Gaines stared in disgust. “Can’t you just leave him as he is, but make him want to work for us?”
The scientist shook his head. “I have to destroy his personality before we can control the new one, or it won’t last. The core personality will reassert eventually and blow the entire program. We’ve done this before. I know the pitfalls of the procedure. He’ll be the youngest I’ve ever programmed and his will take the shortest time. The younger they are, the easier it is to break them.”
Gaines cursed and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind to bounce open and shiver on its hinges. In the room, the boy lay twitching.
Chapter 15
Senator Michael Patrick De Rosier waited in the big empty house, although he wasn’t alone. The entire FBI team was there in the study waiting on the phone call. There had been several, all crank calls looking to collect on the million-dollar reward, but all had been false leads.
Felice Rickover was there with her two Secret Service agents, her face was a mask of terror, and tear tracks. She sobbed quietly into her hands, her cell phone dialing Danny’s voice mailbox endlessly. The State Police of Washington Metro PD were in and out constantly, murmuring to the Chief of Police. He was speaking to the Senator. Ms. Penny was organizing coffee and snacks, trying to get the Senator to eat something. His face was haggard, blued circles under his eyes, deep lines etched around his generous mouth. He looked shell-shocked, his usual air of quiet competence completely gone. Traces of tears showed on his face, his hands worried his son’s backpack and two used paperbacks.
“Oh God,” he cried. “Please, don’t take Danny from me!”
One of the agents muttered to the Chief of Police, “Sir, is there a doctor handy in case the Senator collapses? He looks like he’s on the verge of collapse or heart attack.”
“There’s team of paramedics outside,” the head cop said quietly.
A phone rang and the people in the room checked their cells. The lead SAIC listened, his lips thinned and he jerked his head to his second, whispering to him. The Senator watched them like a mouse watched the serpent, was backing up into the wall and the Chief’s arms as the SAC said, “Senator, I’m so sorry. They found blood at a scene near the Verizon store – an old boat salvage yard. They found Danny’s fingerprints on the door, the phone and the table.”
The Senator gasped, “How much blood?”
“A lot, Senator. The blood spatter CSI said more than a boy his age could survive.”
De Rosier’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed. His body didn’t hit the floor, a dozen arms reached out to grab him and in minutes, he was on his way to Walter Reed. Outside, no one noticed the scrawny blue dog that lingered behind the rose bushes and hid from any people. Inside, the SA and SAC were scrambling for details on the alleged murder scene. The SAIC left two agents behind to man the phones, the rest he ordered back to the city and the salvage yard.
Jake James went later, after he had seen to the Senator and handed over his shift to the next Secret Service agent. What he saw in that filthy trailer stunned him. There was so much blood splattered, pooled and dripping that he knew Danny had to be dead, beaten and stabbed or worse. There was so much of it, he felt nauseous.
“Oh God,” he murmured. “They didn’t even leave us his body.”
The FBI agent said. “You don’t want the Senator to see this.”
“Never,” James vowed. “If it takes me the next forty years, I’m going to track down the fucker that did this and rip him into little pieces.”
“I hate kid crimes,” the essay cursed. “How is he doing?”
“The Senator’s tough, he’ll come through. He’ll use this to give him a reason to fight, to avenge his son. Some tough shit will come out of this against criminals. Mike will fight back,” James said. “It’s the funeral I’m worried about. That will drive home his epic loss.”
“His wife, and now his only child. There’ll be a funeral?”
“Ms. Penny is already planning a service.”
“No point in hoping,” the agent said flatly, looking around the bloody room. He saw there were dog prints in the blood. “There was a witness.”
“What?” James asked sharply.
“Dog prints. Small, about 35 pounds. See the dog hair on the couch? Black, gray and white hairs. I took samples.”
“Why?”
“Forensics. If we find the killer, we can match hairs found on their clothes with hairs from the crime scene.”
“Too bad the dog can’t talk.”
With a straight face, the SA said, “eyewitness accounts are invariably unreliable.”
