Chapter Text
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
– John Milton, Paradise Lost
“Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”
– Richard Lovelace, “To Althea, from Prison”
PROLOGUE
It’s starting over again.
He’s in the car. He can feel the leather of the bucket seat beneath him, warm from the sunny street. The wheel in his hands, turning so smoothly, the hum of the tarmac, the wind in his face.
He’s not the warm and cuddly type. He’s aloof, bitingly sarcastic, downright bloody cold in fact, or so he’s been assured by more than one disillusioned would-be lover. There’s no one in his life he’s particularly close to. Is there anything, anyone, he’s ever been as passionately devoted to as this car he built with his own hands?
Of course. The integrity of the individual human mind. Pompous, no doubt. He doesn’t care.
He’s getting out of the car now. He’s striding down the corridor, propelled by righteous fury. Because it isn’t just him; there are others involved, though he doesn’t know who or how many. Or how many more there might be in future.
He tells the hapless functionary at the desk exactly what he thinks, profanely and at considerable length. And probably unfairly since the fellow almost certainly lacks a security clearance high enough to know what he’s referring to. But the Admiral isn’t in and some things just can’t wait. He slaps his resignation down in front of his cringing victim, then turns and leaves without a backward glance. Out on the road he pushes the accelerator down, down, down, and he smiles. It feels so much like flying. It feels like the wheels aren’t even touching the ground.
He’s free.
And then he isn’t.
He’s somewhere else, a prisoner in a prison without walls, without bars, and reality has tipped sideways. Sometimes he knows it’s a lie, a dream, a delusion, a trip. He walks on the beach and watches the sky because at any moment, who knows, the clouds might part and light might come pouring through. Someone, something, might reach down and grab him, snatch him out of this place and put him back where he belongs. At any moment, he might wake up. He slaps himself in the face sometimes, to make it happen.
At those times he can see, dimly, the cracks, the weak spots in the illusion. The place is no more real than a Christmas panto and just as ridiculous. It's a collection of false fronts and cardboard cutouts, not the Village but a Potemkin village. It’s a projection, a creation of his own hyperstimulated consciousness, and he knows that like a snow globe the whole thing would shatter to bits if only he could get outside it for once, if only he could take it in his two hands and crush it, trample it, grind it into dust….
But he’s inside the snow globe, and the snow globe is his mind.
Other times, the distinction between the real and the unreal slips away as if it had never existed. Because when he’s deep into it, deep inside his mind, he has no awareness that it’s anything but life and death. It’s twisted and bizarre, but it’s real and he’s in it and he has to react to it, deal with it, escape from it if he can. Dodge Rover, play kosho, fall dead when he’s shot. The eyes that study him, that watch him, the people who discuss him and argue about him and poke and prod him and debate how much to give him and when – they’re outside. They’re the puppeteers, and only they have the key to the prison. He’s inside it, he lives it, and it’s reality, until it isn’t. Until they let him come down. Then he goes walking on the beach again. Sometimes he sees himself there – his other self observing him with a cool, superior smile – and it no longer surprises him. Nothing does now.
It isn’t a nightmare. Nightmares end.
*****
CHAPTER ONE
“It’s an experimental drug. First synthesized in Switzerland in, er –” the Admiral glances down at the papers on his desk “-- 1938. Been the subject of several small studies in psychiatry in attempts to find a practical application for it. There are some indications that it might be of use in treating alcoholics, or even autistic children.”
Drake taps the ash from his cigarette into the Admiral’s ivory ashtray. “I rather hope it has not escaped your attention that I am neither.”
Admiral Hobbs gives him a sharp look. Humor isn’t one of the man’s strengths. “It has not. No one’s proposing to treat you for anything. We’re looking at it purely as an experiment. Apparently, the drug has produced positive results when applied to disordered minds. Now we’d like to see what effect it might have on healthy subjects. And you, my friend, are sound of mind and – body.” On the last word his eyes roam, quite blatantly, over Drake’s suit-clad shoulders and torso. “Are you not?”
It isn’t the first time the Admiral has made his interest a bit too clear, or the first time Drake has found it tiresome. His early, more disreputable days with M9 seem to be an even more vivid memory for Hobbs than for Drake himself.
He smiles, thinly. “I am, indeed, in the pink.”
“There’s something else.” Now Hobbs looks him squarely in the eye. “The Americans are on board with this. The CIA and U.S. Army intelligence have been running experiments on unwitting test subjects with an eye toward using the drug as an interrogation aid. They’re very keen on its potential for, er, freeing the mind, for lack of a better term. Increasing suggestibility, expanding consciousness, releasing the self from the prison of the ego, and so on.” He clears his throat, a bit embarrassedly it seems to Drake. “Typical American overenthusiasm, perhaps. But if even half of what’s claimed for the drug is true, they reckon it could be revolutionary.”
“Very intriguing.” Drake keeps his tone nonchalant, but in fact he is intrigued. What agent worth his salt wouldn’t be? One couldn’t succeed in this business without a lively interest in psychology, in the endlessly fascinating mysteries of the human mind. “One point. You said the American subjects were – I believe the word you used was unwitting.”
“Yes.”
“On the other hand, I am thoroughly witting, thanks to your kind explanation of the facts.”
“I’m not in the habit of passing judgment on the practices of other agencies, particularly not those of our allies.” The Admiral pauses. “However, I must admit I find the CIA’s disregard for the principle of informed consent distasteful. They have their reasons, no doubt. I’m confident, though, that our own system of ethics will prove superior in this matter. I would hardly have broached the subject with you if we didn’t have the highest respect for your discernment. I cannot stress strongly enough that this is entirely your own decision. You may choose to participate in this drug trial, or not. We’re calling it Project Infinity, by the way. And you could, of course, withdraw your consent at any time.”
If the man is lying, he’s doing a good job of it. No obvious tells. One could never be absolutely certain whom to trust, of course, but Drake has worked under the Admiral for years with no more than the expected amount of professional friction. The occasional suggestive remarks are irritating but not threatening. And the Admiral is right. Drake’s discernment is sharp. He trusts his own judgment. At some point, one has to.
“You would not, of course, be the only subject. Several of your colleagues have been approached. You understand, I’m not at liberty to divulge their names.” Hobbs pauses. “Naturally, the experiment would be very tightly controlled. Because little is known about this drug as yet, its administration would be done under conditions designed to ensure your safety. While under its influence, you’d be watched closely, monitored at all times. We’ve been told the circumstances under which the drug is used and the state of mind of the subject are of paramount importance.”
Drake nods thoughtfully. He’d read an article some months ago about these new “mind revealing” drugs and the famous people – Cary Grant, Clare Boothe Luce – who swore by them. Supposedly they could accomplish in a few sessions what might take years of traditional psychoanalysis. Not that he has any desire whatsoever to undergo psychoanalysis; M9’s mandatory psychological testing of all its field agents is more than enough, thank you. Whatever problems he’s had, he’s always dealt with on his own. And he doesn’t even see them as problems, really; just as challenges to be either overcome or ignored.
Still – it might be interesting.
“Will you do it?”
He will. Curiosity demands it, and while a highly developed sense of caution is vital, so is a willingness to take risks. A man doesn’t become an intelligence agent for the purpose of shying away from the unknown.
But it seems wise not to appear overeager. “May I have the weekend to think it over?”
Admiral Hobbs smiles and leans back in his chair. “By all means! Give it some thought and get back to me on Monday. I look forward to your decision.”
Drake rises to take his leave, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray, and stops as a thought strikes him. “Sorry, I’ve forgotten. What’s the stuff called again? The drug?”
The Admiral frowns and shuffles through his papers. “Yes, bit of a mouthful, I’m afraid — ah, here. Lysergic acid diethylamide. LSD-25.”
Chapter Text
“Can you hear me clearly?”
“Of course.”
“You’re quite comfortable?”
“Quite.”
“How would you describe your state of mind at this moment?”
“I am impatient. Can we get on with it?”
Doctor Smith laughs. “We have done. I put the drug in your tea.”
Drake raises his eyebrows and casts a quick glance down into his cup. “I see.” He’d expected a pill or a needle. They’d told him almost nothing about the specifics of what would happen. He’d simply been summoned to this room in an M9 safe house in the West End on a rainy summer morning, introduced to the smiling psychiatrist with the faint German accent (“I hope you and I will be friends”) and offered a cup of very good tea.
“It is colorless, odorless, tasteless. Its undetectability is part of what we believe will make it so valuable to us. If you took sugar, I would have impregnated a sugar cube with it. Since you don’t, I dropped it directly into the liquid. It dissolves almost instantly.”
He nods. “And it begins to take effect….”
“Twenty to thirty minutes, perhaps a bit longer. You can read if you like, while we wait.” The doctor gestures at the newspaper-strewn coffee table across the room.
He rises, setting the teacup on the desk, but Smith stops him. “No. Drink it all.”
He complies, draining the cup before wandering over to the newspapers and choosing the most recent edition of the Guardian Weekly.
He’s relaxing in an armchair, deep into a piece on the chaotic political situation in South Vietnam, when he notices that the overhead light seems to be glaring harshly off the page, making it difficult to make out the words. He blinks in annoyance, squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them and gazes around the room.
Everything looks the same, only – brighter.
The doctor is at his side. “How do you feel?” His voice is tense, excited.
“What….” He blinks again. Smith’s face is too close, too – big, somehow. Alarmed, he leans away, dropping the newspaper and pushing the chair back.
Smith puts a hand on his arm, murmuring “Steady,” and he recoils from it reflexively; he’s two steps away before he realizes he’s moved. Because the doctor’s hand had somehow touched his arm, his bare skin, through two layers of cloth. He stares down at his jacket sleeve in wonder. It looks perfectly normal, but he can still feel the imprint of Smith’s hand.
“You’re all right.” The doctor’s voice is quiet, soothing, but still with that edge of excited anticipation. “Everything’s all right, Drake, you’re in no danger.”
