The Iscariot Agenda

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Ezekiel sat at an outdoor eatery with a small cup of latte before him. In his hands was the Le Parisien, a Parisian newspaper.

After escaping Necropolis all bloodied and fatigued, he found his way to a hack doctor who healed his wounds for a nominal fee, along with an additional charge up front to keep him quiet. But when the doctor hinted that he would renege out of the deal unless Ezekiel came up with more of the required sum originally agreed upon, Ezekiel grabbed a scalpel and threw it across the room, impaling a cockroach that was scaling the wall.

Point made!

After that the doctor said nothing more and aided the assassin with his healing.

Once Ezekiel was able to travel he made his way to France and kept a low profile.

Now, almost three months to the day after the battle inside Necropolis and sitting beneath a uniform blue sky with the Eiffel Tower serving as the backdrop, with pigeons cooing and pecking at the flakes of his croissant lying about his feet, Ezekiel’s heart grew heavy inside his chest.

On the front page of Le Parisien was a glorified obituary regarding the death of Amerigo Anzalone, Pope Pius XIII. It covered the man’s life, his rise to the papal throne, and the final days of his life as a servant to Christians around the world.

How I must have disappointed him in the end, he thought. And he was deeply saddened. Although the man had gone rogue, he respected the pontiff and wished deep down that Pope Pius had forgiven him on so many levels. For some reason, this was important to Ezekiel as he sat there musing over the times he stood within the glory of this man.

Please forgive me.

Slowly, he lowered the newspaper to the white-clothed tabletop and watched the pigeons gather at his feet without fear — the birds pecking, eating, and cooing while life as usual moved on.

It was a beautiful day, yet a sad one as well.

And then the birds took flight, their wings beating everywhere in sudden panic, nothing but a wall of feathers. And then they were gone.

In their place stood a well-built man with fair complexion, raven hair, and a wedge of pink scarring beneath his chin from a horrible accident. “Disgusting creatures, don’t you think?”

Ezekiel said nothing. He just stared at the man.

The man with the scar pointed to an empty chair at the table opposite Ezekiel. “May I?”

“Do I know you?”

Without waiting for Ezekiel’s invite the man took the seat. “In a way I believe you do,” the man said.

Ezekiel waited.

When a waiter came forward the man waved him off, crossed his legs in leisure, and cupped his hands over a knee. “We’ve never met face to face, but I’m sure you’ve heard of me,” he told him. “In your circle you would know me as Abraham Obadiah.”

As stoic as Ezekiel was, his eyes started as he reached for a weapon.

The man quickly raised his hand. “Don’t,” he said. “Do you really think I would sit at this table without the proper resources backing me up?”

“I’d kill you before they had time to react.”

“I hardly doubt it,” he returned. “Look at your chest.”

Ezekiel did, finding three red spots from laser sightings directed over his heart. However, he could not spot the assassins in hiding.

Ezekiel could feel his anger bubbling. A few years ago this man sitting before him was responsible for the kidnapping of Pope Pius and the executions of bishops within the Holy See. Of this man’s entire team, he was the only one to escape after Kimball and his team of Vatican Knights waged war against Obadiah’s military elitists and defeated them.

“Why are you here?”

Obadiah stared at him briefly before digging a photo out of his pocket and placing it on top of the open pages of Le Parisien. The photo was aged, but still in excellent condition, not grainy. It was a photo of a much younger Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci. The man beside him wearing the black fatigue pants, military beret, boots and a cleric’s shirt with a Roman Catholic collar, was Kimball Hayden.

“When the blood relative of a superior American senator is taken in by the State of the Vatican, it draws attention.” He tapped the photo. “This was taken a day after papers were filed for your release into their custody with no questions asked by state agencies. The people I work for take notice of things like that.”

“What’s your point?”

He pointed to Kimball. “This man,” he said. “Who is he?”

“Why?”

The man’s tapping became more adamant. “Who… is… he?”

The men squared off against one another with hardened gazes. And then, with measured calm, Ezekiel said, “His name is Kimball Hayden.”

Obadiah fell back into his seat. “Kimball Hayden,” he uttered distantly, his eyes growing detached. He now had a name. “And what does Kimball Hayden do?”

“Why do you want to know?” Ezekiel asked harshly.

Obadiah leaned forward. “Let’s just say that my team keeps an eye on things globally for the welfare of humankind.”

Ezekiel smirked. “Espionage,” he said. “Word at the time of the pope’s kidnapping was that you worked for Mossad.”

“You can believe whatever you want,” he returned. “If that was the word, then that was the word.” The man leaned further forward, as if in close counsel. “Now tell me, who is this Kimball Hayden? And what was his interest for the only surviving relative of a powerful American senator?”

Ezekiel did not draw close to Obadiah. Instead, he closed his hands together in an attitude of prayer and placed them over the photo. “He is a Vatican Knight,” he told him. “As I was.”

Obadiah fell back once again. “A Vatican Knight?”

