by Mark Nolan
“This way big fella,” Dr. Brook said. “We need to have a meeting. You, me and Katherine.”
Daniel nodded and went along with Dr. Brook. He didn’t say anything, he just walked along, deep in thought.
When they entered the room, Katherine said, “Daniel I’m so sorry for what I said to you. I don’t really feel that way, I’m just upset.”
“I’m sorry too, but there is another upsetting thing you need to know so I may as well tell you now,” Daniel said. “The paintball shooting was because of me. A Secret Service agent in Washington named Shannon McKay said it has something to do with my work in Congress.”
“You mean he was aiming at you and missed and hit me instead?”
“No, the man who attacked you did so in hopes of distracting me so I would miss the next few days of work. No one has any idea why that would be so important, but the Secret Service is studying my schedule and looking for clues.”
Katherine stared at Daniel, her eyes red from crying. “A news cameraman shot at my belly to keep you from doing your job?”
“It wasn’t really that cameraman. The person who did it was wearing a facial disguise designed to look like him. Behind the mask was an international assassin.”
Katherine’s face grew pale when she heard the word assassin. “I’m a former prosecuting attorney. Does this have anything to do with the recent attorney assassinations?”
Daniel wished he could have avoided this conversation, but it was a truth that had to be told. “Yes, the Secret Service believes it is the same person. This is a classic old school Soviet-style disinformation strategy. Whoever hired this shooter wants people to believe he is a crazy attorney-hating serial killer. That’s a technique conspirators use to hide their real agenda, which in this case is interfering with Congress and the US government in some way.”
Daniel held up a tablet computer and showed Katherine a news story by a reporter named Dick Arnold. The story documented highlights of Katherine’s law career and it speculated that Jake Wolfe was angry about how Katherine had once sent an innocent man to prison. The man had spent eight years on death row waiting to be executed for something he didn’t do. Recently he’d been exonerated by the Innocence Project using DNA evidence. While the innocent man had been locked in jail, the actual criminal had escaped justice and had gone on to commit several more assaults, rapes, and murders.
“I feel terrible about the mistake I made with that man. I can never make it up to him.”
“That man has nothing to do with this. But these manipulated news stories draw attention away from the shooter’s real agenda. When and if the truth ever comes to light, it will be too late. The conspirators’ goals will have already been accomplished, and their trail covered and witnesses eliminated.”
“Who is behind this? You can’t let them intimidate you.”
“Are you kidding? They’ve already intimidated me. You and our baby are a thousand times more important to me than my career or my run for the White House, or anything else in my life.”
Katherine’s eyes softened and she held out her hand to him. Daniel took her hand in his. They both had sorry looks on their faces. Someone had to apologize first, and since Daniel’s body wasn’t flooded with hormones from pregnancy he felt that it was his job to start. “I’m sorry for arguing with you when you’re in a hospital bed.”
“I’m sorry too. I’ve been an emotional wreck. I apologize for the things I’ve said.”
That was good enough for Daniel, and he put his arms around Katherine and kissed her. She smiled as she kissed him back and thought about how he was always so willing to forgive and forget.
Daniel’s phone buzzed, and he answered it. “Hello Agent McKay.”
“Is that the Secret Service agent in Washington?” Katherine said. “Please let me talk to her for a minute.”
Daniel nodded and said to McKay, “I told Katherine about the situation, and she’d like to speak with you. Okay, here she is.”
Daniel handed his phone to Katherine.
“Agent McKay, this is Katherine Anderson. I thought of a crazy idea I’d like to run by you. It’s dangerous, but it might work.”
Chapter 85
Night fell on the city, and a thick fog blanketed the streets of the North Beach area of San Francisco.
Outside the stone walls of a beautiful old church, a tall man and his golden-haired dog hesitated for a moment on the steps in front of the large wooden door.
Jake wore a pistol hung in a shoulder holster hidden under his black leather jacket, and it felt heavy against his heart. He didn’t want to go into the church, but he was running out of places to hide. He was a wanted man, and he was being hunted by some of the best investigators ever to wear a badge.
He looked around, his highly observant eyes flicking here and there. He didn’t see any threats, he only felt them. His instincts told him something was wrong. One of the hunters was close by and was coming in this direction. Jake felt the danger with an almost animal instinct.
The sky was darkly overcast, and clouds obscured the setting sun. The only people out and about in North Beach were driving in their cars or getting out of taxis to go into restaurants for dinner.
Jake wished he was going into one of his favorite Italian restaurants instead of into this church. He had a craving for the North Beach Restaurant on Stockton Street. It was a local landmark that had served soul-satisfying Tuscan-style Italian food for decades. His mouth was watering for their famous calamari vinaigrette as an appetizer. For dinner he’d try to decide between the sea scallops, the spaghetti with vodka sauce or the gnocchi with gorgonzola. He was hungry enough right now to eat all three. To drink, he might add a humble but tasty bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, the red wine favored by the great painter and sculptor Michelangelo. Or perhaps he’d splurge on some perfectly aged treasure of a Barolo from the restaurant’s famous underground wine cellar.
