by John Nelson
“Yeah, I’m impervious to her kind of persuasion,” Jean added.
“Yes, that’s what we’re hoping,” Musgrave said, but sounded less than convinced.
He closed down the screen monitor, opened his computer and voiced a command, and the doors opened and the rest of the team entered. We spent the next several hours going over the specifics of our assignment. Well, I was glad that my neural processor recorded this session for a future playback, because I was somewhere else, no doubt back in that gorgeous mountaintop home “viewing the scenery.”
Chapter Six
16.
We were back in New York for only a few days before Jean was whisked away in the middle of the night, to the Howell’s lakeside mansion and compound in Chicago. As our last briefing had noted, Jean would be outfitted there, and while she was just a bit smaller than Brenda, her clothes would be altered to fit Jean to help maintain her cover. For my end, I was taken a couple days later, when it became evident that Sherry was flying back to New York from Washington. They didn’t want me interacting with her before my assignment. Interestingly enough, I was then flown from New York to Bangor Maine, where Lewis Hargrove lived, and spent several days observing him as he went about his daily routine.
There was an all-night diner on the outskirts of town where he liked to write and where I spent several late nights eating, reading the news on my portable, and observing him. He was a weird-looking guy in his late forties, tall with a long narrow face—his left ear was missing its lobe, as if someone had bitten it off—very van Gogh. He always wore a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead, which accentuated his sharp features as he hunched over his portable and typed. He looked like the kind of guy who lived with his mother and wrote apocalyptic sci-fi novels. We even exchanged a few words, when I left early one night and he asked me what the latest news was on the storm heading our way.
“Yeah, supposed to hit at dawn,” I said, stopping at his table, but well back from it to protect my earlobes.
He glanced up at me and had trouble focusing his eyes. “Not from around here?” he asked.
I nodded my head.
“Well, these northeasters can be a real bitch,” he said, with a sneer. “Like everything else in life.”
“Yeah, tell me.”
“We should all move out West,” he said, with a sly smile, and then turned back to his portable.
I hesitated, a little taken aback by his reference, and then thanked him for his heads-up and walked out. I had to wonder if Fria wasn’t the only psychic rattling my cage, or if the Howells weren’t the only coconspirators in our cover story.
After our Washington sojourn, I continued to dream intermittently about Maria Fria. What I couldn’t determine was whether these dreams were actually projections from her, or my own subconscious fears working themselves out. At some point, after I bought a local car with Maine plates and drove to Chicago, where I hooked up with Brenda/Jean and we started sleeping together, they stopped. I wondered if sleeping with Brenda formed its own kind of psychic shield, or was my libido getting its release and my subconscious was thus preoccupied and not fixated on Fria. The plan was for us to head out in the family’s touring car after a week or so and drive to the Southwest as a kind of getaway vacation from Chicago and her parents, who lived in another wing of the mansion. I’ll have to say that Jean was quite an actress and had adopted a whole new set of behaviors playing the part of Brenda Howell—softer and more feminine in some ways, but no less a voracious lover.
On one of our last nights in Chicago, we dined at an expensive lakeside restaurant frequented by Brenda Howell. When I tried to pay for the dinner, which was more than my weekly salary, Brenda was insistent. “No, Lewis, save your money. You impress me in other ways, dear.”
The waiter extended his electronic check pad and Brenda used her retail fob to pay it. He must’ve seen her name come up on his screen because he looked down at her more closely. “Is anything wrong, Claude?”
“No ma’am, you just look … younger than I remember, Ms. Howell.”
“Well, great sex can take years off of you.”
He laughed, glanced over at me. “I’ll remember that, ma’am.”
“Well, I hope you do more than just remember it,” she said leeringly. Brenda turned to me, no doubt expecting me to slip into my own altered ego.
“I wish you wouldn’t embarrass me like that, Brenda,” I said as the waiter walked away from the table with a smirk on his face.
“You must allow me to take care of you, Lewis. I’m hoping this trip will spur on your creative efforts. I did so adore your last novel.”
