The God Particle

by Tom Avitabile

  “Brooke is talking about what a local priest told me they called the room behind the doors with the rings.

  “And if Sicard wears the ring of the Knights and they have a chamber here at the Cathedral in Paris and now he is here…”

  “Holy Shit!” Bill said. “Sorry Marilou.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Brooke mildly protested.

  “My apologies all around, but we could be in the middle of a lot of holy sh… stuff!”

  “So we are now thinking that this man, Sicard, is a modern-day Knight of the Sepulchre?” Joey asked.

  “It all seems to fit,” Brooke said.

  “Joey, I think you and Brooke should visit the church again and see what you can dig up. Joey? Hello.” Bill was trying to break through whatever pensive fog Joey was suddenly in.

  “Sorry Bill, it’s just that this is getting kinda weird. I am an RCH away from placing Sicard at the murder scene of a Franciscan brother. Actually, they’d have called him a friar here in Paris back in ’97.”

  “RCH?” Marilou asked.

  “Er…that’s a …um,” Joey fumbled.

  Marilou looked at Bill.

  “I…ah…it’s a phrase meaning small amount…very small…a smidge.” Bill attempted to describe it by making the smallest of space between his thumb and forefinger.

  The fertile mind of the Mensa student, herself an RCH away from her doctorate, tried to detangle the code. “Real close…real close happening…real close to happening?”

  “That’s close enough,” Joey quickly dismissed.

  “Works for me,” Bill was quick to add.

  Brooke was laughing and felt that she as a female had the cred to explain the term, woman to woman. “Marilou, RCH stands for…”

  As she described the term, born out of the construction trades as a reference to a tight fit between two things that were not just a hair’s width apart, but a pubic hair — a red, female, pubic hair apart. Only she used the street vernacular c-word for vagina, which made both Bill and Joey wince.

  For her part, the prim and proper Marilou Delacruz, daughter of the Filipino deacon, simply said, “That’s charmingly colloquial.”

  ∞§∞

  Aboard the Carl Vinson, Bridgestone was kept separate from the Japanese crew he had rescued. However, the Japanese captain and he were in the Commander of the CVN’s quarters, meeting with a CIA officer.

  “Captain Toshihira, you have expressed deep gratitude and appreciation for the United States’ efforts to release you and your men. Speaking for the president of the United States, we are glad you are safe. Now I must ask you to help us save future crews and captives of pirates and terrorists around the world,” the CIA officer said.

  “Of course, I would consider it my duty.”

  “Good, because you will have to stick to a story that erases any involvement by this man. He is a valuable asset and as such his identity cannot be revealed.”

  Kasogi looked at Bridgestone in a way that said he understood.

  “The story from this point forward is that the guards all fell sick because of contamination of their food, which was separate and apart from the food served you and your crew. When they were weak, you and your men overpowered them, used their radio equipment to send out a Mayday and this ship responded and air evacuated you out. You and your men will be heroes and will make much money writing your memoirs, but no one must ever know the actual story. Do you feel you can do this and order your crew to do the same?”

  “This is not the military. I can order, but they are Merchant Marine. I cannot guarantee.”

  “Understood, but in our debriefing of your crew, in all the confusion of the rescue many were unaware of this man’s role. Those who remembered him only know he was a nomadic tribesman who helped. In fact, much of the crew credits you with securing the first weapon and firing. So the story is almost complete.”

  Toshihira nodded, as he understood how far along the story was. “I will do as you ask; I will take our secret to my grave.”

  “May that be a long, long time from now,” Bridge said, and then left the quarters.

  Once they were alone, the intelligence agent asked, “Now, tell me about the whale.”

  ∞§∞

  Brooke and Joey were in Director Dupré’s office rifling through stacks of police files, looking for any shred of evidence tying Sicard to the dead priest, or to the Knights.

  “This is interesting. I can’t find anything on the victim, Friar Gregory, for two years prior to his death.”

  “We could have a case of assumed identity here.” Brooke said.

  “Director Dupré, can you have your people obtain a picture of the priest prior to 1995?” Joey said.

  “Agent Burrell, my staff is at your disposal. If you don’t mind, dial seven-seven and ask Roland to do the search.” Dupré turned to Joey. “If we are dealing with assumed identity, it can turn our investigation one hundred eighty degrees.”

  Brooke opened one of the old files and pulled out the coroner’s picture of the victim. She went to the computer. “Roland is fast: he just e-mailed me a 1992 driver’s license photo of Friar Gregory.” Brooke held up the paper photo against the screen image. “Fasten your seatbelts, gentlemen. We are about to make a screaming u-turn!”

  Both Joey and Dupré concurred that the dead man was not Friar Gregory. Brooke put it into words. “So it seems like this imposter could be the assassin, and Sicard was the assassin’s assassin.”

  “And since it was a dead priest with ID on him, and the Pope was in town…” Joey started.

  “And there was no trace of foul play or evidence of anything other than an accidental crushing of his larynx possibly by a fall…” Brooke added.

  “Then of course, I didn’t order a DNA confirmation of the priest’s identity because I concluded it was a non-crime,” Dupré confessed.

