Mind Games

Chapter 18

See Chapter 1 for disclaimer

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Charlie paced anxiously in the bedroom of the safe house, clutching his cell phone. Almost two days earlier, he'd arrived there after a several hour flight. He'd landed at a tiny airport that he didn't recognize, but the vegetation and terrain had looked western, and appeared even more familiar as they drove. He was in L.A., of all places, he realized, just miles from home. The agents with him explained that they'd had his house under surveillance as a precaution, to make sure that his cover wasn't broken and that there was no sign that anyone else was watching the Craftsman. Eventually, he might be able to go back there – perhaps even before the treason hearings. For the time being, however, he'd been put in a safe house, on the far eastern edge of L.A. They'd called in a doctor, who examined him, pronounced him badly bruised, and told him to rest. Charlie could have told him that – it was now two days later, and he was still limping slightly.

His injuries were nothing compared to Don's, he thought to himself, anxiously. He'd just talked to Ian, and had found that his brother was going into surgery in the morning – nothing major, Ian had told him – they were going in to make a sure a tiny bleed had resolved itself before they started Don on therapy. Just a precaution, Ian had repeated; nothing major. Right. They were about to cut a hole in his brother's head, and it was nothing major.

His phone vibrated in his hand, and he nearly dropped it. He managed to get it turned in his hand, only to see his father's number appear on the screen. He swallowed hard and flipped it open. "Dad. Hi. How's it going?"

"Charlie, good, how are you two doing?" Alan's voice was amiable, relaxed.

"Good. A little tired, but good. We've been pretty busy." Charlie was glad his father couldn't see his face, and the guilty flush that stained his cheeks. Don was getting ready to go through surgery for a head injury within hours, and Charlie had to stand there and lie to his own father. He tried to divert the conversation. "What's new?"

"Oh, it's crazy up here," Alan replied happily. "We've been unbelievably busy – one of the major businessmen in town has gotten involved, and wants some of his properties rebuilt as a part of the downtown renovation project. I'm kind of glad you two are still out there – I expected to get home some of these weekends, but there's no chance of that. Most of the original planning will be done in a couple of weeks, and I'd intended to go back to L.A. then, but the businessman has invited Stan and me out to his cabin to work on a proposal for a new mall. I guess his cabin is a heck of a place, out in the middle of nowhere. The scenery and wildlife are supposed to be magnificent. He says it's where he gets most of his inspirations."

Charlie gave him a weak chuckle. "I'll bet."

"Anyway, I wanted to give you boys a heads-up. Stan and I aren't entirely sure we'll go yet, but if we do, we'll be out of contact for a couple of weeks. There's no phone service there."

Charlie thought of the surveillance on the Craftsman, and was suddenly extremely glad his father was safe, in Alaska. The longer he stayed there, the better. "Dad, it sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime. You ought to take it. Don and I might not even be back by then – this is taking longer than we thought."

"Good, then maybe we'll consider it. I'll call you and let you know for sure before we go. How's Donnie doing, anyway? I tried calling him a couple of times, but he didn't answer his phone."

"Oh, uh, he's okay," stammered Charlie. "Quantico's a funny place, there are dead zones in spots here – sometimes our cells don't work. He's actually in a meeting right now." He winced at the lie.

"Okay, well, tell him I called. Take it easy – don't work too hard – and make sure you eat. I know how you are when you get on a roll."

"Yeah, don't worry, Dad, we're doing fine." They exchanged good-byes, and Charlie disconnected the call, feeling like a criminal. He sat on the edge of his bed, put his head in his hands, and groaned. God, he couldn't wait until Don was home safely, and this was over.

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"Everything set?'

"Yes," replied Allman, looking at Marsh. "They're prepping him now, getting ready to put him under."

"I know we've done this reprogramming before, but I never had you explain it to me," said Marsh, curiously. "How exactly will this work?"

"First we'll go in and put in the auditory module. It's similar in appearance to a cochlear implant used for the hearing-impaired, but much more advanced, and much smaller. It doesn't actually process sound – instead, it receives high definition radio signals, which it then transmits directly to the auditory nerve via a microchip. No one else can hear the signals, but to the device wearer, it sounds as though someone is speaking to him – and frankly, they are, from a central station. We rotate three teams of two, eight hours at a stretch, with a main handler in each team of two. All of them are highly trained in psychology and brainwashing techniques, and they provide direction to the subject, twenty-four hours a day. They can broadcast from here, but the subject will need to carry a device with him to receive and boost the signal, once he is outside a range of 100 miles."

Marsh pursed his lips. "So wherever Don goes, they'll be able to speak to him – he will have a voice inside his head, telling him what to do."