It was at that point that my Lewis Hargrove persona seemed to gel. I had wanted to leave for the Southwest earlier, but Brenda insisted that I wasn’t ready, or that I hadn’t taken on my role yet. It was clear that she was in charge, and from then on I started calling her Brenda and thinking of myself as Lewis. The dinner performance had apparently convinced her and two days later we headed out—after a shopping splurge, in which she bought me a Southwest wardrobe to go with my “Maine duds,” as she called them.
I knew this wasn’t going to fool Fria, nor did we want it too, but the idea was to maintain Brenda’s role as the duped lover. I was concerned that, if Fria had remote-viewed me at the compound, she could have spotted Jean. Musgrave’s experts said that was unlikely, given that she had so quickly acquired me as the target. It probably helped that from the moment I arrived in Chicago, Brenda was in character and never deviated for a moment, even her orgasms were more ladylike. One had to be impressed with this degree of role playacting, and it made me wonder if her previous role as Jean Whatley wasn’t just another persona as well.
As we drove through Oklahoma and then into New Mexico, the wide-open spaces and endless expanse of brown prairie grass and sagebrush really opened me up, after living in the confined cages of big cities and our modern straitjackets: from work to relationships. However, it turned Brenda from Ms. Chatty to Ms. video game, as she shrank down to the size of her portable and blocked out the surrounding landscape. I recalled a quote from a twentieth-century Western author, about how the expanded horizons frightened structured people who are afraid their essence will leak out. It had quite the opposite effect on me: I could feel myself, or my real self, as the Jungians might say, busting out of its seams. I even rolled down the window to smell the sagebrush and feel the biting cold winter air. Brenda activated her passenger-side climate control and kept focused on her game playing. At one point I pulled into a diner in Tucumcari, New Mexico for an early lunch, just because of the city’s name. It suggested an exotic locale, even if the diner was a dilapidated old railroad car.
Brenda called up the roadmap on her portable. “Why don’t we wait until we reach Albuquerque? Better selection, I’d imagine.”
“Brenda, dear. Our destination is a mountaintop in the middle of the desert. Get use to the wild.”
I stepped out of the car and she reluctantly followed me, zipping up her rather expensive, teal-colored, ski jacket, which did look smashing on her. She took two quick steps into the interior; since unlike most modern establishments, the diner didn’t have a UV-ray awning. We sat down at an old-fashioned booth, with red vinyl benches right out of the twentieth century; the windows, by federal regulation, did have darkened UV screens, if peeling in places.
The restaurant also had a white & gold-chipped Formica counter with bar stools, where a mixture of local Hispanics, Anglo cowboys and rift-raff hard cases sat drinking coffee that could probably hold up spoons. Since they were used to tourists, and there were a few others here this morning, our presence didn’t make much of a stir. Brenda quickly scanned through the tattered plastic menu and ordered something safe: a taco salad. I ordered the Huevos Rancheros with green chili sauce.
Brenda looked down to my selection, which didn’t have a description. No doubt they figured most locals knew what they were getting, and tourists could ask if they dared. “Ma’am, what is that?
” she asked the waitress, a fiftyish Hispanic woman with pockmarked skin, as she stepped over.
“Fried eggs on black beans and tortilla chips smothered with green chili sauce,” she said, shaking her head, grabbing the menus, and walking off muttering “gringos.”
“Lewis, have you ever had this before?”
“No. But, then I’ve never been in Tucumcari, New Mexico.” She gave me one of her new disapproving looks. “Think globally, eat locally,” I added.
“Well, if you get sick, dear, don’t expect me to drive that car of yours.”
I had to laugh, as did half the guys at the counter. She was really playing her role. Well, the food came, and I was both pleasantly surprised by its quality and taste. It must’ve had homegrown ingredients and not the frozen precooked meals we were used to eating, even in East Coast restaurants, or the less pricey ones.
17.
