by David Hearne
We sat for about five minutes talking, and then the crackling of the driver’s two-way-radio was heard, giving him the go ahead. Outside a woman rushed to the limo as a guard opened a door for her. It was Pamela Tutton. She was a little out of breath as she climbed in and sat beside Vince facing me. As the driver revved-up the limo, she quickly introduced herself to us. The conversation was cut short when a man outside signaled to her, and we started to slowly move down the road escorted by police contingents in front and back. Through the limo’s windows, we watched throngs of people, lining the streets yelling and cheering for the Senator. The glass was one way, so we were unseen. The limo inched its way toward the town hall’s steps. From my advantage point, I could clearly see the Senator shaking hands with her supporters. The Senator inched her way toward the limousine and then suddenly a guard opened our door to let her inside. Senator Laforge backed into the limo still waving and smiling at the throngs of people as guards and police moved in to separate the well-wishers from her.
TV cameras focused on the Senator and followed her every move.
The Senator slid into the limo seat where her campaign manager, Pamela, and Vince sat. She looked tired, but a smile flickered across her face, as she got comfortable on the leather seats. As the limo door closed, it immediately began to inch forward into the road lined with an ecstatic crowd. Inside, the mood was not quite as cheery, as we each quietly expressed our condolences to the Senator over her loss of Ira and members of her staff. Her eyes had hollowness to them, yet she still seemed defiant and very much in control. Other than a smile or a perfunctory “Thank you!” to our voiced concerns, our physical presence was virtually not acknowledged by her. She seemed to be in her own world staring blankly out into space. She sighed and closed her eyes while she quietly asked if she could just have a minute to gather her thoughts. Without waiting for an answer, Pamela came to her rescue and reminded us of the terrible day the Senator had endured.
It was an uncomfortable situation sitting there with the Senator. We had dissected her life for most of the day and we all felt a bit guilty now sitting with her.
She looked at us and said, “I owe all of you my gratitude for having been such good friends to me these last couple of years. I wanted to thank you personally for your friendship, and your faith. I hope that somehow in the future I can repay you. I also want to explain just what has been going on in my life and how you have all been a part of it. I am sure you have many questions about what happened this morning. After all that has occurred, I feel I really owe you an explanation.”
Her statement had piqued all of our interest and we all sat there waiting. There was a bit of electricity that sort of rippled through my body. I could feel the anticipation that we all shared.
Vince interjected, “Senator, this has been a long, hard day for you. Are you sure you want to talk to us now?”
“Oh yes!” She replied, “It is very important to discuss these events with you. I feel it is my obligation to tell you what has transpired over the last couple years. If you remember, I told you that just knowing me might pose a danger to you. Well, that statement now appears true, as you can quite well see. If you have the time, let’s just ride around a few minutes and talk. What I have to say might relieve some of your concerns and help you avoid problems in the future. If any of you do not want to stay, I will have my driver take you to your car immediately.”
Silence hung in the air for a long moment and then Tom answered for all of us, “Senator, I am sure none of us want to go home before we get to hear what you have to say.”
“Okay”, the Senator smiled, “I need to go way back and explain ‘operation Hulagu’ that I mentioned to all of you when we first talked. Operation Hulagu was a covert program to create very sophisticated replicates of selected individuals for various purposes. I was one of the individuals that was selected to be replicated. I like to think that my replication was to help bring about peaceful resolution to some of our world problems.”
The Senator paused briefly to collect her thoughts and then continued. “I was selected to be the first person replicated and my replica was named ComDefC1. It was designed to have a seventy-two hour life span. Her longevity was carefully tested many times in the laboratory and our calculations had proven accurate every time. Repeatedly, her death would happen within minutes of the predicted time. It is hard to explain how I felt seeing this living replica of me dying over and over again. Scientifically we had succeeded in duplicating what some might call ‘the miracle of life,’ but I was not prepared for the emotional side of being spawned and witnessing myself repeatedly destroyed. To me this was as traumatic as cutting off my arms or legs.”
Katherine paused again her eyes glistened with tears. “I was taught to think of her as a transient physical extension to my own being, but in my mind, she was me. She was my physical, mental and emotional mirror image.”
The Senator bit her lip and looked down. All of our eyes were on the Senator.
She squeezed her hands tightly and continued. “We never anticipated what would happen when we employed her in the field. ComDefC1 was an extension of me. When I was told she had failed her mission, and she had failed to expire after the 72-hour window, I was filled with mixed emotions. First I was actually happy, even ecstatic over her survival, but then fear set in, and I was afraid of what it meant. I knew how hard I would fight to stay alive, and I knew she had my drive and would do the same.”
Absentmindedly, Katherine curled her silver hair between her fingers.
“This situation made it necessary for the CIA to hide me away for the remainder of the time she continued to live so publicly. When I received the news that she had disappeared from the hospital in Iraq and the news that it was believed she had been killed in a car bombing, I was relieved that I could resume my life again.”
