36. Alexei #2
“Yup. Carter’s younger brother. And take a look at this.
” I bring up the diagram I sent Lars, with the Compass Initiative at the top, the Meridian Network at the bottom, and the logo from the John Owens card in the center.
“This was what I sent to Lars when I couldn’t get ahold of you.
” I point at the top logo. “At the time, I thought this arrow was supposed to be the ‘needle’ on the Compass Initiative, pointing north.”
Lars staring skeptically at the logo: It looks like a cock . . .
“But then I saw the arrow on the Meridian logo. It points south—and it’s exactly the same shape and color as the Compass one.
When I put the two logos in alignment,” I say, “they look exactly like the central north–south line in the global logo I’ve put in the middle of that diagram.
It appeared on the card John Owens gave me back in Miami Airport.
I didn’t realize it when I first looked, but there is a cross at the center of the globe, with arrows pointing to all four sides, like a compass.
And the arrows on the Owens logo are drawn in the same font, same color, same everything, as those on the Compass and Meridian logos.
Not to mention the names, which both have geographical connections. ”
I sit back. “It can’t be a coincidence. If my theory is right, then there are at least two more companies.”
I point to the east–west line running across the Owens logo, which, like the north–south one, has arrows on each end, like a compass needle. “Possibly more, going by all the thinner lines crisscrossing the logo.”
Mak gives a humorless laugh. “Shall I fill in the rest of it for you?”
“Please.” I turn the laptop to him, and his fingers race across the keys. He opens two windows.
“Sentinel Operations.” He points to one logo, which incorporates an arrow the same style as the others, pointing west. “Sentinel does private security, almost exclusively lucrative government contracts.”
“Wait.” I pull up the photos and video Lars and Dima sent weeks ago of the private security guys who boarded the Cardenas boats and closed down my clubs.
“West-facing arrow.” I zoom in on the lone mark I could make no sense of at the time.
“Not the full Sentinel logo, just the fucking arrow.” I shake my head. “No wonder we couldn’t place them.”
Mak nods. “And this logo”—he points to the east-facing arrow on the second—“belongs to the Zenith Advisory, a government consulting firm who made a name for themselves by advocating the use of ‘decoy’ candidates in elections. In other words, they find sacrificial candidates, puppets who can be manipulated, blackmailed, disgraced, or used, according to requirements.”
“Like Marty Hunter Jr.”
“Exactly.”
“What a reassuring picture you paint of the US government,” I say dryly.
Mak doesn’t smile. “Companies like Meridian, Sentinel, and Zenith are the government, Lex. They just prefer to rule without the inconvenience of elections and public scrutiny. I’ve been watching all of them for years, but until the attack on you in Paris, I’d never seen such clear evidence of them working together. It’s what first roused my interest.
“The Paris operation itself,” he goes on, “had all the hallmarks of Sentinel Operations: slick, big payroll, completely untraceable. And the media cover-up was classic Meridian.”
He brings up a stack of social media posts showing grainy photographs of the van on a Paris street, with headlines like “Immigrant Crime Tears Paris Apart” and “The Paris They Don’t Want You to See.”
“That combination was enough to rouse my interest, but then came the news of Marty Hunter Jr.’s candidacy for governor, which had the Zenith Advisory’s fingerprints all over it.
Along with the anonymous attacks on your organization, it became very clear to me that for the first time, I was actually watching Meridian, Sentinel, and Zenith operating together, in real time.
It was the kind of bait I couldn’t resist, which is why I asked you for that favor in the first place. ”
He sits back, rubbing a hand over his face. “Do you recall,” he says, “when I first came to see you on the Quantum Drift, and you asked me if we were dealing with government, bratva, or corporation?”
“You said we could be dealing with all three.”
“You also asked if that logo meant anything to me.”
“And you said, not yet.” My chest tightens at the memory. The conversation feels like it happened in another life, back when the future stretched in front of me full of tantalizing possibilities.
Back when I thought it was funny that Lars was impersonating me.
The sickening rush of shame and guilt makes the room spin. I breathe, trying to focus on Mak’s voice.
