The Fellowship

by William Tyree

  “Jesuits,” Tesla said in English, tapping the inked skin.

  “Whoa!” Nico exclaimed. “These were some badass priests!”

  “Not all Jesuits are priests,” Father Callahan cut in. “Some are lay brothers. And I’d venture to say that the presence of a tattoo is hardly proof that they were in the Society at all. Vandalization of the flesh is hardly standard. You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord. That’s from Leviticus. It wouldn’t be approved by Father General, I can tell you that much.”

  Carver understood the reference. Father General was the leader of the Jesuits worldwide. It was a powerful position within the Roman Catholic Church, officially known by insiders as Superior General, and to some outsiders by the mildly derogatory term, Black pope. Like the pontiff, superiors general were generally elected for life, their reign typically ending only as they drew their last waking breath. Ignatius of Loyola had been the first leader of the Jesuits, in 1541.

  “What were they wearing?” Carver said.

  The answer came back quickly. “Track suits.”

  Carver looked up at Tesla. “There was some mention of an octagon found on one of the bodies?”

  “Ah, ottagono,” he nodded. Tesla zipped up the body bag and rolled the cadaver drawer back into the wall. Then he led them into an office with plastic bins on shelves. Most had a name. The employee went to a shelf that had several bins that were labeled by number only. He pulled #51, which corresponded to the cadaver drawer they had just seen.

  The octagon-shaped piece of cloth was on top in a plastic Ziploc bag, resting atop the bloodied tracksuit and sneakers the dead man had been wearing. To Carver’s eye, it looked exactly like the octagons at the Gish and Preston crime scenes. The inscription on the front was Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam – for the greater glory of God. He flipped it over to read the inscription on the back, Paratus Enim Dolor et Cruciatus, in Dei Nomine. Prepared for pain and torment, in God’s name.

  “Where’s the other one?” Carver said.

  Tesla shook his head and held up one finger.

  “Only one octagon?”

  “Pocket,” Tesla replied, opening his own jacket and pointing to an inside pouch.

  “The octagon was in his pocket?” Carver said. “Not in his mouth?”

  The priest translated. Carver understood Tesla’s response before Callahan interpreted. “He wants to know why you would expect it to be in his mouth. And that goes double for me.”

  Carver could not say what he was thinking. An octagon in either dead man’s mouth might have indicated that they were victims of the same organization that had killed Preston and Gish. But the presence of the fabric in their pocket could mean the opposite.

  But these men had not killed Gish or Preston. Their deaths had in fact come several hours before the assassinations in D.C. and Rome.

  That meant that the organization they were up against was large enough, and sophisticated enough, to operate in three time zones simultaneously.

  Sea-Tac Airport

  It was past 11 p.m. Pacific time when Ellis’ plane touched down, waking her from a deep sleep. She was immediately self-conscious of her boozy breath. To calm her nerves, she had downed a couple of strong martinis in an airport bar prior to boarding. As soon as she disembarked, she would be searching for a can of Venom, coffee, anything. It was a vicious cycle.

  She stretched as much as possible without encroaching upon the space of the elderly gentleman sitting next to her. Then she opened the window shade and peered out the dewy window. The thick airport fog reduced the airport buildings to hazy illuminations of yellow light.

  She had no luggage except the backpack she had taken from Drucker’s condo. In it she had packed her weapon, Drucker’s manuscript and notes. The hotel situation had forced her to travel light. After her conversation with Vera Borst, Ellis had been left with the challenge of escaping Jack McClellan’s watch. After hearing nothing through the door the adjoining suite for several hours, she took a chance and forced it open. One look at the room told her it was still occupied, but the guests had apparently stepped out. Ellis rifled through the closet, looking for anything that might pass for a disguise. She quickly located a stylish long black trenchcoat that fit to a tee, and a furry hat with long earflaps and poms. A pair of sheepskin boots were a half-size too large for her, but she decided she could manage it. She bolted out of the adjoining suite with her back to McClellan’s position in the hallway, walking with purpose toward the elevators at the end of the hall. She never looked back.

