4

Twenty-eight Months Earlier:

Saturday, April 12, 1975

 

THE HELICOPTER—A PLUSH, luxuriously appointed Bell JetRanger TI—chopped up the dry Nevada air and flung it down at the Las Vegas Strip. The pilot gingerly approached the landing pad on the roof of the Fortunata Hotel, hovered over the red target circle for a moment, then put down with consummate skill.

As the rotors stopped churning overhead, Ogden Salsbury slid open his door and stepped out onto the hotel roof. For a few seconds he was disoriented. The cabin of the JetRanger had been air-conditioned. Out here, the air was like a parching gust from a furnace. A Frank Sinatra album was playing on a stereo, blasting forth from speakers mounted on six-foot-high poles. Sunlight reflected from the rippling water in the roof-top pool, and Salsbury was partially blinded in spite of his sunglasses. Somehow, he had expected the roof to bobble and sway under him as the helicopter had done; and when it did not, he staggered slightly.

The swimming pool and the glass-walled recreation room beside it were adjuncts of the enormous thirtieth-floor presidential suite of the Fortunata Hotel. This afternoon there were only two people using it: a pair of voluptuous young women in skimpy white string bikinis. They were sitting on the edge of the pool, near the deep end, dangling their legs in the water.

A squat, powerfully built man in gray slacks and a short-sleeved white silk shirt: was hunkered down beside them, talking to them. All three had the perfect nonchalance that, Ogden thought, came only with power or money. They appeared not even to have noticed the arrival of the helicopter.

Salsbury crossed the roof to them. “General Klinger?”

The squat man looked up at him.

The girls didn’t seem to know that he existed. The blonde had begun to lather the brunette with tanning lotion. Her hands lingered on the other girl’s calves and knees, then inched lovingly along her taut brown thighs. Obviously, they were more than just good friends.

“My name’s Salsbury.”

Klinger stood up. He didn’t offer to shake hands. “I’ve got one suitcase. Be with you in a minute.” He walked back toward the glass-walled recreation room.

Salsbury stared at the girls. They had the longest, loveliest legs he had ever seen. He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll bet you’re in show business.”

Neither of them looked at him. The blonde squeezed lotion into her left hand and massaged the swelling tops of the brunette’s large breasts. Her fingers trailed under the bikini bra, flicked across the hidden nipples.

Salsbury felt like a fool—as he always had around beautiful women. He was certain that they were making fun of him. You stinking bitches! he thought viciously. Some day I’ll have any of you I want. Some day I’ll tell you what I want, and you’ll do it, and you’ll love it because I’ll tell you to love it.

Klinger returned, carrying one large suitcase. He had put on a two-hundred-dollar, blue-and-gray-plaid sport coat.

Looks like a gorilla dressed up for a circus act, Salsbury thought.

In the passengers’ compartment of the helicopter, as they lifted away from the roof, Klinger pressed his face to the window and watched the girls dwindle into sexless specks. Then he sighed and sat back and said, “Your boss knows how to arrange a man’s vacation.”

Salsbury blinked in confusion. “My boss?”

Glancing at him, Klinger said, “Dawson.” He took a packet of cheroots from an inside coat pocket. He fished one out and lit it for himself without offering one to Salsbury. “What did you think of Crystal and Daisy?”

Salsbury took off his sunglasses. “What?”

“Crystal and Daisy. The girls at the pool.”

“Nice. Very nice.”

Pausing for a long drag of his cheroot, Klinger blew out smoke and said, “You wouldn’t believe what those girls can do.”

“I thought they were dancers,” Salsbury said.

Klinger looked at him disbelievingly, and then threw back his head and laughed.

“Oh, they are! They dance their little asses off every night in the Fortunata’s main showroom. But they’ve also been performing in the penthouse suite. And let me tell you, dancing is the least of their talents.”

Salsbury was perspiring even though the cabin of the JetRanger was cool. Women … He feared them—and wanted them desperately. To Dawson, mind control meant unlimited wealth, a financial stranglehold on the entire world. To Klinger it might mean unrestricted power, the satisfaction of unquestioned command. But to Salsbury, it meant having sex as often as he wanted it, in as many ways as he wanted it, with any woman he desired.

