The Siren Project (15 page)

“What programming?” Prescott demanded. “And
where the hell are my clothes?”

“Do you remember what you did since you
came to meet me at the hotel in Washington yesterday morning?” Mitch asked.

“Sure. I was up at congress all day. We’re
covering a state visit by some African leader.”

“Were you on duty all day?”

He thought for a moment. “No, I . . . I had
a meeting, and was doing some background checking for you.”

“Who did you meet?”

Prescott shook his head. “It’s not
important.”

Christa was focused on Prescott. “He
doesn’t want to remember. Something is blocking his memory.”

“It’s important, Mat. Who did you meet?”

“I don’t know. A senator I think. It was a
security matter.”

“Which senator?” Mitch persisted.

“I don’t know,” he replied genuinely
puzzled.

“Do you remember a face?” Christa asked. “A
voice? A building?”

Confusion appeared on his face as he
realized there was a blank spot in his memory. “I remember passing a guard . .
. going up some stairs. I had a piece of paper in my hand, it was a note, it
had a room number, but . . . I don’t remember what was on the paper.”

“Do you remember going into an office?” Mitch
pressed.

“No. I don’t remember anything after
walking along a hall, looking for the senator’s office.”

“Okay Mat, what’s the next thing you
recall?”

Prescott put his head on the carpet and
closed his eyes, thinking back. “I remember talking to you on the telephone. I
was in my apartment.”

“Do you remember how you got to your apartment?”

Again Prescott struggled to remember,
surprised at his own memory loss. “No. The last thing I remember is sitting by
the phone. When it rang, we waited until you spoke to my answering machine,
then he handed me the phone and I told you I had to meet you.”

“We? Who is we?’

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“You said ‘we waited’. You said ‘he’ handed
you the telephone. Who are you talking about?”

“No I didn’t, I was alone in my room . . .
I know I was alone, but someone . . . someone? But I was alone,” Prescott tried
to convince himself of something he knew to be false.

“Mat,” Mitch said. “Do you want to kill me?”

“No,” he said, sincerely. “I don’t
want
to kill you.”

“If I gave you a gun, would you shoot me?”

“Of course,” Prescott said automatically.

“Why? Why would you shoot me?”

“Because I had a gun.”

“Okay Mat, you don’t want to kill me, but
if you had a gun, you would shoot me?”

“That’s right,” Prescott said, relieved something
finally made sense.

“It’s a conditioned response,” Christa
explained. “The Mathew Prescott who is your friend wouldn’t kill you, but put a
gun in his hand and he’ll shoot you as a reflex action.”

“What about Christa? Would you shoot her?”

“Of course.”

Mitch was perplexed. “So why did you try to
shoot yourself last night?”

“I didn't do that.” Prescott wrinkled his
face. “I’ve got a terrible headache.”

“Did you have the headache before you went
to visit the senator?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“What about when you answered the
telephone, when I rang you?”

“Oh yeah, it was the worst hangover I’ve
ever had.”

“Had you been drinking?”

“No, I’d been working. But . . . I
remember, it was a hangover.”

“Why did it have to be a hangover?” Mitch
persisted.

Prescott couldn't answer. His face showed
the depth of his confusion.

“We’re not equipped to deal with this,”
Mitch said. “We’ve got to call Knightly.”

Mitch set up the scrambler attachment
again, dialed the London computer, then pressed several more numbers on the
phone’s key pad that would inform the London relay that it had to on-dial a new
call. He passed the phone to Christa.

“Call him.”

Christa dialed the contact number, which
the London computer dutifully repeated via a new line, then passed the phone
back to Mitch when Knightly answered.

“We need your help,” Mitch said.

“What exactly do you need?”

“One of my contacts in Washington has been .
. . ?” Mitch searched for a word to explain the effect.

“Conditioned?” Knightly offered with a tone
that indicated he was not surprised.

“Yes. He tried to kill me last night. Christa
said he’s a partial. Can you help him?”

“No,” Knightly said emphatically. “You’ll
have to liquidate him. Christa should have told you that.”

“She did. It’s not an option. He’s a friend
of mine and we’re responsible for what’s happened to him. This is an
opportunity to find a solution, or maybe a defense against it.”

