The Redemption Man

by James Carver

  The Redemption Man

  James Carver

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Epilogue

  A note from the author

  Prologue

  He sprinted through the rain, weaving in and out of the mesh of branches nearly invisible now in the darkness. He had long ago lost any sense of how much ground he had covered or how long he’d been running for. It had been dusk when he’d entered the forest. Now a moonless night had fallen and closed in around him like a tomb. Must have been a couple of hours at least, he guessed. But it felt like an eternity. His body and his nerves were beginning to give. And yet it wasn’t completely hopeless. Not completely. After all, he had speed, agility, and youth on his side. If anyone could do it, he could. He had to. He just couldn’t keep running forever.

  The rain that had started out as a fine drizzle was hammering down. The waterlogged forest floor felt like it was moving under his feet. Just in the nick of time, he skid-braked into a hard stop and stood panting on the brink of a bank. Below him was a steep slope. He looked back over his shoulder. In the far distance, he could see tiny pins of light bobbing and winking at him through the trees and slicing rain. His heart burned with fear. There was no way back. He slid his foot down the side of the bank, trying to get a firm hold. With a hand placed on the top of the ridge, he crouched and cautiously placed his other foot on the wet incline and began to sidle down. Very quickly he found himself accelerating, gravity and frictionless, wet mud taking over. He slipped onto his backside and began surfing the sodden earth. Faster than he could register and faster than his hands could react, his foot caught on a root, and the weight of the top half of his body pulled him over into an uncontrollable spin. He started to tumble at speed, speed that kept increasing until eventually the slanting bank evened out into flat ground and he rolled to a stop in the middle of a clearing.

  Soaked to the skin and covered in dirt and blood, he scrambled to his feet and scurried back into the cover of the forest. Moving quickly in these circumstances needed constant concentration and fast reactions. But he was hitting exhaustion, and his reflexes were deteriorating. Suddenly, out of nowhere, his brow collided against a bough, and in a white flash he found himself spread-eagled on the forest floor. He sat up cradling his head and began to panic.

  Jesus. How long had he been out for? Seconds? Minutes?

  He struggled to his feet, but his head ached and his balance was off. He looked back in the direction he’d come from and saw the lights again. But now he could hear voices too—men calling to each other. He turned and flew off again, choking on the rain. The voices and lights were not so far behind him now, closing in. Not for the first time, he considered surrender. Throwing himself on their mercy. But he knew there would be no reprieve. These people didn’t even think of him as human.

  Another low branch struck his body, slamming him onto his back and embedding him in mud. By the time he had gotten to his feet, the pack of men was so close he could see cones of light sweeping the trees and hear branches being broken as they forged their way toward him. Desperation began to overwhelm him. This was their land, their forest. He was lost.

  He managed to stand and swayed, breathing unevenly. Then, at the edge of his vision, something twinkled and caught his attention up ahead. Something at last that wasn’t darkness or more forest. Through a small gap in the dense woodland, a white light flashed. Not the swing of a flashlight though… There it was again. A white light that zipped by. And another. Not flashlights… No…headlights. Cars. On a highway. And then he heard it, above the sound of the rainfall, as if plugs had been removed from his ears: the thrum and buzz of traffic. He made one last lurch into a walk, not running but using the trees as crutches, throwing himself forward from one trunk to another until he stumbled onto open ground, drenched grass underfoot that rolled down toward a busy highway. He blinked away the tears, blood, and rain, and his blurred vision made out a police cruiser pulling over, then coming to a stop. A door opened and a uniformed figure stepped out.

  He fell to his knees. He had made it. He would live after all. The police officer walked up the bank of grass toward him. Through a sheet of tears and warm blood, he made out an outstretched arm. Was he being beckoned? Yes. An arm was reaching out to beckon him forward. Protection. His nightmare was over. He wrenched himself to his feet and began to walk toward the police officer.

  Now, as his terror receded, his mind slowly began to take control of his raging emotions and to piece together what the officer was doing. Something wasn’t right.

  The officer’s outstretched arm was holding a gun. Why was a gun being pointed at him? He wasn’t any kind of threat. Then the officer spoke, with a soft voice just audible over the falling rain.

  “Turn around.”

