The Absolver: Rome (Saint Michael Thriller Series Book 1)

by Gavin Reese

  Father Harry cleared his throat and continued. “Once assigned a target, you will search for objective, independent evidence that corroborates or dismisses the allegations, all of which will be rooted directly in scriptures and the Catechism. You will either find the evidence and move toward a final absolution, or you won’t. In that case, John will ensure that no further action is taken against that target without new or additional information. They’ve, in effect, been acquitted without even knowing they've been accused.”

  John leaned forward and excitedly added his thoughts. “The folks you’re gonna be called to serve, because that’s really what we’re doin’, is helpin’ them receive a one-time chance at eternal salvation. Absolving these folks of their sin, cleansing their souls, by itself, anyway, is about as effective as washin’ an ashtray. They’re just gonna fuck it up again a couple minutes later, so what’s the point? It’ll never stay clean long enough to matter. That’s where you come in.

  “One of the most important op-sec considerations to this whole thing,” John added, “this absolution, these last rites, is that you will only ever engage and reveal yourself to the accused after you have found irrefutable evidence that absolutely corroborates their alleged sins. Cops and detectives, investigators, they can walk up to anyone at any time and ask questions about alleged actions. It doesn’t matter because everyone knows who the police are and what they’re about. No one outside this room can ever know about you, about what you do, and the important role you play for God and to His children.”

  “If, in the course of your assigned tasks,” Father Harry offered, “you are revealed as an absolver to one whose soul is not in dire need of immediate and righteous absolution, you have failed and put all our work and effort at risk. You will have exposed the entire program and God’s work to the world. You cannot ever become a murderer, and that is exactly what would be required to keep our secrets at that moment. We are not murderers, and never will be. We are absolvers.”

  “However,” John redirected the conversation, “when you do find corroborating evidence, the truly important work will begin. You’ll need to get the target alone, incapacitate them, and keep them isolated with the evidence for the remainder of the ritual. You’ll interrogate them and ensure they’ve got a chance to come clean and meet God with an open heart and a pure soul. Hear their confession and contrition. Absolve them of their sins, anoint them, and relieve their soul of its mortal shell. Pray that God accepts their soul into his divine and perfect kingdom of heaven, in spite of the eternal damnation they otherwise deserved, if not for your actions.”

  Michael sat in awe and tried to take in everything John was offering. Is this real? Can I really do this? He considered all the training and skills he’d acquired over the last two decades in light of the tasks laid before him. Now it all makes sense, why John made us succeed in all the training topics. Son of a bitch. Even the benign classes like Ethics were preparing me for this assignment. Some of the others should’ve been giveaways. Not many people but dog catchers need to know how to use tranquilizer guns. Michael smiled and sat up a little straighter without realizing he'd done so.

  “By absolving them of their sins and immediately killing their mortal body,” Father Harry reiterated, “you’re giving their immortal soul its one and only chance to ever enter the Kingdom of God and spend eternity in the warmth of God’s love. The only other path available to them is the eternal fire and damnation of Hell. You alone can spare them from that. Despite the evil that Satan has infected them with, God wants them to be cleansed, to be absolved, and join Him in Heaven, just as the prodigal son. He has appointed you to that sacred task.”

  John leaned back on the couch before he spoke. “You also gotta ensure they understand their sins will be revealed to the world after their departure. For their absolution to stick, the remorse in their heart must be genuine. They hafta understand the pain and suffering they’ve inflicted on others will not go unknown on Earth. They must know their victims will get help, and that their sins and crimes will be identified. That is your opportunity to identify additional victims no one else knows about. Who else have they harmed that’s in need-a help or recovery? Who else needs to understand God loves and cares about them, and that the crimes and sin committed against them were borne from evil, not of an unjust, uncaring, or unloving God?”

  Father Harry nodded his agreement. “Every absolution has the potential to bring love, forgiveness, and closure to scores of other lives, and help restore the dignity God always intended them to have. Then, only after they’ve decided how to spend their eternity, you will end their mortal life. You will sever the tie between their mind, body, and spirit and, in the process, you’ll immediately ensure the safety of dozens, maybe hundreds, of unknown and future victims from the indignity of the unjust aggressor.”

  In affirmative response, Michael somberly combined and paraphrased a few Catechism sections. “The defense of the common good requires us to render the unjust aggressor harmless. Once accepted, their punishment defends the public and revives their soul. I see no better way to fulfill those holy obligations, Father.”

  Both men look relieved, and John nodded before he spoke. “How you feel about your pseudonym?”

  Michael shrugged. “Haven’t really thought about it. I guess it’s nice being named after the first apostle, but I don’t have the weight or pressure of living up to Saint Peter or Paul, I suppose.”

