Imminent Threat

by Jeff Gunhus

  Thales reached into his front pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. He flipped it open to show an identification badge embossed with the seal of the orthodox cross. The odd man snatched it from his hands and held it up close to his face as if smelling it instead of reading. He snorted and threw it back to Thales.

  “He knew you were coming, you know?” he said, licking his lips as if they were food promised him. “Prelates of the false gods, he called you. He knew. He knew.”

  “Did he tell you that I would smack you aside the head if you delay us any longer?” Thales asked.

  The man’s demeanor changed at the threat. He scowled, then turned and led them to the ladder, which went to the largest of the four sketes. “I will go up and announce you.”

  Thales pulled the man down off the ladder. “That won’t be necessary. You said yourself, he knows we’re coming.”

  Urgo wanted to complain but seemed to think better of it. He slunk to the side of the ladder and sat heavily on a rock with his arms crossed.

  “Zealot,” Thales whispered as he began the climb up.

  Urgo spat at the bottom of the ladder, his eyes blazing with hate.

  Scott decided the monk was a few cards short of a full deck but was likely harmless enough. He waited until Thales entered the skete before adding his weight to the ladder, then climbed up.

  The inside of the skete was dark and smelled like disease and old age. He flashed back to the hospital where his daughter Lucy had spent her last weeks fighting cancer. On the run, he’d been forced to come to her undercover as one of the maintenance crew. Even there in a modern hospital with disinfectants, the smell of death had lingered. In this small, enclosed space, it was nearly overwhelming.

  The skete was a long rectangle with one side carved directly into the cliff wall. Occupying one end was a bed surrounded by wide candles. In the flickering light, they saw a man sitting upright, propped up by pillows, his head lolled to one side.

  He was thin to the point of emaciation, his body not much more than tight skin stretched against bone, reminding Scott of Belchik. He was hairless, both his face and head. His hands rested one on top of the other on his lap. Whatever Urgo did to care for the old man, cutting his nails was not part of his routine. Yellowed nails curled from the ends of his fingers, some of them cracked and torn. A bedpan rested against the wall next to the bed, but the stench coming from the bed meant either it hadn’t been washed since its last use or Urgo had missed the old man’s last movement.

  Scott’s heart sank. It seemed impossible the miserable figure in front of him would be able to give him anything of value.

  Thales kneeled next to the bed and put an arm on the old man’s shoulder. “Father Spiros. Wake up. Can you hear me?”

  The old man’s eyes fluttered and then bolted open. Scott was shocked to see that they glowed blue in the candlelight, glazed over with starbursts of cataracts.

  “Apostoli,” he croaked. “Is that you?”

  Thales was about to answer when Scott held up his hand for him to stop. He moved closer.

  “Yes,” he said softly, doing his best to recall Scarvan’s gruff Eastern European accent from years ago on the boat. “I am here.”

  Tears appeared in Father Spiros’s eyes. His mouth opened and closed involuntarily, a faint smacking sound coming from his dry tongue. “Do you forgive me? Do you forgive my sin?”

  “I do,” Scott said. “Of course, I forgive you.”

  “You came back,” the old man mumbled. “Does this mean it’s done? You did as God showed us?”

  “Yes,” Scott answered, hoping to get something out of the old man. “I did what I had to do.”

  Father Spiros tried to lift his hands but could not. Under the covers, the man’s thin legs moved. He snorted and grunted from the effort.

  “Rest easy,” Scott said. “The task is done. Just as you predicted it would be.”

  This seemed to calm the old man down. He closed his eyes and a wicked smile appeared on his lips. He whispered, “Every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.” Father Spiros reached out and grasped Scott’s arm. The old man’s nails dug into his skin and his fingers were no more than claws of bone. “And what a fire it shall be, Apostoli. Because of you, my son.” He released his grip and closed his eyes. “I want to hear it. Tell me how it was done.”

  Scott and Thales shared a look. They both felt on the edge of getting the man to say what they needed, but also on the edge of the subterfuge collapsing.

