The Devil's Game (The Game Trilogy Book 2)

by Sean Chercover

  She pulled out another file. “By 1984, they had a working prototype up and running successfully. The next year, they were granted a patent for”—she read from the top sheet in the folder—“a portable electronic device that directs scripted auditory hallucinations directly into a subject’s mind from a distance.”

  She handed the file over. Sure enough, it was a copy of the approval notice from the US Patent Office. Daniel paged through the document, which also contained mostly thick black lines laid down by government censors. How the device worked, how and of what it was made, details of the tests on live subjects, adverse side effects—all redacted from both documents. But what remained was enough to confirm exactly what Julia had said.

  The weapon was real, and it worked.

  “What kind of sick puppy dreams up such a weapon?” said Julia. “And what kind of government thinks it should have such a weapon? Hijacking people’s minds, directing their thoughts, to me that’s worse than simply killing them.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” said Daniel, “but even if it exists, it couldn’t account for the Trinity Phenomenon. It doesn’t explain the backwards tongues, and it certainly can’t explain predicting the future. You were there when that billboard came down—you saw. Our very presence there caused the accident—setting up in the median, the dead battery, Shooter running across the highway. There was simply no possible way for Tim to have predicted it. None. And yet he did.”

  “Absolutely. This isn’t what happened to Tim, but it proves that auditory hallucinations can have an outside source. It’s worth at least a few chapters in my book.” Julia sipped her drink. “I need to profile one or two sufferers from the seemingly rational minority, and so far my best candidate is here in London. I’ve spent the last week with her and she seems perfect for it. If you would meet with her, listen to her story, with your experience debunking—”

  “I’d love to help,” Daniel cut in, “but I’ve got a pretty full plate right now.” It sounded lame, but I’m a little busy chasing down a plague was not an option. He needed to add something else. “And I gotta admit I don’t love the idea of spending a day listening to the sad fantasies of a crazy person. It feels, I don’t know, exploitative.”

  Oops. Exactly the wrong thing to say. But he couldn’t unsay it.

  “The woman feels she’s being victimized,” said Julia, not amused. “She wants to tell her story and she’s got a hell of a story to tell. She trusts me to tell it fairly, and you know I will. It is not exploitative, and I’m not asking for a day, just an hour.” With a little effort, her face brightened. “Tell you what: I’ve found this awesome pizza joint in London—”

  “London pizza? Please, I’ve spent the last three months in New York.”

  “The guy who owns it is originally from Brooklyn and he actually shipped his pizza oven across the Atlantic when he came—it’s like a million years old. I guarantee his pie ranks with the best. You do this for me, and I’ll take you there and prove it. What do you say, Danny?”

  With Tim Trinity gone, Julia was the only person left who called Daniel “Danny,” and although he hadn’t thought of himself as “Danny” since he was a teen, it was nice to hear it from her.

  “Have you approached the Pentagon for a comment?” he asked, hoping she’d go with the change of subject.

  “Too early. But I know what they’re gonna say. The official line is laid out clearly in the project report. The conclusion says after patenting the weapon, the Pentagon decided that putting it into use was unethical and a possible violation of the Geneva Conventions. So the entire thing was mothballed, and was never shared with any branch of the military or intelligence community.” She smirked. “And if you believe that, I’ve got some primo swampland for sale at a bargain.”

  “You really think they’re using this thing?”

  “I have no idea. But I know boys love to play with their toys. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that someone, somewhere, is using one.”

  Daniel flipped through the project report as Julia spoke, still having trouble accepting the existence of this terrible weapon, this high-tech gaslighting device. He came to the final page, his eye immediately drawn to the name of the officer who authored the report. His heart skipped a beat.

  Major Michael Dillman.

  Colonel Michael Dillman, the DIA spook who’d transferred from Air Force Intelligence as a major, had been in charge of developing this weapon in the 1980s. And who was now working with Conrad Winter on the Council’s AIT program.

  Were they planning to use the weapon to fake AIT? And if so, to what end? No way to know, still not enough dots to connect.

  But then a stranger idea hit Daniel. What were the chances that Julia’s research would lead her to this fringe group with no real connection to the Trinity Phenomenon, which would lead her to Colonel Dillman’s Air Force project from thirty years ago and to a woman in London she would want Daniel to vet for her book just as he was visiting London, leading him to see Dillman’s name in the file?

  An incredible string of coincidences, or . . . ? The questions were making him dizzy. Daniel put the file folder down and signaled the waitress for another round of drinks, as Julia slipped out to the ladies room.

  While she was gone, he photographed the cover sheet of the Patent Office document, the cover sheet of the Air Force project report, and the page bearing Michael Dillman’s name. He texted the photos to Ayo in New York, returning the phone to his pocket just as Julia returned to the booth.

  “So?” she said.

  “You’re on for pizza,” said Daniel. “Tell me about this woman you want me to debunk.”

  14: FINGERPRINT FILE

  Daniel went through his morning routine—meditation, katas, yoga, shower, and wet shave. He selected the green-gray suit, blue mandarin-collared shirt, and suede Mephisto wingtips. The day-off uniform of a top-shelf business consultant.

