Operation Malacca

by Joe Poyer

  bowl. 'Okay, I give up. What you two birds pull no longer surprises me.' He looked up at Keilty patiently. Now, would you mind explaining to an old and very tired man exactly why that crazy fish ... ah,' he held up a hand, I know, dolphin. Why that Charlie character should need breathing gear.'

  The steward interrupted to wheel in a tray of drinks. Before the captain could finish explaining that he had ordered them because he felt their American visitor would need one, Jack was already thirstily coaching the British seaman on making his own version of the gin and tonic. The steward was aghast that Jack insisted he make it with lemon rather than lime.

  Keilty turned back to Rawingson.

  'How long can you stay underwater?' he asked.

  Àbsolute maximum?' Rawingson picked up his drink and sat down. 'Four minutes, I guess. Why?'

  `Well,' Keilty answered, 'a dolphin can't stay under a heck of a lot longer — maybe ten minutes by stretching it. Don't forget, he's an air-breather and a mammal, just like you.'

  'How could I forget it, for God's sake, you bring it up every chance you get. Anyway, how come?'

  Keilty chuckled and went on. 'A dolphin's lungs are really not much bigger than yours, maybe a third or so. Charlie is nine and a half feet long and weighs three hundred and seventy-five pounds. His lung is a bit more efficient, although relatively it is about the same size. So he has maybe a three- to five-minute edge on you. Dolphins are coastal-water animals, rarely straying beyond the limits of the continental shelf. There isn't much in the open ocean in the way of food or in the deeper waters several miles off the edge of the shelf, except for bottom-dwelling animals and those in the upper currents.

  The mid-oceans are almost deserts, with the exception of the arctic and antarctic waters where temperature is a factor.

  'Anyway, what I'm getting at is that Charlie needs air to stay underwater longer than ten minutes. So Jack and I rigged up a special self-contained underwater apparatus for him.'

  'Why special? Can't he use the same type that a man uses, with maybe a different kind of mouthpiece?'

  Jack finished mixing a second drink and brought it over to Rawingson.

  Not really, Admiral. Dolphins don't breathe through their mouths. There is no connection at the back of the throat to the trachea as in man. Otherwise, every time he opened his mouth, he'd get a lung full or stomach full of water.

  'Dolphins breathe through the blowhole located on top and towards the back of their heads. So we had to come up with a special gadget that would seal him off without limiting his breathing while on the surface.'

  'Which brings us to the next item of discussion,' Keilty interposed. 'Just how do you expect us to go about this business of finding one little dinky sub somewhere in the South China Sea?'

  `You said that Charlie knew where it was,' Rawingson said accusingly.

  Keilty snorted. 'I said that he said he saw something, and that that something looked like a submarine. Neither one of us can or will guarantee the validity of that statement.'

  Òkay, okay,' Rawingson held up a hand. 'Anyway, I realize that there is no way of being sure it's still there. We haven't tried using any anti-submarine warfare techniques in case they would spot us and hightail it for home. Nobody knows that we know, except the four of us,' and he waved a hand to take them all in, 'Charlie, and the people you met in Singapore, and the general staff.'

  `What about the kidnappers?' Keilty asked.

  'Our people picked up the taxi driver and he turned out to be a member of the Singapore Communist Party — distinct Peking leanings. From documents found at their headquarters, the word to pick you up seemed to have come from Peking rather than from Moscow. The CIA claims it was just another one of their tries to get more information. Even if you had been taken, on which they only laid a fifty-fifty chance of success, you probably would have been dropped back at your hotel rooms the next night with no memory of anything except one hell of a good time in a brothel. Yet they would have picked your skull clean, then replaced the incident with happy thoughts.'

  'They can do that?' Jack asked, his voice showing disbelief.

  Rawingson nodded soberly. 'They can, and do.

  'Hell!' Rawingson stood up and began pacing up and down the wardroom. 'People think that just because we don't fight a hot war, that everything is confined to words and oh-so-proper diplomatic meetings. Well it's not,' he said, swinging around to face Jack. 'Let me tell you.

