Randy White - Hunter's moon

Pulling me by the wrist, she countered, “I covered the White House for three years. You don’t think I know that? But history’s supposed to repeat itself.”

In its way, Hamlet’s train station was a time machine. Wilson had chosen this, his boyhood home, in which to spend Thanksgiving, and had decided to stay on until Christmas.

That’s why we were standing in this North Carolina village, an hour before midnight, looking at a blazing moon.

It was a “hunter’s moon,” Tomlinson informed me. The first full moon in November.

“Yeah, man,” he added, his tone introspective, “streets are empty, and it’s bright enough to play. Next time, we bring our gloves.”

But there would be no next time, as we both knew.

The next morning, we stood on a country road, too small for the number of Lincoln Town Cars, unmarked Fords, and Secret Service SUVs parked in the sand, and watched Agent Wren touch an index finger to his ear before telling his partner, “He’s countermanded my orders again. His doctors, too. He says these two gentlemen should be escorted in immediately.”

As Wren said “gentlemen,” his eyes brushed past me with a variety of contempt reserved exclusively for rogue biologists who help rogue commanders in chief escape. Wren didn’t like me, didn’t trust me, and had contacted the head office in Maryland determined to keep Tomlinson and me out.

Finding several joints in Tomlinson’s silver cigarette case, he believed, had finalized his case.

Instead, he had been overruled.

Wren’s partner straightened his Ray-Bans and turned toward two houses set back in a clearing of orange clay and pines. The area had been cordoned off with Secret Service agents, local law enforcement, and sophisticated electronic sensors.

Tomlinson asked Agent Wren, “Did his family own both these houses?” Each was tiny: white shingle exteriors, asphalt shingle roofs, and sand driveways.

Wren’s partner answered, “No. The president and his family lived in the one on the right. The First Lady’s family lived in the other. Their parents worked for the same textile mill, and they both moved to Minnesota at about the same time. That’s where the Presidential Library’s located. And the Wilson Center.”

Tomlinson said we were aware of that as one of the agent’s radios squelched, and I overheard, “If Hunter wants privacy, that’s what Hunter gets…”

Not easily accomplished.

Overhead, two Blackhawk helicopters cauldroned like seabirds, maintaining secure airspace, keeping a half dozen TV news choppers at bay. There was a breaking story below. New York, Atlanta, and L.A. wanted a live feed when it happened.

Kerney Amos Levaugn Wilson lay dying in the house where he had been born.

Leukemia destroys red blood cells with a swarming indifference. Kal Wilson’s face was the color of a mushroom, and he looked as frail.

He lay in a hospital bed, in the room that had been his as a boy, surrounded by monitors and tubes but also family photos. The Boy Scout and the deaf girl, with this same white-shingled house in the background-there were several black-and-white shots in frames.

When Tomlinson and I entered the room, Vue gave us a quick hug, then shooed everyone else out. When he turned to close the door, I could see that he’d been crying. I don’t know why I found that surprising but I did.

The president stuck his hand out. I shook it. His skin was cool but too loose over its fleshy scaffolding. He didn’t object when Tomlinson leaned to pat his shoulder-a daring familiarity with this man.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “The holiday season’s a busy time for everyone. But there’s one last bit of business I’d like to dispose of before…” He had a mask that fed oxygen when he needed it and he fitted it over his face and took several breaths. He left the sentence unfinished.

“You received the envelopes containing your dossiers?”

Yes, we had. Tomlinson and I had not shared. Not everything, anyway. We all have done things in the past that we would prefer to remain in the past. That is certainly true of my life.

As the documents confirmed, Tomlinson had been recruited, tested, and then employed by a federal agency-the CIA, most likely-as “asymmetrical intelligence-gathering personnel.”

“My God,” he wailed when he told me, “I was a psychic spy. Like James Bond, man, only I never got to leave the damn room.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” I told him.

I was referring not only to Stargate. Tomlinson had unwillingly participated in another CIA program, he discovered, that is not as well documented because files were ordered destroyed by Richard Helms, director of the CIA at the time.

According to information provided by Wilson, The research project, code-named MKULTRA, was established to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing techniques. It was designed to study the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior, and also human memory.

MKULTRA researchers demonstrated that human memory can be damaged or destroyed by electroshock treatments-Tomlinson was proof. But there was no way to selectively destroy memory, as Hollywood would have us believe.

Far easier, they discovered, was introducing specific, detailed memories of events that, in fact, never occurred. Give a subject a combination of drugs and shock treatments, for instance, show them a film of a murder scene over and over, the subject would soon be convinced he was guilty.

“You had nothing to do with sending a bomb, or killing Naval personnel,” the former president told Tomlinson. “You already know that. The information was in the documents I provided. But I wanted you to hear it from my own lips. Feel better?”

Tomlinson was looking at him affectionately. “You are a good one, Sam. I wish you would’ve run for a second term. We need you, man.”

According to polls taken after the stand he took in Panama, Kal Wilson could have won the presidency again-but the mention of a second term was still an unwelcome subject.

He pointed abruptly to the door and said to Tomlinson, “Give me a few minutes alone with Ford.”

After Tomlinson exited, Wilson told me, “You never admitted that you are one of the thirteen plank members of the Negotiating and Systems Analysis Group. I want you to sit in on a little meeting I’ve arranged with three of those plank members. Right here. Are you willing?”

It seemed absurd to lie but I had to. “I still don’t know what group you’re talking about, sir.”

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “It’s my understanding that members of your group trained and operated separately for security reasons. You’ve never met.”

That wasn’t exactly true. I was aware of the names of two fellow members. Hal Harrington, the software millionaire, and another who was a journalist.

I shrugged. “If you would like me to stay, I will.”

“It is also my understanding that one of your members was supposed to destroy all documents relating to your group’s activities. But he didn’t.”

That was my understanding, too, but I said nothing.

“Members of your group had quite a scare a few years back when a New York Times reporter nearly came into possession of some of those documents. It was my last year in office.”

I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Even for a former president, Wilson knew way too much about the Negotiators.

“I really have no knowledge, sir-”

The door opened and I stopped in midsentence. It was Harrington, the intelligence guru Wilson said he no longer trusted. I no longer trusted him, either. Hal was the man who’d kept records that should have been destroyed.

Surprised, I looked from the president to Harrington. Typically, Harrington was wearing a tailored suit and tie. Atypically, he looked distressed.