by Rick Jones
“Already you’ve made your first mistake,” she told him. “You’ve already underestimated your opponent, which is something you never do when you’re dealing with the Vatican Knights. Never.” Then she quickly segued into another topic for discussion. “And the nun that’s with them? Is it Sister Godwin?”
“Unknown,” said a male voice. “But we’re checking into it.”
“And where are they now? These Vatican Knights?”
“They were taken to Saint Mary’s Church as soon as they disembarked at Dulles,” he told her, “by a pair of federal agents.”
“You still have eyes on them?”
The shape nodded. “They’re being watched as we sit in council.”
“Expand the network,” she told them. “I want eyes and ears open in every part of D.C. I want to know why the Vatican Knights are here and how deep the feds are into this investigation.”
“Should we suspend our mission, then?” asked the male.
“We have a few targets left,” she answered. “If the goal isn’t achieved, then we move on to the Vatican to seat another upon its throne. But changes will be had. And God will never bend to the will of man.” Then she held her hands out to be grabbed by those on either side of her. Once everybody had a hand within their own, she raised her eyes ceilingward and said, “For I am Hydra…”
And then in chorus from everyone else, they said: “…And we are many.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Rectory of Saint Mary’s Church
Alexandria, Virginia
As CSI concluded their investigation to gather forensic evidence from the entryways into the rectory, and after the priest’s room had been significantly combed over, Kimball and his team, along with Sister Godwin, Special Agent Trycord, the two members from the Bureau, Shari Cohen, and the coroner, who was a cadaverous-looking man that was tall and lean and hunched over like a question mark, remained.
With the coroner—who had dark rings around eyes against an ashen face— examining the inverted body of Father Modesto, Shari Cohen went into detail of the murder to those who were present. “As you can see,” she began, “the signature is the same. An upside-down crucifixion.”
Trycord nodded. “The current belief here is that the Nocturnal Saints are a satanic cult,” he told everyone. “The inverted crucifixion being a sign of Satan. But you”—He pointed to Sister Godwin—”believe otherwise, yes?”
“The upside down cross is not the sign of Satan. It never was. It’s been nothing but a tool used by Hollywood over the years to portray evil. But this,” she said, pointing to Father Modesto, “has a completely different meaning.”
“And you would be exactly?” Agent Trycord asked her.
“This is Sister Godwin,” Kimball intervened. “She’s the lead historian for the Vatican. And she’s here to lend assistance regarding the Nocturnal Saints.”
“I see.”
Sister Godwin stepped closer to the body, could already smell the lingering odor of death, and cocked her head slightly in study. “The upside-down crucifixion is a meaning of unworthiness,” she finally said. “When Peter was to be executed, he asked to be crucified upside-down because he did not believe that he was worthy enough to be crucified in the same manner as Jesus, and was granted his wish. So the image of the inverted form of punishment is not a symbol of demonic interference as Hollywood would have you believe, but as a symbol of ‘unworthiness.’” When she saw his shirt unbuttoned, she asked Shari, who was still wearing gloves, to part the folds to expose his chest, which she did. Carved in his flesh with deep scores was: Ephesians 4:28.
Sister Godwin fell back. “He died for the crime of thievery,” she said. “That’s why his hands are missing.”
“How do you know that?” Shari asked her.
“Ephesians 4:28: Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” Though no one else in the room knew it, Sister Godwin recognized that this ritualistic killing was not unique. Severing the hands from the body and inverting Father Modesto against the wall was a symbol of unworthiness, and an often-used signature by the Nocturnal Saints during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The mutilation signature—though different for this particular crime—for Father O’Brien was his missing genitalia to indicate his sexual improprieties.
“The hands are a symbol of his thievery,” she said.
“We’ve checked his background,” said Trycord. “The man is as pure as the driven snow.”
“For every wayward priest there are a thousand more who hold true to their course. This man, Father Modesto, if he hangs upside-down with the words Nocturnal Saints written beside him, is that wayward priest. You may want to search deeper into his background, Special Agent. If you look long enough, then the details begin to talk to you.”
“So you don’t believe this to be the perverse artistry of a satanic cult?”
Trycord asked her.
“Hardly. In fact, I believe it to be quite the opposite.”
“So you think it’s them? The Nocturnal Saints?” Kimball asked her.
“The mutilations. The carved script in Father Modesto’s chest. Everything I see is the signature markings of the Nocturnal Saints dating back five hundred years, right down to the final detail.” She turned to Kimball. “You and your team will certainly have your work cut out for you.”
“And what does that mean?” asked Trycord.
“The Nocturnal Saints are not a new faction,” Kimball told him. “They’re a Catholic order who established themselves during the Protestant Reformation. A conservative faction who deem themselves to be judge, jury and executioner while waving the banner of Catholicism. But that’s not all.”
“No.”
“Special Agent—” Sister Godwin led the federal agent so that he’d finish for her.
“Trycord,” he responded. “My name’s Trycord.”
