MindWar (Nick Hall Book 3)

by Douglas E. Richards

  After describing the rationale for these conjectures, which explained Hilton Subel’s presence on the team, Hall concluded his overview. He then turned the meeting over to the research scientists among them to plunge into these results with far greater depth and scientific rigor, while Catherine asked questions and engaged in discussion. Finally, more than three hours after the meeting had begun, the presentations concluded.

  Catherine gave the team her heartfelt thanks for taking the time to bring her up to speed. “But before we call it a day,” she added, “there is something else I’d like to bring up, even though I’m sure you’ve done so long ago.”

  “By all means,” said Hall.

  “Since I got clearance to join this team, I’ve been doing homework. As I understand it, the prevailing theory is that Kelvin Gray’s experimentation somehow triggered Nick’s ESP, which is likely a dormant ability present in all of us. I know I’m stating the obvious here, but it stands to reason that if we really want to understand this, we need to know the exact pathway the BrainWeb implants took through Nick’s brain.”

  “As you suspected,” said Hall, “this point did come up. During our very first meeting, in fact. The core team debated attempting this approach, but we decided not to go there. Not yet. We do have a copy of Kelvin Gray’s data, including a careful record of his experimentation on me. This is in a file that also contains thousands of pages detailing the technology behind the implants, and specifications for large scale manufacturing. We kept a single copy only. But this file has been safely trapped within an impenetrable cage of Alex’s making, one we think of as our own version of Pandora’s Box. It’s not only the recipe for ESP, as you point out, but for the BrainWeb hardware and software as well. We have no doubt that there are people and governments who would do anything to get their hands on it. We can’t take any chances. Besides, we aren’t trying to recreate mind reading, just block it if others do.”

  “I know I’m the newbie,” pressed Catherine, “but I’d recommend this be reconsidered. I’m very impressed with your efforts. But I’m not sure how much farther you can get from here. You’ve been ingenious and thorough. I know you want to safeguard the recipe, as you call it, and I appreciate that, but I don’t see how we can make the progress we need without it. It’s the most important piece of the puzzle. More important than all of the other pieces combined.”

  She paused. “We’re trying to stop ESP,” she continued, “not create it. I get that. But knowing which of your neurons were stimulated or destroyed by the passage of the implants would be invaluable. It’s a lot easier to determine how to block something if you know what caused it in the first place.”

  Hall nodded. She made some excellent points. And they had vetoed this idea back when they had started, back when they thought they might find an answer without this data. But they had been fooling themselves.

  “I also understand that there are still a few handfuls of prototype sets available,” continued the neurosurgeon, “but that they haven’t been installed in anyone else. I think they should be. Nick’s ESP is dependent on the implants, after all. Comparing Nick’s brain activity to that of someone who has implants, but not ESP, could prove valuable. We might begin to get a handle on how the implant/brain interface contributes to the mind reading effect.”

  Hall glanced over to Dennis Sargent, who raised his eyebrows almost imperceptibly. He was the only one outside of THT’s core team aware that Alex Altschuler also possessed implants. He had done the very experiments Catherine Ellen Guess had just suggested, but they hadn’t led anywhere useful. Still, this was one sharp woman. What a great addition to the team she was going to make.

  Hall decided to speak privately with Altschuler while conversation continued around the table. Since both possessed implants, the communication was indistinguishable from telepathy. “What do you think, Alex?” he asked.

  “You know what I think,” he replied. “I know you’re trying not to read me, but my thoughts are pretty clear on this.”

  “Can you tell me anyway?”

  “She’s remarkable. Just what we need. Not afraid to speak her mind in her first meeting. And I think she’s right. The time has come to open Pandora’s Box. I think we’ve been too paranoid. And it won’t be dangerous if we open it inside an even bigger Pandora’s Box.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Hall.

