by Rick Jones
When Najm told himself that the first engagement was to be within days, Allawi appeared to intuit this from Najm’s micro facial responses.
“I’ll be fine by then,” Allawi told him. “And believe me, I want to be front and center to call the shots. But first and foremost, remember what I said about Special Agent Cohen. Find her. And let’s see how special she truly is.”
“Yes, Allawi.”
“The operation, at least until I’m able, is in your hands.”
Najm nodded. He had never felt so useful. Suddenly, his life was full of purpose and importance.
“Allahu Akbar,” said Allawi.
“Allahu Akbar.”
Chapter Six
Rome, Italy
Present Day
When Monsignor Dom Giammacio entered the tiny pub located in one of Rome’s poorer sections, he felt oddly displaced. The tavern was small and dense with cigarette smoke, even though there were few patrons. It was as if the smoke was forever trapped since the ventilation system was inadequate, if a system existed at all.
Removing a handkerchief to cover his mouth, the monsignor made his way down an aisle that smelled of stale smoke and mildew. Sitting in the corner booth was Kimball Hayden. In his hand was a half-empty bottle of whisky, not the usual line of shot glasses he often had before him.
Reaching the table with the handkerchief still guarding his mouth, the monsignor pointed to the empty chair across from Kimball.
“It’s a free world, Padre. Be my guest.”
The monsignor took the seat and pointed to the bottle. “Are you inebriated?”
Kimball shook his head. “Not yet. But I’m working on it.”
“You already drank half the bottle.”
“Hardly. I just bought it. Half a bottle was all I could afford with twenty-five Euros.”
When the monsignor lowered the handkerchief, his features became distorted with displeasure at the overwhelming smell of the bar. Then he pointed at the whisky in the Vatican Knight’s hand. “Tell me, Kimball, do you expect to find Jesus at the bottom of that bottle?”
Kimball held the bottle up. “You mean this bottle?” he asked the monsignor. “I don’t know. Let’s see, shall we?”
“No. Kimball, that’s not what I meant.” When the monsignor tried to grab the bottle, Kimball shoved the cleric’s hand aside and brought the bottle to his lips.
The Vatican Knight then chugged the alcohol as if it was water, as bubbles worked inside the bottle while Kimball’s throat bobbed from the intake of whisky. When the bottle was empty, Kimball brought the empty bottle to his eye as if it was a telescope and scoped its interior. After a pause, Kimball shook his head. “Nope . . . I don’t see Him.” Then he turned the bottle over so that the opening was facing the cleric. “How about you, Padre? . . . You see Him?”
“Please, Kimball. It’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“Why are you here?” Kimball gently put the bottle down on the table.
The monsignor flapped his handkerchief, as if to wave off the bar’s stench.
“How can you stand this place?”
“It suits me . . . Now, why are you here?”
“Well, you either come to this bar or you go to the one in Venice. And since Venice is too far of a walk, even for you, this was my best bet.”
“Padre—”
The monsignor raised his hand and patted the air, telling Kimball to calm down.
“Look, Kimball, I know you had a rough go in the Philippines.”
“Rough? We were sent on a mission to save five people being held hostage by the MILF. The nuns had been raped and murdered before the negotiations began, and a priest was hung and left hanging for days. Ramos had no intentions of following through with his demands. He was going to kill them anyway. They never had a chance.”
“You did save the life of Father Maggiano,” said the monsignor.
“Yeah. And we had to kill several people, too.” Kimball leaned forward, and with a hint of self-repugnance, said, “I was forced to kill a child, Padre . . . A kid who should have been in school or playing soccer. Instead, he was out running around with an AK-47 as his playmate.” Kimball eased back into his seat and looked at the empty bottle.
Then from Monsignor Giammacio: “You were defending yourself,” he told him.
“You had no choice, Kimball. Even God recognizes the fact that everyone has the right—”
“—To defend themselves and to protect those who cannot protect themselves,” Kimball finished. “You keep telling me that. But all I’m hearing from you is that you’re trying to justify the killing.” Kimball grabbed the bottle and wished for more. Then he stated evenly, “You know what we are, Padre? We’re pawns in a vicious fight between our God and their God. And in the end, we simply justify these horrible actions in the name of Heaven or Allah. I don’t see how any of this can be justified no matter how you, or anyone else, wants to look at it. I shot and killed a boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned during my stay here at the Vatican . . . it’s that there is no God who would ever condone the killing of any man, let alone a child.”
“There are times, Kimball, when you are given no choice. This was one of those times.”
“I seem to have a lot of those times, Padre. Killing, I mean. And then I justify the action in the end because I can. But you know what?”
The monsignor waited for Kimball to continue, which he did.
“Justifying any action is the easiest thing a man can do,” Kimball told him, “no matter how terrible that action may be. Slaughter. Executions. Everything is justifiable. And this is something I know about, Padre, since I made a lifetime of doing it.” Kimball hoisted the empty bottle for the monsignor to see. “Can you loan me about thirty Euros . . . I’m a little tapped.”
