William Tyree - The Fellowship

“Did Constantine believe the ossuary was legitimate?”

“Not especially,” Lang said. “He was a firm believer in physical resurrection. But he was willing to consider the possibility that he would be proven wrong some day.”

“So he decided to keep the ossuary safe, but secret.”

Lang nodded. “He therefore mandated that the story of the mysterious ossuary be documented and passed on to each succeeding pope by the dead or dying pope’s camerlengo. Eventually, the tradition was expanded to be shared with each new head of Vatican Intelligence, so that the secret could be protected in the event of foreign conquest. It also served to insulate the pope against any violence undertaken to protect it.”

“And now?” Seven said.

“It goes without saying that the pontiff is innocent,” Callahan cut in. “His Holiness would never agree to these atrocities in the name of God.”

Lang crossed himself. “What we do, we do to serve God. It is my sincere hope that His Holiness remains naive of the war we are waging to protect him.”

“I’m not easily offended,” Carver growled. “But I don’t want to hear another word justifying these murders in the name of God.”

Lang leaned back in his chair. “That’s fine, Agent Carver, because I’m tired of talking. I’ve told you more than I should have in hopes that we might better understand each other. I suggest you get on with whatever business you have planned.”

Now thoroughly satisfied that Lang was the leader they had been looking for, Carver sat in the chair opposite the desk and looked the old man in the eyes. “What if I could lead you to the ossuary, and allow you to return it to the Vatican?”

Lang folded his hands before him. “Then the secret would be restored. All hostilities would cease immediately.”

Carver turned, suppressing a smile. He had Lang right where he wanted him. “I would need something else in return.”

“Naturally. And what might that be?”

“The names and locations of the men who killed Rand Preston.”

Subterranean Rome

It was Lars who first discovered that something was wrong. Just an unsettling feeling, quickly followed by butterflies in his stomach. Seconds later, the lights in the enormous home flickered, and then went out completely. The jumbo-size lift that operated 24 hours a day behind him — that which connected the palazzo to the subterranean chamber beneath Rome — ground to a halt. The darkness itself felt alive, like a dangerous organism that threatened to swallow him whole.

Magi’s distant bark echoed up and down the elevator shaft. A husky growl that was unlike any sound the animal had made in the past.

Where the hell were the emergency lights? As soon as the thought had come to him, the battery-powered lights came to life. The peach-colored illumination felt strangely relaxing, as if he were in some upscale restaurant.

Then came the screeching. It took a moment before he recognized the terrible sound of the nightingale floors. It sounded more like bats than birds. Someone was running at full speed down the corridor. He forced himself to breathe as he crouched behind one of the climate-control appliances. He steadied the weapon before him, switched it off safety, and rested his index finger on the trigger.

It was just Mathieu. He raced toward Lars, his eyes impossibly huge. “They’re here!” he yelled.

“Who’s here?” a voice behind him shouted. Lars turned. It was Nicolas. He had just come from one of the interior chambers.

“Black Order!” Mathieu said, exasperated. “I don’t know how many. I saw three, maybe four before the cameras went out.”

Lars was furious. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I tried! Communications are out!”

That figured. After having spent tens of millions acquiring and installing the lab into this ancient place, the communications equipment was comparably archaic. With wireless communications next to impossible from level to level, they had purchased a 1980s-era intercom system that had been salvaged from an abandoned Soviet missile bunker. As with everything down here, they had been too afraid of cave-ins to embed the wiring into the walls. It had worked great, but, as Lars had warned from the beginning, all it would take to cut off multi-floor communication was a pair of wire cutters.

Now he had no way to warn anyone else. “Let’s go,” he urged. Even if they made their stand there, the others could escort the Shepherd out the emergency hatch. It was time to release the bots.

Suddenly the nightingale floors were screaming one long, inharmonious note. God help us, Lars thought. The passageway was full of Black Order operatives.

*

Lang’s international force of holy warriors advanced through the subterranean maze of catacombs, long-buried cobblestone streets and escape routes carved though the ages by the Roman Empire, various resistance movements and later, the Vatican itself. As they had agreed, Carver, Seven, Father Callahan and Heinz Lang trekked behind them.

To forge the unlikely alliance, Carver had provided Lang with the location of the ossuary. Per their agreement, Lang would be permitted to retrieve the ossuary and return it to the Vatican. In turn, Lang had agreed to reveal the identities of Senator Preston’s killers. As a gesture of good faith, Lang had offered to hand them over before the assault even started. Carver, however, preferred to wait. He expected heavy security at the Roman villa where Sebastian Wolf was completing his life’s work. They would need every gun they had.

The tunnels twisted this way and that. The porous walls seemed to have tear ducts, weeping water that was at times pure and at other times putrid. With only their headlamps for illumination, they trekked through passageways lined with the bones of long-dead Romans.

Time and again he flashed to the kill zone beneath Washington D.C. where he had lost Megan O’Keefe. The sight and sound of her stiff, waterlogged corpse had haunted his sleep endlessly. And now he relived the nightmare as they waded through three feet of water and the rats — hundreds of them — scurried up the walls around them. On his insistence, Seven walked behind him. As he turned to check on her, his heart skipped as he projected the face of his dead partner on hers.

Seven’s voice broke through the quiet. “How far down are we?”

“About 60 meters and counting,” Callahan replied. He had used the tunnels many times over the years. Dressed in olive green cargo pants, a black turtleneck and felt-bottom boots that would not slip on the wet earth below Rome, Father Callahan’s preparation was admirable. Callahan carried a pack containing spare ammunition, guns, night vision goggles and other items that they had handpicked from the trunk of his car.

As he had told Blake, he was here not as an operative, but as a Christian. Callahan had been just a boy when his uncle had been killed in a torrid stretch of Protestant on Catholic violence in Belfast. The trouble over the ossuary would only bring more blood to the streets around the world. They had a chance to stop it tonight, once and for all.

“If we find Sebastian Wolf,” the priest asked, “What exactly are we going to do with him?”

“That’s for Lang to decide,” Carver said. “We aren’t allowed to touch him.”

“And Adrian Zhu?”

“We have reasonable cause to apprehend him. That goes double for Mary Borst.”

Finally they breached the immense reception room of the grandiose residence near Piazza del Popolo. It was to this stately address that Symplexicon Labs had shipped enough laboratory equipment to clone a herd of woolly mammoths. Lang’s force quickly dispatched two armed guards in the Renaissance-era foyer, the blood spatter scarcely noticeable against the crimson-colored walls. Overhead, an enormous white glass chandelier swung back and forth. Portraits of long-dead Vatican royalty seemed to stare at them from all sides.