*****
Two weeks later, a small crowd gathered at an old Virginia cemetery where some of the stones were as old as the late 1790s and had names that echoed with history, tracing back to revolutionary times. It was a beautiful place with century-old oak trees on a small hill, quiet, and laden with crape myrtles and roses, white graveled paths and mausoleums that exuded coziness and eternal rest, not ‘here lies death’. There were stone benches and carved angels, the scent of jasmine, and honeysuckle. Bees made lazy spirals from petal to pedal. The sky overhead was a blue so pure it hurt to stare at it, no trace of white marred its perfection yet a silver moon showed crystal-clear against the day sky.
No one wore black, but they were dressed soberly in suits, ties and dresses. Carried flowers, photos and favorite remembrances to the gravesite of the Senator’s wife. They hadn’t disturbed the plot, there was no body, and only a few ounces of blood left of his son so they merely came to see the boy’s name, birth date, and death newly carved on the stone. White granite, it sparkled as if the sun kissed it. Felice Rickover could not stop crying. Ms. Penny, the Senator’s aide openly sobbed. Michael De Rosier stood, his face a mask, a muscle in his cheek jumping with seething rage as his eyes traced the fresh carving.
Dantan Townsley De Rosier.
Born March 1, 1996
Died April 12, 2010
‘Beloved son, in you I found my courage.’
One by one, agents, friends and family left their gifts on the soft grass and pressed the Senator’s hand as they departed, save for his security detail. Even Felice, her Dad and Ms. Penny did not intrude on his silent grief.
Chapter 16
“Danny, do you hear me?” There was a voice in my skull, so loud I couldn’t ignore it.
“Yes,” I said and the voice quieted. I couldn’t think, I was floating somewhere, no light, no reference point, except for my own frantic heartbeat and the voice. I thought I should know it; fear raced through me and the only thing I could remember was my Uncle Townsley, telling me to make a room for myself, an impregnable vault.
Instead, I reached out. Screaming, searching for a mind, any mind where I could still be a part of the living world and the only thing I could even touch was so alien that I fell back sobbing in terror for the mind of a roach could not shelter me. Wherever I was, no other animals were close enough to enter their minds.
Brick by brick I built it, laying one atop the other against the titanium shell of girders, surrounded by nuclear bombproof concrete buried a hundred feet in the ground. I built the door of titanium and steel balanced on a ball bearing hinge so only my finger’s touch could open it. When I turned the key in the lock, I was inside, sitting in the room with my memories, where no one could touch or hurt me. I kept an image of my Dad in front of me and it brought me courage.
*****
The head scientist in charge of the project was a PhD at the age of twenty-two, his specialty was brain wave phenomenon and mind-altering techniques grossly called brainwashing, but the techniques had come light years from the Manchurian Candidate days. His name was Everett Hawthorne, his fellow researcher Doctor Marian Cohen, herself a neurologist and psychologist.
Their subject was three days in the SDPT, (sensory deprivation tank) when the brain monitor flat-lined, to a chorus of alarms.
“It’s too soon,” he gaped. “Three days
is too soon for the core to disintegrate. We have to get him out, now.”
Running for the room at the end of the corridor, they had the tank opened and drained in seconds and hauled the boy out onto the floor. He was naked, dripping with saline, leads attached all over his bald skull, pulse points, heart and groin so that he looked like one of the characters from the Terminal Man.
His brain waves were flat, his heart in de-fib as a crash team joined the two. As they started CPR and established a heartbeat on the first try, picked up the boy and rushed him into the OR where they hooked him onto the cardiac monitors, IVs and drugs to bring him up but not quite aware. Pain meds for the aches that surely he would feel from both rib cracking CPR and cardiac stimulants.
“Can you hear me, Danny?” Doctor Hawthorne asked as he flicked a penlight into the dual colored eyes.
“There is no Danny,” the eerie little voice returned.
Cohen murmured, “alpha waves are flat, feedback is completely different from baseline, Everett.”
“He broke in three days? That’s not normal,” he protested. “The super id is usually too entrenched by age 10 to reprogram that quickly.”
“He’s a kid, Ev. Your youngest subject was twenty-two and he took 6 ½ days. Truth is, you don’t know how age plays a part in the dis-associative stage.”
