Finally he said, “Thanks for the call—I want a meeting tomorrow on our promotion package and daily updates on sales thereafter. I want every evening newscast on the big four to have our product front and centre. Do you think we could get Katie Couric to take a dose on air? Just kidding. But wouldn’t that be something? Look, I want people to think that they are the only ones not taking—what are we calling it, anyway?”
“We usually wait for you for names.”
He thought for a moment—dammit, he wished that Miltown hadn’t already come and gone. How brilliant was that choice? Miltown 2? Miltown redux? Nah. Maybe a gerund—Streaming? Rafting? No too—just too, too. Happinex? Too on the nose. Contentrex? No, but ending in “ex” is always good. “I’ll get back to you with a name. In the meantime book the spots and get our creative guys in this office first thing tomorrow morning. I want America a happy place in six months.”
He hung up and thought about that. About happiness. He knew it was the only product to sell in America. After all, it’s in the Declaration of Independence under “pursuit of.” Something makes you thin—and you happy. Something makes your teeth sparkle—and you happy. Something makes your hair shine—and you happy. Something makes your skin perfect—and you happy. But with this new drug, no preliminary step is required—it goes right to “makes you happy.”
He picked up the phone with the scrambled line and added a final small piece of insurance—just in case something went wrong with the drug. “Yes, it’s Henry-Clay Yolles, I’d like to speak to Congressman Villianne.”
34
WHAT’S A LIE
DECKER WAS EXHAUSTED, BUT THE WOMAN ACROSS THE table from him looked fresh—attentive. In his acting class he would have called her fully present. And somehow more beautiful after all these hours of grilling. How could that be? Didn’t she ever get tired? They’d been at it for he didn’t know how many hours. There was no exterior light in the room, so he had no idea if it was day or night—and of course they’d taken his watch. It gave him eerie memories of a night in Shanghai.
After finally dismissing Charendoff as a suspect he handed over a USB key and said, “Then there’s this.”
Good, Yslan thought, very good. “So tell me about it.”
“Why not just listen to it?”
“I’ll listen later. Now I want you to tell me about it.”
Decker looked at her for a moment then started, “Well, there was the thing with the Penguins just a few days back.”
“You had a thing with penguins?”
“The Pittsburgh Penguins.”
“Ah, those Penguins. You Canadians and your ice hockey.”
“Hockey.”
“What?”
“It’s hockey—not ice hockey.”
“Yeah, who cares? So, tell me about these Penguins.”
“It was one of the hardest for me to get right.”
“To tell if he was lying?”
Decker looked away.
Yslan pressed on, “Why was that, Mr. Roberts?”
“’Cause he was a young Russian defenseman.”
“Was his youth, his nationality, or his position the problem?”
“Ha, ha, ha. His English was spotty and his translator seemed to be taking liberties with his translation. The questions—all of which came in rapid, uncompromising English—were all about the young Russian’s ‘business’ connections back in Moscow. A team of investigators grilled the kid while the Penguins’ manager watched. I viewed the whole thing through a one-way mirror they had installed especially for this interview, but they’d skimped on the sound equipment so I had to keep adjusting my earphones to make sure that the treble and bass were balanced.”
“Why is that important?”
“Standard speech is in a very limited range. If it’s artificially changed it can cause confusion for me.”
“In detecting if the guy is lying?”
“No. In detecting if the guy is telling the truth.”
“Right. Of course, you know when someone is telling the truth.”
Decker stared at her. “That’s the point of all this, isn’t it?” Yslan nodded noncommittally. “Look, if you don’t believe I can do that then what the fuck am I doing here?”
Now it was Yslan’s turn to stare. Decker couldn’t hold her eyes. “I don’t believe in the supernatural, Mr. Roberts. I don’t believe in extraterrestrial life. I don’t believe that there are angels or guardian spirits or whatever it’s fashionable to call them. But I do believe that there are mistakes that happen in human anatomy—genetic errors or simple physical trauma that can lead to some unusual abilities. I believe you have such an unusual ability. That good enough?”
