Mindbenders

by Ted Krever

  ~~~~

  I awoke with a start—there was someone in the room, whispering to me. Not a familiar voice but a lover’s tone, one that asked for intimacy. I fumbled for the light and then, somehow, moved myself, in that half-awake state, back to Tess, to the back seat of her car again. And woke the others immediately.

  “I just got probed bigtime.” Kate nodded like she knew—Tauber, who’d been standing watch, didn’t even turn around. What was up? Then I saw Max on the floor, eyes closed and limp.

  “What happened?”

  “They’re probin’ for him all over the place. They didn’t buy the crushed-by-a-rock-wall act; they’ve got us narrowed to a couple houses ‘round here. You have yer stuff?”

  “All I’ve got is what I’m wearing.”

  “As soon as he stops breathin’, we’ll take him down to the car. If he’s out like this, hopefully they won’t catch on till it’s too late.”

  “They know about this trick,” I warned.

  “Knowin’ it ain’t solvin’ it,” he answered. “Hopefully.”

  And, once the coma took effect, we carried the body out to the Alfa Romeo parked alongside the house.

  Billy was waiting with a satellite truck five blocks from the first checkpoint. “The roof saucer by itself should get you halfway through,” he said, staring as we carried Max’s body into the back.

  The guards at the second checkpoint took their time—they made an effort at a thorough search—but Billy kept ranting against Berlusconi and how unfair the TV business was to anyone over 40 until they just slammed the door in his face.

  It wasn’t like they didn’t have anything else to keep themselves busy. We were surrounded the whole way by crowds heading for the concert. The floodlights glinted off the Plexiglas viewing box set up for the leaders at the end of the island and the bleachers on both banks, filling rapidly with jostling guests contending for choice locations with their wine bottles and cellphone cameras.

  Finally, we were at the final checkpoint and over the bridge, assigned a spot amidst the other satellite trucks. As soon as we settled, I gave Max a good kick—I wasn’t taking chances. This time, he came to with a start.

  “They’re sending out suggestions, really concentrated—do you feel it?” he asked, shaking himself awake. “You and Kate know where their conference rooms are—shut them down. Disrupt them, knock over the furniture, get in their faces, break their concentration. Interrupt the message. Two minutes is enough. Then get off the island as fast as you can. It’s going to get hairy.”

  He turned to Tauber. “We’re heading for the orchestra—you’re my eyes and ears…” As he pushed the doors open, we all heard the thrums of the strings starting to beat in the night air. “That’s it! Mars! We‘ve got five minutes! Go!”

  The guards at the conference center grew half a foot taller just from us running at them.

  “Halt or show ident—”

  Kate swiped her hand at them and they flew backwards into the stone wall. She had that look on her face now, the one I’d seen in the cemetery. I pitied anyone who got in her way.

  We ran headlong toward the two rooms we’d visited that morning. “Get in, mess them up and get out!” she yelled. “We’ve got to get back to the concert as soon as we’re done.”

  “But Max said—” I started and cut myself short—I had no more intention of skipping out than she did. “Never mind,” I said and saw the light glinting in her eyes.

  Two more guards waited outside the L Corps doors—Kate concentrated real hard this time; one hit the ceiling, the other flew straight backward through the door. By the time we burst in behind him, rows of meditating drones were already jumping up out of their yoga poses and scattering.

  I grabbed a monitor from the front of the room and smashed it to the floor. A studly guy in a Dallas Cowboys jersey jumped me—I grabbed the whiteboard and smacked him in the face with it. The whole group was yelling and scattering, the way anyone would, attacked by crazy people for no reason—I realized they really didn’t know what they were doing there.

  Lowery’s familiar figure rushed for cover under an ornate arch, finger to his ear, talking hard into his headpiece. There’d be guards coming on the run, I realized. After the first rush of fear, I recognized this as a good thing—it would clear the other end of the island for Max. But it was still trouble for us.

  And sooner than I thought. The partition to the next conference room slid open and several burly shooters barged through. The drones were scattering behind them, so we had officially accomplished our mission.

  More guards pounded through the door behind us and I spied reinforcements coming hard across the courtyard outside. Drones scattered, we suddenly had a new goal: getting out alive.

  I shot Kate a look, feeling like a bulls-eye on a stand. Her eyes were closed and her lips pursed, the prissy girl throwing a fit in school because somebody stole her notebook. She was humming up a storm. I relaxed the way you do when your only choice is to go over the oncoming waterfall.

  A moment later, the angel statue with the folded wings unfolded them and took to the air; the one who’d started out unfolded was already flapping hard around the suite, scattering papers and loose jackets and scaring the shit out of everybody. Saints floated out of the stained-glass windows and the fountains round the edge of the room shot straight into the air, showering the whole scattering bunch.

  I flunked science but there’s a limit. I reached out my hand, groping for the spot where the statues had stood a few moments earlier. My hand touched marble and, all at once, without drama or fanfare, the statues were there again. Or there still, I guess. I removed my hand and they disappeared. Kate had a smirk on her face.

  “This way!” she said, pointing at a granite staircase under another of the arches. I started after her and then stopped dead in my tracks. She whirled, questioning but it was too late. With all the craziness, I couldn’t move.

  One drone remained stubbornly in place, brow furrowed under his sandy hair, furiously sending out his message. All I had to do was knock over his chair, kick his ass and get the hell out.

