The Entity Game: An Aurora Donati Novel

by Lisa Shearin

  How simple it is to kill in the so-called halls of power. I can take any of them at any time…My power flows now, amplified beyond what I’d ever dreamed…It is effortless to summon and aim. Like a weapon, a flawlessly lethal weapon…It is mine to wield, no one else’s, at my command and mine alone…No one can find me. I can’t be captured, because I cannot be disarmed. I cannot be stopped.

  Normally, all I got from contact with a killer were brief flashes of images or impressions. This was so far from my normal, I didn’t even know where to begin trying to explain it. I was there with him, inside his head, an eyewitness to his thoughts. My contact in Julian’s office was what I was used to experiencing. I’d never been at the scene of a crime this quickly, but even that didn’t explain…Something was wrong here, different from anything I’d experienced before.

  I felt the urge to wipe my hands on my jeans, even though I’d been careful to touch nothing. It wouldn’t help, but that didn’t lessen the strength of the compulsion. When you made contact with what I could now only describe as evil incarnate, the first instinct was to wipe it off.

  Mark Dalton’s killer wasn’t Gabriel Marshall.

  My breathing was ragged as I backed away from the stall, scrubbing my hands on my jeans. I had to do something, anything to be rid of it. A wave of dizziness swept over me, and I staggered backward to where I hoped the sinks were. I turned and heaved, bracing my elbows on the porcelain as my knees gave way along with the contents of my stomach.

  Rees’s strong arm was around my shoulders, keeping me from crumpling to the floor. I dimly heard him turn on the faucet, the water hopefully washing out the sink.

  I’d had bad contacts before and been told I’d looked like I was about to throw up. I’d never hurled at a crime scene, until now.

  Berta would never let me hear the end of it.

  I got my legs back under me and stood on my own, bracing my hands against the next sink. I hung my head and fixed my eyes on the drain until the world stopped spinning.

  He had merely looked at Mark Dalton, and within seconds, the senator had died a quick, albeit painful, death.

  If looks could kill…

  Could they?

  A cardiac arrest and an aneurysm. Both natural, even common, causes of death. No alarms raised; no suspicions aroused.

  It made for the perfect murder.

  The killer was the perfect assassin.

  My mouth was dry, my voice raspy. “Sam, we’ve got a problem.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Outside the men’s room, Grandad and Berta were waiting down the hall, but still inside the section that had been cordoned off. I’d told Rees what I’d seen, cleaned up, and splashed cold water on my face in an attempt to at least look human again. Feeling that way was going to take some time.

  Grandad needed only one look at me. “Let’s go home.”

  “I saw—”

  He held up a hand. “I know. Not here. Let’s wait until we’re in the car.”

  Rees guided us out the opposite way from where Berta and I had come in and we managed to avoid the media. He’d parked in the underground garage used by senators and their staffers. I wasn’t big on patience, but I managed to wait until Berta had pulled out onto Constitution Avenue.

  All the questions running around in my head narrowed themselves down to two words.

  “You knew?”

  “Not until I touched Dalton and stood for a moment in front of that stall door,” Grandad told me. “There was no aerosol. He did it himself, with psychokinesis at a level that shouldn’t be possible.”

  “With emphasis on psycho. This guy’s not going around bending spoons or staring at goats. This isn’t a nightclub act or movie. He actually stopped two hearts and…whatever happens to cause an aneurysm. Miss Eleanor and Gabriel Marshall can toss people, but this guy—”

  “Who is Gabr—” Grandad began.

  “What?!” Rees blurted, something I’d never heard him do.

  “We had ourselves an interesting time after we left Senator Pierce’s house,” Berta told her partner.

  I gave Rees and Grandad the quick and dirty version of what had happened in David Barrington’s town house.

  Rees was stunned. “I never knew Gabriel Marshall was psychokinetic—”

  “And this CIA agent knows about you,” Grandad said.

  “More than likely, you as well,” I told him.

