maximal effect. Cunningham said, “While the poor kid is in surgery, Wyse collects a few pieces of brain. Brain that would otherwise be tossed in the trash. The boy will die anyway, so he’s no worse off for trying to help society by advancing science. Think of it this way: If a dying street thug can help thousands of our nation’s sons and daugh
ters who have sacrificed everything for the freedom we all hold dear, isn’t it worth it? You bet it is.”

  “I get that part,” Rasmussen conceded. “What I don’t understand is, okay, you have pieces of brain from the gangbanger, but who do you put them in? I mean, why would anyone in their right mind—no pun intended—allow you to do that?”

  “Fair enough: Here’s where the PTSD tie-in comes into play. Like I said a few minutes ago, Wyse believes that traumatic memories—combat, rape, any number of heinous acts—trigger the symptoms. Removing that memory can stop the triggering events and, hence, abate the symptoms.” Scanning his audience, Cunningham was praying no one would ask how Wyse was able to locate the memories to begin with. Wyse had explained it had to do with MRI scans—a functional MRI scan, Wyse called it—but that was the extent of his knowledge.

  “He implants the tissue during the operation to treat the PTSD.”

  Rasmussen shook her head. “This is where I’m having a problem. Why would any patient agree to have a piece of someone else’s brain implanted in their own?”

  Fucking Rasmussen. Precisely the questions he didn’t want to field. It was where things got a little sticky, depending upon your philosophical views. He and Wyse had no problem with it, but those fucking bleeding-heart ACLU types certainly would. Because each member of this handpicked audience had sworn to keep this information strictly confidential, he decided to divulge more than initially intended. He cleared his throat. “We don’t inform them of that part.”

  “I see.” Rasmussen glanced at the others sitting around the table as if testing their degree of support should she raise objections. No one seemed willing to object, probably because they were all waiting for someone else to do so first. “In that case, should I assume there is no ethics committee oversight on Operation Cuckoo’s Nest?”

  They were now entering political land mine territory: the issue of experimenting on human subjects without consent. “That would hardly be feasible considering the classified nature of the project.” However, if the press ever got wind of it …