Blowing smoke at the cabin ceiling, Klinger said, “I’ll bet you’d like having those two in your bed, shoving it in them, one after the other. Would you like that?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“They’re hard on a man,” Klinger said, chuckling. “Takes a man with real stamina to keep them happy. You think you could handle both Crystal and Daisy?”

“I could give it a good try.”

Klinger laughed loudly.

Salsbury hated him for that.

This crude bastard was nothing more than an influence peddler, Ogden thought. He could be bought—and his price was cheap. In one way or another, he helped Futurex International

in its competitive bidding for Pentagon contracts. In return, he took free vacations in Las Vegas, and some sort of stipend was paid into a Swiss bank account. There was only one element of this arrangement that Salsbury was unable to reconcile with Leonard Dawson’s personal philosophy. He said to Klinger: “Does Leonard pay for the girls too?”

“Well, I don’t. I’ve never had to pay for it.” He stared hard at Salsbury, until he was convinced that the scientist believed him. “The hotel picks up the tab.

That’s one of Futurex’s subsidiaries. But both Leonard and I pretend he doesn’t know about the girls. Whenever he asks me how I enjoyed a vacation, he acts as if all I’ve done is sit around the pool, by myself, reading the latest books.”

He was amused. He sucked on his cheroot. “Leonard is a Puritan, but he knows better than to let his personal feelings interfere with business.” He shook his head. “Your boss is some man.”

“He’s not my boss,” Salsbury said.

Klinger didn’t seem to have heard him.

“Leonard and I are partners,” Salsbury said. Klinger looked him up and down.

“Partners.” “That’s right.”

Their eyes met.

Reluctantly, after a few seconds, Salsbury looked away.

“Partners,” Klinger said. He didn’t believe it.

We are partners, Salsbury thought. Dawson may own this helicopter, the Fortunata Hotel, Crystal, Daisy, and you. But he doesn’t own me, and he never will. Never.

At the Las Vegas airport, the helicopter put down thirty yards from a dazzling, white Grumman Gulf Stream jet. Red letters on the fuselage spelled FUTUREX

INTERNATIONAL.

Fifteen minutes later they were airborne, on their way to an exclusive landing strip near Lake Tahoe.

Klinger unbuckled his seat belt and said, “I understand you’re to give me a briefing.”

“That’s right. We’ve got two hours for it.” He put his briefcase on his lap.

“Have you ever heard of subliminal—”

“Before we get going, I’d like a Scotch on the rocks.”

“I believe there’s a bar aboard.” “Fine. Just fine.”

“It’s back there.” Salsbury gestured over his shoulder.

Klinger said, “Make mine four ounces of Scotch and four ice cubes in an eight-ounce glass.”

At first Salsbury gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got it: generals didn’t mix their own drinks. Don’t let him intimidate you, he thought. Against his will, however, he found himself getting up and moving toward the back of the plane. It was as if he were not in control of his body. When he returned with the drink, Klinger didn’t even thank him.

“You say you’re one of Leonard’s partners?”

Salsbury realized that, by acting more like a waiter than like a host, he had only reinforced the general’s conviction that the word “partner” did not fit him. The bastard had been testing him.

He began to wonder if Dawson and Klinger were too much for him. Was he a bantam in a ring with heavyweights? He might be setting himself up for a knockout punch.

He quickly dismissed that thought. Without Dawson and the general, he could not keep his discoveries from the government, which had financed them and owned them and would be jealous of them if it knew that they existed. He had no choice but to associate with these people; and he knew he would have to be cautious, suspicious, and watchful. But a man could safely make his bed with the devil so long as he slept with a loaded gun under his pillow.

Couldn’t he?

Pine House, the twenty-five-room Dawson mansion that overlooked Lake Tahoe, Nevada, had won two design awards for its architect and been featured in House Beautiful. It stood at the water’s edge on a five-acre estate, with a backdrop of more than one hundred towering pine trees; and it seemed to rise naturally from the landscape rather than intrude upon it, even though its lines were quite modern. The first level was large, circular, of stone and without windows. The second story—a

circle the same size as but not concentric to the first level— was a step up from the ground floor. Lakeside, at the back of the house, the second story overhung the first, sheltering a small boat dock; and here there was a twelve-foot-long window that provided a magnificent view of the water and the distant pine-covered slopes. The dome-shaped, black slate roof was crowned with a slender, needlelike eight-foot spire.

