Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  His head turned, and he groaned.

  “Brady!” she exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

  Stretching the groan into a noisy breath, he fluttered his eyes open. He said, “I’m not having such a good day.”

  She smiled and pulled him into a hug.

  “Somebody hit me,” he said.

  “Scaramuzzi tried to knock your head out of the park with a baseball bat.” She examined his eyes. Both pupils were the same size and not overly dilated or constricted. She made a peace sign in front of his face. “How many fingers?” she asked.

  “Two, the same number of times I’ve been knocked flat today.” He rose onto his elbows. “First, by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brother. Now, by Antichrist.” He shook his head slowly.

  “Do you know what day it is?”

  “A bad day. A very bad day.”

  “Brady.”

  “Sunday . . . unless I was out longer than I think I was.”

  “About a minute. I don’t think you have a concussion, but how you escaped it, I don’t know.”

  “Guess your helmet works.”

  “It looks worse than you do.”

  He scanned the surroundings. “This ain’t the Marriott.”

  She patted a cot. “Try it; you’ll like it. Come on.” She helped lever him up. He plopped onto the cot. She sat beside him.

  He leaned into the wall, closed his eyes.

  She wanted to ask him about his injuries, about the labyrinth, about his activities between the airport and here, but she appreciated his need to simply settle. Even the dimness of the cell could not hide the deepening discoloration of his cheekbone. Arteries in his temple and throat throbbed, slowing as he relaxed. She saw that his injured hand had bled through the bandages again. She squeezed the other hand.

  After a minute, he sat up straight, trying hard to appear uninjured and unafflicted.

  She told him about waking up to find Scaramuzzi in the cell with her and his reason for ordering the Pelletier murders and the attacks on them.

  A spark in Brady’s eyes flared, but he was too weary to effectively animate his outrage.

  “So it was all a sham to make Scaramuzzi look sincere to his board of directors,” he concluded.

  “Smoke and mirrors with life and death,” she agreed. She examined her gauzed forearm. She poked at a bloodstain, checked her finger; it was wet with fresh blood.

  Brady shook his head. “I’ve squandered so many evenings contemplating the nature of evil. I thought I had stared it in the face. I thought I knew it.” His frown deepened. “But I’ve been raging at an impostor . . . at . . . at the smoke instead of the fire.”

  “Scaramuzzi’s the fire,” Alicia said.

  “I thought Karen’s death was senseless. Some clown behind the wheel, either drunk or distracted or careless, swatted her out of existence like a fly. As much as that hurts, what Scaramuzzi is doing is worse.” He raised his eyes to hers. “I’ve been in my own world, living in the past, mourning the present. I forgot about the real world, where the people I love live. And they’re in danger from creatures like Scaramuzzi. If I’m the man my wife loved, then I have to let her go. She’s in a different place now . . .”

  His eyes drifted away, and Alicia knew he was speaking not only to her but to himself. And to Karen and Zach and perhaps even to his God, with whom she had watched him battle for as long as she’d known him.

  “I can’t hold on to her and hold on to the others I love at the same time,” he continued. “I wanted to be with her more than I wanted to be with them. Today, I decided I want to be with them more. They need me; she doesn’t.”

  His eyes came up again. They were moist and red-rimmed.

  She wanted to say something comforting but was afraid any words she had would come out wrong, so she just squeezed his hand.

  “This isn’t the end,” he whispered. He was about to say more when a booming voice interrupted them—

  “You’re celebrities!”

  Scaramuzzi walked toward the cell, his hands raised in mock greeting.

  “Everybody’s asking about you,” he said. “Who are these enemies who invaded my home, they want to know. Who are these infidels? One person was particularly interested, so I invited him to meet you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  He turned toward the blackened corridor and called, “Come, Father!” To Brady and Alicia he said quietly, “The poor man is ancient. He can barely walk.”

  From the shadows shuffled a stooped old man in black slacks and shirt, wearing a cleric’s collar. He raised his head, and Alicia felt Brady’s body stiffen, even as hers did the same.

