The Fellowship

by William Tyree

  “A clever rouse intended to deceive Pontius Pilate,” Lang said.

  Seven rejoined the group. “The lab is empty.”

  Lang’s goon came up behind her now. He was breathing heavily, as if he were a child having a tantrum. “Can I rope him?” he pleaded.

  “No,” Lang said. He kissed his cross again. “We will not punish him. That will be left to God. But scripture does tell us that he must die. That prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

  Wolf rose from his throne, appearing to gaze over them. His face was content, as if he had finally arrived at his destination after a long journey. He held his arms out slightly to his sides. It was an invitation. He was ready to be martyred.

  Lang reached under his cloak and produced the dagger. He ran his fingers down the shining blade. “I took this from you when you had your episode in Venice.”

  “Episode? That strikes me as quite clinical. Is that what you’ve called it all these years?”

  “You don’t actually believe you were blessed with the stigmata?” Lang said. “The gunshot you sustained in Paris had gradually become infected. You were ill with fever. Your visions were nothing more than a hallucination.”

  He drew closer to Wolf, offering him the dagger. Magi whined, alternating nervously between his master and Lang.

  “I will save you the indignity of the rope,” Lang said, drawing closer to the throne. “Take your own life now so that you can meet your maker and learn the error of your ways.”

  Wolf shook his head. “I left Catholicism long ago. But I must admit, I am still superstitious about suicide.”

  “Please. I will even hear your confession as you bleed to death. Perhaps then God would have mercy on your soul.”

  “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction,” Wolf spat, his face suddenly full of hatred. “Now make me the martyr that I am destined to become!”

  Lang lunged forward with the dagger. His aim was true, lodging the tip of the blade within Wolf’s side. Magi jumped, clamping his jaws around the old Jesuit’s wrist, shaking his head back and forth to tear the flesh.

  One of the soldiers squeezed off three rounds, neutralizing the animal. The smell of gunpowder awakened Carver’s senses. As Lang squirmed under the dead canine, and Wolf collapsed across the ancient throne, he knew the time to bring Preston’s killers to justice was now. There would not be a better opportunity.

  The four able-bodied survivors of the villa assault stood in a quadrangle of death, with the ossuary at the center. Both of Lang’s henchmen stood on the other side of the marble platform. As Carver swung his rifle toward them, both soldiers were already in motion. Seven, too, had been at the ready, preparing to fire from the hip.

  It was impossible to tell who fired next. The fusillade of automatic gunfire seemed to come all at once. The throne room was suddenly alive with chalk dust and smoke and blood spray.

  Carver found himself lying in the dirt, winded. He had been hit. A coating of white chalk fell over him like snow. He felt his chest, where the pain was the worst. It was dry. The vest had held.

  Somewhere to his right, he heard the unmistakable sound of a fresh magazine shoved into a weapon. He saw the silhouette of an armed man in the dissipating haze, moving toward him.

  Carver rolled right and emptied the rest of his clip into the haze. He immediately rolled left in case there was return fire, but none came. All was quiet. All was still. He waited until the air cleared enough so that he could make out a boot, then a leg, and then another set of boots. Preston’s killers were, at last, dead.

  He got to his feet. Seven was slumped along the western wall of the throne room. The fabric of her hoodie was shredded in front, and the nanofibers of her protection vest were splayed, but not broken. Unconscious, but breathing. At best, she was going to have a few broken ribs. At worst, she could be bleeding internally. He had to get her to a doctor.

  He stepped over her and pulled the dead dog off Lang. The Vatican Intelligence chief coughed and groaned. Still alive, but rapidly losing blood from deep bites in his wrist and throat. Carver tore a piece of fabric from his vestments and tied it around the man’s wrist as a tourniquet. Before he could even tend to the man’s throat, he saw the old man’s chest grow still. There was no use trying to resuscitate him. Chest compressions would only expedite the flow of blood from his body. Heinz Lang’s long journey was finally over.

