Vatican Ambassador

by Mike Luoma

  “Yes?”

  “Incoming message. Audio Only.”

  “Go ahead. Campion here.”

  “Father Campion?” A woman’s voice. Pleasant. Unaccented.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello, Father. You don’t know me, but I have some information I believe will be of importance to you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a scientist. I work here on the Moon. My name is Doctor Capituna. And I believe I know who infected the people who have died and are dying, here and on Earth, right now.”

  Holy Shit. No, lady, I don’t need to know that!

  Is she for real? Or a kook who got through?

  “Go on,” BC encourages her to talk.

  “I can’t say anymore over the com. Can we meet?” she asks.

  “Sure. Why don’t you come to my office?” BC asks.

  “Um...” she pauses. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  That’s suspicious...

  “Your security measures. I can’t get past them to see you. Not right now.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Let’s see...

  “Then where?” BC asks.

  “You couldn’t come to my lab for the same reasons. Security measures. So let’s meet at a restaurant or someplace like that.”

  “Sure. How about...”

  Where was that place? McGrady’s?

  “McGrady’s?” BC suggests.

  “Sure. When?” She asks.

  BC checks the time. 7:12.

  “How about 8 o’clock?”

  “Fine. Where is it?”

  “Atrium. Second Level. How will I know it’s you?”

  “You won’t. But I know you. Who you are, I mean.”

  Creepy. I don’t like this at all. But if she is for real...

  “Uh... okay. But you have me at a disadvantage, then.”

  “Oh.” she doesn’t say anything for a second. Then there’s almost a hint of attitude in her voice. “You think you can handle that?”

  What’s this, sass? I think I know that voice from somewhere... but who? Who is she? What the fuck.

  “Sure. See you in about 45 minutes,” BC says.

  The com is dead.

  Gone. Huh.

  Should I tell Wentworth? Nah. Nothing to tell yet, don’t need to waste his time. Maybe I’ll know something soon, though. Or I’m chasing a wild goose. Be nice to have some back up. Oh, the price of running alone. I’ll just go early and sit with my back to the wall, facing the door... might as well leave now.

  Chapter Twelve

  BC heads out the door for McGrady’s. He finds the place almost empty, finds himself a table near the back with a chair against the wall, facing the door. He catches the notice of the bartender across the room. He nods and smiles at BC. BC nods back.

  Guess he knows me, or at least figures a priest is no threat. I haven’t been here very much lately.

  BC gets up and orders a pint of Guinness.

  Best not to appear out of place. Gotta drink a pint to blend in. Such a sacrifice. A woman, average height, walks in while BC awaits his pint. She wears a long, tan, old-fashioned coat. Large, dark sunglasses cover her eyes and most of her face. The rest of her head is just about covered by a scarf, but strands of blonde hair fall out around her face. That head covering almost looks Muslim, but not quite. Is it her? The woman who called me?

  She looks darker in complexion than a natural blonde... tan or bleach?

  The woman looks around the bar. BC tries not to watch as she looks. He can see the bar in the mirror behind the bar in front of him.

  There’s an older man sitting at the inside end of the bar alone , hand rolling cigarettes. A young couple is in a booth across the room, two booths down from where BC first sat down, all into each other and ignoring their Caesar salads.

  Another man sits at a table alone, reading the paper.

  Funny. We call it a paper, but it’s a tablet, really. Old habits die hard, I guess. Wonder when the last paper was actually made of paper... what’s this?

  The blonde approaches the bar. She tilts her glasses down. Her brown eyes peer out over the top of them at BC.

  That’s gotta be her, Capituna… Huh... something familiar about her. There was something about her voice, too, too familiar, felt like I should know her. She looks like she could be cute under there. Maybe it’s just that feeling you get when you meet a beautiful woman. You you knew her before, so you you might have known her.

  It is her. She comes over with her hand extended toward BC.

  “Father Campion?” She asks.

  BC nods, shakes her hand. “Doctor Capituna, I presume?”

