The Bridge of Bones (Vatican Knights)

by Rick Jones

  Beauchamp swallowed, the sour lump in his throat starting to bite with discomfort.

  Kimball fell back, stood straight, and removed a photo from his shirt pocket. It was a still of Tolimir. He then proposed it face-first for Beauchamp’s study. “Tolimir… Where do I find him?”

  Beauchamp narrowed his eyes to feign study of the photo. “I’ve never seen that man—”

  Kimball shot his hand out and grabbed Beauchamp by the trachea, causing the man to choke and gag. Beauchamp reached up and tried to pull Kimball’s hand away, but the grip was much too powerful.

  “Tell me what I want to know, Beauchamp. Or I’ll rip your throat out. So help me God, I’ll rip it out by the roots.”

  Beauchamp nodded; his face the color of deep cherry.

  When Kimball let him go, the inspector fell forward, his lungs wheezing with a sound similar to the scraping of fingers across a blackboard, harsh and grating to the ears.

  Kimball leaned forward and placed his hands on his kneecaps. “Let’s get one thing straight, Beauchamp. You’re not one of my favorite people. So you’re going to give me what I want. Is that clear to you?”

  Beauchamp looked at him.

  “Now answer my question. Where can I find this man Tolimir?”

  Between gasps: “If I tell you…then he’ll kill me.”

  “Tolimir?”

  “If not him…then another.”

  “You’re talking about Jadran Božanović, aren’t you?”

  Beauchamp’s eyes clearly detonated when Kimball spoke the Croat’s name.

  “Give me Božanović, and I’ll make your worries go away.”

  “I can’t. No one knows where he is. The man’s always transient. Never stays in one place.”

  “But I can get to him through Tolimir, correct?” Kimball asked.

  “I don’t know… Maybe.”

  “Then give me Tolimir, and I’ll force the issue with him.” Kimball could see that Beauchamp was clearly leaning toward the side of caution. By surrendering Tolimir, Kimball knew that Božanović would view this as a violation that could compromise his operation, thereby meriting the use of his knife against Beauchamp. But Kimball didn’t care as he leaned into him.

  “Understand this,” he continued. “You were instrumental in the kidnapping of two children I hold very dear to my heart. Two children I have held in my arms when they were very young. Two children you have condemned to a life of living hell, because of your willingness to turn your head away.” Kimball gnashed his teeth and grabbed Beauchamp by the lapels of his jacket, the fabric bleeding through his clenched fingers. He pulled the inspector into close counsel. “Give me Božanović.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes… You will.”

  Beauchamp’s face suddenly took on the looseness of a rubber mask. He was terrified of Kimball almost as much as he was terrified of Božanović. “Please. They’ll kill me.”

  “Where is he?”

  Beauchamp shook his head: no.

  “All right.” Kimball lifted Beauchamp by the lapels and half-carried, half-dragged him across the room, through the adjoining room, and out to the balcony that overlooked the pool area. “By the way, did I tell you how much I admired your house?” The light of the pool was on, the water a crystal blue, which shown beautifully against the landscaped grounds.

  The inspector began to choke and gag, his collar becoming too tight, as Kimball twisted it until Beauchamp’s face went scarlet.

  “Tell me something,” he said, pointing to the blanket of grass directly below. “Who’s your gardener? I’ve got to say that he does a very nice job on lawn maintenance.”

  Beauchamp grabbed Kimball’s wrist and tried to pry it away.

  “How does he get the grass so…nice?”

  “Ahhggg!”

  “What was that?”

  “Ahhggg!”

  Kimball looked over the side in admiration, if not in consideration. “Really sweet,” he said. Then: “How far up from the ground do you think this balcony is?”

  Beauchamp’s eyes widened. “Ahhggg!”

  “Ten feet maybe? Certainly not much higher than that.”

  “Ahhggg!”

  “Are you going to give me Tolimir?”

  Beauchamp shook his head.

  Fine! Kimball hoisted the man up and over the railing, sending Beauchamp to the surface below with the inspector’s arms pin-wheeling.

  Beauchamp hit the grass hard, the impact knocking the wind out of him. Before he was able to focus, Kimball was standing over him as a hulking mass, impossibly tall.

  Kimball reached down, grabbed Beauchamp by the collar, and lifted him to an upright position. The Knight’s face maintained a no-nonsense look. “Tolimir.”

  “You don’t understand. They’ll kill—”

  Kimball was beginning to lose patience. “Give me Tolimir!”

  Beauchamp said nothing.

  Fine. Kimball lifted Beauchamp to his feet and guided him to the pool area. As soon as they reached the pool’s edge, Kimball tossed Beauchamp over side with his hand still clutching the inspector’s jacket. “Your life is immaterial to me,” he told the inspector, and then he shoved Beauchamp beneath the surface. The inspector’s hands flailed madly and splashed water everywhere.

  “Kimball.” Isaiah moved closer. “We’re not about this. This is not what we do. There are rules of engagement.”

  Kimball turned on him as Beauchamp continued to struggle beneath his grip. “This is what I do,” he said firmly. “In a perfect world, Isaiah, rules are great, as long as everyone is in compliance. But as soon as someone decides to go against them, then rules need to be adjusted to put those who stray from the values back in line.”

