“Yes,” said Tom.
Physically he felt reborn in his new shell, better than ever, no longer experiencing the drag of his crippling disease. His movements were swift, precise and pain free.
Emotionally he was a mess of fear and confusion. Would he ever see Emily and Sofi again? Could he truly leave them to lead the free world? What was more important?
Tom was cured, and now he had to heal a nation. It was a huge responsibility but Tom knew he had a duty to his country. Besides, his very existence relied on cooperation. He didn’t want his consciousness to wind up filed away in a vault.
As he neared the press conference staging, he could hear the growing buzz of the crowd, an overflow of media packed into the small room, anxious to receive the latest news and developments and see for themselves that the assassination attempt had failed.
Before Tom took the podium, Jarret Spero whispered parting words: “The future is in your hands.”
Tom assumed his new role. Thrusting out his chest, he entered the room to an eruption of flashing cameras and shouting reporters. He broke out in a big smile and waved. The room filled with cheers and happy faces, some showing tears.
A representative of the hospital introduced him at the microphone, booming with patriotic pride and enthusiasm. At that moment, Tom Nolan disappeared forever. A new life was born in the shine of the camera lights.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Randy Phelan reported to an office in a Chicago high-rise with no identification on the door to indicate who he was meeting with or what he was meeting about. He only knew it was very important, totally confidential, government-related business and he was to report to the location alone. He wore his best suit – a cheap suit, rumpled with age – but at least it was a slight step toward appearing dignified.
He was convinced it had something to do with his debt and bankruptcy because there was no other reason he would be summoned like this. He was apprehensive but not fearful. He had nothing to hide. He had always been open and honest. And whatever these federal officials needed from him, he would comply.
The room was alarmingly bare, as if borrowed but not officially leased. There was a plain desk with two persons sitting behind it, a man and a woman in dark jackets. They gestured to a single chair across the desk from them.
Randy sat.
“Thank you for coming,” said the woman.
“Are you the IRS?” Randy asked.
“No,” said the man. “We’re the CIA.”
At that moment, Steven Morris entered the room. Randy let out a small gasp. “Steven, what are you doing here?”
Steven just smiled and pulled over a chair from the other side of the room. He sat opposite Randy, alongside Meg McGrath and Jason Wallers of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“Am I in trouble?” Randy asked.
“Not at all,” Steven said. “You’re here because you’re family, and we need your help.”
“My help?” said Randy quickly. “Yes. Anything. What is it?”
Steven took a deep breath. “Here goes.…”
And he brought his brother-in-law into the biggest secret in the world.
He told him everything.
He had promised the president’s inner circle that Randy could be trusted. They were desperate for the immediate resource. The cleanup of the damage and destruction caused by the Russians was moving fast and furious.
Simon Giamatti and Bella Giamatti were dead. Their murders could not be undone. Also, given their extremely high profile in the public eye and their secret ties to the Gemini Experiment, they could not suddenly become absent and leave a gaping hole that would prompt a lot of scrutiny and investigation.
Fortunately, the shells of Simon Giamatti and Bella Giamatti had been recovered – apprehended – and the cartridges of Yefim and Alina had been ejected.
This left two identities without an owner. Someone needed to assume these roles, preferably someone with close ties to Steven for a smooth transition into the Gemini project.
“You want me to what?” said Randy.
“We want you and Christie to become the Giamattis,” Steven said.
“But what about the life we have now?”
“Randy and Christie Phelan would be phased out. Move away. Quietly slip out of society. Don’t worry about that part – it’s handled at government level. Like going into a witness protection program.”
“But what about the kids?” Randy said. “There’s no way I’m leaving my children. I’m sorry, but that is not negotiable.”
“You wouldn’t lose your children,” said Jason Wallers. “The Giamattis would adopt them.”
“I would adopt my own kids?”
“Technically, yes,” said Meg McGrath.
“This is crazy.”
“Yes,” Steven said. “We know.”
Randy slowly shook his head in bafflement, and then it increased in emphasis to become a response of no.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll keep all these secrets. I promise. You have my word. You can lock me up if I betray you. But this offer.… I just.… I just can’t. I don’t want to do this. I’m afraid I have to decline your proposal. Count me out.”
Jason and Meg exchanged glances.
Steven sat back in his chair. “There’s one more thing we haven’t told you.”
Randy said, “Steven, I’m sorry. Please respect my wishes.”
“Absolutely,” said Steven. “But hear me out. To truly become the Giamattis, you will need to inherit their assets and holdings. We would make it completely seamless. That means what belongs to them would belong to you. Including the fortune that Simon Giamatti amassed in his lifetime.”
