Hard fall, p.7
Hard Fall, page 7
part #5 of Jon Reznick Series
“That sounds like a nightmare. Are you sure about this?”
Houlihan held up his hand, as if wanting Reznick to listen closer to what he had to say. “Ten years ago, I was working for the New York Times and the Washington Post, freelance, whatever. Crime. Politics. Whatever took my fancy or the editor’s fancy. Then one day I got a call. From a woman who used to work at the Wittenden Institute. I had never heard of it. She was a cleaner. A humble cleaner. And she told me about this basement. Actually, it was a subbasement. And she had to clean it. It had three rooms, audio equipment hooked up, medical beds, leather straps. She occasionally saw patients wheeled down there on a gurney. Unconscious. She told me that she was seeing a male nurse who worked there. His name was Frank Perino. And he had told her about everything. He suffered nightmares because of what he’d seen. So did some of the other nurses and doctors. And they were all on various types of medication. Frank killed himself with an overdose.”
“And that’s what got you interested in this place?”
“Yeah, the Times was very keen on the story. And then they just got cold feet after a few months. Said it didn’t feel right, that kind of thing.”
“That’s quite a turnaround.”
“They got spooked. Or someone got to them. I think.”
“Do you have any proof?”
“No.”
“So what did you do?”
“The Washington Post wasn’t interested. I was working full-time freelance. But suddenly I wasn’t getting hired. No one wanted to touch me. Then it wasn’t long before I began to get calls in the middle of the night. Threatening me. Saying I was being watched.”
“Watched? By who?”
“They didn’t say. Then they began to call saying I was going to be killed.”
“Did someone know you were working on this story?”
“Absolutely. And they were trying to scare me. And they did a pretty good job too.”
“So you began to move around?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“And this Wittenden Institute . . .”
Houlihan held out his hands, a slight tremor. “It’s taken over my life. It’s kind of destroyed what I had. I had some savings. But they’re nearly gone. Flat broke. I intended to write a book about the place. But . . .”
“But what?”
“The two publishers that were interested got cold feet too.”
“Why don’t you publish it yourself?”
“I might. I don’t know. I’ve written about three hundred thousand words. I need an editor. I don’t know. It’s turned into a monster.”
“OK, let’s back up for a minute. This Gittinger was working under this Cameron guy?”
“Eminent psychiatrist. Used to be the president of the American Psychiatric Association in the early fifties. But here’s the interesting thing. Who was covertly funding all of Cameron’s work?”
Reznick shrugged.
“The CIA.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Houlihan shook his head. “Swear to God. One hundred percent correct. Very well documented. Cameron didn’t even know it was the CIA that was plowing all this money into his research. He was living in Albany, and he was commuting across to Montreal a couple times a week.”
“Why Canada?”
“It’s illegal for the CIA to operate on US soil. So research funding through Cornell made its way to McGill and Cameron and his team. There was funding coming in from the navy, army, you name it.”
“And Cameron didn’t know about the funding?”
“He didn’t know exactly where it was coming from. The money was delivered through grants from charities which were in fact CIA fronts. He thought it was legitimate.”
“Tell me about Gittinger.”
“He won a CIA medical scholarship to McGill. He learned everything there under Cameron. But when Cameron left under a cloud in 1964, Gittinger completed his studies. He became a CIA psychiatrist. Deployed in Vietnam. Laos.”
“Hasn’t he retired?”
“Very interesting point. Apparently, he was brought out of retirement for this special project. He was put in charge of it, on the ground, special access program, above-top-secret classified. You heard of SAPs?”
Reznick nodded. He felt overwhelmed by the revelations. His friend was being treated inside such a hospital? Was he being experimented on?
“So you’ll know that it’s restricted only to certain people. People with the highest level of security clearance.”
“What’s the purpose of this program?”
“I have my suspicions.”
“What do you think is happening there?”
“It’s interesting that it’s on US soil. I believe it’s a wholly privately funded project, but with ‘oversight’ from the CIA.”
“Almost certainly illegal.”
“Yeah. Getting back to your question, what do I think is happening there? If you’d asked me a couple of years back, I’d have said the purpose was to develop procedures to be used in interrogation and torture.”
“Sleep deprivation, constant sound, right?”
“Yeah, but now? I think the Wittenden Institute is about more than just that. A hell of a lot more.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know for sure. But the hellish conditions you saw in Abu Ghraib—constant white noise, music, humiliation, breaking down the personality and human being—these are well established. I find it hard to believe that Wittenden is undertaking the same tests for the same purpose. I believe there’s more to it.”
“Do you have any proof—written proof—of this?”
“Oh yeah, I got stuff alright.” Houlihan went to a safe hidden in the floor and pulled out a sheath of papers. He handed them to Reznick. “The full details of the special access program and the architect’s schematics when Wittenden was built.”
“How did you get your hands on this?”
“Sources.” He pointed to a paragraph. “The drawings? Other sources.” He pointed to the various levels of the hospital. “On the outside it seems like a three-story facility. But there are two sublevels below ground.”
