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T H E S H A D O W P R I E S T
B O O K T W O
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
—Bertrand Russell
ONE
The three men—two in their 70s, one in his late 30s—sat staring at each other on computer screens in rooms thousands of miles apart, brought together by an encrypted videoconference link. The oldest of the three sat utterly mute and motionless in a motorized wheelchair in a room of whitewashed stone walls while the other two spoke.
"I just decoded River Team's last signal," said the younger of the two speakers.
"And?"
"It's graded 'urgent.'"
"And?"
"Apparently Target River Three managed to find documents that reveal the location of Praetorian Station."
"How did we let that happen?"
"It hardly matters now."
"It always matters."
"We'll get it sorted. As a more immediate concern, the team is requesting permission to take preventive measures."
The elder of the two speakers looked down for a moment, as if studying his hands. "I don't suppose they gave you any detail as to exactly why they think it's absolutely necessary that they—"
"All indications are that, for the moment, River Three is the only outsider known to have knowledge of Praetorian Station's location. But it is clear that he intends to disperse this information as soon as he gets to his office tomorrow morning, if not before he brushes his teeth tonight."
The elder of the two speakers went quiet again, turning to look out a window. "What is River Three's name?" he asked at last.
"Encryption or not, according to our teleconference procedures, that you drafted by the way—"
"I asked you what his name is."
"Don't do this to yourself again."
"Tell me."
A pause. "Pratt. His name is John Pratt."
"And?"
"And he's a young DCI agent. He has a wife and four small children."
The elder of the two speakers closed his eyes and exhaled as though punched in the stomach, his face still turned away from his videoconference camera.
"This is our last chance to get the toothpaste back in the tube," the younger man continued. "Either that, or we close down Praetorian Station, sanitize, and build new identities for—"
"I can see that."
For the better part of a minute, no one spoke. Finally, the elder of the two speakers faced the camera again. "Decision?" he asked before holding his breath.
For the first time, the mute old man in the motorized wheelchair moved. He lifted his pale, bony index finger from the control joystick of his chair and held it there, pointed, for just a moment before letting it drop back down. The gesture was hardly noticeable, but the other two men were watching for it.
The elder speaker exhaled and nodded slowly. "So be it. Signal the team to proceed."
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THREE MONTHS LATER
TWO
Special Agent Bill Morrison sat atop his dark brown stallion on a wide open, brush-dotted New Mexican plateau roughly 25 miles southeast of the Four Corners—the point where the borders of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet. It was a cold but sunny day with a steady 10-knot wind blowing down from the north. There wasn't a cloud to be seen in any direction. Three miles ahead, towering nearly 1,600 feet above the desert floor, loomed Shiprock—the jagged, eroded remnant and throat of a 27 million-year-old volcano. Morrison would ride no closer out of respect for Navajo beliefs that Shiprock was a holy place of sorts. Indeed, according to one legend, Shiprock had once been a massive bird—an agent of the Great Spirit—that first brought the Navajo to the region, helping them flee warlike tribes that were assaulting their former homelands in the North. The Navajo still called it "the winged rock."
Even at this distance Shiprock was awe-inspiring. Morrison always thought it looked something like a medieval cathedral. The Notre Dame of the American desert southwest.
Morrison had acquired his horse while deployed on military service overseas, bending a few regulations and calling in a huge favor with a drinking buddy who was a charter cargo plane pilot in getting it shipped back to the U.S. Until recently, he'd thought it was an Arabian—in part because of an odd brand on the animal's flank that looked to Morrison like a modified Arabic letter. But an equine vet he'd taken riding the previous month, in a ham-handed and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to convince her to date him, had corrected his mistaken belief and explained that his horse was instead a Habash—an ancient, rugged, and uncommon breed found in the most remote and mountainous parts Central Asia. Habash horses were famed for their use in Buzkashi—an Afghani game somewhat akin to polo, the most notable difference being that in place of long mallets and a white plastic ball, the horse-mounted players used their bare hands and a headless, disemboweled goat carcass.
Morrison was at the turnaround point of a 30-mile ride—no problem for a strong horse like his. He'd parked his truck and trailer on the side of a rutted dirt road that ran along an undeveloped stretch of the San Juan River, ridden upstream to where the tiny Chaco River flowed into it, then followed the Chaco south until he emerged on the wide-open plain that Shiprock stood upon a few miles to the west. He pulled a canteen from his saddlebag and took a long, welcome drink of water.
