He was walking down the drive towards the car park when Miller and Martinez passed him in a Cadillac. The American was grinning broadly and Martinez lifted his hand in salute.
He looked again at his watch.
Between them they had stolen over an hour.
But how had it been done? And where had it gone?
Chapter Eight – ‘This thing has become personal.’
Grant used a public phone box.
The lines were clear and he was connected with Paris in under two minutes flat.
The direct line to Admiral Cooper’s office could only be used in extreme emergencies but even then every message had to be both guarded and brief. ‘Maximal urgency. Treble A One speaking. Request send Juin or representative plus top expert hypnosis to Hotel Paix, Quai du Mont Blanc this afternoon. Chartered aircraft if necessary. Time now fourteen hours thirty. Will expect meet seventeen hundred hours and have reserved room number D.69. Ask for Grant. Repeat time factor maximally important.’
The voice at the other end was flatly neutral. ‘Will do.’
Grant glanced round the quiet square near Jardins des Anglais and stepped into the sunlight.
Two hours to kill! And best out of circulation.
He strolled to the jetty and hired a motor boat. Better on the emptiness of the lake than among crowds where he could be recognised by anyone, anywhere, at any time.
He nodded to the boy in charge. ‘One hour along the lake and another back. Land me at Quai du Mont Blanc and set course about a kilometre off shore.’
The boy touched his hat. ‘Certainly, m’sieur.’ They skirted the jet d’eau and then pointed for Versoix. It was fifteen minutes short of seventeen hundred hours when he dropped off near the Paix and strode rapidly inside. His room had been prepared. There was a tray of soft drinks with sandwiches and he composed himself to wait.
He had given them very little time.
And where had Miller gone with Martinez? Lausanne sounded like a red herring. And they had been in a hurry. Nor did he dare to ring Stefanie. Chances were that if he had spilled anything under hypnosis she, too, had been mentioned and it would be nothing for any organised opposition to tap the line to her pension.
He glanced again at his watch and the phone rang as its hands hit five pip emma.
‘Reception, m’sieur. Your friends have arrived.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Send them up. Plus a pot of tea with lemon.’
Professor Juin himself was in charge and Grant breathed a sigh of relief. The Prof was top man at his job and ADSAD’s leading boffin. But, more than that, he was the ‘ideas’ man who mattered. Given the gist of a situation and it was only a question of time till he came up with an answer. He was accompanied by a middle-aged man wearing a rimless pincenez. ‘Mr. Neville,’ said Juin briefly. ‘American. Expert in hypnosis. And now tell us what has been going on.’
Grant made it brief. There had been an argument about hypnosis between Miller and a Spaniard who was alleged to be a patient at the Hancke Clinique. The Spaniard had claimed to be able to cure the American’s emotional problems by using suggestion while under a hypnotic trance.
The American had ultimately agreed to let him try, but provided only that Grant had acted as chaperone.
Grant remembered some mumbo jumbo, which had been the beginning of a session but he also remembered looking at his watch and it had been twelve-fifteen precisely.
Next thing he knew it was one-thirty and the Spaniard was admitting that he had failed. There had been a bet attached and the Spaniard had handed over five thousand dollars without batting an eyelid.
But Grant had lost over an hour of time. Where had it gone?
Was it possible for a man to be hypnotised even when he was in the background, taking no part, not watching the hypnotist and not even particularly listening to his voice?
The American nodded. ‘Surely so. Plenty examples of this sort of thing happening with stage demonstrations.’ He hesitated. ‘What were you looking at if you weren’t watching Martinez?’
Grant shrugged his shoulders. And then he remembered. The cigar. And a smoke ring. And a thin flare of blue vapour.
‘So you did have a fixed point to stare at. He did succeed in distracting your attention.’
‘But I was sleepy,’ said Grant curtly. ‘They had given me six grains of tuinal on the previous night and it left me with a hangover.’
