The U.S. embassy in Moscow was famously believed to have been bombarded with microwaves for several decades starting in the 1950s in an effort to confuse, disorient, and even harm its staff. Anecdotal evidence exists of many embassy employees dying in the ensuing years because of the damage that was done to them, although as was usual in these cases, I imagined the real truth was buried in some long-shredded documents or in the graves of those insiders who really knew what had happened-or of those who had been its victims.
I found references to a scientist from Yale called Delgado in several articles. He had implanted electrodes into the brains of animals and humans in order to send highly specific electromagnetic currents into targeted areas. In his most infamous experiment, he wired up a bull, then, in front of several colleagues, Delgado stepped into the bull ring armed with no more than a remote control. He hit a switch that made the bull furious, then as the bull charged at him, he hit another switch that stopped the big animal in its tracks and turned it into a docile pussycat. Delgado was quoted as saying that if he could do these things by implanting electrodes in the brain, he believed it was only a matter of time before he’d be able to do it from outside the brain, using a very precise electromagnetic field.
And if all that wasn’t enough to trip all kinds of circuits inside me, another article revealed that the same Microwave Auditory Effect was found to be inducible with shorter-wavelength portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The shorter the wave, it seemed, the more energy and information it could carry. The article then described how microwave pulses from modern cell-phone network towers could theoretically cause this effect. These behavioral changes had to do with chemical responses in the brain. The external stimuli triggered the release of neurochemicals that caused various reactions in the brain, resulting in remotely heightened emotional and intellectual responses such as calmness, trust, lust, or aggression. The difficulty, and the key to achieving this, was believed to be in pinpointing the right combination of frequency, wave form, and power level to bring about a specific reaction.
Microwaves. Cell-phone technology. Altering human behavior remotely. Aggression.
The bloodbath at Brighton Beach. The gear we found in Sokolov’s garage.
I couldn’t read this last section fast enough, and I could already feel my heart kicking in my neck before I saw this:
Russian and American psychological warfare programs are believed to be actively researching the sonic, electromagnetic, and microwave spectrums for wavelengths and frequencies that can affect human behavior and exploring the viability of using entrainment, both to control their own population as well as to use it as an advanced weapon. The Russians are widely acknowledged to be well ahead of their American counterparts in this field. A handful of independent scientists are also actively researching brainwave entrainment, with the more outspoken stating that it could theoretically be used to cause subjects to commit acts of extreme violence and even kill on a massive scale by activating extreme paranoia and predatory survival impulses inside them.
My insides twisted.
I went back and checked the first date in the report.
November 29, 1981.
My eyes went into tunnel vision, and everything outside those words and numbers went all blurry as a fury of connections and implications lit up my mind.
I had zero doubt about it.
This file was about Sokolov.
Leo Sokolov was “Jericho.”
And he was connected to Corrigan.
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Sokolov was Jericho.
And everything started to fall into place.
Sokolov develops some kind of radical entrainment technology in Russia. Decides to defect for some reason. Maybe he doesn’t want his bosses at the KGB to have it. Maybe he doesn’t want his brain-manipulating technology in the hands of the most ruthless oppressors in history.
Or anyone else, for that matter.
Because as it turns out, he doesn’t trust us with it either.
Soon after he lands on U.S. soil, he gives his CIA handlers the slip. It happens at a hotel in Virginia. He’s taken there by the agents who spirited him out of Europe from under the KGB’s nose. Somehow, he manages to smuggle in a powerful tranquilizer with him. Easy enough to do, I suppose. All he would have needed was a small sachet of powder. He slips the two agents a Mickey and by the time they wake up, he’s disappeared.
They lose track of him. End of file.
Except that we now know what happened to him.
He lies low, takes menial jobs, and gets himself a fake identity as Leo Sokolov. Marries Daphne. Gets a job teaching at Flushing High. Lives happily ever after. Or should have. Except that, evidently, Leo couldn’t keep his inquisitive mind in check. He builds something, whatever it is he’s got in his van. Why he would do that-could be for any number of reasons. But regardless, he keeps it a secret. And, as we discovered, it works-which made me wonder if he’d ever tested it. He had to have done that. I made a mental note to look into it.
Somehow, the Russians track him down, all these years later.
I pored over the next JPEGs from Kirby.
The code names of the two agents who smuggled him back from Europe and lost him in Virginia were Reed Corrigan and Frank Fullerton.
Which triggered all kinds of questions in my mind.
Corrigan was the point man on Sokolov all those years ago. Then I get assigned to Sokolov’s case.
No need for electromagnetic or other stimuli to prod my paranoia. Was this just a coincidence? Or did Corrigan have anything to do with my being assigned to the murder at Sokolov’s apartment? And if so, why?
Was Corrigan still working the Sokolov case?
Was he still after the man who had slipped out of his fingers and most likely caused him all kinds of headaches and embarrassment inside the Company?
Was he playing me? Had he been doing it from the get-go? And if so, why?
Kirby had said the case file was live, and I needed to know if the updates mentioned any activity from Corrigan.
The first entry was dated just over a week ago, a few days before Aparo and I were sent to Sokolov’s apartment. It was marked EYES ONLY: DDS &T-a reference to the director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology-and, in cold and urgent prose, it warned that Jericho’s current identity and whereabouts had been discovered by the Russians. He’d been conspicuously noisy and rambunctious at a protest outside the Russian consulate in Manhattan. They’d realized who he really was and tracked him down, but the identity he’d been living under was a closely guarded secret and whoever filed the update couldn’t get hold of it.
A second update said Moscow had assigned its top SVR agent in New York, Fyodor Yakovlev, to bring Jericho in.
I scanned the reports, looking to see who had authored these updates. It sounded to me like they were written by someone with a solid inside track into the Russian consulate. They could simply have been the result of electronic eavesdropping, but I’d seen such reports and their format would have been different. There’d be all kinds of references on there that these updates didn’t have. Alternatively, the updates’ author could have a mole inside the consulate. But in that case, I would have expected the mole to be referred to as the source of the information. The third option was that the updates were written by the mole himself. Which meant a CIA agent working inside the consulate-a double agent.