  “Special Agents Moore and Wagner,” Scaramuzzi said, “meet my head theologian, Father Randall.”

  The old man locked eyes with each of them in turn. He raised a quick finger to his lips, then scratched a day’s worth of stubble on his cheek.

  Brady and Alicia looked at each other. Alicia helped Brady rise off the cot and step up to the bars. There, they stood face-to-face with the man they knew as Cardinal Ambrosi.

  82

  Cardinal Ambrosi—Father Randall—eyed them and nodded.

  To his prisoners, Scaramuzzi said, “Father Randall asked me what you knew about me and how you got as far as my doorstep in just a few days of searching. I suggested he ask you himself.”

  “Indeed . . . ,” Ambrosi intoned thoughtfully. His gaze had settled on Alicia. Trouble darkened his countenance, though he was trying to disguise it as curiosity. His eyelids fell slowly and opened again as if by great willpower.

  “Don’t be late for the Gathering,” Scaramuzzi said quietly to the cardinal or priest or whatever he was. Turning his smile to Alicia, he said, “Be nice to him. He has friends in high places.” He laughed, and Alicia realized he could have been referring to God or the Vatican or even himself; she suspected it was the ambiguity that pleased him. He gave Ambrosi’s shoulder a friendly squeeze and strolled away.

  The old man said, “Please, step to the back wall.”

  “What have you done?” Brady said, each word as hard and heavy as a stone.

  “Please. You can’t leave yet. It’s too dangerous.”

  Alicia pulled Brady back. They watched the old man lean to the keypad, punch in a number, and yank the door open. He shuffled in and pulled the door shut behind him.

  He shuffled over to Alicia’s cot and sat. He sighed, deflating his shoulders and chest. He seemed smaller than Alicia remembered him from that morning. Frailer. She sat beside him.

  Brady glowered. “Scaramuzzi’s pawn,” he said spitefully. “He sent you to trap us.”

  “No,” Alicia said, squinting at Ambrosi’s weary expression. “Scaramuzzi doesn’t know something. He doesn’t know who you really are.”

  Brady snapped, “We didn’t know who he really was. Servant of Antichrist.”

  Ambrosi adjusted himself on the cot, slowly, carefully, using the time to gather himself. He cleared his throat.

  “I had hoped for a different resolution,” he said. “I tried to impress upon you how dangerous Scaramuzzi is, how volatile. I thought . . .” He shook his head, apparently at his own naïveté. “I thought with that knowledge and your desperation to save yourselves—and your son—you would not allow him to come close. I believed . . .” He lowered his gaze.

  “What?” Brady said.

  “I believed you would kill him first.”

  “That’s what you wanted?” Alicia asked. “For us to kill him?”

  “He is a dangerous man, the destruction he is capable of.”

  “So kill him yourself,” Brady snapped. “You obviously have access.”

  Ambrosi tilted his head. “If I failed . . . First, I must find a successor. A priest who can carry on my work. Otherwise, who would watch for and stop future Antichrist candidates, and who would, someday, urge the faithful to hold strong against the schemes of the true Antichrist?”

  “Shouldn’t you have selected a successor about fifty years ago?”
r />   He nodded. “I have had several. They grow bored and drift into different fields. God will send one to me when it’s time.”

  “And until then, you send other people to do your dirty work,” Brady said. He had gripped a bar to keep from collapsing. He stumbled to his cot and sat.

  “You must understand,” Ambrosi said, “when I realized what Scaramuzzi intended to do with the near-death experience prophecy, I attempted to call in the cavalry, so to speak.”

  Alicia said, “You told Father McAfee your name.”

  “With hopes of attracting the whole of your Federal Bureau of Investigation or Interpol. Instead . . .”

  “You got us,” finished Brady.

  “I was working every angle I could,” Ambrosi said. “I had befriended Scaramuzzi’s closest confidant, Pippino Farago. He was a childhood friend of Luco’s who became his personal assistant. I discovered that he possessed evidence that would prove Scaramuzzi is a fraud. I had nearly convinced him to turn it over to the Watchers. I was nudging him toward doing the right thing for himself and mankind. I arranged a meeting between him and a Watcher who would love nothing better than to end Scaramuzzi’s reign. That’s when Pip disappeared, four days ago.”

