The Nocturnal Saints

by Rick Jones

  Picking up the uniform and showing them to the second guard, the message was clear: Sister Maria Elefante had left the church.

  * * *

  “Gone,” said Father Auciello. “She knew we would come, eventually.”

  “Who knows how long ago she left,” stated Father Essex. “She could be anywhere.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s committed no crime. The choice to leave the church was hers to make.”

  “Still,” said Father Essex. “Maria Elefante’s choice raises red flags. If she is a member of the Nocturnal Saints and provided warning to those in Washington, then there may be others within the ranks. Perhaps a bishop of the Holy See or a cardinal within the College.”

  “We’ll have to examine everyone.”

  “That may take months.”

  “Nevertheless, it has to be done. The pontiff’s safety is paramount.”

  “There’s something else to consider,” said Father Auciello.

  “And what’s that?”

  The priest pointed to the several intel operators within the high-tech room.

  “Who’s to say that none of these people are involved as well?” Was it paranoia? Yes. This Father Auciello knew the moment the comment left his lips. But it was also something he believed needed extensive and proper examination given the circumstances. And then: “Trace the number to its origination point,” he said. “Find out exactly where Sister Elefante’s call went to.”

  “And the Vatican Knights?”

  “I’ll call Kimball and update him as to what we found.”

  As Fathers Auciello and Essex galvanized into action as the intel techs operated their consoles, and with suspicions running high, neither one of the priests believed that anyone within the Vatican was safe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Dead women, children and aged men too old to fight back lay upon dirt roadways that surrounded the village of My Lai. Bloodied and mutilated, the images remained in Cardinal Bishop’s mind as if the incident had recently taken place, the horrors were that indelible.

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  His hands were shaking and his bowels began to loosen.

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  He could see the face of the mother who begged for mercy.

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  Her children were hugging her for the comfort of safety which would never come.

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  Tears stormed down the woman’s face as she waved a hand at him to reconsider.

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  The platoon leader yelled at him with considerable rage.

  …They’re less than human…

  Then Cardinal Bishop recalled his thoughts at the time, the voice in his mind asking his platoon leader to reconsider, to stop the madness.

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  But he was a coward deep to the core.

  The cardinal brought his hands up to his face as he sat inside his chamber.

  “Please don’t make me remember this,” he said out loud, his voice muffled by his hands. “Not again.”

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  In his mind’s eye he could see himself raise the point of his M-16 rifle and direct it to the Vietnamese woman and her two children. Her pleading grew. Her waving maniacal. And then her children embraced her by corralling their wispy-thin arms around her neck and pulling her close, all loving, and all going to the same destination.

  …Pull the trigger, Private!…Pull the trigger!…

  Private Bishop began to squeeze, to pull, the mechanism moving inward, the rifle close to setting off a short burst.

  …Puuuuullllllll the triiiiiiiiiiggeeeeeeer!…Priiiiiiiivaaaaaate!…Puuuuullllllll…

  He could feel the weapon jump in his hand, could feel the vibration of its power as the rounds exited from the barrel and stitched across the flesh of the woman and her children. In his mind he could clearly see with the slow-motion of a bad dream the shock on the woman’s face as the first bullet punched a hole in center mass, that look of complete surprise. Then the other rounds followed, all hitting their marks.

  As he stood appraising his handiwork, as a ribbon of smoke curled from the end of his barrel, he could see, could remember, the blood fanning out from beneath them in a perfect halo and absorbed by the dirt.

  …They were less than human, Private…

  Somewhere in the village there was more gunfire, more screaming, which abruptly stopped. There was nothing but madness and moral decay, the young man surrounded by it. Then he wanted to raise his eyes heavenward and scream himself, asking God to take him away from all this, only for him to toss out nothing but guttural sounds, like clicks coming from the back of his throat. Then the memories departed as Cardinal Bishop returned to the here and now, the images gone.

  When the cardinal lowered his hands he fell back into his seat, as if exhausted.

  Then: “Please, Lord, no more…No more.”

  In the solitude of his chamber, Cardinal Bishop began to weep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Washington, D.C.

  The rain was coming down hard as Kimball walked the streets of Washington, D.C. The day had been long and filled with countless frustrations. But what Kimball Hayden didn’t really like was the feeling of being impotent. He had no clues to home in on, no direction to turn to, and nothing to set him on a viable course. Then he thought about Cardinal Bishop’s confession and the horrors he had kept with him for decades. The murders of a woman and her children, something Kimball found a certain familiarity with, and something he could never let go of. It was like a cancer, he considered, that was at times sliced away, only for it to come back in a more aggressive form that would corrode the human conscience at a far more rapid pace. And Cardinal Bishop wasn’t a man who was strong enough to conquer the disease, since Kimball believed that the cardinal’s sense of morality was too weak to withstand the pressures, and in time would fall to the sins of the father. Then Kimball wondered about his own pressures, his own sins, which were numerous.

