by Declan Finn
He gestured at Ryan, as though to concede a point that Ryan hadn’t made. “Granted, he will be found guilty no matter what. But, he is, unfortunately, making us look bad. Our bastards can’t be bothered with knowing anything about counter-arguments; they knew nothing about who or what they are trying to convict, only that he and his thoughts are inconvenient. They don’t like what he says, and refuse to hear the message. They would much sooner be slaves to their desires and whims than mastered by their reason.”
He smiled. “The Enlightenment elevated their reason to the status of godhood, and thus decided whatever they thought was the truth, so therefore facts mean nothing.”
“But real people don’t think like that,” Ryan finished the argument for him. “They either follow facts or showmanship.”
Ioseph nodded. “Showmanship, the Pope has. Facts, he has. The lawyers used for this conviction haven’t even bothered to accumulate enough facts to bury the Pope in trivia, and they don’t try to put on a good show. It’s just…” He groped for the word. “Lazy. It’s just lazy.” He sighed. “I miss the old days. The show trials were at least entertaining from our side.”
Ryan arched a brow. “I know a few people who would disagree with that assessment. But you think that torturing the crap out of me will make a difference to either Kovach or the Pope?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps it is a bit of an indulgence on my part, but I assume you will eventually try to free the Pope—I know you. I know your family.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, you know my family?”
Ioseph met his prisoner’s eyes, and reflected back on one thing that his own father had said about the man who had crippled him, made him limp for life, and that was the man’s eyes. They were eyes filled with destructiveness and intellect, and plenty of fun, and joy, and cheerfulness that his father had never understood. The man had been caught, captured, his colleagues killed, but he was still hopeful and bright.
Ioseph always suspected that was the other thing that had driven his father half-mad. Before the man escaped with his British colleague, the prisoner had given his grandfather his true name. After weeks of torture, he had finally broken.
That night, the prisoner had escaped with his friend.
He hadn’t been broken, but just wanted to rub it in, essentially saying that: “I didn’t break, I wanted you to know that I knew I would escape. I knew my name would mean nothing, but you’d always remember.”
And until the day he died, he knew the name... The name of Ryan.
Mikhailov himself never knew if that had been a first or a last name, which he suspected was the point. And when he had found the true Ryan in London, his first reflex was to have him killed. Even when the man was over 80, he still got the drop on his men.
This man had nearly killed him, and Mikhailov was in his prime. Nothing and no one could stop him, not ever...Until this Ryan.
That would end tonight.
“It does not matter. I know you would go after the Pope. No one else would dare. No government would break him out, no private contractor would risk relations with potential clients, and only private citizens would lead any sort of charge. And Xavier O’Brian? I think not. Fr. Francis Williams? Unlikely. Your Secret Service analyst? Your Interpol agent? I’ll take whatever advantage I can get while I can. You two are mine.”
Ryan blinked. “Two?”
* * *
Down the hall, in another slaughter room, Manana Shushurin came to, looking down over her own naked form as she dangled from a set of chains looped around a hook in the ceiling. She looked around the room and sighed.
In the corner, a large man set out power tools as he hummed the theme to The Hunt for Red October. He was large and beefy, and even his face was heavyset.
“Boris, you never struck me as a Tom Clancy fan,” Manana said.
He did not reply, but he did lay out an acetylene torch.
* * *
Ioseph Mikhailov had left, only to be replaced by someone with a lab coat and a gut about four sizes larger than Ryan.
“Into lab research, huh?” Sean Ryan smiled.
“After a fashion,” he said, in a French accent so thick that the N dropped from the last word. “This is my lab.”
As he brought out a canister of tear gas, and a catheter, Ryan knew that this was going to hurt.
* * *
At the moment that Ryan and Manana woke up in their prison, the Pope stepped up to a historian who specialized in exposing Church bigotry towards Islam. Pius XIII stopped halfway between his table and the witness box. “Mr. Sadiq, does your religion have any animosity towards mine?”
