The Vatican Knights

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

“Now you know,” said Team Leader, walking into the pope’s chamber and standing over the body of Bishop Angelo. “Now you endure the pain of having a loved one deposited at your feet just like my people have endured over a lifetime.”

Pope Pius reached for Bishop Angelo’s body and tried to pull him close, but lacked the strength to do so.

“Look at me,” said Team Leader. “Look at me and tell me you don’t hate me for what I’ve done.”

The pope acted like he didn’t hear Team Leader at all. He simply caressed what was left of Angelo’s hair like a despondent father.

Team Leader reached out and grabbed the pope’s wrist, demanding his attention. “Tell me you understand,” he stated firmly. “Tell me that you now see the madness behind what I’m doing. Tell me you can no longer turn the other cheek now that I’ve brought this to you.” He released the pope’s wrist. “Tell me that you’re not a hypocrite and that hatred, true hatred, has consumed you… Tell me that you understand me!”

The pope shook his head. “What I understand is that your hatred runs so deep and is so corrupt, that no matter how well you think your vision may be, you’ll never see beyond your own contempt, which is the only part of you that is pure. And for that I pity you… I don’t hate you.”

Team Leader stood up. “Then you are a hypocrite,” he told him. “There’s no man on this earth who can honestly sit there and tell the murderer of a loved one that he doesn’t hate him, not even you.”

The pope went back to caressing Angelo’s hair and then the tears, the sobbing, came. Team Leader felt he had won a moral victory. He had, in essence, broken a man who was the showcase of moral fortitude and a pillar of strength.

“As a reminder of your own stubborn will to refuse to acknowledge what makes us human, I’ll let your bishop sit beside you and rot. Maybe with each passing moment you’ll grow to understand further what my people have gone through for years.”

After Team Leader left, the pope wept and prayed and asked for forgiveness. What the man in black had said was true. For the first time in Pope Pius’s life he felt the pressure of hatred and understood the need for retribution by a hand other than that of God. Even worse, he understood the man’s embitterment and saw the reasoning behind his lunacy.

I won’t give in to your way of thinking, he pressed upon himself. I will not. But Pope Pius knew he couldn’t bury the truth deep enough. And if he couldn’t hide the truth from himself, there was no way he could deceive God. The truth was he did hate the man for what he did to Bishop Angelo. And as much as he tried to find forgiveness in his heart, he could not.

The pope bowed his head and pleaded for His understanding. Forgive me, Lord. Please, forgive me.

The old man wept.

Punch Murdock lay in a quasi-daze pumped up on morphine. Incessantly, like an army of ants crawling over his flesh, he often reached to scratch away the itch, but the itch was a phantom, the leg no longer there. Often he would depress the button, self-injecting morphine whenever he felt the beginnings of a throbbing ache budding from the stump of his leg. Then he would sleep, dreaming of images he forgot about the moment he awoke. On one occasion he awoke to find FBI Director Larry Johnston standing beside his bed, his face bearing the same unyielding features as before.

“Man, don’t you ever smile?”

Johnston tossed a photo onto Murdock’s chest. It was a picture of Pappandopolous after the hit. “What you said panned out,” he said.

“And Paxton?”

“Too messy to show.”

Murdock handed the photo back. “Now I suppose you want Yahweh?”

“That was the deal, but I’m not here to pay you a courtesy visit. I’m here to tell you that through the simplicity of technology, you gave us more than we expected from our deal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that we tapped the lines to Pappandopolous’ and Paxton’s residence and we intercepted a call from Yahweh. A voice print proved who the caller was. We know who Yahweh is.”

Murdock’s mouth opened with mechanical slowness, his trump card gone.

“Just thought you’d like to know that,” said Johnston.

Suddenly Murdock understood the mockery behind Johnston’s tone, behind his visit. It was something akin to the Grim Reaper taunting him with a slight brush of his bony talons across his cheek before the final fall of the scythe. “Now wait a minute,” Murdock said. “You gave me your word! You agreed to give me life with a courtyard!”

Johnston turned and headed for the door.

“You gave me your word!” Murdock shouted, struggling against the cuff that held him to the rail. “YOU… GAVE… ME… YOUR… WORD!”

Although the door closed behind him, Murdock’s shouts could be heard all the way down the hall.