CROSSWIND’s most secure conference room exceeded the NSA’s Tempest-class Level A standards. It was a room within a room—an acoustically dampened box mounted on thick rubber pads, webbed by copper mesh that functioned like a Faraday cage, blocking any electronic signals generated inside from being detected outside, even at a distance of less than a yard.
In that room, Sam Arlo handed Caparelli a tablet, already switched on. “Photos from a crime scene in Sonora, Mexico.”
Caparelli swiped through the images: stark, graphic, shadowless in the dead-on brightness of a crime-scene photographer’s flash.
“Twelve victims,” Arlo said. “They think.”
Caparelli understood the uncertainty. Limbs and other unidentifiable body pieces were strewn about as if by explosives, but no other blast damage was evident. No scorch marks. One photo showed small lamps, bottles, and glasses untouched on a small table that was still standing. Bullet holes in abundance, though. The walls were pocked with them. Hundreds. “This happened last night? You’re certain?”
“Federales found them this morning.” Caparelli’s young manager of research removed his wire-frame glasses, rubbed his eyes, his dark olive complexion accented by the sparse black stubble dotting his usually clean-shaven head.
The overhead fluorescents were harsh. The effect wasn’t helped by the conference room’s unrelieved white walls. The project had been moved here before Caparelli became its head. He assumed the previous director, the legendary Dr. Nourem, had chosen the color or lack thereof to remind staff that despite being an operational arm of the intelligence community, the facility also functioned as a lab.
“This is what Laura saw, right?”
Caparelli corrected Arlo’s terminology. “This is what she perceived.”
“Saw” referred to visible light sensed by eyes and optic nerves. Since Laura had not been physically present in Sonora, sight had had nothing to do with what she had witnessed in that distant location.
Caparelli had listened to the voice mail Laura left for him the night of the accident. He had no need to torture himself by hearing it again. Her last words were burned into his memory, forever linked to the unanswerable question: Would she have died if he had answered her call?
Whatever had happened in these images, Laura had been a witness. She’d described it in her message. The tile roof and stucco walls of the structure. The gunfire. The bodies torn apart as she watched.
“But what’s the tie to Borodin?” Caparelli asked.
Arlo seemed surprised by his question. “Obviously, if Laura was there as a perceiver, the general was there in the flesh. He’s her target.” He added, almost apologetically, “That’s how it works.”
Caparelli swiped through more of the images. Close-ups of disembodied heads. Number cards identifying severed arms and legs, bullet casings, sprays of blood on walls and ceilings. “So we accept that Borodin was in a compound in the middle of nowhere. In Mexico. Why?”
“Compound’s less than two miles from the US border.”
That got Caparelli’s interest. “Did they find a tunnel?”
“Comes up in Nogales. Small house at the end of a residential street, at the edge of the desert. Border Patrol found another body there. But not like those. Shot, twice in the head. Some local used car dealer. They’re saying it’s a drug war. Rival gangs.”
Caparelli knew that wasn’t it at all. The nightmare scenario was real. “Borodin’s in the country.”
Arlo looked down at the image on the tablet in Caparelli’s hands. Body parts. Bullet holes. The victims had firepower, put up a fight, and it had done them no good. “Seems like he’s brought VEKTOR’s latest technology, whatever the hell it is. But why?”
Caparelli didn’t have an answer, but knew nothing else would matter until he did. “Whatever the reason, it has to be sanctioned.”
Arlo seemed puzzled. “The Russians do shit all over the world. Same as us. But it’s balanced, isn’t it? We keep each other in check. Do what we can to be sure no one gets a real advantage.”
Caparelli stared at the carnage on the tablet’s screen. “Look at what that technology accomplished.” He glanced at Arlo. “Maybe they think that now they do have a real advantage. Maybe they mean to use it.”
Arlo wasn’t inclined to argue. “Whatever it is, it’s effective.”
Caparelli glanced back at the door to the corridor. At the end of it, Detective Matthew Caidin waited in another secure, white-walled room. “The cop I brought in, the one who was at the scene of the crash, Laura contacted him. Tonight.”
“No shit! Uh, sorry…”
Caparelli shared Arlo’s conflicting emotions, an unsettling mix of elation and despair.
“Did she … What did she say?”