Alexander Sadiq smiled, smoothing out his Oxford shirt and dark brown Brooks Brothers tie. His suit was tweed, made in London, and he was immaculately dressed by anyone’s standards. “Not historically, no. Christians are, after all, People of the Book. Islam, too, believes in your Jesus.”
The Pope smiled brightly. “Truly? Where is that mentioned in your faith?”
“In the Koran itself,” Sadiq said with a smile. This was obviously going to be easy. “In it, Jesus is called Issa. He predicts the coming of Mohammad, blessed be his name.”
The Pope acknowledged this with an easy nod and wandered back over to his desk...and paused, his brows furrowing, his mouth drawn into a thoughtful frown, his face a mask of confusion. “How is that possible?”
“Excuse me?”
The Pope turned to Alexander Sadiq. “Issa appears out of place and time, with no reference to Israel’s landscape; his mother is called the sister of Aaron, and gives birth to him under a palm tree. All his miracles are drawn from Christian apocrypha—according to the Koran, he does not even die on the cross. In fact, according to the Koran, both Christianity and Judaism are actually false religions, aren’t they?”
“They are more like...superseded. Much like Christians claim to be the next stage of the covenant with the Jews.”
“Really: It’s like that, is it? What is Koran, 5:64?”
“‘As often as the Jews light a fire for war, Allah extinguisheth it. Their effort is for corruption in the land, and Allah loveth not corrupters.’ ”
“How annoying that Israel wins every war it fights,” the Pope said with a smile. “And 3:110?”
“‘Ye are the best of peoples, evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong, and believing in Allah. If only the People of the Book had faith, it were best for them: among them are some who have faith, but most of them are perverted transgressors.’”
The Pope smiled. “How nice that we are not all perverted.”
Sadiq grinned, his teeth barely grinding together. “I would not say that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. Now, since you bring up the Koran, I have heard that most of the book has been taken out of context, correct?”
Sadiq nodded, happy for the shift, and, frankly it was an easy way to slip in more of his talking points. “True. However, most of the book lacks context itself—Allah and Muhammad (peace be upon him) are the two major speakers. We require both Hadith… sayings and actions of the prophet… and tafsir… commentaries… to provide context.”
“Oh?” Pius XIII asked. “Friends of Muhammed were taking notes?”
Sadiq took a moment to decipher whether or not he was being made fun of, but rejected the idea. “No, they had been written later, after his death. Muwatta Malik is the earliest, and Sahih Bukhari is the most comprehensive.”
“I recall Bukhari being nine volumes long,” Joshua added for the audience’s education. The prosecution, the judges, and the audience were all wondering exactly what the point of this was. “What is Bukhari, volume 4, book 56, verse 3012?”
“‘I resemble Prophet Ibrahim more than any of his offspring does.’”
“Ah…so Muhammad believed that he was more Jewish than the Jews. Interesting. And Bukhari, 4, 61, the mid 3630s, what does that recall?”
“It recounts the Prophet reviving the order of
Allah.” Sadiq said proudly.
The Pope dramatically arched a brow for the cameras. “Oh? In what fashion?”
“The Jews had read from the law, but deliberately covered a portion of it so it could not be read. The Prophet had the law uncovered and carried out.”
“Which law?” the Pope asked casually.
“Stoning and death for adulterers.”
“In my church, we let the first without sin cast the first stone.”
Sadiq narrowed his eyes. “Allah willed it.”
The Pope shrugged. “I think that’s what a predecessor of mine said about the Crusades. When Muhammad waged war, how were the spoils divided?”
Sadiq blinked. “Only the Prophet was entitled to them.”
“How convenient,” the Pope drawled. “And what of raiders killing Quraysh during the sacred month, or when Muhammed was given a ‘revelation’ to marry Zaynab bin Jahsh, a woman he had already been attracted to?”
“What about them?” the academic asked.
“Both of these were occasions where Muhammed cast aside his own principles when it was convenient,” the Pope answered. “So, I ask again: is there any animosity between our faiths?”