He nodded. “The Vatican has its own team of elite commandos,” he returned. “It was the Vatican Knights you clashed with on the day the pontiff was freed from captivity… And it was Kimball Hayden who led the team.”

Obadiah nodded. “I know,” he said, raising his arm and showing off a ragged scar. “He did this to me.”

“He should have killed you.”

“But he didn’t.” A pause, then: “And why you?”

Ezekiel took in a breath and let out a sigh. “To become a Vatican Knight you must be without family, someone who is orphaned. From a young age you are trained to be learned and skilled in combat.”

“Fascinating,” he murmured. “Taking pages directly from Spartan legacy by rearing a child to become an elite soldier. But why you?”

“Kimball murdered my grandfather,” he said.

“While working under the auspices of the Church?”

“No. At that time he was an assassin for the United States government.”

Obadiah was blown away. This was incredibly damaging intel his League did not have; the murder of a all-powerful political figure sanctioned by figures within the White House. “And your role?”

“I was chosen by Hayden because of his own personal reasons.”

Obadiah smiled. “For salvation,” he said. “He raised you for his own salvation.”

“You’re very perceptive.”

“The man has a conscience that cannot be placated, so he serves the Vatican in order to achieve redemption. But for him to do that, he believed that saving you after he destroyed your life was a way to make amends.”

“Touché.”

“Then you were nothing more to him than his own personal puppet?”

Ezekiel looked away. “He tried to save me.”

“Sure he did.” Obadiah removed several photos from his jacket pocket and spread them over the tabletop. They were postmortem shots of the members from the Pieces of Eight. “I’m impressed with your handiwork,” he told him. “Our intelligence knew about the Pieces of Eight, but we could not determine who these people were or what their role was. But when we were informed that they were being terminated, our sources had to find out why ex-GI officials were being eradicated, whether the reason was political or otherwise.” He tossed another picture on top of the others, this one taken through the lens with NG capability. It was a photo of Ezekiel leaving the ranch house moments after he killed Hawk. And then another photo was laid down by Obadiah, this one showing Ezekiel on the rooftop with a sniper rifle moments before he shot one of the Hardwick brothers with pinpoint accuracy.

“And then we realized that this had no political implication behind it at all — that this was nothing more than a personal vendetta.” Obadiah tossed a third photo down, this one of Kimball Hayden from a distance. “And it was this man you wanted dead, isn’t it?”

Ezekiel stared at the photo, said nothing.

“When I saw this photo I recognized this man right away. I knew it was the man at the depository who freed the pontiff and took out my team. I never thought I’d ever see him again.” Obadiah picked up the photo and examined it. “Kimball Hayden was a member of the Pieces of Eight, and now a warrior for the Church. Talk about extremes.”

“What do you want, Obadiah?”

“My own redemption,” he quickly told him. “When I saw this photo as the man targeted by the grandson of a powerful senator now bearing very particular skills that rival my own, I saw the opportunity for my own salvation. So I waited, hoping that you would fulfill your goal of terminating this man from our lives.” He laid the photo down and sighed. “But you failed in your quest.”

“I have not forfeited my goals,” he said. “Kimball Hayden is one of the best in the world at what he does.”

Obadiah rubbed at the scar on his arm. No one knew better regarding that statement than he did.

“Now he’ll be waiting for me, which makes my agenda all the more difficult to achieve.”

Obadiah stopped rubbing the scar. “And that is why I am here,” he stated. “It appears that Kimball Hayden has become our white whale. So I offer you a proposal.”

“A proposal?”

“Work with my group,” he offered. “Kimball Hayden may become a liability in future ventures. Therefore, he must be taken out of the equation. Against one of us, the odds are even; but against two, then the odds are skewed in our favor.”

“Why would I want to join league with a man who tried to assassinate the pope?”

“What I did was purely business with political aspirations behind the motive. But in the end, when I realized the mission was over, I was the one who cut the bonds of the pontiff’s chains and set him free. I may be a fanatic in my duties to my organization, but I also recognize the fact that if the journey is over, then it’s over. There was no point in killing the pope.”

“But your team tried.”

“And they suffered the ultimate cost at the hands of Kimball Hayden and the Vatican Knights.” He held up his arm, the scar still ugly and purple. “Including myself.”

“Looks like a small price to pay considering that the others paid with their lives.”

“True. But he hampered my skills somewhat. But nevertheless, I’m still skilled.”

The men measured each other carefully from across the table for a long moment.

And then, from Obadiah, “Do we have an alliance, Mr. Cartwright?”

“I go by Ezekiel.”

Obadiah smiled, and then lifted his hand as an offering. “Fine,” he said. “Then do we have an alliance, Ezekiel? Shall we hunt the white whale together?”

Ezekiel looked at the proffered hand, then at Obadiah, noting stoicism on his face.

The former Knight lifted his hand and joined it with Obadiah’s. “Are you Mossad?” he asked.

Obadiah smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. And then with a wave of his free hand the three red dots disappeared from the center of Ezekiel’s chest.

And a new alliance was born.