Ingrams & Assoc 5: Personality Flaws Ch. 04

"As I said, I've softened all the memories of the rapes, but I can't remove them entirely. As it is, April is one hell of a strong woman mentally, and given what she does for a living, she is better able to divorce sex from anything else. There wasn't much I had to do in terms of rationalization – she's already done it herself.

"But. She is going to need some pretty intensive therapy too, right April?"

April shrugged, but clearly, she was agreeing.

"I understand she has a therapist already? Maryanne someone?"

"Dubowski," nodded Jessica. She continued tartly, "Marianne Dubowski. She was one of my tutors when I was at college. She was a royal pain in the ass – she played that game like Sherlock Holmes does, knowing what you are thinking by watching your face and starting from a known mental state. She started out as a Moonie de-programmer back in the seventies. Single handedly created the CIA psychiatry program. Dermot – my number one back at the office - took over from her, in fact. She's very good."

That was the first time April had ever heard Jessica talk about her friend and therapist, Marianne Dubowski. She'd asked Marianne about her relationship with Jessica Ingrams – the two clearly knew of each other – but each time it came up Marianne had given her a cryptic smile, and then changed the subject. It just didn't seem right to pursue it too hard.

"Well, she's going to need to be on this. I think April really needs to get back home as soon as possible, among familiar surroundings. Back with her dog. I'd like to schedule some follow up sessions in a couple of weeks, possibly sooner. But I think, on balance, we got her out early enough that there won't be too many repercussions from her experience. Except for one."

Chandra clearly had the attention of everyone in the room, and was just as clearly enjoying it, even if the subject matter was so serious.

"She killed a man. April has never killed anyone before. That takes some...overcoming. Everyone's reaction is different. April hasn't even begun to process that yet, because of all the other junk stuffed into her head. But she will, and soon. She needs the right surroundings and the right people around her when that bill comes due, right?"

Jessica nodded, and looked directly at April, who stared back, a little apprehensively. This was not the normal direct and always-in-control April she was used to. This was a damaged April, and one that would need help to regain what had been taken from her.

There was an unspoken message sent between the two women. Jessica was not about to let her employee and friend down. And April, much as she hated needing the help, was acknowledging that she would require it.

Holding the eye contact for just a few seconds, Jessica turned to Mark and George.

"Regarding that, what's our legal situation here?"

George sighed heavily, and then said, "Honestly? We don't have one. There is a very dead man back there, and several assaulted individuals, both physically and medical. There's no getting around that."

Jessica pursed her lips and looked around the room.

"Do any of you regret our actions? Anyone here think we went too far? That we didn't need to do what we did?"

There was silence to that.

"If this does come back on us, do we have an out?"

"Oh, I think pretty much any jury in the land isn't going to put April in jail for what she did. There was assault, repeated premeditated rape, imprisonment, you name it, they did it. Even if a jury did convict her, there's no way she was totally in her right mind anyway. Sorry April," George apologized to April.

"No offense taken George. You are not wrong," she replied, softly.

"Our little raid might not be looked at with quite such rose glasses though," he added, drily. "That was pretty illegal and the boys at the Yard tend to take a pretty dim view regarding domestic paramilitary invasions. At least ones they aren't running."

"Well then. We don't speak about that unless asked. What's the latest on what's going on at that facility?"

"We left a few transmitting cameras and audio devices in there, so we've got an idea. At least for a while, anyway. The day shift arrived, just as those we hit with the AEP's and the syringes started to wake up. They discovered Baker's corpse. Some phone calls were made, and within two hours a clean-up crew arrived. The entire place was dismantled and packed into vans – which we followed by the way; they ended up storing the desks and stuff in a warehouse that no one has been anywhere near since.

"Since then, there's been no activity at the facility at all. It's deserted, everyone was sent home presumably. They found our bugs while they were packing up, and we saw a crew come in with a bug detecting wand to remove what was left, so we are now none the wiser. Suffice to say though, your instincts were correct. As far as we can tell, the entire operation is now in mothballs."

"Hmmm," said Jessica. "Well, it's about as good as we can expect. So now, the sixty-four-million-dollar question. What were they actually doing there? What did they want April for? More to the point, how did they know who she is?"

"I can't tell you why they wanted me, specifically, or how they knew I worked for you, Jessica – Baker never got into that. But I can tell you some of what they were doing. What Lee Hicks was all about. Baker was quite open about it," said April, with more authority than she'd previously shown. She had information and she was a field agent and she had decided she needed to act more like it.