“I’m not giving you money for alcohol, Kimball. We need to talk. Perhaps we should return to my office—”
“I’m fine right where I am, Padre.” Kimball then tapped the point of his forefinger against the tabletop in emphasis. “This is my office . . . My workplace.”
The monsignor held his hands up in surrender. Fine.
“Now, how about that loan?”
“I’m not giving you money for alcohol,” the monsignor repeated. “In fact, your drinking appears to be getting out of hand. Perhaps you should minimize your intake.”
“Minimize my intake? I don’t intake enough.”
“Kimball, you won’t find your faith inside of a bottle. Only within your heart. You need to put your trust in a higher power to get you through. Not the bottle.” Kimball chortled at this. “News flash, Padre, my heart is not the seat of emotions. It’s a muscle. And as for faith and putting my trust in a higher power, how can I do that when I can’t even trust myself?”
The monsignor had never seen Kimball so defeated or antagonistic. Killing the child in the Philippines might have pushed him over the edge.
“It couldn’t have been helped,” the monsignor finally told him.
“So, you keep saying.”
“Kimball, it’s not right to beat yourself up over this. You had no choice.”
The Vatican Knight continued to stare at the empty bottle, then he looked at the bottles along the back of the bar, all filled. Then: “I keep seeing them.”
“You keep seeing who?”
“The faces of all those I’ve killed over the years,” Kimball stated faintly. “Men. Women. Children. Especially the children. They follow me in my dreams, which is why I don’t sleep well. They call my name and ask me ‘why.’ And the thing is I have no answer. No justification. And they just keep coming with all of them screaming and wailing for a reply that I can’t give them.”
“All you have to do, Kimball, is to give yourself to God and He will embrace you.”
“It’s funny how you mental witch doctors think it’s that simple. It isn’t. Ever since I killed that kid a few days ago, all I can see is the rec
ognition in his eyes that he was about to die. It’s a look I’ve seen many times before—that painful look of someone a moment before I put a bullet in their head. And this,” Kimball raised the empty bottle, “is the only thing that dulls the images. Not faith. Not these come-to-Jesus talks. Only this.” He shook the bottle to get his point across to the monsignor, then he placed it softly against the table. A second later, he said, “I’m sorry, Padre. None of this is your fault. I shouldn’t be curt.”
“I understand,” he answered. “You’re frustrated.”
“Greatly.”
“Still, Kimball, the bottle is not the answer and it never will be.”
In an unprecedented move on the part of Kimball Hayden, he removed the cleric’s band from his collar and placed it on the table beside the bottle.
“What are you doing?” the monsignor asked him.
“I don’t deserve to wear that.”
“Kimball, you have every right to wear that collar.”
But Kimball shook his head. “No, I don’t. My legacy is not to leave a trail of bodies behind me a mile wide in the name of the church. I will never find the Light, Padre. And God will never roll out the red carpet for me due to the sins of my past.”
“Perhaps at one time, Kimball, when you were an assassin. But since you’ve become a Vatican Knight, you’ve saved the lives of so many. Your acts of redemption have become your legacy.”
Kimball remained quiet and solemn while fixing his eyes on the collar. “Can I ask you something, Padre?”
“Of course.”
“When did life get so difficult?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“When I was a little boy,” Kimball began, “I always saw the world as a place filled with magic and make believe . . . And then I grew up and somewhere along the way I lost that magic of being a child.” And then: “You have no idea how much I wish to be a little boy again.”
“Life is a learning process, Kimball. We make mistakes and we learn from them.
We better ourselves so at the time of our passing, it’s always about what we leave behind—and that the difference that we had made in life was for the good of all things.”
“And you believe this?”
“Of course, I do.”
“You really believe that the marks we make in life are also the steppingstones to an afterlife?”
“Don’t you believe that?”
“I’m not sure what to believe,” he said to the monsignor. “Sometimes I wonder if the afterlife is like before birth, which is a whole lot of nothing.”
“Look into yourself, Kimball, and look at your life since you’ve become a Vatican Knight. See all the wonderful things you’ve done in the name of the church.”
Kimball feigned a smile.
Then from the monsignor. “What?”
“In the name of the church . . . I still see the face of the boy I killed a few days ago.” Kimball rose to his feet. “I’m going back to the Vatican,” he told him. “I’m tired.”
The monsignor grabbed the cleric’s band beside the empty bottle and held it out to Kimball. “Don’t forget this.”
Kimball stared at it for a long moment, looked at the monsignor, then said, “You keep it.”
When Kimball started to walk out of the bar, the monsignor called out to him.
“Kimball, you are a good man. Believe in that and the rest will fall into place. Just . believe.”
Kimball stopped and turned his head enough to show the monsignor his profile. Then he returned softly: “I can’t.”
And then he left the monsignor alone in a bar that stank of stale smoke and cheap booze.
