Sons

by Michael Halfhill

  Jan frowned, remembering the many who’d died, if not by his own hand, then as the result of his orders.

  “Let’s hope God’s listening.” Jan looked up at the vaulted ceiling and studied the hard stone. “As you know, Jacques, when I was a boy, I was immensely poor. Now I’m immensely rich. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  “Jan, you have heard the saying that to those whom much has been given, much is expected. No one can fault you in this.”

  Nodding toward the dead hearth, Jan said, “Doesn’t the fireplace work anymore? It’s freezing in here!”

  The ageing abbot ignored the remark. He had avoided any hint of why he wanted this meeting. Now he was going to meddle in a realm of which he knew very little. A realm he would have shunned had it not been for the Vatican thrusting it upon him.

  “Jan, I asked you to come here because I want you to speak with someone on behalf of the Church. The Archbishop of Seoul contacted me via the Vatican.”

  The monk gave Jan a sidelong glance, searching for a sign that Jan knew what was coming.

  Jan tensed but said nothing.

  “The Archbishop asked my help in contacting you. He wants me to ask you to meet with someone.”

  “Someone? Who?” Jan asked warily.

  “Actually, two people, Dr. Kwon Du-Ho and Mrs. Kwon Yon. Terrorists murdered their son in Iraq. They made a video of his beheading. You may have seen it on the news.”

  The old man shuddered. He had seen the results of many atrocities in his lifetime. The mania of Fascist Italy and Spain, as well as the meticulous documentation of Nazi Germany, lived on in his tortured memory. Monstrous as these murders were, they counted as but a few in the history of human crime. Yet, in all his long life, Jacques had never witnessed a brutal murder, only the aftermath, until now. The abbot had the esteemed Cardinal-Archbishop of Arles to thank for his recent nightmares. Jacques didn’t ask where or how the prelate came by the video. He merely assumed Vatican sources were sending it to the entire College of Cardinals. Rumor had it that after viewing the tape, the Pope spent eleven hours lying prostrate on the floor before a mural of the crucified Christ, praying and weeping.

  Jan too reflected on the young man’s murder. Of course, he had seen the video and others like it. This particular one was made by a gang of murderers, posing as valiant rebels defending their homeland against foreign occupiers. The tapes he saw were not the ones carefully sanitized so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of those men and women who pulled the levers of life and death in quiet, air-conditioned, government offices in Washington. These images were available to all six Mundus Masters and their associates through the seldom talked of back channels of the news world. Complete and unedited, they showed the last grisly and painful moments of each captive’s life. Jan pulled a frown and cut the old man off.

  “Jacques, I know who the Kwons are. They’ve tried to contact our Asian Mundus representatives several times. There’s nothing we can do. Their son is dead. They know that, you know that, I know that, hell, even the Pope knows!”

  The abbot said nothing, leaving Jan to stand in the glare of his silent reproach.

  Jan reached out, taking the priest by the arm, feeling his bones beneath the rough wool robe.

  “Old friend, you must understand. There’s nothing we can do! Even with Mundus’s considerable resources we weren’t able to rescue the Kwon boy.” Jan looked deep into the old man’s eyes. “Believe me, we tried. As for the Kwons, we certainly can’t resurrect the dead—and the Middle East? Well, it is what it is.”

  “Won’t you at least talk to them?”

  “No!” Jan said, exasperated.

  “Jan, they are souls in distress!”

  “That’s your department!” Jan snapped.

  Jacques pulled the wool cowl of his robe over his head and gave Jan a fixed stare.

  “I remember an eighteen-year-old boy standing right where you are now. Mon père, help me! I am a soul in distress. Those were your very words, my son. Have you come so far that you can no longer see yourself?”

  Jan felt the stab of guilt only Catholics and Jewish mothers can inflict. In a flash of memory that seemed like hours, he gave way under the memory of his own past heartache, a heartache borne of sexual uncertainty and the loss of his childhood and family.

  “Jan?” prodded the priest.

  “All right! All right! You win. I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow morning. Ask them to meet me at my Paris apartment at ten tomorrow evening.”