“Sure,” Decker said. He found that he was having trouble keeping his voice steady.
“So, the Pittsburgh Penguins?”
Decker considered his options then decided to continue. “Well, the opening questions to the young Russian were pretty basic. Then one of the investigators demanded to know if the kid knew a man named Boris Barionofky.”
Suddenly Yslan was on her feet. “Spell the last name.”
Decker took a guess. She opened the door and spoke quickly to Ted Knight, who nodded then disappeared. Yslan turned back to Decker. “Go ahead.”
“What was…”
“None of your damned business. Go on.”
“Well I assumed this guy, Barionofky, was somehow associated with the oligarchs who took over Russia when the Soviets disappeared.”
There was a sharp knock on the door. Ted Knight handed Yslan some papers. Her face darkened. “Your assumption is correct, Mr. Roberts.” She flipped to the second page and whistled through her teeth. “This Boris guy is a superstar asshole businessman.” She handed the papers back to Ted Knight, who now took up a position in the corner of the room. “So how did the Russian kid answer the questions about this Boris character?”
“He ducked and dodged.”
Decker allowed his mind to drift back to the small office in Pittsburgh.
“Surely there was more than ducking and dodging,” Yslan demanded.
“Yeah, there was sweating.”
“There was what?”
“The young Russian began to sweat shortly after the first question about Boris.”
“Well, surely that’s a sign.”
“Sure it is—oh, yeah, it’s a sign. It’s a sign that he’s nervous, that he’s hot, that he’s annoyed, that he ate something that disagreed with him, that he doesn’t like being asked questions, that someone’s cologne bugs him—sweating only means shit on TV. In real life physical signs can mean anything. Anything. It’s why no court accepts the results of a polygraph test.” Decker glanced at the old wall socket then asked, “Could I get a glass of water? Evian if you’ve got it.” Yslan nodded, and Ted Knight quickly produced a bottle of Evian. “Thanks.” He took a deep swig. “Then the questions began to come more quickly with the interrogators often not waiting for the translator to complete his response. The young Russian suddenly stood and said ‘Moya sistra balna y nuzhdaetca v pomoschti.’”
“My sister is…”
“Sick, Ms. Hicks. He said, ‘My sister is sick and needs help.’” There was a moment of silence in the room.
“Was his sister sick?”
“Without a doubt.”
“And you were sure of that?”
“I was sure that he believed his sister was sick. I assumed that the sister’s illness made the young player vulnerable to the approach of powerful, dangerous men from his homeland. He could be asked to throw a game in return for better care for his sister or the like. No doubt that was the Penguins’ concern. But it wasn’t mine. I got my money and got the hell out of there.” He pointed to the USB key and said, “You can hear the whole thing for yourself on that.”
“I told you I’d do that later.”
“So what do you think about this Boris as behind all this crap that’s been thrown at me?”
Yslan looked to Ted Knight
then said, “Doesn’t strike me as likely.”
“Why?” Decker demanded.
“The kid played last night for the Penguins. Isn’t having much of a season—awful plus minus. Few minutes per game, but he still plays.”
“So what does that prove?”
“Not much except that they renewed his contract for three years. You should read the sports section more often.”
“I guess.”
“So if there was a problem with this Boris it must have been solved.”
“And this Boris guy couldn’t come after me?”
“He certainly could. He’s no doubt more dangerous than ol’ Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle—wasn’t she the sexiest thing in cartoons?”
“That’s a bit weird to say.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t think ol’ Boris is behind all this. Betting on hockey is penny-ante. Boris has probably moved on—at least that’s what our data suggests. Oil and gas is easier than hockey players with severely schizophrenic sisters.”
Decker was suddenly on his feet. “What the fuck is this? You already knew all this?”