  Whenever he sought the Light and took a step forward to achieve this goal, he always made the decision to do something that moved him two steps back, causing the reach of the Light to become even greater, the goal of achievement more difficult.

  He killed because he never saw the practicality of allowing a person who lived in absolute darkness to live on, even as the church dictated otherwise. Putting Band-Aids on certain situations was never Kimball’s forte, but a complete eradication of it. To temporarily neutralize someone who sits upon a throne cast in shadows only allowed for the darkness to rise again, and usually within weeks. This was something Kimball was wired to keep from happening by taking away that life, that cancer, from coming back.

  …I kill people…

  …It’s what I do…

  …Its’ what I’m good at…

  Reaching up with the tip of his finger, Kimball traced it along the cleric’s band within the collar of his shirt to feel its smooth surface.

  …Killing people is the only thing I’m good at…

  He lowered his hand and continued to walk through the rain.

  Then his mind continued with thoughts of the cardinal who freely admitted his sins to Kimball, who was also a sinner, and wondered if the priests within the District would seek protection within the archdiocese. Then Kimball thought: no. Their shame would be too great to admit, which is why Cardinal Bishop maintained his sin for so long.

  And because of their underlying guilt more will probably die.

  The rain came down hard and soaked Kimball, who didn’t appear to be fazed by it.

  And then his phone buzzed and vibrated. He removed it from his pocket and looked at the screen. It was from Vatican Intelligence. “Yeah.”

  “Kimball.” It wa
s Father Auciello.

  “You got news for me, Father?”

  “Quite a bit. Mostly bad, I’m afraid.”

  Of course, thought Kimball. Is news anything but?

  “We’ve discovered a possible source who may have contacted someone in Washington, D.C., just as you were departing from Rome. A sister,” he said. “Sister Maria Elefante.”

  “Don’t know her.”

  “She was Sister Godwin’s roommate inside the Vatican,” said Father Auciello.

  “It appears that she was the one who made a call to Washington, which we’re trying to verify as to whom she made it to and why. But Sister Elefante disappeared. She surrendered her position as a nun and vacated the premise. Her whereabouts are unknown, though we have facial recognition looking for her.”

  When Father Auciello stated that they were using facial recognition to locate her, Kimball knew that he was talking about VisageWare, which was a software program that was capable of identifying certain landmarks on a person’s face to certainty, and then had the ability to hack and tap into security and CCTV cameras across the globe to scan the current whereabouts of the target.

  “And if you find her?” asked Kimball.

  “She’s committed no crime, Kimball. But we need to know from her who she contacted and why. We’re also checking into the possibility that she may be a covert operator for the Nocturnal Saints. And if that’s the case—” He cut himself short.

  “Then there could be others,” Kimball finished for him.

  “Exactly. Right now we don’t know who to trust since the reach of the Nocturnal Saints may have extended to the halls of the Vatican. And if that’s the case, Kimball, then the life of the pontiff may be in dire jeopardy. But again, this is all speculation until we find Sister Elefante.”

  “Tell me about the call she made?”

  “Like I said, she made a call to Washington, D.C. the moment you were leaving. Makes sense since Sister Godwin told her everything about the flight plans. But we’re having problems trying to locate the end-point of Sister Elefante’s call. Whoever it was she contacted masked their trail. So this is going to take time, Kimball. Longer than we anticipated.”

  “Find her, Father. She’s obviously the key to this. I believe she knows something.”

  “Agreed.”

  “What about the two cops from Metro? Were you able to pull info on them?”

  “So far, Kimball, they look clean. Both have been with the department for more than a decade. Both decorated. One’s a Republican and the other’s a Democrat. One bowls on Friday nights with a team, the other doesn’t bowl at all. Both are married with no known problems. Both have kids who appear to be doing well in school. No financial problems. No exorbitant bank accounts to suggest that they’re getting illegal funds from outside sources. No off-shore accounts. Clean records all the way around—”

  “Religion,” Kimball interrupted. “What religion are they?”

  “Roman Catholic.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Yes.”

  Though nothing seemed to glare at him surface-wise, there was at least this one connection, as tenuous as it may be, since there were a lot of Roman Catholics in the area.

  “Keep digging,” he told Father Auciello. “We’re drawing a blank here on our end. You’ve got to find Sister Elefante and bring her in. She needs to shed some light on the situation.”

  “Understood.”

  Just as Kimball closed the conversation, he found himself standing across the street from Mastro’s Restaurant. The time was ten minutes past seven o’clock. And Shari Cohen was sitting inside the restaurant with a man Kimball did not recognize.

  From the shadows Kimball watched.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Rome, Italy

  Maria Elefante, who was no longer a part of the sisterhood, was sitting inside a café with a hoodie over her head somewhere in the back and alone. She was hugging a hot cup of latte with both hands, the steam rising.