  Jack grinned. 'I'm no military man. The Coast Guard is just glorified civil service. No one ever tells us anything. And you think you got problems.'

  'Okay, okay, you two simmer down,' Keilty growled. 'I suspected it was something like that. If they had known what we

  were up to, they'd have gone after you as well, Admiral. The only thing that puzzles me is why they attacked the Mission building.'

  `Same reason they went after you,' Rawingson replied. 'They had a truck and hoist around the corner. Our boys got there in time to see it disappear down the street. They never did catch it. They couldn't kill the dolphin by shooting it, because the first thing he would have done would be to go to the bottom. They could have poisoned him, but they didn't have any poison. Or they could have tossed some high explosive into the pool. But the only explosives they had, they used to blow down the gates. Like I said, they were paid by Peking, not Moscow.

  Keilty snorted. `Don't you know that the Russians have been interested in dolphins for years. And anything the Russians are interested in, the Red Chinese are too. They probably wanted to compare notes, Soviet-American notes, that is. It wasn't just plain old curiosity.'

  Keilty slammed a meaty fist against the tabletop. `For God's sake, what kind of intelligence system do you birds have? If I'd of known that you guys were such rank amateurs, we would have never signed to play on your team.'

  `Well, we knew that the Russians were interested in dolphin studies, but not that much interested.' Rawingson looked sheepily at Keilty and Jack standing together.

  'Look, Admiral . . Jack began, his face angry. He took a step towards Rawingson.

  `Forget it, Jack.' Keilty said warily, and put a restraining hand on his shoulder. It's done now, and he's only one man. And if he has to depend on idiots like Redgrave and the rest of those characters, I can see some of his problems.'

  Rawingson jumped up, anger beginning to show in his eyes. `Look, you two young idiots ...'

  Ì said, forget it,' Keilty interrupted sharply. 'Let's quit fighting among ourselves.' He glanced at the two Australian officers who had witnessed the enmity between the three Americans. They stood up and excused themselves hastily and left.

  After they were gone, Keilty kicked the duffel bag before he spoke again. 'Admiral, Jack is upset and so am I about your acknowledged ignorance of the Soviet dolphin research.

  In nineteen sixty-six the Soviets made it illegal to hunt dolphins or other Cetacea in Soviet waters, except for certain kinds of whales that traditionally were taken by the whaling fleets.

  They did this on the off chance that something would come of the dolphin research, most of which was being done in the U.S. by Lilly and Norris. That little item was carried by British and American newspapers. Shortly thereafter, they classified all dolphin research being done in the U.S.S.R. and you couldn't get boo out of them.

  Ànd now you tell us,' he said quietly, 'that your office doesn't even know that they are engaged in this kind of research.'

  `Wait a minute,' Rawingson yelped. Ì didn't say that. We know they are, we just do not know to what extent.'

  Weston covered his face with his hands and a steady but muffled cursing filled the room.

  Keilty waited politely for him to stop, then inquired solicitously: 'Do you feel better now?'

  `Some. But at this point, I'm damned glad I resigned my commission before I left. Hey,'

  he said, turning to Keilty, `do you know what we can do with all that money now?'

  `Yeah, give it to the admiral so he can hire a kindergarten cla
ss to do his intelligence work.' Laughing, he held up his hand. 'No offense, Admiral, but I would suggest you have your people do whatever it is they are supposed to do and have them check into the status of current Soviet work.'

  Àdmiral,' Jack put in, 'you said they could snatch somebody, wring his brains out, then put him back with phony memories. That sounds a bit far-fetched.'

  Rawingson snorted. 'We're not so dumb as you two seem to think. And neither are the Reds. The technique, while fairly complicated in setup, is easy enough to use. All you need are one strait jacket, a couple of hypodermics, one full of amphetamine and the other full of some tranquillizer, an oculometer, electroencephalograph and a microvibration gauge and a galvanic skin-response recorder. Plug the electronics into a computer, hook up a tape recorder, and leave subject alone for six to eight hours. He spills his guts automatically.'

  `Heh, wha ?'

