Deep Six (Dirk Pitt 7)

"Not yet," Oates replied tersely.

Fawcett didn't press him. He switched tack. "You want the President's latest brainstorm?"

"Bad?"

"Very bad," admitted Fawcett. "He's talking about withdrawing our military forces from the NATO alliance."

Oates clutched the phone until his knuckles turned white. "Got to be stopped," he said grimly.

Fawcett's voice sounded far away. "The President and I are a long way together, but in the best interests of the country must agree."

"Stay in touch."

Oates put down the phone, turned in his desk chair and stared out the window, lost in thought. The afternoon sky had ominous gray, and a light rain began to fall on Washington streets, their slickened surfaces reflecting the federal buildings eerie distortions.

In the end he would have to take over the reins of office Oates thought bitterly. He was well aware that every President over the last thirty years had been vilified and debased by ev yond his control. Eisenhower was the last chief executive the White House as venerated as when he came in. No saintly or intellectually brilliant the next President, stoned by an unmovable bureaucracy and increasingly news media; and Oates harbored no desire to be a target for rock throwers.

He was pulled out of his reverie by the muted buzz of his com. "Mr. Brogan and another gentleman to see you.

"Send them in," Oates directed. He rose and came around the desk as Brogan entered. They shook hands briefly and introduced the man standing beside him as Dr. Raymond. Oates correctly pegged Edgely as an academician.

fashioned crew cut and bow tie suggested someone strayed from a university campus. Edgely was slender, scraggly barbed-wire heard, and his bristly dark eyebro untrimmed and brushed upward in a Mephistopheles set [email protected] "Dr. Edgely is the director of Fathom," Brogan explain Agency's special study into mind-control techniques at UDiversity in Colorado."

Oates gestured for them to sit on a sofa and took a chair across a marble coffee table. "I've just received a call from Dan Fawcett.

The President intends to withdraw our troops from NATO."

"Another piece of evidence to holster our case," said Brogan.

"Only the Russians would profit from such a move."

Oates turned to Edgely. "Has Martin explained our suspicions regarding the President's behavior to you?"

"Yes, Mr. Brogan has filled me in."

"And how does the situation strike you? Can the President be mentally forced to become an involuntary traitor?"

"I grant the President's actions demonstrate a dramatic personality change, but unless we can put him through a series of tests, there is no way of being certain of brain alteration or exterior domination."

"He will never consent to an examination," said Brogan.

"That presents a problem," Edgely said.

"Suppose you tell us, Doctor," Oates asked, "how the President's mind transfer was performed?"

"If that is indeed what we are faced with," replied Edgely, "the first step is to isolate the subject in a womblike chamber for a given length of time, removed from all sensorial influences. During this sequence his brain patterns are studied, analyzed and deciphered into a language that can be programmed and translated by computer. The next step is to design an implant, in this instance a microchip, with the desired data and then insert it by psychosurgery into the subject's brain."

"You make it sound as elementary as a tonsillectomy," said Oates.

Edgely laughed. "I've condensed and oversimplified, of course, but in reality the procedures are incredibly delicate and involved."

"After

the microchip is imbedded into the brain, what then?"

"I should have mentioned that a section of the implant is a tiny transmitter/receiver which operates off the electrical impulses of the brain and is capable of sending thought patterns and other bodily functions to a central computer and monitoring post located as far away as Hong Kong."

"Or Moscow," anded Brogan.