by Jen Blood
“I know him,” I said. Dad pushed us toward the trees. We hadn’t been spotted yet—or at least I thought we hadn’t. Hoped to hell we hadn’t. “Back in Allentown, when I was trying to get out of there that morning. He spoke to me.”
“Come on,” Dad said. “We can’t stay here.”
“Why? Who is he?” I demanded.
“You wanted to know who Willett is? That’s him: Trent Willett.”
“What does he want with us? He can’t be police—he would have just arrested us back in Allentown.”
“He’s hoping you’ll lead him to me—and J.”
“But who does he work for?” I persisted.
“Government—”
This was getting ridiculous. “I thought J. Enterprises was government.”
Dad looked at Diggs. “Is she like this all the time?”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Diggs said. “We can ask questions once we get out of here. Right now, I think we need to figure out how to lose this guy.”
“He knows your car,” Dad said. “We’ll need to leave that behind. We can take mine.”
I thought of the suitcase with the few material possessions I had left in this world.
“But our stuff…” I began.
“Cameron told you to carry the cash and IDs with you. You have that?”
Diggs nodded to a backpack slung over his shoulder. “Yeah—we’ve got it. But everything else…”
“We can replace everything else,” Dad said.
“So, we just… what?” I asked. “Leave the car here?”
“That’s right,” my father agreed, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I’m sorry, but right now this is what you can expect—a life where nothing is permanent. Nothing is certain. It’s not a good way to live.”
“Well, right now I don’t see a lot of options,” I said. “We have to get Kat. We’ll give them the memory card... We can figure out the next step once I know Mom is safe.”
He massaged his temples, as though he had a monster headache. Another flash came through from childhood: My father in the greenhouse, head in his hands, staring at the stone floor beneath our feet for what seemed like hours. The world is a hard place, baby. That’s why we stay here… Isaac isn’t perfect, but he cares about us. He would never hurt us. But out there…
“It’ll be all right,” I said, surprising myself. I’ve never been much of a cheerleader. “But we can’t just leave her. I won’t.”
“Okay,” he agreed after several seconds. He wasn’t exactly jumping up and down over the change in plans, though. “We’ll try this. But if we do it, you have to do as I say.”
With the clock running down and this new, trench-coat-clad mystery man on our heels, I agreed: I would let my father call the shots.
From there, Dad pointed out a dark blue SUV in the parking lot. We waited until Willett had gone into the rest station before we made our move—heart pounding, Einstein panting, me looking over my shoulder the whole time.
The entire operation took maybe ninety seconds. If I hadn’t been so tired and wired and generally freaked out, it might have felt anticlimactic. The four of us piled into the SUV and pulled out, me in the front with Dad, Diggs and Einstein in the back. I ducked down in my seat. Diggs reached around and touched my knee.
“All right?” he whispered to me. I squeezed his hand; he squeezed back.
“No problem,” I said. “Easiest getaway ever.”
“You’ve had a few of them by now, I guess,” my father said, tapping my shoulder after we’d hit the highway. “You can get up now.” His SUV was a tank—one of those vehicles that takes up two parking spaces and makes the planet wheeze every time you put it in drive.
“More than I can count,” I said, glancing back at Diggs. He didn’t seem so assured that we were in the clear. He craned his head back to scan the traffic behind us, not even acknowledging what I’d said.
“Now—how about some answers,” I prompted, once we were safely rumbling west.
“Your mother warned me about you and the third degree.” I started to protest, but he held up his hand before I got a word out. “You’re right, though: It’s pointless keeping the secret anymore. They’re after you, whether you know these things or not. You might as well have some idea why.”
Finally, someone who saw things my way.
“Okay—so, let’s start with an easy one: Who is J?” I asked immediately. Diggs stopped looking backward and focused on the conversation, leaning forward in his seat.
“It isn’t a who—it’s a what,” Dad said, after only a second of hesitation. “Project J-932—shortened to J for simplicity’s sake.”
“J-932,” I repeated, turning it over in my head. “When did it start?”
“1936. You’ve heard of something called MK Ultra?”
“Of course,” I said. “I mean—I have a general idea. I don’t know a lot of specifics.”
“MK Ultra was a controversial government-funded operation,” Diggs said. Because these are the kinds of things Diggs knows. “Using human subjects, they experimented with things like mind control, ESP, and… what did they call it? ‘Behavioral engineering.’” Dad nodded. “The project was officially shut down sometime in the ‘70s.”
“That’s right,” my father said. “There were about one hundred and fifty subprojects that were part of MK Ultra—J-932 was just one of them. It involved four different research bases around the country: one in northern California, one in Kentucky, one in Maine… and one in Lynn, Indiana.”
“And what did they do, exactly?” I asked. “What was the goal?”
“It was started by a behaviorist by the name of Dexter Mandrake. He wanted to find a way to manipulate behavior over the course of a subject’s lifetime,” my father said. He didn’t look at me as he said it, his focus instead on the busy highway ahead. I got the sense his mind was far, far away. “So, he targeted children who fit within certain behavioral parameters: shaky home life, no discernible support system, a predilection for… questionable morality.”
