William Tyree - The Fellowship

True, she wasn’t out in the field. But the weight of the investigation hadn’t left her mind for one minute. She had spent every waking moment going over the case notes, including Drucker’s manuscript. She was unable to stay awake for long periods, but even in sleep, the Living Scriptures were circling round and round in her foggy brain. She had trouble concentrating. She couldn’t eat. And she dreamed in numbers. Some endless, unsolvable code.

The shrink leaned forward. “I specialize in trauma. I see a lot of military. It helps some people to start by telling me their experience in general terms. Even if your case was classified, telling me basic information is permissible within the privacy protections of our relationship. Believe me, I’ve heard everything.”

Ellis doubted that anyone had told the shrink anything like what she had experienced. Nothing Ellis had seen in Iraq had even come close. What she saw in Seattle was straight out of a horror movie.

“You want to help?” Ellis said. “Okay. I need to remember something specific.”

“What would that be?”

“A conversation. The night I was attacked, someone was dying right in front of me. She was telling me something. It might be important. A name, maybe.”

The shrink was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure you’re ready to remember that level of detail. It could do more harm than good.”

Yeah, obviously. Part of Ellis was terrified of remembering any more. She might never sleep again. But her gut told her that she had to know.

“Haley?”

“There was a woman hanging over me,” Ellis began, making a mental note not to mention Vera Borst by name.

“Hanging?” the shrink asked, trying unsuccessfully to mask the dread she felt inside. “Hanging how?”

“In mid-air.” Her voice was suddenly tight with emotion. “She was bound at the wrists. Suspended by the wrists by a thick rope. Bleeding. She had been sliced up.”

The shrink did her best not to show the revulsion that she felt. “Again, I’m worried that we may be going too fast.”

“She knew she was dying. And I think she told me something important. A message of some sort. I need to remember what that was.”

The shrink sipped her tea. An obvious stalling tactic. She was formulating what she wanted to say next.

“Can you do hypnosis?” Ellis asked.

“Sure, but in this case…”

“You want to help? Then I want you to hypnotize me.”

Piazza di Spagna

Nico woke to slushing and splashing sounds. He looked at the clock next to the bed. He had slept four hours, which was more than Carver had allowed him since this little adventure had begun. His body complained as he turned, aching all over from the bruises he had taken during the previous evening’s ordeal. There was a little blood on his pillow, too. He touched the ear that had been cut, not at all surprised to find that the scab had come off in the night.

He rose, shuffled into the bathroom and found Carver stripped down to his boxers, kneeling in front of the tub, rubbing a soaked garment with detergent.

“That shirt is dry-clean only,” Nico said in a mock-scolding voice.

“Hilarious.”

Carver stood, looking down at the tub full of submerged garments. He had been soaking them since daybreak with a bottle of stain remover and a packet of detergent that room service had brought up. Despite his scrubbing, those blood and powder stains hadn’t faded much. It wasn’t like they could just give them to the hotel laundry service. These clothes contained evidence that could put them in an Italian prison for a very long time.

“I’m ready to work,” Nico said. “What’s on the agenda?”

“I’m going to give you the names of two laboratory equipment manufacturers, along with the model numbers of some specialty items. Extremely expensive, completely custom, sold to a very limited number of customers. I want you to find out if either of them shipped equipment to Rome within the past two years. I don’t care how you do it. Hack into their billing systems if you have to.”

Nico leaned up against the doorframe and folded his arms across his chest. “Do I have to ask?”

“If my theory is right, a shipment from at least one of these companies should lead us to a lab here in Rome. And that is where we will find Adrian Zhu, Mary Borst and, if we are very lucky, Mr. Sebastian Wolf.”

Psychiatric Office

Washington D.C.

“Haley?” Jack McClellan’s voice startled Ellis as she emerged from the session. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” she answered without thinking. And no, she wasn’t all right. She had just been to a place in her memory that truly terrified her, and she didn’t even know what time it was. She had forgotten that Jack was even here. It seemed like days since he had driven her here from the safehouse in McLean.

There were a couple of young girls in the waiting room. Both lowered their magazines slightly to sneak a peek. They were sizing her up. That was the way it worked in these places. You hoped to spot someone who looked more damaged than you. At least then you could feel a little better about yourself.

“Jill called when you were in there,” McClellan said as he held the door open for her. “She wants to know if she could get lamb shawarma delivered. Said you know a good place. I told her nothing gets delivered to the safehouse, but we could get one of the guys to pick it up.”

Shawarma? Screw shawarma. Couldn’t he see her quaking? Couldn’t he see what she had just been through?

Her forehead throbbed, and she remembered the big sunglasses. She’d slipped them back on just before standing up. To hide the bruises. It had been the shrink’s suggestion. How had she put it? You might be more comfortable with those on .

A few seconds later they were outside, standing on 10th and G Street. St. Patrick’s Cathedral was across the street. It had been her regular church a few years back when she had lived in Chinatown. She hadn’t been there in a couple of years.

She darted between two cars and raced across the street.

“Where you going?” Jack called after her. “Haley? We have to get back.”

When she entered the 18th-century church, she wasn’t sure why she had come. The next mass didn’t start for another hour. She sat in a back pew, unfurled her scarf and used the end of it to wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks.

“My job is to keep you safe,” Jack said. He was standing in the aisle, looking down at her in a way that reminded her of her own father. “This kind of stunt stops now.”

Ellis looked down at the piece of paper in her hands. A transcription of what she had recalled during her hypnosis. At the bottom of the sheet of paper, circled in pen, was a 32-digit alphanumeric sequence. Vera Borst had used her last moments to reveal it to her. Now that the hypnosis had finally been purged it from her subconscious, her relief was tempered by the fact that she still didn’t know what the numbers meant.

“Haley, please.”

“Just a little time. That’s all I need.”

Jack sighed. “Ten minutes. Then we’re going, no arguments. Do we understand each other?”

A confessional booth came into focus along the western edge of the sanctuary. She recalled her first time in confession, as an eight-year-old child. She had been too shy to speak to the priest peering at her through the tiny veiled screen. After several unsuccessful attempts to start a conversation, he had simply laughed and given her a blessing. It was a good feeling that had stayed with her throughout her life.

Now she found herself on her feet, peering in through the open curtain.

“Have a seat.” The priest’s voice was more youthful than Ellis had expected. “Peace be with you.”