The Fellowship

by William Tyree

They came to an elevator and went inside. Speers used the butt of his cane to push the button for the 11 floor. He waited for the doors to close and then said, “Ellis doesn’t even recognize me. If she had listened to me in the first place, she would’ve never ended up here.”

  “You think someone is targeting her?”

  “All I know is she met with Nathan Drucker, and he ended up dead. Then Ellis comes out here, and we’ve got three more bodies on our hands. A water taxi captain with a goofy name claims that he charged her 300 bucks to take her out to Vashon, then saved her life with the only weapon he had on the boat, a freaking flare gun.”

  Fordham’s face lit up. “Flare gun? I’ve always wondered what one of those would do to a person. Seems like they could burn a hole right through somebody.”

  “No such luck. It hit the a-hole right in the face, though. Caught his beard and hair on fire. Captain Zack said the guy looked like an asteroid with legs when he ran out of the house.”

  They took the elevator to the 11th floor. Fordham’s special agents were stationed outside the room. Two thick-necked studs in their mid-20s. They eyed Speers and Fordham warily.

  “Can I help you?” the elder of the two agents said.

  “I can see why you wouldn’t recognize me, but my friend here?” Speers motioned toward Fordham. “Seriously?”

  Both men shook their head. “Some ID might make this go faster.”

  “How about you go back to the Seattle field office and look at the picture of the guy plastered on the wall next to the president?”

  By then Fordham already had his FBI badge out of his jacket. A light went on in the talker’s eyes as he stood a little straighter. “Mr. Director, sir. I apologize.”

  “That’s not necessary. The FBI has 35,000 employees and at the end of the day, I’m just one of ‘em.”

  The double doors opened. The talker stepped aside so that the surgeon could pass. Speers flashed his ID. “Director of National Intelligence.” Then he took out the passport belonging to the assailant, Roberto Melfi. The man was balding and bearded, with a stocky-looking neck and face.

  “Ah,” the surgeon said. “You’re here about the burn victim?”

  “It’s the other way around, doc. He’s not the victim. He’s the bad guy.”

  “Well I hope force was really justified, because in addition to the burned face, fractured vertebrae and broken ribs, I had to remove what was left of his right eye.”

  “We need to talk to him. Is he awake?”

  The doc stiffened. “Did you hear what I just said? Your people really jacked him up. He’ll be lucky to make it through the day.”

  Speers’ phone rang. He pulled up Eva’s mobile profile on his phone and showed it to the doctor. It was Eva’s official presidential portrait. “Okay, doc. You tell the president we can’t talk to a suspected terrorist.”

  “Wait, that’s really her calling? Right now?” The doc put up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Talking is going to be tough, though. His lips are burned off.”

  Speers answered the phone as Fordham ushered the doctor out of earshot. “Madam President.”

  “It’s been four hours since I had a progress report,” she said. “That’s too long relative to the heat I’m feeling.”

  “I’m sorry, Madam President.”

  “The prime minister is having second thoughts about keeping this under wraps. I need some good news.”

  Speers understood. The longer this crisis went unresolved, the more likely that it would become an international scandal.

  “We identified two suspects,” Speers said. “One deceased. The other one’s in bad shape.”

  He heard the tension in Eva’s voice ease a bit. “That’s encouraging. So what’s the bad news?”

  Speers told her about Vera Borst and Dane Mitchell.

  There was a long silence before the president spoke again. “So let me get this straight. Three international leaders, representing three separate bodies of government, have been brutally tortured and killed, thousands of miles apart from each other.”

  “Plus the professor,” Speers reminded her. “I understand Dr. Mitchell was a rising name in the bioengineering world.”

  He did not tell her the truly terrible news. Captain Zack had called 911, and the local police and paramedics had been on the scene within minutes. The FBI had, of course, asked the first responders to keep the story out of the press, but with this kind of a horror show, these embargoes never lasted long on the local level. There was little they could do short of sequestering everyone involved. Sooner or later, details about the heinous crime were going to hit the press. He would be worried enough about that part for both of them.

  *

  No one – not even his brothers in Venice – would have recognized Brother Roberto Melfi. Bandages covered his entire face. Two small holes had been carved into the bandages. One, over his nostrils, enabled him to breathe. The other permitted him to see out of his remaining eye.

  The monk could only stare up helplessly as a man positioned himself over the eyehole, looking down as if peering into a deep, dark well. He heard the man take the Lord’s name in vain. Melfi forgave him for that. Anyone would have been horrified by his appearance.

  “Hello,” he said. “My name is Julian Speers. Blink twice if you understand English.”

  Melfi knew English all too well. He also knew that he would not be alive much longer. Even now, his pain had receded, and he felt a certain lightness of being, as if his spirit was separating itself from his flesh. The Lord would take him soon. He felt obligated to use his final moments meaningfully. If only he knew how.

  “You are under arrest for the murders of Dane Mitchell and Vera Borst,” Speers said. “Understand?”

  He blinked twice.

  “Good. Can you tell us anything about the death of Rand Preston?”