  He got to his feet and regarded the throne. Wolf was sprawled backwards across the imperfect stone furnishing, his arms splayed out to his sides. The tip of the dagger was still lodged within the ribs on his left torso. He had also been shot in the neck and chest. His white hair was tainted with crimson blood spatter and his eyes looked heavenward.

  Carver gazed into the dead man’s eyes, longing for the secrets they still held.

  Safehouse

  McLean, Virginia

  Speers let himself into the unremarkable three-bedroom brick home near ODNI headquarters. The place smelled like bacon and eggs and coffee. The smell turned Speers’ stomach. He had stayed at the office all night with Chad Fordham and Arunus Roth, monitoring the situation in Rome. To stay awake, the two of them had eaten an entire bag of leftover Halloween candy.

  Jack McClellan stood from his post in the foyer. “Morning, director,” McClellan said as Speers took his coat off and hung it on the rack behind the door.

  “Evening, Jack. The girls up yet?”

  McClellan nodded. “Jenna’s always up. She’s going stir crazy. Can’t blame her, I guess. After Haley’s little Mayflower stunt, we’ve really had this little place on lockdown. I’ve got people in the backyard, in the kitchen and in the hallway between their bedrooms. No closed doors allowed.”

  “You’ve been spooning them at night too?”

  “Everything but,” McClellan grinned.

  “And Haley?”

  McClellan furrowed his brow. “Quiet. Real quiet. She’s up, though. I heard Jenna bring her some tea a little while ago.”

  Speers slapped McClellan on the shoulder. “Unless something changes, we can all go home in about 24 hours.”

  “Good. Haley’s down the hall, second door.”

  As McClellan had indicated, Speers found the door to the bedroom ajar. Ellis was sitting in a rocking chair, sipping tea and gazing out into the backyard. She wore black leggings and a gray wool sweater that the secret service had brought from the apartment she shared with Jenna. A Bible and a pair of rosary beads rested on the table next to her.

  Speers shut the door behind him. “How’s your head?”

  “Numb.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around at the room furnishings. The bedspread, lamps and dresser had all been purchased decades ago, but they weren’t what anyone would call classic. “Jeeze,” he said. “You think this stuff would even sell at a yard sale?”

  She sighed, but still did not look at him, and then took a long sip of tea. “What do you want, Julian?”

  “To tell you that it’s over. Wolf and Lang are dead.”

  Another long pause. She drew one leg up, resting the heel against the edge of the rocking chair. “And the ossuary?”

  “En route to the Vatican as we speak.”

  Speers frowned. He wasn’t expecting a high-five, but he resented the lack of any response. Maybe the concussion was worse than they had thought. Maybe he needed to have another neurologist check her out.

  “Not that you asked, but Blake is all right, by the way. It’s just a matter of getting him home now.”

  “I’m glad,” she said after a pause. “Is that it?”

  “We also got Preston’s killers. You can thank Blake for that.”

  No smile. No reaction.

  Ellis set her tea down. “Y
ou could have called to tell me all this. Why are you here?”

  He pulled a grape lollipop from his pocket, unwrapped it and slid it between his cheek and gum. Screw his stomach ache. He needed a sugar fix.

  “I need to know if you’ve remembered anything else about Seattle.”

  Her answer was quick. “No.”

  “How did it go with the shrink?”

  Ellis turned to face him for the first time. “It’s personal, Julian.”

  “Obviously, I want to respect your personal boundaries. But this is mission critical.”

  She returned her gaze back to the window. “Mission’s over, Julian. You said as much.”

  “Your mission is over. You’re right about that. But Operation Crossbow isn’t. Adrian Zhu is still out there, and my people have to find him.”

  “Really? From what I can tell, your intel about him working on military projects was bogus. His passion is obviously elsewhere.”

  “The situation has evolved, I’ll give you that. But we believe Zhu may be with Mary Borst. She’s still missing. What if she’s being held against her will? If you know anything, now’s the time.”