"Most of the people they grabbed and...conditioned, were targets of opportunity. They've basically set up shop, offer therapy for some specific aliment, and then see who came along. As soon as someone came along with some ability to make them money, they'd grab hold of them and try and...utilize them. They'd brainwash them, and along the way, figure out the best way to get money out of them. Sometimes it was straight 'give us money' – I get the impression that was only done with single people because marriage or close family would smell a rat there -, sometimes it was stocks and bonds. Baker was quite open and gloated about how they'd figure out convoluted ways to get their hands on money, and then see if he couldn't program people into doing what he wanted. The more convoluted it was, the happier he was, because he liked a challenge. He wanted to expand his abilities at programming people. Lee Hicks was like that. He wanted to see if he could totally reprogram this man's psyche. It was all a lab experiment to him.

"But Lee Hicks was the first time they actively went after someone. The first time they set things up so he would be caught in their web. They needed to – because of the drug that Rachael's company was developing. Baker feared it would interfere with how he was programming people. Anyone taking it would be automatically resistant to his little cocktail, and he couldn't have that. Any threat to his little empire had to be dealt with, and the fact that it was a challenge, well, he loved that idea. He was very pleased with the results."

There was a stunned silence to this. Everyone absorbed the fact that this man had destroyed marriages, personalities and even companies, purely in order to prove he could.

"Jesus," whispered Dan. There was unconscious nodding in agreement around the table.

"April," intoned Jessica, "I think I speak for everyone here when I congratulate you on removing an evil presence from the world. What you did needed to be done. Don't you dare feel bad about it. This man needed to go."

There was more nodding and murmuring of agreement.

Then Jessica turned to Mark, George and Chandra.

"What's going on with the investigation? Did we get much from the data from the servers? Did that get wiped correctly? What do we know about Marcus Baker?"

Mark grinned and responded first.

"Oh yes. Their servers were well and truly wiped. Our little black hat hacker also traced a backup to the Amazon cloud servers, and went and wiped that, too. He was just mad he didn't have enough time. He wanted to duplicated their data, run a program on it that would randomize the results, and then replace their data with that. They wouldn't even have known their data was bullshit. But, he did what we asked. Their records, recordings and everything else is toast. They don't even have payroll anymore. He was quite thorough." Mark empathized the word 'quite' in a very British fashion.

George then picked up the narrative, looking at some papers on the table in front of him.

"So Marcus Baker, also known as Robin Temple, Mike Arkin, Robert Sewell, Phillip Pols and half a dozen other alias we think, originally came into life as one Danilo Jezdic. He was Serbian, although he went to Oxford to do a degree in psychology. Served in the Serbian army during the Kosvo conflict during the very late 1990's. It appears he was a psychologist, and his specialty was as an interrogator, and then he moved into using hypnotism to get details out of enemy combatants, and then moving from there to sending them back with single instructions in them, helping rooting out what they declared as terrorist cells. Simple stuff like 'Open the door at this time.' Apparently he had some success with that.

"When the War was over, he vanished. There are some references in the data we got to him visiting India for some time, Nepal, and then being in Northern Japan for some eighteen months." George looked meaningfully at Chandra and added, "Looks like your hunch was right."

"He showed up in the UK about ten years ago, and has been sporadically building this little empire and refining his research, as best we can tell. It's not like he left us a nice journal detailing everything he's been doing."

Jessica nodded and then replied, thoughtfully, "Good job George, Mark, and you Mr. Patel."

She thought for a moment, then said, implacably, "And now we've looked at the data, I would like our copy to be wiped too."

Immediately Chandra jumped in with, "Wait, what? That's a treasure trove of research there. You can't delete that!"

Jessica looked very hard at Chandra and replied, slowly but very firmly, "Mr. Patel. That research represents lives destroyed. The cost of that research is in human misery. Added to that, I think we can all understand what this kind of knowledge means. If someone like the CIA or MI6 got their hands on this, you know what kind of ends it would be put to. This kind of knowledge needs to be put back in Pandora's box and left there."

Chandra sputtered, "But it's knowledge. If it was discovered once, it can be discovered again. Hiding it doesn't mean it will never be re-found!"

"I know. However, I'm not about to make that easy if I can make it hard Mr. Patel. Do you have enough to be able to help the poor retches we already rescued?"

Basic honestly compelled Chandra to nod and say, "Yes, but that's not the point."

"On the contrary Mr. Patel, I think that's exactly the point. And my decision is the one that matters. Mr. Scholtz, please do as I ask. I want that data deleted by the time I get on the plane."

Mark obviously agreed with the decision, since he nodded vigorously and said, "It'll be a pleasure Jessica."