“Yeah, well, I never had one flat line on the cardiac, either,” he returned. “Do we even have a profile set up?”
“I’ve been working on it. They want someone they can easily control and use as an agent, someone quiet, non-obtrusive and capable of blending in.”
“How complete is it?”
“It’s not, it is bare-bones. I have a computer fleshing it out.”
“It’d better be done soon, I don’t want to leave him blank for too long, it makes it harder to download the new personality.”
“You have a name?”
“Daniel. I want to keep as close to his real name for the programming success.”
“Daniel, it is.”
The boy lay there with absolutely no reaction on his face, no emotion, no personality.
“What about his eyes,” she asked. “They’re unique and memorable.”
“We haven’t succeeded in changing eye color or replacement eyes yet, Marian. Best we can do with them are contacts. Or remove the eye itself.”
She shook her head. “A kid missing an eye is also memorable. Besides, we don’t know how that will affect his talent.”
He fiddled with the lines and watched the monitors, pleased with the strengthening heartbeat and brain waves.
“How are you feeling, Danny?”
“Don’t know,” the flat voice said. “There is no ‘I’.”
“Your name is Daniel. Daniel Atkinson.”
“Okay. My name is Daniel Atkinson,” the boy closed his eyes and his breathing slowed as his body relaxed.
“Keep an eye on him, Marian. I’m going to report to the Director, and let him know we are ready to start the next stage.”
“You expect any more setbacks?”
He shuddered. “I hope not. Be a shame to lose this one. First case of real psychic ability I’ve been able to document.”
*****
Mitchell Gaines wasn’t in his office, the labs in the research division of HS, but in the backseat of a black Denali sandwiched between two big men in dark suits, sunglasses, and shoulder holsters. They had flashed FBI credentials, but he knew most of the special agents in the area, and he didn’t recognize of either them or the driver. He suspected they were either NSA or NIA.
“Where we headed?” Gaines asked expecting no answer.
“Director wants to see you,” goon number one on his left answered.
“Director Walters?” He named the present head of the FBI. Neither man replied. “Couldn’t we do this with a phone call?”
“The Director will answer your questions.”
The drive was over an hour, heading out of the city towards the Blue Ridge Parkway and the complex he knew to be a government facility called Spook-Land. He was escorted inside the sprawling high-tech security to an inner office reached by key cards, hand scanners and retinal readers. Against the wall was a chair that cost more than a luxury car behind a desk worth a new Mercedes, and the man who entered the black on chrome office through the rear door was of medium height, wore a Colonel’s uniform. He was instantly recognizable as Colonel Mathias Washington Pierce. He stared at Gaines before he sat down.
“Colonel.”
“Gaines, what’s going on at HS and in their R&D labs?”
Gaines spread his hands. “How would I know? I do office work.”
“You’re working on something called the ‘Ed Project’ with a forty million dollar budget. What is it and what’s it got to do with President Rickover’s assassination attempt, Senator De Rosier son’s kidnap and murder?”
“What makes you think I know anything about it?”
The Director threw memos and reports down on the desktop with Gaines name on the requests for a detailed search of De Rosier’s background, the case report on the assassination attempt and medical records of the child, Dantan. All with Gaines’ clearances and signatures. He said mildly, “we are the NSA, Gaines. We’ve been around a hell of a lot longer than Homeland Security.”
“So, what do you want?”
“I want to know what the ‘Ed Project’ is.”
Gaines explained and the Colonel listened without any sign of skepticism or disbelief. When the HS agent was done, the colonel nodded once. Said, “Want to continue on the project?”
“Of course, sir.”
“You’ve a choice, Gaines. Work for me or be pushed out.”
“Pushed out? What do you mean?”
He looked at his watch. “As of twenty minutes ago, a black ops team hit your R&D department. They will remove the subject, the doctors, all computer data and files on this ‘Ed Project’ transporting everything to a secure location of my choosing. I will be in charge of the ‘Chameleon Project’. There will be a substantial increase in pay and security clearance. If you come on board.”
“Did you make the same offer to the doctors?”
