Page 39 of Mastermind

“I hope I’m not disturbing anything,” he says in his booming voice. “I’d just flown in from Japan to offer to help, and I heard one of my oldest and dearest friends was here.”

Robert Ailes, US ambassador to Japan, my former mentor at the FBI, and the man who saved me from a life of boredom and helped me do whatever good acts I’ve done in this world, looks in my direction. “Ah, Jessica. It’s so good to see you.”

He walks around the table, and I give him a warm hug. “Dr. Ailes,” I say deferentially.

“Listen to her with that. She’s like my own daughter. I hope they’re treating you well here.”

“We were just wrapping up. I was heading over to the infirmary to see Dr. Theo Cray.”

“Cray? He’s here?” says Ailes, pretending to be surprised. “I’d been meaning to talk to him. His paper on simulating neural network backpropagation using bacterial films was a work of genius.” Ailes glances over at O’Donnell. “Are we good here?”

O’Donnell rolls his eyes. Everyone in the room is aware of who just played whom. I should keep my mouth shut, but I look to Kieren and remark, “It’s good to have friends.”

Ailes and I walk down the hall with his escorts, and he whispers under his breath, “This better be good, Jessica, or I’m putting you in an even worse place than they were planning to.”

“Define ‘good,’” I reply.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHESSBOARD

After checking on Theo, who was moved to the base hospital to get some much-needed rest and medical care, Robert Ailes and I found a nearly empty base coffee shop to talk out of earshot of anyone connected to Kieren.

I spent the first hour explaining everything that had happened up until the moment he walked in, leaving nothing out. That’s my relationship with Ailes. He can tell when I’m lying from a mile away. He can even tell when I’m lying to myself. I didn’t tell him I was coming to this part of the world, and I didn’t ask him how he knew, but Ailes is the kind of man to keep an eye on people, and he must’ve heard about my whereabouts through diplomatic channels.

Ailes started off as a brilliant mathematician, made a fortune in the private sector, and then let the last president talk him into helping restructure the FBI to better utilize people who have skills that are often overlooked. As part of that project, he created his own little team of misfit toys—Gerald being one and me another. My years working with Robert were the most dangerous, damaging, and rewarding of my life.

When I was moved to a teaching role, Robert left and later accepted the position as US ambassador to Japan. While it was historically a role that dealt with ceremony and trade negotiations, I’d heard whispers that his real mission was to help build a new US/Japanese/Korean intelligence partnership to counteract the threat of China. If any person could pull that off while avoiding knee-jerk xenophobia, it was Ailes.

He listens to the last details of my account, then shakes his head. “So you decided to travel to Myanmar to retrieve Dr. Cray. Did Gerald sign off on that?”

“Technically, yes. I had prior approval to travel overseas to escort material witnesses, provided they were in custody of local authorities,” I explain.

“What you did was a jailbreak.”

“Assumptions may have been made. But, Robert, they were going to kill him.”

“Who? The Burmese or Kieren?”

“Either. Both.”

“I don’t see it. Kieren is a blunt instrument. But I don’t get why she’d want him dead,” he replies.

“All I know is this: Cray’s name showed up on a list from an intel source that I suspect is Heywood—or is at least controlled by him. If you’re Kieren and you’ve been running around acting on this intel, you’re better off putting Cray into a deep hole. Plus, it’s a big win for the IDR.”

“So you don’t think Cray is involved?”

“No!” I almost spit out my coffee. “That’s absurd.”

“Maybe not as absurd as you think. There’s some suspicious things about him.”

“What? The whole he-framed-the-serial-killers theory? You?”

“No. The way he got some of them. Remember the Butcher Creek fiasco, where the FBI thought they had a serial killer and it was some prankster with a bunch of medical body parts?”

“Theo? Why?”

“Forrester, the man who tried to vaccinate half our armed forces with a bad vaccine, was a crime-scene junkie. Speculation is that Cray manufactured that entire scene just to lure him out.”