  But, five feet away from him, it hit me, full-strength, full-on: the screaming, the shots going off, the tumult of bodies in every direction, trying to get the gun away from—? And the music, the Holst, but not the Holst outside, the same piece but a minute advanced, a hundred bars ahead.

  I staggered like a sailor in a squall as the complete suggestion hit me, all four channels feverishly relayed by the man seated in front of me, the man who hadn’t faltered, the mindshare buddy I’d channeled in the hallway outside the bomber’s apartment and at the airport. The man whose wavelength I shared.

  “We’ve got to get to Max!” I yelled. “I know the plan!”

  We dove down the stairwell and rushed headlong across the corridor below, past a succession of storage rooms and offices. We could hear shouting and footsteps behind us but we weren’t waiting for company.

  At the far end, Kate threw open a door and then another and we were outside in the lovely oppressive night air. She put her fingers to the lock and waited. Nothing. She grimaced, shook them in the air and finally rubbed enough to get a spark. She fused the lock shut just as the guards reached it. We ran the high concrete skirt of the island, tearing reckless toward the prow and the sound of the raging orchestra.

  And then it was pouring, just like in Lowery’s image, the rain coming down in buckets. As we neared the prow, the whole scene opened up like a pageant in front of us—spotlights glaring on the dome where the leaders sat like mannequins, facing the open-sided tent covering the orchestra. The Holst was pounding away, strings bowing furiously and horns blaring, a huge wall of sound. I knew the piece—we had a minute, maybe less, before the cue.

  Three guards rushed us in formation. Kate threw two into the river with a flick of the wrist. The third pulled a gun, then howled and dropped it. The weapon glowed hitting the ground, setting the grass all round to burn
ing.

  Singh sat in the middle of the dome, everyone’s primary safety concern but not really a proper member of the G8. I’d seen enough on TV to know her usual self-possession; the conflict on her face now was chilling. She was fighting herself—fighting what her mind was telling her to do. She didn’t look like she’d be able to fight much longer.

  Max and Tauber stood next to the tent; I veered wildly toward them—several heads swiveled in percussion as I ran past.

  A lightning bolt crackled past my ear. I turned to face it and it exploded—against an invisible shield. Kate ran up next to me. “Keep going,” she yelled, deflecting another blast with a swipe of her hand. On the far side of the island, Pietr Volkov stood close alongside the viewing box while Marat headed straight for us.

  Less than thirty seconds to the cue. Volkov, near the dome, began to mutter and Singh rose like a marionette out of her chair. The French President turned to check on her but no one, characteristically, left their positions.

  “Max!” I yelled. I was right on top of him now. He was frozen, his face full of fear. Considering the things I’d seen him do, that sent a chill up my back. He was fixated on Volkov, staring hard but clearly getting no voices, no answers, no clear idea of what was happening.

  “Not now!” he yelled.

  “We got it wrong!” I grabbed him by the shoulders. “She’s not the victim—she’s the assassin!”

  My skull went hot and in a moment, he knew what I knew, what I’d read from the sandy-haired drone: the plan wasn’t to kill the messenger of hope—that wouldn’t be enough, there could always be another. It was to discredit the idea of hope, to show up the Emissary of Hope as a loon, a crackpot, someone who went crazy just on the verge of success.

  Singh had carried her own gun into the enclosure—nobody was searching World Leaders on their way to a concert. She would kill as many in the dome as she could, until the guards brought her down or she killed herself, all in full view of the television cameras, the ambassador of peace become the instrument of violence, betrayer of all she’d stood for and all the hope she’d inspired. Her eyes grew large now, recognizing the swelling of the music cue.

  I felt Max suck all this out of me. He wheeled toward the dome and the few seconds left before it was too late. Lightning bolts burst inches away against another Kate shield. She advanced on Marat now, throwing shields at him, blowing his own blasts back in his face, forcing him to retreat.

  Volkov remained focused on Singh. If the drones were down, he could accomplish the mission on his own—at this range, she couldn’t resist. He repeated instructions and made tiny gestures and she moved in lockstep, pulling her bag open, grasping for the revolver inside.

  Max seemed fixated, just taking in the scene, for far too long. But then, all at once, he began to speak, in a language I’d never heard—and Singh flinched again and withdrew her hand from the bag. Volkov saw this and upped his tempo. The two voices echoed and clashed inside my head, each growing louder, more insistent, with repetition, like each hoped somehow to drown the other out.

  Seconds to the climax, the music cue, the moment for killing. The tempo was pounding, the music rising to crescendo.

  Singh was taut, quivering back and forth, fighting to reconcile the competing orders in her head. Volkov grimaced, his face grim and determined. I could hear his voice ordering her with ferocious energy: Take the gun out, Fire away.

  Max’s voice, on the other hand, actually faded now. I looked over with alarm and saw his face struggling, suffering, full of confusion. He was muttering to himself, his voice repeating his indecipherable phrases like a mantra but also babbling and arguing back and forth. At first, I thought we were lost, until I realized I wasn’t hearing Max’s voice at all—his lips were moving but what I heard in my head, in that unknown language, was Singh’s voice speaking. Her face and Max’s were synchronized, the same emotions, the same convulsions and confusion passing back and forth, from one to the other.

  Volkov was ordering her around; Max had gotten inside her, taking over the load and helping her fight back. And now I saw his determination begin to creep onto her face.