  “I will tell you, but not now,” Scott said. “I need to know what to do next. Your instructions from here forward were unclear.”

  The old man stopped breathing from several long seconds, his face slowly twisting into a grimace. Scott thought he might be having a heart attack or maybe a stroke.

  What was actually happening was far worse.

  When the old man’s eyes opened, gone was the mad euphoria, replaced instead by fury. As he turned his head to bring Scott fully into his range of vision, he knew the old priest had figured it out.

  “Where is Apostoli?” he said.

  “Dead,” Scott answered on impulse, following his instinct. “I killed him. Your plan failed.”

  The lie had an immediate effect. The old man groaned, lifting his hands to his face, seeming not to notice as his own curled nails scratched at his paper-thin skin. Scott misinterpreted the action, thinking it was despair. Instead, when Father Spiros lowered his hands, he was smiling, his rotting gums poking out from behind his thin lips.

  “Last night in my sleep I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded.” He stared at Scott from behind his gnarled fingers. “You’re lying. You were too late, weren’t you?”

  “Who was beheaded, Father?” Thales said, stepping forward for the first time. “The men who tried to kill him?”

  The priest turned to him as if seeing his other visitor for the first time. “The men who have tried to kill God’s world. As I saw in my vision, this shall herald the end of times. Have you seen it? Has He come?”

  “Has who come?” Thales asked.

  For the first time, the old man had a frightened, panicked look. “And then they will see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great splendor.” He reached out to Scott, a look of confusion in his eyes. “Apostoli, I’m sorry I lied to you. I wanted to see the Messiah too much to wait. Please forgive the weakness of an old man. Forgive my lie.”

  Scott kneeled on the floor next to the bed. Maybe they’d catch a break after all. With the old man fading in and out, it was just a matter of time for them to pull the information out of him.

  He adopted the deep Eastern European accent once again. “Tell me,” he said. “Explain your vision and how I’m supposed to deliver God’s plan.”

  Slowly, his voice weakening, Father Spiros began to speak.

  CHAPTER 26

  Scarvan had been on Mt. Athos for six months. He would never have believed it had someone told him that was to be the case the day he woke up in the old man’s skete. A few days. A week at the most. The minimal amount of time for his body to heal enough for him to travel. That’s what he expected.

  But there he was.

  Six months.

  While his enemies still roamed free. Enjoying their lives. Filled with pride that they had been able to kill him. The bastards.

  But something had happened to him in this place. Something unexpected.

  For the first time since he’d been a child at his mother’s knee, he was actually contemplating the existence of a power greater than himself. There had been no place for religion in his life. The only god he swore fealty to was that of the gun, of punishment, of power.

  Father Spiros had opened his eyes to the idea that perhaps he’d been serving God all along. That His infinite wisdom caused him to know the evil in the hearts of men and also gave Him reason to hand-select those to do His work.<
br />
  Whether they were aware or not.

  The idea had seemed ridiculous to him, the mutterings of an old fool who had lived alone too long eating wild berries and drinking rainwater.

  But there were the dreams.

  At first, he thought them no more than his fever talking to him. A parade of ghosts from his past coming to berate and scream at him for taking their lives. This he could handle. It was no different from when they’d begged him to spare them the first time. Anger now, instead of pathetic groveling, but the heart of it was the same.

  But then things changed.

  He’d been on Mt. Athos a month when the dream became something different.

  That night, he found himself in the ruins of a soccer stadium. The edifice to man’s leisure transformed by a few bomb runs into a symbol of mankind’s true pastime, waging war. The once-lush green grass was brown and burned by the blistering sun. Shredded refuge shelters blew in the hot wind. The burned husk of a Red Cross ambulance lay on its side where there had once been a goal. The stadium seats were pockmarked with black spots where campfires had burned on cold nights.

