Free The Fellowship by William Tyree

house just went up in flames.”
    Before anyone could react, Fordham also received a text. “It’s Bowers,” he said, gazing into his screen. “He’s all right.”
    “ Thank God,” Speers gushed in relief. “And the senator’s assistant?”
    Fordham shook his head grimly. “Doesn’t look good. She was inside.”
    Carver felt sick. It wasn’t just that Mary Borst was likely dead. All forensic evidence had just burned up in the senator’s brownstone.

 
    Eisenhower Building
    Washington D.C.
     
    Speers ran his fingers over the oak surface of the partners desk that he had used during his seven years as White House Chief of Staff. Despite finding a few new nicks in the wood, he smiled, knowing that he wouldn’t be headed back to McLean tonight. After his debrief with the president and the others, he had stayed behind and formally requested permission to reclaim his old office in the adjacent Eisenhower Building.
    The president was visibly irritated, but granted the request nonetheless. Speers didn’t mind a bit of social tension. That was part of the game. And timing was everything. As he had hoped, his audacity was trumped by the president’s desire to stay in the loop during the investigation into Senator Preston’s assassination. 
    The office’s current occupant, a GS-14 from the Office of Management & Budget, had been out when Speers arrived. His startled assistant, who sat in the neighboring office, was trying to get hold of him at this very moment. Speers couldn’t wait for the guy to get back here and take his horrendous photos down. A few beach pics from Guam, a random picture out the window of an airplane, and one of an old dog with an old woman that, for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, depressed him.
    He sat in his old chair and adjusted the lumbar support and height to suit him. Then he set his computer on the desk, fired it up, and logged into the secure network. Per the president’s directive, he dialed Claire Shipmont to temporarily delegate oversight of the ODNI daily operations to her so that he could focus on the crisis at hand. “Don’t ask,” he said before Claire could get the first question out of her mouth. “Just know this is temporary, so don’t go making changes that can’t be undone a few days from now.”
    “ Yeah, I was thinking Mondays should be wear your pajamas to work day from now on.”
    He liked Claire. He had, after all, plucked her from a Bay Area data analysis company to be his second in command. “Just one thing. There’s a technical support analyst named Arunus Roth. He works under Blake Carver in the NCC. Give him access to my office. He’ll be working in there.”
    “I know who he is. He’s like a G-8 or something. He’s always hitting on my assistant. ”
    “ Roth might be a little rough around the edges, but he won’t trash the place. He needs complete privacy for the next few days, and we won’t be seeing much of Carver, either.”
    As Speers signed off , a file request notification appeared in the corner of his screen. Someone was requesting access to a file that Speers owned. He didn’t receive many these days, since he almost never had time to create any, much less administrate them. In the time that he had been heading up the ODNI, he spent more than 70 percent of his time in meetings, and the rest problem solving, reviewing reports and news. He scarcely had time to create anything of his own. Even his news releases and quotes were written for him.
    He clicked on the file share request. It was from Chad Fordham. He was requesting access to Blake Carver’s official dossier.
    Speers called Fordham, knowing that the FBI Director would be startled to hear his voice. Making a file share request outside of one’s own agency was a completely blind process. You couldn’t see who owned them.
    The FBI Director answered on the first ring. “Anything you want to know about Carver,” Speers declared, “You can ask me right now.”
    It took