“A woman?”
“She was one of the world’s first real intelligence chiefs. And she was merciless. The Black Order specialized in lethal operations against the church’s enemies. Its victims were found with the striped fabric stuffed in their orifices.”
Prichard folded his arms across his chest. “Are you implying the Vatican is still capable of this sort of thing?”
“No. The Black Order was formally dissolved. But it continued on as a separate and rogue defender of the church. The last trace of the organization was in the 1800s, after Napoleon’s invasion of Rome. Some believe that they embarked on a failed mission to free the pope, and that was the end of them.”
Prichard stood. “I say the killers plucked these tidbits out of a history book. They’re copycat killers.”
“Maybe,” Carver conceded. “The only thing I know for sure is that there’s more to come.”
Carlisle sat forward, giving Carver his full attention. “What are you getting at?”
“We all know how this works. An organization commits a horrific act for shock value, and then claims responsibility. Sometimes they make demands. But our killers…”
“Have yet to make any demands.” Carlisle slumped back in the chair, looking as deflated as an uncorked air mattress.
“Right. And that’s what worries me.”
Eisenhower Building
Washington D.C.
Pangs of envy grew within Chad Fordham as he made his way to Speers’ office. The 1888 federal building, affectionately known as Old Executive, stood adjacent to the West Wing of the White House. One of the city’s most stately buildings, it was adorned by an impressive 900 classical exterior columns.
In stark contrast, Fordham’s FBI headquarters – The J. Edgar Hoover Building, located several blocks away on Pennsylvania Avenue – had been described by Reuters not only as a “dreary 1970s behemoth,” but also as one of the world’s ugliest buildings.
Fordham exited the third floor elevator and started down a well-lit corridor that was full of ambitious, clean-cut feds in conservative suits. Down at the end of the hallway, at the building’s corner, he found Speers’ office. The previous resident – a GS-14 from OMB – was carting his last box out of the place.
The FBI director closed the door behind him and glared at Speers, who was working behind a 19 century oak partner’s desk that looked like it weighed more than his car.
“I’ll say this for you, Julian. You’ve got cajones.”
With Eva’s blessing, Speers had just reclaimed the same office he’d had during the Hatch Administration. It was an insanely good space. A corner office complete with a view of historic 17 Street NW, a fireplace and a dumb waiter.
“It was the only sensible solution,” Speers said. “I need to be in close proximity to you and the president during this crisis. McLean’s just too far.”
Fordham sat down in the chair before him. “When you hear what I’ve got to say, you’re going to wish you were a lot farther away than McLean.”
“Try me.”
“The preliminary report on the Preston fire points to arson.”
Speers nodded. “I assume the target was first responders. What did they use as a detonator?”
“You’re thinking way too sophisticated. I’m talking pedestrian, no frills, old school arson. You might remember a stack of paint cans in the basement?”
Speers’ face lost some of its color. “You’re telling me someone just lit a match and set fire to the house?”
Fordham folded his hands in his lap. “And left the gas stove on, which caused the ensuing explosion.”
Speers leaned forward. “When we left, the only two people in the house were Mary Borst and your guy, what’s his name?”
“Hank Bowers. According to him, he stepped into the front yard to take a confidential phone call a few minutes after we left, leaving Mary in the home alone.”
“I know Bowers is a trusted member of your team, but did you check out his story?”
Fordham nodded. “Phone records match up. But the other thing is…” Fordham leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “They only pulled one body from the ashes.”
“Which one?”
“Preston’s. And that can only mean one thing. Mary Borst is alive.”
SIS Building
Seven went back to the enormous monitor and touched one of the folder icons. A set of grisly crime scene photos appeared onscreen. Finally, Carver thought. This was what they had flown all the way across the Atlantic to see.
“Severe trauma around the wrists?” Carver asked.
Seven touched one of the thumbnail autopsy photos and dragged it to the middle of the screen, then zoomed in until Gish’s wrists were visible. Deep flesh wounds, an inch wide, ground down to the bone. Much like Preston’s.
“And were Sir Gish’s shoulders dislocated?” Carver said.
“Two for two,” Seven replied with some amazement.
Carver turned to Ellis. “Ropes again.”
Prichard popped out of his seat. “Pardon?”
“The D.C. crime scene burned down before we could do a proper forensic examination, but I was reasonably sure the senator was subjected to rope torture.”
Carlisle grimaced at the thought of Nils Gish strung up by a rope. “I suppose that is consistent with the predilections of this Black Order group you told us about?”
Carver nodded. “The strappado. They would tie the victim’s hands together behind his or her back, loop the rope over a high point in the room, and hoist them up. At a certain point, the body would be suddenly dropped. The shoulders and wrists were the first things to break, but it also put pressure on the lungs, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.”
“Bloody hell.”
“But the strappado has made a comeback of sorts in recent years. It would be impossible to tie it to any particular group.”
