Neuropath (15 page)

The bar where they were to meet Dr Mackenzie was just off K Street, not far from Georgetown University, in a neighborhood planners would have called 'medium density mixed residential and commercial'. Thomas could smell the Potomac gnawing on tin and granite when he stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Sam gave him a hasty briefing as they walked up to the bar. Thomas could tell she was angry at herself for not doing so earlier; he could sense a gestalt shift in her attitude toward him, as though she were remembering some promise she had made to herself. Suddenly she was brisk and professional, if a little harried. Even so, she found time to answer a panhandler's upraised palm—one of those bums straight out of the old movies, all stained whiskers and clothes leathered with grime. Once again, Thomas waited on the guilty sidelines while she pawed through her purse. She ended up giving the old man a five, pinching the corner of the bill as though she were feeding something with teeth that snapped.

Dr Mackenzie, she explained with mnemonic intensity, was 68, an employee of the NSA for sixteen years, a widower for eight. He had a reputation for brilliance, though oddly enough, he had no publications whatsoever. She cast him a lingering look as they trotted up the steps to make sure, Thomas supposed, he had absorbed the significance of that last tidbit.

'Remember,' she said, 'try to read between the lines.'

Thomas smiled despite the lump in his throat. Why was he anxious all of a sudden? He almost felt like one of Neil's newly jilted lovers about to confront the first ex-wife. Neil, Thomas realized, had likely betrayed Mackenzie every bit as profoundly as he had betrayed him.

Thomas recognized the man the instant they stepped into the pub-worn interior. The place had a quaint teahouse atmosphere that not only belied its name,
Blowhards
, but all the telltale signs of hardcore barroom crowds: the cracked panes of glass, the carved initials distressing the already 'distressed' decor, and the smell of spilled booze and—oddly enough—cigar smoke. In theory-speak he would have said that its identity-claims contradicted its behavioral residue. In normal speak he would have said that it looked like a place where the high and mighty got down and dirty.

Mackenzie sat in a high-backed stall to their right, pondering his palmtop. He looked like a bald, diminutive grandfather, someone who should be wearing overalls rather than a lobbyist's slick K Street attire, a black pinstriped Armani by the look of it, with a hint of zoot in the cut of the jacket. When he spotted them, his face fairly exploded with affable good humor.

'Good-good!' he cried. 'I was getting worried I'd confused the times.'

He seemed a very happy ex-wife.

After the obligatory introductions, Sam slid against the wall and Thomas settled next to her. She laid the tips of all ten fingers on the manila file folder she had placed before her. It seemed quaint, like something from the innumerable crime movies Thomas had watched as a child.

I'm actually part of an investigation… The
FBI
for chrissakes
!

'My,' Mackenzie said, tilting his head in Sam's direction, 'aren't you a striking beauty.'

Ordinarily, a statement like this would have sounded sexist, but for some reason, his age and festive disposition seemed to render him exempt. It was like he had a 'dirty old joker badge' or something.

Rather than blush, Sam smiled and looked down. His expression mild, Mackenzie retrieved a pack of Winstons from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. The lighter he seemed to conjure from nowhere.

'A nasty habit I've never been able to shake,' he explained in the midst of billowing smoke. 'Lucky for me, this place casts a blind eye.'

'A speakeasy for smokers,' Thomas said, finding himself, despite all his earlier apprehensions, quite disarmed. Mackenzie, he realized, was a classic rogue, someone who used charm and impish good humor to run roughshod over even the most exacting social niceties.

'For every Prohibition,' the old man declared, 'there are a thousand blind eyes, I assure you.'

Sam raised her eyebrows, pursed her it-girl lips. 'I
do
work in law enforcement, Dr Mackenzie.'

'I suppose,' the impish old man replied. 'But then you need me far more than otherwise, Agent Logan.' He looked at Thomas, shot him a friendly blink. 'Game Theory 101,' he said. 'Strike, or be struck.'

