C. Graham - The Solomon Effect

She jerked away from him. “I don’t understand what went wrong. I’ve never had a complete miss like this. It was as if I reached out with my mind and touched…nothing.”

“How often are you wrong?”

“It depends on how you define ‘wrong.’” She thought about it for a moment. “I get details wrong. I miss things that are there-sometimes important things, like the Yalena at the shipyard. And sometimes I’ll see things that aren’t there-or I’ll interpret some of what I see wrong. Then other times, my attention will waver from the intended target to something nearby that’s more interesting.”

“Like what?”

“Well…one time I described a church, when the target was a bicycle shed across the street. And then sometimes I’m off in time.”

He frowned. “In time?”

She nodded. “Once, McClintock ran me against a target I described as a swimming pool, when it was supposed to be a warehouse. At first we thought it was a complete miss. Then we discovered that the site used to be a public swimming pool, before it was abandoned during the Civil Rights movement in the sixties.”

Jax studied her smooth-skinned face. “Are you telling me you can remote view different time periods?”

She gave him a wry smile. “Why is that so much harder to believe than remote viewing across distance?”

“Because-” He broke off. The truth was, he didn’t know why it was harder to believe. Hell, both should be impossible.

“One of the reasons quantum physicists have always been at the forefront of research into remote viewing is because they know that our ideas about time and space are just mental conveniences that don’t actually describe the fundamentals of reality at all. The problem is, it’s a concept the rest of the scientific community has a hard time grasping-mainly, I suspect, because it threatens so many things we all believe in.”

He went to stand at the window, his gaze on the dark river sliding silently past below. His own knowledge of quantum physics-of things like string theory, or M-theory-was at best vague. Not something he’d ever felt a compelling need to understand. Now, it had suddenly become vitally important.

After a moment, he said, “So why do you think it didn’t work tonight? Because the setup was wrong?”

She shook her head. “No. That shouldn’t really have made a difference. The constructs McClintock and I use-always having an independent tasker, always keeping the viewer ignorant of the target-are important in training, and to provide clean quantifiable results for statistical purposes-or for intelligence work. But the truth is, experienced remote viewers are capable of tasking themselves.”

“How do you know you’re not just accessing your own imaginations?”

“We don’t. That’s part of the problem. It’s why I wanted tonight’s setup to be as structured as possible-to reduce the chance I would simply tap into my own imagination.”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “But you didn’t access your imagination. All you got was…nothing.”

She pursed her lips and blew out a long sigh. “It could be because I’m tired. Because I’m tense. Because I know so much is riding on this.” Reaching down, she snatched up the crumpled paper from the floor. “And it’s not like I was really ignorant of the target. I had a pretty good idea what you were setting me against-either the atomic device, or the men who have it.”

“So you can still try it again, later?”

“I can try.”

The rattle of his phone vibrating against the table drew his attention. He picked it up without even glancing at the caller ID. “Jax Alexander.”

A heavily accented voice said, “You wanted something?”

Jax met October’s questioning gaze. “Hey, Andrei,” he said lightly. “Just the man I wanted to talk to. Did your guys ever do a radiation check on that U-boat?”

“What do you think? We’re stupid? We know about U-234. Of course we did a radiation check.”

“And?”

“And, nothing. It came up clean. Why do you ask, Jax?”

“Just wondering.”

“Right, Jax. It doesn’t have anything to do with the interesting rumor I heard this evening?”

“Rumor? What rumor?”

“That U-114 was carrying some kind of atomic device.”

Sonofabitch. Wolfgang Palmer obviously had a big mouth. Aloud, Jax said, “The Nazis never developed an atom bomb, Andrei.”

Andrei gave a soft laugh. “Just because the West has been ignorant of the contents of our archives for the last sixty years, Jax, doesn’t mean we were.”

Jax looked out the window, at the cold stars glittering from out of the black northern sky.

Andrei said, “I checked into your suggestion about the boy, Stefan Baklanov.”

“And?”

“And his body was not among the thirteen dead found on the Yalena.”

“So he is still alive.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he was somehow involved in the killings.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Andrei grunted. “One more thing. It seems the captain of the Yalena was in contact with a mutual friend of ours.”

“We have mutual friends?”

“Call him a business acquaintance. Azzam Badr al’Din.” He gave the name its proper pronunciation, Bed-ra-deen.

“Shit.” Jax was aware of October’s frowning gaze upon him. He said, “We’d heard Baklanov was into gunrunning.”

“This was more than gunrunning. We’re not talking about a bunch of Kalashnikovs here, Jax. Whatever was on that ship was big. Baklanov was asking a million euros for it.”

Jax leaned back against the edge of the table. “Why are you telling me this, Andrei?”

“Because this is your problem, Jax, not mine. Besides…” Jax could hear the malicious smile in the Russian’s voice. “What are friends for?”

Washington, D.C.: Wednesday 28 October

6:05 P.M. local time

As far as Gerald T. Boyd was concerned, remote viewing belonged in the same category as sun signs and chakras and all the other New Age nonsense embraced by the credulous fools of the world. He knew about the Army’s decades-long flirtation with the phenomenon, and had always found it a source of profound professional embarrassment. So it was with a sense of anger mingled with disgust that he settled at the desk of his room at the Willard that evening and spread the report on Ensign Guinness’s “viewing” session across the leather blotter.

It’s some kind of a fraud, he thought. No one could “see” images with only their minds. Someone had obviously leaked the location of the Yalena and its illicit cargo. The problem was, who? Baklanov? Rodriguez?

Impossible.

As he flipped through the pages, anger bled slowly into disquiet and, ultimately, into doubt. Pushing up from the desk, he paced the room, his mind testing and rejecting one hypothetical explanation after the other. He poured himself a glass of Jack Daniel’s and drank it down in one long pull. Then he splashed another two inches into the bottom of his glass and went to flip open his laptop.

The convictions of a lifetime are not easily overturned. But as he worked his way through the publicly available literature and then on to the material that was still classified, he found himself eventually confronted with more evidence than he could deny. In the end, he was inclined to agree with the general who’d once said that if you didn’t believe in remote viewing, you hadn’t done your homework.

Whether October Guinness’s ability was a gift from God or the devil, it was not Boyd’s place to judge. He knew only one thing: the woman was dangerous, and she needed to be located and eliminated.

Quickly.

Bremen, Germany: Thursday 29 October

12:10 A.M. local time