The Fellowship (13 page)

The fly
had fallen onto the table. Two of its legs were detached from the main body. When Ellis prodded it with her fingertips, she knew what Drucker never would. The fly was man-made.

Verona, Italy

The journey from South Africa to Italy had been a circuitous one.
Their flight into Rome had been diverted to Munich due to thunderstorms across Italy. They had then been promised another flight the next afternoon, but Carver wasn’t content to wait that long. He opted instead to catch a night train heading south through the Austrian Aps.

Five hours later they arrived in Verona, where a train strike had forced the cancellation of the second leg to Rome. They would be forced to stay in the
northern Italian town for the night. Both men were famished and grumpy as they headed for a late-night pizzeria near the station.

Now, sitting outside under a string of yellow lights, the two men looked better than they felt. They
wore Hugo Boss suits and had both been to a barber at the Munich train station.

“About that thing you put in my arm,”
Nico said, running his fingers over the welt where it had been inserted.

Carver nodded. “The
tracking chip.”

“Not that I’m planning on it, but what’s to stop me from digging that out with a pocketknife?”

“It’s hooked around your cephalic vein. That’s the big one running down your bicep into your forearm.”

“
What? How?”

“
These hooks expand from the chip after it’s embedded. They start off as tiny, flaccid tentacles. But if you attempt to remove the chip after it’s embedded, the tentacles swell, go rigid and curl, cutting off blood flow.”

Nico was horrified. “And this thing is in me permanently?”

“I’m not
that
sadistic. It’s just that you can’t just get any quack to remove it. One of our people in the States will deactivate the hooks and remove the chip after the mission’s done.”

“That’s
just wrong.”

“Not as
wrong as handing you over to the CIA, which is what they wanted me to do. You’d be back in Lee Federal Penitentiary. Or worse, extradited to the Saudis, who would be willing to take your head in exchange for the money you stole from them.” Nico shivered visibly. Carver instantly regretted the remarks, hoping they hadn’t further hardened his asset. He softened his voice. “Look, Julian gave his personal assurances that this mission will pay your debt to America in full.”

“And Eva?”

“For the last time, it’s President Hudson now. And yes, I’m sure she’s on board as well.”

Carver wasn’t sure. But there was always a way. If Nico’s contribution to the investigation turned out to be half as valuable as Carver was expecting, a presidential pardon would be a moral imperative.

After dinner, they checked into a shabby motel with one bed, near the train station. Carver surveyed the dilapidated room, chewing on the end of a straw he had taken from the pizzeria. It wasn’t much, but they were just here to sleep before catching a train to Rome the following morning.

Carver urinated with the restroom door open, and then washed his face and hands. Then he pulled the blankets off the bed and handed them to Nico. “It’s all yours,” he said, gesturing toward the restroom.

“Where am I supposed to sleep, the bathtub?”

Carver nodded and tossed him a feather pillow. “Just for tonight. That way I won’t have to snooze with one eye open.”

“It’s not like I’m going to run.”

“I know. But
it was only 24 hours ago that your girlfriend tried to shoot me, and I punched her in the face.”

“Ah. You’re afraid I’ll smother you with a pillow in the middle of the night.”

“Something like that.”

“Fair enough.”

Carver pushed the dresser against the bathroom door, sealing Nico inside.

“What if there’s a fire?” Nico yelled through the door. “I’ll be trapped in here.”

“Take a cold shower.”

W Hotel

The room lights were on full, offering Ellis a level of illumination that only the hotel bar’s cleaning crew usually witnessed. Men in white biohazard suits examined the booth where Ellis and Drucker had sat earlier in the evening. Two other crews probed every piece of furniture, glass and surface for electronic devices or cameras.

Drucker had died within
90 seconds of the insect bite. Ellis herself had frantically searched the 11
th
floor, as well as the P.O.V.’s rooftop terrace, for anyone suspicious. It had been a fruitless task. By then the lounge had been crowded with people, half of whom could have potentially utilized their phones as either cameras or remote control devices.

The object in question was in a sealed petri dish on the bar countertop.
A federal robotics expert hunched over it, peering through a microscope, gently turning its tiny wings with delicate tweezers. Ellis and Speers stood behind him.

“Amazing nanotechnology,” the
expert said.

Speers had divulged nothing of the situation – other than the fact that a man appeared to have been attacked – to any of the crew on site. 
“Who could have done this?”

“
Beats me. I’m no
entomologist, but whoever did this made a pretty convincing female tabanid, otherwise known as a common horse fly. Right down to the proboscis, which is that needle-like snout that a horse fly uses to extract the blood meal it requires before reproduction.”

“
Only this one didn’t suck his blood,” someone behind them said. The voice belonged to Chad Fordham, who had just come in. “I just talked to my toxins specialist. Drucker was poisoned. We’ll have to confirm this in the lab, but based on Ellis’ description of facial paralysis followed by respiratory failure, taken together with an early blood sample, they’re 90 percent sure that little robo-fly injected him with a botulinum toxin.”

