Vatican Knights by Rick Jones Page B

standing against the opposite wall. If the man had
chosen not to speak, the pope would never have known he was there.  
    The figure stepped into a shaft of
wan light, with his hands clasped behind his back. He wore a black tactical
jumpsuit, a black ski mask, and combat boots. “How are you feeling?” the man
asked, speaking in a clipped accent. 
    Pope Pius XIII raised his bony
hand, the chained hand, the movement itself imploring and fragile. “Please,” he
said. “Why are you doing this?”
     The shape took a step closer, the
toes of his boots nearly touching the edge of the pope’s mattress. “I do this,”
he answered, “to end the madness once and for all.”
    The pope gave him an inquisitive
look.
    “Whereas your Christ was the King
of Kings who readily embraced the world, Pope Pius XIII shall become the Martyr
of Martyrs who will divide it.” The shape took a step back and was again
swallowed in darkness. “You will be the catalyst for the beginning of the end.”
    The pope was unable to grasp the
meaning of what was being said, the words cryptic, the voice hollow and growing
distant. The shape spoke in riddles, while his mind was still numb from the
ketamine in his system.
    “I don’t understand.”
    The shape illuminated one thing
further. “Tomorrow you will begin to usher in a new age,” he said.
    And like a wispy comma of smoke in
a blowing wind, the shape was gone.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER NINETEEN
     
    Team
Leader made it a point to separate the pope from the bishops of the Holy See
and the governor. He wished to evaluate each man on his own mettle, without any
support, encouragement, or comfort from the pope.
    He wanted to see if the bishops
truly believed in a paradisiacal afterlife, if they would readily accept death
as a graduation rather than the end. He would watch them with studious
appraisal to see if their eyes reflected hypocrisy or genuine belief in the
moments before he pulled the trigger. In this fashion Team Leader was an
observer, a scientist, a searcher for truth. Does an afterlife of absolute
peace and tranquility exist? And is blind faith the wings that carry humankind
to such a place? If he could discover the truth, he would gladly surrender to
it.
    But Team Leader had grown tired;
his searching always ended in disappointment. He had seen nothing more than
cowardice in the faces of all the men he had killed. Still, he searched for a
spark of hope that a better life than this existed. Everybody wants to go to
heaven , he considered, but nobody wants to pay the price of admission.
    Shaking his head in
disappointment, Team Leader walked into the dank and hollow corridor. In the
slivers of fading light that penetrated the edges of the boarded-up windows, he
walked to the room where his team had anchored the governor and the bishops of
the Holy See to a wall with lengths of chain. The stench of their filth hung on
their garments and in the air, constant and unyielding.
    On the mattresses, still affected
by the sedative, the bishops were moving humorously about like corpses in a
George Romero film, as they reached mindlessly for the purchase of something
not there. On the last mattress lay the governor, a silver thread of drool
spilling from the corner of his lips as he lay unmoving.
    “Tomorrow, my dear governor,”
whispered Team Leader, “we’ll start with you and write a new chapter of
history.” And then he turned to wake his team from their short, but granted
time for rest.    

 
     
     
    CHAPTER TWENTY
    Washington, D.C.
    September 23, Late Evening
     
    The
distance between the Archdiocese of Washington and the Sacred Hearts Church was
less than a mile. The Vatican Knights walked through the soup of an early morning
fog, their footfalls quiet and catlike.
    When they arrived, the church’s
brownstone walls bore the greasy sheen of wetness. The stained-glass windows
emitted a faint glow from candles burning within, flickering with the rhythm of
a heartbeat.
    When they