“I’m Haley,” Ellis said as she slid into the seat opposite him. She regretted having used her real first name with him on the phone, but what was done was done. There was no going back now.
She didn’t extend her hand across the table, a habit she had picked up from her boss at NIC, who believed there was little good that would come from broadcasting to others that contact with a potential asset was taking place for the first time. You never knew who was watching.
The journalist nodded once and said, “Nathan Drucker.” She noted the worry lines around his eyes and the creased forehead of a man in his early 50s. His tweed jacket fit snugly over an unfortunate plaid vest and a bow tie. He wore black plastic-framed eyeglasses under bushy eyebrows.
“Is the Tweed Ride this week?” Haley said, referring to the annual event that had tweed revivalists cycling around the city dressed like 19th century Ivy League professors.
“No. I always dress like this.”
“Oh.”
“Without further ado, Ms. Ellis, will you please prove you’re who you say you are?”
Ellis plucked a business card from a small stainless steel cardholder and discretely placed it on the table close to Drucker.
He inspected it for a long moment. He held the card up to the light, as if looking for a watermark, and still didn’t seem satisfied. “Let me see your badge,” he said.
She took it out of her purse and held it out for him to inspect. “Would you like a urine sample?”
“You think this is easy for me? I had to take something for my nerves this morning. Nobody’s contacted me about this for years. Then, out of the blue, wham!”
Ellis somehow managed a reassuring smile. “No reason to be nervous, Nate. Can I call you Nate?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Rest assured, Nate, I’m just looking for information.”
“I didn’t realize the FBI was still interested. How did this case get revived?”
She couldn’t let him know that the original memo wasn’t even available to her. It was time to improvise. “To be honest,” she said, “the handoff was poorly handled. I was hoping you could help by recapping the last contact you had with the Bureau.”
Drucker’s mustache twitched up and down. “Okay then. An Agent Hollis had contacted me the same day the article came out.”
Ellis smiled and nodded. “To be clear, the article we’re referring to was the one you wrote called ‘The Country Club Cult that Runs Washington.’”
“That’s right. As I told Agent Hollis, the article was beyond my editorial control. I’ll tell you what I told him, which is that the stuff in the article pales in comparison to what Sebastian Wolf may be up to. But Agent Hollis lost interest fast. We talked once more by phone, and that was the last time I heard from him. I tried calling the Bureau, of course, but he never seemed to be in, so I eventually said screw it and forgot the whole thing.”
“Let’s take this one item at a time,” Ellis suggested. “You threw out a name. Sebastian Wolf. Who is that?”
Drucker made a face. His head appeared to slide backward on his neck, as if on a rail, until he was looking down his nose at Ellis. “You didn’t even read the article you called me about!”
“I read two pages,” Ellis confessed. “That was all I could find online.”
Drucker sighed and shook his head. “This is all very disappointing. I can’t risk meeting with anyone who isn’t serious.”
The journalist put a ten dollar bill on the table — which wasn’t quite enough to cover his iced tea, much less the tip — and began to slide out from the booth. Crap. There was a time and place to use her feminine wiles, and this was one of them. Ellis reached out and touched the journalist’s left wrist.
“Nate,” she said in a gentle voice, her fingertips touching him gently, her eyes looking into his. “I’m sorry this wasn’t handled well internally, but I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t serious.” He paused, as if frozen by her touch. “This is important. Please stay and talk to me. Please.”
Drucker’s pupils dilated, the telltale sign that Ellis had connected the old-fashioned way. He sighed, smiled and resettled himself on the leather couch. “All right,” he said. “I’m a little testy, I guess. I took an oath of silence on this stuff. They made me swear not to talk.”
“Who did?”
“Wolf’s people.”
“Let’s start with you telling me exactly who Sebastian Wolf is.”
“Wolf is…” Drucker struggled for words. “He’s not just a person. He’s a prophet.”
Eisenhower Building
Speers clenched his fists as he stared at the video image of the young woman passing through security at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Still sporting a blonde boy-cut, she had not dyed her hair or changed anything but her clothes since she had last been seen in Senator Preston’s den, just minutes before the fire.
There was no use stating the obvious. The body of Mary Borst, daughter to a UN under-secretary-general and assistant to an American senator, would not be found among the ashes of Preston’s home. She was alive and well.
“Tell me she’s still in the air,” Speers said into his speakerphone.
“Wish I could,” Chad Fordham said. “This image was taken about 12 hours ago, and she landed in Rome approximately eight hours later. It’s possible that she then boarded a connecting flight to Tel Aviv, Cairo, St. Petersburg or Munich. We’re exploring all eventualities as quickly as possible.”
As Speers began shouting into the phone, he had the odd sensation of standing outside himself. He had thus far borne the stress of the situation stoically. He suddenly felt a complete loss of control.
“She used her own passport, for God’s sake! How could we not know about this?”
He was barely listening as Fordham blamed the Canadian border authorities for their slowness in responding to his request for cooperation. As he speculated that Mary Borst must have used cash to pay for her plane ticket, thus evading the monitor they had put on her credit cards and bank account. As he made excuses for Hank Bowers, who had, as Fordham put it, followed standard procedure to the letter. As if that mattered. There was nothing standard about this situation.
Too little, too late. The only person of interest in Senator Preston’s murder had been right under their nose. And now she was gone.
W Hotel
Outside, night had fully enveloped Washington. The White House and the Treasury Building sparkled outside, and the Washington Monument rose up like a beacon in the distance. Drucker sipped from a dark ‘n’ stormy cocktail. The alcohol seemed to have calmed his nerves. Ellis sensed Drucker’s defenses coming down further.
“You described Sebastian Wolf as a prophet. You also slammed his organization as a cult. So what is he, a visionary, or a cult leader?”
“Don’t get hung up on labels.” The journalist looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched. He lowered his voice before speaking again. “The Fellowship is, and I quote from the charter, dedicated to exposing hidden truths that will change the course of humanity.”
“Like what?” Ellis said. “Government corruption?”
Drucker shook his head. “No. That’s small ball.”
“Religion?”
“Warmer, but to be honest, Wolf doesn’t believe in religion. He thinks it gets in the way of following Jesus.”
Ellis was growing impatient with Drucker’s bombastic declarations. He was simultaneously provocative and vague. She needed concrete details that could tie Preston, Gish and Borst together. But she had to resist rushing him. She had to be patient.
“Looks like there’s nothing small about Eden,” she said. “The address on file with the IRS looks huge on Google Maps, like a compound.”
Drucker confirmed with a nod. “That’s not inaccurate.”
“Can we go there now? You could explain the backstory on the way.”
The journalist gave Ellis a look. “Lady, you have no idea what you’re getting into. You don’t just show up at Eden uninvited.”