  'Look, it's simple,' Rawingson went on patiently. 'Strap subject into specially modified strait jacket that fits from head to foot so he can't wiggle a muscle. He is completely, and I emphasize, completely immobile. Attach the electronics. Then feed the stimulant and depressant to him at the same time.

  Èver drink a cup of strong, black coffee, then immediately smoke a cigarette — all when you are dead tired?'

  `Don't smoke,' Weston snorted.

  The first part of Rawingson's answer was limited to four-

  letter words. 'Take my word for it, numbskull, you can feel your nerves and muscles fighting both commands from your brain. Relax . . . get set . . . relax . . . get set. Your hands will shake, your muscles twitch — actually a minor convulsion — your eyes will refuse to focus, your head will swim, and your thoughts will become jumbled.

  Òf course, all this is very minor with just cigarettes and coffee, but it is there. Now imagine what good strong doses of a tranquillizer and pick-me-up will do, especially when you can't move a muscle. Your body has to slowly work off the effects and you damn near go crazy.

  `Now, with a properly programmed computer to sort out the noise and correlate muscle and nerve signals made visible through the EEG, oculometer, microvibrations, and skin response ...'

  `What's a microvibration?' Jack inquired.

  Rawingson looked at him stonily to decide whether his question was serious or not. He decided it was.

  `Microvibrations are very small, almost invisible muscular movements. Hold up your hand and point your index finger,' he commanded.

  Jack did so.

  `Now, see the tiny movements. No matter how hard you try, you can't hold that finger perfectly still. You have a servomechanism feedback system controlling two sets of opposing muscles. One set is a tensor; the other, a flexor. A muscle can only work by tensing itself and that moves the limb one way. To go back to the original or another position, another muscle, an opposing muscle, has to pull. It's like that throughout your body. Of course the movements you see in your finger are pretty gross, but they are classified as microvibrations. In other words, every muscle in your body "vibrates". The nerve impulses that control muscles are electrical and they can be measured.

  ÈEG, or electroencephalograph, is a device for measuring the electrical activity generated in the brain. In a sense, these so-called electrical impulses are the by-products of thinking, because they control your body. So far, the state of the art has not progressed to the point where each minute charge of electricity can be measured, so again we are measuring relatively gross changes. In these signals are thought patterns, but on a level so low we just do not have anything sensitive enough to measure them.'

  'I see,' Weston said slowly. 'What about the skin response and "ocomotor" thing?'

  Òculometer. That's a gadget for measuring eye movements.' Àh, the dream thing,'

  Weston said.

  Ìn a way. Thought patterns are in some way related to eye movements, or probably, more properly, the other way around. The galvanic skin-response recorder measures the electrical conductivity of the skin, which changes with emotional, mental, and physical patterns.

  `You see,' he said, absently taking another drink from the table, 'separately, these techniques tell us little or nothing about thought patterns. Collectively, with the proper data sorted out, they can tell us a hell of a lot.

  `So what happens is that our trussed-up subject is quietly going nuts with the chemicals boiling through his system. After an hour or so, when even the most hardened thinker can no longer concentrate, carefully phrased and selected questions are asked periodically by the tape recorder. The sound is loud and rasping enough to penetrate the noise generated by his mind. No matter how hard he tries not to think of the proper answer, eventually he will. The questions are all designed on a simple yes–no basis. Each question is properly keyed from the electronics to the tape readouts and fed into the computer for correlation. After a predetermined period, everything is shut down and the subject's system is purged. Then he is thoroughly hypnotized, given a phony set of memories, and turned loose.'

  `Holy gods,' Keilty exclaimed. 'You could wring a person clean in no time.

  Èxactly. When we suspect it's been done, we use the same process to find out.'

  `Then how deep are the transplanted memories,' Weston asked.

  `Hell, they're deep enough. After a few years they may begin to break down, but unless you really worked at it, and I mean, work with drugs and the whole show, you will never reconstruct what happened.'

  `Then how can you find out it's been done? And why not hypno everybody who might become a victim?'

