Chapter Five 1999 Madeline checked her watch and settled back into the chair. To pass the time while waiting, she looked around the room in curiosity. The therapist�s office was quite plain, really. If it had truly been hers, instead of borrowed, Madeline would have chosen a more welcoming, luxurious style of d�cor -- something that would pamper the patients and make them feel the center of her concerned attention, something that would lower their defenses and help them open up -- and something that they would enjoy so much that they would keep making costly appointments week after week. She smiled, a bit surprised at the mercenary nature of her thought. Her smile vanished as she heard a tap at the door. It was time for the mission to begin. �Come in,� she called, standing up to meet the visitor. A thin, worried-looking woman stepped inside. When she saw Madeline, a broad smile of recognition warmed her face. �Hello, Madeline,� the woman said, walking toward her. �Hello, Christine,� Madeline replied, equally warmly. The two women lightly kissed each other�s cheeks in greeting. Christine stepped back and looked at Madeline with an expression of surprise. �Goodness, you look so different!� Madeline gave her a wry smile. �Older, you mean?� Christine laughed. �Well, a bit. But that�s not what I meant. I don�t know -- you have a sort of air about you. Maybe it�s the short hair, or the glasses -- they make you look so distinguished!� �Well, thank you. You look well also.� Madeline took a seat and gestured for Christine to join her. Christine looked at Madeline almost shyly. �George tells me you�re quite high-ranking these days. Number two over at Section One, or something like that?� �You didn�t know?� Madeline was taken aback that the other woman would lack such basic information. �I�ve been undercover as Corinne Markali for so long, I don�t really know anything about the Sections anymore. I talk to my handlers regularly, meet with George once a year, and that�s about it. It was years before I even knew Adrian was gone.� Christine gave an embarrassed chuckle. �Really.� Madeline bristled involuntarily at the mention of Adrian�s name. A short and slightly awkward silence ensued. Christine fidgeted, clasping and unclasping her hands, and then gave Madeline a thoughtful look. �You know, back when we were in training, I always looked up to you, even though you were younger.� Christine smiled, almost hesitantly. �I just had a feeling that you were going to be in charge someday. I�m glad you finally are.� Madeline raised an eyebrow in surprise. �Well, number two isn�t in charge.� �That�s not what George says.� Madeline felt her smile fade as her mood grew colder. George was making entirely too many remarks like that lately. The implications made her truly uncomfortable -- even though she knew that his behavior toward her was a sign that things were falling into place. Her irritation must have showed in her expression, because she noticed Christine begin to stare at her nervously. She cleared her throat. It was time to get on with what they had come for. �Did George give you the script for what we�re supposed to say today?� Christine shifted uncomfortably at Madeline�s sudden businesslike manner. �Yes. You�re posing as my new therapist, and we�re going to talk about Nikolai. I assume the conversation is going to be recorded for someone.� �Yes.� Madeline reached over to switch on the surveillance equipment. �Are you ready to begin?� 1978 With a smile and exaggerated sweep of his hand, the maitre d� ushered George and Adrian to the private corner table they always favored. He lit the centerpiece candle expertly, gave a silent bow, and disappeared. �Madame, monsieur,� the sommelier murmured as he approached, presenting their usual selection. �Merci, Claude,� said Adrian, nodding. George leaned back in his chair and casually watched the ruby liquid fill their glasses. When the man departed, George looked over at Adrian. �It�s been almost a year since Paul Wolfe last showed any interest in seeing what his wife was up to.� Adrian sipped her wine delicately. �Yes, I think that�s a good sign.� George�s face tightened faintly. �That�s not what I meant.� Something in George�s tone surprised her -- a barely restrained pique, even resentment. �What do you mean, George?� she asked soothingly. �I have a perfectly good operative who�s being wasted. I think she ought to be released for other missions. I could certainly use her, given the limited resources you allow me over at Two.� Adrian studied the man sitting across the table from her. His shoulders hunched tensely; his face clouded with a dark shadow. She smiled indulgently, recognizing what the problem was. George was feeling neglected again. Every so often the restrictions she imposed upon him chafed -- but that was easily solved. All he really needed was reassurance that she took his opinion seriously. She folded her hands together on the table and looked at him with what she hoped would come across as sincere attention. �How do you propose to use her?� �Have �Corinne� suffer a tragic accident and put this matter to rest. We can then give Christine a new identity and a new assignment. Something where she actually collects real intel.� �No.� She shook her head. �That would be very unwise. The Sections don�t work together very often, but what if somehow he came across her in her new identity? It wouldn�t be something we could explain away very easily, to say the least.