“We have no program to reverse the
conditioning process.”

“You’re an egghead, invent one. This guy is
Secret Service. He’s one of the good guys, and he’s fighting it, even though he
doesn’t know he is. He may have valuable information, if we can just unlock it.”

“How much do you know about the
conditioning process?”

“Not a lot.”

“Let me enlighten you. It’s not a mental
state and you can’t take a pill for it. It’s a physical alteration of the
brain’s electrical pathways. We don’t have the technology to deal with
something like that.”

“What about hypnosis?”

“We’ve tried it. It has no lasting effect.”

“Have you tried it on a partial?”

“No, we haven’t. But there's no evidence to
suggest there'd be a different outcome.”

“You could at least try. If it doesn’t
work, there must be some drugs you can test. Or surgery? Or an evil witch
doctor can chant something over his body. Shit, I don’t know, but there’s got
to be a way.”

“People used to think the world was flat, Mitchell.
It wasn’t. Wishing something to be so, doesn't make it that way.”

“Well sitting on your ass all day hiding in
a hole in the ground won’t beat this thing either. Isn’t it about time you
started finding a way to help the victims? Or am I just a stupid flat Earther?”

Knightly was silent for a moment, then said
with a hint of resignation. “Very well. We’ll take a look at him. Where are
you?”

Mitch gave him the address and room number
of their hotel. “I want your word now, he’ll be safe in your hands. No spook
tricks, no what ifs, you’ll protect him.”

“We won’t eliminate him. He will, however,
be a human guinea pig. Any radical treatment we come up with, will be tried on
him. More than likely, the treatment will kill him. Working on the brain is an
extremely risky proposition.”

“I understand. No frontal lobotomies, only
the real stuff. Stuff you think has a chance.”

“Agreed.”

“What are you doing, Mitch?” Prescott demanded.
“I don’t want a frontal lobotomy!”

Mitch switched off his cell phone. “Some
people are coming to help you, Mat.”

“What people? Let me out of here. I don’t
need any help!”

Mitch raised his hand, commanding silence. “One
more word, and I’ll gag you. You don’t want that.”

Prescott shut up.

* * * *

An ambulance pulled up outside the
hotel and two paramedics wheeled a stretcher inside, followed by a scholarly
looking figure in a dark overcoat. The concierge, surprised at their
unannounced arrival, followed them to the elevator. They told him it was an
emergency and to keep the lobby clear, then the elevator doors shut and they
were on their way up.

Mitch let them in. The two paramedics pushed
past him with the stretcher, which had a black metal box fitted with a carry
handle strapped to it. Knightly followed the paramedics, his hands plunged deep
into his coat pockets, nodding to Mitch and Christa as he entered.

When Prescott saw the two paramedics and
the stretcher, he became agitated. “What do you think you’re doing? I work for
the U.S. Government. You can’t do this to me. Let me out of here!”

Knightly approached Christa and gave her a
hug. “How’s my number one student?”

She smiled. “Wishing she was back at
Metapsych, playing your silly mind games.”

“Metapsych?” Mitch asked.

“Later,” Christa said, cutting him off.

One of the paramedics gave Prescott an
injection, while the other paramedic held him down.

“What’s that? What are you doing to me?”

“It’s just a sedative.” the paramedic
explained. “It’ll help you sleep,”

“I don’t want to sleep. Let me up.”

Mitch tried to reassure his friend, “They’re
going to help you, Mat. Just go with it.”

Prescott struggled for a few moments, then
fell fast asleep. Once fully unconscious, Mitch helped the two paramedics untie
Prescott, then slip his arms into a straight jacket. One paramedic unstrapped
the black box and put it on the floor, while Mitch grabbed a pair of shorts and
dragged them onto Prescott’s naked form.

Knightly approached the stretcher, once
Prescott was securely tied to it. He lifted Prescott’s eyelids, judging the
degree of dilation in his eyes, then opened the black box, revealing a display
screen and several neatly coiled wires attached to electrodes. Knightly fitted
the electrodes to Prescott’s temples, then studied the waves patterns that appeared
on the screen.

“What do you think Professor,” one of the
paramedics asked.

