Summit (9 page)

"I can go home, then?"

"With our gratitude and best wishes," Williams said.

Everyone insisted on shaking his hand. He tolerated it. As he left the room with Hill, he saw Culpepper lighting a cigarette with relief and exhaustion.

Fulton felt better as soon as they got outside. The decision had been made. He could live with it.

Hill seemed to sense Fulton's state of mind. "I can't help you with the piano playing, but I can help you with everything else," he reassured Fulton. "It shouldn't be hard."

"You probably say that to all the civilians who do the dirty work for you," Fulton muttered. But was it dirty work? He stood in the parking lot. It was hot here. What was he doing in Washington, or wherever this was? His life had changed completely in a few hours. He had chosen to change it. "Tell me. Did you really think I'd go along with this scheme?"

Hill grinned. "Once you agreed to hear us out, I was sure of it," he said. "The others had their doubts, but not me. I know a patriot when I see one. Come on. I'll take you home."

Fulton followed Hill to the waiting limousine. What, he wondered, did a patriot look like?

* * *

Bertram Culpepper wandered into Houghton's office after the meeting. The two of them got along surprisingly well, considering that they ran competing branches of the Company. "How do you think it went?" he asked.

"I thought Williams laid it on a bit thick," Houghton replied. "But it worked, so obviously he knows what he's doing."

"He's desperate for a success to make up for the Coyne fiasco," Culpepper said. "He's afraid Loud's going to put him out to pasture."

"Maybe Loud should put him out to pasture."

Culpepper shrugged. He looked down at his hands. He had no urge to smoke in private, or with friends. Strange what your body can do to you. "Do you think this pianist can pull it off?" he asked finally.

Houghton pressed his hands together in front of his face. "Who cares?" he answered finally.

Chapter 7

So many meetings. Theodore Winn wished he could hold them all outdoors. He did his best thinking while stomping through the woods. Unfortunately, few of his advisers could keep up with him when he started stomping, so he had to spend long days like this one sitting in the Oval Office and catering to their weakness. It was one of the sacrifices you made to be president.

He stared at his CIA director, George Loud. The little fellow would probably faint after half a mile of stomping. Still, he was loyal, and he had a good head on his shoulders. The same could be said of the other people at the meeting;—Benjamin Follett, the national security adviser, and Follett's assistant, Colonel Thomas Poole. Follett was a gray, thin, scholarly type who had probably never gone for a walk in the woods in his life. Poole, on the other hand, looked like he could do ten miles double time carrying a forty-pound pack. He had the tanned, rugged appearance of a career soldier, even while wearing a pinstripe suit and sitting in an armchair. Winn liked men who were in shape.

"Okay, George, what's the problem?" Winn asked.

Loud folded his hands as he prepared to state why he had asked for the meeting. "Some background, if I may, Mr. President," he began. Winn had to strain to hear him. Loud's voice sounded as out of shape as his body. "Some of you may be familiar with Rod Williams, my deputy director. Rod is interested in some of the more, er, esoteric areas of intelligence. In particular, he has a theory that armies and weapons are becoming passé, and that the next great battlefield will be the human mind."

"You mean propaganda, disinformation, that sort of thing?" Follett asked. He did not sound impressed.

Loud shook his head. "Esoteric," he repeated. "More along the lines of drugs, ESP, psychic weapons."

"Oh Lord," Follett said. "like putting LSD in the Moscow water supply?"

Loud sighed. "Something like that, Ben, although I don't know all the schemes he's cooked up. I just know that he believes the Soviets are spending massive sums of money in this area, and if we don't keep up, the results will be catastrophic for America."

"Is he right about the Soviets?" Winn asked. This was all news to him, and he didn't like being surprised.

"Probably not," Loud replied. "The Soviets certainly dabble in this sort of thing, but the general feeling is that they put no more effort into it than we do. Like us, they probably have some people like Rod who think it's important, and others who just want to do it because they think the other side is doing it."

"All right. What's the problem, then?"

Loud looked around. "Have any of you heard of endorphins?" he whispered.

Winn certainly hadn't; they sounded like some kind of fish to him. Follett looked blank. "Chemicals in the brain," Poole said, as if responding to an order. "Natural opiates."

Loud nodded. "Very good, Tom. In general, they're the brain's own version of morphine, although the scientists tell me there are different endorphins with different effects. Rod Williams thought it would be interesting to play with endorphins and see if they had some value in this mind race of his. He got a modest research effort funded in the Science and Technology Directorate to study these chemicals and their effect on behavior. And, as you might expect, things finally went haywire."

"The CIA hasn't been experimenting on people without their consent, has it?" Winn demanded.