  Ellis had left the hotel before her new satphone had arrived from McLean. Traveling without a device made her feel both vulnerable and free. She was so accustomed to having the mapped world at her behest that the thought of finding Ms. Borst’s address – which she had handwritten on a piece of hotel stationary – seemed daunting. At the same time, she was grateful to be spared the inevitable barrage of demanding messages from Julian Speers. That went double for having her location trackable. She checked her watch again. It was 2 a.m. in D.C. With luck, she would be on her returning flight by the time Speers woke up.

  Despite her eighth row window seat, Ellis managed to be the first one off the plane when the doors opened, elbowing her way past even the first class passengers.

  Ellis quickly made her way through the tidy airport toward the signs for ground transport. Once she reached the outside, she stood for a moment on the curb, breathing in her first taste of Northwest air. Wet. Crisp. Verdant.

  She jumped into a cab.

  “Evening,” the driver said. “Just the pack? No other luggage?”

  She handed the driver the Mayflower Hotel stationary on which she had written Borst’s address. She remembered watching her mother do the same thing once, when she was a child, before the age of smartphones.

  The cab driver let out a hearty laugh. “Miss,” he chuckled. “Do you even know where this is?”

  Ellis took it back. She saw nothing wrong with the address. “What’s the problem?”

  “The zip code. It’s on Vashon Island.”

  Crap. Ellis was vaguely aware that the Northwest was partitioned by lots of inlets, lakes and rivers, but she had no concrete knowledge of its actual geography. She had already spent a ton of her own money on the plane ticket, without any guarantee that Speers would ever agree to reimburse her for it.

  “Okay. How much?”

  “I can’t just drive there, if that’s what you’re asking. If it was Mercer Island, no problem. There’s a bridge to Mercer. For Vashon, you have to take a ferry, and the ferries stopped for the night already. You’ll have to wait until morning.”

  That was out of the question. Vera Borst had said she was flying to Europe in the morning, presumably on UN business, although she hadn’t specified. She had said to come tonight.

  “Are there water taxis?” Ellis said.

  The cabbie chortled again. “There should be, right? Fact is that there’s a lot of people that want water service privatized, which would mean more jobs and service all night and all day, right? But no, the county protected the union jobs like always.”

  “Is there someone else you can call? Someone with a boat?”

  The driver shook his head.

  Ellis reached into her pack, fished out one of the outdated NIC business cards she had shown Drucker, and handed it to the cabbie. “I’m not usually this pushy. It’s just that I’m here on a matter of national security. It’s important.”

  Rome

  The sun fell behind St. Peter’s Basilica just as Father Callahan turned his tiny Fiat onto Via della Conciliazione. Nico sat sideways in the car’s tiny back seat, watching as a group of tourists posed for pictures in front of the Santa Maria della Transpontina church. The car passed the embassies of Brazil, Iraq and Egypt. How was it that over the past two thousand years the Vatican had shrunk from a vast geographical empire of papal states to a tiny sovereign nation wedged inside Rome, and yet it influenced more peop
le worldwide than any other government?

  At last, the Fiat pulled up to the Palazzo della Rovere. “Buy you a drink?” Carver asked the priest, who was shaken from seeing the mangled corpses.

  “I could use it,” he said. “I’ll meet you in Le Colonne.”

  Carver and Nico unfolded themselves from the tiny car and watched as the priest pulled through the arched driveway in search of parking. The two hadn’t talked since Detective Tesla had shown them the bodies and the personal effects found on the dead Jesuits down at the morgue.

  “In your estimation,” Carver said, “How accurate was Father Callahan’s translation?”

  Nico scratched behind his left ear and rolled his shoulders up and down, as if to work the tension out of them. “Mmmm,” he said, “Detective Tesla talks a hundred miles an hour.”

  Carver smiled. “I have a hard time believing that you, of all people, couldn’t understand him.”

