The Shadow Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  “So you gave them the real itinerary?”

  “No, that’s just it! I gave them exactly what I was supposed to. I was working with one of the embassy staff—a CIA agent. He gave me the files that I passed to Qasid.”

  “Maybe he was the one who screwed up.”

  “There’s no way of knowing,” said Adam, shaking his head. “He’s dead. He died in the bombing.” Another frown. “But he wasn’t directly involved with the secretary’s visit—he shouldn’t have been in the convoy …”

  “Did you actually read these files?” asked Bianca.

  “Yes—I had to, in case Qasid asked me any questions about them. But …” He searched his newly reacquired memories. “I didn’t know what the actual itinerary was going to be—I didn’t need to.”

  “So if you’d given Qasid the real files rather than the fakes, you’d have had no way to know that, would you?”

  “No,” he admitted. “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “So it wasn’t your fault, no matter what Harper told you. God, the more I learn about him, the more I hate him!”

  “You’re not alone,” said Adam. “It was just him and me in an interrogation room. But he wasn’t interrogating me—it was more like an inquisition. He just kept on and on, hammering it into me that I’d fucked up. And finally I …” His face filled with shame. “I cracked, just broke down in tears in front of him. I couldn’t take it anymore. The guilt was too much.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I wanted to die.”

  He released his grip on Bianca’s wrist, but she kept hold of his hand, squeezing it in sympathy. “What did Harper do then?”

  An almost sarcastic exhalation. “He offered me a job.”

  “What?”

  “Not right away. First he ordered me back to Tampa—SOCOM headquarters—to be debriefed. In isolation; I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody except the intelligence officers doing the debriefing. I couldn’t even call my mother. And the agents were nearly as bad as Harper, just saying over and over again that I’d screwed up the mission. I was practically on suicide watch by the time Harper saw me again.”

  “And that’s when he told you about the Persona Project?”

  “Yeah. He said it was a way that I could … God, he actually used the word atone, for my mistakes and go on serving my country—and have my pain and guilt taken away. And I was hurting so much that I took him up on it. I would have …” He cleared his throat, the very feelings that had been erased along with his past returning. “I’d have done anything to make it stop.”

  “So you let them wipe your memory,” Bianca said quietly.

  He nodded, saying nothing for several seconds before finally whispering: “Does that make me a coward?”

  “No,” she told him. “It makes you human.”

  A bitter smile. “Good to know there’s something human about me. The cyborg secret agent without a past.”

  “But you do have a past. Now, I mean. You know who you are again.”

  “Only until I fall asleep.”

  She gestured toward the PERSONA equipment. “I can imprint you with it again tomorrow. Since it’s your own personality rather than somebody else’s, I don’t think it’ll be nearly as risky. Then we can get out of Washington.”

  He shook his head. “It might make a good TV show, but I don’t think the two of us going on the run in a black Mustang’ll work out in real life.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  He wiped his eyes, then straightened. “Harper was determined to wipe my memory. Even after I’d agreed to join the Persona Project, he kept up the pressure—he even once had me come see him at his house to make sure I wasn’t going to back out. But he wasn’t doing it to save me from any emotional pain—that’s not how he works.”

  “He’s more the type who likes to cause it,” Bianca said.

  “Right. So he had a reason for doing it. But what was it? He wanted me to forget what happened in Pakistan—my mission to give false information to al-Qaeda. So if I didn’t remember it …”

  She completed his thought. “You couldn’t tell anyone else. He’s trying to cover it up!”

  “Looks that way.”

  “But why?”

  Adam stood, filled with a new sense of purpose. “There’s one way to find out.”

  The sun was setting over Washington as the luxurious Cadillac CTS crawled northwest out of central DC along the traffic-clogged Massachusetts Avenue. In its backseat, Harper shouted incredulously into his phone. “You’ve still got nothing? How the hell is that possible! You’ve got the entire resources of the US government at your disposal, and you can’t find one man?”

