Dothan smiled. “That helmet only had those three antennas so it could pick up the detonation signal from farther away. You don’t need any larger antenna for the local mind-control range he had than is built-in to your cell phone, which can reach a cell tower miles away. His set up had far less control range than that, and that must be by intentional design. They didn’t trust him to have greater range so that his handlers could stay close enough to blow him apart. For an unenhanced Compeller to influence a mind, the range is normally sixty to seventy feet for most Compellers, and for that man from Louisville it’s apparently a hundred to a hundred ten feet.”
“You mean Stiles.”
“Yes.”
“He’s been seen in the Washington area, by the way.”
“Uh Oh. You need to watch for that man. He’s a wild card.”
“What range could you scale up a transmitter like the one we brought back?”
“First, we must examine the frequencies, and study their attenuation with atmospheric variables, but the overland range isn’t the thing that worries us so much.”
“What does worry you?”
“You’re a BII agent. Do you have your Iridium phone with you?”
“Just received one.”
“It will connect to a satellite in orbit about 485 miles high, which may not even be directly overhead. Your handset probably wouldn't reach another BII agent’s Iridium phone by a direct connection if you were thirty miles apart on the surface. But the Iridium satellite constellation can link you to any spot in the world. We worry about a device like the one you brought us providing a link to a low orbit satellite, and that satellite to another satellite, and then beaming a signal down over a city or a wider area, and controlling all the minds within its coverage.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Indeed. We haven’t teased out the precise signals a Compeller emits and filtered them for the ones needed to amplify and send a thought to someone’s mind. When we do it will overpower them, and they will believe it is their thoughts and would be strong enough to make them act on the command. The North Koreans seem to have had a crash program for this, and without any concern for human rights, experimented to find what worked. We need to make use of this immorally acquired technology if only to protect ourselves with the deterrent effect, but we’ll gain the means to mass control people in the process. The psych amplifier is dangerous technology, but Pandora’s box is open now, and the technology has been proven to work.”
“Did Superintendent Brogan brief you on what Gorka and I discovered about an Immune’s ability in Seoul? I wasn’t affected by Agent-X at all, but Gorka, when he was close to that transmitter, became just another member of the puppet army he controlled. I was able to break that control, for a short time, when I placed my head close to Mike’s and ordered him not to obey.”
“You’re a double Immune, and you have Compel ability too?” Dothan looked incredulous.
“No. I carry one copy of the Compel gene as recessive. Your facial expression was the same look I got from Brogan when I told him what I did, but Mike confirmed it for him. I apparently sent a command that allowed Mike to temporarily share my Immune ability, including my directionality and ranging of Agent-X when he was sending his thoughts. It didn’t last when the outside controlling thoughts continued or grew stronger.”
“Mr. Grayson, I was part of the research team that tested Immunes for their ability to send thoughts. We never detected any signal from an Immune.”
“Call me Dan, please. I don’t know if I sent my actual thoughts. It may be that I simply triggered an inherent Immune ability that is within Mike’s active Compel gene. Hell, here I am trying to explain an ability I didn’t know existed nine days ago to one of the people that discovered and studied what I have.”
“Dan, if there isn’t any modulation, perhaps we were looking for a signal on the carrier frequency, and when we didn’t see that, we assumed there was nothing sent. It may be that the carrier frequency an Immune sends is subtly different from that of a Compeller. We’ll test you again after we have the prize you brought to us made safe. The demolitions people have almost finished removing the plastic explosives, and verifying there were no other self-destruct circuits if we tamper with the electronics.”
When the demolition experts returned the purloined technology to the scientists, engineers, and the technicians, they placed the equipment in a Faraday shielded room, and remotely powered it up, then down, with Grayson confirming he sensed nothing from the outside.
The researchers approached the next test as being a bit dicier from their perspective, but it didn’t concern Grayson. Dothan asked, “Are you OK with being inside with the transmitter when we switch it on? We have it in the low power setting.”
“Professor, Agent-X had it at full power and tried to control me when he was less than three feet away. I sensed his mental commands, but it didn’t affect me. There’s no mind inside that helmet now.”
True to that prediction Grayson merely said he sensed a sort of faint hum when the helmet was radiating. The technicians and scientists were excited to report their signal monitors sensed a carrier frequency that had a jitter that might be the cause of the hum Grayson sensed.
Satisfied they had a functioning transmitter, which matched the base frequency range of previously tested Compellers, they no longer needed Grayson’s mental perception that the device worked. Now they would test the modulation circuits that isolated the mental commands of a Compeller’s mind, to overlay them on the carrier signal. They didn’t need actual thoughts for this at present.
It was while calibration tests for modulation were underway that Grayson participated in some monitored experiments where he sent his mental commands to a test volunteer to make them immune. It was a dry run because they hadn’t thought they would need a Compeller for their early testing. It wasn’t possible to be certain how Grayson’s mental effort would affect the mind of a Compeller, but the ordinary man he directed his thoughts at said he did sense a calming effect, but that could have been his imagination.