‘Then that would be ideal for their purposes.’ The American smiled slightly. ‘They seem to have taken you for quite a ride.’
‘Maybe, yes.’ Grant’s voice was uncompromising. ‘But so far as I can see the only way to find out is to have someone responsible give me the works and then let him try to find out exactly what did happen during that hour. An hour is a long time,’ he added viciously. ‘And you’ll need to find out if they’ve ordered me to do some goddam thing or other. For all I know they’ve set a trap for any mortal thing they want.’
Professor Juin knew Grant better than most men and could not remember ever having seen him really rattled before. ‘One point, David,’ he said slowly. ‘How did you feel towards Martinez afterwards?’
Grant looked at him coldly. ‘I thought he was a nice bloke. I felt friendly.’
‘In spite of suspecting that there had been some hanky-panky?’
‘Yes.’ Grant nodded impatiently. ‘I knew that I’d lost an hour and I had a suspicion that Martinez knew the answer. But I still liked him.’
‘Then that tends to convince me that he did, in fact, hypnotise you: that he has gained some sort of ascendance over your subconscious mind.’
‘Look,’ said Grant desperately. ‘I’m not a child. Do you mean to say that a hard boiled citizen like myself can be hypnotised in the open air, without even knowing that it was done? Without co-operation or anything?’
The American was polishing his lenses. ‘I’m afraid so, sir. In fact, your defences were completely down. You suspected nothing. You were relaxed after a very efficient sleeping pill and it was a warm morning. That all adds up to a background favourable for this sort of technique.’
‘Look, Prof,’ said Grant brusquely. ‘It hardly seems possible. In fact I just don’t believe it.’
The American was very gentle. ‘You do believe it. Which is why you deny it so strongly. You don’t like truth, so you try to argue yourself out of it. Very human. Very normal.’
Professor Juin studied him carefully. He had never before seen Grant so irritated. ‘What exactly is bothering you, David? There is nothing humiliating in having been hypnotised.’
Grant half smiled. ‘Isn’t there! But what really happened? I must know the truth. And if they’ve got me laid on to do some stricken thing then you’ve got to suggest me out of it.’
‘But first,’ said the American slowly, ‘I’ve got to know the facts. The full detailed facts.’ He paused. ‘My departmental number is H for Harry-536. I am privileged to have the full confidence of Admiral Cooper and he gave me a letter to clarify the situation.’
Grant thumbed open a heavy seal. ‘Do what H 536 says. He has been graded ASAC.’
Above Suspicion Above Corruption was top departmental grading and granted only to a handful of the Admiral’s staff.
Swiftly he ran through the whole background, listed the addresses of the Negro girls and etched the part played by Stefanie Carmichael. He filled in most of his conversation with Hancke, with Miller and with Martinez and sketched the objects of the exercise.
Neville continued to stare at his fingers and then beamed with satisfaction. ‘Enough. We’ll put you under. Juin will be chaperone and I’ll be guided by him as to how best we lay on a counter-attack.’
‘And what do I do?’ Grant sounded vaguely aggressive.
The American looked up placidly. ‘Nothing. Just sit. I could put you under even with your eyes blindfolded and your ears plugged.’
He walked across the room and laid down his glass of iced pineapple juice. His hands stroked gently
around Grant’s neck until suddenly he pressed hard. Grant felt the fingers bore into his flesh just below the ear and then he heard the American’s voice coming from a long way off.
Professor Juin settled himself into his seat and watched. Neville was using the carotid technique and already Grant was sitting rigid. His eyes were half closed but his jaw muscles had relaxed. His arms were limp by his side and his fingers hung loose against his calfs.
Grant answered questions in a sluggish monotone and then Neville ordered him to raise his arms to the sides. He held them in position without a tremor for over five minutes, until slowly, with command after command, the American regressed him to childhood and back to full maturity. And only then did Grant begin to explain what had happened.
