Red Swan

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Smear? Not if it’s true.”

  “Can you prove that she is gay?” he asked.

  “She sure as hell came on to me, and other women in the office—”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “You could testify, and so could they, but they’d all lose their jobs, and you work for the Antichrist over there in Langley. Plus, accusing someone of being homosexual doesn’t carry the clout it used to.”

  “It would in her district, or so she said.”

  “She’s a Democrat. She’ll get the DNC to crank up the smear professionals and totally demonize her opponent and then blame him for the whole thing. No, all this means is that McGill has dropped the first shoe.”

  “What’s the second shoe?”

  “That Chinese woman in Greer’s car. McGill has set a trap, I believe.” He looked at his watch. “Meet me out front in thirty minutes.”

  * * *

  An hour later they arrived at the gates of what looked like a high-security prison, without a single bit of greenery in sight around its two-acre compound. It was enclosed by high chain-link fences surrounding a single long, windowless one-story cinder-block building. A grass-covered hill rose right behind the building. The grounds immediately around the building were surfaced entirely in gray gravel and there appeared to be an unusual number of utility and HVAC cabinets at the back of the building. The parking lot outside the compound contained several civilian vehicles, but no people were in sight when they arrived. Allender told the driver that they would call Dispatch when they needed a ride back to the residential building, and then walked up to a kiosk outside the gate. He pressed a button. A television screen came to life. A voice asked them to state their names and then hold their facility badges up to a scanner. A moment later, a warning buzzer sounded and the gate retracted. They walked up to the plain metal door and went right in. Inside there was a security lobby with a desk and a metal-detector portal. The guards were in casual clothes and not visibly armed. A large and totally bald black man waited to greet them.

  “Doctor Allender, welcome back,” he boomed as he offered a massive paw.

  “It’s good to be back, Deacon,” Allender responded. “I think. This is Melanie Sloan from the CS. Melanie, this is Armstrong Battle, the director of this facility. She looks quite a bit different from when she came through the basic training course.”

  “I guess so,” Battle said, shaking hands gently with Melanie. “This face I would have remembered. Let’s go to my office and I’ll fill you in.”

  Melanie massaged her right hand as they walked down a corridor to one end of the building, passing several offices where people appeared to be pushing papers, talking on the phone, or doing other office-drone things. There were no windows, and she felt that the building was amazingly quiet and kind of creepy. She was struck by the fact that Allender seemed quite at home here. As tall as he was, he was still a head shorter than the giant leading the way.

  Battle’s office took up the entire width of one end of the building, and while there were no windows in the walls there were large-screen display panels that gave a view of what looked a lot like vistas from Yellowstone Park. Battle saw her looking and explained that the panels could do day and night and display just about any panorama in the world. He sat down behind an enormous oak desk and gestured for them to take seats in a circle of armchairs positioned in front of the desk. Coffee was offered and declined.

  “Right,” Battle said. “Ms. Sloan, do you remember doing interrogation training as part of your CS syllabus?”

  “Yes, I do, vividly,” she replied. “But it wasn’t here. It was—”

  “Yes, yes, of course, it was in building six. Still is. This, on the other hand, is the real deal. All the admin and control rooms are on this level where we’re sitting. Two stories down and tucked back under the hill behind this building is a suite of interrogation cells, ranging in ambience from a lawyer’s conference room to something the Inquisition would have approved. Below that is a complex of cells which we modeled after the Lubyanka complex in Moscow, complete with those pretty, white-tiled rooms with a prominent drain in the center of the floor. Hence the building’s nickname: the Dungeons. Ever hear of it?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Melanie said. “You said ‘real deal.’ Does that mean—”

  “Yes it does, Ms. Sloan,” Battle interrupting her again. “It surely does. And Doctor Allender has been, over the years, the grand master of the edgier parts of our little fun palace. For reasons only he knows, he has asked that you be allowed to sit in, on the control level, of course, on one of his special séances. I have agreed to allow that, on two conditions. One, that you never speak of your experiences here to anyone, ever. And, two, that once you go into the control room you may not leave until the session is completed, nor may you speak. Agreed?”

