The Fellowship

by William Tyree

  Suddenly both goons started firing up both staircases. And then they were taking rounds too. Rounds ricocheted off the stairs and whizzed by. Nico squatted with his hands over his head.

  “Keep working!” the longhaired zealot screamed at him, looking back over his shoulder. “Or I shoot you!”

  He straightened up and tried to focus on the screen. Concentrate, he told himself, willing himself to be braver than he really was. Nothing else matters. Just this.

  Onscreen, he had the FAA flight record database for Washington Executive airport, AKA Hyde Field. The little airport was just 30 minutes from D.C., and about 45 minutes from the Eden compound. Earlier he had discovered the name and registration of Wolf’s private plane, an eight-passenger Learjet he had picked up in the 1990s. Now he tried to run a simple query for the plane against the data set. His fingers and palms were slick with sweat. His arms ached, as if they would fall off at any moment. His hands seemed to move involuntarily. He had to keep retyping the simple command query again and again until he got it right.

  Something exploded behind him, sending stone shards against his back. He turned in time to see the goon switching a new clip into his gun.

  He heard a heavy object tumble down the stairs. He turned. The goon yelled “Got one!” in Russian.

  Not Carver, Nico thought. Please, don’t let it be Carver.

  And now the other one shouted something in Romanian and kept firing at something or someone else. The output of gunfire going upstairs seemed heavy in proportion to what was coming down. He hadn’t seen Carver with anything other than a handgun.

  The database query he ran was impossibly slow. He hoped the connection would remain stable long enough to produce results. Another stray round, this time from the entrance at the other side of the room, bounced from the stairs to the ceiling, floor and back again.

  “This is crazy!” he shouted.

  “Shut up,” the goon closest to him growled before resuming the gunfight.

  The rope was behind him. Waiting for him. It was only a matter of time, Nico felt, before these cretins strung him up. He would experience the hopeless sensation of both shoulders dislocating from his body.

  He looked right. Broken pieces of a stone slab were piled near the empty body bays cut into the wall. Nico suddenly found himself in motion. He picked up a piece of cut stone that had once been a piece of a burial tomb, heaved it over his shoulder, and rushed the goon.

  As Nico swung the slab, his captor turned. Suddenly the bastard looked surprisingly human. Brown eyes. Pimples on the forehead. A look of stunned surprise.

  As the stone connected with his skull, a mural of blood splattered across the archway. All Nico’s adrenaline seemed to evaporate at once. His ears were ringing. He felt the urge to run, but there was nowhere to go.

  *

  From his position atop the first staircase to the crypt, Carver heard both machine pistols go silent. Seven and Prichard had been assaulting the other entrance. He was hoping one of them had breached the room. He had only come into this with two spare clips, and he was already two rounds away from empty.

  Now gunfire resumed. It was coming from his side of the fight, but judging by the sound of the ricochet at the far end of the crypt below, it was aimed in the opposite direction. The shooter had been distracted by something behind him.

  He had to make his move now.

  Carver ripped a framed portrait of some long-dead archbishop from the wall beside him. It was approximately five feet in length, and three or so feet wide. Judging by the fact that it had been left behind in this gloomy place, he reckoned that it wouldn’t be missed.

  He placed the portrait at a 45-degree angle at the top of the staircase and leapt atop the makeshift sled. The edges of the stone steps had been worn down from centuries of use, making for a surprisingly fast descent toward the basement. He managed to hold his balance for approximately two seconds. Then he brought his legs under him and pushed off the sled from the ball of his right foot, exploding forward.

  His shooting hand, head and shoulders were the first to enter the room. Time seemed to slow down. His form mimicked the fleche technique he had used to win countless fencing bouts over the years – pushing off from the ball of the front foot and flying forward unexpectedly in mid-air for a surprise attack. When facing lefties, Carver used the move to slip behind his opponents and score from behind.