  Jan pulled his card from a pocket and jotted his Paris address on the back. He shook his head as he handed it to the abbot.

  “Frankly, Jacques, I don’t know what I can possibly tell them that they don’t already know.”

  “You’ll know when the time comes. I’m sure of it.”

  “Hmm, I wish I had your confidence. Anyway, I’m leaving for Philadelphia in a few days. I want to be home before the New Year.”

  Jan, defeated but equally sure of the outcome of any meeting with the dead boy’s parents, said, “Now if you’ll stoke up a fire, I’ll tell you about my conversation with a certain cardinal I met in Rome last month.”

  JAN waited for the Kwons in his Paris penthouse apartment situated at the tip of the Ile Saint Louis, one of two islands in the River Seine. Beyond the window’s wavy glass the Cathedral of Notre Dame glowed burnished bronze as dozens of floodlights bathed its ancient walls. Their soft warmth belied the coldness of the city in winter. Jan thought back to the first time he saw the great cathedral. He was just eighteen. Paris was the first leg of a trip Tim made for the World Court at The Hague, and he had brought Jan along. It was autumn. The water, still warm from a late summer gasp, gave up a mist that swirled around the base of the great church, making it look as if it floated on air. Jan’s breath caught in his breast as he remembered running to the river, crying his excitement. Tim! It’s Notre Dame! Come on! Come on!

  Amal, Jan’s valet, broke the bittersweet dream. “Effendi, your guests have arrived. Marguerite asked them to wait for you in the study.”

  “Thank you, Amal. Please ask her to prepare tea for us. Amal?”

  “Yes, Effendi?”

  “These people are the parents of the Korean man who was beheaded in Iraq. They may appear unfriendly….”

  “I understand, Effendi.”

  Amal retreated from the room, his head hung for shame that a murder should be committed in the name of Allah.

  Jan turned back for one more look at Notre Dame. He took a deep breath before heading across the hall to his study. He had no idea what to say to comfort these people. He waited near the door and watched a tall man as he inspected a row of leather-bound books titled, Birds of America, published in 1777 by the Comte de Buffon. Dr. Kwon pulled out a slim volume and studied a page while Mrs. Kwon admired a gilded Louis XIII sideboard set against the simplicity of walls and woodwork painted in a soft ivory color.

  “I’m afraid the illustrations in that book are a bit bogus, Dr. Kwon. The Comte de Buffon never visited America, and so his drawings are somewhat fanciful. Still, they are beautiful, are they not? I’m Jan Phillips.”

  Husband and wife exchanged startled glances.

  Jan noticed their expression.

  Mrs. Kwon apologized. “Excuse us, please, you look so much younger than we expected.”

  “I understand,” Jan soothed. “Many people have the same reaction.”

  The three shook hands. The couple sat side by side on a sofa covered in a tiger-striped silk. Jan took a low, black-lacquered, Empire side chair.

  “Before we begin,” Jan said, “please let me say how sorry I am for you, and for what happened to your son. Permit me to share in your grief.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Phillips. You are—” Mrs. Kwon struggled for the words. “—most kind.”

  Dr. Kwon spoke for the first time, in perfect English.

  “Mr. Phillips, we have come a long way to see you.” He paused a moment, trying to frame his words in such a w
ay so as not to lose face and yet clearly indicate he was begging Jan for help.

  “We believe you are our last hope. You see, we want you to find the man who murdered our son, Soo. We want you to kill him and bring us his head in a box.”

  The man spoke this last part as if in a frozen trance, as if he had spoken these words so often that they no longer bore their true meaning.

  Jan was taken aback by the abruptness and iniquity of the request. Surely, he reasoned, the Vatican had no idea this was what the Kwons had in mind when arranging this meeting, and yet Jan knew the Vatican’s history. Its hands were not free of blood. Far from it. Peace and universal love for all men was a relatively new Church doctrine and, in certain oppressed parts of the Catholic world, not altogether welcome.

  The couple was suddenly embarrassed at the thought that they had offended Jan, and fearful the man on whom they relied to assist them in avenging their son’s murder would reject them because of a blunder of words.

