by Gavin Reese
As they closed in on the chaos, a Middle Eastern man emerged from the far side of a pillar two dozen yards in front of them near the left side of the narthex, the long entryway at the back of the structure. Two men, each of whom had found a folding chair, tried to keep him at bay like a trained lion, but one slipped in a blood pool and awkwardly fell onto his knee. The assailant struck out and cut the man’s arm. As the latest victim shrieked in pain and terror, the aspiring murderer shoved him down to the floor and dropped on top of the victim’s waist in one swift and practiced motion. His eyes widened with bloodlust, and he continued his frenzied shouts of Allah Akbar.
Michael leaned forward and sprinted toward the attacker’s left chest and shoulder. No time to stop, draw, and shoot! He watched the assailant raise the bloody knife in his right hand and hold it over his head for a moment to further terrify his panicked and pleading victim. Michael lowered his body and lunged forward as the aggressor’s hips and shoulder collapsed down for the kill. Contacting the man’s upper left torso, Michael propelled himself through the tackle.
whuh
Michael felt the man’s lungs collapse, and the tremendous force cast the smaller and lighter assailant back and to his right. The open field hit freed the victim, redirected the knife’s downward stroke, and plunged the long blade deep into the attacker’s left abdomen.
thock
The attacker’s skull struck the ancient stone floor and sounded like a ripe, wet watermelon breaking open on concrete.
Michael’s momentum carried him up and over the lighter man, and he crashed hard onto his knees and right shoulder. He leapt up and prepared to defend himself, but the unconscious aggressor laid in an awkward heap on his right side where he’d struck the stone floor. The man’s own knife had buried deep into his spleen and intestines. Only his left eye was open but unfocused, and it endlessly stared at the floor as a growing blood pool emanated from an unseen injury on the right side of his head.
The parishioners all backed away from the sudden corpse.
Without a further fight before him, Michael doubled over at the waist, put his hands on his hips, and gasped for each breath. Alpha lowered the borrowed cane he’d had no opportunity to use. Luc finally arrived and fell to his knees next to the decedent and crossed himself.
“What, are you doing,” Michael asked him between gasps.
“Leading by example,” Luc offered, out of breath himself. “We must pray for this man’s soul and his forgiveness.”
Michael resisted the urge to spit at the corpse and stood upright. “He can go to hell. You do what you want. I’m gonna help his victims.”
May 12, 11:43am local
San Miguel Chapel. Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Michael shuffled into the small rectory, the parish priests’ shared living space in his historic home chapel. He closed the door behind him and found his mentor, Monsignor Eduardo Hernandez, sitting on the small living room’s threadbare couch. He’ll always remind me of Jerry Garcia.
“Woof!”
Ira, the border collie-heeler mix Michael rescued from Wyoming last February, barked once and rushed to greet him. Despite his aches and pains, Michael knelt and petted his beloved dog. Hernandez looked up, smiled, and folded the afternoon newspaper.
“You look a damned sight better than the last time you came home.” H stood and walked over, grabbing a letter-sized envelope from the kitchen countertop as he did so. “Apparently, your dog isn’t the only one that misses you.” He presented the envelope to Michael.
Curious, Michael stopped petting Ira, stood with some effort, and accepted the envelope. It had been addressed to him, for delivery simply to “San Miguel Chapel, Santa Fe, New Mexico.” The return information showed only an address and didn’t identify its sender. Who do I know in Switzerland? Michael roughly tore open the glued, back flap and pulled out a heavy-stock card. The front displayed a high-resolution photograph of the Alps. Michael opened the card, skipped the handwritten paragraphs, and looked to the bottom for a signature. Merci. She must have moved her research facility.
“So, who’s it from?” Hernandez sounded both curious and accusatory.
“The doctor I met in Columbia last year, Merci Renard.” Suddenly self-conscious about the woman’s attention, Michael blushed.
