Second Sight (20 page)

“Moore says there is a journal. Monahan’s journal.”

Case let the pen fall from his hand and Troy watched the color drain from his stepfather’s face. They were in Case’s library, in the south wing of the Lancaster estate. The old man backed the wheelchair up to free himself from the desk and toggled forward, advancing to the windows and looking out, then back to his stepson.

He waited a moment before walking toward him. Outside the window, beyond his full white head of hair, there were gardeners pruning flowers and green hummingbirds leapfrogging the plumes of purple hostas.

“Where?” Case said at last.

“In Philadelphia, at her neighbor’s house, he’s a retired admiral.”

“The older man she was with at the psychiatric hospital?”

“I can only assume,” Weir said.

“How do you know? How do you know it’s his? That it’s Monahan’s?”

“She said she’s reading a soldier’s journal. A soldier who died in an asylum.”

Case stared at his stepson.

Troy Weir shrugged.

Case locked eyes with him, but the younger man didn’t think Case was looking at him. He seemed somewhere far, far away.

“Doctor?”

Suddenly Case pounded the top of a serpentine tea table, snapping the top from the delicately carved legs. “Goddamn it!” he yelled with a fury that belied his eighty-three years. He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling, all the muscles and leaders in his neck stretching like twine. He looked almost biblical for a minute, as if the backdrop of morning light that haloed his white hair was heaven-sent, to lift and deliver him from his agony. Troy knew right then that whatever else this journal held, it contained the ruin of Case’s lifetime of achievements.

“I think it’s time you told me what this is all about,” Weir said.

Case was still struggling in the throes of this new reality, the knowledge that he had lost a sizable chunk of his armor, and was seriously vulnerable. Weir thought he looked like a man imploding, all the grace and swagger and authority he liked to project dissipating until all that was left was an old man in a wheelchair.

Case turned his head and gave the younger man a chilling look, his face white and empty as a death mask. Then he nodded, motored to the door and pushed it the rest of the way closed, then spun to face the leather sofa and chair.

Troy walked to the bar, poured an inch of vodka, carried it to the leather chair, and handed it to the old man.

Case was regaining composure, but only partially. He looked shaken. Troy would have loved to know what signals the old man’s autonomic nerves were sending from the stem of his brain. Once upon a time he had studied the autonomic nerves’ effect on heart rhythms during times of great stress. There was
actually a percentage, albeit small, of people who died from heart arrhythmia due to sudden stress. The proverbial “died of fright” scenario. He had actually introduced the arrhythmia study to MIRA Project members from the Department of Defense. It was yet another means of close-contact assassination, he’d suggested, but that was a whole other story.

“You have come to know Case and Kimble’s most closely guarded secret,” Case said, “and not because of any particular knowledge you possess. I have no shortage of experts at my disposal. You were chosen to liaise with the National Security Agency because you think in a way that better serves my purpose. You do not limit MIRA’s potential with a lot of unnecessary concern for risk.

“I was held in high esteem following World War Two”—Case swept an arm to encompass the many pictures on the walls—“one of the very few and youngest minds at the heart of the Manhattan Project.” He nodded self-righteously, sat up, and the wheel of his chair made a splintering noise against an edge of his antique table.

“So when the army learned of a mind-control machine the Russians were working on in 1950, they came to me.” He tapped the breast pocket of his jacket.

“I was promised anything. Money, home, laboratory, access to their latest nuclear data, test subjects to continue my work involving radiation, literally anything.”

“We had the primitive hypothesis in those days concerning the effects of radio waves. Low-frequency sound being directed at human beings, highly concentrated microwaves in which we melded visual images and voices.”

“LIDA,” Weir said.

“Yes, LIDA.” Case nodded, taking a sip of the vodka.

“The Russians,” Case went on, “had their working model in Korea at the time and the army had proof they were using it on American pilots. Jason Kimble was at Princeton, that’s
where they sent the pilots who returned and that was how Jason and I first came to know each other. I was supposed to re-create the device based on intelligence smuggled out of the Kremlin. The army gave us test subjects, guinea pigs, from the front lines of Seoul.”

“Disposable guinea pigs,” Troy said.