Ellis s
cratched her head. “Isn’t that stuff in Botox?”

Fordham
nodded. “In its purest form, this is the deadliest toxin on the planet. Couple bags of this stuff, and a smart delivery mechanism, and you’ve got a bioweapon capable of mass eradication.”

Ellis tried to imagine the people standing around them and seated at the bar. Lots of little black dresses.
Lots of men in conservative dark suits. Typical Washington crowd. Nobody stood out.

Her
head was spinning. Maybe the FBI hadn’t felt Drucker was worth following up with in the past 12 years, but someone else did. “We’re going to need to look at all the hotel camera footage. Maybe we can catch somebody operating this from their mobile device.”

Speers
pulled Ellis aside. “We’ve been assuming Drucker was the target. We have to consider the possibility that the target was you.”

She
had been thinking the same thought all morning. “Drucker had a crazy vibe,” she said. “But if half the stuff he told me was true, he could have been dangerous.”

“Dangerous to who
m?”

She sat on a barstool and summarized all the madness Drucker had spewed in regards to
the Fellowship World Initiative and its headquarters, Eden. Then she told him what little Drucker had said about its enigmatic leader, Sebastian Wolf.

Speers nodded
, recognizing the name. He had met Wolf, years ago, at the Council on Faith luncheon. “I can hear about that later. Right now we have to assume that someone saw you two together. You can work from McLean until we know more.”

If
there’s anything that can protect you from a killer fly, Ellis thought, I’d like to see it. But she couldn’t think about herself right now. Someone had killer Drucker, presumably because he had agreed to discuss an article he had published more than a decade ago. She had to get her hands on that book of his before someone else did.

“
I’ve got to get to Drucker’s condo,” she said. “It’s in Silver Springs.”

Speers’ glare could have wilted sunflowers.
“Are you deaf? I just finished saying I want you out of the field until we know who did this.”

“
Who’s going to go, you? This isn’t something you can just delegate. The president said she wanted to keep the team small. Besides, I’m the only person that knows what we’re looking for.”  

Speers reached into his pocket
grudgingly. “I’ll drive.”

Nathan Drucker Residence

Silver Springs, Maryland

A curvy 20-something office manager wearing yoga pants and a hoodie staffed the leasing office where Nathan Drucker had lived. After agreeing to let Ellis and Speers into the deceased journalist’s condo, she led them up the building’s stairwell. “This isn’t my career,” she volunteered, although they had not even asked about her ambitions. “I’ve got a degree in communications from Duke. I had an internship last year, but it didn’t pay. I’m just doing this until I can get into something more permanent.”

“I’m sure something will
turn up,” Speers offered as they came to Drucker’s third-floor condo.

“Getting a job must’ve been way easier in your day,” the manager said as she
fumbled through an enormous set of keys. Speers let the age comment go. He was just happy the girl didn’t ask them to get a warrant.

The extent of Drucker’s paranoia was evident by two
bulky cameras mounted over the front door, holdovers from before the era of miniaturization. No less than four dead bolts secured the entrance.

“The
building association must have loved those,” Ellis said, motioning to the cameras. “Did Drucker live alone?”

“He’s got two kids that visit
every now and then, but they live with the ex-wife.” The girl unlocked the second deadbolt, and then turned. “Hold on. Why are you talking about him in the past tense?”

Ellis shot her boss a glare before rolling her eyes.

“I’m afraid Mr. Drucker is deceased,” Speers said with a note of awkward finality.

“Oh my God. Is his body in there
? Are we about to see a corpse?”

“
No,” Speers said. “Look, I need to ask you to keep this under your hat. We haven’t even notified family yet.”

Rattled, the girl
unlocked the last two deadbolts. The apartment was completely dark. Out of habit, Ellis held Speers at the entrance as the manager walked in to flip on the lights. She used the other hand to open her purse and grope for her SIG. In Iraq, her unit had a couple of nasty experiences during home invasions. It was amazing what naughty things people could do with a little trip wire and basic explosives.

All seemed to be quiet.
Satisfied that the spacious condo was still secure, Ellis went in, noting that the place had not been ransacked. She counted them lucky. If someone had taken the time to kill Drucker in a public place, it was only a matter of time before they showed up here.

They
went from room to room until they found Drucker’s study. The converted bedroom would have scarcely been wide enough to hold a queen-size bed. The walls held Drucker’s UCLA degree, as well as framed movie posters for ‘All the President’s Men,’ ‘State of Play’ and the George Clooney movie about TV journalist Ed Murrow, ‘Good Night, and Good Luck.’ All movies about heroic journalists. That figures, Speers thought. Drucker probably thought they’d make a movie about him someday. But journalists never died in the movies.

There was a computer, a printer, and also an old
-fashioned analog typewriter. “This would look cool in my office,” Speers said, admiring the Smith Corona’s sleek black curves.

“
It might look like a museum piece, but I think Drucker was actually using it.”

