Mind's Eye

by Douglas E. Richards

  “I thought he’d still be close by,” said Megan. “And he was. So he was able to helicopter out to meet me in record time. He arrived even before Fyfe revived anyone.”

  “Must be nice to be able to get a helicopter on short notice,” said Heather.

  “It can come in handy,” admitted Girdler.

  “The colonel planned everything,” said Megan. “Thank God for that. If you want to plan a deception, you can’t do better than having the head of PsyOps on your side. So I didn’t capture Cowan. He did. With mind reading intel from Nick, which I passed along. Colonel Girdler came up with the idea for the candle.” She beamed. “You have to admit—that was pretty cool.”

  Heather grinned. “Cool in a demented, horrific, Rube-Goldberg-device sort of way, for sure. But given I was handcuffed in a panic room with a madman at the time, I have to admit I was a big admirer.”

  “Me too,” said Altschuler.

  “It wasn’t real,” said Girdler. “We bought the containers of lighter fluid, but the casserole dish was filled with water. And the blanket and Cowan were soaked in water as well. Once we filmed the scene, I had a colleague helicopter in from Edwards Air Force Base and take Cowan to an interrogation facility.”

  A half smile played across Girdler’s face. “So the burning alive thing was just stagecraft,” he said. “The real key to all of this was getting Fyfe out of the panic room. Before he killed anyone. Inside, there was no way we could touch him. Not if we wanted any of the innocent hostages to survive.”

  “Speaking on behalf of the innocent hostages,” said Heather, “I’m glad this was a consideration.”

  “So you presented a credible hostage exchange scenario and lured him out,” said Altschuler. “Knowing that he wouldn’t feel the least bit nervous going head to head against Megan.” He shook his head. “I knew the bastard would never let us walk. I thought Megan was being naive.”

  “She knew he’d never let you walk as well,” said Girdler. “She was being naive on purpose. To make sure Fyfe was comfortable walking into our trap. And we have Nick Hall to thank for helping me get the drop on Fyfe, by the way.”

  “Really?” said Heather. “You do know he was unconscious at the time, right?”

  “Saving the day while out cold is pretty impressive,” said Megan with a grin. “But it was obviously his ability to plan ahead that did it. If I was going to be a fail-safe, Nick figured I might need a way back in. In case the, ah . . . waste . . . hit the fan. So he reprogrammed Tanya. To ignore me leaving. And, if she ever detected me returning, to immediately unlock the back door and ignore any breach there.”

  Altschuler laughed. “This has to be the cleverest group of people I’ve ever known,” he said. “How brilliant is that? So that’s why you came in the front door like you did. I thought you were crazy.”

  “Sure enough,” said Megan, “as soon as Tanya’s cameras saw me approach the front door, she unlocked the back door as programmed, allowing the colonel to slip right in. While Fyfe was preoccupied at the front of the house, convinced he had the upper hand and that I was a fool, I got the last laugh.”

  “Incredible!” said Altschuler in admiration.

  The room fell quiet as each member of the group reflected on how flawlessly Megan and the colonel had carried out their plan. Only sips of coffee broke the perfect silence.

  “I have an idea,” said Girdler. “The three of you have had quite a traumatic day. Why don’t you shower, get into fresh clothes, and we can reconvene when Nick is awake.”

  “That sounds great,” said Heather. “I guess you really do have a knack for planning.”

  60

  Hall’s eyes fluttered open. After a short while, he realized he was on the couch in the living room of the Sacramento safe house. A splattering of dried blood was on the front door and a trail of blood ran across the carpet, as though a recently deceased body had been dragged through.

  Hall seized on the first mind he came to, belonging to Alex Altschuler, and quickly read what had happened, learning that his assessment had been correct.

  Fyfe was dead!

  They had outmaneuvered a grandmaster. They had stopped a man who was, without question, the most dangerous threat the West had ever encountered. Hall was ecstatic.

