The Brimstone Diaries

by Rick Jones

  “You have something?” he asked the co-directors.

  “Sorry to wake you,” said Father Auciello. “I know it’s early.” The Jesuit turned to the console and began to type commands onto a keyboard. On a monitor against the far wall, a series of corresponding emails showed on the screen like the communicating texts of a cellphone. “The emails were encrypted, but we were able to decipher them easily, even though they tried to mask and erase their cyberfootprints,” he said.

  “And these are the cleaned-up versions?”

  Father Auciello nodded. “The communication between the parties reveal that the assassin in London was the foot soldier who’d been traveling across Europe to take out the messianic bloodline. The communication from the home-base front suggests that the second person involved was forwarding the targeted-killing information from a point right here in Rome.”

  “Rome?”

  Father Essex nodded. “It appears, Kimball, that the Brimstone Diaries never ventured far from the Vatican’s Secret Archives.”

  “Do we know this for sure?”

  “We’re not positive since the IP addresses were attached to a pair of laptops, making them mobile, obviously. But the interpreted codes taken from the tome were forwarded from point A, which is Rome, to point B, which was where you found the assassin’s laptop in London. It was obvious that the London assassin was mobile, whereas the second operator was at a stationary point when he was decoding the pages and forwarding the intel. The brains and the brawn, so to speak.”

  “You have a physical address?” asked the Vatican Knight.

  Father Auciello typed additional commands into the computer, which brought up a map of Rome. In the center was a red teardrop-shaped icon to note the current address of the laptop. After hitting a specific button, it turned the screen from street imagery to satellite imagery, and then he zoomed in to a precise location marked by the red teardrop, which was a flat in the northern part of Rome. “The computer was activated six hours ago for a complete online activation of twenty minutes,” stated Auciello. “Whether or not the second operator bugged out since then—we don’t know.”

  Kimball looked at his watch. It was 3:36 a.m. “I’ll gather a team immediately,” he said. “We can be on the premise in thirty.”

  “We’ll contact Father Ferrano,” said Father Essex. “If the book is there, he’ll appropriate it and return it to the Secret Archives.”

  “Good enough.” With that, Kimball turned and hustled from the Comm Center.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  ––––––––

  Rome

  Early Morning. 4:12 a.m.

  Martin Gemini had always been an insomniac, the man sleeping a maximum of four hours a day, which was enough to recharge and revitalize him for the coming day’s events.

  When he had learned of his brother’s death, the news had also set forth inquiries of Robert Bowman’s whereabouts, who was missing and then later suggested by the media that he had gone underground to escape the violence. In his apartment in Rome, Martin Gemini was kneeling before the red neon cross with his hands clasped together in an attitude of prayer. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. In ways to serve You—”

  Somewhere in the room an alarm began to go off in warning, cutting him off from prayer. And he knew the sound, what it signified. Getting to his massive height with his flesh a remarkable canvas of tattoos, Martin Gemini went to the laptop, flipped the lid, and booted it up. After tapping a few buttons, the monitor came to life. The screen was separated into a grid pattern of four different locations within the apartment, such as the stairways and corridors, the alarm something he always enabled after the midnight hour.

  The first grid was empty, the area already bypassed by the time he got the laptop going. But the second grid showed movement of a military force, six members in all.

  Martin Gemini cocked his head slightly and stated softly, “And whose little boys are you, I wonder?”

  Then with one hand he typed commands on the keyboard until that grid surfaced on the entire monitor.

  Five men were moving forward with the points of their weapons in the ready position, a skilled force, with a sixth man appearing unarmed. As they made their way along the corridor towards his room, Gemini zoomed in. He could see a speck of stark white peeking out from the collars of their shirts. As he homed in for a closer evaluation, there was no doubt that they were wearing the Roman Catholic collars of priests, which caused him to cock his head even further to the side inquisitively. Then the third alarm went off, meaning that the unit had reached the eye of the third camera. After a few more taps, Gemini brought up the third screen. On the monitor, he watched the team advance towards his door, which was located at the end of the hallway.

  Martin Gemini closed the lid of his computer knowing that he had been compromised.