Grayson, at the urging of Dothan, called Brogan to see if he could assign two Compellers to come to the lab for testing Grayson’s ability to shield one of them from the other. There was bad news waiting before he could make his request.
“Dan, Dalia Nadeer was murdered in her apartment, apparently early this morning based on body temperature. When she didn’t respond to my cell call or her satellite phone, I sent someone to her apartment. She was found tied to a chair and shot in the head. You know she was a Compeller, right? What that implies?”
“That she couldn’t Compell the shooter. Do you think an Immune did it?”
“We accounted for every BII Immune last night, so it was an outside Immune.”
“Boss, you may be missing another possibility.”
“How so?”
“She could have been compelled herself.”
“Encountering another psych transmitter so soon after you captured the first one is kind of a stretch, Dan. And if that’s true, it was done so selectively. Why reveal that secret for such a limited gain? The life of a single BII agent.”
“You told me yourself; Stiles is in Washington. Dalia became involved when he tried to gain access to the public gallery above the House of Representatives. He may have seen her there and wanted to learn more about people with abilities like his.”
“He couldn’t have a transmitter.”
“No, but he has double active compel genes. He’s a Controller, and much stronger than a Compeller. We know a strong enough mind control signal can control someone like Dalia because Agent-X controlled Mike. Don’t rule out that psychopath and what he may have learned from Dalia. If someone just wanted her dead, why tie her to a chair in her apartment overnight and then shoot her? The assailant could have shot her in the back of the head on the street, which would be safer for them. Stiles happens to be here, and he’s a remorseless killer.”
“I hear the detective in you
speaking, Dan. You make sense. I’ll set the FBI to tracing her movements after she left work yesterday, with an emphasis to see if Stiles appears in her back trail in any surveillance images. If not, we may spot someone else following her.”
“If it was Stiles, he had all night to question her, Sir. What could he have made her tell him that we need to be ready to counter?”
“A lot. She knows every BII agent, where many of them live, our headquarters address, all our protocols for protecting government leaders, the Tin Man procedures to shield anyone, and she knew that you and Mike were sent to South Korea and why. Dalia wanted that assignment, but I picked Mike to go with you. She didn’t know your mission was successful because I didn’t tell anyone what you had acquired before you returned.”
“Sir, the fact that he came to Washinton, practically on the team’s heels after leaving Louisville, suggests a strong motive to me. We learned that he’s very vengeful, and he knows the BII took away his cash and bank accounts, his house and cars, his carefully built façade, and his respectable appearing lifestyle.
“Stiles is here to for revenge and to try to get back what you took from him. He may have arrived looking for you, Sir, even if he didn’t know your name. He came to find whoever was in charge of the BII. I can guarantee he knows who you are now. He has a personal grudge against you, me, the BII, and the federal government in general. He’ll now know who I am, and he may think I brought this all down on him because I’m from Louisville, and I was probably the first person to resist his ability. You and I or any BII agent might be his targets.”
“We don't know that he killed Dalia for certain, Dan. Other countries have people like us, and some of those governments are very hostile to the US. It could be someone like that.”
“Genetically, you said that he’s one in seventy-five million people, Sir. What are the odds of it being a foreign agent? He’s the only known Controller in North America; he is here in Washington and was present in the Capitol building when there was an incident where Dalia was involved. Can’t we plaster his face in the news, like was done in South Korea for Agent-X? We need to flush him out the way they did. Call him a Person of Interest in Dalia’s murder.”
“Good point. I’ll ask the police and the FBI to do that for us. I don’t have the connections and authority to do it directly. You may have noticed that people, many even in the government, don’t know who in Hell we are, or recognize our badges and IDs. There are disadvantages to being a new and deliberately obscure agency.”
“I wonder how he’ll react when his face is in the news?”
****
“How did those assholes connect me to that bitch’s death?”
He’d seen the news from his hotel room, but he wasn’t worried the desk clerk or anyone in the lobby would make the connection to him. He’d been using a false image projection, and not his usual grandiose “leading man” sort of mental image, to avoid attention or be remembered. To Susceptibles, when he checked in, he was a middle-aged, overweight man with acne scars, and he was using one of his multiple false identities with a driver’s license photo that matched his projected appearance. The picture and his mental image projection were that of the lawn maintenance man he’d hired, and whose driver’s license he now possessed. He even used a prepaid credit card in the false name. He figured using too much cash might draw attention if there were phone inquiries about guests that behaved secretively, and the credit card furnished no link to to the real him.
He had been making plans for tracking down what the BII would do with the transmitter device stolen from under South Korean noses. The BII agent knew who they sent, what the device looked like, and that it was a personal wearable device that greatly expanded the range and power of a Controller. Or, as he now knew the BII’s term for someone of lesser ability than his, a Compeller. He wanted the device, or just as good, the design for making one of his own.
