The Fellowship

by William Tyree

  Ellis threw her hands up in exasperation. “Seriously? For that thing?”

  “It’s after midnight, lady. For an extra $200, I’ve got a boat with an aluminum top.”

  Ellis shook her head. She had already spent well beyond her means, and the odds that she would get to expense the plane ticket here were dim. “Nothing wrong with a little night air.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Captain Zack took them out with an electric motor and then cranked up the diesel engine when they were a reasonable distance from the marina.

  As they pulled out into Puget Sound, Ellis saw a vast industrial port where thousands of shipping containers were stacked like multicolored Legos. A row of enormous cranes reminded Ellis of Imperial Walkers from the Star Wars movies. The Seattle skyline was hazy as viewed through the fog, but nevertheless far more impressive than she had imagined.

  “Must be gorgeous in the daytime.”

  Captain Zack shrugged. “Guess so. Hard to appreciate it when business is slow. Course, this is just my first year running water taxis. I was a commercial angler before that, up in Alaska.”

  “How slow is slow?”

  “Over the summer, maybe three calls a day. After Labor Day I’m lucky if I get one.”

  “Ever thought about changing the business name?”

  Captain Zack took his eyes off their course for the first time and looked at Ellis. “Why would I do that? What’s wrong with the name?”

  Ellis already regretted saying anything. “The irony doesn’t work for me. Just my opinion.”

  “What irony? Me and my wife and our daughter all have November birthdays. We’re all Scorpios. And there you have it. Scorpion Water Taxis.”

  It was hard to believe nobody had brought this up before now. “Nobody’s ever mentioned the fable of the frog and the scorpion?”

  The captain shook his head again. “Can’t say that they have. What is it?”

  Ellis sighed. “The story goes like this. A frog made his money taking animals across the river. He had never turned down a customer. Then one day, here came a scorpion. The frog was afraid, and said he couldn’t take him. The scorpion said, ‘Mr. Frog, I would never sting you. If I did, then we would both drown.’ That seemed rational, so he let the scorpion climb onto his back, and they went out into the river. When they had almost reached the other side, the scorpion stung him. As they started to sink toward what was certain death for both of them, the frog wanted to know why. The scorpion just told him, ‘Sorry, buddy, but you just can’t fight nature.’”

  She watched Captain Zack’s face as he absorbed the moral of the story. He was quiet for nearly a minute. “So you’re saying that everyone who’s ever heard that fable thinks about drowning when they hear the name of my water taxi business.”

  “Not everyone. But hey, every customer counts, right?”

  “The way I see it, the dangerous one in that story is the insect, not the frog. And as the water taxi driver, I’m the frog.”

  “True. Well, I’m a Scorpio. And I promise not to sting you.”

  He was silent for a few minutes. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Here’s one. How about Titanic Taxis?”

  Ellis laughed. At least he was thinking big.

  The Apostolic Palace

  Vatican City

  Father Callahan donned a new white collar for his audience with Heinz Lang. In his years of services to the CIA and the Vatican, the priest had used his cover to gather sensitive information from a litany of powerful people throughout Europe. He had trafficked stolen data and weapons for some of the world’s most lethal operatives. He had eliminated a fanatic who planned to detonate a dirty bomb in St. Peter’s Square. Yet today, in preparation for a meeting with the 85-year-old head of Vatican Intelligence, his forehead was slick with sweat.

  He climbed the stairs toward the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, rubbing a dollop of hand sanitizer between his palms and over his lips. After his tense evening with Agent Carver at Le Colonne, he had been up much of the night praying for guidance. Of his vow of poverty, he was sure to be in good standing with God. The entirety of his salary from the CIA and various other clients was piling up in a Swiss bank account, and would be tapped only in retirement, with more than half the funds slated for charity. Regarding his vow of chastity, he also presented a nearly flawless record, with his only slip a heated embrace and brief kiss with a widow he consoled early in his career as a priest. It was his vow of obedience that he had failed in. There was nothing he could do. Obedience to the CIA and obedience to God seemed, at the moment, like conflicting actions.

