“I don’t have a telephone. Why should a spy carry an identification card?”
“So that a man like yourself will give some weight to what I say I’m not a spy like you see in the movies, Mr. Alter. I don’t shoot people, I don’t arrange for the overthrow of unfriendly governments, and I don’t go skulking around Russian missile sites or Washington apartment complexes I’m just a domestic errand boy whose biggest concern is staying out of the way of FBI people who zealously guard what they consider to be their turf.”
It was probably true, Chant thought as he closed the wallet and handed it back to the man “How did you find out about me?”
“Let’s just say that we have a friend on Blake’s clerical staff who provides us with access to all the applications for Montsero’s research project.”
“You say you want me to be your eyes and ears What is it that you want me to look and listen for?”
“I don’t want to tell you that,” Insolers replied matter-of-factly “It could make you self-conscious, and that could be dangerous for you We don’t want you to do anything unusual, just take part, watch, and listen. I’ll drop around from time to time, or leave word where and when we can meet Then you’ll report to me on what goes on How about it, Mr Alter? Will you cooperate?”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“Look, I imagine you’re pretty bitter about what happened to you Also, judging from the looks of this place, things are pretty rough for you right now I can understand you being goddam pissed, and maybe you feel you don’t owe this country—”
“How I feel about this country will have nothing to do with my decision, Insolers I don’t blame the government, or any person, for what happened to me, and I don’t feel bitter. I don’t have time or energy to waste on recriminations or regrets.”
“What’s the problem, then? Did I scare you when I said it might be dangerous if we told you what we were looking for?”
Chant said nothing.
The rodent-faced man grimaced and clucked his tongue “You’re kind of putting me on a spot, Mr. Alter. The first session is scheduled for this afternoon.”
“So? Why am I putting you on a spot? I’ll be going to the session anyway. By the time you contact me again, I’ll have made my decision as to whether or not I have anything to say to you.”
“Yeah, but there’s information I could give you if I knew you were going to cooperate.”
“Do what you want.”
Insolers sighed heavily. He ground out his cigarette in the saucer, immediately lit another. “All right,” he said after a long pause. “I’m going to give it to you I’m not sure it will do any good, but it might. To be perfectly frank with you, we haven’t quite totally figured out this angle yet.”
“Do you expect me to express curiosity, Insolers? All right; I’m curious.
“You have a peculiar way of saying what’s on your mind, Mr. Alter.”
“So do you,” Chant replied evenly. “You come to me waving what you claim is a CIA identity card and asking me to act as an informer on a group of men I’ve never met—but you won’t tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for, or why For all I know, that card—and you—could be phony. I’m an ex-convict, with no real way of checking you out. Now you’re trying to pressure me. I was told two days ago that I’d been accepted into the group. Why did you wait until the day of the first session to contact me?”
Insolers shrugged. “It took us a little time to put things together.”
“That tells me nothing. I’ve been in another world for twenty years, Insolers. You’d best believe that I’m going to ease my way back into this one with great care and caution. In the world I just came from, informing—for whatever reason—is definitely not a good idea.”
Insolers narrowed his eyes, slowly nodded. “All right,” he said after a pause. “All the talk in the world isn’t going to do us any good unless you last and keep making the cuts.”
“Keep making the cuts?”
“The experiments are conducted in stages, with the original group growing smaller at each step. There’s some kind of elimination process continually going on, and we don’t completely understand it because the men chosen to continue are sworn to absolute secrecy about why they were chosen—assuming they know, which is a big assumption—and what they do at each step along the way. Naturally, we’d like to see you get through to the final stage so that we can get the big picture of just what Montsero’s so-called research project is really all about I can’t guarantee that you’re going to make it that far, no matter what you do. There seem to be a number of criteria applied to the people chosen to continue on, and we don’t know what they are But the first critical step is the multiple-choice tests you’ll be taking this afternoon God knows what they’re trying to figure out, but I can tell you this: on every sixth question you should check the fourth box, no matter how ridiculous that answer might seem to you I told you there’s no guarantee, but we have good reason to believe doing that will go a long way toward getting you passed on to the next stage.”
“You don’t know the purpose of the tests, but you know which boxes I have to check in order to pass them?”
“The intelligence community works in mysterious ways, Mr Alter,” Insolers replied as he stubbed out his cigarette. He rose and put on his overcoat, shrugging it over his thin frame. “Remember: the fourth box on every sixth question.”
Chant remained where he was as Insolers left the room, closing the door quietly behind him The medicinal smell remained, pungent and unpleasant.
There was always the possibility that he had made a mistake and betrayed his presence in New York, Chant thought as he pondered the meaning of Insolers’s visit. Both the CIA and FBI would be certain that he was in the United States; the operation against the Johnson brothers in Ronda had his mark all over it—precisely as he had intended. There was also the possibility that Alistair had blundered, been captured and drugged or tortured into revealing where he had gone, and why. Insolers’s visit could be the CIA’s way of playing a cat-and-mouse game with his mind before killing him.