When he first saw the place, Salsbury thought that it was a cousin to those futuristic churches that had been rising in wealthy and progressive parishes over the last ten or fifteen years. Without a thought for tact, he had said as much—and Leonard had taken the comment as a compliment. Having been refamiliarized with his host’s eccentricities during their weekly meetings over the past three months, Ogden was fairly certain that the house was supposed to resemble a church, that Dawson meant for it to be a temple, a holy monument to wealth and power.

Pine House had cost nearly as much as a church: one and a half million dollars, including the price of the land. Nevertheless, it was only one of five houses and three large apartments that Dawson and his wife maintained in the United States, Jamaica, England, and Europe.

After dinner the three men reclined in easy chairs in the living room, a few feet from the picture window. Tahoe, one of the highest and deepest lakes in the world, shimmered with light and shadow as the last rays of the sun, already gone behind the mountains, drained from the sky. In the morning the water had a clear, greenish cast. By afternoon it was a pure, crystalline blue. Now, soon to be as black as a vast spill of oil, it was like purple velvet folded softly against the shoreline. For five or ten minutes they enjoyed the view, speaking only to remark on the meal they had just finished and on the brandy they were sipping.

At last Dawson turned to the general and said, “Ernst, what do you think of subliminal advertising?”

The general had anticipated this abrupt shift from relaxation to business.

“Fascinating stuff.”

“You have no doubts?”

“That it exists? None whatsoever. Your man here has the proof. But he didn’t explain what subliminal advertising has to do with me.”

Sipping brandy, savoring it, Dawson nodded toward Salsbury. Putting down his own drink, angry with Klinger for referring to him as Dawson’s man and angry with Dawson for not correcting the general, reminding himself not to address Klinger by his military title, Ogden said, “Ernst, we never met until this morning. I’ve never told you where I work—but I’m sure you know.”

“The Brockert Institute,” Klinger said without hesitation.

General Ernst Klinger supervised a division of the Pentagon’s vitally important Department of Security for Weapons Research. His authority within the department extended to the states of Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. It was his responsibility to choose, oversee the installation of, and regularly inspect the traditional and electronic systems that protected all laboratories, factories, and test sites where weapons research was conducted within those fourteen states. Several laboratories belonging to Creative Development Associates, including the Brockert facility in Connecticut, came under his jurisdiction; and Salsbury would have been surprised if the general had not known the name of the scientist in charge of the work at Brockert.

“Do you know what sort of research we’re conducting up there?” Salsbury asked.

“I’m responsible for the security, not the research,” Klinger said. “I only know what I need to know. Like the backgrounds of the people who work there, the layout of the buildings, and the nature of the surrounding countryside. I don’t need to know about your work.”

“It has to do with subliminals.”

Stiffening as if he had sensed stealthy movement behind him, Some of the brandy-inspired color seeping from his face, Klinger said, “I believe you’ve signed a secrecy pledge like everyone else at Brockert.”

“Yes, I have.”

“You just now violated it.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Are you aware of the penalty?” “Yes. But I’ll never suffer it.”

“You’re sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Damned sure,” Salsbury said.

“It makes no difference, you know, that I’m a general in the United States Army or that Leonard is a loyal and trusted citizen. You’ve still broken the pledge.

Maybe they can’t put you away for treason when you’ve only talked to the likes of us— but they can at least give you eighteen months for declassifying information without the authority to do so.”

Salsbury glanced at Dawson.

Leaning forward in his chair, Dawson patted the general’s knee. “Let Ogden finish.”

Klinger said, “This could be a setup.”

“A what?”

“A setup. A trap.”

“To get you?” Dawson asked.

“Could be.”

“Why would I want to set you up?” Dawson asked. He seemed genuinely hurt by the suggestion.

