Paradime (22 page)

It takes us a little over two hours to get there, and I spend most of this time lost in thought, in loops of anger and regret, but also moving, slowly, I suppose, to a state of resignation and acceptance. Whatever reason they have for bringing me out here, it isn’t to do further training or orientation, that’s for sure.

We drive through the gates of the facility, which is in a fairly remote, wooded area, and park directly in front of a plain, single-storey building. That’s when I start to feel a little sick. I get out of the car and look around, avoiding eye contact with Ricardo. The contrast of the sleek black limousine with the dusty, sunbaked, almost ramshackle surroundings is quite stark. As I remember it, there are several similar buildings to the rear of the one we’re parked in front of.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

I look over at Ricardo, who’s leaning against the side of the car. I’m about to say something to him when a figure emerges from the building, a guy in his twenties wearing fatigue pants and a black T-shirt.

He approaches me and says, ‘Sir, come this way, please.’ He then turns around and goes back inside. I follow him into a small, sparsely furnished office. ‘In there, sir,’ he says and points to a door in the corner.

I nod in acknowledgement, wondering if there’s any way I can delay this. There isn’t. I take in a deep breath, hold it for a few seconds and release it slowly. I head for the door. What’s behind here? I quickly visualise a large empty room, blacked-out windows, a single light bulb, and then . . . after the bullet has entered the back of my head, and I’m falling forward, a spray of blood hitting the bare floorboards just
inches
in front of me . . .

The room
is
large, and pretty much empty, except for a pool table in the middle of it and several rows of stacked plastic folding chairs over to the right. The floorboards are bare and worn. To the left there are two windows, both of them grimy, probably from a combination of dust and rain. These are the only sources of light here, making the atmosphere dim and oppressive, and for this reason it takes me a couple of moments to realise that there is a man standing at the far side of the room. The fact that he has his back to me isn’t helping.

I take a few steps towards him. ‘Hello?’

He’s wearing a suit, a well-cut one, and is about my height and build, and—

He turns around.

I remain calm.

Controlled breathing helps, short ones – in, out, in, out. Because it’s Teddy Trager. Standing there in front of me now. Ten feet away, and smiling.

It’s
Teddy fucking Trager
. . .

Except that . . .

I take another step forward.

Except that it
isn’t
. He looks like Teddy Trager, but there’s something off . . . the cheekbones, the eyes, I don’t know what it is . . .
something
. He also has a visible scar below his left ear. As I get closer, he takes a step forward too and holds out his hand. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

And he doesn’t sound a fucking thing like Teddy Trager.

I ignore his outstretched hand and study his face for a moment instead, the lines, the proportions.

That scar is really distracting.

Is this guy meant to be a replacement for me? They can’t be serious.

I’m about to say something to him when I hear a sound behind me – the door opening and then footsteps. On these floorboards, the footsteps are loud and firm. I swallow hard and find myself wondering, as I turn around, where the nearest subway stop might be.

‘Danny,’ Phil Coover says, striding towards me. ‘Danny, Danny, Danny.’

In green khaki pants and a black turtleneck sweater, he looks a little older than I remember. He radiates a similar vitality and presence, but his face seems heavier, more lined, his eyes less intensely vivid.

We shake hands. His grip is just as firm as before, and, as before, when we’re done he places a hand on my shoulder. ‘So, how’s my favourite cockroach?’

No change in style, either.

It might be a little soon to say
fuck you
, but nor do I want to waste any time being polite. I flick my head back to indicate the guy standing behind me. ‘You’re kidding with this, right?’

Coover removes his hand from my shoulder. ‘Say what?’

‘Oh, come on,
look
at him.’

Keeping his eyes on me the whole time, Coover seems to consider this. Then he says, ‘Leon here is a work in progress. The scar is unfortunate. We need more time for things to settle in.’

‘And for a little
voice
work, maybe?’

‘Yes. Obviously. We can’t all be perfect like you, Danny.’

My stomach flips, and I feel weak. ‘So why show him off like this?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘Well, let’s see . . . you want to make a point? You replaced Teddy Trager, you can just as easily replace me? Is that it?’

