Justification For Killing (38 page)

Slipping even closer, Kat
whispered, “MK-ULTRA is like an onion – as you peel the layers off
you will expose your senses to the brutal reality of the objects
interior. You want to know? Well it’s your funeral!”

“
See I told you Sam Lin,
‘funeral’ that’s the same as ‘death’, I’m totally against both of
those. I’m telling you, let’s go home!”

“
Please be quiet Si Lei,
go on Kat...”

“
Okay if you insist -
Project MK-ULTRA, was the stealthy name for a black-ops, illegal
CIA program using human subjects for experimentation. The CIA’s
Office of Cerebral Information and Intelligence (CII) managed it.
The man on whom you are seeking info - Doctor Ryan Rousseau - was
the Chief of this detestable, underground operation!

“
I managed to find out Dr.
Rousseau’s father was the infamous German Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele.
Your Ryan Rousseau came by his job honestly since his father had
tortured Jewish children, Gypsy children and many others during the
war. "Patients" were put into pressure chambers, tested with drugs,
castrated, frozen to death, and exposed to various other traumas,
all in the name of Nazi “science”. Mengele himself injected
chemicals into the eyes of children in an attempt to change their
eye color. Unfortunately a strict veil of secrecy over the
experiments enabled Mengele to do his work more effectively;
however close to the end of the war his records were sent to Dr.
Von Verschiers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute at Heidelberg in two
truckloads and were supposedly destroyed by the latter, but the
OSS, which is now the CIA saved those records. Those records became
the core for the CII experiments. After the war Dr. Josef Mengele
escaped to South America and changed his name to Helmut Gerhart. He
died in 1979. His son became Ryan Rousseau, believing Rousseau
sounded less German than his father’s atrocious Mengele
name.”

“
Kat, this cannot be true.
SCAR did a complete Top Secret background check on Rousseau and
found no mention of Josef Mengele; in fact, his father, Paul
Rousseau was supposedly a second-generation immigrant from
France.”

“
Remember we are dealing
with the CIA - they can do, change or completely fabricate
anything. The U.S. government, utilizing this same CIA, began
working with human subjects in the early 1950s, and they continued,
at least through the early 1970s. The test subjects were from
various countries; however, most were citizens of the United
States. A few were Russian, and some were even U.S. Army and Marine
military personnel.

“
I have been working
within the CIA on this covert operation for many years now, and I
can tell you MK-ULTRA used a host of different methods to alter or
control individual brain functions of test subjects. In doing so
they were attempting to manipulate their mental state.”

Sam Lin interjected, “Kat
how were they doing this?”

“
The CIA dispensed many
kinds of psychedelic chemicals and drugs, both legal and illegal,
to their victims. Sometimes hypnotism was used, at other times they
used sensory deprivation, or they might place the subject in
isolation or inflict them with verbal or sometimes sexual abuse.
The CIA operatives were not beyond the use of torture to achieve
their goals either.”

“
That sounds like mind
control. Is that what you’re talking about?”

“
Mind
control was exactly what they were trying to achieve - a real life
edition of
The
Manchurian Candidate
. In fact, this
book may have been the catalyst for some genius in the CIA wanting
to begin this clandestine program.”

“
Were they ever
successful?” asked Si Lei. “I sure would have hated to have been
one of their test subjects.”

“
If the CIA had used you
Si Lei,” said Sam Lin, “they would have abandoned the program
before it ever got started - remember the program is called ‘mind
control’, you would have been dropped as an unsuccessful subject.
There would have found nothing to control,” still chuckling he
slapped Si Lei on the shoulder.

“
Funny, Sam Lin, funny,
you need to get a comedy act,” Si Lei said angrily crossing his
arms.

“
Kat, I have a couple of
questions, first - was the program successful and when did it
REALLY end?”

