Fawcett’s voice sounded far away. “The President and I go back a long way together, but in the best interests of the country, I must agree.”
“Stay in touch.”
Oates put down the phone, turned in his desk chair and gazed out the window, lost in thought. The afternoon sky had turned an ominous gray, and a light rain began to fall on Washington’s streets, their slickened surfaces reflecting the federal buildings in eerie distortions.
In the end he would have to take over the reins of government, Oates thought bitterly. He was well aware that every President in the last thirty years had been vilified and debased by events beyond his control. Eisenhower was the last chief executive who left the White House as venerated as when he came in. No matter how saintly or intellectually brilliant the next President, he would be stoned by an unmovable bureaucracy and increasingly hostile news media; and Oates harbored no desire to be a target of the rock throwers.
He was pulled out of his reverie by the muted buzz of his intercom. “Mr. Brogan and another gentleman to see you.”
“Send them in,” Oates directed. He rose and came around his desk as Brogan entered. They shook hands briefly and Brogan introduced the man standing beside him as Dr. Raymond Edgely.
Oates correctly pegged Edgely as an academician. The old-fashioned crew cut and bow tie suggested someone who seldom strayed from a university campus. Edgely was slender, wore a scraggly barbed-wire beard, and his bristly dark eyebrows were untrimmed and brushed upward in a Mephistopheles set and blow.
“Dr. Edgely is the director of Fathom,” Brogan explained, “the Agency’s special study into mind-control techniques at Greeley University in Colorado.”
Oates gestured for them to sit on a sofa and took a chair across a marble coffee table. “I’ve just received a call from Dan Fawcett. The President intends to withdraw our troops from NATO.”
“Another piece of evidence to bolster our case,” said Brogan. “Only the Russians would profit from such a move.”
Oates turned to Edgely. “Has Martin explained our suspicions regarding the President’s behavior to you?”
“Yes, Mr. Brogan has filled me in.”
“And how does the situation strike you? Can the President be mentally forced to become an involuntary traitor?”
“I grant the President’s actions demonstrate a dramatic personality change, but unless we can put him through a series of tests, there is no way of being certain of brain alteration or exterior domination.”
“He will never consent to an examination,” said Brogan.
“That presents a problem,” Edgely said.
“Suppose you tell us, Doctor,” Oates asked, “how the President’s mind transfer was performed?”
“If that is indeed what we are faced with,” replied Edgely, “the first step is to isolate the subject in a womblike chamber for a given length of time, removed from all sensorial influences. During this sequence his brain patterns are studied, analyzed and deciphered into a language that can be programmed and translated by computer. The next step is to design an implant, in this instance a microchip, with the desired data and then insert it by psychosurgery into the subject’s brain.”
“You make it sound as elementary as a tonsillectomy,” said Oates.
Edgely laughed. “I’ve condensed and oversimplified, of course, but in reality the procedures are incredibly delicate and involved.”
“After the microchip is imbedded into the brain, what then?”
“I should have mentioned that a section of the implant is a tiny transmitter/receiver which operates off the electrical impulses of the brain and is capable of sending thought patterns and other bodily functions to a central computer and monitoring post located as far away as Hong Kong.”
“Or Moscow,” added Brogan.
“And not the Soviet embassy here in Washington, as you suggested earlier?” Oates asked, looking at Brogan.
“I think I can answer that,” Edgely volunteered. “The communication technology is certainly available to relay data from a subject via satellite to Russia, but if I were in Dr. Lugovoy’s shoes, I’d set up my monitoring station nearby so I could observe the results of the President’s actions at firsthand. This would also allow me a faster response time to redirect my command signals to his mind during unexpected political events.”
“Can Lugovoy lose control over the President?” asked Brogan.
“If the President ceases to think and act for himself, he breaks the ties to his normal world. Then he may tend to stray from Lugovoy’s instructions and carry them to extremes.”
“Is this why he’s instigated so many radical programs in such haste?”
“I can’t say,” Edgely answered. “For all I know he is responding precisely to Lugovoy’s commands. I do suspect, however, that it goes far deeper.”
“In what manner?”
“The reports supplied by Mr. Brogan’s operatives in Russia show that Lugovoy has attempted experiments with political prisoners, transferring the fluid from their hippocampuses — a structure in the brain’s limbic system that holds our memories — to those of other subjects.”
“A memory injection,” Oates murmured wonderingly. “So there really is a Dr. Frankenstein.”
“Memory transfer is a tricky business,” Edgely continued. “There is no predicting with any certainty the end results.”
“Do you think Lugovoy performed this experiment on the President?”
“I hate to say yes, but if he runs true to form, he might very well have programmed some poor Russian prisoner for months, even years, with thoughts promoting Soviet policy, and then transplanted the hippocampal fluid into the President’s brain as a backup to the implant.”
“Under the proper care,” Oates asked, “could the President return to normal?”
“You mean put his mind back as it was before?”
“Something like that.”
Edgely shook his head. “Any known treatment will not reverse the damage. The President will always be haunted by the memory of someone else.”
“Couldn’t you extract his hippocampal fluid as well?”
“I catch your meaning, but by removing the foreign thought patterns, we’d be erasing the President’s own memories.” Edgely paused. “No, I’m sorry to say, the President’s behavior patterns have been irrevocably altered.”
“Then he should be removed from office… permanently.”
“That would be my recommendation,” answered Edgely without hesitation.
Oates sat back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve reinforced our resolve.”
“From what I’ve heard, no one gets through the White House gates.”
“If the Russians could abduct him,” said Brogan, “I see no reason why we can’t do the same. But first we have to disconnect him from Lugovoy.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
“Please.”
“There is an excellent opportunity to turn this situation around to our advantage.”
“How?”
“Rather than cut off his brain signals, why not tune in on the frequency?”
“For what purpose?”
‘‘So my staff and I can feed the transmissions into our own monitoring equipment. If our computers can receive enough data, say within a forty-eight-hour period, we can take the place of the President’s brain.”
“A substitution to feed the Russians false information,” said Brogan, rising to Edgely’s inspiration.
“Exactly!” Edgely exclaimed. “Because they have every reason to believe the validity of the data they receive from the President, Soviet intelligence can be led down whichever garden path you choose.”
“I like the idea,” said Oates. “But the stickler is whether we can afford the forty-eight hours. There’s no telling what the President might attempt within that time frame.”
