Margaret Truman's Experiment in Murder (29 page)

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Nic Tatum grabbed a Nathan's hot dog and a soda at the airport before boarding his flight to San Francisco. When he'd called Cindy to tell her that he was leaving, she reacted as might be expected. “Just like that?” she said.

“Yeah. I know it's strange, but I have to do it. I found out that Sheila has flown to San Francisco. She would never have done that if Borger wasn't pulling her strings like a goddamn marionette. I need to … well, I just need to convince myself that I'm right.”

“You're going to confront this Dr. Borger?”

“I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I'll play it by ear.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“A day or two.”

“Mac Smith called.”

“What did he want?”

“He's invited us to a rally for Senator Mortinson three days from now. It's at the Ronald Reagan Building, in the afternoon. He says he has an extra set of passes and wondered if we wanted to use them.”

“I don't know, I—”

“I'd love to go, Nic.”

“That's right, I forgot, you have a crush on Mortinson.”

“I do not and you know it.”

“It's okay with me provided I'm back in time.”

“Please try to be. And Nic?”

“Huh?”

“Be careful. If everything you say about this Dr. Borger and the people he's involved with is true, they won't stop at anything to keep it a secret.”

Tatum loved flying, any sort of flying, whether in his aerobatic aircraft or as a passenger on a jumbo jet. He considered sitting in a jetliner to be the ultimate getaway—no phones, no TV, just hours of solitude to think things out. It wasn't that he enjoyed the process of boarding a commercial plane, or the lack of amenities once aboard. Like most air travelers, he gritted his teeth each time he had to suffer the indignities and hassle of navigating airports, and the disregard for passenger comfort that prevailed with most airlines. But he was able to cast all that aside once airborne, strapped in his seat in an aluminum cigar tube traveling six hundred miles an hour to his destination, and this trip was no exception.

He didn't consider himself an impetuous person. His life was structured, and he liked to think of himself as someone who gave careful consideration to his options before making a decision. For him life came down to a series of decisions. You made good ones and things went fairly well barring a natural calamity or an air conditioner falling on you while you walked down a street. Make bad decisions and, well …

But here he was hopping on a plane to San Francisco two hours after he'd learned that Sheila Klaus had gone there, and he hadn't the foggiest notion of what to do once he arrived. He hadn't bothered to change clothes before the trip and had shoved an overnight's amount of clothing, along with some reading material, into a small backpack.

Once settled in his coach seat—and thankful that he was at the window with no one in the middle seat next to him—he tried to bring order to his thoughts about what he believed was Sheila's programmed murder of Mark Sedgwick and the control that Dr. Sheldon Borger exerted over her.

One of the things he'd stuffed into his backpack was his laptop, which contained, among other things, a file he'd gathered over the years on the CIA's mind-control experimentation. He hadn't collected the material with any purpose in mind. It was more a matter of intellectual curiosity and to remind him to not become ensnared in any government projects that he might be offered.

The reports in the file documented not only mind-control experiments since the 1950s but also described other government medical experimentation on innocent victims as early as the 1930s.

One of the most infamous occurred when the Public Health Service, with the blessing of the surgeon general and the American Heart Association, launched a project in which 399 poor rural black men from Tuskegee, Alabama, who had syphilis were recruited as subjects along with 201 control subjects who did not have the sexually transmitted disease. The 399 infected men never received treatment, nor were they or their families ever informed that they had the disease. “You have bad blood,” was the explanation given them. Although the cure for syphilis, penicillin, was introduced in the early 1940s, it was withheld from these men for thirty years. Lord knew how many wives were infected with the disease, and how many children were born with syphilis.

He scrolled through other reports. Radiation experiments were conducted on six hundred American subjects in the 1940s and continued through the 1970s. People were injected with plutonium and exposed to other forms of radiation without their informed consent. Prisoners received $5 a month in return for having their testicles irradiated. Children weren't spared these vile experiments. In 1961, scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Boston University School of Medicine gave radioactive iodine to retarded kids at a state school, and at another state school MIT added radioactive materials to food fed to children. Their parents signed consent forms in which the stated purpose of the experiments was “helping improve the nutrition of our children.”

