The Persona Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  He staggered from the Mustang, almost collapsing against the wall of the loading dock. Now genuinely scared, Bianca jumped out and ran to him. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘The dream’s not a dream,’ he gasped. ‘My brother, Michael – he worked for the State Department, he was one of Secretary Easton’s staff. He was with her in Islamabad when – when al-Qaeda blew up her convoy. I was waiting to meet him, we were going to catch up . . .’ He tried to stand, but reeled again, overpowered by the rush of memories pummelling his mind. ‘I heard the explosion – I ran down the street to help, but I found him, I found him . . .’ He slumped to his knees, retching.

  ‘Oh God,’ whispered Bianca, a hand covering her mouth in dismay as she realised the truth. Adam’s recurring ‘dream’ had been reality, an image so shocking and traumatic that it had resisted the purge of his memory, searing itself into his subconscious.

  But now it had been brought back into the open. And Adam was feeling the pain of that moment all over again.

  She crouched beside him, a hand on his back. ‘Adam, I’m here for you. What can I do to help?’

  ‘Nothing, there’s nothing you can do,’ he replied, stricken. ‘Oh, God! It’s all my fault!’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ she said, trying to reassure him. ‘You couldn’t have—’

  ‘But I did!’ He raised his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘I really did sell the information to Qasid. I gave al-Qaeda the Secretary’s route – and I killed my own brother!’

  44

  A Life Lost

  Bianca stared at Adam in disbelief. ‘You mean . . . everything you found out from Qasid’s persona was true?’

  He struggled to regain control over his emotions as he answered. ‘Some of it. I was – I was on a CIA-SOCOM joint op. It was meant to be a sting operation. The idea was that I’d pose as a disaffected embassy worker. My grandfather was Syrian, so I looked the part enough for it to be plausible that I’d have local sympathies. They wouldn’t have bought it if I’d been blond-haired and blue-eyed like Tony.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I had to establish myself as a credible source, so I gave them classified information. It was all part of the plan,’ he quickly clarified. ‘It caused some diplomatic blowback, but it did its job.’

  ‘It got Qasid to trust you.’

  ‘Yes. So the next stage of the plan was to give him information about the Secretary of State’s secret visit to Pakistan.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You mean your bosses deliberately told al-Qaeda about it?’

  ‘No! That’s not what happened – not what was supposed to happen,’ he replied, correcting himself. ‘I was supposed to give them misinformation. They wouldn’t get the real itinerary. They’d get a fake route, one we’d be watching. There were only a couple of places along it where they’d be able to carry out an effective attack – and we’d cover them. When they showed themselves, we’d take them out all at once – captured or killed, either way would be a win.’

  ‘But it didn’t work out like that . . .’

  ‘No. And I don’t know why.’ The anguish returned. ‘I did everything I was supposed to. I followed my orders to the letter, gave Qasid the fake information – but somehow they saw through it. I wasn’t good enough to convince them. So they found a way to attack the real convoy. And they murdered over a hundred people. They killed the Secretary, and . . . and . . .’ His voice cracked. ‘And Michael. They killed my brother. I killed him – I gave them what they needed to do it!’

  He slumped again, head buried in his hands, shaking as he wept uncontrollably. Bianca tried to comfort him. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?’ She looked back at the car. The door was open, the medical case visible inside. ‘I could give you another injection of Neutharsine. It’d wipe the memories, take the pain away—’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want it to go away.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t deserve it to. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault . . .’ He curled into a tighter ball, shuddering.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Bianca insisted. ‘You were on a mission – you did exactly what you were ordered to do. There’s no way you could have known what would happen. And,’ she went on, more forcefully, ‘I’m not going to let you torture yourself over it out of some sort of misplaced guilt. I’m getting the injector.’ She stood.

  Adam’s hand snapped up and gripped her wrist. He raised his head. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Please. It hurts, but . . . it’s all I’ve got left of him. If you wipe it, some of the memories will still be there, but . . . none of the feelings.’

