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2
Gerald A.Browne
author of Il Harrowhouse
44 78725-$1.50
ARD
makes ESPionage history,
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bit Hazard overheard. With no sympathy, Hazard thought
that would be the best Richland and Whitley could do-
a couple of hurry-up hookers.
Meanwhile, Whitley was still proving he had a mean
eye for unnecessary or excessive spending. Now he was
suggesting that Kersh cut back some on all operations'
costs. Kersh didn't give in on that, and Hazard. noticed
Whitley didn't press the point, just poured himself an-
other double bourbon and folded.
As soon as Richland was off the phone, Hazard took
it over. First he dialed Carl's number direct and got a
busy signal. At least Carl was home. He dialed another
number. After the third ring he heard it pick up. As
usual the person on the other end said nothing. Hazard
said his code letters. T-R-A-K, which alphabetically cor-
responded with the last four digits of his own New York
number reversed. Deliberately loud enough to be heard
by Richland and Whitley, he asked what the line was
on the Mets that night at Shea. He listened and then said,
"I'll take the Mets for a nickel." Betting five hundred,
despite his better judgment that Gibson of the Cardinals
would have the underdog Met batters striking, grounding,
and popping out all night.
After that he gave Carl's number another try. Still busy.
For the exercise it was decided that Richland would
stay at the installation with Keven and Kersh. Whitley
would go along with Hazard and Kersh's first assistant,
a young Ph.D. named Lowery. Lowery's primary respon-
sibility would be to sce that certain controls were main-
tained. Also he would keep an exact chronological record
of each image that was chosen. For this purpose he had
an oversized clipboard holding a pad of special, printed
forms. Attached to the upper part of the clipboard was
a special, very accurate watch with a green signal light set
in the center of its face. Lowery also would be in charge
of the images, which were in a metal box .. About a
thousand of them.
Hazard, Whitley, and Lowery went out and down the
slope to the private landing and a twenty-meter power
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Fetch that Kersh had hired for the day. The owner and
bis son had sailed the boat over from Westport.
The three men went aboard, the mooring lines were
unhitched, and immediately the idling gurgle of the
ketch's engine changed to a louder boil, getting under
way.
They headed straight out. It was a bright, nearly cloud-
less day. The wind was cool, but Hazard took off his
sweater anyway to get the sun. For some protection he
sat on the deck leeward of the rear cabin house.
Hazard looked forward and noticed how out of place
Whitley seemed there in his suit and tie, having trouble
keeping his balance against the ship's pitches and rolls.
He watched Whitley take out a cigar and try to light it
in the wind. Whitley didn't give up, used almost a whole
book of matches, and must have inhaled plenty of sul-
phur before he finally got the cigar going. He puffed hard
and some of the tobacco's aroma was carried back
to Hazard. Hazard wasn't a cigar smoker but he knew an
authentic Havana when he smelled one. Probably gets
them via Canada, Hazard thought, suspecting that Whit-
ley's political hypocrisy wasn't limited to such minor
transgressions.
At the installation, Keven was being made ready. She
was seated in a contour chair in the center of a window-
less room. The walls she faced, those on both sides and
the ceiling, were blank and black, not painted but cov-
ered entirely with a felt fabric so that the black was
softer and unmarred. Behind her was a partition of
special, dark glass, something like a two-way mirror
with reflection. It allowed unobtrusive observation from
the adjoining laboratory area.
Keven knew what to expect, having been through these
procedures numerous times before, but it usually took
her a while to get used to the room. The feeling of being
enclosed alone caused an uneasiness that she called
"the clausties." She usually got over that soon enough,
but then there were all the wires and terminals. Kersh
had explained the purpose of each and reassured her that
there was no danger. Still, she couldn't help feel edgy
about them. Also, the possibility that she might not do
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well, might fail completely and disappoint Kersh and
everyone was another source of her apprehension.
It was expected that everything would come to her
and, through her, be fed into the computers just below.
The computers would record, process, and relay im-
mediately whatever came to the monitors in the labora-
tory.
In Keven's opinion it was awfully complicated. With
the confidence she'd acquired over the past six months,
she was sure she could do just as well without being all
wired and connected up like some living instrument. She
told Kersh that and he agreed with her. But, he explained,
personal experience, no matter how valid it might be,
was not scientifically acceptable. That was especially true,
he said, in researching this subject, which was already
handicapped by countless personal experiences over hun-
dreds of years.
Thirty-six electrodes were attached to Keven's scalp.
Kersh placed them himself and was very exact about
it.
.
In several ways the procedures differed from the usual
electroencephalograph. Interpreting the results of a reg-
ular EEG always required guesswork because of the elec-
trical activity between various areas of the brain. It was
like trying to analyze the recording of a thousand-piece
symphony orchestra, hoping to isolate a single instru-
ment from the whole. For this very reason, neuroscientists
had eagerly taken any opportunity to implant terminals
deep within the brain itself.
However, the electrodes being used by Kersh overcame
the old EEG problem without having to resort to delicate
surgery. They probed the brain with the same precision
as implanted terminals but did so electronically. Each
electrode was present to record at a certain fixed depth.
Those voltages, for example, that originated in the oc-
cipital lobe would be recorded independently from those
that came. from the adjacent cerebellum. The electrodes
were color-keyed and numbered according to where they
would be positioned on the scalp. Also, the electrodes
themselves were much more efficient than those usually
used. They were made up of an alloy of platinum and
clement 44, ruthenium, a very scarce and extremely hard
metal more sensitive to electricity than any other known
substance. Capable of picking up charges well beyond
fifty millionths of a volt, the average potential of the
buman brain, which is actually much less than the elec-
trostatic charges that occur when a person combs his
hair.
Methodically, precise to the centimeter, Kersh ap-
plied the tiny, silvery-white discs to Keven's head. The
contact surface of each electrode held three points that
penetrated the skin. However, they were so sharp and
fine that Keven hardly felt them go in. Anyway, she was
brave about it, said it didn't hurt nearly as much as the
pain inflicted on herself whenever she plucked her
eyebrows.
