The Holy Bullet

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  “He’d better get here soon,” James protested.

  Sarah and Simon Lloyd now found themselves shut in a small window-less room completely sunk in claustrophobic darkness. Simon had received more slaps from his ex-lover, who was enraged by the bottle Sarah broke over his head. And since the asshole couldn’t take the insult out on Sarah, he hastened to do so on Simon. He, Simon, was only a job, something that guaranteed a paycheck… .

  Sarah heard Simon snuffling or trying to disguise his crying by mumbling in a low voice. It made her feel completely discouraged. Another victim paying for something she’d done.

  “What are they going to do to us?” Simon asked, breaking the silence.

  “To you, nothing,” she said confidently. She’d do everything to prevent his paying for being with the wrong person. No one ought to suffer for that.

  “I was so deceived, so deceived.” A damp sound confirmed the tears that still ran down his face unseen.

  Simon meant Hugh as the target of these words, but Sarah applied them to herself, since she felt them deeply. She considered herself a disappointment for everyone, beginning with the people she loved, always in danger, pleading, wounded, dead. So she repeated, “They won’t do anything to you.” She would strongly resist cooperating with this Herbert, unless he agreed to release Simon. She might be tortured, but she’d only talk when Simon was out of danger. Even if it was the last thing she did, which was possible, she intended to save Simon. The worst was if this Herbert didn’t want information from her and was only coming in order to personally carry out their killing. If that was the case, Simon would pardon her, if her lack of power wouldn’t permit heroic acts. If she found Herbert willing to negotiate, only one of them would survive. This was hard reality, not the stuff of detective novels or films. The good die before the end.

  “What’s happening? What have we done to deserve this?” Simon lamented in the darkness of the room that blended into the mental darkness overwhelming him since he’d turned the key in the unlucky door of the house at Redcliff Gardens and summoned the unknown.

  “You haven’t done anything, Simon,” Sarah said with shame. “This … only has to do with me and me alone,” she confessed. “Last year a price was put on my head,” she began to explain.

  It was impossible to see anything, but Simon straightened his back against the cold wall, sharpened his ears, and waited.

  “My godfather, whom I hardly remembered, sent me a list of names belonging to a secret Italian society. It contained the names of some very important people in politics, the judiciary, religion, and all at the international level. Even my father’s name was on it. I found out later that that list was in John Paul the First’s hands the night he died … and I knew that he was murdered.”

  “What?” Simon could barely believe what he heard.

  “Just what I said. The sect, called P2, and the CIA started to persecute me.”

  “Good God,” Simon exclaimed. “Are they the ones trying to do us in?”

  “No. This is something else entirely. I still haven’t figured it out.”

  Simon stopped talking in order to let Sarah spill her guts.

  “Things poured out in such a torrent that I couldn’t process all the information given to me. Even today I don’t understand how far-reaching it all is.”

  “Sarah, we’re prisoners in a basement or whatever this is. There are two armed men outside prepared to give us a passport to eternity.”

  Despite all that was happening, Simon seemed more in control of himself. The power of resignation has this consequence. We accept what has happened and look for better times to come. Of course the fear was always present. A quick death was preferable to torture, though obviously the best result would be if they opened the door and let them go with apologies for what they’d done, regretting a terrible mistake in identification, accompanied by a farewell dinner in some luxury restaurant. Ah, the power of the imagination, unconquerable, even in the face of imminent death.

  “Let’s try to make a deal with everyone,” Sarah continued.

  “What kind of a deal?”

  “We won’t turn them in, and they won’t hurt us.”

  “Maybe they’ve repented,” Simon suggested.

  “They’d have a lot to lose. Besides it’s the Holy See that protects this agreement,” Sarah said thoughtfully. She wanted to put the loose pieces together to see if they made some sense. “That is something else.”

  “One thing not missing is crazy men with power,” Simon revealed his feelings. “Do you think they’re going to leave us here the rest of the night?”

