Mosaic

by John R. Maxim Narrated by Dick Hill

Overview

The U.S. government has sanctioned two top-secret scientific experiments, both morally questionable and potentially devastating. The brainchild of a noted pop-psychologist - overseen by a shadowy figure known for his brutal efficiency and cold disregard for human life - these twin covert operations are each part of a dark and sinister agenda: an attempt to use Multiple Personality Disorder to create the perfect assassin.

Major Roger Grayson's uncanny ability to adapt to any undercover situation by becoming seemingly different people makes him the ideal person to evaluate both these projects. On the orders of his superior, General Hoyt - a troubled and secretive officer whose own purposes remain murky and unclear - Grayson launches an investigation into the goings-on behind the electrified gates of the Belfair mental health research facility, an assignment that is leading him to unsettling doubts about the nature and humanity of these projects...and about who - or what - he really is.

It is also leading him to Susannah Card, a beautiful, talented, and accomplished young woman who is everything the projects' masterminds are searching for: a natural "mosaic" - a multiple with total dominance over her separate personalities. But Grayson's attraction and growing feelings for Susannah is drawing a lethal nightmare from his past into their lives. And now it will take all of his exceptional skills to prevent Susannah from being sucked into a grim experiment born of greed and madness that is suddenly going brutally, horribly wrong.

Editorial Reviews

bn.com

Mosaic is an original, gripping, and bloody chiller about a twisted agenda designed to mold those suffering from multiple-personality disorder into perfect spies and assassins. Maxim has a great deal of fun with this mesmerizing premise, and in the process he crafts a superb and complex story about one undercover agent's attempt to end this heinous scheme.

Linda Howard

Wonderful...No one does better characterization or plotting than maxim.

Kirkus Reviews

A hodgepodge of a thriller about secret government experiments aimed at turning Multiple Personality Disorder into a positive. Major Roger Grayson is terrific at going undercover to penetrate noxious organizations. Among other sociopathic roles, he's played the vicious redneck and the ruthless neo-Nazi to great disruptive advantage. But now he's called upon to accept a sea change of an assignment: helping evaluate the mysterious effort overseen by pop psychologist Norman Zales at Belfair, a sort of gothic hideaway for MPDs. If the government-sanctioned experiments taking place there prove out, the nation will be able to field an enhanced breed of espionage agent. Consider: an agent is captured. She (virtually all MPDs are female) proceeds to frustrate the daylights out of her interrogators by a nifty shift of personality Mata Hari into Orphan Annie, for instance. Or so goes the theory. Grayson is skeptical. He's also not sure he qualifies as the right person to do the evaluating. Nor does he understand why it's so important to the general, his boss, that he take the job. And when he begins to encounter bad guys, he's puzzled by what they're after. Grayson just can't fathom what's really going on at Belfair, or who's being kept there. He's sent to track down Susannah, a natural-that is to say, a multiple with push-button control over her contrasting cast of personalities-but he's not sure why. And neither is the reader. But after the big, bloody finish, we do know that the survivors are the good guys. Since some of them may be MPDs, however, the difficulty lies in counting noses. You need a scorecard to tell the Emmas from the Veronicas from the Theresas, and so on. And a reallystrong commitment to want to do it. This capable veteran has done better (Haven, 1997, etc.). .

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172638787
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	08/17/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Grayson knew that going back to the same place was foolish. It broke a cardinal rule of survival. Avoid routines; never follow a pattern. Assume that they're watching you, charting your movements, looking for their best chance to take you.

Major Grayson more than knew that; he'd taught it. But he needed to see that young woman again. She had seemed to be either the twin or the ghost of the woman he had probably murdered.

It had been three months since he'd last left the confines of a small Air Force base outside Washington. He'd been assigned quarters in a corner of the base that was sealed off by a series of checkpoints. He'd been given a small office that no one else used and whatever equipment he requested.

His superiors called it a cooling-off period, a time for his mind and body to heal. He would be out of the reach of those civilian authorities who would probably indict him if they knew how to find him. And safe from those who wanted to kill him.

He'd been given light-duty writing manuals, planning courses, but all human contact had been minimal. Not that he'd sought it. He kept to himself. His only visitors had been his debriefers. The debriefers, however, could hardly be called company because Grayson was never told any of their names. Debriefers were almost always anonymous. If one didn't know them, one couldn't name them if caught. They were, for the most part , dour and secretive men of the we'll-ask-the-questions variety.

The one exception was a Pentagon psychiatrist who at least seemed to see him as a human being and not as some sort of experiment gone wrong. But even thepsychiatrist kept a distance between them. Grayson wasn't to know his name either.

He was certainly safe but grew increasingly restless until he could stand the isolation no longer. Grayson needed to get out, at least for a while, and be among people who knew nothing about him. So just after sunrise on a cool September morning, he had put on some shorts and an old hooded jersey and studied the effect in a mirror.

He could have been anyone; people said that was his gift. No two photos of his face ever seemed quite alike. His hair had returned to its natural dark brown. He had let it grow long since his last field assignment, for which it had been cropped and dyed blond. Even the color of his eyes seemed to vary. They were gray in some light, green in others. He could be almost handsome; he could be almost homely, depending on how he set his jaw and his brow. His face could be cold and cruel for one role; it could be stupid and slack for another.

But today, the look that he wanted was average. Uninteresting, unthreatening, don't stand out from the crowd. The look that he saw in his mirror seemed to do it, especially with the hood of his jersey in place. Satisfied, he sat and fastened his knee brace. That done, he went out and got into his car, and proceeded to drive off the base.

The sergeant at the main gate had known he was coming. The guards at the checkpoints had alerted him. The sergeant, clearly nervous, asked Grayson not to leave, or at least to wait for an escort. Grayson assured him that he wouldn't be long and would stay within sight of the perimeter. He was armed, he said, and had his cell phone and pager. He'd be back before anyone could miss him.

He wanted to run. Not run away, just run. But he had no intention of staying near the base. He wanted to drive the few miles into Washington and park near the Jefferson Memorial. From there, he would walk to the jogging path that circled the Tidal Basin. Few tourists, if any, would be out at that hour. There would be, at most, a few dozen runners spread over its two-mile length. They would all be civilians who lived normal lives. Unlike the personnel on the base, there wouldn't be anyone pointing him out and whispering stories they'd heard about him. The civilians would not drop their eyes as they passed him. The civilians would not be afraid of him.

For a time that first morning he felt wonderfully free. He had started with his hood up but it soon fell away. He had wanted to run the full two miles of the path but the knee that took the bullet wasn't up to it yet. He jogged part way and he walked part way. The knee, even so, began to swell inside its brace. He would ice it later; this was worth it.

He had almost made a full circle of the basin and was headed back to where he'd left his car. It was then that he first saw the two women running toward him. One of the two looked so much like Janice that he felt his stomach rise up into his chest.

The woman running with her, a light-skinned black woman, was wearing a Georgetown University sweatshirt. The one who looked like Janice wore a halter and shorts. Her body, like Janice's, was fit and tanned. Her proportions seemed exactly the same. She had the same dark blond hair, gathered loosely in the back and the same way of brushing errant strands from her face. She was about the same age, mid-twenties at most. The two women were chatting back and forth as they ran. They smiled and said "Hi!" as they went by him.

It wasn't Janice, of course—-Janice was dead.

 

 

Copyright ? 1999 by John R. Maxim

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