  “I guess I have to ask,” she said. “Am I going to be watching people driving ten-penny nails into a subject’s head?”

  “No, no, it’s ten in the morning. We don’t do that kind of thing until well after lunch.”

  She cocked her head to one side and gave him an impatient look, knowing he was screwing around with her. He finally grinned.

  “No, this is going to be done in what we lovingly call the Extrusion Room. It hasn’t been used since the good doctor here retired, much to our sorrow.”

  “Who’s the subject?” she asked.

  “Agreed? Or not agreed?”

  “Yes, agreed,” she said. “Never tell and don’t speak. Got it.”

  “Very well, Ms. Sloan. Never violate those conditions, especially the ‘tell’ part. If you do, we will find you and introduce you to the museum level. Now, Doctor Allender: Do you know who the subject is?”

  “Hank Wallace didn’t say,” Allender replied. “He termed it a ‘job of work.’”

  “Ah, yes, I’ve heard that term before,” Battle said. He fiddled with some controls on the console that was sitting on his desk. One of the eight-foot-high scenic panels went gray and then came back into focus. It now showed a gently lit room carpeted on both the floor and the walls, with a medium-sized conference table in the middle. There were two comfortable-looking, high-backed upholstered chairs, one on either side of the table. There was a single, oversized doorway with a window at the back of the room. The door had a sign on it that she couldn’t read, but she did notice that the door lacked a handle. In its place was a simple brass plate.

  Sitting at the table in one of the upholstered chairs was a woman dressed in what looked to Melanie like an oversized, sleeveless, white pillowcase. The woman was Rebecca Lansing, and Melanie thought she looked terrified.

  “What. The. Fuck,” she murmured, unaware that she’d even said it.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “The Secret Service brought her down here from Washington late last night,” Battle said, returning the large screen to a pastoral scene. “We put her in a simple cell. This morning she was allowed to shower but then was given the white smock you see her wearing now. All of her other clothes were confiscated. She got breakfast in her cell and then was taken down to the interrogation suite.”

  “Has she protested or otherwise spoken?” Allender asked.

  “Not to us. The Secret Service escort said she raised hell when they came for her, but once they strapped her into the backseat she stayed quiet all the way down.”

  “Okay, I’ll need to make some phone calls first,” Allender said. “Is Doctor Chen participating?”

  “Ready and waiting, as is the surgical team. They won’t scrub until you tell them to.”

  “Right,” Allender said. “Melanie, could you please write up a timeline of all your activities since you first arrived in Greer’s office? Line by line, time and date.”

  “On it,” she said, looking for a legal pad. Allender thought she looked just a bit worried now. Battle probably shouldn’t have used that word “surgical,” he thought. Oh, well. He sat down at the secure-link console in Battle’s office, and
made his first call.

  Forty minutes later he had what he needed. He told Battle he was ready. A moment later a man wearing medical scrubs appeared and motioned for Allender to follow him. They took an elevator down to the interrogation level, where his escort took him to the prop room. There he gave Allender a doctor’s white coat, a face mask, a pair of latex gloves, and a boxed syringe set. The doctor’s coat was white on one side, but black on the other. The fabric case was covered in transparent plastic wrap with a sterile label acting as the band. Inside were several needles, two syringes, packaged alcohol swabs, and three tiny vials of clear fluid.

  “What has she had to eat or drink?” Allender asked.

  “Breakfast this morning—a muffin and coffee. Nothing but a bottle of water since. One bathroom break, thirty minutes ago.”

  “And she’s in the autorestraint chair?’

  “Yes, sir. The remote is at the end of the right armrest on your chair. Once to restrain, twice to tighten, three times to relax, hold to fully open. It’s a newer model, put in since you were last here.”

  “The backlighting panels are the same?”

