Why wouldn't they?
I was suddenly very self-conscious.
What had happened, had happened. I mean, I was there and watched it happen, so I know it happened. “Stick to your legend....” It wasn't a story.... Walk the dog, dodge the shooter, hide in the house, smoke out the stalker, get rescued by the fire department: that's what happened.... Was there some reason they wouldn't believe me?
And why would they care?
I scanned the room looking for some indication of the time.
Before they left, one of the Q-tips moved the curtain between me and the window just enough so that I could no longer see outside. I could still tell whether, or not, it was brighter outside than in, but that only helped me tell day from night, not morning from afternoon.
Changing the mark's relationship to time is one of the first steps. Keep them disoriented, off balance.
Phelps and Cinnamon and Rollin: they were in the mix somehow, playing against someone for some reason.
It didn't make any sense. Even if they hadn't been victimized by a premature sheet cake, they would be long past retirement. What were they doing running a mission?
What was so big that they got called back and read in? What was so big that they felt they couldn't read me in?
Had I done something?
Had I not done something?
Maybe I had been disavowed? But why and what for?
The more I thought about it, the more I got lost in the echo chamber of my own thoughts.
I forced myself to think about the false flag operations we had run in the past. I thought about when we would play against a mark to get him to give up some close-hold material. I thought about the things we did and the things we did not do?
Going by that, they would leave me alone for a while to think about my situation. They'd want me to be pretty clear-headed so that I could process the occasional prompts that they would be feeding me. They would want to pump up the anxiety level before getting down to business.
No question about it: the mark is his own worst enemy in the run-up to the Q and A.
Depending on what they had in mind for me, they would probably introduce drugs at a little after the half-way mark. They'd want to keep me up and thinking about what might be about to happen.
When we ran games like this, we would have environmentals that would keep the mark from straying from the path. Screams, moans, shots, simulated electrocutions: Barney would layer that stuff in to keep the mark's focus where we wanted it.
There was always a sob-sister: someone weaker than the mark who would look to him for support and reassurance. Sometimes the sob would have a secret and other times they would be the first to “die,” but always they were the rock against which we would push in order to obtain leverage.
Somewhere along the line, there would be the “happy accident” when the mark would get a piece of information that they weren't "supposed" to have. This was the moment when we would allow them to feel hopeful, that they could outsmart their inquisitors and might even be able to escape.
False hope is more toxic than the real thing and more powerful than any of the so-called truth drugs. You show a mark that their situation is hopeless, then you show them a way out and let them focus all of their energy on that and then you crush that option absolutely. There can be no possibility that any of it is left.
When they see that, when they really understand that there are no other possibilities then they give up.
We played a guy once who had a list of agents who were working in the West. He was an experienced operator and so we had to convince him that we had something more valuable than his list, something he would be willing to trade for.
So we played a nested false flag against him and had him convinced that he had been in an accident and lost one of his legs. We then put him through the “rehab” process, introducing him to what life would be like without his leg.
We sold him on the idea of a special prosthesis and how it would be his only hope and then we showed him how he had been responsible for the death of the only person who could fit him for this special leg.
After we let him marinate in the permanent loss of his leg, we introduced the option of an “untested” technology that could actually be superior to the lost first option.
To access this last best hope, we set the price at his list.
He went for it.
By the time we were done with him, he had no other choice, no other way to be made whole.
I will never forget the look on his face when he discovered that he had not been injured, that he still had all his factory equipment and that he had just been beaten at his own game.
They were about to do this to me. I knew it and, if they knew anything about me, they knew that I knew it.
But what were they after?
I didn't have a list. They'd more or less seen to it that I didn't have much of anything once they pushed me out.
I only knew where some of the bodies were buried and that was because I had buried them.
If I'd had anything really useful, I would have used it long before now.
I had nothing, I knew nothing and I was about to be interrogated.
I had a pretty good idea about how, but, for the life of me, I could not get a handle on why?
“Stick to the legend;” make sure they “buy the act....” I didn't have any choice.
Until I had more information, I didn't have any choice.
It was the only way I was going to get out of this bed.
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