  She nods. “Can we sit down?”

  “Sure. Do you want anything?” BC asks her.

  “Soda water? With Lemon?”

  She sits down across the table from him, leaves on her scarf and her glasses. The bartender brings BC’s finished Guinness over.

  “Thank you, sir,” BC says to him. “Could you bring a club soda with lemon for the lady, please?”

  “You want a tab, Padre?” he asks BC.

  “Sure. Thank you...” BC lets it trail, fishing for a name.

  “It’s Diamande, Padre. I go to your church. Well, sometimes.”

  “Well, Diamande, it’s nice to see you again.”

  “Sure, Father. I’ll be over with the lady’s soda in no time!” Diamande says. There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence, mercifully broken by Diamande appearing with Doctor Capituna’s club soda.

  “Thank you,” she says, turning to Diamande.

  I swear, where I know this woman from somewhere... ...so familiar, somehow. She sips the soda through the straw as she turns back to face BC. She puts down the glass.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve lied to you,” she says.

  Oh great. She is a nutcase!

  “Great,” BC says. “You don’t have any information for me, do you?”

  She looks surprised. “No! That’s not it at all! I do. That’s not it! I mean that I lied when I told you we hadn’t met before. We have.”

  I knew it!

  “Have we?” BC asks, quasi-innocently.

  “Yeah,” she says, half gulping. “And not under the best of circumstances. I owe you a huge explanation and an apology, if you’ll hear me out.”

  BC gets exasperated. “Look, are you gonna quit this mysterious...”

  He stops, suddenly speechless. “Doctor Capituna” has removed her scarf and glasses. And even as a blonde, BC recognizes her.

  Nita Bendix! Nita fucking Bendix!

  “I should kill you right now,” BC says in a harsh whisper. “Tell me why I shouldn’t. And be quick about it. Very quick. Because you’re already dead. You know that, don’t you?” BC sneers at her.

  “Hold on, ‘Padre’. Thou shalt not kill or something?” She smirks, thinks better of it, and gets serious again. “And what about the witnesses?”

  “Don’t care. If I hadn’t mellowed, you’d already be dead, Bendix!” BC nearly snarls. “You best talk fast!”

  “Or what?” She leans over the table. ‘The Vatican Ambassador to the Moon is going to kill me in public?

  And with what? You packin’ heat?”

  “You might be surprised,” he says coldly. She leans back.

  “I don’t think so,” she tells him. “If we met in your office, I might be dead already,” she admits.

  “Yup, that sounds right,” BC sarcastically admits.

  How can I kill her? What’s available? Knives with the silverware? Huh. Plastic. That’ll do.

  “I’m not your enemy, Father Campion,” she says. “You need to know that. You wouldn’t want to kill a friend now, would you?”

  “You? A friend? You tried to kill me!” BC protests.

  “Ha!” She laughs out loud. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. What was it, two years ago? I actually saved your life,” she says with a huff. “I did want it to look l
ike I’d tried to kill you, so I guess I understand your confusion. I had to make it look good. Otherwise I would’ve blown my UIN cover.”

  “What?” BC asks. But his mind is racing through ways he can kill her in front of these witnesses. But then it registers. “UIN cover?”

  “Yeah,” she says, “The UIN thought I was theirs, working as a mole in the LSC.”

  “Double Agent?” BC humors her.

  “Not exactly. I guess I was a triple agent,” she says. “If you want to get technical. But not really. Because I think my side and your side are actually the same side.”

  “Right.” BC realizes his Guinness is gone. He contemplates his empty pint glass, and then he looks back up at Nita Bendix. Doctor Capituna.

  Whatever.

  “Triple?” BC says.

  “I work for... a separate concern. Not the UIN. Not by a long shot! We’re independent. I was working under cover on both sides.”

  “Great! An equal opportunity spy! How incredibly fair of you!” BC cracks. “You’re not UIN or UTZ… What? Do you work for Lunar Prime?” BC asks.

