Grolier Recovery Services was headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, and our house was right off of East Bay Street, on the peninsula, a fixer-upper that had been paid for by our “real” contracts with GRS. Jennifer had come up with the initial idea to sponsor Amena at Ashley Hall, an all-girls school literally about a stone’s throw away that had a boarding program for international students. Having been an institution of higher learning since Christ was a corporal, it had a plethora of foreign students—now mainly from China—and had readily agreed to allow Amena to attend, provided we sponsored her.
The school’s motto was Possunt Quae Volunt, or PQV, which was Latin for “Girls who have the will have the ability.” Something I really liked. But they’d never met Amena, and we were about to test whether her will would crush their ability to rein her in, because she was definitely a handful.
We loaded up the car and cut across the peninsula, dodging the tourist vehicles that couldn’t find their way out of a wet paper bag, all of them confused by the byzantine one-way streets that made absolutely no sense. We finally turned onto Smith Street, right outside the school. In the rearview mirror I saw Amena grow a little wary when we parked in the fire lane. I turned to her and said, “Hey, this is what you wanted. I know it’s a little scary, but it’s for the best. You’re in America now.”
She said, “Would you have sent your daughter here?”
It was a profound question that hung in the air. My daughter was dead, and she knew the love I held for her. I said, “Yes. Cross my heart. Yes.”
She said, “Okay, Pike. But only if I get to go on the honeymoon.”
That brought a smile to Jennifer’s face. She leaned over and brushed Amena’s cheek, saying, “Okay, but you can’t stay in our room.”
Amena laughed and opened the door, right as my cell phone rang with a peculiar tone that Jennifer recognized. It was an encrypted call. Meaning it was from the Taskforce.
Before I got a word out, Jennifer said, “Come on, little one. Let’s go check in. Pike can catch up.”
They left, and I answered the phone with a little trepidation. Only the Taskforce could destroy everything I had planned.
“Hello?”
“So how’s the little refugee hand grenade working out?”
I recognized the voice of George Wolffe, the deputy commander of the Taskforce, and then was forced to remember he was now the commander, as Kurt Hale—the original commander—had been blown up in my Jeep the year before. The emotion was a whipsaw, none of it reduced by the march of time.
I said, “Hey, sir, we just got here. She’s checking in now. What’s up with the call?”
He laughed at the angst in my voice and said, “Nothing, man. I’m really just checking in. The entire Council is worried about her. They just want to know the plan is going okay.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “That’s good to hear, because it is. She’s signing in right now and we’re headed out to Australia, just like we talked about. What’s up with the Taskforce?”
He knew what I was asking. It had been a rough year for our organization, and we’d been on hold since Kurt’s death, with all the hand-wringers in the Oversight Council waiting on the shoe to drop that might expose our operations, but as far as I could tell, that hadn’t happened. Mainly because I’d had a couple of Israelis tie off some loose ends outside of the Taskforce charter.
I heard him sigh, then say, “I wish Kurt were still here. I don’t want this responsibility.”
“What’s going on?”
“China. China is going on. They’re kicking our ass all over the place. Hong Kong is going nuts, they’re taking over the South China Sea, they’ve infiltrated every university we have, stealing our technology, and they are locking up the Muslim Uyghur community into concentration camps.”
I laughed and said, “Why does the Taskforce care about that? Sounds like a traditional intelligence community problem.”
Because our unit was illegal from the jump point, Kurt Hale—our deceased commander—had developed strict limits to Project Prometheus, understanding the threat the unit could pose. Not wanting it to turn into an American Gestapo force, he had designed the Oversight Council and then dictated that we would only deal with substate terrorist threats. We wouldn’t do state-on-state activities, like Wolffe was describing. Well, we had a few times in the past, but it was always the exception to the rule. Wolffe’s tone told me the rule might be changing.
Wolffe said, “Yeah, you’d think so, but I’m headed into a National Security Council meeting as a backseater about selling F-35s to Taiwan. I’m supposed to just sit and listen, and nobody’s told me why they demanded I be there, but you know they wouldn’t ask me if they didn’t want me to do something. What I’m hearing on the trap lines is that the established architecture can’t penetrate what’s going on in China. In 2010 the Chinese broke our covert communications and rolled up our entire network. The CIA is impotent now. They want something else.”
And now the hairs really stood up on my neck. “Something like me? Like Grolier Recovery Services? Tell me that’s not true. We don’t even have a targeted threat. I don’t do intel collection. I do the finish. Period.”
“No, no. Nothing like that. At least I don’t think so. I probably said too much. Get Amena situated and you’re clear to head to Australia. Tell Dunkin I said hello.”
I saw Amena come back out from the front of the school, looking at me. I said, “Will do, sir. Gotta go. But give me a call if you need me. I’ll sort those fucks out.”
He laughed and said, “You’ve never even been to China.”
“I wasn’t talking about the Chinese.”
I heard nothing and said, “I gotta go. Good luck,” and hung up the phone. Some things were more important than national security.
I exited the car, seeing Jennifer standing behind Amena with an administrator next to her, Jennifer’s eyes wet. I walked to them and said, “So this is it, doodlebug. You make it through two weeks, and you can make it through anything.”
I saw her lip quiver and squatted down, saying, “Hey, come on. I was teasing. You’ve been through much worse than this. Now all you have to do is make friends. I promise nobody here is going to try to hurt you.”
The administrator, having no idea what Amena had been through in life, said, “That’s true, honey. You’ll love it here.”
I wanted to smack her.
Amena said, “I want to come with you guys.” And it broke my heart. But that was the whole point of leaving. She was very strong, and she’d be okay. I wrapped her in my arms and said, “Two weeks, doodlebug. We’ll be back in two weeks.”
She said, “Promise?”
“I promise. I’m pretty sure Jennifer will get us into more trouble than you’ll find here.”
She wiped her eyes and gave me a fake smile. I returned a fake one of my own, not realizing how true those words would become.
Chapter 6
George Wolffe pulled into the checkpoint for the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, right across from the White House, and halfway hoped they’d turn him away. After all, he wasn’t a member of the National Security Council, and as such, he didn’t have an “all access” pass. All he had was a name, and he hoped the name wouldn’t be enough to grant him access. He’d never been given a badge for the White House grounds, precisely to conceal the organization he worked for—Project Prometheus.