by Rick Jones
Božanović’s eyes lit with a marginal flare of surprise. Then, after cocking his head to one side and leaving it there, he said, “Well, if it isn’t the priest who is not a priest. I’m impressed. You’re the first of five to enter the maze and come out alive. Perhaps there’s something to this urbana legenda after all.”
“You said you wanted more of a challenge. Well, here I am, Božanović.” Kimball raised his KA-BAR, and directed its point at the Croatian. “Just so that you know, I plan to make a statement of my own.”
The Croat smiled. “Ah, I see,” he said. “Statements are always good. And it’s nice to know that I have influenced you to do the same.” He removed his own knife and turned it over in his hand, the man staring at it with a sort of twisted admiration. “Do you know why I do what I do? Why I send the messages I do?”
“I don’t really care.”
“In 1462,” Božanović went on, “Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, was a brilliant tactician noted for his psychological warfare and the impalement of subjugated peoples in the Ottoman Empire. He returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of 20,000 impaled corpses outside of Târgovişte, the capital city of Vlad the Impaler. That message sent by Vlad was so powerful, the invading army retreated without a single warhorse stepping onto Vlad’s territory. And that is the power and reason behind what I do. I send messages to my opposition to stay away. If they don’t, as with your case, then they will suffer the harsh and brutal consequences.”
“Have you even looked at the scoreboard, Božanović? Have you even looked around you? Your army is lying in pools of blood.”
The corner of Božanović’s lip began to move in nervous tics. “Then in the end, I guess it comes down to you and me; two men fighting from different ends of the moral spectrum.”
“You think I’m different from you, Božanović? I’m not. I’ve killed women. I’ve killed children. So when I look at you, I see myself. My scars may not be visible like yours, but they’re still there.”
Božanović laughed at this. “You think you’re like me? You’re nothing like me at all,” he said. “Just because we’ve killed before doesn’t make us similar in any way. You and I are separated by one major difference. After what you just told me, it’s obvious that you’re working under the authority of the Church, hoping to redeem yourself for the things you’ve done in the past. I, on the other hand, have no delusions of morality at all. None. And that’s where we differ, Knight. You’re deluded by the hope that there is salvation in the end… I am not.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. But I can’t imagine a God who would disapprove the actions of someone who takes out the likes of you.”
“So in the end, if you beat me, you think salvation will be yours? Is that it?”
“I’m counting on it.”
Božanović bent his knees and readied himself for combat. “Then let’s get this over with so we can both find out the truth,” he said.
On the dock, the children gathered by the van that was too small to transport them all. Jeremiah was badly hurt, with gunshot wounds to both legs. Leviticus had a bullet in his shoulder, but neither man was in a life-threatening situation. Gary’s face was battered and Shari’s was bruised; their appearances had seen better days.
From their position on the mooring pier, it was Shari who saw Božanović standing close to the stern, in combat-ready position with a knife in his hand. Moving closer and closing the gap with a KA-BAR in his grasp was Kimball, the two men converging until they were in the kill zone.
“Look.” Shari pointed, drawing the attention of the Knights. “It’s Kimball.”
Isaiah grabbed his weapon and began to charge the yacht’s gangway, when Leviticus called after him.
“Isaiah!”
The Vatican Knight stopped and turned.
Leviticus called him back with a beckoning hand. “We’ve completed our objectives,” he said. “Kimball’s last order to us was to get the children to safety. What goes on from this point on, is Kimball’s choice. It’s his decision.”
Isaiah seemed to be caught in the middle of indecision, as he looked toward the stern and then back to Leviticus, trying to settle on a choice. And then the choice was made for him, when Leviticus finally said, “He told us to understand his wish to go after Božanović alone. So this is not the road you need to go down, Isaiah. Not now, not ever. You even said so yourself: This is not what we’re about. And we’re not. He chose not to follow the rules of engagement. That’s why he removed his collar.”
Isaiah’s shoulders slowly slumped with defeat.
“Kimball will be fine,” added Leviticus.
But it wasn’t enough to placate Isaiah, as everyone stood ringside watching the two men at the stern of the ship converge on one another with knives slashing.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Kimball deflected Božanović’s jabs and strikes with simple flicks of his wrist. The Croat quickly changed his attack by coming across with horizontal and diagonal sweeps, his blade connecting with Kimball’s one more time. Kimball stood back and realized that Božanović was an unskilled practitioner of double-edged weaponry, and that he was, at best, a hacker with no true coordination behind the choreography of his attacks.
But Božanović wasn’t without his skills of interpretation, either. He immediately read Kimball’s body language with a keen eye and noted that the Vatican Knight was favoring his left side, especially his shoulder, which sloped further downward than the right.
And this was all Jadran Božanović needed to understand.
The Vatican Knight was injured.
The Croatian circled Kimball, studying the man while looking for an opportune moment to strike.
And then he found it.
