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twenty-six

Again Jarrow's sleep was troubled by strange, yet vividly real, dreams. He was one of a group of men who lived in the empty billet hut that Nordens and Tierney had taken him to. They were all military people, he knew somehow, although in the dream everyone wore a green, one-piece smock, something like a surgeon's. They moved with jerky, zombielike motions and their features were distorted like the faces of rubber bendy-dolls. There were mirrors on the walls, which Jarrow continually avoided confronting, because he was terrified of seeing that he might be the same as the others, although he knew all along, anyway, that it was true.

He woke up feeling panicky and shook while the images faded away. But even when he was fully conscious again, he still felt acutely disturbed. He was unable to pinpoint why.

As his mental gears slowly reengaged, the events of the previous day replayed themselves through his mind, leading him to experience again the vague but firmly rooted dissatisfaction that he had felt just before falling asleep. Something felt very wrong about this whole business. Something was trying to stare him in the face, but the conscious part of him that was in control kept looking the other way.

He got up, showered, and dressed slowly, moving around as he did so and taking in the mood and feeling of the place he was in. These had been his quarters for several months at least, seemingly. Yet nothing was familiar; nothing evoked any flicker of recognition or touched a sympathetic chord of some buried memory. And even more than that, every bit as much as yesterday, it was all so unlike him, so unchar-acteristic of anything he could have wished to be a part of, so . . . alien.

Several months here—of doing what? How did it tie in with appearing one day at the Atlanta Hyatt as Maurice Gordon, carrying weapons and strange equipment that looked like the kinds of things that secret agents in movies used? Josef had told him that he had arrived there looking for Ashling. Why would Demiro, a volunteer subject for a research program intended to explore a new military training method, know anything about a defecting scientist or be involved with attempts to find him? Could Josef have been simply grasping at a straw in the wild hope that anyone from Pearse might know something about Ashling? . . . No, that didn't ring true, Jarrow told himself. Josef wouldn't act that way. He'd had a reason for saying what he had. Jarrow stopped in the living room and stared at the window looking out over the shrubs screening the parking area below. He had to find out more about those missing months and the connection with Ashling.

The sound of a woman's footsteps approaching came from the walkway below the shrubbery and the steps leading up to the door. Jarrow moved forward, expecting to see Vera again, but it was a dark-skinned girl in a white tunic. She was carrying a plastic bag containing the clothes that Jarrow had left for laundering the evening before. Jarrow opened the door before she could ring.

"Good morning," he said, extending an arm to accept them.

"Good morning, sir. That's all right, I'll take care of it." She had a Hispanic voice. "There were these things as well." She handed him some scraps of paper, ticket stubs, a few receipts, and the memo pad from the Hyatt, all from the pockets of Gordon's gray suit, which he had been wearing yesterday. The girl went through to the bedroom to hang the jacket, shirts, and pants, and put the other items away. Jarrow moved over to the desk and opened one of the drawers to get rid of the things that she had given him. He paused when he saw the note that he had found in the pad on the morning that he first awoke:

Headman to ship out via J'ville, sometime Nov 19. Check ref "Cop 3."

Somebody shipping out? From the things he knew now, he guessed that it was probably a reference to Ashling. Had Samurai known something, then? Yesterday he would have taken this straight to Dr. Nordens. Now, with these new doubts assailing him, he was less sure.

His gaze came to the phone unit standing to one side of the desk. He thought of Vera again. There was somebody who could probably tell him a lot about those crucial missing months. He had no delusions that she had reappeared simply by courtesy of the management to let Samurai have his plaything back; she was on the payroll to watch Jarrow, and doubtless briefed to try to help him jog his memory. In other words she'd be more than ready to talk. . . .

But he'd never learn anything if he wouldn't let her near him. He put the pad in the drawer with the other things and closed it. The girl came back into the living room and began crossing toward the door. "What do I call you?" Jarrow asked, turning his head.

"My name is Maria." A puzzled look crossed her face, as if he should have known that.

"Do you know the lady called Vera, who comes here?"

"Of course, sir."

Jarrow gestured toward the desk. "How would I contact her?"

"Seven-oh will get you the general directory. You should have a personal section indexed from there. I think she would be in that somewhere."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." Maria smiled a little nervously, gave him a strange look again, and left. Jarrow activated the terminal, tapped in 70, and after a little experimentation found himself looking at Vera's feline-eyed features, framed by the sweep of black hair.