Case shrugged. “I was told their absence could be explained, but only if things came to worse.” He spread out his open arms. “That was part of doing business when you’re at the cutting edge of science. Explorers, test pilots, researchers had always put their lives on the line.” Case wore a look of disgust. “Had,” he repeated. “Oh, the boys knew there was a risk. They knew they were walking away from all but certain death in Korea. Danger is synonymous with research. To find the threshold of a thing is to go out and touch its edge. Someone needed to do that. We didn’t know about the long-term effects of radiation. We didn’t know what exposures our boys could stand under attack. We didn’t know how to protect ourselves from radio waves and being brainwashed into submission by the enemy. We needed to get out in front of the game. To find out what they were doing over there and contain it.”

“But there never was such a thing as the brainwash machine, was there? The LIDA machine was a failure. Hocus-pocus. Soviet propaganda,” Troy said.

Case shook his head emphatically “No, no. That was what we reported. I was on the inside. There were cases, many cases we could never explain. Those machines worked. They just weren’t predictable. The brain was the unknown quantity in the equation. The brain’s reaction to the frequencies was unforeseeable. Some men acted upon suggestion. Some who did not and seemed impervious went on about their business for days and weeks at a time and then suddenly something tripped their brain and they went on the attack.”

“They were trained to resist?”

“Of course,” Case said. “They were supposed to do everything in their power not to act on a suggestion.”

“And the strongest motivation you could hope to overcome would be their reluctance to commit murder. To assassinate.”

Case shook his head and a cruel smile formed on his lips. “We thought of one even stronger,” he said. “Suicide.”

Case raised his drink and Troy noticed that the doctor’s hand was shaking.

“It was very dangerous stuff. We had to watch our subjects constantly. To make sure they weren’t going to harm one another. A psychiatrist monitored them daily. We removed dangerous articles from the dormitory. There was always an MP posted outside the entrance.”

“But Monahan got out just the same.”

Case looked at the young man. “Yes, he got out.”

“How could he have kept a journal without your knowing it?”

“We knew. Hell, we encouraged them to keep diaries. Their writings were evidence of their state of mind before and after the tests. We went through their bunks while they were out in the labs. We knew what they were thinking. We wanted to know what was happening to them as the tests proceeded.”

“Where did you think the journal was after all these years?” Troy asked.

“We didn’t know. We talked to the security men from the asylum who had found him. We asked if the kid had anything with him. All of them said he hadn’t. All but one had been together when they were with him. It didn’t seem likely that four people would conspire to hide something as innocuous as a journal as fast as we got to them, and they were interviewed within an hour of bringing him to the asylum. They didn’t have time to contrive a story.”

Case sipped more of his drink. “We went up there on the summit many times afterward, looking for the book, but it never turned up. After that we could only hope it was lost to time and the elements.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Troy said. “
Hoping
for something.”

Case’s expression remained fixed.

“This is where the all but one comes in, isn’t it?” Troy added.

“The security chief. Jack McCullough. He was the one who found Monahan’s body. He was alone with the boy for over an hour. He told the ER doctor he thought the boy might have intentionally jumped from the cliff wall.”

“So you questioned him?”

“Not me, but the right people took him aside,” Case said. “He was convincing.”

“What happened to the kid afterward?”

“He was already in the asylum. Our best psychiatrists determined he was brain-dead. There was nothing we could do to make him go away so we decided to leave him there. Where better to tuck someone away than a mental institution in the Catskills? The government could pay for his interminable convalescence, and we could monitor his progress from time to time to ensure he was no threat. Standing orders were left for the administrator to contact our foundation should he ever awaken or pass away.”

“And the security chief, McCullough?”

Case looked at his hands. “He committed suicide.”

Troy looked out the window, the slightest smile forming at his lips. He shook his head in admiration of the doctor.

“It was I who laid the groundwork for MIRA. Block by block until what you have seen today is the most sophisticated mind-control device on the planet. A virtual library of human emotions, thirty years of EEGs catalogued and waiting for the moment they could be released in microwaves. Like a bullet they enter the body, with a complete set of blueprints, which guides the target’s every move. In ten years we will be able to direct such a bullet at the masses. We will be able to turn armies
on their heels and send them walking and after all the lives it cost to create it, we will win wars without a single shot being fired. We will save whole nations. We will turn dictators into apostles and terrorists into lambs.”

Case spun in the direction of the bar and poured another tumbler of scotch. “No one can read that journal and live, Troy.”

He studied the old man a long moment and grunted.

“Is that a problem?” Case asked.

“Not in the least.”

“Who has seen it?”

“Obviously the security man who found Monahan had a wife or a child who kept his belongings. Sherry Moore found out about it somehow, so then there is Sherry Moore herself, and her neighbor.”