“That she had to get here.”
“She tell him about us, the project?”
“Just the address.”
Arlo was excited, couldn’t help himself. “She must have seen more than she put in her message. Felt she had to come in personally to report when … well, you know.”
Caparelli agreed. That was his conclusion as well.
“Unfinished business,” the young man said. “It’s … classic, isn’t it? Right out of the folklore.”
Caparelli handed the tablet back to Arlo. “We’ll finish it tonight.”
“So she can … go.”
Caparelli wouldn’t allow himself to think that. The only way he could keep going was to do his job. “She’s already gone. But she can still help us stop the general. Whatever he’s here for.”
* * *
In the disturbingly white and windowless conference room, the mysterious Agent Caparelli sat across from Matt. He had nothing in his hands and had placed no file folder, computer, or recorder on the narrow metal table between them. That told Matt that everything said here would be captured on video by unseen cameras.
He still didn’t know what this place was, only its location. Caparelli, refusing any conversation in what he called an unsecure location, had driven them to DC, to E Street SW’s 600 block, a huge recently constructed building that appeared to span the entire block as far as Matt could tell. What it wasn’t was the FBI building.
In the underground parking lot, he’d seen no identifying signage, nor was there any in the elevator that had brought them to this floor. But while he’d no way of knowing what actual address he had arrived at, Matt felt certain he was where the girl had said she needed to go.
The dead girl from the car crash, according to Agent Caparelli.
Which was impossible.
Still, Matt reasoned, something had triggered the agent’s late-night visit. Something that linked an FBI operative to a car-crash victim, and now to him. The fact that ordinary traffic surveillance video of the crash had been wiped from the system while Matt watched told him to brace for the unexpected. Even so, Caparelli’s opening surprised him.
“A team of terrorists has entered the country with the intention of causing significant destruction and death. Do I have your attention, Detective Caidin?”
Matt groaned inwardly at his bad luck. Obviously, and inadvertently, he’d become mixed up in some undercover operation. Had the girl in the photo been impersonating the driver of the car as part of an investigation, until the accident claimed that woman’s life?
“Absolutely. I’ll do whatever it is you require of me.”
“Laura Hart has vital information about the terrorists’ plans and capabilities, and she needs to get that information to us.”
Matt held up a hand. “Hold it. Which woman are we talking about? The one in the car or the one in the restaurant?”
“Both. They’re the same.”
Matt flashed through outrageous scenarios of twins, spies, doubles, couldn’t find a match. “How could they be?”
Caparelli ignored his confusion. “We need you to make contact with Laura Hart again.”
Matt felt as if he had missed part of the conversation. “Why? The girl I saw in Molly’s, she only talked to me because she wanted to come here. What do you need me for? She knows where you are.”
“Do you?”
Matt thought that an odd question. “I don’t know for a fact, but I assume this is the address that she gave me at the diner. I mean, we’re in the 600 block of E Street, right?”
“Any other assumptions?’
Matt had been part of a few similar conversations in the past, where the other side had been vague and evasive. The last time was two years ago, when a homicide investigation was quietly handed over to another investigatory agency. Eventually, the various parties decided to share the real story off the record. The victim had turned out to be a foreign national with an assumed identity, and he’d been executed by his own people. Pure spy stuff.
“I’m guessing you’re not FBI,” Matt said.
“Correct.”
“CIA?”
“No, but from time to time we work with them.”
“‘We’?”
Caparelli paused. Matt could sense that whatever it was the man was going to say next, it was a struggle. “What I’m about to tell you is so far beyond ‘top secret’ that if you even think of repeating it to anyone, your life as you know it will be over.”
Five different smart-ass replies flashed through Matt’s mind in an instant. But the look on Caparelli’s face told him this wasn’t the time for any of them.
“I understand,” Matt said.
Caparelli’s expression didn’t change. “Two nights ago, Laura Hart died from injuries she sustained in the car accident that you witnessed. Last night, you spoke to her ghost.”
* * *
“Is this is some sort of psychological test?” Caidin asked.
Caparelli counseled himself to remain patient. As director of Project CROSSWIND, he had lived with its reality for so long that he sometimes found himself forgetting how incomprehensible it all was, how bizarre it seemed to outsiders. But there was no time to ease this particular outsider into the situation.
