Reckoning

by James Byron Huggins

  His gaze grew serious once more. "And, while we are on the subject of superior knowledge and wisdom, Father D'Oncetta, I have often had difficulty understanding the true meaning of the Copernican turning point in the theory of knowledge and faith as it was captured by the philosopher from Konigsburg. Do you think that you might be able to illumine my mind in this, as Simon would so often do while we walked through the hills near Umberto? I'm sure it would be a simple task for someone so superior as you."

  Grim, D'Oncetta looked vaguely away.

  And as if absorbed by his thoughts, Clement shook his head.

  "If I remember correctly," Clement continued, laughing as a man laughs at happy memories, "Kant's critique of pure Reason was the beginning of the end for the Enlightenment, setting cruel philosophical limitations to the proudly claimed omnipotence of Reason." He smiled. "Yes, I recall how Simon could discuss the hidden implications of the death of Reason for hours, always bringing the spiraling tendrils of lofty logic down again to that central, Copernican theory. Yes," the old man nodded, "I was hoping that you might also be able to explore its depths."

  D'Oncetta said nothing, maintained a steady and elect bearing.

  "Yes," Clement continued, "I understand. It is difficult, is it not? Please, forgive me for reminiscing, Father. But sometimes, in the strangest hours, I wish to hear my old friend's words again. It is impossible for me to duplicate the context of his august learning. But I can remember how he would explain how subjectivity always colors true reason, therefore coloring judgment and a priori thought. He found it humorous that men would use pure reason to establish moral standards, or even, to establish the meaning of reason itself. He likened it to measuring one fish by another fish."

  Clement laughed again. "I can remember how he would often joke merrily at those who proclaimed so proudly that reason and superior thought would deliver them or lead them to moral enlightenment. Yes, he would speak for hours on how truly synthetic judgments which decide ultimate issues and genuinely increase our knowledge are possible only in mathematics, and not metaphysics. And when he had intimately explored virtually all the dimensions of a priori knowledge that fail to achieve true knowledge and which can never build a tower to God, he would categorize all of the pomposity where it truly belonged, as suprasensible thought that offers only the illusion of logic, but was not truly logical at all. Merely the proud reasoning of proud men. And he would explain how, if one demands certainty in thought, then he will surely meet with failure. He would talk about how, in knowledge, enough is always merely 'something,' and not 'everything' because ‘everything’ cannot be understood through language or thought. Ambiguity is everywhere. But I am sure that these are simple thoughts for one such as you, Father D'Oncetta. Perhaps they are even insulting for one who stands among the master race, and who has, by association, humbly donned the mantle of a superior being. But then neither Simon, nor I, ever made claims to superiority. We merely continued our poor search for truth with hope, with study and discipline and tolerance. And with a dedication to what we believed was right. Surely, our actions were unworthy of a master race of the intellectually enlightened."

  D'Oncetta was silent, face expressionless.

  Clement leaned back against the throne, his farmer's hands clutching each of the solid golden globes decorating the armrests.

  A defiant silence reigned between them.

  Finally Clement spoke, all mockery gone. "You might have learned much from poor Father Simon if you had taken the time to speak with him, D'Oncetta, instead of eliminating him."

  Slowly, D'Oncetta took in a deep breath, released it suddenly. "I see that there can be no agreement between us, Clement."

  "No." Clement shook his head. "There can be no agreement. But I will take no official action against you, Father. I shall not make you a martyr. You deserve to be called a criminal, yes, but not a martyr. And you deserve to be called a murderer, for that is what you are. But I know that your crimes can never be proven. Even so, do not be deceived. The Judge of all the Earth has sealed your fate. And I do not speak of the nebulous Cosmos which Augustus so zealously worships. It will not be the neutral God of Light that supposedly melds Augustus's spirit-soul with Eternity, allowing him to speak with men who are long dead and men who have never lived. No, it shall be a different God, a holy God who sacrificed Himself on Golgotha."

