Syndrome E

by Franck Thilliez

  LSD…Judith Sagnol…the presence of a doctor in the old warehouse…Could it have been Sanders? Had the doctor known Lacombe? Had the two men worked together on MK-Ultra? The questions piled up. And Lucie knew Rotenberg would have the answers.

  Onscreen, the images passed in slow succession. The headphones on the patients’ ears became more refined, the waiting lines on gurneys grew longer, the faces wilted.

  “As you can see, Sanders equipped the rooms with loudspeakers that broadcast the same sentences over and over. He called them ‘sleep rooms.’ Those lines of gurneys represent the wait for electroshock. Patients were subjected to treatments three times a day, for periods of up to eight weeks. Three times a day, miss. Thousands of volts coursing through your body. Can you imagine the damage something like that could do to your nerves, heart, and brain?”

  “I can imagine perfectly well.”

  “Sanders literally wanted to cleanse the brain of its illness. No one on his devoted staff dared question his orders, for fear of losing their job. Sanders was a cold man, authoritarian and devoid of compassion.”

  “Are you telling me that no one, in his entire department, ever spoke out? They just let him do what he wanted?”

  “Not only let him do it, but assisted. They obeyed, pure and simple.”

  Lucie felt her blood boil. It had happened: dozens of doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists who had blindly followed the orders of a madman, even though it flew in the face of their oaths and beliefs. Fear, pressure, and the vile orders of a superior authority in a white lab coat had muzzled them. Lucie couldn’t help making a connection with the famous Milgram experiment, a tape of which she had seen once on the Web. Submission to an absolute authority, which let a human being abandon himself to his basest instincts.

  “Sanders truly believed in these barbaric techniques. He held conferences, and even wrote a book called Psychic Driving—you can still find a copy now and then. The most illustrious doctors came to hear him lecture. It was at that point, at the beginning of the 1950s, that the CIA got in touch with him. The agency was strongly interested in his techniques and his writings. It secretly integrated him into Project MK-Ultra, and for years provided the funding for him to pursue his brainwashing experiments at the hospital. And that’s how MK-Ultra entered Canadian territory.”

  “Is Sanders still alive?”

  “No, he died of a heart attack in 1967.”

  “And what about the lawsuit?”

  “Despite countless motions to dismiss by the CIA, threats, influence peddling, and claims that this was all protected under the military secrets restrictions, we did prevail. The CIA admitted its involvement in the experiments conducted in Canada and at Allan Memorial. The victims received financial compensation, but much more important than that, they had gotten justice and recognition. For Joseph Rauth and myself, the matter was finally over. We had gotten to the bottom of MK-Ultra and the CIA had admitted its mistakes. Case closed. And what a case…”

  Rotenberg remained frozen in place, his eyes on the floor. On the computer screen, the old black-and-white photos continued to parade by. The hospital rooms at McGill were now equipped with televisions hanging nine feet from the patients’ impassive gazes. The retired attorney pressed PAUSE.

  “I pursued a brilliant career with Joseph, who died in the late nineties. I handled some terrific little cases, but nothing that ever matched the scope of that one.”

  “Forgive me, but…I still don’t see how this relates to the film, or to Lacombe or the Duplessis Orphans.”

  Rotenberg nodded.

  “I was just getting to that. Some thirty years after the Sanders case, I received a phone call from Belgium. This was about two years ago.”

  “Vlad Szpilman?”

  “Yes. The man knew my career and everything related to the American intelligence agency, government affairs, and so on. He was a real history and geopolitics buff. He claimed to have revelations about experiments conducted in Canada on children in the fifties. Based on everything he’d read about MK-Ultra, he suspected the CIA was involved. At first I didn’t believe it. I figured he was either some kook or another conspiracy theorist—those nuts had been coming out of the woodwork ever since the 1977 case. To get rid of him, I told him he was on the wrong track, that all the agency’s misdeeds had been brought to light, and that children had never been involved in their brainwashing program. So he e-mailed me a black-and-white photo taken from a film, asking me to call back if I was interested.”

