The Brad West Files

by Fritz Galt

  Along with the computer services staff deep in the tunnels of Site R, a technical support staff maintained three dozen communications systems from phone and data to visual and satellite information for all the customers in the site.

  As if that weren’t enough, the facility could house, feed and protect three thousand people and service the needs of the top government leadership.

  Burrows was led past a laboratory where medical technicians were preparing massive quantities of antibiotics. They walked through the fully staffed backup missile defense headquarters. Then they passed a mess hall where civilian contractors and military personnel dined side-by-side amidst plastic trees and surrounded by a forest painted on the walls, apparently to give the workers the illusion that they were above ground. It reminded Burrows of the ways his submarine commander tried to make submariners forget they were underwater.

  At last they entered a complex of offices marked Psychological Operations. The first and largest office belonged to the Director of Psychological Operations.

  “Mr. President,” the general said. “This is Dr. Hildegard Pfannenstein. I will leave you in her care.”

  Burrows had grown used to others making the trek to see him. He felt indignant at being the one to call on someone else, until he got an eyeful of the tall woman in the lab coat.

  The general left the room and closed the door behind him.

  “So, Mr. President,” Hildegard said with a delightful German accent. She whisked a strand of flaxen hair out of her baby blue eyes and strolled around him.

  He could feel her sizing him up.

  “You are just the man I wanted to see.”

  Was he there as a subject or to be briefed? Still, there was an alluring quality to her voice that led him to give her a chance.

  She leaned back against her desk. Light danced in her eyes as they locked in on his. “I must say, you would make a remarkable study.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I have always been interested in the attraction that powerful people have on others. Who can resist it? And how?”

  He felt a blush coming on.

  “Such specimens are rarely studied, yet here I have one in my laboratory.”

  She stood upright and began to approach him, never once taking her eyes off him. Why were there blinds on her windows when there was no sun?

  “I have always thought of myself as someone who could resist anything,” she purred.

  Maybe it was he who couldn’t resist.

  She came to within inches of him. He could smell her essence emanating from her hair. Was she the more powerful of the two? They stood chest-to-chest, inhaling each other, drinking in each other’s eyes.

  At last she arched an eyebrow. She cursed softly in German and closed her eyes. “I have been down in this cave for far too long.”

  He smiled. He could appreciate how the claustrophobic environment would affect her. And yet he could also feel magic in her presence and a strong attraction pulling them together.

  “When we’re finished,” he said, “you might come up for air and join me at Camp David.”

  “How nice of you to offer.” But her attention had already turned back to her work. “Come with me.”

  She led him out of her office and down the hall. They entered a well-lit room lined with mirrors. It reminded him of an exercise room. Complete with two-way mirrors, no doubt.

  Two chairs were placed in the middle of the room. Seated in one was a young man badly in need of a haircut and shave.

  The lad jumped up at once. “Mr. President! What are you doing here?”

  “I have no idea,” Burrows said. “Something about Psychological Operations.”

  “That’s right,” Hildegard said. “Let me introduce Mr. Bradley West.”

  “Brad,” the young man corrected and offered his hand.

  “An undercover agent for the CIA, he has been infiltrating psychological operations run by the Chinese against the United States.”

  “I have?”

  Burrows shook the young man’s hand, and Hildegard continued without reacting. “First the PowerPoint presentation. Take a seat.”

  The lights were out before Burrows could sit in the remaining seat. The only solid wall in the room began to glow. Then an image came in focus. It was a well-known photograph taken of prisoners at a concentration camp at the end of the Second World War. Then Dr. Hildegard Pfannenstein began.

  “Nazi doctors performed many inhumane experiments on people. They tested the limits of physical endurance in conditions such as cold water and low air pressure. And they tested the limits of psychological stamina or will power in search of a truth drug.”

  Click. A picture of a German submarine.

  “And so did Americans. German U-boats were penetrating America’s coastline and sinking our ships. So when we captured German sailors, the OSS naturally wanted to interrogate them and learn their techniques, codes, and plans. The prisoners were difficult to crack, so we experimented with drugs to make them lose their inhibitions and thereby reveal their secrets. Unfortunately, we got carried away. Take for example, the Mk-Ultra experiments carried out in New York apartments and San Francisco brothels. Need I go on?”

  The image clicked and changed to a grainy photo of a medical doctor shaking hands with what looked like an American in a business suit.

  “After the war, my father, who was a prominent German psychiatrist, was hired by the Americans. Certainly America wanted a truth serum, but the primary purpose of hiring German scientists was to prevent them from being snapped up by the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, not all German scientists made it to the West.”

  The next image showed a Soviet prisoner speaking from a dock before a judge.

  “The great show trials of the Soviet era demonstrated that people could be persuaded to say whatever the government wanted them to say, even if such testimonies were to the detriment of the defendants. Lesson learned: the Russians had developed a way not to tell the truth.”

  Click. An image of soldiers in combat during the Korean War.