  The hypnotism had indeed worked. The psychologist had been able to take Ellis back to that moment on Vashon Island. She had been on the ground, banged up and bloodied. Vera Borst had been swinging over her, hanging by a rope, suspended by her wrists, slowly bleeding to death from an array of small incisions to her torso. So much blood. But she had still been conscious. She knew she was dying. She had a message. Mary, she had said. The voice had been soft and earnest, as if whispered by a dying angel.

  Mary. My daughter. The virgin. They know. It’s her they’re looking for.

  Who knows?

  The Black Order. And those afraid of the Rule of Light will search the Earth for me. As it was in the time of Herod, it will be again. Many innocents will die.

  Herod? Who, King Herod? I don’t understand.

  Mary will carry the child. You must protect them. You must protect the child. The codeword. Shepherd with threes.

  What followed next – a spoken 32-digit string of letters and numbers that Ellis had recounted under hypnosis –had been even more baffling. Eight sets of four characters. The shrink had copied the string onto a sheet of paper for her, but oddly, Ellis found that she had no need for it. She could recite the sequence from memory, as if she had known it all along. It was crazy. Ellis couldn’t even memorize phone numbers.

  And then last night, she had woken suddenly at 3 am with the realization. She knew what it was. An IP address.

  She had switched on her computer and typed the sequence into a web browser. When a password prompt appeared, she had entered the codeword Vera Borst had given her. Shepherd with threes. When it didn’t work, she tried a few variations. All caps, all lowercase, with and without spaces. Finally it hit her – Sh3ph3rd. Boom. She was in.

  The resulting screen was all white except for the sign of the Chi-Rho and two lines of simple black webtext. The Rule of Light Begins 6-28. Check back for further instructions.

  Now Speers’ voice broke through. “You all right?” He was standing in front of her now. “You’re not taking your meds, are you?”

  “I’d like to be alone.”

  “Haley, I know this took a toll on you. And I’m very grateful for that. But if you remembered anything that might help us find her, no matter how painful…”

  The words seemed to stick to the top of Ellis’ mouth. “Mary Borst doesn’t want to be found, Julian.”

  “You do know something, don’t you?”

  “What we all know is that she got on that plane to Rome by herself. We saw the security camera footage. I’d say that’s proof she didn’t go under duress. I think we should just pretend that she died in that fire, like we thought in the first place.”

  “Don’t tell me you actually believe she’s – ”

  “That doesn’t matter. People are going to be gunning for her. They’re going to be gunning for that child. If you bring her in, you’re just making their job easier. You won’t be able to protect them. Do you really want to be responsible for that?”

  The hum of Speers’ phone interrupted their conversation. It was a text message from Arunus Roth. He turned his back for a moment to read it: Carver never showed at the extraction point. Please advise.

  Piazza di Spagna

  The hotel elevator climbed past the second floor en route to the 10. He had come in through the service entrance, avoiding the lobby altogether. Coming back here was insane, Carver knew. As a rule, he never returned to the roost after an operation was finished. Even when there didn’t appear to be survivors, he assumed they were out there, like roaches after a nuclear winter. They always wanted their pound of flesh. They wanted any semblance of payback they could get.

  His phone rang. It was Speers.

  “You missed the rendezvous,” he complained over the spotty connection. “The chopper pilot says he can’t wait any longer. Are you close?”

  “You should already know the answer to that.”

  Hadn’t they triangulated his phone location to the hotel near the Spanish Steps? And as for Nico, hadn’t they already checked the location of the RFID chip in his arm?

  After all, Nico was the only reason he had returned.

  He had not answered the room phone in nearly two hours. Nor was he answering either of the two stolen phones he had hacked into. Carver knew because he had tried them all endlessly. Fearing the worst, he had logged into the mission cloud to get a location on the chip. It was still here, within the hotel.