The Colonel shrugged, his gray eyes lacking any sign of remorse or compassion. They were as cold as a gun barrel. “They are no longer with the project. They resigned due to their objections.”
“And the Director, Oliver Sustain? What do I tell him about my change of employment?”
“The two doctors, Cohen and Hawthorne e-mailed the Director with news of the subject’s death. It seems the boy coded. Heart failure. CPR cardiac shock was administered with no results. Subject was incinerated after a thorough autopsy.
“The computers and cameras will back up the scenario. Both scientists perished in a lab fire. It should just be hitting the news in the next half hour.”
“Was I in this lab fire?” Gaines asked grimly.
“No. You were asked to report to the Director’s office to confirm the boy’s death and was involved in a minor car accident where you sustained a minor concussion and a broken arm. You’re taken to Walter Reed, treated and released. Are now officially on leave, pending disability where you will resign with a full pension and move to Dallas, Texas.”
“Dallas? Why Dallas?”
“Because, according to our expert brain designers, the boy is fourteen and requires at least four years to become mature enough to activate. Dallas is not a city where either you, the Senator or any of the family’s circle had contact.
“How do you feel about kids?”
“Why?”
“It’s been determined that it would be preferable for the child to be raised with an adoptive family, in a normal social structure. We don’t want him placed just anywhere. You’re married, in a stable relationship and your wife wants kids. She can’t have any.”
“How do you know that?” Gaines snapped angrily.
The Colonel quirked an eyebrow. “We know everything about you, Mitchell, includin
g your application to join us after 9/11.”
“You turned me down,” Mitchell Gaines pointed out.
“As did the Secret Service and the FBI. On my say so. I wanted you sufficiently hungry to be my man.”
“And I am now?”
“I can give you the man responsible for your brother’s death, Mitchell. With this… project, we can track them down and dispose of him and his cohorts.”
“You think this kid reads minds, Colonel? He doesn’t. He can’t get into the Kremlin or Al Qaeda headquarters or the Pentagon. You can’t make a super spy out of him. He’s not one of those guys like Men Who Stare at Goats.”
“I know what he is, Gaines,” the Colonel’s eyes burned hot as molten steel. “I know exactly what he is. I knew his uncle, Townsley Hutton. Went to school together. I knew Evangeline, too.” He turned to the back wall, spoke over his shoulder. “You’ll be airlifted straight to a safe house somewhere in the Midwest until the boy stabilizes and is ready to meet you in Dallas. We’ll take care of the details, your house, and your wife.” His eyes flickered as the door behind Gaines opened, and he turned around to see a man in a white lab coat, stick him in the neck. He collapsed without a sound.
The Colonel said tersely, “Minor concussion, broken arm, but don’t damage it permanently. He needs to be able to shoot and make the physicals.”
“Complete memory traces?” The white coated professional queried.
“Career move after the car accident. Wife pushing for less hazardous duty, job at high tech computer consulting, General Fiber-dynamics. Make him a Systems Analyst Grade 4. He has a degree in robotics and computer science.”
“On the project?”
“Yes. He’ll be the subject’s adoptive father.”
The lab tech looked down at the unconscious agent. “Big guy. He FBI?”
“HS. Make sure he’s ready by Friday. Rickover is doing a memorial for the Senator’s son on TV and pleading for help to solve the murder. I have to be there in Washington, and I want all trace of this gone before then.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll need a team to transport him.”
The Colonel waved a hand. “Get what you need. Just don’t scratch the furniture.”
Chapter 17
Mitchell Gaines grimaced as he banged his arm for the third time as he wandered the house behind the real estate agent. Jasmine, his wife was in a short skirt and jacket of pale lime. With her dark hair and blue eyes, she was sexy enough to make him drool if his damn head and arm hadn’t awakened with a vengeance. He barely remembered the crash, only woke up in the ambulance on the way to Walter Reed. The EMT said he missed a deer and swerved head-on into a venerable old maple tree on the curve to his house out in the Maryland wooded burbs. Apparently, he was on the way to or from his boss’s office with important news. Couldn’t remember that either.