Sam leaned back from the wires of curling blue smoke, clearly annoyed. Smiling, Thomas reminded himself not to be taken in by the old charmer. Given what this man did for a living—he quite literally 'hacked' brains (in both senses of the word)—there could be little doubt that he, like Neil, was some kind of sociopath. Lacking the circuitry for the social anxieties that plagued everyone else, he doubtlessly found putting people at ease quite effortless. A former colleague of Thomas's had spent a better part of her career studying psychopathy. The biggest challenge, she had said on more than one occasion, was immunizing her research assistants against their charms.

Sam pressed on. 'What exactly was the nature of your work, Dr Mackenzie?'

'I'm afraid that's classified.'

The expected answer. Sam continued without missing a beat.

'It says here that you were Dr Cassidy's immediate subordinate—his second-in-command, in effect. Is that true?'

An apologetic look, mawkish because of the agility of his face. 'I'm afraid that's classified as well.'

Thomas frowned, wondering how it could be at once classified and in Sam's FBI dossier. He was about to say as much, but was pulled up short by a small flash of insight. 'Tell me, doctor,' he asked, 'did Neil ever mention the Argument?'

The bright eyes dropped to the table. For a moment he looked like something between a smiling Buddha and an Irish drunk.

'Oh,
that
.'

Thomas could feel Sam stiffen beside him. 'So he
did
talk about it,' she said.

'On occasion.'

'Would you mind relating the substance of those occasions?' she pressed.

'I'm afraid that's classified.'

Thomas frowned. 'Is it now?'

Mackenzie raised his small hands as though in surrender. His grin was contagious. His eyes fairly chirped with glee.

'Well it's
should
be.'

'And why's that, Dr Mackenzie?'

'Because it's true and because it's scary as all hell. What do you think secrets are
for
, Professor Bible?'

'In my experience,' Thomas said, 'truth is rarely as dangerous as people seem to think.'

'Ah,' Mackenzie beamed, 'so you're a
cognitive
psychologist.' Glancing at Sam's perplexed frown, he explained, 'Professor Bible doesn't think the Argument is dangerous because he doesn't believe the greater part of humanity is
capable
of believing it.'

'He's right,' Thomas said in response to Sam's questioning look. 'But not for the reasons you might think. It's not because people are too stupid—'

'Well,' Mackenzie interjected, 'not
all
of them, anyway.'

Thomas scowled and smirked. 'It's just that we suffer from so many biases. We like things to be simple. We have no stomach for uncertainty; just think of the way people throw snap judgments at their televisions. We're out-and-out addicted to praise. We cherry-pick evidence that confirms our beliefs and selectively ignore disconfirming evidence—'

'We
rationalize
,' Mackenzie interrupted once again, as though to simplify things for Sam's poor feminine brain. 'Why do you think science was so difficult for our ancestors to come by? It pretty much turns human psychology on its head, doesn't it, Professor Bible?'

You mean the soul, Thomas wanted to say. It turns our soul on its head. Instead he continued as though Mackenzie hadn't spoken—a petty punishment for his speaking out of turn. 'We do these things all the time—
all
of us. But the biggest thing, hands down, is that we confuse agreement with argumentative strength, or even worse, intelligence. Since we can only judge things in terms of our prior judgments, we make what we already believe the yardstick for what's right or wrong.'

Mackenzie chortled. 'Certainly explains the present political situation, wouldn't you say, agent?'

Of course the president was a Democrat.

Sam's face broke into an upside-down smile. 'I'm not sure I—'

'Oh
my
,' Mackenzie interrupted, turning to Thomas. 'You would love to know what we're working on, wouldn't you? A cognitive psychologist? We've been forced to completely abandon all the folk psychological assumptions. The old eliminativists were right! None of the traditional categories are adequate—things are much stranger than you can imagine! I mean, take language—oh-ho! We experience nothing but
smoke
, nothing but smoke!'

Dr Mackenzie, Thomas realized, had a true passion for his work; he simply assumed that Thomas must feel the same. As it happened, this was another common human bias, sometimes called the 'consensus fallacy'.

'Just for example, we've completely isolated the rationalization module in the left hemisphere.'

'Rationalization module…' Sam repeated dubiously. 'Huh?'