When the depth electrodes were all securely in place,
more electrodes of a different type were attached to var-
ious other parts of Keven's body, to measure her heart and
metabolic rate, breathing, blood pressure, body tempera-
ture, and muscle reactions. Two final attachments were
made to the outer corners of her eyelids.
She remained seated upright, eyes open, facing the soft
blackness of the wall. Nothing else in sight, but her mind
was racing, changing, presenting a hodgepodge of un-
related images. Nothing definite. She again was worried
about failure.
A keyboard of numbers and letters was swung auto-
matically into position, so that it was easily within her
reach. Also an electronic apparatus that looked like a
slanted easel.
In the adjacent laboratory one of Kersh's assistants
determined that all systems were functioning properly.
Kersh was in the laboratory now. He quickly looked
over the bank of monitors that were presenting a com-
puterized translation of Keven's physical and mental
processes at that moment. Kersh saw that everything was
within normal range. There was the expected alternating
between alpha and beta brain waves, with more betas
coming through because Keven was acclimating herself
to the surroundings and circumstances.
From where Richland was seated in the lab, he also
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had a good view of all the monitors. To emphasize his
official presence, he asked about the brain waves, the
alphas and betas he'd heard Kersh mention.
"Alphas are the primary waves that occur when the
mind and body are at rest," Kersh told him.
"Everyone has. them?"
"The average brain transmits eight to thirteen alphas
a second at a range of two to fifteen millionths of a volt.
Each alpha pulsation lasts about ninety thousandths of a
second."
Richland nodded as though he understood. "So where
do the betas come in?"
Kersh doubted that Richland was genuinely interested,
but he also couldn't just ignore the man. Unfortunately.
"An abrupt change in brain-wave pattern takes place
each time a person experiences any sensory stimulus or
is required to make a mental effort of any sort. What
happens is the alphas cease entirely and the betas take
over."
.
"How do you know one from the other?"
"Betas are obviously different. They're lower in voltage,
have longer duration, and come at a faster rate, normally
from eighteen to thirty per second. As soon as the brain
accepts the stimulus or becomes used to it, the betas
disappear and the alpha pattern returns."
"You mean we're always going back and forth like
that?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
."No one knows for certain. There have been various
theories but as yet no definite explanations."
"Shows how little anybody knows."
"About the brain, yes," Kersh admitted.
That verified Richland's opinion. He wasn't the only
one there who didn't know what was going on.
Kersh waited until he saw alphas now coming more
consistently from Keven. Then, satisfied that she was
settled enough, he spoke to her via the intercom. "Test
the keyboard."
Keven had learned the keyboard by touch. She hit
three of the keys.
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On a monitor screen in the lab appeared the letters
Y-O-U. Also, predictably, the beta monitor showed tem-
porary activity. Twenty-three cycles per second, normal
voltage, average .duration.
"Now try the graph."
Keven's fingers found and took up a thin, metal stylus.
It felt cold to her touch, and she realized that her hands
were moist from tension. She used the stylus like a pencil
on the slightly grainy surface of the easel, careful that
only the very tip of the stylus made contact. She drew
the shape of a heart. No image appeared on the eascl
but its pressure-sensitized surface electronically relayed
a clear outline of the image to a corresponding monitor
in the lab.
Richland saw the heart shape appear, scoffcd to him-
self, and shifted impatiently.
"We're ready," Kersh said. He pressed a square but-
ton on the console, which caused the remote signal on
Lowery's clipboard to light green. By then the ketch was
about four miles out on the sound. It came about sharply,
reduced speed, and ran parallel with the Connecticut
coast. The wind had picked up considerably and the tide
was running strong. The ridges of the swells were white
and spraying.
Lowery motioned for Hazard to join him at midship.
Lowery also tried for Whitley's attention, but had to go
forward to get him. Hazard noticed Whitley's face and
even his neck had lost color. The man appeared cold,
but there was perspiration on his forehead and above his
lips.
With the wind and sea as they were, Lowery nearly
had to shout when explaining to Whitley the controlled
conditions under which the exercise would be conducted.
Whitley merely gave a single emphatic nod every once in
a while. Not really listening. His cigar had gone out but
he still held it tight between his lips. Hazard imagined the
end of the cigar soaking in Whitley's mouth.
Lowery opened the box of images to show Whitley
how the four-by-five cards were always concealed. Hc
demonstrated how the battery-powered box rotated the
cards on a spindle, how it automatically selected and
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presented one card at random out of more than a thou-
sand: The face of each card was entirely, covered with "an
opaque adhesive paper that Hazard would peel off. No.
one but Hazard would get. a look at an image until after
it had been transmitted. That way they'd. be. absolutely
sure only Hazard was doing : the sending, : explained
Lowery.
A final approving nod from Whitley .. He gazed long-
ingly at the far-off horizontal strip of gray that was land.
Wishing he were back on it, he pulled the knot of his
: tie down. unbuttoned his collar and. breathed deeply
through his nose ...
Hazard's look told Lowery he was ready .:
Lowery activated the box. The spindle rotated the
cards for several seconds and then pushed up a single
card.
Hazard took it. He carefully peeled off the opaque
adhesive and glanced at the image. : An easy one, he
thought.
It was an . ordinary circle with a much smaller circle
at its center ..
Hazard immediately fixed his mind on that image. He
had to force his senses to detach, ignore everything else-
Lowery, Whitley, the sea, the wind. It wasn't easy. It
never was. Because success depended on more than sim-
.:: ple concentration. It required that he focus his thoughts
not only on the image as he saw it but also as Keven
. would see it. That meant concentrating simultaneously
· on two related but separate things. Not easy. Ordinarily
impossible:
Circle containing a smaller circle.
I see it, thought Hazard, and I. see it as she sees it.
He visualized Keven's eyes, their special blue color
with slivers of silver in them. Her eyes set on the circle
containing a smaller circle. Her eyes delivering that
image to her brain.
He felt a spray of cold sea water on his face, distract-
ing. He was momentarily aware of Lowery and Whitley
, nearby, a peripheral impression of them. But he used
the sea, its repetitive chopped-up mass, to bring his mind
back to nothing but the circle containing a smaller circle.
50
There it was again, isolated in his mind's eye.