  Scarvan recognized the place, but only as it had been in his youth. Rajko Miti Stadium. In Dedinje, just outside Belgrade. He and his friends used to sneak in when they were teenagers, watch the match, drink too much, sometimes get into a fight with fans from the other team when they were in the mood.

  But he’d never seen it like this.

  Now he stood in the center of the field, a spot where his heroes once stood at the beginning of the game, all promise and potential no matter the season’s record. Kickoff was always a fresh start.

  But standing there didn’t feel like a new beginning. Far from it.

  He spun in a circle, feeling his heart pound. A ringing noise filled his ears. He searched for a way out, but every exit was piled up with rubble.

  No.

  Not rubble.

  There were stacks of bodies.

  Charred. Twisted in unnatural poses. But still stacked like firewood. Barricading the outside world.

  Or perhaps locking him in.

  “What is this place?” he shouted.

  Feeling eyes on him, he spun around. At the far end of the field, down by the ambulance, stood a little girl in a white nightgown. She had blond hair that lay flat, reaching down to the middle of her back. She walked toward him, and he felt the most incredible mixture of awe and fear he’d ever experienced in his life.

  As she approached, he saw that both her nightgown and her pale, white skin were perfectly unblemished. In a world of dust and ash and debris, she was untouched.

  Scarvan reached for his gun. A knife. Anything.

  But in a moment of terror, he realized he carried none of these.

  Worse, he wore no clothes at all. He was stark naked.

  A wave of embarrassment and shame came over him. He covered his genitals with both hands. He looked for something with which to cover himself, but there was nothing. He was exposed.

  The little girl stopped fifteen feet from him, regarding him curiously.

  “Do you not know who you are to me?” she asked.

  Her voice was both the sound of water in a stream and the roll of thunder in a night sky. Somehow both peace and terror at the same time.

  “I don’t,” he said. “I don’t know this place.”

  The little girl smiled but Scarvan shrank away from her. Inside the girl’s mouth was nothing but incalculable darkness. No tongue or teeth, just an endless void that pulled at him with its own gravity.

  “This is a place you made,” she said.

  “It’s horrible.”

  The girl looked sad at the comment, as if he were making a statement about her. “It’s necessary. This you did for me. And I honor you for it.”

  In a moment of perfect clarity, Scarvan realized what was happening. He straightened and pulled his shoulders back, feeling his confidence come rushing back. “This isn’t real,” he stated firmly. “All of this is a dream. Or a hallucin––”

  The girl rushed at him, no more than a blur from the speed. She smashed her fist into his chest, and he flew backward through the air. He landed hard, gasping for air. He held his chest, coughing.

  A shadow blocked the noon sun and he looked up.

  The girl stood over him. “I saved you for a reason. Spiros knows it. But do you? Can you ever accept it?” She turned her head to one side, studying him. “I think you can. In time. But now . . . wake up.”

  Scarvan had bolted up in bed. Father Spiros was sitting in his usual chair next to him, Bible in hand. Scarvan grabbed his chest, rubbing at the burning pain there.

  Heart attack?

  He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and tried to get his bearings in the small hut. He pulled open his shirt and, even in the candlelight, could see the deep red mark on his skin from the impact. Within a day, it would be a nasty purple bruise that radiated across his chest.

  Father Spiros closed his book. “He came to you,” he whispered.

  “What are you talking about? It was a dream. A little girl. Just a dream.” He heard the desperation in his own voice and hated the sound of it.

  Father Spiros smiled and nodded at his chest. “A dream? I think not. And do you not think the Lord Father can come in any way he sees fit? Man, woman, child, creature. Don’t dare to believe you can understand His ways.” He leaned forward. “Did He tell you what must happen? Did He show you the path He’s chosen?”

  Scarvan pulled his shirt closed. He wanted nothing to do with this. With any of it. He scrambled to his feet and shoved the old man to the side. He sprinted to the door and burst through it, gasping for air as if he’d been underwater on the edge of drowning. He lunged for the ladder, grasped it, and swung his legs around.