  “This is the Pip that Scaramuzzi thinks contacted us, and the file he thinks we have or can get?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell him Pip contacted us?”

  “I did. I am sorry.”

  “But why?”

  “To draw him out. You would never have come near him on your own. How could you kill someone you can’t even see? The file is important enough to him, secretive enough, that he would never send his men after it. He would do it himself.”

  Brady said, “You set up this Pip guy to turn on Scaramuzzi and he disappears. You send us to kill Scaramuzzi and here we are, as good as dead. You’re pretty lousy at this whole spy game thing, aren’t you?”

  Ambrosi smiled. “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

  Alicia moved her hand to his back and patted it gently. His face was kind when he looked at her.

  “I only wanted to stop Scaramuzzi. Months ago, Pip was full of wine and complaining about how terribly Luco treated him. He said he wanted to stand up to him, give him his due. I reminded him Luco did not tolerate insolence. He scoffed at that, so I said, ‘Pip, the man killed his own mother’—a story everybody knew. Pip laughed and said it wasn’t true. I knew then that I could trap Scaramuzzi in the lie, make him look like a fraud to the Watchers. Nobody cared if he murdered his mother or not; I had to make them care. I constructed the matricide prophecy, and Scaramuzzi, in his eagerness to win over the Watchers, he bought it.”

  Alicia finished for him: “After the Watchers accepted it, with Scaramuzzi’s approval, Pip would step forward and say Scaramuzzi had not really fulfilled the prophecy.”

  “Better than that. Pip came back to me and confided that he had proof Scaramuzzi had not murdered his mother.”

  “The file,” Brady said.

  Ambrosi nodded. “He must be stopped. Not because he is Antichrist; he is no more Antichrist than was Mother Teresa. But he is a very clever con artist, even more so now that he has deluded himself into believing he truly is who he pretends to be. He will not bring about the biblical Armageddon, but for hundreds of millions, he may as well. Imagine Hitler with modern weaponry—this is Luco Scaramuzzi.”

  Brady wasn’t buying any of it. He said, “But because of your high opinion of yourself and your calling to watch for Antichrist, you’re willing to sacrifice innocent people.”

  Alicia scowled at him. “I think he’s right. What are a few people compared to the millions who could die if Scaramuzzi gets his way?”

  Speak for yourself. He didn’t say it. The only reason he would have said it was to be spiteful, because he agreed with her—and, he supposed, with Ambrosi. He simply did not like being used the way Ambrosi had used them.

  Ambrosi lowered his gaze to the floor, whispered, “Exitus acta paene approbat.”

  Alicia gently touched his forearm. “What does that mean, Roberto?”

  He met her eyes and bent his lips wryly. He said, “The end almost justifies the means.”

  That made Brady smile, but only a little. He said, “I understand what you tried to do, even though I don’t agree with the way you went about it. And I appreciate your own commitment and risk, to have infiltrated Scaramuzzi’s camp. But couldn’t you have done something before it went so far, before the murder of five innocent people, before we almost died?”

  “This may sound heartless, but wasn’t it Napoleon who said, ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’? Scaramuzzi’s operation in America was going to shine a blazing spotlight on him. Simultaneously, I thought that Pip’s evidence against him would find its way into the Watchers’ hands by this time. He would have been squeezed from all sides. I envisioned the Watchers taking him out, and the FBI or Interpol wreaking havoc among the Watchers, making it difficult for them to regroup or salvage the assets they had already invested in Scaramuzzi’s world. I wanted to cause as much harm to them as possible.”

  Brady said, “Were you responsible for sending that Viking after me and Malik after Alicia?”

  “Of course not. That was Scaramuzzi’s plan moving along like clockwork. His intentions were to have you and Alicia murdered on American soil. The world press would have a field day over the slaughter of two federal agents—one of them killed in the exact manner of the crimes he was investigating. Within a day, the Watchers would know it was he who had ordered the killings, and he’d have the boost in credibility he was vying for.”