“
I don’t understand those analog sentimentalists. Like those people who play vinyl records. It’s just backwards.”

“
In this case, it was a security measure. A typewriter is the literary equivalent of paying cash for everything. It’s not digital, it’s far less likely to be traced, found or stolen.”

Speers unplugged Drucker’s computer and began boxing up his papers for analysis back at the office.  Ellis
searched through two tall filing cabinets, discovering nothing. She then went back to the living room, where the office manager had her feet up on Drucker’s coffee table and was peering into her phone. “How much longer?” she said without looking up.

“As long as it takes.”
Ellis went back to the study. She climbed atop the rickety desk while Speers steadied her legs, then pushed open one of the ceiling panels and, fearing a chance encounter with a rat trap, used a plastic back scratcher to poke around in the unseen darkness. Moments later she hit something. She reached in with her hands, pulled, and was soon holding a rectangular box filled with something heavy. Behind it, she found two more that were identical. She handed the boxes one by one to Speers, grunting a little with each heave.

Then she climbed down and opened the first box. It was filled with several legal pads, as well as a bunch of old mini-cassette tapes. “I’d venture a guess that these are
…”

“
Interview transcriptions,” Speers confirmed after taking a quick look at the content.

He
opened the second box. In it, he found a two-inch thick pile of typewritten paper. There was no cover sheet. The double-spaced type started on the first page, and it was crowded with handwritten annotations.

The third box contained
a manuscript printed in bluish text, with margins that had tiny holes in it. “This came out of a dot matrix printer,” Speers said. “We actually had one of these things when we were kids. They were really noisy.” 

“I think I saw one in the Smithsonian,” Ellis said. Speers
chuckled before realizing that his younger subordinate hadn’t been joking.

Ellis opened the closet and found a large
trail-grade backpack. She put the contents of the three boxes into it.

Glass exploded somewhere in the apartment.
Stunned for only a moment, Ellis motioned for Speers to stay quiet.

She
drew her Beretta and spun out into the hallway. The manager was in the living room about 20 feet in front of her, bending to inspect whatever had just been thrown through the living room window.  Ellis didn’t need to get any closer to know it was bad news.

“Run!” she shouted
at the manager before ducking back into the study. There was no time to try to save her. “Cover up,” she told Speers. They had only just gotten their hands over their ears when a blast rocked the entire floor.

If the size of the explosion hadn’t made it obvious, the amount of plaster whizzing past the study
confirmed that the office manager was toast.

Waves of regret coursed through Ellis
. Not just for failing to instruct the office manager to leave the premises, but also for involving Julian. She should have come alone. Now both their lives were in danger. 

In Iraq, Ellis had learned that explosions were sometimes just a
prelude to armed entry. Ellis was willing to bet that at least two invaders would be inside as soon as the dust and smoke cleared. She stood and then pulled Speers to his feet. The paunchy intelligence director was unarmed, and would be of little value in a firefight. They had no choice but to try to escape.

“Take a deep breath and hold it,”
Ellis instructed. She shouldered the heavy backpack containing the manuscript and stepped out into the hallway, leading Speers by the hand. The air was filled with particles that made her eyes burn.

They went into the room opposite the study, heading straight for the window. She looked outside, hoping for a cable they could slide down, a rooftop close enough to jump to, or a fire escape. All
she saw was a brick wall, with only enough clearance for a set of flowerpots.

She
led Speers back into the hallway. Someone was shouting now. It could be anyone, she reminded herself. But as she looked back toward what had been Drucker’s living room, the sight of three red laser dots squelched any hope of heading out the front entrance. Drucker’s killers were already here.

She led Speers to the back bedroom and shut the door behind them. Next to the door w
as a tall maple wood wardrobe. With Speers’ help, she toppled it so that it was blocking the door sideways. She didn’t want to make a stand here, but at least it might stop someone from kicking down the door for a while.

Two windows looked out over
a dimly lit courtyard. Once again, there were no tree branches or wires within reaching distance from the window, nor was there a fire escape. That, she realized, would have been outside the living room, which the invaders had no doubt utilized to their advantage.

“Look,” Speers said, o
pening the window on the other side of the bedroom.

Three
floors down was a community swimming pool, illuminated by a pair of lights at the bottom. There was nobody there at this time of night. Even from her angle at the other window, the water was clearly too far to jump.

“No,” Speers said, pointing straight down. “Down there!”

Ellis’ view was blocked. Before she could stop him, Speers already had one leg out the window. She lunged, grabbing for his other leg just as he let go. They both screamed as he jumped.

S
everal gunshots ripped through the top portion of the door, above the substantial protection that the heavy wardrobe offered. Rays of light emanated from each hole in the door.

She pulled off the backpack, knowing that it would inhibit her ability to break her fall, and tossed it out the window without looking.  Ellis turned, firing three rounds through the door just before she leapt. There was no hope of killing three assassins equipped for night
operations.

She crossed herself
. Then she jumped.