“I – I –” He closes his eyes again, against the glare. “I – ” He can see it, a capital I painted on the inside of each eyelid.
“Come and sit down. I won’t touch you.”
“I don’t want – I –”
“What is it? What are you seeing? Can you tell me what –”
“That sound!” He claps his hands to his ears, but the brass band he had hardly even noticed until that moment only gets louder, louder. “The music! Switch it off!”
There’s a pause, an indeterminate time during which he stands, squeezing his head between his hands, rocking on the balls of his feet, hating that sound, that sound, and then the doctor’s voice. Cool, calming.
“It was a radio in the next room. I had them switch it off. Drake, do you hear me?”
He opens his eyes, slowly. The music is gone.
“I can’t see it now,” he whispers.
“You can’t – hear it, do you mean?”
He nods. “Can’t see it.” He feels suddenly desperate to make himself understood. “I – I saw the – the notes, the… I – I saw it.”
“It was too loud for you?”
He shakes his head in sharp frustration. Is the man a fool? “Too – bright.”
“All right, come and sit down, please.”
And he’s sitting on the couch, and the wild pounding of his heart that he had felt in every cell of his body has slowed, blessedly slowed. He listens to it, entranced by the quiet, comforting rhythm.
Smith is close beside him. “What are you seeing? Can you tell me?”
He sees everything in the room, of course – the doctor’s shiny mahogany desk, the framed diplomas on the wall, the rose-colored carpet. Smith’s black horn-rimmed spectacles – but he doesn’t like those, doesn’t like the eyes, the I’s that watch him, so he looks away from them at the rain pattering on the window, a silver sound that reminds him of clinking coins, and the umbrella lying upended, unfurled, on the floor.
He points at it. “It’s open.”
“What?”
“The umbrella. Why….” He wants to ask, Why isn’t it in the umbrella stand by the door, why are you letting it get the carpet wet – but the words slip out of his grasp and he can only gaze at it, at its beautiful colors that sing. One sees so many black umbrellas. Almost all umbrellas are black, it seems. This one is red, green, yellow, blue – a multitude of colors, and all of them are singing, and the song and the colors are so beautiful he can hardly believe it. He wants to pick it up, twirl it around, hear its colors spin and fall like the inside of a kaleidoscope.
He doesn’t know how long he stares at it. Time slides by, but it’s irrelevant. Time is the least important thing. Everything else, everything, is vastly important, tremendously meaningful — the sights, the sounds, the thoughts — though he quickly discovers it’s useless trying to explain any of it to this doctor. One might just as well try to explain algebra to a cat. Apart from that, he’s not at all convinced the man is a doctor. It could be a cover. Diplomas, credentials, can be faked. He’s been a doctor himself, not to mention a professional gambler, a proper English butler, an ex-convict, a travel agent (of course), even a Communist defector. Identities are malleable. It’s easy to be someone else, and that’s what frightens him. He’s never been frightened of it before, but that was before.
At some point he realizes he’s begging the doctor (if he is a doctor) to tell him who he is, to please just tell him his name.
“Drake,” the doctor says, “John Drake,” but why should he believe this man? He pulls out his wallet, checks his driving license and his M9 badge. They match, they corroborate the doctor’s story. The two pictures look like each other, but do they look like him? He studies himself carefully in the mirror on the wall, and he sees his father frowning back at him. He looks again, closely, his nose almost touching the glass. Of course, he does look startlingly like his father; he always has. But he’s himself; it’s his reflection. It must be him, it must be. He’s not his father. And he’s certainly not No One.
Is he?
Horror grips him and he turns quickly, putting his back to the mirror.
I am — I am — I am — I — I — I — I —
He has a name. He’s John Drake. He has a father (but he isn’t his father) and a mother, a brother and a sister. They’re all named Drake. (“Quack, quack” said the boys at boarding school, until he thrashed them).
“Am I mad?” It isn’t a rhetorical question; the answer is not at all clear to him.
“No!” The doctor – the supposed doctor, the doctor till proven otherwise – sounds genuinely appalled. “My dear fellow, you’re perfectly fine! You just need to let go. You’re holding on far too tightly.”
“I’m tired,” he says. He’s also terrified, utterly confused, even, somehow, weirdly elated. He’s lost in a place he’s never been, a place he wishes he’d never seen, a place he’s beginning to suspect he’ll never get out of.
The room has windows, though. If he went through them….
He doesn’t hear himself say it aloud, but perhaps he did because just as he gets within reach of the window there’s a shout and three burly men burst through the door, heading straight for him. He fells one reflexively with an uppercut to the jaw, but the exaggerated sound it makes, the horrible crunch, stuns him, distracts him completely, and he’s unprepared when the other two grab him by the arms and wrestle him to the couch while the doctor shouts, “For God’s sake be careful with him, you idiots!” Someone is yelling about restraints, someone else is yelling “No, it would make things worse!”, everything is getting louder and louder, but all he can do is stare at his right hand, the hand he used to defend himself. It hurts, but there’s no fracture. He’s sure of that, because he can see through the skin to the bones. He flexes it cautiously and watches the intricate play of bone and muscle and tendon. He can even see the blood flowing out of the broken vessels to form the bruise he’s going to have. He’s aware of the doctor’s voice – “No restraints! It could push him over the edge!” – but the words bounce off his consciousness, leaving no impression.
He’s alone with the doctor again, and the doctor asks him questions, lots of questions. How are you feeling now, what are you seeing, are you angry, are you hungry, are you frightened…. Meaningless questions, all of them, so trivial he wants to laugh. It’s impossible to explain to this man how unimportant these questions are, so he doesn’t try.
But there are other questions too, much more serious ones. The name of his contact in Prague. The location of the dead drop in Havana. The combination of the safe in the basement of M9 HQ (above my pay grade, old chap).
He doesn’t answer any of these questions either, though he wants to. He knows there are very good reasons not to, even though his mind can barely hold onto those reasons, even though the doctor’s face is stretching and rippling and bending in a way that nauseates him and he has to screw his eyes shut and clench his jaw and swallow the sickness. Even though the walls, at one point, move toward him, close in on him on all sides, causing him to leap to his feet in a panic before they suddenly retreat. Even though he feels as if every piece of information he’s ever learned, from his ABC’s to how to field strip a Browning automatic, is dancing on the tip of his tongue, begging to get out.
One doesn’t tell an interrogator anything. And what about that slight but definite accent? The fellow’s German. He’s trying to hide it, but he obviously needs to work harder on his cover. Which side of the Curtain is he from? Whose side is he on? It’s impossible to be sure, and the lights are so bright he can hardly keep his eyes open, and the doctor’s voice drones unbearably, and he has to yank at his tie to loosen it because it’s so bloody hot he’s terrified he’s going to dissolve, literally dissolve into a puddle.
“I’ll get you a glass of water,” the interrogator says, but he can’t even consider taking anything from them. That’s one of the first things you learn.
“I’m too clever for you,” he says, with his most superior smirk. “Whoever I am, I’m far too clever for you.”
The doctor (if he is a doctor) drinks the water himself. “Yes,” he sighs. “Far too clever.”
*****
A long, long time later (or not so long, he doesn’t know) he says, “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, if that’s what you thought.”
The doctor looks pained. “I couldn’t be sure you weren’t going to jump. You frightened me half to death.”
“I thought it was the way out. The way to be free.” He’s lying on the couch, looking up at the ceiling, which isn’t glowing and pulsating any longer. It did, for a while, and he’d enjoyed watching it, though it was almost painfully bright. Now it’s gone grey again, dull. So has everything else.
“You didn’t tell me much after the first hour or so,” the doctor says. He sounds disappointed, peevish. “We need to know what you saw, what you felt.”
“My mind is my own. It belongs to me.”
The doctor shakes his head and writes something in his notebook.
He swings his legs off the couch and forces himself to walk to the mirror, forces himself to look. The face that looks back at him is his, of course. John Drake is his name. He is not his father. He is not No One.
“You really shouldn’t go yet – ”
“Yes, I really should. I most definitely should.”
“You are not entirely stable yet, you need more observation before –”
“Observation.” He turns, eyes sweeping the room before settling again on the mirror. “Who is back there? Who is….” He lets the sentence trail off. Of course, there are watchers. There are eyes everywhere.
“All right, if you’re determined to leave, I won’t stop you –”
“No.” He looks Smith squarely in the eye. “I can assure you you won’t.”
He watches the doctor glance down, watches him swallow nervously, and feels a surge of relieved satisfaction. Whatever else has happened to him, he hasn’t lost his power to intimidate.
“Drake, if you must go, please be careful. You’re still in a highly sensitive state –”
“My state is no longer your concern.”
“You should not drive, for instance, and you really shouldn’t be alone for the next few hours.”
The contempt he feels for this man almost chokes him. “I can think of nothing I would rather be than alone.” He strides to the door, then turns back with one hand on the doorknob. “Am I the first victim – sorry, volunteer – of this experiment?”
Doctor Smith removes his glasses and rubs his eyes tiredly. “Not the first, but certainly the most, ah, intense.” He sighs. “We’ve had five previous subjects. You are number six.”
Out on the street, the rain has stopped. It’s late afternoon, the traffic heavy with homeward-bound wage-earners. Horns blare, double-decker buses rumble, and he struggles to keep his hands away from his ears. It’s like surfacing from deep water into a world of shouting bathers and screeching seagulls. Sunlight glares off windscreens, and he winces. A low roaring, a distant whooshing sound, rises inside his head.
He hurries down the street, making himself focus on one thing – finding the car park where he’d left his car this morning, or an eon ago. As he rounds the corner (there’s the car, he hasn’t lost it), he notices a woman and a little girl waiting to cross the road. The child is holding a large white balloon by a long string.
They’re still waiting when he pulls out into traffic. He can see the balloon in the rear-view mirror, bobbing and waving in the breeze. He drags his eyes away from it and guns the engine.