  “Of course I could understand him,” Nico quipped. “I’m just qualifying my answer first. The priest lives here, so naturally his comprehension is going to be a bit better than mine.”

  “I get it. Now answer the question.”

  Nico placed a hand flat against the wall and leaned into it, bringing his left leg up behind him as he spoke. “I didn’t notice any glaring omissions, but I thought it was curious that Father Callahan kept referring to the bodies as victims. Tesla never used that word to describe them.”

  “What word did he use?”

  “Gunmen.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Mind if I go up and wire in? You didn’t drag my ass all the way from Africa to hang around morgues.”

  That much was true. Carver needed Nico to find connections between two more famous stiffs – Preston and Gish. Maybe it was time to let the tracking chip in Nico’s arm do the chaperoning for a bit. He took one of the room keys from his pocket and handed it over.

  Carver held the door to the lobby open. “I want to know the moment you find anything.”

  Nico scampered upstairs. Carver made his way through the lobby to Le Colonne, the hotel bar where Father Callahan had already sidled up to a bar stool. The priest had ordered whiskey for himself, along with a plate of pizza, and unsweetened iced tea and salmon for his American colleague.

  Carver pointed toward a booth at the back of the room. He had no intention of disclosing the full details of the operation to Callahan or anyone. But the conversation would undoubtedly veer into territory that would be far too sensitive for anyone else’s ears.

  “Now then,” Callahan began as they settled into the booth. The priest was smiling, but he wasn’t in a merry mood. “If you’ll do me the courtesy of disclosing the real reason you’re in Rome, perhaps I’ll feel like less of a jackass.”

  “This isn’t about Operation Crossbow per se.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “Some very important people are dead. I’m looking for the assassins.”

  “Plural?” Callahan asked.

  “Yes. We believe this is the work of a sophisticated organization.”

  “Is this somehow related to Adrian Zhu or LifeEmberz?”

  “A valid question, Father. I don’t have the answer to that yet. But I have to find the organization behind these assassinations.”

  Without naming the dead, or detailing the exact circumstances, Carver explained how they had found identical octagons in Washington, London, Seattle and now Rome.

  The bartender walked over with the drinks and set them on the table. Carver held his tongue until the man was back at his post. “That octagon we saw today. Have you ever seen something like that before?”

  The priest took a slug of his whiskey. “As a matter of fact, yes. The moment my security clearance was accepted by the Holy See, I went to the archives and read everything I could about the history of Vatican Intelligence.”

  “I’m actually jealous.”

  “You should be. It’s a cracking read. But yes, I saw a couple of preserved octagons like the one we saw today. Calling cards, apparently, for a group of nasties that went by the name Black Order.”

  “How recently?”

  “Not very. 1700s, if memory serves.”

  That checked out. Carver knew that the Black Order had been officially dissolved by Pope Leo XIII in 1878. “What else can you tell me?”

  “I’m not sure,” the priest continued. “You’ve given me almost nothing to go on.”

  The American wasn’t ready to show his hand yet. He still had more questions. “Who’s your boss at Vatican Intelligence?”

  “My direct boss is a nobody. When I really need something, I go to the very top.”

  “Heinz Lang?”

  The priest nodded. Heinz Lang had served as the Superior General of the Society of Jesus for 12 distinguished years. Lang had made headlines by retiring several years earlier, despite appearing to be in excellent health. The rumor in Europe had been that Lang had quietly stepped down in order to direct Vatican Intelligence, which, officially speaking, did not exist.

  “What’s he like?”

  “Very German. Good at delegation and leadership. Personally, quite cold. And like one of our former popes, Lang is a product of the Second World War.”

  “Hitler Youth?”

  “Aye. And then some.”

  The bartender came with the pizza and salmon, some sparkling water and two sets of silverware. Carver waited until he was safely away. “Are you saying Lang was an actual Nazi?”