  “Meaning that I can make sure it won’t leak. I can set up the data so it won’t let itself ever touch the Internet. If we only ever view the data inside these walls, and keep it isolated from the Web, there’s no way anyone can get at it.”

  Hall ended his private communication with Altschuler and listened to the continuing conversation around the table. It was soon clear that the idea to provide the team with access to Kelvin Gray’s data had unanimous support.

  “Okay,” said Hall when the discussion had died down. “Catherine makes a good point, and we’ve always known this course of study might prove valuable. I guess I’ve been guilty of being ridiculously paranoid. I’m sure Alex can come up with a way to let the data off the leash but make sure it’s still secure—along with Drew, of course,” he added hastily.

  Drew Russell shook his head. “How did I manage to find the only place on earth where I’m second fiddle?” he said. “Where my considerable talents are just an afterthought?” He held out his hand in mock resignation. “That’s okay,” he added dramatically. “My ego is big enough to take it.”

  “Your ego is big enough to take a nuclear warhead, Drew,” said Hall in amusement. “But we wouldn’t have it any other way.” He paused and faced the entire group. “But back to Kelvin Gray’s data. I’ll take this up with General Girdler and President Cochran. I’ll let you know if they approve our request for access.”

  “What are the chances they will?” asked Catherine.

  Hall smiled. “For a request that has this team’s unanimous support? I’d say as close to a hundred percent as it’s possible to get.”

  28

  Admiral Robert “Bob” Siegel waited until he was informed the coast was clear and then drove inside a mining warehouse set against a Utah mountain, alone in his rental car.

  Until just a few days earlier he had thought he had been doing a good job of keeping the country safe. He had thought he was as high as it got in the intelligence pecking order.

  As Director of National Intelligence, he could be forgiven for having these grandiose thoughts, no matter how wrong they had turned out to be. He was, after all, in charge of all sixteen US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA, and was the principal intelligence advisor to both the National Security and Homeland Security Councils.

  He was also supposed to have been the principal intelligence advisor to the president, and he had thought that he was, until the president had read him into a tiny little Black Operations group called THT, which was just chock-full of surprises. Mind-blowing surprises.

  Siegel, a trim man in his early fifties, was just glad that his hair was already white, or it might have changed to this color during the hour or two meeting at which the president had finally disclosed this bombshell. Revelations like THT didn’t happen every day.

  In fact, none even close to this had ever happened in his lifetime.

  As he exited the rental car, feeling more like a feeble tourist than the head of the most powerful and far-ranging intelligence organization in history, he was greeted warmly by an old associate, General Justin Girdler, looking quite well for a treasonous bastard who was being hunted as though he were Osama bin Laden.

  Apparently, no one had thought to look in Utah.

  And no one had considered that this Benedict Arnold was actually George Washington in disguise. Not to mention the man pulling all the strings of national security, playing patty-cake with the president while Siegel played the clueless figurehead.

  “Let me give you a tour of the kingdom,” said Girdler.

  Siegel knew the general was using irony to poke fun at the
vast disparity in the facilities they controlled, along with their human and physical resources. But this only served to highlight the obvious: as ridiculously small as Girdler’s physical kingdom might have been, his power was unparalleled.

  Timothy Cochran had given Siegel a verbal overview of THT’s history and had let him read a brief summary file in the Oval Office, one the president wouldn’t let out of the room, but the admiral wasn’t even close to being fully up to speed.

  Right now, all he knew were the basics. He knew that two legends thought dead, Nick Hall and Alex Altschuler, were in surprisingly good health, and a man known only as Victor had been fooled to implant Trojan Horse bugs inside the heads of key enemies of the state, streaming intel back to THT-controlled computers 24/7. He knew that Girdler had wanted to keep knowledge of THT more rarified than any Black project in history.

  Not that he could fault the general’s reasoning. When giving a hollow wooden horse as a gift, a single leaked rumor that there were soldiers inside would ruin everything.