Juin’s portable tape recorder took down every word. Admiral Cooper would require detailed reportage and the situation was explosive.
He had given the names and addresses of each Negro girl to Tomas Martinez.
But he had refused to divulge the names of his superiors in ADSAD. The Spaniard had bullied him and bombarded him with questions for a long time, but he had still refused. Miller had then interrupted and reminded the Spaniard that perhaps ‘full information would come on their next session.’
Martinez had immediately changed his approach and asked a whole series of questions which only required ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for an answer.
Grant had admitted that he was a NATO agent and he had agreed that Stefanie Carmichael was working with him.
He had also agreed that an operation had been planned against Charles W. E. Miller Junior and admitted that coloured girls would be used. Address and names had then been given but when the Spaniard had switched back to grill him about ADSAD he had again refused to say anything. Though he had admitted that the Administrative Department relating to Security concerning Attack and Defence did exist and that it was part of NATO’s security framework.
At that stage the Spaniard had again returned to the Negro girls and he had repeated their names and addresses.
They had then thumped into his subconscious that he would forget everything which had taken place and the two men had gone into conference, behaving as though they had been speaking in complete privacy. He had simply ceased to exist.
And he had heard them argue not only how best they could checkmate him but also protect Miller and dispose of the girls.
A phone call had then been put through to a Gstaad number and he had heard enough to guess that a meeting was being called for that very afternoon.
Afterwards Miller had tried to persuade Martinez that the girls must be killed without delay but Martinez had reminded him that their first duty was to secure the names of top ADSAD personnel and a compromise had then been reached. The girls would be killed that night before they could be used by Grant but their bodies would be hidden in a certain deserted farmhouse near Messery until Tomas had succeeded in putting Grant into such a depth of hypnosis that he would keep nothing back. After which a drill had been arranged to involve Grant and expose him as murderer, hoist him with his own petard, in fact.
He would be made to drug each girl and take her with him in his car to the farm. Each woman would then be strangled but their bodies would be left in different rooms and each would be mutilated to raise public opinion against their murderer—once he had been captured. And to guarantee this, clues would be left all over the place, a personal letter bearing Grant’s name and address in the kitchen and a handkerchief carrying his laundry mark between the sheets of one bed.
His fingerprints would be smeared on the bathroom mirror and he would drop some earth from the ground outside into the turn-ups of his trousers.
He would then close the house up and return to Hancke’s Clinique where, next morning he would report to the Spaniard and a second session would be arranged without preliminaries.
The Spaniard believed that this would be enough, that at worst he would require only one more grilling before getting Grant so deeply under his influence that he would explain everything. And Miller had said that he would breathe more easily with the women out of the way. It couldn’t happen too soon for him.
The American spoke slowly and carefully. ‘You will never again be hypnotised by this Spaniard or by anyone else. Never. You are being given protection now, by me . . . by me . . . to prevent you ever again being hypnotised by anyone except me. The Spaniard no longer has any power over you and you will forget everything he has said. But you will go to him tomorrow morning and you will pretend to be hypnotised. And he will be deceived into believing that you are. You will be given the know-how to pull the wool over his eyes and you will never give the list of names which he is so anxious to secure.’
He hesitated and looked towards Juin. ‘I am trying to hypnotise him into being resistent to any other hypnotic influence which may ever be brought to play upon him. It is a novel sort of defence, but the only one I can think of. Any better suggestions?’
Juin was deadly serious. ‘You are doing very well. But be certain that you eliminate every trace of that man’s power. Build up a wall in Grant’s subconscious which will be totally impenetrable under all circumstances. And then remove all traces of the orders which he has received. Later we’ll play the tapes back to him and he’ll know exactly what has been going on.’
The American’s voice hardened and commands shot out with crisp efficiency.
