The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book #4 in Templars in America Series)

by David S. Brody

  Next he did a Google search combining the terms “Leonard Carmichael” and “MK-Ultra.” He didn’t expect much—it was one of those shots in the dark that rarely amounted to anything. Which is why he nearly fell off his chair when the search yielded over two hundred hits. What the—? Reading quickly, he learned that Leonard Carmichael, though apparently not employed by the CIA, was one of the founding directors of Project MK-Ultra—they called their group, in a fine example of government-speak, the ‘Human Ecology Society.’ Cam rubbed his eyes and let the words sink in. Leonard Carmichael helped found MK-Ultra? Could this be just another coincidence?

  Carrying his laptop, Cam ran down the basement stairs and snagged the ping pong ball out of the air just before Amanda could slap it. “Hey,” she cried.

  “Sorry. Point for Astarte. But look at this.”

  Amanda’s eyes moved across the page. “Bloody hell. This is the bloke who headed the Smithsonian, right?”

  “And also the bloke who Pugh stole the Bat Creek bracelet from.”

  “Were he and Mellon mates?”

  “Good question.” He tossed the ball to Astarte. “If Mum says ‘hell’ again, you get the point.”

  Cam raced back upstairs with his laptop and, fingers fumbling on the keyboard, Googled the words ‘Mellon’ and ‘Carmichael.’ Sure enough, Carmichael and Paul Mellon served on many boards and committees together in Washington.

  Certain he was onto something, Cam dug further. Carmichael, it turns out, had been mentored in the 1920s by a Brown University psychologist by the name of Edward Delabarre. Delabarre was renowned not only for his work in psychology but also for his research on Dighton Rock and other mysterious and presumably ancient stone carvings found in New England. Exposure to Delabarre’s research probably first sparked Carmichael’s interest in early American history, setting him on the path to eventually running the Smithsonian. And it was another piece to a puzzle that was becoming increasingly discernible.

  Cam kept at it, searching for more connections linking Carmichael, the Smithsonian and Project MK-Ultra. A 1958 article in the New York Times further tied things together. The article stated: “Soviet advances in brain research and the possible advent of pharmacological warfare were cited last night by an eminent psychologist in a plea for a greater American effort to penetrate the secrets of the mind.” The psychologist called for “the development of novel methods for altering human behavior” in order to meet the Soviet threat. Cam read the words again and shook his head: the development of novel methods for altering human behavior.

  And who was this eminent psychologist calling for advancements in mind control? Leonard Carmichael, then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The next question was obvious: Why was the guardian of the nation’s historical artifacts calling for advancements in mind control? And, more importantly, what was he prepared to do about it?

  Georgia’s cell phone rang as she meandered around the supermarket’s bakery section, searching for a fresh loaf of multi-grain bread. Did people really still eat white bread? Apparently in Kansas that was pretty much all they ate….

  “Sorry to bother you on the weekend, Ms. Johnson, but the Senator is helping paint a church this morning and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “What is it, Mary?” Mary had been Lovecroft’s personal secretary for decades.

  “There’s a dentist from Boston who keeps calling. He insists on talking to the Senator directly. He won’t tell me why, but he says it’s confidential doctor-patient information. Why would a dentist in Boston be calling? The Senator hasn’t lived there since the 1970s.”

  “Perhaps it was just a reminder call—forty years is a long time to wait between cleanings.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.”

  Nobody out here seemed to get Georgia’s sarcasm. Georgia walked her cart into a corner of the store. These kinds of calls were never good news. “If you give me the dentist’s number, I’ll call him.”

  Georgia spent ten minutes on the phone with Dr. Anoosian, alternately charming and cajoling and bullying him, but he would not violate the doctor-patient confidentiality. Eventually she gave up, paid for her groceries and tracked down her boss, paintbrush in hand, atop a ladder in a church reception hall in a rundown neighborhood on the outskirts of Wichita.

  “Can I steal you away for a few minutes?” She explained the dentist’s call.