Katherine paused, “The CIA kept me in hiding for a couple more days, and then it was decided to move me to Iraq and have me found by agents in Basra. It was important to have me found in Iraq to convince the media that I had been there all along. Well, you know I was found and what happened after.”
The Senator hunched forward and paused while rubbing her knee. Tom took the occasion to tell the Senator that he had read her book on her experiences in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Senator looked at Tom and flashed him a smile.
“Thank you, Tom. One thing that was not included in that book was how I was almost killed by a doctor, a plastic surgeon, who thought he recognized me as his former patient at Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad. He intended to kill me, but luckily one of my aides shot him before he shot me. That was my first encounter with people trying to kill me. Since then I have carried a loaded pistol virtually at all times.”
“Kat, can I ask another question?” Tom Asked
The Senator looked up, surprised and nodded.
“Did you know then that she was alive?”
The Senator looked at Tom and shook her head, no and continued. “I certainly had doubts and a very strong feeling something was amiss. I definitely believed there was a chance she was alive, but I hoped I was wrong, or that she would look so different that we could both exist without affecting the other.”
“No definitive proof of her existence was immediately found, and I began to feel a bit more secure, but then another problem surfaced. My twin had absconded with about a million dollars given to her by Saddam Hussein. This money was supposed to have been for my Presidential run in exchange for currying favors for Hussein, if I was elected. When, I resurfaced, he put a hit out on me. Also at that time, the CIA blocked my access to all information about ongoing research into cloning and made it amply clear that I was to talk to no one about the project. The laboratory in Lumberton, Texas was quickly dismantled and the property sold. Now a big white house sits where the old entrance shack, use to be. No one with the CIA would talk to me anymore. I was a persona non grata. But regardless, I still knew the experiments were continuing.”
Katherine sh
ook her head forlornly and said, “My dear friends, they are still experimenting with quantum cloning. Apparently, once they realized how to prolong life longer, more Senators were enlisted into the program. I don’t know how they were convinced to join, but they did, and now we have a very clandestine fraternal order of Senators that have active twins.”
“Are you saying they only enlisted Senators into the program?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Katherine responded, “The CIA was interested in gaining control of one of our existing legislative branches. They wanted to have more control of government policies and officials. They also were disgusted with congressional interference in their covert operations. Senators were the perfect congressional members to control, since they can stay in office indefinitely making it the most powerful governmental branch. It was the perfect power base to infiltrate.”
Vince looked astonished and asked, “Are you saying, our current Senators are not who they appear to be?”
Katherine looked grimly, “No, I am not saying all of them have been compromised, but quite a few have been. Some were already obligated to the CIA and continued to cast votes in the CIA’s favor to insure certain skeletons remained buried and others were so corrupt within their own power circles that they had no desire to cede power to the CIA. But the younger, hungry naïve Senators could be enlisted.”
“So how many have been cloned?” Vince asked.
“I don’t really know,” Katherine replied, “but I do know that the last cloning project number before I was cut from the program was ComDefC28.”
“Jesus, this is insane. Are you sure this is happening? Do you have proof?” Tom asked in disbelief.
Pamela Tutton answered Tom, “We have proof, but it cannot be used. Who would we go to? Those who are behind this program are covert CIA operatives aligned with powerful individuals outside the government. They have such powerful media control, that the only news the public ever knows is the truth that is created for them. Perception Management and Public Relation companies spew out all kinds of truths for the public’s consumption, and that is what the public is given and accepts as the truth. This new order views the public as the worker ants of the new society. They see them as expendable, easy to manipulate, great cannon fodder, and an excellent tax base to support their projects. We live in sort of a virtual world, where much of what happens is fabricated to support what powerful elements of society want us to perceive. Even the most obvious truths are often warped into absurdities by reporting the contrived news from so many media outlets that eventually it becomes the undisputed truth. Often there is not an iota of truth in these fabricated stories. News reporting using perception management has become a type of psychological means to insure that people view things properly.”
Katherine interrupted, “Who would believe a ridiculous story about members of the CIA and powerful outsiders trying to take over the Senate? No one would believe it. Here you are sitting with me, someone who has been involved in this program, and no media outlet ever recognized or brought up the question that perhaps there were two of me. When Wilson Lawson tried to tell the truth, he was labeled psychotic, a liar, a publicity hound and a greedy son-of-a-bitch for selling his bullshit story to the tabloids. No one can intercede and stop this, because it isn’t happening.”
I felt noxious as her words sank in. If this is real, there is little we can do. We cannot have a Salem witch-hunt of cloned Senators. Just thinking about how preposterous this all sounded made me feel helpless. This was probably how Giordano Bruno felt when he tried to convince the inquisition that earth was not the center of the Universe and then was subsequently burned at the stake for heresy. Now we simply use political correctness to obscure truths and stifle dissent. Who wants to be labeled a heretic by the Grand Inquisitor of the new politically correct doctrine?
Katherine apologetically said, “The simple fact is what you know, or what they might think you know could complicate your life or even hurt you. You must not speak to anyone of this. If you do, I am sure you will be visited by someone to help you forget what you know.”