Seven touched the screen and opened another photograph. It was far more grisly, a photograph of Gish’s legs, which were severely lacerated. “Poor man was cut to ribbons. They started with the balls of his feet and made their way up his ankles and legs. The first few dozen were shallow enough so that he might not have bled to death, but eventually, they punctured a main artery in the left leg.”
Carver stood. “I don’t think these were ritual killings at all. The rope is far from the quickest or cleanest assassination method, and if they really wanted to be sadistic, they would’ve cut genitals, ears or faces.”
“Agreed,” Carlisle concluded. “The killers were after information.”
Government Flat
London
By the time they left MI6 headquarters for their flat, it had been approximately 14 hours since the killings of Nils Gish and Rand Preston. No group had yet claimed responsibility.
Or had they? It occurred to Carver that the entire point of placing the octagon-shaped fabric inside the mouths of the victims was to claim credit. Only the message wasn’t for them. It was for someone who already knew who the killers were.
The St. James-area flat Speers had retained for traveling intelligence operatives was on the sixth floor of a building that had the old-world charm that Carver had missed at the ultra-modern MI6 headquarters. Carver and Ellis opened the door with the security code Speers had given them, and wordlessly set about sweeping the two-bedroom apartment for bugs. Ellis was done with her part in six minutes. It took Carver a few minutes longer to feel secure. After both electronic and manual inspections, he finally sat on the couch and switched on his computer.
“It’s actually charming,” Ellis remarked as she took in the hardwood floors in the living room, and the windows that, if she stood at just the right angle, had a view of Green Park. “Why would the ODNI spring for a place like this?”
“London hotel rates, obviously,” Carver shrugged. “At 300 pounds a night, a place this close to Parliament probably paid for itself within the first eight or nine years.”
Ellis scratched h
er underarm and caught a whiff of her own odor. “Mind if I shower?”
“Ladies first.” The gesture was pure chivalry, as he himself had not had so much as a sink shower in the past 24 hours.
As he heard Ellis turn the shower on, Carver powered up his tablet, linked to the secure DNI satellite feed, and logged into the mission cloud. He was eager to see what, if anything, had been accomplished since they had stepped off the plane.
Arunus Roth had been tasked with mashing up all public information about Preston and Gish and looking for common links. He cringed when he read the kid’s summary statement: No obvious connections.
Roth had prepared a grid with key information in categories, summarizing everything from education to public perceptions about each man’s political positions. It was unlikely that either man would have been paired through an online matchmaking algorithm. Although both were politicians, Gish was socialist-leaning in his beliefs, and Preston was so far right that he was even considered a hardline conservative in his home state of Texas. Preston was so religious that he had led prayer circles on the campaign trail, whereas the only times Gish attended church were for weddings and funerals.
Neither man had any known relatives in the other man’s country. They did not appear to be connected through any social networks. Gish had studied in D.C. for one year of college, but he was older than Preston, who would have been in high school in Texas at the time.
There were no known photos of Gish and Preston together.
There were no news articles in which they appeared at the same time.
Nothing to go on.
The trail was getting colder every minute, and yet no one had yet analyzed the two men’s social networks for common connections. No one had yet cross-indexed the two men’s standard contacts for first and second-degree connections. No one had yet analyzed their travel itineraries for common destinations.
As Carver stared at the depressing report, a new entry came onto the screen:
Mary Borst’s body NOT FOUND on arson site. Subject is now considered a person of interest in both the arson and the death of Senator Preston. POI has been added to federal NO FLY LIST. TSA is to notify Hank Bowers immediately should she book tickets or attempt to board any aircraft. Attempts being made to contact mother and stepfather. No classified information will be offered. As far as the public is concerned, she will be considered a missing person.
Carver got up, went down the hall and found that Ellis had left the bathroom door slightly ajar.
“She’s alive,” Carver shouted through the opening in the door.
“What?”
“Mary Borst is alive!”
He heard the water shut off and trickle to a halt. “Oh my God.”
“This is getting very deep, very fast,” Carver said, still standing in the hallway, trying not to be distracted by the fact that Ellis was stark naked on the other side of the door. “Even if they manage to catch her, she couldn’t have done this alone. She’d had to have help in D.C., to say nothing of London.”
“We need to tell MI6.”
“What we need is some decent support. It’s been eight hours since we left Washington, and our guys haven’t been able to find a single connection point between Gish and Preston, other than the bizarre way they were killed.”
“You heard the president. We can’t put 50 analysts on this without raising huge red flags.”
“We don’t need 50 analysts, Haley. All we need is one incredible geek in front of a computer.”
He heard the steel O-rings slide across the shower bar, then the smack of Ellis’ wet feet on the bathroom tile. The door opened. Elis stood in a towel before him, her wet hair slicked back on her head.
“What do you suggest?” she said.
Eastern Cape
South Africa
Carver drove through scattered rain over twisting one-lane mountain roads. The rental car’s GPS was useless, and his phone hadn’t gotten a signal since leaving Johannesburg early that morning. He stopped for directions often. This was not only because there were so few road signs in the rural Eastern Cape. It was also because most of the people he asked for directions had never been more than 20 miles from home.
