“A private Learjet owned by the World Fellowship Initiative landed at Ciampino Airport last week. There’s a good chance that Wolf was on it.”
Carver felt as if he had known it all along. Despite the killings in London, Washington, Seattle and Geneva, Wolf’s past and present always seemed to point to the Eternal city.
He put his hands in his pockets and held Nico’s gaze. “A lot of people would have given up after what you went through tonight.”
Nico seemed stunned by the lack of irony in Carver’s sentiment. “Well, out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they say.”
“I won’t let you down when this is over. I want you to know that.”
Nico held his gaze for a moment before gathering himself. “This sincerity stuff is a little awkward coming from you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I was about to look at the stuff we took from the crypt. Care to join?”
Nico went to the little kitchenette and found the manila envelope next to the toaster. He dumped its contents out onto the Formica countertop. It was a hasty assembly of loose notes, receipts and documents.
The two men quickly rifled through the mess. It hit Carver that this collection of ordinary items could easily have been a collection from his own desk in D.C. Were they somehow tracking expenses for reimbursement, or was one of them simply fastidious about his own personal finances?
Among the many incidental receipts for fuel and food, were two punched airline tickets from Rome to London.
Nico examined the dates. “The arrival date at Heathrow was three days prior to Sir Gish’s assassination.”
Carver nodded. “Good. Upload them to the mission cloud.”
“Will do. And one other thing. While you were sleeping, I managed to hack into one of the creep’s phones. There were no messages stored on the device, but I did uncover these.”
Carver took the phone and flipped through a series of candid photos of Sir Gish. In each he was dressed in a suit and was clearly on a subway car of some type.
“They were following him,” Carver observed. “Look at this one. You can see a station ad for the London Eye behind him. That’s right on Gish’s daily routine to parliament.”
Had they indeed gotten lucky and killed Gish’s assassins last night? He hoped so. It would make Prichard’s death a little easier to stomach.
Carver kept flipping. There were hundreds of pictures. Some looked as if they had been taken on a different device and simply downloaded to the phone.
One such image compelled him to pause. “The Council on Faith luncheon in Washington D.C.,” he said, reading the image tag.
“Looks like it was taken on 35 mil,” Nico added.
“For sure. It was taken in 2001. You couldn’t get this kind of definition on digital back then.”
Several young congressmen were pictured with a white-haired man whom, judging by the way they all deferred to him with their body language, they obviously regarded as a patriarch.
“This might be the last public snapshot of Sebastian Wolf,” Carver said.
“Check out that hair. What’s that gel he’s using? Liquefied horse cartilage?”
“Tag it and upload to the mission cloud.”
The final image was the one that really made Carver’s heart race. The subject was thin, with neck-length black hair, an Anglo nose and Asian eyes behind black-framed Armani eyeglasses.
“Adrian Zhu.”
It was all starting to add up. The Fellowship’s investment in LifeEmberz. Zhu’s disappearance in Rome. And now this confirmation that Zhu himself was on the Black Order hit list. There was no question about it. Zhu wasn’t merely associated with Wolf’s organization. He was critical to its success.
And if Wolf was in Rome, Carver was willing to bet everything that Zhu was still here too.
*
Carver rubbed his eyes and yawned into his hand. Nico had finally gone to bed, but he had continued working. The sun was coming in through the balcony glass now, the light warming his back. In the last hour he had organized the items they had taken from the church crypt into three piles. One pile pointed at evidence that seemed to confirm that the Black Order operatives they had killed were likely responsible for the death of Sir Gish. Another pile pointed to a hunt for Adrian Zhu. And yet another contained the lone photograph of Sebastian Wolf. All were Black Order targets.
He called Dr. Charlotte Calipari, a molecular geneticist Speers had introduced him to at a State Department event the previous year. Although it had been some time since they had connected, and it was nearly 10 p.m. back in D.C., he took a chance. Calipari was the only person he had ever met who had supervised the creation of a paleo-DNA lab.
“If you had to build such a lab today,” Carver asked, “and you wanted to also clone from dead tissue, where would you find the equipment?”
There was a long pause before her response. “Well that’s not the sort of question I hear every day.”
Carver was acutely aware of the strangeness of the question. The fact was that Calipari owed him no favors. The only tool at his disposal was flattery. “When we met, I was impressed by you. I thought if there was anyone in the world qualified to answer this, it would be you.”
“You’re too kind. Fortunately, the answer to your question is simple. Short of creating your own machines, there would be only a couple of places where you could turn to get what you needed. The community is very small. There are just two providers in the entire world that are really considered state-of-the-art right now.”
Carver smiled. “And those would be?”
Psychiatric Office
Washington D.C.
Ellis wore oversized sunglasses to mask the facial bruises she’d sustained in Seattle. She eased down on the couch, her demeanor cool and distant behind the big black lenses. The doctor had said she’d be a little foggy for the next few days. Her memories were coming back to her, but not quickly enough to be of much use.
