Chapter III

In the morning, the act of going to the hospital produced within him a sensation as of marching to the front line of battle.

Whitehead, the laboratory chief, was prowling about his office when he arrived.

"Morning," Wolf greeted him. "Got something for me?"

"I have a strangeness," Whitehead said. "A very great strangeness."

"We all do," Wolf replied. "What's yours?"

"This Britten of yours. How old is he?"

"By appearance, and according to the records, about twenty-one."

"Uh-huh. And by cellular structure and metabolism he is at least forty!"

"So."

Wolf sank down in his chair and cocked an eye at Alma Heller, who came into the room at that moment.

"Did you hear that, Alma? In more ways than one our boy isn't what he seems to be. By last night I was certain that he is not a native of Louisville, Kentucky. Now we are told that he is twice as old as we thought he was."

Alma stared for a moment.

"We do seem to get in deeper and deeper. Have any ideas?"

Wolf ran his hand worriedly through his hair. "One. But I'm afraid of it. At any rate, we're in too far to back out. This morning we're going to dig for more information, and we're not going to stop until we have Britten squeezed dry."

He reached onto his desk for his tobacco can and began filling a pipe, meanwhile organizing his thoughts.

"Somehow or other," he resumed, "Britten has received conditioning to resist giving information under deep therapy."

"And not only that," Alma interposed, "but he has the ability to retain consciousness under deep therapy and fabricate a story to replace the true facts."

"Correct. So, since the ordinary deep therapy method is useless, we have to get tough. We have to eliminate his present set of conditioned reactions and replace them by a new set. In other words, we must reset the controls so that he responds to a new set of orders."

Alma pursed her lips for a soundless whistle. "Fisher's method! Do you know how much of that a nervous system can take?"

Wolf shrugged. "Who knows? This is very new stuff. I've played around with a little of it, but ... who knows? At any rate, we're going to assume that Britten has a fairly tough mind in order to get as far as he has. We'll assume this not only for his own sake, but for ours, because we are going to shake him loose from his present set of memories, and we want enough of his original memories left for us to assemble. Now suppose we begin."

* * * * *

Whitehead excused himself. There was work waiting in his laboratory, he said, and watched wistfully as the two disappeared into the therapy room.

Alma began switching on the apparatus, while Wolf called for Jim Britten to be brought in.

"Still going digging in my mind?" Britten wisecracked as he walked in, flanked by the ubiquitous Grady and Jones.

"With a steam shovel," Wolf replied, and motioned that Britten be strapped onto the table.

This time Wolf wasted no explanations. Without pausing he slipped Britten a preliminary shot and began fitting electrodes onto his head and arms.

"We're going back a long time, now," he said, quietly. "Remember back to the days before you started college. How old are you?"

Britten began dreaming off. "Sixteen years old. It was a hot summer. Kentucky in summer. Hot. Hot as a solar cycle ... hot as a bicycle down the road ... a tricycle down the toad ... doctor you look like a big pimply warty green-eyed toad...."

Morris Wolf waited until the drug-induced schizophrenic symptoms were well under way, then motioned for Alma Heller to send a sequence of high-frequency pulses through Britten's nervous system, breaking down synapses and destroying memory patterns. This, in combination with the drug, was intended to clear the mind of memories involving the period of time to which Britten's attention had been directed. In this period, Wolf guessed, the conditioning had taken place. If not, then he must try another period.

Britten's body stiffened under the onslaught and perspiration rolled out on his brow. His mouth twisted and his eyebrows writhed. Morris Wolf himself felt perspiration starting out on his face, while in the back of the room the two "attendants" stared in amazement.

After enough time of this, Wolf switched the controls so that a rhythmic pattern of pulses went through Britten's system in such a manner as to aid the triggering of synapses and the formation of memory patterns. The slate having been wiped clean, new writing had to be placed on it.

"Now," he said, tensely, leaning over the patient and speaking close to his ears. "Cooperation means obey. Cooperation means obey. Cooperation means you do what I say. Cooperation means you do what I tell you to do, say what I tell you to say, remember what I tell you to remember. Cooperation is the key word."