  Melfi blinked only once.

  Speers’ face was suddenly tense. He did not believe him. “Are you telling me that you did not visit the home of Rand Preston in Washington D.C.? Blink twice if you were there.”

  Melfi blinked only once.

  Speers disappeared from view. Melfi heard him swearing again. He was chatting with someone. Yes, there was someone else in the room. They talked for a moment before Speers appeared again in his tunnel-like field of vision.

  “I’ll be honest with you. You killed a Swedish citizen on American soil. The Swedes are going to want you. You know what their prisons are like? It’ll be like being in a hotel. If you tell me what I need to know about the senator, I’ll consider releasing you into their custody.”

  Brother Melfi was not motivated by promises of light punishment. He would soon get his reward in heaven. Nevertheless, he blinked twice to show that he understood. Then he focused all his energy on his right hand. With considerable effort, he managed to lift it. He curled his fingers together and moved them slowly up and down, as if he were writing.

  Speers said something to the other man in the room. He disappeared from view. Melfi felt someone open his hand and place a pen between his fingers. Then he saw a note pad appear overhead. Speers must have been holding it. It seemed impossibly far away, but with the other man’s help, his writing hand was lifted toward it until the inky tip was pressed against the pad.

  He jotted a quick note.

  You must stop them.

  Speers flipped the notepad over and read it. His face broke into an icy grin. “Stop them? You did a pretty good job of that yourself. Those people are dead.”

  Melfi pressed the pen to the paper again.

  The others. The world is in danger.

  He felt his arm fall to his side. He heard the pen clatter on the linoleum floor. His right eye closed and he felt himself drift. He began to feel inner warmth. Someone lifted up his arm again, placed the pen within his grasp, and guided the hand toward the notepad. He opened his eyes.

  “Tell me how,” Speers commanded. “Concentrate. How is the world in danger?”

  He
wrote again.

  False prophets. A global war. Without state. Without end.

  He rested his arm for a moment as Speers digested this. His body was depleted. He could scarcely focus. How could he make them understand, when the words did not come to him?

  “Why did you kill Vera Borst?” Speers pushed.

  Melfi felt a burst of energy. A burst of inspiration. His hand shot back to the paper and he began writing:

  They said, “Come, let us build a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they try to do will be impossible for them. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.

  His arm once again fell to his side. The pen once again clattered on the floor. But now Melfi could see Speers with both eyes. How was this possible? He had heard the surgeon say that his right eye had been burned, and he was certain that it was covered with bandages.

  He saw Speers flip the pad and devour its contents. “Damn. I think he’s just writing random scripture.”

  The machine next to the bed emitted a loud noise. Suddenly Speers was over him. “Hello? Hey! Chad, Get that doctor in here!”

  Rome

  Carver struggled to keep his emotions in check as he viewed the grisly Seattle crime scene photos. There was a lot of blood. No doubt that some of it belonged to Ellis. What had she been doing there? It was just like her, getting on a plane without telling anyone.

  He took a deep breath, flooding his body with fresh oxygen. The truth was that he blamed himself. Maybe if he hadn’t jetted off to South Africa to get Nico, leaving her to fend for herself in London. Maybe if he hadn’t been so vocal about the fact that the team was so thin.

  He refocused on the images. Speers had annotated the snap of Vera Borst strung up with her hands tied behind her back: “You were right about the method.”

  He felt no pride in knowing that he had been able to deduce the killers’ technique upon observing Senator Preston’s body. What good had it done? It hadn’t stopped the murders from happening again. No one had been saved. It only told him that the killers were an unusually disciplined and cruel organization. What remained to be seen was whether they used torture to punish their victims, or whether they were actually extracting information.

  This thing was spreading like the flu. D.C., London, Rome and now Seattle. Four time zones. Four! How many assassins could there be? He understood Speers’ desire to keep the team size small for security reasons, but it was a gamble that was already blowing up in their faces. They needed more people on this.

  And to that end, how many more victims were targeted? Five? A hundred? And from what countries? The presence of a United Nations leader from the Netherlands among the casualty list only further clouded things.

  Nico was in the other room expanding his search. He was now focused on data-matching Borst’s purchase and travel histories with those of Preston and Gish. He hoped Arunus Roth was looking into Mary Borst’s background, because they had their hands full here.

  Carver opened a bottle of Pellegrino, settled onto the suite’s leather sofa and opened the document Speers had uploaded. He had scrawled, in all caps, a directive on the first page:

  DIGEST THOROUGHLY – DO NOT SKIM!!!

  Did Speers really expect him to read this entire thing? The document Nathan Drucker had made his life’s work was an unwieldy collection of typed and handwritten passages that had been worked and reworked countless times. What a mess. There were attributions and qualifications and scrawled illustrations all over the place. There were even sticky notes in Ellis’ handwriting that had been photocopied right onto the page, at times obscuring the original text. Some of the document wasn’t even edited, but rather looked like straight transcriptions from interviews.