“I remember telling you to be careful with her. She called here, you know, after you came back from Bogotá, and she sounded very much like a woman in love.”
Ira nudged Michael for attention, so he scratched the dog’s head while he read the card. “I don’t know about that, H,” Michael weakly replied as he read the doctor’s beautiful cursive.
“Dearest Father Michael—
I am incredibly grateful to have met you. I’ve thought of you often since our last conversation, every day, in fact, and I don’t know why. I can’t imagine what might come out of our friendship, as our lives are so very different and separated by so much distance. Despite the effort and rational thought I’ve put into leaving you in my past, your memory refuses to allow it.
I cannot explain why, but I believe God does not yet intend for us to part ways. I hope this isn’t too brash or assuming, and, selfishly, I need to know that you feel the same way. Please know that I’m sending this without a specific hope or agenda, and I do not wish to ever ask you to leave your work with the Church. I only wish for you to know that you remain important to me, and that I do hope we can one day meet again. Love & Light, Merci”
Michael looked up from the note and blushed again.
“That’s the first time you’ve smiled in several months. There’s gotta be a reason for it.”
“I don’t know, H, I really don’t. Doctor Renard is an incredible person, with this amazing, compassionate heart of action and selflessness, but I don’t know what to do with that.”
“What would Michael the Episcopal priest do?”
“You mean, if things were different and I could marry and not have to maintain my vow of celibacy? I’d probably pursue her. I loved Catherine, back when we were together in Silver City, but I didn’t hold the same esteem for her.” Michael leaned back against the small kitchen counter and looked at the floor. “It would be cruel enough for a parish priest to let a woman hope for a relationship with him, even more so with what I’m actually doing for the Church. It’s guaranteed heartbreak when one of the investigations spins out of control.”
“I think ‘guarantee’ is a little harsh--”
“No, really, H, I think this assignment will be what ends this life for me. I’ve almost been killed, several times now, and, just for bonus points, I’m now...”
“Hang on, it sounds like you have something to confess.” Hernandez’s tone was more direction than observation.
Michael nodded and both men moved to the rickety bistro-sized table next to the kitchen and sat in its unstable chairs. Michael crossed himself, and H did the same. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been six days since my last confession, and I have grief and sorrow in my heart.”
“Go on,” Hernandez offered as he rose and walked to the small refrigerator. “Just gonna make this official.” The aging monsignor pulled out two bottles of Trappist ale and opened them while Michael spoke.
“I feel guilty, H, but not for what I’ve done, directly, I mean. I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. I had a hand in ending the lives of two men yesterday. Two. Both intended to die in a mass suicide bombing plot all across Paris, and one of them did just that, so I’m not even sure that I get credit or blame for him. The other one, though, I gave him the shove that ended his life. He was trying to carve up and murder a bunch of innocents, and I had to stop him from killing another man he had pinned on the floor.
“The worst part is, the local parish priest, he showed up right after I killed the second guy, and his knee-jerk response was to drop to the deck and pray for that asshole’s soul, beg God to forgive him.”
H set their beers on the bistro table, sipped from his own, and sat back at the
table. “What was your knee-jerk response?”
“To stop myself from spitting on the corpse.” Michael paused after his sheepish admission. “I think I said something about hoping the guy went to hell, and I was gonna triage his victims instead. Something like that.”
“Who’s to say either of you are wrong?”
“I get that both things have to be done, and we should have that much capacity for forgiveness and compassion in our hearts, H, but I wasn’t there. At all. I’m still not. Maybe, after every single victim was treated, then I might consider praying for his soul. Which, of course now means that I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. Not for either of them.”
“Alright. What else is eating you? I can see you got something else.”
“It’s an arbitrary definition, H, and it’s tied up in my gut with this Doctor Renard thing…”
“And?”
Michael hung his head and forced his words. “I’m a, uh, I’m a serial killer, H. A damned serial killer, at least by F-B-I standards.”
“Why?”