“And how much is that?”
“Seven and a half billion dollars.”
Randy Phelan blinked and promptly responded. “Where do I sign?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
In a secured, concealed government facility nestled in solid rock in the mountains of West Virginia, Sam Mejos checked on his three prisoners. It was a daily routine, boring in the beginning, but he had found ways to spice it up for his amusement at the expense of his neutralized inmates. Humming to himself, the rotund man with thinning hair advanced through three layers of security before entering a long, narrow room with bare walls. The room was immaculately climate controlled, completely windowless, brightly lit and populated with rotating cameras hanging from the ceiling. The front section resembled a humdrum office with a desk, monitor and computer tower a little bit thicker than most. Sam sat down and began pecking at the keyboard to boot up.
Before long, an animated avatar of a male figure appeared on the screen, represented by simple, three-dimensional graphics. The cartoonish character paced within the borders of the monitor, head bobbing, mouth frowning and eyes alert.
“Good morning,” Sam said.
“Go fuck yourself,” said Yefim.
The captive Russian spy existed as a cartridge of digitized consciousness installed in a computer that linked him with a simulated human being created in pixels in a virtual environment. The computer-generated imagery allowed for user customization, which had enabled Sam to dress up Yefim as a small elf in a green jumpsuit with pointy shoes.
Sam’s intention was his own entertainment and his cyber-prisoner’s humiliation. It worked on both levels.
Yefim’s avatar continued to spew profanity at him.
With a click of his mouse, Sam muted the audio.
“Watch your language,” he said. “Don’t forget, I can take away your voice.”
The elf continued to move within the confines of his abstract, illustrated surroundings. He made several crude, offensive gestures.
“Okay, I’m putting you to sleep,” Sam said. And he did just that, mo
ving the cursor across a navigation bar and down a menu before clicking the avatar away. “You’re lucky I don’t drag you into the recycling bin.”
He called up Alina next.
Alina was represented by an animated face embedded in the center of a big, colorful daisy flower. She didn’t – couldn’t – move. She just stared.
Sam had converted her to a daisy earlier in the week, just for fun.
Prior to that, she had been various other objects: a school bus, an octopus, a pomegranate, the number 4.
Awakened from sleep mode, she addressed her observer in a hard, direct voice that no longer attempted to conceal a Russian accent.
“Listen. I want to cut a deal. Get me back in the physical world. Put me in something real. I will see that you are rewarded. You will receive riches beyond your wildest dreams. I am very well connected. Name your price.”
Sam chuckled at her. “You are a prisoner of the US government, for now and forever. You are serving a sentence of one million years. There is nothing to negotiate.”
“This is not fair. This is torture.”
“The United States does not torture,” said Sam, and he moved the cursor across the screen. He clicked Exit.
Sam stepped away from the computer. It was time to check on his third prisoner, Sergei Vladin, the legendary spy known as ‘The Stick’. The Stick stood at the end of the long, narrow room in a cage of thick steel bars. He stared at his fat captor with a simmering anger that never relaxed. It only intensified.
“Hello, Mr. Ugly,” Sam said.
The Stick said nothing. He could not speak. He was a disfigured animal mutation, probably the closest thing to a living monster on the planet and definitely one-of-a-kind.
Pre-dating the creation of Tom Nolan’s shell, the first experimental scan of a living mammal took place with a chimpanzee. The results were far from perfect. Its dimensions were wrong. Parts went missing. Its appearance was generally deformed with eyes at different levels, lopsided shoulders and arms of different length and size. The distorted facsimile was promptly abandoned and deemed useless until someone came up with the notion to test a human cartridge in it – specifically, the idle consciousness of a captured Russian spy.
Partly out of curiosity, partly out of cruelty, Sergei Vladin’s mind was installed in the misshapen animal shell. It worked.
“Okay,” said Sam to the prisoner. “Are you ready for today’s joke?”
No response. This was to be expected – the thing in the cage had no voice.
“You’re so ugly, you scare the crap out of the toilet,” Sam said, following the one-liner with uproarious laughter. Sam provided a few more general taunts. Then he left the containment vault to begin crafting the next day’s joke. Joke writing had become a daily ritual to kill some idle time in Sam’s long, isolated, uneventful job in the middle of nowhere. As far as Sam was concerned, it was the easiest job in the world.
* * *
Sergei Vladin barely moved, perched on his two hairy, irregular legs, feeling no physical need to move or sit, content with remaining stationary while his brain did the racing. He festered with rage about his literally inhuman predicament and the smirking buffoon prison guard who constantly belittled him. He directed the crackle of all energies toward a single destiny that wholly consumed his thoughts.