  Then, while looking at the light of the neon cross which reflected red off his skin, he said as he opened his arms wide in mock crucifixion, “I have prepared for this moment, my Lord.”

  That was when the fourth alarm went off.

  The intruders had reached the door to his apartment.

  * * *

  Kimball held up his hand with three fingers up, then began to tick them off from three...

  ...to two ...

  ...to one ...

  Initiation.

  The door flew inward from Kimball’s kick, the doorjamb breaking into myriad pieces as shards of wood skated down the hallway. The Vatican Knights entered the apartment with the team branching off to clear the rooms off the central corridor. Kimball continued straight down the hallway. Isaiah and Joshua went to the left; Jeremiah and Moses to the right. Father Ferrano was an arm’s length away behind Kimball.

  The rooms to the left were clear.

  The rooms to the right were clear.

  Ahead, the living area.

  Kimball moved into the room with his head on a swivel by first panning the point of his weapon to the left, and then to the right.

  Nothing.

  On the table was the laptop, the lid closed.

  And against the wall and burning a crimson red was a neon cross.

  Kimball stood and listened. Then the hairs on the back of his neck tingled like a sixth sense, much like a dog who raises its hackles when sensing great danger.

  Kimball maintained his weapon, held it steady.

  The neon cross continued to hum and buzz.

  Ahead was a closet. The door was closed.

  From the left Isaiah and Joshua joined him; then from the right Jeremiah and

  Moses.

  The Vatican Knights were standing in a row before the closet. Father Ferrano stood behind them with the priest anticipating the door to swing wide like the lid of a Jack-in-the-Box, the surprise expected though terrifying.

  Kimball motioned his hand for Isaiah to move forward to open the door, which he did with remarkable care and prudence.

  Holding the knob for a moment as if to feel the pulsations of life behind the door, Isaiah yanked it wide and stepped back with his weapon directed toward the shadows within.

  The closet was empty except for a pair of pants and a shirt that dangled on two hangers.

  Nevertheless, Kimball continued to sense something wrong, that a darkness was pooling close by as if gathering strength.

  Then Kimball gestured to his team to keep eyes and ears open, and that—

  Suddenly the bookcase against the wall appeared to rise from the floor and fell forward, the piece of furniture heavy as it took flight and landed on Jeremiah and Moses, knocking them to the floor with the bookcase holding them underneath. In the red light of the neon, Martin Gemini stood openly naked with his body a living canvas of religious images. Like his brother, he was a tattooed facsimile with Jesus adorning the Crown of Thorns on one arm, and the Weeping Mother on the other, with a myriad of crosses decorating the rest of his flesh. On his back, and what the Vatican Knights could not see, were the angel’s wings. As Gemini s
tepped forward with madness waging fiercely in eyes that burned red from the light of the neon cross, Kimball noted the incredible height of the man as well as his great muscle mass, the man a physical freak of nature like his brother, and perhaps just as dangerous.

  Kimball directed his weapon to Gemini’s center mass. “On the floor!”

  But Gemini countered Kimball’s order by raising his hands to his side as if to embrace all those before him, and said, “I am a soldier of God who will destroy those who trespass against His will!”

  “I said, on the floor! I will not repeat—”

  But Gemini was quick and powerful. Reaching down with impossible speed,

  Gemini lifted the bookcase and hurled it at the Vatican Knights, who drew their aim away when they scattered from the bookcase’s trajectory.

  Reaching down and grabbing the backs of Jeremiah’s and Moses’ necks with a Vatican Knight in each hand, Gemini raised them off the floor and held them aloft. Then he slammed them together like cymbals, the collision knocking the Vatican Knights so hard that their eyes rolled up into their heads until nothing showed but slivers of white, and then he dropped them to the floor where they landed as boneless heaps.