"One last thing Mr. Scholtz. I've been reviewing the London station. My feeling is that Ingrams & Associates needs to expand their international focus a bit. I want two full field agents recruited from the UK by Christmas. I'll send you Megan and her husband to help you find them and train them. I'm sure they won't turn up an all-expenses paid trip the UK for a couple of months. If you are lucky, I'll send April here back out to help out too. I'm sure your friend Rachael would be happy about that idea," Jessica said, flashing a glance at April with the last sentence.

"Well then, I think we are done here. Mark, obviously let's keep an eye on that warehouse. April, I want you back in the US within a few days. Mark make sure that happens. Mr. Patel, again, our thanks for your help."

Jessica stood up, giving a plastered smile at everyone, before walking out of the room, Mark following along.

April was back in the US three days later, on a private jet chartered by Coladia no less. Nothing was too good for Rachael Hick's friend. Chandra even went with her, spending the flight putting her in a trance and attempting to track down any remaining of the damage done to her psyche.

She was installed in her home, and astonished to find that the pottery she had ordered was waiting for her. Kim had Max, and brought him home. He was very excited to see April again and smothered her with attention and licks.

April was just glad to be home.

Over the next few weeks, April had many sessions with Marianne Dubowski, and Chandra arrived a few times, both to confer with Marianne and to put April into a trance, just to ensure everything was calm inside. He recorded all sessions for her to hear, just in case, and while he was there, he made damn sure that April could not be hypnotized again in this fashion.

Three months to the day after she returned to the US, April went through the doors to Ingrams & Associates HQ in Washington DC, to applause from everyone present.

She found a radically different environment – Dermot had retired, and Desirea was now promoted to head of operations, in order to keep her from field work, her own experience having destroyed her nerve for field operations.

"Ready to get back to work, April?" Desirea asked, smiling a toothy smile at her as April settled into her office chair

"Yeah. Think so. Whatchagot for me?"

Epilogue.

The phone rang and the well-manicured and tanned hand reached out to pick it up. This wasn't a phone call he'd been looking forward to, but it had to be handled.

"Yes?" he asked calmly, in his deep reverberating baritone.

The voice on the other end of the phone was less calm - positively testy in fact.

"Well that was a debacle."

"Yes, I can quite see how it could be seen that way."

"There's another way to see it?"

There was a pause.

"I'm sure we'll find the silver lining in this eventually."

The voice snorted.

"Yes, I'm sure. You are good at that. I'll give you that. Are we insulated?"

"Oh yes, one hundred percent. The money he used to start his venture came from us, but it was funneled through three believable people who are, unfortunately, no longer with us. They were chosen for their advanced age for just this kind of eventuality. While he did a lot for us, this particular thing of his was just that – his. There is no connection to us. As I understood it, he used it as some sort of research and development laboratory."

The voice grunted and then said, "Total insulation?"

"I can assure you of that."

"Good. Does this hurt us at all?"

"Well, as I said, he did a lot for us, but by this point, most of what he did is well established. Obviously we won't have the benefit of his experience and new research, but for now, we can muddle along with what we do know. It's not optimal, but at least he did us the courtesy of leaving this world before real damage could be done."

"Yes. This is the second time they've dipped their oar in our waters, isn't it?"

"Strictly speaking, if you are counting everything, this is the third time. But it doesn't much matter. What we got from their agent effectively nullifies them going forward. She was most helpful. We know all we need to know."

"Well that's good to hear, after the disaster it's all turned out to be. While we talking about pain in the asses, what about that other issue?"

"That is...in hand," he said smoothly.

"It's been 'in hand' for the past fourteen months. When is it going to be out of the hand and in the garbage?"

"I admit it has been taking longer than anticipated. For that I apologize. However, we've recently had a new idea that should take care of all our issues in one fell swoop. It's quite a clever and audacious concept, and also quite ironic when looked at from the right point of view."

"I don't give a shit how audacious it is. Will it work and will it remove that thorn?"

"Undoubtedly."

"OK then. Glad to hear it. I'll leave you to your metallurgy."

There was a click as the phone was hung up, and the hand slowly put down the old fashioned receiver he was using.

He congratulated himself on handling that well, and decided on a brandy to celebrate. One from the Hennesey collection, perhaps the Ellipse? Yes. That would do.

He reached out to press the button to summon the maid. If she took more than a minute to arrive, he'd have to discipline her again. Good help was just so hard to find these days.

April Carlisle and the rest of Ingrams & Associates will be back in the conclusion to the Ingrams Series – Downfall.