Russell had no knowledge of Girdler’s connection to the CEO of Theia Labs, and was absolutely stunned. “Impossible,” he said. “Even I would have trouble stealing keys from Alex Altschuler. He may be the only person in the world who’s better than me.”
“So what are you saying?” said Girdler with a smile. “That for all of your greatness, there may be a reason I’ve gotten to the top of the organization? That I just might have tricks up my sleeve that might even baffle you? That even without an eye-patch, this is a feat that not even Nick Fury could match?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” replied Russell. “Besides, Fury isn’t running SHIELD anymore. Phil Coulson is in charge. But regardless, I’m definitely impressed.”
“Good. Wouldn’t want you to underestimate me. Now, let me explain what I want.”
“I’m all ears,” said Drew Russell.
***
Girdler ended his video call with Russell and immediately called Mike Campbell on the secure video connection Russell had established.
“I assume your sources are passing on the same whispers as mine?” said Campbell when they had completed their greetings and a few minutes of small talk.
“Probably,” said Girdler. “But that depends on what you’re hearing.”
“I’m hearing the investigation is mostly just a delay tactic,” replied the colonel. “One that will continue until those in power can decide what they want to do about this. They’re not finding out much more than they already know. You faked Hall’s death. You lied to your superiors. You had him working on projects that were never authorized. And you channeled money from your department to build a facility in the desert and to fund Hall.”
“That last one is really annoying,” said the general. “Since I am entrusted with spending considerably more money than this on my own authority.”
“Yes, but apparently not on projects that only you know about. And even if this were not the case, the fine print says that you don’t have signature authority to set up a military installation, no matter how small.” Campbell paused. “But regardless, my sources seem to indicate the winds have shifted toward convening a court martial. Probably within a month or so. Don’t know what’s turning the tide, but the push is coming from a number of directions. They’ll drag out the investigation until the people pushing for this get their ducks in a row.”
“Yes,” mumbled the general. “This is what my sources are saying, as well. They’re guessing about a seventy-five percent chance of court martial now. And it’s turning more and more into a witch hunt.”
Girdler knew his disdain for the political aspect of his new job was now coming back to bite him. He liked his new role as head of Black Ops, but it was so high in the pecking order that hobnobbing with key politicians on Capitol Hill was expected. And there was nothing he hated more.
He had initially considered refusing the promotion, and often wished he had. Not that he didn’t love the job, aside from the odious requirements of pressing flesh in Washington. It was fascinating. Black Ops commanded a huge budget and was into some pretty wild stuff, although the purely scientific projects were his favorite.
“The fact that your commanding officer is in full support of the lynch mob, and not you, doesn’t exactly help,” noted Campbell.
General Nelson Sobol had been head of Black Ops, and Girdler’s boss, when Girdler had run PsyOps. But Sobol had been moved up the ranks to make room for Girdler’s promotion, and Girdler still reported to him.
When Girdler had first suspected Hall could read minds he had philosophical disagreements with Sobol, and Sobol had later become convinced Girdler had ignored his orders. Which was true, but Sobol had nothing other than a hunch to substantiate this.
Even so, these suspicions did nothing to endear Girdler to the man, especially when events had unfolded and Girdler was seen as a hero. Still, Sobol had been promoted because of it, to make way for Girdler and his surging popularity in the military community, so he was willing to forgive and forget.
But when Sobol recently learned that Girdler had lied to his face when he had told him Hall was dead, he had taken this very personally. He was Girdler’s commanding officer, after all, so this deception was not only a slap in the face, it made him appear to be an ineffectual leader. And rubbing more salt in Sobol’s wound, he hadn’t been invited to the president’s National Security Council meeting that had featured Girdler, nor any subsequent meetings with Girdler and Hall.
“Hard not to see his point of view on this one,” said Girdler. “I did disobey his orders, and I did lie to him. And Sobol is a powerful enemy to have. But, regardless, if he was beating the drum all by himself, I’d be okay. The problem is the pressure is continuing to mount from multiple quarters.”
“I have heard that President Cochran is swimming against the current on this one. He’s not a bad person to have in your corner.”
“Yes, Cochran has been working hard on my behalf. And I appreciate that. Unlike most everyone else, he’s never forgotten Hall’s heroism and what would have happened without him. But even though he wields the most power of anyone, he’s likely to lose.”
“You’re probably right,” said Campbell. “There is even a school of thought that says his support is hurting you.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said the general. “He’s made a lot of enemies in DC. Many of whom are probably pushing for a court martial just because he’s against it. To flex some muscle and to piss him off.”
Campbell let out a heavy sigh. “It looks like we’re on the same page then. And while we minimized the fallout from Nick disappearing again, I think this was the last straw. Talk about pissing people off. Even those who believe you aren’t behind it want you to fry for negligence and incompetence.”
The colonel paused. “Look, Justin, I don’t want to paint too dire a picture. It looks bad, but maybe sanity will prevail after all. And even if a court martial is called, I doubt you’d be found guilty. And even if you were, I can’t imagine you’d get more than a slap on the wrist.”