Michael looked up at his mentor’s obvious surprise and ignorance. “Well, so, after a man kills three people in a similar manner and for similar reasons--”
“Bullshit! If you’re gonna look at it that way, almost every soldier that came home from the fields in Europe, a lotta troops comin’ outta the sandbox and the ‘Stan, they’re serial killers, too. All the pilots who’ve seen combat and dusted at least three other pilots. You’d call them serial killers, too, right?”
Michael felt even more sheepish. “No, of course not.”
“How many men have you sent for judgement now, Michael?”
“Five, including Bogotá.”
“You’re at war, Michael. A foot soldier combating the greatest evils that walk the face of the earth. You’re no serial killer, son. Hell, if anything, you’re a goddamned ace!”
Later that night, Michael sat alone at the petite writing desk in his bedroom. A single bulb desk lamp illuminated his work surface, and Ira had curled up by his feet. Michael donned medical exam gloves and carefully removed a Ziploc bag concealed inside his backpack. Pulling a manila envelope from inside the plastic, Michael retrieved its contents and cast the envelope aside. Reading back over the two pages in his gloved hands, he considered whether he wanted to proceed. Once I do this, there’s no going back.
Michael pondered the possible outcomes for what felt like a long time. I want to know who the hell I’m working for. Tired of finding my ass in a sling for people who don’t trust me with their name. He retrieved a Silver City Police Department latent fingerprint kit from the bottom desk drawer and used its magnetic brush to apply black print powder to John’s memo explaining the new operational security arrangements with the Oremus hotels. Six viable fingerprints appeared along the edges. Might be his prints, might be Jacques’, might be someone else I don’t know.
After he collected the black fingerprint images on his old department’s print tape, Michael packaged them for delivery in tomorrow's mail. He waited to address the envelope from sheer paranoia that its contents might be discovered before morning. A man has to protect his sources.
That task completed, he pulled a yellow legal pad from the desk’s top drawer and grabbed the first working pen he found. After a moment’s hesitation, Michael began the letter he’d feared writing.
Doctor Renard--
He stared at the title, and then tore that page out and crumpled it. I need to say everything I want her to know and understand, even if it’s from the grave because H sends it after my burial.
Dear Merci, I just got
knockknock
“Michael!”
At the urgent sound of his mentor’s voice, Michael turned the legal pad over and shoved the bottom desk drawer closed to conceal the print kit and the sealed envelope of print tapes. “Come in.”
Hernandez stepped into the room, his face ashen with worry. “The bishop just called. The pope, he’s, uh, he just resigned.”
Epilogue
May 13, 7:45am local.
Vatican Housing Complex. Rome, Italy.
Bishop Harold Hoffaburr and Cardinal Paul Dylan sat in the cardinal’s furnished luxury residence. As usual, Dylan’s open window blinds allowed his view over the Vatican City wall to dominate the apartment’s living area. Saint Peter’s Basilica glowed under the warmth of the rising, late spring sun. Despite the early hour, both men smoked rich, dark Cuban cigars and sipped Italian liqueur while they relished their view and the morning’s news.
Harold had never seen his mentor so jubilant, and he hesitated from directly asking how the resignation impacted them. He took another pull from his snifter of Centerba, a traditional Italian liqueur made from herbs and medicinal spices in the Abruzzo region. Despite his lack of detail, Dylan gloated over his future while fielding dozens of phone calls from other cardinals and bishops, several of which came from Cornelius’ innermost council. As he’d done throughout their relationship, Dylan obviously withheld information and wanted to ensure Harold knew he did so. Harold, meanwhile, strove to merely ensure he stayed in the best of his cardinal’s graces. His future is mine, just as I’ve long professed.
The Italian CNN broadcast played with English subtitles. Dylan claimed it helped him brush up on the language, but Harold found the delay between the audio and inaccurate transcript frustrating. A passionate local Roman anchor discussed the sudden and unexpected resignation of His Holiness, Pope Cornelius II.