But Chant didn’t think so The CIA didn’t work that way; if the agency had had any indication that the man calling himself Neil Alter was really John Sinclair, Chant was certain he’d be dead. Which meant that Duane Insolers, with his apparently authentic CIA credentials, really was interested in Neil Alter and the Blake College research project on ex-convicts.
The situation offered any number of interesting possibilities, Chant thought with a thin smile, as he dismissed Insolers from his mind.
CHAPTER SIX
Blake College turned out to be easily accessible by subway and bus. Following the directions he had been given, Chant went to the basement of the largest building, in the center of the campus. He found himself in a large, brightly lit lecture hall with close to fifty other men.
Chant leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, affecting boredom but in fact using his highly developed peripheral vision to observe the others. The room was eerily silent, except for the nervous shuffling of feet and an occasional, muffled cough. It confirmed for Chant what Martha had told him in the course of his “briefing” for his role, that ex-convicts on the outside tended to be notoriously shy in the presence of strangers, even if those strangers were ex-convicts like themselves. Most of the men sat very straight in the student desks, feet flat on the floor and arms folded across their chests. Only one other man besides Chant had removed his coat, although the room was warm. The men appeared to range in age from their late thirties to a few well past sixty, with a relatively even mix of whites, blacks and Hispanics. A lone Oriental sat like a paranoid sentry near the door, as if ready to bolt if he saw or heard something he did not like.
“You don’t look like no long-termer to me, and I’ve got a pretty good eye for things.”
Chant turned and looked at the man sitting next to him, who had spoken The man was the same height as Chant but perhaps seventy pounds heavier
, most of it thick and knotted muscle—a man, Chant thought, who had probably lifted weights in the prison yard year after year until he was now too musclebound to do anything with his strength but lift more weights His head was shaved, and he wore a tiny silver earring in the lobe of his right ear. Both ears were cauliflowered, his nose had apparently been broken many times, and scar tissue around both eyes made it appear as if he were wearing an ivory-colored mask He was a stupid man with heart, Chant thought, a man who liked to fight, but—unless his face was a secret weapon—not much of a fighter.
“You certainly look like one,” Chant replied with a faint smile.
The big man thought about it, then grinned and let out a whoop of laughter that startled half the other men in the room. “Yeah, I guess I do, don’t I?”
Chant broadened his own smile. “A real meat-eater, huh?”
“Yeah.” The hint of suspicion that had been flickering in the man’s eyes was replaced by pride at what he took as a compliment “You look like you done a lot of easy time.”
“A lot of time,” Chant said evenly, “none of it easy. Only bankers and politicians do easy time. My only interest in banks was wanting to rob one; I didn’t like the only politician I ever met, so I removed his teeth for him.”
“You talk good You been to college or something?”
“Jailhouse University. Started when I was eighteen, studied for twenty years.”
“Where?”
“Q,” Chant said, hoping the man he was talking to hadn’t spent time in San Quentin. “How about you?”
“Attica.” The man flexed his right arm, rubbed the shoulder. “Took a rat-trooper bullet right through here during the riots. You can see it’s good as new, though It takes a hell of a lot more than one bullet to put the Tank away. What’d they get you for?”
“Murder,” Chant replied, and winked. “Naturally, I didn’t do it.”
The man whooped again. “They got me for armed robbery and assault. I didn’t do none of them things, either. Hey, listen, how about you and me being kind of like, you know, buddies? Maybe we can help each other out during this thing. I never even been close to any kind of college, what’s more sat in one, and I’m kind of nervous.”
“Why not?” Chant extended his hand. “I’m Neil Alter. You, I take it, are Tank?”
“Yeah.” The man engulfed Chant’s hand in an equally large hand that showed unmistakable signs of arthritis from too many broken bones and dislocated knuckles. “So we’ll help each other out if we need it, right?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, it looks like the boss man’s here.”
Precisely at four o’clock a man in a charcoal-gray suit entered the lecture hall. He was short and burly, with feet that seemed too small for the rest of his body. His hair was sandy, streaked with gray, razor-cut. He wore tinted, reflecting aviator glasses, and moved with an air of almost arrogant confidence. Flanking him, carrying bundles of papers, were two extremely attractive student assistants, a boy and a girl, who immediately elicited a chorus of catcalls and sexual remarks from the group. Both students flushed deeply, stopped, and looked down at the floor while the man stepped behind a lectern that had been placed on a slightly elevated platform at the front of the hall Chant put his age at around fifty.
“I’m Jack Montsero,” the man announced in a voice so soft that the group of ex-convicts had to strain in order to hear him. “I’m a shrink. I’m here because I want to find out a few things about you people, and you’re here for the money. When we’re finished this afternoon, each of you will get a hundred bucks. It’ll be in cash, so you don’t have to worry about cashing a check.”
A low murmur rose from the group. “Hey!” a deep voice called from one of the upper tiers of seats in the back. Chant turned, saw a man with tattoos on his cheeks and hands slouched in his desk with his feet up on the chair in front of him. “You got that much cash on you? How do you know one of us ain’t gonna rip you off?”