When Kimball squared off with Božanović so that his injured shoulder was no longer held away from the Croat, Božanović struck at Kimball’s Achilles heel. He kicked out with his foot and caught Kimball alongside his knee joint, nearly causing the Vatican Knight to buckle to the deck on one knee. The moment Kimball leaned into the fall, Božanović launched into a roundhouse kick that struck Kimball’s wound, the gash reopening to its fullest.
Kimball stumbled back with a hand to his injury, gritting his teeth. Then Božanović attacked Kimball with the point of his knife held forward, with every intent to run it through him. But Kimball responded quickly by lashing out with the pommel of his knife, striking Božanović on the bridge of his nose, hard. The strike opened a deep gash, the force behind the blow staying Božanović’s momentum.
The Croat staggered on his feet, his eyes trying to maintain focus, the double and triple images of the world eventually working their way back to a single aspect of reality. He then bull-rushed Kimball, the man screaming in primal rage as he hit the Vatican Knight in his midsection with a shoulder. The blow lifted Kimball off his feet. With Kimball in a bear hug with no ground on which to anchor his feet, Božanović carried him to the edge of the stern. He elevated Kimball above and over the transom, then slammed him against the yacht’s 45-degree decline, where they held each other by the wrists, with Kimball hanging precariously over churning waters that were driven by the ship’s twin screws.
Božanović looked down at him with malicious amusement. “And so it comes down to this,” he said evenly. “To a tenuous hold between two men.”
Kimball tried to set the soles of his feet against the stern wall of the yacht. But the surface was too slick, too steep, the man slipping with every effort to find a reasonable purchase.
Within seconds, Božanović allowed their grasps to slip until they were holding each other in an obscene handshake, and then by just the curls of their fingertips.
“It’s time to die, priest who is not a priest.” Božanović walked along the transom with Kimball being dragged along the skin of the yacht, until he was situated directly over the recess that housed a turning screw.
The surface of the water beneath him bubbled and boiled
with activity, the propulsion system maintaining at maximum. It was as if sharks were positioning themselves just below the surface, intuiting the chum and bait that was about to fall into their jaws.
Božanović’s smile grew wider, which tugged at his scar.
Kimball stopped struggling, resolving himself to the inevitable.
In the long pause between them, both men looked each other in the eyes. Whereas Kimball saw a man in the throes of steaming madness, the Croatian discovered the priest to be a man of inner conflict and smoldering anger.
Without giving any indication of his next action or what he was about to do, Jadran Božanović released Kimball to his fate.
The Vatican Knight slid down the yacht’s steep transom toward the shaft that housed the turning screw.
The waters bubbled with anticipation, as he slid toward the path of the churning water, his feet trying to slow the slide and failing. The surface came closer, the tides soon to be red from the dicing of his limbs.
From somewhere in the distance, Kimball heard a cry. It was faint, a warbled scream. But he knew it was Shari, and like him, she understood that his outcome could only be one of finality.
As he hit the surface, and as the waves washed over him and pulled him underneath, the last thing Kimball Hayden heard was the voice of the woman he loved.
Shari watched from the dock as Jadran Božanović held Kimball over the transom at the ship’s stern. At the moment of their release and the beginning of Kimball’s long slide toward the course of the turning screw, Shari brought her fisted hands to her chest and cried out in a long, banshee-like wail that carried throughout the docks.
The moment he hit the surface, the moment he was carried underneath, she knew that she would never see him again.
Kimball Hayden was finally gone from her life.
Jadran Božanović watched the man slip beneath the churning waves and waited. But the man never resurfaced.
Stepping away from the transom, he looked down at the children that had gathered and the champions that surrounded them. They were products that were forever gone; he knew that. They were profits lost.
Now looking at the woman and seeing the agony within the twisted lines of her features, he brought his hand to his throat and drew his fingers across it in a cutting motion, making sure that she had seen the action.
The message to her was clear: I’m coming for you.
Shari was watching Božanović the moment he drew his fingers across his throat in a cutting motion. Given his profile, she knew that she would never escape his pursuit.
Ever.
The world just wasn’t big enough for her to hide.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The propulsion room three decks below Božanović was saturated with gas fumes and uncontainable heat, the engines and turbines running well beyond their capacities. They had been for some time.
Some of the copper leads and connection points inside the engines had grown red-hot, the area suddenly becoming volatile. And as waves of gases moved throughout the room, the fumes found themselves to be the perfect combustible gas, as the red-hot coils ignited a simple lick of flame that quickly grew to a fireball eruption that pitched the overhead floors upward.
Wood flooring splintered skyward against the power of boiling flames. They threw Božanović away from the stern and toward the doorway of the salon, which was closer to the midsection. Getting quickly to his feet and seeing a gout of fire rise and then mushroom at a height greater than the fly bridge, he reacted out of the purest form of instinct: self-preservation.
He ran toward the ship’s bow, the stern beginning to rise from the water, the hull becoming misshapen, as cracks and fissures ran along the boat’s length, dividing it into separate pieces. More than 9000 gallons of fuel in separate tanks were beginning to fire off.
The stern finally exploded, the ship’s rear end rising, and then gone, the fiery debris taking flight in every direction, in a perfect radius.