  Finally, he knew that Girdler and his second-in-command, Colonel Mike Campbell, whom Siegel had also worked with previously, had finally decided their job was too big, and that they needed to bring the Director of National Intelligence into the tent after all.

  When he had first learned of THT’s activities, Siegel had been self-critical. How had he failed to connect the dots? How had he failed to realize that US intelligence organizations were being fed high-quality intel in ways that disguised how this intel had come to be known?

  But after a brief period of self-recrimination, he had decided he hadn’t been negligent or incompetent. Girdler had done his usual crafty job of orchestrating this stealthy data dump, with the President of the United States running interference. And Siegel’s domain was enormous, a sixteen-tentacled octopus, with each tentacle sprouting hundreds of others. He couldn’t possibly be expected to ferret out hidden data insertions spread out across all of these offshoots, any more than the ruler of an ocean could be expected to be aware of all that was occurring within its murky depths.

  And when the president had personally ordered Homeland to round up ninety-nine different suspects each month for useless interrogations in Utah, requesting his fingerprints not be on the orders, Siegel had strenuously objected. Objections Cochran had shut down without explanation, insisting that the admiral leave it alone.

  At least now he knew why.

  “The president gave me a rundown on the attack you stopped over the University of San Diego,” he said to Girdler. “Well done! Malala and thousands of little girls? Jesus, Justin, my head explodes just thinking about what would have happened if this wasn’t stopped.”

  The attempted attack had taken place exactly a week earlier. Siegel wasn’t sure if they had made the decision to read him into THT prior to this, or if this had somehow been the straw that broke the camel’s back, convincing them of the need to broaden their manpower and reach, and that continuing to keep the DNI in the dark might be misguided.

  Either way, the decision had been made. The president had read him in and then had him whisked away to Utah to get a more comprehensive briefing, and to meet the band, which had been playing the real music while he had been busy playing air guitar.

  Girdler’s facilities tour lasted all of ten minutes. The interior of the warehouse was modern and high tech, but this was the last thing that set THT apart.

  Their last stop was the main conference room, where the rest of THT’s core team would be waiting for them. A team Girdler had raved about during the tour, proclaiming it to be the most extraordinary ever assembled.

  Based on what Siegel knew, it was hard to argue otherwise.

  29

  Girdler smiled to himself as he watched Admiral Bob Siegel take a deep breath and enter the main conference room. The man looked like he was going to a funeral. His own funeral.

  Every member of the core team was standing inside, some holding glasses of orange juice and some with mugs of coffee, waiting for them to arrive.

  Girdler also noted that the Director of National Intelligence tried to be polite and make small talk while he was introduced to each man or woman in turn, but he couldn’t completely hide the nauseated expression on his face or keep the slightly panicked look from his eyes, and Girdler’s colleagues couldn’t quite hide their amused smiles. Only he and Mike Campbell managed to keep straight faces, and he had no doubt that Siegel was wondering if some sort of happy gas had been released into the air to account for the laughs and smirks he was seeing all around him.

  Heather and Megan seated themselves at the conference table right after being introduced and studied Siegel like he was a puppy they expected to soon do something fun and entertaining. Drew Russell gave the incoming admiral a “you’re fucked now, buddy,” expression, just to play with his mind. And Altschuler simply raised his eyebrows in amusement as he noticed a thin coating of perspiration emerge from the pores on Siegel’s face, making it the slightest bit shiny.

  Siegel was so paralyzed when Nick Hall reached out to shake his hand that Girdler couldn’t keep a straight face any longer. The admiral couldn’t have looked more horrified had a proctologist announced he was using a sword to give him a rectal exam.

  “Let’s get started,” said Girdler when everyone had been introduced and all were seated around the table. “The purpose of today’s meeting is to bring Admiral Siegel up to speed on all of our activities, and for all of us to, well . . . bond . . . for want of a better word. Thus the personal visit.”