“Jim Jones, then,” I said as understanding dawned. “That’s where Jonestown fits into this whole thing: Jones was one of Mandrake’s subjects.”
“One of the most successful,” my father agreed. “If you can call Jonestown a success.”
“And Max Richards?” I asked.
Dad nodded. “That’s right. Max Richards, Cameron, Isaac Payson…”
“You?” I asked.
My father’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “That’s right. I didn’t move to Lynn until later—I was seven when my father moved us out of Chicago. Your grandfather…” He hesitated.
“Was a mobster,” I said, recalling the story Juarez had unearthed when I was first learning about my father’s past. “He got caught by the Feds, flaked out on a deal to testify, and disappeared.”
Dad smiled faintly. “Apparently I have no secrets here. Yes… My father was with the mob, so there was already some moral ambiguity. When we moved to Lynn, Mandrake zeroed in on me immediately.”
I dug my fingers into my palms. “What did they do to you?”
He reached across the seat and slid his hand into mine. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was working… for a while, anyway.”
“Until your sister was killed,” Diggs said. A shadow crossed my father’s face, grief coloring his blue eyes.
“Yes,” he agreed with a nod. “Mandrake never bargained for that degree of violence… or if he had, he wouldn’t have admitted it. What they did to my sister, though…” He shook his head, his eyes welling. “It knocked me out of the project. It knocked me out of my life. I tried to disappear… Mandrake suggested maybe I should talk to Jim Jones. Then, I would see firsthand that not everyone who came out of the project was a monster. J-932 was capable of inspiring greatness—making the world a better place.”
“So you joined Jones and the People’s Temple,” I said.
“I was screwed up, but not so much
that I didn’t recognize the church’s imperfections. It didn’t feel… right, exactly, when I saw what Jim was doing. The way he manipulated his followers. But, by then I was under Mandrake’s thumb again. Taking the drugs. Following the protocol. I saw the results we were achieving: Jim making the papers, striving for racial equality, establishing social outreach programs… Mandrake’s kids were always taught that the ends justify the means.”
“And Cameron?” I asked. “Where did he fit into this? Or Isaac Payson? What is the point of a project where the subjects just start killing indiscriminately?”
“That’s why J-932 was ultimately shut down,” Dad said. “MK Ultra was officially put out of commission in 1973, but it continued for a few years beyond that—off the books, of course. After Jonestown, though, the CIA cut all ties with Mandrake. He went underground… but he continued with his research, using private funding.”
“Why the hell is he still out there?” Diggs asked. “If the government knew about this, why hasn’t he been arrested? Why aren’t you working with them to take him down?”
“It’s not that simple,” my father said. “For one thing, Mandrake died about twenty years ago—there’s no ‘him’ to take down anymore. There’s the Project, and Mandrake’s successors have kept things going over the years. As for why I’m not helping the government get rid of them…” His eyes shifted toward me for a split second before they returned to the road. “You don’t know what Willett is like. He’s ruthless—and corrupt. Whatever happens, don’t let him anywhere near you. The Project may have been bad, but it doesn’t have anything on Willett and his people. At least with J, I know their end goal.”
“Which is?” I asked. He glanced in the rearview mirror briefly. I thought of the memory card Diggs and I had decrypted. What the hell did it mean? “Dad?” I pressed.
“When Mandrake started, the Project was all about scientific inquiry: How much could an outside party manipulate the human mind? By the time the government cut off funding and Mandrake died and new concerns took over, that question had been answered. Under the right conditions, there are no limits to how extensive that manipulation can be. You can make people kill en masse; you can remove conscience, you can change belief systems, you can shift consciousness.”
“If they’ve already done that,” I said, “then what are they after now?”
“Now, they’re putting those theories into practice. They have three generations of foot soldiers around the country—around the world—who were raised under Mandrake’s tutelage. Now, it’s a matter of activating those individuals to gain the power, the prestige, the money the higher-ups want.”
I fell silent. As did Diggs. We continued driving, Einstein sitting up with his nose out the window. What did you say to something like this? It was… ridiculous. Nuts.
“You’re talking about a global conspiracy,” Diggs said. “An ongoing conspiracy that’s been hidden for nearly eighty years, if your timeline is accurate. If this is at the root of Jonestown, Payson Isle, Raven’s Ledge, and Justice, Kentucky, not to mention the women tortured and killed by Max Richards, then I’m assuming it’s at the root of other mass casualty tragedies, as well.”
My father nodded.
“So, these people are responsible for killing thousands of innocent victims,” Diggs continued. “And you’ve known about it all this time. Why haven’t you gone to… I don’t know, someone? I can maybe understand avoiding the police, but why not alert the media? Tell them what you told us.”
Dad didn’t answer for as much as thirty seconds. I cleared my throat, the conversation weighing like lead on my shoulders.
“Because they would have killed me,” I said. “That’s been the deal all along, hasn’t it? Since Payson Isle, when Cameron found you… He killed everyone else in that church, but he didn’t go after me or Kat. J was letting you know, then: The only way we would be safe is if you kept your mouth shut.”