And then the midsection started to go, the floor cracking around Božanović as he raced forward. The polished wood split with jagged ends poking up dangerously around him, like punji sticks, the points sharp and deadly, as the hull began to come apart from all positions of the ship—front and aft.
And then the remaining fuel tanks began to go off in quick succession.
…Whump…Whump…Whump…Whump…
As the fireballs ripped upward through the decks, Jadran Božanović dove over the side and into water. The final fury of a massive explosion lifted the ship from the surface and divided the remains into three separate pieces. Debris continued to burn freely along the ripples of the Seine, like Japanese water lanterns.
A distance away, Božanović waded, the Croat watching the remnants of the yacht slide smoothly beneath the water.
With lit debris bobbing all around him and with the rush of sirens coming closer, he began to swim away from the pier and to the safety of distant shores.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Vatican City, Inside the Papal Chamber
One Week Later
When Monsignor Giammacio entered the papal chamber, he found Pope Pius XIV standing at the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square. The pontiff was quiet and subdued, and he never turned to acknowledge the monsignor’s presence.
“Your Holiness.”
Pius raised his head but didn’t face the man, afraid that the monsignor would see the agony in his face or the aged lines that had deepened over the week. Or perhaps he would take note of the deeply saddened eyes that held the constant and burning sting of tears.
“Your Holiness,” he repeated.
“Yes, Monsignor.”
The monsignor held up a manila envelope. “I have Kimball’s clinical records, as you requested.”
The pontiff nodded and held a hand out to him. The monsignor gave him the envelope, then stepped back. Pius didn’t even open it. He simply held it in his hand, which he kept behind the small of his back.
“Shari Cohen and her husband are here for the services as well,” the monsignor added.
Pius nodded. “Did you know that this will be the second time that Kimball will be buried in an empty coffin?”
“It came up in counseling, yes.”
There was a long pause before the pontiff finally spoke. “Personally speaking, Monsignor, do you think Kimball found the salvation he was looking for?”
“I would like to think so.”
“Technically speaking, and by your clinical observations,” he held up the manila envelope. “Do you think he found it?”
There was a slight moment of deliberation. Then: “No.”
Although the monsignor could not see it, Pope Pius closed his eyes to blink away the tears. “I will file these with his records and archive them,” he eventually stated. “Thank you.”
The monsignor bowed his head, and quietly left the chamber.
For a long and saddening moment, Pius tried to galvanize himself to commence the service for the Vatican Knights who had fallen in battle, including Kimball. But to find the courage and strength to do so would be hard, if not completely difficult. He didn’t know how he would manage without breaking before those in attendance. But he also knew that it was not a sin to mourn openly for the one you love. If he did break, surely his actions would be understood.
Unable to hold back the sting any longer, he shed another tear.
He had loved Kimball and tried to give the man the same direction that a father would give his son, by giving him the tools necessary to grow and build. And Kimball had given him the same love and respect as well, seeing him as the loving father he wished he’d had, instead of the given one, who had been cruel and dispassionate.
Feeling a pang in his heart and a sadness he was sure would never end, Pius called upon God to give him strength. And in the end he knew it would be granted, and the pain would diminish.
Opening his eyes that were red and raw in appearance, Pope Pius XIV raised his shoulders with fe
igned strength, raised his chin, and went to conduct a burial service over a man he had come to love as his own son.
As he made his walk to the ceremonial chamber, he finally broke down and slowly took to his knees, his back heaving and pitching with deep sobbing and tears of anguish.
Kimball should have buried me, he thought. A son should always bury his father. A father should never have to bury his son.
He continued to sob, never having felt so empty or so lost in his entire life.
A bishop wearing full vestments opened the door and peeked his head inside a holding room filled with plush furnishings. “Ms. Cohen, Mr. Molin, services are about to begin. We’ll send someone to get you in a few moments.”
Shari got to her feet. “Thank you.”
The door closed softly between them.
Gary got to his feet, went to his wife, and embraced her. When she fell into him, she began to cry. “It’ll be all right,” he told her without emotion. He knew it was extremely lame, but it was the only thing he could think of to say at the time, to ease her pain.
Deep underneath he was fuming and angry and hurt, because he knew—perhaps by the way she had looked at Kimball, or by the shine in her eyes, or the way her face had beamed whenever he was around—that she loved him on some level, deeply or otherwise.
She couldn’t even begin to mask it.
“Did you love him?” he finally asked her. It had been a question that had been weighing on him for some time now.
Shari noted the wounded look on Gary’s face. “Honey, Kimball was the only one who came to our aid. He risked his life not once, but twice, to put our family whole again. And this time he paid the ultimate price. I think I’m entitled to mourn the loss of a dear friend, don’t you?” She had come off much too harsh with the bite of her attitude, far too severe and certainly unwarranted. Perhaps it was something that she did not want to admit to herself. The reality of her words became her enlightenment regarding how she really felt for Kimball, which shamed her into becoming somewhat defensive.