  “That’s what I would have thought also, given what you didn’t know then,” Joey said, then added, “This guy Percy must be a really well-trained operative to be able to cover his tracks so perfectly and not reveal his true mission.”

  “Sure, and if we don’t follow Sicard to Paris and Joey doesn’t dig up this case file, then the phony dead priest decomposes in the ground and no one is the wiser,” Brooke concluded as she printed out the grainy license photo and pinned it on the corkboard they were using to see the bigger picture that was emerging.

  “I will do what I should have done before and run the coroner’s fingerprints of the dead imposter through our files as well as Interpol.”

  “Brooke, include the bureau on it too. There’s no telling where this guy came from.” Joey said.

  “Will do. We should pull in your friend from the mosque. If Sicard killed the phony priest to stop him from killing the Pope, maybe he knows more about the plot than he let on,” Brooke said as she picked up the phone to call the bureau in Washington and get the prints run through the FBI and the NCIC national fingerprint databases.

  ∞§∞

  “Hello Joseph!”

  “Joey.”

  “Yes, of course, how are you Joey?” Father Mercado reached down and shook Joey’s hand from the altar of the grand cathedral.

  “I am doing well, and you?”

  “No complaints. What brings you here today? You aren’t thinking of joining up are you?”

  “Father, I need…”

  “Joey, in the confessional or during the celebration, calling me Father is cool, but when it’s just you and me talking, please call me Frank. It makes me feel like I’m home.”

  Joey laughed a little, “Okay, Frank. What I need is to pick your brain a little more about the Knight’s Chamber and a few other things.”

  “Hold on, if you are here as a cop, then we can go back to Father Mercado.”

  “How about as a concerned citizen and Catholic?”

  “This sounds serious.”

  “It is, my friend, and I would like you to help m
e on background so that I can understand things a little better.”

  “Give me a minute. Let’s go down the street to a place on the corner. I don’t want to do this in here.”

  “I totally understand,” Joey nodded.

  The challenge of sitting in a sidewalk café on the streets of Paris with a priest is that when the inevitable French girls prance down the street without the benefit of supporting undergarments, the undulating motion instinctively attracts the eye of the male. There were many ‘bouncing Bettys’ passing by, and Joey had to focus in on the fact that he was talking to a priest and didn’t want to be obvious.

  “Frank, I have to ask you if you can hold what we discuss here between us. Almost like it was confession. I don’t want to put you in a dilemma, but I need to insist on discretion before I proceed.”

  “I will agree if there is no compulsion for me to answer something which I don’t feel comfortable with.”

  Joey let those words sink in and tried to imagine what would trigger that but decided he’d find out soon enough. “Agreed.” Joey opened a file on his iPad and showed the Paris morgue picture of Franciscan Friar Gregory, who was found dead in a stairwell of the Sofitel in ’97.

  “I assume he’s not sleeping in this picture?”

  “No, he is deceased, but it’s the manner of his death that intrigues me.” Joey flipped to the next image, the front page of LeMonde, the French paper of record, chronicling the arrival of the Pope in Paris back in 1997. “Now I know you weren’t here then, but that Franciscan priest died the day before the Pope arrived.”

  “Actually, I was here. Not as a priest, but the Pope was here on his ‘reach out to youth’ initiative. A few friends and I came here to participate. How did the priest die?”

  “Probably murdered, and he isn’t a priest, but someone we believe was here to assassinate the Pope.”

  Frank now understood the weight of Joey’s inquiry. “You know, Joey, the Pope was one of the reasons I answered the calling. He spoke to me and millions around the world. Who would want to kill him?”

  “Frank, unfortunately, it is a long list.”

  “Yes, I guess I am a little tunnel-visioned there, but okay, who killed the would-be killer?”

  “That’s what I am trying to find out.”

  “How do you think I can help you figure that out?”

  Joey fingered the next image onto the screen. It was Marilou’s police-style sketch of the ring Sicard and the bishop wore. “Ever see this?”

  “Looks like the Ring of Thorns.”

  “Exactly. Remember when I asked you about the room under the church?”

  “Wow. You said you couldn’t sleep a wink until you got inside. You weren’t kidding, were you?”

  “Well, the door knockers on the doors of the Knight’s Chamber and the rings worn by the Knights of the Sepulchre are exactly the same.”

  “Knights. Okay I got that part but I don’t follow what…”

  “We believe the man who killed that assassin was wearing this ring. He is the same man I came here to Paris to find. I nearly had him, and then the French law pulled him away from me.”

  “So a Knight of the Sepulchre saved the Pope’s life by killing his would-be assassin.”

  “That’s our working theory thus far, so I ask you, do you know of this group or this man?” He brought up Sicard’s picture.

  Frank took the iPad and tilted it to avoid the glare. “You know, I think I have seen this guy.”

  “Remember where? When?”

  Joe could see Frank thinking, “Joey, if this man saved the life of the Pope, even though I don’t agree with his method, he is a hero to me. Why would I help you incarcerate him?”

  “I can see your point. But I am not interested in arresting him. He is only sought as a person of interest in a completely different affair with the most critical national security implications, which I am currently trying to stop. What happened here in Paris in ’97 is out of my jurisdiction. I have no interest in that.”