Knightly rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “He’s
about seventy percent, judging by the abnormal theta rhythms. Definitely
unstable. Fortunately, he’s only of average intelligence and his beta waves max
out at twenty hertz, so he’s somewhat naturally resistant.”

“You can tell how smart he is, from that
machine?” Mitch asked, genuinely impressed.

Knightly waved the question off
dismissively. “Not precisely, but the general indications are there.” He stood
up and turned to Mitch. “You understand, there are no guarantees? From this
point on, this man is no more than a lab rat to me.”

“Yeah, but a lab rat you’ll take care of? Right?”

“Gus,” Christa said. “Take care of him. Please.”

Knightly looked thoughtfully at Christa,
then nodded, her request clearly having more weight than Mitch’s. “Very well. He’ll
be a well cared for lab rat. You have my word.”

The paramedics pulled a white sheet up to
Prescott’s neck to hide the straight jacket, removed the electrodes, then
wheeled him to the door.

“Where will you take him?” Mitch asked.

“I’ve set up a safe house outside
Baltimore.” Knightly held up a small card in front of Mitch. “This is the
address. Remember it.”

Mitch memorized card, then nodded.

“I’m bringing in some of the best neurological
people in the country. Not that it'll do any good,” Knightly said as he picked
up the black metal box. He said his goodbyes, then followed the paramedics down
to the waiting ambulance.

Mitch locked the door behind him. “We check
out in five minutes.”

“Then what?”

“Then we find ourselves a senator.”

Mitch listened with rising
frustration.

“Rayborne’s electronic diary has been
erased,” Mouse reported via the London relay. “I tapped the local network his
secretary’s computer is on. Emails, appointments, all that stuff is gone. Even
the logs have been deleted. It was a very professional wipe.”

Mitch spoke to Mouse as he circled Capitol
Hill in a hire car. “What about his secretary? Do we know who she is, how I can
contact her?”

“Her name is Lucille Carmody. You can
contact her at the morgue. She was killed last night in a drive by shooting.”

He winced, looking sideways at Christa. “They
killed Rayborne’s secretary.”

She nodded, as if she expected it.

Mitch's attention returned to the cell
phone. “What about Prescott’s movements?”

“No joy. Telephone records show he made no
calls on either his home phone or his cell, not even the call he made to you.”

“Brick walls everywhere,” Mitch concluded.

“I tell you, Mitch, these are the same
freaks hiding the alien technology down in area 51. They work the same way–”

“Later Mouse,” Mitch cut him off before he
could dive into his alien conspiracy spiel. “How fast can you tell me if
there’s an African diplomat visiting Washington.”

“Hold on,” Mouse fell silent for almost a
minute. “The Foreign Minister of Angola is here looking for aid money to build
a hydro electric power station on the Cuanza River. We’ll only give him the
money if Angola closes a terrorist training base in their territory.”

Mitch looked impressed. “How’d you find all
that so fast?”

“I just checked The Washington Post website.
You want the name of the hotel he’s staying at?”

“Yeah, give me the lot.”

* * * *

A black van fitted with six aerials
was parked across the street from the Angolan Foreign Minister’s hotel. Mitch
and Christa studied it as they cruised slowly past in the car.

“You think they’d learn to hide the
antennas,” Christa said dryly.

Mitch parked the car around the corner,
then they walked back toward the van. He knocked loudly on the rear doors and
waited. A moment later, a swarthy, pock marked man stuck his head out. When he
saw Mitch, his face hardened.

“Mitchell! I Thought your ass would be in
jail by now.”

“Still getting the shittiest jobs in town,
I see!” Mitch snapped.

Special Agent Sivetta furrowed his brow. “What
do you want, Mitchell?”

“I’m looking for Ventura.”

“He ain’t here.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“He's never been here. He’s riding a desk. Now
beat it, I’m busy?”

“Isn’t Ventura Prescott’s partner?”

“Not since March. Why? Do you know where
that goof off Prescott is?”

“In hospital. Gunshot wound.”

Sivetta’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It
better be serious! Leaving me stuck pulling double duty like this, he damn well
better be on a respirator.”

“It’s serious enough,” Mitch said soberly. “Don’t
expect to see him any time soon.”