  Morgan’s voice at the other end of the line was tired, beaten down after a long and stressful day. “With all due respect, Admiral, Adam Gray is a highly trained agent in his own right, even without the help of the PERSONA system. If he’s gone to ground—”

  “Morgan, I’m getting fed up with your excuses,” the older man snapped. “Gray is your man—and your responsibility. And right now, he’s an ongoing threat to national security. Find him!”

  He disconnected, then immediately scrolled through his lengthy contacts list to make another call. “Baxter,” came the reply.

  “STS still has nothing, and neither do the cops. What about you?”

  “No joy, sir. I’ve got men watching Gray’s apartment and Childs’s hotel, but they haven’t shown. Nothing on their credit or ATM cards either. Sir,” he added, “are you sure you don’t want to block their cards? They’ll need money sooner or later—if we cut them off, it might force them into the open.”

  “No, leave them active,” said Harper. “Gray won’t just be hiding—he’ll be planning something. If we track any financial transactions they make, it could give us a clue to what that is. We have to assume that Childs gave him back his memories, so now he knows everything up to when the recording was made. He’ll be trying to put the pieces together.”

  Baxter sounded uncomfortable. “Could he expose us?”

  “No—he doesn’t know anything more than he did before, remember. The risk is if he causes the wrong people to start asking questions.”

  “Morgan?”

  “I can handle him, and anyone else in the intelligence community. It’s people outside the chain of command who are the problem.”

  “Like Sternberg?”

  The mention of his rival’s name provoked a scowl. “Yeah. I’ve already had demands for updates on the situation from the White House. But even if Gray remembers everything, he still doesn’t know anything that directly links us to what happened.”

  “I’ll make sure he never does, sir. Now that he doesn’t have any more inside help, we’ll find him. What’s happening with Carpenter, by the way?”

  “He’s locked up at STS. Once Gray’s been dealt with, I’ll decide what to do with him. It might be that I’ll need you to handle him.”

  “Understood,” Baxter replied with malevolent meaning. “I’ll call you with any updates, sir.”

  “Good.” Harper disconnected again, then sank back into the plush leather, thinking.

  It took another fifteen minutes before the Cadillac finally pulled into the driveway of his house. The leafy neighborhood was both expensive and exclusive; among its residents were a number of embassies, as well as the Washington homes of several major politicians. “Will you be needing the car again tonight, sir?” the driver asked as he opened the rear door for his passenger.

  Harper shook his head. “Pick me up at the usual time tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll see you at six.” The driver waited until Harper had opened the front door of the house, then climbed back into the Cadillac and drove away.

  Harper entered the hall, going to the alarm panel and checking that everything was as it should be. The director of national intelligence was not granted around-the-clock protection by the Secret Service, but he still required a high degree of security. The fact that he had once summoned Adam Gray t
o his home—meaning that Gray surely now remembered where he lived—had been weighing on his mind, but requesting a bodyguard would have raised questions about his past connections to the rogue agent.

  However, the display told him that the house remained secure. Satisfied, he entered a disarm code. The system chirped in confirmation. He headed down the hall, going into the kitchen—

  A savage kick slammed into his stomach, knocking him breathless to the floor.

  Despite her loathing of Harper, Bianca couldn’t help but wince at the violence of Adam’s ambush. “Don’t move,” the agent ordered, drawing a gun—the DNI’s own, taken from a cabinet in his study.

  Harper clutched at his midsection. “How—how did you get in here without tripping the alarms?” he rasped, struggling to draw breath.

  “It turns out I was trained by the best,” Adam replied. “Now I want answers.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Gray,” came the snarled reply. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  “I don’t need you to.” Adam glanced across the kitchen to Bianca, who was setting up the PERSONA on the oak dining table.

  Harper saw what she was doing. His eyes widened in alarm, and he tried to get up—only to have Adam’s heel crunch down hard on his sternum, forcing him back to the floor. Even through the pain, however, the older man was still defiant. “You just earned yourself a lifetime ticket to Gitmo,” he gasped. “That’s if you’re not executed for treason!”

