“Fine dear,” Nico yelled back through the door. He steadied his gaze on Carver and lowered his voice.
Nico reached for the open bottle of pinotage on the table and poured himself a full glass. He offered some to Carver, who politely declined. “I’d forgotten what a teetotaler you are. Probably made it all the way to Africa without so much as a wink of sleep or a drop of caffeine.”
“I’m not here to talk about me.”
“I read about O’Keefe,” Nico said. “I’m sorry. I could tell you two were close.”
Meagan O’Keefe, a young cryptologist from NSA whom Speers had turned into a field operative, had been Carver’s partner. The auburn-haired firecracker was untrained in combat, but her grounded, pragmatic procedural style had proved to be the perfect match for Carver’s aggressive energy. The two had worked together just long enough to get close when they were thrust into what would later be known as the Ulysses Coup. O’Keefe had died serving her country during the six-day siege. Carver missed her like crazy.
Carver got up, pulled a cup from the cupboard and helped himself to some tap water. He drank eight ounces and put the cup down. “I don’t discuss Agent O’Keefe with anyone.”
Nico finished his glass. “So. I guess Eva sent you?”
“Careful. Nobody calls her by her first name now. Not even me. It’s Madam President.”
“She’s going to hand me over to the Saudis, isn’t she?”
“She was thinking about it. Then she read Haley Ellis’ report detailing the miraculous way that five Ulysses Bradleys disappeared from the South Lawn just in time for the motorcade to come through.”
Nico folded his arms across his chest, looking partially validated. “Well, if you’re packing a presidential pardon, I’d say it’s high time you whip it out.”
“The way the president sees it, you owe her one more favor.”
Carver, of course, was taking liberties with the truth. The president had no idea he was there, and neither did Speers, yet. The way he saw it, if his mission status was deniable, then the methods and resources he used to complete it were up to him.
“I’m retired,” Nico said. “Don’t even own a computer. I’ve spent the last year learning Afrikaans and Xhosa. Madge tends to the guests during fishing season and cooks. I make repairs to the place, read books. We’re not hurting anybody.”
Carver pulled two newly issued passports from his jacket pocket. “We have an issue that needs tending to. Your services are required.”
Then he pulled three South African Airways tickets from his pocket and laid them on the table. The flight was to leave from Johannesburg International Airport and land in Washington some 17 hours later.
“This flight is tomorrow morning!” Nico raved. “We’d have to drive all night to get to Johannesburg in time.”
Carver gripped Nico’s spindly right arm and pulled him from the table. “Good point. You’ve got one minute to convince Madge that it’s a good idea. I’ll give you ten to pack.”
SIS Building
The first tangible connection between Rand Preston and Nils Gish was an address: 9002 River Road, Rockville, Maryland.
The murdered MP’s official college records had been delivered to the Legoland war room where Ellis and Seven Mansfield conducted their investigation. The large paper file – Gish’s college career had begun prior to the computerization of Oxford’s administrative operations – had been delivered by the same assistant that kept their teakettle full all day. Ellis appreciated the constant influx of Earl Gray, as she still hadn’t been able to locate a can of Venom in London.
With Carver off to Africa, and Prichard out gumshoeing Gish’s old haunts, Ellis and Seven had focused their efforts on finding any link that Roth’s semantic search exercise might have missed. While they had already discovered that Gish had studied abroad at the University of Maryland for one year, they had ruled out any connection to Preston, as it had occurred 12 years prior to the Senator’s arrival in Washington.
Ellis had grown up in Richmond, but she knew the Washington area well enough by now to know that Rockville was an affluent area northwest of D.C., and 19 miles from the University of Maryland campus. It struck her as odd that Gish, then a young exchange student from London, would live so far from campus. The only reason she could think of was if Gish had chosen to live with a relative or friend.
She looked up the address, which corresponded to an enormous estate a half-hour from Washington D.C. She pulled up Street View. This definitely wasn’t student housing. The term estate did not quite do it justice. The high ivory-covered walls and mounted cameras in the surrounding trees gave the place the feel of a compound. A sign above the gated entrance read “Eden.”
On a lark, Ellis had VPN’d into McLean’s dual-search tool, which allowed her to simultaneously run queries against both the intelligence community database – which included all declassified and classified data at her security clearance level – as well as public search engines. The record match on the residential address where Gish had lived during his study-abroad year postdated his era by nearly three decades.
Twenty-seven years after Gish’s study-abroad year, Mary Borst had listed the same residential address on her collegiate records.
Kei Mouth
South Africa
Carver pressed the RFID gun to Nico’s bicep and pressed the trigger. The hacker yelped as the tiny tracking chip became embedded beneath the skin, extending tiny tentacles that would make it nearly impossible to remove without prior deactivation.
“Get a move on,” Carver said as he unfurled his grip. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
He watched the fugitive leave the kitchen with his tail between his legs. A flurry of whispers, like steam hissing from a boiling kettle, floated in from the next room as Nico explained the situation to Madge. Carver almost felt sorry for him. He had never emasculated another man in the presence of his woman.