Chapter Text
Doctor Schmidt is leaning back in his chair, eyelids drooping, when the door opens. He’s wide awake in an instant, though he’d rather not be. These sessions are exhausting, utterly draining. He looks at his watch. This one lasted more than ten hours. He wants nothing more than to go home and collapse into bed. And if he feels this wrung-out, how must Drake feel?
Admiral Hobbs holds up a hand as he starts to rise. “Don’t get up. I daresay you’re all in.” He seats himself in front of the desk as a grateful Schmidt sinks back down. “I don’t know how you do it, Doctor. It’s like being locked in a cage with a madman. I feel like climbing the walls, and all I do is watch.”
Schmidt smiles faintly. The Admiral does considerably more than watch. The room is bugged, the mirror two-way. From behind that mirror he notes every movement, hears every word, directs his secretary to take meticulous notes, exchanges observations with his fellow section chiefs, who are also watching, listening, considering. It’s a long day for them all.
“It can be tiring,” Schmidt admits. “But I believe, Admiral, it will pay off.”
The Admiral nods. “That’s certainly our hope. What did you think of today’s subject?”
“Sir, I’ve had no time to review my notes, to watch the footage –”
“I’m aware of that, but I’m talking about raw data here. Your initial opinion, unfiltered.”
The doctor sighs. “Well, you saw it yourself. Very strong reaction, much stronger than I expected given that I gave him only one hundred micrograms. Paranoia, which is quite common and certainly to be expected in experienced field agents. Synesthesia, which I’ve only seen in one other case so far –”
“Sorry – you said synesthesia?”
“Scrambling of the senses; the phenomenon of ‘seeing’ sounds or ‘hearing’ colors.”
“Go on.”
“Heightened sensitivity to touch, a general sharpening of all the senses. Did you notice how he kept squinting, even after I dimmed the lights? Of course, we’ve seen that in other test subjects as well. A tendency to fixate on everyday objects like the umbrella, to invest them with meaning they don’t have. Again, very common.”
He pauses and Hobbs cocks an eyebrow at him. “You’re frowning, Doctor. I sense a but coming.”
“Two things concern me, sir. I mentioned the extreme reaction. LSD-25 can provoke a range of responses, of course, and some subjects are more susceptible to its effects than others. Drake, for whatever reason, seems highly vulnerable to it. According to his psychological file he was prone to sleepwalking as a child, and still experiences vivid dreams and frequent nightmares.”
“We’re aware of that. We monitor all our field agents closely. Psychological testing is an annual requirement, though, as you may imagine, hardly a popular one.” Hobbs smiles grimly. “Drake, I happen to know, detests it.”
Schmidt nods. “I’m not surprised. I know he once had a very detailed delusional experience while unconscious after an accident.”
The Admiral scowls. “I remember that incident. Gave us quite a turn. We kept a very close eye on him for quite a while after that, let me tell you.”
“It is possible his psychological makeup is simply given to these types of episodes; thus, a fairly mild dose of the drug produced quite dramatic effects. A subject with such inclinations could well have even more extreme encounters on higher doses – strong episodes of deja vu, for instance, of living and reliving the same experiences repeatedly, in a kind of recurring loop. This sort of thing can be a truly devastating experience, disorienting to the point of madness. If Drake is as prone to such phenomena as he appears to be, he will require very delicate handling in any future sessions to avoid damaging him irreversibly. And that leads me to my second reservation.”
He hesitates, and Hobbs sits forward attentively. “Well, what? Spit it out, man!”
“It’s the question of identity. You heard how he asked me, again and again, to tell him who he was. I am not certain whether he’d actually forgotten his name or merely wanted reassurance that he was who he believed himself to be. Separation from the self, from the ego, is a common phenomenon among users of the drug. Subjects often feel that they’ve lost themselves, that they’ve merged with their surroundings, with nature, even with God. Users often actively seek that loss of self. I once had a subject tell me he felt like a drop of water in an endless sea, and he enjoyed it tremendously.” Schmidt pauses, smiling apologetically. “They do often say the most remarkable things.”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“The point is, what I saw today makes me suspect Drake’s attachment to his identity, his ego, his self, is very tightly held. Unlike many subjects, I don’t believe he found the loosening of his grip on it at all pleasant. I would, of course, need to conduct repeated sessions with him at varying dosages before I could offer a definitive opinion. But he seemed both highly sensitive to the drug, and highly resistant. In other words, he fell under its influence easily, but not happily. Psychically, he was kicking and screaming all the way.”
The Admiral absorbs this information thoughtfully, fingers drumming on the arm of his chair. “He’s terrified of losing himself.”
“I believe so, yes. It is a buried fear, but a very real one. I suspect that’s the reason he’s been so successful in undercover work, the fact that he does have such a strong hold on his identity. He’s good at taking on other personas because he feels in control of those personas. His psyche knows it’s simply a job, a role he’s playing, and he never loses sight of that. He knows he can always find his way back to himself, so he’s not afraid. But what happened to him today was very different. Yes, he volunteered for the experiment, but he had no real idea what to expect. He had no control over the effects of the drug, so the loss of self was almost total. And this time there was no other self, no other persona, to replace it with.”
“A hole,” the Admiral muses.
Schmidt blinks. “I’m sorry?”
“A hole, a sort of – void – in the mind. An emptiness. You think that’s what he was experiencing.”
“I suppose it could be expressed that way. An absence of ego, at any rate.” The doctor casts a glance at the window. Sometimes they do jump. He’s heard of such cases. “In some subjects, this ego death can produce an almost schizophrenic effect, a splitting of the subject’s consciousness into two distinct personas. This is usually temporary, of course, but one can’t explain to a man under the influence of LSD for the first time that whatever he’s feeling, good or bad, it won’t last forever. For all he knows, he may never recover his identity, never be sane again. For a personality as tightly wound as Drake’s that must be a harrowing prospect indeed.”
Hobbs rises and paces slowly around the room. “That void, that emptying of the mind. Voids demand to be filled.”
The doctor gives a disbelieving little laugh. “Admiral, the so-called Manchurian candidate has never been proven to exist. If you expect to turn him into some sort of robot, I’m afraid you are destined to be disappointed.”
The Admiral waves a dismissive hand and lights his cigarette. “Come now, Doctor, I was implying nothing so melodramatic. But Drake certainly has a pronounced independent streak and has butted heads at some point with every controller he’s ever worked with. To be quite frank, I have believed for years that he could do with being taken down a peg or two. If we could tame that feral quality of his, make him easier to manipulate….”
“Taming him might be tantamount to ruining him,” the doctor says sharply. At the Admiral’s raised eyebrows, he softens his tone. “You said it yourself, Admiral. He’s a valuable property, not some anonymous undesirable. Even in a state of considerable disorientation and fear, he retained enough of his training, enough of his self, to resist answering my questions.”
Admiral Hobbs shrugs this off. “To a man like Drake, a field agent with his level of experience, that’s a reflex. He’d have to be broken down to nothing before he’d forget how to behave under interrogation. And if I may say so, Doctor, you are hardly a substitute for a real interrogator.”
Schmidt raises his hands placatingly. “I accept that his years of experience have sharpened him, toughened him. Of course they have. But they have also worn on him. Agents such as he are under incredible psychological strain on a very frequent basis. The human nervous system will tolerate only so much. If Drake is not handled with care, I assure you he will snap at some point. I would need to conduct further sessions with him to say more. And I am not at all certain he’ll be willing to give me the chance.”
“No?’
“Well, you saw the way he stormed out of here. These experiments are done on an ostensibly voluntary basis, and I would guess he is seriously rethinking his agreement to participate. If he opts out, that’s the end of it.” At least, the doctor thinks, if we want to maintain the fiction that consent is essential.
“Mm.” The Admiral ’s eyes are far away.
Schmidt shifts in his chair. He’s not naturally an outspoken man, and he’s unaccustomed to talking back. He’s beginning to wish he’d never heard of Project Infinity. Even the name – dreamed up, no doubt, by some overly credulous reader of Aldous Huxley – strikes him as naive, adolescent, reeking of a sort of wide-eyed wonder at odds with serious science.
“I wouldn’t worry that he’ll opt out, Doctor. None of the other subjects have.”
“None of the other subjects have had such an unexpectedly intense experience, at least not yet. And none of them have resisted it so fiercely.” He looks the Admiral in the eye. “If he runs, we will have lost him.”
Admiral Hobbs smiles and takes a drag. “We don’t lose men, Doctor. If he runs, we’ll pull him in. By hook or by crook.”
Chapter Text
Of course, he withdraws from the experiment. There are no arguments about it, no coaxing, no hints that if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll go along with the program. It is, after all, just an experiment. M9 isn’t in the business of bullying its operatives, the Admiral assures him. If he no longer wishes to participate, fine. No harm, no foul.
He leaves the interview more suspicious than relieved. He’s certainly been bullied by his superiors before, as have, he knows, some of his colleagues with similar reputations for voicing unpopular opinions or employing unorthodox methods. Since when does M9 rely on friendly persuasion to get its way?
But then, he’s important. That’s not conceit, it’s just a fact. He’s a high-value commodity, one of the Service’s finest, called on for the trickiest of assignments. Which is not to say they wouldn’t cut him loose without a qualm if the situation seemed to warrant it. All agents are expendable, in the end. But he does have some leverage. He’s a veteran agent with an enviable record. His loyalty, his patriotism, have never been called into question. Whatever doubts he’s had, whatever misgivings, regrets, attacks of conscience – he’s managed to keep them to himself. They weren’t terribly frequent, and they could usually be banished by more work, more exercise, a few stiff drinks.
M9 might try high-pressuring other men into going along with this wretched experiment against their will. They know better, surely, than to try it with him.