“Troy, I think you now understand the gravity of the situation. This is why you have become so essential to what I do. I need this to go away, but with the finest touch. No clues, no loose ends, no inferences. Do nothing unnecessary, but end it. I want you to understand that. It must be very, very clean.”

Sherry’s mouth was dry, her head still pounding from last night’s wine. She wished she could forget how the evening had ended, but she kept seeing Brian Metcalf’s face at her door. She was reasonably sure she was dressed as she’d stood there, but Troy’s shirt had been out and they both must have looked quite disheveled.

“You call him?”

“No answer,” she said softly.

“You going to call him again?”

“Just read,” she whispered.

Brigham, looking stern, put on his glasses and lifted the book.

Sherry closed her eyes.

“This is really getting hard to hear,” Sherry said.

Brigham nodded and laid the book on its spine. “Take a break?”

She nodded and went to check the answering machine. Someone had been calling her during the last hour of Brigham’s reading.

“Your friend?” he asked sarcastically.

“Brian,” she said distantly. “Wait…” and she held up a finger as more messages came through. After the fourth, a frown formed on her face.

She walked back to the chair as she punched numbers into the receiver. “Two calls from Kelly O’Shaughnessy in Wildwood.”

“You guys still talk?”

Sherry shrugged, pushing Send and lifting the phone to her ear. “It’s been awhile.”

“Kelly,” she said after a long moment. “Sherry. How are you?”

Kelly O’Shaughnessy had been a rookie lieutenant in charge of Wildwood, New Jersey’s detective division in 2006, when a string of boardwalk murders brought Sherry to the oceanside resort—an incredibly sad time in her life. That’s where she lost her best friend, John Payne.

Sherry could tell from the police captain’s hesitation that it wasn’t going to be good news.

“I’m sorry, Sherry. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“What is it, Kelly? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, it’s not about me,” O’Shaughnessy said. “I just got a call from state police headquarters in Trenton. A trooper was killed an hour ago on the Garden State Parkway. His partner was
taken hostage. They can’t identify the shooter on the dash cam. There were no witnesses. Only the dead trooper could have seen who took her and what he was driving. The superintendant called me. Very privately, about you.”

“Where did they take him?”

“Shore Memorial, Somers Point.”

“They’ll let me see him?”

“They’ll turn their heads for ten minutes. You’re supposed to call me when you get out of there.”

“Can you get me a car?”

“I can do you one better. They’ve got a bird in the air. Your lawn okay?”

“No one’s sued me yet.”

“I’ll tell them you’re getting ready.”

“I’ll be ready when they land. I’ll call you from the hospital, Kelly.”

Twenty minutes later Sherry was on her lawn, boarding an Sikorsky S-76B, waving to Brigham and putting her hand to her ear to signal that she would phone.

She had been dreading this moment for weeks now, ever since New Mexico. She was scared of what would happen the next time she was asked to do this. Very scared.

Not that there had ever been a guarantee about her powers. There were just times that nothing came to mind. Even when she saw things, they were often out of context, the dying person’s random access from a lifetime’s archives of memories, easy enough to confuse with more recent images.

But this time was like no other. Never before had she been exposed to radioactive isotopes and then dosed with a dye called Prussian blue. Never before had she tried to do this when able to see with her own two eyes.

Whatever had happened to her in New Mexico and later, on that table in Nazareth Hospital, may have done far more than reconnect her to sight. There might not be any more images for
Sherry Moore—and so much was at stake. But then there was always so much at stake, wasn’t there?

“Twenty minutes,” the pilot said into her headphones.

Sherry nodded and looked at her watch. There had been a sixth message on her answering machine, one from Troy Weir, who’d called as Brigham approached her door and she’d silenced it on purpose.

They flew alongside the Atlantic City Expressway, then banked south at Mays Landing and crossed half a dozen golf courses before she saw the hospital on Shore Road.

It took less than a minute to enter the hospital with a cortege of stone-faced state troopers blocking her from public view and rushing her to the ER and a draped triage room guarded by wild-eyed police officers.

“In here,” a man said. He had eagles on his epaulettes. He pulled the curtain closed behind her and she could smell the inside of the body cavity, the broken arteries and torn bowels, the room, the floor and counters strewn with bloody instruments and surgical sponges. She had never seen such a room, though she had visited literally hundreds. She made her way to a stainless steel stool with wheels and rolled up alongside the body. She lifted the hand, which was in a clutching position, and felt the gritty crumbs of dried blood pressed between his skin and hers.

She squeezed and closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

And nothing happened.