  Although the Jesuits maintained a fortified headquarters nearby known as the Jesuit Curia – which was, coincidentally, less than a city block from Carver’s hotel room at the Palazzo della Rovere – Lang preferred to office in the Apostolic Palace. Citing security concerns, as well as a desire to be as close as possible to serve His Holiness, he had requested an office on the third floor and moved in less than a month after his election.

  In a maze of offices, reception rooms and tiny chapels, Callahan spotted Lang’s office by the hallmark Greek IHT letters that were displayed in bronze above the door. The society explained this acronym – which the priest had also seen etched in ink on the bodies of the gunmen in the Rome morgue – as an abbreviation of the Greek spelling of Jesus, iota-eta-sigma. Rumors of alternate meanings had dogged the Jesuits for centuries. Some said that Constantine – the ancient master of the Roman Empire who had first declared Rome to be a Christian city – had created the acronym himself from the phrase In hoc signo vinces, meaning, “In this sign you shall conquer.”

  Lang was behind his desk when the priest entered. Wood paneling behind it depicted painted images of the first three superiors general from the 1500s, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Borgia and Everard Mercurian. Lang’s hair looked whiter than when Callahan had last met him, but his frame looked just as fit underneath his black ankle-length cassock. A simple wooden cross dangled from a necklace made of simple leather.

  “Your Excellency,” Callahan said with his hands folded before him.

  The corners of Lang’s lips curled up. He stood and walked around his desk, held out his right hand and watched as Callahan knelt and kissed the brass ring that bore the Jesuit symbol. It was said that superiors general in recent times had dispensed with this custom among their own kind, deeming it too demeaning for those within Vatican Intelligence.

  But Lang was a classicist. During his reign as Jesuit Chief, he had openly yearned for the formal era of his youth, when the church’s exclusive use of Latin in Mass, elaborate liturgical rituals and formal attire added an aura of mystery to the Holy See.

  He had been as active a superior general as the church had ever seen. Few before him had attempted to manage the entirety of the Jesuit mission. The society’s schools and orphanages and other groups operated in every corner of the world. Lang, having made a commitment to visit each and every one of the provinces during his first two years in the post, possessed an itinerary that would have been aggressive for anyone, let alone a man in his 70s and 80s. He appeared to have a limitless well of energy.

  Since stepping down, he had brought the same level of devotion to Vatican Intelligence. Now Lang raised the hem of his cassock slightly and walked to a sitting area at the far end of the room, an intimate array of chairs where visitors could enjoy the priceless view afforded them from the Apostolic Palace.

  “So,” Lang began. “When we last chatted, you were to inform me of any inroads we made as to the investigation. I assume by your insistence about this meeting that you have something to report that was too sensitive to be handled by telephone.”

  “In a matter of speaking, Your Excellency,” Callahan replied before breaking out into a coughing fit.

  “Is it that troubling?”

  “Forgive me. The hours I’ve been keeping of late have not been good for my health.”

  “Then I would thank you to cover your mouth with
your sleeve when coughing. At my age, I can’t afford to get sick.”

  “Naturally,” Callahan replied. “In regards to the matter at hand, I regret to report that the two young lads you asked me to find are in the city morgue.”

  Lang’s face flattened. “Did they die violently?”

  The priest nodded. “In a most brutal fashion, I’m afraid.”

  Three days prior to Carver’s arrival in Rome, Callahan had received a surprise call from Lang, who had been visiting a Jesuit province in Brazil, where it was said that the church was losing ground to a groundswell of Mormon missionaries. But Lang’s call had nothing to do with evangelism. His request was cryptic, and he had given the priest almost no information to go on, other than to ask him to find two operatives who had disappeared in Rome after what he had described as a critical operation. He had mentioned only their names and nationalities. Lazlo Cruz, from Argentina, and Cesar Macchione, who was from Florence.

