Shift: A Novel

“The world is strange enough on its own, eh, Agent Morganthau?”

“I’ll say,” he said, sounding for a moment even younger than he looked. He blushed and sipped at his drink. “So I asked you before if you’d ever heard of LSD.”

“Actually, the clinician who ran the second study I participated in—the one on prognostication—mentioned it to me. He said several studies had shown that it proved beneficial to schizophrenics and other patients suffering from acute mental disorders. He even gave me the name of one working at Harvard—O’Reilly? O’Leary?—but when I went there, it turned out he’d left the institution.”

“Leary,” Morganthau said. “He was asked to leave, actually. His methodology was a little too unorthodox for Harvard.”

Naz’s eyes narrowed. “You sound like you know something about him.”

“Just what I read in his file. His interest in LSD and the Company’s ran on tangential tracks.”

“And what exactly is the Company’s interest in LSD?”

Morganthau waved her question away with a smile. “‘Need-to-know basis,’ as they say.”

“Then let’s return to our original subject: what is the Company’s interest in me?”

“The Company’s only official interest in you is in a caretaker capacity, as befits the debt owed to your father. But the Company is also looking for people to assist in its LSD investigations, and I thought you might be interested in helping.”

“You want me to take LSD?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Then what?”

“I want you to administer it.”

“To …” Naz’s eyes suddenly went wide. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Morganthau refused to meet her gaze. “The Company requires a few things from its subjects. First, that they be completely ignorant of the fact that they’re being given the drug. And second, that they be unwilling to pursue the matter should the drug cause them any adverse effects.”

“And who would be less likely to pursue matters than a man given the drugs by the prostitute he was sharing his evening with? And I assume the corollary is true as well? That if I refuse to help you, you’ll report my own illegal activities to the police?”

Morganthau blushed yet again. It was clear Naz wasn’t the only intoxicated one at the table. “Before I met you, I would have said yes, that was the reasoning behind it. But, having spent an hour with you …”

“Two, by the way I reckon these things.”

Morganthau’s blush deepened. “After getting to know you, I would be hard-pressed to do anything that might cause you harm.”

“But?”

“But I’ve already included your name in my report. If I don’t recruit you, there will be questions. Repercussions. Though I wouldn’t turn you in, someone else in the Boston office surely would.”

“So your hands are clean, is that it? It’s the Company that’s doing this to me, not you?”

“You have to understand, Miss Haverman, there are goals here that are bigger than you or me.”

“Is that what Kermit Roosevelt told my father? Because if he did, he was right. What my father did for the Company not only got him killed, my mother, and my aunt, and three housemaids, and how many hundreds, thousands, of other innocents. Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ve always known, on some level. Whatever, you don’t need to persuade me. I know a losing battle when I see one. But I want compensation.”

“Of course.”

“Five hundred dollars per ‘subject.’” She said the word as lewdly as possible. “And I want protection. I’ve heard people do some crazy stuff on this drug, and I don’t want someone acting his Jack the Ripper fantasies out on me for the sake of science or national security.”

“I’ll be in the next room the whole time, Miss Haverman.”

“The next room?”

“Watching,” Agent Morganthau said. “For the sake of science, of course. And national security.”

Three days later, Naz walked into another bar. The King’s Head. Other than the name, everything was the same—the gray dress, the dim lighting, the need for a drink. Even Morganthau was there, tucked into a back corner, his face lost beneath the shadow of his fedora. There were the girls and the men, the choking press of desperation and lust, and of course the bartender; the cold glass in her fingers, the soothing chill of gin sliding down her throat, the nod yes, get me another. The only thing different was the tiny glassine in her pocket, the even tinier stamp of paper inside it.

“Stamp” was the right term, for the paper was embossed with a profile of Thomas Edison. “Big fan of cocaine,” Morganthau had told her; and then, when she didn’t laugh: “Kind of an inside joke.”

But she had more than that. She had a mark too. “Although I suppose you’d call him a john,” Morganthau had said, his cheeks turning red even as he forced a laugh.

“John, Mark, what’s the difference?” Naz had answered, her cheeks coloring almost as much as Morganthau’s. “It’s all Tom, Dick, and Harry to me.”

Morganthau had given her a photograph but not a name. “You need to be surprised when he speaks to you.” He told her nothing about the man. Not why CIA was interested in him nor what the Company hoped the “experiment” would prove. Instead, the agent told her about himself.