And then, there in his mind was Keven seeing it.
The image.
As he saw it.
As he saw her seeing it.
The two still consecutive.
For several minutes his mind shifted its intense con-
centration alternately between those two impressions.
Back and forth, more and more quickly. Until the image
became a constant and his mental view of it and his
mental view of Keven seeing it superimposed one on the .
rother for no more than the duration of an ordinary frag-
ment of thought. ;
. He couldn't hold the composite, didn't try. The im-
pressions became consecutive again, individual thoughts
in order, and he felt he might lose them altogether and
have to start over. He knew he'd lose them if he tried
too hard. So he released the intensity of his concentration
slightly, just enough, and that kept the impressions there.
Then he pulled the separate thoughts back together to
form the necessary composite again. I see it and see it as
she sees it. The image. He held it for as long as he could
and then let it go.
There was the choppy sea, the sun and the wind that
had been hitting him. He handed the card to Lowery.
During all that time Kersh's attention never left the
laboratory monitors. He anticipated what might come
through, so he was less surprised than pleased by what
the computers picked up from Keven, swiftly processed
and relayed.
Kersh recognized it as the same extraordinary sequence.
that had occurred in previous, similar exercises. Beginning
with a regular, steady alpha-wave rhythm and then an
abrupt block of all alphas as the beta waves took over.
Indicating that Keven was responding to a sensory stim-
ulus. Perfectly normal.
: However, at this point came the first significant varia-
tion from the normal pattern. For no apparent reason,
the beta waves continued, and quickly their cycles per
second increased from twenty-three to fifty-four. There
was also a sharp increase in beta amplitude to sixty mil-
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livolts, and the beta impulses more than doubled in dura-
tion to eighty-five thousandths of a second.
Obviously Keven's brain was very hard at. work. Re-
laxed as she was, and alone in that silent room, it was
doubtful that she was responding to any external sensory
stimulation. At least not to this extent.
Kersh noted the auxiliary channel that corresponded
with the electrodes attached to the corners of Keven's
eyelids. Indications of very rapid eye movement. Her
eyes were shifting erratically, as though she were being
bombarded by myriad visual attractions. Despite the fact
that she was looking at nothing but a blank black wall.
:
All the while, the beta waves kept coming from her.
Within less than a minute they had doubled again in
frequency, voltage and length; were peaking up to a
hundred and ten cycles; one hundred twenty-five milli-
volts, one hundred seventy thousandths of a second.
Kersh tried to identify with what Keven was experienc-
ing at that moment. By comparative standards her brain
was electrocuting itself. Yet he felt no pain.
The beats went on and up to one hundred thirty
cycles, one hundred fifty millivolts, two hundred thou-
sandths of a second. And then, abruptly-
The betas stopped.
As though someone had pulled the plug or severed the
wires, the monitor that had been registering the beta
rhythm indicated no beta response at all. Strange enough,
but all the more so because the expected didn't happen-
there was no reversion to an alpha-wave rhythm. The
monitor that registered alphas showed no sign of activity.
And the eye movement, so prominent before, had sud-
denly stopped.
Incredible as it seemed, every monitor relating to
Keven's brain was now presenting nothing. Blank. It ap-
peared that her entire cerebral cortex had shut down.
For one, two, three, four, five seconds.
Then, while all other channels stayed void, there came
a distinct pulsating wave of a different sort. It didn't
begin low and build up-it came through full at once.
Eleven cycles per second with a very high amplitude
of two hundred fifty millivolts. Each wave was extremely
Short, a mere ten thousandths of a second. Graphically,
the pattern being recorded was one of long, sharp, in-
dividual spikes, like a symmetrical line of identical in-
verted icicles.
It was relatively easy for Kersh to determine from
which part of Keven's brain these waves were coming.
He only needed to see which of the keyed depth elec-
trodes on Keven's scalp was picking up this isolated elec-
trical activity.
The old brain. That was the point of origin. Deep
down past the new bark, inside the old bark where the
three earliest brain vesicals had evolved. Just anterior
of the brain stem, those three known as the rhomben-
cephalon, metencephalon, and thalamencephalon, also
called the hind, mid, and fore sections of the old brain.
In the evolution of the human thinking and sensory
mechanisms, these three had been the first to develop.
However, most of their earlier functions had since been
taken over by newer brain parts.
Kersh suspected that the waves originating in the old
brain were possibly the so-called lambda waves that
neuroscientists had detected infrequently on the EEGS
of certain subjects. It secmed that lambdas showed up.
with some subjects and didn't with others. Kersh wasn't
sure they were that unpredictable and generally ignored
the lambdas, so he arbitrarily called them something
else. Psi waves.
Now, as abruptly as they'd begun, the psi waves com-
ing from Keven cut off. Leaving' once again that inex-
plicable, contrary one, two, three, four, five seconds of
blank. Then in proper reversion sequence the recogniz-
able beta waves returned as strong as before. Gradually
they subsided to normal range.
Kersh focused on the monitor that corresponded with
the graph, the easel-like electronic apparatus on which,
earlier, Keven had drawn a heart.
Within seconds, there, on the silvery face of that mon-
itor, appeared the image she had chosen to draw this
time.
A circle containing a much smaller circle.
Kersh didn't know, of course, whether or not that
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image had been telepathically received by Keven, whether
it was a hit or a miss. He wouldn't know until the res
of the exercise was done and the score was' added up
with Lowery.
"Know what that looks like to me?" said Richland
from the rear of the lab. He'd gone for the bottle of
bourbon and had missed most of what had happened.
He wouldn't have understood it anyway. Now he gulped
from a styrofoam cup and said, "It looks like a tit."
Kersh didn't turn to Richland, thought it better no!
to in order to control his flare of anger. He kept himself
in check by once more reminding himself that his affiliation
with Richland and all the others like Richland had been
his own choosing. Out of necessity, yes, but he'd known
pretty well beforehand how it would be.
In 1950 at the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge
University Kersh was one of a small group of biologists
working on the possible genetic importance of protein
molecules. While at Cavendish, it became apparent to
Kersh that the protein theory, then supported by so many
scientists, was not going to prove itself out as the answer
to genetic structure. He preferred to believe that the
solution lay in the area of nucleic acids rather than the
proteins.
