I nodded.
He paused and studied me for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to say anything. Then he said, “You know, your people are researching this too. Who knows? Maybe they’ve already figured it out.”
“God, I hope not,” I told him.
“They could already be using it in ways you can’t imagine,” he added. “The thing is… this is going to be the century of the mind. The technology’s finally here for it. And these discoveries… they’ll have the ability to either free us to explore our minds and reach higher potentials that we never dreamed about-or they’re going to enslave us. And it’s going to be very tough to explore the first without opening the door to the second. I wish you the best of luck in keeping that door firmly shut.”
“I think we’re going to need it.” I smiled. Then I watched them get into the car and disappear into the early dawn.
75
By the time I caught up with Aparo and Larisa at the French bistro in Chelsea, it was almost noon and they looked wrecked.
Which was the idea.
We’d be showing up at Federal Plaza sometime soon, looking like someone had slipped us some serious mickeys. Which is what we needed everyone to believe. After all, we would have allowed one of the government’s most wanted prizes to slip through our fingers, and if we were going to hang on to our careers and avoid prosecution, we needed to have a solid story. One that we all agreed upon and would be able to give individually without being caught out.
It wouldn’t be too difficult. It was an easy tale to tell. After all, Sokolov had done it before. And there was no reason for us to know about it.
Predictably, the debriefs took a while, but it was all handled without too much aggravation. Sure, they were pissed off that he’d gotten away. FBI, CIA, you name it. But then again, the president was alive and well, and he wanted to meet us personally to thank us for what we’d done, which helped. A lot.
I managed to extricate myself from that first session at around seven and was home in Mamaroneck about an hour later. It felt great to be back and even greater to have Tess in my arms.
I polished off the leftover roasted chicken she’d made for dinner and we both had a laugh watching Alex and Kim taking Super Mario through space on the Wii, then we all hit the sack. I was exhausted and couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a solid stretch of sleep. My body demanded a respite, and it was finally going to get it.
I showered and was on the bed putting my phone on its charger when I remembered something. I’d never gotten around to reading the third Corrigan file that Kirby had sent me. The JPEGs were still sitting in my message inbox.
The lure was stronger than my exhaustion. I couldn’t resist a peek.
I padded into the study, downloaded the files, and pulled up the first image.
The file was massively redacted. There were more lines blacked-out than there were unmarked. It was about an assignment code named Operation Cold Burn and was marked SCI-Sensitive Compartmented Information. It involved something called Project Azorian. In my tired state, I just skimmed past it and cast a weary glance on the page before clicking on to the next page, also heavily redacted, then the next one that was just as mutilated.
I was about to switch it off and head back to bed when two unredacted letters on the page caught my eye. CR. Something inside me flinched, something at the very edge of my consciousness, a minute stab of recognition.
CR .
Could be anything, normally. Except that in this case, the two anodyne letters weren’t just anything. And it was because of the context. It was because of the word I’d passed over lethargically only moments earlier. Azorian.
It was a word I’d seen before. And in that instant, prompted by the two letters, I remembered where I’d seen it. And heard it. And asked about it.
It was a long time ago. Back when I was ten years old.
I’d seen it on CR’s desk. Heard him say it. And when I’d asked about it, he’d said it was someone he worked with who had a silly name, a name they’d laughed about at work. The Mighty Azorian. We’d joked about it before he brushed it away and we moved on to something else.
CR was Colin Reilly.
My dad.
The dad I had walked in on all those years ago, when I was ten, to find him at his desk, slumped in his chair, with a gun on the floor by his side and a wall of blood spatter behind his head.
Sitting there on the edge of my bed, exhausted beyond reason, I found myself frozen, my mind focused on two questions:
Did Corrigan know my dad?
And given all the mind-control mumbo-jumbo Corrigan was involved with… had my dad really killed himself?
Author's Note
There is so much research material on Rasputin out there, it was hard to know when to stop. Even better, a lot of it is firsthand. A huge trove of letters and diaries of many of the key players still exist. Most striking are those of the tsar and the tsarina: their letters and telegrams to each other, and their diaries, all of which have been carefully preserved, give us a clear and incredibly detailed insider’s look at their lives and their dealings with Rasputin. All the main players testified to the Extraordinary Commission in 1917, a few months after Rasputin’s death and after the tsar’s abdication. The monk Iliodor wrote a book about him from the comfort of his new home in America. Even his murderers published their memoirs long after fleeing Russia, although their versions of the events surrounding that infamous night have glaring, self-serving inconsistencies. Rasputin himself wrote-or, more likely, dictated, to Olga Lokhtina-several works, most notably “The Life of an Experienced Wanderer,” which was published after his death. All of which allowed me a phenomenally intimate look at what happened in those final turbulent years of the Romanov dynasty.
Remarkably, every event described in this book’s historical chapters actually happened-with one caveat: Misha and his discovery are, of course, my invention. Rasputin really did everything described in this book, and as far as I know, he achieved it without a shadow like Misha helping him out. Which is astounding. He did keep the tsarevich alive long enough for the young boy to face an executioner’s bullet three weeks short of his fourteenth birthday. He bedded countless aristocratic women, culled from the highest rungs of St. Petersburg society. His influence over the tsar in affairs of government was mind-boggling and contributed in no small amount to the fall of the monarchy and the onset of the revolution.
How did he do it? There’s little doubt that he was a remarkably brazen and cunning man who exploited the gullibility and superstition of those around him. In that respect, the tsarina was his prime dupe. Throw in a touch of hypnosis (which has been medically demonstrated to reduce the amount of clotting factor needed by hemophiliacs to stop bleeding) and a young heir to the throne who hovered close to death for most of his short life, and Rasputin’s bewildering rise to power is easier to understand.
As for entrainment, the scientific basis for Leo’s machine exists. Entrainment is real. The grid box and the zombie room are real, as is the huge grinder at Lefortovo Prison. The Yale scientist and his remote-controlled bull are real. In the spring of 2012, the Russian Defense Minister publicly announced that mind-bending “psychotronic” weapons that can turn people into zombies have been given the go-ahead by President Putin. The potential to induce and control different emotional states has been achieved by implanting electrodes into the brains of animals and, it is rumored, of humans too. What hasn’t been achieved-yet-is doing it wirelessly.
I wouldn’t want to bet against it becoming a reality in the not-too-distant future…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS