Placebo

by Steven James

  They were both easing from their trancelike states in the dimly lit research room at the RixoTray R&D facility. No one else was there with them. This was one experiment they’d been careful to conduct on their own.

  After what happened in Kabul, they’d decided they needed one more test. After all, it was essential that they see this through, finish their mission successfully, and neither of them felt quite ready to do that yet. What they were attempting was unprecedented in their field and would change the landscape of espionage and covert warfare forever. It wasn’t something they could fail at, not when so much was at stake.

  “We should check the news,” Darren said. They both rose, he went to the computer on the desk. Daniel made a few phone calls, including one to their contact, the one who’d salvaged things in Kabul. The one who’d told them about the man in Lancerton.

  Riah was the kind of person they were confident could help them. Not only because of her expertise in deep-brain stimulation but because of who she was inside—how much like them she was. Even though she might not’ve been aware of what she was really capable of, they could tell. It’d become more and more clear to them over the last few months.

  She would be here soon and they wanted to tell her everything.

  True, they would have to kill her when this was over, just to be safe. But she could be of use to them in the meantime in completing their assignment.

  The two brothers hadn’t yet decided which of them would eliminate Dr. Colette. That little detail was still up in the air.

  At the FedEx Office, I buy two clipboards, one for me, one for Charlene. No government inspector impersonation kit would be complete without them.

  “You do know,” Xavier tells me, “we’ll probably get in big trouble with this.”

  “I’d say almost certainly.”

  “Too bad there isn’t any fine print somewhere, a way to skirt around possible prosecution.”

  I kick that around for a minute. “You know what, let me get in touch with my lawyers. They might be able to come up with something that Fionna can add to the forms, noting that we’re there for entertainment or educational purposes only, or that by allowing us to access the facility, the guards release all liability. Something like that.”

  Xavier looks at me skeptically. “You really think your lawyers can come up with something that’ll cover our butts?”

  “Hard to say, but that’s what lawyers do best. And my lawyers are very, very good at what they do.”

  “Well, you pay them enough.”

  “True. And it’s not like the guards would take the time to try to translate the legalese double-talk.”

  “No one reads fine print on forms like that anyway.”

  “That’s true too. They don’t even read iTunes updates.”

  “I do.”

  I pause. “I know. But honestly, regarding a waiver, when you know what you’re doing, you can create a disclaimer big enough to cover your butt even if you were to steal the moon.”

  “Steal the moon?”

  “I don’t know. I was trying to think of something big.”

  “You keep using analogies like that and you’re going to start giving Fionna a run for her money.”

  Now he was just being mean.

  I gesture toward the cards he’s holding. “The lamination machine’s over there in the corner.” Then I fish out my phone and make the call to the law firm.

  Riah arrived at the R&D facility and passed through security.

  She was still uncertain what all this was about, but she sensed that helping the twins was a good thing, the right thing, to do.

  If that was indeed the case, it looked like she would get a chance to help the government stop terrorist threats by working with Daniel and Darren to do whatever it was they actually did when they thwarted that potential suicide attack in Kabul.

  “We let him do it,” they’d told her last night.

  How did they “let” the suicide bomber do it?

  She wasn’t sure, but obviously it had something to do with her research and Dr. Tanbyrn’s findings.

  Hundreds of people might’ve been killed at that mosque, and if she could assist in stopping things like that, help to remove terrorist threats, that was probably an honorable, perhaps even, in one sense, a noble thing to do.

  Preemptive justice?

  One way to look at it.

  She was obviously no expert on morality, but even she could anticipate that if the man in the video had been shot or arrested, insurgents would’ve claimed that he was an innocent civilian who’d been unjustly killed or imprisoned by imperialist Americans. After all, news is all about spin, almost never about truth. Scratch away at the surface of what people say and you’ll always find an agenda lurking beneath the words.

  That was one thing she’d learned about human nature. One thing she knew for sure: you can’t take what people say at face value.

  And spin like that would put more American soldiers at risk.

  Yes, if there really was a way for her to help the twins eliminate threats without endangering the military’s intelligence assets or personnel, it would certainly help the war efforts, probably save lives, and—

  It would be the right thing to do. A way to serve the greater good.

  So, yes, the greater good.

  As she walked down the R&D facility’s east corridor toward research room 27B for her meeting with the twins, she became more and more curious about what exactly she could do to help them kill.

  Or eliminate targets.

  Whichever term you preferred to use.

  The Recruit

  9:13 a.m.

  1 hour 42 minutes left

  Dr. Tanbyrn died.

  We receive the news while we’re gathered in Xavier’s and my room getting ready to head out.

  It shakes us, all four of us.

  Personally, I hadn’t been seriously considering the possibility that he would pass away but rather had settled on the expectation that he would recover.

  The tragic announcement lends a renewed sense of focus and intensity to what we’re doing. Now Dr. Cyrus Arlington is not only somehow connected to the death of Abina but also to that of Dr. Tanbyrn, the researcher he and his company had spent millions of dollars funding.