To research that field he left Cavendish in 1952 and
established himself at Harvard. He was close to the
nucleic acid answer when, in 1953, Crick and Watson
proved he was right by beating him to it. A disappoint-
ment, but Kersh drew valuable self-confidence from know-
ing he'd been on the right track. That fact also brought
him a certain amount of recognition.
Crick's and Watson's double helix discovery was a
huge jump ahead. Kersh wisely jumped ahead with it. He
stayed at Harvard, refocused his efforts, and over the
ycars made numerous valuable contributions. His reputa-
tion grew within the scientific community and reached
its height in 1968 when he was awarded a top interna-
tional prize-just this side of the Nobel-for his work
on the replication of DNA and. RNA.
By then he was in his fifties, and late one Saturday
night at his desk, having worked straight through without
54
dinner, more or less out of habit, he paused for a mo-
cent, glanced at his plastic-protected prize certificate and
eralized how much he really hadn't lived, how much of
Lis time he'd given to his work. Most of his best. It was
feeling that had been coming on for quite awhile. He
decided he wouldn't rest on his laurels, stay in the rut.
There was still time, and possibly he could make the best
of it.
Soon afterward he took a leave of absence. Went to
warm foreign places and tried not to think of such things
ts crystalline A-form DNA fibers. Within six months he had
met Julie, loved her, married her, returned to Harvard,
and found he couldn't pick up where he'd left off.
Changed that much.
It was during his prolonged sabbatical that he'd devel-
oped an interest in extrasensory perception, particularly
telepathy. Julie's influence had much to do with that.
Her belief in it was emphatic and she enjoyed discussing
it with Kersh. She related telepathy to something spir-
itual, a psychic phenomenon. Without belittling her the-
ories, he naturally took a scientific position. If telepathy
did exist, he said, there was a scientific explanation for it.
Did he believe there was such a thing as telepathy?
Possibly.
"Then why," asked Julie, "hasn't science given it more
important attention?"
He wasn't sure. Perhaps the most inhibiting factor was
the religious belief that God, not man, works in strange
and wondrous ways. Geneticists were getting some of the
same treatment for their discoveries that chromosomatic
arrangements could be manipulated to predetermine hu-
man characteristics.
Julie didn't believe that was a good enough excuse.
Kersh agreed, and told her, "As much as they deny it,
scientists also want acceptance outside their own special
community. That's what often holds them back more
than anything else."
Julie put the question to him again. "Do you believe
in telepathy? Yes or no?"
"There must be something to it," he conceded.
There was an impressive amount of evidence in favor
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of humans having such an ability. But little of it scien-
tifically acceptable. Except for the work of J. B. Rhine at
Duke and a few others, all of whom had gone at it rather
defensively, attempting to prove the existence of telepathy
rather than assuming it did exist and concentrating their
energies determining how and why.
The new challenge of it appealed to Kersh. Also, for
him, a not unimportant consideration was Julie's en.
thusiastic interest. Work was better when there was love
in it.
He outlined a research program and submitted an offi-
cial request to the appropriate board of grants at Harvard.
The board, though taken aback by Kersh's proposal to
research telepathy, did not turn him down. They just
politely tried to dissuade him, urging him to continue
with his brilliant work in molecular biology.
Kersh stood fast. The board stalled, suggested he take
another sabbatical.
Kersh insisted.
Harvard lost him.
But where to get financing for the research of telep-
athy? One of the private foundations? Too controversial
a field for them, Kersh decided. He looked to a more
likely money source.
The letter he wrote to Washington was purposely
vaguc, but it received a prompt reply and a week later
Kersh flew the shuttle down to Washington for a meeting.
As he was escorted down one of the wide upper corridors
of the Pentagon, past offices with doors displaying gold-
leaved eagles and stars and other emblems, he felt sure
he'd come to the right place.
His timing was perfect. There were just six weeks left
in the fiscal year and every federal agency was concerned
with its dollars; not pinching to make do, rather trying
to spend what remained of that year's appropriation. The
worst thing would be to have money left over, which
might cause next year's appropriation to be reduced. A
federal agency could lose its standing if it were too con-
scientiously frugal. It was the season to be prodigal, and
Kersh sensed the spirit of waste in the air.
He was led to and through double doors to his ap-
pointment with an Assistant Deputy Director of Plans.
Kersh wasn't kept waiting, was shown right in to an of-
fice that had much the same durable character as the
corridors, the most noticeable difference being underfoot
-wall-to-wall gray carpeting. In one corner a stanchion
beld a drooping Stars and Stripes fringed cheaply in gold.
On a wall were framed photographs in proper nonpar-
tisan sequence. FDR, Harry, Ike, Jack, LBJ and Dick.
Signed but probably not really by them. The only thing
on the desk was a gray manila folder, not thick, not
labeled. A dossier on Kersh.
The Assistant Deputy Director's name was James W.
Mumford. So said a propped-up plastic strip. Mumford
was in his late forties. He'd recently taken off twenty-five
pounds and looked the worse for it, drawn and sallow.
His gray suit hung on him, and his shirt collar, at least
a size and a half too loose, was forced into gathers by
the shoved-up knot of his tie.
Mumford did his best imitation of a warm smile. He
began with some flattery and then got abruptly to the
point. He let Kersh do most of the talking. Within fifteen
minutes the proposition was laid out.
"Rumor had it that we tried telepathy with the sub-
marine Nautilus," Mumford said.
Kersh remembered hearing about that. Surface to un-
derwater telepathic communication. A futile attempt at
best, never verified.
"Not true, of course," said Mumford. "We think the
CIA started the story just to make us look foolish."
Rivalry between the various intelligence agencies. That
was something Kersh was counting on. There were ten
separate agencies sharing an annual six-billion-dollar
budget. Among them were the FBI, the AEC, the Treasury
Department, and the State Department's Intelligence and
Research Bureau. None of these got a very big slice. At
least not compared to the National Security Agency, the
CIA, and the DIA. The last had the intelligence divisions
of the Army, Navy, and Air Force under its authority
making it the biggest spender.