  “Shut up,” Adam snapped. “I’m going to find out the truth about what happened in Pakistan. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That’s why you pressured me into joining the Persona Project—so I couldn’t tell anyone what I knew.”

  “You didn’t know shit, Gray,” Harper replied. “You didn’t then, and you still don’t. You’ve got your memory back, sure—but what does it tell you? Only that you fucked up, and got the secretary killed—and your own brother!”

  Adam stared at him for a moment—then bent down and delivered a fierce blow to his forehead with the butt of the gun, drawing blood. Harper let out an agonized cry.

  “Jesus!” Bianca shrieked. “Adam, what are you doing? You’ll kill him!”

  “If I wanted to kill him, he’d be dead,” he replied coldly. “Wire us up.”

  She took out the skullcaps—then hesitated. “Adam, are you sure you want to do this? It’ll wipe your own memories.”

  “I don’t want to, but I need to. It’s the only way to find out what really happened. And we’ve still got the disk—you can re-imprint them.”

  “In theory,” she reminded him.

  Harper fought back through the pain, squinting up at his captor as Bianca placed the skullcap on Adam’s head. “You do this, and it’s all over for you,” he said. “The US government will never allow someone to run around with all the DNI’s secrets in their head. They’ll take you out—both of you.”

  “Seems like that’s what you were trying to do anyway,” Adam countered. “Baxter wasn’t shooting at my tires. Did you order him to kill us?”

  Harper ignored the question. “You should think about what you’re doing, Dr. Childs,” he said instead. “If you back out now, I’m prepared to be lenient.”

  “I suppose you’ll just drop the whole matter and I can go home, right?” she said sarcastically.

  “Not exactly. But there’ll still be a possibility of your seeing merry old England again before you die of old age in a federal prison. You get one chance. I’d recommend that you take it.”

  “And I’d recommend that you take your offer and shove it up your arse,” Bianca replied, drawing a quick smile from Adam—and a glare of furious outrage from Harper. “You’ve done nothing but bully and intimidate me ever since I arrived in the States. Well, not this time.”

  “It’s easy to act tough when your boyfriend’s pointing a gun at someone, huh? You think you’re Bonnie and Clyde? Well, remember how it ended for them. It’ll go the same way for you.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she told him. “No offense,” she added to Adam as she secured the strap.

  “None taken. Okay, sir,” he said to Harper as he lifted his foot from the other man’s chest, “get up and sit in that chair over there.”

  Harper scowled. “Like hell I will—”

  Before he could even finish speaking, Adam’s foot came down again, grinding brutally against Harper’s rib cage. The white-haired man tried to scream, but all that came from his mouth was a choked gurgle. “You know what I’ve been trained to do,” Adam said in a low, level voice. “This is nothing. I can make you beg to feel this good again.”

  “Adam, please,” said Bianca, fearful of how far he might go. “Don’t.”

  He reluctantly eased the pressure. Harper drew in a deep, whooping breath. Adam bent down and pressed the gun against the gasping man’s head before dragging him across the room and dumping him beside the table.

  Bianca hurriedly fitted the second cap as Adam kept the gun pointed at Harper’s face. “Okay, it’s ready,” she announced.

  Adam took the Neutharsine injector from the medical case. “Keep him covered,” he said, handing her the gun. “If he moves, shoot him in the leg.”

  “What?” she protested, regarding the weapon as if it were toxic. “I can’t do that—I’ve never used a gun in my life. I’ve never even held a real one before!”

  “It’s easy. Hold it with both hands, point, pull the trigger.”

  “But I might kill him!”

  “Aim for the outside of his thigh. It’ll minimize the chances of hitting a major blood vessel. But if he’s smart,” he continued, as much for Harper as for her, “he’ll keep very still. Like you said, you’ve never held a gun before. You might easily rupture the femoral artery—or blow his balls off.” Harper’s face twitched at the prospect. “Just point it at him and count to thirty.”

