by Andrew Mayne
“This is really messed up. Why hasn’t this gotten out? I think it would be all over.” Gerald asks.
“Good question. These were all low-level appearances. Minimal coverage. If I had to guess, the man who gave us this disc probably carries some weight. He might be with Papal security. Did you contact the car service?”
I’d managed to write down the license plate before he drove off.
“Yeah. The car was rented by a company named Tranquilo Partners. There was no passenger name.”
“What is Tranquilo?”
“Some kind of investment firm located in Europe. I looked it up and that’s where things get a little conspiracy.”
“Let me have it,” I declare.
Gerald sighs. “You asked for it. Ever heard of the Dictato Serviam? All the Tranquilo board members belong to it.”
“Let me guess. Is it some kind of Opus Dei thing?”
He shakes his head. “Not quite. More of a lobbying group for the Church. If you could call it that. The Vatican is every bit as dysfunctional as any other bureaucracy, with the added benefit of being two thousand years old. The Dictato is a group that influences Church position.”
“How exactly do they do that?”
“They select priests and cardinals with a record of supporting views with which they agree and want to advance, and donate heavily to their parishes. More money means more influence. The priest who benefits is able to do more works and attract more attention.”
“That sounds kind of corrupt.”
“It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess. But remember, this is the organization that defined modern corruption. The aim of the Dictato is to reward the parts of the Church that they think are serving the true intent. The unintended, or intended, consequence of their influence is that you get priests modifying their application of the Word to suit the Dictato.”
“And what is the Dictato’s position?” I ask.
“That’s where it gets tricky. It changes over time. Not necessarily toward a more progressive view, or a conservative one. The clearest explanation I can see is in how they affect the political viewpoints of clergy. They’re not so much interested in the Church itself as much as the Church’s power within the rest of the world.
“For instance, an African bishop changes his negative assessment of a dictator with a human rights violation record to a slightly more positive one. That shift is enough for that regime to open up foreign-oil exploration. Care to guess the name of the consulting firm that gets the payday?”
“Tranquilo. So that’s who this guy is . . .”
“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s another interesting connection. Did you notice his accent?”
I think back to the conversation. “It could have been Italian or German.”
“What about Swiss?”
“Maybe.”
“There are anecdotal stories about senior members of the Swiss Guard serving as a kind of Secret Service for the pope.”
“Don’t the Swiss Guards have their own plainclothes units?”
“Yes. I suppose the description for this might be more of a SEAL team for the pope.”
“To do what?”
“Priests and agents of the Church inevitably find themselves in various situations. Sometimes aggressive back-channel diplomacy is needed.”
“What’s the connection between them and the Dictato?”
“If I had to guess, funding. Running those kinds of operations is expensive. The Dictato foots the bill and gets the ear of the pope.”
“Things are starting to make sense. I think.” My visitor in Hawkton went through a lot of effort to find me.
“So what’s going on with the pope?”
“The first speech happened before Hawkton. So that rules out the idea he saw it on the news and went nuts and started speaking in tongues. There had to have been some other trigger.”
Gerald nods. “Okay. But what was it? What made him speak that way?”
“I don’t know. It could be psychological. But there’s too much similarity with Groom’s outburst.”
“I’d think the pope would be harder to get to than a local televangelist.”
“Me too. I’d like to know more about Marta Rodriguez. She’s still the center of this. Any word on Lamont?” We’d tracked the tip about the informant down to where he was incarcerated.
“I called the warden. You can speak to him later this afternoon. Do you want to do it in person or over the phone?”
I think about it for a moment. I always get more in person. I want to hear from someone who knows the real Marta firsthand. “It’s a hassle, but I’ll go over there.”
“I’ll tell them.”
“Thanks, Gerald. You’re more than helpful.” Despite my doubts, he’s really stepped up in Ailes’s absence. I’m not sure if I have.
“Until the old man gets back, someone has to keep you from falling on your face.”
He has no idea how true this is. “Any word from Breyer about the Marta Rodriguez connection?”
“His office says they’re looking into it. The information has been passed on to Mitchum.”
I roll my eyes. “That’ll do a lot of good.” Breyer is following procedure, of course. I’m just not sure he gets how much of a stick in the mud Mitchum is.
“I know. I tipped off Winstone, who is heading the investigation into the bombing at your complex. He seemed more eager to have someone to dive into.”
“Well, that’s encouraging.” Winstone may have been kind of a jerk to me, but at least he’s looking more deeply into this.
“Knoll is going to do some digging too.”
I smile. “Look at you. Ailes is gone a couple of days and you’re already subverting our superiors.”
“I like to think of it as rerouting the network around the weakest points.” Gerald returns a boyish grin then buries his head into his laptop.