  ‘Then don’t just think about what happened in Pakistan,’ she pleaded. ‘Think about all the other times with him – with your parents. With your dog! Try to remember the good stuff, the times when you were happy.’ His hand was still around her arm; she wrapped her other hand over it as she crouched again. ‘Get all the other memories while you can – and all the feelings that go with them too. Tell me about them.’

  Despair returned to his face. ‘I want to, but . . . it’s too hard. All I can see is Michael lying in the street. I can’t – I can’t get back past it.’

  ‘Then go forward,’ she said. ‘What happened afterwards? How did you join the Persona Project?’

  His shivering subsided as he focused on recalling the memories. ‘I was taken back to the US embassy. I . . . I had to identify Michael’s body. But I couldn’t even phone my mom to tell her what had happened, because I was on a classified operation – officially I wasn’t even in Pakistan.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. It must have been terrible. I’m sorry.’

  He wiped his eyes, and sighed. ‘Thank you. After that . . . Harper came to see me.’

  ‘What, at the embassy?’

  ‘Yeah. And . . .’ He frowned, puzzled. ‘Baxter was with him.’

  ‘What was he doing there?’ Bianca asked, surprised.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t speak to him, but he arrived with Harper – I’m certain it was him.’

  ‘What did Harper say to you? That what happened wasn’t your fault?’

  A pause. ‘No. The opposite.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He blamed me for it. He said . . .’ Adam’s tendons tightened in a mixture of resurgent guilt, and anger. ‘He said I must have done something wrong. I made Qasid and his cell suspicious, so they realised the information I gave them was a trap. He said everything was my fault.’

  ‘That – that bastard!’ Bianca cried. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I believed him. He’s the Director of National Intelligence – the only person above him in the chain of command is the President. If he says you’ve screwed up . . .’

  ‘But did you screw up? Did you do anything wrong?’

  ‘No – not that I can remember. But . . .’ He fell silent, deep in thought. ‘Qasid wasn’t suspicious of me. He believed my cover story – and he believed that the information I gave him about the Secretary’s visit was genuine. He and al-Rais used it to plan the attack.’

  ‘So you gave them the real itinerary?’

  ‘No, that’s just it! I gave them exactly what I was supposed to. I was working with one of the embassy staff – a CIA agent. He gave me the files that I passed to Qasid.’

  ‘Maybe he was the one who screwed up.’

  ‘There’s no way of knowing,’ said Adam, shaking his head. ‘He’s dead. He died in the bombing.’ Another frown. ‘But he wasn’t directly involved with the Secretary’s visit – he shouldn’t have been in the convoy . . .’

  ‘Did you actually read these files?’ asked Bianca.

  ‘Yes – I had to, in case Qasid asked me any questions about them. But . . .’ He searched his newly reacquired memories. ‘I didn’t know what the genuine itinerary was going to be – I didn’t need to.’

  ‘So if you’d given Qasid the real files rather than the fakes, you’d have had no way to know that, would you?’<
br />
  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘So it wasn’t your fault, no matter what Harper told you. God, the more I learn about him, the more I hate him!’

  ‘You’re not alone,’ said Adam. ‘It was just him and me in an interrogation room. But he wasn’t interrogating me – it was more like an inquisition. He just kept on and on, hammering it into me that I’d fucked up. And finally I . . .’ His face filled with shame. ‘I cracked, just broke down in tears in front of him. I couldn’t take it any more. The guilt was too much.’ His voice fell to a whisper. ‘I wanted to die.’

  He released his grip on Bianca’s wrist, but she kept hold of his hand, squeezing it in sympathy. ‘What did Harper do then?’

  An almost sarcastic exhalation. ‘He offered me a job.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not right away. First he ordered me back to Tampa – SOCOM headquarters – to be debriefed. In isolation; I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody except the intelligence officers doing the debriefing. I couldn’t even call my mother. And the agents were nearly as bad as Harper, just saying over and over again that I’d screwed up the mission. I was practically on suicide watch by the time Harper saw me again.’

