The Persona Protocol

7


The Schizoid Man


Pakistan had been left far behind as the private jet crossed over the Kazakhstani border into Russian airspace, heading north on a trans-polar route back to the United States.

Adam had been undergoing a debriefing – at times, almost an interrogation. Malik Syed was only a relatively small cog in the terrorist organisation, and as such his knowledge of its overall activities was limited, but even so there was urgency to the questioning. Part of this was due to the desire of the American agents to obtain the most vital information as quickly as possible. Lives, after all, could be at stake.

The other part was a matter of neurochemistry. The process that had transferred Syed’s memories into Adam’s mind was only temporary.

Tony was conducting the debriefing in a small cabin at the rear of the jet, Holly Jo recording everything. The field commander had a long list of questions: names of contacts, meeting places, phone numbers, email addresses, past operations, future targets. Adam’s answers often led to tangential but equally valuable queries, stretching out the process. They were almost four hours in, and barely halfway down the list.

And getting an answer was not always straightforward.

‘Who gave Numan Aaqib’s location to Syed?’ Tony asked. Five weeks earlier, the safe house where a double agent who had infiltrated an al-Qaeda cell was being debriefed had been attacked. The informer and four agents from Pakistani and US intelligence were all killed. The safe house was supposed to be top secret; there was almost certainly a mole within the Pakistani government.

‘I won’t—’ Adam began, defiant anger in his voice before he regained control. More calmly, he spoke again. ‘I don’t know the name of the mole, but Syed was given the address by . . .’ He stopped again, faint twitches of his facial muscles betraying the internal conflict as he forced out the information. ‘By Mohammed Qasid.’

Holly Jo typed the name into her laptop. A file appeared on its screen after a few seconds, the machine connected via satellite link to the US intelligence network’s enormous database. ‘Qasid,’ she read. ‘He’s . . . wow. He’s one of Muqaddim al-Rais’s lieutenants.’

‘Al-Rais?’ exclaimed Tony, surprised. ‘You mean Syed’s only two steps removed from the head of the organisation? No way we got that lucky on the first go.’ He looked back at Adam. ‘Did Syed ever meet al-Rais?’

The younger man shook his head. ‘No. And he only met Qasid once – he came with Syed’s usual contact.’

‘Sloppy security,’ Holly Jo commented. ‘A cell leader at Syed’s level shouldn’t ever have come into direct contact with somebody that high up the chain.’

‘Bad for them, good for us,’ said Tony. ‘Who did Syed normally deal with?’

‘A man called . . .’ Again, it took a moment for the name to emerge, the other persona within him not wanting to give up the secret. ‘Hanif Fathi.’

Another, much shorter file came up in response to Holly Jo’s request. ‘Not much on him, not even a photo. The Pakistanis might be able to give us more.’

A sour note entered Tony’s voice. ‘Assuming they haven’t been completely infiltrated by al-Qaeda sympathisers. Okay, go back to Qasid. Did he tell Syed anything else we can use? Names, future plans?’

Adam thought about it. ‘Nothing specific, they didn’t spend much time together, but . . . there was something. A code name. Qasid called it “Operation Lamplighter”.’

‘Lamplighter?’ Holly Jo echoed as she entered the name into the laptop. A list of possible meanings appeared. ‘None of the hits look relevant.’

‘Does Syed know what it is?’ Tony asked Adam.

He shook his head. ‘Just that it’s something major – al-Rais is handling it personally. Qasid only mentioned it in passing.’

‘No indication of dates or possible targets?’

‘No.’

‘Something else for Langley and Fort Meade to listen out for, then,’ said Tony. ‘If it’s important to al-Rais, it’s twice as important to us. All right, so about Fathi—’

He was interrupted by a knock on the cabin door. It opened before he could reply, Kyle leaning in. ‘Morgan wants to talk to you.’

‘We’re kind of in the middle of a debriefing,’ said Holly Jo.

‘He says it’s important. Wants everybody there. Like, now.’

Tony checked his watch. ‘Okay, we’ll take a break. A short one.’

The trio followed Kyle back through the main cabin. Midway along it was a bed, on which lay Albion. The big man was asleep, one of the plane’s flight crew – also a trained nurse – looking up as they approached. ‘How is he?’ Tony said quietly.

‘Stable at the moment,’ she replied. ‘I’ve done as much as I can. But he would have been far better off if he’d been taken to the US consulate. They have full medical facilities—’

‘This is a black operation,’ Tony reminded her sternly. ‘We couldn’t risk linking it to US civilian agencies.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

His tone softened. ‘No need to apologise. I’m not wild about the situation myself.’

