He felt his arm fall to his side. He heard the pen clatter on the linoleum floor. His right eye closed and he felt himself drift. He began to feel inner warmth. Someone lifted up his arm again, placed the pen within his grasp, and guided the hand toward the notepad. He opened his eyes.
“Tell me how,” Speers commanded. “Concentrate. How is the world in danger?”
He wrote again.
False prophets. A global war. Without state. Without end.
He rested his arm for a moment as Speers digested this. His body was depleted. He could scarcely focus. How could he make them understand, when the words did not come to him?
“Why did you kill Vera Borst?” Speers pushed.
Melfi felt a burst of energy. A burst of inspiration. His hand shot back to the paper and he began writing:
They said, “Come, let us build a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they try to do will be impossible for them. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.
His arm once again fell to his side. The pen once again clattered on the floor. But now Melfi could see Speers with both eyes. How was this possible? He had heard the surgeon say that his right eye had been burned, and he was certain that it was covered with bandages.
He saw Speers flip the pad and devour its contents. “Damn. I think he’s just writing random scripture.”
The machine next to the bed emitted a loud noise. Suddenly Speers was over him. “Hello? Hey! Chad, Get that doctor in here!”
Rome
Carver struggled to keep his emotions in check as he viewed the grisly Seattle crime scene photos. There was a lot of blood. No doubt that some of it belonged to Ellis. What had she been doing there? It was just like her, getting on a plane without telling anyone.
He took a deep breath, flooding his body with fresh oxygen. The truth was that he blamed himself. Maybe if he hadn’t jetted off to South Africa to get Nico, leaving her to fend for herself in London. Maybe if he hadn’t been so vocal about the fact that the team was so thin.
He refocused on the images. Speers had annotated the snap of Vera Borst strung up with her hands tied behind her back: “You were right about the method.”
He felt no pride in knowing that he had been able to deduce the killers’ technique upon observing Senator Preston’s body. What good had it done? It hadn’t stopped the murders from happening again. No one had been saved. It only told him that the killers were an unusually disciplined and cruel organization. What remained to be seen was whether they used torture to punish their victims, or whether they were actually extracting information.
This thing was spreading like the flu. D.C., London, Rome and now Seattle. Four time zones. Four! How many assassins could there be? He understood Speers’ desire to keep the team size small for security reasons, but it was a gamble that was already blowing up in their faces. They needed more people on this.
And to that end, how many more victims were targeted? Five? A hundred? And from what countries? The presence of a United Nations leader from the Netherlands among the casualty list only further clouded things.
Nico was in the other room expanding his search. He was now focused on data-matching Borst’s purchase and travel histories with those of Preston and Gish. He hoped Arunus Roth was looking into Mary Borst’s background, because they had their hands full here.
Carver opened a bottle of Pellegrino, settled onto the suite’s leather sofa and opened the document Speers had uploaded. He had scrawled, in all caps, a directive on the first page:
DIGEST THOROUGHLY — DO NOT SKIM!!!
Did Speers really expect him to read this entire thing? The document Nathan Drucker had made his life’s work was an unwieldy collection of typed and handwritten passages that had been worked and reworked countless times. What a mess. There were attributions and qualifications and scrawled illustrations all over the place. There were even sticky notes in Ellis’ handwriting that had been photocopied right onto the page, at times obscuring the original text. Some of the document wasn’t even edited, but rather looked like straight transcriptions from interviews.
Carver focused on the first page of Drucker’s typewritten document and began to read.
The Memoirs of Sebastian Wolf
as told to Mr. Nathan Drucker
I should start by telling you that the man who will try to stop us — all of us, from the very thing humanity has sought for these past two millennia — was once my best friend. I do not say this to be sentimental. I mean only to demonstrate that the harmonic echoes of the spiritual war we are now waging have sounded time and again throughout history, and I am but one conduit through which they are transmitted. Heinz Lang and I share a destiny. Every man has his Judas and Heinz Lang is mine.
By the time you have read my story, my purpose in this epic will have been completed. This has been foretold. Sadly, Lang’s purpose, which is to preserve the empire of lies that he serves at all costs, and along with it a legacy of deceit, may still be underway. But know that what we have been waiting for shall come to pass, and know, too, that this is precisely what the Great Architect requires from us. Soon we will, all of us, I promise you, receive our heavenly reward.
How shall I tell you how we arrived at this moment in history? There are so many possible starting points. Shall I describe the first time the stigmata flowed through my hands and feet?
Without context, it could seem like some sort of cheap parlor trick. Or shall I tell you about The Fellowship, and how this great organization was created? Alas, it is possible that at the time this work is shared with the wider world, our senior brothers and sisters in the movement may yet need to remain hidden for several more years (Know that they both walk among you and look upon you from high, waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves to the world).
Each of us experiences a pivotal moment in time when we are suddenly propelled at high speed toward our destiny. This is not the same as an awakening. It is rather a triggering moment, when we realize painful inconsistencies between our beliefs and reality. It is a moment when we realize that we are being led by God’s will toward Total Awareness.
My moment occurred in Feldafing, Germany, on November 6, 1942. I was fifteen years old.
This is my story.
PART II
The Reich School
Feldafing, Germany
November 6, 1942
Cadet Sebastian Wolf woke moments before the merciless clang of the steel triangle echoed throughout the yellow mansion. The cadets had 15 minutes to relieve themselves, dress and assemble outside for morning calisthenics. As he did every morning, Wolf sat up and groped for the box of matches next to the bed. He broke the first match by striking it against the wrong side of the box. He turned the box and sparked the second, touching the ensuing flame to the wick of the gas lantern on the nightstand.
He spat into his palm and swept the moisture over the wild tuft of white blonde hair at his widow’s peak until it lay flat. As usual, Heinz Lang stirred in the bunk beside him. And as usual, a shoe flew from Lang’s hand, striking the still-sleeping Albert Hoppe in the bunk across the room. Albert was a heavy sleeper.
The boys donned white exercise shorts, white tank tops and brown lace-up saddle shoes with steel toes. They trickled downstairs like white blood cells into an artery, speaking little as they joined other cadets in the cold morning air. Nearly 200 other cadets exited the other mansions, which, they had been told, had been owned by Jewish bankers who had decided to emigrate in the 1930s.