Effective Engineering Solutions

Effective Engineering Solutions, Incorporated is a New York City-based business specializing in failure analysis and solving unique engineering problems. Typically hired following significant accidents or incidents, EES is usually brought in to figure out what went wrong, and why. They also take on unusual and confidential field operation projects for special clients, and are a subcontractor for the Department of Homeland Security. As a major part of their failure analysis operations, they also specialize in psychological profiling. Realizing the need for predictive power–a way to predict how a given person would act in a given situation– they developed a muscular proprietary system for psychological profiling, based on what they termed Quantitative Behavioral Analysis. Effective Engineering Solutions guarantees success on any project they take on, and claim to have never failed, although one singular project remains "open."

History
EES was founded by Eli Glinn following a military career as a Special Forces intelligence specialist. Their Little West 12th Street headquarters in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan lies behind a twelve-story grimy brick fin de siècle facade bearing signage for "Price & Price Pork Packing Inc."

While their client list remains confidential, their project history includes blowing up a volcano to save a minor offshore banking haven, retrieving a nuclear device from Lithuania (and threatening to detonate it when the client refused payment), and even breaking Aloysius Pendergast out of a federal prison in New York. They have performed failure analysis on everything from a devastating earthquake in Port au Prince to the Kennedy Assassination, and completed psychological profiles on Aloysius and Diogenes Pendergast.

The Rolvaag Expedition
The company's one bit of unfinished business involved retrieving a 10,000-ton meteorite from Isla Desolación off the southern coast of Chile for billionaire Palmer Lloyd. It was to be the centerpiece of his new museum, and he spared no expense in financing its retrieval: it cost him a million dollars just for EES to determine if the project was even feasible. EES engineers refitted the supertanker Rolvaag to contain the meteorite for transport. Once on site, they discovered the meteorite was, in fact, 25,000 tons, and their initial attempt at moving it resulted in the death of two crew members, including the expedition's chief engineer, EES founding member Eugene Rochefort. To make matters worse, they found themselves dealing with a severe storm and a rogue captain of a Chilean destroyer, both threatening to sink the Rolvaag and its unique cargo. A series of rare miscalculations by Glinn left the Rolvaag desperate as they fled beyond the ice limit. EES operatives managed to defeat the destroyer as it closed in for the kill, but not before it had crippled the Rolvaag, leaving her dead in the water and at the mercy of the storm. Three lifeboats managed to escape the doomed supertanker; only two managed to find the relative safety of an immense island of ice. When the rescue helicopters located them, barely over two dozen remained of the hundred who had begun the voyage. The Rolvaag was lost, along with her captain and over a hundred crew and staff members from EES and Lloyd Holdings... and the meteorite. Data culled from the meteorite during the expedition, combined with unique geological activity centered on the area where the ship and her cargo went down, led the surviving members to conclude that the meteorite was, in fact, an interstellar spore that had begun germinating. EES immediately began making plans to destroy it. A complete accounting of the expedition can be found in The Ice Limit.

When Lloyd began planning an expedition to destroy the alien spore, a wheelchair-bound Glinn, who had barely survived the sinking of the Rolvaag, offered EES's services but was rebuffed by Lloyd, who blamed Glinn for the first expedition's failure.

Aloysius Pendergast
EES was contracted by FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast to construct a psychological profile of his brother Diogenes. The required turnaround time, however, was not to Pendergast's liking; he claimed to be working under a strict deadline and could not wait. EES completed the profile, concluding that Diogenes Pendergast was one of the most dangerous men alive. However, by the time the profile was completed, the only man capable of stopping him–his brother, Aloysius–had been thrown in federal prison. EES president Eli Glinn personally visited Pendergast's home to meet with the FBI agent's closest associates to offer EES's assistance in planning Pendergast's escape.

Gideon Crew
Glinn and chief engineer Manuel Garza recruited Gideon Crew, a uniquely motivated, quick-thinking nuclear engineer from Los Alamos National Laboratory with a penchant for disguises, Hawaiian shirts, and Beefeater martinis.

Crew's first EES assignment, detailed in Gideon's Sword, was to steal a highly secret and valuable set of electronic plans–believed to be for a new superweapon–from a Chinese scientist who was on a flight bound for the United States.

He was immediately afterward tasked with defusing a hostage situation involving a former Los Alamos co-worker. Chronicled in Gideon's Corpse, Crew uncovered a nuclear threat from a mysterious terrorist cell set to unleash a devastating attack in just ten days.

Having finally made the decision to become a full-time EES operative, Crew was next asked to steal a single page from a priceless Irish national treasure, the Book of Kells. Behind its gorgeously illuminated imagery, the stolen page contained a map dating back to the ancient Greeks, revealing the location of a small unknown island in a remote corner of the Caribbean hiding a secret that could possibly change the world.