In spite of the fact, Salsbury thought, that he has probably set up and destroyed hundreds of men over the last thirty years.

Klinger seemed to be thinking the same thing, although he shrugged and pretended that he had no answer to Dawson’s question.

“That’s not the way I operate,” Dawson said, either unable or unwilling to conceal his bruised pride. “You know me better than that. My whole career, my whole life, is based on Christian principles.”

“I don’t know anyone well enough to risk a charge of treason,” the general said gruffly.

Feigning exasperation—it was a bit too obvious to be real— Dawson said, “Old friend, we’ve made a great deal of money together. But all of it amounts to pocket change when compared to the money we can make if we cooperate with Ogden.

There is literally unlimited wealth here—for all of us.” He watched the general for a moment, and when he could get no reaction he said, “Ernst, I have never misled you. Never. Not once.”

Unconvinced, Klinger said, “All you ever did before was pay me for advice—”

“For your influence.”

“For my advice,” Klinger insisted. “And even if I did sell my influence—which I didn’t—that’s a long way from treason.”

They stared at each other.

Salsbury felt as if he were not in the room with them, as if he were watching them from the eyepiece of a mile-long telescope.

With less of an edge to his voice than there had been a minute ago, Klinger finally said, “Leonard, I suppose you realize that I could be setting you up.”

“Of course.”

“I could agree to hear your man out, listen to everything he has to say—only to get evidence against you and him.”

“String us along.”

“Give you enough rope to hang yourselves,” Klinger said. “I only warn you because you’re a friend. I like you. I don’t want to see you in trouble.”

Dawson settled back in his chair. “Well, I’ve an offer to make you, and I need your cooperation. So I’ll just have to take that risk, won’t I?”

“That’s your choice.”

Smiling, apparently pleased with the general, Dawson raised his brandy glass and silently proposed a toast.

Grinning broadly, Klinger raised his own glass.

What in the hell is going on here? Salsbury wondered.

When he had sniffed and sipped his brandy, Dawson looked at Salsbury for the first time in several minutes and said, “You may proceed, Ogden.”

Suddenly, Salsbury grasped the underlying purpose of the conversation to which he had just listened. In the unlikely event that Dawson actually was setting a trap for an old friend,

on the off chance that the meeting was being taped, Klinger had deftly provided himself with at least some protection against successful prosecution. He was now on record as having warned Dawson about the consequences of his actions. In court or before a military review board, the general could argue that he had only been playing along with them in order to collect evidence against them; and even if no one believed him, he more than likely would manage to retain both his freedom and his rank.

Ogden got up, leaving his brandy glass behind him, went to the window and stood with his back to the darkening lake. He was too nervous to sit still while he talked. Indeed, for a few seconds he was too nervous to speak at all.

Like a pair of lizards perched half in warm sunlight and half in chilly shadows, waiting for the light balance to change enough to warrant movement, Dawson and Klinger watched him. They were sitting in identical high-backed black leather easy chairs with burnished silvery buttons and studs. A small round cocktail table with a dark oak top stood between them. The only light in the richly furnished room came from two floor lamps that flanked the fireplace, twenty feet away. The right side of each man’s face was softened and somewhat concealed by shadows, while the left side was starkly detailed by amber light; and their eyes blinked with saurian patience.

Whether or not the scheme was a success, Salsbury thought, both Dawson and Klinger would come through it unscathed. They both wore effective armor: Dawson his wealth; Klinger his ruthlessness, cleverness, and experience.

However, Salsbury didn’t possess any armor of his own. He hadn’t even realized—as Klinger had when he protected himself with that spiel about secrecy pledges and treason—that he might need it. He had assumed that his discovery would generate enough money and power to satisfy all three of them, but he had just begun to understand that greed could not be sated as easily as a hearty appetite or a demanding thirst. If he had any defensive weapon at all, it was his intelligence, his lightning quick mind; but his intellect had been directed for so long into

narrow channels of specialized scientific inquiry that it now served him far less well in the common matters of life than it did in the laboratory.

Be cautious, suspicious, and watchful, he reminded himself for the second time that day. With men as aggressive as these, caution was a damned thin armor, but it was the only one he had.