So he dismisses his unease. He has to. Paranoia is a bedrock fact of life in his business, but to surrender completely to it is mental suicide. At some point, one has to trust someone, and who else is there? He has no lover, few friends, a family he sees as rarely as possible. Agents barely have private lives. M9, flawed though he knows it is, is his world. He loves it and hates it in roughly equal measure. Without it, what would he be?
Free, his traitorous mind whispers. You’d be a free man.
He ignores it and gets on with the job.
*****
He’s in Munich when it happens, but it could have been anywhere. He could have been in any corner of the globe, in any situation, with anyone. Almost the first thought that occurs to him, after the initial horrified realization, is what an utter, bloody fool he’d been to believe he could simply say No more for me, thanks and get away with it.
The mission, his first since his encounter with Doctor Smith a fortnight earlier, was plain sailing. The East German defector had practically fallen into his arms. He’d delivered her into the welcoming embrace of the British embassy without a snag. It’s the dullest assignment he’s had in a while. If he didn’t know his handlers better, he’d almost suspect they were trying to make something up to him.
It’s early evening, but his flight isn’t until nine the next morning. He’s winding down in the hotel bar, enjoying a drink and leafing through a copy of Der Spiegel, even though there’s an English-language newspaper he could have bought instead. Reading German doesn’t come easily to him; it requires serious focus, intense concentration. It makes it more difficult to dwell on things best forgotten.
The whiskey helps too, of course, though he’s only on his third. There won’t be a fourth. Well, perhaps four, but definitely not five.
He’s only gotten properly drunk once in the past two weeks, and that was in his flat the night following the experiment, when utter oblivion seemed the only rational response possible. Since then he feels he’s coped rather well – burying himself in work; obsessively pummeling the punching bag in the gym; smoking far more than he should (he’d give up the habit someday, of course he would, but certainly not right now); and planning his next holiday. He’s still undecided about where he wants to go, but he’s collected a stack of travel brochures. It’ll be somewhere tropical, somewhere sunny, somewhere as unconducive as possible to bad dreams.
The bar is dim and smoky, and the fine print he’s reading tasks his tired eyes. He sets the magazine aside, closing his eyes. When he opens them again, the bottle on the table in front of him is vibrating. He stares at it in disbelief. The amber liquid has changed color. It’s now blood-red. As he watches, the bottle tips over and spills its contents over his hand.
It is blood, as warm as if it had just seeped from an open wound. Repulsed, he grabs a napkin and wipes his hand.
He looks up, blinking, because the dim lighting is suddenly much too bright. The barman is behind the bar, watching him, smiling.
It was him, it had to be. He’s not a bartender, or maybe he is, but he’s also working for them. He’s part of it. They’d paid him to spike the drink.
His hands are around the barman’s neck, even though he has no memory of sprinting across the room and attacking the fellow. He presses his thumbs into the pudgy throat, feeling for the hyoid bone, pressing, pressing, and somewhere behind him a woman is screaming.
Someone pries his hands loose from behind and the barman staggers back, gagging. Someone whirls him around and punches him in the face before he can react.
And he’s on his back on the floor and a man is sitting on top of him and the man has his father’s face, and the man is trying to kill him. And at that moment, insanely, he wants it. He hears his own voice, a harsh whisper, saying “Kill me, kill me,” even though he knows it’s madness. But of course, it makes perfect sense, because he’s mad. He must be.
The man doesn’t kill him, but he slaps him, backhands him across the face once, twice, a third time, with calm professional efficiency. The remaining breath leaves his lungs and he goes limp. He can’t fight his father anyway. It can’t be his father, but it is.
He hears the siren, far away and then instantly nearer, too near. Someone is holding his hands down and he needs them to cover his ears. He tries to explain this, but his lips won’t move.
“What happened?” He knows the words are German, but he hears them in English.
“He tried to strangle the bartender!”
“All right, move aside please, we’ll sort him out.”
He’s in a car with Polizei written on the side and his hands are cuffed behind his back, but it isn’t the police, he’s sure. He doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. The journey goes on for a period that may be hours, minutes, or days. Streetlights and traffic signals whirl crazily, stabbing his eyes, slicing through his head, and he feels an almost irresistible desire to scream. He doesn’t, because he can’t. He can’t. He’s an M9 agent, and he can’t. He screws his eyes shut and clenches his jaw until his teeth ache.
He’s in a building, somewhere, and the floor tilts beneath his feet. He falls heavily, unable to catch himself with his manacled hands, and his captors haul him back up, laughing. One of them has a wolf’s head, and when it laughs its long red tongue lolls over jagged canine teeth.
He knows this is a hallucination. Of course it is. It isn’t real, and he doesn’t believe it. Or, one of him doesn’t believe it. But there are two of him now, and that’s the problem. There’s John Drake (John Drake, John Drake, John Drake – he repeats it to himself over and over, because he mustn’t forget, he mustn’t forget) and there’s the other. The other is the insane one. The other believes hallucinations are real. He’s the one who thinks the cell they put him in has a bottomless pit in the middle of the floor. John Drake knows it doesn’t, but he can’t convince the other. They both press up against the walls so they won’t slide across the tilting floor and fall in. They both wait, because surely it will end. After all, it ended before. John Drake knows there’s a bug somewhere, and a camera. He tries not to talk, although he desperately wants to babble everything he knows. If he says the right thing, they might let him go.
But he won’t do it, he won’t. He does talk, because he can’t help it, but he only says his name, his real name, again and again. John Drake, John Drake, John Drake. He listens to the swirling color patterns on the walls as they dip and spin and melt into each other; he watches them sing. John Drake, John Drake, John Drake. He avoids the bars of the cell door; they’re glowing red hot. John Drake, John Drake, John Drake. He refuses to look into the mirror over the sink in the corner. He doesn’t want to see someone else, or No One else, looking back.
John Drake, John Drake, John Drake.
*****
“He’s a tough one, I’ll give him that. Some I’ve seen would be pissing their pants and tearing their hair out by now.”
Doctor Schmidt grimaces and doesn’t reply. Agent Ryan is CIA and distastefully American. Schmidt has little patience with his crudity, his brashness, the way he refers to LSD by the street slang term acid. He treats Schmidt with a careless disregard bordering on open contempt, and Schmidt has found himself having to consciously avoid grinding his teeth in the American’s presence.
He ignores Ryan and keeps his eyes on the screen in front of him. Drake is edging around his cell, back to the wall, head turning from side to side, eyes roving restlessly back and forth. He’s speaking, mumbling, the same two words again and again.
Ryan sighs and lights another cigarette. “ How long do you think he’s going to keep that up?”
“He’s protecting himself,” Schmidt replies sharply. “He’s in a terrifying and completely disorienting situation with no one to offer him comfort. His identity is the only armor he has. You might do the same.”
Ryan casts him a surprised glance. “You feel sorry for him.”
“As you say, he is tough. I respect that. I’m a scientist and I do my job. It doesn’t require me to revel in the subject’s pain.”
Ryan mutters under his breath, “Tell that to those poor bastards at Dachau,” but Schmidt ignores him. Why the Service felt the need to bring the Americans into this is beyond him. British intelligence is the finest in the world; it brought down the Reich, didn’t it? Besides, the CIA conducts similar experiments itself. Why did they have to send Ryan here for this one?
Drake approaches the urinal in the corner of the cell and fumbles unsteadily with his zip. Schmidt turns his head, averting his eyes from the screen, because simple decency demands it.
Ryan does not turn away. “Big boy,” he remarks, as a faint trickling sound filters through their headphones.
Schmidt throws him a withering glare, and Ryan shrugs and grins. “Just an observation.”
“This is a scientific experiment, not a peep show for perverts.”
“I’m not a pervert, I’m a connoisseur. And you, Doc, have some pretty delicate sensibilities for an ex-Nazi torturer.”
Schmidt clenches his teeth before he replies. “I have never tortured anyone. I have carried out valuable research – ”
“So did Mengele.”
“ – valuable research,” the doctor goes on, his voice shaking, “in the furtherance of science. I continue to do so, although your presence makes it extremely challenging, Mr. Ryan.”
“Ah, don’t mind me, Doc,” Ryan replies with a sudden laugh, and to Schmidt’s astonishment, he throws a friendly arm around the doctor’s shoulders. “I’m just ragging you. Who hasn’t got a skeleton or two in the closet? You do, I do” – he points at the screen – “he sure as hell does, too, if he’s as good as they tell me. But so what? We’re all on the same side now.”
“Yes,” Schmidt agrees. “We are.” He, for one, has little choice in the matter. M9 needs his scientific expertise; he needs guaranteed protection from Mossad and the Israelis. Project Infinity, whatever his misgivings about it, makes him indispensable, at least for now. He intends to keep it that way.
Drake is sitting now, back to the wall, eyes squeezed shut, clutching his head in his hands, muttering, “No, no…..”
“If only he would not fight it so!” Schmidt shakes his head. “Resisting it, struggling against it – that makes it so much worse than it has to be.”
Ryan shrugs. “Some of them can’t let go. Some of them just won’t.” He’s silent for a moment, watching Drake intently. “This one won’t. Not unless he’s made to.”
Schmidt sighs. There are times when he regrets going into science.
Ryan stands up, removes his headphones, and stretches luxuriously. “Past midnight, Doc, and we still haven’t eaten. He’s not going anywhere. You want some dinner before I go to work on him?”
Chapter Text
Ryan’s first impression of Drake was one of controlled power. He was tall, well-muscled, clearly capable of delivering a devastating punch or the kind of quick neck snap that could render an opponent disabled or dead with horrifying suddenness. The bartender they’d paid to dose him was lucky to have escaped with nothing worse than a badly bruised throat. Ryan and Admiral Hobbs had been watching him via hidden camera from no more than thirty feet away and he’d still almost throttled the poor man before they could drag him off and subdue him. Drake was quick, and his hands were strong.
All of this made him, in Ryan’s opinion, an unusually attractive target.
