by Andrew Huff
“His name.”
“The man I killed was Ali Anar. Your brother.”
Yunus drew a deep breath, and the knife quivered against the pulpit. “Tell them how he died.”
“I shot Ali using a high-precision rifle while he was working in his home office late one night.”
“While his two sons slept in an adjacent bedroom. And his wife brewed tea in the kitchen. A single gunshot to the back of his head.” Yunus lifted the knife and used its tip to demonstrate the path of the bullet. “I’m curious, Mr. Cross. Were you still around to hear Fem’s screams when she found her husband slumped over his desk?”
“Your brother was not a good man …”
Cross sensed Yunus’s fist rising from the pulpit a second before it came rushing toward his temple, but he tensed his muscles and welcomed the punishing blow as penance for his stupidity. The blunt end of the knife’s handle connected with his head and sent Cross sprawling across the stage.
He pushed himself off the floor and onto an elbow. Beneath the ringing in his ears, he could hear several cries from the congregation, along with Christine’s voice saying, “No!” Cross held up a hand to stay her advance, but noticed Gary grabbing at her elbow. Christine froze in her tracks, her moist eyes pleading for Cross to act.
A stinging sensation brought Cross’s fingertips to his eyebrow. He pulled his fingers away to see traces of blood where the knife handle awarded him a fresh gash. His vision remained unsteady, so he left his body prone to the stage floor.
Yunus’s voice boomed across the room as he remained at the pulpit and addressed the crowd. “My brother had his faults, just as all of you. Just as I. But neither of our gods gave this man the right to be the judge and jury that demanded my brother’s life. John Cross took a life, no matter my brother’s guilt. Justice demands a life in return.”
Cross’s head swirled. Yunus held the upper hand. He could wipe them all out with a simple order to his men. Yet it seemed apparent only one death interested him. An atoning death for his brother’s. That was why they wanted Christine. Cross took one of the few people Yunus cared for, and Yunus was about to do the same.
“No, I …” he protested, but Yunus cut him off.
“I want to thank each and every one of you for coming out tonight. You see, this moment was just as important as the one that is soon to follow. It is not enough that John Cross die. He must die the man he was the night he shot my brother. John Cross is no longer your friend. He is no longer your leader. He is only a killer. And justice can finally be had.” Yunus motioned for his men to stand down. “Please find your way to your vehicles. And do not consider calling the authorities. We will be long gone by the time they arrive, and I can assure you we will know and will ensure you pay for your interference.”
The giant man in the center of the aisle scowled and took a step forward, but Yunus halted his advance with the wave of a hand.
The congregation hesitated, unsure of whether or not to trust the words of the madman standing before them. Yunus sighed. “I promise you will not be harmed. Please …” He held a raised hand to the door and shouted in a menacing tone, “Go!”
Motivated by his aggressive tone, everyone rose from their pews and filed into the aisle. The armed men held their positions and glared at each person as they exited. The giant man inhaled and exhaled loudly at frequent intervals. Cross brought himself to one knee and watched Gary start to lead Christine to the rear of the sanctuary.
“No,” Yunus called out to them. “The girl stays.”
Gary paused and looked at Cross, his eyes drooped in somber concern. Cross nodded his approval. Gary assented to Yunus’s request, let go of Christine, and walked out the door, the last to leave. The reporter remained still in the middle of the aisle.
Yunus stepped over to Cross and squatted. He slipped an arm, knife in hand, around Cross’s shoulder and leaned close to his ear. “You should be happy to know that I only intend on killing you, Mr. Cross. And as an honorable man, I am going to afford you a luxury you did not give my brother. A fighting chance. There will be no firearms. Ms. Lewis and I will be escorting my men to their vehicles and bidding them farewell. I will allot you fifteen minutes to prepare yourself, though it will not matter. I am going to kill you. And I’m going to do it while the woman watches. Know that she will carry that pain with her for the remainder of her life. Just as my brother’s wife has.”
