The Vatican Knights

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

He lay between the two mounds of sand with a hand on each mound, his eyes looking skyward for the face of God. In between the great distances of the stars, he tried to glimpse something celestial, to make him believe there was something heavenly beyond the blind faith that led men to believe an existence beyond the five senses. All he saw was the glimmer of stars shimmering like a cache of diamonds on black velvet.

Beneath his hands the soil began to undulate, the tenants below trying to force their way to the surface. Applying great strength through his massive arms, Kimball employed himself to keep them below the depths of the plane and, as always, failed. When their heads broke through the layers of sand, Kimball tried to force them back down, their strength far greater than his. Their faces, remarkably similar to his own in shape and contour and with eyes the color of ice, held the mottled skin tones in the putrescent hues and shades of decay.

Crying out against the surge, Kimball exerted all the power he could call upon. But the shapes continued to rise, the jaws of his own rotting features opening to impossible lengths and revealing a darkness in the throat that was blacker than black.

Kimball always woke at this juncture and searched his surroundings for the reality of the moment. Once calm settled in and the moment less surreal, he would always ask this question: Could You ever forgive me for the things that I have done? But Kimball believed forgiveness would forever elude him, since he gave up one war to wage another against his personal demons. And these demons never allowed him to forget, coming night after night and eroding what little hope of someday being free of a past laden with the bloodshed of others committed by his hands.

It would take him almost twenty minutes to shake off the images, and ten more before he could commit himself to his duties.

Kimball sat in the van outside the Cohen brownstone, with Isaiah in the back monitoring the audio receiver and listening to every movement within the Cohen household.

As Kimball sat with his back against the paneled wall, he wondered why Isaiah’s faith remained so entrenched after living in a culture of hardcore misery.

Isaiah, or Christian, was born in 1984 to a family who lived in makeshift huts of discarded wood and corrugated tin in a Mexican shanty town. Dung piles and rancid water drew mangy curs and blow flies. And as time went on and their world a constant state of suffering, the only possession they held was their faith in Christ.

After Christian’s father succumbed to the ravages of dysentery, wasting away until his body withdrew into itself, the rack of his ribs threatening to burst through flesh, he was buried with little ceremony in a scratch of earth marked for the dead not far from the dung heaps. The stark-white crosses, too numerous to count, seemed to saddle the small stretch of land. But after six months, as the land dwindled, the family was forced to pay homage from a distance, since additional grave markers took over the trails leading to his father’s burial site.

As Christian and his faith grew, he never questioned his abject poverty, but accepted it as a test of diversity to achieve a higher level. But when his mother was taken from him — her body found in a muddy waterway with her skirt hiked up to reveal unspeakable violations — he became lost and frightened, and sought union with anybody who would have him.

He found himself alone and unwanted, however, just another mouth to feed in an already famished world. So he migrated to the north through hot winds and an unforgiving sun, his mind falling into delirious bouts of fog and images.

Sometimes he imagined the worried faces of his parents as they beckoned him with ghostly hands to follow a certain path. But when his body could push no more, the environment having sapped him dry, he surrendered to the elements and took to the earth.

Two days later when he awoke he knew he was in heaven. The angels surrounding him were smiling and wore habits. Around their necks they wore chains bearing the symbol of the Catholic crucifix that was as gold and as bright as the emblazoned sun. When Christian sat up his eyes searched for his parents, who had led him to this wondrous place that smelled of clove and burning candle wax.

“You’ll be fine, my child. You were lucky that a missionary found you,” said one of the angels. Her face was aged and tanned, her eyes sparkled with alertness. “You came from such a long way, so God must have something very special in store for you.”

“Where are my parents?” he asked, the pitch of his tone that of pubescent.

“I’m afraid you were alone.”

Christian shook his head vehemently. “I saw them. They showed me the way.”

But when his mind sobered, he came to realize that his parents were truly gone, and that God had used them as vessels to save his life.

As he grew to manhood during his tenure at the mission, the boy’s body took on an athletic tone. His hunger for knowledge became as urgent as his need for sustenance. This caught the eye of a stranger who came from a faraway land called the Vatican. After holding counsel with the heads of the mission, he recruited the boy.

The stranger’s name was Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci.

Christian, upon learning his fate, cried and refused to leave the only true slice of heaven he had ever known. “To do this is a great honor,” said Father Hernandez, who held the boy in the clutches of a strong embrace. Even the Father was choking back tears. “On the day you came to us we always said that God had a purpose for you. And now that time has come, my son. You must go with the cardinal who is a messenger of God and fulfill your destiny. You are special.”

Christian left the mission behind, never to see or hear from the angels and orphans again.

Now, at such an early hour, Christian — Isaiah — was on the front lines of the most important and noble battle of his life. He was a Vatican Knight.

And Kimball watched him, wanting desperately to know how Christian found faith in such hardship, when Kimball held little after growing up in privilege. Reason would indicate that it should have been the other way around — that those of good standing would have faith and be thankful for their bounties, whereas the disadvantaged would hold none.

But Isaiah was lost in his own world, listening through his headphones and hearing what sounded like the slight passing of air through a seashell.

Leviticus was in the vault of the Sacred Hearts Church working at the computer terminal. Highly adept at his craft, he also had the unethical dexterity to tap and hack into programs and networks to obtain information without leaving a trail.

After loading the Keystroke Logger, he expertly moved his fingers across the keyboard and began to draw data from Shari Cohen’s PC. By logging the sequence of keystrokes that enabled her access to certain sites, Leviticus was able to obtain her password, which afforded him entry into restricted areas of information.

Numbers and symbols relating to computer vernacular came and went as the PC spoke to other networks along the information highway, pulled data from files established in ISP address records, then left a bogus trail in its wake. By the time the hacked parties learned of the breach, the trail would lead the tracking experts to a desktop computer located in a library at a prestigious California college. It was a wonderful red herring on the part of Leviticus, which was also a part of the game he enjoyed too much, almost impishly so.

After establishing the link to Shari’s PC, he realized she was live with booted information regarding the Soldiers of Islam. And with all the ingenuity of a practiced hacker, he downloaded the data.

But it the information was coming in much too slowly.