  “Did you say his name was Anoosian?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Very well. I will call him. I have a feeling this will turn out to be important.”

  “Do you want some privacy?” she asked.

  “On the contrary, I think you need to hear this.” He led her to an unoccupied office and closed the door.

  Georgia put her cell phone on speaker and the dentist, once he confirmed it truly was the Senator on the line, explained the reason for his call. “I’m pretty sure she was a reporter. She knew all about the second row of teeth.”

  Georgia looked quizzically toward the Senator. “I’ll explain later,” he replied. To the dentist, he said, “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing. But she had the article from the dental journal, so she didn’t need me to tell her anything.”

  “Not to cast blame here, doctor, but you assured me when you wrote this article that my identity would remain confidential.”

  “Yes, well, the information didn’t get leaked by my office, I can assure you that.”

  Lovecroft thanked the dentist, ended the call and turned to Georgia. “It seems as if the Good Lord is going to put us to the test.” He smiled sadly. “We have a problem. And I’m guessing it’s not one you’ve ever dealt with before.”

  She returned his smile. In an odd way, she welcomed whatever challenge the Senator was about to describe—navigating a candidate around obstacles was what made politics so fascinating to her. “Staying with the dentist theme,” she said, “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me we may have bitten off more than we can chew.”

  “So if you are correct,” Amanda said as they finished lunch, “then for some reason the Smithsonian has been helping the CIA with MK-Ultra. Seems like strange bedfellows.”

  Cam nodded and finished chewing his sandwich. Astarte had cleared her plate and was outside with Venus getting the mail. “We knew they were, as you say, bedfellows back in the 1950s. And it looks looks like the CIA spends a lot of time worrying about ancient history, which is not exactly at the top of the list of threats to national security. So there’s something funky going on.”

  Amanda smiled. “I heard another of your quaint American expressions the other day: ‘When there’s that many beer cans lying around, there’s probably been some drinking going on.’”

  “So who left the beer cans?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “That’s what Randall and Georgia are supposed to be helping us with.”

  But they had both hit dead ends. “There is one other possibility.”

  “What?”

  “Vito Augustine, our intrepid blogger. How hard could it be to get him to tell me who’s paying him?” Cam smiled. “The snow is stopping. Might be a nice day for a drive to New Hampshire.”

  “Are you intending to just knock on his door and he’ll invite you in for tea?”

  “No. But it’s really easy to be a jerk by email or in a blog. It’s a lot harder when you’re meeting face to face.” He shrugged. “If he won’t talk to me, I’ll just drive home.”

  Amanda locked her eyes on him. “They all have guns up in New Hampshire, Cameron. And they have that silly slogan on their license plates—Live Free or Die. He might just shoot you.”

  Cam tried to lighten the mood. “You know who makes those license plates? The jail inmates.” He smiled. “So much for living free or dying.”

  “They’re probably in jail for shooting at blokes like you.”

  Despite Amanda’s protestations, half an hour later Cam was driving north in the light snow, his four-wheel drive Equinox having no
trouble gripping the road. Fortunately the name ‘Vito Augustine’ was a unique one and, using the internet, Cam had located an address for him in Franklin, New Hampshire, an hour north of the Massachusetts border. The great orator Daniel Webster was born in Franklin—perhaps Augustine imagined himself a modern-day version of the famous wordsmith.

  Cam found a 1980s rock station and turned up the volume, singing along with U2. Out of habit he checked the rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t being followed. A dark sedan with Connecticut plates had been on his tail for the past ten miles, but that probably was just because of the slippery roads. As if on cue, the sedan took the next exit; Cam exhaled and belted out the words to “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” He hoped Saturday would be blood-free. Especially his own.

  He exited Route 93 just before two o’clock and followed the GPS directions up a hill to a neighborhood full of small, Colonial-style homes that looked like they had been built just after World War II. Many appeared not to have been updated since, including number 92.