  “Rome police is all over the villa,” Speers said. “They’re about to shut down all the train stations, the airport, you name it. We have to get you out of the city.”

  His tardiness could not be helped. Tidying up loose ends had taken more time than Carver had imagined. He had freed Callahan so that he could personally deliver the ossuary back to the Vatican. Then he had taken Seven to the British Embassy, where a consulate physician would patch her up before she would be whisked quietly out of the country.

  The mission was over. Balance was restored. Except for Nico. What if he had made a mistake in leaving Nico unguarded again? He had been determined to get keep him alive and return him to the States to receive the pardon he deserved. Carver owed him that.

  “You still there?” Speers demanded.

  “Yeah.”

  “A local detective named Tesla showed up at the American consulate looking for you in connection with a double homicide. It’s getting too hot. If you can’t meet the chopper in 10 minutes, you’re on your own.”

  Carver hung up as the elevator reached the 10 floor. Carver exited, stepping lightly as he moved down the unfamiliar hallway. He eased into the staircase, holding the door behind him to avoid any unnecessary noise. He remained motionless for several seconds, watching the shadows in the flights above him until he was confident that he was alone. Only then did he gingerly ascend to the 11 floor. As he approached the doorway leading to the corridor, he heard a group of revelers tramping noisily down the hall. Aussies, he figured by their accents. They were drunk.

  He opened the door as the six loud drunkards passed. Just a group of tourists, he hoped. He fell into line behind them, scanning the hallway ahead for any signs of police. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Still, he wasn’t comfortable entering the room through the front door. Too dangerous.

  A floor map was posted on the wall to his left. He stopped and studied it quickly, noting an alcove up ahead outfitted with a fire escape. He backtracked to the alcove, which was just large enough for two armchairs that enjoyed an unobstructed view of the piazza. He pried the window open.

  An earsplitting fire alarm sounded. All the better, Carver thought as he climbed out onto the ironwork. If the cops were there with Nico, they would have no choice but to take him downstairs. If it was Black Order, the sensory overload might help distract them.

  It was cool outside. A light mist was coming down, mak
ing footing difficult on the ironwork. Room balconies stretched out in a row on either side of him. If the floor map was correct, their suite was the third to his right.

  He leapt up, gripping a metal rung in the landing above him, just the way Seven had showed him. He swung back and forth until he had enough momentum to propel himself over to the adjacent balcony.

  His didn’t stick the landing. His right foot slipped out from under him. Carver fell forward, crashing into a set of French doors. Fortunately, the glass didn’t break. Looking through it, Carver saw an elderly couple scrambling about half-dressed, preparing to evacuate the building. They didn’t seem to notice him. The alarm was simply too loud.

  A waist-high wall was all that separated this deck from the next room. Carver scrambled to his feet and climbed over it. He was suddenly face-to-face with a little girl. She was inside, looking out the French doors, with her fingers stuck in her ears. Her parents were packing their bags, preparing to take every bit of luggage with them downstairs. Good thing this wasn’t a real fire.

  He smiled and waved at the girl, and then made his way over the final barrier and crouched behind a deck chair. The suite was well lit. Soccer was on the TV. Their dirty room-service plates and utensils were still on the main table and sitting area where they had left them yesterday, the result of leaving the don’t disturb sign on the door. There were no signs of booby traps that he could see.

  Holding his SIG out before him, he slipped his shoes off to be as quiet as possible, and opened the French doors. He quickly cleared the living room and kitchen. He went to the main bathroom. Wet towels were on the floor, just as they had left them. The closet was empty except for an unused ironing board and the room safe.

  He moved on. The bed where Seven had slept was unmade and still held the faint smell of perspiration and Chanel No. 5.

  The first signs of danger materialized on the carpet in front of the bedroom where Nico had worked and slept. Two small reddish-brown splotches. Carver dropped to a knee and grazed the spots with his fingertips. It was dried and hardened, scab-like.