  The superior general stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and went to the window, looking out over Rome. Callahan hoped that he would not be asked how he had discovered the young Jesuits’ bodies. Although Lang was fully aware of Callahan’s working relationship with the CIA and other intelligence organizations, revealing that the information had come to him via the Americans would only incite Lang’s legendary paranoia.

  “I trust you did not claim the bodies.”

  “Correct,” Callahan answered. “And as you asked, I instructed Venice to deny any knowledge of the men if police are somehow able to trace them there.”

  Venice had been the birthplace of the Society in 1540, when Pope Paul III established the Jesuits as a formal religious order at the Palazzo San Marco. But the Jesuits had never been well received in the city of endless canals, and it had been abandoned as an outpost for centuries. Unbeknownst to most even within the Holy See, Lang had reclaimed it shortly after his election, transforming a shuttered church into a private barracks where future Vatican Intelligence agents were trained. When he had first learned of the Venice unit, and heard of the rumored 24 new recruits in training there, Callahan had wondered why intelligence services had been inflated at such a rapid rate. In recent years, they had fielded no more than 20 operatives in total. In light of recent events, Callahan was willing to entertain the notion that Agent Carver’s suspicions might be correct. Perhaps the Black Order had been resurrected after all.

  “Your Excellency, there must be some other way that I can serve you. Perhaps I can somehow complete the mission you had set out for the lads.”

  Only a slight turning of Lang’s head gave the priest any indication that his offer had been heard. The head of Vatican Intelligence stood at the window for half a minute longer, then returned to the seating area, sitting directly opposite his subject. The thin eyelids retracted themselves over Lang’s substantial eyeballs, and his lips pulled back at the edges, baring both teeth and gums. “Their chance is over,” he said. “We must be more aggressive, if that is even possible.”

  “To what end, your Excellency?”

  “Nothing less than the continuation of the one true Apostolic Church is at stake. The world criticized us for standing in the way of science,” Lang went on. “Yes, we persecuted heretics. Yes, we demanded repentance when scientific advancements contradicted church dogma. For centuries they said we were wrong. But now what will they say? What will the world say? How will God judge us if this comes to pass?”

  The priest smiled, but only because he was genuinely afraid. Nobody in the Vatican talked like this. Those popes and cardinals who had tortured and killed men of science were long dead. The mistakes of the past were, as a rule, either ignored or chalked up to the imperfection of man. Callahan had never in his life heard anyone in the Vatican suggest that the torment of Galileo, for example, had actually been justified.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Callahan said. “What will come to pass?”

  The head of Vatican Intelligence stood. He went to the grand desk, slid open the middle drawer and retrieved a tattered black and white photograph. A medium close-up of three boys who looked to be in their early teens. All three wore button-down military field shirts with black ties and long shorts. Each wore oversized swastika armbands. Despite the several decades that had passed since the photo had been taken, Callahan instantly recognized the boy on the left. He was the tallest, with white-blond hair and some sort of merit head pinned to his shirt. It was Heinz Lang.

  Then Lang pointed to the boy in the middle, tapping the boy’s head repeatedly. He was the best looking of the three, with chiseled, serious features.

  “This man,” Lang said. “His name is Sebastian Wolf. Find him for me, and you will have done a lifetime of good deeds.”

  Julian Speers Residence

  Arlington, Virginia

  It was nearly 3 a.m. when Speers, having left McLean a short time earlier, pulled up to the four-bedroom colonial house. Despite having moved in several months earlier, he still felt like a stranger here. There was just so little time now. Somehow, Speers had fooled himself into believing that no job could have been more demanding than his former role as White House Chief of Staff. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. He routinely worked over 100 hours per week now. Some nights it didn’t even make sense to come home. The cushions of his office couch were nearly as familiar to him as the mattress in his bedroom.

  The ankle he had twisted was still swollen and weak. He stepped out of the Highlander and used an aluminum crutch to limp toward the house. The moment he unlocked the door and heard the twins’ cries, he knew the injury wouldn’t earn him any sympathy points. His wife met him at the door, kissed him tersely and handed him one of the swaddled infants.

