building was probably more than two hundred years old. Rencke went down the corridor to three-eleven and listened at the door. If there was anyone inside, they were being very quiet.
No movement. No sounds whatsoever. He shifted his laptop to his left hand and knocked. Someone stirred inside, and a moment later the dead bolt was withdrawn and the door opened. A tall man, very old and thin, the skin on his cheeks and around his eyes shiny and papery, like blue-tinged parchment, stood there. He wore gray trousers and an old fisherman’s sweater. His thin white hair was mussed, but he did not look surprised. “Well, you’re not a Russian or a Frenchman, which means that you must be Otto Rencke,” Nikolayev said in English. His accent was British, and his voice was whisper-soft, yet Rencke could hear the Russian in him. “I got your message, Dr. Nikolayev.” “And you want more. But you wonder why I stopped sending.” Nikolayev turned away from the door and went to a writing table, where his laptop was open and running. Rencke entered the small room and closed the door, but did not bother locking it. With luck he wouldn’t be here long. “Your re mailer is not very secure.” “I discovered that for myself after the fact,” Nikolayev said. He stood with his back to Rencke, looking out the window, watching the comings and goings down on the street. “Once I sent you the first batch of material I got nervous. I sent myself an e-mail, then traced it to where it originated. It was not easy for me, but I did it. So I assumed others could.” He turned around. “I figured that I had a fifty-fifty chance that it would be either you or my own people coming for me. There are still friends in the Czech Republic who cooperate with the SVR.” “Why didn’t you disappear?” “I was on the verge of it when the French Action Service showed up and threw a cordon around me.” He had a warm smile. “Marvelous young boys. I actually felt safe for the first time since August.”
“Okay. You sent us a message about General BaranoVs Network Martyrs.
Someone has tried to assassinate McGarvey, so here I am. We need your help.” A hint of amusement came into NikolayeVs eyes. “It’s refreshing for a Russian to hear an American ask for help ”
“Don’t jerk me around, Anatoli Nikolaevich,” Rencke said harshly. He tossed his laptop on the bed and brushed the Russian aside so that he could get at his computer. But Nikolayev reached out and touched the escape key, and the screen went blank. “First we will establish some ground rules, as you call them,” Nikolayev said. “It’ll take me sixty seconds longer without your help than with it to get inside your computer,” Rencke told him. “I’ve followed you for six months because a very good friend of mine has been put in a dangerous position. I know what you were, who you worked for and why. So don’t try to bullshit me. You’re shaking in your slippers. First it was Zhuralev in Moscow, then Trofimov in Paris. You’re next.” “You’re right, of course,” Nikolayev said softly. He was struggling with himself. Trying to make a decision that made sense. Yet he was a Russian. And that died hard.
He took two CDs from the writing table’s drawer and gave them to Rencke. “That’s everything I found. Where are you at now?” “I’ll look at these on the way back,” Rencke said. “Somebody is trying to kill Kirk McGarvey, and they’re not going to quit until they succeed.
But a lot of what I’ve come up with doesn’t make any sense yet. It doesn’t fit a pattern.” “Tell me.” “Okay, so Baranov realized twenty years ago that McGarvey was going to be a somebody if he survived long enough. Baranov was a vain sonofabitch, maybe even nuts, so he put a sleeper in the States, and when the time was right the sleeper would be activated and set up the kill. Well, the time is apparently right, so why hasn’t Baranov’s sleeper done the job?” “You said they already tried.” “But it was crude. Everything I’ve learned about General Baranov tells me that he was anything but a crude operator. And there have been attempts on my life, and on the lives of McGarveys wife and daughter and his personal bodyguard.” “And what conclusions are you drawing?” Nikolayev asked. He was an instructor filled with patience for a student. Rencke didn’t mind. “Everybody suspects everybody else.”
“That isn’t so crude,” Nikolayev observed. “It’s what Baranov planned to happen. Are you familiar with the Donald Powers operation and the Darby [Yarnell files?”; “I’ve read them.” | “Vasha was famous for spreading lies and disunity like rose petals on fresh graves. He always managed to include the thorns.” Nikolayev studied I Rencke for a few moments. “You are close to McGarvey, yet you yourself are a suspect. Isn’t that true?” I “Yes.” [‘ “Anyone in his inner circle could be the killer.” “Yes.” “Perhaps even his son-in-law.” It was a bridge that Rencke had not wanted to cross. And now that he had he felt no better than he had before. He shook his head. “Todd’s too young.” “Then it’s someone else. Maybe the SVR in Washington.
