by Joseph Nagle
Today is no different than that day three months ago. Is God reminding me of what I found, somehow telling me what to do? Leo looked skyward and hoped that some divine message would be there answering his question.
He thought back to that day. Just like today, he had been annoyed by the persistent distraction from the sunlight. When the light had first bothered him, he remembered having pushed himself back from his old table and with one simple intention: to simply walk to the balcony and close the heavy curtains. Instead, he had found himself being drawn to the misbehaving tile.
Leo looked down at his pen; it was the same pen he was holding on that day. Rolling it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger, he was instantly shamed by the damage he had caused to it. The pen had been presented to him as a gift when he had been named Pope, and was a clearly expensive one.
On that day three months ago, he had lowered himself slowly to one knee to inspect the broken tile and took caution while doing so: at 78 years of age, every movement must be thought out carefully.
Leo remembered that day and all of its details, as if it were playing out like a staged production in front of him. He could see and hear himself quite clearly, almost as if he had traveled back in time and was watching the events play out once more.
He saw himself bending lower to the broken tile and saying, “Joshua, too many of your peers find themselves with broken hips.” This had made him chuckle out loud; he was clearly not yet accustomed to referring to himself as Leo.
Staring at the tile, he saw himself fingering the slightly misshaped marble’s edge; the slab had seemed a bit loose. It was loose. He saw himself scratching at the slightly raised corner of the tile with a bit of fervor. He remembered how the mortar connecting it to the adjacent slab had easily broken free.
When he was Joshua, he had always been a curious man, and becoming Leo hadn’t changed that; he had been unable to pull himself away from his destructive doings. He remembered thinking, as he had dug out the tile’s mortar, that perhaps the workers had simply not given this tile enough attention, but realized that the floor had merely been cleaned during the renovation, and not replaced.
Leo sat at his table and stared at the marble tile, flashing back to that day over and over again. Just like that day three months ago, he was unable to return his thoughts to his task at hand. Leo had been flush with a child-like curiosity for that piece of rock, and when he couldn’t dig the mortar away with his fingers, had scratched at the edges with the top of the ornate pen that had been in his hand. He damaged the pen, but he hadn’t noticed it then because the tile had shifted slightly, and to his surprise.
It was only after the marble tile had moved that he had looked at the pen and had become aware of the damage he caused to it. He had become flush with shame and quickly had set the magnificent pen down on a nearby shelf and next to a large golden crucifix; he had realized that he should not have used the expensive gift as a tool and hoped that Geoffrey, his faithful assistant, wouldn’t notice.
Reliving those vivid moments from three months ago, and just like then, one bead of sweat from the many now attached to his brow trickled down the side of his face. He felt his heart race as he continued to recall that day.
Reaching down with both hands, he had clasped the corner of the five-hundred year old marble and, with a grunt, had pulled. The marble had been too heavy for him and had lifted only slightly from the base of the floor, but had exposed a few centimeters of darkness beneath it.
Sitting at his table, Leo looked across his private studio to the shelves where the large golden crucifix sat. Three months ago, that golden cross had seemed like it had been some sort of divine inspiration. Leo had eagerly grabbed it from the shelf and used it as a lever to pry the marble tile from the floor.
Leo continued to stare at the cross. Had it truly been divine inspiration, or was it something else?
Leo was suddenly compelled – he didn’t know from what – to stand up and walk over to the cross. Rising gingerly to his feet and without pause, Leo scampered across his studio and toward the shelves where the cross sat.
Once there, he stared at the cross for a moment and then picked it up from the shelf. He kissed it more so as an apology than as a blessing or for respect. With the cross in his hand, he looked down at the tile and then, with care, he knelt to the floor. He felt a slight tremble in his hands; unlike that moment three months ago, this time he knew what was underneath the tile.
Leo inserted the crucifix into the space he had created, and, with a bit of effort, lifted the marble slab once more. He lowered himself closer to the ground. With his left eye near the newly opened chasm, he squinted and looked into the dark space. The Pope could make out the faint tubular shape of the parchment.
Leo reached in; grasping the parchment, the Pope slowly extracted it from where it had rested - up until three months ago - for nearly a century.
Eighteen inches in width and wrapped tightly in a deteriorating rag, the parchment was calf-skin vellum. In use nearly two centuries before Christ, vellum was washed, limed, and stretched for writing, but did not always stand the test of time. This parchment had obviously been well-kept.
Leo removed the outer wrapping and dropped it to the floor; the sealed letter that he had read over and over again fell with it.
On the letter was the Holy Seal of the Papal Arms with the recognizable papal tiara and crossed keys of a Pope stamped into the thick red wax of the letter’s seal. Underneath the seal, penned in heavy black calligraphy, were the letters “PPX.”
Leo had instantly recognized the significance of the letters when he had first found the parchment three months ago. He bent over to pick it up from the floor but was disturbed suddenly by a knock at the door.
“Your Holiness, it is I, Geoffrey, may I enter?”