"Well, hello there," she greeted. "Sleep well?"

"Not too bad. Look, I'm just about to order breakfast. How would you like to join me?"

"I'd love it. . . . Why? Changed your mind about needing some company?"

Jarrow fought to try to suppress the flush of color that he could feel rising around his ears. "I'd like to talk some more, anyway," he replied.

* * *

Jarrow tried a few guesses based on the two strange regressions that he had experienced, which he presumed were flashes of the mysterious Samurai.

"Are there any recreational facilities here?" he asked Vera as they picked at iced melon and fruit slices across the table in the dining area of the apartment. "A gymnasium, training room, something like that?"

"Why?" Vera asked, raising an eyebrow and looking interested.

"I get the feeling of having been in a place like that here. With a soft mat floor, the kind they do martial arts in."

"Were you doing anything like that yourself?"

"I'm not sure." Jarrow saw the look of anticipation on her face. "Yes, I think I was." He'd read somewhere about how so-called psychics achieved their results by leading their clients into telling them what they were later supposed to have divined. Maybe he could manage something similar too. He sat back and took on a distant expression. "There was a kind of teacher, or maybe sparring partner. He had an odd face, something different about it . . ."

"You mean Oriental, maybe?" Vera said.

"Yes, that was it. He had dark hair. I can see him."

Vera leaned forward encouragingly. "What else?"

"Guns. I did things with guns."

"Where?"

"I don't know"

"Was it outside or inside?"

"Er, outside."

"You're sure?"

"Wait. No, maybe it was inside. There were bright lights overhead."

"You mean like in a shooting range?"

"Exactly."

Vera affirmed with a nod. "Yes, there is a range here. You used to use it."

"Right." Jarrow frowned and tried a long shot. "Wasn't there a group of us? We were in one of the huts over the other side."

"That must go back to some earlier days, before I was around."

"Oh. So how long have we known each other?" Jarrow asked.

"Since around early September: a couple of months."

"What happened to the others?"

"As I said, that must have been before my time. I gather you were something special. Anyhow, there weren't any others around by then."

"So how did you appear on the scene?"

"You don't remember anything about that?"

Jarrow had nothing to go on here and could only shake his head. "Not really."

"Maybe we should take another trip to Philadelphia," Vera said, smiling suggestively.

"Another? Were we in Philadelphia?"

"We went there to set up your cover."

Jarrow spooned scrambled eggs onto a plate and gave her a long, contemplative look. They were alone for now, and she was being cooperative. He didn't know what might happen once Nordens reappeared and began unrolling whatever schedule he'd prepared for the day. If Jarrow had one chance of finding out anything on the side, it was now.

"Look, why don't we save ourselves a lot of time and be frank," he suggested. "Obviously you're aware that I'm undergoing a severe loss of memory. And, just as obviously, you're not here to add to the decorations. So why not simply fill me in with as much as you know? For instance, I believe that I was known here as Samurai, is that right?"

Vera frowned, for the first time showing uneasiness. "I'm not sure that it's supposed to work like that. The whole idea is for you to try and remember."

"But all I'm asking is my own name," Jarrow said. "Just tell me if Samurai is what you call me. That's hardly giving any state secrets away." Vera hesitated, then nodded. "So what did I do?" Jarrow asked.

"I didn't go into that," Vera said, speaking just a shade hastily. "Politics isn't my thing." She relaxed again with an effort and switched on her seductive smile. "I'm more concerned with, shall we say, the off-duty side of things."

"So what does that make you?" Jarrow asked. "Some kind of a . . ." He trailed off, lost for a word.

"You could think of it as a personal companion," Vera said. "The on-duty side could be stressful. The management believes in looking after a specially selected asset."

Jarrow was about to say something more, when a tone sounded from the phone on the wall. "Excuse me." He got up to answer it and found himself looking at a man in an Army major's uniform. He had one of those mobile, expressive, smiling faces that exuded trust and bonhomie, adding instantly to Jarrow's growing feeling of distrust.

"Hi. My name's Gleavey. You may not be too sure of your bearings yet, but I'm the guy who used to take care of things for you and make sure that everything was just the way you like. Right now, I just wanted to touch base and go over the items that we've got scheduled for today."

