Callahan acted quickly, pushing a trio of heavy, oversized books into the opening. It momentarily stalled the door’s progress. Carver raced to help, grabbing a small bronze bust from one of the shelves. He shoved it in, risking his limbs as he got onto his back and kicked it into place.
He heard the gears within the walls slipping. Then came the smell of heat — like a hairdryer that had been on far too long. Next was the unmistakable burn of mechanical failure. The crushing steel halted with a loud metallic knock from within the wall.
He looked around the room at the others. With the entrance now sealed off, there was no way to go but down the passageway. Fortunately, the entire crew was slim enough to slide underneath the 16-inch gap. Except Callahan, he realized. He glanced at the priest’s midsection and had his doubts.
“That sound,” Seven said. She had her hands over both ears. Carver had been so preoccupied with securing their freedom that he hadn’t noticed the incessant buzzing. It had grown louder.
Carver pointed up at the 20-foot ceiling and saw what he had failed to notice earlier — a shiny black orb, consisting of perhaps hundreds of tiny holes.
What he saw next truly terrified him. Emerging from the holes was a swarm of flies. Hundreds of them. Only they weren’t flies, Carver knew. They were flying nanobots. Just like the one that killed Drucker.
*
Seven was the first to slide under the 16-inch gap to the relative safety of the passageway. Carver was right behind her, wriggling his muscular but lean build through the opening. He took Lang next, the old man’s thin, long frame coming feet first as he scooted through on his back. His two henchmen were next.
And then there was Father Callahan. He pushed his backpack through first, and then his weapon. This was going to be tight.
Carver peered through the gap from the other side. The swarm had descended now perhaps five feet from the orb, and they were dispersing horizontally, a squadron of drones preparing for attack. “Hurry!” he implored Callahan.
Like Lang, the stocky priest came feet-first, perhaps anticipating that his midsection would prove to be the most challenging piece. His knees and thighs cleared, but sure enough, 16 vertical inches wasn’t quite enough to get his potbelly through the space.
“Suck it in!” Carver yelled.
“I’m trying!”
The priest tried to make himself thin as Carver pulled from the other side. Within seconds Callahan was bleeding from broken skin at his waistline. He screamed for Carver to stop.
“It’s no use!” he cried.
The American stuck his head under the space. The swarm had spread wide, and was now sweeping the room from above, as if they were a single collective.
“Lie still!” he commanded. “Those bots can’t be individually controlled. Maybe they’re motion-activated.”
Callahan tried to quiet his body and minimize his breathing. No small task given that he was half inside, half outside the room, wedged underneath a steel door, with a threat of death hovering overhead.
Carver reached into Callahan’s pack and pulled out two stun grenades. They were eight inches long with openings in the black matte metal casing designed to prevent defragmentation during the explosion. When Carver had pulled them from the priest’s trunk, he had imagined using them on human beings. He wasn’t sure whether they would effectively disrupt the nanobots, but he was out of both ideas and time.
“Everyone close your eyes and ears,” he said, then tapped one of the priest’s boots, “Except you. Just close your eyes, there Padre. Be very still.”
Carver pulled both pins simultaneously and rolled the stun grenades into the center of the room. Carver used his index fingers to plug his ears. He felt a twinge of pity for the additional pain Callahan was about to endure. That was assuming he didn’t die. Stun grenades weren’t designed to be lethal, but they occasionally killed people all the same.
The blast came hard and fast. The shockwave belched a blast of hot air out the gap and into the staircase. Even kneeling just outside the room, Carver felt the fluid in his ears in flux, putting him slightly off balance.
He heard the priest screaming, which was a good sign. He peered under the gap. The swarm was gone.
“I’m blind,” Callahan screamed.
“I told you to close your eyes,” Carver chided him. The blinding light from the grenades caused all the light sensitive cells within the eye to activate at once. It would, however, pass.
“Agent Carver,” Lang called from within the iron staircase. “We have to go.”
Carver patted the priest on the leg. “Hang tight. We’ll be back.”
*
They descended the iron helix that went ever deeper into the porous, spongy earth that had allowed Rome to be so easily tunneled in ancient times. A mechanical hum — gas generators, perhaps — droned somewhere in the distance. A series of construction lights strung along the walls provided adequate illumination.
Carver and Seven moved behind their unlikely assault partners warily, and always on guard. After all, this was merely an alliance of convenience. Carver had every expectation that they too planned on violently ending the partnership once they found what they had come for.
A series of ancient slabs, piles of broken pottery and pieces of sculpture were clustered near the far wall. Relics unearthed during the recent construction, Carver presumed. A bit further in, they approached a security post that looked much like the TSA stations at the airports in American megacities. Sheets of transparent blast-proof glass flanked a full-body scanner.
“Nobody here,” one of Lang’s soldiers said in wonderment.
A bad sign, Carver knew. By his count, they had killed only eight guards in the villa. Surely their numbers had been greater in recent days. Why had they already abandoned these underground security posts? Had the ossuary already been moved? Zhu would have had a week at most to work with the DNA samples.
