William Tyree - The Fellowship

Twenty-seven years after Gish’s study-abroad year, Mary Borst had listed the same residential address on her collegiate records.

Kei Mouth

South Africa

Carver pressed the RFID gun to Nico’s bicep and pressed the trigger. The hacker yelped as the tiny tracking chip became embedded beneath the skin, extending tiny tentacles that would make it nearly impossible to remove without prior deactivation.

“Get a move on,” Carver said as he unfurled his grip. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

He watched the fugitive leave the kitchen with his tail between his legs. A flurry of whispers, like steam hissing from a boiling kettle, floated in from the next room as Nico explained the situation to Madge. Carver almost felt sorry for him. He had never emasculated another man in the presence of his woman.

Most of the people Carver had taken into custody over the years had been loners by virtue of their professions. From Carver’s perspective, the main thing that assassins, mercenaries and hackers had in common was that their sources of companionship tended to come through artificial means, satisfied either in the deep digital recesses of some massive multiplayer video game, or via anonymous encounters with sex workers. In this respect, Nico was an outlier. During his time in Lee Federal Penitentiary, Madge had written him more than 70 letters. As a middling programmer herself, Madge looked up to him as a superstar activist geek. She even bought into his manufactured Robin Hood mystique, although his lack of spiritual faith disturbed her. During the course of their courtship — during which she would drive up to his Virginia prison from her home in the Carolinas — she set out to reform him.

During the 12-hour drive here from Johannesburg, Carver had deliberated whether to tell Nico how hard the committee had pressed him to give up his location. Carver didn’t expect or want a thank-you. He only wanted to impress upon Nico how his past deeds had fostered some goodwill.

A crash emanated from the next room, followed by shouting. Good Lord. Were they actually fighting? Madge was screaming at the top of her lungs. “They’re going to have to go through me! They’re just going to hand you over to the Saudis! Is that what you want?”

Carver peeked into the living room. Madge was sprawled over Nico, struggling for control of the shotgun. He slipped back into the kitchen, cursing himself for not being more careful. Why hadn’t he disarmed her upon entering? He had actually believed that Madge, of all people, would want to go back to her life in the U.S.

He had clearly miscalculated. She and Nico had come here together and established a life far from the reach of the Americans or Saudis. A bond had formed, and in the process, it seemed that Madge was wearing the pants now. Carver had shown up out of the blue, a hostile force from another time and dimension.

Something made of glass smashed against the wall and shattered. Carver hadn’t come all this way only to lose Nico in a lover’s spat. He had to intervene.

He hoped the bullet-resistant vest he wore under his suit would be enough against Madge’s sawed-off shotgun. By reducing the length of the barrel, she had effectively removed the gun’s choke, giving the weapon a substantially wider spray pattern.

Carver reached inside his jacket and drew the SIG Sauer P226 from his shoulder holster. God help me, he thought. He had never lifted a hand against a woman, and he had no intention of shooting her. He decided to leave the weapon on top of the refrigerator. If he so much as grazed Madge, his working relationship with Nico would be over.

He grabbed a broad iron skillet from the stovetop. It was greasy and it smelled like sausage, but it was a reasonable substitute for riot gear.

Wielding the skillet, Carver rolled into the living room, then sprung forth like an undersized defensive tackle, keeping low as he powered toward Madge, who now stood with one foot atop Nico’s chest and the gun pointed straight down at him. He caught sight of her bare knee, round and moon-like, exposed through slacks that had been torn in the scuffle.

She swung the barrel toward Carver, who charged like a kitchen knight with the skillet covering his face and neck. A blast of pellets strafed his midsection and the bottom of the skillet.

Forward momentum propelled him ahead regardless. He chipped Madge at the knees, their collective mass hurling into the wall, which caved like cardboard. Particle dust mushroomed in the air as Carver wrestled Madge for the shotgun. She managed to fire the right barrel. The heat of the shortened barrel burned Carver’s hands and blasted a soccer ball-sized section out of what was left of the wall.

Carver felt another pair of hands tugging at his shoulders. He threw a donkey kick that landed in Nico’s groin, sending him once again to a useless heap upon the living room carpet. He then bore his knee into Madge’s chest, throwing an open-handed blow to Madge’s forehead. The back of her skull cracked against a wall stud.

She fell limp under him. Don’t be dead , Carver thought. Don’t even be brain-damaged .

Despite the sting of welts rising under his vest, he reached out, feeling her wrist. Thankfully, her pulse was strong. And looking across her chest, he could see that she was breathing. She was just going to have a humongous knot on her head when she woke up.

He got to his feet, grabbed her ankles, and dragged her out of the wall crevice. Then he collapsed onto the sofa, lifted his shirt — which was riddled with dozens of tiny holes — and grappled with the straps of his under armor until the vest could be peeled away from his body. He let out an audible groan as he separated it from his body, letting his skin breathe.

Carver watched as Nico got to his hands and knees and crawled to Madge’s side. He lifted the hand of the crazed lover who had attacked him and kissed it tenderly. Wonders never ceased. The man who had once been considered the world’s most notorious cybercriminal was, emotionally speaking, stripped to the core.

Carver decided then and there that Madge wasn’t coming with them. Volatile as she was, she would have to be restrained for the duration of the trip, and that would only slow them down. He would leave her airline ticket and passport in case she had a change of heart.

He rubbed his rib cage with his fingertips, checking to see if anything felt out of place. “When did Madge start going to fight club?”

Nico’s eyes rolled slowly upwards. Carver expected to see hostility in them, but Nico simply shook his head, as if to imply that Carver hadn’t the vaguest understanding of human temperament. He drew his legs under his body and sat cross-legged.

“Madge is one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“The Xhosa have a saying: There is no beast that does not roar in its den.”

SIS Building

Finding out who owned the massive estate known as Eden, at 9002 River Road, was no easy task. Despite the address matching the collegiate mailing address of both Mary Borst and Nils Gish, there were virtually no public records on the property. Ellis finally had to get Speers to phone a friend at the IRS. Twenty minutes later, he came back with the name of the owner: The Fellowship World Initiative, a 5013C.

The nonprofit organization had no website, no social media presence and no listing on sites that rated charities. Not even a Wikipedia page.

After a lot of searching, Ellis finally unearthed an article that had been published way back in the early 2000s. The website it appeared on was at an obscure web address with spammy ads all over the place. It looked like an abandoned personal site that had been taken over by an ad network.