The Nameless Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

of escape. It’s essential that the trigger is rendered completely ineffectual, and that I can only do when you are unconscious.’
    ‘So, Doc, has the treatment worked this time?’
    ‘Let’s see,’ he said drily. ‘Ready?’
    I took a deep breath and dropped into the defense zone I had learnt.
    ‘Fontane.’
    I felt a momentary buzz, but nothing more. ‘Okay, you can unbuckle me.’
    Rivers shook his head. ‘You know the protocol, Mr. Wells. We wait for ten minutes in case of—’
    ‘Delayed reaction,’ I said, closing my eyes. This was always the dullest part of the procedure. ‘What does Fontane mean?’ I asked, to pass the time.
    ‘Who rather than what,’ the doctor replied. ‘Theodore Fontane was a major nineteenth-century German novelist.’
    ‘Never heard of him,’ I muttered, mildly embarrassed by my ignorance. Even though I’d studied English literature at college, my knowledge of foreign writers was negligible. Being a crime writer didn’t help. I spent most of my reading time on the competition, and not much of it was translated from German. ‘So did the Nazis approve of this Fontane?’
    Rivers shrugged. ‘I rather doubt it. He was some kind of early Modernist—too refined for them, I imagine.’
    ‘Oh, I get it. A double bluff by the Rothmanns.’
    He nodded. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
    An earlier trigger had been ‘von Stauffenberg,’ the man behind the bomb plot that nearly cost Hitler his life in 1944. The Rothmanns were cunning as hell. They had no qualms about using words abominable to the Nazis.
    When the ten minutes were up, Dr. Rivers called in an orderly. I was released from my bonds, the big man remaining in the room while the scientist finished writing up his notes.
    ‘All right, Mr. Wells, that’s it for today.’
    ‘How did I do, Doc?’ I asked, rubbing my ankles.
    Rivers peered at me though the thick lenses of his glasses. ‘A perfectly adequate response,’ he said. ‘You still cannot control the post-traumatic rage that being confined here has exacerbated, but that is within the parameters. It would be interesting to monitor your reactions in the open, but I rather doubt Mr. Sebastian would sanction that.’
    I felt another flare of anger when I heard the FBI man’s name. ‘Maybe in five years,’ I said, heading for the door.
    The gorilla came with me as far as our rooms. Despite the ten-minute delay precaution, Rivers and his team would be watching me carefully over the coming hours, just in case. Such a lengthy response time had happened once before. I had broken my fingernails on the window locks trying to get out. Afterward, I was thankful I hadn’t hurt Karen—she managed to take refuge in the closet and I was eventually restrained by a quartet of soldiers in body armor. It was possible that I had been programmed not to injure another Rothmann subject, as Karen had been, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Her own reactions to triggers had been less overtly aggressive and she became even more docile as the pregnancy advanced.
    Peter Sebastian was the scumbag responsible for our continued incarceration. Although he knew that, without me, the Rothmann conspiracy would have been even more devastating for the U.S., he wouldn’t cut us any slack. He had visited the camp once a week, though it was nearly ten days since we’d last seen him, always pretending he was our friend because he was a lawenforcement colleague of Karen’s. I knew better. Dr. Rivers had recommended we be given access to internet and television, arguing that cutting us off from the world was no longer beneficial to our treatment. Sebastian had rejected that and we were going stir-crazy—especially Karen, who wasn’t able to make as much use of the outdoor facilities as I was. Of course, Sebastian might have been taking orders from the justice secretary or even the White House, but in any event he was definitely the scheming type and was probably using us to further his