The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2)

by Michael Stiles

  Ed was struggling to think of a response, but their dinner arrived at that moment. Danny dug right into his plate of spaghetti with mushrooms. Ed had never understood why anyone would willingly eat mushrooms. As a boy, he had been convinced that mushrooms were made of dirt, and the thought had never quite left his mind. He tried his own potatoes au gratin and decided they were pretty good, just as Driscoll had said. They ate in silence for some time, after which Kissinger set his silverware down, wiped his mouth, and said, “Back to business. How long did you say you’ve been working for Bud Krogh?”

  “The Plumbers?” Ed took his time chewing and swallowing. “I don’t work with them, I just―”

  “You just help them break into safes,” said Milligrew.

  Ed rolled his eyes. “Only that one time.”

  “Then your help is needed,” Kissinger said firmly. “They are planning more mischief. I have been entirely shut out of their meetings. They are suspicious of me, and Nixon has taken on some of their suspicion. I need someone inside their group. That someone must be you. You will work with them and report back to me regularly on everything you see and hear.”

  “I don’t want to be part of their group,” Ed said.

  “I am not asking you what you want. As you have seen by rummaging through my private papers, this is a most serious situation. Thornwood must be found.”

  Ed found the man’s sheer German-ness to be almost overpowering. Refusal was not an option. An idea came to him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it. But I have one condition.”

  Kissinger’s substantial eyebrows rose up high on his forehead. “A condition,” he repeated. He seemed surprised rather than angry; evidently, people did not usually talk to the National Security Advisor in this way.

  Ed knew this would probably be his only chance to get the information he needed. He had to make it count. “I want you to tell me about Novus.”

  There was a short pause, barely perceptible. “Novus does not exist.”

  “I saw the file. I know it exists.” He had also witnessed Kissinger’s conversation with Witherspoon in the woods, although that wasn’t something he could mention.

  “It used to exist. It does not exist anymore.” He said this as though this should make things perfectly clear, and no more explanation should be needed. Ed waited patiently, meeting his gaze without blinking. Finally Kissinger let out a deep, frustrated breath. “All right. Mulberry says that you are trustworthy. I will tell you what I can. But you must promise to help me unmask the dark man. Thornwood, or whatever name he’s using now. You must agree to continue to infiltrate the Plumbers and try to discover who he is.”

  “Do I get one of those tattoos?”

  “No.”

  Kissinger said nothing more until he had ordered and received another drink. Ed ordered another glass of water.

  “Novus,” Kissinger said at last, “was a project that was overseen by a CIA man named Charles Witherspoon.”

  Ed held up a hand to stop him. “That’s not right. Witherspoon was in the FBI. I’ve met him.”

  “You have?” Kissinger looked genuinely surprised. “Interesting. But I’m not mistaken. He later went over to the FBI and took his program with him, but it began as a CIA experiment. They were studying telepathy, communication by brain waves. It was known that the Soviets were making great progress in that field, so we needed to catch up. But the nature of the program changed over time. They found that brain waves are not so different from radio waves. They discovered, further, that knowing how brain waves work, it is not so difficult to alter the brain’s usual operation by bombarding it with certain radio frequencies. What started out as an experiment in mind-reading evolved into an exercise in mind control. There were many secret operations that grew out of the original Novus research. One was called Candlestick. This was an attempt to use a Novus test subject to assassinate a man who was running for reelection to the Senate, Ralph Yarborough. Yarborough was from a town called Chandler, Texas, which was the inspiration for the name. But Candlestick was a failure. The subject escaped and killed the wrong person, a woman in California who had nothing to do with Senator Yarborough. The Candlestick program was terminated, although Novus lived on.”

  Ed felt his jaw clench involuntarily at the casual mention of Eleanor’s murder, but he kept quiet.

  “Then,” Kissinger said, “Novus was caught up in political battles when Nixon took office. He didn’t like the CIA, thought the Agency was controlled by liberals. He did not get along with Director Helms. So Nixon moved Witherspoon over to the FBI where Hoover could keep him under a close eye. Except… I don’t believe Director Hoover was ever told about Novus. Witherspoon turned out to be working for another man entirely, someone outside of the regular chain of command.”