  “Kimball—”

  “We are running out of time,” he emphasized. “We’re talking about the lives of two children here.”

  He then allowed Beauchamp’s head above the surface, the inspector wheezing in a lungful of air. “I can do this all night,” he told him. “Or until you’re lying at the bottom of this pool. I don’t care which. It’s your choice… Where’s Tolimir?”

  When Beauchamp refused to answer, Kimball pushed him under once again. “You’ll be the first man to die by baptism, Beauchamp. I guarantee it. Now give him up.”

  When Beauchamp finally waved his hands in surrender, Kimball lifted him out of the pool and sat him down against a lounge chair for the man to catch his breath. After a moment, Kimball allowed him to speak without coercion.

  “There is this place on Les Halles, a small bar that’s non-descript and does not advertise its location. It is a simple door that leads into a bar area that serves as a front for money laundering. It’s a dummy business under the ownership name of someone who does not exist.”

  “And this is where I’ll find Tolimir?”

  He nodded. “Every night he’s there counting money taken from the proceeds of current auctions.”

  Current auctions. Kimball had to bite back some stinging words.

  “Where is this place?”

  Beauchamp shifted, the man was obviously uncomfortable. “It’s a white building set between two smaller stores, one is a bakery and the other a milliner’s shop.”

  Leviticus knew exactly where the shops were.

  Kimball reached out, grabbed Beauchamp by the collar of his jacket, and lifted him to his feet.

  “So what now?” asked the inspector.

  “I’m going to see if you’re telling me the truth.”

  “I am.”

  “I hope so. Because if you’re not, then I’ll be back to finish off what I started.” He ushered Beauchamp roughly into the house, sat him down in front of one of two decorative columns that led into the dining area, and secured his hands behind the pillar with his own handcuffs.

  “What are you doing?” Beauchamp asked. “I gave you what you wanted.”

  “I wouldn’t believe a word out of your mouth until I know otherwise.” Then to Isaiah: “Disable the phone syste
ms. I want this house completely shut off.”

  “Aye.”

  “And as for you,” he said to Beauchamp, his words so soft it was as if he was mouthing them, “you deserve everything you get.” He stood and looked down at the inspector with a look that could only be considered as disdain.

  “When you see that I am telling the truth, priest, then you’ll come back and undo these cuffs, yes?”

  “Somebody will be back,” he told him. “But it won’t be me.”

  “Then who?”

  An artist.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Up! Ustani!” Up! Get up!

  The voice was loud and demanding, the tone curt. Too many hands seemed to reach out through the fog and grab the girls, then hoist them forcefully to their feet.

  “Rekao sam premjestiti!” I said move!

  Both of the girls were groggy, their hands held in front of them as if to feel their way along as they moved. Often they were shoved from behind as an incentive to move faster. The girls stumbled and fell, then were lifted to their feet in violent fashion, as the world around them appeared different.

  Nothing made sense as they tried to register what was happening to them. Their surroundings seemed to move at a sluggish pace, because their veins were lit up with a mind-numbing sedative. The colors were heightened, and the movements of their surroundings were slow and awkward, to the point where it appeared as if they were a part of some Wonderlandian landscape, where nothing seemed genuine and the timing was unrealistic.

  They had been ushered into a room with people mostly their age, with a few being younger, some a little older. Mostly women who were grouped together with a small number of males spotted throughout the chamber. Under the feeble glow of the lighting, everyone appeared ghostly and translucent, their skin appearing as pale and wan as the underbelly of a fish. Gray half moons circled eyes that were red and rheumy from the constant shedding of tears and from imploring pleas that went unheard; their pitiful wails of suffering sounded off like a soft wind passing through the eaves of an old house.

  The stench of human waste was strong, especially that of uric acid.

  When Stephanie was shoved to the floor, she fell onto someone who was laying prone, her sister then falling on top of her. Limbs and body parts moved beneath them, around them, everyone writhing with a living-dead slowness to their motions.

  Stephanie then sat up as much as her mind and body would allow, and tried to focus, with her sister lying next to her. All around her, a sea of people seemed to blend into kaleidoscopic designs and colors like a bad acid trip. At the other end of the room, two men stood by the door speaking Croatian, a language she did not understand.

  If she had, then she would have understood that the plans for their transit to the Middle East had been moved up a day, which was why they were being gathered like cattle.

  Time was running out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  For the past two hours, while Kimball and company were concentrating their efforts on finding Beauchamp, Shari Cohen was bringing up as much data as she possibly could, regarding Jadran Božanović. Her forte as a specialist with the FBI was to develop enough of a psychological profile that would enable her to prognosticate a subject’s future actions, based on past events, thereby preparing a counter-reaction that would give her the overall advantage.

  From what she was reading on Božanović, he was an extremely learned individual who had been schooled by the finest institutions that money could buy. He could speak four languages fluently, English being one of them, as he could converse in Arabic and the known dialects of Northern Africa.

  And there was more, a profile coming to fruition.

