by Declan Finn
She shrugged. “We have the right to dictate how many children we have to fit the situation of our environment.”
The birthrate in America is one point two,” the Pope drawled, “Which means that they aren’t reproducing the population that came before…Would not that environment dictate having more children instead of fewer?”
“I suppose, but—”
“Do you know the effects of an abortion?”
“What do you mean? There is no pregnancy anymore.”
“Yes, the child is dead, but what is the effect on the mother?” He pulled out several medical journals. “The women surviving abortion suffer from acute depression because of their belief that they have murdered their child. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a common result, and that can lay dormant for years. In the meantime, they enjoy the effects of clinical, biochemical depression. In addition, they have an increased chance of never having children.”
He slammed each of the books down at the table next to him. “I’d like to submit these medical journals into evidence to footnote the conclusions of psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical doctors from several different countries, including the bioethics consultant to the Republic of Germany, Professor Joseph Califano.” He turned back to his witness. “So, why are these women aborting their children? It can’t be for their health.”
“The children interfere with our lives,” she answered.
“Oh, you mean they’re all unwanted?”
“Of course they are.”
“So all the children born are wanted?”
“Yes.”
“Then why has child abuse and infanticide increased since abortion became legal in your country?”
She stopped in mid-comeback, hesitant to give an answer she didn’t know about.
The Pope smiled. “Your American General Wesley Clark, when running for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, said that ‘Life begins when the mother chooses.’ Is that your opinion as well?”
“Of course is it. We should put aside any feelings based on the small and cute human infant. If we can put those irrelevant aspects of killing a baby, it’s obvious that the grounds for not killing people do not apply to newborns. And besides, ending a severely handicapped newborn doesn’t take from them a life that they care about yet—they’re too stupid to know any better.”
The Pope’s face did not change. “So, you agree with the Netherlands’ euthanasia policy? In case you are not aware, that means that doctors can kill children under twelve for any perceived genetic flaw.”
“I am aware of it, and I agree with it.”
“Even though 8% of Dutch infant deaths are from infanticide, and more than a fifth of those are committed without the parents’ consent?”
“Sometimes the parents aren’t the best ones to make that decision.”
“But Medical Doctors are?” the Pope asked.
“That’s what the MD is for.”
“So, let me understand you clearly,” Pius said, slowly and carefully. “From your writing, and your testimony here today, your position is that abortion should be legal throughout pregnancy; teenage girls should not have to inform their parents about it, or get consent; anyone who would let the voters change those positions should not be allowed in a court, or be voted on to join a court; when pregnant women are murdered, they are not double homicides because it might not reflect well on abortion; and federal funds should pay for abortions, but not to ensure prenatal health. Is that correct?”
“More or less, yes.” Dr. Cantor paused.
“One more thing. Do you know of the god Moloch?”
She nodded. “The god of capitalism.”
“The god of the Carthaginians over two thousand years ago, the god of money,” he corrected. “Do you know the way they worshipped Moloch?”
“Money?”
“Close. They got rid of all the burdens on their pocketbooks, all of the inconveniences. They burned it in a giant fire pit to their god of money.”
She smiled. “You mean they burned their priests?”
“No. They burned their children alive in a fire pit. Thank you for resurrecting him, I’m certain Moloch is most appreciative.”
Chapter XVIII
Intercessions
Day 6
As FBI Special Agent Jennifer Lane listened to the “trial” in the background, she smiled. As the Pope dismissed the prosecution’s witness like an annoying maid, the sound of applause broke out somewhere in the background of the television station.
She studied her screen even more intently this time, wondering how far she could push the boundaries of the law. With several law groups backing the case against the Pope, she wondered if it were possible to crash several mainframes and servers without breaking too many laws.
“Jen,” Blaine Lansing said from his desk, parked just in front of hers. “I’ve got something.”
She looked over from her desk, checking over his shoulder. “What?”
“They’ve given the Pope some ’Net access…from what looks like an old computer.”
Lane blinked. She smiled slightly and said, “How do you know that?”
The plain man glanced at her, looking like an irritated Pillsbury Dough Boy. “Duh, I went looking for it.”
Lane frowned. “You shouldn’t be. We haven’t any orders to do it.”
He cocked his head almost ninety degrees. “And?”
Jennifer thought for a moment, pondering what she should do. She cleared her throat and said, “Can you trace the connection?”
Lansing nodded. “It’s coming from the World Court. He’s got it with him.”
Lane swiveled around to get a better look at the television screen while the prosecutor tried to heal the damage the Pope had done to his case. “I see it right next to him. How can you tell it’s limited?”
“Because I needed to force my way in just to send him an email.”
“You did what?”
* * *
Pope Pius XIII opened the laptop and listened to the prosecutor with half an ear, seeking out anything he could take advantage of…a real advantage, not just a quick jab.
And then something happened.
A white box appeared on his screen with black letters that said, “Your Holiness, this is Blaine Lansing, FBI, and I will be your hero this evening. Pay attention to further updates as your case proceeds.”