From the way that Gleavey had just happened to call as soon as Jarrow began pressing Vera for information, the suspicion rooted itself in Jarrow's mind that the conversation had probably been monitored.

* * *

Gleavey appeared in person ten minutes or so later with a schedule for the day. First on the list was a visit to the medical department, where Jarrow was subjected to a thorough physical check. He was pronounced to be in good shape, with the bruise on his face having practically disappeared. The inflamed area around the tiny puncture on the side of his neck, which had been there when he awoke in Atlanta, had also nearly healed. The doctors showed more interest in this, but they volunteered no information about it.

Then came another round of debriefing with Nordens and Gleavey, again with the emphasis on probing Jarrow's memory: Had anything further come together in his mind overnight? Had talking to Vera helped? Did he remember going with her to Philadelphia? Had he managed to recall anything about Ashling yet?

Through it all, Jarrow, despite himself, found his mind going back to Josef and the others from Pipeline whom he had met in Chicago. There was no evading the contrast that he saw between them and the people he was dealing with now. The assurance that he had felt only yesterday, of being in safe hands and among experts who had his best interests at heart, was already dimming. Josef had been blunt and candid in his answers, while Scipio hadn't even tried to conceal that he didn't expect Jarrow to believe him. Gleavey, on the other hand, came across as being about as sincere as his unremitting smile, which was beginning to have the same effect on Jarrow's nerves as a coarse sock on a blistered toe. Everything that Nordens said sounded secretive and devious, as if hiding his true motives about anything had become second nature in whatever world of ubiquitous mistrust and paranoia he moved in. Jarrow found himself doubting everything. The story that he had swallowed so readily yesterday about his medical file having been mixed up with Demiro's now seemed absurd. And when he thought of Rita's honest directness, and Kay, with her calm, reasoned competence, and compared them to the polished whore who was presumably supposed to complete his exist-ence, his disillusionment turned to outrage.

He lunched with Nordens in a private dining room on the floor below Nordens's office in the Main Complex, where Tierney joined them. The same atmosphere of wariness and double-talk pervaded. They weren't concerned for Jarrow's interests at all. It was all a pretense. They only wanted to find Ashling. Jarrow grew increasingly perturbed and morose. When they were finished, he said that he needed time on his own to rest some more.

Back in his apartment of black and white and gleaming metal, he prowled agitatedly from room to room, going back over everything yet again in his mind. There were certain things that Vera had let slip that morning: snippets that he had barely noticed at the time, but which took on new perspective from the changing view that he found himself slipping inexorably into.

He had been "something special," she'd said. What did that mean? It no longer smacked of the crude personal allusion that he'd taken it to be at the time. There had been no others around by then, she'd said. What others? He thought back. . . . It had been when he asked her about being one of a group of men in the hut that Nordens and Tierney had shown him on the far side of the complex—the men from his dream. But if that had been before Vera's appearance on the scene, maybe it was before Samurai's time too—in other words nearer the time that Tony Demiro had first arrived here. And that made sense, since Demiro had been an Army volunteer. Who else could the rest of the group in a military hut be but other volunteers who had arrived with him?

So Demiro had been picked for some reason. . . . Which also tied in. Somewhere else, Vera had talked about his being a "specially selected asset." Selected for what? . . . He stopped, staring hard at the wall in the living room. Hadn't Kay already told him?

And then another little phrase of Vera's came back to him and clinched it: "Politics isn't my thing," she had said.

Politics!

That was what they had been looking for. It wasn't any coincidence that Jarrow's own political views were diametrically opposed to what Demiro's had been. Nordens had needed originals to extract the transfer codes from. The real purpose of what had been going on was to experiment with methods of political reprogramming.

Jarrow turned and stared at the window in a daze. For that was precisely what Josef and Kay had been trying to tell him. But it wasn't what Fairfax and Nordens had told him. So the whole official line that he had been given was a lie. They had lied to Demiro and the others; they had lied about Demiro's death; they were lying to Jarrow still about Valdheim. The "subversives" whom he'd scorned had been correct all along. The realization surged through Jarrow like a tidal wave.

He stifled the anger that he could feel boiling up -inside and forced himself to think it through further.