  “Nosgrove,” Ed said.

  Kissinger inhaled sharply. “How do you know that name?”

  “I’ve been searching for him. For personal reasons.”

  “Ah, of course—Eleanor Terwilliger. I should have made the connection. I am truly sorry,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. “I told you about Thornwood, the dark man. Nosgrove is most definitely the same man. But Nosgrove has disappeared, just as Thornwood did. I’ve spoken with the men who worked for him in the Bureau, those who were still able to talk, and none of them could tell me where he went.”

  “Not even Albert Wensel?”

  Kissinger regarded Ed with a curious expression. “Nosgrove ordered Mr. Wensel to be killed.”

  “I know,” said Ed. “I saw it happen.”

  This seemed to startle the Doctor, although he tried to hide it. “I did not want that to happen.”

  “But you were there.” Ed made no attempt to hide his accusatory tone.

  Kissinger sighed. “Nosgrove ordered me to make it happen. I had no choice but to go along with it; otherwise I would have had to reveal that I was against him. To be honest, I did not worry overmuch about the way Wensel ended up. He was not a good man.”

  “There aren’t a lot of good men around this town, it seems to me.” Milligrew shot Ed a glare at that remark, but Kissinger laughed.

  “True enough. I often feel like I am the only man of honor left in Washington.”

  Ed continued to watch the man’s head for any sign of black smoke. But if there was any, the ambient haze of tobacco smoke in the restaurant made it impossible to detect.

  “Witherspoon and Wensel had been planning, on Nosgrove’s orders, to murder President Johnson in 1968. This plan was called Daisy. They meant to clear the field for their favored candidate to win the presidency. That proved unnecessary because Johnson chose not to run for reelection. When Robert Kennedy began his presidential campaign, they saw him as the greater threat and murdered him instead.”

  “I know the story,” Ed said.

  Kissinger gave him that strange look again. “Then you know they succeeded, and as a result, Nixon was able to win his election decisively over Humphrey. Nosgrove already had men who were close to Nixon, and this victory put them inside the White House.”

  “It put you in the White House, too,” Ed observed.

  The Doctor ignored that remark. “The dark man had Witherspoon working on other things as well. Nosgrove is deathly afraid of people seeing through him, seeing him for what he really is. He can only win if he stays in the shadows. He was especially afraid that young people, these hippies, as they’re called, would recognize him for the monster he is, so he waged war on them. He made a list of artists and musicians that he perceived were a threat to his plans, and he began to exterminate them one by one. ‘Summit’ was the name of that operation.

  “At the same time, he was nudging the President toward ever more aggressive moves in foreign policy. Knowing that Nixon is afraid of me—Nixon is very much afraid of me, with good reason—Nosgrove attempted to recruit me to his side. To this day he believes I am a faithful henchman, but for all my efforts I have never been granted an opportunity to meet him face to face.

  �
�All of this,” Kissinger said, leaning back in his chair, “leads us back to Novus. It was supposed to be Elmer’s final plan. He was building a secret army—an army of minds instead of guns. He sought people who had certain inherent traits. Then he used a machine, think of a very complicated radio transmitter, to disrupt their brain-waves and make them do his bidding. Under Director Helms, the Novus project was meant to tap into the secrets of the human brain, to create a force of telepathic men who would emerge at just the right moment to defeat the Soviets and tear down the Iron Curtain once and for all. But Nosgrove saw a different opportunity: he meant to use Novus to rule the world. With it, he would have absolute power: the power to read minds, to control minds, to destroy them.”

  Ed glanced at Danny, but Danny’s full attention was on Kissinger. “Where is it?” Ed asked. “Where is Novus?”

  “I told you, it is gone. After Wensel was killed, Charles Witherspoon had a rare attack of the conscience and closed it down. Nosgrove was not watching it closely enough, so he did not find out until it was too late. Novus no longer exists.”

  Ed stared at his empty plate as his mind mulled this over. “That’s not true,” he said. “It still exists.”

