“Ah, the third, our southwesterly wind. Well, I’m sure you read up enough on the program to know.”

I nod. “LSD.”

“Correct.”

Right, so my twenty-three day nightmare was just one big acid trip.

“The rest is up to the host,” Ewen says. “Their experiences, their memories, their fears.” He glares at me for a long moment, then asks, “Did your mother do this to you?”

I nod.

I can see, feel, his mind doing laps behind his blue eyes. Is he putting himself in my shoes? Living out a twenty-three hour — twenty-three day — nightmare?

“I can only imagine,” he says under his breath.

This is when I realize just what a monster he is. He isn’t sympathetic. He is curious. I can see him mentally placing electrodes on my body, hooking me to a series of machines, scribbling in a notebook as he hovers over my trembling body.

I want to climb across the table and smash my hand into his bulbous nose.

Instead, I look down at my cell.

3:26 a.m.

I want to know more about my nightmares, but I have a limited amount of time. “Keep going,” I say. “My mother had just started the Sleep Control Program.”

“Yes, yes,” he says, then turns his gaze to my father. “Correct me if I’m wrong. You met Elena — well, I believe she was going by Sally at that point — in 1976.”

My father nods. “That’s correct. I met her at a coffee shop November of that year.”

“Right, so she had been working on the Sleep Control Program for going on two — two and a half years. I was three years into what would prove a decade of Senate hearings, committee oversight hearings and whatnot, and I had little contact with Elena and the Sleep Control Program.”

“Who was bankrolling the operation?” I ask.

“I was.”

“You?”

“Yes. MK-Ultra had an annual budget of ten million dollars, today's equivalent of right around ninety million.”

“And you were skimming?”

“I wouldn’t say skimming. More like stockpiling. A rainy day fund.”

“For when you were eventually shut down?”

“Correct.”

“And just how much did you stockpile?”

“Around thirty million.”

Thirty million dollars. What today would be over a quarter of a billion dollars.

“And you invested this all in the Sleep Control Program?”

“Heavens, no. The Sleep Control Program was only one of several black ops I funded after retirement.”

I wait for him to elaborate.

He doesn’t.

“So how much did you give her?”

“Ballpark—five million.”

“And how much did you keep for yourself?”

I expect him to shake off the question, to say he was above stealing for his own gains.

“Enough,” he says.

“Enough to buy a nice house on a big plot and a couple goats.”

Another cragged grin forms as he says, “So I take it you met Marshall and Latimer?”

“We did.”