William Tyree - The Fellowship

“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 her 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.