  In fast and fluid motion, Gemini crossed the floor and kicked aside the point of Isaiah’s weapon, which went off with a burst. As the room lit up with muzzle flashes, the expended rounds stitched across the wall and smashed into the neon cross, damaging it. The red light was gone, as was the constant hum. The only light in the room now was the glow of the street lamp outside the window. When seeing the damaged cross and the way it hung drunkenly against the wall, the sight of its damage propelled Gemini into an uncontrollable rage. The moment the tattooed man launched himself forward, Kimball responded by trying to hit the man in close quarters by ramming the stock of his weapon into the man’s solar plexus. But Gemini slapped the attempt away, his reflexes quick and catlike as he drove on Kimball, the large man eclipsing him. But Kimball was also fast, the man a seasoned warrior who knew how to counter from sheer instinct.

  As Gemini knocked the weapon free from Kimball’s hands, the Vatican Knight came at him with a series of blows and punches, his fists pummeling the man’s tattooed chest with the back-and-forth motion of an engine’s pistons. Yet the punches seemed to have little effect. Then Kimball came across with a series of elbow strikes—left, right, left, right, left, right—the points striking the man’s jaw, which no doubt threw the large man off his game as his legs began to go gelatinous beneath him and threatened to buckle.

  ...left, right, left, right, left, right ...

  Isaiah leapt over the downed bookcase and added his own sequence of front kicks with his right foot, the impacts knocking Gemini against the wall, before he moved in with a series of straight jabs with his fists.

  Kimball was in the front and Isaiah was to the side, both punching, kicking and hammering away. But Gemini gathered himself, the large man lashing out with his piledriving fist and striking Kimball with a clean shot to the chin. As the Vatican Knight stumbled backward while seeing internal stars, Gemini shot his arm across in a horizontal arc at Isaiah. But the Vatican Knight ducked from the man’s swing while continuing to throw his own chops, with his hands and fists hitting key areas of the man’s body to disable him. But Gemini remained on his feet, a difficult man to bring down.

  As Kimball shook off the cobwebs, Joshua and Jeremiah entered the fray with the commandos using the stocks of their weapons to bring the man down. Now Gemini was a towering rage of mass and muscle as he grabbed Isaiah by the front of the shirt, hoisted him high off the floor, and rammed him into the drywall, caving it in. As Isaiah fell to the floor, the tattooed man turned on Joshua and Jeremiah, who continued to hammer away to bring the big man down. They struck his abdomen, kicked his knees, elbowed his chin—yet he kept on coming, the large man screaming with savage fury.

  Joshua, a big man himself, bull-rushed the man and pinned him against the wall, then threw a knee into his groin, which caused Gemini to moan and retch. Gemini, however, countered with a headbutt that drove the Vatican Knight back, grabbed Joshua by the collar, yanked him forward, and gave him another head thrust. The impact was so great that a wound opened on Gemini’s head. Joshua, however, received the brunt of the force that sent him to the floor. Jeremiah was on his feet and began to throw a series of roundhouse kicks that struck home by hitting Gemini’s cheek, then his chin, the side of his head, all knocking the large man backward. Isaiah was able to get to his feet, though slowly, then entered the mix by throwing blows to Gemini’s throat using the blades of his hands, throwing chop after chop, with his hands moving in blurs. Kimball came forward gritting his teeth, ready to attack.

  Joshua and Moses remained on the floor.

  And then Gemini moved as a man with nothing left to lose since he knew that he was about to be overwhelmed.

  He raised his arms that were as thick as pythons, cried out in a rage, and lashed out wildly. He grabbed Jeremiah by the throat and flung him into Kimball, then he knocked Isaiah off his feet with the Vatican Knight taking flight and landing on a table, which broke beneath his weight.

  Father Ferrano stood before the tattooed man with his face a mask of terror. Fumbling for his sidearm while keeping his eyes on the behemoth that was coming for him, Father Ferrano was able to remove the pistol, took aim and pulled the trigger.

  There was nothing but a dry click.

  Gemini continued to approach him with his teeth bared.

  Another pull on the trigger.

  Another dry click.

  Gemini was almost on top of him.

  “The safety!” someone yelled. “Release the safety!” Father Ferrano had no idea who was calling out to him.

  Thumbing off the safety, Father Ferrano took aim and pulled the trigger. This time the gun went off with a loud report. The round, however, missed its target and took out a quarter-sized hole in the wall behind Gemini.