Since the Bay of Pigs fiasco the CIA had recouped its
losses and apparently was the intelligence agency most
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favored by the present administration. That left the DIA
a poor second. Not poor in . moncy but starving for
prestige. .
The CIA had come to be synonymous with . U.S. intel-
ligence. Few persons even knew: the DIA : existed. The
Defense Intelligence Agency had been formed in . 1961
by Secretary of Defense McNamara. The idea was to con-
solidate the intelligence units of the various military ser-
vices. The move gave the DIA a big edge in personnel
under command. The DIA was big, so big in fact that it
got caught up in its own bureaucracy. It operated like
a giant vacuum cleaner, sweeping up raw data gleaned
by DIA agents over the world, but DIA suffered a glut of
facts and a poverty of analysis.
Meanwhile, it was the CIA that predicted the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia and Israeli's blitz victory in
the Six-Day War. It was the CIA that engineered the
putschs and coups like the one in Iran that put the Shah
back in power and kept the Russians from getting control
of the Iranian oil fields. It was the CIA that did the things
: behind the things that made the headlines. The smaller,
trimmer CIA used clever footwork, beat its rival agencies
to the punch, and had made itself the lightweight cham-
pion of the smart-ass, know-it-all division.
That being the case, Kersh believed that not the CIA
but the DIA was. his best prospect. He figured the DIA had
more money to get rid of and would also be more recep-
tive because of its secondary position.
However, after twenty minutes with this DIA man,
Mumford, Kersh doubted his own strategy. Mumford
showed no sign one way or the other; merely sat there
riding his swivel chair, noncommittal.
Kersh went to his reserve ammunition.
He let Mumford know he'd only accidentally chosen to
come first to the DIA with this proposition. Implying that
his next stop would be CIA headquarters across the river
at Langley.
. That got nothing from Mumford, not even a blink ..
Kersh brought in the Russians. He'd boned up on what
they were reportedly doing in the field of ESP. A surpris-
ing amount of information was available in such ethical
58
publications as the Foreign Science Bulletin. And Kersh
had access to papers written by Russian scientists, cx-
tracts of symposiums held at the geophysics department
of Moscow University, the Leningrad Academy of Sci-
ence, and the Kazah State University. Among those in-
volved was Dr. Leonid Vasilev, whom Kersh knew to bc
a top Soviet scientist. He was holder of the Lenin Prize,
a member of the Soviet Academy of Medicine, and chair-
man of physiology at the University of Leningrad. Excel-
lent credentials. Also participating was Dr. Ya Terletsky,
the noted physicist, a chairman at Moscow University,
and Dr. M. Bongard of the Biophysics Institute of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
From what was reported, Kersh gathered that, unlike
the United States, the Soviet Union had been seriously
experimenting with ESP for the past twenty years. In 1966
the Russians conducted the first long-distance-telepathy
exercise. A receiver-subject in Moscow successfully re- .
ceived several simple-image messages telepathically trans-
mitted by a sender-subject in another city more than a
thousand miles away. The exercise was performed under
fairly controlled conditions. Since then, more complicated,
highly controlled experiments had been conducted in
Moscow, Leningrad, Prague, at various state universities,
and most recently in Academgorodok, where the elite of
Russia's scientists were stationed. Most impressive was
the fact that the experiments were supervised by men of
Vasilev's caliber. That indicated a priority interest by the
state and meant, of course, that the military was also in
on it. Evidently the Soviets, not deterred by any religious
or other prejudices, had accepted the fact that ESP was
possible and had gone full speed ahead to develop an
understanding of it. In 1969 a center for the preliminary
training of telepathic subjects was established at the Uni-
versity of Leningrad. Just a year later another for ad-
vanced training was put into operation at the State Uni-
versity in Moscow. Of course there was no way of
knowing really how far the Soviets had progressed, but
the advantages in using telepathy for security and espio-
nage purposes were obvious.
Mumford acted as though this was last year's news.
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He told Kersh; "If, as you imply, they've got it, why
aren't they using it?"
"Perhaps they are."
Finally a reaction from Mumford. A thoughtful grin.
It occurred to Kersh that possibly Mumford was enjoy-
ing a mental picture of someone putting one over on the
CIA, even the Russians.
"How much money are we talking about?" asked
Mumford.
Kersh presented a written estimate of costs. To his
way of thinking, it was plenty.
Mumford studied the estimate for several minutes and
then told Kersh that he thought the bottom-line figure
was inadequate. Too low. His tone had the ring of ob-
jective criticism more than interest. He also mentioned
that nowhere on the estimate did he see a provision for
Kersh's personal salary. .
That wasn't an oversight on Kersh's part. It just wasn't
of first importance, so he'd left it out of this first presen-
tation.
Mumford insisted that Kersh quote a salary figure.
Kersh thought first of a relatively modest amount but
then remembered to triple it, hopefully catering to Mum-
ford's need to spend.
Mumford ended with the vague promise that Kersh
might be hearing from him or someone else in a month
or two. Along with good-bye he shook Kersh's hand as
though he didn't consider it an act of touching another
person.
Kersh returned from Washington. feeling that he'd
failed. Ten days later there was a call from Mumford in-
forming Kersh that the DIA had approved his proposal.
It had accepted Kersh's original estimate and voluntarily
added on thirty percent for contingencies. That extra
thirty, Mumford explained, would avoid having to reap-
ply for additional funds later on. It was good to have a
little slush, he said. There were some DIA stipulations of
a minor nature that Kersh would have to agree to, but
the important thing, the project itself, had been given
the go-ahead and would also be provided for in the DIA's
budget for the next year.
60
Kersh got right to it. He acquired the big house in
Fairfield and began installing the equipment he'd need.
Within six months he was conducting experiments with
various DIA agents as subjects. That was one of the DIA's
so-called minor stipulations. Kersh had to use DIA per-
sonnel exclusively for his experiments. Perhaps the inten-
tion was to keep the CIA from knowing about the project,
but more likely it was just that the DIA self-consciously
didn't want anyone to know it was involved with ESP.