  He looked at the cop and then at the gun in the cop’s hand that shook a little from being gripped too hard. It wasn’t within his power anymore to live, but he sure as hell would decide how he died. With one last breath he summoned all the courage and strength he had left and ran at full tilt, screaming at the top of his voice, a ragged, lunatic death rattle.

  Three shots did it. Two to stop him in his tracks and one last one to the head as he lay twitching in the wet mud. And he was grateful for each one of them.

  1

  The figure in black leaned against the hood of his beat-up Ford Explorer, tilted his head up toward the blue sky, and let the midday sun warm his face. He was standing in front of St Patrick’s Church on G Street in Washington, DC. One hand held a lit Cohiba Corona, and the other was buried into his jacket pocket, gently rolling a rosary bead between his thumb and forefinger. Silently he mouthed the Fatima Prayer to himself: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy.” He pulled on the cigar, sucking in a thin ribbon
of heat and smoke that seethed between his teeth and curled down the back of his throat, baking his lungs.

  The silver Chevy Impala was a 2004 3.8-liter model. It was the LS with rear spoilers and leather bucket seats. This particular Impala had red and white Ohio plates. The man in black knew all this because it was the same Chevy that had followed him from Baltimore down to DC. It was the same Chevy that had followed him all the way down New York Avenue, and it was the same Chevy now parked up half a block away along G Street, sitting outside some gaudy, billion-dollar-making clothing store for people so young it made the man in black tired just thinking about it all. It was possible of course that they weren’t following him. It was possible it was just a coincidence. When you have something to hide, everything looks different.

  He stamped out the cigar, grinding it with his heel into the sidewalk. He was dressed entirely in black save for the square of white at his throat, which he fingered with hands that trembled. He waited for the shakes to ease off, then headed up the church steps, entering through the ornate limestone arch.

  Father Hector Hermes had finished his last confession of the day. He was reflecting on the sins he had heard when the booth door opened and the darkly lit frame of a large man slid onto the seat behind the screen.

  “I’m afraid I’ve finished taking confession for the day. The red light was…”

  “Hello, Hector.” Father Hermes instantly recognized the voice, a deep, distinctive rumble, and looked up in surprise.

  “Gabe? Gabe Devlin? Where have you been? I called you a dozen times. Why haven’t you answered?”

  “I’ve had some thinking to do.”

  “They told me you quit your church? Is that true?”

  “Yes. Yes, it’s true.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was no longer fit to minister.”

  “No longer fit? Since when?”

  “Since I made a decision that I could not honestly perform the duties of a priest. It was a kind of sudden decision…”

  “No kidding. Gabe, you can’t just quit. Are you doubting your faith? Every priest I know, every cardinal I know has doubts. Quitting isn’t the answer.”

  “I’m not quitting the priesthood, Hector. Not yet anyhow. I’m taking some time off. I just wasn’t fit to lead my congregation. Any congregation. Not right now. And I have a short-term plan. Of sorts. I’m heading to Georgia. An old Air Force friend said there might be an opening, training paratroopers at Jump School. Just for a few months. Some space is all it is. Beyond that, I can’t say.”

  There was a silence. Hector’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been drinking?”

  Devlin clasped his hands, not in prayer but only to keep them still. “Yes.”

  “Gabe, it’s been seven years since you touched a drop.”

  “Have been drinking, Hector. Have been. I stopped three days ago, but I still have these damn tremors. I’m off it now. That’s an end to it. But it had nothing to do with quitting St. Jude’s.”

  “So what happened, then, Gabe?”

  “I fell.”

  “You fell? What does that mean?”

  “What it means is, I’d like you to hear my confession, Hector.”

  Hector didn’t respond for a moment. His dark, lined eyes, overhung with the odd stray hair from his thick brows, locked onto Devlin, making him out in the shadows of the confessional for the first time. Devlin, Hector observed, was a big, impressive man not easy to place in years with a thick shock of black hair swept back from the temples. His large frame and strong features gave him presence and authority, but there was still a suggestion of a youth not so long gone around his blue eyes. Middle age had not quite arrived yet. When he spoke, if you listened very, very carefully, you could hear the thin seam of an old, soft Belfast accent that had refused to be entirely forgotten. The sharp downward light, what little there was of it, gave his deep-set eyes a haunted, almost tormented appearance. And there was something else too, something slightly extraordinary about Devlin. His presence was charged with an energy. It had a crackle about it. Hector thought of it as a troubled divinity. And it troubled Hector as much as it seemed to trouble Devlin. Hector worried at the unknown consequences of this overflow of spirit.