Most of the people Carver had taken into custody over the years had been loners by virtue of their professions. From Carver’s perspective, the main thing that assassins, mercenaries and hackers had in common was that their sources of companionship tended to come through artificial means, satisfied either in the deep digital recesses of some massive multiplayer video game, or via anonymous encounters with sex workers. In this respect, Nico was an outlier. During his time in Lee Federal Penitentiary, Madge had written him more than 70 letters. As a middling programmer herself, Madge looked up to him as a superstar activist geek. She even bought into his manufactured Robin Hood mystique, although his lack of spiritual faith disturbed her. During the course of their courtship – during which she would drive up to his Virginia prison from her home in the Carolinas – she set out to reform him.
During the 12-hour drive here from Johannesburg, Carver had deliberated whether to tell Nico how hard the committee had pressed him to give up his location. Carver didn’t expect or want a thank-you. He only wanted to impress upon Nico how his past deeds had fostered some goodwill.
A crash emanated from the next room, followed by shouting. Good Lord. Were they actually fighting? Madge was screaming at the top of her lungs. “They’re going to have to go through me! They’re just going to hand you over to the Saudis! Is that what you want?”
Carver peeked into the living room. Madge was sprawled over Nico, struggling for control of the shotgun. He slipped back into the kitchen, cursing himself for not being more careful. Why hadn’t he disarmed her upon entering? He had actually believed that Madge, of all people, would want to go back to her life in the U.S.
He had clearly miscalculated. She and Nico had come here together and established a life far from the reach of the Americans or Saudis. A bond had formed, and in the process, it seemed that Madge was wearing the pants now. Carver had shown up out of the blue, a hostile force from another time and dimension.
Something made of glass smashed against the wall and shattered. Carver hadn’t come all this way only to lose Nico in a lover�
�s spat. He had to intervene.
He hoped the bullet-resistant vest he wore under his suit would be enough against Madge’s sawed-off shotgun. By reducing the length of the barrel, she had effectively removed the gun’s choke, giving the weapon a substantially wider spray pattern.
Carver reached inside his jacket and drew the SIG Sauer P226 from his shoulder holster. God help me, he thought. He had never lifted a hand against a woman, and he had no intention of shooting her. He decided to leave the weapon on top of the refrigerator. If he so much as grazed Madge, his working relationship with Nico would be over.
He grabbed a broad iron skillet from the stovetop. It was greasy and it smelled like sausage, but it was a reasonable substitute for riot gear.
Wielding the skillet, Carver rolled into the living room, then sprung forth like an undersized defensive tackle, keeping low as he powered toward Madge, who now stood with one foot atop Nico’s chest and the gun pointed straight down at him. He caught sight of her bare knee, round and moon-like, exposed through slacks that had been torn in the scuffle.
She swung the barrel toward Carver, who charged like a kitchen knight with the skillet covering his face and neck. A blast of pellets strafed his midsection and the bottom of the skillet.
Forward momentum propelled him ahead regardless. He chipped Madge at the knees, their collective mass hurling into the wall, which caved like cardboard. Particle dust mushroomed in the air as Carver wrestled Madge for the shotgun. She managed to fire the right barrel. The heat of the shortened barrel burned Carver’s hands and blasted a soccer ball-sized section out of what was left of the wall.
Carver felt another pair of hands tugging at his shoulders. He threw a donkey kick that landed in Nico’s groin, sending him once again to a useless heap upon the living room carpet. He then bore his knee into Madge’s chest, throwing an open-handed blow to Madge’s forehead. The back of her skull cracked against a wall stud.
She fell limp under him. Don’t be dead, Carver thought. Don’t even be brain-damaged.
Despite the sting of welts rising under his vest, he reached out, feeling her wrist. Thankfully, her pulse was strong. And looking across her chest, he could see that she was breathing. She was just going to have a humongous knot on her head when she woke up.
He got to his feet, grabbed her ankles, and dragged her out of the wall crevice. Then he collapsed onto the sofa, lifted his shirt –which was riddled with dozens of tiny holes – and grappled with the straps of his under armor until the vest could be peeled away from his body. He let out an audible groan as he separated it from his body, letting his skin breathe.
Carver watched as Nico got to his hands and knees and crawled to Madge’s side. He lifted the hand of the crazed lover who had attacked him and kissed it tenderly. Wonders never ceased. The man who had once been considered the world’s most notorious cybercriminal was, emotionally speaking, stripped to the core.
Carver decided then and there that Madge wasn’t coming with them. Volatile as she was, she would have to be restrained for the duration of the trip, and that would only slow them down. He would leave her airline ticket and passport in case she had a change of heart.
He rubbed his rib cage with his fingertips, checking to see if anything felt out of place. “When did Madge start going to fight club?”
Nico’s eyes rolled slowly upwards. Carver expected to see hostility in them, but Nico simply shook his head, as if to imply that Carver hadn’t the vaguest understanding of human temperament. He drew his legs under his body and sat cross-legged.
“Madge is one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“The Xhosa have a saying: There is no beast that does not roar in its den.”