  Carver focused on the first page of Drucker’s typewritten document and began to read.

  The Memoirs of Sebastian Wolf

  as told to Mr. Nathan Drucker

  I should start by telling you that the man who will try to stop us – all of us, from the very thing humanity has sought for these past two millennia – was once my best friend. I do not say this to be sentimental. I mean only to demonstrate that the harmonic echoes of the spiritual war we are now waging have sounded time and again throughout history, and I am but one conduit through which they are transmitted. Heinz Lang and I share a destiny. Every man has his Judas and Heinz Lang is mine.

  By the time you have read my story, my purpose in this epic will have been completed. This has been foretold. Sadly, Lang’s purpose, which is to preserve the empire of lies that he serves at all costs, and along with it a legacy of deceit, may still be underway. But know that what we have been waiting for shall come to pass, and know, too, that this is precisely what the Great Architect requires from us. Soon we will, all of us, I promise you, receive our heavenly reward.

  How shall I tell you how we arrived at this moment in history? There are so many possible starting points. Shall I describe the first time the stigmata flowed through my hands and feet?

  Without context, it could seem like some sort of cheap parlor trick. Or shall I tell you about The Fellowship, and how this great organization was created? Alas, it is possible that at the time this work is shared with the wider world, our senior brothers and sisters in the movement may yet need to remain hidden for several more years (Know that they both walk among you and look upon you from high, waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves to the world).

  Each of us experiences a pivotal moment in time when we are suddenly propelled at high speed toward our destiny. This is not the same as an awakening. It is rather a triggering moment, when we realize painful inconsistencies between our beliefs and reality. It is a moment when we realize that we are being led by God’s will toward Total Awareness.

  My moment occurred in Feldafing, Germany, on November 6, 1942. I was fifteen years old.

  This is my story.

  PART II

  The Reich School

  Feldafing, Germany

  November 6, 1942

  Cadet Sebastian Wolf woke moments before the merciless clang of the steel triangle echoed throughout the yellow mansion. The cadets had 15 minutes to relieve themselves, dress and assemble outside for morning calisthenics. As he did every morning, Wolf sat up and groped for the box of matches next to the bed. He broke the first match by striking it against the wrong side of the box. He turned the box and sparked the second, touching the ensuing flame to the wick of the gas lantern on the nightstand.

  He spat into his palm and swept the moisture over the wild tuft of white blonde hair at his widow’s peak until it lay flat. As usual, Heinz Lang stirred in the bunk beside him. And as usual, a shoe flew from Lang’s hand, striking the still-sleeping Albert Hoppe in the bunk across the room. Albert was a heavy sleeper.

  The boys donned white exercise shorts, white tank tops and brown lace-up saddle shoes with steel toes. They trickled downstairs like white blood cells into an artery, speaking little as they joined other cadets in the cold morning air. Nearly 200 other cadets exited the other mansions, which, they had been told, had been owned by Jewish bankers who had decided to emigrate in the 1930s.

  The grass was tipped with the first frost of the season, glowing faintly in the purple pre-dawn light. Although it was still too dark to see clearly, they formed remarkably symmetrical callisthenic lines. The previous months and years of drilling had instilled a sense of automated navigation in the boys. They moved as a single organism, powerful in their unity.

  Obersturmführer Beck– a veteran of the first war with France whose fingers were calloused and bent, like tree roots –led more than 200 students in jumping jacks, pushups, sit-ups and various stretching exercises. Beck’s voice exuded unforgiving authority,
and yet somehow, managed to be encouraging rather than punishing. A full year after his arrival at the Reich School, the boys were fully synchronized, bending, stretching and pushing in perfect harmony.

  As the purple morning light faded to bluish yellow, Wolf noticed that the bleachers, which were typically free of spectators, were full. Two men sat front row center, surrounded by a large number of aides. Soon whispers began, blowing softly across the field from one column of students to the next.

  “Vogel,” Lang whispered just after he had heard it from another boy. A visit from Otto Vogel, Hitler’s private secretary, was not so unusual. The Reich School was the most prestigious of all Germany’s political leadership institutions, and it was only natural that Hitler, through Vogel, wanted regular progress reports on his country’s future leaders. But Vogel had another reason for coming to the school so often. His son, Adolf Otto Vogel Jr. – named after his godfather, Adolf Hitler – was enrolled in one of the lower grades. The concept of royalty was anathema to National Socialism, but there was no denying that the Vogel boy, by virtue of his relationship to the führer, was regarded as a prince.

  Wolf imagined the solid-looking Vogel, a man with a square jaw and no neck to speak of. The red lapels of his uniform – adorned with the party eagle surrounded by gold laurels – marked him as one of the party elite.

  As the boys launched into jumping jacks, Lang whispered, “Himmler!”

  This was truly a name worthy of gossip. Heinrich Himmler was head of the Schutzstaffel, or the SS. Following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich months earlier, Himmler had firmly established himself as the second-most powerful man in Germany. The very name prompted Wolf to step up his workout. Himmler was a man to be feared.