The two men quickly rifled through the mess. It hit Carver that this collection of ordinary items could easily have been a collection from his own desk in D.C. Were they somehow tracking expenses for reimbursement, or was one of them simply fastidious about his own personal finances?
Among the many incidental receipts for fuel and food, were two punched airline tickets from Rome to London.
Nico examined the dates. “The arrival date at Heathrow was three days prior to Sir Gish’s assassination.”
Carver nodded. “Good. Upload them to the mission cloud.”
“Will do. And one other thing. While you were sleeping, I managed to hack into one of the creep’s phones. There were no messages stored on the device, but I did uncover these.”
Carver took the phone and flipped through a series of candid photos of Sir Gish. In each he was dressed in a suit and was clearly on a subway car of some type.
“They were following him,” Carver observed. “Look at this one. You can see a station ad for the London Eye behind him. That’s right on Gish’s daily routine to parliament.”
Had they indeed gotten lucky and killed Gish’s assassins last night? He hoped so. It would make Prichard’s death a little easier to stomach.
Carver kept flipping. There were hundreds of pictures. Some looked as if they had been taken on a different device and simply downloaded to the phone.
One such image compelled him to pause. “The Council on Faith luncheon in Washington D.C.,” he said, reading the image tag.
“Looks like it was taken on 35 mil,” Nico added.
“For sure. It was taken in 2001. You couldn’t get this kind of definition on digital back then.”
Several young congressmen were pictured with a white-haired man whom, judging by the way they all deferred to him with their body language, they obviously regarded as a patriarch.
“This might be the last public snapshot of Sebastian Wolf,” Carver said.
“Check out that hair. What’s that gel he’s using? Liquefied horse cartilage?”
“Tag it and upload to the mission cloud.”
The final image was the one that really made Carver’s heart race. The subject was thin, with neck-length black hair, an Anglo nose and Asian eyes behind black-framed Armani eyeglasses.
“Adrian Zhu.”
It was all starting to add up. The Fellowship’s investment in LifeEmberz. Zhu’s disappearance in Rome. And now this confirmation that Zhu himself was on the Black Order hit list. There was no question about it. Zhu wasn’t merely associated with Wolf’s organization. He was critical to its success.
And if Wolf was in Rome, Carver was willing to bet everything that Zhu was still here too.
*
Carver rubbed his eyes and yawned into his hand. Nico had finally gone to bed, but he had continued working. The sun was coming in through the balcony glass now, the light warming his back. In the last hour he had organized the items they had taken from the church crypt into three piles. One pile pointed at evidence that seemed to confirm that the Black Order operatives they had killed were likely responsible for the death of Sir Gish. Another pile pointed to a hunt for Adrian Zhu. And yet another contained the lone photograph of Sebastian Wolf. All were Black Order targets.
He called Dr. Charlotte Calipari, a molecular geneticist Speers had introduced him to at a State Department event the previous year. Although it had been some time since they had connected, and it was nearly 10 p.m. back in D.C., he took a chance. Calipari was the only person he had ever met who had supervised the creation of a paleo-DNA lab.
“If you had to build such a lab today,” Carver asked, “and you wanted to also clone from dead tissue, where would you find the equipment?”
There was a long pause before her response. “Well that’s not the sort of question I hear every day.”
Carver was acutely aware of the strangeness of the question. The fact was that Calipari owed him no favors. The only tool at his disposal was flattery. “When we met, I was impressed by you. I thought if there was anyone in the world qualified to answer this, it would be you.”
“You’re too kind. Fortunately, the answer to your question is simple. Short of creating your own machines, there would be only a couple of places where you could turn to get what you needed. The community is very small. There are just two providers in the entire world that are really considered state-of-the-art right now.”
Carver smiled. “And those would be?”
Psychiatric Office
Washington D.C.
Ellis wore oversized sunglasses to mask the facial bruises she’d sustained in Seattle. She eased down on the couch, her demeanor cool and distant behind the big black lenses. The doctor had said she’d be a little foggy for the next few days. Her memories were coming back to her, but not quickly enough to be of much use.
The shrink was in her mid-40s, with long brown hair tied in a ponytail and expensive eyeglasses. She sat across from Ellis in an armchair that looked comfortable enough to nap in.
“So,” she said after some cursory introductions. “You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
Ellis shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m here. It’s not my choice.”
Speers had personally insisted that she come. Some agency rule about preventing post-traumatic stress.
The shrink nodded sympathetically. “I understand they gave you something out in Seattle to calm your nerves.”
“Well I’m not taking it.”
“And why is that?”
“My job requires that my thoughts be as clear as possible.”
The shrink scanned the notes in her lap. “I was told you’re not on active duty right now. That you’d been granted some recovery time.”
True, she wasn’t out in the field. But the weight of the investigation hadn’t left her mind for one minute. She had spent every waking moment going over the case notes, including Drucker’s manuscript. She was unable to stay awake for long periods, but even in sleep, the Living Scriptures were circling round and round in her foggy brain. She had trouble concentrating. She couldn’t eat. And she dreamed in numbers. Some endless, unsolvable code.
The shrink leaned forward. “I specialize in trauma. I see a lot of military. It helps some people to start by telling me their experience in general terms. Even if your case was classified, telling me basic information is permissible within the privacy protections of our relationship. Believe me, I’ve heard everything.”
Ellis doubted that anyone had told the shrink anything like what she had experienced. Nothing Ellis had seen in Iraq had even come close. What she saw in Seattle was straight out of a horror movie.
“You want to help?” Ellis said. “Okay. I need to remember something specific.”
“What would that be?”
“A conversation. The night I was attacked, someone was dying right in front of me. She was telling me something. It might be important. A name, maybe.”
The shrink was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure you’re ready to remember that level of detail. It could do more harm than good.”
Yeah, obviously. Part of Ellis was terrified of remembering any more. She might never sleep again. But her gut told her that she had to know.
“Haley?”
“There was a woman hanging over me,” Ellis began, making a mental note not to mention Vera Borst by name.
“Hanging?” the shrink asked, trying unsuccessfully to mask the dread she felt inside. “Hanging how?”
“In mid-air.” Her voice was suddenly tight with emotion. “She was bound at the wrists. Suspended by the wrists by a thick rope. Bleeding. She had been sliced up.”
The shrink did her best not to show the revulsion that she felt. “Again, I’m worried that we may be going too fast.”
“She knew she was dying. And I think she told me something important. A message of some sort. I need to remember what that was.”