“Under standard conditions, before I could tell you any of this, you’d have had to undergo a stringent security clearance investigation. Then I’d have everything: your bank records; tax returns; medical files; criminal record; affidavits from employers, friends, enemies, family members—anything I wanted.
“What I have learned about you is that despite an extraordinary arrest record, you’re on desk duty with the Arlington County Police. Your partner’s on life support from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound and not expected to regain consciousness. Preliminary evidence indicates he was being paid off by a local dealer and that you’re somehow connected to it.”
Caidin’s face shut down, unreadable. “It’s an ongoing investigation. I can’t discuss it.”
“I don’t care one way or the other,” Caparelli said. “Whatever shitstorm you think you could face because of those accusations, it is nothing compared to what will happen to you if you divulge any of what I’m about to say.”
“Then don’t tell me.”
“Not your decision, it’s mine. So I’ll cut to the chase: The facility you’re in is part of a classified intelligence program called CROSSWIND. Have you ever heard of remote viewing?”
Caidin mimed pressing a button on a television remote. “Like when I change channels?”
Caparelli ignored the sarcasm. “I’ll make the explanation simple. We have perceivers—remote viewers—with the ability to separate their consciousness from their physical body and, for want of a better term, project it to another location. Laura Hart was one of our most gifted perceivers. Without any form of technological support, Laura could, in a sense, see and hear events thousands of miles away.”
For just a moment, a look played over Caidin’s face. It was one Caparelli had seen many time. Absolute disbelief.
“I’m not a science guy but … how could anything like that even be possible?” Caidin asked.
“For you, right now, it’s enough to know that it is. Details aren’t important.”
Caidin’s next words were those of one professional to another. “One thing I do know: If you can’t back it up, then everything you say is crap. You’ve got to give me something.”
“Fair enough,” Caparelli said. “For decades, it’s been widely accepted that consciousness arises from electrochemical activity in the brain. You’d agree?”
Caidin reluctantly nodded, as if expecting a trap.
“Except there’s no experimental proof that confirms that concept. At best, researchers have been able to show that there’s an association between consciousness and physical processes within the brain, but no evidence that conclusively establishes causation.”
Caidin appeared to think that over. “So, it’s chicken or egg: Does that electrochemical activity produce consciousness, or does consciousness produce the activity?”
“Close enough. To the outside world, at least, that’s the extent of what’s understood. But our researchers have taken a significant step past that: Human consciousness exists as a nonphysical field, and it’s entangled at a quantum level with the physical structure of the brain. They’re connected in the same way that a moving magnetic field produces an electric current, and an electric current can produce magnetism. Two different phenomena arising from one underlying cause, but—and this is the important part—under certain specific conditions each can exist on its own.
“It’s the same for the brain’s electrochemical processes and consciousness. In most cases, both exist at the same place and same time within us. In quantum physics, the principle is called superposition. Something like a photon, say, exists tangled up in all its possible configurations at the same time, as both a particle and a wave. But then, when that photon’s measured or observed, the act of observation reveals that it’s one or the other, never both.
“That’s essentially what people like Laura can do. Somehow, they’re able to ‘untangle’ their consciousness from their bodies while still keeping both connected, no matter how far apart the two components are. It’s what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance.’ I doubt even he knew how appropriate the term is.”
“You’re serious about all this,” Caidin said. Not a question.
“I have no time to be anything but. This facility’s been in and out of operation in one form or another since the seventies. Twenty years ago, we had a breakthrough that led us to consistent, reliable results. We’ve been active ever since.”
Caidin still looked skeptical. “But if that’s true, if we can see and hear anything, anywhere … how can we ever be taken by surprise? How can there ever be terrorists here we don’t know about?”
It was a question Caparelli had encountered many times before. His answer was well-practiced. “First of all, we have to know where and when to look, and that requires more traditional intelligence-gathering techniques for us to choose our targets. Second, there are technical limitations: The quantum fields that support nonphysical awareness are extraordinarily sensitive to certain electromagnetic disturbances. Remote viewing is almost impossible during daylight at any given target area because of interference from the sun. And those potential targets who are aware of our technology can also take steps to electromagnetically shield facilities from remote observation. But, as I said, these are details you don’t need to know.”