  In a brief video chat, Ayo told him Conrad Winter and Michael Dillman had melted into the ether without leaving a trail, so Pat had gone home to Louisiana to hang out with his coonhound until his services were next required. Daniel then gave Ayo a condensed version of the story Julia had told him the night before about Dillman’s thirty-year-old invention that could beam voices into people’s heads, and about the woman he was about to meet.

  Kara Singh, forty-two, US citizen. Both parents deceased, both naturalized US citizens born in India, mother was a history professor at Stanford, father a prominent orthopedic surgeon. Kara followed in her father’s footsteps and became a trauma surgeon in the California Bay Area, married John Watts, a Silicon Valley geek considered a rock star by the venture capitalists. Fifteen years ago, the couple had become a family when they’d brought a daughter into the world.

  Eight years ago, they’d moved to London when Watts and his backers had bought into a small-but-rising tech company there. Relocated in England, Kara had worked for the National Health Service as an on-call ER surgeon. She was well respected and well liked by her peers. Kara and John had a robust social life with colleagues from work, friends he brought in from the golf club, and hers from the gardening club. Their daughter made friends easily and thrived in the academic world of UK private education, showing a talent for the sciences, looking more like her mother every day. Life was good.

  Until six years ago, when Kara started hearing voices. She came to believe that they were not being conjured by her own mind but were coming from outside. Researching online, she found that she was far from alone. She learned from the Freedom of Information releases of the Pentagon’s strange weapon. She tried to raise hell about it, going public in an attempt to pressure them to cease and desist.

  The British tabloid press savaged her on the front pages with headlines like Dr. Kara-zy claims CIA mind control! and NHS allows lunatic doc to operate on our kids!

  In the end, she lost everything. Her job, social sta
tus, friends, and finally even her family, when her husband had her declared by the courts an unfit parent and moved with their daughter back to California. Alone for the last three years with nothing to do, she’d filled journal after journal with handwritten transcriptions of the voices in her head. And she continued to vociferate about it to a world that wouldn’t listen to the vociferations of a crazy woman.

  “God,” said Ayo, “it’s tragic.”

  “Yeah it is. According to Julia, Dr. Singh is now self-medicating with alcohol.” He wasn’t very much looking forward to spending the afternoon with this woman. “Anyway, she isn’t likely to be a productive lead—Julia read some of the journals, didn’t see anything Dr. Singh’s malfunctioning mind couldn’t have supplied without outside help. I’ll keep an eye out for a Dillman connection, but the odds on that are somewhere between slim and none, I’m guessing.”

  The morning news mentioned a protest growing in front of the US Embassy, so Daniel avoided Grosvenor Square by walking north to Oxford Street, which was a more interesting route for people-watching anyway. The day was mild and blue-skied with enough clouds to make it interesting, like the classic Thames Television logo come to life.

  He turned south at the eastern edge of Hyde Park, slowing to a stroll as he passed Speakers’ Corner.

  He loved the idea of Speakers’ Corner—a designated place in the city where members of the public could climb up on their proverbial soapboxes and give voice to their beliefs, ideas, and grievances about the world. London’s finest had officers on hand to enforce basic rules against excessive profanity and blatantly offensive speech, but beyond that it was pretty much anything goes.

  Spectators gathered around the various speakers, egging them on with noises of agreement or ridicule, sometimes engaging the speakers in free-form debate. Daniel strolled past a hairy man in a green kilt calling—with an American accent—for Scottish independence; a skinny pink-haired punk girl issuing dire warnings about the worldwide collapse of the honeybee population; a UFO cover-up conspiracy hipster; a gray-haired Orwell enthusiast upset about perpetual war; and an even number of pro- and anti-Tim Trinity preachers, three on each side of the issue.

  Dr. Kara Singh lived in Knightsbridge, a leafy district of high-end shops and even higher-end residences. Singh’s husband had left her with more money than she could spend in a lifetime so she’d taken a ninety-eight-year lease on a large flat in the quiet neighborhood.

  Daniel took the Underground to Knightsbridge. Across the street from Harrods, he stopped for lunch at Cafe Rouge. He sat facing the door, ate moules marinières, and drank lemon barley water.

  The man who approached was in his early forties, powerfully built, close-cropped sandy hair, blue poplin suit. He pulled out the chair across from Daniel and sat.

  “Evan Sage, fellow American.”

  Daniel shook the offered hand. “Daniel Byrne.”

  “Good to know you, Daniel,” said Sage. “Here on business?”

  “Yep.”

  “Work keep you on the road a lot?”

  “Sure,” said Daniel.

  “Me, too. Man, it’s brutal. This trip here? Cost me my fiancée.”

  “Maybe you should travel less,” said Daniel.

  “Not really an option in my line of work.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Evan Sage grinned on one side of his mouth. “See, a normal person would say, ‘What line of work are you in?’”

  “I enjoy dining alone,” said Daniel. “Nothing personal, I’m just not looking for conversation.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that.” Sage plucked a roll from the breadbasket, tore a chunk off with his teeth, and chewed, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Daniel figured Evan Sage might be the Homeland Security Yank Descia Milinkovic had mentioned the previous day. Whoever he was, he wasn’t here by accident, and Daniel had not made himself easy to track.

