The Persona Protocol Read online

  The meeting broke up, its members dispersing into smaller groups. Bianca watched Adam as he stood. Since the incident with her car more than a day before, he had revealed no more of the brief glimpses of an actual personality behind the expressionless face – until his comment about her personality. It suggested that he was not as disinterested as he appeared . . . but now the blinds had come down again. If he was thinking about anything other than the mission, it didn’t show.

  ‘Bianca?’ said Tony, gesturing towards the forward compartment.

  She nodded and went with him. She hesitated at the dividing curtain, looking back at Adam.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Tony asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, still regarding Adam before finally turning away. ‘When you were talking about setting up the car crash, you said you’d done it before, to get a copy of someone’s persona, but Adam didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t have.’ He motioned for her to take a seat, waiting politely until she was down before sitting beside her.

  ‘So Adam isn’t the Persona Project’s first agent?’

  ‘There was someone else before him.’ A pause. ‘Me.’

  She was surprised. ‘You?’

  He turned his head and used his thumb and forefinger to part his hair in a particular spot, revealing a small scar. ‘I’ve still got the electrode filaments inside my skull; they decided it was too risky to take them out. So in theory, I could still use the PERSONA device to take on someone else’s personality. In practice, though . . .’

  ‘What?’

  He chewed on his lower lip, reluctant. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘It’s a long flight.’ They were still more than eight hours from Macau.

  ‘Okay. Just keep it to yourself. Not everybody out there,’ a nod towards the other cabin, ‘knows the whole story, and some of it I’d prefer to keep that way. Not for security reasons, just . . . personal ones.’

  ‘I won’t say a word,’ she promised.

  ‘Thanks.’ He smiled briefly. ‘So, before I became the Persona Project’s head of field operations, I was its first field agent. In other words, I was the guinea pig.’

  ‘How short a straw did you draw to get that assignment?’

  ‘Actually, I volunteered. I used to be US Army – 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta,’ he said proudly, before clarifying to the uncomprehending Englishwoman, ‘Delta Force. Like the British SAS.’

  Again, she was surprised. ‘Really? You don’t look like . . .’

  One side of his mouth creased into a sardonic grin. ‘A grunt?’

  ‘I was going to say “some sort of grim-faced super-soldier”, actually. Aren’t they all supposed to have macho names like Flint or Stone, or Gristle?’

  ‘What’s wrong with Carpenter?’ he said, in mock offence. ‘There have been some badass carpenters in history. One had a whole book written about him. Two thousand years ago, or thereabouts.’

  ‘No besmirchment of your good name intended. I meant, you don’t look . . . I don’t know, like a strip of old leather that’s been chewed by the dog. That’s the mental picture I have of those guys. Like John Baxter.’

  Tony burst into laughter. ‘Oh, that’s fantastic!’ he said. ‘But you’re right, he kinda does, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t tell him I said that,’ she added hurriedly.

  ‘If you can keep a secret, so can I. Anyway, yes, I volunteered.’ He became more sober. ‘The reason was simple enough – I’d seen too many of my friends die in places like Afghanistan. All we were doing was picking off low-level soldiers. I wanted to go after the leaders. Persona gave me that chance.’

  Bianca had been fervently opposed to the wars in the Middle East, but she couldn’t help feeling sympathy for him. The deaths that had altered the course of her life had been from long-term, debilitating diseases; they were horrible to witness, but one knew roughly when the end would come. To see people your own age, friends and comrades, violently cut down without warning was something else entirely. ‘So you took the risk?’

  ‘Yeah. Roger and Kiddrick were there from the start; they made it possible, after all. Martin was brought in from the CIA to oversee things and make sure they didn’t kill each other. The two of them don’t exactly get on. Kiddrick thinks he’s the brains of the operation, and that Roger’s just a glorified pharmacist.’