“
We believe in a few cases
it was successful, but, in most others, the results could be
described as disastrous.” She continued by explaining the
investigation she had been involved in for the past couple of
years. In a number of cases, she said, the CIA believes some test
subject were not even aware, and certainly without their consent,
were injected with dangerous drugs. In fact, she said, “in the mid
nineteen fifties Dr. Fred Osborn, a biochemist and biological
weapons researcher and Chief of the U. S. Army’s Special Operations
Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland ingested LSD without his
knowledge or consent as part of an experiment administered by the
CIA. He died under suspicious circumstances a week
later.”

Continuing she said, “The
CIA concluded Dr. Osborn had been suffering from severe
schizophrenic madness when he leaped from the fourteenth floor of a
New York hotel in 1958. Another doctor had been assigned to watch
Dr. Osborn, but he said he had been asleep and did not see him
jump. The CIA declared his death had been a suicide. The other
doctor, also a Russian defector, was held responsible for Dr.
Osborn’s death. The CIA reprimanded him, kept him from future
promotions, and ultimately in the early part of 1960 he also jumped
from the upper floor of an apartment building and committed
‘suicide’.”

“
Are you suggesting the
CIA might have been involved in Dr. Osborn’s death? What would be
their motive?”

With the mention of death,
Si Lei set his cup down, turned and stared directly at Kat and
said, “I believe Osborn was pushed.” Looking, one could have seen
the fear in Si Lei’s eyes. “Home, Sam Lin we need to drop this
investigation and go home.”

“
Surprising you said
pushed Mr. Kim, Dr. Osborn had been personally involved with
MK-ULTRA and knew all the CIA secrets. We believe the Company had
decided he had become a security risk and might divulge the
sinister secrets associated with this highly classified illegal,
covert operation. Especially since he had personal knowledge of
some of the people involved. The strange thing... in the
mid-nineties, his body was exhumed, and a complete, independent
autopsy was performed. The pathologists found Dr. Osborn had
sustained severe blunt force injuries to his head before he hit the
street fourteen floors below. They ruled the death was a homicide.
He had been murdered before someone threw him out the hotel window
a hundred and forty feet above the cold, hard cement of the
sidewalk below.”

“
You mean this all went
on, and no one in our government knew about it?”

She then explained how the
U.S. Congress personally got involved in the middle of the ‘70s
with an investigation. This investigation became known as the
Church Committee. Even the President got involved and formed
another group of investigators known as the Rockefeller Commission.
Kat further told them how the CIA Director, Richard Hellams in 1973
ordered all the MK-ULTRA records destroyed. At least, she said the
Director thought he had erased all the evidence linking the CIA
with such a despicable program.

Pausing for a second she
asked, “I’m sorry, but would you mind if I smoked? We have been
sitting here sipping tea and talking for quite a long time. I
believe if I do not get a cigarette I am going to have a nicotine
tantrum.”

“
You mean ‘nicotine
fit’?”

“
Yes, of course, ‘fit’.
What must I be thinking? Yes, a nicotine fit.” Before receiving an
answer, she pulled a box of cigarettes, along with an exquisite
gold lighter, from the clutch she had taken from her purse. With a
flip of her thumb, she opened the lid on the box, removed an
un-filtered cigarette and touched lighter flame to the end. Sucking
in a lung-full of smoke she slowly exhaled the blue mist back into
the air, “Hmmm, yes,” she said. “Gentlemen, would you excuse me for
a moment... I need to go to the ladies room and powder my nose.”
Sliding back from the table, she arose and walked across the
restaurant to one of the restrooms located in the rear. The
rhythmic taping of her heels reminded them of their initial meeting
a few hours earlier at the Thai Pavilion.

Sam Lin was watching her
every move as she walked. Si Lei snickered, “Like what you see,
huh?”

“
What?” Sam Lin
absentmindedly answered, still engrossed in watching her go around
the screen separating the restroom from the main seating area. “No!
Si Lei... well yes, she is beautiful, but something is not right. I
have a feeling she’s not being entirely truthful.”

“
What do you mean Sam Lin?
She is our contact here in Bangkok. She is CIA, what is wrong with
you Sam Lin?”

