The Holy Bullet

62

James Phelps hung on to the weak thread of life with all his strength, or, at least, that’s how it seemed. He was shaken by intermittent jolts from the rusty van that rushed him to the veterans’ hospital a few blocks from the barbershop.

They’d left through one of the closed doors in the passageway that opened onto another narrow hallway with a door to an underground parking garage at the end. The escape route in case an operation went wrong.

Rafael and Ivanovsky did the carrying with Sarah comforting Phelps. They put him in the middle seat of a 1980s Daihatsu with room for nine. Vladimir drove the “smoke bomb,” as they lovingly called it for the excessive fumes that escaped through the exhaust pipe.

“Hang on,” Rafael encouraged Phelps with his hands on his head.

Ivanovsky took the passenger seat to show Vladimir the way. A Russian mania for knowing more than others or thinking they did. Sarah was in the middle seat next to the sliding door. Phelps’s feet were on her lap.

“Everything will be all right,” she told him.

“Don’t you believe in auto repair shops?” Rafael shouted so they could hear him over the turbulent engine. “The noise and fumes this car is emitting must be detectable from space,” he added.

“This van’s been retired a long time. It’s the first time it’s been used in fifteen years, or more,” Ivanovsky also shouted. “You said you know who’s behind all this?”

Sarah listened silently. Rafael knew who was behind the plot? Who?

Rafael gestured an affirmation. “I think so.”

“Who?” Sarah and the Russian asked in unison.

“I can think of only one man capable of manipulating everything and everyone with such skill. JC. Do you know him?”

Of course, Sarah reflected. Why didn’t I think of that?

“I’ve heard of him, but his existence has never been proved.”

“He exists,” Rafael confirmed, exchanging a long look with Sarah.

“Go down Ulitsa Varvarka,” the barber ordered Vladimir.

They passed a packed Red Square, the Kremlin on the opposite side. Next to the walls was the mausoleum where the embalmed body of Lenin serves as a national and international tourist attraction, along with great men of the nation, a little to the back, Yuri Gagarin, Maxim Gorky, Brezh nev. The cathedral of Saint Basil with its onion dome cupolas, built by Ivan the Terrible, is in front of the Museum of History, separated by five hundred yards of Red Square.

It wasn’t the first time Rafael had visited the city, but Sarah would’ve preferred another situation to enjoy the cultural, historical, and social attractions Moscow has to offer.

“Turn onto Ulitsa Varvarka.”

“It’s longer that way,” Vladimir observed in Russian.

“Do what I tell you.” Ivanovsky turned around to the back again. “What’s the plan of this JC?”

“He has his own agenda,” Rafael answered. “But this web is typical of him. He gives information to you, us, Opus Dei, a few clues to the Americans and English, and we all start moving, thinking we’re the only ones.”

“Where does this Spanish priest fit in?”

“I still don’t know that. It doesn’t mean everything’s interconnected,” Rafael said in a meditative way. Phelps let out a distant moan.

Sarah stroked his leg up to his thigh, with no untoward intentions, despite her uncomfortable attraction to men of the Church, albeit younger ones.

“You’re going to be all right,” she murmured.

“We have to find out what his plan is,” Ivanovsky declared.

“Of course,” Rafael agreed. I know very well how to do that, he thought. You can’t share everything.

“Accelerate this piece of shit.” Ivanovsky angrily turned to Vladimir. “The guy can’t die on us. He has to tell us what he knows.”

“It won’t go any faster,” Vladimir said as he floored the accelerator, unable to get past seventy.

Another moan from Phelps, this time more intense, almost louder than the engine noise of the Daihatsu.

“Stay calm. We’re almost there,” Rafael told him.

Sarah stroked his leg and thigh again, the right one, to be more precise, until something caught her attention, a rise, a projection about a centimeter in diameter running completely around his leg. Like a belt fastened to his thigh… very tightly.

What’s this? she asked herself. At that precise moment Phelps opened his eyes and looked at her in a way he never had before. The thin, timorous old man completely lost consciousness.

A bang on the windshield snapped her out of the lethargy she’d sunk into. Phelps’s eyes were closed. Perhaps it was her imagination, except the belt pressing into his thigh was real.

There was no time to think. A new bang made the Daihatsu roll toward the driver’s side. Ivanovsky started to shout, along with Rafael, who grabbed the seat to avoid falling over Sarah, as he pressed down on Phelps with all his strength so that his dead weight wouldn’t crush her.

“Damn,” Rafael swore.

“What’s going on?” Sarah cried.

Ivanovsky, leaning on the front panel, pulled two guns.

“They killed Vladimir,” he warned. “Bastards.”

Given the slow speed of the van, it stopped after a few yards and rolled over onto the side of the dead driver.

“What’s going on?” Phelps’s weak voice asked.

“Stay quiet. We’re going to get you out of here,” Rafael ordered, red from the effort of supporting him.

“Let’s lower him slowly,” Sarah suggested, drawing back to leave room. She noticed the glass in the sliding door was broken, and she was standing on the asphalt of the street.

Rafael put Phelps down carefully. He now had some control over his body, although he still had a hand on Phelps’s chest. A few seconds later the Englishman was on the ground next to Sarah.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“We’re being attacked,” Sarah informed him, realizing for the first time the seriousness of the situation.

Rafael turned to Ivanovsky. “Give me one of those pieces.”

The Russian hesitated, but finally tossed him one of the guns. He opened the door and looked around. Rafael broke the glass in the window that had been at the side before but now was the roof and stuck his head outside. This model had only one sliding door, on Sarah’s side, now the floor of the van after it turned over. A shot pierced the frame a few inches from his face. The same happened to Ivanovsky. Both ducked back inside the van.