“You think this is where the tests are being carried out?”
“Bet your life they are. See what they call them? Intensive therapy rooms. And trust me, you won’t see these plans on the Internet. How do I know? I checked. There’s nothing.”
“Shit.”
Houlihan pointed to other aspects of the plans. “What does that say?”
“Access tunnels.”
“They have tunnels underneath. You fucking believe that?”
“For what purpose?”
“I have no idea.”
“Have you had verification of these basements and tunnels?”
“One guy. A former priest.”
“Ex-priest? What’s that all about?”
“He was excommunicated after writing to a local newspaper talking about ‘sinister forces’ at work at the Wittenden Institute. But he told me there was a subterranean world going on there. His sister worked at Wittenden. But she killed herself, apparently, on the day the letter appeared in the paper.”
“What’s his name?”
“Father McNamara. He lives in Ithaca.”
Eighteen
Three days after Jerry White had been returned to the facility, Gittinger made his way down to the hospital’s basement.
His job was to determine when Jerry White would be ready to be released into the community. The phrase was code for the patient being activated.
He headed into the special observation room, where doctors and nurses could watch patients through special one-way reinforced Plexiglas. He observed through the glass as Jerry White sat up in his bed, looking around his room blankly. The haunting, ethereal sound of the traditional Vietnamese instrument the đàn tran breezed out into the room. Gittinger always loved the juxtaposition between the calm and peaceful music and the nightmare the patients were enduring. It was a signature element of the program he had introduced. It reminded him of his sweat-drenched days and nights in Vietnam in the late 1960s. The smell of rice cooking, the kerosene in the sticky air amid the chaos. The look in the captured Vietcong kids’ eyes as they were locked in a windowless basement room, awaiting their fate.
The woman’s voice coming through the speakers snapped Gittinger back to the present. “Jerry, how do you feel today?”
White looked around, as if unsure where he was. “How do I feel? I feel good.”
“Can you describe why that might be, Jerry?”
“Why do I feel good?”
“Yes, what do you believe is contributing to your happiness?”
“Things seem clearer now. I’m beginning to feel more focused. I think I’m beginning to understand that you’re here to help me. I didn’t understand that before.”
“That’s very good, Jerry.” The woman continued: “When you returned to us, you seemed very agitated. Now . . . Well, I think you can see for yourself what we’re achieving together.”
“I was scared. I’m not scared anymore.”
“That’s very pleasing to hear, Jerry. Tell me, are you still having nightmares?”
“I see things very clearly in my dreams. I see people. And they’re afraid. But I’m not afraid. I can see them cowering in fear. From me.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I feel fine. That doesn’t bother me.”
“Do you feel calm during the dream?”
“I remember watching the events, shooting them, and it’s almost like I had to do that.”
“Do you mean you felt compelled to shoot them?”
Sitting on a dresser at the bottom of White’s bed was a picture of him as a boy. “I absolutely had to do it.”
“And is that a good thing?”
“It’s a really good thing. I was smiling in my dream. No one was smiling. Apart from me.”
Gittinger watched as White closed his eyes and began to hum a tune. It was as if he was in a trance. Which he was. A deep trance. Locked in. A little part of Gittinger felt sorry for the poor bastard. But at his time of life, he was beyond caring.
The woman’s voice said, “Jerry, why don’t you lie down? Do you want to sleep?”
Jerry nodded blankly, eyes still shut.
“Are you ready to begin? Do you want to feel that way again? Do you want to feel calm again?”
Jerry began to rock back and forth for a few moments, then lay down on the bed in the fetal position.
The voice began on the loop again. No past. No future. No now. No past. No now. No future.
Gittinger could see that Jerry White would soon be ready. He caught his reflection in the glass. He was smiling.
Nineteen
Later that day, Reznick touched down in Ithaca after catching a flight from Albany with a one-hour layover in Newark. He paid cash for a rental car and headed out to Father McNamara’s address; the GPS indicated it was right beside Ithaca College. He pulled up outside a modest home, a faint light on inside.
Reznick had been wondering why he was pursuing this. He wondered if he was losing all sense of perspective. He was reacting to events. It was almost like he was being drawn into the story. But why? What was the story?
A psychiatric hospital was using controversial practices? Was that it?
The more he thought about it, he saw that he simply wanted to know that Jerry was being looked after. What he’d heard had aroused concerns. Deep concerns. He had doubts about Houlihan. He was the archetypal loner turning his back on the world. But he had documented proof there was something suspicious going on at the Wittenden Institute.
Then there was something deeper inside Reznick that had been awakened. This quest of his was more than simply helping a friend, ex-Delta and all that. It wasn’t just that he had a real connection with Jerry. Or that Jerry had propped him up in his dark days after his wife’s terrible death on 9/11.
He was starting to see there was something more.
Reznick knew firsthand how intense and punishing Delta Force was. It was only for the fittest, toughest, and most resilient but also the most robust, armed with critical thinking skills and the ability to see the big picture and not get bogged down in detail. It required a complex mixture of physical, psychological, and physiological attributes.