Sivetta looked inside the van. “Call it in.
Tell them we need a replacement.”

“Okay,” a woman’s voice sounded from
inside.

“So who shot him?” Sivetta asked, annoyed
that Prescott had a good reason for being absent.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Did
you see him yesterday? Do you know where he went.”

Sivetta gave Mitch a distrustful look. “You're
a civilian. What are you doing investigating a shooting?”

“Just looking out for a buddy.”

“I haven't seen him. Now get the hell away
from my vehicle.” Sivetta slammed the door shut behind him.

Christa gave Mitch a perplexed look. “I
thought you said these people were your friends?”

“Some of them are. Just not him.” Mitch
banged on the van’s door again.

A moment later, Sivetta appeared again. “I won't
tell you twice.”

“I’m not leaving until you answer my
question,” Mitch said with a trace of menace in his voice.

“Is that right? I assume you know how much
trouble you could get into, interfering with a Secret Service protection
detail?”

The door opened wider, and a woman pushed
past Sivetta and jumped down onto the road beside them.

“Hello Mitchell,” she said, looking Christa
up and down, wondering if they were together.

“Hi Laurie. Must be tough, stuck in a van
with him all day.”

“I've had worse. Prescott went to meet a senator,
at his office yesterday morning. There was a message waiting for him when he
got here. We haven’t seen him since.”

“Do you know the senator’s name?”

“Fraser, I think.”

“Never heard of him,” Mitch said. “Who is
he?”

She shrugged. “A nobody from the mid west.”

“He’s on the Appropriations Committee,”
Christa said. “Something of a hawk.”

“Any reason why he’d want to talk to
Prescott?” Mitch asked.

“None I can think of. We’ve never covered
him.”

“That’s enough,” Sivetta said irritably. “Mitchell,
if I hear you've been bothering a United States senator, watch out. You got a
lot of enemies around here. Don’t forget it!”

“I got a lot enemies everywhere.”

Sivetta nodded for Laurie to get back in
the van, then he slammed the door shut again.

“He’s a charm school graduate,” Christa
observed dryly.

“He’s a first class pain in the ass,” Mitch
said, starting to walk back to the car.

As soon as they were out of ear shot of the
van, he called Mouse and had him start checking on Senator Fraser.

* * * *

The hotel was suitably opulent in a
way that would satisfy the rich and powerful and overawe visiting dignitaries
from foreign countries. A red felt notice board, framed in gold, announced the
luncheon’s guest speaker was one George Washington Fraser, senator from Kansas,
just as Mouse had predicted. Mitch knew from the hotel plans he'd studied that
the ballroom doors were to his right. They were closed and unattended.

“No guards on ballroom doors,” he whispered
just loud enough for the small microphone in his lapel to pick up.

“Check,” Christa’s voice sounded from his
earpiece.

It had cost him more than ten thousand
dollars from the account EB had set up for him, but Mitch had acquired, under
Mouse’s guidance, the equipment necessary to permit contact with the senator.

Just then, a hotel bell boy burst out of
the ballroom doors and hurried across the lobby. For a moment, Mitch glimpsed
the crowded ballroom beyond, filled with round tables covered with white tablecloths
and surrounded by mostly men, sitting and listening to an unseen speaker.

“At least one security guard near the
entrance,” he said.

Mitch saw the plain clothes guard for only
an instant, but knew from the way he watched the room that he was security. He
wasn’t sure if he was hotel security, or the senator’s own, but he had no doubt
what he was there for.

“Where there’s one, there’s more,” Christa
said from the car waiting in the hotel’s underground car park. She had dropped
Mitch off a block away and let him walk in, while she drove in separately. They'd
already decided that anyone watching would now be looking for a man and a woman
together, so keeping apart was in itself some disguise.

Mitch went to the front desk and checked
in.

“Will you be staying long, sir?” the
receptionist asked.

“Just the one night. And I’d like a room on
the top floor please.”

“Certainly, sir. And the name?”

“Mathew Prescott.”

Mitch watched her as she duly noted down
his name.

“That’s Prescott with two T’s,” he
corrected.

She smiled and fixed her spelling, then
looked up. “Do you have a credit card, sir?”