Even now, in his “cell” (just a room, an ordinary interrogation room in the basement of M9’s Munich station), Drake is quite an arresting sight. Of course, he’s a mess — face black and blue; nose bloody, hair hopelessly rumpled; shirt half-open; tie and suit jacket gone. His eyes are wild, crazed, the pupils so enlarged only a thin rim of color is visible around them. They widen even more as they settle on Ryan, as if Drake is struggling to determine whether he’s real or just another delusion.
It’s almost impossible to describe the thrill of seeing a man like Drake in such a state. That strength and that danger, all under Ryan’s control. They’d wrestled him into a chair in preparation for questioning, and bound him to it hand and foot. He looks away from Ryan and up at the ceiling, head tipped back, throat exposed, Adam’s apple bobbing restlessly beneath the skin.
Ryan knows better than to damage him any more than he already has. It’s the fantasy that he could, that he could press the blade of his combat knife (he always carries one, in a scabbard at his hip) against that vulnerable throat until tiny red beads of blood pop out – that’s what excites him. He could do anything to Drake right now, if he wanted to badly enough, if he were willing to pay the price for his disobedience. It’s that illusion that makes his heart race and his balls tighten. He’d felt it in the bar, too, astride Drake’s supine body, looking down into his cold blue eyes, smacking him methodically even though he had already seemed too dazed to struggle. He’d looked Ryan right in the eye and whispered, “Kill me.” He wonders if Drake had felt Ryan’s erection harden against his belly at the sound of those words; if he had still been lucid enough to recognize it for what it was.
Probably not. Pity.
Sorry, my boy, but they want you alive. If it were up to me….
It’s a damn shame, but he can see their point. You don’t toss a gem like Drake aside lightly.
He seats himself in the chair opposite his subject and adjusts the lampshade on the table beside him, shining the bright light directly at Drake’s face, watching him grimace and turn his head.
“Drake,” Ryan says softly.
No reaction.
“I’m not going to hurt you unless I have to. You understand?”
Drake’s head moves slowly from side to side.
“I need you to answer me, Drake. Do you understand me?’
Drake’s brow wrinkles, as if he’s trying hard to think. His eyes almost focus.
“I know you’re very high right now. You’ll be that way for several more hours. But you can concentrate, you can talk to me if you try. Cooperate, and I’ll quit bothering you. I’ll leave you alone.”
Drake blinks suddenly, rapidly, as though waking from a dream. “The pit,” he says. His voice is a raspy whisper. “Where is it?”
“There’s no pit, Drake.”
“There is.” He twists awkwardly in his bonds, turning his head right and left. “It’s here, somewhere. The walls – the walls tried to push me into it.”
Ryan smiles gently. “No pit. You can stop worrying about it.”
“I don’t believe you.” Ryan is surprised at how clear he sounds. “You’re lying. Everyone lies to me.”
“Do they? Then you’re smart not to trust them.”
“I don’t trust. I don’t….” He trails off, eyes wandering toward the door.
“Would you like something to eat? I can get you a sandwich, or – ”
“I won’t eat your poison.”
Ryan laughs. “You think I’d poison you?”
Drake closes his eyes. “I want it to stop.” The words are so soft Ryan has to lean forward to make them out. “The white balls and the chessmen – I want it to stop.”
“It will stop, I promise. It will, but you have to talk to me first.”
“My name is John Drake.”
“Yes, I know. But sometimes it’s something else, right?”
“No! It’s – John Drake. It always is.”
“All right.”
“I want it to stop.”
“All right, but let’s think about this logically. Your name can’t always be the same, can it? You go undercover, you change your name. I mean, I change mine sometimes. We have to, don’t we? No one’s always the same.”
“No one is – no one’s – ”
“A lot of people change their names. People like us – “
“I know I’m not mad,” Drake interrupts. “I know I’m not.”
“Of course not. You haven’t lost your mind, you’ve just changed it.”
“Changed it.”
“Sure. It works a little differently now, that’s all. The white balls and the chessmen – you can see things you couldn’t see before.”
“I want to get out. I want to get out!”
“You can get out after you talk to me.”
“I won’t talk!”
Ryan laughs. “If you really weren’t going to talk, you wouldn’t say I won’t talk. You’d just clam up. The only reason you’re talking at all is because of the drug.”
“No.”
“You think I can’t get you to talk, in the shape you’re in? You’re crazy as a loon – ”
“No!”
“ – you’re on a whole different planet, and I’m sane. I’m cold sober. I can twist you around my little finger.”
“I’m not mad,” Drake grinds out between gritted teeth. “I know I’m not, you said I wasn’t.”
“You can’t trust me, though. I lie. Everyone lies, you know that.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t trust anyone.”
“No.”
“So it doesn’t matter who you talk to, who you tell things to. It makes no difference, you can’t trust any of them, so why not talk? Why not tell them what they want to hear?”
Drake shakes his head slowly. “I – no. I won’t.”
“But why not? What’s the harm?”
He can almost see the gears turning in Drake’s head. “I don’t – I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember why you shouldn’t talk?”
“I won’t. I won’t talk.”
“What’s your name again? I’ve forgotten.”
Drake’s eyes close, as if in relief. “John Drake. My name is John Drake. John Drake.”
“And you’re a British agent?”
Drake gives him a sudden sharp look and presses his lips together.
“Come on, I know you are.”
Drake turns his head and stares fixedly at the wall.
“I know you are. I know you know a lot of secrets. And you want to tell them to me because it almost hurts not to, doesn’t it? It would feel so good to talk. So why not?”
Nothing.
“It doesn’t matter, you know. We’re on the same side, you and I.”
“I don’t know whose side you’re on.”
“Yours, of course. What’s the matter? I sound American, don’t I?” Ryan is, in fact, British, his natural accent a twin to Drake’s own cut-glass, public school tones. But loyalties, political sympathies, those are what count. Nationalities don’t matter nearly as much, not to M9 or the CIA. Or even the KGB.
“I can sound American too,” Drake replies, his voice flattening abruptly to a generic Midwestern drawl, and Ryan laughs.
“You’re good at this, aren’t you?” He changes tack abruptly. “What’s your father’s name?”
Drake flinches.
“Tell me and I’ll leave you alone.”
“He isn’t here.” Drake’s voice is a low whisper.
“How do you know? Maybe he’s watching you right now.”
“No.”
“What’s his name? Is it John Drake?”
“No! My – my name – ”
“But it’s his too, isn’t it?” Ryan knows it is. He’s read Drake’s complete file.
“It’s my name.”
“Because you’re named after him.”
Drake shakes his head violently. “It’s my name. Mine.”
“Okay, it’s your name. What’s the name of the M9 section chief in Helsinki?”
Drake meets his eyes and then looks away silently.
Ryan sighs a theatrical sigh. “It won’t go any further, you know. I’m on your side. It doesn’t matter what you tell me.”
Drake says nothing.
“You want me to shut up and go away, don’t you? So you can listen to the pretty colors in your head?”
Nothing.
“You’re hearing them right now, aren’t you? I lied about the pit, you know. It’s there. When you move, it follows you around.”
“It’s not real,” Drake mutters. “It’s from Poe.”
“How do you know it’s not real? You’re nothing but a drug addict. You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Maybe everything that happens here is real, and your real life is unreal. Ever think of that? Maybe you’ve finally woken up from a dream you’ve been having all your life.”
Drake nods, slowly, as if giving this possibility serious consideration. “He hath awakened from the dream of life.”
“Pardon?”
Drake’s eyes look into the far distance, past the walls of the drab little room, beyond anything Ryan can see. “Shelley,” he says. “Adonais.”
Ryan lets out a disbelieving little laugh. It never ceases to surprise him, the things they come up with on acid. Poetry, that’s a new one.
One last card to play. “Pretty lonely in here, huh, Drake?”
No reaction.
“And you don’t know how long you’ll be here.”
Still no reaction, and Ryan wonders for a moment if Drake has retreated too far into his own mind to hear him. He extends a finger and pokes the bruise on Drake’s cheek. Drake’s head snaps back, eyes widening.
“Good. Thought you weren’t still in there! Like I said, you must be lonely here with nobody to talk to. I mean, nobody but me.”
Drake stares mutely back at him.
“We could be friends, you know, you and me.” He raises his hand, ignoring the way Drake leans away from him, and touches his face again. This time it’s a gentle touch, a caress.
Drake winces and turns his head.
“Come on, I’m not hurting you. Just the opposite.” Ryan strokes the stubbly jaw. “Feels good, doesn’t it? Just a little touching, a little comforting human contact. I mean, we all need that sometimes, right? Nothing to be ashamed of.”
From what he’s been told, Drake is impervious to honey traps of both sexes, and the information in his file bore that out. He’d been tested repeatedly and always passed with flying colors. He was so impervious, in fact, that Ryan had found it a bit bizarre. It was, of course, an enormous asset for an agent to be immune to seduction, to persuasive pillow talk, to sexual blackmail. If true, it was yet another reason M9 valued him so highly.
Then again, he’d never been tested while under the influence of LSD.
“You have a pretty mouth.” Ryan smiles and touches Drake’s lower lip with a finger. “Bet you’re a good kisser.”
He blinks, delighted at the sudden flash of arctic disdain in Drake’s eyes.
“I don’t kiss,” Drake snaps. “I bite.”
“Attaboy.” Ryan grins. “I’ll bet you do.” He’s liking Drake more and more. The fact that his true self — his real personality — is able to fight its way to the surface, even briefly, on a dose Ryan has seen flatten many subjects is proof of his grit.
Then it’s gone. Drake blinks twice and stares over Ryan’s shoulder at the wall, at some shadow play only he can see.
He actually would have liked to kiss the guy, but forewarned is forearmed. Instead, Ryan buries his fingers in Drake’s hair and rubs gently at his scalp. He can feel the salt of dried perspiration. Drake twitches and tries to move his head away.
“You don’t like being touched at all, huh?” Ryan slides his hand down to the nape of Drake’s neck. The muscles are tight, and he kneads them gently.