Although Nic was familiar with the file's contents, his anger level rose as he continued to read. Until his involvement with Sheila Klaus, he hadn't bothered to review what he'd collected in his files on the government's use of physicians, scientists, and many of the nation's leading hospitals to carry out such experimentation. For him the reports had been nothing more than abstract reminders of what he knew to be true, pieces of sordid history that had little or no direct bearing on his life.

But it was different now that he'd witnessed firsthand the damage to Sheila Klaus.

According to a 1954 MK-ULTRA document, a female subject was placed into a deep trance. A second female was handed an unloaded gun and, under hypnosis, was told that she must awaken the first woman using every means possible. If she failed, she was told to shoot the sleeping subject. She carried out the instructions, including aiming the weapon at the sleeping woman's head and pulling the trigger. When both were brought out of trance, they had total amnesia of everything having to do with the event.

Another subject, a Canadian woman, was so destroyed by experiments on her that she was completely disoriented, and didn't know her name, age, or her husband, and was unable to read, write, cook, or use the toilet. She eventually joined in a class action lawsuit against the CIA. But because the Canadian physician who had experimented on her had stopped taking CIA money before using her as a subject (the Canadian government began funding the doctor after the CIA money dried up), she sued the Canadian government and won $100,000 plus legal fees.

“Damn them!” Tatum said loud enough to cause the passenger in the aisle seat to glance in his direction.

Tatum read one final report from his file, a synopsis of the work G. H. Estabrooks had done in creating multiple personalities in order to create the perfect spy, courier, or assassin. The writer of the synopsis ended by quoting Estabrooks about the ethical aspect of his work: “The hand of the military must not be tied by any silly prejudices in the minds of the general public. War is the end of all law. In the last analysis any device is justifiable which enables us to protect ourselves from defeat.”

This time Tatum seethed quietly in order to not disturb his seatmate. But he boiled inside. His anger wasn't pointed so much at the government as at the medical world, its doctors and psychologists, scientists and nurses, and administrators of leading hospitals and other health facilities whose stated purpose was to alleviate suffering and cure disease, to make life better for mankind. Yet they'd willingly, even enthusiastically, involved themselves in projects that violated the oath they'd taken as physicians and protectors of public health.

Sheldon Borger.

Tatum recalled the one time he'd met him at a psychiatric conference and tried to envision what he would look like years later. What could cause a physician to abandon all sense of decency and commitment and inflict harm on unsuspecting men and women? Money? For some that would be a motivating factor. Patriotism? That was no excuse any more than it was for former House speaker Newt Gingrich who'd blamed his heightened sense of patriotism for his marital infidelities.

It had to be ego, Tatum decided, massive ego, and he silently cursed that human failing. He also thought of his friend Dave Considine, which reminded him that not all physicians fell into the Sheldon Borger category. He gave a thumbs-up to Considine as he turned off the overhead light and dozed off.

 

CHAPTER

35

SAN FRANCISCO

When he awoke, the plane was in its landing pattern. He hadn't reserved a car and was relieved that Hertz had some vehicles available. It was night; the Lightpath Clinic would be closed. Going there would have to wait until morning. He had Borger's home address. Should he knock on the door and hope that Borger would answer and invite him in? Unlikely. Still, he felt he had to do something to justify his decision to get on a plane and travel across the country.

He took 101 into the city and proceeded up steep Van Ness Avenue until reaching the fabled Nob Hill where Borger's home was situated. He had trouble finding it and was disappointed that a gate spanned the driveway. He turned off his lights and looked past the gates to the house. Lights were on, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure passing a window. While he sat debating whether to ring the bell on the gate, a car, its lights blinding Tatum in his rearview mirror, came up behind. It was a patrol car. An even brighter floodlight came on, washing Tatum's rental in harsh white light. An officer got out and approached. Tatum rolled down the window.

