The name rang a bell, but BC couldn’t place it. “No, sir.”
“Until very recently, Dr. Leary was associated with Harvard University.” Hoover’s voice was slightly vexed, as if he expected Bureau agents to know the faculty of every major American institute of higher learning, or at least those of the Ivy League. Or who knows, maybe it was just the report in front of him. He touched his pencil lead to the tip of his tongue, drew a line through six or seven words, then continued speaking. “Dr. Leary left Harvard at the beginning of the year, and, after a brief sojourn in Mexico, has now established some type of ‘experimental-community’-cum-‘research-center’ outside the town of Millbrook, New York.”
BC could hear the echo of beatnik mumbo jumbo in a term like “experimental community,” but he wasn’t sure how such activities merited the attention of the Bureau. Of course, he rarely understood why many of the groups he investigated merited the Bureau’s attention, so that wasn’t saying much. It wasn’t his job to know, only to do.
“The express purpose of this research center,” the director was saying, “is the investigation of an extremely powerful ‘psychoto-mimetic’ chemical compound called lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD for short. The Bureau has, of course, been aware of LSD for some time. Allen Ginsberg and other malcontents of his ilk have been extolling its virtues for some time. It is manufactured by Sandoz Laboratories, a pharmaceuticals company based in Switzerland. For the past several years, Sandoz has graciously allowed us to track not only its sales in the United States, but also its export to other countries as well. Just over a year ago, however, we noticed a discrepancy between the amount of LSD Sandoz manufactures and the amount they purport to sell. Initially we feared the company was concealing shipments to the Soviet Union or one of its Eastern Bloc satellites, but with a little digging we were able to discover that the missing quantity had in fact been acquired by Dulles’s boys over at Langley—McCone’s boys, I should probably say—although I think we all know where their loyalties lie. Ac-cum-mu-late.”
Silence hung in the room like a low cloud. The only sound was the director’s pencil drawing an X through an entire paragraph. Finally BC spoke.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Ac-cum-mu-late.” The director didn’t look up. “One ‘m’ or two?”
“Er, one, I believe, sir.”
The director frowned. “I think it’s two.” He made a mark, then turned the last sheet face down. Opened the center drawer of his desk, put his pencil in it, closed it; took his reading glasses off, opened a side drawer, put them away as well. Only then did he look up at the agent standing before him. The left side of his mouth slanted upwards, the right down; the rest of his face remained unchanged, as though Hoover’s mouth were a snake skimming the surface of swamp water too sludgy to ripple. Over the past year, BC had come to recognize this parallelogram as his boss’s version of a smile.
“Now, I don’t pretend to understand the reasoning behind what I’m about to tell you, let alone condone it. As you know, I am no fan of Allen Dulles nor of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose mission more properly belongs under the auspices of this Bureau. I am merely repeating information as it has been reported to me. Under the direction of Sidney Gottlieb, the director of the so-called ‘Technical Services Section,’ the agency is investigating drugs with what they see as potential intelligence applications. Although they claim to be researching nothing more potent than incapacitants and truth serums, we have it on good authority that they are in fact looking for chemical agents that have”—the director found it necessary to pause again—“mind-control abilities.” A twitch that could have been a smile, or just an embarrassed tic. “As we understand it, the goal is to create a so-called ‘sleeper agent’—a Manchurian candidate, if you will, who can be programmed to perform certain actions not only against his will, but without his knowledge. You read The Manchurian Candidate, did you not, Agent Querrey?”
The question was rhetorical. BC had written a report on the novel for the director eight months ago. The director’s mouth twitched and slanted more sharply than before—a smirk?—but the rest of his face remained shapelessly still, even after he began speaking again.
“Because CIA lacks the facilities to fully investigate these kinds of drugs in-house, it has been compelled to foster associations with third parties, often without their knowledge. Enter Dr. Leary. Apparently his ‘experiments’ did not pass academic muster at Harvard, and he was, to put it politely, not asked to renew his contract. Cut off from his academic supplier, the doctor was forced to enter into a relationship of convenience with Billy Hitchcock. No, not the Orioles ‘coach.’” Another lopsided smile, acknowledging the Orioles dismal .500 record last season. “William Mellon Hitchcock is the grandson of William Larimer Mellon, the founder of Gulf Oil, and the great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, founder of Mellon Bank. He also, apparently, has aspirations to being a spook, and, in exchange for being allowed to supply Dr. Leary with enough LSD for his experiments, he reports on the results of those experiments to his handler at CIA, and Edward Logan based in Boston. This morning we received credible intelligence suggesting Dr. Leary has achieved some kind of breakthrough. The exact nature of this breakthrough is not clear to us, nor does it appear to be clear to CIA, perhaps because of Leary’s attenuated relationship with Logan. I need you to travel to Millbrook to find out if anything Dr. Leary has discovered—or, dare I say, created—has the potential to be a threat to the interests or security of the United States of America, and, if so, to take it, or him, into custody. The last thing we need is for CIA to get its hands on this ‘Orpheus.’”
As he spoke, Hoover’s mouth seemed to separate from the unmoving white sludge that surrounded it, until it was just a void in space through which issued the director’s uncannily articulate summary. Beyond the pinkish slug-shaped lips and small, sharp-looking teeth, the tongue pulsed wetly, and, even further back, the uvula wiggled in front of the dark shadow of the director’s esophagus like a pendulum swinging at the entrance of a house of horrors. With each word, BC felt as if he were being sucked toward that void, so completely that when the director’s lips sealed shut, he almost felt as if he were being swallowed.
“Agent Querrey? I wish you wouldn’t chew your lip like that. It’s hardly becoming in a representative of the Bureau.”
BC blinked his eyes rapidly, took a moment to consider everything the director had just told him. He’d never heard of Hoover telling a joke. He’d heard that Hoover had interfered with American citizens in left-wing groups in clear violation of their First Amendment rights. He’d heard also that Hoover had cut deals with gangsters in Chicago, New York, and Miami to the effect that if they confined their business to prostitution and narcotics and a little bit of honest graft at the dockyards—and continued to maintain a hardline anti-Communist stance—he wouldn’t sic the Bureau on them. He’d heard that Hoover’s mania for keeping up appearances was a reaction to his father’s nervous breakdown, that his hatred of miscegenation stemmed from the fact that he himself was mulatto, and that he was sexually involved with Associate Director Clyde Tolson, and was wont to sport black cocktail dresses at their all-male soirées. But he had never heard of Hoover telling a joke, and he didn’t want to know what would happen if he laughed in his boss’s face. But stilclass="underline"
“Orpheus?”
An actual expression flickered across the director’s face. It was hard to read, yet BC could have sworn it was consternation, as if the director had been caught out. “The code name for the project,” he said, waving a hand as if the term were of no importance. “As with all CIA terminology, its meaning is unclear. It seems to be used variously to refer to the drug, the ‘receptor’ in the brain to which the drug is meant to ‘bind,’ and the person to whom the drug is administered.”