'It all fits - but this is almost as baffling as before. Someone in the Foundation wanted me to lose my memory?'
'I can guess who,' Billie said. 'Anthony Carroll. He's on the board.'
The name rang a bell. Luke recalled that Anthony was the CIA man mentioned by Elspeth. 'That still leaves the question why.'
'But now we have someone to ask,' Billie said, and she picked up the phone.
While she dialed, Luke tried to organize his thoughts. The last hour had been a series of shocks. He had been told he was not going to get his memory back. He had learned that he had loved Billie and lost her, and he could not understand how he could have been such a fool. Now he had discovered that his amnesia had been deliberately inflicted on him and that someone in the CIA was responsible. Yet he still had no clue as to why this had been done.
'Let me speak to Anthony Carroll,' Billie said into the phone. 'This is Dr Josephson.' Her tone was peremptory. 'Okay, then tell him I need to speak to him urgently.' She looked at her watch. 'Have him call me at home in exactly one hour from now.' Her face suddenly darkened. 'Don't jerk me around, buster, I know you can get a message to him any time of the day or night, wherever he is.' She slammed the phone down.
She caught Luke's eye and looked abashed. 'Sorry,' she said. 'The guy said: 'I'll see what I can do,' like he was doing me a darn favour.'
Luke remembered Elspeth saying that Anthony Carroll was an old buddy who had been at Harvard with Luke and Bern. 'This Anthony,' he said. 'I thought he was a friend.'
'Yeah.' Billie nodded, a worried frown on her expressive face. 'So did I.'
.
7.30 P. M.
The temperature problem is a key obstacle to manned space flight. To gauge the efficacy of its insulation, the Explorer carries four thermometers: three in the outer shell, to measure skin temperature, and one inside the instrument compartment, to give the interior temperature. The aim is to keep the level between forty and seventy' degrees Fahrenheit - a comfortable range for human survival.
Bern lived on Massachusetts Avenue, Overlooking the picturesque gorge of Rock Creek, in a neighbourhood of large homes and foreign embassies. His apartment had an Iberian theme, with ornate Spanish colonial furniture, twisted shapes in dark wood. The stark white walls were hung with paintings of sun-baked landscapes. Luke recalled Billie saving that Bern had fought in the Spanish Civil War.
It was easy to imagine Bern as a fighter. His dark hair was receding now, and his waist hung over the belt of his slacks a little, but there was a hard set to his face and a bleak look in his grey eyes. Luke wondered if such a down-to-earth man would credit the strange story he had to tell.
Bern shook Luke's hand warmly and gave him strong coffee in a small cup. On top of the console gramophone was a silver-framed photograph of a middle-aged man in a torn shirt holding a rifle. Luke picked it up. 'Largo Benito,' Bern explained. 'Greatest man I ever knew. I fought with him in Spain. My son is named Largo, but Billie calls him Larry.'
Bern probably looked back on the war in Spain as the best time of his life. Luke wondered enviously what had been the best time of his own life. 'I guess I must have had great memories of something,' he said despondently.
Bern gave him a sharp look. 'What the hell is going on, old buddy?'
Luke sat down and related what he and Billie had discovered at the hospital. Then he said: 'Here's what I think happened to me. I don't know if you're going to buy it, but I'll tell you anyway, because I'm really hoping you can shed some light on the mystery.'
I'll do what I can,'
'I came to Washington on Monday, right before the launch of the rocket, to see an army general for some mysterious purpose that I wouldn't tell anyone about. My wife was worried about me and called Anthony, to ask him to keep an eye on me. Anthony made a breakfast date with me for Tuesday morning.'
'It makes sense. Anthony's your oldest friend. You were room-mates already when I met you.'
'The, next bit is more speculative. I met Anthony for breakfast, before going to the Pentagon. He put something in my coffee to make me fall asleep, then got me into his car and drove me to Georgetown Mind Hospital. He must have gotten Billie out of the way somehow, or maybe waited until she left for the day. Anyway, he made sure she didn't see me, and checked me in under a false name. Then he got hold of Dr Len Ross, whom he knew might be bribed. Using his position as a board member of the Sowerby Foundation, he persuaded Len to give me a treatment that would destroy my memory.'
Luke paused, waiting for Bern to say the whole thing was ludicrous, impossible, a figment of an overactive imagination. But he did not. To Luke's surprise, he simply said: 'But for God's sake, why?'
Luke began to feel better. If Bern believed him, he might help. He said: 'For the moment, let's concentrate on how, rather than why.'
'Okay.'
'To cover his tracks, he checked me out of the hospital, dressed me in rags - presumably while I was still unconscious from the treatment - and dumped me in Union Station, along with a sidekick whose job was to persuade me that I lived like that, and at the same time to keep an eye on me and make sure the amnesia treatment had worked.'
Now Bern did look skeptical. 'But he must have known you'd find out the truth sooner or later.'
'Not necessarily - not all of it, anyway. Sure, he had to calculate that after a few days or weeks I would figure out who I was. But he thought I'd still believe I had gone on a bender. People do lose their memories after drinking heavily, at least according to legend. If I did find it hard to believe, and asked a few questions, the trail would have gone cold. Billie probably would have forgotten about the mystery patient - and in case she remembered, Ross would have destroyed his records.'
Bern nodded thoughtfully. 'A risky plan, but one with a good chance of success. In clandestine work, that's generally the best you can hope for.'
'I'm surprised you're not more skeptical.'
Bern shrugged.
Luke pressed him. 'Do you have a reason for accepting the story so readily?'
'We've all been in secret work. These things happen.'
Luke felt sure Bern was keeping something back. There was nothing he could do but plead. 'Bern, if there's something else you know, for God's sake, tell me. I need all the help I can get'
Bern looked anguished. 'There is something - but it's secret, and I don't want to get anyone into trouble.'
Luke's heart leaped in hope. 'Tell me, please. I'm desperate.'
Bern looked hard at him. 'I guess you are.' He took a deep breath. 'Okay, then, here goes. Toward the end of the war, Billie and Anthony, worked on a special project for the OSS, the Truth Drug Committee. You and I didn't know about it at the time, but I found out later, when I was married to Billie. They were looking for drugs that would affect prisoners under interrogation. They tried mescaline, barbiturates, scopolamine, and cannabis. Their test subjects were soldiers suspected of communist sympathies. Billie and Anthony went to military camps in Atlanta, Memphis and New Orleans. They would win the confidence of the suspect soldier, give him a reefer, and see whether he betrayed secrets.'
Luke laughed. 'So a lot of grunts got a free high!'
Bern nodded. 'At that level, the whole thing was faintly comical. After the war, Billie went back to college and did her doctoral thesis on the effects of various legal drugs such as nicotine on people's mental states. When she finally became a professor, she continued to work on the same area, concentrating on how drugs and other factors affect memory.'
'But not for the CIA.'
'That's what I thought. But I was wrong.'
'Christ.'
'In 1950, when Roscoe Hillenkoetter was Director, the Agency started a project codenamed Bluebird, and Hillenkoetter authorized the use of unvouchered funds, so there was no paper trail. Bluebird was about mind control. They financed a. whole series of legitimate research projects in universities, channeling the money through