He'd taken the long ride to clear his head. To meditate on what was to come. It had been a rough week. He'd driven thousands of miles to covertly reunite his good friend Nate Arkin—a federal agent turned federal fugitive—with his dying wife, Hannah. Once Hannah succumbed, after a long and grueling battle with cervical cancer, Morrison assisted in Arkin's escape from the area and made arrangements for Hannah's funeral. All of this on top of his regular work schedule. And he'd managed it all while under surveillance. He was definitely under surveillance by the U.S. Marshall Service and FBI—who had been hoodwinked into thinking that Arkin was a murderer. He was also probably under surveillance by a homicidal, ideological group of assassins that Morrison and Arkin referred to as "the Priest's group." A group that Arkin originally thought had been formed by a lapsed Jesuit priest named Collin Bryant. A group that Arkin believed was led by Roland Sheffield—a man who'd been Arkin's mentor, father figure, and boss years earlier when they'd both worked at DCI—the Directorate for Counter Intelligence—a post-9/11 inter-agency counterterrorism task force based out of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
The previous week, Morrison and Arkin had flushed Sheffield from his hiding place in Eugene, Oregon, where he was living under an assumed name while working as a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. In the process, they'd drawn out and then facilitated the demise of Andrej Petrović—a psycho Serbian-Canadian artist, sniper, and assassin who for years the Priest's group had been dispatching to murder charismatic extremists of every banner all over North America.
It had been four days since Hannah's passing. It had been three since Arkin, somber and heartbroken, had departed for the Pacific Northwest on a quest for evidence that would exonerate him from an exceptionally clever frame-up—carrying nothing more than a water bottle, a bag of granola, a medium-duty backpack stuffed with clothes, a compact one-man tent, a sleeping bag, and a burner cell phone Morrison had given him. Arkin skipped his wife's funeral because he knew people would be watching for him—people who wanted to either arrest or kill him. He rode away on an old Suzuki sport bike Morrison had borrowed from a friend over in Pagosa Springs. Morrison had given Arkin strict instructions to obey the speed limit and keep his helmet on to avoid any entanglements with law enforcement. But they both knew that, in the unlikely event police attempted to pull him over, Arkin had a good chance of losing them given that the bike had a top speed of damn near 180 miles per hour.
Though he was physically and emotionally weary, Morrison knew his hardship didn't hold a candle to t
he ordeal Arkin had dealt with of late. Somehow, the Priest's group had managed to frame Arkin for murder and have federal law enforcement agencies label him a high-priority fugitive, all as his wife's health was failing, forcing Arkin to flee their hometown of Durango, Colorado. Forcing him to pursue Sheffield and Petrović to clear himself and to neutralize the threat they posed to himself and others. And while Petrović was now dead and Sheffield on the run, it was a good bet that the Priest's group was out there regrouping. Planning more murders. Still planning to kill Arkin—a man who knew too much about them.
As far as Arkin and Morrison could tell, the Priest's group was a band of killers that had penetrated the upper echelons of the U.S. intelligence and federal law enforcement communities. Some were former military. Some were no doubt former spies or spymasters. They seemed to be very well-trained in the covert arts. Arkin believed they were motivated by an ostensibly benevolent goal—to pre-emptively save the world from future Hitlers and bin Ladens. But their methods were extrajudicial, centered on assassinating particularly charismatic extremists—any nut job with a growing following—before the extremists grew strong enough to wreak murderous havoc. And anyone who got in their way or threatened them, intentionally or by accident, got taken out. It didn't matter whether they were good or bad. John Pratt was one such victim. A good man. A husband and father of four beautiful young children. A friend. Morrison swore they'd have to step over his own dead body before they tried to kill Arkin too. He wasn't about to stand by and lose another friend.
THREE
That same evening, 1,200 miles away, having ducked under a double line of police crime scene tape, Arkin poked through the burned, mostly collapsed remains of what had been Sheffield's large house on a hillside toward the south end of Eugene, Oregon. It was dark out, but he wore night vision goggles as he poked around in the charred debris with a discarded broom handle, searching for anything that might give him a better idea of where the Priest's group was located and where Sheffield had gone. The lot was surrounded by dense vestiges of Pacific Northwest coastal rainforest, so Arkin wasn't overly worried about being spotted by a neighbor who might alert the police. Still, he kept one ear open and did his best to keep a low profile. His efforts kept him warm despite the cold, damp air.
There wasn't much left of the house. Though there were 80 or 90 square feet of scorched floor space flanked by remnants of wall in two opposite corners of the foundation, it had otherwise burned to the ground. Arkin had little doubt the fire had been deliberately set with copious amounts of kerosene—apparently one of the Priest's group's favored techniques for getting rid of problems such as a house full of evidence. Having arrived barely an hour earlier to find the house destroyed, Arkin wasn't expecting to find anything of value. But he had to try.
