The Entity Game: An Aurora Donati Novel

by Lisa Shearin

  I showed him the book.

  “Isn’t that clever?” he murmured. “And such an interesting choice of title.”

  “Yeah, I got the feeling it wasn’t a random choice. I don’t know what it means, but I don’t think he just pulled a book off the shelf.”

  “Gentlemen,” Rees said to the two young agents, “work your magic.”

  One tech dusted the phone and the spine of the book for prints, finding that all of them belonged to Julian Pierce.

  “How do you guys have his prints?” I asked.

  “They took them in the morgue,” Rees said.

  “What all can you get from the phone?” I asked the other tech.

  He glanced at Rees, who nodded.

  “I’ll access any deleted voice mails or texts and get all the numbers from incoming and outgoing calls.” He glanced down at the phone and pushed a few keys. “The last texts that were sent and received weren’t deleted. They were sent Wednesday afternoon at 12:44. The outgoing text says, ‘Go fish.’ It’s signed J. The response of ‘Done’ came at 12:46. It was signed D.”

  Could D be our elusive David?

  Grandad indicated the burner phone. “May I?” he asked Rees.

  “Pete, may we borrow the phone for a few minutes before you get started?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rees gave it to Grandad who went back into the sitting room out of sight of the two agents. I followed him, and Rees followed me. Grandad and I operated on a “need to know basis.” Those two young agents didn’t need to know, but Rees did.

  “By the way,” he said, “the registration on that BMW bike came back to an Adam Granger.”

  “Where does he live?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “He doesn’t exist. Neither does the address. It’s a vacant lot in Alexandria.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “If he’s with an agency, we have no way of finding out which one.” He paused. “Or he could be a foreign agent.”

  “Crap.”

  “Agreed.”

  “The few words I got from him were in English,” I said. “It doesn’t mean he’s a native speaker, but generally a person’s thoughts are in their primary language.”

  Grandad told Rees about Julian’s call.

  “And he gave you no indication of why he wanted to meet?” Rees asked.

  “None. Though I think we can safely conclude Aurora’s visitor would know the reason.” Grandad sat and pressed the phone between his palms, head bowed, eyes closed. He remained that way for about ten seconds. Then he opened his eyes and leaned back, sorting and pondering what he’d sensed. He was still holding the phone.

  “Three things,” he said quietly. “The project was successful months ago. The failures were a diversion. It wasn’t supposed to happen this fast. I got the feeling that ‘it was successful months ago’ was unwelcome news for Julian. The ‘failures were a diversion’ was Julian’s own conclusion, as was ‘it wasn’t supposed to happen this fast.’” Grandad held out the phone to me.

  I took it. “Can I open it to hold?” I asked Rees.

  “Please do.”

  I opened the flip phone and held it as Grandad had.

  They’re too close…you took a foolish risk…we’re not ready to move…go fish.

  I told them what I’d gotten, which was only a little more than I had before.

  “And judging from that text,” I added, “I think that ‘go fish’ may have been some kind of prearranged signal. I think Julian was telling David to run.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Minutes later, Rees got a call from his boss, SAC Roger Hudson. We had a new problem, a big one.

  The media had found out about Alan Coe’s death. Not only that he was dead, but when, where, and how.

  Within the hour, the news channels were filled with conspiracy theories and the “experts” who peddled them. Some were speculating about the “sound attacks” at the Cuban, Russian, and Chinese embassies in recent years, and that perhaps heart attacks could be brought on this way as well.

  It now seemed that everyone in Washington knew Julian Pierce or Alan Coe. The media was interviewing their colleagues or anyone who even remotely knew them or could get away with claiming to know them or had an opinion about how they really died. Since the FBI was keeping its collective mouth shut and only issuing official statements, the rest of Washington was leaking like the sieve it was. It was the nature of the political beast. The men and women filling the slots on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox were looking for any excuse to get their faces on TV. It didn’t matter that they were essentially stepping on dead men to reach those cameras.

  The media outside Julian’s home had thinned a little because they now had more people to cover. Rees said that the FBI had dispatched agents to the homes of Julian’s other two aides. They had also moved Nate Baxter to a safe house. It’d be only a matter of time until the media found out about a suspected assassin and the attempt to frame Baxter for the murders. The money that had been deposited into his account had come from a bank in the Cayman Islands by way of a bank in Cyprus.

  “This particular bank is known for handling Russian and Middle Eastern money that comes from less than savory sources,” Rees was saying. “I believe the money trail was too easily detected.”

  “It was hidden, but not too well hidden,” I said. “Kind of like hiding Easter eggs for toddlers.”

  “An apt analogy. Someone wanted us to find it.”

  While Elaine was looking for any photos from her grandfather’s fishing trips or any documentation such as fishing licenses or cabin rental agreements that would tell us where Julian and his fishing buddies had stayed, Grandad and I continued searching Julian’s office. Just because I’d found a burner phone he’d used to communicate with a person who was probably David didn’t mean there weren’t more clues to be found.

  Rees’s phone chirped with an incoming text. He glanced down and chuckled. “On occasion, the media is most helpful.”