  Clement's voice contained the drum, drum of doom. "Until that day, however, until you ascend from this fleshly tomb and stand before the judgment seat of Christ, you must deal with me. And I tell you this, D'Oncetta, you are never to set foot in Citie del Vaticano again. Not while I live. You may continue your intrigues with the cursed Cardinals who have aligned themselves with Augustus, but not on holy ground. And you may tell Augustus that Clement stands against him."

  D'Oncetta shifted, his gaze unfaltering. "This is your final word?"

  "It is my final word," Clement said grimly. "Because the time for words has passed. I assure you that when you see me again, Father, you will curse my name."

  The black-robed priest raised his hand, pleading indulgence. "Allow me, first, Holiness, the opportunity of delivering this message to Augustus. I believe he may well heed your warning. But, of course, he will need time to consider means of forging that peace. Many lives are at stake, and events have occurred for which there will be consequences. We will need time to study the situation, to placate our allies and create a suitable ending. By your own great love for mercy and grace, I ask that you give us time to deal with these potentially dangerous issues."

  An ominous silence cloaked the throne room, and Clement's eyes glinted flintlike in the gloom. He recognized that Augustus, his old and cunning enemy, would never surrender his dreams of a global empire of the ruling elite. But he also knew that mercy must have its say …

  Even for monsters.

  Slowly, he nodded. "As you request, Father D'Oncetta. Tell Augustus that he has one month to consider his error and make amends. But he must take no action against the Americans, or peace will be severed. Advise him that if he does not return the manuscript within that month, we shall both discover whose forces are truly superior."

  D'Oncetta bowed. "A wise decision, Holiness. I am sure that Augustus will wish to speak with you personally. Where shall the meeting be held?"

  Clement lowered his face, resting for a moment before raising it again.

  "In the graveyard by the sea," he said. "It will be on the ground that Augustus cherishes most that I will begin this battle."

  *

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Booted feet resting on his desk, Kertzman began to read the heavy stack of reports recently out of the NSA office.

  Since the disturbing night with Sir Stephenson in the church, Kertzman had reverted to wearing an old pair of sturdy, brown corduroy pants, a heavy cotton, western blue work shirt, and boots. It was rugged footwear and dress wear, the kind of clothes he would want to be wearing if he were going to either run or fight for his life.

  By reflex, at Stephenson's tone of danger, he had also reverted to the oldest golden rule of hunting: Always bring enough gun for the job. A new Colt .45, a slightly modified 1911 with an oversized safety and beveled magazine port for fast reloads had never left his side and even now rested on his belt in an easily concealable cut-down Velcro holster.

  Six extra clips loaded with 230-grain, full-metal jacketed hydroshock hollow points were shoved into his cowboy-style boots, seven rounds to a clip, three clips on each ankle, for a total of 49 shots. Now, no matter what happened, he wouldn't go down without a very memorable fight.

  He reached for a cup of coffee. Then, casually, with a discriminating eye, he scanned the reports, spending less than five seconds on each fully written page before knowing whether there was anything of merit, then turning to the next. It was boring. Tedious. His concentration wandered. A cardboard box filled with the personal papers and effects of Father Simon, the old priest who had worked at St. Thomas and who had died a few weeks
before the infamous shootout at the seminary, rested on a corner of Kertzman's desk.

  Absently, Kertzman glanced at it.

  He had confiscated the papers without bothering NYPD with a federal evidence request before he had left the church, and he knew it was a long shot that he would find anything of interest. It was a shotgun approach, checking everything, anything, just to find a lead. A desperate move for a desperate man.

  A quick perusal uncovered private devotional letters, treasured notes, travel logs, archeological diaries, and a passport. Kertzman had no reason to suspect that the deceased Father Simon had anything to do with this, but he felt a brief impulse of pride to know that he had, in any case, covered everything. At least he had retained that much emotional control after Stephenson had shaken him up with the superman speech. But as he continued to stare at the box, Kertzman became slowly curious, and his mind geared down into a surprisingly concentrated mode.