  His mood was elevated even further when Megan, realizing he was awake, threw herself into his arms. They kissed, even knowing they were putting on a show, and then she sat down beside him, beaming. Heather and Alex, seated on the couch across from them, were smiling from ear to ear. Even the colonel, seated in a chair to the left of the couches, was in high spirits.

  “Welcome back, Nick,” said Megan, uttering the first words spoken since he had come to. “Did you already use your ESP to learn what happened?”

  Hall nodded. “I did.” When he had regained consciousness in the panic room, Megan had let him know telepathically that she was now working with Girdler, and described their plan. And while he had expected to be able to witness it unfold himself, he was thrilled to read how flawlessly it had gone. “What happened is that you saved my sorry ass. Again! You know what, Megan? I have an almost irresistible urge to tell you that I love you. How psycho is that?” he added playfully, but in such a way that he knew Megan would realize this hadn’t been said entirely in jest.

  “Hey,” she complained, recognizing this exact line from the fake letter she had written. “That’s plagiarism. That was some of my best work.”

  Hall laughed. If he could read her mind, he suspected that some of the letter was truer than she would like to admit. But what he had said to Alex was true also. He was never going to let this one get away. Never. Even pretending that she had left him had been a brutal blow to his psyche.

  Hall turned to the colonel. “Thanks for helping Megan on this one,” he said. “And especially for not killing me.”

  Hall could read that as upset as Girdler was by the Iowa Gazette story, he was also happy that the story was effectively a last-second pardon for Hall. At least now the colonel felt like he was on the right side of things, helping innocent people rather than trying to kill them. Now all he had to do was avert a possible global catastrophe. Hall also read that the group had filled Girdler in on Alex’s recent implant surgery while they were waiting for him to regain consciousness, so the colonel knew that ESP and cybersurfing were not two sides of the same coin.

  Hall took Megan’s hand in his and turned to face her. “And thanks to you for being smart enough to see how that ESP story might have changed things after we were knocked out.”

  “About that,” said Girdler before Megan could respond. He blew out a long breath. “You know what I’m about to say to you, Nick, but for the benefit of everyone else, I’ll still say it. Even though I don’t want to kill you, I’m afraid I also can’t let you be cured of ESP. The arms race is about to begin. The e-mail you sent to reporters, in conjunction with the flood of information Fyfe released about Gray’s experiments and the implants, is just too credible for the world to ignore. This arms race will be well under the radar, but numerous countries will mount programs. They’ll start by copying the placement of the implants Theia uses in their clinical trials, and begin tinkering from there. Trying to find the recipe for ESP. With horrible consequences if they do, as we’ve all discussed.”

  He leaned in closer to Hall. “So what we have to do now is find an antidote. Which means we need your ESP to be working, so we’ll know if we’ve succeeded. We’ll assume someone will eventually find the recipe to unleash ESP, and we’ll dedicate ourselves to finding a way to block it. A simple formula we can share with the world. So even if someone does crack the code on the weapon of mass destruction that mind reading represents, we’ll have already discovered the shield.”

  “With Megan being a big part of this effort, correct?” said Hall.

  “I don’t know if you cheated on that or not, but that’s right.”

  From Megan’s expression, it was clear this was a new one on her.

  �
��Because she’s immune,” whispered Heather, having figured it out. “That’s why she’s so important.”

  “Yes,” said Girdler. “She’s naturally resistant. There will be others in this category as well, but she’ll be the only one in the inner sanctum. But she, and these others, will be the key. We have to discover why they’re immune. Study their genes, their DNA. Test them. Study the nature of their resistance. Hopefully it’s something simple. But we can’t rest until we find it. And when we do, if there’s ever any evidence that ESP is out of the bag, we can give it freely to the world.”

  “Until then,” said Heather, “just how secret is this program going to be?”

  Girdler frowned. “You know the old joke that goes, ‘It’s so secret, if I told you, I’d have to kill you?’ Well, in this case, it really isn’t so much of a joke. Please keep that in mind. The five of us in this room, and my second-in-command, Major Mike Campbell, will be the only ones to ever know about this. I’d hate to kill someone over being a leak, but I will.” He gestured toward Hall. “Nick?”