Pius raised an eyebrow. “Fascinating, these Americans,” he muttered.
* * *
Wilhelmina Goldberg squinted at the television image. “Did the Pope just say something?”
Scott Murphy, next to her, nodded. “Seems that way.”
The Secret Service agent had been viewing the proceedings through the Web while Scott Murphy and Manana Shushurin viewed it on the television in Matthew Kovach’s hotel suite.
Matthew Kovach had gone to settle scores on the media end, and Inna Petraro had gone with him to keep him on his best behavior. No one had seen Sean Ryan for hours, and it was unanimous that no one wanted to be around him in a bad mood. Fr. Williams and his father Wayne had also vanished, but that was no surprise. McGrail was off “interrogating” the French prisoners.
Goldberg tapped a few keys and reversed the footage with the TiVo, and Scott Murphy read his lips. “‘Fascinating, these Americans.’”
Goldberg raised a brow. He had been looking at his computer at the time, therefore something had appeared, and therefore…
Goldberg reached out with the force of her computer, and found a signal getting into the Pope’s court-provided laptop. She piggybacked the signals and rode it in with the sender, turning the dialogue box into a chat room.
“Joshua, it’s Villie Goldberg. You’re on Candid Camera.”
The Pope smiled, confusing everyone in the world who watched him—about two billion people, give or take a hundred million.
* * *
New York City.
The Manhattan apartment building seamlessly blende
d into the landscape, a metal gray building on West 80th street, behind the Museum of Natural History, tucked away into a corner few people ever go.
A few people knew it as The Complex. Its location practically screamed ‘if you can’t find us, we don’t want you.’ The security included everything but retinal scans and palm readers. Rumors said that Witness Protection bought the design plans so they could build one just like it.
The lobby had two desks, one on each end of the floor, and three people at each desk. The ceiling above the desk released a bulletproof shield. Each of the guards had a .50 caliber pistol at his side and a computer at his place.
The guards tapped in the names of each guest, so computers could perform an automatic search on each of the names for outstanding arrests, warrants or flags, and provided a photo of each.
The elevator doors were also like the doors of a bank, with at least two cameras. On each floor, at either end of the hall, stood a guard at attention.
The primary attraction to the Complex lay in their ultra-sophisticated locks: a series of steel bars that slid into the metal doorframe. The only way to undo these locks was to use a key, a seven-digit code, and an iris scan.
The ultra-paranoid lived in the center of the building to avoid sniper fire and so a “helicopter insertion” team could be caught by the time they worked their way in.
Vsevolod Davidoff quickly decided that the entire plan was suicide, at least as a full frontal assault, or even a covert insertion. His orders had come down from Belgium at approximately 10 a.m., local time. By 11 a.m., he’d arrived at The Complex. By noon, he knew that attacking Moira McShane at her home was futile.
However, a simple mugging in the street on her way home from work? That was something different. She ran a self-defense center in midtown Manhattan about three days a week, and spent the other three days teaching martial arts at a university. According to their sources she had a black belt in Krav Maga, and informal training in penjakt silat, as well as tae kwon do. Which, theoretically, made her potentially as deadly as Davidoff and his people.
Then again, theoretical skill had nothing to do with actual experience. Davidoff had run more covert operations in more parts of the world than this woman had students. He also had guns and knives, and a team that was skilled in snatch-and-grab operations, as well as assassinations.
Vsevolod had two men and two women, and almost infinite possibilities at his disposal. Granted, a few things were out of the question. A snatch in broad daylight in Manhattan would be impossible—the traffic would cause more problems than anything else, and only in the movies could a kidnapper be so blatant without having the police catch them so quickly. Usually, people were at their most vulnerable when coming close to their home—in this case, Complex security would not allow it, so an attack on the same block as her apartment was out.
The next possibility was something simple. A quick, subtle needle stick could be concealed even in a public place. Add a medical alert bracelet, quickly produced by slight-of-hand, and a fake ambulance, and they were off to the races. There was also a possibility that they could take her off the street at gunpoint—a kind word and a gun instilled a spirit of cooperation that a kind word alone was always unequal to.
Since they didn’t have the time to establish the patterns of Moira McShane, they needed to follow her for an opportune moment. With a professional, it would be a worry—there was always a risk of being noticed. While this person was well-trained, anti-surveillance tactics didn’t seem like it was part of her routine.
Vsevolod looked at the photo again. There were multiple photos of her, including one beach shot—Ioseph Mikhailov was so thorough on background checks it bordered on the compulsive. However, there was one photo that Vsevolod was most interested in. It was a bikini shot, but he wasn’t interested in it because of any lascivious motive—it showed off how she moved. Her foot was slightly banged up and calloused, possibly from breaking boards. Her calf muscles were well developed, like Madonna would kill for—no cellulite, all sleek muscle, like a deer’s, graceful. Flat belly, but not a female body builder. The chest was well developed, but that didn’t factor into the fighting equation.
