Read Online The Fellowship by William Tyree - Free Book Online Page A

to dinner and you wanted the venison, but you asked the waiter to find out where the deer had been raised.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know w here my meat came from.”
    “ If it’s that important to you, kill your own deer.”
    They all stood as President Hudson entered. The bottle-blonde wore a slimming pantsuit with a matching pearl necklace and earrings. She was sporting a graduated bob cut that looked as if it had been shorn with a straight razor.
    “I appreciate you coming in person,” she said as they all sat down. “Chad gave me the basics by phone. I’ll ask you all the same question I asked him. Was this a state-sponsored action?”
    Speers shook his head. “No reason to believe that right now.”
    “What else do we know?”
    Speers gave her the short version, explaining that it had looked as if the senator had been tortured, that it had probably been the work of two or more people, and that the killers had left a calling card with religious overtones.
    The president rotated the bracelet on her wrist three times in a clockwise motion, as if winding herself up. “This morning I spent the better part of an hour on the phone with the British prime minister."
    Carver sat forward. Based on how locked down the crime scene had been, he had hardly expected the president to discuss Preston’s murder with anyone outside the circle of trust, not to mention the British PM.  “What was his reaction to the news?”
    “Actually, he called with news of his own. There was another octagon-shaped piece of fabric found this morning. This one was in London.”
    “London?”
    Speers nodded. “Inside the mouth of Nils Gish.”
    The name did n’t register with Ellis. “Who?”
    Carver’s fists clenched as he considered the implications of what he’d just heard. “Sir Nils Gish,” he said just loud enough to be heard. “Member of parliament, leader of the Labour Party and possibly the next British prime minister.”
    Ellis made the sign of the cross – quick touches on the forehead and both shoulders.
    The president leaned back, resting her elbows on the armrests of her chair in a classic power pose. “High ranking members of Congress and Parliament were assassinated on the same night, within approximately three hours of each other.”
    “Two killers,” Carver deduced. “Or two sets of killers.” Only a handful of military jets could get from London to D.C. in just three hours, and even that didn’t allow for ground travel, to say nothing of the prep time that went into any professional assassination.
    The treatment of the D.C. crime scene made more sense now. FBI chief Fordham had kept the late Senator Rand’s D.C. residence locked down tight. This was much bigger than a lover’s quarrel gone wrong, or the wrath of a vengeful loan shark.
    “No group has claimed responsibility,” Speers added. “In both cases, black-and-red striped fabric was left in the victim’s mouth. Someone is clearly sending a message here. Agent Carver felt there might be a connection to some ancient European group.”
    “ Not so fast,” Carver objected. “What I said was that a piece of fabric like it was used by a certain assassination squad in Renaissance Europe. Since nobody alive has ever seen one, obviously this is an organization who’s read about it, as I did, and decided to co-opt the symbol for their own purposes.”
    The president raised an open hand. “Work out the details on your own time. How are we going to handle this publicly?”
    Speers’ jaw tightened. “Whatever the spin, it’s going to be a circus.”
    “All the progress we’ve made calming security jitters will vanish. It’s not like these men were simply shot. They were brutally tortured. Forget the fact that we were under no obligation to provide secret service protection to the senator. People will look at this as a huge security failure. And since Preston was a presidential hopeful, the media is only going to fan the