  Alicia spoke up. “You and Pip were close to Scaramuzzi, yet you were working against him all along, and Pip was about to betray him.”

  Ambrosi nodded. “That is the nature of deceit. Enter that world—that tangled web, as someone called it—and you never know whom to trust; you never know what schemes are working against your own schemes.” He sighed heavily, then continued. “People wonder why villains seem so ruthless, so decisive in their cruelty. It’s because they operate in an environment that punishes anything less.”

  Abruptly, he checked his watch and stood. “I must go.”

  “Wait,” Brady said, rising from the cot. He staggered back, caught his balance, and drew close to Ambrosi. He grabbed the old man’s arm, all bone.

  “You can’t leave us here,” he said.

  “If you escape now, I’ll be exposed. I’ll come back for you later . . . tonight.”

  “We may not be alive tonight!” He was pushing the words through clenched teeth. “We may not be alive in an hour! You got us here; you get us out.”

  Ambrosi laid a gentle hand on Brady’s shoulder. “I will, but you must wait. Don’t forfeit everything now.”

  “Forfeit? I’ve already—”

  “Let him go,” Alicia said. “He’ll be back.”

  He leaned his head toward them. On whispered breath, he said, “Pip was not murdered, as I feared. I saw him today. I think he will contact me, and I will get the file. All is not lost.” He reversed a step and nodded sharply, as if to say, That’s what we have done. We will win this war yet.

  He reached through the bars, felt for the keypad, and made it beep three times. The door opened, and he stepped into the breach.

  Brady said, “At least give us the combination. Just in case.”

  “Have patience, my son. I will not betray you . . . again.”

  Alicia raised her arm, crossing it horizontally over Brady’s chest—a gesture, not a genuine attempt to stop him if he were determined to leave.

  “It’ll be okay,” she whispered.

  Ambrosi clanged the cage closed.

  “But if you can get the file, you don’t need us anymore,” Brady said.

  The old man pressed his finger to his lips.

  He turned and shambled toward the dark corridor on the left, the one Scaramuzzi had taken.

  “Today?” Brady p
leaded.

  “I pray it will be,” he said without stopping.

  “You said today, later today!”

  At the threshold of the corridor, he turned and rested his hand on the wall.

  “Brady, you must trust—”

  The bat arced out of the darkness and cracked into the old man’s temple. Flesh and muscle and bone split under the impact. Blood sprayed as if exploding from a balloon. Ambrosi crashed against the wall and crumpled to the floor.

  “Noooo!” Alicia screamed.

  Brady ran to the bars, rattled the door with all his strength. He swore at Scaramuzzi as the man stepped from the shadows, straddling the downed man, surveying his handiwork. A crimson ribbon streamed from the tip of the bat, drizzling on Ambrosi’s black sweater.

  The cardinal’s lifeblood pooled out from his head, tracing the joints in the stone, rising to cover the stones themselves.

  Scaramuzzi stooped and plucked something off the sweater. He held it up. It was a transmitting device, about the size of a dime, with two thin-wire antennae jutting from it like legs. For the first time, Brady noticed the white iPod earbuds nestled in Scaramuzzi’s ears. Undoubtedly, the iPod was rigged to receive signals from the transmitter. He stepped closer to the cell.

  “I thought the old guy was acting a bit peculiar lately,” he said. “A shame, really. I liked him.”

  An unearthly rasp floated up from the floor: “It’s . . . what . . . you’d . . . expect,” it said.

  All three of them looked to see Ambrosi propped up on his elbows, glaring at Brady and Alicia with wide-eyed wonder, an earnestness that made the hair on Brady’s arms stand up.

  “Oh, now,” Scaramuzzi said, raising the bat.

  “No! No!” Alicia hurled the words at him like stones. But they had no effect. Gripping it in two hands, he brought the bat down on the already misshapen skull. The sound reminded Brady of an overripe watermelon he’d once dropped, carrying it to the trash.

  Alicia ran to the corner and vomited.