  ‘Yes, I got that impression,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘But the theory was all there, and it was time to see if it worked in practice. So I had the procedure, and . . . it did. All those disks in the lab at STS? Most were recorded as tests for the system; they got volunteers from all kinds of potentially useful backgrounds – like our card player – by telling them it was a psychological research experiment. Measuring their brainwaves in response to certain stimuli, that sort of thing.’

  Bianca’s sense of ethics was jabbing at her again. ‘Nobody told them they were having their minds copied for someone else to read? All their secrets, everything?’

  ‘No. They didn’t even remember the actual process, because Roger blanked their short-term memories after the transfer.’

  ‘Did he now.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like you approve.’

  ‘I can’t say that I do, particularly,’ she told him. ‘So you had all these personas. Were they useful? Did everything work?’

  ‘Perfectly. At first. Some of the personas gave me specialist knowledge that helped me carry out missions. Languages, local lands and people, how to fly a chopper – all sorts of things.’

  She asked the question that had been on her mind since the demonstration at STS. ‘What . . . what did it feel like? Having someone else’s memories?’

  Tony considered it. ‘Odd,’ he finally said. ‘In a lot of ways it seemed totally natural – drawing on a person’s memories or skills was just like recalling my own. It’s automatic, unconscious; it just happens. It only got weird if I actively thought about how they weren’t my memories. So I tried not to do that too often.’

  ‘I can imagine it must have been bizarre, having someone else’s thoughts in your head. A whole different personality, even – like when Adam started behaving like Conrad Wilmar.’

  ‘Actually, Adam shows that a lot more strongly than I did – acting like the other person, I mean.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Different personality, updated procedure, I guess. But,’ he went on, with a renewed intensity that suggested he wanted to leave that line of enquiry behind, ‘the missions we ran were all successful. PERSONA worked, and provided intel that would have been impossible to get any other way. And then . . . we had the big one. The mission where we caught Mahjub Najjar.’

  ‘Where you caught—’ She broke off as the full implications of what he had just said hit her. ‘The al-Qaeda leader? But I thought he was killed by a drone! It was all over the news. I mean, you even had your president gloating about it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it gloating,’ Tony said sharply. ‘It was a cover-up. We’d just captured the world’s most wanted terrorist. More to the point, we had a way to find out everything that he knew. Every planned attack, the names and locations of all his cell leaders, how he was moving al-Qaeda’s money around the world . . . every single secret that was in his head, we could put into mine. We knew it all. But if we’d announced that he’d been captured, his second-in-command – Muqaddim al-Rais – would have changed all the plans on the first day he took control. So we told the world he’d been killed. Dead men can’t be interrogated.’

  ‘Only now they can,’ Bianca realised. ‘If you’ve made a recording of his persona . . .’

  ‘Yeah. Once I was imprinted, I knew everything Najjar did – and could tell it all to our people.’

  ‘So that’s what PERSONA is really all about? Interrogation without torture?’

  ‘Torture doesn’t work. Not on people like Najjar. But this way we didn’t even need to lay a finger on him. I did all the talkin
g.’

  The limitations of the PERSONA process came to her mind. ‘For twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours at a time. Najjar’s persona disappeared every time I went to sleep. The next morning, it would be re-imprinted so the interrogation could carry on where it left off.’ His expression darkened at a painful memory. ‘Until . . .’

  ‘Something went wrong,’ Bianca realised.

  ‘Yeah.’ He stared out of the porthole at infinity. ‘Like I said, I was the guinea pig. And PERSONA was experimental. It turned out that repeating the process over and over has side effects.’

  ‘What kind of side effects?’

  He shifted in the seat, reluctant to speak. ‘First it was headaches. They weren’t much to begin with, but they turned into full-on skull-splitters. Then I started having periods of confusion, blackouts, and finally . . .’ Another lengthy pause. ‘Finally, I had a breakdown.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Bianca said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I was hospitalised for a week, and was out of commission for nearly another month. When they finally tried to imprint Najjar’s persona again, it was . . . agonising, like my mind was rejecting it. Almost an immune response. They stopped the procedure, but I knew that was it. It was over.’