  Lucie clenched her fists.

  “The photo of the children and the rabbits, is that right? ‘The start of the whole thing’—wasn’t that what you said on the phone?”

  “Exactly. I can still see that room spattered with blood, those little girls in hospital pajamas, standing passively in the midst of all that carnage. An extremely disturbing picture. So I called him back, my curiosity aroused. He didn’t want to send me the reel, but asked me to go over there, to see it at his house. I knew I was dealing with someone extremely suspicious, even paranoid, and remarkably intelligent. Two days later, I was at his place in Liège. He brought me into his projection room, and that’s when I saw the film. The original and the one hidden inside it, which the old man had been able to reconstruct thanks to some contacts he had in neuromarketing.”

  Lucie listened attentively. The contact was probably the former boss of Georges Beckers, the jowly little Belgian who had persuaded Kashmareck to watch the film in an MRI scanner.

  “From the very first image, I knew it was all true. It was like a certainty for me.”

  “Why such a certainty?”

  He nodded toward the computer screen.

  “It’s all there in front of you. The relation between Szpilman’s film and what happened in the hospital rooms at McGill. The undeniable link, the connection between the Duplessis Orphans and the CIA.”

  He closed PowerPoint and glided his mouse onto the AVI file.

  “I’m going to show you the kind of video the CIA manufactured, which Sanders played in a continuous loop for his patients to wash their brains. But first I have to finish telling you what happened with Szpilman in Belgium. After that disturbing show, he started talking to me about mass hysteria…”

  Lucie’s chest grew tighter and tighter. She was hanging on Rotenberg’s every word.

  “The man was a veritable walking encyclopedia. He thought he’d found a connection among…several major outbreaks of violence that had helped shape the last century. According to him, the doctor behind the rabbit experiment was not Sanders, and the program wasn’t MK-Ultra, but a parallel program, something even more covert, whose goal had nothing to do with brainwashing.”

  “So what was this program about, then?”

  “Hold on—it gets better. At that point, Vlad ran to his library and brought out a batch of unpublished photos of the Rwandan genocide, which he’d gotten directly from a photojournalist he’d managed to contact. And he told me about something utterly staggering: mental contamination.”

  “Mental contamination?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Something that can be transmitted through the eye, and that is so violent that it actually alters the structure of the brain.”

  Lucie reacted right off the bat.

  “A friend of mine, Ludovic Sénéchal, completely lost his sight after watching that film. It’s called hysterical blindness. The images made his brain malfunction. Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?”

  “It’s much worse than that. Hysterical blindness is a purely psychological phenomenon. In the case of mental contamination, not only is the brain structure modified—I mean physically modified—but, worse, a chain reaction spreads from person to person, like a virus. You’ll see what I mean. Just give me a second…”

  He suddenly interrupted himself and turned toward the bay window.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  He ran to the table to grab up his weapon.

  �
�A cracking sound.”

  Lucie remained calm. The beer had steadied her nerves.

  “Isn’t it just the fire?”

  “No, no. It came from outside.”

  He turned off the lights and inched toward the window. The stove gave his face a red glow. Lucie came closer. He stretched his hand toward her.

  “Stay away from the window!”

  Lucie froze. Outside, everything was perfectly still. The black tree trunks rose like malevolent totems.

  “Who are you afraid of?” whispered Lucie. “You can see there’s no one around. And no one followed us—I’d never seen such long, straight roads in my life.”

  “Only a few months ago I still lived in the center of Montreal. Then someone tried to kill me.”

  He moved aside and lifted the tail of his shirt. Lucie saw wide scars.

  “Two stabs with a knife. Another quarter inch and that would have been it.”

  “The CIA?”

  He tightened his lip and shook his head.