‘The Spaniard means nothing. You will forget everything he has ever asked you to do. You will forget his orders vis-à-vis the coloured girls. You will remember that this man is nothing. You are David Grant, Treble A One and ADSAD’s top counter-security agent. The Spaniard can do nothing to harm you and his orders are forgotten, forgotten as from now. Understand? Tell me that you understand.’
Grant raised his head. His eyes were heavy and his mouth still slack. ‘I understand. The Spaniard’s orders have been forgotten. He is nothing to me.’
‘And he cannot harm you. Repeat after me that he cannot harm you.’
‘He cannot harm me.’
‘And his orders have been forgotten. They never existed.’
Grant nodded. ‘They never existed.’
‘And he can never again hypnotise you. You are immune against everything he may try to do.’ Neville hesitated again. ‘Repeat that you are immune against everything the Spaniard or anyone else may try to do with you.’
‘I am immune against hypnosis. They can’t ever harm me.’
‘Remember,’ interrupted Professor Juin, ‘that Grant must hear these tapes. He will want to know exactly what has been going on because he is the sort of man who must know where he stands in a thing like this. Are you sure that listening to the tapes will do nothing to disturb the barriers you are building up?’
Neville sipped his pineapple juice. His brow was damp with sweat and his fingers were trembling slightly. ‘Think what would have happened if Grant hadn’t suspected something being wrong when he “lost his hour”.’
Juin half smiled. ‘I hate to think what is going to happen to some people now that he is about to discover why he lost it.’ He lit a slender cigarette. ‘But be sure that you give him enough resistance against anything that the Spaniard may try to do.’
‘You are still under my control,’ said Neville. ‘You cannot open your eyes and you feel nothing.’ He lit a match and gently passed it in front of Grant’s chin. Close enough to hurt but not enough to burn. ‘You feel no pain. No pain at all. You feel nothing.’
His voice became harder. ‘You are unable to lift your legs. They have lost all strength. They are like jelly, with no muscle power.’
And Juin saw Grant slump visibly in his chair. The man had lost height. Shrunk into himself.
‘Now you are in my power. In my power and you will do what I say. Repeat after me. The Spaniard is nothing. He can never hypnotise me.’
‘He can never make me do anything which I do not wish to do. He did succeed once in making me lose control of myself and he gave me o
rders but these orders have been forgotten. They never existed. And the coloured girls are friends whom I will never harm.’
Juin half smiled with a grim sense of satisfaction as he heard Grant repeat every phrase and knew that the orders were sinking into the deepest depths of his subconscious.
‘And when you see Martinez and Miller you will always have the knowledge and courage to deceive them. They will think that you are hypnotised. If they ask you to hold your arms by your sides or do anything else to test the depth of your trance you will have the strength to deceive them. You will succeed in Operation Noah and you will find strength to kill Miller according to schedule.
‘But now,’ he whispered softly, ‘I am going to count from five to one. When I reach one and when I say one you will become David Grant, Treble A One again. Though you will still be under my control. Understand. Five you will still be under my control. Four but you will remember my orders. Three though still under my control. Two and ready to do whatever I tell you to do. One. You are David Grant, Treble A One and ADSAD’s ace security agent. And you are still under my control. You will never be under the hypnotic domination of any other living person ever in your life. And that is a command. Repeat what I have said.’
Grant’s voice snapped out crisply and to the point.
Neville turned again to Professor Juin. ‘Any further angles?’
‘The phone,’ said Juin abruptly. ‘We could do with the Gstaad number.’
Grant was sitting alert on his chair. The number rapped out with military precision and Juin sighed with satisfaction as he watched the tape running smoothly on its drums. ‘One last thing. Did he hear them mention either Zero or SATAN?’
Neville was now speaking in a conversational voice while Grant watched him like a snake beside a mongoose.
‘Zero lives near Gstaad,’ he said curtly. ‘The phone was to Zero. The house was referred to as H.Q.’
Juin lit one last cigarette. ‘Did they give Zero’s name?’ He was taut with excitement as he listened to Neville put the question.
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