“Yep. I told you we’ve been following you for a long time and we have better resources than you do.”
“Then why make me repeat it?”
“To see if you’d lie to me. You’re not the only one interested in truth, Mr. Roberts.”
Decker allowed his eyelids to shut gently—straight lines.
“So is that eye-closing thing part of how you do it?”
Yslan nodded toward Ted Knight. The man left the room without being asked. Yslan tilted her head and said, “So, you going to tell me how all this works?”
“Why should I?”
Yslan took a deep breath. “Look, Mr. Roberts, you still don’t get what’s going on here.”
“This Boris guy could be a real danger to me and that creep Charendoff may have orchestrated a killing and he definitely used me to confirm information, which makes me an accessory, doesn’t it?”
“That’s a legal call.”
“But the guy planned and executed a murder!”
“In all likelihood, yes. But that’s not the NSA’s concern.”
“What the fuck is?”
“You. Mr. Roberts. Your safety is the NSA’s concern. And there are some people who clearly want to do you harm—maybe many different people.”
Decker saw her rub her left index finger against her middle finger. She wanted a smoke. Finally she said, “Do you know who Alan Turing was?”
“The British World War Two cipher guy?”
“The guy who cracked the German’s Enigma machine, allowing the Allies to know virtually everything the Nazis were going to do.”
“Yeah, so what about him?”
“During the war the British spent a fortune keeping him safe because he was a valuable, irreplaceable asset.”
After a long pause Decker said, “Like me.”
Yslan nodded. “You’re a valuable and valued asset, Mr. Roberts. That’s why the NSA is interested in you—and why you’re here in this safe house. And, I might add, costing the American taxpayer a pretty penny.”
“And did he—Turing—live a long and happy life?”
Yslan looked away.
Decker knew that once Alan Turing’s usefulness had ended for the British they literally fed him to the dogs. He was prosecuted as a homosexual then chemically castrated. Shortly thereafter Mr. Turing had had enough of this life—and ended his in a cold water garret, alone and no doubt crazed—and probably looking for a way out of room in which there were no doors.
Yslan turned back to face Decker. After a brief pause she said, “So, are you going to tell me how this trick of yours works?”
“It’s not a trick.”
“Fine. How does it work?”
Decker thought for a second, then attacked. “How much do you know about telling the truth?”
“A lot I think.”
“I doubt that. So tell me, Ms. Hicks, what’s a lie?”
“A lie?”
“Are you suddenly deaf? What’s a lie exactly?”
“Exactly?”
“Don’t do that echoing thing. If you don’t know just say you don’t know.”
“So, I guess I don’t know exactly what a lie is.”
“Few people do. They assume it’s simple but it’s not. A lie is a complicated thing. For example consensus is kind of lie—it means that some folks have been convinced to say yes when in fact they mean no. Sharing is a kind of lie—as one young girl said to her father when he explained what it meant to share, ‘You mean I get less.’ And yes, that’s what sharing means—it’s a kind of lie. So’s a placebo—it’s a sugar pill parading as the real drug. Despite the fact that it does the same work as the real drug, it’s not the real drug—it’s a fake, a lie. When first-world people travel to the third world and they manage not to see the poverty—it’s a lie. Ballet is a lie—no one actually moves like that. Opera is a big-time lie—no one sings like that, and the old fat guy couldn’t possibly be Romeo. The word ‘self-taping’ is a lie. The actor is either doing the taping or the acting, but surely not both. The old Soviets were famous for lies; the People’s Republic of this or that—which people? The U.S. missile called the Peacekeeper was a swell lie. News reports showing dead bodies always at a forty-five-degree angle makes death seem like sleep. I can assure you that death is not like sleep at all. So those news reports are intrinsically lies. Weather forecasting, economic forecasting, any forecasting—all lies. Doctors’ diagnoses—good guesses at best, lies at worst. Then you get to the easy ones—fortune cookies, the reading of entrails, astrology, religion. All easily recognizable as just forms of lying—or hoping. But then again, hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.”