The shrink was in her mid-40s, with long brown hair tied in a ponytail and expensive eyeglasses. She sat across from Ellis in an armchair that looked comfortable enough to nap in.
“So,” she said after some cursory introductions. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Ellis shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m here. It’s not my choice.”
Speers had personally insisted that she come. Some agency rule about preventing post-traumatic stress.
The shrink nodded sympathetically. “I understand they gave you something out in Seattle to calm your nerves.”
“Well I’m not taking it.”
“And why is that?”
“My job requires that my thoughts be as clear as possible.”
The shrink scanned the notes in her lap. “I was told you’re not on active duty right now. That you’d been granted some recovery time.”
True, she wasn’t out in the field. But the weight of the investigation hadn’t left her mind for one minute. She had spent every waking moment going over the case notes, including Drucker’s manuscript. She was unable to stay awake for long periods, but even in sleep, the Living Scriptures were circling round and round in her foggy brain. She had trouble concentrating. She couldn’t eat. And she dreamed in numbers. Some endless, unsolvable code.
The shrink leaned forward. “I specialize in trauma. I see a lot of military. It helps some people to start by telling me their experience in general terms. Even if your case was classified, telling me basic information is permissible within the privacy protections of our relationship. Believe me, I’ve heard everything.”
Ellis doubted that anyone had told the shrink anything like what she had experienced. Nothing Ellis had seen in Iraq had even come close. What she saw in Seattle was straight out of a horror movie.
“You want to help?” Ellis said. “Okay. I need to remember something specific.”
“What would that be?”
“A conversation. The night I was attacked, someo
ne was dying right in front of me. She was telling me something. It might be important. A name, maybe.”
The shrink was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure you’re ready to remember that level of detail. It could do more harm than good.”
Yeah, obviously. Part of Ellis was terrified of remembering any more. She might never sleep again. But her gut told her that she had to know.
“Haley?”
“There was a woman hanging over me,” Ellis began, making a mental note not to mention Vera Borst by name.
“Hanging?” the shrink asked, trying unsuccessfully to mask the dread she felt inside. “Hanging how?”
“In mid-air.” Her voice was suddenly tight with emotion. “She was bound at the wrists. Suspended by the wrists by a thick rope. Bleeding. She had been sliced up.”
The shrink did her best not to show the revulsion that she felt. “Again, I’m worried that we may be going too fast.”
“She knew she was dying. And I think she told me something important. A message of some sort. I need to remember what that was.”
The shrink sipped her tea. An obvious stalling tactic. She was formulating what she wanted to say next.
“Can you do hypnosis?” Ellis asked.
“Sure, but in this case…”
“You want to help? Then I want you to hypnotize me.”
Piazza di Spagna
Nico woke to slushing and splashing sounds. He looked at the clock next to the bed. He had slept four hours, which was more than Carver had allowed him since this little adventure had begun. His body complained as he turned, aching all over from the bruises he had taken during the previous evening’s ordeal. There was a little blood on his pillow, too. He touched the ear that had been cut, not at all surprised to find that the scab had come off in the night.
He rose, shuffled into the bathroom and found Carver stripped down to his boxers, kneeling in front of the tub, rubbing a soaked garment with detergent.
“That shirt is dry-clean only,” Nico said in a mock-scolding voice.
“Hilarious.”
Carver stood, looking down at the tub full of submerged garments. He had been soaking them since daybreak with a bottle of stain remover and a packet of detergent that room service had brought up. Despite his scrubbing, those blood and powder stains hadn’t faded much. It wasn’t like they could just give them to the hotel laundry service. These clothes contained evidence that could put them in an Italian prison for a very long time.
“I’m ready to work,” Nico said. “What’s on the agenda?”
“I’m going to give you the names of two laboratory equipment manufacturers, along with the model numbers of some specialty items. Extremely expensive, completely custom, sold to a very limited number of customers. I want you to find out if either of them shipped equipment to Rome within the past two years. I don’t care how you do it. Hack into their billing systems if you have to.”
Nico leaned up against the doorframe and folded his arms across his chest. “Do I have to ask?”
“If my theory is right, a shipment from at least one of these companies should lead us to a lab here in Rome. And that is where we will find Adrian Zhu, Mary Borst and, if we are very lucky, Mr. Sebastian Wolf.”
Psychiatric Office
Washington D.C.
“Haley?” Jack McClellan’s voice startled Ellis as she emerged from the session. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” she answered without thinking. And no, she wasn’t all right. She had just been to a place in her memory that truly terrified her, and she didn’t even know what time it was. She had forgotten that Jack was even here. It seemed like days since he had driven her here from the safehouse in McLean.
There were a couple of young girls in the waiting room. Both lowered their magazines slightly to sneak a peek. They were sizing her up. That was the way it worked in these places. You hoped to spot someone who looked more damaged than you. At least then you could feel a little better about yourself.
