Max Collins - Executive Order

“If I give you something now, they’ll track me down and kill me — with the rest of you.”

“Not if we take them down first.”

Morris began to laugh, tears quickly flowing. “You just don’t get it, do you? Even if you knew every name on the board, and arrested them, the movement would go on. Those chairs will always be filled. Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, various media moguls, Gregory Bennett post-White House, the Blount dynasty, there’s always a board of directors for the Alliance.”

“Turn a bright enough light on, Lawrence, and watch the roaches scatter.”

“To their hiding place. And you don’t really get rid of them at all, do you?”

“ Hey! ” Miggie called from across the room.

Reeder rejoined the team in the home theater area. Miggie said, “I just got an e-mail from Ivanek.”

“How did you manage that?” Rogers asked, frowning. “He’s out of the burner loop.”

“I’ve been hacking my work e-mail every hour or so, remember. Mostly I’m seeing Fisk memos saying come in toot sweet. But now here’s Ivanek.”

Rogers asked, “He’s at work?”

“Think so,” Miggie said. “Anyway, the e-mail is from his office account. He says Fisk has gone ballistic and he would ‘respectfully like to know what the hell is going on?’”

Reeder said, “If I call him, how fast can it be traced if we’re on the move?”

Miggie said, “Maybe two minutes, tops. Keep it under a minute and you should be safe enough.”

“Okay. Lucas, you and Reg help get Miggie loaded up in your car.”

“You got it,” Hardesy said, and he and Wade followed Miggie to the computer area to start packing up gear.

Reeder said to Rogers, “You and I, plus Reggie and Lucas, will investigate the Alliance as best we can. In that history lesson he blurted, Lawrence mentioned some current players.”

“Ex-President Bennett,” Rogers said, nodding, “and the Blounts. And young Nicky is on that presidential succession list.”

Wade, hands on his hips, towering over them, said, “We’re maybe five minutes from our pictures being on TV with a BOLO warning sayin’ we’re armed and dangerous. You think we can get close to any of the Blounts or Bennett without getting arrested or maybe shot down?”

Reeder shook his head. “We don’t talk to them. They’re already on red alert, you can bet.”

“Who, then?” Hardesy asked.

“We talk with people who know them, people who study them.”

Rogers said, “Journalists, you mean?”

“Well, we’ll start in-house... with our own profiler — Trevor Ivanek.”

“Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.”

Trevor Ivanek, bony and brooding in a black suit with no tie, sat at his desk in the bullpen of the Special Situations Task Force at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, feeling very alone.

The room was already more than the team needed, the big open space more than accommodating their desks and, at the rear, the private offices for Altuve, Rogers, and sometimes Reeder. But it had never felt this big, or this empty, to him before.

Night was peeking through the blinds — how long had he been here? Three hours? No, four.

Not so long ago, with everyone here, Rogers had used a whiteboard to suggest, out of security-cam eyeshot, that a possible rogue element in government meant that paranoia was a fact not a condition. There had been talk of burner cell phones being distributed. But he hadn’t received one.

Possibly that was his fault. He’d made himself scarce last night and this morning, troubled by what Rogers had outlined and wondering where he fit into it. His work as an FBI profiler, for going on ten years now, had taken a toll. He’d never been able to sustain a relationship with the opposite sex, or any sex for that matter — the nightmares of his days made his evenings nothing worth sharing.

Finally, after dealing with some of the worst monsters on the planet as part of an FBI Behavioral Science unit, he’d requested a transfer to something less... intense.

The Special Situations Task Force, however, had proven anything but a less intense environment. Serial killers seemed like pikers compared to those who had sought, last year, to arrange a coup by outlandishly murderous means. And now Rogers was saying that a shadow government, with similar intent, might be attempting to manipulate world events with federal employees used as cannon fodder.

While he waited to hear from Rogers or anyone else on the team, he sat reading, on his tablet, A Brief History of Secret Societies by Barrett; taking a crash course on what they might be dealing with.

He’d spent the morning wandering the National Gallery of Art, one of many local museums where he could drift along and chill. It wasn’t that he was hiding from Rogers and the rest — more that he wanted to decide if he was up to being part of this, this... intense task.

Beneath his cool, rather scholarly manner a jumble of nerves hid how well he understood his own psychology and that of others. He imagined he could rival Joe Reeder in people-reading skills, though that had never been put to the test.

Night was here, and now what? Back to his Dumfries apartment maybe, where Rogers or other team members might be more comfortable getting in contact with him, should a government facility like the Hoover Building seem too likely to have been compromised.

He’d just decided to gather his things and his thoughts and leave for home when something remarkable happened: Assistant Director Margery Fisk herself walked in the door.

In the year-plus the Special Sit Task Force had been on the job, he could remember only once before when AD Fisk had descended from the heavens, several floors above, for a direct visit.

In a black business suit and a white silk blouse, her short curly hair as perfect this time of day as at the start, Fisk granted him a nod and a thin smile. She glanced around at the otherwise empty bullpen. He was just about to ask her where the hell his team was when she spoke.

“Where the hell is your team?” she asked.

She was standing before him now, a teacher looking down at a questionable pupil.

“They’re in the field, Director. I haven’t heard from Agent Rogers or any of the others. And I admit I’m concerned.”

She came around, borrowed a chair from the desk next door, and sat beside him. Leaning forward a little, staring past him, her hands knitted in her lap, Fisk had already moved from stern taskmaster to worried boss... or even worried fellow agent.

“I’m concerned, too, Trevor...”

Calling him Trevor was clearly an attempt to put him at ease, and encourage a sense of familiarity between them. And he did have a history with Fisk, a positive one — she’d allowed him to transfer here from the Behavioral unit.

She was saying, “I’ve left message after message, e-mail, text, voice mail, and no one has checked in. What do you make of that?”

He tilted his head. “Frankly, I know Agent Rogers is concerned about security.”

Fisk frowned and smiled at once. “You mean this notion she has that there’s a ‘rogue element’ in the government? That seems highly unlikely, don’t you think?”

Considering the subject of the book he was reading, Ivanek wasn’t sure. But he told her what she wanted to hear: “Most unlikely.”

“But I do understand what her concern might be — she made a most convincing case for Secretary Yellich’s death to’ve been murder. And considering Yellich’s high position, that murder might well be considered a political assassination.”