  “Long enough to soften us up.” It was Sarah’s turn to sigh. “They’re specialists in that.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m softer than a marshmallow.”

  Two bursts of laughter filled the small room, completely out of place given their situation. Fear can even make a person laugh.

  The sound of the lock turning put a stop to the laughing. Seconds later the light from the hallway filled the dispensary and blinded Simon and Sarah, who blocked the light with their hands.

  “It’s nice to see you feeling so good,” James mocked them from the door, where they made out his silhouette. “Get up. It’s time.”

  Simon swallowed saliva. His heart still went cold when he saw this cool killer who looked at him with curt indifference.

  Without waiting for them to obey, James yanked Simon up brutally by his shirtfront. James had executed his job in an exemplary way. Now he wanted to make his scorn for Simon plain.

  If Simon wanted to fool himself into imagining a sweeter scenario, a joke in tremendously bad taste, maybe, but still forgivable, two hard punches James had the pleasure of giving him in the face drove that fantasy out of his mind. Simon swallowed his impotent rage in silence. When all was said and done, James had the gun pointed at the head of his ex-lover.

  “Leave him alone,” Sarah cried, calling attention to herself.

  The result was immediately visible. James turned on her with contempt. He looked her up and down in such a hateful way that Sarah lowered her head, nauseous. James took a short step toward her and put the barrel of the pistol under her chin, forcing her to lift her head. A bad man knew how to recognize the hate that emanated from her eyes.

  “Your time has come,” he said scornfully. He followed up with a punch to Sarah’s face that split her lip.

  “You son of a bitch,” Simon immediately cried. “Without the gun you wouldn’t be so brave, you bastard.” Indignation overwhelmed him.

  “Simon, shut up,” Sarah ordered. One should never irritate men like these, especially James, who seemed very temperamental. “Please, Simon.”

  James returned slowly to Simon. He put the gun in his back pocket, covering it with the lower part of his jacket so Sarah wouldn’t get crazy ideas. He opened his arms, showing off.

  “No gun,” he said sarcastically. “And now what are you going to do?”

  Simon stayed leaning against the wall, in the same position James had left him. James paused for a few more seconds, awaiting Simon with his enormous open arms.

  He ended with a guttural chuckle, triumphant. He had dared, and he had won, as he knew he would one way or another.

  “You’re a little faggot, Simon,” he offered with a self-satisfied laugh over his little joke.

  Simon just lowered his eyes. Not looking at James laughing in his face meant he could be laughing at anything. At least he could give himself that freedom. All he wanted to do was cry.

  James interrupted his own laugh, almost mechanically, as if it were something he fabricated, manipulated, an actor improvising.

  “Enough joking around. Come on. In front of me,” James ordered in a voice of military command.

  Simon and Sarah could do nothing more than obey. Even so, they were pushed down the hallway, not necessarily to make them walk faster, but simply to show who was giving orders … and who had to follow them.

  They advanced alo
ng the dim corridor, their faint hope disappearing with each step. The jabs in the ribs, to one and then the other, with the cold barrel of the gun served as a catalyst for their negative, fearful emotions.

  “Left,” James ordered. He touched Sarah’s shoulder with the gun.

  They saw a closed white door. In the middle a sign read that only authorized persons were permitted to enter.

  “This doesn’t seem like a hospital,” Simon said in a whisper. “I don’t see anyone. Where are the doctors and the rest of the personnel?”

  “This must be how it is at night,” Sarah supposed in a murmur.

  “And security?” Simon continued. “There’s no security here?”

  “It’s better not to have anyone, believe me,” Sarah warned.

  “Quiet,” James shouted. “Inside and keep your mouths shut.”

  Sarah pushed open the door to what had to be an unused room for interns. The space was big, a double bed stuck in a corner, enormous windows all along a wall, in another corner an open white cabinet. Long ago they’d gotten used to the antiseptic smell penetrating their noses. Right in the center, seated in a plastic chair, Simon Templar, gun in hand, looked at them gravely. The moment had come. Herbert must have arrived.