Harold thought the announcement shocked everyone but Dylan. And yet, we’re suffering through the local info-tainment as though we might learn something through public information channels.
Dylan pointed his smoldering cigar at the screen and its rolling transcript. “I have sacrificed so much over the past two decades to be in this moment, in this position.” His words slurred a bit, and he took another pull from both the cigar and his drink. “We’re standing at the precipice of success and vindication, Harold. Everyone who shunned us and our traditional views of Saint Peter’s church and its rightful place in the human experience. Our sacrifices and persecution will have all been made worthwhile after the conclave convenes, I assure you.”
“Notizie Urgenti” flashed across the screen, and the anchor broke into their nonstop wailing and pontificating. Harold had to wait for the transcript to catch up.
After Saturday’s bombing in the suburbs outside Paris, a local anti-terror cop has been hailed as a hero, while an immediate inquiry into his supervisor’s possible complicity has begun.
In London, Scotland Yard inspectors have launched an investigation into a murder there reminiscent of ‘Jack The Ripper.’
beepbeep beepbeep beepbeep
Harold retrieved his cell phone from a nearby glass-and-wood end table. The caller ID confirmed his educated guess, and he accepted the call. “Good afternoon, there, I suppose. What may I help with today?”
Anger saturated John’s voice. “I assume you’ve seen this business in London?”
“We’re only just hearing of it now.”
“We need to get our boys back over there, on the first available plane. This shoulda been resolved months ago, and now another body’s stacked up over it!”
“We, err, I couldn’t agree more, John. What’s the hang-up?”
“The hang-up is that one man’ll never succeed on this one. We gotta send a team, or we’re never gonna catch this guy. The boys have been very lucky so far, except on this one, but it’s too big a thing for one man.”
Harold frowned and sipped at his drink. He watched Dylan in his peripheral vision for any reaction to the phone call. “We’ve been over this so many times I’m growing concerned about your ability to take orders. No teams.”
“I get the reluctance, I do, but--”
“No. Teams. Ever.”
Dylan looked over and showed interest in the conversation, so Harold hoped John didn’t press the issue while he sat next to the cardinal. He feared upsetting both men, but f
or very different reasons.
The line went dead, and Harold looked at his phone to confirm it had disconnected.
“Does John already see a problem with the London fiasco?”
“Other than the serial killer they can’t stop?” Harold gulped at the remains of his liqueur. “Do you think John and his men have begun to outlive their usefulness?”
“I hadn't looked at that possibility, Harold. How do you mean that?”
“Just, that, well, quite frankly, Your Eminence, with everything that seems so imminent before us, and the sudden spotlight and global publicity that success will cast on you and your associations, I wonder if their continued existence isn’t too dangerous for you and the longevity of your papacy.”
Dylan sat back and considered his subordinate’s thoughts. “I suppose you might be right, Harold. If we make that decision, how should we, errr, disband the group?”
“First, in this interim, I will keep closer tabs on John. Nothing too risky, just a few simple surveillance operations.”
“Do you know someone who can tail a man of his training and capabilities?”
Harold rose to refill his glass. “John keeps saying he’s nothing but a gravedigger, Your Eminence, so I expect that’s what we need. A better gravedigger, certainly, but thousands of men with John’s skills and experiences retire from the world’s preeminent spy agencies every year. We need only one of them.”
Dylan scoffed in agreement. “We found him, so we can find one better, especially for a few simple contracts. I didn’t expect the conclave vote to come so soon on the heels of creating this organization, Harold. From a psychological standpoint, are your soldiers and assassins prepared to follow through on orders, even if they doubt their complete accuracy?”
“Rather than my opinion, let me instead offer you the facts.” Harold sat back in his chair and leaned forward. He spoke in a hushed tone despite their absolute privacy. “As of this morning, we’ve sent the operatives on twenty-two assignments, and they’ve absolved fifteen of those subjects.”