  This isn’t going well. Jan composed himself before he answered. He rose, walked to a window, and fingered an intricately braided tassel that held back a delicate drape of yellow crepe de chine.

  They’ve heard of Mundus, so there’s no point in ignoring its existence. Might as well confront it.

  Jan looked out the window and fixed his gaze on a line of cars darting across the Pont St. Louis. Rain droplets smeared the red and white lights into bright bursts of color. He exhaled a deep breath, fogging the cold glass. He turned and walked to where the couple sat uneasily.

  “Do you have any idea what Mundus is?” he asked quietly, almost hoping he would not be heard.

  Mrs. Kwon studied her knees. She answered, her words tinged with shame. “Yes. My uncle was a spy for North Korea. He worked for Kim Jong-il’s government… a scandal… I do not know how to say it. The Mundus people discovered his activities, and they reported him to the South Korean government. My husband and I know that Mundus has powerful people who can help us.”

  Jan shoved diplomacy aside and said, “Powerful or not, Mrs. Kwon, you and your husband come into my home and ask me to commit murder as if you are ordering a dinner in a fancy restaurant!”

  Chastened, husband and wife remained silent.

  Jan softened his tone a bit. “You must know what you ask is impossible. I—”

  The stricken man also threw courtesy aside. “Do you know how my son was killed? Do you?” he yelled at Jan. “They intended to kill him all along, and they offered no mercy! They stabbed him in the front of his throat and sawed slowly back and forth until they cut his jugular vein. He was alive—alive the whole time! He knew! He was conscious until they hacked around from right to left, and only after they severed that vein was his torture ended.”

  As he spoke, Mrs. Kwon, a small woman with delicate features, rose from the sofa and moved to the window where Jan had been standing earlier. She gazed out at the sacred shrine built to honor the Virgin Mother of God but saw only shadows through her tears. She slumped and then sobbed, pounding her fists together as her husband detailed their son’s last moments.

  She whispered, as if to no one, “He learned Arabic so he could understand and love their people better. My Soo was a good boy. What happened to him cries to heaven for punishment!”

  Punishment. Jan thought of a point of law that says a man is guilty of “contributory negligence” if he acts in a way that contributes to his being harmed or killed. Could he argue the point, in the light of what was happening to foreigners in that region, that Soo’s decision to go into a danger zone showed negligence on his part, and thus he contributed to his own murder?

  Jan considered the Kwons, beaten down with sorrow and resentment. No, he knew that argument was a horse that wouldn’t run. This wasn’t a courtroom where he could argue cold facts. It wasn’t even an inquiry into the facts, but rather a conversation about murder for hire, illegal in most countries and immoral everywhere. Besides, they were under the misguided belief that Mundus’s nongovernmental activities were of the type that transgressed the moral laws and committed premeditated murder. No, that was not Jan’s way. Even if he could kill, he wouldn’t without absolute necessity.

  Finally, Dr. Kwon broke the tense silence, finishing his wife’s thought. “You see, Mr. Phillips, our son was a member of a movement within the Catholic Church. Although he was a social worker, his desire was to bring the message of Jesus to the people.”

  “It is an Evangelical movement,” Mrs. Kwon interjected.

  Her husband continued. “As frightened as he was to die, he loved them as he loved all people, but worst of all for my beautiful son, he understood every hate-filled word those murderers spoke, and he knew when the knife was coming. Can you imagine his terror? I am a surgeon. I know how fearful people are at the thought of being cut open. I beg you once again, in the name of God, help us!”

  Jan heard their words, but his mind reeled back to the Nubian Desert where a dozen youngsters lay dead, their lifeblood drenching the hard packed sand… on his order. The smell, peculiar to death, assaulted his memory. Sweet, yet decidedly like old perfume gone rancid. Project Scimitar was his baby, his first trial as a Mundus Master, where every detail was considered. Nothing was left to chance, yet twelve innocents never saw the next day… on his misguided order. Twelve boys were never to know a first kiss, a first love… on his order. Twelve boys would never lift their children into the air and experience those gleeful squeals all children make, Do it again, daddy! All on his order.

