“I see. But we feel it happened already because it came from the place in our mind where everything we remember comes from.”
“This is getting a little hard to follow,” Tate said.
“The next part may help. Like déjà vu, these instructions were placed directly into Martha’s subconscious and deep subconscious by subliminal suggestion.”
“Hold on, you just said ‘suggestion.’ Earlier you said she was, what was the word you used?” The FBI director referred to his notes. “Programmed. But clearly, she wasn’t choosing to follow a suggestion. She doggedly followed out orders.”
Janice read the skepticism on Tate’s face. She took a deep breath. “That’s the part that’s still up in the air, but I have a theory.” She focused on the president. “Somehow, these instructions get layered into the deepest recesses of the mind and are released by higher levels of instructions. Whoever devised this has broken through to some new understanding of the human brain.”
“Are you aware of any research in that area, Dr. Tyler?”
“No, Sir, but I am talking about the total remapping of the human brain to a level and specificity that, yesterday, I would have told you was two to three centuries away. For all modern science has learned about the mind, we are merely strangers without a map. The creator of this program has the ultimate blueprint and can go anywhere and do anything inside the human brain.”
“That’s a frightening prospect, Doctor.”
“So you’re saying Martha had four or five split personalities?” Reynolds said.
“It is very much like that, Ray. With this level of deep-seated instructions, whole realities and worlds can be created with great detail within someone’s mind, each one being indistinguishable from an actual event that a person has lived through. In short, no matter how it gets there, deep in the center of our minds, there is no difference between a lived memory and an implanted one.”
“So anything can be planted in someone’s mind?” Tate asked.
“It appears to be so. For instance, at one point Martha thought she was saving an infant that had been cruelly locked in the equipment cabinet on the side of the track. That belief was now so entrenched in Martha’s conscious that it motivated her to pry the cabinet open. It is furthermore apparent that this whole scenario was based on an actual event in Martha’s life. Her older daughter remembers locking her baby sister in the closet by accident when they were playing house. Martha had to pry the door open with a crowbar to free the frightened, crying child.”
“So all the details of the situation were already in Martha’s long-term memory. The masterminds of this process just adapted it, possibly by interrogating the subject once she was under their control,” Hiccock said.
“But didn’t she realize it was a lie, or whatever, when she opened the cabinet and she could plainly see there was no baby in there?” the president asked.
Janice pointed to the subroutine on easel two that included a picture of the inside of the control cabinet. “Here’s where the layers come in again. As soon as Martha saw the relays and circuits inside the metal case, it triggered a new subroutine, the one that had her short-circuit the switch wiring. At that instant her brain was cleansed of all thoughts of a trapped baby and replaced with a new reality and a new task.”
Hiccock pointed to the last easel, which displayed the freeze frame of the actress from the HBO movie holding a gun to her head. “The final trigger is the chilling part. Her last subroutine called for her to commit suicide. That program was left open-ended, judging by the way Martha still tries to kill herself to this day.”
Janice stood there for almost a full minute as they silently digested what she had laid out before them.
“My God!” the Commander in Chief said. “Doctor Tyler, how sure are you that this is actually what we are dealing with here?”
“We deduced this methodology from all the available evidence we will ever accumulate. I suppose there might be another explanation or way to connect these elements, but the core of the premise is solid. Although we don’t have a clue as to who is behind it yet, Mr. President, this is how it is being done.”
“One question,” Reynolds said. “You’re saying that Martha was programmed. That implies someone programmed her. How would that someone have known about her dead husband?”
Hiccock fielded that one. “This is a web-based means of recruitment and programming. Today, all records of birth, death, marriages, and even a person’s purchases are out there in the digital domain beyond the public space of the Internet, but potentially available to any clever hacker.”
“So if I understand this right,” Tate said, “assuming we could have stopped Martha in her car on the way to the derailment, she would believe — and pass a lie detector test — that she was simply meeting her husband in his parking lot at work?”
“Exactly. She would have had no inkling of what she was about to do next …”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
A USA Today newspaper headlined “Wall Street’s Deep Freeze Continues” landed on Admiral Parks’s kitchen table, along with Hiccock and Janice’s carry-on bags. Hiccock was about to hit the bathroom when he became distracted by an argument between Kronos and Parks.
“Get off my ass, will ya,” Kronos said with typical Bensonhurst eloquence. “For the hundredth time, it’s no use. I tried everything I know to get through that firewall.”
“Well, that couldn’t have been all that much effort then.”
Kronos slammed down his fist and kicked his chair over as he rose. “You want a piece of me, old woman?”
Before Hiccock or the Army MPs in the room could react, Parks swung around in her swivel chair and swept Kronos’s legs out from under him. He fell on her lap as she put her elbow in his neck. He coughed and gagged as he was pinned by the septuagenarian.
“Who’s old?”
“Admiral, please don’t hurt the stupid hired help,” Hiccock said, trying to hide his amusement. “He’s federal property that I’m signed out for.”
She released her seemingly effortless hold on the nerd with a warning. “You be a good little Guido or this ‘old’ woman will make you bark like a friggin’ dog for your dinner,” the lady said, pulling off a pretty decent Brooklynese in her own right.
Kronos rubbed his throat as he got up and walked over to Hiccock. “I thought you said she was a secretary! For who, Gorilla Monsoon?”
Hiccock ignored him and addressed the Admiral. “Nice move. Where did you pick that up?”
“My dearly departed was UDT.”
“What’s UDT?” Kronos said.
Hiccock answered. “Underwater Demolition Team. It’s what the first Navy Seals were called. I’d show her a little more respect or you’ll be back in Club Fed in time for breakfast.”
Kronos picked up his chair and crossed the room. With a flourish of newfound gallantry, he said, “Might I assist you, Admiral Parks?”