ONE

I was a liar a long time before I hooked up with Dr. Paul Chen—good enough at it to fool my bosses for years—but now they’d changed the rules. At long last they were getting serious. Now they had a brand-new machine, and suddenly I didn’t stand a chance. Or so Dr. Chen was telling me during our regular Monday afternoon session at his biofeedback clinic in Georgetown.

“This is not about self-confidence alone, Mr. Monk,” he said. “If it were, you would not need me at all. You have mastered a few tricks to manipulate the polygraph, but that means nothing anymore.”

In the darkened office he kept too warm, the doctor sat at his desk-console while I lay in a leather recliner a few feet to his right, my stockinged feet hanging over the end as they always did. Aromatic smoke curled from a smoldering stick of incense in the corner of the room, and a cone of light from the high-intensity lamp on his desk dramatized Chen’s gaunt face and the gray chin-whiskers that made him look like Fu Manchu. His hushed voice and stilted Chinese accent added to the illusion.

“Polygraphy,” he continued, “is a science of emotion. That is why it is so unreliable, why a strong-willed person such as yourself can be taught to fool it. That is why the technology has moved in a different direction, to cognition instead of emotion. The future is in brain waves, Mr. Monk, not such transient phenomena as blood pressure and galvanic skin response. And now—for you at least—the future appears to have arrived.”

I glanced at my watch. What the hell was he talking about? I didn’t have time for this today. I turned my head to stare at him.

“What’re you saying … that you can’t help me?”

“I am saying there is no point, not with the same method we have been using at any rate. What use is it to be able to beat a polygraph if the machine no longer exists? Why learn to use a slide rule in an age of computers?”

The back of my neck began to burn. “You wait till now to tell me this?”

“It would have been a waste of time, until I knew you better. If you had not made such progress with the traditional test, there would have been no hope you could beat the new one.”

I nodded, but time was wasting, and I didn’t give a damn about what he thought I could or couldn’t do. Whatever it was, I’d get it done.

“There’s no test that can’t be beaten,” I told him. “I’m paying you to show me how, not to tell me why not.”

He smiled, his lips parting a centimeter or so, his uneven teeth gleaming in the weird lighting. “I cannot recall a more determined client, Mr. Monk. I, too, have little interest in excuses. Perhaps we should get started.”

“What are we talking about, timewise? I’ve got a six o’clock flight out of BWI, at least an hour of paperwork to clear up back at the office before I can leave for the airport. I’ll only be gone overnight. Maybe it would be better to try this tomorrow when I’m not so pushed.”

He shook his head. “You cannot leave. We must not stop just because you are in a hurry, because your level of stress is high. Just the opposite as a matter of fact. If you cannot learn to do this with your stomach clenching and your neck rigid, you will be lost. But once you can, their instruments will be useless against you.”

I opened my mouth to argue but closed it again as I admitted he was right, that when it finally happened I’d be grateful for his insistence. I nodded, and Chen seemed to leave his desk and appear next to my recliner without taking a step.

In his hand he carried dozens of thready electric wires—leads similar to those we’d been using with the polygraph—that I could see were connected to the mahogany instrument panel that dominated his desk. He stood over me and began to tape the sensors to my face, scalp, and neck. He kept talking while he worked.

“To lie successfully,” he said, “you must first think of the words you are about to say, assess the probability they will be accepted as truthful. Doing so causes a burst of brain-wave activity that is lacking when you tell the truth. Researchers believe human beings are powerless to control such bursts, but my hypothesis is that they are wrong. You first came to me because of the success I have had with other of your colleagues. You people have now become critical to my study.”

“What’s so special about FBI agents?”

“You are exceptionally authentic liars, Mr. Monk. I am the only researcher in the field fortunate enough to be working with you.”

I stared at him and tried to think of a response. My pleasure didn’t sound right. Fuck you didn’t either, but before I could think of something better he was talking again.

“For studies like these, authentic liars are almost impossible to recruit. And inducing fake liars to think like real ones is very difficult.” His smile was ghastly in the shadows of his face. “The FBI is a rich source of liars, all the way back to Hoover himself. Not in court—not often in court, I should say—but within the bureau itself. Hoover set up a system that required his agents to tell him lies to keep their jobs. The system has never changed.”

He bent closer to tape the last two sensors somewhere over my right ear. “Your particular lies are not work-related, you contend, but the bureau would disagree. In fact, they would fire you just for being here. You have been promoted into an assignment you do not like, but to get to the counterterrorism work you consider more important you must first pass a lie detector test. You are here to learn how to make that happen. I will not send you away until you do.”

I nodded, the wires clattering. “Let’s get on with it then. Where do we start?”

“We must establish a baseline for you. I will ask very simple questions. You will answer them yes or no, just like you did with the polygraph. The monitor in my console displays information from the sensors attached to your head. The digital input is converted to colors. Blue lines for truth, red lines for the brain-wave bursts that indicate you are lying.”

“Do I watch the screen with you?”

“Not today.”

I tried to get comfortable, but it wasn’t easy. Maybe that was part of the test.

“Are you forty-four years old, Mr. Monk?”

“Yes.”

“Are your eyes blue?”

“Yes.”

“And your hair is brown?”

“Yes.”

“Are you an FBI supervisor in charge of special investigations for the White House?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever lied on an official FBI document?”

“No.”

“Do you live in Fredericksburg, Virginia?”

“Yes.”

“Do you socialize with known criminals?”

“No.”

“Do you work out of the Washington Metropolitan Field Office?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever lied to the FBI about any aspect of your personal life?”

“No.”

Dr. Chen stood, came around to the recliner, and began to remove the electrodes.

“How’d I do?” I asked him. “For the first time, I mean.”

He looked at me and shook his head slowly. I didn’t bother to ask again.