  Edwards never mentioned having any kind of intelligence force. But maybe he wouldn’t have, to me...

  “No,” she says. “We work for ourselves. A separate concern, like I said. It was our people who saved you after I left you for ‘dead’. I had to make it look good for the UIN, but I knew my guys would be there to get you.”

  “The LSC brought me back,” BC protests.

  “The LSC picked you up after we saved you. We called them,” she insists. ““Didn’t you see our ship after the UIN ship took off? One of our ships was there.”

  “What? The flasher? You’re trying to tell me the ‘flashers’ are your ships?” BC asks her in disbelief.

  “You’re with the flashers?”

  “The flashers? Yeah, I guess you could say I’m with them.”

  BC takes the offensive. “So. What is your name? I mean, really?”

  “Anita Capituna. Doctor Anita Capituna. That’s my real name. And I really am a scientist. I work for The Project.”

  The Project? Man I can hear the capital “P”. Never hurts to ask...

  “The Project?”

  She hesitates. “The Project. It’s what we call ourselves. And we’ve decided it’s time for you to know about us. That’s why I’m here today. That… and we do think we know who has infected us with this sickness.”

  “Right,” BC says suspiciously. “It’s ‘my time’. I see.”

  “Look. I’m here to bring you in on what The Project is up to. You can accept that, or walk away from it.”

  “How do I know you’re not just fucking crazy?”

  “Such language from a priest,” she says with a tsk. “I didn’t kill you, I had you rescued. You saw the

  ‘flasher’ as you call our ships. They called in the LSC.”

  BC is still not convinced. “How can I be sure you’re not still a UIN agent, just trying to take advantage of the current situation and trying to keep me from being a threat?”

  “Like I said before, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. I’m not UIN!” she insists.

  “I saw you at the conference here! You were working with McEntyre! Last October! It was all over the news… you’re a celebrity secret agent. Kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it?”

  “Did you like that? That performance was for you, once I realized you’d spotted me. I was spying on McEntyre. Then I saw you and I improvised. Hey, it helped you get rid of McEntyre, didn’t it? And as far as we know, Amanda Erskine is clean. No alliances, no agenda except the Moon’s. I did you a favor!”

  “Wait, back up. Are you saying McEntyre didn’t know you were here that last time?”

  “Not at all. I made it look like he did for your benefit. Well, for you and the cameras, anyway. It helped you take him down, didn’t it?” She pleads her case. “And McEntyre must have been so confused,” she chuckles, “probably figures he did something wrong and the UIN set him up to fall down. Smiles all around, then, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re hurting my head,” BC says.

  “Still getting those headaches?” she asks.

  “How do you...”

  “I know stuff,” she says, cutting him off. “Why be so hostile?”

  “I’m not hostile! I’m a priest,” BC protests.

  “Oh, like those two have ever been mutually exclusive!” she fires back. Jesus Christ!

  BC raises his voice, “I guess the whole ‘you tried to kill me’ thing is still giving me trouble! I’m having a really hard time getting past that!” BC realizes he’s being loud. He looks around McGrady’s, but no one else in the place is really paying attention.

  “Look,” she says, “I was doing you a favor. I was originally down there to see if you wanted to go for a walk. I knew the UIN were about to strike. And I knew they were gunning for the NcC area. I drew you away! I saved your life twice, and you don’t even know it. One more time, I was not trying to kill you!

  I was trying to make it look like I was trying to kill you! There is a difference! It’d be nice to get some gratitude for a change. I mean, now that you know.”

  BC shakes his head, “I don’t know anything. You’re raving about some ‘Project’, trying to spin your trying to kill me as saving my life,” BC says, lowering his voice. “What now, then? What could have ever possessed you to make you want to get in touch with me? What do you want with me? And what do you think I’d be dumb enough to agree to go along with you on? What is there you could want that you’d think I’d be foolish enough to get for you?”” BC says in a harsh half-whisper.

  “I want what you want,” she says.

