The Fellowship (20 page)

Vera Borst Residence

Vera Borst was suspended in mid-air by a rope that was attached to a pulley and a hand winch. Her hands were tied behind her back, her torso arched forward. Her blouse was torn open, revealing sagging white breasts and a bulging stomach, which was already bloodied by several open incisions. Carver had been right. It was just like he had predicted. Rope torture.

Borst
’s mouth was fixed in an “O” shape.  Her eyes were closed. Her chin bobbed wearily against her chest. Her vocalizing was less constant now, breaking up into great spastic bursts of guttural release.

A man in dark
coveralls stood at her feet. He seemed to be attaching some sort of weight to her ankles, which Ellis imagined might be enough to actually break Borst’s wrists and sever them from her body. Ellis judged the distance between her and the tormentor to be about 30 feet. As much as he might deserve to die, she wanted to take him alive. He had to be questioned.

He didn’t look like the most overpoweri
ng physical specimen. Perhaps five foot ten, with a trim, but not especially muscular, build. Ellis was no dojo master, but she had studied a variety of hand-to-hand combat techniques in the Army.

The man had his back to the staircase. He
seemed to be preoccupied with affixing the weights to Borst’s ankles. There was no telling whether he was alone. Ellis did not have a full view of the basement, nor was it well lit. However small, there was a chance that another perpetrator could be behind the row of canoes, kayaks and oars to the right of where Borst hung, or lurking in a dark corner of the space, perhaps behind the crates of Christmas ornaments or behind the air hockey table at the far end.

Nevertheless, there
was no time for deliberation. Borst’s life was quickly slipping away.

Ellis crossed herself before leaping down the stairwell
. Although she had perfected her flying kick several years earlier en route to earning a brown belt in karate, she had been skeptical about its effectiveness in an actual combat situation. That had changed while watching a cage match on TV the previous year, when a 230-pound bruiser was dropped senseless by a much smaller man using such a move. It was time to find out for herself.

Borst
’s cries masked Ellis’ footfall, but the perp sensed the reverberations an instant before she took to the air. He turned his shoulders and neck just as the edge of Ellis’ right foot plowed into his neck. The blow knocked him into Borst’s suspended torso, snapping his neck back violently. The under-secretary-general swung grotesquely back and forth like a bloody piñata.

The perp collapsed at her feet, legs and arms twitching violently. Ellis was shocked by the effectiveness of the maneuver, fearing that she had killed him after all. “
You better not die,” she growled.

Another
.
Another
. The words seemed to pop into her head, as if whispered from angels.
Another
. She looked up. The words were Borst’s. A warning.

A canoe paddle struck
Ellis’ back, felling her head-first into a column of crates filled with tree ornaments. The Beretta flew from her hand. Two dozen silver balls popped loose, breaking into hundreds of tiny shards against the concrete flooring. Ellis tumbled over them, instinctively rolling on her right shoulder so to as avoid eating glass. She rose slowly, just enough to see that the first perp was still where she had left him, twitching beneath Borst, who continued to swing like freshly butchered hog.

The second perp stood several feet away. He wore
a black plastic smock that was hooded at the top. A prickly black beard protruded from his face.

He
threw down the oar, reached into his pocket and removed a small Taser. Oh hell. The Beard was going to Tase her.

Ellis had
once been told that the best defense against a Taser was a firearm. That advice was now of little help, as her Beretta was nowhere in sight.  She rolled right across the bed of broken Christmas ornaments, heading for the foosball table. She heard a burst of compressed nitrogen. Two electrical probes crackled toward her at 135 feet per second. They struck her left side, right in the ribs, piercing her shirt and skin. Ellis’ momentum sent her rolling, the wires wrapping around her midsection as her body was flooded by 50,000 volts. Her hands clenched involuntarily. Every muscle in her body seemed to seize and cramp. Her sinuses seemed to actually screech.

A
s her mind traversed the edge of consciousness, she tried to roll over. Her extremities were unresponsive. She could do nothing but observe as the Beard appeared over her, like some reaper from a dark fairy tale. He tightened the cooling probe wires around her, turned her on her stomach, and began tying her wrists together with some sort of elaborate knot. And now the Beard was talking in some foreign language. The same phrases over and again.
Benedictus Dominus Deus meus qui docet manus meas ad proelium digitos meos ad bellum. Deus, refugium meum salvator meus scutum meum et in ipso sperávi. Benedictus Dominus Deus meus qui docet manus meas ad proelium digitos meos ad bellum...

Ellis tried to block out the pain and think. Why was
the Beard praying? Was he asking God for forgiveness, or was he giving thanks for the latest prey that had fallen into his trap?

She managed to raise her head and get her bearings
. She must have been dragged from the place where she had fallen. She was underneath Borst now, right next to the Beard’s fallen companion. The Beard would probably finish Borst off and drag her upstairs, like he had done to her boyfriend. Then it’s my turn, she thought. The
strappado.

Carver and Speers would eventually find their way here, she realized. They would find
her in a heap on the floor, her body scarred by the telltale signs of the rope torture. And slipped inside her shirt would be an octagon. Just like the one they found on the others. And they would look at the number of wounds on her body and based on that, they would try to deduce how much information she had given up. It was the last thing she could control, she realized. Her life was over, but she could decide to stay strong, to keep her mouth shut until the end.

She spotted the twitching man’s
Taser gun, perhaps four feet away now. If only she could get to it.

Mary
. Mary. Mary
.  The voice again. Ghostly, as if blown in from the Puget Sound.
Mary
. She looked up to see if angels might be hovering overhead. It was the opposite. The motion of Vera Borst’s body had slowed, but the rope still carried her back and forth over the twitching man. She had stopped wailing. Her eyes were open now. She couldn’t seem to move her head, but her eyes were tracking, and they looked deep into Ellis’.  Her lips moved, more of a whispering wind than a human voice.
They want Mary.