Nadeer also told him where the BII would send the transmitter if it were successfully acquired. The BII used a government lab in nearby Maryland, just outside Baltimore, where research was done to study the abilities conferred by the two gene variations inherited by Compellers and Immunes, and now the first known Controller, Stiles himself.
Stiles learned that this laboratory had conducted a broad range of studies and research over the years on many subjects. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, funded some of the work there.
Nadeer, who had undergone testing and training there, told him researchers in that complex had dealt with specific portions of subjects related to biological control systems, engineering biological controls for human-machine interfaces, and mind to computer communication and an interface system for performing that function.
One aspect of the latter work had originally been to link a pilot’s thoughts to his aircraft’s systems, or a tank commander linking their mind to their fighting vehicle's sensors and weapons. It was this aspect that led to the exploration of Compeller ability when discovered, and after the genetic source of the ability was found, the discovery of the Immune variation of that gene soon followed.
The BII, with presidential backing, had diverted some of those scientists to the higher priority research of the mental abilities of a very small, but an impactful portion of the human population, and how to defend against the mental control of ordinary citizens by those people able to perform mind control.
To discover if the device existed, and if it was in the hands of the United States, Stiles used his ability to slip through security checks at Andrews. He learned where the B-1 that returned from Korea was parked. It wasn’t on a ramp, where he thought it would be, but he found the people he sought; the ground crew that serviced the B-1 and had witnessed who exited the aircraft inside the closed hangar. Those airmen said that two men, not part of the normal flight crew of a B-1, carried a plastic cooler which they delivered to a man who appeared to be their superior.
Stiles believed that man was probably the head of the small BII agency, someone named Brogan, and the cooler most likely held the North Korean mental amplifier.
One of the men with the cooler, according to information Nadeer provided, must be Grayson, the strong Immune the BII recruited in Lousiville. He was an insurance fraud investigator and a retired former police detective. Several of the people Stiles had murdered as part of his ending an investigation into his final insurance scams proved to be friends of Grayson. That had motivated the man to draw attention to Stiles, and he’d reported him to the police. Later, he had identified him on mall surveillance recordings to the BII.
Stiles wanted Grayson dead. He assumed the feeling was mutual.
With his picture on the news in and around the District of Columbia, he’d have to be constantly on guard to hide his visual identity. With the electronic security around Washington and possible facial recognition software that saw past his mental projections, DC was risky for him. He needed to find some other way to get hold of information about the mental amplifier.
Nadeer had told him about the man’s now closed investigative agency, his former job with the police department, that he was married, and his daughter was in high school. He opened his laptop and connected to the hotel wi-fi, and started an online search for information. He wanted to know about the family Grayson had left behind, where they lived, and what they did. They could furnish some powerful leverage over Grayson if Stiles could locate them, and placed them under his control.
If he obtained the device or plans on how to build one, he wanted first-hand information of how the man had used it in Seoul. How did Grayson manage to take the device away from a person that could control thousands of people to protect himself?
He would make a trip to Baltimore, get the information he was after, then find transportation back to Louisville.
Chapter 9: Deadly Dealing
“Mom, did Dad travel to South Korea this past week by any chance?”
Barb looked at Stacy initially with surprise, then with a touch of
curiosity at her question. She remembered how smart her daughter was, and how analytical she could be. Much like her father was.
Dan hadn’t told them where he was going, only that he’d be out of touch for possibly a week, and he couldn’t discuss it with them. Knowing the agency he now worked for, and what his ability was, she’d assumed his being unavailable was related to his being an unusually capable Immune, as Brogan had explained to them. She assumed he was undertaking the BII’s responsibility of protecting the nation’s leaders from Compellers working for hostile nations.
“What prompted you to ask me that, hon? Have you heard anything from your Dad or seen something in the news?”
“Nothing from Dad, but there was news of strange happenings in Seoul this week, and there were interviews with eyewitnesses. They described large-scale crowd activity that Stiles could cause with a smaller group of people like Dad said he did at the mall. People in Seoul behaved like they were mind controlled, and there was speculation that the events in a Seoul neighborhood were like what happened at a soccer stadium on the day Dad flew to Washington in a big rush.
“If there were mass mind control happening someplace, Dad’s ability would be useful. Although, I don’t know why South Korea would expect us to send our agents to help them or know if we had any Immunes in the first place if the BII’s work is that secret. I saw TV pictures that were taken from the air, of dozens of armed men in silver suits moving against a crazy crowd that attacked them barehanded, and then the people in the streets suddenly stopped acting crazy, and quit fighting them.”
“Did you say men in silver suits? I wonder why they wore those? Were there any fires set?”
“Not large ones that they showed on camera, although they reported several helicopters crashed or were shot down. There wasn’t any smoke on the street were the men in the shiny suits were, and they had guns. Firemen don’t carry rifles.”
Controller: Controller Trilogy, Book 1 Page 27