I replay the pope video a few more times trying to figure out what’s going on. His delivery sort of reminds me of watching someone trying to lip-sync words as they listen to them.
I don’t even notice Gerald leaning over my screen until he clears his throat.
“What’s up?” I take the buds out of my ears.
“Ever hear of speech shadowing?” he asks excitedly.
“I don’t even have a clue what that means.” But I have a feeling it’s important.
“There was a Soviet researcher named Chistovich who discovered that if you played people’s voices back to them with a slight delay, it basically shuts down their ability to talk. It kind of overloads the brain.”
That would explain the pope’s expression on the freeze-frame in front of me. “Interesting. Did he discover anything else?”
“She. Chistovich was a woman. It turns out twenty-five percent of women could ignore it and keep talking.”
“Watch it,” I reply.
“Don’t blame science. Well . . . that’s not the end of it. Over here, there was that whole MK-Ultra government mind-control project. Who knows what else they came up with? This opened up a whole new area for speech and cognitive research—and manipulation.” He points to his computer. “It turns out you can use this method to do things like speech shaping, influencing what people say.”
“Yeah, but the pope didn’t have an earpiece as far as we know.”
“True,” Gerald admits. “But you wouldn’t need one to do this. We can project sound like a laser. All you need is a flat device, like a dinner plate, aimed at the person. They’d be the only one who heard it.”
“So you render them mute first? Then maybe feed them lines?”
“Yeah. Something like that. I’ll ask around. But I think this could be the basis of a plausible explanation.”
“Hell yeah. See if you can find me a way to demo this.” I think about the so
und projection idea. “Could you just project the sound off their face?”
“Yeah. That’s one application. Are you saying you might not even need the speech shaping?”
“The pope’s lips seem to match. Hold on a second.” Something hits me. “This could just be a high-tech version of the ventriloquism trick Marta and Marty played. Maybe a mixture of both techniques.”
“Oh, man. I can see how that could work. I see a trip to Radio Shack in my future.” Gerald enthusiastically types away on his computer as he tries to reverse engineer what we think is Marta’s trick.
I call the number on the disc. The man from Rome didn’t exactly tell me what his hours of business are, so I don’t bother doing the math to figure out what time it is over there. He seems like the type who’ll pick up the phone if he wants to.
52
“HELLO, AGENT BLACKWOOD.” His voice is just as deep and confident as I remember. “Have you seen the contents of the video?”
“Yes . . . Mr. . . . What should I call you?”
“You may call me Mr. Oberst. And what is your professional opinion?”
“My professional opinion? Your pope is acting nuts.” There’s no other way to put it. He’s one Drudge Report headline away from a global scandal.
“Yes. There’s cause for concern. Do you have a possible explanation?”
“Other than a psychological breakdown?”
“I can assure you that this man doesn’t know a word of the language he spoke, let alone how to string a sentence together.”
Without Gerald’s technological discovery, I’d find this hard to believe myself. “What does he say happened?”
Oberst hesitates. “It’s a complicated question.”
“How so?” I don’t have any patience for this kind of verbal dancing. Lives are at stake. “You ask the man what happened and he tells you. It’s really not that hard, I do it a hundred times a day.”
“Yes, I imagine you do.” He pauses. “These things must be broached more delicately. There is a chance for people to misinterpret the response. Words may be taken out of context.”
God, more insider politics.
“You approached me.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Our friend says he heard the words inside his head in his own voice. He wasn’t aware that he was repeating them out loud. In fact, he wasn’t quite sure what was taking place. It was . . . It was as if someone else had control over his speech.”
And thus the fear over the identity of the “someone.”
“But he does remember the experience?”
“Yes. Vividly.”
“I don’t suppose someone hijacked a teleprompter?”
“No. On these occasions, one wasn’t even present. We considered all of the obvious possibilities.”
Obvious is a subjective term. “Is he on any medication?”
“Nothing that would cause this. After the first episode we began monitoring everything that went into and out of his body.”
I need to rule out the obvious conclusions first. “Does he have a hearing aid?”
“Yes. But we checked it for interference and in the second speech he went without.”
“Are these the only times it’s happened? And they were all in public?”
“Yes, and mostly. The second time was with a group of about a hundred people in Majorca. The third time was in a museum in Vienna where he was speaking at the opening of an art exchange with the Vatican gallery.
“After the first incident, we’ve been certain to thoroughly search everyone who comes near him. We’ve also used scanners to listen for illicit transmissions.”
“Anything?”
“Just cellular signals.”
“And this has never happened in the privacy of his own quarters or in parts of the Vatican with no public access?”
“No. Never.”
This suggests a method that can’t work when security is too tight. “Hmm . . .”
“Why is that interesting to you?”