Anyway, those initial experiments were not encourag-
ing. At that time Kersh was just getting his own thoughts
organized into workable theory. However, he believed the
subjects the DIA assigned to him didn't help matters. They
lacked, for example, the necessary positive attitude.
Kersh complained to Mumford several times, and was
finally so adamant that the DIA decided to compromise.
Kersh could experiment with subjects of his own choos-
ing, but, first, each had to be cleared. and enlisted into
the DIA. Kersh agreed. At least it was an improvement
over what he'd had to put up with.
Shortly thereafter, Kersh met socially with a long-time
acquaintance and colleague named Albert Benson. He
happened to mention to Benson that he was having
difficulty finding qualified subjects for his research. Ben-
son, who had been on the faculty at Dartmouth for
many years, tried to be helpful. He gave it some thought.
and recalled a young man who had once attended Dart-
mouth-a young man with a remarkable mind, an amaz-
ing memory, actually a mnemonist. Offhand, Benson
didn't remember the young man's name but he found it
in the college records and phoned Kersh to tell him it
was Hazard.
From a call made to Hazard's father, Kersh got Ha-
zard's current New York City address. But the two let-
ters Kersh wrote to that address received no reply. It
was just a long shot anyway and Kersh gave up on it.
But then one day while in the city for a meeting with
Richland, Kersh had some time and decided to hell with
form, he'd look up this Hazard.
He found him in a bathrobe, not yet shaved, hair.
mussed, sleepy looking and not very hospitable. It was
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nearly noon. With unconcealed reluctance, Hazard in-
vited Kersh in and as long as he was making himself a
cup of instant coffee Kersh might as well have one. Kersh
sat in the living room of Hazard's apartment and felt all
the more an intruder when his glance into the bedroom
caught on part of a bed and the bare legs of a girl,
apparently still sleeping. As an afterthought Hazard closed
the bedroom door, not quietly.
Kersh told Hazard why he was there. Hazard became
interested when Kersh said what Hazard would get out
of it. Five hundred a week for putting in only a couple
of days a week; some weeks nothing would be expected
of him, but he'd still get paid.
Hazard thought there had to be a catch and said so.
Kersh told him the DIA requirement of having to enlist.
That cooled Hazard. He wasn't about to be recruited
into any branch of the government.
Kersh didn't try to convert Hazard, saw that would be
futile. But his instinct told him he'd found a good subject
and he didn't want to lose him on a technicality that he
also considered absurd. He decided it was the right time
to make an exception. He wouldn't flagrantly break the
DIA rule, couldn't get away with that, but it was worth
the risk to bend a little. He suggested Hazard give it a
try, say for two or three weeks, just to see how things
went. No real commitment to the DIA or Kersh.
Hazard didn't jump at the offer, didn't much like the
idea of promising any of his time to anyone. Although
the five hundred.a week sounded like easy enough money.
Kersh waited a while before making a different sort of
appeal. "I need your help," he said.
Don't be a sucker for sincerity, Hazard warned him-
self. But less than five minutes later he heard himself
agreeing, "Five hundred."
The following Thursday Hazard went up to the Fair-
field installation and Kersh ran him through some pre-
liminary tests to measure potential. To put Hazard at
ease, Kersh used a deck of ordinary playing cards in-
stead of the usual ESP symbol series. He extracted two
cards from the deck so Hazard would be working with
an even fifty. The cards were preshuffled and put face
-
62
down into a small box that was placed on a table. Ha-
zard's job was to try to identify the cards in consecutive
order according to suit. Top card first and then down
through the entire stack.
Hazard acted blasé about it and really was only slight-
ly intrigued by the challenge. As he called out the heart,
diamond, spade, or club that came to mind, Kersh tab-
ulated each call in sequence on a score sheet.
On the first run Hazard had cleven hits. Only one
above the average score that could be expected through
mere chance. Hazard was disappointed but didn't show it.
The second run he hit eight, and on the third run, nine.
Discouraged and self-conscious about not doing well, he
wanted to quit, but Kersh urged him to continue.
After fifteen more runs with less than a little more than
average chance results, Kersh suggested a break. They
went out and walked the grounds to the upper edge of
the woods. Neither man was very talkative, but they
were learning one another. They went down to the shore
and along to the beach house that was shuttered tight
and aging too quickly from neglect. Hazard felt sorry for
the place which needed opening and care.
When they got back to the main house Hazard didn't
want to undergo any more tests. He was supposed to stay
over but he made the excuse that he had a long standing
important engagement back in the city. Kersh didn't in-
sist. Hazard left believing the whole episode had been a
travesty. You'll never see me again, he thought.
But the next Thursday, there he was.
Kersh didn't seem surprised to see him, nor did he
reveal how pleased he was. He liked Hazard.
More tests with the playing cards.
The first run, Hazard hit twenty-two out of the fifty.
The second run, twenty-eight.
They did, altogether, a hundred runs, with Hazard re-
peatedly scoring in the twenty to thirty range. For the last
dozen runs, Kersh asked him to try for the exact desig-
nation of each card: ace of diamonds, king of clubs, and
so on.
Hazard's first attempt at that resulted in twenty-five
hits. Of the other twenty-five, he got the correct value of
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ten cards and the correct suit of twelve. He only com-
pletely missed three out of fifty. Remarkable. And he
went on to do as well and frequently even better on the
following runs. The odds against such consistently high
scores were in the area of five billion to one.
Kersh praised him.
Hazard felt good, like a winner.
But what had brought about the drastic improvement
over scores from the week before? The difference had
to be in Hazard. All week long his pride and competitive
nature had picked at him because he'd failed and so
quickly retreated. There was that. And there was Kersh.
Hazard found he liked the older man. That was excep-
tional because normally Hazard was as much a loner
when it came to men as he was the opposite with women.
Another motivation for Hazard was a practical one-the
five hundred a week. Hazard needed it.
The three-week trial period they'd agreed on passed
quickly. During that time they had six day-long sessions.
Kersh accelerated the tests and exercises, made them in-
creasingly more complex and demanding. Hazard seemed
to develop right along with them. The greater the chal-
lenge the more determined he was to keep his scores
above the probability level. Really bucking the odds.
