For some reason, Smalls had not recruited Clifford Turner, who had demonstrated some actual psychic ability—and that reason was that Turner was black. Smalls had let his prejudice do his thinking for him and had hired instead two white men who were self-deluded yahoos. Bob Nickles was a retired electrician who claimed to be an electricity douser; Jonathan Jones was a young man who’d been “discovered” by two Stanford professors after scoring high in a series of guessing games. Their primary qualifications seemed to be (a) luck, now run out; and (b) their golden-retriever-like enthusiasm. Nickles and Jones would babble on about whatever came to mind, often subconsciously riffing on whatever cues Smalls had let slip about the assignment. A stray mention of “sand” was enough to send them conjuring camels and Arabs all afternoon. What bothered Teddy was not that these two nimrods honestly thought they were having psychic experiences, but that Smalls did, too. Some days the G-man rated their results higher than Teddy’s or Maureen’s.
The rampant gullibility seemed to permeate all levels of government, fueled by fear of the Russians. The Soviets were pouring money into psi research, and the U.S., Smalls explained, had no choice but to respond in kind. All the intelligence organizations and every branch of the military were financing parallel secret programs. Some of them were focused on mind control, others on mind reading. Smalls’s team was in charge of remote viewing. He’d been given a dusty barracks building at the fort, enough money for a secretary, a junior agent, and four psychics, and all the office equipment he could scavenge from INSCOM and other army detachments. The program had no name, so everyone just called it “the program.”
The infuriating thing was that with all this government money flying around, so little of it was going to the ones doing the work—the psychic operatives. They were paying Maureen and Teddy peanuts. When Teddy pointed this out to Smalls, the man went into a speech about duty, protecting the country, and the threat to democracy itself. Asking you to forgo your fair share for the good of the nation, the company, or the church was a common enough scam, but telling you to go broke for the sake of an abstract philosophy? That took balls.
The real money, Teddy quickly figured out, was going to consultants and third-party contractors. Case in point: The morning before the night Teddy proposed to Maureen, they arrived at the barracks to find several workmen in orange coveralls setting up stacks of electrical equipment. Smalls called the seven members of the staff into his office. “I’ve got some good news,” he told them. “Management is very excited about the results that we’ve achieved so far. We’ve been given our own funding line, and an official code name. As of today, we are Aqueduct Anvil.”
“Wow!” Jones said. “What does it mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Smalls said. “It was next in the book.”
“What book?”
“The book of available code names.”
“You have a book of pre-generated code names?” Teddy asked.
“If you don’t, then everybody picks names like ‘Thunder Strike.’ In other news—”
Teddy raised his hand. “Can I tell people I’m in AA?” he asked innocently.
“Don’t tell people you’re in anything,” Smalls said.
“Can we still call it ‘the program’?” Bob Nickles asked.
“Then they’ll know we’re in AA,” Teddy said. Only Maureen and the secretary laughed.
“In other news,” Smalls repeated, desperately trying to regain control of the meeting. He never laughed at Teddy’s jokes. Any sense of humor in the man was short-circuited in Teddy’s presence by his jealousy. The poor lug was sweet on Maureen, but couldn’t admit these unclean thoughts to himself, and so had to take out his frustrations on her charming, loudmouthed beau. It didn’t matter that Teddy and Maureen’s relationship had been classified top secret by the woman herself; Smalls could sense it.
“Management also approved an expansion of the program,” Smalls said. “We’re going on a hiring spree.”
Smalls had gotten permission to test army personnel and read them into the program if their scores matched the desired “psychological profile.” Teddy assumed that meant gullibility.
“Test them how?” Maureen asked.
“That’s an excellent question,” Smalls said. “Thank you, Maureen.”
God help us, Teddy thought.
Smalls gestured toward the door. “Here is the man who can answer your questions.” Standing there, hands clasped behind his back, was a short man in a black suit. His hair was wispy on top, but his mustache was as thick, oiled, and pointy as a silent film villain’s.
“This is G. Randall Archibald,” Smalls said. “And he has a device that will revolutionize psi research.”
“You don’t say,” Teddy said.
The mustachioed man surveyed the room. “My torsion field detector can measure psi ability with ninety-five percent accuracy.”
“Ninety-five point six,” Smalls said. “How about we begin with you, Teddy?”
“Say what?” Teddy asked. He glanced at Maureen. She suddenly took an interest in her shoes.
“You of all people have nothing to be afraid of,” Archibald said with the tone of a physician hiding a large syringe behind his back. “Not a talent as powerful as yourself.”
Coming home did nothing to improve Teddy’s mood. Buddy was crouched in the living room, sweaty and distressed, trying to rewire a lamp. (Why? Was it broken? If it hadn’t been it was now.) Frankie sat at the kitchen table, three empty beer bottles in front of him, sucking down his fourth.
“What are you doing here, and what have you done with my beer?” Teddy asked.
“I dropped off Matty. He’s a hell of a young man. Good worker, enthusiastic, and ready to push himself. Not like most kids.”
“Right,” Teddy said. “Not like the kind who hang around your house, expecting a handout.”
“Exactly.” Frankie finished his beer, got up to pull another one from the fridge. “A real go-getter.” Under the table sat a cardboard box.
“What the hell is that?” Teddy asked, knowing full well what the box was.
“I brought you a refill,” Frankie said.
“No.” Teddy shook his head. “No no no no.”
“You know this stuff is good for you. It’s got—”
“Antioxidants! Jesus Christ, I know. Take it out of here, Frankie. I got enough God damn antioxidants to drown a steer.”
“If you become one of my down-line distributors, the price gets even cheaper.”
“We’ve talked about this. That’s your scam, not mine.”
“All I’m asking is for once in your life you show a little support.”
“Once in my—is that what you said? Once?”
“I don’t mooch off you,” Frankie said, in denial of all historical records. “We all know you’re loaded—”
“I’m not loaded.”
“—but at least I don’t squat here, eat your food, expect you to take care of me.”
Teddy opened the high cabinet and brought down the Hendrick’s bottle. “So what you’re telling me,” he said, pouring three fingers into a thick-bottomed glass, “I buy one more box from you, that’s it, you’ll never ask for anything again?”
Frankie frowned. “What’s the matter with you?” He wasn’t used to sarcasm from Teddy, whose habit in these post-work sessions was to listen quietly. Two or three times a week Frankie would do this, come in after work, start holding forth on herbal supplements or real estate taxes or whatever had gotten into his brain or under his skin, and consume all Teddy’s Heinekens and Ritz crackers. He was in no rush to go home to Loretta, probably because he didn’t want to get stuck watching the twins or taking them to gymnastics practice. He’d keep talking until the beer or Teddy’s patience ran out. Then Teddy would clap his son on the arm, agree with whatever his last point was, and head upstairs for a nap. (Though it wasn’t so much a nap as a retreat.) He’d decided years ago there was no profit in arguing with the boy, and no way to stop his yammering any more than he could start Buddy talking. Theoretically, Buddy would be the perfect sound-absorbing device for Frankie’s verbiage, but ever since the riverboat the brothers could barely look at each other.