The Fellowship (7 page)

Eisenhower Building

Washington D.C.

Speers ran his fingers over the oak surface of the
partners desk that he had used during his seven years as White House Chief of Staff. Despite finding a few new nicks in the wood, he smiled, knowing that he wouldn’t be headed back to McLean tonight. After his debrief with the president and the others, he had stayed behind and formally requested permission to reclaim his old office in the adjacent Eisenhower Building.

The
president was visibly irritated, but granted the request nonetheless. Speers didn’t mind a bit of social tension. That was part of the game. And timing was everything. As he had hoped, his audacity was trumped by the president’s desire to stay in the loop during the investigation into Senator Preston’s assassination. 

The
office’s current occupant, a GS-14 from the Office of Management & Budget, had been out when Speers arrived. His startled assistant, who sat in the neighboring office, was trying to get hold of him at this very moment. Speers couldn’t wait for the guy to get back here and take his horrendous photos down. A few beach pics from Guam, a random picture out the window of an airplane, and one of an old dog with an old woman that, for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, depressed him.

He
sat in his old chair and adjusted the lumbar support and height to suit him. Then he set his computer on the desk, fired it up, and logged into the secure network. Per the president’s directive, he dialed Claire Shipmont to temporarily delegate oversight of the ODNI daily operations to her so that he could focus on the crisis at hand. “Don’t ask,” he said before Claire could get the first question out of her mouth. “Just know this is temporary, so don’t go making changes that can’t be undone a few days from now.”

“
Yeah, I was thinking Mondays should be wear your pajamas to work day from now on.”

He liked Claire.
He had, after all, plucked her from a Bay Area data analysis company to be his second in command. “Just one thing. There’s a technical support analyst named Arunus Roth. He works under Blake Carver in the NCC. Give him access to my office. He’ll be working in there.”

“I know who he is. He’s like a G-8 or something. He’s always hitting on my assistant.
”

“
Roth might be a little rough around the edges, but he won’t trash the place. He needs complete privacy for the next few days, and we won’t be seeing much of Carver, either.”

As Speers signed off
, a file request notification appeared in the corner of his screen. Someone was requesting access to a file that Speers owned. He didn’t receive many these days, since he almost never had time to create any, much less administrate them. In the time that he had been heading up the ODNI, he spent more than 70 percent of his time in meetings, and the rest problem solving, reviewing reports and news. He scarcely had time to create anything of his own. Even his news releases and quotes were written for him.

He clicked on the
file share request. It was from Chad Fordham. He was requesting access to Blake Carver’s official dossier.

Speers
called Fordham, knowing that the FBI Director would be startled to hear his voice. Making a file share request outside of one’s own agency was a completely blind process. You couldn’t see who owned them.

The FBI Director answered on the first ring. “Anything you want to know about Carver,” Speers
declared, “You can ask me right now.”

It took Fordham a moment to form a response
. “Sorry, Julian. I never guessed this would go through you personally.”

“
Just tell me what you’re looking for.”

“
Well, everything, frankly. The president requested Carver’s involvement, not me. I want to know more about who I’m working with.”

Speers wasn’t about to lay everything on the table. Besides, Carver’s most interesting work had
been deliberately omitted from the record. “You called me last year asking who the hell he was. You remember what I told you?”

He heard Fordham take a sip of something hot before speaking. “You said if I needed someone to parachute into
a mountain fortress in the middle of the night to get somebody important, then Carver would be the guy.”

“
That’s right. And here’s what I should have said – if you needed someone to figure out that the target was there in the first place, then Carver would also be the guy. You remember two years ago when the CIA foiled an Allied Jihad plot to kidnap that drone pilot out in Nevada?”

“Don’t tell me that –
”

“
Yes, that was Carver’s operation. What else?”

“
There’s a rumor that he’s in trouble with the House Committee on Domestic Intelligence.”

“Then you already know
he’s protecting Nico Gold. It’s not what I’d do, but at least Carver’s loyal, which is more than I can say for most people.”

“And that’s all there is to it?”

“That’s right. He’s protecting an asset. That’s it.”

Fordham thanked Speers for his time and hung up. Speers had
hunch that Fordham wasn’t the type to be satisfied that quickly, though. He’d find a way into Carver’s file with or without permission. Speers unwrapped a grape lollipop and decided he better see if anything needed editing.

He navi
gated to Carver’s dossier and began browsing through it, not quite sure what he was looking for. He cracked the lollipop between his molars, chewing it as casually as gum although it sounded like he was crushing rocks.

After college, Carver applied for the CIA’s clandestine service. But the evaluating psychiatrist
recommended him for the Joint Strike Operations Command (JSOC) – a paramilitary spy, capture and kill force rolled into one.

Pulling up
the results of Carver’s initial background check, he saw a handful of unpaid parking tickets that had shown up on his initial federal background check. Other than that, it looked like he had never broken the law. The polygraph hadn’t budged when he’d claimed that he had never had drugs or alcohol. Heck, he’d never even had coffee. He had grown up in a small Mormon town in northern Arizona. When the examiner asked if he was religious, he answered no. When asked if he believed in God, he’d said yes.