‘Not
just
as easily, but . . . yes.’

‘So then . . .’ I look down at the floorboards, frustration mounting, a part of me wishing there really had been a bullet waiting on the other side of the door. I look back at Coover. ‘I don’t get any of this. None of it makes sense. What are you running here, some kind of programme? Or
project
, I don’t know . . . Project Mandrake?’

Coover holds my gaze for a moment, then looks over my shoulder. ‘Leon,’ he says, ‘thank you.’

Leon moves immediately. He walks around us and leaves the room.

When Coover hears the door closing behind him, he says, ‘Okay, so . . . no, Project Mandrake, that was’ – he clicks his fingers – ‘that was the late seventies, after the Church Committee hearings, in fact. So I doubt very much, quite frankly, if you know anything more about it than the name.’ He turns and walks over to the pool table. Resting against the edge of it, he folds his arms. ‘Things are different today. Well, the
names
are certainly different, but I suppose they all lead back in one way or another to the great fountainhead, MKUltra. That was Allen Dulles, in ’53. And even before that, I suppose, to get the ball rolling, there was Operation Paperclip.’ He seems quite wistful about all of this. ‘So you see, Danny, we’re part of a great tradition here.’

I shake my head. ‘I’m not part of any fucking
tradition
. I didn’t choose this—’

‘Well, none of us
chooses
it—’

‘Oh please.’ I feel another wave of exhaustion. ‘I need to sit down.’

He holds out a hand, indicating the stacked chairs. ‘Be my guest.’

I walk over and pick out two of the folding chairs. I set them up a few feet apart and take one of them. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘This programme I’m apparently taking part in, what is it, Operation Doppelgänger? Project Lookalike? What?’

‘Something along those lines,’ Coover says, coming over and sitting down in the second chair. ‘Understandably, it’s classified, but yes, the idea is essentially that . . . to harness this opportunity nature provides, albeit rarely. Though not as rarely as you might think. Leon there, for example – okay, he needs work, I’ll admit it – but he comes from an area of Russia where for some reason we have found there’s a higher statistical probability of being able to find a lookalike, for
our
purposes, at any rate, than anywhere else in the entire world. And believe me, we’ve looked. This programme goes back twenty-five years.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Yes, the thing is, you see, in most cases, there’s an initial
wow
factor, and then you look closer – like with Leon, I guess – and maybe it’s not such a close match. But there are enhancement options . . . surgical procedures, for example, prosthetic implants, genetic manipulation, and new areas are opening up all the time. It’s a regular Pandora’s box.’ He leans back in the chair. ‘But then, once in a while . . .
man
. . .’

‘What?’

‘We get a live one . . . a ninety-seven, ninety-eight per cent match. Almost too good to be true.’

‘And that’s
me
you’re talking about?’

‘Damn right. You’re the jewel in the crown of this programme, Danny.’

I shake my head, struggling here. ‘So . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘What about Bill Clinton?’

‘Ha. That’s another Russian guy, and he’s
very
good, but he doesn’t have anything like your numbers.’

‘Clooney?’

Coover shakes his head. ‘No, no, that was George. He and Teddy go back. It was Ray too. We put Bill in there to mix it up a bit.’

‘Look, what
is
this programme? I don’t understand.’

Coover clears his throat quietly, then sits up straight in the chair. ‘Okay, like any of these programmes, it’s a form of unconventional or asymmetric warfare. It’s an attempt to weaponise something that you wouldn’t usually think of in that context – so . . . psychiatry, LSD, sleep cycles, sex, the media, video games, consumer technology, or
whatever
– and it’s all done in the interests of protecting national security. In this case, it’s the strategic use of political decoys or body doubles. At least that’s how it started out, and you can see the appeal of it, being able to replace key figures, and then influence decision-making, reverse policies and, ultimately, shape events. But the limitation of it has always been this: how do you control the decoy? How do you control the double? Do you pay them? Or do you coerce them? Is it a suitcase full of money or a baseball bat? It’s all a little crude, I’ll admit, and more often than not it ends in tears. Or a goddamned book deal.’ He pauses. ‘Because the double, usually, is a nobody, a loser.’