  And Arlington was somehow connected to the video of the three men in Kabul, although how he might be tied to their deaths was still unclear.

  We quietly take the elevator to the lobby, step outside, and find our two executive cars waiting for us out front.

  Charlene and I climb into one of them, Fionna and Xavier disappear into the other, and the four of us leave the hotel to find out how RixoTray Pharmaceuticals was entangled in arson, terrorism, conspiracy, and murder.

  Cyrus was waiting outside the vice president’s office when he saw on his phone’s news feed that Dr. Tanbyrn had died.

  So.

  Atabei had come through for him.

  Or the fire did, that coma did. Tanbyrn could’ve simply died from complications brought about by smoke inhalation.

  Possibly, but—

  “Dr. Arlington?” It was the receptionist, jarring him out of his thoughts. She wore a telephone headset and was tapping the receiver by her ear to end a call.

  “Yes?”

  “The vice president has been held up talking with Congresswoman Greene. He told me he’ll be here within the hour. He apologizes for any inconvenience.”

  “Not a problem.” Buoyed by the news of Tanbyrn’s death, Cyrus didn’t mind waiting another hour for the vice president of the United States. “Not a problem at all.”

  “Please, Riah, have a seat,” Daniel told her.

  She positioned herself across the table from the two brothers. The mammoth MEG machine took up the far end of the room. Countertops covered with medical instruments lined the walls. A sink, two computer desks, and a small conference area rounded out the room. All familiar to her. All part of her everyday world.

  “Last night,” she b
egan, “you told me that you would explain how I could help you do . . . well, whatever it was that happened in Kabul.”

  “What do you think happened?” Darren asked.

  “Somehow you made that man detonate his vest. I don’t understand how—except that it must involve my neurophysiology research and Dr. Tanbyrn’s psi studies.”

  “Yes, of course.” Daniel stood. “Riah, if we could identify a threat, a terrorist, and without putting any soldiers in harm’s way—”

  “Get him to blow himself up.”

  “That’s one option, yes. Or kill him quietly, in a way that was untraceable. Think about it. If it were possible.”

  She did think about it.

  Identify a terrorist and somehow convince the person to blow himself up—like the man in the video. Let the terrorists take themselves out.

  Or kill him quietly?

  In an untraceable manner?

  What did that even mean?

  Tanbyrn’s research: altering galvanic skin response, respiration rate—

  Heart rate.

  She took a shot at it: “Cardiac arrhythmia.”

  Daniel nodded. “Or a cerebrovascular accident.”

  In other words, a stroke.

  But how?

  She didn’t know, but she did realize that what they were saying didn’t quite fit with what she’d seen on the video of the suicide bombers. “Is that what you’re telling me happened in Kabul?”

  “At this point we’re not quite ready to cover all that happened,” Daniel said apologetically. “I wish we could, but we’re awaiting word on an incident in Maine, then we can explain everything. But for now, we promised to tell you how you can help us.”

  Darren continued for him, “My brother and I were engaged in a study with Dr. Tanbyrn regarding the effects of mind-to-mind entanglement. Ways to nonlocally affect another person’s physiology. Daniel and I share a certain connection with each other, you know that. Even more so than most identical twins.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the studies, by working cooperatively, we were able to cause a person a great deal of—”

  “Discomfort,” Daniel cut in.

  “Discomfort?”

  “Pain,” Darren specified. “Fluctuations in cardiac activity and synapses in neural activity in the centers of the brain that register pain.”

  “And you’re saying you did this nonlocally?”

  They nodded.

  She reflected on what she knew of Tanbyrn’s research. Did it really involve the possibility of negatively influencing another person? If it were possible, as he claimed, that your thoughts could affect another person’s physiology, then—

  Especially if you know which areas of the brain to alter. Especially if you had an identical twin with whom you shared the ability to communicate in unexplainable ways . . .

  Especially if—

  Ah.

  So that’s where she came into the picture.

  Stimulating the Wernicke’s area.

  Exciting that specific area of the temporal lobe.

  “You’re actually talking about—”

  But before she could finish, Darren got a text message, looked at his phone, then interrupted her: “Goss’s wife and son were found dead at the house. The sheriff has Adrian in custody.”

  “His son and his wife?” Daniel said.

  “Yes.”

  Riah had no idea who Adrian was or who the Goss family was, but she was intrigued that more people connected with the twins had died.

  Discomfort.

  Pain.

  Death.

  She waited; Darren took a breath. “Well, it looks like we can tell you exactly how you can help us after all.”

  No Wind

  9:20 a.m.

  1 hour 35 minutes left

  Charlene and I sit quietly in the back of the executive car as our driver maneuvers through traffic, taking us to Bridgeport.

  The silence accentuates how affected we both are by the news of Dr. Tanbyrn’s death.

  I think of what Michelle Boyd, my producer at EFN, told me last night about viewers being forced to think about their own mortality if Tanbyrn died, and then being inspired to live better lives themselves.

