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The radiator clanks.

I lie there and I don’t sleep for a long time.

Chapter 3

The Campaign

PRESTON

The woman in Room 614 believes the CIA is monitoring her through the hospital’s ventilation system. She has been here for six days. She is articulate, educated, and absolutely certain that the air ducts contain surveillance equipment calibrated to her specific brainwave frequency. She has drawn a diagram. The diagram is detailed, annotated, and – I have to admit – impressive.

I am forty minutes into our morning session, and we are making progress. She has agreed, provisionally, that the likelihood of the CIA targeting a retired political science professor from Astoria is statistically low. She has not agreed that it’s impossible, because, as she points out, “They’d want you to think it’s impossible, Dr. York. That’s how they get you.” Which is, from a purely logical standpoint, airtight.

I’m working the edges of the delusion, sitting in the gap between confrontation and validation and letting her find her own foothold. This is the work: the slow, patient, unremarkable sessions where a person takes one half-step back from the thing their brain is telling them, and you sit with them while they decide whether to take another.

She stops mid-sentence.

“Oh,” she says. “I forgot. That nurse told me to tell you something.”

I set my pen down. “Which nurse?”

“The short one. With the chilli pepper hat. She came in during breakfast.”

The back of my neck prickles.

“What did she say?”

“She said to tell you that you’re – hang on, let me get the exact words.” The woman closes her eyes, concentrating. “‘Tell Dr. York he’s wasting his prime reproductive window.’” She opens her eyes. “Is she your mother? She seems very intense.”

I am a physician. I know that men remain fertile well into their seventies. I also know that correcting Rosa Ortiz on a point of biology is a thing you do once, briefly, shortly before losing.

I take a breath. I take a very slow, very measured breath, because if I react the way I want to react, I will compromise the therapeutic environment, and also I will scream.

“She’s my mother-in-law.”

“Ah.” The woman nods. “That explains it. She had a certain… authority. I almost told her about the vents.”

“I would not recommend that.”

“No. I got the sense she’d have an opinion about the vents. And her opinions seem…” she searches for the word. “…final.”

I make a note in the chart. It says: Patient interrupted by non-clinical personnel. Will follow up. What it means is: I am going to have a conversation with Rosa Ortiz that will be short, devastating, and one-sided, and I will almost certainly be on the losing side.

“Professor Kozlov,” I say, setting the chart down. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“In your professional assessment – as a woman of significant intelligence who is very good at reading people – is it possible that the nurse with the chilli pepper hat is running a campaign?”

Professor Kozlov considers this. She steeples her fingers.

“A campaign,” she says. “As in, a coordinated effort to achieve a specific objective through strategic communication and the recruitment of unwitting assets?”

“Exactly that.”

“Oh, she’s not running a campaign, Dr. York. She’s running a counterintelligence operation.” Professor Kozlov leans forward, eyes bright. “She recruited me as a messenger – that’s classic cut-out protocol. She didn’t deliver the message herself, because that would be traceable. She used a patient. A patient with a documented credibility issue, which means if you complain, it’s hearsay. Deniable. Brilliant.”

“That’s – actually a very good analysis.”