“It could possibly be qualified as you dislike us, we dislike you back,” Sadiq said in his soft British accent. “After all, you launched a crusade against us in 1095. The first of many.”
The Pope stopped wandering the room. “And that was the first war between the Christian West and Muslim East?” After Sadiq hesitated, the Pope smiled. “Let me simplify it—when was the Battle of Tours, fought between one Charles Martel and Governor-General Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi?”
Sadiq cleared his throat. “The year 732.”
“Over three hundred years before the first Crusade. Thank you.” Pius nodded. “And what can you tell me of dhimmitude?” he asked, pronouncing the “dh” like a “z”.
“Dhimmi is an Arabic word, meaning ‘protected’. Dhimmitude is a French creation of the 1980s for how we treat non-Muslims. As everyone knows, we treated Christians and Jews much better than the Catholic Inquisition.”
Pope Pius XII smiled gently. “So, making Jews wear the Star of David was not part of this Dhimmitude?”
Sadiq blinked. “I do not know what you are talking about!”
“What is the other translation of dhimmi?” the Pope asked.
“Other translation?”
“Of course.” The Pope practically beamed. “Almost every word in every language can be translated differently, can it not?”
“Of course... the other translation means ‘guilty.’”
Pius gave a thoughtful, “Ah,” and said, “So the People of the Book were protected because they had received word from Allah, and guilty because they did not convert?”
“Of course not!” Sadiq barked.
“Koran, 9:33, let Allah ‘be made uppermost above all other religions’!” he snapped. “And what of Koran 9:30, 9:31 and 32, and 33-5, where Christians are cursed for not only worshiping Jesus, but also damned for not paying their taxes?” The Pope’s eyes narrowed, no longer amused or playful. “Tell me of the Koran, 9:29.”
Sadiq sneered. “What of it?”
“Was it not the revelation from Allah that commands Muslims to fight Jews and Christians until they accept an Islamic hegemony? Including the dhimmi poll tax called jizya? Their land tax for being an infidel, even for fellow ‘People of the Book,’ called kharaz. What about the mandatory alms from said infidels—the zakat?”
Sadiq leaned forward in his chair, and the people in the room tensed, thinking that this eloquent British scholar might just attack the Pontiff. “Careful, priest.”
The Pope kept going. “As I recall, the punishment for failure to pay, or for paying late, a punishment meted out by the local qadi, religious judge, is death by stoning or beheading.” He smiled without mirth. “I’m sure the American IRS would enjoy such powers.”
“The Jizya was necessary!”
The Pope nodded. “Of course, it’s the chief source of state income. Though, under sharia, the value of a dhimmi’s life is one-half the value of a Muslim’s. Jews and Christians are worth one-third. Indian Parsees? One-fifteenth. If a Muslim murders a dhimmi, any infidel, he must pay a blood-money fine. No Muslim would ever be jailed or sentenced to death for the murder of any dhimmi or any number of dhimmis.”
The scholar turned purple. “We are a religion of peace!”
“What about Koran 9:41, where ‘jihad fi sabil Allah’ …armed struggle to establish the hegemony of the Islamic social order…jihad for jihad’s sake…is the best deed a Muslim can perform? Or Koran, 8:9, 12-13, instructing the armies of jihad to strike Unbelievers above the necks? Sounds like a terrorist home video, does it not?”
“Of the world’s population,” Sadiq thundered, “there are over a billion Muslims; only ten percent are hostile to the Christian West.”
The Pope’s smile was quick and fleeting. “That is still a hundred million people, Professor Sadiq. And they seem to have a predilection for firebombing cars in Paris, killing filmmakers who disagree with them, like Theo Van Gogh, not to mention becoming offended at Danish cartoons.”
“Those cartoons were offensive! They would be the equivalent of what you call antisemitism.”
“Truly? I did not know that criticism meant insults—or did they say more than, ‘there’s a connection between some portions of Islam and violence’? Which seem to be the consensus of almost every jihadist.”
