A Pius Man_A Holy Thriller

by Declan Finn

  “It doesn’t stop me from feeling stupid about it,” she complained with a rueful smile.

  Scott Murphy, this time, raised a finger to get attention. He paused, lit his pipe, and once he got a good head of smoke going, said, “One question.”

  Shushurin arched a brow, turning to face him. “Yes?”

  “Your father created an army of comic book villains, and a Bond-like plan to destroy the Church.” He leaned back and readjusted the pipe. “Who the hell is this guy?”

  “Ioseph Mikhailov, but that is not important,” she told him. Manana Shushurin looked to the others in the room. “It is, however, important who his father is. My parental grandfather was named Hans, Wilhelm, Franke.”

  Sean blinked. “Excuse me, you must be confused. My grandfather just told us that Hans Franke was Nazi in World War II.”

  Shushurin nodded. “Yes. After the war, Soviets believed that ’reforming Nazis’ meant replacing the swastika with a red arm band. Franke would become Mikhailov. His son would be named Ioseph, to suck up to Stalin. My father used ’shushurin’ as a professional cover.”

  Pius XIII sat back and frowned thoughtfully, balancing the enormity of the situation. Harrington, James Ryan, Yousef, Clementi, a dozen Swiss Guards, all murdered. And for what? Because people from his past had decided to come after him? Because some tyrants were terrified that he might shake up their cozy cocoons?

  So many have been murdered just to keep me silent… After a long moment, he looked to the others. “In my life, I have helped liberate meals from Idi Amin. As a bishop, I had broken an AK-47 over the head of a soldier who threatened my parishioners. Now these men come into my city, attack my guests, make attempts on my life, and murder friends of the Church.” His voice deepened in pitch and rose in volume. “I — won’t — have it. Find these men, with the police or without them. Take them into custody, and throw them into jail! If they resist, act as you see fit.” The Pope looked from one person to the other. “In short, ladies and gentlemen, get them. I leave the how to you.”

  On the floor, Goldberg’s laptop — in the voice of Viggo Mortenson — announced that her program was complete.

  Goldberg frowned thoughtfully, then looked down at the screen. “Well, it seems they took your advice, Sean, they’re all on the way out of town. Unless, of course, someone can tell me that this isn’t Leonardo da Vinci Airport that all the little red dots are converging on.”

  Figlia was already on his feet and taking extra clips of ammunition from his drawer with one hand, and his other hand dialing his phone, barking out orders in rapid-fire Italian.

  “What was that?” Abasi asked. “It went too fast.”

  “Gianni’s calling the vans and troops,” Sean translated.

  Figlia slammed the phone down and checked the chamber on his pistol. “I see that your Italian pronunciation has improved since we met… or should I say, since you ordered my Swiss Guards in perfect Italian this morning?”

  Sean smiled. “I like to hold some cards back, just in case. I’m not as dumb as I look.”

  “Do we have time to coordinate with the locals?” McGrail asked.

  Figlia shook his head. “No. Perhaps the head of airport security. I worked with him in the carabiniere.” Figlia looked around the room, and settled on the stocky American, Father Frank’s father. “Captain?”

  Captain Wayne Williams snapped to. “Yes?”

  “You’re the only one Mikhailov has not seen yet. We need you.”

  Chapter XXII: Final Destination

  Ioseph Andrevich Mikhailov grumbled as he walked through lines at the airport. He didn’t mind, actually, but it would have looked odd if he were the only person who was happy about the situation. The old mercenary wasn’t even concerned about airport security — he had dealt with it countless times before.

  While Ioseph did want to personally attend to some of the various and sundry people who had botched his plans in Rome, that wasn’t his major concern right now. The primary goal was unchanged, even if some details had to be improved. The original plan had come crashing down like a helicopter without a rotor...

  But, upon reflection, Ioseph Mikhailov wondered if that hadn’t been a good thing.

  He wanted to destroy the Church, and that required public apathy, if not support. If the Vatican could defend itself, stop a conspiracy by highly-trained, well-funded assassins, then who would think anything about any further attacks? Like the Israelis after the first major wars, people would automatically assume that the Vatican could hold its own. That would be useful.