  “Depends on your definition of a Nazi, doesn’t it? As the war went on, they were drafting them right out of high school. They say he was only 15 when Vatican Intelligence caught him. Just a boy, really.”

  “Was he sent to a POW camp?” Carver cut a slice of salmon and chewed. It was undercooked. Just how he liked it.

  “Father General needed no prodding to switch sides, apparently. He was from a closeted Catholic family living under an oppressive fascist regime. As the story goes, his information led directly to the capture of Heinrich Himmler.”

  Carver paused, sipping his water, wanting to word his next question delicately. “If the church was somehow threatened, would Lang have the authority to reconvene the Black Order?”

  The priest laughed before answering. “For one thing, there is no such thing in this day and age.”

  “The Vatican has been denying the existence of its intelligence agency for hundreds of years, but you just told me that the director of this mythical organization is Heinz Lang.”

  “This is different. If the Black Order existed today, it would no more be controlled by the Vatican than an Illinois militia would be controlled by the White House.”

  It was a flimsy comparison that Carver wasn’t about to be satisfied with. “I’m not asking whether the pope himself is running the Black Order. I’m talking about someone for whom espionage is the primary profession. Specifically, Heinz Lang.”

  The priest’s jaw tightened. His eyebrows drew together. Carver had seen Callahan frustrated, but this was the first time he’d ever seen him ready to fight. Good. Now they were getting somewhere.

  “You seem to be proposing that a person or persons in the Vatican are involved in something extremely sinister. That hits pretty close to home.”

  “Not to be crass, but we pay you more than the Vatican does. So I would think our interests would also hit close to home.”

  “I’ve always earned my keep. But this is more than just business to me. I deserve to know why you’re suddenly so interested in the Vatican.”

  “The murder victims were people of considerable influence, Father. And they weren’t just assassinated. They were tortured. They suffered the strappado.”

  “Suspended by a rope?”

  Carver nodded. “The very method that made Venice’s Palazzo Ducale synonymous with Jesuit-inflicted torture.”

  The priest massaged his wrist. “You do realize the likelihood of the Black Order having survived in complete secrecy all these years is
…”

  “Tiny, I know. But if this is a copycat killer, it’s one hell of a trick. It would require at least two tribute killers working in the same style on different continents. There’s no precedent for that.”

  Callahan sat straight up and ran his palm down the length of his face.

  “You’ve ruled out state-sponsored terror?”

  “For the most part.”

  “Look, all I can tell you is that if I had any knowledge of any such activities, you know full well that I would report it.”

  Carver used his fork to fish a lemon wedge out of his tea. Carver took a bite of the lemon, relishing the sourness for a moment. “I need to find out for sure. How high is your security clearance, Father?”

  “Not nearly high enough.” The priest began to sweat, knowing full well that he was being asked to spy on his own boss. “One doesn’t poo where one eats, now does he?”

  “You just told me that your allegiance is to the CIA.” Carver leaned in. “I’m telling you that there’s smoke at the Vatican, Father. I need you to find out where the fire is.”

  Harbor Island Marina

  Seattle, Washington

  It was after midnight by the time the taxi dropped Ellis at the 80-slip moor between the main city and West Seattle. The water in Puget Sound tonight was as still as it had been on the Virginia lakes Ellis had waterskied on as a teenager. The smell was something else, though. An unpleasant mix of salt and decomposing shellfish from an adjacent mud beach.

  A ruddy-faced man who called himself Captain Zack stood before her in yellow rubber waders, a peacoat and a white cap. He slipped Ellis’ $300 into his pocket and began leading her toward his vessel. “We’ll be in a convertible,” he whispered as they walked. “It’s only about 14 nautical miles, but it’ll be cold.”

  “How long will it take?” Ellis’ voice seemed to boom throughout the stillness.

  “Shhh,” Captain Zack scolded. “Keep it down. Some of these boats are sleepers.”

  He pointed to a 19-foot Harbercraft boat with the name Scorpion Water Taxis along the running boards. “That one will run you about $300.”