� George shifted in his seat as he considered this, and a frown wrinkled his forehead. �Yes, I suppose you�re right.� Although he looked disappointed, Adrian was relieved to see that his expression was no longer resentful. He sighed. �Well, then, let her keep her identity as Corinne, but let�s try to use her, for God�s sake. In fact, I have something that might be ideal.� This time, Adrian leaned forward with true interest. When he accepted and worked within the discipline she imposed, George could be surprisingly creative. �There�s a young lawyer named Nikolai Markali -- a typical radical, do-gooder type, always on the fringes of subversive groups, but never a member. But he�s going places in government and politics -- I can think of any number of terrorist groups that would salivate to have him in their pocket.� �Go on.� She smiled at his mixed metaphor, but refrained from commenting. �I propose we have Christine target him. Start a relationship with him, marry him if possible, and manipulate his career in the right direction. She can encourage him to join one of those groups -- once he�s in deep enough, we can then use him to track down and eliminate their leadership.� �Why not simply recruit him and make him an informant?� �He�s not up to it psychologically. I don�t think he�s capable of deceit. He�d be caught and killed long before he got the kind of access we need.� �Interesting.� Adrian sat back, running her finger along the rim of her glass in thought. �So you�re suggesting that Christine -- as Corinne -- target this Markali.� �Yes. That way, she could start doing something useful instead of sitting around waiting for Paul to spy on her again, and yet she�d be available for that if needed.� �Don�t you think Paul will find it suspicious that his former wife has fallen in with a terrorist sympathizer? It seems a remarkable coincidence that two members of the same family would just happen to wind up on opposite sides of a covert war.� A corner of George�s mouth curled up in an ironic smile. �It�s a small world. People�s paths cross in strange ways.� With a rhythmic swaying and occasional clatter, the train rolled across the snow-filled countryside. Madeline glanced out the window at the row of dark pines that sped by ceaselessly, allowed her mind to be soothed by their monotony for a few moments, but then returned to her notes. �Sleep Deprivation Test Group A: median number of days prior to onset of hallucinatory phenomena,� she started to write, when the sound of a throat clearing made her look up. �Your ticket, please,� the conductor asked politely. Madeline set her notebook down on the empty seat next to her while she reached down to the floor to pull the ticket from her purse. She handed it to him, watched him punch it, and thanked him as he returned the stub. �You must be a medical student,� he said, smiling pleasantly. She frowned mildly in surprise. �No, I�m a psychologist.� His smile faded. Puzzled, she followed his downward gaze: it led to her notebook, which had fallen open to a page of sketched cranial incisions. She looked back up at him calmly, saying nothing. When he met her eyes, his face grew a pale white against the darkness of his uniform. �You have a pleasant journey,� he said, moving on abruptly. Brushing his reaction aside, she picked up her notebook and resumed writing. She tried to recover her focus, to forget the man�s visible discomfort, but it lingered. She, too, had once felt like that. It hadn�t even been that long ago. She hadn�t expected her first exposure to Ohanian�s work, three years before, to be so disturbing. If anyone had deserved to undergo Ohanian�s brand of physical coercion, it was the suspected serial killer they were called to East Germany to break. The authorities were anxious to hush up the existence of such pathology in their socialist paradise, and were willing to go to any lengths to identify the killer. When Ohanian had explained the spectacularly gruesome nature of the crimes to her, she had almost looked forward to seeing the prisoner suffer. But the reality had been quite different. *** Upon arrival in the grim-looking police station, a watery-eyed policeman greeted them. �We�ve prepared the prisoner according to your instructions,� he informed Ohanian. Ohanian nodded in approval. �Where is he?� �This way,� the policeman grunted, leading them down a cold, musty corridor. After several turns, he stopped at a doorway, withdrew a jangling ring of keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door. Pushing the door open, he sniffed and said, �He�s all yours.� Ohanian entered the room first, and Madeline cautiously followed. A strange, acrid smell immersed her, causing her stomach to heave uncontrollably. Clenching her jaw to maintain control, she looked around the room. It looked like an ordinary, albeit rundown, office. A plain, metal desk and a folding chair sat in the middle of the room, and a row of beaten-looking file cabinets lined the right wall. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows against the peeling beige paint that covered the bare walls. The floors were dusty and looked scuffed with wear. She saw no one inside. That is, until she looked sharply left. There, a man crouched on the floor. He was naked, facing the middle of the room, with an expression of frenzied despair. Handcuffs bound him by the wrists and ankles to a radiator; he pulled as far away from the radiator as the restraints allowed him, but she could feel the heat even from where she stood. Realizing that the stench was burning flesh, she felt herself growing lightheaded. She staggered, legs giving way, until she felt Ohanian catch her around the waist. �Hold on, it�s all right,� he said, guiding her to the chair. She rested her head on the desk, fighting off waves of nausea and dizziness. The surface of the desk felt smooth against her cheek, which she found oddly comforting. As the room continued to spin, she heard Ohanian exit and call for the policeman to return. �Officer! We need this man unchained.