  “I’m not concerned about myself. It’s you—”

  “I’m a big girl, Grandad. You know I can take care of myself. Gabriel Marshall hasn’t shown himself to be a problem, whereas Julian’s killer stopped two hearts and caused an aneurysm. He was in the same room with all three of his victims. That could either be by necessity or preference.” I explained the difference in what I’d felt in the men’s room. The man had killed Senator Dalton with his mind. All my crime-scene experience had been with “normal” means of murder such as guns, knives, blunt objects, or poisons. Perhaps that explained the oddness of what I’d felt. “This man could sit a couple of tables away, and his target is having dinner and minding their own business. No one would ever suspect. People die of cardiac arrests and aneurysms all the time. Or choking. Making someone choke to death would probably be easy for him.”

  “I knew you would get much more than I ever could,” Grandad said, “and most importantly, you had sensed the presence in Julian’s office and would know if it was the same man.”

  “It was him all right.”

  “We needed confirmation that one man was responsible for all three murders,” Rees said. “The ME’s report will say it was natural. We now know it wasn’t.”

  I snorted. “So, just toss Rory in the deep end with no warning.”

  “I’m sorry, cara,” Grandad said. “With all those people, I couldn’t speak freely. And you might not have gotten as much detail as you did if I had said anything. The presence was fresh. You were only going to get one chance at this. I wanted you to get the best reading possible.”

  “It didn’t make it any less horrifying, but you’re right. What did you get from him?”

  “I sensed arrogance, pride, and pleasure. He enjoyed his work. And yes, it was his job. We’re dealing with a professional assassin. He was assigned to kill Julian and Mark Dalton.”

  A professional assassin. Like Gabriel Marshall.

  “Assigned, not hired?” I asked.

  Rees said, “Ambrose and I believe the killer in all probability works for an intelligence agency.”

  “Ours or theirs?” I paused, recalling Berta’s definition of ours or theirs. “Ours meaning US. Theirs meaning the Russians or whoev—”

  “We’re not eliminating any agency from suspicion,” Rees said, “foreign or domestic.”

  “Why would a US agency kill two US senators?”

  Rather than answering, Rees said, “With Senator Dalton’s death, we now have a connection. Julian was the chair of the Intelligence Committee. Mark Dalton was the ranking member. That is the only working link between them.”

  Grandad huffed a laugh. “It would have to be work. Julian certainly wouldn’t have socialized with the man. He was a warrior, a man of bravery and action. Mark Dalton was—”

  “A common coward,” Rees said. “In death, as in life, Senator Dalton plays second fiddle to the greater man.”

  I chuckled. “And here I thought the FBI was politically impartial.”

  “Politics has nothing to do with my opinion of the late Mark Dalton.”

  “His colleagues outside the men’s room were of the opinion he’d been dragged to where he deserved, kicking and screaming.” I paused. “Just how many agencies does the Intelligence Committee oversee?”

  “The CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO,” Rees said, “as well as the intelligence-related aspects of the State Department, FBI, Treasury Department, the Department of Energy, and all four branches of the military.”

  “People you really don’t want to piss off,” I
noted.

  “The committee essentially controls their budgets,” Berta said. “They also investigate, audit, and inspect their programs and activities when needed.”

  “I wonder if someone needed one of those inspections, audits, or investigations stopped. Someone with access to a psychic assassin. Jeez, I can’t believe I just put those two words together in a sentence.”

  Rees said, “Which is why I’ve requested a briefing on all items on the committee’s agenda—recent past, present, and pending.”

  “Best of luck with that, Samuel,” Grandad said.

  “I’ve made the request to SAC Hudson, who will bump it up to Director Montgomery, who will apply the needed pressure in the right places. We won’t get the information as quickly as I’d like, which would be now, but we will get it soon.” I saw Rees actually smile in the rearview mirror. “As added incentive to cooperate, Hudson will also recommend that the remaining committee members increase their personal security in case our killer has other names on his list.”