  “American prisoners of war during the Korean conflict showed American scientists that the Chinese had taken mind control to a whole new level. POWs made filmed confessions of their guilt and support for the communist cause. Years after returning from Chinese prisons, these same POWs insisted on their guilt and continued to support China.”

  Click. An image of a haggard POW with a blank look on his face.

  “Lesson learned: the Chinese had developed a way of making people believe a falsehood. The Chinese term for this is hsi nao, literally ‘to cleanse the mind.’ American scientists needed to know how this process worked in order to develop a countermeasure to prevent or reverse the effect. In short we, too, needed to figure out how to brainwash people.”

  The next slide showed a woman suffering from a mental breakdown.

  “The CIA could not hire doctors within the United States to perform experiments, so they turned to foreign institutions and doctors, most notably those in Canada. Highly respected doctors were funded to perform experiments with electroshock therapy, drug treatment and other methods of inducing behavioral change in their patients. The details are still highly classified, and let me tell you, you don’t want to know what some subjects endured in our pursuit of behavior modification.”

  The image dissolved from the deeply unhappy woman to her beaming with bright eyes and a radiant smile.

  “In our fascination with experimentation on people, we have gone full circle from pursuing truth to programming minds. The reasoning went like this: if we could brainwash effectively, then we could find a way to deprogram victims. But how can one brainwash effectively? We could look at religious cults. After all, they indoctrinate people every day. But there are two problems with the cult approach. One, they rely on willing participants; and two, participants follow instructions only so long as they are among other believers who help reinforce their beliefs.”

  The image switched to
victims of the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana.

  “But like any culture, Americans share unique cultural traits. We don’t use the coercive methods of a brutal cop routine that was employed in Russia. We are not herd animals like the Chinese. Instead, we tend to rely on technology for shortcuts to success. So we turned to science.”

  A sunny day in California.

  “In the 1970s, the California penal system was overflowing with inmates. Why not find a way to permanently reform violent criminals? After all, during the Vietnam War, the Phoenix Project had tested various drugs, psychosurgery procedures and other gadgets at interrogation camps. So Governor Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of Health set up various experimental research stations. There, researchers found that the drug LSD had a mind-altering effect on prisoners, and on themselves.”

  Click. Millionaire heiress Patty Hearst with a machine gun, captured by a surveillance camera at a bank.

  “Some of those behind the experiments eventually went on to form the Symbionese Liberation Army and used the same techniques to achieve the desired effect on Patty Hearst. Human rights concerns and the prospect of other such experiments going awry caused the state to quietly abandon their program.”

  Click. The Great Wall of China.

  “But others picked up where California’s research left off. Not faced with the burden of public scrutiny or any particular scruples, a certain foreign government, in conjunction with biotech firms, began to vigorously pursue the goal of total mind control.”

  An image of a robed oriental monk meditating.

  “Mankind has long worshiped and communicated with spirits in many forms. The word ‘genius’ comes from the root word ‘genie,’ which originally meant guardian spirit. Western religions have a strong spiritual component, as in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Eastern and Western religions alike pray to spirits and dead ancestors and saints. Many cultures around the world recognize the animas in every natural object. In fact, the New Age movement in the West is a return to the basic elements of primitive religion.”

  A picture of a woman with a beaded headband meditating over a crystal pyramid.

  “And so the inevitable has occurred. Foreign powers have managed to combine mind-altering drugs with spirit communication to plant thoughts into the minds of others.”

  The image dissolved into a close-up of a wizened Chinese man with a thin white beard.

  The young man jumped up. “That’s Dr. Yu.”

  “Exactly. Brad has been working with Dr. Yu Zhaoguo for nearly a year to study the role of spirits in world religions. Dr. Yu has also written on the possibility of communicating with spirits in order to share information with other humans. As scientists, we refer to this as telepathy. I would now like Brad to tell us about the voice in his head.”

  Someone hit a light switch and the room glowed dimly. It was a good thing, too, because Burrows was becoming disoriented by the dizzying flow of logic into the unknown. Spirits? Voices?

  The young man cleared his throat. “It’s true. There is a spirit guide who talks to me on occasion.”

  Hildegard continued in her lecture tone. “And does the guide tell you what to do?”

  “All the time,” he admitted.

  “And do you follow his instructions?”

  “They are not instructions. They are more like suggestions.”

  Burrows studied the young man. He didn’t look like a kook. But he didn’t remind him of a CIA operative either. If anything, he looked like a graduate student that had gone slightly to seed.

  The lights faded once more, and the face of a handsome oriental man filled the wall.

  “Liang,” Brad breathed. “What happened to his face?”

  “That’s correct,” Hildegard went on. “Liang Jiaxi, grandson of President Qian of China. He has undergone reconstructive surgery, but apparently you can still recognize him. Liang has most recently run a biotech firm in Beijing doing work exclusively for the People’s Liberation Army. Despite the classified nature of the research, however, the company brochure and recent interviews with their employees reveal that the firm has actively and successfully developed methods of conferring pain upon an individual who does not comply with instructions given telepathically.”