Back then
he had listed his primary hobby as “hunting.” That figured. He had 5,000 square miles of Arizona’s White Mountains as his backyard. His father had taught him how to stalk game in the woods and be stealthy enough to kill an antelope with a bow & arrow. The psychiatrist asked him how many of his kills he had eaten over the years. The point of the question had been to discover whether Carver valued animal life, or whether he felt entitled to kill for sheer enjoyment. A typical response would have been, “We eat everything we kill.” Carver’s response was off the charts: “Fourteen deer, 12 elk, 151 ducks, 3 antelope, 29 geese.” He remembered
every single one
from the time he was nine years old. That was the super-autobiographical memory
at work.

Aside from being an expert marksman
, he had a high tolerance for risk, did not suffer from nightmares, and was just athletic enough to be dangerous.

Within
five years of Carver’s joining JSOC, his unit became extremely active in Afghanistan as the war on terror switched into high gear. His unit would go out after a bad guy virtually every night. As the months and years went on, they had filled secret prisons and cemeteries with their trophies.

Eventually JSOC created an intelligence support branch, which was initially staffed by CIA. Carver’s commander reassigned him. They needed a mind like his in the command center. By all accounts he was great in his new role, but he hated it. He wanted to be out where the action was.

During the Hatch administration, when Speers had begun to suspect that something fishy was going on with the Pentagon’s relationship with Ulysses USA, he had gone to the CIA Director and asked him who their best guy was. Someone that was as strong in intelligence as he was in execution. Blake Carver’s name had been the first out of his mouth.

What followed was
deliberately absent from the file. He had resigned from the CIA so that he would be accountable only to Speers. There was no more history.  

Speers scrolled back up through the dossier. He stopped at the description of Carver’s cognitive disorder.
It concerned him. In the wrong hands, it could leave Carver vulnerable.
Due to enhanced episodic memory, most people with hyperthymesia spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about their past. They also have an amazing capacity to recall personal events or trivial details, including sensory details such as smells, tastes and sounds. Mr. Carver appears to have the rare ability to turn off “retrieval mode” so that he can focus on the present. He should, however, have regular neurological examinations to monitor the functions in his frontal cortex. Should he experience highly violent scenarios in the line of duty, for example, losing the ability to control his recall abilities could be far more crippling than a person with a normal prefrontal cortex.

Speers
highlighted the entire diagnosis. Then he deleted it.

Somewhere Over the Atlantic

With a phone call, Speers had arranged a private charter leaving immediately from Reagan National Airport.  If they had to go to London, at least they were aboard a fast plane. The Gulfstream IV was capable of speeds just short of Mach 1, shortening the flight time to a little over five hours. That was way better than the winged whales Carver was accustomed to flying. With a few rare exceptions, his modus operandi had been hitching rides on military transport planes that happened to be heading his way.  But in this case, he felt the cost of the charter – a couple hundred thousand dollars – was worth it.  The trail was growing colder by the second.

As the Gulfstream cruised at 28,000 feet,
Haley Ellis sat in a cream-colored leather chair facing his. She and Carver had said little to each other since taking off. They were both busy digesting a steady feed of public and classified information about the victims.

There was nothing obvious to suggest
that Preston or Gish had ever met. The fact that they were both publicly elected officials from Western countries seemed to be just about the only thing they had in common. Carver was confident they would find a common link, but how long would that take? More than anything, it was the ensuing fire that puzzled him. How and why had it been started? The killers had placed a calling card in Preston’s mouth. Obviously some sort of message. Why would they then burn the place up?

He composed a text message and fired it off to
Julian:
anyone claimed responsibility?
Speers’ reply:
nope. Playing hard to get.

Now he
received a stream of information from Arunus Roth about the senator’s executive assistant, Mary Borst.  She was 26 years old. She held a Dutch passport, having been born in Amsterdam to a prominent politician named Vera Borst. Graduated with honors from NYU, where she had studied political science. Immediately after graduation she had worked as a volunteer on Preston’s reelection campaign, and had subsequently landed a job as a staff assistant in his D.C. office, where she had answered phones and staffed the front desk. In three years, she had worked her way up to an aide position, and then officer manager, before becoming Preston’s executive assistant.

In an interview with a local newspaper,
Vera Borst claimed to have raised Mary herself while working her way up through various positions in local and national government. By the time Mary had entered high school, her mother had taken a prominent position with UNICEF, and more recently, had been appointed an under secretary-general of the United Nations. She now lived in Seattle with her life partner, an American scientist.

“
Mary Borst’s mother is kind of a big deal,” Carver remarked.

Ellis looked up. “
Why focus on Preston’s assistant right now?”

Carver switched
off his tablet. “Say more about that.”

