The bemused expression never left the little man’s face; it might have been glued there. He nodded toward the doorway and another man wearing a drab prison uniform came in and set a cassette recorder on a Spartan metal table that was bolted to the floor. He wired the recorder to four small eyelets on the table’s surface and left.
“So you won’t knock your new lesson on the floor, Mr. President,” said the thin man. “I hope you find it interesting.” Then he switched on the recorder and left the room.
The President struggled to shake off the bewildering terror of the nightmare. Yet it all seemed too real to be dream fantasy. He could smell his own sweat, feel the hurt as the straps chafed his skin, hear the walls echo with his cries of frustration. His head sagged to his chest and he began to sob uncontrollably as the recorded message droned over and over. When at last he sufficiently recovered, he raised his head as if lifting a ponderous weight and looked around.
He was seated in his White House study.
Secretary Oates took Dan Fawcett’s call on his private line. “What’s the situation over there?” he asked without wasting words.
“Critical,” Fawcett replied. “Armed guards everywhere. I haven’t seen this many troops since I was with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Korea.”
“And the President?”
“Spitting out directives like a Gatling gun. He won’t listen to advice from his aides any longer, myself included. He’s getting increasingly harder to reach. Two weeks ago, he’d give full attention to opposing viewpoints or objective comments. No more. You agree with him or you’re out the door. Megan Blair and I are the only ones still with access to his office, and my days are numbered. I’m bailing out before the roof caves in.”
“Stay put,” said Oates. “It’s best for all concerned if you and Oscar Lucas remain close to the President. You’re the only open line of communications any of us have into the White House.”
“Won’t work.”
“Why?”
“I told you, even if I stick around, I’ll be closed out. My name is rapidly climbing to the top of the President’s shit list.”
“Then get back in his good graces,” Oates ordered. “Crawl up his butt and support whatever he says. Play yes-man and relay up-to-the-minute reports on every course of action he takes.”
There was a long pause. “Okay, I’ll do my best to keep you informed.”
“And alert Oscar Lucas to stand by. We’re going to need him.”
“Can I ask what’s going on?”
“Not yet,” Oates replied tersely.
Fawcett didn’t press him. He switched tack. “You want to hear the President’s latest brainstorm?”
“Bad?”
“Very bad,” admitted Fawcett. “He’s talking about withdrawing our military forces from the NATO alliance.”
Oates clutched the phone until his knuckles turned ivory. “He’s got to be stopped,” he said grimly.
Fawcett’s voice sounded far away. “The President and I go back a long way together, but in the best interests of the country, I must agree.”
“Stay in touch.”
Oates put down the phone, turned in his desk chair and gazed out the window, lost in thought. The afternoon sky had turned an ominous gray, and a light rain began to fall on Washington’s streets, their slickened surfaces reflecting the federal buildings in eerie distortions.
In the end he would have to take over the reins of government, Oates thought bitterly. He was well aware that every President in the last thirty years had been vilified and debased by events beyond his control. Eisenhower was the last chief executive who left the White House as venerated as when he came in. No matter how saintly or intellectually brilliant the next President, he would be stoned by an unmovable bureaucracy and increasingly hostile news media; and Oates harbored no desire to be a target of the rock throwers.
He was pulled out of his reverie by the muted buzz of his intercom. “Mr. Brogan and another gentleman to see you.”
“Send them in,” Oates directed. He rose and came around his desk as Brogan entered. They shook hands briefly and Brogan introduced the man standing beside him as Dr. Raymond Edgely.
Oates correctly pegged Edgely as an academician. The old-fashioned crew cut and bow tie suggested someone who seldom strayed from a university campus. Edgely was slender, wore a scraggly barbed-wire beard, and his bristly dark eyebrows were untrimmed and brushed upward in a Mephistopheles set and blow.
“Dr. Edgely is the director of Fathom,” Brogan explained, “the Agency’s special study into mind-control techniques at Greeley University in Colorado.”
Oates gestured for them to sit on a sofa and took a chair across a marble coffee table. “I’ve just received a call from Dan Fawcett. The President intends to withdraw our troops from NATO.”
“Another piece of evidence to bolster our case,” said Brogan. “Only the Russians would profit from such a move.”
Oates turned to Edgely. “Has Martin explained our suspicions regarding the President’s behavior to you?”
“Yes, Mr. Brogan has filled me in.”
“And how does the situation strike you? Can the President be mentally forced to become an involuntary traitor?”
“I grant the President’s actions demonstrate a dramatic personality change, but unless we can put him through a series of tests, there is no way of being certain of brain alteration or exterior domination.”
“He will never consent to an examination,” said Brogan.
“That presents a problem,” Edgely said.
“Suppose you tell us, Doctor,” Oates asked, “how the President’s mind transfer was performed?”
“If that is indeed what we are faced with,” replied Edgely, “the first step is to isolate the subject in a womblike chamber for a given length of time, removed from all sensorial influences. During this sequence his brain patterns are studied, analyzed and deciphered into a language that can be programmed and translated by computer. The next step is to design an implant, in this instance a microchip, with the desired data and then insert it by psychosurgery into the subject’s brain.”
“You make it sound as elementary as a tonsillectomy,” said Oates.
Edgely laughed. “I’ve condensed and oversimplified, of course, but in reality the procedures are incredibly delicate and involved.”
“After the microchip is imbedded into the brain, what then?”
“I should have mentioned that a section of the implant is a tiny transmitter/receiver which operates off the electrical impulses of the brain and is capable of sending thought patterns and other bodily functions to a central computer and monitoring post located as far away as Hong Kong.”
“Or Moscow,” added Brogan.
“And not the Soviet embassy here in Washington, as you suggested earlier?” Oates asked, looking at Brogan.
“I think I can answer that,” Edgely volunteered. “The communication technology is certainly available to relay data from a subject via satellite to Russia, but if I were in Dr. Lugovoy’s shoes, I’d set up my monitoring station nearby so I could observe the results of the President’s actions at firsthand. This would also allow me a faster response time to redirect my command signals to his mind during unexpected political events.”
“Can Lugovoy lose control over the President?” asked Brogan.
“If the President ceases to think and act for himself, he breaks the ties to his normal world. Then he may tend to stray from Lugovoy’s instructions and carry them to extremes.”
“Is this why he’s instigated so many radical programs in such haste?”
“I can’t say,” Edgely answered. “For all I know he is responding precisely to Lugovoy’s commands. I do suspect, however, that it goes far deeper.”
“In what manner?”
“The reports supplied by Mr. Brogan’s operatives in Russia show that Lugovoy has attempted experiments with political prisoners, transferring the fluid from their hippocampuses — a structure in the brain’s limbic system that holds our memories — to those of other subjects.”