Chaingang

36

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The office was beautifully done. He had been in enough CEO and directorate executive suites and boardrooms to know this one had cost serious crown jewels. Not your run-of-the-penthouse leather-and-chrome Mies van der Roe-buck barcelona knockoffs and fake Manets. There were genuine antiques and real masters on the walls.

The two silent men who flanked him escorted him through the kings’ throne room past the most beautifully ornate Wooten desk he'd ever seen, through a plush silk-walled anteroom where a tiny but unmistakable Braque was enshrined under subtle track portrait spots.

He was seated in the presence, across a polished cross section of rare wood approximately the size of a modular Rondesic home, and allowed a moment to gather whatever was left of his wits. A fierce neon by someone he didn't recognize, and a wonderful Larry Rivers, flanked the Man.

“Grant Silberman?” he said, with a question on the end, but it was clearly rhetorical. He tried to look sincere, contrite, studious, and worthy of forgiveness, all without changing anything in his face. “Aka Robert Newman, aka Christopher Sinclair. Chief of Section—” he made it sound like Chief Dunderhead—"and survivor of the debacle?"

“Yes, sir,” he answered, quietly.

“Matters not.” He gestured, and gold winked. “You know the old saying—shoot them all and you'll always get the guilty.” The Man smiled, and poison dripped. “Not that it will have any exculpatory value, but just for some semblance of an explanation, how did Clandestine Services ever obtain the responsibility for the creation of anything as insane as a domestic-based school for hit men?"

He decided—fuck it—he'd just give straight answers and damn the torpedoes. To a point, anyway. The brain implant and their “ace” would remain in-house secrets.

“When the idea of a training program of this sort was first broached a quarter century ago, it was quite natural for it to come under the military intelligence umbrella. We were at war, unofficially, but at war nonetheless, and of course, it was a question of eminent domain. This would be the sphere of operations where such things should rightfully take place, so it was within Clandestine Services that the responsibility for the initial program fell."

“Were the initial stages of the program documented, and if so, in what form?"

“You mean memoranda from on high? Written orders?"

“When options were discussed, when the various beginnings of the program took place, were records kept?"

“Yes. There were many special memoranda, minutes of meetings, and general notes—which in turn would become support documents and position papers. The sensitivity of such documentation was such that many records were limited to only one copy, with a carefully monitored ‘subscription’ list. The lab people and the R & D people had their own records, naturally, so all we really saw would be the memos—their projections or appreciations of program development and personnel."

“Do you know if such records are still extant, and if so, where?"

“No, sir."

“An educated guess as to where such records might exist?"

“The head of the research and development for the project was a doctor who was working for the government, but I believe he is deceased. I have no idea. Presumably all records were destroyed due to the nature of the matter."

“How could such a program be put into play, given the enormity of horror with which most of us would receive anything along these lines?"

“It's difficult to explain how it all developed—these things develop over time and—"

“To play with human lives as if they were tokens on a game board! How could any of you live with yourselves?"

“I was following orders. In the military and in other—"

“The Nazis said the same thing. How does that excuse the killing you personally sanctioned?"

“I was doing my job. Nothing more. We were responsible to our government to create a team of expert, professional killers. Individuals capable of the most sensitive assassinations. We did not have such men. We had people with martial skills, law enforcement skills, men who could go to war for their country or things of this nature, but we did not have what the Committee for State Security or the SDECE—or for that matter, the Mossad—had. We were mandated to structure a program and get it rolling, and that's what we did. Many of us might have shared your horror at the idea of it, but we did our job. We were good soldiers."

“What made you think you could get away with it? What were the precedents for such a thing?"

“Well, there were precedents. There were parallel programs such as MK ULTRA, and the top secret STAR RACER. Those were programs created by the United States government to create killing machines, robot assassins, whatever you want to call them. But in our case we didn't want robot, we wanted experts. And it was ... extremely difficult. But as to what made us think we could get away with it—we were building the program around a man who'd done just that for twenty years. He'd killed, again and again, and clearly he'd been able to get away with it. We wanted to learn what he knew, to study him, and to apply what we could learn to similar persons whom the government would employ for that work."

“So you decided to study a mass murderer?"

“Yes, Sir."

“And no one in Clandestine Services demurred? Everybody thought this was perfectly okay, this madness your superiors were proposing?"