Monsignor Geoffrey Hauptmann is the personal secretary to the new Pope. An extremely handsome man, at age 47 has been likened to the Catholic George Clooney. Athletic and with a sense of adventure, he plays a fantastic game of tennis, is a competitive skeet shooter, and even flies airplanes when possible.
The Pope snatched the fallen letter from the floor and stood abruptly to his feet – too quickly for an old man he realized – and spun toward the door with the ancient parchment and letter still grasped in his hands.
Leo didn’t answer. Geoffrey called out once more, “Your Holiness, are you awake? I have documents in need of your approval and signature.”
Leo had become lightheaded and groaned a bit from rising much too quickly but retorted, “One moment, Geoffrey, give me just one moment.”
Flustered by his need to act in secrecy, Leo placed his weight on top of the marble slab forcing it back into position which caused a piece to break off with an inordinately loud crack. Quickly, and with the parchment still in his hand, he put the golden cross back on the shelf and grabbed his pen.
A shiver of nervousness surged through Geoffrey as he heard the loud noise through the door. Suddenly afraid for the Pope, and with his hand on the apartment door’s handle, Geoffrey cried out, “Your Holiness, are you alright, are you in need of assistance?”
The Pope discerned the turn of the door handle, and not knowing what to do with the parchment, quickly tucked it under his robe.
As Leo returned his attention to the door, he was surprised to see that Geoffrey was already half way to him and staring with obvious concern. “Your Holiness, please excuse my unannounced intrusion. I was worried. I had heard a loud noise; I thought that maybe you had fallen!”
Leo was startled by how quickly the younger man had closed the distance from the distant door to where he now stood and answered, “No, Geoffrey, I did not fall, but thank you for your attention to my well being. I only hit my leg on the table. Please, help an old man back to his chair.”
The Pope silently wondered why he had lied to Geoffrey and limped slightly as Geoffrey walked him to the chair that stood in front of his writing table. Geoffrey seemed unaware of the P
ope’s lie as he scanned the face of the old man and the rest of the room.
Geoffrey noticed the sweat on the Pope’s brow. He saw the cracked marble tile, too. He said nothing.
Chapter Three
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
Colorado Springs, CO
Housed two-thousand feet deep inside the protective solid granite heart of Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado is the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Originally, NORAD was chartered to monitor airspace in order to warn of and prevent air attacks against North America. Its primary focus had been born from the escalating, but since then proven unfounded, fear of global nuclear war between the United States and the former USSR.
At the end of the cold war, NORAD had been faced with massive budgetary cutbacks, which forced the Air Force to reinvent NORAD’s usefulness and need. The growing drug trade between the United States and South America gave NORAD its opportunity to redefine itself, and to develop an expertise in conducting counter-drug operations that included the use of advanced satellite live tracking technology. NORAD had done well and the intelligence community took notice.
Officially, the team that operates the Combatant Observation Room Center (CORe) inside NORAD falls under the command of the Combined Intelligence Watch Center. Unofficially, and unbeknownst to the public and nearly all members of Congress, CORe’s budget and organizational construct is black with a direct and untraceable line to the CIA by any congressional watch groups.
Private First Class (PFC) Jonathon York, an Image Intelligence Specialist and the youngest member of the CORe team, sat in the small uninspiring windowless room of CORe. His terminal was the furthest one from the Center’s door, and the CORe Center was as deep in the mountain as one could go which meant that where he sat was, quite literally, at the bottom of a hole – more like at the bottom of a grave he often mused. The only enjoyment that he could look forward to in the deprived environment occurred whenever the pretty new Lieutenant walked by his desk. Nearly every part of her was perfectly round and as equally firm. Her uniform top was obviously and always too small. Its small buttons strained to keep from popping.
PFC York had served in the Army for nearly four years. Promoted and demoted twice, PFC York had a serious problem with authority.
As his time in the Army neared its end, the number of things that he hated about the Army grew.
He hated riding the bus up the broken asphalt of the steep road to the gates of Cheyenne Mountain, especially in winter when hard-packed snow and ice added to the adventure. He swore that the bus driver purposely mishandled the steering to ensure that not one pothole would be missed. No longer wanting to endure the bone jarring ride, he stopped riding the bus and took to running up the switchbacks, even during the winters. To add to the challenge, he would sometimes wear a heavy rucksack full of gear.
When the bus passed him in the morning, he could see the mocking stares of the other soldiers and airmen as they stared at him through the bus’s windows. Often, the bus came too close and threatened his place along the road’s edge. The bus climbed the steep roads and whined with revolutions that were obviously too high for its weak engine while its diesel motor spewed choking black toxins into the air. If it was at all possible to hate an inanimate object, then he even hated the bus, too.
He hated the low-pitched grating sound made by NORAD’s three blast doors that protected the operations center whenever they were opened or closed. He hated the annual polygraphs that went along with stupid questions about his lurid sexual fantasies: how many times he masturbates, his degenerate hobbies, and whether or not he was a spy selling secrets to the enemy.
He especially loathed the random interrogations that asked the same ridiculous questions to his friends and family about him – all in the name of national security.
