William Tyree - Line of Succession

He opened the luggage and pulled out rubber gloves, sheets of plastic, a chemical suit, cleaning equipment and an electric buzz saw with spare blades. He tested the blade’s sharpness against the fleshy part of his palm. Then he plugged it into an outlet near the basement sink.

The chemical suit was made of lightweight nylon, the type used by pest control professionals or arborists, not bio-engineers. He pulled it on and followed with the gloves. Then he stacked several antique milk crates next to the sink, taking care to ensure that the height was equivalent. Finally, he covered the area in plastic sheets — walls, floor and ceiling. He checked his watch. It had been eighteen minutes since he had entered the house. He had to hurry. He was supposed to meet O’Keefe at Lee Federal Penitentiary shortly.

He grabbed Flynn by the ankles and began dragging him across the basement. It never failed. The officer was much heavier dead than alive. What about those twelve grams the body was supposed to lose after death? It felt more like twelve tons were added.

With some trying, he managed to get Flynn’s torso up on the milk crates. The Lieutenant’s stiff legs were now extended over the sink.

As Carver turned on the tap, he gazed up at the black and white photo of the home’s prior inhabitants filleting trout at the very sink where he was about to dismember Flynn. A chuckle escaped his lips.

“Sorry,” he said as he picked up the saw. “I mean no disrespect.”

Yeager Airport

Charleston, West Virginia

10:40 a.m.

Speers drove out of the airport rental car lot in a white economy car, still wearing the gray suit he’d questioned Lieutenant Flynn in before sunup. He got onto the freeway and spoke slowly to the car’s navigation system: “Local search. Monroe. West Virginia. Holy Grace Baptist Church.”

The nav chewed on the request for a moment before it started barking out orders. “Turn left in twenty feet…Merge right onto I-79…Straight ahead for one mile…”

He had napped for the entire 73-minute duration of the flight, and yet he was still groggy enough to have trouble following the nav system’s directions. He managed to merge onto I-79 toward Monroe before his phone rang.

It was Mrs. Tenningclaus, his 71-year-old neighbor. “Good morning, Misses Tenningclaus,” Speers answered. “How are you?”

“Julian dear,” Mrs. Tenningclaus began, “My sister in Phoenix broke her hip.”

“Sorry to hear that. Is she okay?”

“I just said she broke her hip. I’m headed to Arizona to see her right now. Would you be a prince and look in on the cats?”

Mrs. Tenningclaus lived all alone in the big brownstone across from Speers’ building, and the fact that Speers was the White House Chief of Staff — one of the most important jobs in the free world — did not dissuade her from calling on him often for trivial errands or cat sitting. Like Speers, she didn’t have any other family in town. Speers didn’t mind. Mrs. Tenningclaus reminded Speers of his late mother, who had passed from heart disease during the President’s first term. Plus, he was often rewarded with Ms. Tenningclaus’ homemade blueberry scones and strawberry jam. He loved the look on her face when he told her it was the best damn jam in D.C.

“Consider it done,” Speers told her just as his call waiting flashed. He bid Ms. Tenningclaus good luck and switched to the other line, where Carver began complaining immediately.

“I’ve been trying to get through for an hour,” Carver said.

“Just got off the plane,” Speers explained. “On my way to see Congressman Bailey now.”

“Hold it. You’re not actually going to come right out and ask him about Lieutenant Flynn, are you?”

“You know your problem, Carver? You’re a cynic. You assume everyone’s dirty. There may be a perfectly good reason that Lieutenant Flynn called the Speaker of the House.”

Carver couldn’t believe his ears. “Oh, like what? Are they both members of the Capitol City Men’s Chorus?”

“Think about it. The Lieutenant had obviously networked way above his pay grade. Doesn’t happen by accident. Maybe he was being blackmailed. Bailey’s the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Maybe the Lieutenant was reaching out for support.”

“You’ve got a vivid imagination,” Carver said. “I guess that’s why you’re in the Executive Branch.”

The rental car’s nav system cut in: “Exit in one quarter-mile.”

“Listen,” Carver said. “The reason I called. The Lieutenant never existed, okay? You never saw him. We never talked to anyone about him. Got it?”

Speers was quiet for a moment. “If you say so. You’ll tell me what happened at some point, right?”

“No, Julian.”

“I’m the Chief of Staff. Don’t forget that. I could order you to tell me.”

“For your own sake, no. Now go have a nice chat with the Congressman.”

Lee Federal Correctional Facility

Lee, Virginia

Carver passed through the metal detector and gathered his watch, phone, SIG, ammo, money clip and belt from a plastic bucket. This was his first time in a federal prison. A tall, portly guard stood behind him, grinning as he watched Carver struggle to slip back into his black oxfords.

“Might help if you untied the shoelaces,” the guard cracked.

“Shut it,” Carver said.

Meagan O’Keefe came through next, pulling on her brown penny loafers. The humidity from last night’s rain had shortened her long strawberry-blond curls to tight, shoulder-length coils.

“I raced the whole way here,” O’Keefe said, a little out of breath. She wiped her sweaty hands on her pantsuit. “Suicide job threw himself in front of the Blue Line.”

The guard motioned for them to follow him down the hallway.

“Death by subway,” Carver pondered. “Not a bad way to go. Quick. A sure thing.”

O’Keefe scrunched up her face. “Messy. Gimmie pills any day.”

“No. Too painful. Not decisive enough.”

“Exactly my point. It’s that moment just as you decide to do it when you wish you hadn’t. Or at least that’s what they say.”

Carver smiled. “I enjoy our banter.”

The guard led them past several cells with bored-looking inmates in orange jumpsuits.

“Who’s the convict?” O’Keefe said.

“Nico Gold,” Carver said with dread. “Serving twenty years for grand larceny. He wrote a program that lifted small, nearly undetectable sums out of millions of foreign bank accounts.”

“Sounds like a hacker. You said we needed a linguist.”

“Hacking’s just a lucrative sideline. Languages are his passion. That program he wrote? It worked in twelve languages, including Russian, Hebrew, Hungarian and Arabic. He cracked the World Bank and the IMF.”

“Maybe he can fix my credit score.”

The guard opened a second set of gates and led them to a white door with a four-by-four inch opening. The guard filled it first with his puffy eyes, then with his mouth. “Visitors,” he said directly into it.

He unlocked the door and turned to Carver. “Nico’s not dangerous. I’ll be down the hall. Just yell.”

They entered the windowless room that was illuminated only by a skylight and closed the door behind them. Nico Gold sat at the plain plywood table in a short-sleeve orange jumpsuit. He was pale and lean with clear-framed eyeglasses, just as he’d appeared in his mug shot five years ago, but he had added tattoos to both forearms that said simply, “EVA.” He closed the book he was reading and placed it on the table before him.

“Carver and O’Keefe,” Carver said by way of introduction. He had gotten used to saying CIA after his name. Now he was a man without an agency. “Federal agents.”