Crooked River

55

After the chopper had landed in what appeared to be the inner courtyard of an industrial plant, they had been carried out, still bound, and placed in wheelchairs, to which they were additionally strapped. Escorted by half a dozen men carrying rifles and automatic weapons, they’d been pushed through seemingly endless cinder-block hallways and up an elevator, to arrive at a strikingly elegant room — Persian rugs, a massive desk flanked by flags, with paintings on the walls and gilded furniture.

Behind the desk sat an old man wearing military fatigues. Their escort halted them twenty feet from the desk. The old man rose slowly, painfully. Gladstone could see that where his name, rank, and service would have been on his fatigues; the labels had been removed, leaving darker patches. His collar sported three torn holes on each side. The man’s square, granite face was careworn, and tiny veins sprinkled his cheeks. He looked eighty, maybe older. What little hair he had left, fringing a liver-spotted pate, had been cut so short he seemed almost bald. Outside, the storm had intensified tremendously, but the thick concrete walls shielded them to the point where only a faint, muffled moaning came through.

“Welcome,” the man said, his voice anything but welcoming. “I am General Smith.”

Gladstone said nothing and neither did Pendergast. She glanced at the FBI agent. His face was pale, unreadable.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your lab associate, Dr. Gladstone.”

“What ‘happened’ is that you murdered him.”

He sighed and gave a small shrug. “Our work here is of the utmost importance. Regrettable things sometimes happen.”

Gladstone started to speak again but the general overrode her. “We have so little time, and much important work that needs doing. I shall escort you both to the laboratory. That will be much more convenient.” He turned and walked slowly to the far door of the room. Soldiers pushed their wheelchairs, following the old man out of the elegant room and down a hallway, through a set of double doors and into a dazzling laboratory, brightly lit, with gleaming medical equipment such as one would find in an intensive care unit. Two orderlies and a male nurse were in the lab and they glanced up, apparently surprised to see them. Another man stepped through a metal door in the back of the lab. He cradled a small plastic case in his arms. The place smelled strongly of methyl alcohol and iodopovidone.

The general turned. “It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Smith.”

“Lot of Smiths around here,” Gladstone said sarcastically.

“Names are immaterial.”

Dr. Smith stepped forward. He was small and brisk, with round tortoiseshell glasses slightly smoked, dressed in dazzling white. With a shock of brilliantined black hair and an upturned nose, he made Gladstone think of a malignant, mincing leprechaun. An eager smile creased his small face. He gave a short bow, eyes blinking like an owl’s behind the thick lenses. “Pleased.”

“Dr. Smith, could you prepare the patient?”

“Yes, sir.” The doctor turned to one of the orderlies. “Bring the IV.”

The orderly took some items from a cabinet and placed them on the tray of a rolling IV pole, then pushed it toward Gladstone.

A strange, detached sense of curiosity and outrage was suddenly replaced by a spike of fear. “Get the fuck away from me.”

The doctor continued to work as if nothing had been said. He slid a pair of scissors beneath her sleeve and started cutting.

“Stop! No!” She struggled in the chair, but everything was strapped down fast.

The doctor swabbed her exposed forearm.

“No!” she cried. As the doctor bent over her arm, she could smell his hair tonic. “No!”

“Dr. Gladstone,” said the general, standing behind her, “if you continue to make a disturbance I will have you gagged. I can’t tolerate noise.”

She felt the sting as the IV needle went into her vein, and she struggled uselessly again. The doctor secured the catheter, got blood, flushed it, depressed the sterile spike of the drip chamber, then taped the setup in place and stood back. She looked once more at Pendergast, but his face remained shut down, only his eyes glittering, like pale diamonds.

“Now for step two,” said the general.

Gladstone watched as the doctor opened the small plastic case, removed a syringe and glass vial, stuck the syringe into the vial, and filled it with a colorless liquid.

“What is that?” she heard herself ask.

“Dr. Gladstone, one more word from you and I will carry out my threat.”

Gladstone, filled with terror, shut her mouth, her heart beating wildly. She realized she was hyperventilating.

The doctor inserted the needle into the IV’s injection port.

“Hold it there.” The general now looked up at Pendergast. “As you can see, Dr. Smith is poised to inject your associate. Now I will ask you some questions and I will receive answers. If not, he will inject her. Do you understand?”

Gladstone made a huge effort not to speak or make noise. Pendergast, for his part, remained silent.

The general turned his eyes to her, then back to Pendergast. “I’m sorry it’s come to this,” he said. “We’re all on the same side, you see.” He sighed, as if used to dealing with people who didn’t understand. “It would be so much better if we could communicate like reasonable people. Unlike, I fear, your man in China. He wasn’t reasonable. Not reasonable at all.”

Finally, Pendergast spoke. “Is it reasonable to murder an innocent scientist and kidnap another at gunpoint? Torture a man in the most awful way imaginable? Dismember over a hundred people? And now, to proceed with this brutality?”

“It is all in service of a vital cause.”

“Stalin said much the same thing.”

The old general waved his hand. “Enough banter. My questions are few, but I need complete answers. Who else knows the location of this facility?”

Pendergast didn’t answer.

The man turned. “Dr. Gladstone? I give you permission to speak in order to answer the question.”

She said nothing.

“You’ve got nerves of steel,” said the general, not without a touch of admiration. “Would you remain so brave if I told you the drug Dr. Smith will inject produces a most terrifying result?” A pause. “Now, Agent Pendergast: in order to prevent this tragedy, I need to know if anyone else has discovered the location of this facility — or has traced the source of the, ah, feet. We were keeping them for later analysis, and could never have anticipated that a freak deluge would cause the river to flood, destroying our dock and outbuildings — including the frozen storage locker — and sending the feet out into the gulf. We hoped they would decay, or be eaten, or sink for one reason or another; clearly, that did not come to pass. Even so, we never imagined they could be traced back here...” Another pause. “Obviously, we can’t have others coming to the same conclusion that you did. We’ve made a huge investment in this facility; worked very hard to make sure the cost was buried in dark military budgets and appropriations bills; and the research we’re doing here is now at too advanced a stage to be moved. You will give me the answers to these questions eventually — so why not now rather than later, when your associate will have already crossed into a land of horror? Are you truly so eager for a Pyrrhic victory?”

Gladstone stared at the man. The tired, almost bored look in his eyes made his words all the more believable. She felt herself trembling all over. “Please, Agent Pendergast. Answer his question.”

The general turned to Pendergast. “You heard her plea.”

“You mentioned we were all on the same side,” said Pendergast, his voice cool. “Perhaps if you helped us understand the vital work you are doing here, we might be willing to cooperate without coercion.”

The general looked at him a long time.

Now the woman in the pearls, who had been standing in the back during this exchange, spoke up. “General, I’ve had dealings with this man before. Take care with him — and don’t answer his questions.”

Pendergast spoke again, voice still mild. “I see you were a military man — a three-star, if I’m not mistaken. And Ms. Alves-Vettoretto—” he nodded to the woman standing to one side — “also strikes me as a person who was once military. So let us observe military correctness. Before you do this, it’s only honorable to try persuading us first.”

“General, I strongly advise against conversing with this man,” said the woman named Alves-Vettoretto.

Another impatient wave. “It’s a reasonable request. We’re all patriotic Americans here, after all.”

He sat back in a nearby chair and tented his fingers. “Are you familiar with Project MK-Ultra?”