He really was dealing with a psychopath. “With what weapon, may I ask?”

She removed what appeared to be an ornate, antique stiletto from the pocket of her leggings and showed it to him.

“You’re out of your mind.” He checked the chartplotter and saw they were nearing their destination, the old sugar plant on the river. At that moment, the wind suddenly and shockingly increased, the trees on either side of the river lashing about in all directions. Simultaneously, he heard and felt a strange vibration in the air.

Son of a bitch.

As the boat swung around yet another deep bend, lights appeared—a pier and dock along the riverbank, with a loading crane and a launch. And rising behind the trees was an unsettling sight: a grim guard tower with roaming spotlights and the buildings of an industrial complex. It was so much bigger than he’d imagined. They were in deep, way deep, and this was something neither one of them could possibly handle.

But his attention was torn away by a dramatic rising scream of wind coming out of the blackness, upstream of the starboard side. He stared in horror. Something began to resolve from the howling murk: a thrashing mass of blackness against blackness, a sinuous form whipping and writhing this way and that as it advanced on them. It chewed through the trees on the far bank, reducing them to whirling splinters.

Perelman immediately swung the boat around, hoping to outrun it, gunning the engine. But the river channel was narrow and the boat’s turning radius too large, and he ran aground on the muck about ten yards from the embankment.

“Out! Out of the boat!”

Even as he cried, the tornado moved out over the river and blossomed a dirty brown as it sucked up water, its sound changing from a high-pitched scream to something monstrously deeper. Encountering the water caused it to swerve away from them, barreling directly into the docks and blowing them up like a bomb, sparks arcing through the night as the power poles went down. Perelman felt the heavy boat beneath him move in an impossible way. He clutched the wheel as they spun about, the windscreen being plucked off the hull like a child’s toy and disappearing into the roaring tumult. Perelman seized Constance and pulled her out of the boat and into the muck.

The waterspout was almost on top of them, whirling so fast now that it looked like static on a television set. Perelman’s ears popped excruciatingly as he grasped Constance tighter and hauled her through the mucky shallows, trying to reach the shelter of trees along the embankment. And then the roaring, shrieking column was on top of them, and his body was wrenched away, spinning, utterly helpless, before all went black.

58

I AM FAMILIAR with Project MK-Ultra,” Pendergast said. “In fact, I’d begun to wonder if this wasn’t a continuation of it, in some form or other. But if we’re going to converse, could you kindly ask the doctor to remove that needle?”

The general turned. “Dr. Smith, please remove the needle for the time being.”

With a faint look of disappointment, the doctor extracted the needle from the IV injection port and stepped back. Gladstone felt a flood of relief. Her senses were heightened in the extreme; she could hear the storm faintly, still raging outside, along with the whisper of the HVAC and the ticking of a clock somewhere. The IV in her arm throbbed. There were no windows in the lab, only a long, horizontal mirror high along one wall.

“The idea behind MK-Ultra,” the general continued, “was to seek ways to manipulate an individual’s mental state—mind control, if you will—using drugs and behavior modification techniques. It was primarily meant as a battlefield weapon, employed to confuse or disable an enemy, or as a tool for interrogation. It was launched in 1953 and officially shut down in 1973, after some lily-livered government bureaucrats got cold feet.” He shook his head with a mixture of dismay and disgust.

Alves-Vettoretto spoke up. “General, I’m stating for the record that you should not be engaging with this man, in particular by providing him information.”

“Oh, come now. He made a reasonable request. Perhaps he will cooperate.”

“He’ll never cooperate.”

“We shall see. Now, where was I? Most of MK-Ultra involved the testing of various psychoactive drugs. We were seeking compounds that would cause mental confusion, lower a person’s efficiency, make them sick or drunk, induce amnesia, paralysis, and so forth. In short, to incapacitate them. One branch of the division also focused on potentially positive drugs, ones that would enhance thinking, clarity, or physical strength, or reduce the need for sleep without negative side effects.”

He stood up and walked slowly around the lab.

“Some of us devoted our lives to this project. It was run by the CIA, but it had a military component as well. I was part of that latter section. We provided the manpower and facilities necessary to do the testing, as well as the subjects. When the CIA shut it down, several of us from the military component were devastated. We knew other countries had similar and very active programs of their own. It was insane for the United States to unilaterally disarm—especially since we were chasing a potential breakthrough. I was a young officer then, and a group of us resolved to keep it going. We resigned our commissions. But we had friends, many friends, who felt as we did, so we were able to secure black funding channeled to us through military purchasing. That funding allowed us to acquire, transform, and disguise the nature of this facility.”

He turned toward the doctor. “Dr. Smith was instrumental in the development of the breakthrough drug. Doctor, would you care to take over?”

“Delighted,” said the doctor, stepping forward with a grin. He removed his glasses and gave them a careful polishing with a white handkerchief tugged from his pocket. His bright, greenish-amber eyes flickered about the room, passing over Gladstone as if she didn’t exist.

“By 1973, the group had identified a class of powerful psychoactive drugs derived from a genus of parasites called Toxoplasma. These compounds were already known to have peculiar effects on the brain. Extremely peculiar effects. Of course, this was before my time.” He poked the handkerchief back into his pocket and perched the glasses on his nose once again, adjusting the frames behind each ear with a finicky gesture. “The pharmaceutical biologists on the team struggled to understand the mechanism. They had almost given up when I joined, back in ’89.”

He gave a little chuckle. “The parasite in question is not uncommon: Toxoplasma gondii, which causes a disease in humans known as toxoplasmosis. The illness is usually mild, with flulike symptoms, and it’s common in households that have cats, which are widespread carriers. We were interested in this parasite because it appeared to have the power to alter mammal behavior. Mice infected with toxoplasmosis not only lose their fear of cats, but actually seek out cats—and subsequently get killed and eaten. This is how the parasite reproduces and spreads among cats—by altering the mouse’s behavior. In addition, studies showed that people infected with toxoplasmosis also experience altered behavior. It causes, for example, ‘crazy cat-lady syndrome.’ It can also trigger bizarre risk-taking and even schizophrenia.”

He chuckled again and inhaled with a long noisy sniff. “Consider that. A single-celled parasite with no mind of its own, no brain or nervous system, is able to take over the mind of a mouse—or a human—and control its behavior. Truly remarkable!”