William Tyree - The Fellowship

“Why would the Fellowship fund something like that? What does that have to do with exposing essential truth?”

The waitress set down a plate of calamari. Drucker wasted no time in digging into it. “It gets weirder. More recently, Wolf has been obsessed with cloning. Those researchers that cloned an extinct species of goat from cells in hair that had been preserved in permafrost? The Fellowship funded that. Rumor has it that they’re behind the team trying to clone that frozen hunter they found in Greenland last year.”

Ellis got chills. “It’s like playing God.”

“ And the world’s great minds will join his flock. And so too will the world’s great leaders, so that they may be in place when the time comes to usher in the new age of light .”

“Don’t recognize it,” Ellis said. “Is that Old Testament?”

Wolf shook his head. “Wolf claims he wrote that after being blessed with a vision. He’s got a book full of them, called the Living Scriptures. But don’t waste your time looking for a copy. You can’t get a look at the Living Scriptures until you’re at least a Level 15.”

“But you’ve seen it?”

Drucker nodded. “He’s got the original copy in a library at Eden. The Living Scriptures is the least interesting thing there by far. He’s got an actual mummy in there. He’s got Roman antiquities. I guess it’s not surprising considering who his father was.”

“Do I have to ask?”

Drucker licked a piece of calamari breading off his fingers. “Wolf’s father was a Nazi anthropologist. He worked for Heinrich Himmler.”

Now she had heard everything. She had indulged Drucker’s tall tales long enough. Ellis had flown all the way from London only to realize that the Capitol Hill journalist had already been dismissed by the Bureau years ago, and that he was more than likely mad as a hatter. She had come to find a simple, logical connection between the three murder victims, and the journalist was blabbering on about secret societies, cloning and Nazis.

It was time to cut to the chase. “Did you ever see Senator Preston at Eden?”

Drucker set his drink down and looked Ellis straight in the eyes. “Is that why you called me? You think there’s some connection between Eden and Preston’s death?”

“It’s just a question.”

“Like hell it is.” The horse fly was back again. Drucker swatted in the air again as it buzzed about his head. “If the feds thought Preston really died in a residential fire, you wouldn’t be here.”

She revealed nothing in her expression. “How can I get a list of all the Fellowship members?”

The journalist snickered. “You can’t. These are very cautious people. We haven’t even scratched the surface of what they’re capable of.”

Ellis sighed. Maybe it was wise to get a look at Agent Hollis’ notes on Drucker before investing any more time with him. She grabbed her purse and began scooting out of the booth.

Drucker’s face lost color and turned dead serious. “Wait. The information you’re looking for is in the book.”

The comment stopped Ellis in her tracks. In the midst of all of Drucker’s bluster, she had almost forgotten that he had been hired to write Wolf’s memoirs. “I’m listening.”

“Wolf was worried about his legacy after his death. He talked a lot about how the historians had been left to determine the way every important religious leader was viewed, from Moses to Joseph Smith to L. Ron Hubbard. He wanted the chance to tell his own story, especially about how he came to have the vision.”

“Why should I care?”

“For one thing, I’ve got information about Preston. I had access to information that you don’t get until you’re at least a Level 20.”

Ellis set her purse back down onto the table. “If the material is so great, then why hasn’t it been published?”

The peevish look on Drucker’s face foretold the fiasco he was about to describe. “My agreement with Wolf was that the book’s publication was contingent on two things. The first was his death. The second was completion of the Great Mission.”

“Great Mission?”

Drucker nodded. “But I got greedy. Before the old man had even seen the first draft, I sent a few chapters to a book agent. But this material was so hot. I thought maybe if we could get a big advance, then Wolf might change his mind and let us publish it right away.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, in fact. But my agent blew it for me. Somewhere deep in the representation agreement, I had apparently consented to let my agent place my work in short form for fair market value so long as it was for promotional purposes. The next thing I know, a portion of it had been edited and published as the article you found online.”

“I take it that didn’t go over so well.”

The very thought of it seemed to sap Drucker’s spirit. “Wolf’s security team used me as a punching bag.”

“They actually attacked you?”

“Broke my jaw and two ribs. Check the hospital records if you don’t believe me.”

Ellis was already planning on it. “And then what?”

“Like I said, they made me swear an oath that I’d keep quiet, or else. They took my computer, and I’m pretty sure they put a virus into the one I bought after that.” A smile crept across his face. “But they didn’t realize that I was such a paranoid son of a bitch.”

“You kept a copy?”

The ends of his handlebar mustache rose as he grinned devilishly. “All these years later, I’m still working on it. I know they periodically hack into my computer, but they’ll never find it. The best defense against cyberattacks is old-fashioned paper.”

Suddenly, Drucker slapped his neck hard. Ellis watched the horse fly bounce off Drucker’s shoulder and fall below. “Got the bastard.”

“Nate, I’m going to need to see that book.”

Drucker opened his mouth to reply, but words didn’t come. He groaned and moved his neck slowly to the right, straining against some unseen force.

It was then that Ellis noticed the growing welt on his neck, near his jugular. “Nate,” she said, “have you ever had an allergic reaction to an insect bite?”

He grunted. His lips and tongue seemed suddenly out of sync, and he was glassy-eyed.

The fly had fallen onto the table. Two of its legs were detached from the main body. When Ellis prodded it with her fingertips, she knew what Drucker never would. The fly was man-made.

Verona, Italy

The journey from South Africa to Italy had been a circuitous one. Their flight into Rome had been diverted to Munich due to thunderstorms across Italy. They had then been promised another flight the next afternoon, but Carver wasn’t content to wait that long. He opted instead to catch a night train heading south through the Austrian Aps.

Five hours later they arrived in Verona, where a train strike had forced the cancellation of the second leg to Rome. They would be forced to stay in the northern Italian town for the night. Both men were famished and grumpy as they headed for a late-night pizzeria near the station.

Now, sitting outside under a string of yellow lights, the two men looked better than they felt. They wore Hugo Boss suits and had both been to a barber at the Munich train station.

“About that thing you put in my arm,” Nico said, running his fingers over the welt where it had been inserted.

Carver nodded. “The tracking chip.”

“Not that I’m planning on it, but what’s to stop me from digging that out with a pocketknife?”

“It’s hooked around your cephalic vein. That’s the big one running down your bicep into your forearm.”

“What? How?”

“These hooks expand from the chip after it’s embedded. They start off as tiny, flaccid tentacles. But if you attempt to remove the chip after it’s embedded, the tentacles swell, go rigid and curl, cutting off blood flow.”