He said, “For ten years the Brockert Institute has been fully devoted to a Pentagon study of subliminal advertising. We haven’t been interested in the technical, theoretical, or sociological aspects of it; that work is being done elsewhere. We’ve been concerned solely with the biological mechanisms of subliminal perception. From the start we have been trying to develop a drug that will ‘prime’ the brain for subception, a drug that will make a man obey without question every subliminal directive that’s given to him.” Scientists at another CDA laboratory in northern California were trying to engineer a viral or bacterial agent for the same purpose. But they were on the wrong track. He knew that for a fact because he was on the right one. “Currently, it’s possible to use subliminals to influence people who have no unshakable opinions about a particular subject or product. But the Pentagon wants to be able to use subliminal messages to alter the fundamental attitudes of people who do have very strong, stubbornly held opinions.”

“Mind control,” Klinger said matter-of-factly.

Dawson took another sip from his brandy glass.

“If such a drug can be synthesized,” Salsbury said, “it will change the course of history. That’s no exaggeration. For one thing, there will never again be war, not in the traditional sense. We will simply contaminate our enemies’ water supplies with the drug, then inundate them, through their own. media—television, radio, motion pictures, newspapers, and magazines— with a continuing series of carefully structured subliminals that will convince them to see things our way.

Gradually, subtly, we can transform our enemies into our allies—and let them think that the transformation was their own idea.”

They were silent for perhaps a minute, thinking about it.

Klinger lit a cheroot. Then he said, “There would also be a number of domestic uses for a drug like that.”

“Of course,” Salsbury said.

“At long last,” Dawson said almost wistfully, “we could achieve national unity, put an end to all the bickering and protest and disagreement that’s holding back this great country.”

Ogden turned away from them and stared through the window. Night had fully claimed the lake. He could hear the water lapping at the boat dock pilings a few feet below him, just beyond the glass. He listened and allowed the rhythmic sound to calm him. He was certain now that Klinger would cooperate, and he saw the incredible future that lay before him, and he was so excited by the vision that he did not trust himself to speak.

To his back Klinger said, “You’re primarily the director of research at Brockert. But apparently you’re not just a desk man.”

“There are certain lines of study I’ve reserved for myself,” Salsbury admitted.

“And you’ve discovered a drug that works, a drug that primes the brain for subception.”

“Three months ago,” Ogden said to the glass.

“Who knows about it?”

“The three of us.”

“No one at Brockert?”

“No one.”

“Even if you have, as you say, reserved some lines of study for yourself, you must have a lab assistant.”

“He’s not all that bright,” Salsbury said. “That’s why I chose him. Six years ago.”

Klinger said, “You were thinking about taking the discovery for yourself all that long ago?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve doctored your daily work record? The forms that go to Washington at the end of every week?”

“I only had to falsify them for a few days. As soon as I saw what I had come upon, I stopped working on it at once and changed the entire direction of my research.”

“And your assistant didn’t figure the switch?”

“He thought I’d given up on that avenue of research and was ready to try another. I told you, he’s not terribly clever.”

Dawson said, “Ogden hasn’t perfected this drug of his, Ernst. There’s still a great deal of work to be done.”

“How much work?” the general asked.

Turning from the window, Salsbury said, “I’m not absolutely certain. Perhaps as little as six months—or as much as a year and a half.”

“He can’t work on it at Brockert,” Dawson said. “He couldn’t possibly get away with falsifying his records for such a length of time. Therefore, I’m putting together a completely equipped laboratory for him in my house in Greenwich, forty minutes from the Brockert Institute.”

Raising his eyebrows, Klinger said, “You’ve got a house so big you can turn it into a lab?”

“Ogden doesn’t need a great deal of room, really. A thousand square feet. Eleven hundred at the outside. And most of that will be taken up with computers.

Hideously expensive computers, I might add. I’m backing Ogden with nearly two million of my own money, Ernst. That’s an indication of the tremendous faith I have in him.”

“You really think he can develop, test, and perfect this drug in a jerry-built lab?”

“Two million is hardly jerry-built,” Dawson said. “And don’t forget that billions of dollars’ worth of preliminary research has already been paid for by the government. I’m financing just the final stage.”