  After a moment, with a gaze of slowly intensifying suspicion, Kertzman laid down the report he was reading. Then he reached out to pull the box closer, tilting it to stare down into the haphazard contents; a blend of letters and notebooks. He fished out a handful, opening a black archeological diary dated to 1976.

  Thumbing slowly, he glanced through it, found places and dates, personal observations of finds, locations of discoveries, things Kertzman couldn't understand. He dropped it back into the box, moved to the next book, and the next, studying one after the other, scanning, absorbing, getting a basic understanding of the old man.

  Then a thought, faint and thin, came from the distance but closed hard and gathered fast as it neared, concentrating and sharpening in clarity until Kertzman suddenly reached out with a quick movement and stood, staring down into the box. In seconds, rummaging roughly, he found it, lifted a small blue passport from the pile.

  Mouth slack, eyes widening slightly in excitement, he immediately had it open, scanning, studying the stamps and markings, turning the pages quickly and not knowing exactly what it would look like. Then there it was.

  Entered: Israel. June 19,1990.

  His soul confirmed the rest before he saw it.

  Departed: Israel. August, 1990.

  Kertzman's teeth came together hard, lips drawing back.

  Eyes gleaming, he smiled; “I found you!”

  A sign, a track, something leading out of this desert. Kertzman saw it all: Gage, lost in the Negeb in August, 1990. Father Simon, also in Israel in August, 1990. And deep inside, where he had begun tracking a cold wind trail to the lay of the land, Kertzman suddenly knew where Malachi Halder would also be found in August of 1990.

  Israel.

  Kertzman read the faint imprints in the dust, felt it; a dim gathering of an almost invisible sign, long worn by time, almost gone. But it was there.

  He was certain.

  That's the key, he thought. Something had happened in the desert that tied them all together.

  Taking another sip of coffee, Kertzman sat back down, heavily, the scenario revolving in his head for long moments, again and again, solidifying. He knew he had found the clue, something important. It made sense.

  He leaned back again in the chair, picking up another report. No longer bored, fired with fresh excitement, he allowed his eyes to scan the pages with new speed: no sightings of Gage's car, no traces of him, nothing. Nothing.

  Kertzman laughed, snorting contemptuously. He was still committed to covering Gage's bloody tracks, but now he saw that it would be a lot easier than he had feared.

  Two weeks since the incident in St. Thomas and the NSA, the largest intelligence agency in America, had turned up exactly nothing. The FBI had matched the ammo to a store in Phoenix, Arizona. No connection to anybody who worked in any agency associated with the Cavalier. No connection to anybody who had ever worked with Gage or Black Light or even, as a long, long shot, the United States Army. The Hi-Power was British military issue, and it had been released to a colonel of the Special Air Service in 1974. Kertzman had traced the colonel back to the Puerto Rico Special Warfare School in July of 1979, where Gage had cross-trained with the SAS. That was the only good connection.

  The colonel had died in 1984, and no trace was possible on ownership of the weapon. The British said that, as far as they knew, it was supposed to be in his estate. Kertzman laughed again at that. It wasn't.

  There were absolutely no sightings of the LTD. And that, for Kertzman, was the truly amazing part. No sightings of a shot-to-pieces late-model dark LTD with a smashed-to-smithereens right side and two seatfuls of shattered windows. Yes, it was possible, with the car traveling on back roads, away from city lights. The damaged right side would have been away from traffic, the glass not so noticeable at night. He had seen it happen before. And there was no real coordination of information between law enforcement agencies. It was slightly possible that no one had even looked for it at all.

  In fact, it was amazing how small an amount of truly accurate information did, indeed, circulate in the national police community. Somewhere between the despised uniform officer on the scene, through the sergeant, to the lieutenant, and finally through dispatcher and back again through the same chain of command in a hundred other departments, anything could happen with the simplest wanted bulletin. And often did.