  “I had to go to the ER,” he said, but his exhausted wife did not hear him over the twins’ wailing. She took the other child upstairs without looking back.

  He kissed the baby on the forehead and hobbled to the kitchen pantry. He reached onto the highest shelf and searched blindly with his fingers for a Tupperware container. A wave of relief washed over him as he located it, pulling down the secret stash of pink pacifiers. His wife had banned them several weeks ago, fearing that the children weren’t learning – how had she put it? – “self-soothing techniques.”

  The baby’s response to the sight of the pacifier was decidedly Pavlovian, the mouth opening and puckering instantly. Speers rinsed it under the kitchen sink faucet and promptly put it into the child’s mouth. She was asleep in seconds.

  She felt good in his arms. He held her with one hand, retrieved an ice pack from the freezer and went into the living room. He sat in an easy chair and removed his shoes, socks and the ankle wrap without setting the child down. Then he rested the bag of ice on the ottoman, nestled his swollen ankle into it, and reclined.

  The little darling was swaddled and asleep in his arms. Speers felt himself drifting, too. He didn’t fight it. He rather enjoyed the sensation of letting go for the first time all day.

  His phone buzzed. And just like that, his state of bliss was gone. Speers sometimes fantasized about having the kind of job where you could turn off your phone.

  He glanced at the screen. It was Blake Carver. He answered.

  “Blake?” he whispered.

  “I can barely hear you,” Carver said.

  “I’m holding Isabella.” He looked at his watch. It was nearly two in the morning.

  “Must be nice,” Carver said. “I’m visiting morgues, and you’re playing house.”

  The DNI didn’t need Carver’s judgment right now. The Eden search had turned up nothing. He had three bodies on his hands, a tiny team stretched across the globe and a president that needed results right away.

  “You called for a reason?” Speers said.

  “I’m trying to get hold of Ellis. She left a weird message saying she was at the Mayflower Hotel. Is it just me, or are you guys just living it up over there while I’m busting my butt?”

  Speers swore and told Carver
to hold on. He used his crutch to get to his feet, gently setting the baby down onto the soft leather where he had been sitting, balancing her in the cradle of the seat cushion so she could not roll out. Then he hobbled into the next room.

  “Had you bothered to read Ellis’ update on the mission cloud,” he barked, “You’d know that we almost got killed last night!”

  He provided Carver with a brief summary and, once he had cooled down, told him about the notes and manuscript they had fished out of Drucker’s now-incinerated apartment. “That’s why she’s locked down at the hotel,” he added. “I’ve got Jack McClellan leading security there.”

  “That’s weird,” Carver said. “I just talked to her sister, Jenna. Apparently Haley left the hotel a couple hours ago.”

  Puget Sound

  The boat traced the contours of the West Seattle coastline. Its stern finally pointed southwest. It was getting colder. Ellis was losing the feeling in her hands. The dampness was seeping into her bones. It wasn’t too cold – about 40 degrees – but on the water, it felt frosty. She envied Captain Zack’s coat.

  “There’s a fuzzy blanket under your seat,” he said. “No charge.”

  No charge for the business advice either, Ellis thought. She got to her feet, lifted the seat cushion and found a silver and blue stadium blanket emblazoned with the Seattle Seahawks logo. She wrapped it around her shoulders and stood next to the captain.

  “I reckon this must be pretty important,” Captain Zack said. “Anything you can talk about?”

  “Missing person,” she said, and there was some truth to it. Her original objective had been to connect the dots between Preston and Gish and, if possible, find out who their common enemy was. Now that Mary Borst had gone missing, however, she was more intrigued by the role the Borsts themselves played in all of this. According to Drucker’s notes, Vera Borst, Gish and Preston were all high-ranking Fellowship members. What, if anything, was Mary’s role? Had she simply witnessed a murder and freaked out, or had she had a role in either Preston’s death or the fire?