  “Are you in trouble, Gabe?”

  “Yes. But it’s my responsibility to live with what has happened and mine alone. Something’s happening to me, Hector. I can feel it. I’m not who I was. I can’t explain it any other way… Hector, you picked up the pieces when Jane died. You mentored me through seminary. You are the only person in the world I wholly trust. Will you take my confession?”

  “Of course, my son.” Hector dropped his head and made the sign of the cross.

  The light outside on the confessional booth went red.

  An hour later Devlin reemerged into daylight. It was now just after two, and the lunch rush was dying. The sun beat down, so Devlin shaded his eyes making a quick scan up and down Tenth Street and up over to G Street. The Chevy was still in the same place. He could just about make out two figures sitting in the car, both wearing sunglasses.

  Okay, thought Devlin, let’s see what the deal is here.

  Devlin got into his car and set off down Tenth Street, eventually turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue heading southeast out of DC. He kept checking his mirror for the Chevy nosing about in the run of traffic behind, but there was no sign of it. Maybe he’d lost them. Maybe it was his paranoid imagination at work. Or maybe they’d held back and, for the first time since he’d seen them, done a decent job of tailing him.

  He drove on for a couple of miles toward the Beltway and turned right down Southern Avenue. He kept driving until the neighborhood took a steep dive, and he found himself cruising past empty row houses that stood in weed-lined streets with liquor stores on the corners. And then, finally, he hit on exactly what he was looking for—a bank. It was a Sun Trust bank, and it sat in a run-down stretch of retail and industrial estates. Devlin pulled up in the parking lot and waited. After a couple of minutes, the Chevy appeared and stopped over on the other side of the highway, opposite the parking lot. Devlin got out of the car and strode toward the bank, a modest, slim brick building with two white faux-classical pillars either side of the door topped with a pediment. As he approached the entrance, he straightened his collar, buttoned his suit jacket, and once inside made for the counter.

  “Hello, can I help you, Father?” The teller gave him her warmest smile.

  “You surely can. I would very much like to open an account if that’s possible.”

  “Oh, we can absolutely help you with that. I’ll call an account manager for you. Would you like to take a seat?”

  “Of course. Thank you.” Devlin sat waiting for a minute or two until an impeccably dressed young man with gold wire glasses and thin brown hair parted to the side approached him, extending a pale hand.

  “Father, my name’s Martin. I’m the assistant branch manager. I understand you wish to open an account?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Come with me.”

  They sat down at a desk by a front window, and Martin logged in to his desktop. “Now, I’ll need to see some ID of course.”

  “ID?”

  “Yes, driver’s license or passport will do.”

  “Oh, I don’t have one of those with me.”

  “Right. We can’t open an account without identification, Father. You understand that would be impossible?”

  Devlin clasped his forehead in horror. “Of course you can’t. You must think me a complete fool.”

  “No, no. You wouldn’t be the first. People just don’t think of these things,” Martin lied.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve opened an account. Well, a priest only needs the basics, financially speaking. I’ll have to go back home and pick up my driver’s license.”

  “And social security number, please. That’s another one folks forget.”

  “Yes, of course. You know, I only intended to come out here for t
he bank, but I got caught in that wretched dollar store and spent about seventeen dollars on absolute trash. I tell you, they’re an addiction with me.”

  “Really, Father, forgive me but…”

  “I shouldn’t be allowed near them. My congregants joke that I’ll make myself bankrupt—but I shouldn’t be telling you that, should I?”

  “It’s fine, really, Father.” Martin stood. “I’m sorry, do you mind? It’s just I have another customer waiting.”

  “Of course.” Devlin stood, hesitated for a moment, then sat down and said, “There was another thing I thought I should mention.”

  Martin sighed and sat down. “Yes, Father?”

  “I’ve been walking up and down, doing a bit of window-shopping.”

  “Is this really important? Because Saturday is very busy for—”

  “And there’s this car over on the other side of the highway. It’s been parked outside the bank with two men in it for at least as long as I’ve been parked here. That’s got to be an hour and a half, more even.” Martin was suddenly on his feet and peering anxiously out of the window.