Kersh didn't bring up the DIA requirement. He was
afraid Hazard would quit and he doubted he'd ever again
find such a prime subject, surely not one so likable. But
then it got to be four weeks, five, and one afternoon dur-
ing a break when they were sitting out on the terrace
Kersh put it to him.
It brought the usual bitter response from Hazard about
the government. But no mention of quitting. Hazard's
convictions hadn't weakened, but now there were other
considerations. He was hooked. On admiration for Kersh,
interest in the project, and surely the weekly five hun-
dred. In the precarious balancing of his winnings and
losses Hazard had come to count on that five hundred.
He referred to it as his fuck-you money.
He asked Kersh, "Who would I have to answer to?"
"Only me."
"No Washington shit?"
64
"No Washington shit."
"I could quit anytime?"
Kersh nodded.
The decision was so contrary to his style that Hazard
couldn't be direct. He looked down the slope in the di-
rection of the beach house. "Maybe I could fix that place
up and use it," he said. "Would that be okay with you?"
"Fine."
And so Hazard committed himself to enlistment in the
DIA, although his motives for becoming an intelligence
agent were something less-and more-than patriotic. .
He opened the beach house, cleaned, and painted it.
He slept there whenever he came up for his scheduled
exercises and he also spent some of his other time there.
More often than not he brought a friend along. Models,
hardly ever the same one twice. Hazard liked being able
to invite them to what he called his beach place up in
Connecticut. He didn't ask Kersh's permission to have
guests, but Kersh didn't mind. Sure it was a Government
installation and undoubtedly the DIA would consider such
conduct out of line. However, it wasn't unpleasant for
Kersh to glance down to the beach and see a lovely
young creature topless and sometimes also bottomless.
That was the extent of Kersh's interest in any of the girls
Hazard brought.
Until Keven.
She was different from the start. She didn't just lie on
the beach or roam around the grounds as though the
world were an eye aimed at her. Keven was actively cur-
ious about the project. She often intruded on the exer-
cises. She kept asking Kersh to test her, claiming she
wanted to know herself better. Kersh believed she was
merely being competitive and he wasn't entirely wrong
about that.
By then Hazard had made amazing progress. He en-
joyed being number one. No one else was even a close
second. An analysis of all tests and exercises showed,
however, that he was a much better sender than receiver.
As a matter of fact he was comparatively poor at recep-
tion. It would have been ideal had he been equally pro-
ficient at both sending and receiving, and perhaps the
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latter could be developed over the long run. But for effi-
ciency, Kersh decided to place total emphasis on expand -.
ing Hazard's strength as a sender.
That left Kersh looking for a receiver of equivalent
ability. He found and tested several candidates, a few of
whom showed potential. But they all lacked the required
consistency. He even tested Julie, whose talents didn't ap -.
proach her enthusiasm for the. subject. It was a crucial
problem for Kersh. To take his research to a higher level
.it was imperative that he have a sender-receiver team.
When he tested Keven he didn't have any high hopes.
Mostly he did it only to accommodate her. But when he
tallied up her scores and saw how consistently she hit
high above the probability-of-chance level, he realized that
it was Keven who was accommodating him. She was a
natural. Kersh wondered, unscientifically, if such inclina-
tions had been passed down by her superstitious Irish
ancestors.
Didn't she mind enlisting in the DIA?
She didn't know what it was.
Kersh explained.
She told him she hated uniforms. As long as she didn't
have to wear a uniform, okay. What she didn't tell him
was that it saved her from having to look for another
awful, steady job.
So Kersh now had his telepathy team. And a new prob-
lem: To make the team work and hold it together.
Much of his success or failure with that problem would
be clear at the end of this present demonstration for the
DIA men, Richland and Whitley. Ignoring Richland, Kersh
again pressed the square button on the laboratory con-
sole, signaling to Lowery out on the ketch.
The exercise continued.
Lowery activated the box containing the images. The.
spindle rotated, moved up another card at random. Ha-
zard took it and began peeling off its adhesive covering.
At that moment Keven felt a little itch in the center
of her back. Unreachable. It was most distracting, could
ruin everything, she thought. She tried willing it away
and then resorted to flexing and rubbing against the
66
cushion behind her. But the itch was in that difficult-to-
reach concave spot right between her shoulder blades.
Damn! She was about to call in to Kersh to have him
come give her a scratch when luckily the itch subsided
on its own.
Reminded by this how delicate the line was between
the success and failure of what was expected of her, she
quickly brought her attention to the soft, black, felt-
covered wall before her. She thought about what she was
thinking and remembered something she'd once heard
Kersh say-that the most amazing thing about the human
brain was its ability to reflect on itself, and that was why
man felt special enough to have what he called a soul.
But it also brought on a lot of suffering, from a punish-
ing conscience to neurosis to total insanity.
Keven tried to feel herself thinking and it seemed she
could, although it was a neutral, nondescript, continuous
sensation.
Clear your mind, she told herself, and again used the
soft black confronting her to try to direct her mind into
believing it was receptive.
Suddenly a profusion of images came to her, one after
another, just bits and pieces not apparently related, as
though her mind's eye were sighting through a rapidly
rotating kaleidoscope. She wasn't aware that she was no
longer aware of the soft black wall. Nor was she aware
that those bits and pieces were increasing steadily in
number, that she was presenting them to herself more
and more rapidly, too rapidly for premeditation. It was
actually a pleasant sort of confusion; so much for her
mind's eye to see. Delightful! More and more. There
didn't seem to be any limit, and then .
Change.
It was as though a vertical seam inside her abruptly
parted and folded neatly back to reveal an emptiness in-
side. A void. Not black, but a white, substantial nothing-
ness, clean and still as new milk.
A dormant region.
There on the white, as though projected, all of it, all
at once, isolated in unmistakable contrast, was a picture
of words. It remained only long enough to register bc-
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fore disappearing. Leaving a void as undisturbed as be-
.fore. Then, as though reversing experience, a layer of
impressions unfolded to envelop and join, replacing the
nothing with enjoyable, entertaining, rapid-fire confusion.
Gradually that diminished. .
To the point where Keven again thought about what
she was thinking and again realized her eyes were open
on the soft, black, felt-covered wall.