  I paused while inspecting the gullet of yet another mounted large-mouth bass for a hidden object like a flash drive. “What happened?”

  “Hudson had Brandon Trevor brought in for questioning, and the media caught wind of it and was waiting for him when he left.”

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “The smarmy weasel everyone in America wants to punch,” Berta said.

  “He’s the CEO of Ripton Pharmaceuticals,” Rees replied. “The bill Senator Pierce was working on the night he was killed was to rein in arbitrary drug pricing. In recent weeks, Trevor has been threatening the government with a lawsuit for defamation of character and damage to his company’s reputation. Last month, Trevor testified before the Senate committee investigating drug price increases. Trevor made the tactical error of losing his temper with Senator Pierce on national TV.”

  “And now it’s come back to bite him,” Berta said nodding in approval. “Nice. He and his company have essentially extorted billions from the elderly, the last people who can afford it. Trevor said that no one was forcing them to buy his drug.” She snorted in derision. “Yeah, they have a choice all right. They don’t buy the drug and die of a heart attack, or buy it and die of starvation while homeless.”

  Rees put his phone away. “Ripton’s top-selling drug significantly reduces the chances of a heart attack in at-risk patients.”

  “And the senator who grilled the guy on TV and was writing the bill to take a big bite out of his profits dies of cardiac arrest along with his aide.” I nodded. “I can see how the media came up with this.”

  “A most convenient diversion for us,” Rees said. “After his company’s latest price increase, Brandon Trevor found himself the object of derision and disgust, not the kind of attention he wanted. Hence his threat of lawsuits.”

  “Like the media could be controlled once they’d sunk their teeth into Ripton’s collective as
s.” Berta gave us all a rare smile. “And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.”

  Since moving to Washington, I’d learned that it didn’t matter what the truth was. No one wanted to hear the truth. They wanted scandal, and big pharma was one of the favorite and most used punching bags. Everyone hated big pharma and loved a juicy scandal. It was two things most Americans, regardless of political party, could agree on. The politicians and pundits were always eager to pounce. If the past was any indication, a few of the pundits and guests on various news shows would take it further before too long. They would appoint themselves judge, jury, and reputation-executioner in the court of public opinion. A network or pundit’s beef with their chosen target might be personal, political, business, or all of the above. The truth—or their version of it—might be stretched to the snapping point, but that didn’t stop them or even slow them down. Their like-minded viewers or readers lapped it up like mother’s milk.

  They were all happy.

  And the majority of the time, they were all wrong.

  Berta had pulled up the lead article on CNN. I took a look. The video snippet was a shot of Brandon Trevor coming out of the Hoover Building after he’d been questioned. He appeared to be in his late forties, was pale, had a starter gut, and was wearing a smirk that had probably earned him more than one ass-kicking as a kid. He was also too old to have a name like Brandon.

  “You’re right,” I told him. “I’ve never seen the guy before and I want to haul off and punch him.”

  “I’d punch him twice,” Berta said.

  “I don’t think he’d be upright for number two.”

  “Bending down would be worth the effort.”

  I had to agree.

  Elaine came back into the room carrying an open photo album.

  “I think I may have something.” She set the album on her grandfather’s desk, peeled back the clear sheet on one of the pages, and removed a photo.

  Five men were standing in a stream wearing hip waders and geared up for trout fishing. They were smiling at the camera.

  “These are Grandfather’s fishing buddies.” Elaine turned over the photo. Julian had written the date: July 27, 2011.

  Under that was a list of names.

  One of them was David Barrington.

  “My grandfather called him Barry,” she said. “I only ever knew him as Uncle Barry. I had no idea his name was David.”

  “Do you have any more recent photos of him?” Rees asked.

  “This one was taken just a couple of months ago.” Elaine indicated a framed photo on the wall directly behind the desk of two men, both smiling—Julian Pierce and David Barrington. It was set among the senator’s family photos. “There must be a reason Grandfather called him Barry. I just don’t know what it was.”

  Rees had made a call and had the phone to his ear waiting for whoever he was calling to answer. “We’ll simply find Mr. Barrington and ask him.”

  “Doctor,” Elaine said. “It’s Doctor Barrington.”

  “Medical doctor or PhD?” Rees asked.

  “Medical. I don’t know his specialty. He worked with Grandfather at the CIA.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Dr. David Barrington had been married twice and divorced twice, most recently three years ago.

  A quick dive into his medical career told us that Barrington was a neurosurgeon with a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. He wanted to help those who were paralyzed to be able to walk, move, and live as close to a normal life as possible through chip implants in the brain that could trigger muscle movement. Rees said Barrington had disappeared into the black hole that was the CIA’s science branch about five years ago.

  The condo complex was named The Battery and resembled the gracious houses along Charleston’s waterfront, that is if there was absolutely zero space between them. Each condo was a narrow, three-story town house backing up to the Potomac and looking across the river to Arlington. David Barrington’s condo was on the end.

  “Nice,” I noted. “Either Barrington had a great lawyer for both divorces, or the CIA pays him enough that he can still afford this and two ex-wives.”