  Probably only two or three cities had even transmitted the bulletin for the LTD. It wasn't required that they did; it was professional courtesy. And on a hot Friday night, courtesy was at a minimum, as was excess radio traffic. So unless the departments had specific reason to believe that the LTD was in their neighborhoods, dispatchers would probably have kept the bulletin off the air entirely. Kertzman thought it likely that virtually no one had broadcast it. It wasn't a verifiable homicide at the time, just a felony hit and run, an important event to civilians but just a slightly interesting call for veteran officers. And Kertzman knew from experience that tired third-shift cops, working the late half of a late night, sleepy and not really caring about anything except an early breakfast and some coffee to stay awake, wouldn't have gone to any real pains to look for it, even if they had received the bolo. Still, though, with a car as noticeable as that, it was probably close.

  "You got lucky on that one, partner," Kertzman said softly, and put the report down. Then he picked up a thick, triple-ringed book from the clutter.

  And saw it.

  In another shotgun approach the Bureau had run a registration check through the National Crime Information Center and had come up with a full listing of all post-1980 LTDs still recorded under any tag for the greater northeastern area of the nation. The list was 275 pages long, single-spaced with four narrowly divided columns for each page. Kertzman estimated over 20,000 listings.

  Frowning, he skipped over 200 pages of original owners and transfers. Gage wouldn't be that stupid. Then he began reading the names of corporations listing possession of an LTD for business purposes.

  A long, painful tension and 30 minutes later, he had found three possibilities: Allied Air Transport, out of Monticello, New York, Expansion Transport out of New York City, and International Air Freight, Inc. out of Boston.

  No matter what Gage did with the rest of the money, he would have used some of it to provide a back door, in case he needed to penetrate the border of a country without using commercial airlines or risking the International Customs' attention drawn by a private flight. It was his soldier's nature, driven into him from spending half of his life in the air or on a ship, flying and jumping, always at war.

  From the relentless conditioning of always fighting someone, and knowing that the old life might return one day to haunt him, he would have a door, something that would allow him to slide back into a warrior's life if the desperate need ever arose, even if it was only for a last-stand suicide run at revenge.

  But Expansion Transport and International Air Freight were both extremely large corporations, too large, even, for Gage's investment. It might attract attention and he wouldn't want to be involved with some
thing so big that he couldn't control it. And, also, they were listed for the greater New York and Boston areas.

  No, Kertzman thought, shaking his head, that wouldn't work. He looked at Allied Air Transport, saw that it was a small airfreight company created in 1989. Then he considered the location: Monticello, New York.

  Kertzman knew the terrain of northern New York. Monticello lay on Interstate 17, a scant 10 miles from the Catskills.

  Kertzman caught the wind, saw the track.

  Yeah, that’s it …

  He was almost certain. It had to be. The Catskill Mountains. A million acres of undeveloped forest with mountains and wilderness trails that Gage could retreat into. He could use his Special Forces skills to evade an army in there, if he had to.

  Kertzman sighed. Yeah, that's where he would be holed up. Somewhere in the Catskills, close to his main business with a wilderness to his back. Even as he thought of it, Kertzman realized how he might be able to bypass Gage's warning flags in the first two or three false identities. It was a long shot, but it looked like the only shot he might get.

  "Yeah," he said quietly, unable to confine his emotion to cold thought alone. "It might just work."

  But there was a problem. The NSA, because he had told Radford and Milburn to focus on airlines, would be running their own ploddingly methodical investigation. Soon the agency would be stomping all over Allied Air Transport, setting off every alarm in the corporation, alerting Gage to the fact that the government was closing in on him. Gage would hang tight for a while, until the investigation got closer. Then he would retreat for another, more isolated location, maybe somewhere in northwestern Canada, to some last-chance stronghold with deep cover. Something in the back of Kertzman's mind warned him that if he missed this chance, if he let the NSA blow it before he could find Gage's hideout, he'd never find the former Delta commando at all.