  “Scusemi, signore,” said one of the transit security agents.

  Ioseph blinked, making it look like he was a tourist who had been baffled by the sudden attention. The security guard was built a little like Ioseph, with blue-green eyes, and oddly graying hair, an intermingling of silver, iron gray, and fringes of gold.

  “Excuse me?” he said in a voice lightly tinged with a British accent, to match his forged British passport.

  “Sir,” the guard said in a thick accent, “please come with me. How do you say… you have won the lottery?”

  Ioseph rolled his eyes. It was almost as though these people could sense his profession. Out of the last ten plane rides he’d been on, no matter what alias he used, he was always pulled out at random.

  In this case, it didn’t even seem to matter that he was dressed in an immaculate black suit, made of silk and cashmere, and a simple black tie. If he looked any more professional, his teeth would hurt.

  Ioseph sighed. “Of course, my good man.”

  Ioseph followed the guard without comment or complaint to a little side room. The guard opened the door for him, then let him go in first. The room was dark, except for a single lamp, which illuminated a chair and a table.

  The guard’s radio burst out a bit of static, and said, “Scusemi, ma… io… I must take.”

  He closed the door, locking Ioseph in. He had been in this situation more than a few times over the years. It was tiresome, but he could live with it.

  “Hello, Ioseph,” came a voice from the darkness.

  Ioseph started, peering into the darkness of the room. “Who’s there?”

  A shape moved. A hand reached out of the darkness, and a little sticker was placed on the table that read: “Hello, my name’s Sean Ryan.”

  The shape spoke again. “Don’t even try to leave. We have a microwave cannon that will cook you halfway to hell the moment you break open the door, so any further move you make will only end badly for you.”

  Ioseph leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly. He folded his hands in front of him on the table, and said, “Oh? And who do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re a butcher who’s killed more than his fair share of people in the last few days.” The shape shifted position, moving to the other corner. A glint of reflected light caught the man’s eyes, and they briefly flashed a bright blue. “After all, what kind of sloppy, second-rate killer would leave so many people on the ground, missing his mark time after time?” He scoffed. “I mean, let’s start with Gerrity. I don’t know why you had your guy kill him, but come on; the man was a diabetic who played Russian roulette — if you’ll pardon the pun — with his blood sugar. Your hitman posed as room service — you couldn’t have seen to it that he wound up with the sweetened tea at dinner? Shipped up some sugared cannoli, saying they were sugar-free? He could have gone into shock and been dead soon enough.” The shadow smiled, his bright teeth practically glowing. “Or should I just blame it on the hired help, and Clementi’s stupidity?”

  Ioseph found himself smiling. “I suppose you could… if I had any idea what you were talking about.”

  A chuckle from the dark. “Of course, I forgot, this is Europe, not America, they don’t have Guantanamo Bay or the Patriot Act. You forgot, however, that this is the home of the mafia, of vendetta, of some people who take their religion very seriously. Just enough people, I think.”

  Ioseph waved it away. “How cou
ld you even be certain that I am who you think I am?”

  Another voice, from a darkened corner of the room, where he had seen nothing and no person, came a simple two words. “Hello, father.”

  Ioseph froze, his eyes peering into the darkness where he thought his daughter was, and blinked. He knew of Sean Ryan’s temper, and found it hard to believe that she had lived so long.

  Sean Ryan laughed without mirth. “I can only assume she takes after her mother.”

  Ioseph said calmly, “So, if that was a lie, is your grandfather dead?”

  “Does it matter?” Shushurin said slowly and patiently. “We have you.”

  Sean leaned forward, letting his eyes catch the light. “Now, I have one question — how did your father ever live long enough to spawn you? Especially after the Pope sent a hit team?”

  Ioseph growled, and nearly leapt for him. The bear of a man looked like a grizzly about to eat his handler. “Good living.”

  Shushurin laughed musically. “More likely lying through his teeth — the Nazi hierarchy had more infighting than academia.”

