by Nick Cook
I stand in front of Bestiaire et Musique for no more than a few moments before hearing my name. Doctor Bogarten sports a black anorak and a woolen hat. We shake hands.
‘I’m so grateful to you for having made time to see me, especially on a Sunday.’
He smiles. ‘All this intrigue? How could I refuse?’
Nils Bogarten is a senior researcher at Stockholm’s internationally famous peace research institute, and has agreed to assist me in analysis I am undertaking for a Washington think-tank on behalf of the FBI. Hetta identified him as the expert on the trafficking of nuclear materials by criminal gangs, especially from the former Soviet Union. DJ contacted him from a hot desk at FBI HQ.
‘It would be impolite of me not to start by asking how you are.’ Bogarten’s voice is only marginally accented. ‘It is quite an honor to meet you.’
We stroll from painting to painting as we talk.
‘You have to understand, first off, the close relationship between criminal gangs and the Russian state,’ he says. ‘When the Soviet Union collapsed, certain corrupt officials attempted to get rich quick by using the Russian mafia as middlemen to sell nuclear materials. These middlemen were afforded protection by the KGB, now the FSB. They really didn’t care with whom they traded either. I understood from your FBI colleague that this is a particular focus of your study.’
‘I’m especially interested in a component known as a ballotechnic.’
He chuckles. ‘OK, if this is the real purpose of our meeting, you can relax. I meant what I said. It is an honor to meet you, Doctor Cain, but the President’s doctor – ex-doctor – making inquiries about nuclear weapons components on the eve of a conference in the Middle East, which the President himself will be attending? Has this resurfaced?’
I ask him to tell me everything he knows.
Bogarten takes a moment to study the painting we’ve stopped by – a self-portrait with seven fingers on each hand. ‘In theory, ballotechnics have the capacity to trigger a fusion reaction in a nuclear weapon, but the pressure required to initiate that reaction is immense – tens of thousands of atmospheres.’
‘So, we’re not talking a conventional detonator.’
‘Far from it. This material only becomes explosive when subjected to phenomenal pressure. As you may be aware, considerable mythology surrounds certain materials that were supposedly developed by the USSR during the Cold War. Ballotechnics, for example, are said to have magical properties when it comes to do-it-yourself nuclear weapons, but they have been dismissed by almost all the intelligence experts I know.’
‘What do you think?’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘There are three possibilities. One, that they are bogus – invented by conmen intent on duping gullible terrorists into handing over very large sums of money. This is the accepted version of the Ukrainian–FBI sting back in the day. The second is a canny twist: that they’re the product of a disinformation campaign by intelligence agencies.’
‘And the third?’
‘The third isn’t really an option.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it adheres to the old adage that disinformation works best when it is mixed with a little truth.’
‘Meaning?’
‘That the Soviets did develop this capability – or, at least, one on which the mythology is based.’
‘Go on.’
‘If that were the case, the weapons would be … well, terrifying.’
‘Aren’t all nuclear weapons?’
‘Just so. But these would be for a different reason.’
‘Why?’
‘They would be extremely small.’
‘How small?’
‘Baseball-sized.’
The seconds tick by.
‘And yet …?’
‘I’m a scientist, Doctor Cain. I put my faith in the laws of physics. Even if ballotechnics were real, there is no power – no power on this earth – capable of generating the pressures to trigger them. And no ballotechnic: no fourth-generation nuclear weapon. Whoever sent you, tell them their time and money would be better spent tackling the extremist ideology that produces the terrorists – not hunting for weaponry with little foundation in truth.’
I take a different route back to the hotel, through a kids’ play area, and emerge onto the Strandvägen, which runs along the waterfront on the east side of the city. Inadvertently, I join a crowd of people, most of them head to toe in white.
Young and old mingle. Some carry placards. A man in a black waistcoat takes no notice of the cold as he bangs on a drum; another strums a guitar. The people around them – mothers, fathers, children, grandparents – are singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’. Only the Swedes can turn a protest into a family outing.
A placard exhorts us to ‘Seize the Moment’.
Another proclaims ‘Scandinavians for A Free Palestine’.
A third promises ‘Five Days to A Better World’.
I notice one emblazoned with the word ‘Peace’ in large yellow letters. The girl holding it is tall, willowy, with long blonde hair. A brown backpack slung over her shoulder. Fifteen meters ahead of me. I can’t see her face, but I’m suddenly twenty-one years younger, in D.C., not Stockholm, with the woman of my dreams.
The crowd begins to slow. Ahead, through the trees, a four-story concrete and glass building comes into view. The Stars and Stripes flies from a flagpole above its heavily guarded gates. A dozen police cars with blue and yellow markings block the route to the end of the street.
A long-haired Swede with a megaphone clambers onto a concrete barrier and addresses us. I hear the words ‘Thompson’ and ‘Jerusalem’ and spot the girl with the placard again. She’s ahead of me and slightly to the left. I still can’t see her face.