  “That’s not how they operate. The recent discovery of the bodies in Normandy makes me think now that the guy was French.”

  “Secret service?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If I said Foreign Legion, would that sound right?”

  “I couldn’t say. I vaguely remember what the guy looked like…Square jaw, well built, military bearing.”

  The guy in combat boots, thought Lucie.

  “What is for sure is that the attempt on my life was clearly connected with Szpilman’s film and what we’d discovered. Even so, he and I were working in strict secret, trying to find the trail, marshal our facts, as you’re trying to do now. He was a lot more careful than I was. I still don’t know how the people following me found out. The leak could have come from anywhere. While I was investigating, I made a lot of phone calls and met a lot of people. In mental hospitals, archives, religious institutions. Those killers must have contacts, lookouts. Since then, I’ve been hiding out here, protected by reliable sources, in the middle of nowhere.”

  Squatting, gun in hand, he ventured another quick look through the bay window. He sighed heavily, and after thirty long seconds stood up again.

  “Maybe an animal after all. There’s no shortage of elks and beavers around here.”

  He regained his calm. In his younger years, this man must have stared down a fair number of dangerous and influential people, faced the darkness and managed to keep his wits about him, and yet he was ending his days as a full-blown paranoiac.

  “I suppose you didn’t turn up much in the archives?” he asked. “I went there myself, about a year ago. It’s clear that the names corresponding to little girls’ faces can be found in the religious communities. But as I’m sure you’ve discovered, they’re inaccessible. It’s the only thing I’m still missing: the names of those young patients, to help us find our way back to the mental ward with the children and the rabbits, to those girls, get their testimony, living proof that—”

  “I have the names.”

  “You what?”

  “Many religious institutions are closing for lack of funds. Their archives have been relocated to the center in Montreal. Didn’t you know?”

  He shook his head.

  “Since I’ve been in hiding, it’s harder for me to keep current.”

  “The little girl on the swing is named Alice Tonquin.”

  “Alice…” He sighed, as if the name had remained caught at the back of his throat for years.

  “The Sûreté lost track of her, but her last known address was the convent of the Gray Sisters. I have the name of the nun who took care of her. Sister Marie du Calvaire. That’s where I was headed before you…kidnapped me.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “We mined the film for everything in it.”

  He smiled imperceptibly.

  “I think it’s time I told you about the rest of our findings, Vlad’s and mine. And that we were making progress thanks to your information. Let’s go back to the computer…”

  When he returned to the table, his eyes fell on Lucie’s cell phone. He picked it up.

  “Your phone…”

  “What about it?”

  “You said it wasn’t working. Since when?”

  “Um…I tried to use it when I landed in Canada and—”

  Lucie didn’t finish her sentence, having just understood. Rotenberg turned the device over and opened the cover in back, his hands trembling. He tore what looked like a small electronic chip from its compartment.

  “That’s got to be a tracking device.”

  His blue eyes widened in panic. Lucie’s hands flew to her head.

  “The guy sitting next to me, on the plane…I was asleep for almost the entire trip.”

  “Drugged, most likely. They must have been watching you for a while. And they used you to find me. They—they’re here…”

  Lucie thought of the hidden microphones in her apartment and Sharko’s. It was easy for the killers to shadow her.

  Rotenberg immediately pulled out his own cell phone and dialed 911.

  “Philip Rotenberg. Send someone right away to Matawinie, right next to the lake, where it meets the Matawin River. I’ll give you the exact GPS coordinates—please take them down quickly!”

  “What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “They’re here to kill me!”

  He gave the memorized coordinates and hung up, again urging them to hurry. Then, hunched over, he crept back toward the stove. Lucie imitated him. The fire made the inside of the house dangerously bright, and there was glass on all sides. Just as he approached the stove, the bay window exploded.

