As he walked out of the house and back to his car he wondered how much to tell them. He decided then that the stuff in the files was too good to be lost in the archives of SIS. It was the kind of stuff that Carter would find better use for. The others would be scared to use it.
He dialled the emergency number from the call-box in Marlow High Street and asked for the police. He gave the Dower House address and reported a disturbance. When they asked for his name he hung up.
Maclaren met Carter in the drinking club off Brewer Street. Carter was already there when he arrived, sitting in the far corner, barely distinguishable in the dim lighting and the haze of cigar smoke. Although Carter had his suits made by a first-class tailor in Covent Garden, whatever he wore always looked a size too small. With shoulders, arms, chest and thighs like an all-in wrestler’s it seemed incongruous that his round, moon face always looked so amiable, almost childlike. He waved Maclaren to the empty seat beside him and offered him a cigar from a leather case, still holding it out after Maclaren had declined.
“What’s all the excitement about, sonny boy?”
Maclaren outlined what had happened on his surveillance without mentioning the contents of the files.
“Did he kick the bucket, the American?”
“I phoned the hospital. He’s in their intensive care unit. They weren’t saying much but they didn’t sound hopeful. They’ve sent for his parents from San Antonio.”
Carter beamed. “I like San Antonio. Best Angus cattle I’ve ever seen, and some nice little girls. So you think he’s had it?”
“I’d say so.”
“So what’s the rest of it? The files I suppose?”
“There’s two CIA men stashed away in this country.”
“Two. For Christ’s sake. Two hundred’s more like it.”
“I mean two CIA men who aren’t on the list. Canadian passports. No contact with Grosvenor Square, who’ve never heard of either of them.”
Carter drew on his cigar, his eyes half-closed against the smoke. He was looking straight ahead, his eyebrows raised as his mind went over the possibilities.
“What do you reckon they’re doing here?”
“Hiding.”
“Who from?”
“Practically everybody.”
“Don’t play games, boy. What’s it all about?”
“They’re both psychiatrists. They specialize in hypnotizing. And they’re both CIA agents.”
“So why the excitement?”
“Have you ever heard of the MKULTRA programme?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s a CIA programme about the use of special drugs and hypnosis to control somebody’s mind. So that they do whatever they’re told to do but they never know what they’ve done. Or even that they’ve done anything. They don’t know that they were hypnotized at all.”
Carter tapped out the long cylinder of ash in the cracked saucer that served as an ash-tray, turning to look at Maclaren as he lifted the cigar back to his mouth.
“I heard a rumour about this. Two years, maybe three years ago. One of the Mossad boys was talking about it when I was in Tel Aviv. How much truth is there in it?”
“It’s a hundred per cent true. They’ve been doing it on scores of people for years.”
“You mean experimenting?”
“No. Actually doing it. Operationally.”
“What sort of things?”
“Everything from simple courier work to murder.”
Carter sniffed loudly and swallowed, his eyes on Maclaren’s face.
“How can you be sure?”
“It’s in those files. Code-names, the lot.”
“What are these guys doing here?”
“Like I said … hiding.”
“Who from?”
“According to the files—the FBI, the CIA, several congressional committees and a few independent investigators.”
“Why should that bunch be after them? They’re on their side for Christ’s sake.”
“Depends on what you’ve been up to.”
“Like what for instance?”
“Like hypnotizing people and using them as killers.”
“You mean they’ve actually done that?”
“Yes. According to the files they have.”
“Maybe the stuff in the files is just feasibility studies. Checking over what they’d like to do, but never got around to.”
Maclaren smiled. “You ought to read the files, Nick.”
“Better pass them to one of the evaluation teams.”
“What, and give up one of the best pieces of luck we’ve ever had? We could use those guys ourselves.”
“For what?”
“Knocking off some of the central council of the IRA maybe. In Dublin. Either these two Americans cooperate with us or we blow them.”
Carter smiled. A slow, fat-cat smile. “Now you’re cookin’ with gas, sunbeam.”
Maclaren waited for a moment and then said quietly: “These two could do it for us.”
Carter sat in silence for several minutes and Maclaren knew better than to disturb his thoughts. Twice Carter leaned forward as if he were going to speak, and twice he leaned back again in his chair. Then, without looking at Maclaren, Carter said, “Why should they?”
“So that we don’t send copies of the files to The Washington Post and Reuters.”
“How definite is the file material?”
“Definite enough. Even as it stands it would finish the CIA for good and all.”
“Where are the files?”
“At my place.”
“You’d better go and get ’em. I’ll come with you.”
“You’ll use them, Nick? You won’t let them rot?”
“I’ll think about it. Have you made copies of ’em?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Right.” He stood up, surprisingly smoothly for his bulk. “Let’s go and find them.”
Carter read the file material carefully. Again and again. He motored down to the cottage he owned outside Folkestone and spent the weekend gardening. When he left on the Sunday evening the metal map-cylinder with the files inside was a couple of feet under some Ailsa Craig seed potatoes that were neatly earthed-up in three long rows in the vegetable patch.
On the Monday he bought a stand-by ticket at Heathrow and was in Washington mid-morning local time. He looked in his little notebook and asked the cab-driver to take him to The Brighton Hotel on California Street. After consulting his notebook again, he dialled the