  The large man, who appeared perplexed by the sound of the gunfire, stopped and turned to examine the hole in the wall. Then he turned and drove on Father Ferrano by piledriving the flat of his palm into the priest’s chest, which knocked the cleric off his feet and to the floor, where he skated on his backside for a few feet before coming to a stop.

  Having been winded with starbursts of light popping before his eyes, Father Ferrano could see this towering mountain of rage moving towards him. He saw the tattoos move and take on a life of their own with every flex of the large man’s muscles. He could see Jesus wearing the Crown of Thorns, the Messiah’s face a portrait of sadness and pity. And then there was the Holy Mother who wept with misery.

  Bringing his weapon up once again, Father Ferrano got off a pair of shots. One round went to Gemini’s left, hitting something glasslike such as a vase. The second shot missed his head entirely and ended up high on the wall and close to the ceiling.

  Again, the large man strangely stopped to look at the holes.

  Then as he turned and lunged at the priest, two bullet wounds appeared on Gemini’s flesh; one on the shoulder and the other just beneath the left clavicle, with the edges of the wounds paring back like the blooming petals of a red rose, which caused the big man to stumble and fall to his knees.

  Turning to give a sidelong look at Kimball through his deformed eye, Gemini saw a ribbon of smoke rising from the mouth of Kimball’s weapon.

  “Don’t move,” Kimball told him.

  But the big man smiled and laughed. “I have dealt with much greater pain from the lash of my father’s belt,” he said. Then he rose to his feet, the man a behemoth. Then he brushed at the wounds as if to sweep them off his skin, smiled, and acted as if they were nothing but mere nuisances.

  Then he advanced on Kimball.

  “On your knees!” the Vatican Knight told him.

  “If I fall to my knees, priest, it will only be before my God ...Not before you.”

  Gemini moved as if his wounds served no pain or agony, but as additional decorat
ion to his tapestry of flesh.

  Another hole appeared in the large man’s chest, a wound that smoked. This, however, had the effect that Kimball was looking for, as Gemini fell to his knees, looked at the broken cross on the wall, and smiled peacefully. His eyes seemed to wander about the room seeing vistas only he could imagine in his mind, a place of peace.

  Looking at his chest, he could see blood coursing heavily over the markings of his skin.

  Then he looked at Kimball and saw the Roman Catholic collar around his neck, then allowed his sight to fall to the mouth of the smoking barrel of Kimball’s gun.

  Then from Gemini: “Father,” he whispered. And then he fell forward and hard, his great weight crashing against the floor and causing it to tremor beneath everyone’s feet.

  Martin Gemini was gone.

  Lowering the point of his weapon and sighing, Kimball then pointed to Father Ferrano and asked him if he was fine. He said he was as he got to his feet and holstered his weapon. With the rest of the Vatican Knights feeling fine except for Joshua, who would need stitches to knit the wound shut, and Moses, who no doubt was suffering from a concussion, gathered themselves inside a room that was as hot and cloying as a sweat box.

  “This guy was an animal,” said Isaiah. “Like his brother. A slab of stone who just wouldn’t fall.”

  “Madness is a power unto its own,” said Jeremiah. “It’s like he felt nothing at all.”

  Kimball noted the man’s back as he lay on the floor, saw the angel’s wings and the scarring of previous lashes. “It looks like he’d been dealing with pain for most of his life,” he said. “I guess pain was so much a part of him that he had learned how to live with it. He learned how to cope with the agony. That’s why he wouldn’t go down. He was used to dealing with pain as if it was something natural.”

  Then everyone examined their surroundings. The place was in shambles. From the wreckage, however, Father Ferrano found the tome beneath the smashed bookcase, lifted it, used the sleeve of his coat to brush off the dust, and held it up for all to see. “I have it,” he said. “I have the Brimstone Diaries.” After acknowledging the find, Kimball once again returned to the tattoos of angel’s wings on Gemini’s back. They were perfectly done, the artistry magnificent. The only flaws were the blemishes that came by way of a whip’s tail. Kimball could only wonder how someone could go through life in pain, both physical and mental, without the aid of a helping hand. And the answer was simple.