The words went from Wolf's mouth to Britten's ears in the form of sound waves, were converted into neuro-electrical impulses, and under the influence of the rhythmically repeating pulses, from the machine, circulated around and around through Britten's system, tracing a deeply etched path.

Finally Wolf ceased the talking, and Alma handed him the needle with the antidote to the first drug.

"Now we see how successful we are," he said.

He gave the shot and several minutes went by while they waited for it to take effect. They remained silent, as though to say a word would break the spell.

Then: "Cooperation," Wolf said.

Britten lay still.

"Open your eyes."

Britten's eyelids struggled open, but the eyes stared blankly.

Wolf thought: what question is most basic?

Then he asked: "What is your name?"

The mouth writhed, and then whispered, "_Pyotr Fermineyev_."

* * * * *

There was a small roaring in Morris Wolf's ears, and beside him he heard the intake of Alma Heller's breath. The FBI agents, Grady and Jones, had moved up until they were leaning over Wolf's shoulder.

Then: "Where were you born?"

Again the whisper from the blank face: "In Leningrad."

Then: "Who sent you to America?"

"_The Society for the Restoration of the Revolution._"

"What is the nature of this organization?"

"It is an underground group pledged to return the Soviet Union to its status as the leader of the world revolution and to overthrow the present appeasers of the capitalist governments."

Wolf glowed with triumph. "Get that, Alma?" he gloated, and he turned around half way and winked at the two men behind him.

Alma Heller shook a strand of hair back from her eyes. "The fanatical revolutionaries--now they're trying to overthrow their own government because the Soviet is too friendly to the Western governments!"

"This is no comic underground group," Wolf said. "There are some big people in it who know how to do things that we're just barely starting to learn about."

He paused, and considered his next questions. The time had come to dig in.

He phrased his query: "What was your task on the satellite?"

Britten's face writhed. Perspiration rolled down his cheeks in a steady stream. Obviously some of the original conditioning remained, causing interference with Wolf's orders.

Alma Heller's knuckles showed white and her clenched hands trembled. The FBI agents inched forward, their bodies stiff with impatience.

Between hard breaths the words came: "... was on the satellite to watch ... new developments in nuclear power ... complete conversion ... matter to energy...."

Understanding grew in Wolf's mind with a brilliant glare. Glover had been on the verge of taming the ultimate source of energy--the total and complete conversion of matter--a source of power over 130 times more potent than the hydrogen-helium reaction. No wonder the project had been put under wraps!

"So you killed Glover to prevent him from continuing his work. What did you intend to gain by that? Somebody else will take it over. How are you going to develop this power source yourself?"

Britten groaned audibly. His back arched and his arms strained against the table straps.

Through clenched teeth: "Ruppert ... next man in line for Glover's job ... one of us."

Wolf's eyes opened wide, and he whirled to the telephone.

"I'm calling Washington--" he began, then stopped in horror.

Behind him, Britten's voice said, in a strangely firm tone: "_Now is the time._"

* * * * *

Wolf whirled again. He saw Britten, still strapped to the table, his eyes unglazed, and his facial expression commanding.

The FBI men had stiffened, and were standing in place, motionless.

"Cover them, and untie me," Britten rapped out, in a voice that was greatly different from the youthful, uncertain tone he had previously used.

Grady pulled his gun, backed Wolf and Alma Heller against the wall, while Jones loosened Britten's straps.

"So you're one of them, too, Grady," Wolf growled. "And you, Jones. May you burn in hell."

"Don't malign them," said Britten, sitting up and rubbing his arms. "They are good, loyal G-men. But they sat outside my door too long, and now they do what I tell them to do."

Wolf narrowed his eyes and stared at Britten. "Just what are you?" he demanded.

Britten met his gaze, bleakly, and ignored the question.

"We have a rendezvous to make. The two of you will escort me to a helicopter that Grady will order. I need not repeat that we are prepared to blast our way out of this place. You'll save lives all around by being as inconspicuous as possible."