  She was about to object further, but Adam put the injector to his neck and squeezed its trigger. He dropped onto a chair as the Neutharsine swept through his system.

  This time, it wasn’t just erasing a borrowed persona. It was erasing him. Bianca had coaxed memories out of him during the wait for Harper to return home, trying to ensure that at least some of what he had rediscovered would remain … but it wasn’t enough. The sensation was almost physically painful this time, a lifetime being neuro-chemically torn away before he had even had the chance to experience it again.

  And his feelings were being eradicated too. The resurgent pain of the grief and guilt that had almost destroyed him ten months earlier was fading … but so too were all the flashes of brightness to which his thoughts of Michael had led him. His brother, father, mother, other family members, friends, lovers—countless moments of happiness, love, pleasure, laughter, warmth, joy …

  All leaching away, flattening to bland cardboard. Nothing left but secondhand descriptions of emotions, not the emotions themselves.

  Michael was gone. He knew he had once had a twin brother, closer to him than anyone else, and that his loss had been shattering. But he could no longer remember how his brother’s death—or his life—had made him feel. It was merely a fact.

  Another emotion rose in him. Anger. Not for what he had lost, but that it had been taken from him. Stolen. He opened his eyes, seeing the cause of the anger. Harper.

  “Thirty,” said Bianca, the gun still shaking in her hands. She glanced at Adam. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” he said, trying to control his feelings. He stood. “Give me the gun, then inject him.” She passed the weapon back to him with great relief.

  “Dr. Childs!” said Harper. “This is your last chance to save yourself. You’ve got your whole life in front of you—don’t throw it away.”

  “Adam had his whole life ahead of him too, until you threw away his past,” she responded, taking the other injector from the case. It was loaded with a vial of Hyperthymexine.

  The admiral eyed it with concern. “Wait—aren’t you going to do an examination? Wha
t about all the measurements you need to take? If you get the dose wrong, it could kill me!”

  Bianca smiled sardonically. “I’ve done a whole four transfers from unwilling subjects now; I think I can wing it. Six foot two, about ninety-five kilos, wouldn’t you say, Adam?”

  “Call it ninety-eight,” Adam said.

  She looked Harper up and down, then adjusted the dial. “Yeah, that’s probably about right. Sitting at a desk all day adds a bit extra, no matter how hard you try.”

  The DNI was caught between fury and fear as she crouched beside him. “If you get it wrong and you kill me, it’ll be on your hands. You’ll be a murderer, Childs! I read your file—you went into medicine to save lives. Is that what you want? To be a killer?”

  “Like you?” Adam said, voice cold.

  “I’ve never killed anyone in my life!”

  “Not yourself. But you gave the orders—to people like me. I want to find out what other orders you gave.” He nodded to Bianca. “Do it.”

  “No!” Harper roared, trying to scramble to his feet. Adam kicked him back down. Before he could recover, Bianca fired the injector into his neck. His yell was abruptly choked off as his entire body convulsed.

  Adam quickly returned to the chair as Bianca tapped the keyboard.

  ACTIVE: PERSONA TRANSFER IN PROGRESS.

  With more nervousness than usual, she flicked her gaze between the flaring colors on the screen and the two men before her. Guessing the drug dose really was a gamble; there was leeway in Albion’s overly theatrical calculations, but not so much that some degree of accuracy was unnecessary. She had estimated Harper’s height and weight as best she could, but if the dose of Hyperthymexine was too low, it could affect Adam’s ability to access the stolen memories.

  If it was too high … Harper was right. It could kill him.

  But the readings on the screen seemed in line with what she had seen with Zykov, al-Rais, the Russian pilot, and Qasid. Reassured, slightly, she removed the vial from the injector and replaced it with one of Mnemexal. Adam did not want Harper to retain any memory of their visit—though it would be impossible for him to dismiss the cut on his head. She eyed the tiled kitchen floor. Maybe they could make it seem as if he had slipped and banged his head, as they’d done in Macao …