After a moment she extended her right: hand to the
"electronic keyboard. She had to resist her present thoughts,
keep them from distracting her. It was difficult. Her mind.
seemed to resent her concentration. It protested by offer-
ing various impressions, some divertingly. erotic.
. She nearly giggled, wasn't sure that she hadn't.
. Her first finger pecked at the keyboard.
On the corresponding monitor in the laboratory. ap-
peared:
BIGBIRDDETAIL715SECTION2VERIFIEDLREM
Keven had no idea what that meant, didn't know BIG
BIRD was the SR-71, the Air Force's new 2,000-mph,
high-altitude surveillance plane, DETAIL 715 the code
number of certain photographs taken by that plane during
a particular flight, SECTION 2 an area in China one hun-
dred fifty miles north of Peking, and VERIFIED LRBM that
the plane's cameras had caught a long-range ballistic
missile.
Out on the Sound aboard the ketch, Lowery was about
to record the card that Hazard had just handed over. He
read the message that was printed on it and shook his
head. The box had selected a toughie, he thought, and
doubted they'd score a hit on that one. On his exercise
report sheet he noted the exact times of transmission and
then in the allotted space he wrote:
BIG BIRD DETAIL 715 SECTION 2 VERIFIED LRBM
The exercise called for a run of eight images. The
fifth image chosen at random was. one designed to test
68
"Incidental accuracy. A drawing of an oddly spotted, onc-
eared, three-legged dog.
:. When . Hazard, finished sending that one, they were
through . for the day. Also, Whitley was belly down on
the deck, head over the side, retching up Old Granddad
and sandwiches. To multiply the displeasure, he was doing .
it against the wind.
... Hazard, feeling no pity, observed Whitley's anguish for
a while and then went below to get out of range.
Less than an hour later they were all gathered again
in Kersh's office to review the results. Lowery's record
of images sent by Hazard was compared with what the
computers had registered via Keven. Out of the run of
five they'd scored three perfect hits, a partial hit and an
apparent miss.
Kersh congratulated his team.
Keven beamed like a superstar. At that moment she
was so high on herself that Hazard couldn't resist bring-
ing her down. He blamed her for the miss.
. "It wasn't my fault," she said, above reproach.
"Had to be."
"You didn't send it strong enough."
"Hell I didn't. Anybody could have gotten that one."
"Not true."
"You choked on it.
· Actually the missed image was graphically. the simplest
of all they'd attempted that day. An inverted arrow with-
out a tail. What Keven had gotten was a shape that re-
sembled the flame of a candle.
"That's exactly what came to me," she said.
A scoff from Hazard.
"No doubt you had something else on your mind."
He thought she meant her. "Like what?"
"Yourself. You hardly ever get past that."
Hazard had intended only a little chaffing, harmless
enough, but it was getting out of proportion.
: "Admit it was your fault," she said ..
He almost did just to get it over with, but stayed on
top by nonchalantly pouring himself a cup of leftover
coffee. It was cold and bitter, nevertheless he gulped it
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down and to the empty cup said, "Slows downthe; sex
drive." Her words that morning.
: Her. Irish went up a few more degrees. "That's for
sure," she promised, and left the room, walking as though
she were going a long way.
Kersh had an idea about what possibly had caused the
miss. Hazard had sent the inverted arrow; Keven had re-
ceived.it. But at the moment it came to her, Keven's un-
conscious had interfered, changed the impression to an-
other it considered more acceptable. This wasn't the first
time her unconscious had resorted to such guile. But why.
this time? Kersh felt there was a connection between the
two images. Vertical arrow could suggest penetration, ag-
: gression. Keven's unconscious had perhaps associated it
with masculine dominance and defiantly opposed it, ve-
toed it, replaced it with an image that was more fem-
inine. Kersli would have suggested all this to Keven if
Richland and Whitley hadn't been there. :
Richland was half drunk. and Whitley was only half
recovered. Richland kept saying, "Impressive, very im-
· pressive." And , Whitley mumbled on about what a hell of
a good sailor he'd always been, claiming something he'd
.eaten hadn't agreed with him.
They were anxious to leave. Kersh accompanied them.
out to their car. Handshakes and good-byes.
From behind the steering wheel Richland told Kersh,"
"Goddamn impressive." The motor was already running
but he turned the ignition key again to cause a painful,
grinding screech. :
The Chrysler pulled away. Whitley lighted up a Ha-
. vana and took two puffs before his stomach made him
throw it out. "What a day," he moaned. "You didn't fall
for all that crap, did you?"
"Hell no."
"It was rigged; they had it rigged."
"Yeah," Richland said.
"Some kind of hook-up from that guy what's his name.".
"Hubbard."
"From him to the girl. A radio or something."
"That's what I figure."
"Bunch of real phonies."
70.
A questioning glance from Richland ..
Whitley got it. "Don't worry your, ass, Fred. As far as
I'm concerned,; the project's full-ahead. I'd even say it's
priority." :Besides, it's only a spit in the bucket, he as-
sured himself.
"You're one decent guy, Whit."
Whitley nodded. "Reminds me, at the last convention
down in. Miami. I saw this guy in a nightclub. He was
blindfolded and he could tell you everything you had in .
your. pockets. Now, he was something. He could .guess.
the number :on your social security card, driver's license,
;everything. No shit. Damndest thing I ever saw."
5
. USUALLY KEVEN didn't stay angry long ..
; Hazard thought she'd get over it, surely by bedtime.
. But night came and she kept to herself in one of the
upper bedrooms of the main house. Her things hadn't
been moved back down to the beach house, which Ha-
zard didn't find encouraging. He told himself it didn't
matter and read some Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951.
For a while he forced himself to read word for word, line
for line, like everyone else, but he soon reverted to taking
it in an entire page at a glance.
Around eleven he got up and went down to the beach,
from where he could see Keven's lighted window. He
imagined her up there munching on sunflower seeds and
.dried' apricots, probably hating her stubbornness, and
trying to think of a face-saving way out of it. He thought
about giving in, going up to get her, but decided if he,
did that this time she'd expect it the next. He returned
to Camus and finished him.
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