  At the beginning of the civil war and on the day of his seventeenth birthday, his high-end life had come to a crushing halt, and the privileges of wealth had all but evaporated. His family was gone, the members executed in front of a luxurious estate that the Serbs razed by fire. And Jadran was left alone in a world that had gone from grandeur to abject poverty within a blink of an eye.

  Within months he found his way into an insurgent group and fought by way of courage and anger, his emotions becoming twisted by hateful revenge.

  One day his unit had been ambushed and captured, only for a secondary unit to come in and save the proverbial day. It was here that he had become horribly disfigured. And it was here that Jadran Božanović had found his emotional release, by cutting and slicing his opponents until their skins resembled savaged flesh.

  Being learned, he did not go without seeing the impact the event had had on those around him—those within his circle and those outside it. Word of mouth had spread about a boy who was on the cusp of becoming a man, and that this boy-man was clearly marking his territory with the sliced-up bodies of his enemies. There were no reprieves. There was no mercy. To challenge Jadran Božanović guaranteed a most hideous death.

  It was the first message of many—and one that always worked to his advantage, to the point where he thought he had become so legendary over time that he could move mountains. People feared him. The mob loved him. And Božanović had grown to be a man who was untouchable in certain circles, which included political, judicial, and members from many departments of law. The only ones willing to take action against him were those who sat upon the thrones of international courts.

  But even they weren’t beyond Božanović’s reach.

  She scrolled down to the next page.

  One month after the siege of the Aleksandra, Colonel John Majors of an international taskforce, the man who headed the raid, was found dead in his flat in London. The murder had all the earmarks of a Jadran Božanović slaughter: the man’s torso having been flayed of flesh with the strips hanging purposely over the shower rod in a macabre display. There were no trace elements, no DNA, nothing that would tie him to the murder, other than the obscenity of the scene.

  And this is what scared her the most.

  Because on a prior siege that was headed by a member of Interpol, eight months before the siege of the Aleksandra, the commander had been found tied to the four corner posts of his bed in Lyon, France, with the flesh of his torso peeled away with such surgical precision that the anatomy of muscle fiber was showcased, as it would have been on a cadaver in a medical study. There was hardly a nick against the muscle bands. And this, too, took place about a month after a failed attempt by Interpol forces to capture Božanović in Spain. Although there was no trace evidence, the area always sanitized, it bore all the hallmarks of the Croatian’s artistic quality.

  The images on the screen were gruesome. The man’s face was untouched, as his eyes stared ceilingward. The sheets were spotted and stained, the color of blood drying to the shade of burgundy. He had the look and stare of a man who had been surprised by his own mortality.

  Next page.

  Božanović’s statistical kills were listed: eight known kills and a probable seventeen more. Names and faces were given, as well as the locations of the kills, which were global.

  Apparently Božanović would traipse across the world to exact revenge on those who bested or challenged him on any level, just to make a point. It was to let others know that the planet wasn’t big enough for them to hide.

  On the surface, Jadran Božanović was a man with an overwhelming psychology of retribution. And the ‘revenge paradox’ did not apply to him, which is when a person takes revenge out on another and feels worse about it instead of better. Božanović seemed to revel in the glory of his kills, keeping his anger alive. The history of his actions was a testament to this by showing a sadistic, if not serial, disposition of someone who relished the dark side of reciprocity.

  In other words, Jadran Božanović knew no boundaries, and he would travel the world to make a kill, to calm the beast inside. And once the kill was made, only then would he feel justifiably whole.

  On a scratch pad beside her, Shari continued to make notes.

  “Ms. Cohen, your husband would like to know if you
would like something to eat.”

  She looked up at Joshua—at the fresh-scrubbed look of his face. He had marginal good looks and emerald green eyes that sparkled with youth. And if she was to hazard a guess about his age, she would have said not more than twenty, if that. She then wiped the fatigue and itch from her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. She had not rested since the kidnapping of her children. “Can I ask you something, Joshua?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is Joshua your real name? Or is it a moniker?”

  “It’s a moniker, ma’am.” When he spoke, he did so with an accent that was either UK or Australian, she could never tell the difference.

  “Please,” she told him. “Call me Shari. You make me feel old when you call me ma’am.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She wanted to roll her eyes. It’s Shari!

  “So what’s your real name, Joshua?”

  “It’s Thomas, ma’am. Or Tommy.”

  She sized him up. He was no Kimball or Leviticus in size, but more like Isaiah, with that wiry range that gave him incredible speed and agility. “OK, Joshua. Tell me. How did you become a Vatican Knight?” She knew the Knights were recruited as orphans, children with no familial ties or any real future other than what they made for themselves in the streets.

  “In London, ma’am—”

  It’s Shari!

  “—I was seven or eight when I tried to pick the pocket of this man in Hyde Park. I wasn’t very good at it, since he chased me down and caught me within two strides. But that’s when I saw his collar.” He pointed to his own cleric’s collar. “I remember him walking me to the nearest bench and sitting me down, and for the longest time we just sat there looking into each other’s eyes. Even at seven or eight, I could remember seeing this sadness about him. But I thought it was for what I did. But the sadness never went away—not even after he took me in and gave me direction.”