  “It does not. The location was in Maryland, close to the President’s retreat at Camp David. You can go there yourself and see. I’ll even give you the address. There is nothing there.”

  Ed recalled the memories he had watched through Witherspoon’s eyes. “He meant to shut it down. But something went wrong. It’s been taken over by someone else. He must have moved it to a new location.”

  “Taken over? By whom?”

  “A very bad person.”

  “Exactly how do you know this?”

  This was the question Ed had been hoping to avoid. He still didn’t know whether he could trust this man. Danny trusted him, and Ed still had not seen any smoke coming out of him, but… “Witherspoon told me.”

  “Then you must find out where it was moved to. This is very important.”

  Ed pounded the table with his fist, making the silverware rattle. “That’s why I came to you!” Danny touched his arm, and Ed noticed that all the people at the surrounding tables were looking at him. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “That’s why I broke into your safe. You were supposed to know.”

  Kissinger’s face remained perfectly calm. “I do not. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  Ed watched his face for any sign that he was lying. Kissinger gazed back at him, perfectly unreadable. “That’s just great,” Ed said, tossing his napkin on the table. Several of the restaurant patrons looked his way; he made no attempt to keep quiet. Let them stare. “The first you’ve heard. You’re no help at all!” He pushed his chair back and started to get up. “Thanks for dinner,” he added reluctantly.

  “You are welcome,” Kissinger said. “Mulberry will be in contact regarding your daily reports on the Plumbers.”

  Ed stared at him, slack-jawed. “You can’t be serious,” he said once he found his voice again. “We don’t have a deal. You didn’t tell me anything useful.”

  “I believe you just agreed to help, not five minutes ago.”

  “In exchange for telling me how to find Novus. You said yourself that you don’t know where it is.”

  “No.” His face hardened, the fine lines becoming more defined. The lenses of his glasses glittered in the glow of the tiny lights overhead. It was no wonder, Ed thought, that Nixon and all his men were afraid of him. “I made no such commitment. I merely agreed to tell you what Novus is, and I honored my end of the bargain. You must now honor yours. Mr. Mulberry will contact you. And―” He twitched his finger, summoning Ed closer. Ed approached until he was close enough to smell Kissinger’s breath. “They will ask you what you and I talked about. You must not mention Novus, nor Duck Hook. Tell them I interrogated you about which documents were photographed. You’ll say that you told me everything. They won’t believe you if you claim to have held anything back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ed replied.

  “Starting tomorrow, you’ll report to Mulberry every day. Cooperate with the Plumbers and do not shirk your duty, or Mr. Milligrew will come find you. And believe me, Mr. Terwilliger, you don’t want to upset the monkeys.”

  33

  ODESSA

  It was well past midnight when Ed got back to his hotel. He crawled into bed with his clothes on and fell asleep almost at once. His dreams were about Sarah. It was the day he had first met her, on the street in front of his apartment in Los Angeles. She was cursing at him for nearly running her over, but an instant later she was in his arms and holding him tight. He tried to kiss her, but she was suddenly pulled away from him. The dream had changed; they were in Arthur’s room in Society House, and Arthur was hurting her. Ed attacked Arthur, pummeled him with all his might, but Arthur merely laughed as he tortured Sarah. Her screams were terribly loud—but they weren’t Sarah’s screams; Ed himself was screaming. And then it wasn’t Arthur who was hurting her; it was Tom Kajdas, and he was dragging her into a hole in the ground. There were mountains all around, huge and foreboding, and he knew that the mountains were guarding a terrible secret. Perla was there as well, surrounded by several men wearing blue clothes. She couldn’t see the men—they were invisible to her, but not to Ed. He ran toward them, wanting to help, but he couldn’t cover the distance in time. They all went into a door in a hillside, a door that led into pitch darkness. Kajdas was the last to enter it, and as he stepped through the door he turned to look at Ed. He had only one eye, an eye that glowed red.