"Correct. That, of course, is after we've reprogrammed him – and the other part of the surgery facilitates that. That surgery is very similar to one that is done for Parkinson's patients – small holes are drilled in the top of the skull, and tiny wires are fed into the brain that deliver small doses of electric current. In Parkinson's patients, the wires are placed in parts of the brain that affect motion, and the goal is to control spasms and tremors. For our purposes, we target other areas of the brain."

"We have learned much about the areas we want to target from other sources. For example, we know that serial killers have physical differences in their thalamus, which we think inhibits normal feelings of guilt. We place two wires there. The prefrontal cortex controls decision-making and personality, we route other wires there. Finally, we place wires in the areas of the brain governing emotional responses. By adjusting the flow of current to the areas, we can control his moods, even his ability to reason. Once these are in place, we begin the brainwashing. Using the electrical impulses, we can accelerate the process and make it virtually impossible for the subject to resist – especially when coupled with constant instruction from our teams. We in essence reprogram the subject's brain. That is what we will be doing for the next two weeks after the surgery. Of course, the programming generally isn't permanent – we constantly need to monitor the subject. Our teams not only speak to him, they can adjust the electrical impulses remotely, by sending them to another booster unit. Both the auditory and brain wiring boosters are small devices – normally we put them in the subject's clothing, like a jacket. In Archer's case, we'll use the denim jacket that he wore here."

"Of course, the circuitry in his head will not operate without power. For that, we implant batteries in the area of the collarbone, and route wires from them up underneath the skin and the scalp – that part of the surgery is exactly the same as it is for Parkinson's patients."

"I know you're going to explain that the sutures in the head are because of his injuries and the surgery, but what about the collarbone incisions? Won't he wonder why he has them?"

"No one else will be able to see them under his hospital gown, and if Archer asks, we'll explain that we needed to go in there scope out the arteries leading up to his brain to check for clots after the procedure. That's bullshit, but he won't know that. The whole surgery will take the better part of the day, although it only takes the patient two days to recover – the incisions and access holes are very small."

Marsh frowned. "I thought you told Ian Crocker and Joe Bishop that you were doing a very simple exploratory to check a possible bleed. How will you explain the length of the surgery?"

"I already have that covered," replied Allman, confidently. "I will tell them we took Don back for surgery, but an emergency came in before we could get started, and we had to put his operation on hold for several hours. I'll say that because he was prepped, we opted to keep him in the pre-surgery bay. In addition, I will tell them that once we got in, we did find a bleed, and it was more serious than expected. That will be the excuse for the two week recovery, and for hours of therapy afterward."

"Did Bishop get clearance to give you his name?"

"Yes," replied Allman, "it's Eppes. Both brothers are out of Los Angeles – Don is SAC of the FBI office there. I've already obtained background information on him and his brother to use for the reprogramming. I told Bishop it was to check to make sure his cognitive and emotional responses were normal. I asked them to give me Charlie's location or phone number, but they balked at that – they said that was on a need-to-know basis, and that if we had to pass a message to him, we should do it through Bishop or Ian Crocker. Even they don't know his location, but they do have a phone number."

Marsh grunted. He wasn't surprised at that; he'd expected that they would keep a tight lid on Charlie's whereabouts. It didn't matter; Don Eppes would do the job for him – and when he was done, he would undoubtedly end up in a mental hospital for the criminally insane.

Allman pushed a photo from a pile across his desk. "Does that look familiar?"

Marsh looked down at the picture of the man he knew as Charles Archer, and nodded. "That's him," he said.

"Don calls him Charlie. We've already done some pre-testing, late yesterday – we showed Don pictures of people with impact on his life – from his family members to criminals that he's put away. While we did so, we mapped his emotional responses to the pictures with MRI imaging." He pulled out a multicolored scan of a brain, and laid it in front of Marsh. "That's the image of his brain when we showed him the picture of Charlie. The area and intensity of the colors show us whether or not he likes or dislikes the subject in the photo, and how strong his feelings are."

"And-," prompted Marsh, impatiently.

Allman smiled. "You couldn't ask for a better outcome. From this scan, and the questions we asked him, we've determined that he bears a deep love for his brother – although that love is twisted up in a complex relationship that goes back to their childhood. Apparently, Charlie was found to be a genius at an early age, and received unusual attention when he was young. Although Don was older, he spent a lot of time in his brother's shadow. Along with the love, there are traces of envy and resentment, and some deep-seated feelings of insecurity and intense competition. He didn't come right out and say that, but our psychologists are experts – they could read the meanings behind some of his statements."

"Kind of a love-hate thing," offered Marsh.

"I'm not sure I'd go that far – the negative feelings aren't nearly as strong as the positive. The strength of his love for his brother alone will give us the intensity of the emotional response we need. The other things will just make it easier to find footholds for the programmers – they can use those negative issues to turn Don's mind against his brother. For example, he admits he has a tendency to be protective of his younger brother – which implies related submerged beliefs that he is dominant, physically. We can twist that knowledge to make him feel that his brother is weak, and further twist that into feelings of disdain. Truthfully, I've never seen a better candidate. I predict a very successful outcome to this, and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't turn him in less than two weeks."