“They do not count.”
“But, certainly, freedom of speech is also the freedom to annoy,” the Pope said. “Were the cartoons worth the lives of over a hundred and thirty nine people and over eight hundred injured in the international rioting?”
The Pope nodded sharply, whether in acknowledgment or agreement no one could tell. “If symbols of the Prophet had been stored in urine or smeared with elephant dung? What would the reaction be then?”
Sadiq snarled at the idea. “That would be even worse blasphemy.”
“Then be grateful you are not a Catholic. I just described two exhibits in American Museums, with Jesus and the Virgin Mary.”
* * *
Undisclosed Location
“When that light goes on,” Boris explained, “we will begin.”
Manana followed his gesture to the camera setup. She glanced around, and examined his tools. She knew Boris from when they trained together at the Charm School, and like a lot of the others, he had eyed her all the time. Only he was less subtle about it. No one had ever told him that drool wasn’t subtle.
So, obviously, they were going in for a round of torture. But if they needed it taped, then it was for someone else’s benefit—and unless they were going to go into the business of snuff films, the Pope was the only person she could think of.
So, they can’t torture the Pope without the world seeing something’s wrong, but if they torture me and he breaks, no bruises, burns, or scars on him. And in my case, no one will miss me … Except Scott…
* * *
In another place, the torture on Sean had started a little early.
In his life as both a stuntman and a bodyguard, Sean Ryan had gone through many types of pain. Ryan had been set on fire, dropped from heights, had his entire ribcage broken at once, shoved into an open steam pipe, shot, stabbed, and had done just as bad unto others before they had done onto him. So, he was no stranger to pain.
This was much, much worse.
It was much like steam—steam was essentially fire, only without the bliss of smoke knocking you out, or burning away nerve cells—and in this case, it felt like it was coming from inside his body.
But Ryan did not scream.
The sociopath with a medical degree who hovered over Ryan simpered in pleasure. Then, Ryan’s world dissolved into a haze of fiery agony that must have been similar to what Hell was like.
But Ryan would not scream.
Ryan had filled his lungs to capacity, so much that his r
ibs felt like they had compressed on him. The pain pulled at his throat for his scream, and he remained silent for as long as he could. Seconds ticked by. Five…ten…twenty…thirty…
And then he screamed. His scream was so loud that his throat went hoarse halfway through. The scream was so powerful, it emptied his lungs entirely, squeezing every last drop of air from his body.
With what little control Ryan had, he did his best not to breathe. When he did, he did so in short, sharp gasps that provided little air. His long acquaintance with pain granted him just that much control of his body as he started to hyperventilate. It was still pain that made him want to break…shatter into a few thousand pieces, and for the larger pieces to crawl under a rock and cry.
And, mercifully, Ryan’s hyperventilation increased as his body struggled for air, and then, with a final gasp, he blacked out.
* * *
The Hague
After that particularly sharp hit, the Pope’s demeanor relaxed, and his smile was amused. “When my predecessor, Benedict XVI, quoted a medieval view of Islam, merely presenting the point of view of the age”—the Pope’s voice then cracked sharply—“those ten percent invaded churches, assaulted nuns, and reigned havoc on my Church whenever possible!”
“That is a gross exaggeration!”
“Really?” The Pope gave a small, irritated smirk. “When Barbary Pirates of the early 1800s operated out of Tripoli, their ambassador told Thomas Jefferson it was their duty to capture Christians for slaves. Has that view changed?” This time, when Sadiq did not answer, he waved it away. “If you do not wish to answer, let us move forward. What about my predecessor John Paul II—was he hated?”
Sadiq shook his head. “Of course not.”
“Would I be better off asking why did Ali Agca, a Muslim, shot the Pope?”
The professor blinked. He had not expected to be confronted directly with individual cases. He had thoughts about grand sociological forces, personal pressures and hatreds, but none of that answered these questions.
“You seem put out, sir,” the Pope said consolingly. “Let me try something else. What do you know about Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem?”