  Joey’s mind immediately filled with the phrase “sin of omission,” because, although what he was saying was true, he didn’t bother to mention that his co-investigator, Director Dupré, would see it differently and surely stop at nothing to press for the prosecution of the murderer he had let slip through his fingers.

  “Joey, I am a priest. I take confession and celebrate Mass. I am not an informer.”

  “Frank, I can’t go into what this is all about, but this man has knowledge of threats and methods that makes him someone valuable to talk to.”

  “Joey, I have seen the movies. ‘Talk to’ can mean rendition, handing him over to some god-forsaken dungeon in some dictatorship that isn’t queasy about little things like human rights.”

  “Whoa, Frank, don’t hang that crap on me. I work for the science advisor to the president, not Attila the Hun. You are a priest, but you are also an American. I need you to remember that. Sicard might help us thwart an attack, an attack using scientific means, that could be worse than one hundred 9/11s.”

  “Do I have your word then Joey, as a man, and as a Catholic to a priest, that if I help you, Sicard will not suddenly disappear?”

  Joey didn’t know if he could guarantee that. After all, he didn’t know the depth of complicity Sicard might have had in Maguambi’s whale tale. “Frank, I cannot grant a pardon. I mean, I don’t know how clean Sicard is, but I can promise you this: if his involvement is purely academic and he hasn’t compromised any national security secrets, then yeah, he talks and then he walks, free as a bird.”

  ∞§∞

  Frank took a minute. He looked across the street at the citizens and tourists going about their day. He focused on a young girl and her mother, who reminded him of his sister and his niece, back in Philly, back in the USA. Joey was in some way protecting them as well. “Okay, I have seen him at the church. He takes a special confession; he goes to only one particular priest, never to any of the rest of us..”

  “The priest that takes the confession, what’s his name?”

  “Monsignor. Monsignor Mancuso.”

  “When can I speak to him?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  ∞§∞

  Joey sat back, took a sip of espresso and looked across the street at the chocolate shop with the pink awning. Maybe I should get some for Phyllis? It was the first normal thought he’d had in a long time. Now that he had connected Sicard to the Monsignor, it was only a matter of time until the rest of the pieces fell together, not only in the whale case, but possibly in the shoot-down of the chopper as well. Maybe a big, like two-pound, box of chocolates.

  ∞§∞

  A full company of Marines was now bivouacked in the woods surrounding Camp David. All two hundred men had one purpose: stop any shoulder-launched missile from interrupting any future helicopter flights. All of which made Bill feel better as he boarded the chopper on the charred and scarred tarmac of the helipad for a quick visit to the CIA in Alexandria.

  The hastily arranged conference included the head of Homeland, director of National Intelligence, the DCI of the CIA and the general in charge of DIA. It was the Defense Intelligence Agency that had the skin in the game with the attack of the USS Nebraska. Everyone else was there because the Commander-In-Chief was involved and none of them could risk being on his bad side. After all, the president could cut their funding and they would all be looking for new jobs.

  Bill relayed what he knew and reported on what he thought. The various heads all offered their agencies’ services and promised operational plans to Hiccock by 5 p.m. Bill had circulated the picture of Sicard to all in attendance, to be filtered through their networks of spooks and sources in the hope it would ring some bells.

  As he was leaving the meeting, a man approached him and said, “Excuse me, sir. You dropped this,” and handed Bill a folded piece of paper.

  “Bill said, “Thank you,” and continued walking as he unfolded the paper. It had three words: Washington Monument — Kla
ven. He turned, but the man was gone. Bill turned to his secret service man, Moskowitz, and said, “Steve, hold the chopper. I need a car to get me to the National Mall ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir.” Steve called control and ordered a service car.

  ∞§∞

  As they approached the Mall, Bill had a heart-to-heart with Steve. “I need you to give me at least five hundred yards here.”

  “I can’t agree to that, sir. You are my responsibility.”

  “Steve, I get all that, but I have to meet with someone who doesn’t like to be known — by anyone. He won’t meet me if he senses any kind of surveillance.”

  “I am qualified at fifty yards. I can give you that, but if he sneezes wrong, I will drop him.”

  “I guess I’ll take fifty, when you put it that way.”

  Bill left the car and walked from the World War II Memorial across Seventeenth to the base of the monument.

  A young boy walked up to him and handed him a throw-away phone. “A man gave me five dollars to give this to you.”

  “Thanks, kid.” Five seconds later, the phone rang, “Clay? Where are you?”

  “The monument is on high ground. I saw you and your nursemaid from three hundred yards off.”

  “I’m sorry about that; it’s his job and I can’t stop him.”

  “There’s a bench next to a trash can with an umbrella in it.”

  Bill walked for a minute and sat on the bench. The phone rang again. “Taped under the bench.” Bill retrieved a yellow envelope and opened it. He was shocked to see a picture of Sicard and a CIA dossier.

  “You keep surprising me!” Bill said, shaking his head.

  “As far as the company is concerned, this guy went rogue back in 2001.”

  “So, his death in Lebanon in 1996 was actually his graduation to the spook house?” Bill reviewed the dossier.