Drake twists away as far as he can.
“Not by anybody?” He moves his fingers to Drake’s throat, tracing the outline of his larynx, watching him swallow. “Is it just because I’m a man?” He pauses. “Is it because I’m your father?”
This is a shot in the dark, and Ryan has no idea where or if it might land. But Drake had reacted strongly to the mention of his father before, so….
Sure enough, it happens again. Drake draws in a sudden, ragged breath, and Ryan feels him stiffen.
“Not – not my….”
Ryan feels the familiar glow of triumph. Might as well play it for all it’s worth. “You don’t even want me touching you? Your own father?” He lets his hands drop lower, to Drake’s gaping shirt front. He unbuttons it completely and spreads the shirt wide, revealing an expanse of sweat-slick chest.
“Hot, aren’t we, son?” he murmurs, and lays a hand over Drake’s racing heart. “So hot in here.”
Drake is swallowing convulsively, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t.” His voice is a hoarse whisper. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t touch you?” Ryan glides both palms down Drake’s chest, appreciating the feel of the tense muscles. “I can touch you as much as I like. You’re my boy, John.”
“No. Not – not – ”
“Oh, yes you are. Yes you are.” Ryan cups Drake’s face with his hands, stroking the cheekbones with his thumbs. “Open your eyes for me, John.” He speaks in a honeyed murmur, careful to keep all traces of threat and harshness out of his tone. “Open your eyes, boy.”
Drake does, slowly, as if his eyelids are almost too heavy to move. His gaze, glassy with chemicals and exhaustion, meets Ryan’s.
“That’s it,” Ryan whispers. “That’s it, son.” He strokes the straggling hair back from Drake’s forehead. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
Chapter Text
“He’s good, obviously. I’ve worked on quite a few subjects and observed even more. His resistance is excellent. He’s high as a kite, paranoid as hell, all alone in his own little world, but he didn’t tell me a thing, not in words, anyway. He’s fighting it tooth and nail.”
Dr. Schmidt makes an exasperated sound. “Exactly what I could have told you.” He turns to the Admiral. “Exactly what I did tell you, sir. I still fail to see why all this was necessary.”
Admiral Hobbs looks thoughtfully out the third-story window of the safe house. “It was necessary, Doctor, for several reasons. One, we needed to study Drake’s reaction when ambushed, as it were. We know from Mr. Ryan’s agency’s experiments that the experience of a subject who is given the drug without his knowledge will often be quite different and more extreme than it is when he’s expecting it. And Mr. Ryan is a highly trained interrogator. His methods are far more ‘real-world’ than those of a psychiatrist.” He smiles, placatingly. “However much we value the assistance of that psychiatrist.”
Schmidt presses his lips together. He knows when he’s being patronized. “You gave him more than twice as high a dose as I recommended. You ambushed him, as you put it, in unfamiliar surroundings, dragged him off by force to more unfamiliar surroundings, and abandoned him in a locked room to hallucinate, totally alone, for hours. You bound him hand and foot even though I told you repeatedly it would be counterproductive. I accept that certain realistic conditions must be duplicated in order for the experiment to have validity. But I must repeat what I warned you of before. Reckless treatment of this subject will have the opposite effect of what you intend. Caution is warranted here.”
Ryan rolls his eyes. “Come on, Doctor.” He puts contemptuous emphasis on the last word, and Schmidt stiffens defensively. “He’s an M9 field agent with fifteen years’ experience. He’s not made of glass and he’s not going to break. ”
“That is exactly what he’ll do if we do not exercise caution!” Schmidt explodes. “I assume M9 would have no use for him as a drooling wreck in a psychiatric ward!”
“Doctor.” The Admiral’s voice is cold. “No one remains a field agent forever. The physical and emotional demands are extreme, and Drake isn’t far short of forty. We’ve seen no diminishment of his physical prowess — yet — but his psychological tests have revealed changes the last few years. Nothing too dramatic — yet. But there will be; there always is, sooner or later. He is approaching the end of his usefulness to us in his current role. But there are other ways he can serve his queen and his country. As a test subject, very possibly.”
Schmidt sighs, defeated, and sinks into a chair. If M9 isn’t interested in protecting its own valuable property, there’s nothing he can do about it.
The Admiral turns back to Ryan. “You said he didn’t tell you anything in words.”
“Exactly. You were both watching, you saw what happened. He’s tougher than nails and smart as a whip. He’s used to violence, force, threats. He expects them, so he’s got defenses against them. He’s built those defenses up over a long career.” Ryan pauses thoughtfully. “Maybe even over a lifetime. It’s gentleness that gets to him. He has no defenses against that. He’s afraid of it. He knows it’s his weakness, and he does whatever he can to avoid it. I could’ve punched him in the face and it wouldn’t have meant a thing to him apart from pain, and he knows how to deal with that. But I touched his face, I petted him, I spoke gently to him. And he didn’t know how to react. Without the acid, what I did would have alarmed him, would have bothered him plenty, but he’d have been able to hold it together anyway because that’s how good he is. But LSD strips the ego bare, it takes a man’s defenses away.”
Ryan sighs and taps a cigarette out of the pack in his breast pocket. “Frankly, I’m very impressed that he held out as well as he did. But every man has cracks in his personality, even if they’re very insignificant ones, even if they’re barely noticeable. Acid widens those cracks. Enough of it will blow them wide open.”
The Admiral nods thoughtfully. “If nothing else, that does explain his resistance to sexual or romantic traps. He’s a man of enormous self-control in that area.”
“Or he’s trained himself not to want it.” Ryan takes an appreciative drag from his Camel. “It’s the way you’d deal with a serious food allergy. Just avoid the allergen. Remove yourself from it, because whatever pleasure or comfort you’d get from it isn’t worth the risk.”
“It’s possible he honestly doesn’t want it.” The Admiral smiles reminiscently. “In his younger days he was a first-class bit of bait for us, one of the best we’ve ever run. One can’t succeed at that dirty work without a great talent for manipulation and an absolute refusal to let one’s own feet get stuck in the honey. Drake certainly never got tangled. He did what needed to be done and got out. It never seemed to touch him.”
Ryan nods. “Makes sense. At any rate, he knows better than to let anyone past the gates. For him, it’s just too dangerous.”
“What happened there at the end, Ryan? Do you think he actually believed you were his father?”
Ryan nods. “I think he did, yes. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but from his expression, the way he looked at me — I think he was hearing his father’s voice, seeing his father’s face, feeling his father’s hands on him. He wasn’t happy about it, either. Who knows what that means; maybe his old man hurt him, abused him. Acid can bring out all kinds of conflicted, mixed-up emotions and memories. It shows you things about yourself you might not want to know or remember.”
“Mmm.” Hobbs ponders, drumming his fingers on the table. “Fascinating to speculate, isn’t it?”
“I’ll tell you one thing it proved, though. Just like the kind treatment, the gentleness – it’s a vulnerability for him. It’s a soft spot to press on.”
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Schmidt begins, and Ryan and Hobbs both turn to him, blinking. He wonders indignantly if they’d actually forgotten he was in the room.
Don’t mind me, I’m just the psychiatric expert.
He swallows his irritation. “Gentlemen, I’ve registered my disapproval of Mr. Ryan’s tactics. They may well have produced results that you consider valuable, but what now? Am I to continue my work with Drake? If so, on what basis? We seem to have established that LSD, at least in his case, does not function as a truth serum, whatever else it may be. We have obtained similar results with our other subjects so far. I’m not sure I understand where I’m expected to go from here. What is Project Infinity’s future?”
The Admiral shakes his head dismissively. “Truth serum or not, this drug is obviously of tremendous importance to the Service and, as I’m certain Mr. Ryan would agree, to our allies as well. Any substance that can break down a subject’s ego, increase suggestibility, reveal buried personality traits, possibly even clean out the cerebral cortex and replace it with a new mind – my God, Doctor! You’re a scientist! How can you not see the value of that?”
“And the danger of it.” Ryan’s voice is soft. “Here’s a scenario for you, Doc. We don’t continue with the research. We decide it’s too big and too scary and we can’t be responsible for taking people’s minds apart. So we bury it. Do you honestly think the Soviets haven’t already started their own psychedelic research? A thing like this can’t be kept completely quiet, no matter how tight the security around it is. They know, and they’re working on it. And someday – who knows, maybe soon – they perfect it. And they pump a few hundred million micrograms of LSD-25 into the public water supply of London or New York or Paris or Washington D.C. What do you think will happen then?”
There’s a long silence. Schmidt had once observed naked POWs kept in vats of ice-water for as long as five hours at a time while doctors measured their heart rates and core temperatures, in an effort to better treat hypothermia. He had seen, and taken careful notes on, inmates forced to drink large amounts of salt water in an attempt to discover a cure for malaria. He had personally assisted in the dissection of the brain of a living prisoner who had been deliberately exposed to crippling levels of air pressure. It was important information for Luftwaffe pilots.
Distasteful, certainly; even shameful. But necessary for the advancement of science. And it was wartime. One did what one needed to do for one’s country.
Britain, whether he likes it or not, is his country now. And a Cold War is still a war.
And there are the Israelis to consider.
They’re both looking at him, Ryan and the Admiral, but not with any doubt in their eyes. They know he really has no decision to make.
He says nothing, and Admiral Hobbs clears his throat. “We’ll continue this discussion later. At the moment we must make arrangements to get our subject out of here.”
Chapter Text
He sleeps the blackest sleep of his life. More than twelve hours (he calculates, when he can think again) of utter oblivion unaided by drink or pills, unmolested by nightmares or even the whisper of a dream. It’s the longest he’s ever slept in one go, and the soundest and most peacefully he ever will again.
He wakes in the hotel room he knows he checked into a few nights ago, though he can barely remember doing it. He can barely remember what city he’s in, or why. He sits up, his heart, roused from its blessed calm, leaping again into a gallop. He fumbles for the bedside lamp, presses the switch, and gazes wildly around at his perfectly ordinary surroundings.