  ‘And that’s when he told you about the Persona Project?’

  ‘Yeah. He said it was a way that I could . . . God, he actually used the word “atone”, for my mistakes and go on serving my country – and have my pain and guilt taken away. And I was hurting so much that I took him up on it. I would have . . .’ He cleared his throat, the very feelings that had been erased along with his past returning. ‘I’d have done anything to make it stop.’

  ‘So you let them wipe your memory,’ Bianca said quietly.

  He nodded, saying nothing for several seconds before finally whispering: ‘Does that make me a coward?’

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘It makes you human.’

  A bitter smile. ‘Good to know there’s something human about me. The cyborg secret agent without a past.’

  ‘But you do have a past. Now, I mean. You know who you are again.’

  ‘Only until I fall asleep.’

  She gestured towards the PERSONA equipment. ‘I can imprint you with it again tomorrow. Since it’s your own personality rather than somebody else’s, I don’t think it’ll be nearly as risky. Then we can get out of Washington.’

  He shook his head. ‘It might make a good TV show, but I don’t think the two of us going on the run in a black Mustang’ll work out in real life.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  He wiped his eyes, then straightened. ‘Harper was determined to wipe my memory. Even after I’d agreed to join the Persona Project, he kept up the pressure – he even once had me come see him at his house to make sure I wasn’t going to back out. But he wasn’t doing it to save me from any emotional pain – that’s not how he works.’

  ‘He’s more the type who likes to cause it,’ Bianca said.

  ‘Right. So he had a reason for doing it. But what was it? He wanted me to forget what happened in Pakistan – my mission to give false information to al-Qaeda. So if I didn’t remember it . . .’

  She completed his thought. ‘You couldn’t tell anyone else. He’s trying to cover it up!’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘But why?’

  Adam stood, filled with a new sense of purpose. ‘There’s one way to find out.’

  The sun was setting over Washington as the luxurious Cadillac CTS crawled north-west out of central DC along the traffic-clogged Massachusetts Avenue. In its back seat, Harper shouted incredulously into his phone. ‘You’ve still got nothing? How the hell is that possible! You’ve got the entire resources of the US government at your disposal, and you can’t find one man?’

  Morgan’s voice at the other end of the line was tired, beaten down after a long and stressful day. ‘With all due respect, Admiral, Adam Gray is a highly trained agent in his own right, even without the help of the PERSONA system. If he’s gone to ground—’

  ‘Morgan, I’m getting fed up of your excuses,’ the older man snapped. ‘Gray is your man – and your responsibility. And right now, he’s an ongoing threat to national security. Find him!’

  He disconnected, then immediately scrolled through his lengthy contacts list to make another call. ‘Baxter,’ came the reply.

  ‘STS still has nothing, and nor do the cops. What about you?’

  ‘No joy, sir. I’ve got men watching Gray’s apartment and Childs’ hotel, but they haven’t shown. Nothing on their credit or ATM cards either. Sir,’ he added, ‘are you sure you don’t want to block their cards? They’ll need money sooner or later – if we cut them off, it might force them into the open.’

  ‘No, leave them active,’ said Harper. ‘Gray won’t just be hiding – he’ll be planning something. If we track any financial transactions they make, it could give us a clue to what that is. We have to assume that Childs gave him back his memories, so now he knows everything up to when the recording was made. He’ll be trying to put the pieces together.’

  Baxter sounded uncomfortable. ‘Could he expose us?’

  ‘No – he doesn’t know anything more than he did before, remember. The risk is if he causes the wrong people to start asking questions.’

  ‘Morgan?’

  ‘I can handle him, and anyone else in the intelligence community. It’s people outside the chain of command who are the problem.’

  ‘Like Sternberg?’

  The mention of his rival’s name provoked a scowl. ‘Yeah. I’ve already had demands for updates on the situation from the White House. But even if Gray remembers everything, he still doesn’t know anything that directly links us to what happened.’

