The Sixth Man

“He’s never said a word, Mr. Bunting. He just sits there.”

“Recent visitors?”

“The FBI. And those investigators, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell. And of course Mr. Bergin.”

“And he never said anything to them?”

“Not a word.”

Bunting nodded, somewhat reassured. He’d pulled many strings to get Carla Dukes assigned as the director of Cutter’s Rock. She was loyal to him, and right now he needed her as his eyes up here. Who Edgar Roy really was had to be kept from everyone, including his lawyers and the FBI.

“Tell me about King and Maxwell.”

“They’re persistent, clever, and tough,” she said promptly.

“Former Secret Service,” said Avery. “So no surprise there.”

“I don’t like surprises,” said Bunting. He nodded at Dukes. “Take us to him, please.”

She escorted them back to the same room Sean and Michelle had been in with Edgar Roy. A minute later the man himself appeared. The guards escorted him in, set him down in the chair. He immediately extended his long legs and sat there, staring at nothing.

Bunting glanced at Dukes. “That’s all, thanks. And kill the surveillance.”

He waited until the video and audio equipment was shut down and then sat down in a chair near Roy, his knees almost touching the other man’s legs.

“Hello, Edgar.”

Nothing.

“I think you can understand me, Edgar.”

Not a blink from Roy. His gaze was positioned over Bunting’s shoulder.

Bunting turned to Avery. “Please tell me his brain is undamaged.”

“Nothing wrong with it that they can find.”

He lowered his voice. “Faking?”

Avery shrugged. “He’s like the smartest person in the world. Anything is possible.”

Bunting nodded and thought back to the first time Edgar Roy had gone toe-to-toe with the Wall. It had been one of the most exhilarating times of Bunting’s life. It had been right up there, in fact, with the birth of his children.

Inside the room, Roy, covered with the same electronic measuring equipment as the now-deceased Sohan Sharma wore, had studied the screen. Bunting noted that when the screen sometimes divided into two sets of images Roy looked at one set with his right eye and the other with his left. That was unusual but not unheard of for people with Roy’s intellectual ability.

Bunting had glanced at Avery, who was working the information flow in front of a bank of computers. “Status?”

“Normal.”

“You mean normal but heightened.”

“No, there’s no change,” said Avery.

“On my command send the Wall to full power. We have to know if this guy can cut it sooner rather than later. We’re running out of time and options.”

“Got it.”

Bunting had spoken into the headset he wore. The first questions would just be warm-ups, nothing too taxing.

“Edgar, please provide me with the logistical data you just observed from the Pakistani border, beginning with US Special Forces movements and the reactionary tactics taken by the Taliban on the fourteenth of last month.”

Five seconds later over his headset Bunting heard an exact replication of this data.

He turned to Avery. “Status?”

“No bump at all. Smooth and level.”

Bunting had turned back to look through the one-way glass. “Edgar, you just observed the encryption code for the relay link for DOD’s satellite platform over the Indian Ocean. Please provide me with every other number of that code up to the first five hundred digits.”

The numbers came at him almost immediately in rapid succession.

Bunting’s gaze was locked on his tablet where the correct digits were set forth. When the last number had rolled off Roy’s tongue, Bunting drew a deep breath. A perfect match.

“Theta status?” he barked at Avery.

“No change.”

“Full power on the data flow.”

Avery cranked it and the Wall flow accelerated markedly.

Bunting had muttered, “Okay, Edgar, let’s see if you can play in the big leagues.”

He had asked four more questions of Roy, all memorization tests, each quantitatively harder than the last one. Roy had aced all four effortlessly.

“He’s very relaxed,” said Avery, his voice cracking with excitement. “His theta activity actually went down.”

Relaxed, Bunting had thought. The man is relaxed and his theta went down and the Wall is at full throttle.

Bunting tried to keep his growing euphoria in check. Memorization was one thing, analysis was quite another.

“Edgar, you observed ten minutes ago both the military and geopolitical conditions on the ground in Afghanistan’s Anbar province. I want you to contrast that with the political situation in Kabul, factoring in the known current allegiances of the tribal and political heads in both sectors. Then, provide me your best analysis of what strategic steps the American military should take to solidify its holdings in Anbar and then expand that into neighboring regions over the next six months, while at the same time enhancing our control over the capital both militarily and politically.”

Bunting had had four rock-solid scenarios on his tablet screen, the result of a hundred top analysts from four different agencies poring over this same data for weeks, instead of minutes. Any one of these four replies would have been more than acceptable. This was the real test. The man who would occupy this position was not called the Memorizer. He was called the Analyst. You earned your money by taking facts and turning them into something valuable, as an alchemist could purportedly turn iron into gold.

Fifteen seconds passed and then it had come.

However, Edgar Roy had not given one of the four responses he was expecting, indeed, hoping for. What he did provide made Bunting’s jaw drop nearly to the device he was holding. Not one person Bunting had ever talked to at the Pentagon, the State Department, or even the CIA had come up with such a revolutionary strategy. And this man had, after bare seconds of thinking about it.

Bunting had looked at the men gathered around him who had heard this feedback as well. They too were all gaping. Bunting had gazed back at Roy, who just sat there as though he were watching a moderately entertaining movie instead of spearheading the American intelligence juggernaut.

Peter Bunting had not been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He had grown up as an army brat; the family had moved each time his father’s duties and rank had changed. His old man was career-enlisted, had bled for his country, and he instilled a pride in his son to do the same. Bad eyesight had killed any chance Bunting had to join up, but he’d found another way to serve. Another way to defend his country.

Bunting had been ecstatic on discovering that Edgar Roy was the greatest Analyst he likely would ever find. What had followed was six months of the best intelligence output the United States had ever had.

And now?

He stared at the six-foot-eight zombie sitting across from him.

God help us all.

He turned to Avery. “How is the investigation going on the death of Edgar’s lawyer?”