We had to take a roundabout route to Jerome from Flagstaff, to avoid driving through Sedona, one of the more notorious borny villages in the Southwest, or maybe we were thus instructed to avoid the so-called energy vortexes there. Anyway, we headed south on Route 17 and then turned onto the road to Prescott and backtracked to Jerome. We got there in late afternoon the next day and drove up the icy road to the top of Cleopatra Hill. There was a sign outside of town, welcoming visitors, signed by Mayor Maria Fria. We had made reservations at a small hotel, The Sliding Sands, and since we weren’t married, they made us both sign in. We then went to our room. While Brenda was showering, I checked out the room with my bug sensor: there were several that I disabled, as well as one vid feed. If Fria knew I was coming and knew of my affiliation, I wouldn’t need to hide my identity from her, just Brenda’s, and while I wasn’t really sure about Musgrave’s scenario, I wasn’t taking any chances.
After a little nap, we headed out with our UV-protective attire and strolled up the 30-degree slope of the street, to the west side of town and viewed a spectacular Southwest sunset. It was really breathtaking, what we city dwellers hardly ever see back East. Then we walked around town for fifteen minutes, with no fixed destination and after passing up several restaurants, chose one on Verde Avenue at the south end of town. We didn’t know what to expect here, whether there would be many tourists or if the whole city was “zoned” for her followers, who might be easy to detect by their flaky attire or blissed-out stares. We were pleasantly surprised that our servers and fellow diners were as normal as they could be, if a little slow, or at least on the surface. We had a table off to the side and could have talked about our assignment, but had agreed to stay in character in public settings. We just didn’t know the level of surveillance, electronic and otherwise. We ordered dinner, their combination Mexican combo plate, with a burrito, enchilada, and taco and drank bottled water.
“Well, Lewis. This is a perfectly delightful little town,” Brenda said at the end of our meal. “I think we should stay for the week, at least.”
“It would make a great setting for a novel,” I added.
“Yes, dear. That was what I was thinking too. Maybe a messianic shamanic novel set in the high desert.”
“I should have you write my back cover copy.”
“Well, you’re not the only creative one,” she said, reaching over and caressing my hand.
“Well, I’ll have to do some research. I wonder if they have a library.”
“You mean with real books,” Brenda laughed, like Sherry would have at such a retro concept. “I’m sure you can find reams of material on websites, and stay closer to home. You know I do need your … constant attention, dear.”
I had to smile. What an actress. The waitress, a woman in her 20s, with short-cropped blonde hair, handed me an electronic check pad. Brenda began to reach for it but I gave her a look. She sat back and I used my own e-transfer fob, which identified me as Lewis Hargrove.
The waitress glanced at her e-pad and then looked up with a more solicitous attitude. I wondered if that was because she recognized my nom de plume, or had been alerted to watch for it. She now asked us, “So, are you passing through town or staying on for a while?”
“Well, we were just talking about that.” Brenda turned to me. “What do you think, Lewis?”
“There is my research.”
“Then it’s settled,” she said, glancing up at the woman.
“Reason I asked … tomorrow night there’s a … gathering you might want to attend.”
“Oh, really. An Indian powwow?” Brenda said facetiously.
“Well, nothing that traditional, but whether you know it or not, one of the country’s best healers lives here, and she’s having an … open healing at the old Methodist church on Main Street.”
“Oh, how exciting. Anybody can attend and … get healed?” Brenda asked with feigned enthusiasm.
“Yes. That’s the idea.”
“Oh, thank you. We’ll be there.”
The waitress nodded her head and then stared at me, her eyes narrowing. She wasn’t very good at hiding her tells. Again, I wasn’t sure if my e-transfer had triggered this inquiry, and if so, whether it was for Lewis Hargrove or Alan Reynard.
Afterward we walked out in the cold air and saw a really spectacular clear, night sky, the likes of which I had rarely seen; the Milky Way’s band of stars clearly discernible. As we strolled back to the hotel, Brenda leaned over and kissed me on the cheek and then whispered in my ear. “Phase one, complete.”