  ‘I’ll make sure he never does, sir. Now that he doesn’t have any more inside help, we’ll find him. What’s happening with Carpenter, by the way?’

  ‘He’s locked up at STS. Once Gray’s been dealt with, I’ll decide what to do with him. It might be that I’ll need you to handle him.’

  ‘Understood,’ Baxter replied with malevolent meaning. ‘I’ll call you with any updates, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Harper disconnected again, then sank back into the plush leather, thinking.

  It took another fifteen minutes before the Cadillac finally pulled into the driveway of his house. The leafy neighbourhood was both expensive and exclusive; amongst its residents were a number of embassies, as well as the Washington homes of several major politicians. ‘Will you be needing the car again tonight, sir?’ the driver asked as he opened the rear door for his passenger.

  Harper shook his head. ‘Pick me up at the usual time tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll see you at six.’ The driver waited until Harper had opened the front door of the house, then climbed back into the Cadillac and drove away.

  Harper entered the hall, going to the alarm panel and checking that everything was as it should be. The Director of National Intelligence was not granted round-the-clock protection by the Secret Service, but he still required a high degree of security. The fact that he had once summoned Adam Gray to his home – meaning that Gray surely now remembered where he lived – had been weighing on his mind, but requesting a bodyguard would have raised questions about his past connections to the rogue agent.

  However, the display told him that the house remained secure. Satisfied, he entered a disarm code. The system chirped in confirmation. He headed down the hall, going into the kitchen—

  A savage kick slammed into his stomach, knocking him breathless to the floor.

  Despite her loathing of Harper, Bianca couldn’t help but wince at the violence of Adam’s ambush. ‘Don’t move,’ the agent ordered, drawing a gun – the DNI’s own, taken from a cabinet in his study.

  Harper clutched at his midsection. ‘How – how did you get in here without tripping the alarms?’ he rasped, struggling to draw breath.

  ‘It turns out I was trained by the best,’ Adam replied. ‘
Now, I want answers.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Gray,’ came the snarled reply. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything.’

  ‘I don’t need you to.’ Adam glanced across the kitchen to Bianca, who was setting up the PERSONA on the oak dining table.

  Harper saw what she was doing. His eyes widened in alarm, and he tried to get up – only to have Adam’s heel crunch down hard on his sternum, forcing him back to the floor. Even through the pain, however, the older man was still defiant. ‘You just earned yourself a lifetime ticket to Gitmo,’ he gasped. ‘That’s if you’re not executed for treason!’

  ‘Shut up,’ Adam snapped. ‘I’m going to find out the truth about what happened in Pakistan. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That’s why you pressured me into joining the Persona Project – so I couldn’t tell anyone what I knew.’

  ‘You didn’t know shit, Gray,’ Harper replied. ‘You didn’t then, and you still don’t. You’ve got your memory back, sure – but what does it tell you? Only that you fucked up, and got the Secretary killed – and your own brother!’

  Adam stared at him for a moment – then bent down and delivered a fierce blow to his forehead with the butt of the gun, drawing blood. Harper let out an agonised cry.

  ‘Jesus!’ Bianca shrieked. ‘Adam, what are you doing? You’ll kill him!’

  ‘If I wanted to kill him, he’d be dead,’ he replied coldly. ‘Wire us up.’

  She took out the skullcaps – then hesitated. ‘Adam, are you sure you want to do this? It’ll wipe your own memories.’

  ‘I don’t want to, but I need to. It’s the only way to find out what really happened. And we’ve still got the disk – you can re-imprint them.’

  ‘In theory,’ she reminded him.

  Harper fought back through the pain, squinting up at his captor as Bianca placed the skullcap on Adam’s head. ‘You do this, and it’s all over for you,’ he said. ‘The US government will never allow someone to run around with all the DNI’s secrets in their head. They’ll take you out – both of you.’