“What’s your name, pal?”
“Chuck Politan, pal I rob people.”
Montsero stepped out from behind the lectern, hunched his broad shoulders, and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Listen, Politan and the rest of you motherfuckers,” he growled in what Chant considered to be a fairly good impression of James Cagney, “there’s safety in numbers If one of you rips me off, it means the rest of you don’t get shit. I like those odds. And while we’re on the subject of pay, motherfuckers, I want your minds on what I’m saying, and not on what you’d like to do with these two young innocents I’ve brought along with me.”
The impression and the words had the desired effect, and the lecture hall rocked with the men’s laughter Montsero had achieved instant rapport, Chant thought, and he was suitably impressed.
“So,” Montsero continued as the laughter died, “now that the bullshit is out of the way, maybe we can get down to business. It may come as a surprise to you badasses, but a lot of you are in much better shape, physically and mentally, than the good, law-abiding folks out here who’ve never spent an hour behind any bar that isn’t stocked with liquor. It seems that breaking your ass all your life to pay for fancy houses, fast cars, and fast women can be hazardous to your health.”
There were loud groans from the men. Montsero stepped down from the platform, paced back and forth for a few moments, then was able to silence the men with a single, curt gesture.
“Some of the reasons for your good health seem self-evident,” the psychologist continued as he reached the far end of the hall, turned, and started back. “Assuming you don’t get knifed or ass-fucked to death, prison can actually be a fairly easy place to live. You eat, sleep, work, play, and shit on command. If you stay on the right side of the guards, and establish your space with the other prisoners, things tend to go along pretty smoothly. You get plenty of food, sleep, and exercise, you eat three times a day—the food may taste like shit, but it’s more of a balanced diet than any of you would eat on your own. You don’t do much booze or dope in prison, because most of you can’t come up with the necessary cash Most important, there just aren’t a whole hell of a lot of things for you to worry about—until you get outside, where there are too many things to do and you can’t, or aren’t permitted to, do most of them. The bottom line is that there are more healthy old men in prison than there are outside Stress kills. Now, we know that there are health differences between long-term convicts and the normal population, and we’re trying to find out just how great some of those differences are.
“What we’re going to do is measure you, physically and psychologically, and then compare your health profiles with those of straights in your age groups. We’re underwritten by a group of insurance companies, which means they’re providing the bread that goes into your pockets and mine. They’ve got plenty of money already, but they want to see if they can’t find ways to help everyone live longer so that they can make even more. That’s what this little gathering is really all about—long-term ex-convicts laboring to insure larger long-term profits for insurance companies Now, doesn’t that gladden your hearts?”
There was another outburst of laughter, which Montsero allowed to continue for some time He returned to the lectern, adjusted his aviator glasses Finally he gestured toward the two student assistants, who still looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“Jane and Paul will pass out questionnaires and a pencil for each of you. These are just some simple questions that give us some idea of your general interests and hobbies All you have to do is read each question and check the box with the sentence that best tells how you feel about the question. If you don’t read too well, move around and try to find someone to help you. The only thing I ask is that you don’t copy anyone else’s answers That’s important, what we want is a picture of you. There are no right or wrong answers, so you don’t have to worry about ‘passing’ the test. You get your hundred bucks just for being here and filling out the questionnaires.”
“You read?” the man called Tank
whispered.
Chant nodded, and the scar-faced man settled back in his desk as a few of the other men cluttered around the better readers.
Montsero tapped on the lectern for attention, got it “I have one more thing to say, and I want to get it out of the way up front Each of you will get your hundred bucks this afternoon. Some—but not all—of you will be invited back for other sessions If you’re not invited back, don’t worry about it And don’t think we overlooked you, because we didn’t; don’t call us, we’ll call you. It has nothing to do with passing or failing these tests, and it has nothing to do with you as a man, it just means you’re not quite what we’re looking for. Also, some of you may not want to participate in the tests that come after this one If any of you feel that you can’t take some real physical testing, you’ll be free to take a walk any time you like, with no hassles That’s the story, and I don’t expect to have to repeat it. Any questions?”
There weren’t any Montsero nodded to the student assistants, who proceeded to pass out questionnaires and a pencil to each man.
“Neil, what’s this?”
“What’s your last name?”
“Olsen.”
“Write it down.”
Chant put his pencil aside and leafed through the first questionnaire, trying to get an overall feel for the questions. It took him less than a minute to determine that Montsero was a liar, which meant that the research project, which seemed to have gained a great deal of respectability over the years, was probably a lie.
The test had nothing to do with general interests, Chant thought, but was a narrow-band personality-screening instrument which seemed specifically designed to probe for paranoia and sociopathology. Every sixth question appeared to be nothing more than a control query designed to disguise the questionnaire’s true intent, and the fourth answers to the sixth questions were meaningless. All of the other questions were tightly focused on antisocial and violent traits.
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