They’d come and fetched him, eventually. They’d untied him and led him to a bathroom where he showered while some young pup from the Munich station sat on the closed toilet lid and waited, apparently in an effort to ensure he didn’t somehow do himself in. What did they think, that he was going to drown himself in the tub? Rip the shower curtain down and strangle himself with it?
He hadn’t even protested. He had never been more exhausted, more thoroughly depleted, in his life. He had stood with eyes closed under the hot needle spray of the water and let it run and run, steam billowing around him, and it was his mother’s womb and he was floating in it, warm and mindless and content, until the water began to cool and the young pup’s tentative “Mr. Drake, are you all right?” broke through. And the walls had tightened suddenly around him and he knew he was being born and that he desperately didn’t want to be.
They’d driven him back to his hotel. It was morning. Everything he looked at – cars, buildings, pedestrians – had an aura, a soft white glow surrounding it. Quite pretty. At one point, a pigeon swooped in front of their car while they were stopped at an intersection and flew off between two buildings. He watched it out of sight, noting that it was no longer one pigeon but a queue of pigeons, a string of identical copies of itself that winked out one by one when the original bird disappeared.
He had said nothing about these things to his escorts, of course. They weren’t frightening, just surreal, and he even felt a fleeting sense of perverse satisfaction that they belonged solely to him.
By the time they parked in front of the hotel, he was asleep. He hopes now that he had managed to make it to his room under his own power, but he wouldn’t put money on it.
He crawls off the bed and stands. He’s fully dressed in what are clearly someone else’s clothes, but they fit him reasonably well. The whereabouts of his own are a mystery to him, and he feels a pang of regret at the loss of his suit jacket, with the lock pick and the tape recorder disguised as a lighter in the inside pocket. There were a couple of cyanide tablets sewn into the lining as well. Though he’s a veteran of many tight scrapes, he’s never needed an L-pill before. He’s never been pushed into quite dire enough a corner to justify it. But now, who knows?
He visits the lavatory, where he steels himself and gives his abused face a grim examination in the mirror. He looks awful, but he’s himself, and he takes some comfort in that.
Then he goes to work sweeping the place. His wallet is lying, intact, on the nightstand. His extra room key has vanished but other items have been added. He finds one bug inside the telephone mouthpiece and one inside the overhead light shade, and feels mildly insulted that they weren’t better hidden. He flushes them both down the toilet. There’s a tiny camera in what he considers an equally obvious place – nestled in a recess in the plaster behind the Monet print on the far wall, its little eye peeking out through a barely noticeable hole in the picture. He removes it, opens the window, and hurls the gadget as far as he can.
It’s dark outside, and the bedside clock reads 10:45. His flight back to London is long gone, of course, so the next order of business is to book a new one. He lifts the newly harmless telephone receiver and immediately drops it back in its cradle when there’s a knock on the door.
Of course, they couldn’t leave him alone now that they knew he was awake.
He doesn’t have a gun; he seldom carries one. He casts a quick glance back at the window. He’s five floors up, if he remembers correctly, and the outside of the building has no handholds.
A key turns in the lock and the door opens as far as it can before the chain catches it. He feels a flicker of satisfaction that at least he’d been sharp enough to put the chain on before he collapsed.
“Drake?” says a familiar voice, and he freezes.
“Just checking on you. I’m in the next room. Come on, let me in.”
His first impulse is to yank the door open and break his tormentor’s neck. One of the unpleasant discoveries he’s made about LSD is that, unlike alcohol, it has no amnesiac effect. He remembers his encounter with this man with merciless clarity.
“Drake, I understand how you feel, believe me. But it’s important that I talk to you.”
Adrenaline sings in his blood, but he forces it down. He can’t afford to let emotion control him. He’s out in the cold here, or he might as well be; he’s certainly not about to ask the Munich station for help. His own side has betrayed him. He needs all the information he can get.
He stalks to the door, shoves it closed, jerks the chain loose and retreats across the room, where he takes a long swallow from the glass of tap water he’d poured in the bathroom, wishing fervently that it was something far more bracing.
His visitor slips inside, closing the door gently behind him. He’s older than Drake by perhaps a decade, shorter, softer, with a round, amiable face. He’s wearing an unremarkable business suit, a worn fedora, shoes that could use a shine. He does not look like a professional interrogator/torturer, but then the good ones never do. He’s holding a grease-stained paper bag in one hand and two bottles of beer in the other.
He glances at the print hanging askew on the wall and smiles. “How long did it take you to find the bugs?”
“Less than two minutes. Amateurish work.”
The other agent laughs. “I haven’t wired a room in quite a while; I’m out of practice.”
“Understandable, as you were no doubt busy with, ah, other things. Torturing captives, perhaps?”
The other man ignores the jab. “I don’t think we were ever formally introduced, were we? I’m Tom Ryan, CIA. Mind if I set this stuff down?” Without waiting for an answer, he deposits his burdens on the table by the window. “Thought you might be hungry, so I got us some sandwiches.”
He pulls out a chair and sits, then extracts a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. “C’mon,” he says, fumbling with a lighter. He gestures at the other chair. “No need to stand on ceremony.”
Drake doesn’t move. “Say whatever you came here to say and get out.”
Ryan draws in a lungful of smoke and lets it slowly trickle out. “Anybody ever call you Jack?’
They had, actually, when he was small. Jack, or Jacky.
“Never, and neither will you. What do you want?”
“Well, first of all I want to eat this bratwurst. I’m starving.” Ryan opens the bag, releasing a pungent smell, and withdraws a bread roll. “And don’t tell me you don’t want the same thing; I just saw your nose twitch.”
“I smell a rat.”
Ryan laughs. “Left myself wide open for that one, didn’t I? Come on, Drake, pull up a chair and dig in. I swear to you, it’s not spiked, and I know you haven’t eaten since last night.”
When Drake still doesn’t move Ryan rolls his eyes. He tears off a chunk of the sandwich and stuffs it into his mouth, chewing it ostentatiously before taking a swallow of beer. He shoves the bottle and the remainder of the sandwich in Drake’s direction.
Silently, Drake accepts the vetted food and settles himself on the bed. Eating at the same table with this man – this man who’d seen him psychically naked, who had shone a light on things he wanted kept dark forever – is not a concession he’s willing to make.
The bratwurst is delicious, and he devotes his full attention to it, eyes closed the better to savor it. After a moment, he opens them and meets Ryan’s rapt gaze.
“I’m sorry if my table manners are imperfect,” Drake says, not at all sorry, and licks a shred of sauerkraut off his thumb. “It seems my recent – experience, if that is the word – has left me largely indifferent to etiquette.”
Ryan smiles. “I like to watch a man eat. I like to watch his throat muscles when he swallows. There’s something primal about it.”
“Primal.” Drake’s tone is flat. “Pain is primal, as well. The response to torture.”
“I didn’t hurt you and you know it. Well, I flattened you in the bar — ”
“Expertly.”
“— but if I hadn’t, you might be facing a murder charge right now.”
Drake laughs, without humor. ”You must forgive me; I’ve had no time to write you a gushing letter of thanks.”
“Apart from that, I treated you with kid gloves.”
Drake sets the beer bottle carefully on the nightstand, noting with detachment the slight tremor in his hands. “As we both well know, psychological injury can sometimes be harder to bear. Be kind enough to pass me one of those; these sandwiches are terribly untidy.”
Ryan sighs and hands him a paper napkin. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry?”
“That would be the human impulse. I assume it isn’t yours.”
“It’s the job, you know that. You’d have done the same thing.”
“Perhaps I flatter myself, but I like to believe I wouldn’t have relished it quite so much.”
Ryan huffs out a laugh. “No, I don’t think you would. But some of us do take pleasure in our work. I won’t apologize for that.“
A picture flashes through Drake’s mind — himself at twenty, flirting shamelessly with the much older marks his handlers aimed him at, charming them, luring them, sleeping with them if necessary. He had not “taken pleasure” in it, exactly; even at that age, for reasons he couldn’t quite define, sex had held little appeal for him. It was simply cold-blooded ambition. He would have done anything then to get ahead in the Service (and away from home) and good-looking young agents were expected to do as they were told. It was the job. At the time, he’d never questioned it.
Ryan gives him a level look. “You and I, we do what needs to be done. No more, no less.”
Drake smiles sourly. “Of course.”
”Some people carry the just following orders bit to extremes, though. Doctor Wilhelm Schmidt, for instance."
Drake stares at him.
“Oh, sorry, I think you know him by a slightly different name. Doctor William Smith?”
“The psychiatrist.”
“Yes, exactly. Brilliant man, or so they tell me. I can’t say I’ve been too impressed with him myself. But he’s an excellent employee. Your Admiral tells him to perform drug experiments on M9 agents, and he does. Once upon a time, Himmler told him to perform medical experiments on helpless inmates at Dachau, and he did that, too.”
There’s a long silence. Drake puts the remainder of his sandwich down, his appetite blunted.
“They don’t advertise it, of course; thus, the cover name. As you might imagine, he’s in a very precarious legal position. One wrong move, and M9 cuts him loose. And then he gets what he deserves –” Ryan laughs shortly “ – but not what he wants.” He pauses, giving Drake a sharp look. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“I believe you.” He remembers a plane downed in the Jordanian desert, a group of commandos hungry for justice, a man shot dead in the sand before Drake could deliver him to safety. It was a failure he had found difficult to regret.
“Of course, he’s small fry compared to Eichmann and some of the others.” Ryan takes a sip of beer, his eyes never leaving Drake’s. “But a Nazi is a Nazi, and the Mossad wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“No,” Drake says, “they wouldn’t.” His pulse has begun to race almost painfully, and the food rests uneasily in his gut. “They shouldn’t.”