  “The quicker they tell the FBI what they’re working on,” I said, “the quicker the FBI can find and stop this guy, and none of them will suddenly find themselves dead of natural causes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “With both the chair and ranking member dead, will that put a temporary stop to any committee meetings or findings they were about to issue?” I asked.

  “Any ongoing investigations will continue,” Rees said. “Those aren’t being done by the committee members themselves. I imagine any agenda items requiring committee debate or a vote will be postponed until after both funerals. I would say at least a week out of propriety. It won’t stop anything, merely delay. As to replacements, I’m sure the maneuvering for Senator Pierce’s position began before his body was cold.”

  “Someone might be buying themselves some time,” Grandad said. “Maybe a week is all they need—but for what?”

  I sat back in my seat. “In front of that stall door, the killer thought how easy it was to kill in the so-called halls of power, and how he could take any of them at any time. He enjoyed what he could do, its amplification, the ease with which it now worked, how effortless it was to summon and aim. He thinks he’s a flawlessly lethal weapon. I get the feeling he enjoys the risk. He’s not afraid of being found or caught, because he can’t be disarmed or stopped. What I got from Julian’s watch, Julian couldn’t believe what was happening, either, that it shouldn’t be possible. The killer’s PK had been amplified from what it was.”

  “And Julian referred to a project,” Grandad said. “When I touched the burner phone, I got that Julian knew it was successful months ago.”

  I sat back in my seat. “A project to create a PK assassin. Who the hell would work on something like this?”

  Grandad raised his hand.

  CHAPTER 24

  I couldn’t believe it. “What?”

  “Not developing psychokinetic assassins,” Grandad hurried to add, “but I did assist our government in keeping our Cold War opponent from gaining any kind of upper hand in this area. The American people knew about the nuclear arms race, but few had any knowledge of the psychic arms race happening at the same time. Thankfully, what has surfaced has been quickly relegated to the realm of crackpots, conspiracy theories, and entertainment franchises—which is where it needs to remain, for everyone’s safety.”

  “The truth is out there and all that.”

  “Precisely. The truth is out there, and the vast majority of the world’s population couldn’t handle it. Our family has limited the knowledge of what we can do to a handful of people, and our lives are infinitely safer and saner for it.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “This is all the Nazis’ fault.”

  “Excuse me?” Berta said.

  “Das Ahnenerbe, the Nazis’ science and research academy. Himmler founded and ran it himself. He sent his SS officers with German scientists and archeologists all over the world to look for traces of the lost Aryan race. The Nazis wanted to prove to their people that Germans and the Nazi ideals descended from ancient Aryans, thus making them—in their minds—the superior race. I won’t go down that twisted rabbit hole. Himmler had his minions searching for anything to do with the occult, legends, and magic. They wanted esoteric writings and any artifacts said to give those who possessed them ultimate power, such as the Holy Grail, the Spear of Destiny, the Ark of the Covenant, and the like. Anything they found and wanted, they stole. Even before the end of the war, the race was on between the US and the then-Soviet Union to find and secure any Nazi technology and weapons programs. That technology, and the Nazi scientists who developed it, have always gotten the most attention in history books and those war documentaries, but those weapons programs included research into psychic skills that could be adapted for wartime use, such as ESP, remote viewing, mind reading and control, and psychokinesis.

  “After the war, the CIA and KGB began building on what they’d taken from the Nazis,” he continued. “They worked to develop drugs to control minds and to enhance psychic abilities in those who had them, and to produce those abilities in those who weren’t born with them. Ultimately, they wanted to create their own elite soldiers and assassins.”

  “That sounds entirely too close to what we have here,” I said.