Why did they want Mary
?

My daughter. The virgin.
They know. It’s her that they want.

A boot
struck the back of Ellis’ head. Someone was using her brain as a soccer ball. Roman candles showered her eyelids as the pain flowed through her skull and neck. A sick wetness oozed from her scalp.

She did not fully lose consciousness. The fading electrical shock seemed to have numbed her senses somewhat, but the texture of the rope fiber was
unpleasant against the delicate skin of her wrists. A knot rose on the back of her head.

Blinding light
suddenly filled the room. She squeezed her eyes shut and still saw nothing but white. A passage to the other side.

But something was burning
. Her ears were filled with a screeching that all but drowned out Borst’s soft moans. Ellis flipped onto her side and saw her tormentor. The Beard. Hair and hood alight in flame, pawing at his flaming face. 

Rome

With night fallen, Carver’s return walk along the Tiber River was a luxurious indulgence. The Tiber snaked directly through the heart of the city, running under one historic bridge after another. He followed it, peering down narrow streets, admiring the medieval
architecture

Ellis still had not returned his call
. Don’t think about it, he told himself. She’s fine. She can take care of herself.

As the city geared up for another frenetic evening, the quiet reflection of the moon against the gently flowing river was the perfect antidote to the chaos of the mission. 
Soon, Castel Sant'Angelo came into view. It had been there all along – perhaps two football fields from the palazzo where they stayed – and yet he found himself truly seeing it for the first time.

What a glorious visual disaster
Castel Sant'Angelo was, especially in a city that valued symmetry and architectural integrity. He considered the dome of the Pantheon, masterfully engineered into a near-perfect sphere. And the elliptical balance that Bernini had achieved in designing St. Peter’s Square, complete with the Egyptian obelisk providing a hub for the four rows of Doric columns on its outer perimeter.

And yet here was
Sant'Angelo, a monstrosity of ancient architecture, reimagined in multiple phases over nearly two thousand years, having slowly evolved from Hadrian’s tomb into a fortress that was the site of both battles and executions. Even now it remained linked from the Papal Apartments by an elevated passage where popes had sought refuge over the millennia.
Sant'Angelo seemed to embody, more than any other structure, everything that Rome was to Carver.

He
turned onto Via della Conciliazione, slowing his pace and checking both sides of the streets. The meeting with Callahan had raised his anxiety levels. During Operation Crossbow, the priest had been the perfect contact, having provided both the malware and the means to infiltrate Adrian Zhu’s network. But as much as Callahan’s information had proven that he was a valuable contact, Carver worried that the priest might alert Vatican Intelligence to his presence in the city.

Nothing seemed to be stirring, not even at the street’s lone café. The
palazzo was up on the left. St Peter’s Cathedral glowed imposingly at the far end of the street, beyond St. Peter’s Square.

The American scanned the lobby before heading inside. Nothing was stirring. He stepped inside slowly
as a group of drunken tourists emerged from Le Colonne. He followed them into the elevator and headed up to his floor.

The smell of eggs and coffee greeted Carver as he entered the suite.
Clothed in a hotel bathrobe, Nico sat on a barstool with a plate full of food and his computer before him.

Carver lifted the top off of a second breakfast plate. He frowned at the sight of the sausage, eggs and coffee.

“Brinner is served,” Nico said.

“
What happened to ‘When in Rome’? This is like an All-American So-and-So Slam at Denny’s.”

“
Mmmm. Denny’s. Never thought I’d say this, but I’m homesick for American food.”

Carver played an imaginary tiny violin. “
Any progress?”

“As a matter of fact,” Nico said, “I’m going to show you something. And afterwards, I’d like you to say, ‘Thank you, Nico. Great work.’” 

“Never expect a ‘thank you.’ Life is less disappointing that way.”

Nico turned his lapt
op so that Carver could see it. The screen was a table of airlines and hotel names cross-indexed with locations and dates. “Ever hear of the Advocate Committee for Small Island Developing States? Or maybe the Investment Council for Landlocked Developing Countries?”

Carver shook his head.
“Nope.”

“Nei
ther has anyone else. An exact match for those names won’t even come up in a plain old web search. But both Senator Preston and Sir Gish traveled to properties where hotel meeting rooms were reserved in those names numerous times over the last five years.” He pointed to his grid. “Over those five years, the two men took a combined 68 trips outside their home countries per year on a combination of official and unofficial business. I was able to find evidence that they were in the same place, at the same time, at least 19 of those times.”

Carver sat down. “
So what?”

“
So…I’m not even sure that these committees really exist. I think they made them up just in case somebody started asking questions.”

“
How’d you find this stuff? Did you break into their frequent flier accounts?”

“
If only it was that easy. These guys were fairly well-heeled. They took a lot of private charters. So I had to mash up credit card purchase history with frequent flier accounts, hotel points accounts, hotel POS systems and, of course, their personal communications. Preston was clearly less careful with privacy than his British counterpart. He even sent emails to his wife a couple of times disclosing the actual location and the committee name.”

Carver
grinned. “Not bad. I knew that trip to South Africa would pay off.”

Nico folded his arms
across his chest. “That statement is entirely self-congratulatory.”

“
It’s as close to a ‘thank you’ as you’re going to get right now. We have more work to do. I need to know who else attended those meetings. I need to know what they were working on.”

His phone rang. Speers’ face lit up on the
Caller ID.

Carver
answered. And he could tell by the darkness in Speers’ tone that he should sit down for whatever news was coming next.