  Rees’s digging had determined that one ex lived in Seattle, the other in Los Angeles. Both women had originally been from the East Coast, yet they’d seen the need to put an entire continent between them and their former dearly beloved. Rees was also working on what Barrington was doing for the CIA. His initial query had run into a brick wall. Samuel Rees had never let brick, whether actual or metaphorical, stand in his way. If he couldn’t get through, he’d go around, above, or beneath. It was merely a matter of time before he had what he was looking for.

  Grandad had stayed to finish his search of Julian’s office, and Rees promised to see him home after they’d finished.

  “This is probably naïve of me,” I said, “but why don’t intelligence agencies work together and share information?”

  “Supposedly it’s gotten better since 9/11,” Berta said, “but we all have secrets that we’d rather keep in-house, especially the embarrassing kind. We’re kind of like estranged siblings that way. Screw up badly enough and your brothers and sisters will never let you live it down.”

  “Aren’t we all on the same side?”

  That earned me a laugh. “Every agency in this town has two sides—ours and theirs. I expect Rees will have to call in more than a few favors to get what he wants on David Barrington.”

  We didn’t expect to find the CIA doctor at home. You didn’t use burner phones to leave cryptic messages and then hang out in the den in front of the TV.

  Rees was getting a warrant for us, and would dispatch an agent with it, but we didn’t need one to knock on the door and do a little discreet snooping.

  There was a pair of windows on the front of the town house, but I’d have had to stand on tiptoes in the bushes to see inside, if the wooden shutters inside hadn’t been closed tight.

  We rang the doorbell and waited. We knocked and waited some more.

  No answer.

  “Judging from the amount of mail piled up, I don’t think the good doctor has been home for some time.” Berta had bent down and pushed open the brass mail flap on the front door. “He didn’t stop the mail. He left quickly; whether it was his idea or someone else’s remains to be seen. Let’s take a look around back.”

  Floor-to-ceiling windows took up the second- and third-floor balconies. A brick patio and small yard were secured behind a six-foot brick wall and gate.

  Berta tried the knob on the gate. It was locked. She took a lockpick out of her badge wallet and had the gate open in two seconds flat. “Oh look, it’s unlocked.”

  “You’re way too good at that,” I told her.

  “If you have a God-given talent, you should use it. Dr. Barrington is a missing person. He could be in there needing our help.”

  “Or dead, and past anyone’s help.”

  “Then we owe it to his next-door neighbors to get the body out of there. I’m not breaking into the house; I’m just going to look inside.”

  The first-floor shutters were closed, but the slats on one were raised just enough to give us a peek.

  We peered into David Barrington’s living room.

  Or what was left of it.

  The doctor may not have been in, but someone had been, and they hadn’t cleaned up when they left. Berta had her phone out, calling Rees. When she slipped her phone back in her jacket pocket, she had her pick out again.

  “We’re going in without that warrant, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, we’re still getting a warrant. We’re just not waiting for it or the forensics team Rees is now sending along with it. And since we’re clearly not the first people here, we probably don’t need to worry about setting off an alarm.” Berta quickly worked her magic on the back door, put the pick away, and drew her gun. “Stay put. I’ll make sure it’s clear.”

  I was already in. “H
ow about I just stay behind you. You might need backup.”

  Berta snorted.

  “Then I’ll keep you company.”

  The furniture was overturned, the cushions slashed open, and the stuffing strewn everywhere. The books on the two built-in shelves on either side of the fireplace had been taken off the shelves, opened and tossed in a corner.

  The condition of the kitchen was even worse. Every bottle, package, and container—in the refrigerator, pantry, and cabinets—had been opened. The dishes weren’t broken, but they had been taken out and the cabinets searched.

  Barrington’s office was also on the main floor. More care had been taken in here. File drawers had been pried open and searched, but the contents had been left inside. The bookshelves had been emptied, the books searched and thrown into a pile along one wall.

  I sat in David Barrington’s office chair. It stood to reason that he would have spent a lot of time in his office. I needed to get a baseline sense of the man, so I could recognize his presence later.

  None of the people who had ransacked the house had sat in this chair. I’d go with the assumption that the serious, inquisitive, brilliant mind I sensed from sitting in the chair was David Barrington, though I had the feeling he hadn’t sat here in quite some time.

  There was no phone on Barrington’s desk. No landline anywhere in the house. A lot of people had ditched their landlines in favor of cell phones. Grandad still had landlines in the town house. Over in the carriage house, I did not.

  I pointed out my observation to Berta.

  She took out her phone and started texting. “Letting Rees know. Maybe he can track his cell.” When she finished, she scanned the destroyed office. “Do you get the feeling they found what they were looking for?”

  My eyes went from file cabinet, to desk, to book pile. “Same as our office. They were looking for data storage devices: flash drives, hard drives, CDs. They were only hired to find and retrieve. They didn’t know what was on what they took with them, nor did they care. That wasn’t their job, and they were being paid enough not to ask. They took everything they found. Unlike the guy in our office, they weren’t frustrated, had no emotional attachment to what they were doing. Search everywhere, find anything that could contain data, and get out.”