The Fellowship (16 page)

City Morgue

Rome

Detective
Antonio Tesla was a distinguished-looking fellow, perhaps in his mid-50s, clean-shaven, with the short, curly hair that was seen on the busts of ancient Roman noblemen. He wore brown suit pants and a white button-down shirt under an unstructured jacket.

Carver let Callahan handle
the introductions between him, Tesla and Nico. Tesla shook hands without a word, turned, and led them past the administrative offices and down some stairs, where the air was markedly colder. It seemed that morgues all over the world looked the same. Unflattering lighting. A series of gurneys with unclothed bodies in various levels of assembly. Rows and rows of drawers.

Tesla began talking
in Italian at a steady clip as they entered a second, and much larger, room. Father Callahan began translating as he received the information. “He says the two victims were found four nights ago in the parking garage of the Hotel Angelico.”

“How did they die, exactly?”

Callahan started to answer, but it was all he could do to keep up with the detective’s quick tongue. “There was a shootout. The victims were found in and around the Mini Cooper, which was apparently rammed several times by a Range Rover with stolen plates. It was left on the premises.”

“Did you say,
in and around
the Mini Cooper? I thought there were only two of them.”

The priest clarified the point with Tesla. His revu
lsion was evident before he began translating. “It appeared that the men might have been attempting to escape the vehicle. Their extremities were smashed in the process, rendering certain, em, pieces of them outside the wreckage.”

“A regular demolition derby,” Carver remarked.

Tesla resumed talking. 

“Yesterday,” Callahan
translated from Italian, “He discovered that the car had been registered to a young couple in Florence who had driven it for four years before donating it to a local Monastery. It’s currently unclear how it ended up in the hands of the victims.”

A morgue employee
in a hooded white uniform took note of Detective Tesla’s entrance and, apparently expecting his arrival, motioned in the general direction of a wall of drawers. He walked to one such drawer and opened it about three feet, revealing a black body bag.

“He says it’s going to be
unpleasant,” the priest explained.

Nico looked away as Tesla
unzipped the bag, revealing the decapitated cadaver. What remained above the neck was a twisted, ravaged lower jawbone covered in jerky-like flesh.

Tesla
spoke rapidly. He went on nonstop for a minute, gesticulating with his hands. At last Callahan said, “He thinks the people in the Range Rover might have just walked away. There’s no accounting for their departure in the hotel security cameras. But he said it looked like they tried to blow up their own ride before they went.”

“
Tried?” Carver said. “Was it armored?”

The priest
nodded. “He says the Range Rover had a serious anti-terror package. The driver’s side glass alone took 20 rounds without giving. They managed to set the gas tank on fire, and the outside was scorched, but the interior withstood the blast.”

“There can’t be many vehicles that tricked out in the world.”

“Tesla’s squad already looked up the plates. Stolen from a Fiat.”

The plates might have been
untraceable, Carver thought, but surely there were only a handful of security companies in the world that could have outfitted the Range Rover to take more than 70 rounds of gunfire and also be resistant to self-sabotage.

They probably just changed vehicles, Carver thought. He was going to need to review the garage security footage for himself.

“Ask the detective if we can see their phones,” Carver said and then waited for the translation.

“He said you’re welcome to see them, but that the SIM cards had been removed by the time police arrived at the scene.”

SIM cards stolen from dead men? This was both strange and disappointing. Even if these men had used disposable handsets, the call logs could have exposed anyone they had communicated with recently. Carver could only conclude that whoever had kill these men wanted the data for the same purpose. Killing them wasn’t enough. They wanted their friends, too.

Meanwhile, Tesla was still talking.
“They appeared to be firing MP5 submachine guns,” Callahan translated. “And they had plenty of time to shoot, apparently. They found 72 shell casings on the cement around them.”

By the time Callahan was finished translating for Carver, Tesla had already opened up a second drawer. He unzipped the body bag and turned the cadaver on its side.
This one had a face, but was missing a foot. Carver crouched to see the man’s face. He looked no older than 25, with olive-tinted skin.

Tesla
waved his hand, motioning Carver to the other side. As Carver came around, he pointed to a tattoo on the man’s back, just below the collar. It was a circular sun, with the block letters IHS in the center. A cross was above the abbreviation, with three nails below. Carver knew it well. It was the symbol of the Society of Jesus.

“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.”