� She heard the policeman tramp into the room and the cuffs fall to the floor. With a high-pitched, animal whimper, the prisoner flung himself away from the radiator, thudding into the desk where she sat. She looked up weakly, but he was hidden from her view at the foot of the desk. The officer sauntered back out of the room, a bored expression on his face. Ohanian looked down at her. �This is never easy. But you�ll be able to manage after a few times. Now, stand up and observe.� She watched as he rounded the desk and squatted next to the prisoner. She stood and walked to stand several feet away from them. She forced herself to look at the man -- his matted hair, his desperate eyes, the seared wounds on his flesh. She tried to remind herself that he was a savage, brutal killer -- but all she saw was a trembling shell of a person. Ohanian spoke to the prisoner gently. �We�re going to bring you a mattress to lie down on, and some water to drink. We�ll leave you alone to rest tonight. If you cooperate tomorrow morning, we�ll give you some medicine to kill the pain. But if you don�t, we�ll start scraping off the flesh where your wounds are. With a dull knife. And then we�ll chain you back to the radiator facing the other way.� The man started sobbing, shaking uncontrollably. Ohanian stood up and looked over at Madeline. �That�s all for now.� As they exited the room and the odor abated, Madeline took a deep, gasping breath. She walked only with considerable effort. �You did well,� Ohanian said cheerfully. �Most people vomit the first time they see something like that. But I knew you would be strong.� She said nothing, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other without losing her balance. The corridor in front of her seemed to elongate to infinity, with a pulsing, tunnel vision effect. �I expect that he�ll confess first thing in the morning,� Ohanian continued. �Once we verify that he�s the perpetrator, we can begin a course of aversion therapy. I have several ideas I�d like to try out, although with the severity of his hematomania, he�ll be quite a challenge.� That was enough. She stopped, unable to go on. Reaching for the wall to steady herself, she turned to look at him. �Why is this necessary?� she asked, her voice rasping with the effort to speak. �Why is what necessary? The aversion therapy? My dear, with a case like his, nothing else could possibly be strong enough.� �No. I mean that, in there,� she gestured weakly back toward the room they had just exited. �Aren�t there humane methods of obtaining confessions?� �Ah, yes,� he laughed, �the Holy Grail of interrogators. A painless, efficient, and completely reliable technique. The trouble is, it doesn�t exist.� �But I�ve heard of such things -- truth serum, lie detector tests�.� �Yes, you�ve heard them from Hollywood, no doubt,� he said sternly. He paused for several moments, his eyes cutting into hers with razor-like sharpness. She wanted to look away, but couldn�t. �Let�s start with the drugs, shall we?� His tone grew slightly mocking. ��Truth serum� -- sodium pentathol and the like -- is a complete misnomer. The drugs that are available merely lower people�s inhibitions, much like alcohol. I�ve seen countless lies told under their influence. Hypnosis -- well, you know quite well how unreliable that can be. As for lie detector tests, they can be fooled with proper training. Besides, they only provide a means to analyze answers -- they can�t be used to force people to talk against their will.� He shook his head. �No, the old-fashioned way is still the best. Use the other techniques as a supplement, but never rely on them.� She frowned. �But this isn�t any better. People confess to all sorts of things under torture just to get the pain to stop. It doesn�t make the confessions true.� He gave her a fond smile. �That�s only when the interrogator doesn�t know what he or she is doing. There are ways you can tell the difference. And that�s what I�m going to teach you.� He stepped toward her and placed his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. �I know this is hard. But remember to keep focused on our goal. A society without the need for prisons or executions, where criminal impulses can be completely eliminated -- isn�t it worth the suffering of a handful of deviants to achieve that?