He was close to the end of his first, and only, tour of duty and couldn’t wait to get out of the Army. He had enough of the never-ending nationalistic bullshit.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like what he did, it was certainly interesting. But staring at screens all day, every day, sitting in the same chair looking at the same people just didn’t inspire him; he had an itch to move, to not be confined to a chair. Besides, he just wasn’t cut out for military life; everybody was a “sir” or a “ma’am,” and he always had to snap to attention because someone had more chevrons and rockers or shiny bars. He just didn’t get it.
From where he sat each day, the multiple LCD screens in front of him displayed three-dimensional images of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf. The territorial borders were outlined from Algeria to Iran, his area of responsibility.
He wasn’t really paying attention to his job requirements as he nonchalantly scanned the screens while drumming his fingers on the desktop. He could barely conceal his boredom. Without warning, lights and alarms startled him back into focus; the superimposed border surrounding Syria glowed brightly, brighter than those of the other countries. At nearly the same time, an alarm at his terminal sounded, and alerted him and everyone else at CORe to potential hostile activity in the region. On his monitor, the electronic borders around Syria blinked brightly and incessantly.
Just great, he thought to himself. So close to ending the shift and some jackass thought this was the best time for some training.
PFC York had really looked forward to leaving. A couple weeks back he had met a fantastically beautiful girl while having beers at Phantom Canyon, a local micro-brewery in nearby Colorado Springs. She was an undergrad studying Psychology at Colorado College, which sits within walking distance from the brewery. Since the first time that they had met, they had spent a few more nights and a weekend together: she had been so intoxicating.
Her legs were the first thing he had noticed about her. He had no choice in the matter really, the shorts she wore that first night would make Daisy Duke blush. Naturally tanned and lightly muscled, the silky bronzed appendages never seemed to end. Instantly, he had been attracted.
That night she had idled up next to him at the bar with no real intention of talking to him, but as luck would have it, it was the only open seat. Like any beautiful woman, she had been hit on by every man she met since the age twelve; it was for this reason that men often disgusted her with their never-ending state of sexual frenzy from which they perpetually suffered. All she had wanted was a cold beer and to be left alone.
By coincidence, she had ordered the same micro-brewed Hefe-Weizen that PFC York had been nursing only to spill it all over his lap. She had to talk to him.
PFC York would learn that she was as much a perpetual klutz as she was beautiful. Their conversation soon went from apologies and small talk to a shared affection for mountain biking and distance running. It had become fairly obvious where those legs had come from.
Unfortunately, when she spoke, especially about a passionate topic, she did so as much with her hands as she did with her mouth; regardless of whether she was still holding a beer or not. After three hours and as many mugs of Hefe-Weizen, she had spilled on the PFC no less than three more times.
Out of obligation perhaps, but more so from a palpable attraction, she had let him walk her back to her room at Bemis Hall, the ladies’ dormitory at Colorado College. He didn’t mind at all that the pants he had worn that night looked as if he had wet himself.
In his mind, he was sure that the evening had gone brilliantly. Removing the obvious (he looked as if he had pissed himself and smelled like a drunk): he had been on his “A” game. They had agreed to meet again which led to more dates, always meeting at the same place. He had been counting down the hours until they became minutes, almost able to taste the Hefe-Weizen as she sat near, and now this: A fucking EDRE.
Every so often, the command would break the boredom of such a job by holding an Emergency Drill and Readiness Exercise (EDRE). It was a way to keep everyone’s skills sharply fine tuned he supposed, but most likely was done to prevent anyone from letting his forehead c
rash to the desk due to the boredom – probably some OSHA rule York sarcastically guessed.
When started, an EDRE would last no less than two-hours, sometimes longer. PFC York threw his hands into the air in exasperation and stammered, “Shit, not fucking now!” and just a bit too loudly.
“What was that PFC York?” Captain Scott, the Executive Officer (XO) of CORe and the shift’s Duty Officer bellowed.
PFC York realized that his inner voice had blatantly become his outer voice, and, instead of directly responding to the question, replied, “Sir, I am picking up activity in Damascus.”
“Run diagnostics on your terminal. Look for malfunctions, Private.”
“Already am.” PFC York knew the procedures: first run diagnostics, confirm functionality of the system.
“Sir, Private!” snorted the Captain. Clearly more than irritated, a few heads turned in their direction.
“Already am, SIR!” he shouted back with just the right amount of disrespect; not enough to be obvious but with the appropriate measurement to be apparent.
PFC York was a “short-timer,” everyone knew it. When one is so close to serving his last day for Uncle Sam, sometimes the soon-to-be-separating soldier is left with an all too familiar military ailment called “STS”: Short Timer Syndrome.
Suddenly left with little desire to be a slave to protocol or fear of retribution, those with STS often displayed subtle symptoms. Recognizable symptoms of those plagued with STS include: a dropped “sir” now and then; less attention on detail; boots that were not spit-shined; uniforms not sharply creased, and a host of other infractions of drill and ceremony.
PFC York had it and had it bad. He could sense the glare from Captain Scott burning into the back of his head but ignored it.