The red hair was a halo of fire around her head—it didn’t come out of a bottle. Her physical appearance alone was enough to make one want to ask, “Where did you first model?” And her violet eyes nearly glowed with amusement. At 5’8”, Moira McShane, the author’s wife, looked good.
This would be enjoyable.
The question is, Vsevolod pondered, why is this… what’s the word? Babe… with this author character? The man is a nothing.
By six o’clock that evening in New York City, over eight hours since the Pope’s trial recessed, McShane had been trailed from her place of business, and was within a few blocks of her home. She had been walking north on Central Park West, and she was positioned awkwardly, for their tastes—she was walking on the block of the museum, on the other side of the street. And driving deliberately slow on CPW was suicide, even for a well-trained mercenary. She wore jeans, a white shirt, with a black windbreaker and a Bluetooth earpiece.
Alexei Yagudaev was the one put on the woman’s trail, and Moira kept a good brisk pace all the way from her martial arts studio. She was so full of energy that she had kept up a stride that equaled power walking from the moment she left the front door of her business. Alexei had to use every method in the book to make sure she didn’t notice him, and he had to use several methods that weren’t in the book.
As Moira walked in front of the Museum of Natural History, she tacked to her left, up the museum steps. She finally started to slow, taking the steps almost as though she were dancing up them.
With Moira going into a public place with plenty of security, Alexei hurried to get to her, before he lost the chance. Once she slipped into the museum, there were too many variables, and more exits than they had personnel.
McShane was faster. She heard his hard footsteps coming up behind her, and when she turned, it looked like he was about to grab her butt.
She glared at him, and Alexei Yagudaev noted something odd about her eyes. In the picture from the folder, they were violet, but now they had taken on what looked like more of a green hue. In both cases, the eyes stood out, almost above the rest of the features, and Alexei was trained to see through disguises. It was her.
He smiled sheepishly and backed down, as though he were just a hormonal male who saw an appealing target
She sighed, shook her head, and started moving horizontally along the steps, no longer heading towards the museum’s front door. It was possible McShane had changed her mind about going into the museum…but was it possible that she had made him as someone stalking her?
Moira McShane stopped by the statue of Teddy Roosevelt, mounted on a horse, and leaned against it, hidden from the view of the street. She stared at him, and waited, as though expecting him to come for her.
Alexei Yagudaev blinked. What was this? She wasn’t the type to sleep around on her husband—not according to her profile. Though he was rather surprised that she wasn’t—after looking at the husband, who would want him? But what else made sense? That she saw him as an enemy agent from another country and was lying in wait for him? No, that made even less sense.
What was logical, however, was that she may have decided to punish a sexist for trying to grope her. Considering some of the women he grew up with at the Charm School, he wasn’t surprised—hell, he needed to go through five kinds of hell just to lose his virginity with one of his own partners. So, the idea that she would try to kick his ass wasn’t out of the question.
Either way, it didn’t matter if she was ready to kick the crap out of some sexist pig—what she was going to get was a fully-trained killer who had a kill record reaching into the triple digits.
* * *
The prosecution said, “Next, Fr. James Northcutt.”
In thirty seconds, Northcutt’s name and personal history popped up on the Pope’s laptop.
The ex-Priest prattled on for the next hour about the horrors he had endured as a Catholic priest. No sex, surrounded by men all the time, simply awful. The horror, the horror of it all…
“And why did you leave the priesthood, Father?” the prosecution asked.
“Because I couldn’t take anymore.”
“Thank you. Your witness.”
The Pope didn’t even move from his chair. He didn’t even look at the priest, only maintained a gaze solely on the computer. “What organizations are you a part of now?”
The ex-priest blinked. “What?”
The Pope cleared his throat. He still didn’t look up from the monitor when he said, louder, “My apologies, I must not be used to public speaking yet.” There were a few chuckles as he looked away from the computer and slowly rose to his feet. “What organizations are you a part of now? If you were to open your wallet and show membership cards, what would they be?”
“Nothing, of course.”
“Really? I must inform them that you’re no longer a member.”
Northcutt leaned forward. “Who?”
The Pope cocked his head, and raised a brow. “Why, Mister Northcutt, don’t you remember that this time last year you were on television as a representative of the North American Man-Boy Love Association?” He grabbed the computer and turned it around, showing a video clip of Northcutt on YouTube.
“Objection!” the French prosecutor roared.
The Pope waved at the lawyer next to him and continued, calmly. “I’m sure that some of my fellow counselor’s homosexual witnesses in the Gay and Lesbian Task Force will be happy to describe how you were thrown out of their organization for your activities—”
“Don’t answer that! Objection!”
“—JUST LIKE YOU WERE THROWN OUT OF MY CHURCH FOR BEING A PEDERAST!” Pius roared. “ISN’T THAT TRUE, MISTER NORTHCUTT?”
Northcutt almost leapt to his feet and glared at the Pope. “Yes, it is you blasted nigger! I spent years in jail because of you God-damned priests! And I’m going to see you burn.”
The Pope simply smiled and said, “You first, Mr. Northcutt.”