“
Okay,
look at the box of cigarettes lying there in her open purse. It is
a pack of
Sobranies
. That particular brand is Russian and is called
‘Black Russian’
. Look
the box is black with gold foil. Notice it is emblazoned with the
Russian imperial eagle. Sam Lin, I remember these smokes, they are
expensive Russian cigarettes made especially for the Russian
taste.”

“
Just
because she likes, what did you call them,
Black Russians,
doesn’t mean
anything. We lived here for awhile, I bet lots of people smoke that
brand.”

“
You’re right but what
about the purse of hers. How many American women have you ever seen
go to the restroom without taking their purse? Especially to
freshen their makeup, none I tell you, N-O-N-E,” he said spelling
the word. “In fact, American women will not go anywhere without
their purse. It’s like leaving an arm behind. They always, and I
mean always take it along. She left it as if she had forgotten it.
Si Lei it is as if she had not been used to carrying
it.”

“
What are you thinking Sam
Lin?”

“
Nothing, she says she is
CIA, and I suppose she is, but we never saw an identity badge or
anything, just her word, and another thing, what about the nicotine
thing? Everyone who smokes has said at least a million times, ‘I’m
having a nicotine fit’. She doesn’t seem to be the person she says
she is, but she has been giving us a lot of good information and —
”

Softly Si Lei whispered,
“Sssh, she is returning.”

“
I’m sorry, gentlemen.
Where were we? Forgive me – I have monopolized the whole
conversation. Let me rest for a moment, drink my tea and allow you
to tell me exactly what you both expect to find in
Bangkok?”

“
Earlier you said our
Director had greased the tracks for our visit. You further stated
you knew we were here to look for information on a man named Ryan
Rousseau. Mr. Rousseau was our boss. What exactly did Director
Scarburg divulge of our mission?”

“
Nothing much more than
the subject Ryan Rousseau. Why are you so interested in him? Fill
me in. What exactly is SCAR? What does the acronym mean? What is
SCAR’s mission? How long has Mr. Rousseau worked for SCAR? Where is
SCAR’s headquarters? What does Mr. Rousseau’s work
entail?

“
Whoa... whoa... Kat, I
thought the CIA would have already had the answers to all those
questions — ”

Before Sam Lin could
complete his sentence, Kat interrupted, “Yes, yes we do, I did not
read the whole file. I only became aware of your arrival just an
hour or so before your plane landed. Sorry for all the
questions.”

The more she talked the
more suspicious Sam Lin became. Si Lei started to answer Kay’s
questions when Sam Lin turned to him and said, “Si Lei, excuse me,
but remember you told your wife you would call her at precisely
midnight.”

“
What.... my wife?”
Questioned Si Lei.

“
Look at the time, it is
1:55 p.m. Saturday afternoon in Bangkok that means it is 11:55 p.m.
Friday night back in the states. You only have a couple of minutes,
come let’s walk outside the café for better reception. Excuse us
for a couple of minutes Kat, Si Lei’s wife is rather
demanding.”

Grabbing Si Lei by the
coat sleeve he pulled him to his feet and pushed him toward the
open expanse of the concourse. All the time Si Lei was trying to
resist the rough treatment he was getting.

Stepping from the doorway
into the stream of passengers, airport personnel and tourists
scurrying up and down the concourse Si Lei jerked his arm from the
grasp of Sam Lin and angrily demanded, “Brother! What in the heck
are you trying to get me to do? I can’t call a wife I don’t
have!”

“
Si Lei I had to get you
alone – I’m telling you this woman is no CIA agent. Her true
identify is unknown, but we must be careful and not divulge any
more information than we have to. Just leave the talking to me. I
believe I can handle her. Get your cell phone and call Captain
Scarburg at home. Ask him whom he talked to in the CIA or the FBI
and find out if he has ever heard of a woman named Katrina Ryabov.
Tell the Captain we are on a hot lead, and will get back to him as
soon as we have something concrete to report.”