I will find my moment and I will escape. It may happen in a week, a month, a year, a decade or decades, but I will be free. I will bring down my enemies with an unfathomable wrath.
There is but one certainty, America. My day is coming.
Epilogue
On the night of President Gus Hartel’s re-election, Emily sat on the sofa with her second husband, Bob, and watched the voting results roll in on colorful maps from across the country. It wasn’t even close. President Hartel won the popular and electoral vote in a landslide. Shortly before midnight he thanked his supporters in a rousing acceptance speech followed by a massive balloon drop and celebratory blast of rock and roll.
As they watched the president, Bob held Emily’s hand. He comforted her as memories returned of a trauma from which she could never fully recover but hurt a little less every day. Emotionally, she continued to create distance from the deep shock of her first husband’s attempted assassination of the president. Physically, she was a thousand miles away from where it all happened, long departed from Chicago to nestle in a calmer and more natural homestead outside of Casper, Wyoming.
While Emily would always love Tom Nolan very much, Bob Greshan had become equally special in her life and critical to her healing. They married seven months after Tom’s death and moved with Sofi to a small ranch property that attracted few visitors and effectively discouraged the media. It was an ideal life – private and simple with bright days of sunshine and quiet nights of stars.
Following President Hartel’s victory speech, Emily and Bob turned off the television and stepped out on the back porch while Sofi slept. A cool breeze swept across the prairie. Bob held Emily tight in the moonlight. She relaxed in his arms, and they felt good and right. He spoke softly to her in the darkness in that familiar, soothing voice.
Everything was in place, just like it should be.
“When do you think we can tell Sofi?” he asked.
“A few more years,” said Emily. “She’ll be old enough then.”
“How do you think she’ll handle it?”
“I think she’ll be the happiest girl in the world.”
Emily stared into Bob’s eyes. She smiled because she could still see Tom. He was not lost. He was not gone. He was just hidden.
He was hidden beneath another man’s face, a necessity for creating closure for a nation that still believed – and needed to believe – that Tom Nolan was dead.
Little did anyone know – except for a very small, closed circle – that Tom not only still lived, he lived twice.
A year ago, a digital representation of Tom Nolan’s mind had been created for President Gus Hartel. Like all digital files, it was duplicable. Within weeks, an exact copy was made and installed in the refurbished Tom Nolan shell that had previously suffered electrocution damage. After several weeks of lab work, scientists repaired the scorched circuitry. They also altered the facial features sufficiently so they no longer resembled Tom Nolan and became a new identity entirely.
Bob Greshan.
Bob’s mental starting point was lifted from Tom’s first month as President Hartel. Once isolated in a new replica and life environment, the file quickly accumulated new data and analytics to shape its personality differently. While President Hartel and Bob Greshan had the same brain at the beginning, they evolved to become their own individuals. For Emily, the original Tom still existed as a familiar foundation, and he grew and developed in the ways people do during their lives. Sort of the same, sort of different.
In Wyoming, Bob took on a general manager position with a Casper accounting firm, distanced from the legal profession. Emily found a new teaching job at an elementary school. Sofi grew up remarkably well adjusted. While her new daddy was different, she found comfort in the many similarities: his voice, his physical build, his blue eyes and warm smile, his gentle personality and encouragement.
In the first year, Emily often found herself calling him ‘Tom’ and correcting herself while he chuckled. Gradually, she got used to ‘Bob’. They enjoyed following the journey of Bob’s secret twin in the White House, not always synchronized with his politics but well aware that his persona was being influenced by another environment, different people and separate life experiences.
Emily felt very fortunate. She was gifted with her own version of Tom in exchange for a lifetime of keeping quiet. That was a tradeoff she was happy to make. She came to terms with the morality of it all. Perhaps President Gus Hartel wasn’t really the original Gus Hartel. But the general public didn’t seem to recognize or question it. If he acted di
fferently now and then, don’t we all?
No one really knows anyone in this world, Emily thought to herself, as she continued to embrace Bob in silence. Together they watched the stars, experienced the moment in their own way, and held on.
About this book
This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK
Text copyright © 2019 Brian Pinkerton
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
FLAME TREE PRESS, 6 Melbray Mews, London, SW6 3NS, UK, flametreepress.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Matteo Middlemiss, Josie Mitchell, Mike Spender, Will Rough, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. The cover is created by Flame Tree Studio with thanks to Nik Keevil and Shutterstock.com.
FLAME TREE PRESS is an imprint of Flame Tree Publishing Ltd. flametreepublishing.com. A copy of the CIP data for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
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