His hands, shoes, and pant legs were already filthy with soot. But he kept searching through the debris, moving aside pieces of charred wood, warped pieces of plastic melted beyond recognition, shards of smoked and broken glass, and partially-burned clothing. His back began to ache from being bent over as he picked through the detritus. But at last, in one of the somewhat intact corners, he lifted a scorched remnant of plasterboard to discover a five-by-seven photo in a simple gunmetal frame, protected by an unbroken pane of glass. Arkin took off his night vision goggles and turned on a small, red bulb LED flashlight he'd been carrying in his pocket to take a better look. In the photo, Arkin, Hannah, Sheffield, and Sheffield's late wife Claudia all stood on the deck of the Sheffields' beach house in North Carolina's Outer Banks, the warm orange light of the setting sun illuminating their smiling faces, a golden sand beach and crashing Atlantic surf in the distance behind them. Arkin remembered the trip well. Sheffield had invited him and Hannah down from D.C. for the weekend to celebrate after Arkin rolled up a terrorist cell that had been planning a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile attack at Andrews Air Force Base—presumably targeting Air Force One. It was a great weekend. The Sheffields had spoiled them with fine food and wine. The experience had cemented Arkin's view of Sheffield as someone he genuinely looked up to and cared about. As someone who genuinely cared about him—seemingly more than his own father had. And yet barely two weeks ago, Sheffield had shot him in the chest three times at close range with a small .32 caliber Berretta Tomcat, probably cracking a couple of his ribs in the process. If it weren't for his ballistic vest, he'd be dead. His ribs still hurt.
Arkin stood holding the photo, examining it in the red glow of his flashlight, puzzled. The same man who'd tried to kill him kept a framed photo of him and his wife in his house. What was he supposed to make of that?
*****
Meanwhile, back in Durango, Morrison ducked into a small bookshop on Main Avenue and chatted with the clerk—one of his ex-girlfriends—for a few minutes before heading to the office in back of the store to use the telephone. There, he dialed the number for the burner cell phone he'd given Arkin after having another friend buy it for him while on a weekend trip to Santa Fe.
"Connors residence," Arkin answered, using the first fake name that came to mind.
"Hola, pendejo."
"Hey," Arkin said, still transfixed by the photograph.
"Catch you at a bad time?"
"No, it's—I found a strange . . . ."
"What?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
"How was the ride north?"
"Uneventful. I'm tired. Had a bad night's sleep where I made camp down on the McKenzie River."
"Are you eating?"
"Don't have much of an appetite."
"You have to eat, Nate. Get yourself a nice bacon double-cheeseburger or something." Silence. "Anyway, got a few things to report."
"Yes?"
"First, I thought you'd like to know that there was a great turnout for Hannah's service. I didn’t know you guys had so many friends."
"I don't. Everybody loved Hannah."
"Well. Yes." Morrison paused. "Anyway, there were four attendees who looked a little out of place. I recognized one from an inter-agency raid down in Chama last year. A U.S. marshal out of the Albuquerque field office. Decent guy. I took down the license plate numbers of the other three and ran them down on my magic law enforcement computer. All legit U.S. Marshal Service vehicles."
"Four U.S. marshals watching for me?"
"Hey, take it as a compliment. They respect your abilities."
"That's nice. But I'd just rather they bought me a beer instead of trying to put me in the bag at my wife's funeral. They aren't fooling around, that's for sure."
"At least there wasn't anyone there from the Priest's group. None of Sheffield's goons, far as I could tell."
"Maybe they're standing down and regrouping after we killed Petrović and flushed out Sheffield."
"That brings me to my next point. They aren't. I ran another check of ViCAP yesterday and came up with a hit in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. A murder where the victim burned to death in a house fire set with kerosene. The victim was the editor-in-chief of a popular lunatic right-wing internet site for fabricated political news stories."
Arkin sighed. "A political extremist and popular fake newsmonger. Sounds like the Priest's group alright. I guess that means time is still of the essence."
"If we really want to bother saving such jackasses."
"Let's not get too high on our ideological horses. Remember, one of the Priest's group's targets, Ted Wright, the First Nations activist in Alberta, has a 5-year-old daughter," Arkin said, thinking of a newspaper photo of Wright holding his little daughter's hand as they walked down the street with ice cream cones. A photo that Arkin had found on the internet while running a search on Wright after seeing the man's home address scribbled on a fax he'd found in a secret room in Petrović's Art Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia. "Wright can't be all bad," he said, suddenly realizing that Wright could still be alive, and that if he was, he was probably still a target of the group. He had to be warned.
"Okay, Mr. Dalai Lama."
/> "Did you learn anything about the fax number?" Arkin asked, referring to one of the numbers he'd copied from a log of inbound and outbound faxes he'd also found in Petrović's secret room.
"Not much of use. I can't link the Valparaiso, Chile, fax number to a name or address. Not without the help of a Chilean phone service provider, which isn't an option."
"What about the one in Montserrat?"
Montserrat was a small island in the Leewards of the Caribbean Sea. A British Overseas Territory.
"Well, you already know that there was a big volcanic eruption on Montserrat in the late 1990s that destroyed the southern half of the island."
"Yes."
"I traced the fax number to an address."
"Great."
"Great, except for the fact that the address is for an office building in the dead center of the former capital city of Plymouth, which was destroyed in the eruption—buried in ash and pyroclastic flows."
"You sure the office wasn't maybe just outside of the destruction zone?"
"Not if Google Earth is to be believed. It's well within the volcanic wasteland."
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