My father reached across the console and took my hand, squeezing it fiercely. His eyes were wet, his voice choked when he spoke. “I left J-932 when I ran from Guyana in 1978, and I swore I would never go back. I wouldn’t let them find me… I would never go through that again. And then I met your mother, and you were born… It felt like redemption. As though, somehow, God had looked past what happened to my sister, had seen that I hadn’t chosen these things… And he’d given me you. By then, I was off the drugs Mandrake had raised me on. I was far from that world.”
“And then they found you,” Diggs said. “Cameron found you.”
“If I were a better man, I would be able to weigh things more wisely,” my father said, his hand still in mine. “I would be able to say, ‘my daughter’s life is not worth one hundred victims, or two hundred, or ten thousand.’ But I could never do that.”
“And Kat?” I asked. Because, frankly, if anyone could flush my life down the toilet for the sake of the planet, it seemed like my mother could do it. “Kat must have known that was insane.”
“Your mother isn’t as hard as you think. But you’re right: She didn’t realize until recently just how deep this went. She didn’t know about Max Richards, or the women he and Will Rainier were tracking and torturing. She didn’t know about Jesup Barnel. The indiscriminate killing you’ve seen in the past year is new to the Project—a reflection of a new regime. Your mother thought the kind of mass deaths you’re seeing now were confined to Jonestown, and that it ended there.”
“Because you told her it had,” I guessed. I pulled my hand back. “She had no idea what protecting me cost.”
“This isn’t your fault, Erin,” my father said. “The people who died… There’s no blood on your hands here. It’s never been about you.”
I thought of the family on Raven’s Ledge: the little girl with the baby in her arms; the old man, half-buried in slush… If I hadn’t been part of the equation, would my father have stopped this in time? Or would the higher-ups in J-932 have just done away with him years ago?
My father cleared his throat again. “This information you have—this memory card you’re using as a bargaining chip to save your mother. Where is it now?”
For the first time, I felt a twinge of anxiety.
“Honey?” he said, glancing at me curiously. When he saw the look in my eye, his face fell. He forced a smile. “It’s all right, Erin. You don’t know me yet. Tell me what you’re comfortable telling... I have to earn your trust, after all these years. I understand that.”
An awkward silence descended. I fought the urge to blurt out everything Diggs and I had learned about the memory card, from the moment Diggs got it to the decryption process to the bizarre scroll of coded entries I now carried in my back pocket.
I stayed quiet.
Eventually, we moved on to other topics. I felt those walls start to crumble, all my doubts fade away. My father was back. He was different, sure, but he was still the man I had known on Payson Isle. There was an ease about talking to him that I never would have expected. It was almost shocking how simple it was to relate to him again, after all these years.
We drove on for hours like that, my father answering more questions; occasionally putting me off; occasionally tearing up, his hands gripped on the steering wheel. We made good time, more and more of the country passing us by as the day wore on. Diggs had been notably quiet for the better part of the trek—letting Dad and me have the time to get reacquainted, while he and Einstein squabbled over who took up more space in the backseat. By five o’clock that evening, we were already in Tennessee.
At a rest stop somewhere near Knoxville, my father went to use the restroom while Diggs and I stretched our legs, walking the picnic area with Einstein. A family ate at one of the picnic tables, their three kids climbing under and over the benches while the parents tried to summon the energy to care. Almost unconsciously, I redirected our path to avoid them. It had become second nature: I avoided everyone, now. Who was to say this innocuous family wasn’t some plant, a bizarre Manchurian familial unit sen
t there to kill us all?
“How are you doing?” Diggs asked as we walked—once we were well out of earshot of everyone else, I noticed. Great: He was getting as paranoid as me now.
“Honestly? I’m a little freaked out. You?”
He nodded thoughtfully. We weren’t touching—I wasn’t sure whether that was my fault or his, but I wasn’t sure how to remedy it, either.
“It’s a lot to take in,” he agreed.
“Daniel Diggins, master of understatement. Do you believe him?”
“I do… Mostly because he’d have to be completely certifiable to come up with anything this elaborate.”
“Completely certifiable isn’t out of the question,” I said. “But I think maybe you’re right. As insane as everything he’s said is, it makes sense. I mean—in a very Oliver Stone kind of way, but… it sort of fits. Explains how everything is tied together, anyway: Payson Isle and Max Richards and Jesup Barnel and Raven’s Ledge…”
My father walked out of the visitor’s center. After ten hours with him, it still felt weird that he was just… here. No longer the lunatic I remembered after the fire at the Payson Church, but far from the quiet, understanding Father Knows Best in my childhood memories of Payson Isle. But then, I was starting to suspect that that time hadn’t been as idyllic as I remembered it.
“Erin,” Diggs said. I looked up to find him watching my father with an intensity that made me uneasy.
“Yeah?”
He scratched his neck and took my arm, gently ushering me onto a pretty wooded path out of my father’s line of sight.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
There was a picnic table in a cleared glade not far along the path. Diggs led me there and sat down. Einstein found a patch of grass and started grazing enthusiastically—a clear sign that our life on the road wasn’t doing him any favors, either. I sat in the grass beside him, taking a moment to be grateful for soft earth and no road moving beneath me for a few beautiful minutes.