“How can you possibly maintain secrecy?”

“There are thousands of uses for the computer system. We won’t be incriminating ourselves just by purchasing it. Furthermore, we’ll arrange for it through one of Futurex’s subsidiaries. There won’t be any record that it was sold to us.

There won’t be any questions asked,” Dawson said.

“You’ll need lab technicians, assistants, clerks—”

“No,” Dawson said. “So long as Ogden has the computer— and a complete data file of his past research—he can handle everything himself. For ten years he’s had a full lab staff to do the drudgery; but most of that kind of work is behind him now.,’

“If he quits at Brockert,” Klinger said, “there will be an exhaustive security investigation. They’ll want to know why he quit—and they’ll find out.”

They were talking about Salsbury as if he were somewhere else and unable to hear them, and he didn’t like that. He moved away from the window, took two steps toward the general and said, “I’m not leaving my position at Brockert. I’ll report for work as usual, five days a week, from nine to four. While I’m there I’ll labor diligently on a useless research project.”

“When will you find time to work at this lab Leonard’s setting up for you?”

“In the evenings,” Salsbury said. “And on weekends. Besides that, I’ve accumulated a lot of sick leave and vacation time. I’ll take most of it—but I’ll spread it out evenly over the next year or so.”

Klinger stood up and went to the elegant copper and glass bar cart that a servant had left a few feet from the easy chairs. His thick and hairy arms made the crystal decanters look more delicate than they actually were. As he poured another double shot of brandy for himself, he said, “And what role do you see me playing in all of this?”

Salsbury said, “Leonard can get the computer system I need. But he can’t provide me with a magnetic tape file of all the research I’ve done for CDA or a set of master program tapes designed for my research. I’ll need both of those before Leonard’s computers are worth a penny to me. Now, given three or four weeks, I could make duplicates of those tapes at Brockert without much risk of being caught. But once I’ve got eighty or ninety cumbersome mag tapes and five-hundred-yard print-outs, how do I get them out of Brockert? There’s just no way. Security procedures, entering and leaving, are tight, too tight for my purpose. Unless . .

“I see,” Klinger said. He returned to his chair and sipped at his brandy.

Sliding forward to the edge of his seat, Dawson said, “Ernst, you’re the ultimate authority for security at Brockert. You know more about that system than anyone else. If there’s a weak spot in their security, you’re the man to find it—or make it.”

Studying Salsbury as if he were assessing the danger and questioning the wisdom of being associated with someone of such obviously inferior character, Klinger said, “I’m supposed to let you smuggle out nearly one hundred magnetic tapes full of top-secret data and sophisticated computer programs?”

Ogden nodded slowly.

“Can you do it?” Dawson asked.

“Probably.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“There’s a better than even chance it can be done.”

“That’s not sufficient, Ernst.”

“All right,” Klinger said, slightly exasperated. “I can do it. I can find a way.”

Smiling, Dawson said, “I knew you could.”

“But if I did find a way and was caught either during or after the operation—I’d be dumped into Leavenworth and left to rot. Earlier, when I used the word ‘treason,’ I wasn’t tossing it around lightly.”

“I didn’t suppose you were,” Dawson said. “But you wouldn’t be required ever to see these mag tapes, let alone touch them. That would be a risk that only Ogden would have to take. They could convict you of nothing more serious than negligence for permitting or overlooking the gap in security.”

“Even so, I’d be forced into early retirement or drummed out of the service with only a partial pension.”

Amazed, Dawson shook his head and said, “I’m offering him one-third of a partnership that will earn millions, and Ernst is worrying about a government pension.”

Salsbury was perspiring heavily. The back of his shirt was soaked and felt like a cold compress against his skin. To Klinger he said, “You’ve told us that you can do it. But the big question is whether you will do it.”

Klinger stared into his brandy glass for a while, then finally looked up at Salsbury and said, “Once you’ve perfected the drug—what’s our first step?”

Getting to his feet, Dawson said, “We’ll establish a front corporation in Liechtenstein.”

“Why there?”