“No, sir. There were many who thought it was evil, that it would be an awful disaster. But the program was going to be put in place over the protests of any analyst or tactical adviser or researcher. And when you're in an explosive program and under time constraints, the bureaucracy is even more quick to find scapegoats than usual. The ones who didn't see the program as workable, or who were too critical, they had a way of becoming part of the problem, and suddenly being transferred or demoted. There were only one or two appropriate responses—when you were asked if the thing would work, you said ‘yes’ or ‘can do.’”

“Who was the force behind this program? There must have a guiding maniac who shoved this massacre through the bureaucracy?"

“There were many people who were forces behind the program, both in the military and out of it. Generals. People in intelligence. Admirals. Think-tank people. I'd say the doctor who ran the primary subject was the main person in the civilian sector. Everyone was looking to him to make it work, to establish control parameters and so on."

“Did this doctor, and we presume you mean Dr. Norman, answer to anyone higher up?"

“Yes, sir. He would have answered to the NSC and to the president, and to the director."

“The director of Clandestine Services?"

“Yes, sir."

“But presumably he directed that the subject be freed, and be encouraged to murder civilians, is that correct?"

“Yes."

“As chief of section, you were responsible for carrying out the orders of putting this killer in place, and of restraining his activities within a certain area?"

“Yes, sir."

“What resources were brought into the area to see that those activities would be confined to the specific area of operations?"

“We had over two hundred covert operations officers in place, over a hundred hunter-killer teams armed with silenced M3A1 machine guns, every high-tech air-land-sea surveillance device imaginable, any equipment or communications or transport mode we could wish for."

“And you thought this would be enough to keep a mass murderer within a certain geographical area?” The man asking the questions was incredulous.

“No, sir. We thought that because of the controls involved—the information the subject had been given free access to—that he'd operate in that zone for a minimal time, but when he attempted to escape, that he would be terminated."

“Uh-huh. That's what we're getting at. What made you think you could stop him—just because you had manpower and equipment?"

“We had him tracked every minute of the time the subject was in the killing zone. Overflights, satellite technology, infrared—we had the subject under a microscope ... It seemed like he could be contained.” The temptation to tell this bureaucratic stuffed shirt about the implant was almost overwhelming, but both the need-to-know criteria and the knowledge that he'd have to invent a plausible reason for OMEGASTAR malfunctioning were sufficient incentive to dissemble.

“Let's recap: A doctor working in the prison system convinces you and the rest of your outfit that a known serial killer can be manipulated like a lab experiment. That while he—and let me quote the record here—'and while he cannot be controlled, he can be handled by the manipulation of his hatred for humans, and his strong protective urges for animals.’ That this could be achieved by—again I'm quoting—'a presentation of data which would effectively target specific individuals for assassination. Subject would be informed that targets lived in a community which had been carefully zoned for his protection, if he stayed within a twenty-five-mile radius. Subject would be transported to and set free in this area of operation, and his killing techniques would be surveilled and monitored to be studied and analyzed later. This would present the service with a unique opportunity to produce a fully documented clinical study of a mass murderer's behavioristic modes, in a civilian setting, under textbook conditions. Was that about the size of it?"

“Yes. It would be a dual operation, a ‘field appraisal’ of an actual series of premeditated assassinations, and because there had been some problems in the securing of a location for the assassination school, which had involved the termination with prejudice of certain indigenous personnel, the actions of the subject would serve as cover."

“But what about the killing of innocents? What about the danger to the community?"

“These were deemed acceptable risk factors."

“But ... even if such a school had to exist, why did it have to be built in this particular country town? Why couldn't it have been located in any suitably desolate locale?"

“There were several sites which were geographically suitable, sufficiently low population density, heartland centrality, that type of thing, quick access to major airports—the various logistical and geographical criteria were met. Then after what we called the “spoon-feeds” were done and we had the communities where a school could be put in place, each one was investigated for prevalence of animal abuses and so on, which were the control factors."

“So you had your location and your mad-dog killer working for you, and all the cameras going, and two hundred people in the bushes with machine guns—and not only do you idiots let a madman slay fifty civilians, you let him get away!"

“Yes, sir."

"But how can that be?"

“We fucked up.” He wondered how the wife and kid would like it in Reykyavik.