by Rick Jones
“Zurie, where are you?”
Nothing.
Then louder: “Zurie.”
After Adalgiso rounded the sofa and chair with the cat nowhere to be seen, he said, “Daddy’s got a treat for you, yeah.”
Silence.
“Zurie?”
His bedroom door opened while it protested on its hinges, but only far enough for a cat to squeeze through.
“Zurie?”
In the shadows of the bedroom the cat called out to him, a cry of panic.
“My dear Zurie, are you injured?” Adalgiso pushed the door aside and entered the room. In the corner wedged in between the nightstand and the wall was his Zurie, a tiger cat with orange markings. “There you are,” he said. As he got onto his knees to pull her free from the tight recess, the cross he was wearing around his neck slipped out of his shirt and dangled freely. “My sweet Zurie. Come. What’s the matter with—” Then he noticed the cat’s eyes were following something over his shoulder. Sensing he was not alone, the old man turned. A large man whose arms were heavily tattooed with Christian images stood over him, and appeared impossibly tall as he studied the old man from eyes that were as black as obsidian glass.
“Who are you?” Adalgiso managed to ask.
The intruder reached down with a powerful hand, grabbed the old man’s collar, and hoisted Adalgiso to his feet.
“What are you doing?” asked the old man. “What do you want? I have no money.”
The tattooed intruder reached behind him and pulled out a butterfly knife, swung it expertly until the blade fixed itself, and brought it to the old man’s throat.
“Why are you doing this?” Adalgiso asked him. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to,” stated the intruder. Then he ran the blade across Adalgiso’s throat, causing his skin to pare back enough to reveal the man’s gullet. As the assassin released Adalgiso, the old man fell to the floor clutching his throat. Blood continued to pour through the gaps of his fingers while his eyes flared with alarm. In time the image standing over him began to fade away. The outer edges of his peripheral vision started to close in, with the spreading darkness beginning to pinch out the light. Then in time, with the tattooed man the last thing he would ever see, came absolute darkness.
After the assassin yanked the cross from around Adalgiso’s neck, he exited the apartment.
Later, as hours passed and day turned into night, Zurie finally left her confines to lap at the blood that flowed from her master’s wounds.
Chapter Six
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Leipzig, Germany
The Following Day
Edelina Böhm was driving home from her final class at Leipzig University when it started to rain. At first it was like a spitting mist, and then it turned into a torrential downpour, the rain coming down so hard that she could barely see through the windshield. Slowing her car down to meet the weather conditions on the back roads and turning on her hazard lights, Edelina drove well below the speed limit. But when visibility became non-existent, she pulled the car over to wait out the storm. As the radio played, she eased back into her seat and started to reminisce. She had met her boyfriend for breakfast in the Student Center with the conversation between them about the day ahead of them, such as classes, studies, exams—the prerequisites of a better future. She also—
There was a sudden wrapping against the window that startled her. With the water cascading heavily down the driver’s side window, it was difficult for her to see who it was.
“Are you all right?” someone asked. The voice was masculine.
She nodded. “I’m fine. Thank you. I’m just waiting for it to let up a bit before I get back on the road.”
“Are you sure? I’m here to help if you need it.”
“No. I’m good. Thank you.”
Then he gave her a signal to roll down the window by circling his hand.
“No-no,” she told him. “Really. I’m good.”
“I can’t hear you, ma’am. I need to know if you’re all right.”
She raised her cellphone to show him that she had access to help. “I’m fine!” she hollered. Then she waved the cellphone with emphasis for two reasons: (A) to let him know that she could contact law enforcement with a touch of a finger, and (B) she hoped it would be enough to send him away, since she could feel the creep-factor beginning to rise. “I’ll be all right! Really!”
After giving her a thumbs-up, he returned to his vehicle.
With the aid of her rearview mirror, the man appeared fuzzy by the rain-covered window as Edelina watched him return to his car. But he never closed the door to his vehicle. Instead, he reached inside to grab a tool of some kind and made a return trip. When he reached her door, he stood silently beneath this baptismal downpour and watched her through the glass. The shape remained distorted by the cascading water against the glass, making it hard for her to see his features. Then with the slowness of a bad dream, Edelina watched him raise the tool with both hands, and bring it around in a horizontal arc. The side window shattered into pieces of chipped glass. As hands reached in to grab her, Edelina fought back by slamming her phone against the man’s wrist as he tried to grab her keys from the ignition. When he pulled them free, Edelina scurried across the front seat until her back was against the passenger-side door. Through the broken window, she could see the man holding a crowbar in one hand while dangling the car keys in the other, letting her know that he had rendered her impotent to get away. What was odd, however, was that he was wearing a short-sleeved cleric’s shirt and a Roman Catholic collar.
A priest?
“What do you want from me?” she cried.
“You were born from sin; therefore, you’re an apostolate of hell.”
“You’re out of your mind!” She brought the phone up and began to type numbers.