  “Yes, sir. Dark behind you, controllable behind the subject. We have the backlight profile for your, um—”

  “Special eyes?” Allender said, turning to look the young man full in the face without his glasses on.

  The escort smiled nervously, then looked away. “Exactly, sir.”

  “Okay,” Allender said. “I’ll call Chen in over the closed circuit when I need him.”

  “Very good, sir. Need anything else or are you ready to go in?”

  “How long has she been in there?”

  “Two hours, now.”

  “That should do it.”

  They went down the hall to the actual interview suite. The escort put his palm against a reader plate and the door clicked open, swinging into the room with a slight hiss. The room had been pressurized at slightly above ambient pressure. Once Allender went in, the escort brought his paraphernalia to the table, put two bottles of water on the table next to Allender’s chair, then backed away and closed the door. Allender sat down, briefly touched the medical equipment, and then looked across the table at the totally surprised woman.

  “You!” Rebecca said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask you the same question, Rebecca,” he said. His chair was two inches higher off the ground than hers, forcing her to look up at him. “Or whatever your real name is.”

  “What is the meaning of this—this outrage?” she said, angrily. “Where am I? Why am I being held prisoner here? I want to call Langley.”

  Allender let her spout. He said nothing, just examined her with those amber eyes, staring at tell points in her face, the blood vessels on her neck, and then her hands, then back to her chest to gauge her respiration rate, all in order to take in each physical manifestation of how much stress she was under. He felt his ears crackle just a tiny bit as the air pressure inched up. Then came the sound of elevator machinery spooling up outside the room. The lights flickered imperceptibly, and the platform onto which both chairs were bolted dropped two inches before stopping and then slowly, almost imperceptibly, began inching back to their original position while the elevator noise reached steady state. His ears crackled again, with a tiny bit more force this time. Air came gently out of a continuous register all around the room to heighten the impression that the whole room was going down.

  “Are we moving?” she cried, looking around as if to confirm what her senses were telling her. The chairs dipped again as the “elevator” spooled down; then it “landed,” and everything went still.

  “Not anymore,” Allender said. “What we need to do here requires extreme security. That’s best accomplished a hundred feet underground.”

  By now the temperature had also gone up a few degrees. She wasn’t exactly perspiring, but her cheeks were starting to flush. To one side lights came on in the adjacent room. Rebecca looked. The window in the door was no more than a foot square, but Allender knew she would be able to see figures moving around in there, and at least one surgical spotlight on the ceiling.

  “Let’s begin with this,” he said. “You told me you worked in the director’s office. I’ve spoken to Wayne Corry, who is his principal admin assistant. He tells me he has no Rebecca Lansing in the system.”

  “When I was sent to the Bureau I was assigned a cover name,” she said. “You still haven’t told me why I am being held here. You’re Agency, so you must know that all you have to do is call—” Then she stopped.

  “Go on,” he said. “Call—?”

  “Operations, for God’s sake.”

  “As in Carson McGill?”

  “He’s the DDO,” she replied. “I’m just an operative. As you must know, operatives don’t get their tasking from the DDO himself.”

  “Okay, who’s your controller?”

  “I’m not at liberty to tell anyone that, as—”

  “As I must know, yes, got that. But you told me you didn’t work for Carson McGill. Now you’re saying you do?”

  As they’d been talking, the lighting in the room had changed subtly. The wall behind Allender was going dark, while the wall behind Rebecca was changing to a hue that amplified the glowing aspect of Allender’s eyes. Rebecca was trying not to make direct eye contact, which drew her gaze again to that little window. “Who are those people?” she asked. “What are they doing?”

  “Do you work for Carson McGill?” he asked.

  “I want this to stop,” she said, her facial expression and the tension in her voice revealing that she was getting scared.

  “Are you afraid of me?” he asked in a soft but menacing voice.

  “No,” she said, trying for a brave face.

  “Good,” he said. “So sit back, relax for a minute, and then we’ll continue.”