As applause ripples front to back, she lifts her hand and waves to someone on the crowd’s edge – a man: early thirties, tall, fair, serious-looking. He waves back and starts to weave his way toward her through the throng. In his left hand he seems to be holding a balloon, but, as the crowd parts, I see the string is attached to the wrist of a little girl, her face painted to look like a lion.
The woman kisses the man lightly on the cheek, then picks up the child and hugs and fusses over her. Something hanging from the woman’s backpack catches the light.
I move closer.
It’s a three-inch cross, crowned with a loop. An ankh, on a length of ribbon.
I hear the guy with the megaphone in the distance. The crowd claps. There’s some jostling around me as people await the next speaker’s arrival. I elbow my way forward, until I’m standing right behind the girl with the long blonde hair.
I touch her on the shoulder. She turns. Our eyes meet.
‘Yes?’
I feel a crushing disappointment, then foolishness.
‘I’m sorry. I thought you were somebody else.’
‘You are American?’
She sounds like the stewardess on the plane. Grappling for a fragment of dignity, I ask her who these people are.
‘We are peace activists from church groups across Sweden.’
She shows me a pamphlet. ‘Would you like to take one?’ Before I can answer, she thrusts it into my hand.
Ten minutes later, I stop at a cafe to warm myself with a cup of coffee.
A second before I consign the pamphlet to the trash, a logo at the bottom of page two catches my eye. A stylized tree.
I look again at the header, then at the paragraph below it, a quote from the Book of Revelation, 21:2 – Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband …
Something echoes at the perimeter of my memory.
When Gapes went to the Settlement the night before he made his way through the sewer system to the church, he’d told Steve he was going to mount a protest everybody was going to know about.
He’d announced himself using the language of Revelation: I, John.
I glance back at the pamphlet.
Next paragraph. 22:1–2 – Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the Tree of Life, which bore twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations …
Twelve of them.
Twelve nations.
47
‘POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS IS ONE OF THE GREAT SCARS OF OUR age,’ Åke Lund tells the audience in his soft, lilting accent. ‘Which is why we are fortunate to have with us our next distinguished speaker …’
The professor of clinical neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute has wild, chalk-white hair. He’s in his mid-sixties, a two-time recipient of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
The applause continues as I take my place at the podium. My water glass is charged. A technician checks the mike is working and gives me a thumbs-up.
I turn to check the title slide on the laptop is also displayed onscreen. ‘The Ripple-Effects of Trauma – New Treatments’, along with my name, in letters twenty centimeters high.
My talk is about the secondary effects of PTSD – how they act as a contagion upon those close to the primary; not about our returning veterans, but on their families: wives, husbands, children. I will speak about the phenomenon that led Hope, after months of living with my combat trauma, to become infected by it herself, without revealing the twist that has made it, for me, so tragic and personal.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honor to be here today. I am enormously grateful for the opportunity to be—’
My attention is drawn to the face of a man in the second row.
As I lean forward, my hand knocks the glass onto the laptop. The imagery flickers and dies, the glass smashes, I try to pick up the pieces and cut my finger.
The technician rushes back onstage, followed by a very flustered-looking Lund. He leans past me to speak into the mike. ‘Please, ladies and gentlemen, please, let’s take a short break while we get things back online.’
I scan the auditorium, but the man I saw has gone.
I need air.
I take a Kleenex from my pocket, wrap it around the cut, and follow the emergency exit signs down a long hallway, which takes me to a loading bay. Two delivery drivers are smoking and talking amid piles of empty cardboard boxes, plastic packaging and several giant waste collection bins. Neither pays me the slightest attention.
The door opens. It’s the professor, a picture of concern. ‘Doctor Cain? I am sorry. Perhaps it would be better if we were to reschedule your presentation for tomorrow.’ He sees the wound on my hand. ‘Maybe you are in need of medical attention. We have an excellent—’
‘Thank you, Åke. It’s just a cut. I need a few moments. I’ll be fine.’
‘Of course. Will you be all right to resume your speech in, shall we say –’ he glances at his watch, ‘– an hour? Two?’
‘An hour would be perfect.’
Moments later, alone with my thoughts again, I hear the door open.
I hadn’t imagined it. Standing two meters from me is Stanislaw Koori, the man who trained Duke Gapes to remote view.
According to the file at the Army Research Laboratory, Koori was in his mid- to late sixties when he trialed the HITS helmet, which makes him seventy-five-odd now.
His accent still has a twist of Mitteleuropa, but is like nothing I’ve ever heard.
He reaches into his jacket, takes out a silver cigarette case and lights up an unfiltered cigarette, examining me with reptilian eyes.
When the Stanford Research Institute started the remote viewing program in the early seventies, on the back of all that CIA secrecy and money, Koori was one of a handful of psychics recruited to test the ‘psi’ phenomenon – whether we have powers that might be described as extraordinary: clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition and, strangest of all, psychokinesis, the ability to move, bend and break objects with the power of the mind.
Stani had come to the CIA’s attention at some LA psi salons and spoon-bending parties. He had demonstrated an ability to score highly in all of these areas, which persuaded the Agency to throw more money at it because US Intelligence believed the Soviets were even deeper into psi than it was.