Jake had not eaten since breakfast, and his stomach growled with a hunger for the delicious dinner. Good food was one of the few reliable pleasures left in life for him, along with the proverbial wine, women, and song.
Out of the swirling fog, there appeared a wrinkled old Italian woman with a shawl over her head. She walked slowly, and in her gnarled hands she held rosary beads and a well-worn Bible. Jake pulled on the door’s large iron handle, opened the door and held it for her.
The old woman stopped mumbling her non-stop Hail Mary rosary prayers for a moment to say, “Grazi.” Then she shuffled inside the entryway.
“Prego,” Jake said, and he followed her inside, with Cody walking along beside him.
Moments after the door closed, an unmarked Police SUV pulled up in front of the church. The eager young uniformed policeman in the passenger seat studied a photograph on the dashboard computer screen.
The rookie cop looked at the driver. “That’s the fugitive and his dog. It has to be them. Who else could it be?”
The more experienced plainclothes cop sitting in the driver’s seat gave the rookie a skeptical look. “That could be anyone. There are seventeen thousand people per square mile in this city and a lot of them have pet dogs.”
“Maybe he’s the fugitive, and he went into the church to ask for sanctuary.”
“Churches can’t provide legal sanctuary any longer. They haven’t since the seventeenth century.”
The rookie checked his pistol and opened the car door. “I want to go inside to look around. Can you watch the door in case he tries to get away?”
“No problem. Just don’t do any shooting inside the church, or the chief will come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
The uniformed officer got out of the car and climbed the steps of the church. He kept his right hand on the pistol in his belt holster. He planned to enter the doorway alcove, hide in the shadows and wait for his target to come out. This was his chance to be a hero.
Inside the church, Jake’s eyes adjusted to the soft light. Candles flickered in the semi-darkn
ess and the air smelled faintly of beeswax candles and wood polish. Jake scanned the church pews. They were empty except for the little-old Italian grandma in a front row seat, still mumbling the Rosary. There was something reassuring about her, like an ancient tree in the forest that could bend in a storm but never break. The journalist inside him wanted to sit with her, drink espresso together and listen to her stories about life. He’d take pictures of her beautiful, wrinkled face—every line representing a joy or sorrow in her personal history.
Jake dipped his fingers in holy water and made the sign of the cross on himself. He touched his forehead, then his stomach, his left shoulder and across to his right. Next he slowly walked along the right wall toward a set of three polished oak doors. Cody walked along beside him wearing his service dog vest.
Behind the center door sat the gracefully aging Father Sean O’Leary, waiting with practiced patience for someone to enter one of the booths on either side, and for another confession to begin. It had been a long day for O’Leary. There was a mass this morning, then a baptism and a funeral, followed by taking confessions for several hours.
He looked at his watch. His confession time for the day was just about done. Few people had their mind on church now that it was getting close to dinner time. He felt the same way, and was looking forward to eating a hearty meal of chicken and dumplings, and then sipping an Irish whiskey while he curled up with a good book for the rest of the evening.
Just as O’Leary closed his Bible and reached for the doorknob, the door to the confessional booth on his right creaked quietly on old hinges as it opened and closed.
“Ah well, no rest for the wicked,” O’Leary whispered to himself. He smiled at his own humor.
When the door to the confessional booth was opened, a light came on inside for the visitor. When he or she knelt down on the padded ledge, the pressure connected to a circuit and the light went off for privacy. Once the light was off, Father O’Leary slid open the small window panel so the two could talk through an ornately carved wooden privacy screen.
Out of the darkness, a deep, male voice spoke quietly. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been… many years since my last confession.”
The man’s voice sounded familiar to O’Leary, but he couldn’t place it at the moment. He had listened to so many confessions, knew so many people. O’Leary heard a dog panting, and he smelled its wet fur. He guessed it could a service dog. The man might be blind or have some kind of disability or health problem. Now O’Leary was glad he’d stayed and had not left for dinner. These two souls needed someone to care about them. He would listen to the man’s troubles and offer him guidance.
There was a pause as the confessor gathered his thoughts, or swallowed his pride. Father O’Leary was accustomed to this. He gently encouraged the man. “Yes we all sin but the good Lord died for our sins. Confess and God will forgive you. What troubles you my son?”
Late in the afternoon on a stressful day like this, O’Leary felt like saying, ‘I’ve heard it all by now, so just spit it out.’ He smiled again at his irreverent thoughts. That Irish whiskey was sounding better by the minute.
In the stillness, Jake took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Father I have broken the seventh commandment. And I think I’ll have to do it again soon.”
O’Leary sat up straight in his chair. He leaned closer to the small square screen between the booths. “The seventh commandment. Thou shall not kill.”
“Yes, Father.”
There was another pause. This time it was O’Leary who took a moment to gather his thoughts. He ran a leathery hand through his gray hair. “You have killed another human being?”
“Yes, I’ve killed evil people.”