  She leaned closer to him. ‘Did they . . . did they try again?’

  ‘Yeah, with a different persona. They waited a few days, but it was the same result. Still,’ he said, sitting upright with strained lightness, ‘that’s science, I guess! You learn as much from the failures as the successes.’

  She knew that he counted himself as one of the former. ‘But you came back to the project.’

  ‘The technique worked and had incredible potential, so it was obvious they were going to try again. I decided to stay, so I could help them work out the . . . kinks.’ That last was said somewhat acerbically. ‘And be sure that whoever they got to replace me didn’t suffer the same problems. The first thing I did was make them put in a rule that a persona could only be imprinted once. That way, it’d eliminate one of the possible causes of what happened to me. As for the other . . .’

  ‘That the problem might be cumulative?’

  ‘Exactly. Maybe there’s a limit on the number of times the process can be used before the brain says enough. We just don’t know.’

  Bianca looked back at the divider. ‘So what about Adam? Has he shown any signs of problems?’

  ‘Not yet. He went through tests and what you could call warm-up missions before the first full operation in Pakistan, but that’s all. He hasn’t been imprinted as much as I was. So far, everything seems normal.’ A pause. ‘With the process, anyway.’

  She knew what he meant. ‘But about Adam himself . . . ?’

  He straightened. ‘I’m not going to go there. What he was like before he joined the project, I don’t know – and it’s his business, not mine.’

  ‘But you know that he’s not . . . well, normal.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m not going to go there.’

  Bianca took the hint. ‘So what happened to Najjar?’ she asked instead.

  ‘He’s out of circulation.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss that.’

  ‘You know, it’s not the first time I’ve heard that line recently.’

  He gave her a wry smile. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. So, anyway,’ he said, getting back to business, ‘let’s talk about how you’re going to throw away a quarter of a million dollars.’

  15

  The Gambler

  Macau, China

  Like Las Vegas, Macau – a former Portuguese colony now returned to, but not fully assimilated by, the People’s Republic of China – was a city dominated by one thing: gambling. The relentless growth of the pastime, fuelled by increasingly affluent Chinese tourists making the trip from the mainland to wager their new wealth, had led to a full two square miles of new land being reclaimed from the sea – not to accommodate the people of one of the most densely populated places on earth, but to provide space for ever-larger casinos.

  The Imperial was one of this new wave, a combined gambling emporium and hotel rising fifty storeys into the sky. It was styled to resemble, at least superficially, a traditional Chinese pagoda. A steeply pitched roof outlined in red neon curved upwards from the tower’s top, a garish hat with the word IMPERIAL blazing along each of its long sides. Even in daylight more neon was visible streaking down the tower itself, the structure visually jostling for attention amongst its equally glitzy neighbours.

  ‘So there’s no word in Macau for “subtle”, I see,’ said Bianca as she peered out of the window at the building. The team had set up temporary stall in another hotel not far away. ‘Zykov’s in the penthouse?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Holly Jo. ‘He checked in about three hours ago. He’s in the one on the right-hand corner.’

  Bianca looked more closely. She could pick out windows beneath the illuminated crown, a balcony offering the occupants a spectacular view across the islands. She could also tell that the edges of the roof jutted out quite a distance from the tower itself. ‘Tony was right. I really wouldn’t want to climb along there.’

  A knock at the door. ‘Can I come in?’ called a voice.

  ‘Yes, I’m decent.’

  She turned as Tony entered the bedroom, a cellophane clothing bag draped over one arm. ‘I come bearing – wow, that’s a different look.’

  ‘I know.’ Holly Jo, in addition to her technical and linguistic skills, had revealed that she was also quite the stylist. Tying it back was normally the limit of what Bianca would do with her hair, but it had now been straightened and held up in a loose, stylish twist. ‘It’s so different I wasn’t even sure if I liked it, but I think it’s starting to grow on me.’

  ‘Just wait until I do your make-up,’ said Holly Jo.