Yunus stood and left the stage. With a hand on Christine’s back, he led her out the door. His men followed suit. Cross watched as the giant man walked last through the door, shooting Cross an evil wink as he closed it behind him. Cross stayed still, silent, crouching on one knee on the wooden stage floor. Alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
RAIN FELL IN sheets across the empty parking lot. Thunder and lightning danced about the dark clouds overhead. Christine dreaded the walk to the vehicles without an umbrella.
Yunus led her back to the dark SUVs parked behind the building and shoved her into the back seat of the nearest one. It surprised her that he appeared so trusting. He’d refrained from ordering his men to constrain her after they’d released her from the cargo container. Though she kept an eye open for an opportunity to slip away, the armed men surrounded her at all times.
She heard their muffled voices outside of the car and watched Yunus’s silhouette move between each of his comrades. There seemed to be a heated argument with the large one, but then they hugged. A strange decision to make in the middle of a violent rainstorm. After interacting with the final man in the group, their black forms dissolved away. Multiple car doors opened and closed. Engines turned. One by one, the other vehicles departed.
The driver’s-side door opened, and Yunus shook beads of water from his shoulders as he slid onto the seat. “What a night, eh?”
Christine forced her jaw to stay shut, though it wanted to drop open at the man’s cordial tone. “Small talk? Really?”
Yunus peered at her in the rearview mirror. “Please, Ms. Lewis. By now you must know my quarrel is with John alone. There’s no reason we can’t be civil.”
“Civil? You just held a church congregation at gunpoint. Explain to me how that is civil.”
“I regret the anxiety they all felt, please believe me, but a strong statement was necessary. No one was in any real danger. I made sure of it.”
“You said it yourself: John’s the only one to blame. Why involve everyone else?”
“Could I have executed John in the streets? Or perhaps at home, just as he did my brother? Or even lured him to a desolate place? Yes, of course. But then it wouldn’t really be him. The man I killed would not have been the man who murdered my brother. And I will not do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The John Cross these people know was a charlatan. A fraud. To them he was a white knight, while in reality the darkness lies just beneath his skin. I had to strip away the false image before the real John Cross could emerge. That is the man who must pay for his sins.”
“Sounds like your brother had his share of sins too.”
She might have pushed too hard. Yunus sat still, his eyes averted, his breathing coming and going in a slow, rhythmic pattern. The rain clawed at the roof of the car, desperate to enter and drench them both.
Finally, he said, “My brother had his regrets, as do I. As do you. And death is a certainty, often a necessity. But there is a difference between a life taken in war and a life taken in the name of business.”
“Business? Is that what you call the Syrian conflict?”
Yunus reestablished eye contact. “Do you understand what John confessed inside the church? He shot my brother for a deal to provide arms to Syrian rebels. Your own government is about to do the very same thing. Ms. Lewis, that man shot my brother not because of Ali’s crimes but because the United States wasn’t getting their cut.”
Christine opened her mouth to speak but found no words waiting.
“Everyone thinks chaos around the
world is about competing ideals.” Yunus shook his head. “It’s about money. It’s always about the money. Who is getting paid, and who will pay the most.”
Christine shot a piercing stare back against the mirror. “And who is paying you?”
Yunus smiled. “I know this may sound like a contradiction to my previous claim, but I am not doing this for money. Not this.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t sound true.”
“I have not always been proud of what I’ve done. And I’m sure I will continue to find only regret in life’s turns. But this one thing I do for honor, nothing more.”
“You think it honors your brother to take another man’s life?”
“It must. For there is nothing else.”
Christine leaned forward and braced herself against the back of the driver’s seat. A sense of urgency sprang from her heart. If only she could plant the right seed, perhaps she could stave off Yunus’s thirst for revenge. “What if there’s something else?” she asked. “What if there’s another way? A way for you to find closure without harming anyone ever again?”
Yunus’s silence prompted her to continue.