Liechtenstein did not require that a corporation list its true owners. Dawson could hire lawyers in Vaduz and appoint them as corporate officers—and they could not be forced by law to reveal the identities of their clients.

“Furthermore,” Dawson said, “I will acquire for each of us a set of forged papers, complete with passports, so that we can travel and do business under assumed names. If the lawyers in Vadnz are forced by extralegal means to reveal the names of their clients, they still won’t endanger us because they won’t know our real names.”

Dawson’s caution was not excessive. The corporation would quite rapidly become an incredibly successful venture, so successful that a great many powerful people in both business and government would eventually be prying at it quietly, trying to find out who lay behind the phony officers in Vaduz. With Salsbury’s drug and extensive programs of carefully structured subliminals, the three of them could establish a hundred different businesses and literally demand that customers, associates, and even rivals produce a substantial profit for them.

Every dollar they earned would seem to be spotlessly clean, produced by a legitimate form of commerce. But, of course, a great many people would feel that it was not at all legitimate to manipulate the competition and the buying public by means of a powerful new drug. In the event that the corporation got caught using the drug—stolen, as it was, from a U.S. weapons research project—what had once appeared to be excessive caution might well prove no more than adequate.

“And once we’ve got the corporation?” Klinger asked.

Money and business arrangements were Dawson’s vocation and his avocation. He began to declaim almost in the manner of a Baptist preacher, full of vigor and fierce intent, thoroughly enjoying himself. “The corporation will purchase a walled estate somewhere in Germany or France. At least one hundred acres. On the surface it will appear to be an executive retreat. But in reality it will be used for the indoctrination of mercenary soldiers.”

“Mercenaries?” Klinger’s hard, broad face expressed the institutional soldier’s disdain for the freelancer.

The corporation, Dawson explained, would hire perhaps a dozen of the very best mercenaries available, men who had fought in Asia and Africa. They would be brought to the company estate, ostensibly to be briefed on their assignments and to meet their superiors. The water supply and all bottled beverages on the estate would be used as media for the drug. Twenty-four hours after the mercenaries had taken their first few drinks, when they were primed for total subliminal brainwashing, they would be shown four hours of films on each of three successive days—travelogues, industrial studies, and technical documentaries detailing the use of a variety of weapons and electronic devices—which would be presented as essential background material for their assignments. Unknowingly, of course, they would be watching twelve hours of sophisticated subliminals telling them to obey without question any order prefaced by a certain code phrase; and when those three days had passed, all twelve men would cease to be merely hired hands and would become something quite like programmed robots.

Outwardly, they would not appear to have changed. They would look and behave as they always had done. Nevertheless, they would obey any order to lie, steal, or kill anyone, obey without hesitation, so long as that order was preceded by the proper code phrase.

“As mercenary soldiers, they would be professional killers to begin with,”

Klinger said.

“That’s true,” Dawson said. “But the glory lies in their unconditional, unquestioning obedience. As hired mercenaries, they would be able to reject any order or assignment that they

didn’t like. But as our programmed staff, they will do precisely what they are told to do.”

“There are other advantages, too,” Salsbury said, not unaware that Dawson, now that he was in a proselytizing mood, resented being nudged from the pulpit. “For one thing, you can order a man to kill and then to erase all memory of the murder from both his conscious and subconscious mind. He would never be able to testify against the corporation or against us; and he would pass any polygraph examination.”

Klinger’s Neanderthal face brightened a bit. He appreciated the importance of what Salsbury had said. “Even if they used pentothal or hypnotic regression—he still couldn’t remember?”

“Sodium pentothal is much overrated as a truth serum,” Salsbury said. “As for the other. . - Well, they could put him in a trance and regress him to the time of the murder. But he would only draw a blank. Once he has been told to erase the event from his mind, it is beyond his recall just as surely as obsolete data is beyond the recall of a computer that has had its memory banks wiped clean.”

Having finished his second brandy, Klinger returned to the bar cart. This time he filled a twelve-ounce tumbler with ice and Seven-Up.

Salsbury thought, He’s right about that: any man who doesn’t keep a clear head here, tonight, is plainly suicidal.

To Dawson, Klinger said, “Once we’ve got these twelve ‘robots’ what do we do with them?”