  Cam parked on the side of the road, took a deep breath and trudged through the snow to the front door. Four or five inches had fallen here, yet nobody had bothered to shovel the walk, so Cam followed a couple of sets of footprints that had recently preceded him. In the movies they always made it look like no big deal to confront someone in a hostile situation, but Cam’s fingers tingled and there was a tightness in his chest as he rang the buzzer.

  A pasty-faced young man wearing an open flannel shirt and a pair of dark sweatpants opened the door. Taller than Cam by a couple of inches but pear-shaped and wheezy, he eyed Cameron silently.

  “I’m Cameron Thorne.”

  The man nodded and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “What do you want?” His bottom lip drooped, showing a set of graying teeth. Cam actually felt a little sorry for him—it was rarely a good thing when your skin was whiter than your smile.

  Cam had expected surprise, perhaps even fear. “I want to come in and talk to you. Assuming you’re Vito Augustine.”

  Vito glanced to his side, to something blocked by the open door, before shrugging. “Suit yourself.” He stepped aside, turned his back and began shuffling toward the back of the house.

  Cam kicked the snow off his boots and followed Vito to the kitchen. A sour smell wafted off the younger man and his blondish hair hung limp and darkened with grease. Vito sat at the kitchen table, his back to the window, and motioned for Cam to sit opposite him.

  “Why did you write that stuff about me?”

  Vito shrugged. “Because it’s true. I think you’re wrong.” He glanced up once in a while in Cam’s direction but never actually made eye contact. “You’re not a true historian and your conclusions are flawed.”

  “That may be so. But what you wrote was personal. You came after me. I want to know why.” He paused. “Actually, I think I know why, but I want you to confirm it.”

  “Confirm what?” Again, Vito focused not on Cam but on a point over Cam’s shoulder.

  “That you are working for the CIA. They told you to come after me. Like I said, I want to know why.”

  A deep voice from behind Cam responded just as a massive arm encircled his neck in a choke hold while a second set of hands grabbed his arms and pinned them behind the chair back. “If you want to know why, we can tell you.”

  Cam thrashed and kicked but almost instantly the vise-like bicep around his windpipe sapped his strength. He felt himself losing consciousness, the deep-voiced words traveling a great distance before finally reaching his brain. “But you’re not going to like the answer.”

  Amanda tried not to imagine the worst. Cam had texted almost three hours ago that he had parked in front of Vito Augustine’s New Hampshire house and was going in. Nothing since. Her calls went straight to voice mail, her texts unanswered.

  She stared out over the frozen lake and jabbed at the redial button as the late afternoon light faded to gray. Voice mail again. Venus rubbed her head against Amanda’s thigh and whimpered, sensing her anxiety.

  Not knowing what else to do, Amanda dialed the Franklin, New Hampshire police and explained the situation. “I know he’s only been out of touch a few hours.” The story needed a bit of embellishment. “But there is bad blood between Cameron and this Vito Augustine, and I’m concerned things might have turned violent.”

  A sympathetic desk sergeant agreed to send a squad car over, probably just to kill the boredom. He phoned back fifteen minutes later. “No sign of Mr. Thorne. Augustine says he arrived around two, they talked for ten minutes, then your fiancé left. No signs of violence. My officer then drove around the block but didn’t see Mr. Thorne’s vehicle.” He sighed. “Sorry, lady, there’s nothing else I can do for you. My guess is his phone died and he’ll be home in time for dinner.”

  Amanda bit her lip. If Cam only stayed for ten minutes, he’d have been home two hours ago. Under normal circumstance perhaps he wouldn’t have checked in, but since the Chung abduction they had agreed to maintain constant contact. She dialed Georgia’s number.

  “There are very few people’s calls that I’d answer at the moment, Amanda,” Georgia said. “I’m having a shitty day.”

  “Me also.” She explained the situation. “Is there any chance the CIA is involved with this? If they are tracking Cameron, and he confronted their hired pen, perhaps they intervened.”

  “I’ll look into it right away, Amanda, I promise.” Georgia paused. “But after he’s found I’m going to need to talk to you about this research you’re doing on giants.”