  Sean nodded. “Lying works. After all, all of the ones sent after Hitler and company had been killed, except for the ones who got away. So, like other Nazis who lived until the fall of Berlin, Hans Franke — your grandfather, Shushurin — was brought into the Soviet Union.” Sean looked to the Russian. “What happened, did Hans hold a grudge?”

  Ioseph’s eyes narrowed. “To say,” Ioseph Mikhailov said, his control remarkable, considering his impulse to kill, “that I have a grudge is to put it in the most placid language conceivable.”

  “And yet,” Shushurin said, her fluid form coming into the light, “you decided to wait until you had people who would pay you to take your revenge.” She pulled out a seat and took it, her eyes glittering bright with anger. “Convenient.”

  “Indeed,” Sean Ryan agreed, straightening. “Now, I know some of the details. There was an elegant plan to bring down the Church through slander and internal corruption, all very complicated. Much of that slander centered on Pius XII. The plan was kept alive even after the U.S.S.R. fell, and you kept the embers glowing while you looked for backers. You found them, eventually, but by then, Pius XIII, our man Joshua Kutjok, had opened the archives. You became cautious, trailed people who might find an inconvenient truth.

  “And one day, Ashid Raqman Yousef, officer for al-Qaeda, appeared, wanting to unite radical Islam and Catholicism by citing Pius XII’s support for the Holocaust. You bugged him, tracked him, and when Yousef figured that Pius XII was really on the side of the Jews, and must be publicly ‘disgraced’ on Al-Jazeera, you had him killed.”

  Ioseph Mikhailov nodded slowly. “If so, why didn’t I simply report him? Israelis or the CIA? Others could kill him.” He grinned.

  Sean shrugged. “You had no idea how fast anyone would move on the intel. And you couldn’t waste time. Intelligence agencies can be so slow at times, checking and rechecking facts. Bureaucracies can be such a hassle when someone has to die.

  “Your next problem: you heard about this upstart in Rome — a man named Ryan.

  “Uh oh, could he have any relation to the Ryan from sixty years before? Nah, can’t be… oh crud, he is. Now, that would really cause problems, wouldn’t it? Even better, reports from Ireland told of a Father Harrington going to Rome to testify on Pius XII…”

  Manana Shushurin finished the line of thought. “Well, that last part wasn’t a problem, was it? He had stopped off at a Markist Brother house, and was easily executed.”

  Mikhailov finally blinked. The Markists had been compromised? Manana had never been told.

  She chuckled darkly, enjoying dismantling his life. “Yes, father dearest, as Sean has said… you’re screwed.”

  “Yup,” Sean agreed. “The Markists will be gone within the year — or as fast as Rome can move. Now, after having Dr. Gerrity — a revered historian and an honest man — whacked by your pet killer, Clementi, you do Clementi as well. He must have seen something Gerrity had, like the name of your grandfather.”

  “Hans Franke,” Shushurin said. “A name you’ve used quite a bit, lately, as your alias.”

  Sean nodded, and grinned. “Then — oh crap — you have cops crawling all over your plot: Mossad would certainly hear about Yousef, a private mercenary is on the scene already, you hear that an Egyptian cop and the Secret Service are coming to town, what to do? Answer: play your trump card. Manana. If Mossad’s coming, bring them in with someone you control — or kind of control.”

  Ioseph Mikhailov ground his teeth, ready to kill the bitch. He looked at his daughter, who seemed almost as angry as he did. “Oh? And what did she tell you?”

  “That you blackmailed me,” she answered, her voice calm, betrayed by the murder in her soul. “Threaten to have me declared a traitor by my government. Threaten to kill my mother, my friends, and anyone I was ever close to since you left my life.” Her eyes narrowed as she leaned forward. “I’m done with you.”

  Ioseph cocked his head. “And all that is because of your little spy? My, my, and what do you think you’re going to do with me?”

  “Scott and I,” Shushurin continued, “are taking you to Israel with us. They’re allowing me to interrogate you.”

  Ioseph’s mouth tightened and he looked to Sean. “You think you are better than me?”