“Who said that—that’s not yours.”
“Right. How did you—?”
“I’ve studied your speeches for almost three years. Memorized some of your better opening addresses to your acting classes, and ‘veracity’ isn’t a word that shows up even once. So who said it?”
“Robert Green Ingersoll, a U.S. lawyer in the late eighteen hundreds. Don’t ask me how I know that—I just know.”
“Like you just know when someone’s telling the truth?”
Decker didn’t answer. Knowing the authorship of a quotation was just a fluke of memory—knowing when someone was telling the truth was a gift that came with a heavy burden.
“Okay. So you’re not going to tell me how it works, are you?”
Decker returned her stare.
“All right, when did you first know, Mr. Roberts?”
“A long time ago.”
She opened the door and called to Mr. T. The large man appeared at the door. She looked back at Decker. “You like Chinese, we know that—how spicy?”
“Spicy.”
She gave Mr. T a few bills and ordered hot and sour soup, potstickers, crispy beef, dried green beans with pork, and two steamed buns, then closed the door on Mr. T and turned to Decker. “Dinnertime.”
“Is it really?”
She smiled slowly. “It’s dinnertime somewhere in the world.”
Decker nodded. “You see, your statement that it’s dinnertime is both a truth and a falsehood. Pure truths are rarer than you think.”
“Okay. I get that. So how did it start—this ability to tell when someone’s telling the truth?”
“Could I get a Tsingtao with dinner?”
“No.”
“A refill for my Evian; it’s losing its bubbles.”
“Sure. I think that’s within our budget. So, how did this thing of yours start?”
“If I don’t tell you I don’t get dinner?” he asked.
“Yep—and then I waterboard you just for the heck of it.”
“That’s not so funny.”
“How did it start, Mr. Roberts?”
“Well, my father was a doctor.”
“Born in 1920, died on
Good Friday a few years back.”
“And like so many doctors,” he continued, “he felt he was equipped to handle any kind of business deal. He was rich, he was smart—he was a perfect mark just waiting for the arrival of the right con man. And sure enough one arrived, bearing, of all things, a curling rink. Well, not the rink itself, but building plans for the rink and a business plan that promised a doubling of the investor’s money in three years, max. Curling was going to be big, explode on the scene. Well, it exploded all right, and every penny of my father’s investment was lost when the building never materialized.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“My father had the guy over for dinner before the deal. When the meal was over I told my father that I thought the guy wasn’t telling the truth. My father laughed at me—but after he lost his money he didn’t laugh and he began to look at me funny, funnier than he usually did. Two years later when I was eleven my father asked me to caddy a round of golf. It was fine with me, I’d never caddied before but I assumed my father was going through one of his periodic cheap phases, so I agreed.
“Between the ‘No, that’s a pitching wedge, not a sand wedge’ and ‘Where in the dickens did that ball get to?’ my father indicated his golf partner and said, ‘Listen to my conversation with this man.’ ‘Why?’ I asked, but my father just said, ‘No reason, just take a close listen.’
“So I did. I overheard what sounded like some kind of business pitch—a slew of facts and figures that came so fast I felt my head literally tilt back.”
But he wasn’t about to tell Ms. Yslan Hicks about sensing a stream of cool, clear air above him. About how he breathed deeply, then sensed something heavy in his right hand and a coldness surround him—and a name, a girl’s name.
“Later that day I told my father that his golf partner was not telling the truth.
“‘You’re sure he was lying?’ my father asked.
“‘Not telling the truth,’ I corrected him.
“‘About all of it?’ he pressed.
“‘No. He gave you some truths.’ I enumerated them for my father—they were few and far between.
“‘And the rest were lies? All of it?’
“‘Well they weren’t truths,’ I told him. A week later my father burst into my bedroom, almost catching me—well, doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing.”
The Placebo Effect Page 17