* * *
Kimball Hayden returned to his quarters next to the Old Gardens in Vatican City. It was a small room, and to some it was perhaps claustrophobic. But this had been Kimball’s home for years, a place he had considered his house of residency. On the left side of the chamber was a cot, a nightstand, a trunk for clothing, a closet, a sink, and a few shelves to hold military tomes and magazines. On the right side of the room was his station for worship. There was a pedestal that held a Bible that had never been opened, a votive rack whose candles had never been lit, and a kneeling rail that had never been knelt upon. High on the wall that divided the room was a stained-glass window of the Virgin Mary who held her arms out in invitation. On certain days as the sun made its trajectory, the rays that filtered through the colored panes provided a Biblical beam of light into the chamber. The image of the Virgin Mother was always smiling and welcoming, as if she was ready to accept Kimball within her arms and pull him close.
Often, Kimball would allow his fingers to dance within inches of the beam, only to pull them away because he did not believe himself worthy of the Light. So, the warmth of the light and the acceptance of the Virgin Mary would have to wait, until a time when he believed that he earned the right to accept both.
Sitting on the edge of his cot, he waited for the sun to make its daily journey until the Biblical beam slanted downward from the window to alight on the floor, as an illuminated square of many colors. Within this divine shaft of light, Kimball could see dust motes moving slowly about in eddies. Then he turned to view the face of the Holy Mother and at the intricate pieces of glass that made her whole. She was beautiful and her smile becoming. Her arms were extended out to him in encouragement. In the back of his mind he could hear the monsignor: Hand yourself over to God and He will do the rest.
I can’t.
All you have to do is believe.
I don’t.
As he continued to sit and watch the beam from less than three feet away, a passing cloud cover had extinguished the light, which left him in the shadows of the ‘Gray.’ And it was here that Kimball Hayden felt most comfortable. He had always been the fulcrum between sinner and saint, always tipping that moral seesaw one way or another to achieve the means. And he did this by working in the ‘Dark’ in order to serve the ‘Light.’
I am inside the Gray.
This is where I belong.
As the hours passed, the sun’s trajectory carried it far to the west and beyond the horizon, leaving Kimball in darkness.
He was not afraid, however. Instead, he found himself oddly at ease inside these deeply woven shadows—more so than the light that had been offered to him by the Virgin Mary.
The room was dark.
It was black.
And it was unfathomable.
Then as fatigue began to take hold, Kimball reached up to feel the opening in his collar where the cleric’s band should have been, but now removed. It had served as a token reminder of what he was seeking with the church, the Light of Salvation. But in the end, he considered that his journey on the Road to Perdition was a stretch that would take him all the way to an awful and Stygian darkness. He would never stand at a crossroad or be given an opportunity to alter his course, since he had damned his soul long ago.
Lying on his cot and bringing his knees up into acute angles, he folded his arms around them in a tight embrace. After his eyes closed and he finally fell asleep, Kimball Hayden would dream of the faces of those he had killed over a lifetime. He would hear them cry his name and ask him one question: Why?
In his dream, Kimball Hayden would have no answer.
Chapter Seven
Washington, D.C.
With Rome six hours ahead of Washington, D.C., Shari Cohen had signed off from duty late in the afternoon and returned to her apartment. Director Johnston thought it best for her to take residence at a safehouse until Mohammad Allawi was captured, she declined. She was not about to dignify his escape by hiding in the shadows. After she parked her car, she immediately recognized the pair of generic-looking sedans that surrounded her address. Partnering up inside each vehicle were similarly suited agents with matching conservative haircuts, which made Shari believe that they would never fool anyone under surveillance. Why don’t you just wave a banner?
After declining the safety of the safehous
e, Director Johnston ordered a security detail which was something she agreed to, but with great reluctance.
Her two-level apartment was small with the three-bedroom residence just over a thousand square feet. The bedrooms were tiny except for the master bedroom, which was not overly grand in size. The kitchen and living area were pieced together to make one large room. And the balcony that overlooked the main street was only large enough to fit a pair of resin chairs. When she was married with two children, she found it proper to live in a large home with enough living space to provide everyone with comfort. But after they had been killed by Mohammad Allawi the home became a mausoleum, a tomb that had become much too large and too hollow. With such vacantness surrounding her, she opted to sell the luxury home in hopes of escaping the dark memories that clung to it. But the home wasn’t the problem; it was her memory of their deaths that would forever haunt her in a habitual retelling of the story in her mind’s eye. Gary, her husband, was going to drive the children to school in their Escalade. Standing on the porch while waiting for them to back down the driveway like she did every morning, the vehicle exploded into a fireball when the Escalade lifted off its wheels, rotated in the air, then landed as twisted metal that hardly resembled an SUV. Even from the porch she could feel the heat of the flames, perhaps this bonfire a suggestion of a beginning Hell to mark the opening chapter of her new life. Without her family, she felt adrift and alone in darkness. Though she continued to wear a suit of armor, it was also pieced together by a single bolt that was ready to give at any moment, since she was at times fragile. As strong as Shari Cohen was as a person, she also had her limits as a human being who often found herself breaking into tears. There was no greater pain than the loss of your children. After leaving her pocketbook on the table and placing her jacket on the coat rack, she went over to the sheer drapes that had a scrim weave and parted them. The sedans were still there as were the agents. Letting the drapes fall, she went to the couch and turned on the TV.