“So what do I need to know?”
“That under certain conditions, which I admit we do not yet fully understand, a person’s separated consciousness can survive the body’s death.”
“Are you talking about … a person’s soul?”
“That’s a religious concept I have no authority to speak on. This facility deals only in science. What we’ve learned empirically is that the quantum field from which consciousness arises can, under certain conditions, be self-sustaining, be seen—perceived—by others, and persist after physical death.”
“As … a ghost.”
“That’s as good a word as any. When we talk about the experiences perceivers have had, we use the term ‘wraith.’ A ghost can be many different things, take different forms, even appear as a dog or horse or other animal. But a wraith is an apparition of a person.”
“What experiences?”
“We know that sometimes our perceivers can be seen or sensed or otherwise identified by their targets. Especially if their targets have perceiver-like abilities, or if there’s been a long-term association between the perceiver and target. Some sort of emotional connection.
“But all these technicalities aside, whether we say ‘ghost’ or ‘wraith,’ or ‘manifestation,’ we’re confident that we’ve identified the natural phenomenon responsible for all the myths and legends of apparitions of the dead, in every culture, and in every time.”
Caidin studied him. “So the woman in the car, Laura Hart, the woman I met in Molly’s, she was one of your ‘perceivers,’ someone who could … send her consciousness away from her body, and she died in the crash, and then her wraith appeared to me.”
Caparelli nodded.
“Why? I mean, why’d she choose me?”
It was the same question tormenting Caparelli. “Had you met Laura before? Maybe encountered her in your police work?”
“No. I’d remember.”
Caparelli had feared that answer. If there had been no earlier connection between Caidin and Laura, then that left only one other answer. “Just as perceivers and their targets can build a form of emotional connection over time, it’s possible there’s also an emotional component involved in the creation—the manifestation—of a wraith. Your being there with her when she was close to death, physically sharing that emotionally intense, end-of-life experience with her, might have bonded her to you.”
“You’re saying what? Our fields ‘entangled’?”
“Perhaps, but we’re as much in the dark as you are. We’ve not studied the manifestation process in detail.”
Caidin looked overwhelmed. “So … Laura Hart worked here, for you, and while she was ‘out’ remote viewing, she discovered something about the terrorists. And she was coming back here to report it, but before she could, she died in a car crash and…” Caidin shook his head. “And now her ghost, her wraith, is still trying to report—through me—to you.”
“Because Laura has unfinished business,” Caparelli said. “That also seems to be part of the traditional ghost phenomenon: The survival of the consciousness when there’s a purpose unfulfilled.”
“Okay, but why do you need me here? All I did was hold her hand, let her think I was someone else … Daniel. She kept calling out for Daniel.”
With an effort, Caparelli hid the wave of anguish that swept through him. “You’re here now because if Laura linked to you when she died, that means there’s a chance she can appear to you again. And we want you to let that happen.”
“And then what?”
“She needs to tell you what she knows.”
“Tell me again why she can’t tell you.”
“Because…” Caparelli stopped, then began again. “Because I wasn’t there when she died. You were.”
“And there’s absolutely no other means to contact her?”
“There is not. This facility’s present mission is remote viewing, and that’s all our technology’s designed for. In the future, we might find a way to apply it to the ghost phenomenon, but we have no means of doing that now.” Caparelli paused. “Six days, Detective. That’s the outside limit that a quantum field originating in the human body can remain self-sustaining on its own. Like a battery slowly running down. Since our perceivers’ wraiths are connected to a living body, they can persist indefinitely. But once the body has died, that’s how long a wraith persists. And Laura’s already been disassociated for two of them. That means she has only four more days to deliver her last report to us. Through you.”
Caidin took a deep breath. “What do you need me to do?”
Caparelli wasted no more time. “We’ll provide the script for what you say to her. Questions to ask, names to mention, everything you need to have her recall whatever it was she was coming here to say.”
“Recall? She doesn’t know?”
“It’s another part of the phenomenon. We believe Laura doesn’t know she’s dead.”
“She doesn’t know…”
“If you tell her,” Caparelli warned. “If you lead her in any way to make that realization, you’ll lose her. Along with everything she knows about the terrorists…” Sudden grief abruptly roughened his voice. “Along with everything she was … Gone forever.”