‘I sure as hell bet the Doc isn’t, either,’ Kyle added.

Holly Jo was more rueful. ‘Or Mr Morgan.’

‘We’ll find out soon,’ said Tony.

The group continued up the cabin. At its forward end was a small conference table. Baxter and his team were already seated at it. A large screen on the bulkhead displayed a live teleconference link. The screen was divided in two; Levon was on one side, his thick round glasses crooked as he rubbed sleepily at one eye.

The other half held the image of Martin Morgan, Tony’s superior. Late forties, black, wearing a pair of slim silver-framed glasses that blended almost perfectly into his greying sideburns and hair.

And not in a good mood. ‘Do you know what time it is here in DC?’ he asked, before the late arrivals had even taken their seats.

‘I’m guessing around six a.m.,’ said Tony.

‘That’s right. Which means that three hours ago, I was getting a preliminary report on the Persona Project’s first full mission with its new lead agent. Which means that one hour ago, I was getting my ass chewed off by the Admiral for waking him up to tell him there had been complications. Although that wasn’t how he described them. His terms were a lot more colourful. The main one started with the word “cluster”.’

Kyle smirked. Morgan’s glower deepened. ‘Something amusing you, Mr Falconetti?’

The smirk hurriedly vanished. ‘Uh, no, sir.’

‘Damn right it shouldn’t be. What the hell was going on over there? Shots fired, three people dead, the CIA’s local assets working in overdrive to clean up after you. You were meant to achieve your objective using stealth and subtlety, not this James Bond bullshit!’

‘With all due respect, sir,’ said Baxter, ‘the hostiles fired on us first. We were defending ourselves.’

‘And we did achieve the objective,’ Tony pointed out. ‘We successfully implanted Syed’s persona into Adam – we’re in the middle of debriefing him,’ he added, with emphasis, ‘and then put Syed back on the street without his realising what had happened.’

‘And when he finds out that three of his people have mysteriously vanished, then what?’ demanded Morgan.

To everyone’s surprise, Adam answered – almost in Syed’s voice. ‘He will be suspicious, but will accept it as a natural risk of fighting the holy war. He has lost other members of his cell before. In Pakistan, people do sometimes just . . . disappear.’

Morgan was faintly unsettled, as if he were being briefed by the terrorist himself. ‘Even three at once?’

‘It is the price of jihad. And there are many more to take their place.’

‘Well, that’s reassuring to know,’ Kyle muttered sarcastically.

‘As you can see,’ said Tony, ‘Adam’s got Syed’s knowledge on tap. So, if you’re going to chew us out, wait until we get back to DC so we can keep extracting it while we still have time. Once we’ve done that, then you and the Admiral can decide if the Persona Project is a success or a failure.’

‘Right now, the Persona Project is dead in the water, Tony,’ Morgan snapped. ‘I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but there’s more to it than just Adam. And the other man it depends upon took a bullet to the back!’

Tony glanced back towards Albion’s bed. ‘I hadn’t forgotten.’

‘Good. Then I hope you also haven’t forgotten that he’s the only person who knows how to calculate the drug doses so they don’t kill the subjects. Without him, we don’t have a project. And his chances of going back into the field any time soon don’t look good.’

‘He’s currently stable.’

‘Stable isn’t the same as healthy.’ He looked down at something below the camera’s field of view. ‘I see from the mission transcripts that Ms Voss suggested using the pre-recorded emergency persona so that Adam could perform field surgery on Roger. That might have improved his chances – why didn’t you consider it?’

‘That was my decision,’ said Adam before Tony could reply. ‘Doing that would have erased Syed’s persona, and let his men escape. It would have cost us the mission.’

‘Not doing it might have cost us the entire project,’ Morgan countered. ‘Why wasn’t Syed’s persona recorded during transfer?’

‘We needed to get Syed back into play as fast as possible,’ explained Tony. ‘All the encoding and compression needed to record a persona would have taken too long. Also,’ he added, before his superior could respond, ‘doing that would have meant imprinting Adam with the same persona twice. You know we can’t risk the potential side effects.’

Morgan was annoyed at being challenged, but acquiesced. ‘Okay. But I want recording of subjects’ personas to be standard operating procedure from now on unless absolutely necessary.’

‘Understood.’

‘That is, assuming there’s ever another mission. We can’t do anything without Roger to administer the drugs.’

‘There might . . . be a solution to that problem.’