We didn’t dare use electronic communication for contact purposes, so we were pretty much on our own, or at least within the confines of the town. The other consideration we discussed walking back to the hotel, was whether either of us should participate in the healing ceremony, given how her energy was reported to affect neural processors. Of course that was part of the assignment, but we decided to just observe this first healing ceremony but decline to participate. That night Brenda was really sexually primed and nearly wore me out; in the shower, which we figured was off-limits to even psychic prying, I probed her and she confessed that this dual Brenda/Jean role was creating tension that intense sex seemed to relieve. Being more integrative, and not as invested in my dual role, it didn’t affect me the same way.
In the morning, Brenda woke up with a throbbing headache, that didn’t go away as the day progressed. On our morning walk, we wondered if they hadn’t slipped something into her meal last night, causing the headaches to make her a more willing participant that evening.
“Interesting that they would target me and not you, if that were the case,” Brenda said.
“You’re my ballast, as it were, and maybe affecting you would make it easier to compromise me.”
“Well, we’ll see about that.”
“So, you think you should step forward tonight?” I asked.
“Let me play the sucker and see where it leads us.”
Musgrave had set up a remote contact facility in Phoenix with full tech capability, so if Brenda’s neural processor was affected, we could have it checked out fairly quickly. It did seem too obvious for a first move on their part. Maybe they just wanted to make sure we attended their little get-together, or maybe this speculation was just unfounded.
I spent the afternoon at the library, reading dozens of Native American, shamanic, and energy medicine books and some e-book editions that weren’t available from booksellers on the Internet. Brenda made a show of being bored and went shopping, taking advantage of the government’s unlimited expense account. While viewing their archives, a very attractive young woman saw my interest and started up a conversation with a lot of enthusiasm and way too many sexual undertones. Maybe this group wasn’t as sophisticated as we had assumed about their recruitment tactics, or maybe they underestimated me. After a while, I told her I needed to get back to my research, and she asked if I was coming to the healing tonight. I said yes, and she replied that maybe she’d see me there. I had no doubt about that. I just hoped Brenda wouldn’t get territorial about her interest.
18.
/> The Methodist church where the healing ceremony was conducted had high, stained-glass windows, depicting the Stations of the Cross, but the pews had been replaced with padded folding chairs, that could be easily moved around on the wood floor to form various configurations. Tonight they were spread in a semicircle around the front of the elevated sanctuary, where a rather large ornamental, high-back chair sat. There were about a hundred people in attendance, in an audience five rows deep. The chairs were half-filled, and we were shown by an usher to the second row from the front. I assumed the locals filled it in from the back forward, to give first-timers a better view. After we were seated, the other chairs were quickly filled and the organ began to play Ave Maria and the small choir sang the hymn. After a while, most of the attendees started meditating, and we took that as a cue and at least closed our eyes and pretended, but Brenda’s form was suspect and it showed.
At some point I sensed a shift or a slight disturbance in the air, and I squinted my eyes open to watch Maria Fria enter the sanctuary from a side room and take her seat. She was dressed in a flowing turquoise gown that was understated, and she wasn’t as large in stature as I had supposed from her old photos. She closed her eyes in meditation and I was able to examine her features: her skin was lighter than either her Indian or Hispanic heritage would suggest, indicating that she was probably more than one-fourth Anglo. She had a high forehead and prominent cheeks, and one would say that she was an attractive woman, but unlike many of these messianic female leaders who tended to be quite plump, she was just a big-boned woman and well-toned. The choir finished their hymn and the organ music stopped, and we sat in silent meditation for at least fifteen minutes. I could sense Brenda’s restlessness but wasn’t about to nudge her.
A young woman in a blue, ankle-length dress walked into the sanctuary and stepped up to the old pulpit. I was interested as to just how far they would mirror their “church” or healing service after Catholic ritual, which was the faith that Fria had been raised in. The woman cleared her throat and began.