“W
e have two high-ranking politicians ritually murdered on the same night. We should be looking for connection points. If we can find out what they had in common, and which relationships they may have shared, maybe we can find out who wanted them dead.”

“
Ever spend any time with the executive assistant to a senator?”

“Can’t sa
y that I have.”

Ellis lowered her tablet, reached into the small bag she’d packed and pulled out a can of Venom energy drink. Carver’s right eyebrow went up independently of the left.

“Venom? You’d actually buy something called Venom and put it into your body?”

Ellis shrugged.
“It’s just caffeine, guarana and sugar.”

“
More sugar? I couldn’t help but notice that you added some to your coffee earlier.”

“Could we stop talking about my nutri
tional habits for a moment? You were explaining why you think we should burn effort on the senator’s assistant.”

“
Executive assistants on the Hill play a role that is simultaneously powerful and menial. They have a hand in everything from daily scheduling to the senator’s personal life and what he wears. And still, they pick up dry-cleaning, get coffee, and act as a gatekeeper, which means dealing with a lot of irate friends and constituents who can never get enough time with him.”

“What’s your point
?”

“That
Mary Borst probably knew the senator better than his own wife did. If there’s anyone who could tell us what the relationship was between Preston and Gish, it was her.”

“You seem to be forgetting the fact that she’s dead.”

“No. I’m making the reasonable assumption that she had a confidant. Someone she told about her fears and anxieties. That person might be her roommate, or it might be her mother, but we need to talk to them, see if they know anything.”

“And I suppose you’d like me to board the next plane back to Washington to do that?”

Carver held his hands up in surrender. “Whoa. This isn’t personal. We’re just talking strategy here.”

Ellis chuckled the way people sometimes do when they are trying hard to remain civil. “Isn’t it
personal? Within 60 seconds of Speers assigning the two of us to this mission, you suggested I remain stateside while you go to London alone.”

“I was trying
to be practical.”

“Were you being practical when you didn’t
get back to me after the Baltimore Marathon?”

So that was it
. “You’re right,” he said. “I owe you an apology. You contacted me four times, and it was inexcusable of me not to get back to you.”

“Four times?” Now you’re making me sound like
some kind of stalker. I left you one voice message, maybe two.”

It had definitely been four, Carver knew.
Her memory was average, but Carver’s
was extraordinary.
The Monday after the marathon, Ellis had texted him at 11:48 a.m., saying it had been great to see him. She had then called and left a voice message at 2:10 pm the following day. She had called and left no messages at 7:54 pm on Thursday and again at 8:14 pm on Friday.

But Carver had learned long ago not to quibble over details in social situations, or reveal the freakish accuracy with which he could recall dates and events. His condition helped his work, but did little to improve his interpersonal relations. He had learned over time that insisting on the correctness of his recollections only led to needless arguments. And disclosing his
hyperthymesia
inevitably generated countless questions, in the form of pop quizzes. What did you have for lunch on March 2? What is the fourth paragraph on page 27 of
War and Peace
?

Better not to go there.
He could never change the fact that the entire world suffered from mild amnesia, nor did it do any good to rub people’s noses in it. It was easier just to change the subject. 

“Haley,” he said, “I’m trying to apologize. The reason I didn’t call you was because of Hector. When we ran into each other, you’d just broken
it off with him. He was crushed. I was trying to be sensitive.”

“
How is not calling me being sensitive?”

“
If I’d contacted you, it would have led to dinner, drinks, etcetera. I couldn’t do that to my friend.”

Ellis leaned forward, looking him dead in the eye. “
Etcetera
? I wasn’t calling you for a hook up, jerk. I was calling to ask about Hector.” She unbuckled her seatbelt, stood, and stomped off to the plane’s lavatory.

Well that was awkward, Carver thought. Had he really misread the situation that badly?
Ellis hadn’t been interested in him at all, and the four contacts within five days – none of which had mentioned Hector at all – were really just out of compassion for the guy she’d unceremoniously dumped? He thought not.

The buzz of Carver’s phone broke his concentration
. It was a message from Roth with a link to a live video feed. He clicked it.

The video showed
FBI Director Chad Fordham standing at a podium. The ticket beneath the video read
BREAKING NEWS: Senator Rand Preston confirmed dead after tragic home fire.

“
We have very few details
,” Fordham began. “
The preliminary investigation into this tragedy indicates that the fire began within the senator’s D.C. residence. I repeat that we have no reason at this time to suspect that the fire was arson. I can tell you that the senator’s immediately family was safely in their home in Texas at the time of the fire. We are still investigating whether anyone else might have been home
.”

Carver closed his eyes and
leaned back against the headrest. It was only a matter of time before the conspiracy theorists were out in force on this one.  The quicker he could find the killers, the better chance they would have of containing it.  If they could solve this in a matter of days, there might even be time to set the record straight.

Their objective was clear
. Discover who killed Senator Preston and Sir Gish. Find out why they killed him. And obliterate them before they can act again.