“Got a problem?” the officer, a tall black man, asked.

“Problem? No. I was just driving around and pulled over here.”

“You from here?”

“Nob Hill? No. Actually, I'm from Washington, D.C. I just arrived in San Francisco and wanted to see the city.”

“This your car?”

“No. I mean, it's a rental.”

“Can I see your license and the papers for the car?”

Tatum obliged. The officer carefully, slowly perused them before handing them back. “You're staying in San Francisco?” he asked.

“Just for a night or two. I—”

“Where are you staying?”

“I don't have a hotel yet. I have to find one.”

“You don't have drugs with you, do you?”

“Drugs?” Tatum forced a laugh. “No, no drugs. I'm a psychologist. Ph.D.”

“Uh-huh. I suggest you find that hotel and not be parked in front of a private residence.”

“Okay,” Tatum said.

He watched the officer walk back to his car.

“Dummy!” he told himself as he started the engine and left the area. What did he think he could accomplish sitting outside Borger's home in the middle of the night? “You'd make one pathetic private detective,” he said as he drove until finding a Holiday Inn Express in nearby Fisherman's Wharf, where he checked into a room, then walked to a small restaurant that was open late. He returned to the hotel and fell into a fitful sleep that left the bedding a tangled mess when he awoke at five the following morning.

After showering and checking out, he found a place for breakfast, which he lingered over while skimming a copy of a newspaper provided by the restaurant. He read it from cover to cover while biding his time before heading across the Bay Bridge to the Lightpath Clinic. Tatum always enjoyed reading papers from other cities. It gave him a sense of the place, its pace and the things that were important to its citizens. One small item was a report of an unidentified female body washing up near the airport. A police spokesman was quoted as saying, “We're treating this as a homicide. The victim's body must have been secured to something heavy to cause it to sink, but the weight used wasn't sufficient to keep it underwater.” An autopsy was to be performed, according to the police; the investigation was ongoing and no further details were available.

Tatum paid his bill, got in his car, and headed for Berkeley and the Lightpath Psychiatric Clinic, where he hoped he might find Borger. Traffic was particularly heavy that morning, compounded by an accident that closed one lane on the bridge. He eventually reached the address and pulled up in front of the drab one-story gray building on Shattuck Avenue. It was strange, he thought, that there was no sign indicating the existence of a clinic, but then he rationalized that if it was a CIA front, announcing its existence couldn't be expected.

He went to the front door and tried it. Locked. He pushed a button and heard a buzzer sound from inside. He was about to push it again when the door opened.

“Yes?” a short, chubby young man asked.

“I was hoping to see Dr. Borger,” Tatum said.

“What's it in reference to?”

“A professional matter.” Tatum handed the young man his business card, which he slowly, too slowly, scrutinized.

“I'm afraid that Dr. Borger isn't here.”

“Just my luck. Do you expect him?”

“He's away.”

“Out of town?”

“Away. When I'm in touch with him I'll let him know you were here. Will he know what it's about?”

Tatum hesitated before saying, “It's about Sheila Klaus.”

The young man nodded and started to close the door. Tatum placed his hand against it and said, “You say that Dr. Borger is away. Is he at his home on Nob Hill?”

“I'll tell him that you were here.”

The door closed and Tatum heard it being locked.

He drove back to Nob Hill and peered through the gates at Borger's mansion where two Hispanic workmen tended a garden. Other than the gardeners there was no sign of life. A yellow Subaru Outback was parked off to the side of the house and Tatum wondered whether it belonged to Borger. Should I ring the bell on the gate? he mused. Instead, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number he had for Borger's residence. It rang four times before an answering machine picked up: “This is Dr. Sheldon Borger. I'm unable to take your call at the moment. If you are a patient seeking an appointment, please call my scheduling office.” He gave the phone number. “You may leave a message following the beep.”