  Sean shrugged. “Unlike your men, I’m creative. They’re well trained, but lack imagination. You’re good, and at the top of the Soviet food chain, you were allowed to show initiative. But, right now, it’s just you, Mani, me, and the closed door. We let most of your other members escape. They can’t carry on your work, now can they, Ioseph? You’re not that trusting.”

  Ioseph Mikhailov smiled tightly. “Maybe so, Mr. Ryan, but I will win, in the end.” He grinned. “You see, my men are still here.” He leaned back in his chair. “You didn’t, by any chance, take the liberty of jamming our radios, this time, did you, Ryan?” He casually — albeit slowly — slipped two fingers into his front pocket and drew out a cell phone. “Oh, look here, I have five bars.”

  A moment later, shots rang from outside, and Ioseph was up at the moment of the first shot. He pushed off his feet and sprang back against the door, putting his shoulder into it. The deadbolt broke open easily, and Ioseph was about to be home free.

  That’s when he slipped on the anti-traction gel, spread liberally over the floor outside the interrogation room. He slid on his belly, right past the shot-up broken microwave weapon set up in front of the door. He leapt off the pool of vile liquid, slamming to a stop at the metal detectors, right at a guard’s feet.

  Ioseph grabbed the guard’s ankles, bringing him down to the ground. An elbow to the throat crushed the man’s windpipe as he scrambled over him, taking his sidearm.

  Bullets flew as the other guard — Captain Wayne Williams — returned fire, trying to shoot around the stampeding crowd.

  Ioseph nodded thoughtfully as the chaos unfolded. Fleeing civilians ran past the metal detectors, right between the Russian and Sean Ryan — and running on top of the ocean of anti-traction gel, creating a wall of bodies between him and the door he had just fled.

  Ioseph had to laugh at the scene. Pure anarchy, and he would still get away.

  He scrambled over the guard’s chest, wiping his feet off on the clean shirt, and ran in the direction of the other civilians — away from the gunfire, the front door, and Sean Ryan.

  A guard stepped in Ioseph’s path, and the mercenary smacked the gun out of the way, and shot the muzzle of his pistol into the guard’s throat, making him gag. With a twist from his left hand, Mikhailov availed himself of the man’s other pistol.

  “Mikhailov!”

  Ioseph turned at the roar. Sean Ryan was already stepping on the fallen civilians, creating a bridge over the anti-traction gel. His gun was raised, and already firing.

  The first bullet caught Mikhailov in the right side, then two bullets in the left, both of them heart shots. I am gr
ateful I wear body armor.

  When the next bullet clipped his ear, he ducked and ran faster. I have made better moves.

  * * *

  “Mani,” Sean said, making his way over the civilians, “take the front. Your father is mine!”

  Shushurin grimaced, but complied, running to the front of the airport as Sean dove into the swarming mass of civilians crowding the terminal. She had out her own gun — given to her over the griping of Wilhelmina Goldberg — and nodded to Captain Wayne Williams as she passed him. He grimaced, torn between the gunfire out front and the leader getting away. He growled at himself and turned to the front, following the spy.

  Outside, the airport was a hurricane of bullets. Five pedestrians were down, and the shooters Sean had brought along were already pinned down in front of cars parked near the entrance ramp. Maureen McGrail and Abasi were already hunkered down behind the back of the black Vatican security van, and Father Frank was behind the front hood.

  Shushurin and Wayne hurled themselves behind the truck as the next hailstorm of lead burst out. “This looks positively pleasant,” she murmured.

  “I don’t know, it looks like fun.”

  McGrail looked at him. “Are you sure you’re not related to Sean?”

  Shushurin smiled. “You’d think that, wouldn’t …” her reply drifted off as she noted the blood running down one side of McGrail’s face. “What happened?”

  “A bit of gravel, that’s all. One of the bullets didn’t like me much.”

  “Do we have any advantages?”

  “I have a sparkling personality, not sure about the rest of you,” Wayne replied. He slid down, looking underneath the car, and fired three rounds, catching one of the shooters in the leg. The man went down to one knee, then flattened himself, aiming back at the American with a rifle. Wayne rolled out of the way, back behind the wheel well. “And an armored car.”