  Paranoia might leave you loveless and alone, Raoul once said, but it’ll keep you alive. Paranoia is your best friend.

  So Daniel had followed the protocol he’d learned in training. During the walk to Speakers’ Corner he’d checked his rear using shop windows and other reflective surfaces, had crossed the street regularly, stopped into stores, reversed direction a few times, always looking for faces and clothing and cars and bicycles that he’d cataloged earlier in his walk.

  After entering the Underground at Marble Arch, he’d taken the Jubilee line one stop to Bond Street, gotten off the train, and waited on the platform for the next one. Then he’d overshot Green Park by one station, crossed platforms, and returned. He’d let a few trains pass through Green Park in all directions before switching to the Piccadilly line, finally riding the two stops to Knightsbridge.

  He’d employed all the standard maneuvers, but no surveillance had revealed itself. Which meant a surveillance team of at least eight, or none at all. He knew that London had the most extensive network of surveillance cameras of any city in the world, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  Whoever Evan Sage was, either he had the power to plug into that camera network or he commanded a large team.

  Bad news either way.

  Daniel said, “Okay, Mr. Sage, I’ll bite. What line of work are you in?”

  “Evan, please. I work for a little outfit called the United States Department of Homeland Security. You may have heard of us.” He produced a badge wallet and extracted a business card, slid it across the table. “Let’s trade.” Daniel didn’t pick up Sage’s card, but he did slide one of his own across in return. Sage looked down at it. “Right, Descia Milinkovic said you were some kind of money guy.”

  Daniel nodded. “One of our clients is a charitable trust that funds some of her work. They sent me to see that their money’s being wisely allocated.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sage tore off another chunk of bread, chewed it for a while before speaking again. “Thing is, I wouldn’t be very good at my job without a functioning bullshit detector. Descia is a nice lady but she set my spidey senses tingling, so I made a few calls, got a few answers. Nobody goes from spooky Vatican investigator to jet-set business consultant in five months. Just doesn’t happen.”

  “I’m a quick study,” shrugged Daniel. Sage stopped chewing. “What can I tell you, Evan? Sometimes people are exactly who they appear to be.”

  Evan Sage dropped the half-eaten roll back into the breadbasket, wiped his fingers together to knock off the crumbs. He picked up Daniel’s business card and sniffed it. “Smells like a front, my friend. The good doctor gets wind from the States of what could be the makings of a new bioweapon, and you just happen to show up from the States the very next day?”

  “I have absolutely not a clue what you’re talking about,” said Daniel. He watched Sage’s face for any reaction, saw none.

  “Whose interests do you represent?” said Sage as he slipped Daniel’s card into a pocket. “Who’s behind the front?”

  “Seriously,” said Daniel, “you might as well be speaking Urdu.”

  Sage now put his face into an expression of concern. “You seem like a nice enough guy and I’m not sure you fully realize what you’ve gotten yourself involved in. But you are swimming in the deep end now, and you will soon need a friend. I am trying to be that friend.”

  Daniel said nothing.

  “Pick it up.” Evan Sage nodded as Daniel picked up his card. “You’re just on a long leash, Daniel Byrne. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” He stood. “In the meantime, if it gets hard to tell who your friends are, you’ve got my number.”

  15: WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE

  If Kara Singh was drinking as heavily as Julia implied, Daniel wanted to catch her before she dipped her bill too deep. After running around in circles to spot a tail, and the unexpected visit by Evan Sage, he arrived significantly later than intended.

  But
as she shook his hand and ushered him into her living room, he caught no whiff of booze or anything used to mask it, and she seemed perfectly sober.

  “Please sit. Coffee’s brewing, I’ll just get it.”

  “Thank you.”

  She paused in the doorway and as she glanced back her smile faltered. She quickly got it back in place, but now it looked more nervous than before. “Be right back,” she said, retreating down the hallway to the kitchen.

  Daniel closed his eyes, conjured her in his mind’s eye just as Dave Christleib had taught him. We actually notice a lot more than we realize about people in the first few seconds after meeting them, but because we’re busy dealing with each successive moment, we only consciously recognize a fraction of what we’ve seen. The trick is to stop and take stock in the first few minutes, before we forget.

  He saw her now as she had appeared in the doorway, a hand on one hip. She stood about five foot six. Trim but not skinny, she’d given up neither exercise nor eating as her life came crashing down. She wore designer blue jeans and a raw silk blouse, untucked. Thin-strapped leather sandals, long feet, toenails unpainted. Her hair was long and black, the inch and a half at the roots and temples showing some silver. Short upper lip. When she closed her mouth, he could just catch a sliver of teeth glistening behind full lips. A long, sharp nose and green eyes, almond shaped, almost hooded—beautiful windows into a badly damaged soul.

  Daniel heard the coffeemaker beep from the kitchen. He opened his eyes and turned his attention to the room, dark woods and colorful silks, antique wool rugs covering the hardwood floor. The decor a mash-up of Arts and Crafts Americana and India, and it somehow went together perfectly.