When the attacker saw this, he leaped forward with the tip of the crowbar and knocked the phone free. As it fell to the floor amongst the pieces of broken glass, Edelina reached for it. But the assailant brought the crowbar down and smashed it directly on her kneecap. Immediately she saw flashes of bright light before her eyes as white-hot pain suddenly shot through her body in an electric charge, the agony so bitter that she bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood.
Undoing the door handle behind her, Edelina fell away from the car and onto the wet pavement.
The attacker rounded the vehicle with the crowbar in his hands.
Getting to her feet, she limped toward the tree line of the nearby woods. “Why are you doing this?”
The man said nothing as he closed the distance between them.
Just as she reached the copse of trees, she fell because the pain was too great.
The man stood over her with the crowbar in his grip, watching her as rain pelted him until the strands of his wet hair hung wildly across his forehead. Then she saw the number of tattoos that covered his arms. Sleeves, they called it; a term indicating tattoos that adorned the flesh from wrist to shoulder. On one arm was an image of Jesus who wore the Crown of Thorns. On the other was the Mother Mary who held her hands together in prayer. The rest of his skin was a canvas of fine art that was covered with crosses of different sizes, with some appearing to weep droplets of blood.
“Why?” she asked him.
The priest said nothing.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
The priest holding the crowbar took a step forward. He was a large man who was heavily muscled. Then he pointed the curved end of the tool at her with accusation. “You are an abomination born from sin.”
She could see the madness in his eyes, the dark voids as cold as his frosty tone. “You’re a priest!”
“I am a vessel of God.” The priest raised the crowbar high above his head. “And I have been chosen to make the world pure from sin!” With a spark in his eyes that seemed to be borne from blood lust, he brought the bar down again and again. Blood spatter struck his face and his clothing, the ra
ins washing him clean. “A cleansing,” he cried, striking the woman over and over until her skull finally caved. “A purification!”
After he exhausted himself, the priest returned to Edelina’s car, grabbed her cellphone, and began to make his way west.
He had so much more to do.
Chapter Seven
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Eiffel Tower
Paris, France
10:47 P.M. The Following Day
On the second floor of the Eiffel Tower when sightseeing was normally low in the late evening, a mechanic was conducting a diagnostic check on all five lifts to ensure that the operating systems were running smoothly. While he was checking the state of the third lift, he was surprised to hear the hum and whine of a neighboring elevator working its way toward his level. When the lift stopped and the door opened, the silhouette of a tall man exited the cab and went directly to the rail that overlooked Paris. Even in the rain the City of Lights was spectacular, the lights glowing like a cache of diamonds spread over black velvet.
“It is a gorgeous night,” the man stated in flawless French. “Isn’t it?”
The mechanic looked up from what he was doing. Nobody else was on the tier.
Then: “Are you talking to me?”
“Unless you see anyone else here who is among us?”
The mechanic went back to connecting alligator clips to a pair of leads to get a read on his power meter. “Yeah. Whatever,” he stated with disinterest.
“You appear to have an interesting job,” stated the silhouetted man.
“It pays the bills.” The mechanic grabbed a pen that was wedged behind his ear and used it to mark the power recordings in a small book.
“I’m sure it does, Lamont Charbonneau. And I’m sure it also pays for services you seek within a certain gentlemen’s club, yes? In fact, I believe you have an affinity for a young lady who goes by the name of Starbright. But, of course, we both know that’s not her real name.”
At the mention of his name the mechanic looked up. “Do I know you, monsieur?”
The shadowy figure turned around to face the maintenance worker and stood as still as a Grecian statue.
“Do I know you?” Lamont repeated. The mechanic, who was a large man, placed the meter, book and pen on the platform, and stood to his full height. Though he was tall and thick with brawny arms and a bull-like neck, he still didn’t measure up to the man standing in front of him. “I asked you a question, monsieur. And I’m trying to be polite here. Do I know you or not?”
“No. You don’t. But I know about you, Lamont Charbonneau, better than you know yourself.” The man stepped out of the shadows by the railing and moved into the light. He was powerfully built with a wide breadth to his shoulders and bore the heavily muscled arms of a weightlifter that were profoundly tattooed. Around the collar of his cleric’s shirt was the Catholic band of a priest.
“Father,” Lamont said softly, as if stunned. “You came here because...” He let his words drag so that the priest could finish off the sentence for him.
“I came here as a vessel of God. I’m here to punish those who shame the principles of Catholicism.”
Charbonneau had no idea what he was talking about. “If you came all this way to seek my confession, Father, I gotta say that I’m not really a believer.”
“Which is all the more reason.”
When the priest came forward, Lamont noted the number of tattoos on the man’s arms. Then when he looked into the holy man’s eyes, he saw nothing but cold indifference. “What exactly do you want from me?” Charbonneau asked him.
“What I want to do, Lamont Charbonneau, is to cleanse the world of shame.”
“And you’re telling me this because...”