  “Here are our little doves,” James sneered. “I’m anxious to have a little fun with them,” he said with his mouth right next to Sarah’s ear. She closed her eyes. He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it a few inches from her skin. She didn’t show it, but Sarah felt a convulsive nausea overwhelm her. If James didn’t pull back, her stomach would turn over, and she’d end up vomiting on him.

  “And now?” James asked, turning toward Templar, who looked like someone who had just heard bad news.

  Templar ignored the question and continued to look at Sarah, or at least it seemed so.

  “What now, man?” James asked again. He didn’t like Templar’s glassy stare.

  The behavior of his colleague in service, butcher or mercenary, in the pay of whoever opened his wallet most generously, seemed abnormal also. James approached Templar, seated on the plastic chair, put his hand on his shoulder, and gave him a push.

  “Well, then?” he said. “Are you sleeping with your eyes open?”

  The gun in Templar’s hand went off. Luckily it hit the ceiling where it was pointed. The vigorous push made him fall to the floor on his stomach without moving. James leaned over him in shock. Two holes in Templar’s jacket explained the rest. James looked at the chair where the two holes were repeated with a smear of Templar’s blood, dark red, the sign of death.

  James panicked.

  “Don’t move,” he cried. “Don’t anyone move.”

  Confused, he aimed the gun randomly, turning toward every side, alert, looking for the source of danger, the origin of the bullets. He couldn’t find the shells, which meant someone had retrieved them or the shots hadn’t been fired inside.

  “Don’t move,” he shouted again. “The first person who even breathes gets a shot in the head.”

  “Okay, okay,” Simon agreed, uncomfortable with the panic reflected in his ex-lover’s eyes. “Be careful with that thing.”

  Sarah looked around the room, trying to understand what was happening. When one lost control, one lost all dignity, she thought, watching James’s contortions.

  James approached the huge window slowly and looked out, holding himself back to look at the glass.

  “Oh shit,” he exclaimed.

  Seconds later he was thrown back and fell on the floor. Simon let out a scream, more a howl, and saw, as did Sarah, a thread of blood flowing from James’s head. His eyes were full of panic as he died.

  “Fuck,” Simon exploded. “Did you see that?”

  Sarah didn’t reply. A strained, out-of-place smile came over her face as she looked out the window.

  “What’s going on?” Simon asked, looking out the window for the reason for this smile.

  In the glass, three small holes.

  35

  THE POLE AND THE TURK

  December 27, 1983

  The Holy Father never exhibited again the bright glow of former times. The Lord gives the burden, but also the strength to bear it. He thought of Franz Koenig, the enterprising Austrian, responsible, admittedly, for his election in October of 1978, as he climbed the stairs of the penitentiary in the direction of the cell. With him were the faithful Stanislaw, Dziwisz, his secretary, as always, and the director, some priests, and a few guards. A rigorous security perimeter was set up. There was no room for distractions after what happened two years ago in the foreign territory of Italy. The Lord gives the burden … The phrase returned to his mind. He’d thought about it a long time and come to a conclusion. What was important was not to carry, but to endure. He’d been the Shepherd of Shepherds in the Catholic world for five years and could confirm, better than anyone alive, that the papacy ages one and kills slowly. It was a constant weight, incomparable to anything else, and one had to endure it, not carry it, until one …

  He climbed the stairs with difficulty, helped by Stanislaw. Age was another kind of burden. But it was the bullets that weakened him like this, making other such obligations and pleasures difficult.

  The last step was like a victory without particular savor. It marked the beginning of recovering his strength, his breath. Wojtyla let himself be led through the gray, ugly hallway toward the cell where the young Turk paid for his notorious crime against the life of the pope, the very pope who was walking to see him.

  “Are you all right, Holy Father?” Dziwisz, who’d devoted his life to the pope for many years, asked.