He drops the butt and grinds it beneath a brown-and-white brogue. ‘There’s no magic in roaming time and space. Boredom is the viewer’s principal enemy. So when they asked if I’d like to test some kind of headgear that allows another person to see what the psychic sees, I was curious to know whether such a thing might be possible, even though it was clear to me the only person who believed in the project, at that stage, was the scientist himself.’
‘Kaufmann?’
‘His method of mining the data in which nature’s memory is held is one of the greatest achievements of all time. Suffice to say, after a year or so of working on it, as the evidence began to build that this thing might actually work, I thought it would be wise to …’
He hesitates.
‘Drop off the map?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Some people call it retirement. I’ve never had much of a liking for excessive, Draconian secrecy, of which our government is so fond.’
‘Then why are you here?’
He produces a sheet of paper and slowly unfolds it to reveal, in thick blue marker pen, a circle containing an eight-pointed star.
A month or so ago, while painting in his studio above San Francisco Bay, he spontaneously sketched this symbol in the bottom right corner of the canvas.
He hadn’t remote viewed for many years, he says, but the reflex action that produced this was more than familiar to him. Back in the day, remote viewers used to call them ‘ideograms’.
When the ideogram came through – sometimes it could be a squiggle, sometimes something more defined – the viewer and the monitor knew that the viewer was on the signal line, connected. That data from the target was about to come through.
‘Three days later, I was in my apartment. It was evening, and I was getting ready to eat. I got a vivid picture in my mind of this same symbol, and did what I should have done the first time: I sat, quietly composed myself, and began to jot down all my impressions of the target – like I used to do.’
What came to him were images, feelings, of something hot, very hot, like an oven or a furnace. And the number 22.
He let Google do the rest. The V-22 Osprey flashed up, and the location of the crash. Then he found my booking at the conference.
Koori lives on the West Coast. He doesn’t concern himself with current affairs much, but my name was familiar to him from the news generated by my encounter in the tower with the man he knew wasn’t Matt Voss. He’d trained Duke Gapes, after all.
‘I’ve felt nothing but guilt about that boy since I quit the program.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I knew they’d replace me with him, and that they’d turn our little tech demonstrator into something big, bad and operational.’
I say nothing.
He lights another cigarette and sucks in a lungful of smoke.
‘The first-generation helmet that Kaufmann built really wasn’t much to write home about. It used a classical computer in its bid to connect the hardware to …’
He pauses again.
‘Kaufmann had this dumb-ass scientific name for it – he called it holosphere.’ He brushes back what’s left of his hair.
‘Anyhow, it didn’t work too good, but well enough for Abnarth to give him more funding to develop an improved model.’
I ask if he and Abnarth ever met.
‘My, yes,’ he says. ‘The Senator was in and out of our lab all the time. More so when I told Kaufmann that something had changed with the integration of the quantum computer.’
‘Changed?’
‘It was trying to communicate with me.’
‘But we’re talking about a machine—’
‘No, Colonel. W
e’re talking about a channel via which the world of matter connects to the world of the immaterial.’
A breeze blows up through the loading bay.
Misty said her sister got calls from Duke while he was on the run. The idea was dismissed because of Lou’s Alzheimer’s.
But I now know they came at the point Duke was set to move from the HITS lab to the Canyon.
He told her he’d been in communication with his father, even though his father had been dead for years.
The suits who’d grilled Gapes and Offutt after the Grid’s meltdown even had a name for it: Reachback.
No wonder he’d told his mother he was scared.
I check my watch. I’m back on stage in five minutes.
‘And that’s when you quit?’
‘I know how this goes. I worked for the CIA and the military in the seventies. I retired. They brought me back to train a new generation of viewers after 9/11. I could see from Abnarth and Kaufmann’s fixation that the art of remote viewing – my art – was about to become a science. I knew I had to quit before I got in so deep they’d never let me go.’
He reaches into his jacket. I think he’s going for his cigarette case again, but he produces a small artist’s sketchbook and flicks through it. Each page is filled with numbers, strange runes and symbols, but prominent amongst them are my initials, as well as renditions – in all colors and sizes – of the circle with the eight-pointed star.
‘Native Americans wrote nothing down. Their ideas, their dreams and fears were communicated from one generation to the next through signs and symbols. The number eight represents balance and harmony. The circle represents protection. The star represents knowledge, particularly about things to come.’
He pauses.
‘I guess you must know this now. They called it the Hope Symbol.’
Symbols. What Mo and I also know as Jungian archetypes. Deep subconscious messaging. After the talk, but before I leave the hotel for the City Hall ferry terminal, I sit in my room, kill the TV news, which is beginning to obsess about the forthcoming conference, and Google ‘ankh’.
It was held by the early Christians as a symbol of eternal faith. The crucifix, which spoke of torture and death, was not adopted by the Church until the second or third centuries. The loop at the top of the ankh represented the soul, the cross below it the state of death. Together, they came to symbolize reincarnation.