The Syndrome

She ignored the question, and turned back to Shapiro. “You keep referring to ‘the program’ and… “ She stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, and organized her thoughts. “A few days ago,” she said, “before Lew had the implant removed, I found him sitting in front of my sister’s laptop. He was logged onto this very weird Web site: theprogram dot org. (Theprogram is one word.)”

“Yes?”

“He was in a trance state—completely out of it. I mean, he was totally unresponsive—but not to the Web site. Which was interactive. He was typing in answers to questions that appeared on the screen. One of them was, ‘Where are you?’”

“Well, that’s very interesting,” Shapiro remarked, “but… what’s the point?”

“The point,” Adrie

“And this Web site was… ?”

“I asked a friend who’s kind of a geek to check it out,” Adrie

“And what did he find?” Shapiro asked.

“He said the site’s on a computer in something called ‘the Prudhomme Clinic.’ It’s in a little town in Switzerland.”

Shapiro nodded, shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

Adrie

“What?!”

“She killed a man in Florida. She assassinated him.”

Shapiro’s eyes swelled with skepticism and surprise. “Why do you use that word?” he asked.

“Because the victim was an old man, sitting in a wheelchair, watching the sunset. She shot him with a sniper rifle—the kind with a silencer and telescopic sights. The newspapers said his spine was cut in half.”

“And… how do you know this?” Shapiro asked.

She explained about finding the rifle in her sister’s apartment.

“And you’re just telling me about this now?” McBride exclaimed.

“I didn’t know what the gun meant,” she told him, “until I went through her credit card charges, and saw that she’d gone to Florida. Then I looked up where she was staying, and read about this man who’d been killed while she was there. You were in the hospital—and, after that, we came here. I wanted to think about it.”

McBride finished his glass of wine. “So who was he?” he asked. “The man who was killed.”

“The papers said his name was Calvin Crane.”

Shapiro’s hand jerked involuntarily, almost knocking over his wineglass. Adrie

Adrie

“Wait a second,” McBride mumbled, talking as much to himself as to the others. “There was a Crane with the Institute.”

“If we’re talking about the same person, he ran the Institute of Global Affairs,” Shapiro told them. “For decades.”

“That’s right!” McBride exclaimed. “It was before my time, but… his name was still on the stationery. Director Emeritus, or something like that.” He paused. Finally, he said, “Jesus…”

Adrie

No one spoke for a moment. Adrie

Shapiro cleared his throat, and began to get up. To McBride, it seemed like the old man was shaken. “Well,” he told them, “I won’t ask you who ‘Duran’ is. I think we’ve probably taken this conversation about as far as—”

“How do you know him?” Adrie

“Who?”

“Calvin Crane.”

The former CIA man was quiet for what seemed a long time. Adrie

“The what?” McBride demanded.

“That’s what they were called—the i

“So… he was a CIA agent,” Adrie

Shapiro winced at the naive terminology, and shook his head. “No. He went to the opening, but left in the first act.” He paused. “Look,” he confided, “you’re nice people. But now you’re getting into something very dark. Maybe you should just walk away.”

“‘Walk away’?” McBride said. “They’re trying to kill us. How the fuck—”

“Who’s ‘trying to kill’ you?”

McBride turned questioningly to Adrie

Shapiro sighed. “The Institute was one of our conduits,” he told them. “Crane was a good friend to the Agency—and completely trusted.”

“So he was a part of the program,” Adrie

“He was an asset—one of the men we knew we could count on. This was a rich and well-co

“‘Ironic’?” Adrie

Shapiro nodded. “A case of the snake swallowing its tail. Crane wanted to establish an assassination utility deep inside the CIA. But the support wasn’t there.”

Adrie

“‘An assassination utility.’”

She rolled her eyes. “You make it sound like the electric company.”

Shapiro smiled. Weakly. “The idea was to identify—and eliminate—people who posed a threat to world peace. Or maybe it was liberal democracy—or the American Way. I don’t remember, and I’m not sure Crane was entirely certain himself. But he was lobbying to create an i

“So you’re telling us the CIA never killed anyone?” McBride asked. “What about all those ‘behaviorally-controlled assassins’ you were talking about?”

Shapiro shook his head. “It’s two different things: when I was ru

“What about Castro?” McBride demanded.

“I understand what you’re saying,” Shapiro admitted. “But those were ad hoc exercises—and not at all what Crane had in mind. What’s more, they were failures—which is, also, not what Crane had in mind.”

McBride cocked his head to the side. “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that so many ‘lone nuts’ have succeeded in killing political leaders, while the CIA—with all its resources—has failed—in every case we know of?”

Shapiro glanced at his watch, and got to his feet, signaling that the conversation was at an end. He began to clear the dishes. “Well,” he sighed, “this has been interesting, but—it’s dark, and you have a long way to go.”

McBride took the hint, stood, and helped Adrie

“Actually,” she said, “we’re staying at Hilltop House. It’s not so far.”

Shapiro shook his head. “That’s not what I meant,” he replied. “I meant it’s dark, and you have a long way to go.” Escorting them to the front door, he opened it and paused. “Put on your seat belts,” he told them, then closed the door, and was gone.