Suppose, then, that Kay had been right also in her theory about Jarrow's whole personality having been transferred into Demiro inadvertently, instead of just the target patterns containing Jarrow's political convictions. . . . And then Jarrow had died unexpectedly. Nordens and his group found themselves with an experimental subject walking around thinking he was somebody who was dead. Clearly an intolerable situation. So they had simplified things by officially getting Demiro out of the picture—cynically, callously, and with lies.

But despite what the rest of the world might have been told, they still had the actual "Demiro," alive and well, inside Pearse. What might they have done with him then? A cold feeling of revulsion slithered up Jarrow's spine as the glimmerings came to him of the answer. The people at Pearse—maybe just a close inner group of those connected with the original program—had found themselves in possession of a healthy, militarily trained body that had lost all recollection of its identity and which officially didn't exist; also, they had at their disposal the unique new technology commandeered from Ashling, no doubt with many unanswered questions as to what it could accomplish.

And so they had suppressed the implanted Jarrow psyche, and in its place created a synthetic personality of their own devising, optimized for their own purposes: a "super agent" for employment in the most demanding assignments, formed by combining the best skills available from experts in -every specialty that circumstances might require.

Jarrow moved across the room and stared numbly at his reflection in a mirror. He was a freak. A psychological Frankenstein monster, pieced together from the parts of scores of unknown minds. Code name Samurai. Meanwhile, Ashling had found out about the true political goals of Southside, decided that he wanted out, and approached Pipeline. After Ashling's disappearance, Nordens and his group had no way of knowing how much Ashling had uncovered. Threatened with exposure, they sent their -super agent out under the cover identity of Maurice Gordon to find Ashling and bring him back. Everything fitted now.

Unable to contain himself, Jarrow drove a fist into the other palm and paced about the room, slamming his fist and his hand together repeatedly. He stood for perhaps half a minute, breathing heavily and composing himself, then strode to the desk and hammered Nordens's number into the viewphone with savage jabs of his finger. The assistant in Nordens's outer office answered a moment later. "Dr. Nordens's office. Is it—"

"Put me through! I want to talk to him now!"

* * *

Nordens and Tierney had observed Jarrow's eruption via a monitor in another part of the building. "It's as I've been saying all along," Nordens said, swinging away from the screen. "He knows. There's no hope of finding out anything this way. We can't waste any more time on it. The only chance is to try and reactivate Samurai. Ashling must still be in the country somewhere, otherwise Pipeline wouldn't be looking for him."

In Jarrow's quarters Vera had appeared, seemingly concerned. "It's all right," she told him. "They're trying to locate Dr. Nordens for you now. Sit down. It's just a relapse after all the tension you've been through. Everything will be all right."

Jarrow felt an impulse to rage at her, but checked himself. Getting excited wasn't going to do him any good. It would only give the game away. He needed time to get to an outside phone somehow and contact Pipeline. Vera took his arm and steered him to one of the armchairs. He -allowed himself to sink into it. "Maybe you're right," he said.

Vera smiled. "That's better. Take it easy for a day or two. But right now you look as if you could use a drink."

Jarrow nodded, content to let things follow their course now. "Sure," he agreed.

Vera went to a cabinet and began spooning ice into two glasses. "Usual?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Why not?"

She paused. "Does that mean that you remember what the usual is?"

"I haven't a clue," Jarrow said. Vera carried on pouring. He watched her from the chair. "You know, maybe that trip to Philadelphia wouldn't be a bad idea. How soon could we fix it?"

She came over to him and held out a glass of something amber. "Not too long. It's something to talk about, anyway. Here."

"Thanks." He took the glass and drank, then looked back up to find her watching him with an odd intensity. Only then did he realize how he'd been lulled off his guard. He started to rise, but whatever she'd used was taking effect already. The glass fell from his fingers as numbness came over his body. He collapsed back into the chair, still conscious in a fragmented kind of way of what was going on, but unable to resist the paralysis that was taking hold of him.

Vera, her face cold and clinical suddenly, stooped to lift one of his eyelids with a thumb and peer at him. Then she turned away, and Jarrow felt himself fading as he watched her move quickly across the room and open the door. He just had time to recognize Dr. Valdheim entering before he passed out.

Nordens was close behind, followed by several attendants. "Get him to the machine right away and power up the system," he instructed. "We should have done it from the beginning. This whole nonsense has been nothing but a waste of time."

 

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