  A moment later, Volkov realized what was going on—did he read it from me?—and his stare went murderous. His attention narrowed to Max and Max responded, the two locked together, throwing every ounce of energy into competing suggestions and opposing methods, into beating the other, all the imperatives of a lifetime come together.

  All at once Max threw his hands in front of him, defensively, like he was being pushed. His face was confused and desperate and I thought, Volkov’s hit him with something he can’t counter. But Volkov’s shoulder was up, pushing back at some unseen force, legs pumping hard just to keep him upright. He was every bit as shaken and off-kilter as Max. Whatever was happening, it was new territory for the two of them.

  Until that moment, the five of us fighting were the only ones who knew what was going on. A moment later, the audience on both banks of the river gasped aloud, loud enough to be heard over the shrieking orchestra as the whole affair went public, as all assembled saw what no one could later explain, the sight replayed on video two million times after it was all over.

  Two lines of energy were converging on Singh—one from Volkov, the other from Max, each hell-bent on overwhelming the other. Now, all at once, that force went visible.

  A seam opened in the air, like a thick snake writhing in the night sky, throwing off the raindrops, slipping back and forth as the two men battled for control. It slithered above the orchestra tent and suddenly the music warped Doppler, like the sound of an ambulance passing in traffic, pitch wavering and flexing.

  The musicians were throwing nervous looks around and above, trying to figure out what was happening. The leaders in the dome were up, staring at the seam and the men at the two ends of it. Max and Volkov were as shocked as everyone else, their mouths open, lost in their own power gone beserk.

  And then the leaders were scrambling for the exit door, their bodyguards struggling to open the lock but even at a distance it was clear they’d be way too late to affect the outcome. Singh was frozen, hand still inside her bag—the confusion on her face was suffocating.

  The seam bubbled and squirmed in the middle now, like a pig squeezed through the belly of the snake, the bubble rumbling back and forth as the two men poured it on. And then the seam flicked sideways, in an eyeblink, and nicked the rim of the dome itself and the Plexiglas buckled and exploded, a million tiny shards of plastic hurled in every direction.

  The leaders hit the floor with the guards piled on top of them. Shouts and screams from both sides of the river, a panicked crush fleeing the bleachers.

  I was running too, sprinting up the riverbank. Kate was in front of me, pushing Marat back. The harder he tried, the harder she pushed him back and I could see him really getting hot.

  I went straight for Volkov. He was still grappling with the seam, puffing like a general on an obstacle course. But as the guards began hustling the leaders to shelter, he saw the situation was hopeless. He released the bubble with a wave of his hand—it vanished as he focused a murderous look on Singh.

  He threw his hand out but I threw myself at him first and we went head over heels, tumbling down the side of the island. I hit a tree squarely and that stopped me but good. Volkov continued straight into the river. When I looked up, Singh was gone—when I turned back to the river, so was Volkov.

  I stood the best I could, vowing to keep clear of trees the rest of my life. Tauber ran toward us, somehow supporting Max, who was wheezing as bad as Volkov. The musicians, disciplined as soldiers, were finishing their piece but looking around wildly while playing.

  Kate had pushed Marat to the bank of the river, both of them grim-faced and determined. All at once, Marat stopped firing. He turned from Kate and fired at Max, who managed to block the blast with a high swipe of his hand. As he reached upward, Marat lowered his aim and fired another blast directly into Tauber.


  The old man turned blue and glowed like one of those bars you break open to light your campsite. He twitched and shook, making growling noises like an animal in a trap. And then a look of recognition moved across his face—almost a smile but not quite —and he collapsed like a bag of bones.

  Marat lowered his arms now, satisfaction on his face. Max and Kate turned a black look on him simultaneously. At the moment their looks converged, Marat vaporized—imploded into the night air, sucked into particles that glowed for an instant and flickered out.

  And then the music was over and all was chaos, the cries of the crowd and the sound of a hundred musicians abandoning their instruments, running across the sodden lawn for cover.

  Kate and I bent over Tauber but there was nobody there. He was just a shell in the grass. I flashed back all of a sudden to Dave, to the way I’d gone vacant and distant a moment after Dave was killed. There was nothing distant here—this hurt.

  “We’ve got to go,” Max was saying but we weren’t listening.

  “We’ve can’t just leave him behind,” Kate answered. “We—” but she didn’t know how to finish.

  “We have to,” Max repeated, gesturing behind us. Turning, I saw security pouring around the front of the island, seeking culprits for the morning papers.

  Kate wasn’t budging. “He—we’ve got to do something for him. Something for…respect.”

  “He’s got that,” Max said, closing Tauber’s eyes and laying his head back on the grass. Kate glared at him—she wasn’t going without him. Max nodded at me and I knew what he wanted, because of course he put the idea into my head. The idea did nothing for me—I wanted what Kate wanted, to do something for the old warrior instead of leaving him on the battlefield. We’d said in Iraq, don’t miss a speck. But now I did what Max told me to, because I knew it was necessary or because he made me, I can’t tell you which. I can tell you I hated him for it. I grabbed Kate under the arm, Max took her from the other side and we dragged her as fast as we could to the river, the guards coming fast behind us.

  Max threw out his hand, drawing a line over the roiling surface. That’s how we ended up on a million web videos, appearing to run across the surface of the Tiber, Kate kicking and screaming between us, while our pursuers dropped into the water seconds later trying to follow.