� *** The sudden lurch of the train jolted Madeline abruptly back to the present. She shook herself to cast away her memory, but Ohanian�s words continued to haunt her. �Remember to keep focused on our goal,� he had said. She knew what his goal was -- but what was hers? No one from the Section would tell her. At first, she was certain that at some point she would be instructed to stop the professor, or at least undermine his work -- but with each uneventful visit to her handlers, her hope slowly faded. Worse still were her visits to George. Each year, when she explained to him the techniques perfected by Ohanian�s research, he grew more and more enthusiastic. Her annual debriefs were no longer five-minute affairs -- they had grown into full-day sessions. Now, after three years as Ohanian�s assistant, Madeline had become remarkably proficient at her work. Indeed, she was proficient enough that she often handled the �cases� -- as Ohanian euphemistically called them -- on her own. With his health failing, he disliked travel, and he trusted her enough to bring back the research data he required. And in truth, she no longer needed his assistance. He had indeed turned out to be a master instructor, and she the model student. It was the fear and confusion, she had learned, rather than the physical pain itself, that worked most reliably to break their subjects. As time passed, she found herself resorting to the more brutal tactics less and less -- becoming a subtle, almost sophisticated purveyor of threats. She had, in a very real sense, become an expert: reliable, efficient, and hardened -- at least during waking hours. But in her dreams, she still heard the hiss of that East German radiator -- and it still made her shudder. With a violent, shuddering gasp, Paul wrenched himself out of his nightmare and into the comforting reality of his bedroom. As always, he was shivering -- even though he was dripping with sweat and the heat was running full blast. Pulling the blankets around him to try to warm himself, he took long, slow breaths to stop from hyperventilating as his racing heartbeat slowly dropped back to a normal pace. Every night this happened. Every night he was surrounded by faceless entities who grasped and clawed at him. Invariably, one of them was Corinne -- the more he tried to put her out of his mind, the more relentlessly she pursued him. In the past, when he had still wondered about her feelings for him, her apparition had been affectionate, although beseeching. But after he had tracked her down, after he had listened in through surveillance equipment to hear her say that Paul had meant nothing to her, the Corinne who appeared in his dreams was angry and violent. He wondered if perhaps the violence of the dream was his own anger reflected back upon himself. That might perhaps explain why Corinne appeared, angrily accusing him of abandoning her. But there were others, also faceless. The worst was a tall, blond man -- covered in blood -- who clutched at Paul with long, bony fingers and tried to pull him down in a hideous embrace. Whenever the man appeared in a dream -- as was happening more and more frequently -- Paul woke screaming. The lack of restful sleep had started to affect him physically. On missions, his reactions sometimes slowed. No one -- as of yet -- seemed to have noticed. But it was only a matter of time -- a moment that Paul dreaded. Incapacitation -- including mental incapacitation -- was grounds for cancellation. He dared not confess any weakness, betray any problem. He had tried to find a way to help himself. In desperation, he had started researching psychological conditions -- nightmares, insomnia, even wartime-induced disorders. He painstakingly gathered journals and magazines and piled them throughout his apartment in precarious stacks. Occasionally, armed with a red felt pen for underlining, he would attempt to read them. But he had no patience for their jargon -- besides, he always managed to convince himself that he had whatever condition he happened to be reading about. Collecting the journals gave him the illusion that he was doing something. But in the back of his mind, he knew it was a pointless exercise. Identifying the problem would be no help -- he needed a solution, and there didn�t seem to be one. He could only hope that time would be a cure -- but time was a luxury that life in Section One did not provide. �Hello, Paul,� George said smoothly from behind Paul�s back. Paul turned around sharply, caught by surprise by the man�s approach. George continually unnerved him that way -- no one else could ever manage to sneak up on him like that. �I didn�t know you were in Section One today, George,� Paul said, trying to sound casual. George rarely spent time in the Section -- he was too busy elsewhere performing his duties as Adrian�s hatchet-man -- and gigolo, if the rumors were to be believed. Although how any woman could be attracted to such a ham-faced prick was beyond Paul�s understanding. �Just a brief visit.� George smiled -- a dangerous, predatorial smile. He then looked Paul up and down, slowly and methodically. �You look a bit tired. Are you sure you�re feeling all right?� Paul felt a twinge deep within his stomach. George was looking at him with an odd, knowing expression. He felt a sheen of cold sweat begin to cover his skin, as a horrible feeling of foreboding settled over him. What if George suspects I�m having problems? George had never expressed any open animosity toward Paul, nor had the two men had any tangible conflicts. Yet somehow Paul knew, instinctively, that however Adrian might favor him, George would destroy him if he sensed any weakness. So he resolved to show none. �I�m feeling perfect,� he answered, jutting out his chin in defiance. George blinked and stared, his expression blank. Then he narrowed his eyes as the corner of his lip curled up triumphantly. �Good, I�m glad to hear it.� The tone of his voice made it clear that he knew Paul was lying. �I�ll suggest to Adrian that she increase your mission frequency, since you seem to be able to handle it so well. She�ll be pleased to know that she can use you more.