“Special Agent Trycord, the Nocturnal Saints are a powerful organization that has grown overtime, and have established themselves as an all-powerful force with long arms to reach anyone across this globe.”
“And why haven’t we heard of them?” he asked her. “They’re not even in our databanks, especially if they’re as big as you say they are.”
“They’ve been dormant, yes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They absolutely do.”
“Then we’ll deal with them.”
“It won’t be that easy, Special Agent. Not at all. The Nocturnal Saints were a global network of elite assassins centuries ago. There’s no reason to think otherwise now.”
“How many people are we talking about here?” Shari asked her.
“That, my dear, is the $64,000 question, isn’t it?”
“So it could be in the hundreds?”
“Or the tens of hundreds. But the true danger, Special Agent Cohen, is that they’re faceless, meaning they could be your next-door neighbor. Your congressman. Your physician. School teacher. The cashier at the local market. Even your priest. And you won’t know until it’s too late. Once you become a target of the Nocturnal Saints, then your life is as good as over. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But someday, as long as they see you as a threat to the old ideologies of the church.”
“The old ideologies?”
Sister Godwin nodded. “Man shall bend to the will of God, and God shall never bend to the will of Man. The growing liberalism in the church, at least from what we believe, has been the galvanizing force that has awakened a sleeping giant.”
Shari didn’t know what to say.
Then from Sister Godwin: “You may find some,” she told her. “But you’ll never be able to find them all. They’re much too large and too powerful.”
“So how do we stop them?”
Sister Godwin looked at the towering Vatican Knight who was standing beside her and smiled at him engagingly. “When prayer is not enough,” she said, “we have Kimball Hay
den. Or so I’m told.” And she left it at that.
But Shari Cohen knew exactly what Sister Godwin meant.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Temple Hills Section
Washington, D.C.
As the investigation concluded and the Vatican Knights were transported to the archdiocese in Temple Hills, Shari Cohen asked Kimball to ride with her because things needed to be discussed.
In a company sedan, the ride started out awkward between them as if two shy teens were trying to communicate with one another. But it was Shari who broke the ice.
“Kimball, I know it’s been awhile,” she told him. “And I’m glad you came. I just wanted to thank you without others around to hear this.”
Kimball nodded.
“What I wanted to say,” she went on, “is to thank you for pulling me through the darkest moment of my life. When I was in my coma there didn’t seem to be a time construct there. Minutes could have been days and days could have been minutes. The only constant was the darkness.”
Kimball looked straight ahead, listening.
“I lost my entire family to an assassin—Gary, my daughters—and felt nothing afterwards. I just didn’t care about anything. Then when the assassin tried to take me out and I ended up in a coma, I could sense you inside this darkness that was complete and absolute, where you guided me along. Your presence was so strong, Kimball, like you belonged there to usher those who needed you most, through the darkest of times. I swore I heard your voice.”
Kimball recalled the moments when he called her bedside-priest on a daily basis and had him press the cellphone to Shari’s ear, so he could talk to her as she laid there.
“I was never so afraid,” she told him. “Because it was a place of despair.”
After a pause, and just as they hit a red light, Shari continued. “Yet along the way, and I know this is impossible, I could feel your hand inside my own, directing me. You moved me through the shadows as if you knew exactly where to go. It was as if you had walked through this blackness many times before, and knew exactly where to go to reach the Light.”
When the light turned green, she depressed the gas pedal.
“Hand in hand, Kimball, you showed me the way. And you spoke to me, always telling me to push on.”
He remembered every word spoken over the cellphone, with those words of encouragement reaching her ear, her mind, her psyche.
“Then as I was coming to,” she said, “when I saw the light of the room starting to break through my eyelids, you released my hand. You told me that you had taken me as far as you could and that I needed to go on alone, and that the Light wasn’t for you…At least not yet. And then you were gone. Your voice. Your touch. And I could sense that you were falling back into the darkness, sliding into a black veil, until I couldn’t sense you anymore.”
The darkness is my ally, Kimball thought. That’s where I feel most comfortable.
With her right hand, Shari reached out and placed her hand on Kimball’s forearm. And when she did this Kimball turned his head and closed his eyes. He felt grateful for the touch, a simple laying of her hand that filled him with an incredible warmth.
“Thank you,” she finally said. Then she removed her hand which saddened Kimball to a degree, since he wished he could feel her touch always.
He turned back to look through the windshield. “You’re welcome,” he said to her, managing a light smile. “You know I called every day and had the phone put to your ear, to keep you going. I did that because to lose you, Shari…would have devastated me.”
And there it was, an admission on his part on some level.
For the next few minutes they rode in silence.
Then from Shari: “Sister Godwin; was she right about the Nocturnal Saints? That they’re an order that has existed for five hundred years?”
He nodded. “Within a church, a self-proclaimed barometer to curb the corruptions. But they’re no more than a terrorist group. And nobody knows better than Sister Godwin, since she’s the Vatican’s historian on most things.”
“But what she says about them, they’re just not a radical group trying to make a statement.”
“No. They’re so much more.”