“The logo was familiar,” he’s saying, “but so generic that until recently I didn’t realize why. Take a look at this.”
He brings up a social media page for what looks like some kind of college club.
It’s from a long-defunct platform, and the photo grid only has a handful of pictures.
They’re all taken atop various geographical landmarks, like mountain peaks and waterfalls, and feature young men dressed in top hats and tails, sporting oddities like monocle glasses and waistcoat pocket watches.
Young men who all dress exactly like Tyler fucking Thorne.
“The Cartographer Club,” I read. “What is this, some kind of elite college secret society?”
“Exactly that,” Mak says. “Only the Cartographer Club isn’t associated with one particular college—it has maintained branches in elite universities across America for nearly a century.
Its list of former members include senators, generals, and judges, not to mention several presidents. Now look at this.”
He expands a photograph from the old platform. Three faces stare austerely into the camera as if they’re Victorian explorers about to climb into a hot air balloon and navigate the earth.
“This was taken over twenty years ago.” Mak points to the first face.
“Silas Thorne. Founder of Meridian—and during his college years, president of the Yale chapter of the Cartographer Club. The man next to him is Reid Calloway.” He points to the second face.
“Founder of Sentinel Operations and Cartographer Club president at West Point. And finally”—he points to the third face—“Calder Vane, CEO of the Zenith Advisory. President of the Georgetown chapter. Now.” He enlarges the photograph to focus on the round pins the men are wearing in their silk cravats. “Look at the logo engraved on them.”
“Holy shit.” I stare at the pins. They’re all engraved with two letter C’s, facing each other so that they form an oval-shaped globe, intersected by the directional needles of a compass.
I bring up the logo on the John Owens card and put it beside the photo.
The two logos are almost identical, except that the Owens logo has multiple lines in addition to the central compass arrows on that of the Cartographer Club.
“If I had to guess,” Mak says, “I’d bet the additional lines represent other companies run by Cartographer Club members.”
“No wonder we couldn’t find a fucking company name.” I shake my head slowly. “We were looking for the wrong thing altogether.”
I think of Lars and me, chasing that logo down one rabbit hole after another, and feel suddenly swamped by a wave of exhaustion and defeat.
It should be us sitting here, I think dully. Bouncing off each other like pinballs, until we uncover the mystery.
The thought that we might never do that again is too bleak to even contemplate.
Going to the fridge, I pull out a bottle of vodka and pour us both a hefty shot. For once, Mak doesn’t make a crack about the lack of elegant presentation. I pull the laptop toward me, staring at the smug, self-satisfied faces in the old photo.
Thorne. Calloway. Vane.
The kind of names found on a country club membership list or beneath portraits on a wall.
Not the kind of names you see in tabloid articles.
Which is where I’ve seen them before.
“Hang on.” I pull up an old news report from the time around Carter Thorne’s death.
“Here.” I point to the second paragraph.
“Carter Thorne’s friends who were interviewed after his disappearance.
I barely noticed the names at the time.” I shake my head.
“Thorne, Calloway, and Vane. The first one is Carter’s younger brother, Tyler.
The other two are Reid Calloway’s son and Calder Vane’s son.
This Cartographer Club is some serious generational shit, by the look of it. ”
“Going by the Compass Initiative logo, I’d say that’s a solid assumption,” Mak says. “Although you’d never know. The Cartographers are one of those skull-and-crossbones type societies that are dismissed as some kind of conspiracy theory.”
Lars laughing at me: “Diagrams and tin foil hats . . .”
I swallow hard.
“That old social media page is the only evidence of the club I could find,” he goes on, “and even that I only came across by chance, years ago on the dark web when I began researching possible links between Meridian, Sentinel, and Zenith. The Cartographer’s Club is strictly underground, always has been.
That page was an anomaly, and it disappeared almost as soon as it was begun.
Other than this photograph, I’ve never been able to find any connection between Thorne, Calloway, and Vane, or any evidence of their three entities working together—until their sudden coordination to bring you down, something that made no sense to me. Until now.”