  Jan rubbed two fingers up and down his forehead and shook off the waking nightmare that had plagued him for years.

  Mrs. Kwon returned from the window and sat beside her husband. They waited, breathless, for Jan’s response, unaware of the battle raging in his breast. Jan returned to his chair and sat. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and looked both in the eyes. He hoped his reasoning would help them understand.

  “Dr. Kwon, Mrs. Kwon, you believe I have the power to avenge your son’s murder. You are wrong. What I do have is the power to cut a bloody path through those who have done no harm to you, to your son, or to anyone. People who have committed no crime. And even if I were to agree, and succeed in this, the men who are responsible for your son’s murder were masked, like the cowards they are. You would never know for sure, I mean truly for sure, if the guilty were punished. You have to know that.”

  The man’s shoulders shook, but his eyes would not weep. He said, “What I know, Mr. Phillips, is the Bible says an ‘eye for an eye’.”

  “If everyone followed the Bible, the world would be blind,” Jan replied sourly.

  “You don’t understand. I loved my son more than you can know. I would have gladly offered myself in his place in order to save him!”

  Jan thought, If you loved your son so much, why did you let him go to such a place?

  Jan forced judgment from his mind and said, “Perhaps one day you may get the revenge you seek, but if you persist in letting your grief eat at you, then you may as well dig your own graves now and lie down with your son. Sometimes, when we know the person committing a crime has been punished, the blessing of closure is granted to us. Many more times, we must wait for heaven’s judgment. Believe me, if I ruled the world, we would not be having this discussion. I’m sorry. I truly am. There is nothing I can do.”

  Dr. Kwon looked around the opulent room as if the book-filled walls could offer the wise words he needed to persuade this powerful man to change his mind and avenge his son.

  “Mr. Phillips, do you have a son?”

  “No, sir. I’m… no,” Jan said.

  “Soo was my only son. My wife and I are beyond the time for making more sons. You understand.”

  Jan nodded.

  “I tell you this because you don’t know what the loss of a son means until you experience it yourself. You are still a young man, with power and position. Believe me when I tell you that even with all your power, the loss of a son would kill you inside, as it has me.”


  Jan stood, bent over, and rested his hand on the broken man’s shoulder.

  “Vengeance belongs to God. Your faith tells you so, Dr. Kwon. Leave vengeance to God. Take your son home.”

  Mrs. Kwon took her husband’s hand and rested her head on his shoulder, but she stiffened as she observed a tall young Arab enter the study. Amal, dressed in a gold-threaded, flowing galabiya over a long white thawb, carefully placed a tray of sweet Moroccan mint tea on a low table of ebonized wood and looked at Jan.

  “Is it permitted for me to speak?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Jan replied.

  Turning to the murdered boy’s grieving parents, he averted his eyes and said, “Sir, madame, I want you to know I am very sorry for you. I know that your son died for his Jesus. Blessings be upon Him. Your son was a martyr. A special place will be made for him in paradise. Enshallah, if Allah wills it—I am sorry.”

  Mrs. Kwon looked at Amal through tear-flooded eyes but said nothing. Her husband, stifling a sob, looked away and nodded a silent acknowledgement.

  Amal bowed slightly and left quietly.

  “Please excuse me a moment,” Jan said.

  Jan followed Amal into the kitchen.

  “Effendi, did I do wrong?”

  “No, Amal, you did well. Thank you. My guests will be leaving soon. Ask René to bring the limousine around for them.”

  SHORTLY after the Kwons left the apartment, Jan returned to his study and accessed the Mundus internal database on his computer. He checked the recognition code for the day before calling Sebastian Faust. The Mundus Master for the African continent was also responsible for the Middle East. Jan needed permission from Faust to phone a request to the Persia chapter. He was sure there would be no problem; however, Mundus’s protocol demanded this courtesy. After a brief conversation with Sebastian, Jan dialed a secure satellite connection, punching in the coded number for the Mundus operative in Persepolis.

  A young voice with a thick accent answered on the second ring.