As Jake confessed to his killings he instinctively touched the pistol in its holster. He felt he should leave the confessional soon. He had that bad feeling again that something might go wrong at any moment.
“Are you serving in the armed forces?”
“I recently served in the Marines, deployed overseas. I got injured in battle, and I spent some time recuperating in the hospital. A CIA agent paid me a bedside visit there, and recruited to be a shooter… an assassin.”
“Assassin,” O’Leary said slowly, pronouncing each syllable. It had been many years since he’d said it himself, back in Ireland. “But you were an assassin for the government, not for organized crime.”
“Well that’s a matter of opinion. Some people think of governments as a type of organized crime.”
“Feel free to talk about this, if you need to get it off your chest. You’re anonymous here, and I’m bound to secrecy by my vows.”
“I worked for a black ops team that waged war against high value targets. We were like a well-oiled, killing machine.”
“It sounds like the CIA and their drone strikes.”
“Good guess, it was similar to a branch of the CIA known as the JSOC. Whenever they tracked down a major terrorist who could not be hit with a drone strike, they would send in one lone assassin to infiltrate.”
“Similar to what a military sniper does, but up close and personal?”
“Exactly, I was like a Mafia hit man.”
“But you were doing your duty and serving your country when you killed enemies in the line of fire. The cold wars and the fights against terrorism and violent crime are still wars nonetheless. It wasn’t personal, and now you are sorry and you seek forgiveness from God. Is that right?”
“I’m not sure what I feel. The faces of the dead haunt my dreams. But I believe that I was justified in exterminating a few two-legged animals to save scores of innocent people. Including women and children.”
“Did you? Save the lives of innocent people?”
“Yes Father, I killed the killers. The same way a Sheriff in the old West would get into a shootout with criminals to protect the townsfolk.”
Jake pressed the confessional door open just a crack so he could peek out and see the front door of the church. His feeling of danger was getting stronger. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could just make out the shadow of a man hiding in the alcove. Cody was showing his teeth and making a very stealthy but distinct growl in his throat. Jake thought of it as Cody’s jungle growl. Cody obviously sensed some kind of danger here.
O’Leary said, “So you were the modern day marshal and now you may be feeling your own mortality. Those Wild West lawmen saved many lives, but very few of the lawmen lived to a ripe old age themselves. Their power came with crushing responsibility, constant danger and often an early grave.”
“True enough, but the only way a sheriff could keep the people of his town safe from the attacks of murders was with swift and stern justice. It was not exactly what I dreamed of doing with my life, but at that time and place, someone had to do it.”
“Yes, someone always has done it and someone always will. But ask God to forgive you for these killings and he will. Then try to forgive yourself.”
Jake peered through the crack in the door and saw the old woman walking slowly toward the doorway. “I’ve said too much. I don’t want to get you involved in my troubles.”
“People from Ireland know all about troubles, but I’m far too old now to be the least bit afraid of anything. Tell me, where did you do your assassin work?”
“In Iraq, Afghanistan, and various undisclosed locations overseas. I was a troubleshooter in the most literal sense. When they tracked down an extremely troublesome terrorist, I would find him and shoot him. No more trouble.”
“So it was your military duty to terrorize the terrorists.”
“Yes, you could say that, and when I did my duty I was acting on orders from my government. But I came here today because I want absolution. I want to be forgiven for my past killings. I’m carrying the weight of all of those lives on my conscience. I see their faces in my sleep, and I have this recurring nightmare that I’m going to have to fight them again to protect my friends and family.”
“Many people have night
mares, lad. I’d imagine it to be even more common for someone who has seen the terrible things you’ve seen.”
“The first terrorist I executed was the coward who set up a roadside bomb that killed two of my closest friends. He also shot a young girl just for going to school, and he made a video of himself beheading a woman who had dared to drive a car.”
“I believe God will forgive you for killing a beast like that.”
Jake started taking deep angry breaths. “He was a beast who killed men, raped women, and abused boys and girls,” Jake said. “When I put a bullet in his head, I had no doubt that I’d made the world a better place.”
“Are you feeling remorse now that some time has passed?”
“I’m not sure. The killing took a heavy toll on my heart and soul. And yet I’d do my duty again if it was the only way to protect the innocent.”
“I understand son, I wasn’t always a priest you know.”
“I hate to say this, but when I shot that man, it felt good. I was glad to see him die. Father, if I killed evil beasts like him, does that make me evil too?”
O’Leary paused a moment as he considered how to answer. “I’ve also wrestled with that question on many a sleepless night. Nietzsche said that whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
“And he said, if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
“That’s why you need to stay away from your previous violent line of work. Find a peaceful profession and let your soul rest.”
“I’m no longer working for the government, but there is a killer here in the city who is challenging me to a fight. He impersonated me, and now I’ve been falsely accused of a crime he committed.”
Father O’Leary weighed this new information. He reached for his Peterson pipe and Old Dublin tobacco so he could think. But his beloved pipe was not allowed in church. “Do you feel it is your job to stop this killer—or could you let the police handle it?”