  Now in mid-flight, Carver’s body cleared the threshold, floating not two feet from the assassin. He was a white, balding European who was obviously stunned by Carver’s sudden presence.

  Unlike Carver’s expert swordplay, his midair shot did not find its mark. The round struck the wall over the man’s shoulder. Carver braced his fall by tumbling into a lightweight wooden table. His gun skittered into the shadows.

  A set of long blades fell from the table surface, clanging against the stone floor. The blades were sharp and shiny with precious-looking stones along the handles. Ritual blades, Carver noted. Could these have been the same knives used on the others?

  Two shots hit the wooden table, splintering the thick wood and missing Carver’s face by mere inches. Then Carver heard the chukka-chukka sound of an empty clip being discharged from the assailant’s weapon.

  He grabbed the longest blade of the bunch – about 18 inches – and rose up as the chrome-domed thug reloaded. Wielding the heavy blade, he sprung forward into a flunge – a combination of the fleche and the traditional lunge – that ended in a chop to the side of the head.

  A section of the assailant’s scalp flew overhead. He dropped his gun and tried to catch the severed flesh in mid-air. He then crawled toward the place where it landed, clutching it for a moment before the heavy loss of blood rendered him unconscious. Carver lingered over him for a moment, wielding the blood-drenched blade in a defensive stance, as the man’s body worked out its final electrical impulses.

  “Nico?” he called out.

  “I’m all right!” a quivering voice called from the other side of the room.

  With Nico safe, Carver refocused on the dead man’s face. He couldn’t be certain, but the wide flared nostrils, glasses and complexion bore a strong resemblance to the man on the security camera footage they had seen at Legoland.

  He took a photograph of the dead man’s face. Are you the one who killed Sir Gish? Carver wondered. Did you kill Kenyatta? How many more are there like you?

  Now he heard Seven’s voice. He turned and noted the blue glow of a computer screen flickering in the middle of the darkened crypt. He picked up an LED lantern and went to the other side of the room, where its florescent bulbs illuminated Seven and Nico.

  Nico wore a dazed stare. His arms were bruised and lacerated in several places. Blood ran down one side of his face from the top of his ear. Carver felt a pang of responsibility. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he’d extracted Nico from his home. Not even close.

  He could tell by the look in Seven’s moist eyes that something was very wrong.

  “Where?” Carver said.

  She pointed to the second staircase. At the bottom, the other Black Order assassin lay dead. His head had been bashed in by a blunt object.

  A rivulet of blood snaked its way down the staircase. About halfway up, Prichard was sprawled face-down, his right arm twisted unnaturally behind him. He had been shot once in the chest.

  A siren sounded in the distance.

  Carver turned back toward Seven. “We have to get out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving Sam,” Seven said.

  He looked around. “This is going to be hard to explain to the police.”

  He went up the steps, removing Prichard’s visa and other identification from his pockets. Nico collected both assailants’ phones and began sweeping several other items that had spilled from the overturned table into a manila folder.

  Seven was frozen in place.

  “We’re going,” Carver said, taking her hand. “All of us.”

  Piazza di Spagna<
br />
  Rome

  Carver checked them into a luxury hotel near the Spanish Steps that was large enough to feel anonymous. To mask the powder burns and bloodstains on their clothes, they had bought three knockoff designer hoodies from a sidewalk vendor, zipping them as high as they would go. Nico tightened the hood around his head to mask the lacerations on his neck and ear.

  Everyone managed to keep it together at the front desk. They did not speak in the elevator. There was a collective exhale as they finally reached the suite, which was larger than Carver’s apartment back in D.C. He stood in the living room and watched as Seven went to the minibar and downed six tiny bottles of vodka. She also made fast work of the gin and rum samplers. As if it would help stop the ringing in her ears from the gunfire. As if it would help her stop thinking about Sam Prichard’s body, which they had left in the old deconsecrated church crypt.