  “Good, cause you’re keepin’ it,” John replied. “It’s just a matter of time until someone like you ends up on the evening news tryin’ to work out a deal to avoid prosecution in exchange for tellin’ the whole world about this rogue band of killer priests ‘the Church’ has gallivanting all over the world. As much as we talk about God bringin’ you into his prison mission, not everyone has the gumption to stay that particular course. Nice thing for us, though, Andrew,” he offered and spread his arms out wide in disbelief, “is who’d ever believe this shit is real, anyway, right? I mean, we have the perfect cover story to do everything necessary to save mankind. But, so help me God, if you do try to offer up your comrades to save yourself, I hope I get sent to the same shithole so I can get just a few minutes alone with you. Can’t abide a traitor, especially one that’s sworn an oath to God and His servants. Keep that in mind if you ever find yourself in a dark hole desperately seeking Earthly salvation.”

  Michael confidently held eye contact with his instructor and dismissed the necessity of his dark warning. Can’t take this asshole’s behavior personally. “Not an issue, John. Everything happens for a reason, even incarceration.”

  “You ever offered last rites before,” John pointedly asked.

  “Just the one time,” Michael replied, “and it wasn’t strictly on-script.”

  John grimaced in reaction to the admission. “Spend the time necessary to ensure you’ve got the ritual down-pat. That’s the most important part of the whole thing. Takin’ a life without absolvin’ its soul is no better’n a killin’, and might even be a murder, no matter how much society benefits from the absence of the departed.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  Training Day 220, 1135 hours.

  Rural Compound. Niobrara County, Wyoming.

  Only a few hours after learning the nature of his assignment, Michael again sat at the far-right side of the classroom’s banquet table. The other three candidates, now all graduates, sat to his left. John stood before them with only some handwritten notes and his reading glasses, and no one else from the training cadre was present. Michael shared a jovial mood with his classmates, just as he had at every commencement he’d enjoyed. This one, though, had just been unexpectedly sprung on them and felt much more electric than all the others, which had been scheduled well in advance with a specific date, time, and location. Given all the struggles and hardships they’d endured during the past seven months, Michael thought they’d earned a bit of frivolity. Reindeer games, I think John’d call them.

  John cleared his throat to dra
w their attention, which ended all conversation in the room. “First off, gentlemen, I am exceptionally proud of all that you’ve accomplished here in a very short time. I figure your experience here at my vacation Bible study was different from anything you imagined, but I also hope it turned out to be everything you dreamed. Some of you came to the table with relevant experience, and you weren’t big enough assholes to keep that to yourself, even though I first demanded that you not treat this as a team-sport environment. There’s a lot of background information that I gotta share before we start shippin’ you off, and there’s a lot more that you’ll never be privy to, unless you someday find yourself takin’ this over from me. That gives me a lotta goddamned heartburn now, just thinkin’ that one of you could try to fill my size elevens, but, shit, that’s life and I can’t keep this up forever.

  “The first thing that I need to do, now that I’ve given you all your goddamned pat on the back, is to remind you that your skillset is fairly limited. The key to your success and longevity will be to realize your own limitations. Regardless of the assignment for which you’ve been chosen, you’re not a buncha Mossad, C-I-A, or F-S-B operatives. You’re not the Navy SEALs, or Combat Application Group, or whatever Delta’s callin’ themselves these days. You don’t have their same depth and breadth of training. Not tryin’ to demean or lessen the significance of the holy work you’ll be doing, but no one’s spendin’ their all-day-every-day chasin’ you. We’ve imparted you with the skills to protect God’s children and pursue evil, but none-a y’all are gonna have spec-ops folks huntin’ you in the night, so we didn’t bother trainin’ you up to that capacity. It’s an important point, and I want y’all to stick to the skills we taught you, and the way that we taught you to operate. If you leave here and promptly go right-the-fuck off-the-rails, you’re gonna be dead or imprisoned before you know it. You’re a buncha badasses, I’ll give you that, but ain’t none of you shitheads in here that’s James Bond, Master Chief, or Jason fuckin’ Bourne.

  “Now,” John continued, “one thing I don’t mind sharing at this point is that my program is the first of its kind, and you’re my first graduating class, if you wanna call it that. There is not another group of men like you on the face of the Earth, at least not yet, but gimme another year and I’ll probably change that. There’s plenty with your training, many of them’s got far superior skills because of the particular prey that they’re after or that’s chasin’ them. They’re not goin’ after the gutter urchins that you are, they’re going after, well, men like you who’ve chosen to play for the wrong team. So, congratulations on being the first. You’re goin’ out to do critical work and I’ll sleep much better at night when I got a lot more-a you out there.”

  Alpha half-raised his hand and nodded at John. “One question, please, John. I understand we may have different roles and assignments, but, what are we? I mean, what do we call ourselves, as graduates of your training?”

  “Nothin’,” John frowned and replied. “You call yourselves nothin’.”

  “Like, we’re the Nothing Squad?”

  John put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “No, there isn’t a name, official or otherwise, for you all, and there never will be.” He began pacing around the front of the room as he spoke, obviously worked up by the topic. “What’s ‘O-G-A’ mean to you, Andrew?”

  “Uhh, ‘Other Governmental Agency?’”

  “Yep. What about you, Jude?”

  With John singling Sergio out, Michael inferred that he was the only one with a military background. Wonder what Alpha and Phillip did to get here, then…

  “John, that’s just another acronym for C-I-A.”