  ~~~~

  Now

  So now we’re on the run, the best-known fugitives in the world, other than Bin Laden. TV shows regularly cite us right behind him on their ‘most dangerous terrorists’ lists. I never realized how many shows there were like that until we started showing up on them.

  The video of the fight has been seen on the web over a million times. Whichever angle you watch—there were certainly enough cellphone cameras present that night—nothing’s ever clear. Which provides enough ambiguity to fuel fifteen discussion groups, connecting us to sightings of Jesus, Elvis, aliens and 9/11 conspiracy theories. Actually, the one I liked the best was the one that suggested we were fallen angels. Unless they meant we were followers of Lucifer. I may rethink my affection for that one.

  It’s hard to argue that we accomplished a whole lot, once the G8 rejected Singh’s proposal and she was deposed by her own party two weeks after the conference. I can’t really argue that this world is a whole lot better than the one that might have been, although you have to hope.

  Which is why I’m writing this. Max says just write it the best you can and give people the chance to see the truth in it. Which is interesting coming from him, considering he’s spent his whole life making people see things that weren’t there. But I think there’s a bit of a dreamer in him that comes out in moments like this. I find it funny, to tell the truth.

  ~~~~

  Author’s Note

  I have my trusted readers, who tell me when I’ve confused or put them to sleep. Significant contributions to this book were made by Marsha Garelick, David Leaf, Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, Maureen Gallagher, Elena Kushnerova, Steve Cosgrove and Margie Nicholson, Billy Papaleo and Dianna Dennis. Many thanks to all of them. Special thanks to the members of Stargate, Grill Flame and the other real American mindbender programs who wrote about it—their reminiscences are wilder than anything I’ve put in these pages.

  See my other books at www.tedkrever.com

  And look for

  Mindbenders: The Big Dream

  later this year.

  ~~~~

  Author Bio

  Ted Krever watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, went to Woodstock (the good one), and graduated Sarah Lawrence College with a useless degree in creative writing.

  He spent the next few decades in media journalism, at ABC News on the magazine show Day One with Forrest Sawyer and the Barbara Walters Interviews of a Lifetime series, as General Manager of BNNtv, a documentary production company, creating programs for CNN, A&E, Court TV, CBS, MTV News, Discovery People and CBS/48 Hours, and as VP/Production of a short-lived dotcom, followed swiftly by nine months of unemployment.

  Ted now writes novels and sells mattresses in Staten Island NY, a job which registers at a loathsome -98 on the Cosmopolitan Eligible Male Job-Status Guide. Ted is happily divorced, purports to be a good kisser and hopes for world peace.

  He was once accused of attempting to blow up Ethel Kennedy with a Super-8 projector.