  She went to the second bedroom and, without closing the door, stripped to her undergarments and fell into bed, weeping.

  “Why don’t you say something?” Nico said.

  Carver turned. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Tell her it’s going to be all right. Give her a hug. Something.”

  Carver shook his head. He knew better. His words of comfort would only seem hollow. He couldn’t tell her it was going to be all right, because it wasn’t going to be all right. At least not for Prichard.

  A week ago, he had been sipping tea in his cushy MI6 office. He had never even heard of the Black Order. And tonight the Black Order had killed him.

  Carver really knew nothing about him. Was he married? Were his parents alive? Did he have children? It was been obvious that he wasn’t battle tested, though. Carver had sensed that before launching the attack, and deemed it an acceptable risk.

  Nico was their greatest asset right now. His life was simply more valuable than any of theirs. That was the cold, hard reality.

  “You know what it’s like to lose somebody,” Nico reminded him.

  The intensity of his glare startled Nico. “I told you,” he said. “I don’t discuss Agent O’Keefe with anyone.”

  “Meagan. Her name was Meagan. And you don’t have to talk about her. Just tell Seven you understand.”

  He hated himself at times like this. He wanted to feel more. He didn’t want to be so practical. But he could not force himself to think about O’Keefe. He couldn’t say her name. If he did, then he would lose all focus. He would become the emotional one. Unable to think strategically. Unable to maintain his edge.

  It was the downside of hyperthymesia. He did not relive painful memories with the same soft focus that others did. Time created no protective buffer for him. Every moment was relived in excruciating detail. He had learned to suppress effect over the years by denying such memories entry altogether. But once they were unleashed, it was difficult to bottle them up again.

  Against his better judgment, he walked to the bedroom. He had not experienced fear during the gun battle tonight, but he felt afraid now. He found it remarkably difficult to put one foot in front of the other.

  It wasn’t just the fear of uncorking his own emotions, he knew, or the fear of confronting his own suppressed grief. It was a fear of attraction. Seven was witty and brave. She knew how to hotwire a scooter. He could imagine her London flat, white-walled and airy. An expensive bike parked near the front door, to which she owed her round, muscular haunches. A closet was half-filled with biking gear, and the other half with sensible evening wear, as she was often invited to events that required little black dresses and strands of pearls and good shoes.

  He went to the bed where Seven was curled up in fetal position, clutching a pillow. Even as upset as she was, she was gorgeous. His eyes traced the contours of her athletic calves, which tapered into ankles that were strong but thin. It was wrong to want her at a time like this, but he did.

  God, she smelled like a distillery.

  She looked up at him. Waiting for Carver to speak.

  “I lost a partner too.” His own words surprised him.

  Seven swallowed hard. “Really?”

  He nodded. “About a year ago.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, keeping his back to her so she wouldn’t see the manifestation of his desire in his pants. He put a hand on her calf. Patted it lightly. He felt her cozy up to him. Just close enough so that they were touching.

  And he let himself think about Megan O’Keefe. They had been followed to a rendezvous at Arlington House, and they’d escaped into a section of ancient tunnel underneath it that had been built by Robert E. Lee, who had lived there before the civil war. He never should have let her walk point as the partially flooded tunnel led them under the Potomac. He had seen her green eyes bloodshot with fear and felt her tremble at the frenzied screech of the rats up the tunnel walls. It had smelled like burnt oranges down there. And there had been things in the water. Black snakes six feet long. Carp nearly as big around as his waist. She shouldn’t have been there to begin with. It was his fault. She had been a NASA cryptologist when Speers had paired them up, and he had objected, at first, to working with an academic like O’Keefe on a mission that was likely to get hairy. He never should have demanded that she take weapons training. And he never should have pretended he hadn’t fallen for her on that summer night in the train station. He should have done everything differently.

  “Hey Blake,” Seven murmured from behind him. He was transported back to the present.

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you just sit there while I go to sleep?”