Perhaps someone from his past. Someone who twenty years ago might have been a nobody and is now a power in Washington. Or perhaps someone who was a nothing then, and still is a nothing, someone completely out of sight. A janitor, a former lover, a cop with the FBI, an officer inside the CIA.” “It has to be someone on the inside who knows Mac’s movements.” Nikolayev dismissed the objection. “That kind of information is easy to acquire. The CIA, just like our KGB, is filled with holes like Swiss cheese through which the mice scurry.” “I wanted to set a trap,” Rencke said bleakly. “But now ”
“But now you’re not sure of your information,” Nikolayev said. He glanced out the window again. “Do you know what I did in Department Viktor?” “You were a psychologist.” Nikolayev nodded. “I worked on a number of projects in those days with LSD and a dozen other mind-altering drugs. We were trying to perfect the brainwashing techniques that the Chinese had used during the fighting on the Korean peninsula. Deprogramming and reprogramming, mostly. Auto-hypnosis. Reinforcement. Guilt. Hate.
Anger. Gullibility. All the strong human emotions.” “The CIA tried the same thing, but we dropped it. Supposedly your guys dropped it, too.” “Everyone except for Vasha. It was to be his ultimate weapon.”
“Did it work?”
Nikolayev cocked his head as if he was listening for something. Perhaps an inner voice. “It worked,” he said. “With drugs we needed only a few days, a week at most, for the conversions. Some religious organizations have come to use almost the same techniques. We found people who were convinced that something was wrong with them. People who were facing what were, to them, troubling and complex problems. We gave them the simple answers they were looking for. We gave them a sense of belonging, of self-worth, of well-being. In return they gave us their free will.” “Did you have to bring them to Moscow to do it?”
Nikolayev shook his head. “It could be done anywhere. Moscow. Paris.
London. Washington.” He looked down. “It took eight steps with drugs. First, seclusion. No one else was with the subject except for their handlers. Second, was instant intimacy. The subject was given a strong sense of hierarchy. Who’s the boss. Who’s the leader. Who is the one with all the answers. Third, was giving them the instant sense of community. They belonged. Fourth, they were made to feel guilty for everything around them. Fifth, was sensory overload: lights, noise, hot-and cold-water baths, sleep deprivation, hunger, pain. That was the hardest step to accomplish because we were erasing what amounted to the surface manifestations of their personalities. We could never achieve a complete blank slate, we couldn’t go that deep.
But we could wipe the surface slate clean. Of course that set up a lot of serious problems in the subjects. But it didn’t matter to Baranov that we were driving people to the edge of insanity, so long as we accomplished his missions. “When that was accomplished, the subjects were indoctrinated to our way of thinking, which we tested in steps seven and eight. First they had to appeal to their control officer for something, anything, it didn’t matter what. The right to use the toilet, maybe. Then for graduation the subjects would recite their personal testimonies. Who they had become, what their mission was.”
Rencke understood that as smart as he thought he was, he had no answers now. No suggestions. He knew machines, not people. The killers could be anyone. Finding them could be impossible. “That’s horrible,” he murmured. “It’s worse than that,” Nikolayev said, his voice whisper-soft. “Monstrously worse, because the subject is never aware that they had been brainwashed.” “It could be me,” Rencke blurted. He tried to examine what was in his own mind. He’d been going crazy lately. His head throbbed, his legs were weak. Stenzel had looked into his brain and seen… what? He’d seen whatever Rencke wanted the psychiatrist to see. He’d been playing games with Stenzel; or had they not been games. Maybe they were something else. Preplanned.
Implanted in his thoughts. But Louise knew him, and loved him, as Mac did. Wouldn’t they have seen something? “Yes, I considered that it could be the assassin coming here to kill me,” Nikolayev said. He partially withdrew a pistol from his trousers pocket. He’d purchased it a few days ago from a French mafiosa in Marseilles. “But you would already have tried to kill me, and I was ready.” He put the gun back in his pocket. “Did you find names in the files? Do you know who it is?” “All I got was the name of one target. Kirk McGarvey. There are others, but their names died with the general.” “How can we stop them, then?” Rencke asked, still examining his own inner feelings. “We’ll set a trap, just as you suggested,” Nikolayev said. “There is a weakness built into the process. There has to be a permanent pairing; an operative and the control officer. The effects of our brainwashing technique lasts only one week, maybe a few days longer, before it begins to fade. It has to be reinforced. If we can see them together, we might have a chance. We might recognize something.” “They’ll come to Mac. The killer and