  Ed woke up sweating. The dream was fading from his memory—he could still see the shape of Kajdas’ silhouette against the dimly-lit window of his hotel room. But the silhouette wasn’t Kajdas; it was Leonard Garbanzo, and Ed sat up with a cry of fright when he realized that he was no longer dreaming. Leonard was sitting on his bed and watching him sleep. Ed began pummeling him with his fists and shouting a stream of barely-coherent obscenities until Leonard got off the bed and moved out of reach.

  “You were yelling in your sleep,” Leonard said, rubbing his arm. “Watership sent me. He wants to see you.”

  “You broke into my room just to tell me that?”

  “The door was unlocked.”

  “No, it wasn’t!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Leonard said curtly. It seemed his feelings were hurt. “He knows you went to meet Kissinger.”

  “Tell Watership I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  “Check your clock, bub. It’s tomorrow now.”

  “I mean tomorrow at a reasonable time.”

  Leonard switched on the bedstand light. The stinking black smoke oozed out of his head in thick, snaky tendrils. He stood up and folded his arms obstinately. “Look, Bismuth, some of the Plumbers aren’t too pleased that you got yourself caught. They want explanations.”

  “I wasn’t the only person who got caught in there. What have you told them?”

  Leonard studied the carpet. “I told them the truth. I got away, and you got caught.”

  Ed had disliked Garbanzo from the first time they’d met, and still Leonard managed to lower Ed’s opinion of him every time they had a conversation. “You got away because you ran off like a scared puppy. Did you tell them that?”

  “Watership wants to know what you told Kissinger.” Leonard forced himself to meet Ed’s eyes. “He wants to know if you gave us away.”

  “Kissinger already knew what we were up to. You Plumbers are terrible at keeping secrets.”

  Leonard shrugged uncomfortably. “He’s waiting in his office right now. Watership doesn’t sleep much. He wants to see you right away.”

  “He can wait a little longer. I need some sleep.”

  The expression on Leonard’s face changed. The change was subtle, but Ed was sure he detected a hint of fear in his eyes. “Bismuth, I wouldn’t keep him waiting if I were you. People who upset him… bad things happen.”

  * * *

  Watership’s office was on
the first floor of the Executive Office Building, in a suite that had no signs or markings on the door. At two in the morning, the building was empty except for a skeleton crew of tired-looking security guards. Leonard had a key to the suite. They found Watership in his office at the end of the hall, bouncing his leg nervously and smoking a cigarette. He stopped jiggling his leg when Leonard and Ed entered the room.

  “You let yourself get caught,” Watership said, skipping the greeting and getting straight to business. It was an unpleasant start to a conversation that Ed didn’t feel like having. “I was told you were a pro, Bismuth.”

  “I did my part,” Ed said. “Leonard and Cruller were in charge of keeping watch.”

  Leonard gave Ed a sullen look. “At least I didn’t squeal,” he muttered.

  “Shut up, Garbanzo,” said Watership. He scratched his mustache, and once again Ed had a strong urge to tug on it to see if it would come off. “Well, Bismuth, you were in a tight spot and you got through it. I’ll give you credit for that. That’s why we compartmentalize, so no one person knows too much. Leonard’s an expert at not knowing too much—isn’t that right, Leonard?”

  “Suck it, Watership,” said Leonard.

  Watership laughed a chilling, humorless laugh. “Gentlemen, I just got back from a business trip out west. The first of the Gemstone operations was a success.”

  “Beautiful,” said Leonard.

  “Gemstone?” said Ed.

  “I keep forgetting you’re new here,” Watership said. “When I joined the Special Investigations Unit—the Plumbers—I was asked to formulate some plans for helping the President win the next election. I named each plan after a precious stone: Ruby, Diamond, Opal. The work I was doing out west was related to an operation called Topaz.”

  “Does this have anything to do with ODESSA?” Ed asked, thinking of the documents he’d seen in Kissinger’s safe. Leonard’s eyes went wide, but Watership just nodded.

  “Think of ODESSA as a classification level, more secret than Top Secret. It originally stood for our unit’s mission. Our Organization”—he emphasized that word—“was Directed to Eliminate Subversion of the Secrets of the Administration. Anything marked ODESSA is known only to the Plumbers.”