‘A cockroach.’

‘There you go. But what
if
,’ – he holds up a finger – ‘what if you could engineer it so that the decoy doesn’t really know what’s going on, so that the decoy thinks this is all happening to
him
, that he’s got the chance to become this other person all on his own . . . and then he does, and we just watch. What if you could engineer a sense of destiny for someone and then install it in them like a piece of software?’ He lets that hang in the air for a moment. ‘You know, at one time we had whole research departments working on it, in labs, in universities, looking at this deep-seated desire we all seem to have for personal transformation and what we’ll do to achieve it, the lengths we’ll go to . . . as well, of course, as our capacity for denial and self-deception. This stuff is all there in the literature. You can read it. Also, go talk to Karl – really, he’s fascinating on the subject.’ He clears his throat again, loudly this time. ‘Now, there’s a wild-card aspect to it as well. There’s unpredictability, there are variables – in this case, getting you in front of Teddy, for example, or trying to keep Doug Shaw in line, to convince him this was bigger than just protecting Paradime – but once the subject is embedded, sort of like a sleeper agent, then that’s a solid asset we have in place that we can activate further down the line, if and when we need to.’

I shift in the chair, partly because it’s uncomfortable, partly because I may be about to get sick. ‘And then?’

‘Well, at some point we have a version of
this
conversation. But, you see, the theory is that the decoy is now so entrenched in his new identity that there doesn’t need to be much persuading. The old life has been left behind, we’re all set, and, as for money or coercion, neither of those things is actually required. To be frank, though, Danny, I’m a little disappointed that
we’re
having the conversation so soon. Things seemed to be going pretty well, and then . . . I don’t know . . .’

He lets that trail off. But what does he mean? Is he referring to
Kate
?

‘What about Teddy?’ I say, in a blatant attempt at deflection. ‘I don’t get it. How is
he
such an asset? Where does national security come into it with him?’

Coover shrugs. ‘Maybe it doesn’t,’ he says, after a moment. ‘On the other hand, maybe it does. Maybe Teddy runs for public office, and crushes it. Then we have a glittering prize in our pocket. In any case, he’s on the board of all the major tech companies, and
that’s
certainly valuable. But you know, none of that really matters, because the point is, Danny, you’re an experiment, a trial we’re running. This is now a big programme, and we’re taking the long view. We’ve secured a
lot
of funding.’

I take in a deep breath. ‘There are others? In the programme?’

‘There
will
be,’ Coover says. ‘So this trial, in terms of future budget allocations . . . it’s very important.’ He pauses. ‘Look, since 9/11 the whole national-security apparatus has mushroomed, it’s out of control. There are now thousands of programmes and initiatives, and this is just one of them. But I’ll be honest with you, Danny,
you
revived it. Single-handedly. I’m serious. The programme was more or less dormant, had been for a while. I was involved in other things – I was with Gideon, consulting, liaising . . . and then you showed up on the radar.’

‘At Sharista.’

‘Yeah, after the incident that night, the riot. I’m looking through the reports, there’s video footage, there are photos, and, holy shit, if I don’t see this . . . this
face
.’

More questions arise here than I’ll ever be able to put to him, but as I go back in my mind to that night, and fast forward through the subsequent days and months, only one of them forms coherently in my head. ‘What about the cost?’

Coover shakes his head. ‘I don’t . . . what do you mean? Our budget is—’

‘The
human
cost, Phil. Sajit Pradhan? That prep cook at Barcadero? Trager himself? You hacked his car, you
killed
him. Then all the surveillance, the invasion of privacy, the denial of . . . I thought we had a constitution in this country.’

‘Danny, that’s a bit naive, isn’t it? Don’t you see that what we
have
in this country, what we’re facing, is an existential threat? Nothing less. Now that’s not anything the Founding Fathers ever could have imagined. So what I reckon is’ – he shrugs his shoulders here – ‘we’re no more than a terrorist incident or two away from pretty much having to let that thing go.’

‘Let what go? The Constitution?’