“You’re wrong about John. He may have killed your brother in cold blood for a terrible reason, but that’s not him anymore. He knows he was wrong. And he found something that helped him move forward despite the guilt. Forgiveness.”
The sound of the rain filled the awkward silence between them.
“I know this is going to sound ridiculous,” Christine admitted. “But I think if you stopped and considered forgiving him, it will bring your brother more honor than anything else you could ever do. Killing John won’t take away the pain. It won’t bring your brother back. All it will do is ensure that you’re lost too.”
She tried reading Yunus’s expression, hoping to find some glimmer of possibility that he would back away from his vengeful quest. He just sat, eyes ahead, lost in the mesmerizing drizzle of rain cascading down the windshield.
Silence better than anything else, Christine let her words hang alone in the space between them and sat back into her seat. Movement caught her eye across the parking lot. She turned and stared out the rain-streaked window. A dark shape stood on the edge of the asphalt between the white brick of the church building and the metal frame of the unfinished expansion.
Christine bent toward the window to get a better view and gasped. John glared at the car with his eyes narrowed in a menacing stare. His hands hung in tight fists by his sides. Though the rain fell hard, the anger emanating from his body seemed as if it would protect him from its drench.
“It appears, Ms. Lewis, that our mutual friend does not agree with your position.”
The driver’s-side door opened, and Yunus exited the vehicle. Christine shot her hand to the handle of her own door, but before she could pull on it, Yunus stuck his head back into view and said, “Please, I would ask that you remain inside unless you wish to suffer a similar fate.”
Her hand froze. Conflicted, she nodded and kept her eyes locked on him as he stepped away from the SUV and shut the driver’s-side door behind him. She broke her gaze, slid across the back seat, and pressed her nose against the glass to try to see past the raindrops.
Yunus appeared in her view as he rounded the front of the car. He held his arms open in greeting. She spotted a knife handle protruding from his waistband against his back. He said something inaudible as thunder cracked overhead.
“This ends here, tonight,” John shouted back, his words muffled but discernable. “I’m not going to let you hurt anyone, anymore.”
Christine’s heart thumped in a violent rhythm against her rib cage. She wanted to leap out of the car and plead with him to stand down, to try to speak reason to both of them, but her body refused her commands to move. She sat and stared out the window, her mouth moving in the right way but the words falling in a whispered breath against the glass.
“No, please no …”
Rain flowed in a furious cascade against the skeletal steel structure of the unfinished expansion. Lightning leapt from cloud to cloud and illuminated the sheet of unending water, giving it the look of a wall planned for but never finished.
The shell of an abandoned future seemed a fitting environment for the confrontation of his past. Cross ignored the weight of the white dress shirt and dark dress pants pressed against his body by the merciless downpour. He ignored the feeling of his shoes sinking into the softened sod beneath him. Ignored the clap of thunder at unexpected intervals.
There was only one thing worth his attention: Yunus Anar.
“You’re right,” Yunus shouted over the storm. “It ends here. Not only my suffering, but yours as well.” He waved a hand at the church building. “This isn’t who you really are. This was nothing but a pathetic attempt to save a soul you lost long ago. Let us both end our pain tonight.”
The anger clawed at the seams of his heart. Cross pictured the congregation, their faces drawn in horror at his unmasking. Pictured his own attempts at penance. Then further back. All the sin. All the pain he’d inflicted on others. The deaths.
All the other images faded, leaving only a single face. His first target. The moment his soul died. He couldn’t remember her name or why the CIA considered her a threat.
But he did remember her daughter on the playground a few yards away.
It was all a lie. He’d never changed. He never would. This was who he was. Yunus was right.
Yunus is right.
The least he could do was save Christine—the one person who accepted him no matter what. A chill coursed its way through his veins. A dark hue tinged the corners of his vision. He bit down on his teeth and let the monster within loose.
His shoes lifted from the damp earth, and he ran toward his opponent. The gap closed in seconds. His fury amplified with each step, his eyes locked on Yunus’s vexing, toothy grin.
