He navigated 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 amp; 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.”
“We 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 say 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 nutritional 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.”