The priest lashed out and grabbed the mechanic by the throat with a strong hand. Charbonneau’s eyes flared with alarm as he slapped the priest’s arm that was as thick as a ham hock, his mind suddenly wheeling because he couldn’t understand how such a pious man could be capable of incredible violence. Then he began to gag on his own spit as his face began to turn scarlet, and then purple.
Within moments the outer regions of his peripheral vision started to turn black with dark rings beginning to close inward to blot out what little light was left. In panic he slapped at the tattoo of Jesus adorning the Crown of Thorns to loosen the priest’s grip. But the clawed hand around his throat continued to squeeze him like a vise. And with fingers as thick as sausages, they were now beginning to dig into his flesh in what Lamont Charbonneau believed was meant to crush out his life.
“You are an abomination born from sin!” cried the priest. His eyes widened with murderous fever filled with sick passion. Then the priest drove a fist into Lamont Charbonneau’s solar plexus, which knocked the air from the mechanic’s lungs. With one hand around Lamont’s throat, the priest grabbed Charbonneau with his second hand and hoisted him off his feet.
As Charbonneau’s sight continued to close in from the edges until his world was nothing but a pinprick hole of light, the grip on his throat loosened. He was looking up at a canopy of stars above him, at the twinkle of the universe’s lights.
And then he was in a state of freefall.
His body appeared to have no weight to it, no control.
The stars above.
The Earth below.
In the end, there was nothing but darkness.
* * *
Even from the height of the Tower’s second level, the assassin could hear Lamont Charbonneau’s body hit the surface with the same sound as a melon hitting the pavement. Grabbing his cellular flip phone, the priest thumbed a single numeral on the number’s pad and brought the phone to his ear. After two rings someone picked up, a male.
“Where are you?”
“In Paris.”
“You have news for me?”
“Male Caucasian. Age thirty-nine. Last name: Charbonneau. First name: Lamont.”
“Recorded.”
“Next?”
“London. Female Caucasian. Age seventy-one. Last name: Gibbons. First name:
Marsha.”
“Specifics?”
“You’ll get them when you get to London.” The man hung up.
After tucking the phone away, the priest noted Lamont’s personals on the floor by the elevator. One item that caught his eye was a gold pen which shined beneath the light. Picking it up and examining it between his thumb and forefinger, he saw that it was custom made since Charbonneau’s name was inscribed on it. Tucking the pen into the pocket of his cleric’s shirt, he began to descend the stairs with London on his mind.
Chapter Eight
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The Comm Center of Vatican Intelligence
Vatican City
Fathers Essex and Auciello were pouring over recent findings of three deaths scattered throughout Europe that did not appear to have any connection. In Brussels, a man in his eighties had his throat slit. In Leipzig, a nineteen-year-old student was bludgeoned to death. And in Paris, a lift mechanic was tossed over the railing of the Eiffel Tower’s second tier, the act of the killing caught on a distant camera that did little to shed light on the killer.
“Three deaths by three different methods, presumably by the same man,” Father Essex stated with his heavy British accent. “Usually an assassin will fall in love with a certain way of killing and stick with it.”
Father Auciello agreed. “Perhaps it’s not one man,” he said.
Father Essex nodded. “Perhaps it’s a group of men.”
Father Auciello descended the steps to a lower tier to get a better look at the monitors against the wall. Most of the screens showcased hotspots around the globe, such as the southern part of the Philippines, Syria, and combat points in northern Africa and in the Middle East. On the left monitor but broken up into three separate grids were the postmortem photos of the victims, two males and a female. Lamont Charbonneau and Edelina Böhm were unrecognizable, the damages to their bod
ies too great. Adalgiso François, however, appeared as gray as the underbelly of a fish as he lay on the coroner’s table. His throat was slit, the slash a purple-red with the lips of his wound parted enough to show the gristle underneath.
To the world there would be no obvious connection that tied them together. Three people of different ages and genders who never realized that the other existed— Belgian, a German and a Frenchman—only for them to have a unique connection even they didn’t know about. Since their killings possessed no particular style of execution or any indication that they knew one another, law enforcement would never be able to link the murders.
People like Lamont Charbonneau, Edelina Böhm and Adalgiso François were well-known to the Vatican when their names were written in the sacred tome upon the day of their birth. Now that sacred tome was in the hands of assassins, with the fates of many more in jeopardy.
“Obviously,” Father Auciello began, “they were able to decode the writings of the scribes.”
“And what would have taken decades to decipher can now be done in months through technology.”
“We can rule out ISIS since we know that the book is not being auctioned off to support their cause. It’s being decoded for a specific agenda that cannot continue.”
Father Auciello examined the photos on the monitors. Three innocent people through no fault of their own were dead, he thought, all because of a shared DNA sequence.
“If they found three names in such little time,” said Father Essex, “who knows how many they’ll be able to access in the months to come.”
“We need to get that book back into the Vault where it belongs,” Auciello stated. “Problem is, we have no idea who took it or where it is.”
“I think we can guess who has it now,” said Father Essex.
“Opus Dei,” Father Auciello stated evenly. “They did so twice before when they were known as the Prelature Order of the Cross. There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t do it again.”