“Snipers,” Rafael explained.

“That’s right,” the barber agreed.

“Russian mafia?” Phelps asked, still suffering.

“No,” Ivanovsky contradicted him. “Americans. They can only be Americans. I can smell them,” he lamented.

“Barnes,” Sarah whispered.

“We have to do something,” Rafael declared. The shots came from two places in front and behind the van.

He tried to get to the back where the window was intact. He watched for a long time.

“Give them a little taste, Ivanovsky.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re there and I’m here. If you want, we can switch.”

The two men looked at each other. Ivanovsky was in the front of the van, standing up, holding on to a seat, Rafael in back next to the rear window, Phelps and Sarah between them, also standing. The seats served as corners.

“Do you want to switch?” Rafael suggested again.

“No, I’ll take care of it,” the Russian growled, muttering some insult in Russian.

He held on to the seat and got up toward the door. From the back Rafael watched the buildings in his field of vision. He watched from one side of the glass with his body shielded by the thin metal of the back door.

Ivanovsky put his head out. A shot struck the van next to his head. He returned two shots over the building. Two shots back, closer, made holes in the metal. Another shot came from who knows where. Better not push his luck. He drew back inside the van.

“I’ve found him,” Rafael said.

“Can you take him out?”

“It’s done,” he informed him.

A hole in the back window showed the deed. It had been the last shot the Russian heard before backing down.

“Why don’t they shoot to kill?” the Russian asked.

“They must need one of us and can’t risk it.”

“What are we going to do?” Phelps asked.

“We stick our head out to see where the rest of them are, or wait for them to come looking for us,” Rafael explained. “Either way…”

“We’re screwed,” the Russian admitted.

“I think we should take them on,” Phelps declared, much recovered.

Sarah looked at him, amazed.

“Don’t you have one of those for us?” Phelps asked, pointing to the gun.

“You know how to use this?”

“No, but I’ll learn.”

Ivanovsky thought for a minute and decided to take the gun off Vladimir’s body, which was curled against the door, next to the floor.

You’re not going to need it, my friend.

He gave it to Phelps carefully.

“The safety’s on,” he advised. “To take it off-”

Phelps took the gun knowledgeably, took the safety off, and shot Ivanovsky right in the middle of his head. He fell lifeless over Vladimir.

“I know how to remove an obstacle,” he advised coldly.

Sarah gave a panicked cry, incredulous over what she’d seen.

Rafael aimed at Phelps, but Phelps grabbed Sarah and put the gun to her head.

“I’m not feeling well,” he imitated himself, then immediately let out a sarcastic laugh that ended in a serious stare at Rafael. “Throw your gun out of the van.”

“How can you do this?” Sarah said, feeling the hot barrel burning her scalp.

“Sarah knows very well what we’re capable of doing to protect the good name of our Church.” He turned to Rafael. “Throw the gun out. I’m not going to repeat myself.”

Rafael broke the glass of the back window with one kick and threw the Glock to the asphalt, far off to the side of the van.

“You’re a first-rate adversary, my friend,” Phelps praised him. “You keep everything to yourself. But I’ve succeeded in getting you to give me everything I need.”

“Do you think so?” Rafael asked daringly. “You’re not as good an actor as you think.”

“Don’t underestimate me, my friend,” the Englishman replied, if he was in fact an Englishman. “The heart attack was well rehearsed. I know how much you worried about me, and I appreciate it. I’d trust you in a similar occasion.”

“I’m not talking about the heart attack. I applaud that performance in particular.”

“What are you talking about then?” His curiosity was stimulated. A sarcastic smile stretched his thin lips.

“Your thigh that hurt you from time to time.”

Sarah understood now the source of the pain.

“What about it?” Phelps’s smile disappeared.

“Nothing would have happened if it had always been the same thigh. That’s where you failed. Sometimes the right, sometimes the left. That means only one thing.”

“A cilice, worn for penance.” Sarah spoke. “That’s what he had around his thigh. That’s what occasionally caused him awful pain. The sharp barbs nailed into the flesh.”

Phelps didn’t like being mocked.

“In any case you’ve given me almost everything I need. I’ll get my hands on the file you took from Sarah’s house. With it, I’ll make JC appear.”

“If only it were that simple.”

“What do you mean by that?” Phelps’s good mood vanished in front of their eyes.

“You consider yourself a great manipulator, a first-rate actor, but you’ve been controlled the whole time.”

Phelps applied more pressure with the gun against Sarah’s head and pressed the trigger a little.

Sarah shut her eyes, terrified.

“Your bluff isn’t convincing,” Phelps finally said.

Three black vans with tinted windows stopped next to the overturned van. Several hooded men, armed with semiautomatics, surrounded the vehicle.

“Everything’s okay,” Phelps shouted.

Two men pulled Rafael outside, handcuffed him, and made him get into one of the vans. They did the same with Sarah.

A little later Phelps made his grand entrance.

There was another man inside the van. He wore dark glasses that matched his suit.

“Stuart.”

“Phelps.” He inclined his head with the necessary deference.

“What took you so long?”

“We had to wait where we wouldn’t be noticed. You didn’t exactly avoid the tourist sites.”

“My beloved colonel, it looked like you were going to give me a real heart attack.”

The two men laughed with pleasure.

“Let’s get going,” Stuart Garrison ordered. “We have a long trip ahead.”

The vans pulled away, leaving the other van behind, the one with two corpses inside.