He indicated that Wolf and Alma Heller would go ahead, while the two agents took up the rear. Out in the main corridor they merged into the confused traffic of the busy hospital, two doctors and two attendants conducting a patient out.

Grady took the controls of the helicopter that waited for them out on the parking lot. As they climbed to a high traffic lane, Jones took care of tying the hands of the two doctors behind their seats.

Britten sat beside the pilot, staring through the windshield. "Head due west one hundred miles," he said. "Then I'll give you further directions."

Wolf looked down through the port next to him and felt his heart constrict as he saw the houses below grow smaller and smaller. One of those houses was his; there was a small figure beside it that could have been his little boy. That was the thought that set his heart beating violently and the adrenalin pumping swiftly through his veins. For himself he didn't care so much, but his son needed a father to come home.

He looked at Alma sitting beside him, her face pale and frightened. He wondered how much time there was before the rendezvous. For this was all the time he had. Beyond that were too many unknown factors to consider.

He leaned over sideways.

"Alma," he said, in a voice not loud enough to carry forward over the roar of the motor. "Tell me exactly what happened when Britten said, 'Now is the time.' My back was turned then. Just what did he look like?"

Alma swallowed. She composed her face and turned her thoughts inward, remembering.

"There was a sudden change," she said. "One moment he was in the trance state, the next moment he was fully aware of his surroundings and in charge of the situation. As though he received a signal at that instant."

A signal, Wolf thought. From where? The implication was shocking.

Look at what we have, he continued to himself. Britten comes to me, under conditioning, ready to act out his part to the hilt. We question him under deep hypnotherapy and he comes forth with a plausible story. We might have stopped right there, but we got curious and began to ask more questions. He brings out another story. Why? Obviously, red herrings to confuse the issue. To stall for time. We apply more pressure, blank out his original conditioning so that he gives us straight answers to questions, and we are getting along fine. Then, suddenly he snaps out of it and into his original, pre-Britten character, all forty years of him. Therefore there must have been another, deeper level to the control over his mind which we did not even touch. A level activated by a new signal which we did not even detect, a signal which came at a crucial time.

"_Now is the time_" meant that the stalling was over, that the preparations for Britten's escape were completed.

There were still questions to be answered, many blank spaces to be filled in, but at the present instant there was only one question that mattered. The treatment which Wolf had given Britten--had it been at all effective?

Was it still effective?

There was one way to find out.

* * * * *

Morris Wolf leaned forward and called in a loud voice: "_Pyotr Fermineyev!_"

The man's head snapped around.

"_Cooperation is the key word!_" Wolf shouted.

Confusion passed over Britten's face as conflict once more knotted his nervous system.

Wolf threw his second punch immediately. "Tell Jones to cut me loose," he demanded.

"Cut him loose," Britten echoed, in bewilderment.

After an interminable interval, Jones laid down his gun, found his knife, opened it, and slashed the cords from Wolf's arms. Wolf's muscles were already tensed. He snatched Jones' gun, lurched forward, and even as Britten's mouth opened to countermand his order, he slugged Britten with the butt of the pistol, hitting him viciously and hard until he lay unconscious on the floor.

Then he said to Grady, "You'd better get us back to the hospital," keeping the gun in his hand.

But Grady and Jones made no trouble. With Britten out of the picture they obeyed the one obviously in command. Poor boys, Wolf thought. Now they were in need of therapy.

As the hospital hove into view, he said to Alma Heller, "We have just seen the real beginning of psychological warfare. Where it took us a whole roomful of equipment to condition Britten's responses to a trigger word, he was able to do it to Jones and Brady single-handed. His method is something we'd like to know. But more than that, Britten himself was conditioned to respond to a signal unknown to us and undetected by us. My God, it could only have been telepathic!"

Alma Heller's eyes closed for a moment.

"I think," she said, "that psychiatrists are going to reach the same position that physicists did during World War II."

Morris Wolf looked dourly out of the window, watching the hospital balloon up under the helicopter.

"That's the most unpleasant thing anybody has said all day," he replied.