"No, thank God. Something happened to one of the researchers, a neurochemist named Coyne. They're still trying to figure it out, but apparently the drug he was working on affected the way a specific endorphin is produced and then binds to, um, receptor sites on the neurons in the brain. The effect—at least in Coyne's case—is to induce a state of overwhelming tranquility, optimism, and suggestibility. Everything is fine in Doctor Coyne's world, everything is working out for the best. If you stick him in a dungeon, he'll think it's the most wonderful dungeon he has ever seen, and he'll thank you for giving him the opportunity to rot there. Talking to the man is like eating cotton candy."

"Sort of like a short-term lobotomy?" Follett asked.

"Perhaps. Except that Coyne's higher mental faculties don't appear to be affected. He can still function almost normally. Also, the effect doesn't appear to be temporary—at least, they haven't found a way of reversing it yet. And that's our problem. We've got one angry wife on our hands. We've had to keep Coyne in-house while we study him and try to fix him, and she's demanding to know what we've done with her husband. She's threatening to hold a press conference and expose us as a bunch of criminals. We can't just make her disappear—this isn't Russia, after all. If we explain to her what we've been up to, she'll probably tell the media. We'll look bad for doing this sort of thing, and we also give the Soviets some valuable information about our research."

"But this drug sounds like it could be very useful," Winn said. "Maybe this guy Coyne has found a cure for depression or schizophrenia. Why not just let the world know about it?"

"Because it could also be very dangerous," Loud noted. "We have no idea what the side effects are. Do we want unhappy teenagers getting black-market versions of the drug and possibly ruining their whole lives?"

"Also, do we want Moscow to develop it and use it against us?" Colonel Poole asked. "That's just what the communists dream of—a nation of smiling, obedient automatons."

"Well, Tom," Benjamin Follett said, "I think you might be exagger—"

"No," Winn interrupted, "I think he's got a good point. Just how potent is this stuff, George?"

Loud shook his head. "Once again, Mr. President, the scientists are still studying it. But indications are that it's extremely potent indeed. Coyne evidently didn't ingest the drug—he merely inhaled its fumes. So this could be a little different from the LSD scenario, where the commies poison the reservoirs and give everyone a bad trip and that's that. It could get released into the air and we might not even know what's happening to us."

"That seems a little farfetched," Winn observed.

"Perhaps," Colonel Poole said, "but this drug scares me nevertheless. Under the kind of comprehensive arms reduction treaty the Soviets are proposing, new types of weapons become increasingly important—they're the only way either side can gain an edge. Imagine the battlefield uses of something like this. You spray it on the enemy, and they no longer care about fighting. And do you think the Soviets would hesitate to use this drug on dissidents?"

The man was making some good points. "What about an antidote?" Winn asked Loud.

"We can't come up with an antidote until we understand what the drug is doing," Loud explained. "And the person who knows the most about it is Coyne, and he doesn't want to help. He thinks the drug is a gift from God. Trying to find an antidote would be sacrilege."

Winn sighed. This was messy. "Maybe if we just put out the information in vague terms," he wondered.

"Mr. President," Poole said, leaning forward in his chair, "I know your natural inclination is to be completely honest with the American public, but I think in this case it's imperative that we keep this matter classified until we've had a chance to study it further. The possible repercussions are simply too great."

Yes, well, Poole was right. Winn nodded. "Can the wife be kept quiet, George? Talk to her yourself, explain the national security implications without being too precise, make sure she understands that we're doing all we can."

"I'll do my best," Loud replied.

"I'll talk to her too, if necessary. And put all your resources into trying to find an antidote for this thing."

"Of course."

"May I suggest," Benjamin Follett said, "that you might want to receive reports about all aspects of this matter?"

"Absolutely." Winn didn't like being kept in the dark about anything. There were going to be no unpleasant surprises in his administration; that was one reason he had put Loud in charge of the CIA. "And what about this guy Williams? Is he a loose cannon, George?"

"Well, he obviously has a great deal of autonomy. And he's made a lot of influential friends over the years. I could fire him, but what if he
has
stumbled onto the next superweapon—or the next wonder drug?"

"You're right. But this is all news to me, and I want to get a better handle on it. I'd like to monitor his operations over there."

"All right. I'll have reports prepared about everything he's up to."

Winn considered for a moment. "No, George, I'd like this done personally. No offense, but you're too busy to ensure that people aren't covering something up." He turned to Follett. "Ben, could you spare some of Colonel Poole's time so he can sit in on a few meetings and talk to people over at Langley? He certainly knows more about endorphins than we do."

"Of course, Mr. President."

"Tom, is that okay with you?"

Poole nodded. "I'm honored that you place such trust in me, sir."

"Good. It's settled, then." Winn stood up. That was about as long a meeting as he cared to have. "Thank you, gentlemen."

They murmured their thanks in return and left the Oval Office. Winn looked out into the Rose Garden and sighed as his chief of staff hurried in to brief him on the next meeting.

Chapter 8