  Philip Rotenberg was thrown backward, his body landing heavily on the floor. A red bloom began spreading on his white shirt. His chest was still heaving. From outside, flames suddenly surged. Large moving curtains, coming from the woods. In front and behind. A violent red dance suddenly enveloped the outer walls of the cabin.

  Fire, which had cost Lacombe his life so long ago, was seeking new victims…

  Lucie rushed to Rotenberg, who was wheezing through a hole in his throat. She pressed her two palms over the wound. Her fingers instantly turned purple.

  “Hang on, Philip!”

  The man gripped Lucie’s wrists tightly. His eyes seemed to be preparing for death. Thick black smoke was pouring under the door.

  “On my neck…The key…Pull…”

  Lucie hesitated a split second, then did as told. She yanked on the thin chain at the end of which hung a small bit of metal. Blood had begun to foam from Rotenberg’s mouth.

  “What is this a key to?”

  The lawyer murmured something inaudible.

  A teardrop, then no more.

  Lucie stuffed the key into her pocket and stood up partway, in a panic. She grabbed up the gun, looked quickly around her. There was only one place the fire hadn’t attacked yet: the shattered bay window.

  She tried to think fast. The sniper could have taken her out at the same time as Rotenberg, yet he hadn’t. He wanted to force her outside like a rabbit from its warren.

  Lucie had no doubt: the killer wanted her alive.

  If she set foot outside, she was done for.

  She began to cough. The temperature was rising, the wood starting to crack. She had to hold out.

  Behind her, outside, the flames were rising greedily. It wouldn’t be long before they engulfed everything. From her hiding place behind the stove, Lucie dragged herself to the coffee table, pulled off her sweatshirt, rolled it into a ball, and doused it with water. She stuffed it against her nose.

  Wait, just wait…The attacker would surely start wondering, having second thoughts, thinking she might have gotten away. He’d have to give in.

  A window shattered into pieces behind her. Lucie jumped in fright.

  The flames began to invade the house, raging farther inward; the wood began to twist. The cop’s mind grew cloudy, her eyes were stinging, the heat was growin
g unbearable. She dug her nails into her thighs. Just hold on.

  One minute…Two minutes…

  Just then, a silhouette appeared in the swirls of smoke next to the bay window. The shadow entered cautiously, pistol facing front. A gray head glanced around the room. Lucie suddenly jumped up with a shout and emptied her chamber, firing blindly.

  The shape collapsed.

  Lucie held her breath and rushed across the smoke-filled room. As she stepped over the body, she briefly recognized the face of her neighbor from the plane. On his feet were combat boots.

  She threw herself outside, ran about a dozen yards, and collapsed on the ground.

  She coughed for a long time before finally sucking in a huge gulp of air.

  When she turned around, the house was nothing but a giant ball of fire.

  Lucie had become a nameless person, without her bag, without papers, without ID.

  And she had killed a man in a country that wasn’t her own.

  50

  The blue halo of the police cruisers’ revolving lights mixed with those of the two fire trucks parked next to the cabin. The firefighters had arrived with dizzying speed, and their powerful hoses had managed to contain the blaze before it could spread to the surrounding woods. But Philip Rotenberg’s home was no more than a heap of rubble and smoke.

  The tense silhouettes of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police moved cautiously around the two charred bodies, taking numerous photos and fingerprints. All sorts of uniforms were present: red jackets, black-and-yellow trousers, felt hats, and Strathcona boots for the Mounties; white lab coats for the CSI teams; black slickers and canvas pants for the firefighters. The emergency teams worked together perfectly, giving the impression of a synchronized ballet.

  Lucie was handcuffed. No brutality or animosity, just a respect for procedure. Her papers, notes, and backpack had vanished in the fire, and she had killed a man with multiple gunshots. The weapon found at her feet had just been taken away in a transparent baggie for fingerprint and ballistic analysis.

  Lucie had been placed under arrest at 11:05 p.m. Quebec time by a detective named Pierre Monette, who brought her to the precinct at Trois-Rivières.