“Goddamn Dachau.” Ryan shakes his head wonderingly. “Do you know that place is less than twenty miles from where we’re sitting? Can you imagine how Schmidt must have felt coming back here?” He laughs. “Talk about jittery! I mean, he could have been recognized! He must have been shaking in his boots every minute!”
Drake’s lips tighten. “He was here.”
“Sure he was. He and your Admiral Hobbs both, though they’ve gone back home now. He observed you while you were, uh, under the influence, just like the first time. That’s what M9 pays him for, his medical expertise. All part of Project Infinity.”
Drake stands and walks to the open window. It’s a warm summer night, a faint breeze wafting in, but he’s cold nonetheless.
He hears Ryan push the chair back and walk toward him. “These are the sort of people you work for, Drake.” Ryan’s tone is quiet, serious, all lightness abruptly gone. “Are you proud of it?”
“The sort of people we work for,” Drake says softly, turning to face him.
“Yes.” Ryan smiles. “I admit, the Agency’s no better. But there are always alternatives, you know. Men like us, we’re in high demand. I can tell you from personal experience, you’d be very welcome a little farther east.”
Drake’s had years of experience assuming false personas, hiding emotions, lying himself blue in the face at the drop of a hat. He’s still stunned. He hadn’t suspected for a moment. Double agents are, of course, difficult to spot; they don’t play the game for long if they aren’t. He’s impressed with Ryan on a professional basis, and mightily annoyed with himself.
He manages a thin smile. “I’m obviously not on form today, for what I hope are understandable reasons. You seem so thoroughly American.”
Ryan grins. “I’m as American as you are English! Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, played baseball in high school, dad worked for General Motors – ”
“A real Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
“Red, white, and blue as they come! But my politics are my own. I think for myself. Don’t you?”
“What I think,” Drake replies, “is that you should leave now, for whatever destination you prefer. Washington, East Berlin, Moscow – ”
“Hanoi, actually. That place is hopping right now.”
“Splendid. I wish you no success at all in your future endeavors, which my government as well as your own will no doubt continue to oppose at every turn. I will not, of course, be joining you.”
‘’Sure? Don’t even want a few minutes to think it over?” The jocular tone vanishes abruptly. “Nobody has a right to do what they did to you. Your own side – ”
“I volunteered!” Drake barks, while inwardly blinking at himself in astonishment. Is he actually defending them?
“Not to be ambushed. Not to be taken by surprise, psychologically tortured – ”
“I – ”
“ – have your mind picked apart like a frog on a dissection table – ”
“Shut up!”
“ – by a goddamn Nazi that they’re hiding….”
He can feel himself beginning to shake inside, the roaring building up slowly in his ears. He’s still tender, psychically, the skin not yet grown back over the wound. Contents under pressure, he thinks, a little wildly. Shake them up and they fly apart.
“Get out,” he whispers. “Get out.”
“I’m going, don’t worry. I’m sorry we won’t have you on our side. I’m sorry for personal reasons, too.” He reaches out and touches Drake’s face for a bare instant before Drake splits his lip with a right cross.
Ryan staggers back and hits the door hard. After a stunned moment he catches his breath and raises his hand to his face. Blood trickles over his fingers, and he smiles a crooked smile and runs his tongue gingerly over his lips.
“Remember,” he says, wincing as the words leave his mouth, “what they did to you, they’re doing to others. And will continue to do in the future. What do you think will happen if they decide to test LSD on the Soviets? What if they dump it into the water supply of Moscow or Leningrad for a bunch of innocent civilians to drink? Do you want to be partly responsible for that?”
Drake makes no reply.
Ryan shrugs. “Okay. Be seeing you.”
And with that, he’s gone.
Chapter Text
Ryan sends the wire very early the next morning. Drake has already left; he followed him to the airport – securely disguised, and at a careful distance – and watched him board the red-eye to London. Ryan’s controllers need to know as soon as possible, since he can’t predict just which way the cat will jump, or when. His own babysitting duties are done, and now some other operative will take over. Drake will be shadowed from the moment he arrives until – well, indefinitely if necessary. Until the opportune moment arises to move on him. One thing Ryan knows for certain – they’re not going to let him slip away. The knowledge inside that handsome head is priceless.
The wire is double-coded because you can never be too careful. Its first layer will reveal a second. When both have been deciphered, the message will read:
Mallard to arrive LGW 2:40 AM BST. Plans uncertain. Stick close.
After the wire has been dispatched to Moscow, Ryan visits the men’s room, where he removes his wig, beard, and false nose. He bathes his injured face in cold water and inspects himself critically in the mirror. The bruising is ugly and getting worse, and the swelling doesn’t help, but there are no loose teeth. He feels no resentment; Drake had every right. Ryan would have done the same thing.
He wanders back to the waiting area, where he sinks into a not-very-comfortable airport chair and yawns. A woman sitting across from him gives him an appalled stare, but he ignores her. His flight to Hanoi isn’t for hours yet, and he’s already checked out of his hotel, so there’s nothing to do but wait. He takes an Ian Fleming paperback out of his pocket and prepares to lose himself in fictional intrigue.
*****
Admiral Sir William Hobbs
Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence, Section 9
Foreign Office
Whitehall
London
Admiral,
I have come to the conclusion, perhaps belatedly, that a career is not worth the violation of one’s conscience nor the sanctity of one’s mind. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
This is my resignation, effective immediately.
John Drake
He rolls the letter out of the typewriter, signs it with a flourish, and shoves it into an envelope.
He looks around the flat. Everything’s in order; he’s already arranged to have his post stopped, and the man from the garage will collect his car from the airport and drive it back. He just needs to finish packing, and that won’t take long, since he isn’t taking much. Whichever island paradise he ends up on, he won’t need more than some casual clothes and his swimming trunks. He intends to spend as much time as possible at the beach, swimming of course, but also walking and thinking. The future stretches out blank before him. He has no idea what he’s going to do with it, but there’s time, all the time in the world.
He picks up the envelope and reads the Admiral’s name on the front. He feels no sense of peace, no relief that he’s doing the only thing he can do, although he knows he is. Instead there’s fury so bitter it chokes him and, absurdly, disillusionment, which comes as a darkly amusing surprise to him. Before becoming involved with Project Infinity, he would not have believed he had any illusions left to lose.
He prefers not to dwell on the hurt he also feels, the undeniable sense of personal betrayal, as though M9 were a close, trusted friend who had turned on him. Ridiculous. He knows better. He focuses instead on the rage, letting it wash through him in a hot, red wave.
He stuffs the letter into his pocket and leaves, locking the door securely behind him.
*****
They can’t let him go. He might talk. He might go to the press. The country might wake up to headlines like Ex-Spy Denounces M9, Spills Horrifying Secrets. Or M9 Performs Reckless Drug Trials, Says Former Agent. Or Nazi Doc Linked to British Intelligence; Carried Out Medical “Experiments.” It would rock the nation. There would be inquiries, hearings, fiery speeches in Parliament. Not just Project Infinity, but M9 itself might be on the chopping block. The Soviets would claim it as a triumph, and no one could say where that might lead. There’s far too much leftist sentiment in Britain already.
It could bring down the government.
He must be kept quiet.
*****
They can’t let him get away. He’s too useful, too big a prize to pass up. Even if he won’t tell them everything they want to know, the potential propaganda value is enormous. Imagine it – an M9 agent speaking from a television studio in Moscow, denouncing Western intelligence agencies, revealing their hypocrisy, their criminality, their willingness to do business with anyone, even a former Nazi, if it serves their own ends. They might not be able to turn him; his disenchantment with his own Service might not extend to a willingness to join the other side. But coerced testimonies can be convincing if done correctly. And who knows what these new psychedelic drugs are really capable of? Erasing one mind, one personality, one set of beliefs and values and replacing them with another – well, who says it can’t be done?
He must be taken into Soviet custody immediately.
*****
Almost finished packing. He still can’t decide between Bali, Maui, and Tahiti, but it doesn’t matter; he’ll choose whichever has the earliest flight. The important thing now is to get to the airport. Out of this flat, out of this country. He stuffs all the travel brochures into his case.
He recognizes the smell of the gas immediately. He’s used it himself on occasion, when the situation required it. Dream steam. It has a tongue-twisting chemical name, of course, but that isn’t important. Its effects are what’s important, the fact that it induces deep unconsciousness so quickly.
He topples onto the bed, out like a light.
*****
EPILOGUE
And it’s starting over again.
He’s in the car. He can feel the leather of the bucket seat beneath him, warm from the sunny street. The wheel in his hands, turning so smoothly, the hum of the tarmac, the wind in his face.
He’s free.
And then he isn’t.
*****
It’s starting over again….
….and again….
….and again….
….and again….
….circling, circling, in an endless loop, back to the beginning.
Notes:
I wasn’t prepared for the sheer awfulness of the CIA’s Cold War mind-control experiments. If you’re interested in learning more, here are some resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01070R000301530003-5.pdf
https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-cia-lsd-experimentsPoisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer
The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton by Jefferson Morley
Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age by Norman Ohler
Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science by Benjamin Breen
For more information on psychedelic drugs and their often sublime and beneficial but sometimes terrifying and dangerous effects, here are some good resources:
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures edited by Charles Hayes
Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depersonalization-derealization-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20352911#:~:text=Overview,re%20living%20in%20a%20dream.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30927102
Info on Nazi medical experiments (WARNING – it’s as gruesome as you would expect):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
I realize all this may be a LOT more than anyone wants to know! However, researching this fic was an absolutely fascinating experience for me. I couldn’t get enough info about LSD, the Cold War, intelligence agencies in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and spying in general (Honey traps! L-pills! Secret coded messages!). I had more fun writing this than anything else I’ve ever written, and I’ve been writing fanfic a LONG time.
GunningForTheBuddha on Chapter 1 Mon 26 May 2025 08:25PM UTC
Last Edited Mon 26 May 2025 11:07PM UTC
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