  “Yes, I am,” the Supreme Pontiff replied, panting.

  “Do you want to rest, Your Holiness?” the director asked at his side.

  “Let’s keep going,” Wojtyla said good-naturedly. A slight smile accompanying this wish could be taken as evidence of his sincerity.

  Some dozen feet ahead they stopped in front of a gray, iron-plated door, where two guards were standing at attention, one on each side. The director ordered one of them to open the door. The subaltern obeyed quickly, not without first going down on his knees before the Holy Father and kissing his hand, as respect for the clergy demands from the faith of common men. He turned the key in the lock and entered the cell first, while his companion remained alert by the side of the door.

  “Please, Your Holiness.” The director extended his hand, indicating the way in.

  Wojtyla entered, followed by Stanislaw and the director, leaving the rest of the delegation at the door.

  Inside, the young Turk was on his feet looking at the Pole with an ashamed expression. He couldn’t maintain it for long. He lowered his eyes at once like a good boy who has done mischief and awaits punishment.

  “Holiness, take as much time as you wish,” the director instructed. “A guard will remain here at all times with the safety off on his gun.”

  “Perfect.” The secretary acknowledged the security instructions.

  Wojtyla had already entered another level looking indulgently at the young Turk. They waited for the director to exit the cell. They heard the lock closing from the outside, followed by silence, oppressive for some, but not for Wojtyla. He looked at the Turk, who lowered his face submissively. The pope approached him, spontaneously lifted his wrinkled hand to the Turk’s face and raised it. The dead-looking eyes of the young man had nowhere to hide, nor could he close his eyelids. They remained open, naked before the man who ought to have died two years ago, been wept over, buried, and replaced, since life continues and only those who are here matter, like these two now who must overcome cultural, religious, ideological, and other more deadly differences.

  Suddenly the Turk allowed some life to revive his pale eyes. They filled with tears and seemed to give in to the pope’s scrutiny. Wojtyla’s hand lifting his chin was firm as a rock. There was neither censure nor reproach in his expression, no sign of visible condemnation, only a man, the holiest of them all, looking into the depths of the o
ther’s soul and understanding everything without saying a word or showing emotion.

  As soon as Wojtyla let him go, the young Turk knelt at his feet with such devotion the guard almost fired on him. The pope raised his hand, as if saying lower the gun, and the guard obeyed.

  “Forgive me, Holy Father,” the Turk pleaded with his head bent over the feet of Peter’s worthy successor.

  Wojtyla crouched to lift him up and placed his hand on the Turk’s head.

  “Get up, my son. What has to be forgiven was already forgiven a long time ago.”

  He helped the Turk up and led him to the bed.

  “Now, sit down,” he ordered. “Take a deep breath and tell me everything, my son.”

  36

  Harvey Littel entered the crisis office room with the confidence of a sovereign handing down laws to his people. Certainly Littel didn’t make laws or carry out regulations. His world was a world apart, a world of intelligence, counterintelligence, military, civilian, industrial, and political espionage. There was only one rule on this battlefield: conquer at any price. Imbued with this spirit, Harvey Littel took his place at the table as the windows of the door automatically darkened to block the view from outside.

  “Good evening, once again, gentlemen. Any news?” he asked, taking his seat in a comfortable leather easy chair.

  “We have the Russian contacts on permanent alert,” Colonel Garrison informed him. He took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth.

  “Perfect. Excellent.” Littel raised his hand. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t smoke in my presence. Thank you.” It was obviously an order, not a courteous request.

  Stuart Garrison looked at him with the Cuban cigar unlit. He put it back in his jacket pocket for a better time.

  “And Barnes? Has he given us any information?”

  “He’s on the phone at this moment, Dr. Littel,” Priscilla hastened to inform him with her notebook at the ready.

  “Wonderful,” Littel responded. “Let’s not make him wait any longer,” he decided. “Cil, put him on the speakerphone.”