Because he had spent the last three months thinking about that while he and Saisbury worked out the details of their approach to the general, Dawson had a quick answer. “We can do anything we want with them. Anything at all. But as a first step—I thought we might use them to introduce the drug into the water supplies of every major city in Kuwait. Then we could saturate that country with a multimedia subliminal campaign specially structured for the Arab psyche, and within a month we could quietly seize control without anyone, even the government of Kuwait, knowing what we’ve done.”

“Take over an entire country as a first step?” Klinger asked incredulously.

Preaching again, striding back and forth between Salsbury and the general, gesturing expansively, Dawson said, “The population of Kuwait is less than eight hundred thousand. The greatest part of that is concentrated in a few urban areas, chiefly in Hawaii and the capital city. Furthermore, all of the members of the government and virtually all of the wealthy reside in those metropolitan centers. The handful of super-rich families who own desert enclaves get their water by truck from the cities. In short, we could take control of everyone of influence within the country—giving us a behind-the-scenes managerial dictatorship over the Kuwait oil reserves, which compose twenty percent of the entire world supply. That done, Kuwait would become our base of operations, from which we could subvert Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, and every other oil-exporting nation in the Mid-East.”

“We could smash the OPEC cartel,” Klinger said thoughtfully.

“Or strengthen it,” Dawson said. “Or alternately weaken and strengthen it in order to cause major fluctuations in the value of oil stocks. Indeed, we could affect the entire stock market. And because we’d know about each fluctuation well in advance, we could take rare advantage of it. Within a year of assuming control of a half-dozen Mid-Eastern countries, we should be able to siphon one and a half billion dollars into the corporation in Liechtenstein. Thereafter, it will be a matter of no more than five or six years until everything, quite literally everything, is ours.”

“It sounds—crazy, mad,” Klinger said.

Dawson frowned. “Mad?”

“Incredible, unbelievable, impossible,” the general said, clarifying his first statement when he saw that it disturbed Dawson.

“There was a time when heavier-than-air flight seemed impossible,” Salsbury said. “The nuclear bomb seemed incredible to many people even after it was dropped on Japan. And in 1961, when Kennedy launched the Apollo Space Program, very few Americans believed that a man would ever walk on the moon.”

They stared at one another.

The silence in the room was so perfect that each tiny wave breaking against the boat dock, although it was little more than a gentle ripple and was muffled by the window, sounded like an ocean surf. At least it did to Salsbury; it reverberated within his nearly fevered mind.

Finally Dawson said, “Ernst? Will you help us get those magnetic tapes?”

Klinger looked at Dawson for a long moment, then at Salsbury. A shudder either of fear or pleasure; Ogden could not be certain which—passed through him. He said, “I’ll help.”

Ogden sighed.

“Champagne?” Dawson asked. “It’s a bit crude after brandy. But I believe that we should raise a toast to one another and to the project.”

Fifteen minutes later, after a servant had brought a chilled bottle of Moët et Chandon and he had uncorked it, after the three of them had toasted success, Klinger smiled at Dawson and said, “What if I’d been terrified of this drug?

What if I’d thought your offer was more than I could handle?”

“I know you well, Ernst,” Dawson said. “Perhaps better than you think I do. I’d be surprised if there was anything that you couldn’t handle.”

“But suppose I’d balked, for whatever reason. Suppose I hadn’t wanted to come in with you.”

Dawson rolled some champagne over his tongue, swallowed, inhaled through his mouth to savor the aftertaste, and said, “Then you wouldn’t have left this estate alive, Ernst. I’m afraid you’d have had an accident.”

“Which you arranged for a week ago.” “Nearly that.”

“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

“You came with a gun?” Dawson asked. “A thirty-two automatic.”

“It doesn’t show.”

“It’s taped to the small of my back.”

“You’ve practiced drawing it?”

“I can have it in my hand in less than five seconds.”

Dawson nodded approval. “And you would have used me as a shield to get off the estate.”

“I would have tried.”

They both laughed and regarded each other with something very near to affection.

They were delighted with themselves.

Jesus Christ! Salsbury thought. He nervously sipped his champagne.