  She took a deep breath, then straightened up in the chair and put her arms back down on the armrest. He hit the button. Four stainless-steel bands emerged from the chair like coils in a big spring. One went around her neck, one on each side clamped down on her arms, and the fourth encircled her waist. She gasped when she realized that she was fully restrained now, and then tried to stand up. He hit the button twice and the bands tightened enough to make her inhale with fright. She went rigid.

  Allender pulled the fabric medical case closer, unzipped it, and opened it. A recessed pin light in the ceiling lit up the collection of needles and the syringe, making the needles glitter. He reached into the pocket of his doctor’s white coat and pulled out the gloves and the face mask.

  “What are you going to do?” she whimpered. “Please, let me make one call.”

  “Allergic to anything?” he asked, as he picked up one of the syringes and affixed a needle. “No? Good, because I’m going to give you an injection which will make you sleepy. Then we’re going to talk some more, only this time I think you’ll be a little more forthcoming.”

  “No,” she said. “Please don’t do that. I can’t—I don’t want—” She stuttered to a stop, her eyes fixed on the syringe.

  He picked up one of the vials, stripped off the metal protective cap, and then pulled back the syringe’s bolt handle about an inch. He pushed the needle through the rubber cap and pressed some air into the vial, then reversed the handle and drew up some of the clear fluid in the vial. He got up and walked around the end of the table with an alcohol swab in one hand and the syringe in the other. She struggled with the restraints but there was nothing she could do.

  He stood behind her and swabbed the lower right side of her neck. “Hold still, please,” he said. “You don’t want me missing my target here.”

  He gave her the injection and then waited; it took effect in fifteen seconds and she slumped in the restraints with a plaintive sigh. He went back to his chair and relaxed, but he did not remove the steel restraints. He took off the mask and the gloves, and then the white coat. He turned it inside out, and put it back on. Then he opened a small
drawer under the table and took out a thin, black collar microphone, which he clipped on, leading the wire under his collar and down through the coat to the table port. He sat down and waited, sipping some water, until she mumbled something and her eyes fluttered. At that moment the control room darkened the room completely except for the lighting panels behind Rebecca, whose LEDs now made Allender’s eyes glow like hot coals. With the all-black coat, the only thing she would see would be his face, floating like a specter above the table, framing those hypnotic eyes.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  She blinked a couple of times, wet her lips, cleared her throat and tried to speak, but slurred her words. He could tell, however, that she’d been trying to say “Rebecca Lansing.” Her eyes kept closing and then snapping back open. Control then cued the deep, almost subliminal organ tone. He could barely hear it, but he knew her subconscious mind could definitely hear it. Her head cocked imperceptibly when the tone came on.

  He keyed on the invisible mike. “What is your name?” he asked again, but this time the voice seemed to come from everywhere, with a slight reverberation. Several small speakers in the wall behind her uttered small, weird noises, giving the acoustic impression that something large was creeping up behind her through an immense forest.

  She turned her head to look behind her, which was when Allender slid his chair one foot to the right on the greased track underneath the chair. “Look at me!” he said, the word roaring out of the speakers. She jumped, badly frightened now as her senses tried to take in her environment. She looked to where he had been, and then jerked her head to the left. She was still having trouble focusing, especially now that Allender’s face seemed to have detached from the rest of his body and was floating in midair. He widened his eyes to full power and listened to the stream of thoughts that were crossing his mind.

  That were not crossing his mind, he realized. Shit. She’s blocking. She’s faking! She’s not scared at all.

  “What is your name?” the speakers hissed, this time from under the table. An air nozzle under the table blew a short jet of warm air against several strands of cotton mop cordage, which had been suspended from the underside of the table. She jumped when they caressed her ankle. She looked back at him and said no, but in a tiny voice. Allender pressed a button under the table. A hologram materialized at the opposite end of the table, surrounded by a pale green mist that evolved into the face of McGill. The face drifted in and out of focus, but it had Rebecca’s undivided attention.