  But his foot missed the first rung and he slipped.

  The moment of weightlessness as he fell the fifteen feet seemed to stretch out seconds longer than could be possible.

  He twisted in midair, his training taking over to protect his head and spine.

  His right foot hit first, hammering into the ground with shattering impact.

  It disappeared into a crevice between two rocks, the flesh on his shin scraped clean. Then the mass of his body carried to his right, snapping his tibia with a crack that sounded like gunfire. He screamed as he reached down. The bone jutted out from where its jagged edge had broken the skin. It felt like his entire leg was on fire.

  When he closed his eyes fight back the pain, it was the child’s face from his dream that he saw. And a sense of peace came over him just before he passed out.

  By the time Scarvan had come around, he was being hoisted back up to the skete in the rope-and-pulley system. A young boy named Urgo pulled hard on the rope as he moved slowly higher. His body turned and his leg slammed into the rock face, sending a round of agony shooting through him.

  He next woke back in the same bed where he’d recuperated from his injuries on the boat. Only this time his leg was wrapped in a heavy plaster cast that encompassed his foot and extended up to the middle of his thigh. It was another month before he left the skete again.

  A month of radical dreams, visits from dark memories, and a recurring vision of the young girl in the stadium. Each time he awoke, Father Spiros was there, often reading, sometimes whispering near to his ear, describing the very same things that he’d shared with the old man. As if he could see inside his head.

  To pass the time, Scarvan read the Bible as well. He’d known many of the stories from when he was a child, but there was so much in the pages that surprised him. God was not the benevolent figure his mother had prayed to. Within the pages he read, he found a God he understood. Angry and vengeful. Filled with violence and aggression. A God intent on punishment for those creatures who failed to follow the divine rules.

  Finally, he asked Father Spiros the question that had been gnawing at him. “This girl. She’s already to
ld you what she wants me to do, hasn’t she?”

  The old man grew very quiet. It was a long time before he answered. When he did, it was in a steady, clear voice. “God appears to everyone differently. I do not see a young girl as you describe. He comes to me as a voice inside of a brilliant light.”

  “You didn’t answer the question,” Scarvan said.

  Father Spiros templed his hands together and leaned forward. “Yes, I know what will be asked of you. But I’ve also been told you must learn the truth for yourself.”

  “So, you will not tell me?”

  “I cannot tell you,” he said. “I cannot choose to go against God any more than I could choose to fly or choose to swim under the ocean.”

  “I don’t believe this is God speaking to me,” Scarvan said. “These are dreams. Delusions. Nothing more.”

  The old man gave him a pitying look. Scarvan felt the emptiness in his own words, but he didn’t care. It was better than admitting that he believed. That admission came with consequences he didn’t want to imagine.

  It was another three months before he asked Father Spiros to baptize him.

  Shortly after that, he killed for the first time for his new God.

  CHAPTER 27

  Scott felt a chill climb up his spine. He realized that until that moment he’d let himself believe that Scarvan had been out of the game for the last twenty years. That his complete absence was the only way to explain why he’d managed not to turn up back on the grid again to raise suspicion.

  Now his mind went to the dozens of covert missions carried out by unknown operators over the years. He knew most of his own work left the intelligence agencies around the world scratching their heads, poring over data trying to determine who had been inside their borders.

  Perhaps Scarvan had been more active than he’d thought. The idea of Scarvan killing for God made him uneasy, but he wasn’t sure why. After all, Scott killed for his own country. Was the idea of a nation any less ephemeral than religion? All based on an idea, on faith in a system, on the idea of allegiance to a greater cause.

  But in the end, Scott knew that while he fought for his country, he really had always gone into harm’s way for his family. For his friends. For the men and women walking down any street in America. There was an old saying that there were no atheists in foxholes. But whoever had come up with that saying likely hadn’t spent much time in the trenches. At the end of the day, soldiers might pray to God when they faced the enemy, but they stood and fought because of their buddies on either side of them.