Everyone looked round at the weak voice. Albion was awake and trying to lift his head, despite the efforts of his nurse to keep him still. ‘Roger, you should be trying to rest,’ said Tony.

‘Rest is for babies and the idle,’ Albion replied, forcing a thin smile. ‘No, I’ve been listening; to some of it, anyway. I’m not sure what drugs this young lady’s given me, but they make me . . . drift in and out. They are . . . rather good, though.’

‘I guess I haven’t given you enough,’ the nurse complained. ‘Please, lie down.’

‘In a minute. Look, Martin, I know someone who . . . might be able to stand in for me – to be my locum tenens, so to speak.’

Morgan’s expression turned probing. ‘I thought determining the drug doses was too complicated for anyone but you?’

‘She has the necessary training to . . . assess the subject’s condition and make the appropriate calculations.’ Albion’s head sagged on to the pillow, to the nurse’s relief. ‘I’m sure I can . . . teach her.’

‘I’ll consider it,’ said Morgan. ‘But right now, you need to get some re— some sleep.’

‘I’ll see that he does, sir,’ said the nurse. Albion made a ‘Bah!’ sound, but settled back into the bed.

Tony looked back up at Morgan’s image. ‘Are we done for now, Martin? Because I need to get back to the debrief. We’ve already found a connection between Syed and Muqaddim al-Rais—’

‘Al-Rais?’ Morgan interrupted. Baxter also reacted with surprise at the name. The Saudi was the most wanted terrorist in the world, the current leader of al-Qaeda – which ten months earlier had taken revenge for the loss of its previous commander, Mahjub Najjar, by detonating a massive car bomb in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. The explosion had not only killed over a hundred people, but also assassinated its primary target: the US Secretary of State, Sandra Easton. ‘How strong a connection? Anything that would give us his location?’

‘No – at least, not yet. But we do know that he’s personally overseeing something. “Operation Lamplighter” is what Syed says it’s called.’

‘It doesn’t ring any bells,’ said Morgan. ‘But I’ll pass it straight up to the Admiral so we can get the entire USIC on it. Anything that gives us a shot at al-Rais . . .’

‘I’d be happy to take the shot personally against that son of a bitch, sir,’ said Baxter.

‘I’m sure we all would. All right, Tony, get back to work on Syed. The rest of your chewing-out can keep until you get back to Washington.’ His image disappeared.

‘So, uh, are we done, Tony?’ Levon asked drowsily from the other half of the screen. ‘Not that I don’t mind being dragged out of bed to be shouted at by the boss, but I’d kinda like to get back to sleep now.’

‘We’ll see you tomorrow. Today. Whatever damn day it is in DC,’ Tony told him. Levon grinned, then the screen went dark. ‘Okay, Adam, Holly Jo – let’s get back to it.’

‘Whoa, a three-way,’ said Kyle, smirking at Holly Jo as she stood.

She sighed and gestured towards the emergency exit. ‘Can I kick him out of that hatch?’

Tony smiled. ‘If you take care of the paperwork.’ He led the way back down the cabin, pausing as he reached Albion. ‘Roger, is this friend of yours really good enough to take your place?’

‘Oh, nobody’s good enough to do that,’ Albion whispered, with a feeble smile. ‘But she has the right background in medicine and psychology, and has . . . a good handle on people. I think she’ll be able to fill in until I’m back on my feet.’

‘You make sure that doesn’t take too long, okay?’

‘Get well soon, Roger,’ Holly Jo added.

Adam, behind her, said nothing, staring down at Albion in silence. For a brief moment his eyes widened, taking on the intensity – and anger – of Syed’s gaze . . . but then it faded.

Only Tony had noticed. ‘I think we need to finish the debriefing,’ he said quietly.

Adam looked at him, face now blank. ‘I think you’re right.’

The following hours saw the jet pass over the Arctic wastes of Greenland and Canada, cruising above Quebec and New York State before beginning its descent towards the eastern seaboard. The debriefing was finally concluded. Every secret Syed knew about the terrorist organisation’s operations and members had been exposed, the Pakistani’s memories picked clean.

Now it was time for another kind of cleansing.

Adam emerged from a washroom, drawing a double-take from Holly Jo. ‘Wow. I almost didn’t recognise you,’ she said, only half joking.

Toradze’s moustache was gone, the black dye rinsed out to return Adam’s hair to its natural dark brown. Even his eyes had changed, the piercing blue of the Georgian’s gaze a softer grey now that the contact lenses had been removed. The expensive clothing had also been replaced by an unremarkable shirt and slacks, the gold jewellery returned to an evidence bag.