  Then the image dissolved to that of a remarkably pretty Chinese woman. Her chin was turned upward in defiance, and her eyes were eager and perceptive.

  “Have they drugged May?” Brad raised his voice.

  “Yu May Hua,” Hildegard went on. “Former friend of Liang, and current girlfriend of Brad West. We have reason to believe that she is the victim of Liang’s latest experiment. She is currently at large somewhere in the western United States.”

  “Oh, no!” Brad cried. “Is there some way to stop this?”

  The next picture showed someone Burrows finally recognized. “Governor Stokes?”

  “That’s right, Mr. President. Colorado Governor Herman Stokes has also been a victim of Liang’s mind control technique.”

  Burrows could guess the next picture before it was thrown on the wall. “Governor Walsh.”

  “Also a victim of Liang’s technique. Gentlemen, the nation is in the grips of mass hysteria generated by the actions of these two governors, both under the control of Mr. Liang.”

  Burrows was still confused. “But how does Liang control them?”

  “Three ways: Drugs, most likely LSD. Communication through spirit guides, most likely delivered by Dr. Yu. And some form of negative reinforcement if they don’t comply, most likely one of the electronic implants developed by Liang’s company.”

  “So if Liang tells them to jump, they jump,” Burrows said.

  “That’s right.”

  Hmm. So a Chinese guy was creating havoc in the United States, and the turmoil was spreading to the rest of the world, including China. “What does he stand to gain?”

  “Nothing less than political control.”

  “Of China?”

  The next slide flicked on the screen. It showed a huge man, arms upraised, one hand holding a Bible. “Terry Smith!” Burrows muttered. “How can you accuse him?”

  “Brad, take it from here.”

  The lights returned to full brightness. Burrows blinked and turned to the young man.

  “I compared the itineraries of Terry Smith and the two governors and they match perfectly. Smith visited each man just hours before they imposed their trade embargos.”

  “That’s circumstantial.” Burrows’ past as a federal prosecutor made him naturally skeptical.

  “Furthermore,” Brad went on, “Smith is preaching the gospel of protectionism. This fits the times and preys on voters’ fears.”

  “Also circumstantial. He is capitalizing on the hysteria.”

  “I agree,” Brad said. “That’s the problem. I’ve shown that there is a high, positive correlation between his activities and those of Liang and the governors. But that does not prove collusion. You’ve seen a demonstrable change in Terry Smith’s tactics after the embargos were imposed. But that doesn’t prove that he caused the embargos.” He looked up at the psychologist for help.

  Hildegard smiled. “Today I have revealed to you the mechanism by which this panic was started. And you know the key players. Do we need to prove a conspiracy in a court of law or before a scientific review panel?”

  Burrows stood up, both relieved and frustrated. He had seen enough to sufficiently explain the events of the past few days, but how could he act as a president should when confronted with such treachery? How could he expose the guilty and end the embargos? “Let’s say I buy your arguments. What can I do about it? I could send in the FBI to apprehend these guys, but the damage has already been done. It will look like I’m merely demonizing my political opponent. If anything, that will add fuel to the fire.”

  Brad joined him walking around the room. “Sir, we’ve got to make our case to the American people. We’ve got to demonstrate that Smith is a fraud and that he’s behind all this.”
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br />   “You would need more proof than I’ve seen today,” Burrows said, still playing the devil’s advocate.

  The young man looked thoughtful. “I’ve got to find a way to defrock him. To reveal his true colors. Inside, he must be a very different person than what he reveals in public. I need to catch him with the drugs or microchips or something.”

  Burrows patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a smart young man. You’re careful, yet brave. You’ve got a girlfriend at stake in all of this, yet you’re taking care of the nation’s business first. We’re lucky to have you on our side.” He reached for a pen inside his suit coat and jotted down a phone number. “Here’s my hotline. Call me as soon as something develops.”

  Brad pocketed the number. “That sounds like an order.”

  Burrows pointed all around at the extensive underground command center. “I’ll put whatever you need at your disposal.”

  He turned to Hildegard more full of determination than when he had entered the room. “Let’s go.”

  She led him out the door.

  There, Erwin Bell leapt from behind a mirror.

  “You want to turn over all your resources to Brad West?” Bell said derisively. Beside him stood the military brass in silhouette. They were looking back through the mirror at Brad West, who was lost in thought.

  Burrows grabbed his flunky by the lapels and shoved him up against the wall. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Homeland Security will do whatever Mr. West says. Do I make myself clear?”

  Bell was barely able to nod.

  Burrows let his insolent chief of staff slide back to the floor.

  “Ooh. I liked that,” Hildegard said with a shiver, and slipped an arm under his elbow. “You said something about visiting Camp David?”

  Chapter 36

  Brad sat stunned in the middle of the mirrored room.

  He couldn’t get past the image of a defiant yet receptive May that had been projected against the wall. The psychologist had described her as one who was under Liang’s spell. If so, was that the reason for her disappearance? Did Liang have her walking in a trance through the desert and into his arms? Or off the rim of the Grand Canyon?