“Jill called when you were in there,” McClellan said as he held the door open for her. “She wants to know if she could get lamb shawarma delivered. Said you know a good place. I told her nothing gets delivered to the safehouse, but we could get one of the guys to pick it up.”
Shawarma? Screw shawarma. Couldn’t he see her quaking? Couldn’t he see what she had just been through?
Her forehead throbbed, and she remembered the big sunglasses. She’d slipped them back on just before standing up. To hide the bruises. It had been the shrink’s suggestion. How had she put it? You might be more comfortable with those on.
A few seconds later they were outside, standing on 10 and G Street. St. Patrick’s Cathedral was across the street. It had been her regular church a few years back when she had lived in Chinatown. She hadn’t been there in a couple of years.
She darted between two cars and raced across the street.
“Where you going?” Jack called after her. “Haley? We have to get back.”
When she entered the 18-century church, she wasn’t sure why she had come. The next mass didn’t start for another hour. She sat in a back pew, unfurled her scarf and used the end of it to wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks.
“My job is to keep you safe,” Jack said. He was standing in the aisle, looking down at her in a way that reminded her of her own father. “This kind of stunt stops now.”
Ellis looked down at the piece of paper in her hands. A transcription of what she had recalled during her hypnosis. At the bottom of the sheet of paper, circled in pen, was a 32-digit alphanumeric sequence. Vera Borst had used her last moments to reveal it to her. Now that the hypnosis had finally been purged it from her subconscious, her relief was tempered by the fact that she still didn’t know what the numbers meant.
“Haley, please.”
“Just a little time. That’s all I need.”
Jack sighed. “Ten minutes. Then we’re going, no arguments. Do we understand each other?”
A confessional booth came into focus along the western edge of the sanctuary. She recalled her first time in confession, as an eight-year-old child. She had been too shy to speak to the priest peering at her through the tiny veiled screen. After several unsuccessful attempts to start a conversation, he had simply laughed and given her a blessing. It was a good feeling that had stayed with her throughout her life.
Now she found herself on her feet, peering in through the open curtain.
“Have a seat.” The priest’s voice was more youthful than Ellis had expected. “Peace be with you.”
Ellis drew the curtain behind her and sat, making the sign of the cross. The screen disguising the priest’s face was closed. That was good. Ellis preferred it that way.
“Bless me Father,” she said quietly, “For I have sinned. It has been 11 days since my last confession. These are my sins.”
Her recap was automatic. Brief, lacking any real detail, and neatly categorized into several general areas: desire, envy, gluttony, greed and selfishness. As if the events of the past few days hadn’t really happened at all.
The priest was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”
The next sound from Ellis was somewhere between a cry and a laugh. She took her sunglasses off and held them in her lap. “Sorry.”
“No need to be sorry,” the priest said. “Would you like to do this face-to-face?”
“No offense, but no, I wouldn’t.”
“None taken. So what’s up?”
She tried to gather herself. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Just start with one word. The rest will follow.”
“What if someone asked you for protection? Someone with beliefs that were against everything you’d been taught?”
“Welcome to my world. Most of the people I help have no connection with our beliefs.”
“I’m not talking about the weekly soup kitchen, Father. I mean real protection.”
“As in mortal danger?”
Ellis nodded. “The person in danger is…someone that I don’t know at all. And her child.”
The priest hedged for a moment. “I would probably advise you to contact the authorities.”
“I am the authorities.”
“Oh. You’re with the police?”
“I can’t say more. But let me ask you another way. What if you knew that this child’s very presence would cause violence and death? Would you still protect that child?”
“God doesn’t ask us to make those types of decisions. For us, every life is precious.”
“He’s asking me, Father. What if the church itself was genuinely threatened?”
The youthful voice sounded weary now. “I have to ask…are you under the care of a doctor?”
“I’m not crazy. I’m asking for your spiritual opinion.”
“All right. I’ll tell you what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say on the matter. In short, those who hold authority have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the community entrusted to their responsibility. And furthermore, the literature says that justice does not exclude the death penalty, if this is indeed the only possible way of defending human lives against the aggressor.”
“That’s helpful.”
“To be clear, even within this context, it’s never okay to use God’s name to justify murder. We each take that responsibility upon ourselves, and throw ourselves upon the mercy of the Lord. If you are contemplating such actions, I would like to recommend several scriptural readings that may help you think as Jesus intended us to. Just a moment.”
By the time the priest began reading, Ellis was gone.
Vatican District
“That’s Father Callahan’s building,” Carver told Seven as he pointed at the elegant four-floor structure across the street. He had always guessed that with Callahan’s income from the CIA, Vatican Intelligence and other sources, his digs were a cut above what most of the priests had in the Eternal City. This confirmed it. The apartment was on the third floor, with shutters that opened from both bedrooms. A small balcony jutted out from the living room with window boxes full of fresh flowers.
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