“I don’t know yet. But it simplifies things to a degree. Can you send me any photographs or video you may have of these locations? Any shots or information about the crowd would be helpful.”
“Do you think there’s a connection to what happened with Reverend Groom?”
“I don’t know. We think he may have been coerced to pull the trigger. He may not have thought he was possessed. We may never know.”
“Interesting. Hold on a moment.” Oberst muffles the phone. There’s the faint sound of someone talking. “Would you have any suggestion for how to stop this?”
“If I had to guess? Earplugs.”
“Earplugs?” he asks, confused.
“We think Groom was being extorted to do what he did by someone hacking a radio receiver in his ear. In the pope’s case, we think either the sound could have been projected off his face in sync with his speech. Or it’s possible he was somehow hearing his own voice, modulated and time-delayed, played back at him.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Try it yourself, it’s very uncomfortable. You can use a sound mixer to delay your voice a half second or so. If you try to listen to this as you talk, it confuses the speech center of our brain. If you alter the sound and then play the words to the person in this way, they try to form them with their mouths. You can shape someone’s speech in this manner.
“Watching this video, I’d guess that’s what might be happening. It’s some kind of psy ops trick. A mechanical device involving speakers. But you said you searched everyone?”
“In the second and third speeches. Hold on . . .” He speaks to the other person. “So you’re confident that there is a scientific explanation?”
“Yes. Very. We think there are a couple explanations. The actual method may be different, but I’m sure we only have to ask the right questions.”
Oberst speaks to the other person for several minutes. I scan Gerald’s emails about sound projection and voice shaping. The more I read, the more this theory fits the bill. It also has the sting of being the same trick that got Marty killed. Marta has decided to use it to discredit the pope and make him fear for his sanity.
“Agent Blackwood, we’d like you to come to Rome.”
Rome? Is he kidding? “I don’t think that’s possible. Technically, I’m not assigned to this case right now.”
“It would be a great service to us all if you could come here and share your explanation in person. It could also be very advantageous to you personally.”
I’m not sure he understands how my life works. “Like I said, I don’t think that’s practical.”
“I can have a jet ready for you in a few hours. The flight is quite pleasant. I made it this morning.”
“I’m speaking to your Mr. Lamont this afternoon.”
“After that then? Surely your superiors would let you take the time off for this?”
“It’s not about that.” I don’t like their poorly veiled attempt at wielding power. It might impress some, but it only annoys me. As far as I’m concerned, once we get done with the X-20 matter, I plan on pursuing Marty’s murder. And that means finding out how involved Oberst’s boss is.
“You can’t be convinced?” He asks with the hint that it’s merely a challenge.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hold on.” Oberst whispers to the other person in the room. “All right. We appreciate your assistance. I’ll send you the information about the venues in which his holiness has spoken.”
I can’t end this call without pointing out the elephant in the room. “I’d also like to know what happened the night Marty Rodriguez died.”
“That’s not relevant,” replies Oberst, a little more curtly than usual. “Thank you and good-bye.”
Gerald gives me a look when I hang up. “What’s up?”
“Yes. Annoying. Who was it?”
“I think it was the pope.” I set my phone on the table and stare into space, wondering what the hell I got myself into.
THE PACKAGE
ABOUT TWO WEEKS after our drive to Tahoe, I was awoken one night by the rumbling sound of a truck engine in the back driveway of Dad’s workshop. I crawled out of bed and crept through the house to the kitchen window to see what the noise was about.
Dad and Uncle Darius were pulling a large wooden crate out of the back of a pickup truck. Uncle Darius had been gone for several days so I rushed out onto the driveway to greet him.
“Uncle Darius!” I shouted.
He looked up from the crate they were struggling to lift and smiled. Dad scowled at me. “Go back to bed!”
Hurt, as he rarely raised his voice at me, I ran back inside and defiantly climbed onto the counter in the darkened kitchen. I listened to them argue for several minutes. I couldn’t quite make out the words.
“Spying?” barked Grandfather from behind me.
I turned around to face him. “What’s in the crate?” My curiosity was stronger than my fear of being caught.
“It’s not important.”
Obviously it was, but I knew better than to challenge him on matters like that. I climbed down from the counter and padded toward the hallway.
“Jessica,” called my grandfather. He was half lit by the light of the driveway through the window.
“Yes?”
“Do you know the difference between sheep and wolves?” he asked.
“Wolves eat sheep?”
“Yes. What else?”
“Sheep are gentle?”
“Gentleness isn’t always a virtue.” He leaned on the counter, staring out the window into the dark. “The difference between a wolf and a sheep is that a sheep will stand by and watch a wolf devour its own lambs. If you threaten a wolf’s pup, it’ll rip your throat out. Wolves are foul, vicious creatures. But it’s better to be a wolf pup than a dead lamb. Now good night.”