SIS Building
Finding out who owned the massive estate known as Eden, at 9002 River Road, was no easy task. Despite the address matching the collegiate mailing address of both Mary Borst and Nils Gish, there were virtually no public records on the property. Ellis finally had to get Speers to phone a friend at the IRS. Twenty minutes later, he came back with the name of the owner: The Fellowship World Initiative, a 5013C.
The nonprofit organization had no website, no social media presence and no listing on sites that rated charities. Not even a Wikipedia page.
After a lot of searching, Ellis finally unearthed an article that had been published way back in the early 2000s. The website it appeared on was at an obscure web address with spammy ads all over the place. It looked like an abandoned personal site that had been taken over by an ad network.
The article was called “The Country Club Cult that Runs Washington.” Ellis scanned the 300 or so words on the first page.
It appeared to be a firsthand account of power meetings among several high-ranking congressmen at the estate known as Eden. Her eyes grew wide when she saw one of the names mentioned in the article intro: Senator Rand Preston.
It was easy to see how Arunus Roth had missed it. The article was a scanned image of a page out of a defunct print magazine called Inside Washington. Ellis’ hands were starting to sweat. She clicked through to read the rest of the story. To her dismay, the link to the next page was broken.
She hit the back button and found the name of the writer, Nathan Drucker, on the scanned image. His bio read:
Nathan Drucker is a writer for Capitol Herald, covering congressional news and events.
Ellis navigated immediately to the Capitol Herald site, and then to its staff page. Nathan Drucker was still there all right, although he now held the title Senior Editor. He was a curious-looking fellow, with small eyes, a monobrow and a flamboyant, waxed, handlebar mustache.
She wasted no time in dialing the Capitol Herald newsroom, selecting Drucker’s extension from the phone tree.
“Nate Drucker,” a man’s voice answered.
“Hi,” Ellis said. “I’m calling in regards to an article you wrote several years ago, called the Country Club Cult that Runs Washington.”
The journalist didn’t immediately respond. The silence was filled by the dull roar of newsroom chatter.
“Are you there?” she said.
She heard a door shut. Drucker had apparently gone somewhere private to talk.
“Who is this?” His tone had changed completely. Whether it was paranoia or anger, Ellis wasn’t sure.
“My name is Haley Ellis,” she said, immediately regretting that she had given him her real name. “Do you have a few minutes to chat?’”
Drucker exhaled deeply and loudly, as if merely mentioning the old article had touched a nerve.
“That piece was published a long time ago,” he said. “Are you from the Bureau?”
The Bureau? Ellis had found smoke. She was betting that she would find fire, too.
Eisenhower Building
Speers cringed when a video chat invitation from Chad Fordham appeared on his screen. He accepted grudgingly. Although he himself had been an early adopter of video chat way back in the day, a part of him wished it had never been invented. He missed the freedom of multitasking during audio-only calls. He was constantly looking off-camera as he monitored his neverending feed of incoming messages.
“You’ve got lunch in your beard,” the FBI director said as soon as the connection was established.
Speers moved a reasonable distance from the camera while he combed his salt-and-pepper goatee with his fingers.
“Better?”
“Yup,” Fordham observed. “How’s it going?”
“Just another day in paradise,” Speers said, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. “I just spoke with the operatives whom we’ve entrusted with restoring global security.”
“Something wrong?”
“It seems that Carver has enlisted the help of Nico Gold.”
Fordham smirked the way people do when they hear about little boys getting up to mischief. “The president’s not going to like that one bit.”
“Better th
at she not know,” Speers said. “We need to shield her for her own protection.”
“Risky.”
The two men didn’t always agree with each other, but Speers respected him. That hadn’t always been the case. They had knocked heads a few times during the Hatch Administration over funding and, more recently, issues relating to the DNI’s increasing control over strategic intelligence operations. But when it counted, during the Ulysses Coup, Fordham had made the gutsy call to deploy an improvised force of special agents to help defend the Capitol. Speers would never forget that.
“What choice do we have?” Speers said. “So far, the intel our people have turned up has been garbage, and Carver is the one out in the field, shouldering all the responsibility without even a guarantee that we would extract him if he got into trouble.”
“What about the committee?”
“Screw the committee. Carver should get the job done any way he sees fit, as far as I’m concerned.”
“All righty then. And what about Ellis?”
“She’s on her way back to D.C. to interview some journalist that might know something. What about you?”
“It’s 24 hours after Mary Borst disappeared, and we have no idea where she is. Her roommate says she didn’t come home, and Hank has been unable to reach the mother.”
“She’s in Europe, right?”
“Relocated to Seattle, but she’s constantly traveling on business. She’s one of the UN’s most senior people.”
“But she must have seen the news about Preston. Weird that she wouldn’t have come to Washington out of concern for her daughter by now.” As soon as Speers said it, he thought of his own schedule. He hadn’t even been home since the crisis began, and home was just a few miles away. “Did we triangulate Mary’s phone?”
“Obviously. Zero activity. The phone either went up in the fire, or the battery’s been removed. In the meantime, we’ve contacted her carrier and we have complete access to all her communications. The inbound calls are just piling up, one after another. Concerned friends, distant relatives who knew she worked for the senator keep dialing in, leaving messages of support.”
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