  “Goddamned right,” John confirmed. “C-I, fuckin’-A. Their stupid-ass spooks run all over the world identifying themselves as O-G-A, but they’re doing C-I-A shit and everyone knows they’re C-I-A! They ruined it by giving themselves a name, that’s all it took was just a goddamned name, even though it’s bullshit! As soon as you assholes start callin’ yourselves somethin’, some reporter’s gonna start stickin’ their nose around Saint Peter’s Square askin’ about ‘The Order,’ or ‘The Vengeance Brigade,’ or whatever stupid-ass name you millennials came up with! So, no, there’s no name, never gonna be a name. If I don’t give you somethin’ to repeat to other priests, or girlfriends, or boyfriends, or bartenders, or anyone else you wanna impress with just how goddamned cool you are, you got less chance to violate the op-sec! Jesus, you got me all worked up!” John paced a bit more, but came to rest near the middle of the banquet table again. “That clear enough for you, Alpha?”

  “Yessir, we’re nothing, but, I did kinda like that one, ‘The Vengeance Brigade,’” Alpha joked, “do you mind if we, just between us—”

  “Go fuck yourself and your goddamned jokes. Moving on,” John replied and glanced back at his notes. “You probably noticed you’re keeping your pseudonyms. That won’t change. I’ve beat op-sec and compartmentalization to death, so, no more on that. When somethin’ goes sideways one day, and rest assured that it will, you’ll all be grateful for the anonymity.

  “Next, we need to talk about technical logistics,” John continued. “In the modern era, it’s better for us to go high-tech than low, so you’re all gettin’ a smartphone today that continuously runs a V-P-N in the background and a VOIP phone number. Never communicate with your chain of command by anything else.

  “Related to the tech bullshit,” John sighed, “is that your constant V-P-N allows us to do shit like set up Estonian bank accounts for each of you, in your pseudonyms, of course. That’s where you’ll get paid and access your own money, as well as an operational expense account, all without ever settin’ foot in a bank or having to explain your assets to the I-R-S.” John glanced over at Alpha and grimaced. “Or, whatever their equivalent is in, well, wherever the hell you’re from.” He grimaced at his narrowly-avoided op-sec error.

  “What about our current bank accounts and direct deposits,” Phillip asked. “If we give those up, won’t someone, somewhere, maybe realize we’ve gone off the payroll at our respective archdiocese?”

  “You’re probably gonna take this as the good news that it is, but you’ll have to keep those accounts and paychecks for that very reason, so, the Estonia money will be additional, supplemental income.”

  Michael leaned back and put his hand up to draw their trainer’s attention. “How much, supplemental income, are we talkin’ about, John? Not that I’m greedy, or have to have the money, but, you know, I thought, while we were on the topic—”

  “A hundred kay.”

  Michael nearly fell over in the flimsy chair. “Like, wow, a hundred, thousand. Like, a onetime payment, you mean, right?”

  “Nope. Every year. The Church is gonna pay you a hundred thousand dollars every year that you continue in your assignments, and forty thousand dollars every year after you’re done.”

  I can pay for mom’s treatments in cash after just a few years, Michael thought. A lump formed in his throat and his eyes welled with tears. Michael swallowed hard to fight them back.

  “I argued for more,” John explained, “given how marketable the skills and training you have are, but the higher-ups already thought that was highway robbery. They wanted you to keep that priestly pittance and take on all this risk and trouble for the glorification of God. I finally got ‘em to realize you boys might need some other motivation to stay in their employ and keep all this to yourselves one day. It was the best-goddamned compromise I could work out, so I hope that’s enough.”

  “Damn, John, I don’t think any of us expected that, and, honestly,” Sergio offered, “I really don’t think it’s gonna be necessary—”

  “It is, and you will, someday,” John explained. “Trust me on this. There will be points in this shitty job that you’re gonna need new and different motivations to keep on goin’. Right now, you’re all jazzed and lit up cause you feel like you accomplished somethin’. You’re idealists. In a year, you’ll need to find ne
w meaning in this work. In five years, you’ll stay for the paycheck and the retirement that’ll let you get away from most all the people you’ve ever met. A decade from now, you’ll be goddamned lucky to be upright and vertical, and won’t give a shit about any of it. Trust me, gentlemen, it sounds like a lot of money because y’all took vows of poverty, and I encourage you to continue to live like that as long as you can. There’ll come a day when you’re gonna need every dollar you can drum up to escape with your sanity and, maybe, just maybe, find some peace before you leave this world. Give the rest to whatever charity’s gonna help you sleep at night.

  “I did the same work for a long time,” John explained, “much longer than most, and the only difference between me and you is that I worked for a secular government, and I never knew much of the reason for the work itself. I was just as ideologically devoted to my master and my purpose as you are to yours. I got a target and a timeframe, and I came through, time and again. You’ve got the benefit of knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing, but it’s still the same job. So, while I hope y’all enjoy a different outcome, I expect you’ll eventually walk down the same roads me and all my asshole compatriots did. For that reason, I made sure you had some sorta parachute ready when you decide you need it. Nobody ever did that for me or my friends, and I wasn’t gonna help put this program together without providin’ some assurances.”