Marsh nodded with satisfaction. "Then I won't hold you up, doctor." He rose. "I need to head back to Washington. As we discussed before, I was never here – and you simply treated Don Eppes for a head injury, nothing more. You know what to do from here – although I will be in touch regularly by phone." He nodded. "I won't shake," he said with a smile. "We need to be sure you don't injure your valuable hands. Good luck."

Allman smiled back. "Thank you. And now, I have to be going. They'll be ready for me in twenty minutes."

Marsh nodded, and slipped out the back entrance to the office, and down the back staircase, while Allman left his office by the main door. Marsh was going back to Washington – but he would be returning before Don Eppes was released. He would have a loose end to tie up at that point – a loose end named Joe Bishop.

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Brian Rogan and Bill Masters watched as their witness paced the kitchen of the safe house, anxiously. The fixers had returned to Washington while the Eppes men were in New Orleans, but they'd been called back out to L.A. prior to Charlie's return, to oversee anything that might have a bearing on his safety. Bill Masters eyed the young man with a feeling as close to sympathy as he could muster – years of dealing with the darker side of human nature had left him with muted ability to empathize. Charlie Eppes looked thinner than when he'd left, tired, tense, and was obviously by now nearly frantic about his brother. Don Eppes had been scheduled to go into surgery that morning, around 5 a.m. L.A. time. They'd received a call six hours later from Ian Edgerton, telling them that the surgery had been delayed, but that it was beginning. That was four hours ago – four hours for a surgery that was supposed to have lasted two, and was supposed to have started ten hours previously.

Masters' phone rang, and he pulled it out and flipped it open, putting it to his ear as he watched Charlie stop pacing and look at him, his dark eyes filled with anxiety. "Yeah," said Masters. "Yeah, okay. Uh huh. Yeah, I'll tell him."

He flipped the phone shut and looked at Charlie. "That was Joe Bishop. Your brother's out of surgery and is doing fine." He watched Charlie sag with relief.

"What took so long?"

"Apparently they did find a small bleed – a very tiny slow leak, and needed to repair it. It wasn't that hard to fix – just hard to get to, apparently. They said everything went fine, but they'll have to keep him another two weeks for recovery and some testing, just to make sure there were no long term effects."

"Two weeks," repeated Charlie weakly, his shoulders sagging even further.

Brian Rogan spoke up. "It's going to take three or four weeks to organize the treason hearings against Montreaux – plus, they're still trying to track down the Iranians and the other man you saw from your descriptions. You're going to have to stay here that long anyway. We told you that."

"I know," sighed Charlie, "I'm glad he'll be okay, but I'll feel a lot better when I see him for myself. He's going through this by himself, with no family there. He can't convalesce up here, for at least part of it?"

Masters spoke up. "Bishop said it might be sooner. He said the doctors want to take him through therapy, and they want to be sure he passes all of his cognitive and reaction testing. He'll need to have that before he can be cleared to go back to work, and he might as well get it done there. He'll still have a couple of weeks of recovery time after that, but by that time, the two of you should be finished with your assignment, and you can both get back to your lives." He looked at Charlie, and grinned. "Relax. He's in good hands. He'll be back soon enough. My brother and I used to fight all the time. If you're anything like us, you'll be wishing he was gone a day after he's back."

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End Chapter 18

A/N: I should explain that the procedure described here is fictional (at least, I hope so.) It is, however, based on fact. Someone very close to me has undergone deep brain stimulus surgery for Parkinson's, and the description of the surgery is relatively accurate, although I took a few liberties. Actually, the surgery is often broken into two parts. The first part - inserting the leads into the brain, takes several hours, and unlike Don's surgery, is done while the patient is awake, so the doctor can determine the precise lead location that stops the tremors. Then leads are run under the scalp and coiled under the skin near the ears. The patient does usually go home in just a couple of days, believe it or not, with two very small incisions on the top of their head. The second surgery is usually done a week or two later – in that one, they implant the batteries near the collarbones, and bring the wires down from the ear area under the skin and connect them. The batteries are programmable remotely, which becomes important later. For story purposes, I had them do all of the surgery at once, including putting a separate auditory device in the left side of Don's head, near his ear. I also did some research on which areas of the brain affect what, and so although this is fictional, it is based on a good amount of fact. The only outward sign that a patient would exhibit afterward would be some small scars, soon hidden by hair, on the head, and small scars near the collarbone. Also, if one looks closely, or touches the battery area, they might see or feel a slight bulge – those signs would be completely unnoticeable under clothing.

I've gotten a few comments that people are trying to catch up with this story, but I have the next chapter or two done. I may do a couple of extra chapters this weekened, if you're ready for them.

I hope I didn't give the spy agencies any ideas, here… :)