  Cam woke up on a narrow bed in the center of a square, windowless, white room illuminated by an overhead fluorescent light. His head throbbed and his neck and throat hurt when he moved or breathed or swallowed, probably because his windpipe had been compressed to the diameter of a drinking straw. Unlike in many movies he had seen, it did not take Cam time to remember what had happened—he had been abducted while in Vito Augustine’s kitchen, probably by the CIA. They must have somehow accessed his computer, seen his internet search for Augustine’s address and laid in wait for him. He had a vague memory of being carried into a van, and later of a needle being pressed into his thigh.

  “Over sixty years, and you’re the first person to put the pieces together.” The voice came from behind him. Cam sat up slowly and turned his head. An angular, middle-aged man in a blue blazer sat in a banquet chair, his smudged glasses resting unevenly on his nose.

  Cam blinked. “What pieces?” He felt lethargic and listless, disconnected from this body. Almost as if he was dreaming.

  “When you entered the terms ‘MK-Ultra’ and ‘Leonard Carmichael’ into your search engine, Mr. Thorne, you set off some loud alarms. And left us no choice but to bring you in.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You may not realize it—yet—but you have wormed your way deep into the bowels of this nation’s intelligence community.”

  “I was wondering what that smell was.”

  The man pushed his glasses up his nose. “And like a tape worm, you must be expunged before you do serious damage to internal organs.” He shifted in his chair. “But, first, we must determine what you know. Then, and only then, will you be free to go.”

  Actually, Cam suspected his captor had skipped a step—at some point during his captivity Cam’s mind would be wiped clean like the marker on those whiteboards. He looked around, trying to focus. A pair of overhead cameras panned the room, no doubt watching and recording. He thought about trying to overpower the man in the blue blazer, but then what? “And what if I refuse?” he responded. He hoped the words sounded braver than he felt.

  The man shrugged. “Refusal, cooperation, subterfuge—none of it matters. We have drugs that do our work for us very efficiently, sophisticated drugs that have taken many years and millions of dollars to develop.”

  Cam sat up and turned to face his captor. “I’m glad I’ve been paying my taxes.” He was just verbally fencing, trying to buy time until he could figure something out
. And the adrenaline had begun to kick in a bit.

  The man offered a cold smile. “Mr. Thorne, there are two ways this can go. First, you can cooperate and tell me what I need to know. Or we can use those drugs I mentioned.” He shrugged. “The choice is yours.”

  “I have a third option. I can assert my rights as an American citizen and demand a lawyer.”

  “Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for us, the laws enacted after 9-11 have abridged some of those rights. We are holding you here at Langley as a threat to national security.”

  Cam sniffed. He was scared, but equally so he was outraged. Whatever he was, he was not a threat to national security. “You know what? Fuck you.”

  The man sighed. “I understand your anger, Mr. Thorne. And I apologize for bringing you here. But I promise you, we do what we do for the good of the country.” He shifted in his chair. “You and I will be spending a good many days together, Mr. Thorne. Some of our time, frankly, will be unpleasant. But there is no need for it to be personal.” He stood and offered a bony, ink-smeared hand. “My name is Dr. Jagurkowitzky, and I look forward to working with you. People here call me Dr. Jag.”

  Cam stood slowly and reached across to clasp the offered hand, feigning more unsteadiness than he felt. As their fingers touched, Cam grabbed the man by the wrist, spun his captor around and, bending low to gain leverage, yanked back Dr. Jag’s middle finger until he heard it crack. “That’s payback for my finger.” Actually, Cam wasn’t even sure the CIA had been behind that, not that it mattered now. Dr. Jag screamed in agony as a pair of uniformed guards burst into the room.

  Instead of fighting them or trying to flee, Cam lifted his hands in surrender and sat calmly on his bed. The guards stood by, unsure what to do now that Cam no longer posed a threat. Cam waited until Dr. Jag, grasping his finger, stood and eyed him. “You may get what you want from me,” Cam said. “But let’s get one thing straight: This is very personal.”