“And the reason for the Vatican Knights other than to aid the Bureau in the investigation? And I know there’s an addendum to your mission, Kimball. Otherwise, an elite group of commandos wouldn’t be here.”
Kimball didn’t hesitate on the matter. “Two reasons,” he said. “One, there might be others in the crosshairs, so we are here as a means to protect them.”
“And the other?”
Here he did hesitate.
“Kimball?”
“To discover who they are and neutralize them, before they have any intention of extending their reach to the Vatican.”
“You think the pontiff’s in danger?”
Kimball nodded. “He’s exercising his liberal policies to spread globally to reach the people,” he said. “He’s loved by the masses, but his ideas have also caused friction with the cardinals, making him unpopular within the College.”
“And the Nocturnal Saints want to stop this sense of liberalism from spreading?”
“That’s exactly why. D.C. is the hub of activity for now, the killings becoming the starting point that may spread rapidly to other states, other nations, maybe to the doorstep of the Apostolic Palace, if we don’t act.”
“Outside of the killings, do you even know where to begin?”
“No. What we needed first was a confirmation from Sister Godwin on whether or not this was the real deal—the Nocturnal Saints. If it was a cult faction instead of the Nocturnal Saints, then we would have allowed for normal police procedures to run their course without intervention. But now that a sleeping giant has awakened as Sister Godwin has stated…we have no choice but to protect the sovereignty of the State of the Vatican, and the welfare of its citizenry.” He turned to her.
“That’s what we do.”
“Kimball, from what Sister Godwin has stated, this isn’t going to be an easy fix. We—you—none of us know where to begin.”
And this was true. There were no trace elements discovered at the killing sites of Fathers McKenzie or O’Brien. And most likely none would be found inside the rectory of St. Mary’s Church, either. Every site had been sanitized with surgical precision.
Then Kimball looked out the side-view mirror and caught a glimpse of the olive-green sedan that had been trailing them since the airport. The vehicle was occupied by two people wearing white shirts. One was wearing glasses, the passenger. And the driver had a shaved head. Kimball pointed to the next intersection.
“Take a left at the light,” he told her.
“You want to break away from the unit?” she asked, acknowledging the lead vehicle in front of them.
When they reached the intersection Shari turned on the left blinker. The olivegreen sedan turned its left blinker on as well, and merged into the left lane. When she took the left, so did they.
“Something I should know about, Kimball?”
“No,” he lied, keeping an eye to the side-mirror to watch the trailing vehicle. At this point he trusted little outside his circle. Sister Godwin had stated that the reach of the Nocturnal Saints was widespread, if not omniscient in its capacity to view matters well ahead of time. The case of Father Modesto was evidence of this, by tying him to alleged crimes that had gone under the radar to those closest to the priest. But what concerned Kimball was that their flight into D.C. was a veiled operation known by few. So if their tail was a result of The Nocturnal Saints widespread net, then the information of their arrival had to come directly from the Vatican.
“Are you sure?” she pressed him. “I know you, Kimball. There has to be a reason why you want to stray off course.”
“No,” he continued to lie, his eyes constantly checking the side-view mirror.
The sedan was still following.
Once they reached the archdiocese at Temple Hills, wh
ich was long after the Vatican Knights had arrived earlier in another vehicle, Shari turned to Kimball. “You do understand that the Bureau has jurisdiction here,” she told him. In other words, responding in the cowboy-way had its limitations. More so, it was her way of telling Kimball to stay in touch.
“I hear you,” he told her. “Trust me, when something comes up I’ll call. So keep your phone close.”
For a long moment their eyes locked on each other. But it was Shari who spoke first. “It’s really good to see you again, Kimball. I’m glad you came.”
Kimball didn’t say anything, yet he continued to stare at her with his ceruleanblue eyes.
“I know you have to do what you must for the sake of the Vatican,” she added.
“But if the Nocturnal Saints are as dangerous as Sister Godwin says they are, please be careful.”
He smiled. “I will.”
“And Kimball?”
“Yeah.”
He could tell that there was something she’d been wanting to get off her shoulders, an itch she wanted so desperately to scratch. But as she nibbled on her lowered lip as if to bite back words, she finally said, “Just be careful.” “I will.” After he closed the door she pulled away from the curb. Without looking in the direction of the olive-green sedan he knew was close by, he took the steps to the entryway of the archdiocese. Shari, however, did look in the rear-view mirror, only to see Kimball turn and walk away. About a block away from the archdiocese, the olive-green sedan pulled over and parked on the opposite side of the street.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
While Shari was driving back to J. Edgar Hoover Building, her phone went off.
Switching on the phone link to her vehicle, she said, “Special Agent Cohen.”
“Shari, it’s me.” ‘Me’ being Darce Earl.
“What do you need, Darce?”
“We got a call from one of Lashonda Jackson’s neighbors who claimed that a woman, meaning Lashonda, was being brutalized inside the apartment next to her.”
Shari straightened her shoulders at this. “Has Lashonda been hurt?”