  “I have no fucking idea what I want.” BC states. “How can you want that?”

  Ha!

  “You can’t know what you want,” she surprises BC, “because you don’t know all of your options. I can increase that awareness. I can let you see what else is out there. Let me help you expand your options.”

  “What options?” BC asks, a skeptical edge to his voice.

  “The optional answers to the question of who spread this sickness that is killing the human race, Father Campion,” she says solemnly.

  “The UIN didn’t do this,” she says.

  “Oh, like I’m going to listen to you about the UIN’s innocence,” BC says with a chuckle of his own.

  “C’mon. If this thing is a manufactured virus designed for biological warfare, who else but the UIN

  would be doing this?”

  “Who else? There are others you don’t know about, Father Campion. They’re the ones I need to tell you about. They’re the other options you need to know about. There are other races out there, Campion,”

  she says, looking up, looking him in the eye. “The Project has met with them and dealt with them for quite a while, now. And we in The Project are pretty sure one of these other races planted the virus that is now killing our people.”

  BC’s brain tries to sort out what she just said.

  “So. What you’re saying is that aliens are trying to wipe out the human race?” He shakes his head. “You expect me to believe this crap?”

  “I know it sounds farfetched. I know it sounds unbelievable. I know you have absolutely no reason to trust me, and every reason to mistrust and hate me. I know that,” Dr. Anita Capituna tells BC. “But I won’t ask you to take my word for it. I told you The Project has agreed to let you in, and so I’d like to show you that what I’m saying is all true and for real. Let me prove it to you by taking you on a tour through The Project’s facilities. I can show you evidence there of our interstellar neighbors and fill you in on those who may be trying to do us in.”

  “How do I know you’re not just taking me off to kill me?”

  “Jeesh. Look, if I wanted to kill you, you’d already...”

  “...be dead, I know,” BC says, finishing her sentence, having heard it enough already.

  “You should understand that by now,” she says
and laughs. “This will take some time, though, about a day. And the lab is totally cut off from other communication, so you’ll need to let your staff know you’ll be completely out of touch for about twenty four hours.”

  “I’m not sure I like that. Where are we going?”

  “Nowhere far. Just to the other side of the Moon. The Project’s labs on the Moon are located there,”

  she explains.

  “It would probably be best to go soon, then,” BC says. “Strike while the iron is hot!”

  “No time like the present. Can you get some time right now?” she asks.

  “Right now?” BC asks. She nods. “Let me see.”

  This is happening a little too fast. Why the fuck should I remotely trust her? Can I get away right now? I don’t think there’s anything...

  BC tries his personal link.

  “Hello?”

  Good, she’s at her desk.

  “Hey Lisa, it’s Father BC.”

  “Good evening, Father.”

  “Do I have any appointments tomorrow?”

  “Nothing. Although you did say you’d stop by the hospital to visit the sick people.”

  Damn, good old-fashioned Catholic guilt.

  “Thank you, Lisa. I’m going to be out of contact for about the next twenty-four hours. There’s something,” he looks over at Bendix, or Capituna, as he speaks, “I need to look into.”

  “Okay, Father,” BC hears the sigh in her voice, then the quick tone indicating the link closed. Judgmental woman... thou shalt not judge? Ah, hell. Secretaries.

  Bendix... er, Capituna’s smiling at me. I don’t like that. That’s not the smile of happiness. She looks like the snake about to swallow the little mouse whole. That’s that kind of smile.

  “Okay,” BC says to the smiling predator in front of him, “Let’s go.”

  Her eyes light up, her eyebrows raise, she says, “Alright!” and gets up to go.

  “Hold on,” BC stops her. “I need to stop by my office first.”

  She tries, unsuccessfully, to hide her frustration, “Why?”

  It’s BC’s turn to smile. “My business, not yours.”

  “You can’t come into my lab armed,” she warns him.

  “I need certain security,” BC counters.

  “You don’t trust me. That’s understandable,” she admits.