Cross lifted a fist. The rain scattered in fear. With a wrathful cry, he swung. For an inexplicable reason, Yunus stood his ground. Cross’s knuckles connected with the man’s nose, and the blow sent him downward on his knees and elbows.
“Get up!” Cross yelled. “I said get up!”
Yunus wiped at his nose with an arm, leaving a trail of blood along his sleeve. He swiveled his torso and looked up at Cross, blood caking his upper lip. He laughed. “And that, Mr. Cross, was your fighting chance.” He offered a shout of his own as his arm flew in an arc over his head, the point of the knife clenched in his fist aimed at Cross’s chest.
Cross leapt backward. The knife sliced through his shirt and tie, the tip tearing flesh. Yunus rose from his kneeling position and ran toward Cross. His smile disappeared, a scowl in its place.
Cross parried blow after blow as he backpedaled. Yunus spun the blade on his fingers, then flipped it to his opposite hand. Cross reacted too slow as Yunus sliced the knife down through the rain and nicked Cross’s forearm.
Cross grimaced and fought against the instinct to grab at the wound. Yunus advanced and cut downward with the knife once more. Tired of backing down, Cross shifted his tactic and jumped into Yunus’s charge. The Turk’s forearm slammed against Cross’s shoulder.
Cross wrapped his arms around Yunus’s waist and heaved him in a circle. As their bodies tumbled out of control, Cross caught sight of something he didn’t expect. Too late to stop their momentum, he tightened his embrace.
Yunus screamed as they slipped over the side of the exposed foundation of the unfinished building and fell into nothingness.
Cross’s back connected with a scaffolding plank. His diaphragm tightened, and his lungs refused to cooperate. Yunus rolled off him and spat blood from his mouth. Cross cradled his abdomen and took a deep breath to gain composure.
From beside him, Yunus kicked out with his boot, connected with Cross’s shoulder, and pushed Cross from the platform. Cross grabbed at the wet structure, but his fingers slipped. Just as he went over the edge, his hand found a grip around the metal frame.
&nb
sp; His body lurched to a stop, and Cross hung over the invisible abyss below. Yunus appeared above him, a bright burst of lightning overhead glinting off the exposed knife still in his possession.
The knife swung at his exposed wrist. Cross released his hold on the scaffolding and dropped into a free fall. His descent was short, impeded by his feet landing flat against a neatly stacked pile of cement block.
Cross lost his footing and slipped off the pile. He braced for impact as his body connected with the ground. The mud cushioned his landing, sparing him serious injury.
His lungs decided to work again, and he sucked in large mouthfuls of air. A thump alerted Cross to Yunus towering over him on top of the cement blocks. Yunus vaulted off the pile and plunged the knife in a downward strike with both hands.
Cross rolled to one side, and the knife sank into the wet earth. Yunus pulled it free and swung again. Cross jumped to his feet and met the blow with a knee. His grip released, Yunus growled as he watched the knife sail out of his hand and into the shadows of the framework.
With another swift kick, Cross connected the bottom of his shoe with Yunus’s chest and sent the man flying into a load of lumber. Yunus coughed as he righted his body and wiped the mixture of spit and blood from his chin.
Cross tightened his core and brought both of his fists together to cover his face. “Now it’s a fair fight,” he yelled over the flow of rain spraying them from above.
Yunus smiled, then charged. Cross blocked the incoming attack and lashed out with a left jab. Yunus threw punch after punch, but Cross anticipated every move and countered with crushing blows to the other man’s torso.
Punch, block, duck. They beat and beat on each other as the rain fell, the thunder clapped, and the lightning threatened to enter the fray itself.
Confident he held the upper hand, Cross dropped a fist from his chin. He sensed Yunus’s swing too late. A set of knuckles impacted his exposed abdomen. Cross grunted and doubled back.
Sharp fists struck against his skull. Dazed, Cross threw both arms over his head to try to stave off the unrelenting fury. He tasted blood. The edges of his vision blackened.