  `Two reasons. The first is time. It takes months of treatment. Secondly, this damn process is not even bothered by hypnotic. suggestion. On the contrary, it works on a subconscious level completely below hypnosis. It bypasses the conscious mind and gets right down to the basic thought process on the electrical

  level. Microvibration and EEG measure electrical activity in the body. The skin response measures the emotional activity and the oculometer and the microvibration are measures of eye and muscle reflex. The amphetamine and tranquillizer override the conscious and part of the subconscious mind and make itimpossible to concentrate. In fact, the disappearance of concentration becomes a dead giveaway. It means that important data is coming.

  `So far as we know, there is no way to beat it.'

  When the admiral had finished, the three men sat quietly for some time, finishing the drinks.

  `Looks like I came out of a pretty bad situation by the skin of my teeth,' Keilty commented.

  'Yes, you did,' Rawingson replied seriously. `So the next time you jokers start knocking our work, remember what I just told you. We aren't amateurs.

  Èxcept when it comes to knowing about the statistics of classified Soviet research on dolphins.'

  Rawingson began sputtering.

  He and Jack headed for the hatch, grinning at the admiral. At the hatch, Keilty turned.

  'Say, Admiral, have them check into Soviet research on ESP – they classified that in sixty-three.'

  'They did?' came Rawingson's startled reply, and Keilty ducked through as Rawingson jumped up and headed for the door.

  On deck again, they were still laughing and breathless from the run.

  `You know,' Jack chortled, 'we really shouldn't ride him like that.'

  'Yeah, but you have to admit that if we don't, he'll sink back into the morass of the say-it-ain't-so types like he was when we found him. He's coming along slowly.' Keilty grinned.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Later that afternoon, Rawingson rapped on the cabin hatch. 'Come on in,' Keilty shouted.

  'Can a man of little intelligence and a military background join you two sneering geniuses,' he asked as he stepped in, and sank down on an empty bunk.

  Weston grinned and poured out half a glass of scotch and passed it over to him. 'Sure, Admiral.'

  'Look here,' Keilty said. 'Don't take us too seriously. We aren't as smart as we pretend to be.

  Rawingson rolled his eyes up. 'Now you tell m
e' He leaned back and propped a foot up on the bunk and surveyed the men across from him. Weston was stretched out on the bed, a cigarette dangling from his hand. Keilty sat resting his arms on the back of a chair.

  On the desk between them was a navigation map of the Riouw island chain with depths and currents marked off. A red X presumably marked the location of the sub, resting in 1100 feet of water.

  Keilty sat up, and reached across to the bunk for another cigarette. He lit it, then half stood and stretched widely. 'What's up, Pete?' he asked.

  Rawingson studied the drink a moment. 'Well for one thing, we'll be on location in the morning. When do you jokers plan on going after the sub, and how?'

  `Funny you should ask, Admiral,' Jack muttered from beneath closed eyes, 'we were just discussing that little item.'

  'I'm afraid we'll have to play it by ear for the most part,' Keilty replied. 'We'll go as soon as we can, naturally, but it's going to depend a lot on weather and how soon we can get our gear checked out. Hopefully, the day after tomorrow. According to the navigation officer, we won't reach our target area till late in the morning and we're going to need a full day of light.'

  Rawingson nodded. 'Okay, that takes care of when. Now how do you figure to get the sub? You've been damn mysterious about that and SEATO Command, as well as Washington, London, and Canberra, want some definite answers. They're getting edgy and are on my back to find out.'

  Keilty stared thoughtfully at the map for a few moments. Finally he looked up, humor crinkling his eyes. 'Well to start

  with, Charlie and I will go overboard and swim down to the sub. Then we'll blow it up.'

  Rawingson looked pained. 'Just like that, huh? just swim down to eleven hundred feet and boom?'

  'Just like that. Swim down to eleven hundred feet.'

  'And pray tell, how do you intend to accomplish this seeming miracle?'

  Keilty hesitated for a long moment. 'Okay, Admiral, just to help you out. The process is for sale to the Navy and the details are proprietary. If it works and they want it, they can buy it. Otherwise, tough luck. All right?'