  The very thing that was hardest for him. Sitting still.

  “Sure,” he nodded without turning around. “Go ahead and get some shuteye. I’ll be right here.”

  He would be true to his word. With one last task to do before getting some rest, Carver took his phone he had purchased earlier that day out of his pocket and prepared to upload evidence to the mission cloud. Before leaving the church crypt, he had snapped death portraits of the Black Order assassins. Then he had pressed the ends of their gunpowder-blackened fingers onto his phone screen to get their prints. Fortunately, he had an app for that.

  Now he navigated to the mission cloud, which resided at a hellishly convoluted URL that only a security specialist could love. Once there, he entered the 23-digit passcode without hesitation.

  He uploaded the death photos and the prints to the site with a simple message for Arunus Roth to ID the men. Then he put the phone away and waited for Seven to fall asleep.

  *

  The number of lacerations and bruises Nico had suffered kept his shower forcibly brief. He stepped out onto the marble tile, pausing to note the thinness of his white figure in the bathroom window before wrapping a towel around his waist. He opened the first aid kit he had found in the suite’s kitchenette and began applying Neosporin to several wounds on his arms, neck and ear. Then he used all eight bandages.

  Wearing only the towel, he ventured out into the darkened living room and looked to see if any alcohol had escaped Seven’s thirst. He smiled as he found a Peroni beer. He cracked the lid and inhaled the fumes, savoring them before drinking.

  Wow that was good. It wasn’t like the Italians made the world’s best beer. But any beer tonight was good. He was alive.

  He walked back to the bedroom and opened the computer. He connected to the hotel wireless, and for the first time, saw the results of the search queries he had run at the church. Excitement pulsed through his veins. This was big.

  He felt mildly astonished with himself. Where was the resentfulness he was accustomed to feeling? Where was the victimization? Why didn’t he want to blame anyone for the fact that his left ear would need a plastic surgeon? He felt something he had not felt since he began committing cybercrimes for the thrill of it. Invincibility. He had been pulled back from the abyss tonight, and that in itself was proof of his power.

  Now he understood why he didn’t miss Madge. From the very first letter she had written him in priso
n, her goal had been to rehabilitate him. To convert him. To own him.

  It was true that he had hurt people using his skills in the past. Madge had helped him understand that. But she had also wanted him to let go of those skills completely. And he had. Quit cold turkey. There hadn’t been so much as a mobile device in the house at Kei Mouth. Given all that they had been through, and given the way the Feds had “repaid” him for his good deeds during the Ulysses Coup, leaving it all behind had made sense at the time.

  But in the process he had allowed Madge to transform him into someone else. Someone average, in an anonymous place, with aspirations that nobody would ever care about. That wasn’t who he was.

  He closed his eyes, resolving to hold onto this feeling of renewal. His life was his again. There was only one piece missing. The control of his own destiny.

  *

  Carver woke on the couch. He patted his chest, feeling for the shoulder holster to make sure he had not been disarmed during sleep. The weapon was still there. Then he glanced at his wristwatch. Good. It wasn’t dawn yet.

  He went to the balcony for some fresh air. A few street vendors were sleeping on the Spanish Steps in the very spots where, a few short hours from now, they would sell knockoff designer sunglasses, handbags and other wares. In the Piazza di Spagna he could see the illuminated Fountain of the Barcaccia, which had been created by Bernini’s father, Pietro. The 400-year-old public artwork was such a kid magnet – they were always leaping on and off the thing, drinking from it, throwing stuff into it – that Carver had never seen it unobstructed. Here, stripped down to its core, it was shockingly plain. A partially submerged boat that seemed to be sinking fast.

  He spun around, detecting movement behind him. It was Nico, dressed in a fuzzy white hotel robe. He opened the balcony door.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  Nico shook his head. “I think Wolf is in Rome.”

  Excitement stirred within Carver. “Say more about that.”