I looked at Stacie in disbelief that this was happening. I felt guilty that I had gotten her involved in this mess. Her face was one of shock and fear.
“Do you still want to hear about what happened this morning?” Katherine asked glancing at all of this.
We all still wanted to know more.
Katherine continued, “Once I was back in the states, I began to have a vague feeling of being watched. Then one day a letter was returned to me that had been mailed to a person that I had known, but who had been dead for years. At first, I thought I was losing my mind. Why would I have written to a person I knew was dead? I opened the letter and read the content. Immediately, I knew I had not written it. Thoughts that I had buried deep in my mind were revealed in the letter. Scenes were described from a dream that I had as a young girl. It contained things that only ComDefC1, or I could have known.
A month or so later, I received a call on my cell phone from a woman who identified herself as Zoe. The voice on the other end was my own. It was my twin, I was talking to. I was speechless and she said very little other than “Congratulations Kat on your campaign. I truly hope all goes well in your election bid.” There had not been much to the conversation and a few days later I questioned myself, if it had just been my imagination. I almost wrote the call off as some sort of daydream, but then I received another call and after that they continued right up until just a couple days ago. They were never threatening. She never said much other than informing me that she was alive, and that she was watching what I was doing. One time, I asked her if she wanted anything from me, and she simply said to live in peace and not worry about anyone trying to kill or capture her. I tried to tell her I had little control over that, but we were disconnected before I could finish my sentence.”
Katherine popped open a can of Moxie from the limo’s bar and drank a swallow straight from the can and then continued, “I no longer considered Zoe as an adversary, but more of a daughter to me, my offspring. I had become emotionally attached to her and looked forward to hearing her voice reassuring me that she was well. I definitely felt she was really a part of me, and I could not bear the thought of her being killed.”
The Senator’s voice broke here, and she stopped to recover her composure. Talking about this after having lost her husband and some of her closest friends must have been very hard for her emotionally. The Senator moved an open hand to her eyes and covered them momentarily. When she removed her hand, she let out a loud sigh and then continued.
“I will spare telling you all about my campaign and the multitude of protests that have been orchestrated against me. I am sure you have read all you want to know about that from papers, magazines and the Internet. What I want to tell you now, you are not going to find about from anywhere else, but here in this limo. This, of course cannot go any further then the walls of this limousine.”
The Senator paused and looked inquisitively at us for our response. We all of course agreed and for a second or so the Senator scanned our faces. Then her eyes lost their focus as she started to recount the morning attack on her campaign bus. Her voice was almost a whisper as she spoke.
“This morning as we drove down Route 12 from Bellows Falls, a 2001 Toyota SUV Sequoia came roaring around us. After it passed, it swung in front of us fishtailing back and forth. It quickly decelerated causing my driver ‘Jim’ to apply the brakes hard. While Jim was trying to keep control of the Bus, the Sequoia’s hatchback window suddenly retracted and two shotguns protruded from its darkened interior. I could see the faint silhouette of two men aiming the shotguns at the front of our bus. The flash of the muzzles lit up the rear of the SUV as both shotguns fired simultaneously. The blast of buckshots from the two shotguns slammed into the windshield exploding it into a million pieces. Shards of glass along with buck shots punctured holes all over the driver’s pit. The dense cluster of shotgun pellets and intense shower o
f broken glass ripped into Jim, my driver. They continued to fire and Jim’s face was virtually pulverized, but a part of him still instinctively tried to stop the bus. The suddenness of the braking caused the bus to careen across the highway and smash into a snow bank. The impact of the crash heaved Jim’s body forward over the steering wheel leaving him hanging lifeless out the front windshield.”
“The blast of the shotguns and the crash woke all of us that were not already up. Ira rushed out of our bedroom into the sitting area of the bus and realized what was going on. Everyone was now in the main living area except me. I was standing in the corridor holding on to the doorframe to keep my balance.”
“The first salvo of shots had been intentionally aimed at my driver, and he had been hit numerous times. More men had started to shoot at the bus with automatic rifles and pistols. They shot the tires to pieces preventing us from even trying to escape. There was a constant crackle of gunfire and holes from armor piercing bullets began to appear all over the exit side of the bus. An icy certainty of death crept over me as I envisioned their stalking eyes calmly aiming their rifles at my head. Each flash of their guns punctuating the night’s darkness magnified this terror even more. My mind almost closed down as I fixated on these unseen grotesque monsters shooting at us. My brain churned for a way to escape, but there was none.”
“The gunmen tried to open the front door, but couldn’t pry it open. They apparently used a grenade on the handle, pulled the pin and ran away. The device exploded blowing the door off and buckling the doorframe. The front of the bus filled with swirling smoke and then the darkness was sliced by steadily moving flashes of an automatic weapon. My bodyguard, Steven, began to fire at the muzzle flashes, and they abruptly stopped. Another attacker emerged through the smoke, and was shot numerous times. He staggered forward a couple steps and crumpled to the floor dead.”