“I wish you were right. But if they have the leverage to convene a court martial, I’ll be found guilty. And at minimum, I’ll lose my job and be dishonorably discharged. If things really go south, I’ll have to do jail time.”
“Impossible!” insisted Campbell. “No one would stand for it. What you did in the scheme of things is a misdemeanor, a speeding ticket. Worst case they sign you up for early retirement. And the good you did is practically unmatched in history. Superman saves the world, how bad are they going to punish him when they arrest him for impersonating Clark Kent?”
“I hope you’re right,” said Girdler. “But I have a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling.”
19
Since his meeting a week earlier with Sutherland’s idiot campaign manager, Marc Fisher continued to spend every waking second trying to find the missing mind reader. Sutherland’s campaign had begun to run income disparity adds and he was rapidly strengthening in the polls.
A number of newspapers and online news sites pointed out that if there was a gender-based income gap, it wasn’t nearly as large as portrayed, and that there was no pending legislation to correct it if one did exist, since this kind of discrimination was already against the law. But, as Fisher had known, this didn’t make the slightest difference.
When polled, many voters were livid about Briggs’s heartlessness and misogyny. A woman was paid far less for doing the exact same job as a man. So why wouldn’t Briggs support legislation that would correct this gross injustice? He must be yet another uncaring Republican asshole still living in the 1950s.
But while Sutherland was ecstatic, Fisher was miserable. Nick Hall was nowhere to be found. The mind reader was either very smart, or very lucky.
Fisher had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and his hand-picked soldier-for-hire had completed recruitment of six fellow mercenaries, almost as competent and lethal as himself, to join the hunt. And Fisher had pu
lled strings and manipulated key assets in the intelligence community. He had bullied and charmed and cajoled, but to no avail. He didn’t have as much as a single lead.
Fisher became convinced that Hall was somehow immune to cameras and facial recognition. Perhaps he had had plastic surgery, or perhaps he was using some other means. But most likely Girdler had worked some Black Ops magic to alter the computer facial recognition data on file for Hall, so he could never be identified in this way.
But no matter. Nothing worth having was easy. Regardless of how much effort it might take, Fisher was convinced his perseverance and brains would win out in the end.
He would let nothing stop him.
But then, he never did.
Marc Fisher was a psychopath, plain and simple. And not only was he well aware of this fact, he celebrated it. And for good reason. Psychopaths were superior.
He had known he was different from a very young age. He always seemed to know just how to get what he wanted. Other people, even his loving parents, meant nothing to him. They were just pawns, rubes, to be played as he saw fit.
And he had always known the precise way to manipulate people to achieve his own ends. It was his genius. He could bully or charm with equal facility, and didn’t have a preference either way. He could construct elaborate webs of lies and deceit more effortlessly than other boys his age could construct buildings out of Legos.
And he soon came to realize that even when other kids knew what they wanted, and he helpfully provided a clear strategy to get it, they were often too squeamish, or too moral, or too afraid to go forward. It almost seemed like hurting others, even emotionally, hurt them in some way also. It was pathetic.
But it wasn’t until he was twelve, one morning in his mother’s car, when he happened to hear an expert on psychopathy on the radio, that the light bulb had gone off. He knew what he was. Why he was different. What made him so superior to others.
After this fateful morning he spent months learning about the psychopathic condition. There was a range of severity, with precious few on the Hannibal Lecter end of the spectrum. But fully one percent of the population could be classified as psychopathic, based on a number of criteria.
Psychopaths were absolutely selfish, and absolutely ruthless. They had no conscience, empathy, or remorse. They were devoid of real emotion, but could fake it to manipulate others. They were cold-blooded, fearless, and cool under pressure.
But they were also often charming and charismatic. Smooth talkers who were never embarrassed or self-conscious. Brilliant liars, manipulators, and con artists. And they were chillingly sane. They knew right from wrong: they just didn’t care.
Fisher’s favorite description was encapsulated in a single sentence: psychopaths are predators who see all others as prey, and who feel as much compassion for others as wolves feel for sheep.
In short, they were superior in every way. Strong where normals were weak. Decisive where normals were fearful. Unburdened by doubt, anxiety, empathy, or emotion.
Why would anyone want to be a sheep when they could be a wolf?
Psychopaths were greatly enriched among business executives, and Fisher had even read speculation that the great Steve Jobs had been a psychopath, although at the low end of the range. Fearless, charismatic, and cut-throat.
But compared to himself, Fisher knew, Jobs was as ruthless as a bunny rabbit.
Fisher took great pride from the knowledge that he was extreme, even for a psychopath. He had tortured small animals when he was young, just to see how it felt. When he was seventeen he had drugged, raped, and sodomized two girls while wearing a mask, simply to better understand what might appeal to him.
In the end, he had decided that rape was too much trouble, especially since he could seduce women with such great facility, and seduction allowed him to use them far longer, and in far more interesting ways.
When he was eighteen, he had stalked and killed a homeless man, again just to see how it felt. He had prolonged the man’s agony for hours, making him beg for his life.