  Ten minutes later a man joined her in the booth. He was young, perhaps midtwenties, with dark hair and eyes. But his smile was all-becoming as his teeth shined with diamond-like spangles of light whenever he smiled. “Good evening,

  Ms. Elefante,” he said. “I’ve been informed that you have surrendered your post at the Vatican, and that you’re no longer a nun.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And now you want safe passage after you committed the egregious error of making a phone call from an unsecured line.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “My mind was set on relaying the message.”

  “And the message was received by the member who sits upon the High-Seat of the Council,” he told her. “But your actions have put the organization in a rather precarious position, however. But it’s one that can be rectified.”

  Maria Elefante appeared relieved by this. “They’ll be looking for me,” she told him.

  “We know that. And that’s why I’m here. To help.”

  She nodded at this. “So you can get me out of here?”

  His smile flourished, showing nothing but white. “My dear, what I meant when I said that I was here to help, I didn’t mean I was here to help you. You’ve become a liability to the organization.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I don’t understand.”

  “Then perhaps you can understand this.”

  Three loud spits went off in quick succession under the table.

  …Phffft…

  …Phffft…

  …Phffft…

  The man’s smile never wavered.

  Maria Elefante fell back into her seat and away from the warm cup of latte.

  When she looked down she saw three gunshot wounds in close proximity to one another, the blood from the openings merging into a single growing blood stain.

  When she reached down to touch it with fingers that came away bloody, and then wiggled those fingertips before her eyes, she turned to the man who shot her. But he was already on the move with the vision of him walking away becoming a blur as darkness began to set along the edges of her sight, with the rings closing in until the moment of complete darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Shari Cohen was sitting inside the elegant Mastro’s Restaurant. The table setting was of the finest silverware, and a flower arrangement adorned the center of the table with a candle vase burning to add to the ambiance. Across from her sat Darce Earl. He was wearing a sports coat, white shirt and tie to fit the occasion. Looking across at Shari who was wearing a coral-colored blouse, he offered a polite smile. “You look wonderful,” he told her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You look fine as well.” And then: “The case, Darce.

  Let’s talk about what you know, or what you think you know, that wasn’t fully shared with the Bureau.”

  “So soon? We just got here.”

  After they ordered, Shari waited for Darce to start the conversation, which he did, the moment of sitting here, however, with someone outside of her deceased husband, seemed awkward to her.

  “So, how do you like the Investigation Unit?” he asked her. “I know it’s a far cry from what you used to do.”

  “I could have left with a full pension and medical,” she answered. “But retirement wasn’t for me. I needed to keep busy.”

  Darce knew she had a hard time coping with the loss of her family after a homegrown terrorist assassinated them, then followed up with an attempt to eliminate her. The result, however, was a near-fatal wound which cost her portions of her lung and bowel, and weeks locked inside a coma with her life on the balance between the living and the dead. “And yet here you are,” he said. “And looking as great as always.”

  “The case, Darce.”

  “Relax, Shari. The meals aren’t even here yet.”

  She sighed inwardly.

  “All right,” he told her. “Fine.” He waved a hand through the air in mild frustration. “What do you want to know?”

&nb
sp; “You said that you could provide me with a little light to the situation beyond the reports.”

  He nodded. “The Nocturnal Saints.”

  “And?”

  “All business and no play, I see.”

  “Darce, I told you beforehand that I would meet with you regarding information on the case. Nothing more.”

  He gave her an even stare that lasted for long seconds. Then: “The crime scenes were completely sanitized. No prints. No hairs. Nothing.”

  “I know that.”

  “Word coming from the department is that the accusing finger is now pointing to religious zealots that cropped up on our radar about six months ago. Perhaps a cell.”

  Shari leaned forward. “And you kept this to yourselves?”

  “This is nothing but speculation,” he told her. “Nothing’s been verified. And so far we’ve gained no traction as to whether or not they’re involved in this.”

  “And there’s no say in the reports about them?”

  “Like I said, they’re only on the radar. But without trace evidence to link them—” He cut himself short.

  “Do these ‘zealots’ have a name?”

  “Six people,” he said. “Late teens to early twenties.”

  Shari fell back into her seat with her brow arched in skepticism. For all practical purposes they were just kids, hardly the type of people who could manage this type of sophistication. “Past histories?”

  “Picketing in front of churches. Tagging certain cathedrals with graffiti in protest with the pope’s extremely liberal views. That sort of thing.”

  “No violence?”

  “Like I said, nothing but speculation at this point. And not enough to add to the reports. But you never know, right?”

  “You got the names so that I can check into them?”

  “I can get them for you.”

  “Could you?”

  “Of course. I’ll send them by email. And what about you? Gaining any ground on the matter?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”