  He paused. “We’ve allotted three hours for the briefing, and then we’ll have lunch brought in for an additional hour. Then President Cochran will join us for our first full meeting with Bob as the new team member.”

  He turned to Siegel, who seemed to be in another world, completely preoccupied. “Before we begin, do you have anything to add?”

  Siegel looked confused for just a moment, as though Girdler’s words weren’t registering, but then nodded. “Thanks, Justin,” he began. He swallowed hard. “It’s an honor to meet all of you. I know you’ve singlehandedly been responsible for . . .” He paused. “Responsible for . . .” He stopped again.

  “Shit!” he said finally. “I can’t concentrate.” He turned squarely to face Hall, who was sitting quietly at the table, three chairs away. “I mean, are you reading my mind right now? Do you know exactly what I’m going to say?” he finished in exasperation.

  Everyone in the room broke into broad smiles or laughter at the same time, except for Nick Hall, whose face remained impassive.

  “Sorry, Bob,” said Girdler. “We’ve been having a little fun at your expense. It isn’t hard to guess that you’ve been feeling a little . . . uncomfortable. And by a little, I mean more uncomfortable than you’ve ever felt in your life. And by uncomfortable, I mean anxious to the point of puking.”

  “But you hid it well,” said Megan Emerson wryly.

  From Siegel’s expression, it was clear he wasn’t yet rolling with the joke.

  “This has nothing to do with you personally,” Girdler reassured his old associate. “We’re amused because we’ve all been there. Welcome to the club. Worried about what secrets Nick might be reading? Feeling more exposed than you’ve ever felt? Well, we’ve all had the experience of encountering Nick for the first time and realizing our minds were an open book, ugly warts and all. So we didn’t want this opportunity to pass without observing you and extracting out the humor in the situation.”

  Siegel was now no longer glaring at the group, but he wasn’t smiling, either.

  “Think of this as an initiation,” said Altschuler. “A rite of passage. We tend to ease new scientists joining our peripheral teams into the fold a lot more gently, but we knew you could handle it.”

  Putting the situation in this context did seem to soften the blow, and Siegel’s demeanor continued to improve.

  “You made it for a full eight minutes,” said Girdler. “Eight minutes before you got so unnerved b
eing in Nick’s presence that you couldn’t go on without addressing the elephant in the room. We set the over-under on this at ten minutes,” he explained. He turned to address the entire table. “So congratulations to all of you who bet on the under. We’ll settle up after the meeting.”

  Siegel shook his head. “What the hell, Justin?” he said, but in a good-natured tone, almost one of surrender. “So this is your idea of fun? Watching me squirm?”’

  “Pretty much,” admitted Girdler. “Like Alex said, think of it as an initiation.”

  “Okay, so I’ve been initiated. And you’ve all been in my shoes, which does make me feel better. But I still need to know exactly what those shoes look like. So tell me, Nick, are you planning to read my mind in great depth? The president said you had made a vow to respect the privacy of your colleagues to the best of your ability. Is this true? Will you stay out of my mind?”

  Hall sighed. “It’s true. And no one understands better than I do that this is no laughing matter. I don’t enjoy being a leper any more than you enjoy being around one. I’m sorry that you don’t feel comfortable around me. But I can assure you, as soon as this meeting officially begins and you’re officially a colleague, I’ll give you this same vow.”

  “As soon as the meeting begins?” said Siegel suspiciously. “Does that mean you’ve been in my head since I entered the room? What, vetting me?”

  Hall winced. “Actually, I have something to tell you that you may not love. Turns out I vetted you long before you got here.” He shrugged. “You didn’t think we’d bring you into the fold until we were absolutely sure we could trust you, did you?”

  Siegel’s eyes widened. “When?” he stammered in horror. “How?”

  “We first decided we might want to have you join us about a month ago. Remember when the president had you fly out to Hill Air Force Base to meet with the base commander? Well, I’m afraid I vetted you then.”