“I’ll be paying cash, all in advance.” The
girl’s eyes bulged when Mitch produced a wad of several thousand dollars and
handed it to her to count.

Once she had put the money away, she handed
him his room key. “Suite 1805, sir. The bellboy will show you to your room.”

“That’s not necessary, I know the way.” Mitch
took the key, then leaned closer and nodded toward the ballroom. “The senator
is a good friend of mine, I was wondering if I could leave a message for him? One
you could have delivered to him.”

The young woman smiled. “Of course, sir.”

She passed him a pad of hotel stationery. Mitch
wrote quickly:

Senator,

I’m waiting in room
1805.

Mathew Prescott

Mitch folded the paper and handed it to the
receptionist, who placed it in an envelope and sealed it immediately without
looking at it.

“I’ll have it delivered to him right away, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Mitch walked toward the elevators. “The
bait is on the hook. Is Mouse ready?”

In the car, Christa picked up the cell
phone, bouncing the signal through London as usual. “Ready?”

“All set,” Mouse replied from his computer
screen in LA.

“He’s ready,” Christa relayed over the
short range radio.

Mitch stepped into the elevator, in case
the receptionist was watching. He rode up one floor, then immediately took the
elevator back down to the ground floor. When he came out, the receptionist was
busy with another guest, and didn’t see him walk toward the lounge chairs on
the far side of the lobby. He settled into a high backed leather chair, picked
up a copy of the Washington Post from a small table nearby and pretended to
read. Within a minute, a bellboy carrying an envelope crossed from reception
and entered the ballroom.

“The hook is in the water,” Mitch
whispered, for Christa to relay to Mouse.

The bellboy came out and returned to
reception, then several minutes later, four clean cut men in dark suits emerged
from the ballroom and hurried towards the elevators. One of them was the man he'd
seen at the ballroom doors before he'd checked in, while Mitch recognized several
others from the photographs Prescott had given him of the Secondment 721 team. Mitch
raised the paper a little higher to ensure it covered his face, then when the
four guards stepped into the elevator, he said, “Four on the hook. Snag and bag
them.”

Christa repeated the message to Mouse, who
grabbed control of the hotel elevator system, simulating an electrical fault. All
the elevators in the hotel stopped and a recorded message played in each
elevator, apologizing for the short delay, which would be fixed immediately. Mouse
was careful to ensure that anyone looking at the elevator control system would
see the problem was a technical fault, not the work of a skilled hacker. He
felt burned after losing the elevators in Mitch’s hotel, and was taking
precautions against being caught out a second time.

“If I can’t beat you with brute force,” he said
to his invisible enemy, “Maybe I can fool you.” Satisfied that no elevators
were moving, Mouse spoke into his headset's mike. “The fish are high and dry.”

When Christa repeated the message, Mitch
put the paper down. “Okay, I’m moving. Come up.”

He stood and headed for the ballroom door
while Christa climbed out of the car and hurried up the ramp to the road,
ignoring the elevators. She carried the cell phone that connected them to Mouse
in one hand and her handbag in the other. Like Mitch, she had an ear piece, a
tiny microphone in her lapel, and a small radio hidden in her clothes.

Mitch pushed the ballroom doors open and
slid unobtrusively in. As he expected, the door was now unguarded, and there
were no sleeve whispering spooks standing back watching the room.

Only four guards
, he thought, realizing the senator had no reason to think he was a
target.

Sitting at a table near the rostrum was the
senator, a clean shaven man in his late fifties with distinguished gray hair
and lines under his eyes disguised by metal frame glasses. According to Mouse’s
research, the senator’s career had been long, if nondescript, characterized by
an equal absence of scandal and policy. Mitch had a suspicion that anyone that
clean, that inconspicuous, was that way by design. It made Fraser a potentially
formidable enemy, who pulled strings and manipulated events from the shadows.

“I’m in position,” Christa reported as she
slid into a chair opposite the elevators.

“Roger. I have the whale in sight.”

Waiters moved from table to table, serving
coffee to the guests while the dessert plates were being cleared. On many
tables, men were moving about, mingling with other rich and powerful people,
making deals and contacts. A man sitting beside the senator rose, shook hands
with him, then moved off to engage in other conversations.