'If you shut down the mitigating circuitry,' Mackenzie continued, 'you wouldn't believe the confabulations it generates. Lies, lies, endless lies, each of them completely true as far as the subject is concerned. It's as though each of us has a psychopathic liar built right into our heads! Can you imagine? I mean the evolutionary rationale is plain enough: reproductive success is tied to social status is tied to verbal competition, and so on and so on…' With these last words, he rocked his head from side to side.

'So Ramachandran was wrong?' Thomas asked.

'Ramachandran?' Mackenzie exclaimed. 'Wrong? Please, that's like saying ancient Greek medicine was wrong. "Wrong" is entirely beside the point, at least at this juncture. We've moved so far beyond that, so—'

He suddenly stopped, his open-eyed enthusiasm narrowing into something at once shrewd and sly. He didn't laugh so much as snicker.

'You should be commended,' he said to Sam while waving a finger. 'Bringing another academic with you. You
knew
that I would be more likely to open up if I could talk
shop
, now didn't you? I imagine we eggheads are rather predictably vain, hmm?'

He stubbed out his cigarette with his thumb.

Sam smiled and shook her head. She seemed to make a point of avoiding Thomas's gaze.

Of course
, Thomas thought. Why else would she bring him? For his legendary powers of observation?

He knew the resentment he felt was more a function of the past couple of days than anything else. Hadn't she told him to read between the lines? More importantly, didn't she have an obligation to use every means at her disposal to prevent another Cynthia Powski or Peter Halasz? Coddling Thomas wouldn't be high on her list of priorities simply because it couldn't be.

'Tell me,' Sam asked in a queer voice, 'did you ever
operate
on Neil, Dr Mackenzie?' It was a question that only seemed obvious after she had asked it. Something had to explain Neil's turn to the unthinkable.

Things were moving too quickly.

'Never,' Mackenzie said. 'Why do you ask?'

Thomas stared at him. 'That's the answer you have to give, isn't it?'

'Please… You and I know how this works.'

'Let's just cut to the chase, then,' Thomas said. He knew he was speaking out of anger, that he needed to keep his trap shut, but the words easily outran his horse sense. 'What
can
you tell us, Dr Mackenzie?'

Mackenzie leaned back into his seat, his appraising look shocking for its sudden seriousness. He reached out and withdrew another cigarette. One for the road, as it turned out.

'You know what?' he said, squinting as he ignited it. 'Now that I think about it, precious little.'

'Let me guess,' Sam said. 'It's
all
classified.'

A burst of infectious laughter, framed in roiling smoke. 'Not at all, Agent Logan. Not at all'

'Then what's the problem?'

'Well, agent, here's the thing. I genuinely
like
Neil Cassidy. He's the most brilliant man I've ever known.' His eyes became round with apologetic surprise, as though he'd just stumbled across a disconcerting fact. 'And I've decided that I don't quite like you…'

'But don't you feel betrayed?' Thomas blurted. How had things turned south so quickly?

'Exactly,' Sam added. 'If any of this gets out, you could find yourself without a career, or even worse.'

'Perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing,' Mackenzie replied without missing a beat. 'But I think you and I know the chances of that are pretty slim.'

Thomas looked to Sam, not quite sure what to make of this last comment. Just who was talking shop with whom? But she simply stared at the man, as if weighing some kind of dreadful decision.

Without warning, Dr Mackenzie was on his feet, smoking no-hands, stuffing his Winstons into his suit jacket.

'Well, I'm off,' he said, speaking as though they had just shared a plate of fish and chips. He turned on his heel and made for the door.

Thomas was dumbstruck. 'Mackenzie!' he cried out.

He paid no attention to the other faces in the bar, though he was sure they had all turned toward him. Mackenzie spun, crooked his face forward attentively, waiting to hear what he had to say. 'You do know that'—Thomas glanced nervously at the other patrons—'people, real people, could be hurt if you walk out on us?'

Slow blink. Sad smile. And a response that completely evaded his question.

'Ask yourself, Professor Bible, if you're so certain that the masses have no hope of grasping the Argument, then
why is our friend Neil making it?
He never struck me as particularly optimistic.'

The old man turned to hustle out the entrance, but paused, dragged around by a wagging finger.

'Oh, and Professor Bible…'

'Yes?'

'You should know that I actually envy you, in my way.'