“Don’t do it, Mo,” said the matronly nurse. “You’re too young to end up in there.”
“And maybe too old to avoid it, Annie. But thanks.”
Suddenly Panov and the nurse were aware that he was being paged, the wide-eyed trainee at the desk speaking into the microphone.
“Dr. Panov, please. Telephone for--“
“I’m Dr. Panov,” said the psychiatrist in a sotto voce whisper to the girl. “We don’t want anyone to know. Annie Donovan here’s really my mother from Poland. Who is it?” The trainee stared at Panov’s ID card on his white coat, she blinked and replied. “A Mr. Alexander Conklin, sir.”
“Oh?” Panov was startled. Alex Conklin had been a patient on and off for five years, until they both had agreed he’d adjusted as well as he was ever going to adjust--which was not a hell of a lot.
There were so many, and so little they can do for them. Whatever Conklin wanted had to be relatively serious for him to call Bethesda and not the office. “Where can I take this, Annie?”
“Room One,” said the nurse, pointing across the hall. “It’s empty. I’ll have the call transferred.”
Panov walked toward the door, an uneasy feeling spreading through him.
“I need some very fast answers, Mo,” said Conklin, his voice strained.
“I’m not very good at fast answers, Alex. Why not come in and see me this afternoon?”
“It’s not me. It’s someone else. Possibly.”
“No games, please. I thought we’d gone beyond that.”
“No games. This is a Four-Zero emergency, and I need help.”
“Four-Zero? Call in one of your staff men. I’ve never requested that kind of clearance.”
“I can’t. That’s how tight it is.”
“Then you’d better whisper to God.”
“Mo, please! I only have to confirm possibilities, the rest I can put together myself. And I don’t have five seconds to waste. A man may be running around ready to blow away ghosts, anyone he thinks is a ghost. He’s already killed very real, very important people and I’m not sure he knows it.
Help me, help him!”
“If I can. Go ahead.”
“A man is placed in a highly volatile, maximum stress situation for a long period of time, the entire period in deep cover. The cover itself is a decoy--very visible, very negative, constant pressure applied to maintain that visibility. The purpose is to draw out a target similar to the decoy by convincing the target that the decoy’s a threat, forcing the target into the open. ... Are you with me so far?”
“So far,” said Panov. “You say there’s been constant pressure on the decoy to maintain a negative, highly visible profile. What’s been his environment?”
“As brutal as you can imagine.”
“For how long a period of time?”
“Three years,”
“Good God,” said the psychiatrist “No breaks?”
“None at all. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Three years.
Someone not himself.”
“When will you damn fools learn? Even prisoners in the worst camps could be themselves, talk to others who were themselves--“ Panov stopped, catching his own words and Conklin’s meaning.
“That’s your point, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure,” answered the intelligence officer. “It’s hazy, confusing, even contradictory. What I want to ask is this. Could such a man under these circumstances begin to ... believe he’s the decoy, assume the characteristics, absorb the mocked dossier to the point where he believes it’s him?”
“The answer to that’s so obvious I’m surprised you ask it. Of course he could. Probably would.
It’s an unendurably prolonged performance that can’t be sustained unless the belief becomes a part of his everyday reality. The actor never off the stage in a play that never ends. Day after day, night after night.” The doctor stopped again, then continued carefully. “But that’s not really your question, is it?”
“No,” replied Conklin. “I go one step further. Beyond the decoy. I have to; it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Panov sharply. “You’d better stop there, because I’m not confirming any blind diagnosis. Not for what you’re leading up to. No way, Charlie. That’s giving you a license I won’t be responsible for--with or without a consultation fee.”
“ ‘No way ... Charlie.’ Why did you say that, Mo?”
“What do you mean, why did I say it? It’s a phrase. I hear it all the time. Kids in dirty blue jeans on the corner; hookers in my favorite saloons.”
“How do you know what I’m leading up to?” said the CIA man.
“Because I had to read the books and you’re not very subtle. You’re about to describe a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia with multiple personalities. It’s not just your man assuming the role of the decoy, but the decoy himself transferring his identity to the one he’s after. The target. That’s what you’re driving at, Alex. You’re telling me your man is three people: himself, decoy and target.
And I repeat. No way, Charlie. I’m not confirming anything remotely like that without an extensive examination. That’s giving you rights you can’t have: three reasons for dispatch. No way!”
“I’m not asking you to confirm anything! I just want to know if it’s possible. For Christ’s sake, Mo, there’s a lethally experienced man running around with a gun, killing people he claims he didn’t know, but whom he worked with for three years. He denies being at a specific place at a specific time when his own fingerprints prove he was there. He says images come to him--faces he can’t place, names he’s heard but doesn’t know from where. He claims he was never the decoy; it was never him! But it was! It is! Is it possible? That’s all I want to know. Could the stress and time and the everyday pressures break him like this? Into three?”
Panov held his breath for a moment. “It’s possible,” he said softly. “If your facts are accurate, it’s possible. That’s all I’ll say, because there are too many other possibilities.”
“Thank you.” Conklin paused. “A last question. Say there was a date--a month and a day--that was significant to the mocked dossier-the decoy’s dossier.”
“You’d have to be more specific.”
“I will. It was the date when the man whose identity was taken for decoy was killed.”
“Then obviously not part of the working dossier, but known to your man. Am I following you?”
“Yes, he knew it. Let’s say he was there. Would he remember it?”
“Not as the decoy.”
“But as one of the other two?”