William Tyree - The Fellowship

“Your Excellency, there must be some other way that I can serve you. Perhaps I can somehow complete the mission you had set out for the lads.”

Only a slight turning of Lang’s head gave the priest any indication that his offer had been heard. The head of Vatican Intelligence stood at the window for half a minute longer, then returned to the seating area, sitting directly opposite his subject. The thin eyelids retracted themselves over Lang’s substantial eyeballs, and his lips pulled back at the edges, baring both teeth and gums. “Their chance is over,” he said. “We must be more aggressive, if that is even possible.”

“To what end, your Excellency?”

“Nothing less than the continuation of the one true Apostolic Church is at stake. The world criticized us for standing in the way of science,” Lang went on. “Yes, we persecuted heretics. Yes, we demanded repentance when scientific advancements contradicted church dogma. For centuries they said we were wrong. But now what will they say? What will the world say? How will God judge us if this comes to pass?”

The priest smiled, but only because he was genuinely afraid. Nobody in the Vatican talked like this. Those popes and cardinals who had tortured and killed men of science were long dead. The mistakes of the past were, as a rule, either ignored or chalked up to the imperfection of man. Callahan had never in his life heard anyone in the Vatican suggest that the torment of Galileo, for example, had actually been justified.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Callahan said. “What will come to pass?”

The head of Vatican Intelligence stood. He went to the grand desk, slid open the middle drawer and retrieved a tattered black and white photograph. A medium close-up of three boys who looked to be in their early teens. All three wore button-down military field shirts with black ties and long shorts. Each wore oversized swastika armbands. Despite the several decades that had passed since the photo had been taken, Callahan instantly recognized the boy on the left. He was the tallest, with white-blond hair and some sort of merit head pinned to his shirt. It was Heinz Lang.

Then Lang pointed to the boy in the middle, tapping the boy’s head repeatedly. He was the best looking of the three, with chiseled, serious features.

“This man,” Lang said. “His name is Sebastian Wolf. Find him for me, and you will have done a lifetime of good deeds.”

Julian Speers Residence

Arlington, Virginia

It was nearly 3 a.m. when Speers, having left McLean a short time earlier, pulled up to the four-bedroom colonial house. Despite having moved in several months earlier, he still felt like a stranger here. There was just so little time now. Somehow, Speers had fooled himself into believing that no job could have been more demanding than his former role as White House Chief of Staff. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. He routinely worked over 100 hours per week now. Some nights it didn’t even make sense to come home. The cushions of his office couch were nearly as familiar to him as the mattress in his bedroom.

The ankle he had twisted was still swollen and weak. He stepped out of the Highlander and used an aluminum crutch to limp toward the house. The moment he unlocked the door and heard the twins’ cries, he knew the injury wouldn’t earn him any sympathy points. His wife met him at the door, kissed him tersely and handed him one of the swaddled infants.

“I had to go to the ER,” he said, but his exhausted wife did not hear him over the twins’ wailing. She took the other child upstairs without looking back.

He kissed the baby on the forehead and hobbled to the kitchen pantry. He reached onto the highest shelf and searched blindly with his fingers for a Tupperware container. A wave of relief washed over him as he located it, pulling down the secret stash of pink pacifiers. His wife had banned them several weeks ago, fearing that the children weren’t learning — how had she put it? — “self-soothing techniques.”

The baby’s response to the sight of the pacifier was decidedly Pavlovian, the mouth opening and puckering instantly. Speers rinsed it under the kitchen sink faucet and promptly put it into the child’s mouth. She was asleep in seconds.

She felt good in his arms. He held her with one hand, retrieved an ice pack from the freezer and went into the living room. He sat in an easy chair and removed his shoes, socks and the ankle wrap without setting the child down. Then he rested the bag of ice on the ottoman, nestled his swollen ankle into it, and reclined.

The little darling was swaddled and asleep in his arms. Speers felt himself drifting, too. He didn’t fight it. He rather enjoyed the sensation of letting go for the first time all day.

His phone buzzed. And just like that, his state of bliss was gone. Speers sometimes fantasized about having the kind of job where you could turn off your phone.

He glanced at the screen. It was Blake Carver. He answered.

“Blake?” he whispered.

“I can barely hear you,” Carver said.

“I’m holding Isabella.” He looked at his watch. It was nearly two in the morning.

“Must be nice,” Carver said. “I’m visiting morgues, and you’re playing house.”

The DNI didn’t need Carver’s judgment right now. The Eden search had turned up nothing. He had three bodies on his hands, a tiny team stretched across the globe and a president that needed results right away.

“You called for a reason?” Speers said.

“I’m trying to get hold of Ellis. She left a weird message saying she was at the Mayflower Hotel. Is it just me, or are you guys just living it up over there while I’m busting my butt?”

Speers swore and told Carver to hold on. He used his crutch to get to his feet, gently setting the baby down onto the soft leather where he had been sitting, balancing her in the cradle of the seat cushion so she could not roll out. Then he hobbled into the next room.

“Had you bothered to read Ellis’ update on the mission cloud,” he barked, “You’d know that we almost got killed last night!”

He provided Carver with a brief summary and, once he had cooled down, told him about the notes and manuscript they had fished out of Drucker’s now-incinerated apartment. “That’s why she’s locked down at the hotel,” he added. “I’ve got Jack McClellan leading security there.”

“That’s weird,” Carver said. “I just talked to her sister, Jenna. Apparently Haley left the hotel a couple hours ago.”

Puget Sound

The boat traced the contours of the West Seattle coastline. Its stern finally pointed southwest. It was getting colder. Ellis was losing the feeling in her hands. The dampness was seeping into her bones. It wasn’t too cold — about 40 degrees — but on the water, it felt frosty. She envied Captain Zack’s coat.

“There’s a fuzzy blanket under your seat,” he said. “No charge.”

No charge for the business advice either, Ellis thought. She got to her feet, lifted the seat cushion and found a silver and blue stadium blanket emblazoned with the Seattle Seahawks logo. She wrapped it around her shoulders and stood next to the captain.

“I reckon this must be pretty important,” Captain Zack said. “Anything you can talk about?”

“Missing person,” she said, and there was some truth to it. Her original objective had been to connect the dots between Preston and Gish and, if possible, find out who their common enemy was. Now that Mary Borst had gone missing, however, she was more intrigued by the role the Borsts themselves played in all of this. According to Drucker’s notes, Vera Borst, Gish and Preston were all high-ranking Fellowship members. What, if anything, was Mary’s role? Had she simply witnessed a murder and freaked out, or had she had a role in either Preston’s death or the fire?