  But that’s not exactly how I feel.

  Not inspired to live a better life for myself—inspired to bring down the people who took his life from him. That was more like it.

  In a way, I feel like I did yesterday afternoon when I was facing down Abina’s murderer in the forest in Oregon—a sharpening of my senses, a dialing in of my attention.

  And it felt good.

  It’s like the higher the stakes are being raised, the clearer my focus is becoming. It reminds me of the times when I was performing my stage show and I would do stunts other people referred to as death-defying.

  I always liked those.

  Kinda miss them.

  Knowing that I’m all in, that there’s no turning back and no backing down, it’s what I’m made to do. And it’s good to have that feeling back. I just wish it wasn’t coming today on the heels of someone’s death.

  I couldn’t shake the thought that the footage of the suicide bomber and his two associates blowing up was one of the keys to unlocking what was going on here.

  On the plane, I’d made a mental note to take a closer look at the footage, and I figure now’s probably a good time to do so.

  To give Charlene and me privacy, I close the sliding glass shield between the front and back seats. Then, on my laptop, I pull up the video Fionna had sent me. We watch it several times, study it carefully, looking for anything we might have missed earlier.

  But find nothing.

  Just when I’m about to abandon the idea, Charlene motions to me. “Hang on.” She reaches over, taps the space bar, pauses the video. “I think I saw something. Back it up a little bit.”

  I finger-scroll backward, to the moments immediately preceding the explosion.

  She points to the screen. “There. Outside the window, across the street. You can see it between the gap in the shades. A glint.”

  I enlarge that part of the video, study it closely. “On the third-floor window of that building.”

  “Yes.”

  I zoom in on the image even more, but the footage isn’t the highest resolution and the image becomes blurry. I back it up a bit, and Charlene reads my mind: “Could that be a scope? From a sniper’s rifle?”

  The picture isn’t clear enough for me to tell for sure. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

  “Play it again. From the start.”

  We cue the video at the beginning: the men in the room, the table with the vest and explosives, the man tugging the curtains partway closed, the glint, the explosion—

  “Why doesn’t it billow outward?” I whisper.

  “What?”

  In the sharp sunlight I really can’t tell for sure. “Let me play it through again.”

  I start at the beginning again, pause the video just before the explosion, then play the footage forward as slowly as the computer will let me.

  “The curtain. It looks like it billows into the room as the explosion happens.”

  Once more we study that crucial moment in the video, and it certainly does appear that a fraction of a second before the explosion occurs, the curtain on the left side swirls inward.

  “The wind?” she suggests. “Or a breeze from the ceiling fan?”

  “There wasn’t any wind, there weren’t any ripples in the curtain earlier, and the ceiling fan wasn’t on. So that leaves us with . . .”

  It’s all about sight lines, misdirection, and—

  “A bullet passing through it.” She leans back in her seat. “It’s a fake. A sniper shot the vest, blew it up.”

  Expectation. The audience sees what they expect to see.

  I think through what we know, balance it against what we don’t. “Let me ask Xav if that type of C-4 would detonate from the impact of a sniper’s bullet.”

  I
speed-dial him while Charlene slides the computer onto her lap to watch the footage again. Xavier picks up, speaking quietly; apparently they’d just been escorted into RixoTray’s corporate headquarters and I’ve caught him in the hallway leading to the cybersecurity office. After quickly recounting what Charlene and I noticed, I ask him about the possibility of detonating C-4 by firing a round into it.

  There’s a pause as he considers my question.

  “No. C-4 is a secondary explosive, needs a primer . . . but if the sniper aimed for the primer or the electronic control, it might. Depends on the configuration and design of the vest, where the bullet struck. The point of impact might also explain the brief delay, why there was actually time to see the curtains flutter. But a sniper wouldn’t aim for the vest. He’d aim for the head.”

  “Unless the whole intention was to make the video look like something other than a sniper attack.”

  “So you’re thinking a sniper was stationed in that other building, knew what room these men would be in, sighted through the window, waited until one of them put on the vest, then shot it in the exact place to detonate it?”

  “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound quite so plausible,” I admit.

  “I’m not saying it isn’t plausible, just thinking aloud. Let’s suppose it actually went down like that. It would mean that all of our postulating about the entanglement research—”

  “Was completely off base.”

  “Yeah.”

  Perspective.

  You only find the truth when you look at the facts from the right perspective.

  I try to evaluate things. “The sight line would’ve allowed the sniper to hit each of the men. Maybe the vest just played into the narrative better.”

  “Like one of your tricks.”

  “Like one of my tricks.”

  “Is it definitive? Can you tell for sure if there’s a sniper over there?”

  “No. But the curtains, the glint across the street, the fact that the guy didn’t reach up to detonate the vest himself—they all make it a legitimate possibility.”

  “I’ll have a look at it as soon as I can with Fionna. She might be able to do something about the resolution. But it might be a little while. We’re almost to the cybersecurity office.”