  “I’m afraid he’s serious,” confirmed Hall. He smiled at the colonel. “But the good news, Colonel, is that I’m reading their minds as well—everyone’s but Megan’s—and they will keep this secret.”

  “I’m sure they will,” said Girdler. He paused for a moment and then changed the subject. “It looks like Alex will be the new CEO of Theia Labs now that Fyfe is gone.”

  The colonel turned to Altschuler and raised his eyebrows. “You’ll be a multi-billionaire, Alex. One who secretly knows about top secret government research. More than that, since you are one of only six in the know, and a genius, we’d love to tap you as a consultant from time to time. You can be like Bruce Wayne. Mild-mannered billionaire CEO in the daytime—”

  “Yeah,” interrupted Hall, cringing. “Please don’t go there. Fyfe made a reference to Batman earlier today that kind of pissed us all off.”

  “Really?” said Girdler. “Two Batman references in a row?” He looked puzzled. “And what could piss anyone off about Batman, anyway?”

  Seeing the expressions around the room, he decided to move on. “Okay, forget that I said that. But we would greatly appreciate your intellectual input, Alex. I think you know how important this is.”

  “You’ve got it,” said Altschuler.

  The colonel nodded his thanks. “Nick and Megan, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come work with me and Mike Campbell on a more full-time basis. I wish I could give you a choice in the matter, but I can’t. There’s only one acceptable answer in this case, and that is, ‘I’d love to cooperate with you, Colonel.”

  Hall glanced at Megan. “I’d love to cooperate with you, Colonel,” they both said in unison.

  “Outstanding,” said Girdler. “So here’s the way I see things going forward. We get out of here. Mike Campbell is on his way and will burn this place to the ground with Fyfe in it. We’ll also plant two corpses and change Nick’s and Megan’s dental records to match them, so it looks like they were caught in the blaze as well. Everyone but the five of us and Major Campbell need to believe this is true, including my boss, General Sobol. When Alex learns of the tragic loss of Nick Hall and Cameron Fyfe—and there’s no need for anyone to ever know Fyfe’s true identity, or his purpose, by the way—he assumes the CEO position. Even before this, he needs to cast doubt on the ESP story as best he can.” Girdler sighed. “Good luck with that, Alex. Not an easy assignment.”

  “Thanks,” grumbled Altschuler.

  “Alex, I’ll also want you, as CEO, to work with me to begin talks in Congress on how best to police the web surfing technology. Fyfe’s plans were pretty damn scary. I’m convinced there’s no way to stop the implants from happening. And I’m not convinced we would want to if we could. But we do need triple redundancy safeguards at every level of software and production. And a series of nested Firewalls will need to be designed to be just as foolproof and secure as this. We need to be absolutely certain that nothing like Fyfe had planned could ever happen.”

  “Amen to that,” said Altschuler. “I would be honored to lead this charge.”

  Girdler smiled. “Fantastic. I have to admit, it’s going to be fun secretly working with you when you’re the mightiest business titan in the world.” He paused. “But back to our plans for Nick and Megan. We’ll need to change Nick’s appearance and set up a facility in a desert somewhere for them. Isolated for more than ten miles so Nick won’t hear voices—unless we want him to. We’ll bring in support personnel that Nick can’t read. We can just line up candidates and Nick can tell us which ones he can’t read. We’ll hire them.”

  “Are you going to at least pretend to conduct an interview?” asked Heather with a grin.

  “Of course,” said Girdler, returning the smile. “Pretending is one of the very best things I do.”

  Then, serious once again, he continued. “We’ll get everything up and running within a few weeks. And then we’ll get to work. We’ll learn everything we can about Nick’s abilities and how to block them. Nick, you know I’m doing this to stop ESP, not to use it, but there may be the odd time I need you for an interrogation. I’ll try to keep this to the bare minimum.”