As night fell he listened to African pop music to stay awake. The highway became a series of mesmerizing canyon switchbacks that hugged steep cliffs without so much as a single guardrail. Ten hours after leaving Johannesburg International Airport, he got petrol in Stutterheim, a sleepy little town in the heart of farm country, and went on through the hilly, golden boondocks toward the backwater village of Kei Mouth on the eastern shore.
The last terrestrial radio station fizzled out as he entered the former Transkei, land of the Xhosa tribe. The Transkei region had been part of a wider homeland for the Xhosa tribe. Some of South Africa’s greatest leaders had emerged from these hills. Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and Govan Mbeki. But the rural areas were still virtually lawless, diplomatically isolated, and legally recognized only by the country of South Africa. Unification with the Eastern Cape had brought few tangible benefits over the past couple of decades. There were a few businesses, to be sure, and a few beach homes owned by white ranchers. But it was still so poor that many of the native Xhosas were still without basic plumbing. It was the perfect place to hide.
Xhosa children bartered beaded necklaces for candy bars as he waited 20 minutes for a single-car ferry to take him across the Kei River.
Carver entered the village two hours later. There were few services in town, and the few that existed had posted signs saying CLOSED FOR WINTER in English and Afrikaans. Business windows – all of them – were dark. Finally he spotted the sign that read BED AND BREAKFAST. He turned down a spooky-looking street that led to a gray cement building. This was supposed to be the place. It had better be, Carver thought. He had come a very long way from London under completely unreasonable time constraints.
He shut off the car engine and opened the car door. A pack of dogs raced out from under the front steps. Skinny, tenacious mutts. All bones and teeth. In the face of a hard drizzle, Carver fended off these hounds of hell with the car door, bonking their bony heads with it as they bit and tugged at his left ankle. He felt the familiar warm trickle of blood dampen his sock. Barking in the distance spared him further bloodshed as the pack suddenly broke away, howling at breakneck speed down the street he had driven in on.
“We’re closed!” yelled a woman’s voice from the motel office. She spoke from behind a screen. She sounded American. Good. This was definitely the place.
He unfurled himself from the car, smoothed the wrinkles in his gray suit and approached the building with his hands in the air.
“I’ll shoot,” the voice warned.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Carver said as he measured his approach. He stood several feet from the door and could only make out a shadow in the dense screen door. “It’s Madge, right?”
More silence. Then the voice said, “I suggest you get back in the car.”
“Tell your husband Blake Carver is here to see him.”
He heard her step away from the door. She returned moments later and opened it wide for Agent Carver to enter.
He stepped inside. The house smelled of barbecue. Aside from an expensive-looking entertainment console at the living room’s far wall, the place was sparsely furnished. There were few books and no pictures on the wall except for a print of DaVinci’s The Last Supper.
Nico’s girlfriend, Madge, held a sawed-off shotgun. She looked unhappy. She had gained a great deal of weight since the CIA had last photographed her. Her long brown locks were graying around the temples and had been clipped into a short, unflattering cut. Judging by the jagged pattern of her bangs, Madge had done it herself using shearing scissors.
“Nice dogs,” Carver said. “Yours?”
Madge didn’t smile. “The kitchen.” She pointed to the next room.
Carver found Nico Gold sitting at the kitchen table with three kinds of meat on a plat
e before him. He looked much as he had when Carver had first met him in the Lee Federal Penitentiary the previous year. The African sun had added little color to his pale skin, and the meat-centered African diet had hardly fleshed out his lanky frame. He had, however, dispensed with his eyeglasses and had dyed his hair blonde. The tattoos that had read “EVA” on both forearms were gone. He wore a t-shirt that said OBEY in stylized font.
“Close the door,” Nico told him.
Carver sat in the chair where Madge had no doubt been eating across from her husband minutes before. The ex-con’s face was full of dread. He had the sweet smell of alcohol on his breath. There was an empty pinotage bottle on the table and another that was half-full.
“Dreamed the grim reaper was coming for me last night,” Nico said. “Couldn’t shake the feeling all day. Never had a dream like that before. So bad.”
Carver said nothing. He watched Nico’s hand shake as he held his wine glass.
“I need to know how you found me,” Nico continued. “I don’t use credit cards. I’ve taken nobody into confidence. My only bank accounts in this country are in a town 200 miles away under a different name. They draw their funds from banks abroad that have no idea who I am.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Carver consoled him. “You were good. The best.”
“So how in God’s name did you find me?”
“Your eyes gave you away,” Carver said, referring to the corrective vision procedure Nico underwent in Durban earlier that year. “Organ theft is a bit of a problem here. The government requires that doctors document every eye that gets the surgery. The images are uploaded into a national database. Naturally, we have a script running that scans every image of every retina and matches them up with profiles on our list.”
Nico pounded the table with his fists, bouncing the dinner plates.
“Everything okay?” Madge yelled from the other room.
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