William Tyree - The Fellowship

Fielding picked up Bowers’ card and examined it closely before sliding it into his front shirt pocket. A small spark of hope glimmered in his eyes. “How can I help?”

“I’m here about Mary Borst.”

The staffer nodded. “I heard a rumor that she was killed in the fire. Then I heard maybe she was missing.”

With all the collateral damage in recent days, Bowers had very little time to focus on the fire itself. There was no doubt in Bowers’ mind that Borst had actually started it. But her motive was still a mystery to him.

Given the similar ways that Vera Borst and Preston had been butchered, it now seemed unlikely that Mary had started the fire to disrupt the investigation into the senator’s killers. It was more likely that she feared something in the senator’s home would lead them to the Fellowship and its activities.

“Have any thoughts since then?” Bowers asked.

Fielding shook his head. “I saw that story about her Mom in the news. None of us know what to think.”

Bowers believed him. He had been personally monitoring Borst’s mobile account since the night of the senator’s death. Mason had texted her a few times and called. He truly seemed to have no idea where Mary was.

“Did Mary or the senator ever mention something called the Fellowship World Initiative?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I understand you and Mary were involved,” Bowers continued. Another fact he had drummed up by sifting through Borst’s vast stores of personal communications. From what he could deduce, Mason and Mary had been more than coworkers for a period of weeks or months. “You sure she never mentioned the Fellowship?”

Fielding’s face turned red. “I can’t be absolutely sure, but I don’t remember it.”

“How long were you together?”

“Six months or so. The senator didn’t like relationships among his staff, so we tried to keep it quiet.”

“You’re what, 27?”

“Yes.”

“Did you and Mary ever talk about the future?”

“Yeah, but I eventually realized it wasn’t going to work out long-term.”

“What led you to that conclusion?”

Fielding got up and shut the office door, then returned to his seat. “There was nothing there physically. I kept expecting it to, but it didn’t pan out.”

“You mean sexually.”

“Yes. At first, I thought maybe it was because she was really religious or something, but she never talked about that. After a while, I figured out that she was seeing someone on the side.”

“And what led you to that conclusion?”

“At first she disappeared a lot. Never wanted to tell me where she was, or who she was with.”

“And then?”

“One night I asked her, just hypothetically, if she wanted children. She said she was going to have one child. A boy. One. Boy .”

“She was that exact?”

“Yeah, it was weird. Usually, women just say they want children or they don’t. She had the whole plan in place.“

Bowers scribbled in his notebook. “What exactly did she say?”

“She said she was going to conceive in Rome, but the kid would be born in America.”

“And did she say when this was going to happen?”

Fielding nodded. “She said she’d be a mother by the time she turned 26. That would be what, nine months from now?”

Apostolic Palace

Lang went to his desk and sat down. He slid open a drawer. “Slowly,” Carver said as he took up a position behind him. The intelligence chief was old, but he was as unpredictable and dangerous a creature as Carver had ever met.

“Your assumptions about my personal beliefs are misguided,” Lang said. He removed an electric cigarette from the desk, switched it on, and took a slow drag. Then he reached into the drawer for a second time, producing a transparent rectangular document display box. He set it on the desktop and gestured for Carver to come closer.

Carver remained where he was. “Your dagger,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Your dagger. The one you took from Wolf.”

It had been a calculated guess. Something about Lang’s gait — the way he carried his left leg, stiffer than the right — that had tipped him off. Sure enough, the old man bent down and raised the hem of his robes, revealing a sheath sewn into the inside of his left boot.

The steel glimmered as he pulled the blade from the sheath and laid it on the table. Carver picked it up and checked the inscription. Mehr sein als scheinen . Be more than you seem.

“Now then,” Lang said. “If we’re all feeling more secure, I think you’ll find this artifact much more enlightening.”

Carver rested on his elbows, studying the sketch that was pressed between glass. Judging by the color of the handmade parchment, it had been drawn a very long time ago. It depicted an ancient burial box in the Jewish or Greek style. Dimensions for the ossuary were neatly provided: 51 cm in length by 31 cm high by 28 inches deep. Weight: 20 kilograms. Inscription: Yeshua bar Yehosef. Among the symbols engraved on the ossuary was the Chi-Ro, which was one of the earliest Christian symbols, layering the Greek X with the P. The monogram of Jesus Christ.

“This ossuary,” Lang continued, “was discovered in the catacombs beneath what is now St. Peter’s Basilica between 319 and 333 AD. All that is certain about the ossuary’s origins is that Constantine’s followers unearthed it when digging a well to serve the original church, which is now the site of St. Peter’s Basilica.”

“Wait,” Seven said. “Wasn’t the tomb of St. Peter also discovered underneath the church?”

“ ’And I tell you that you are Peter’ ,” Father Callahan said, quoting Matthew, “ ’And upon this rock I shall build my church .’”

The intelligence czar confirmed with a nod. “To be exact, the bones of St. Peter were eventually discovered within 20 meters of the original ossuary resting place. Obviously, the concept of Christ’s physical remains on Earth wasn’t a completely unknown concept, but it was a contradiction of accepted scripture. Nevertheless, the presence of an old-fashioned burial box, entombed near the remains of Peter, and inscribed with Jesus’ name, created doubt among the church establishment.”

Father Callahan drew closer. “How much doubt, exactly?”

“We can only imagine the questions swirling in Constantine’s mind. Among the papal archives, he had apparently seen a written legend. A rambling diary, in actuality, by an unknown author stating that after the crucifixion, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate had ordered the destruction of Jesus’ body in order to keep the burial tomb from becoming a shrine for believers. According to the legend, it was this decision that led Peter to take Jesus’ body, with the help of Joseph of Arimethea, and hide it from the Romans in Judea. Eventually, the diary claims, it was brought to Rome.”

The priest’s mouth hung open as he pondered the possibility. “Rome. Quite literally the last place on Earth Pilate’s men would think of looking for it.”

Seven ran her fingers through her closely cropped hair. “You described the legend as a rambling diary. How could that possibly stand up to scripture?”

“You have to understand the context of written history in the time of Constantine. There were very few written documents at that time. The oral tradition was strong, and belief in the core teachings of Christ was what mattered then, since there were thousands of variants between the Greek, Latin, Coptic and other versions of the Bible. Most, but not all of them, told of Christ’s physical resurrection. And what was scripture but a series of stories handed down by eyewitnesses and apostles? It wasn’t until approximately 50 years after Constantine’s death that St. Jerome translated the old Latin into the authoritative Bible that we know today.”