A useful experiment. Yielding an important result.
He learned that he didn’t get off on torture and murder, but neither did it trouble him in the slightest.
Right after high school, Fisher had already decided what he would do with his life. He would aim for the ultimate heights, as befitting someone of his superiority. He would become a career politician, the profession that attracted a higher percentage of fellow psychopaths than any other. And while there were a number of pathetic men and women who had chosen politics in a sincere effort to help others, on the whole, politicians were narcissistic backstabbers. Professional liars. Totally selfish and without conscience, most couldn’t care any less about others, although they could con anyone into believing they were the most compassionate people on Earth.
There was an old adage: sincerity—if you can fake that, you’ve got it made. And no group faked sincerity better than politicians. They were the ultimate con artists in a profession that saw all voters as marks.
A con man could ingratiate himself to others. Could be anything his mark needed him to be. Could be warm and charming and caring. A con artist could put you under such a spell, could make you love him so much, that even after he had slipped a knife between your shoulder blades, you would think that this was somehow your fault.
But even among the political class, the vast majority held back. They drew the line at petty forms of corruption. Graft, taking bribes, serial lying, plagiarism, stealing campaign funds, and the like.
None were prepared to get their hands as dirty as Fisher was. Fisher would do whatever it took to get to the upper ranks of power. He would let nothing stand in his way.
When he was very young, he had decided that to achieve his goals, he had to become a multi-millionaire, and he set out to do this as efficiently as possible. Wealth was easy when you weren’t bound by any rules.
During summers away from school, he got a job as a pool boy in Rancho Santa Fe, California, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world. When the owners were away, he would find where they kept their expensive jewelry, sometimes hiding tiny cameras pointing at their wall safes. Cameras he could later retrieve to get the combinations.
Given that this was Southern California, he had little trouble finding artists who specialized in constructing lower cost fakes of exquisite jewelry. Take them photos and dimensions and they would make perfect knock-off versions using real gold, but fake diamonds. Copies that were indistinguishable from the originals to the naked eye.
The fakes were so good that they cost a small fortune, but they were well worth it since his plans called for him to minimize the risk of being caught by swapping in the fakes for the originals. Since the owners had no idea they’d been robbed, Fisher was able to build a war chest with little fear of arrest.
Once he had enough money to get started, though, he abandoned this for even less risky thievery. Insider trading. Given Fisher had no boundaries or ethics, and in an age where cameras were practically microscopic, spying on executive computers and homes was almost routine. In the rare cases when his cameras were discovered, he would simply move on.
He made only the most leveraged trades on the information he gleaned, and by the time he was in his late twenties he had a net worth of more than twenty million dollars and was ready to run for public office.
He chose to run as a Democrat, not out of any deeply held convictions, since he had none, but simply because his district favored this party. But he was glad this was the case because he thought he could prosper more within the Democratic brand. Democrats were seen as the party who really cared. Republicans the party of wealthy assholes.
Fisher was a brilliant campaigner. There was little he enjoyed more than pretending to care about the miserable scum who would elect him. He lived to make speeches bemoaning the plight of the downtrodden while taking money from the well-heeled.
At the age of twenty-nine, Marc Fisher became the congressman
for the second district of the great state of Idaho. He knew many around the country thought Idaho was filled with nothing but dumb potato farmers. But residents of this state were also seen as trustworthy. The salt of the earth. An image he cultivated with an aw-shucks demeanor and a practiced folksy way.
He climbed the party ranks rapidly, through whatever means were required. Twice over the years he was forced to kill when a person standing in his way could not be moved. But years earlier he had prepared for this possible need.
At the start of his political career he had made a study of poisons, and had learned that botulism toxin was the most deadly substance ever discovered. Just four pounds of it was enough to kill every man, woman, and child on Earth. And while it could not be produced in quantities anywhere near this great, given that less than a billionth of a pound was enough to kill a human being, it didn’t have to be.
And it was readily available. While the raw, undiluted material was exceedingly well protected, for someone as resourceful as he was this wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle.
He had loved the irony that the deadliest substance known to man had become widely available so that vain people could maintain the illusion of youth. Botulism toxin stopped communication between nerves and muscles. So when it was diluted in saline to less than one part per billion, and renamed Botox, the substance could destroy the nerves that caused wrinkles. It could help older people look younger. It was also approved for stopping eye spasms, helping alleviate migraine headaches, and for several other maladies, but its use as a cosmetic had put it on the map.
Fisher loved this toxin. Just like him, it performed its job brilliantly, with unmatched power. It was dangerous beyond all possible expectations. But stealthy. Something that could smooth out wrinkles and make people smile, or kill them ruthlessly without fail. A perfect metaphor for his own nature.
Eventually, he had managed to obtain a small vial, diluted millions-fold instead of billions-fold. At this potency, a single drop was more than enough to ensure the death of a person five times over. And he had used it, twice, many years apart. Both victims had died, inexplicably, from sudden respiratory failure, but murder had not been suspected in either case.
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