  “None of those programs bore fruit, but no one was ready to admit defeat, especially after a Soviet psychic named Ninel Kulagina was filmed in a military laboratory stopping a frog’s heart and then starting it again. Reaction here was split. A few factions in the military and intelligence agencies thought it was just Soviet propaganda to make us think they could do it. Others were convinced the film was real and pushed for expanding our own research. If there was even the remotest possibility the KGB could do this, the CIA wanted in on it. They were determined to not only catch up, but to be the front-runner in weaponizing psychics. In 1972, a report called ‘Controlled Offensive Behavior—USSR’ was written and published for the Department of Defense. It wasn’t declassified by the CIA until 2004. It estimated the Soviets’ psychic research budget in the early seventies at over twenty million dollars. That’s a drop in the bucket now, but nearly fifty years ago, that was a substantial financial commitment.”

  Berta glanced in the rearview mirror at Grandad. “Other than what we may have here, how do you weaponize other kinds of psychics?”

  “A remote viewer is said to be able to see classified documents, to discern troop movements, submarine locations, or classified activities at military or government installations.”

  “No offense, but that sounds like a load of crap.”

  “In my opinion, it is, and no offense taken. This report went on to warn that military equipment including aircraft, weapons systems, or satellites could be disarmed remotely by psychokinesis. Or that the thoughts or behavior of military or government leaders could be modified without their knowledge through mind control—or that they could be killed by a psychokinetic assassin. Yes, Yuri Geller can bend spoons. So what? A spoon is an inanimate object, and it certainly isn’t a human heart or brain. Even if a PK assassin were possible, and that is an exceptionally large ‘if,’ there’s difference between a frog heart and a human one. Not to mention, she stared at that frog heart in a jar for seven minutes before it allegedly stopped.”

  I blinked. “It was in a jar?”

  “In Ringer’s solution to keep it beating for a while and hooked up to an EKG to monitor it. The point is, there are a few—very few—people who can move objects. In the case of our murders, we’re talking about affecting a living human being—moving, breathing, autonomous. A heart is an incredibly complex organ, a powerful muscle, and it’s at the center of a human chest, protected by skin, bone, muscle, and, most importantly, a human’s indominable will to live. You cannot simply overcome that in mere seconds with a glance and turn it off just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “That doesn’t even take into account what was done to Mark Dalton.” Grandad settled back in his sea
t. “Most psychic experiments failed, some embarrassingly so.” He smiled. “An acquaintance of mine was leading a study involving a particularly potent Mexican psychedelic mushroom said to enhance psychic abilities.” He cleared his throat. “What can I say? It was the seventies in southern California. Psychic programs were more…adventurous in those days.”

  “This acquaintance’s name wouldn’t happen to be David, would it?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Did anything come of it?”

  “Nothing. Other than some embarrassing photos and compromising videos of a few notable scientists of the day.”

  We’d arrived at the town house. Berta let us out, then drove around back to the alley where she could parallel park in front of the carriage house’s double doors.

  I unsnapped my keys from the holder in my messenger bag. Gerald usually did grocery shopping on Friday afternoons, so he might not be home. Grandad preferred to be let into the house, and I preferred to open my own doors, thank you very much.

  There was no ice on the stairs, but there were still patches of slush where the trees shaded the sidewalk and stairs. Grandad was wearing his usual suit and dress shoes. Only in the most dire circumstances did he allow fashion to fall victim to practicality. I took his arm to walk with him up the stairs. He used to make a fuss about it, but I think he secretly liked it.

  “We haven’t even had lunch,” Grandad said. “If he’s home, I’ll ask Gerald to make sandwiches.” He turned his head toward Rees who was right behind us. “Would you and Berta like…”

  He slipped. I grabbed his arm with both hands, and Rees caught him from behind.

  I slid an arm around his waist. “Careful, I’ve got you—”

  Grandad’s knees gave way, his face twisting in pain, his eyes fixed and staring.

  No. No, no, no…

  Everything went into slow motion as my arms went around him, dragging him up the last two stairs to the safety of the recessed doorway. I dimly heard Rees shouting something into his phone, then he was with us on the landing, putting his body between us and who I knew was out there, close by, at our home. He’d followed us here or was already here when we arrived.