  Hall read that Girdler was sincere in this regard. If a terrorist knew the location of a nuke that was about to detonate, Girdler reserved the right to have Hall invade his mind for the information. Hall had no problem with this. In fact, given what he had come to know about the Abdullah brothers, he couldn’t wait to get in range of a man who had called himself Ed Cowan. “I understand,” said Nick.

  “Thank you,” said Girdler. “Megan, you won’t be engaged full-time in these experiments, so we’ll give you a change of identity. You can still be the owner of a graphic design firm, just a different firm, under a different name, which you can locate in offices next to Nick. I’ll make sure you get as much graphic design work from the US military as you can handle. If you’re one-tenth as impressive a graphic designer as you are a fugitive, then we’ll be in great hands.”

  “Sounds good,” said Megan, looking like a kid on Christmas morning. “Thanks.”

  “But regardless,” continued Girdler, “the two of you will have to spend a lot of time together. In close quarters. A lot of time.” An amused smile came over his face. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  Hall realized he was still holding Megan’s hand. He looked across at the opposite couch and noticed that Heather and Alex were holding hands as well. Megan had told him she thought there must be something in the water, and it was hard not to agree. Something that had turned four adults into giddy seventh graders. Holding hands? Who did that anymore?

  And even though he wasn’t trying to pry, he couldn’t help but read that Heather and Alex were crazy for each other, and not on the superficial level on which Hall had once operated, but on the level he believed he had finally achieved with Megan.

  No, spending time with Megan Emerson was not going to be a problem. The only problem would be his time away from her. “No. I think I can tolerate her for a little while,” he said with an impish smile. “You know, Neanderthal that she is.”

  “Really?” said Girdler. “That’s the way to a woman’s heart? Calling her a Neanderthal? That must be where I’ve been going wrong with women all these years.”

  “Well, there is a back-story involved,” said Hall sheepishly.

  “Good. You’ll have plenty of time to tell me all about it in the months and years ahead. But for now, let’s go figure out a way to safeguard the world from psionic monsters like you. Shall we?”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Thanks for reading MIND’S EYE! I hope that you enjoyed it. If so, Nick Hall will return in BRAINWEB, available in February of 2015.

  When I self-published my first technothriller, WIRED, I expected that only a handful of people would ever read it. But when a word-of-mouth explosion led to the novel going viral, I gained firsthand knowledge of how much the world has changed. I discovered that in
today’s world, readers, rather than just New York City publishers, have the power to determine a novel’s fate. Without a doubt, any success I have achieved in the writing realm is entirely due to the help and support of my readers, and I will never forget this. So if you would like to write to me at doug@san.rr.com, I would love to hear from you, and I will be sure to respond. And if you have any interest in staying current on my activities and new releases, please be sure to Friend me on Facebook at Douglas E. Richards Author.

  The best way a reader can help put an indie book on the map, in addition to recommending it to friends through word-of-mouth and social media, is to write a review. The more reviews a book has—good or bad, short or long—the more chance those browsing for their next possible read will consider it, and that retailers will take notice as well. So, if you get a minute to write a sentence or two about this book, I would very much appreciate it, and you will be helping others decide if they might enjoy it.

  Click here to review MIND’S EYE

  Finally, I have included a piece I wrote for Publishers Weekly below, about meeting the superstar writers of the thriller genre, and my astonishment that they turned out to be so friendly and unassuming. This is followed by an author biography and links to other books I’ve written.

  Thanks again for reading MIND’S EYE!

  — Doug

  Why Superstar Thriller Writers are so Incredibly Nice

  This summer I attended my first ThrillerFest, an annual conference of thriller writers in New York City, where you couldn’t take five steps without tripping over a superstar. Lee Child and Michael Connelly. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Brad Meltzer and Anne Rice. Steve Berry, T. Jefferson Parker, R.L. Stine, Catherine Coulter, Heather Graham, John Lescroart, Philip Margolin, David Morrell, John Sandford and . . . well, you get the idea.