Was Wittenden experimenting with how Special Forces soldiers would react under certain types of psychological torture? So they could resist under such conditions?
He remembered the Rockefeller Report in the 1990s, which revealed that the Department of Defense had used military personnel—hundreds of thousands of them—in human experiments. The files covered everything from deliberate exposure to mustard and nerve gas, hallucinogens, all the way up to drugs used during the Gulf War.
His own father had told him all about Agent Orange. A close friend of his father’s in Vietnam had been part of a massive lawsuit by veterans against the drug manufacturers. The friend eventually died, and his wife was entitled to only the most miserable of pensions. Her lawyer had fought on and, against her and her husband’s wishes, settled out of court.
She received a settlement of $3,700. If her husband had lived, he would have received $12,000, paid over ten years.
Reznick remembered being told and being outraged. His father never said a word. He just stared off into the dark waters of Penobscot Bay, as if the whole thing was too painful, perhaps content to remember the sacrifices of those who had served. But also of the people on the ground. His father always told Reznick that the Vietnamese suffered the most.
The US government, through the DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), had used herbicides as military weapons, following the lead of the British in Malaya. But the cost was incalculable.
Reznick remembered reading about a $43 million project to clean up dioxin hot spots in Vietnam. While it sounded like a step in the right direction, Reznick was under no illusions: the only reason the US government was forking out some money was to forge closer ties with a country that could help it counter China’s growing power and influence in the region.
All those thoughts were going through Reznick’s head as he got out of the car. He walked up the overgrown path, strewn with weeds, and knocked on the door.
A minute or so passed and he was about to knock again.
The door cracked open, and a silver-haired man with rheumy eyes stared at him. “Yeah?”
“I was wondering if you could help me, Father.”
“I’m not a father anymore.”
Reznick smiled. “I know.”
“You part of the faculty?”
“No.”
“Like I said, I’m no longer an ordained priest.”
“I need to talk to you, sir.”
“Listen, I don’t do confessions, and I don’t do Hail Marys or whatever else you might want to hear.”
“I want to talk about you. About your sister. And about the Wittenden Institute.”
The old man stared at him, eyes filling with tears.
“I hope you can help me.”
“In the name of God, son, why do you have to bring that up?”
“My friend is now in Wittenden. I want to visit. But I’m being told I can’t. I’m hearing stories about the place. I thought you might be able to help me. Point me in the right direction, if you will.”
The old man stood and stared, as if unsure what to do, before tentatively opening the door. “Come on in.”
Reznick headed in and stood in the narrow hallway. The old man shut and locked the door, then ushered Reznick into a living room.
The old man slumped down in an easy chair and pointed Reznick toward the sofa opposite. “I don’t get too many visitors. None actually.”
Reznick nodded.
“Where you from?”
“I’m from a small town in Maine. Rockland.”
“Long way from home.”
Reznick smiled.
“So do you mind me asking who you are?”
Reznick patiently explained the sequence of events and how he had ended up in the small house in Ithaca.
“This brings back a lot of painful memories for me. Talking about it is difficult.”
“I’m sorry to rake over this. I came all this way. Kevin Houlihan. I spoke to him.”
“How is he?”
“I don’t know him personally. Didn’t know him until yesterday. But I’d say he’s been very affected, damaged even, professionally and financially after investigating Wittenden. That’s what I know.”
“He did his best. But they get to those papers. And they didn’t want to know anything about Wittenden after that.”
“And you spoke to Kevin confidentially?”
“Yes, I did. But I also wrote a letter to a local paper.”
“Kevin mentioned that.”
Father McNamara’s hand was trembling slightly. “Let me tell you this, I am not afraid. I will not shut up about Wittenden.”
Reznick smiled, admiring the defiance of the vaguely broken man in front of him.
“Tell me more about your friend inside Wittenden,” McNamara said.
“Jerry? We were in Delta together. We drifted apart, as you do. And then the other day, a few days ago, he’s suddenly back in my life, running for his life. He was petrified. Never seen him like that before.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t just mean because he was skeleton thin. Which he was. And I don’t mean how scared he was. But it was as if he was out of it too, almost like in a trance. I don’t know if it was because he was undergoing a psychotic episode, but he seemed real strange.”
“The Wittenden Institute is a dangerous, horrible place. I know, because my sister used to work there, God rest her soul. She’d been depressed and on medication for years afterward. And her deterioration matched that of quite a few other people who worked there over the years and who I counseled or took confession from after seeing what they described as bedlam. They were talking not about a Victorian asylum system but a twenty-first-century hospital, only built about a dozen years ago, on the site of an old brickyard. My sister’s husband left her. He thought she was crazy. But she wasn’t. She just didn’t know how to comprehend what she was witnessing, seeing, or hearing about. Men being strapped down, put into drug-induced comas for days and even weeks, and crazy taped voices being piped into their rooms at high volume twenty-four hours a day.”
