William Tyree - The Fellowship

“Please. I will even hear your confession as you bleed to death. Perhaps then God would have mercy on your soul.”

“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction,” Wolf spat, his face suddenly full of hatred. “Now make me the martyr that I am destined to become!”

Lang lunged forward with the dagger. His aim was true, lodging the tip of the blade within Wolf’s side. Magi jumped, clamping his jaws around the old Jesuit’s wrist, shaking his head back and forth to tear the flesh.

One of the soldiers squeezed off three rounds, neutralizing the animal. The smell of gunpowder awakened Carver’s senses. As Lang squirmed under the dead canine, and Wolf collapsed across the ancient throne, he knew the time to bring Preston’s killers to justice was now. There would not be a better opportunity.

The four able-bodied survivors of the villa assault stood in a quadrangle of death, with the ossuary at the center. Both of Lang’s henchmen stood on the other side of the marble platform. As Carver swung his rifle toward them, both soldiers were already in motion. Seven, too, had been at the ready, preparing to fire from the hip.

It was impossible to tell who fired next. The fusillade of automatic gunfire seemed to come all at once. The throne room was suddenly alive with chalk dust and smoke and blood spray.

Carver found himself lying in the dirt, winded. He had been hit. A coating of white chalk fell over him like snow. He felt his chest, where the pain was the worst. It was dry. The vest had held.

Somewhere to his right, he heard the unmistakable sound of a fresh magazine shoved into a weapon. He saw the silhouette of an armed man in the dissipating haze, moving toward him.

Carver rolled right and emptied the rest of his clip into the haze. He immediately rolled left in case there was return fire, but none came. All was quiet. All was still. He waited until the air cleared enough so that he could make out a boot, then a leg, and then another set of boots. Preston’s killers were, at last, dead.

He got to his feet. Seven was slumped along the western wall of the throne room. The fabric of her hoodie was shredded in front, and the nanofibers of her protection vest were splayed, but not broken. Unconscious, but breathing. At best, she was going to have a few broken ribs. At worst, she could be bleeding internally. He had to get her to a doctor.

He stepped over her and pulled the dead dog off Lang. The Vatican Intelligence chief coughed and groaned. Still alive, but rapidly losing blood from deep bites in his wrist and throat. Carver tore a piece of fabric from his vestments and tied it around the man’s wrist as a tourniquet. Before he could even tend to the man’s throat, he saw the old man’s chest grow still. There was no use trying to resuscitate him. Chest compressions would only expedite the flow of blood from his body. Heinz Lang’s long journey was finally over.

He got to his feet and regarded the throne. Wolf was sprawled backwards across the imperfect stone furnishing, his arms splayed out to his sides. The tip of the dagger was still lodged within the ribs on his left torso. He had also been shot in the neck and chest. His white hair was tainted with crimson blood spatter and his eyes looked heavenward.

Carver gazed into the dead man’s eyes, longing for the secrets they still held.

Safehouse

McLean, Virginia

Speers let himself into the unremarkable three-bedroom brick home near ODNI headquarters. The place smelled like bacon and eggs and coffee. The smell turned Speers’ stomach. He had stayed at the office all night with Chad Fordham and Arunus Roth, monitoring the situation in Rome. To stay awake, the two of them had eaten an entire bag of leftover Halloween candy.

Jack McClellan stood from his post in the foyer. “Morning, director,” McClellan said as Speers took his coat off and hung it on the rack behind the door.

“Evening, Jack. The girls up yet?”

McClellan nodded. “Jenna’s always up. She’s going stir crazy. Can’t blame her, I guess. After Haley’s little Mayflower stunt, we’ve really had this little place on lockdown. I’ve got people in the backyard, in the kitchen and in the hallway between their bedrooms. No closed doors allowed.”

“You’ve been spooning them at night too?”

“Everything but,” McClellan grinned.

“And Haley?”

McClellan furrowed his brow. “Quiet. Real quiet. She’s up, though. I heard Jenna bring her some tea a little while ago.”

Speers slapped McClellan on the shoulder. “Unless something changes, we can all go home in about 24 hours.”

“Good. Haley’s down the hall, second door.”

As McClellan had indicated, Speers found the door to the bedroom ajar. Ellis was sitting in a rocking chair, sipping tea and gazing out into the backyard. She wore black leggings and a gray wool sweater that the secret service had brought from the apartment she shared with Jenna. A Bible and a pair of rosary beads rested on the table next to her.

Speers shut the door behind him. “How’s your head?”

“Numb.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around at the room furnishings. The bedspread, lamps and dresser had all been purchased decades ago, but they weren’t what anyone would call classic. “Jeeze,” he said. “You think this stuff would even sell at a yard sale?”

She sighed, but still did not look at him, and then took a long sip of tea. “What do you want, Julian?”

“To tell you that it’s over. Wolf and Lang are dead.”

Another long pause. She drew one leg up, resting the heel against the edge of the rocking chair. “And the ossuary?”

“En route to the Vatican as we speak.”

Speers frowned. He wasn’t expecting a high-five, but he resented the lack of any response. Maybe the concussion was worse than they had thought. Maybe he needed to have another neurologist check her out.

“Not that you asked, but Blake is all right, by the way. It’s just a matter of getting him home now.”

“I’m glad,” she said after a pause. “Is that it?”

“We also got Preston’s killers. You can thank Blake for that.”

No smile. No reaction.

Ellis set her tea down. “You could have called to tell me all this. Why are you here?”

He pulled a grape lollipop from his pocket, unwrapped it and slid it between his cheek and gum. Screw his stomach ache. He needed a sugar fix.

“I need to know if you’ve remembered anything else about Seattle.”

Her answer was quick. “No.”

“How did it go with the shrink?”

Ellis turned to face him for the first time. “It’s personal, Julian.”

“Obviously, I want to respect your personal boundaries. But this is mission critical.”

She returned her gaze back to the window. “Mission’s over, Julian. You said as much.”

“ Your mission is over. You’re right about that. But Operation Crossbow isn’t. Adrian Zhu is still out there, and my people have to find him.”

“Really? From what I can tell, your intel about him working on military projects was bogus. His passion is obviously elsewhere.”

“The situation has evolved, I’ll give you that. But we believe Zhu may be with Mary Borst. She’s still missing. What if she’s being held against her will? If you know anything, now’s the time.”

The hypnotism had indeed worked. The psychologist had been able to take Ellis back to that moment on Vashon Island. She had been on the ground, banged up and bloodied. Vera Borst had been swinging over her, hanging by a rope, suspended by her wrists, slowly bleeding to death from an array of small incisions to her torso. So much blood. But she had still been conscious. She knew she was dying. She had a message. Mary, she had said. The voice had been soft and earnest, as if whispered by a dying angel.