The Fellowship by William Tyree Read Free Book Online

Coup,” Gonzales continued. “You saw Mr. Gold that day, didn’t you?”
    The Ulysses Coup. Carver shuddered at the name, which missed the point completely. It had only taken a few days with a TV network using the catchphrase before it had become a modern-day Watergate.
    In what appeared at first to be coordinated terror attacks by religious extremists, a group of conspirators had succeeded in decapitating the presidential line of succession, an act of congress that had last been amended in 1947. President Hatch, his vice-president, the president pro tempore and the secretary of state were all killed. Of those in the immediate line, only treasury secretary Eva Hudson had escaped. Ulysses USA Inc., a security multinational that had grown to dwarf the once-mighty Blackwater Corporation, had only been the tool of the crime, not the cause of it. The complete information about the perpetrators and how they had infiltrated the president’s inner circle was still known only to a small group of Washington insiders, and, by executive order of the president, those names would likely be sealed for many years to come.
    It sickened Carver to think about the countless history teachers who would no doubt build curricula around the crisis in the coming years, only to get its most fundamental elements completely wrong. But that was neither here nor there. Ulysses USA Inc. was done for, even if all its puppet masters weren’t. And the official line of succession had been reinstated, making Eva Hudson, the fifth in line, the unlikely Commander-in-Chief.
    One thing was for sure: For Carver, the memories of those six days in August were still too raw for his liking. The horizontal scar on his neck – he’d been grazed by a bullet while defending the White House – was a daily reminder.
    The rent-a-lawyer was whispering something in his ear, but Carver wasn’t listening. He sat forward again. “About all I can tell you, Congressman, is that Nico Gold was critical in helping us with the national security crisis we faced that day.”
    “Our records indicate that on August 21 last year, you arrived at Lee Federal Correctional Facility at 10: 30 a.m., with the intention of recruiting Mr. Gold.”
    “It was 10:41 a.m. when I signed in.”
    “You remember that precisely?”
    He did indeed. What Carver’s small-town doctor had once diagnosed in Carver as a photographic memory, was now known in the medical community as super-autobiographical memory, or hyperthymesia .
    In short, it was the ability to recall an unusually high number of experiential moments in his life. He could point to most any day on the calendar and recall what he had for lunch, what the people he was with had been wearing, and what had been on the news that day.
    Hyperthymesia was o ften regarded as a problematic condition more than a gift. Some people found the constant recall of archived memories emotionally crippling. Others found that the constant influx of the past impaired their ability to experience new things. 
    Carver was lucky. Although he occasionally had problems with focus, he was mostly able to wield the extreme amounts of data located within his brain to his advantage. His was a medical condition with benefits.
    “Yes,” he continued. “My partner and I signed in at 10:41. We were with Nico for approximately 17 minutes, during which time we were able to convince him to serve the very country that had incarcerated him.”
    Cindy Blick (R-Wyoming), a 55-year-old woman with a red beehive haircut, spoke into the microphone mounted before her. “Agent Carver, what I’m trying to understand is why you would enlist the help of a convicted felon when you had access to more than 20 qualified government and private cryptologists, including some from the NSA.”
    The attorney covered the microphone with his right hand and leaned in to offer advice. Carver nudged him away.
    “They may have been qualified,” Carver stated, “But they were ineffective. The