  ‘Don’t make me look too tarty, okay?’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll happen,’ Tony said, smiling. ‘I’ve got the dress. And the shoes.’ He raised his arm to show off both the garment in question and a shoebox.

  Bianca regarded the former dubiously. ‘It’s very . . . red.’

  ‘Ooh, let me see,’ said Holly Jo, hopping up to pluck at the cellophane. ‘Is that a Moschino?’

  ‘Only a knock-off, I’m afraid,’ Tony replied.

  She put a hand on one hip in disapproval. ‘You’re giving her a quarter of a million dollars to gamble away, but you won’t spring for a genuine dress for her to wear while she’s doing it?’

  ‘This is a mission, not a fashion show. Anyway, I doubt anyone’ll be looking too closely at the quality of the stitching.’

  Holly Jo shook her head. ‘The women will be,’ she chided, before taking the shoebox from him. ‘Louboutins!’ she squealed, seeing the red soles inside. Then her excitement abruptly faded. ‘Oh. Let me guess, more knock-offs?’ Tony shrugged helplessly. ‘You are so cheap.’

  ‘Hey, you try justifying a pair of thousand-dollar shoes to Harper.’

  ‘Just give me the chance and I will!’

  Bianca took the box from Holly Jo. ‘High heels aren’t really my thing,’ she said, examining the vertiginous court shoes.

  ‘High heels are everyone’s thing,’ Holly Jo insisted, turning a foot to show off her own. ‘You just haven’t found the right ones.’

  ‘Anyway, foot fetishism aside,’ said Tony, putting the dress on the bed, ‘it’s time. Adam’s waiting in the other bedroom.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bianca said, hesitant. She knew what she was supposed to do; Kiddrick’s tutorials had been thorough, whatever she thought of him personally. But the original plan for her to practise using one of the recorded personalities at STS had been abandoned in the rush to reach Zykov. This would be her first time imprinting Adam for real. ‘Well . . . let’s give it a try.’

  She went with Tony through the suite’s main room, where Kyle was stretched out on a sofa watching TV. Behind him, at a table, Billy Kerschner was working on a piece of
equipment through an illuminated magnifier. Also in the room was a stocky Chinese man called Lau, whom Tony had introduced as one of the CIA’s local contacts. She nodded to them as she passed, then entered the other bedroom.

  The PERSONA device and its recording unit had been set up on a desk. Adam sat beside it, staring at the window. He looked round as Tony and Bianca came in. ‘Are we ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tony told him. ‘Okay, Bianca. Trial by fire.’

  ‘I wish you’d found a less scary way to say that,’ she complained as she took the skullcap from the case. ‘Right, let’s see if I remember how to put this on . . .’

  ‘The open part goes at the front,’ Tony joked.

  She shot a sarcastic smile over her shoulder, then turned back to Adam. As she gently tugged the cap into place and positioned the clusters of electrodes, she realised he was watching her expression, his eyes tracking hers. But there was no sense that he was doing so out of any desire to form an emotional connection; it seemed purely analytical. Data-gathering.

  She secured the strap under his chin. ‘Okay, that’s done. I hope.’

  The disk had already been inserted into the recorder; she opened the screen on the main unit and started it up. It ran through its initial self-tests, informing her that it was ready for use.

  She took the gas injector from the medical case. A quick glance at Tony, who gave her a look of reassurance, then she leaned over Adam. ‘Are you ready?’ A brief flick of his eyes sufficed as affirmation. ‘Okay. Here we go . . .’

  She pressed the injector to his neck and pulled the trigger.

  Adam drew in a sharp breath through his nostrils. Bianca couldn’t help but cringe at having caused his discomfort, but nevertheless began to count off the passing seconds. Ten, twenty. Any faint vestiges of expression that had been on his face evaporated away.

  Thirty seconds. ‘Adam? Are you all right?’

  His gaze locked on to hers, clear and blank. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, okay. Well. This is it, then.’