At the end of the cavern, an open-air lift moved slowly up and down at regular intervals. There were no doors, no buttons. Getting on and off it appeared to be a matter of careful timing, much like a department store escalator.
He crossed to the other side, where a straight, smooth pole descended into another chamber where the facility’s emergency lights glowed. The dog bark he thought he had heard earlier had not repeated. If their prize had escaped, there was no telling where they would go. Equipped with a map such as the one Callahan had, it was possible to walk from one end of Rome to the other using only the ancient tunnels.
“Wolf is here,” Lang insisted. The old man was out of breath, but the thrill of the hunt propelled him forward. “I can feel him in my bones.”
Lang’s soldiers helped him onto the lift, which descended at an uneven pace. Carver and Seven joined them. The ride down to the bottom took approximately 10 seconds. Carver had lost all sense of depth. Were they a hundred yards below ground? Five hundred? The only thing he was sure of was that he didn’t like this. The lighting had grown erratic, twittering on and off at irregular intervals. He hoped the generators weren’t running low on fuel.
“The lab!” Seven said as they neared the bottom. She pointed at what appeared to be a decontamination chamber. Behind additional panes of transparent glass was the shining equipment that Nico had tracked to the villa.
Opposite the lab was an astonishing cavern. Vaulted ceilings. Spring-fed fountains. Walls decorated with faded frescoes of wildlife and chariots. And at the rear, a small throne room, perhaps 500 square feet.
Sebastian Wolf sat on an ancient throne that had been carved out of rock. It was easy to see why Wolf had built the lab here. Carver imagined him sitting there, observing Zhu’s work through the transparent lab walls like some omniscient God supervising the creation of a new world.
The cult leader appeared to be unguarded, unarmed and unafraid. The Alsatian at his side barked ferociously. Wolf whistled one short, sharp tone that snapped the dog into quiet obedience.
The white chalk ossuary reste
d on a marble platform before him. Although Carver had seen the dimensions on Lang’s illustration, it was still smaller than he had imagined, roughly the size of his nephew’s toy chest.
Carver watched Lang carefully. He appeared to be almost as mesmerized by the sight of his old friend as he was by the ossuary. Lang had sworn a blood oath to protect this relic, and yet he himself had never actually laid eyes on it.
“Go on, Heinz,” Wolf said. “See what your papal masters have hidden from the world for these two thousand years.”
Lang walked forward, stretching his right hand out before him. He touched the chalk box, running his fingertips gingerly over the faded engravings on its side. And then he touched the inscription. Yeshua bar Yehosef. Jesus son of Joseph. Just as Wolf had claimed.
“Although we’ve had our differences,” Wolf said, “We did the right thing in Venice, you and I. It would not have been right to let Himmler have this.”
Wolf’s Judas looked up at his former friend. “He would have had nothing. Just as you have nothing now.”
Wolf chuckled. “My old friend. My Judas. If you did not believe this was the Holy Ossuary, then you would not be here.”
“We’ll have to cut the reunion short,” Carver said. “Where’s Zhu?”
Wolf smiled pityingly. “I’m afraid you are too late to catch Mr. Zhu. Our friend’s time in Rome is already complete. He has left to complete his destiny.”
Carver swore. It was just as he had feared. The speed of Zhu’s work, even more than his innovations, was what had made him famous in the first place. And yet it was still astonishing. A world-class paleo-DNA lab had been created for a project that had lasted less than two weeks. And that was assuming that it was equipped with a staff that had set to work immediately after the ossuary had been stolen.
“I’ll check the lab,” Seven said.
“What are you waiting for?” Lang said, gesturing toward one of his men. “Go with her.”
Wolf watched them go. “They will find nothing,” he said. “But the empty feeling you have inside will no doubt pass, Heinz. Soon Mr. Zhu’s role in the great story of our time will be evident for all people to see. And if you are still alive, then you too will join him in worshipping the return of our savior.”
Lang held the cross he wore around his neck up to his lips and kissed it, as if protecting himself against Wolf’s blasphemy. “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.”
Wolf grinned. “Oh, I do love Deuteronomy. I really do. But I am not a false prophet, Heinz. And these bones before you are not those of a false idol. They are nothing less than evidence that Christ walked on this earth, and through the miracle of the knowledge God has endowed upon us, he shall walk again.”
“May I kill him now?” one of Lang’s soldiers called out. He appeared to be every bit as subservient to his master as Magi, the Alsatian, was to Wolf. “Please let me kill him.”
Wolf spoke over the man’s pleas. “This ossuary was, I am told, quite unusual from an anthropological perspective. In a typical Jewish or Greek ossuary, the bones would reside alone. In this case it appears that the disciples added personal effects to the box before it was brought to Rome. We found a stone vessel containing a lock of hair. In another vessel, a piece of sponge that could have been used by Joseph of Arimethea to wash the body. And there was a rusted nail, Heinz. From the true cross, no doubt.”
“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.”
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