The Syndrome

“Refill?” Shapiro asked.

Adrie

“You do?”

“Of course,” Shapiro told them. “You’re thinking I’m a war criminal.”

Neither of them said a word.

“Well,” Shapiro concluded, “I suppose you had to be there.” He sipped his wine, and looked at them. “It’s easy, now, to condemn what was done then. But the truth is, the program was built by people whose motives were as pure as the driven snow.”

Adrie

“They knew what men like Hitler could do. And it made them ruthless in the defense of freedom. I know it sounds corny—‘freedom’ always sounds corny—but it’s true.” The scientist paused, placed his left hand on the floor and sprang to his feet with surprising agility. Crossing the room to the woodstove, he opened it up, stirred the coals with a poker and put in a fresh log. Then he turned to his guests. “From the very begi

“So it was an assassination program,” McBride suggested.

Shapiro shrugged. “In part. The idea was to develop behaviorally-controlled agents who would carry out an assignment, even if the outcome was counterinstinctive.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” McBride asked.

“It means they didn’t care if they lived or died,” Adrie

Shapiro inclined his head in reluctant agreement. “The agent’s survival wasn’t a critical issue—except in the sense that deniability was paramount. If the agent survived, and the agent was caught—well, that was a problem. And people will get caught. Not the first time. Not the second time. But, eventually.”

They looked at him.

“Guns misfire,” he explained. “Policemen become unexpectedly, even irrationally, interested in the most i

“Let me guess,” McBride suggested. “You drove them nuts.”

Shapiro thought about it as he walked back to the table, and sat down. “No. If we’d done that, they wouldn’t have been able to function. We spent years—and quite a lot of money—studying differential amnesia and ways of engendering multiple personalities. In the end, we decided that screen memories were the optimal solution—though, even there, we had problems. They tended to destabilize the personality, so you needed a therapist figure to provide reinforcement.”

Adrie

The scientist considered the question. Finally, he said, “It’s a memory that’s verifiably false and inherently ridiculous—so that anyone who claims that it’s real is discredited, simply on the face of that assertion.”

“Give me an example,” McBride suggested.

“‘I was kidnapped by aliens and flown to an underground base in the Antarctic,’“ the scientist replied.

“‘Satanists tortured me as a child,’“ Adrie

“Exactly,” Shapiro said. “It pigeonholes the speaker—in this case, the assassin—as a ‘lone nut.’ Which, as you can imagine, is reassuring to everyone involved.”

“‘Reassuring’?” Adrie

The old man was startled by her sudden intensity. “I’m talking hypothetically,” he told her. “And, anyway, it’s as I said: unless your sister was a lot older than you, this program had nothing to do with her.”

“How can you say that?” Adrie

“We lost our funding thirty years ago—and, by then, most of the work had moved offshore. So, the handwriting was on the wall. I mean, it was the Sixties, for God’s sake! Every idiot in the country was conducting his own mind control experiments!”

Despite himself, McBride smiled. “When you say the work moved offshore… ?”

“Most of the studies were carried out at universities and research institutes. The funding was laundered through foundations and institutions we knew we could trust. As the years went by, and the Agency came under scrutiny from Congress and the press, some of the more sensitive studies had to be moved overseas. By the time the Rockefeller Commission began its investigation, the activity had been shut down. I retired soon afterward.”

None of them said anything for a while, but sat where they were, watching the firelight play across the ceiling and the floor. Eventually, McBride cleared his throat. “So what about me?” he asked. “Where did the implant come from?”

Shapiro shook his head.

“And my sister!” Adrie

Shapiro turned his palms toward the ceiling. “You’re talking to the wrong person,” he told them. “You’re talking to a dinosaur.”

“I think I’m talking to someone who won’t face facts—even when they’re staring him in the face,” Adrie

“I saw a photograph.”

“Do you think we made it up?” McBride asked.

“No,” the scientist conceded.

“Then… what? Obviously, the program never ended,” Adrie

“—had nothing to do with this.” Shapiro shook his head slowly. “Trust me: if the Agency was involved, I’d know.”

McBride was trying to understand. “Then—”

“It’s a Frankenstein,” Shapiro told them.

Adrie

“A Frankenstein.” The old scientist finished his second glass of wine, and sat back with a strange little smile on his lips. “An agent or operation you can’t control. Something you create that takes on a life of its own.”

“So… ?” Adrie

“I’m guessing,” Shapiro admitted. “But seeing that implant, I’d say the program was privatized.”

“‘Privatized’?” McBride repeated.

“I mean it’s been taken over by someone in the private sector—or someone who went into the private sector. In other words, it looks like someone’s continued the research on his own—outside the Agency.”

“Who are we talking about?” Adrie

Shapiro shrugged. “I haven’t a clue.”

“It would take a lot of money to do something like that,” McBride mused.

Shapiro nodded. “It would take millions. Then again, what doesn’t?”

“But how could they keep it secret?” Adrie

Shapiro considered the question. Finally, he said, “Set it up offshore. Keep it small. Put it in a clinical setting where the patient’s privacy would be paramount.” The scientist pursed his lips, and thought for a moment. “You know,” he said, “if they’ve been working on this for thirty years—my God!”

“You said they’d put it in ‘a clinical setting’?” Adrie

“Yes.”

She leaned forward. “Then, tell me something: have you ever heard of the Prudhomme Clinic?”

The scientist furrowed his brows, thought for a moment, and shook his head. “Not that I recall.”

Adrie

McBride was taken aback. “What-about-me-what? Have I heard of it?” The question was out of the blue—he hadn’t a clue as to what she was up to, but sensing her seriousness, he searched his memory. After a bit, he said, “No. There’s that chef in Louisiana, but… I don’t think that’s what you’re driving at.” He paused. “So what’s the Prudhomme Clinic?”