Chapter 12

A week or so later the chief got in touch and asked us if we could try to get a three week break from modelling as he wanted us to attend a course. As we still had not got around to resigning we were intrigued about this and called the agency to see if we could get the three weeks break.

It worked out well as they wanted us to have a full month on location in a months’ time so we got back to the chief to let him know when we were available. He gave us an address in Hereford that I recognised as being a house that I had been staying in when I did my firearms training with the SAS. I told Wendy that she may find the three weeks an interesting experience. After we had tidied up the few shoots that we had been contracted for, we took my car and headed west.

When we arrived at the house we were greeted by the chief and Major X, my brainwashing expert. We were shown where to put our bags and met the two of them in the lounge with a cup of tea. It started with the Major explaining that he had found that there were three distinct levels of brainwashing that had been used by the gang. The first was the lowest and was mainly used on the target business man. The equipment at the wellness centres was only able to provide this level of influence. The second level was for ‘new girls’ who had been on the edge of illegal activities before they had been taken. This level left them with some knowledge of their personality but removed all vestige of their own history; so ending up as total girls who were able to be trained to administer drugs and to keep tabs on the target so as to determine the best time to go for the ‘wellness’ phase.

The third level was the one I had suffered through. It took away all personal memories permanently. I still could not remember anything about my life before Bethany unless it was something that I had been trained in or had been shown positive proof of. This was why I could remember my earlier days of the case but nothing of the essential me that was there at the time. I ‘knew’ that I had loved Gwen but would not have given her a second glance unless I was shown that she was, indeed, the girl I loved. The gang was lazy in that they had not bothered to give me any imaginary memories to overlay the blankness so I was destined to go through life as a new-born the day I woke up in the hospital. I wasn’t needed to know more as I was there merely as a distraction.

The Major said that the equipment found in Kent was able to go all the way to level three and he knew that it was here that all the girls who were destined to be the centre of attention had spent up to three months. He said there are records of six others who had gone down this path, other than me. Lesley and Julia had been the only two left alive as remains of the other four had been found in the mine shafts. The chief added that they had identified seven missing businessmen among the bodies so the gang had made quite a bit of money. He said that all the money recovered had been returned, in part, to the companies who had lost it.

He told us that he could not get any access to Julia as the French police still had her but he had been able to get Lesley transferred into his custody. He said that she had volunteered to undergo tests with the equipment in Kent and that it had been very interesting. The records found in Kent had given the full details of our time there and he had found out that every new girl who went through the system had been given a coded phrase which was unique to them. He said that he had not been able to find out what the phrase did but expected that it would be something like a suggestion that hypnotised people are given to get them to perform some unusual act.

He had been able to remove the code from her brain and had spoken the words several times to her with no effect. He wanted me to come with him to Kent so that he could remove my own code. While we were to be away, Wendy would be given a crash course in firearms training and then we would both be given a course on unarmed combat, SAS style.

The chief then told us that there had been ten girls found in the raids as well as two with Lesley. He said that all those with links to the crimes would have to go through the courts but he was sure they would be given suspended sentences as they could be proven to be under mind control. There remained four girls who were all found in a house in Manchester who were not fitting any mould at all. All four were transgendered but had all their memories and had never been subjected to the brainwashing, although there was no proof of that. They showed up in the Kent books as purely there for the operations.

He said that all four had been contacted through a TG website and offered the operation for free if they would work as girls through a temping agency in Manchester. Of course, all four took the offer and had been living at the house while working in various offices as temps. They had no links to any odd behaviour or illegal goings-on so everyone wondered just what they had been destined for. They had told the investigators that it was an easy life as they did not pay rent and only needed to keep a couple of resident guards happy, something they all had wished for anyway. He wanted the four girls to stay with us in London, two each to two of the flats.

I told him that we had not yet been able to clean the flats out and he offered to put a team onto it so I gave him the master key. He said that he would organise a complete change of locks for the five flats and that both he and I would have a master. He wanted us to leave the other two flats vacant as there may be some of the other girls who would be able to live with us as well; the two from Scotland would be sent to us once the Major had checked out their brains. The government would find them all safe work to do so that they could all be assimilated back into normal life.

The next day Wendy was taken off for her first day of weapons training and I went with the Major for a quick helicopter ride to Kent where I saw, as we landed, that it now resembled an army camp with some huts and a proper helipad. He took me into the rear building where I was shown the machine used for brainwashing. It looked like a modified sunbed with speakers and output jacks added inside. There was also tubing for a mask and inputs for drips. I was told to go into a change-room and take everything off, including any jewellery, and put on the cotton gown supplied. I then laid in the contraption, had a mask put on me and my head was lightly clamped in place. When the top was closed down he must have added something to the oxygen mix as I was put into a sleep while he worked his magic with the equipment. Afterwards, he told me that my code words had been ‘cauliflower oysters’ and that if anyone said that to me in future I should start breaking heads. Lesley had been ‘Hawkeye havanah’. Afterwards he showed me the brainwashing equipment in more detail and it struck me that we had not arrested an electronics or software wizard when we rolled up the gang.

I commented on this and he nodded, saying “this is something that worries me. Whoever made this lot is a genius and we are still learning things it can do. I have an idea that it can be used to give the subject some knowledge of things that would be totally new to them.” I said that I had been surprised that when I went for the PA job I could touch-type and that Wendy had told me that I had been a pure one-finger pecker before. I came to realise that the case was still well and truly alive as we had got the brawn and the surgeon with her team; but we still needed to find the brains.

I contacted the chief about the financial dealings of the gang and he said that there had been regular payments into a bank account off-shore which had been emptied and closed down after I had been saved from the Met and before we had made the raids. It looked like the brains had left the building after the tip-off from the Yard detective. The Major assured me that anyone could be given the training to work the system and that it was possible that one of the gang that were killed defending the brainwashing building may have been that person.

I asked if I could look at my record while I was here and it made interesting reading – not! There was a complete list of the changes that had been made to my body and then a full description of the brainwashing. As I looked through the list of memories I had been given I could see some items in abbreviations. ‘TT’ could be my touch typing; comb would be hairdressing while cosm could be the ability to put on make-up and ST&GR could be style and grace which I would be forever thankful for. The code words were listed and the last item in the list was FAT.

I sought out the Major and showed him the item. He said that they had thought it may have been short for some ability such as filing and typing. I pointed out that there already was a typing module and wondered if the session may have been subliminal fire-arms training. I said that I had been wondering about this as I had not fired a gun in years but when I did have to I hit everything I aimed at. He said that he had looked at the body of the guy I had shot in the mine site and that I had got the first one between the eyes and the second was under the chin which would be the case with his head snapping back from the impact of the first hit. He said that Wendy had put two into the other guy and that were at least six inches apart.

We stayed the night at the house and I used the surgeons’ bedroom, rummaging through her drawers and picking out a very expensive and beautiful nightie to wear. In the morning, once I was dressed again, I took a pair of scissors from the vanity and cut it into small pieces that went into the bin, so severing my link to the one who changed me so well. We had a look at the records of all the patients that went through the place and I was the first to get the FAT option. There only followed four others, all true TG volunteers, who had a couple of sessions in the brainwasher to give them skills that would allow them to find work as well as turning them into unknowing assassins. The four that we would host were following these but had not been through the brainwashing as their visit was after the date of my ‘arrest’. I wondered if they had been taken somewhere else. All eight were listed only by their male names. Of course, it would be no good going looking for them as they would have now reverted to their preferred femme name which may be nothing like their old one.

Marianne G 2020