Shorn of the arms dealer’s distinguishing marks, what remained was . . . anonymous. Had random onlookers been asked to describe Adam Gray after glimpsing him in a crowd, that would have been the recurring word. He was handsome enough in a way that could charitably have been described as ‘generic’, none of his features particularly distinctive. Even his background was hard to determine; most of the hypothetical onlookers would have thought him Caucasian, but the more observant might have picked out other traits. Some Hispanic ancestry? Persian, perhaps, or Arabic? It was impossible to be sure.

‘It’s an improvement,’ said Tony, looking up. The other team members were in various states of sleep throughout the cabin. ‘Welcome back.’

‘Not quite yet.’ Adam held up the case containing Albion’s medical equipment. ‘There’s one more thing to do.’

‘You don’t want to let it happen naturally?’ Holly Jo asked. ‘You look exhausted – you’ve been awake for nearly twenty-four hours. You really need some sleep.’

‘I want Syed’s persona wiped.’ There was a tinge of disgust to his otherwise flat voice. ‘Now.’

Tony looked towards Albion. ‘Will it be safe without Roger to work out the amount?’

‘It’s a standard dose.’

Tony hesitated, then took the case. ‘If you’re sure.’

‘I’m sure. I don’t want this guy’s thoughts in my head any more.’

The two men went to the rear cabin. Adam sat and tugged down his shirt collar as Tony took out the jet injector. ‘Is this set?’

‘Yes. Do it.’

Tony cautiously placed the nozzle against Adam’s neck and pulled the trigger. Adam flinched, then leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Tony waited, counting thirty seconds on his watch. ‘Adam? You okay?’

‘Yes.’ He slowly opened his eyes. ‘Do a memory check. I want to be sure he’s gone.’

‘Okay. Let’s see . . . what year did Syed go on the Hajj?’

‘That was . . . 2005.’ Adam caught Tony’s dismay. ‘No, it’s okay – that came up during the debriefing, remember? When you asked how he first met Fathi. If we pulled it out of his memory, now I remember it too.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No problem. Ask something else.’

‘How about . . . the name of Syed’s first imam when he was a kid.’

Adam thought for a few seconds. ‘No idea.’

‘How old was he when he first fired a gun?’

Another pause. ‘Nothing.’

‘He’s gone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank God. You must be relieved to be rid of that bastard.’

Another emotionless ‘Yes.’ Adam rubbed the mark on his neck, then stood. ‘How long before we land?’

‘About thirty minutes. I need to go straight to STS once I’ve seen Roger to the hospital; I imagine Morgan’s got a boot with my ass’s name on it. Harper too, I expect. You should go home, though. You could use some sleep.’

‘So could you.’

‘I didn’t get shot at. You deserve the morning off for that, at least. Never say I’m not a generous boss.’ He grinned.

Adam didn’t respond to the joke. ‘Okay. I’ll be at STS by noon.’ He returned to the main cabin.

‘See you there,’ Tony said with a sigh.





Washington DC, United States


After the plane touched down, Albion was taken away by an ambulance, Tony going with him. The rest of the team dispersed. Holly Jo offered to share a taxi with Adam, but he declined.

He returned to his apartment. The living room was plain, even spartan. White walls with no pictures, comfortable but utilitarian black Ikea furniture, a desk in one corner with an Apple laptop upon it. No ornamentation of any kind. There was no television. Or a stereo, even a radio. The entire place was devoid of personal touches, anything that might give a hint about its occupant’s private life.

It did not occur to Adam that there was anything unusual about this.

He entered the bedroom, unpacking his baggage and putting everything in its proper place, then pulled the curtains to shut out the morning light. He undressed and was about to get into the bed when he hesitated. The moment passed and he climbed in, switching off the lights. Despite his tiredness, it took some time before he finally fell asleep.

He knew what was waiting for him.

The dream was one he had experienced too many times before. He ran down a street; where he was, he didn’t know. Something terrible had happened. People fled the other way, screaming and crying, frightened faces flashing past as he battled against the tide.

But there was one face ahead that was not moving. He reached it, kneeling down. It stared up at him. The eyes were wide but lifeless, unmoving, surrounded by dirt and blood.

The dead man’s face was his own.

Adam jerked awake, breathing rapidly. The breaths slowed. He looked at the glowing figures of the clock beside the bed. Barely an hour had passed. He closed his eyes again, but knew that the same dream would find him once more.