His anxiety was coupled by a nervousness that he had never known. Maybe the assault in the hotel parking garage had rattled him more than he had thought. Each time he looked down, the movie began again in his head. His attempts to break away during the opera’s intermission. His pathetic assault on his business partner, Spencer. The sight and smell of Spencer’s flesh on the grill of the Range Rover. The relentless pounding of machine gun fire against the vehicle. The fear that he would be killed, and everything he had worked for, everything he had put at risk, would be lost. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
But wow, he did fear evil. He couldn’t help it.
“Watch your step,” Lars said as their feet finally touched earth. They entered a cavern that was 20 feet tall and more than 60 feet wide. Above a particularly magnificent archway, Zhu gasped as he saw an enormous relief of Mithra slaughtering a bull.
“What is this place?”
“As far as we can tell, this is a branch of the underground Caracalla baths complex. An excavation just like it was unearthed a few years ago in another part of Rome.” He allowed Zhu only a moment to take in the majesty of the relief before nudging him forward. “Come. We have work to do.”
The next chamber was filled with more security personnel. Lars spoke to each of them as they passed, alternating between German, Italian and English. Zhu couldn’t understand much of what they said, but the immediacy of their responses suggested complete obedience.
“The One from the East,” someone said in English. The guards, all of them, removed their caps as Zhu passed with his entourage.
He was taken through a full-body scanner like the ones they had in airports. Beyond it was a narrow tunnel filled with floorboards.
“There’s going to be a little noise now,” Lars said. “Step lightly, please.”
The boards squeaked, like chirping birds, as they walked. The nightingale floors the Shepherd had spoken of. The sounds echoed in the symmetrical cavern, and the effect was that of a massive flock of birds raising hell.
They came to a spacious open-air lift that appeared large and sturdy enough to support a commercial truck. It moved slowly up and down at regular intervals. There were no doors or buttons, and only a single rail prevented occupants from falling from the platform and into the chasm below.
“I see you didn’t invest much in infrastructure,” Zhu said.
Lars nodded. “The Shepherd insisted that the construction be minimally invasive of the ruins.”
The descent was mercifully short. The air was suddenly much cooler. When they exited, he stood before a spotless glass-encased laboratory. At least a dozen people were working inside, making preparations for the Great Mission. Just as Zhu had specified in his instructions, the lab workers were wearing full body suits, with two layers of booties, and additional hoods, sleeves and gloves over the initial layer of outerwear.
Zhu was clearly pleased. “It’s just like we talked about. How do we go in?”
Lars pointed to an exterior chamber at the far end of the room. “You and your assistants change there. Then you enter a secondary chamber equipped with an air shower. Per your requirements, each working area is in a self-contained chamber with its own individual climate control. All the equipment you requested was sterilized in a dedicated room before its introduction to the environment.”
Across the chasm was a vast chamber with algae-damaged walls that had once been frescoed. Still, there were elaborately carved fountains, and in one place, a pool covered with ivory veneers and containing beautiful blue water. A vaulted ceiling was adorned with a mosaic depicting a chariot race. And beyond the chamber, a throne room.
Lars pointed to the stone-carved throne. Hundreds of tiny craters lined the arms and edges where jewels had once bedazzled it. “We believe that Nero himself sat there.”
The grin on Zhu’s face grew even wider. Only the Shepherd could have had such a brilliant idea. The Great Mission would be consummated in the house of one of the most notorious persecutors of Christians, whose intolerance had quite literally driven the movement underground. Filled with renewed inspiration, Zhu turned back toward the lab.
“And you shall use wisdom to create life,” Lars quoted the Living Scriptures. “Just as I have, for I have made you in my likeness."
Zhu nodded. “Game on.”
Washington D.C.
The drizzle started as Haley Ellis exited the Metro Center subway station. She wandered over to a street vendor who had several mismatched umbrellas laid out on the cement before him.
“Ten bucks for the small ones,” the guy said. “Twenty for king size.”
“You have any new umbrellas?” Ellis said, noting the various levels of grime and dirt across the entire collection.
“These are just gently used. No leaks, I promise.”
It was the idea that they might be stolen that bothered Ellis most. She decided to suck it up and move on. The hotel lounge where she was meeting Nathan Drucker was maybe ten minutes if she walked fast.
It figured that she had brought the English weather home with her. Every bit of this investigation had been star-crossed so far. Much as she hated to admit it, Carver’s first thought — that they should divide and conquer — had been right. The only lead so far was a journalist whose office was within three miles from the crime scene.
The lead was, on its surface, flimsy. But Nathan Drucker’s agitation on the phone — not to mention his kooky question, “Are you from the Bureau?” — had intrigued her. Was Drucker just a paranoid conspiracy freak?
Ellis had confirmed that someone from the Bureau — a Special Agent Will Hollis — had contacted Drucker years earlier. Unfortunately, Hollis had since passed away, and the memo he had filed on Drucker had been merged into a separate case file that Ellis didn’t have access to.Bowers said he would look into it.
The group Drucker had written about, the Fellowship World Initiative, was conspicuously absent from local and national news. All she had found were a few old newsgroup postings, from the days before private social networks, listing local meetups for “FWI Alums.” Maybe it was some kind of fraternity, she thought. That would explain the college connection between Gish and Senator Preston’s missing assistant, Mary Borst.
Ellis walked into P.O.V., the 11th floor hotel bar known for its spectacular views of the city. She paused after entering, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the dark lighting before perusing the patrons sitting on zebra-hide bar stools and red leather couches. She had been here once, years ago. She and a friend had waited an hour to get past the velvet rope, only to wait another 20 minutes to get a drink. It was nothing like that tonight. Just pleasantly bustling with tourists, many of whom were hoping to get a bird’s eye view of Washington.
Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she recognized Nathan Drucker’s handlebar mustache from his bio photo on the Capitol Herald site. He sat at a table in the far corner of the lounge, drinking iced tea, with his back to the room.