Comes a Horseman (10 page)

10

Ben-Gurion Airport
Near Tel Aviv, Israel

A
s usual, the big, black Mercedes limousine was waiting on the tarmac for the Gulfstream IV bearing Fr. Adalberto Randall. He eyed it through a porthole as he waited for the pilot to open the door, lower the steps, and offer a hand. He was old, too old for this. His back was bent and his knees were shot and he no longer possessed the muscle mass that would have compensated for these deficiencies in a younger man. At least he did not have to fly commercial.

The limo's back door opened as he approached. Leaning out, Pippino Farago grazed him with his eyes before disappearing back into the cool darkness of the car's interior.

Climbing in wrenched Randall's back even more.

The passenger compartment was laid out like a living room, with two plush bench seats facing each other—one directly behind the driver's seat and one at the rear. Pip and his boss, Luco Scaramuzzi, lounged in the rear seat, so Randall fell back into the one facing them.

Luco smiled warmly. He leaned forward to extend his hand, and Father Randall shook it.

“Good to see you again, Father,” Luco said. He was one of the handsomest men the priest had ever seen, on-screen or off—he could have been George Clooney's Italian brother. He was lithe, muscular, and tall. At forty-two, his thick salt-and-pepper hair had not receded one centimeter off his forehead.

And God had not denied the man any trappings to make the most out of his good looks. If charm were a poker hand, Luco came up with a royal flush every time. Children adored him, men wanted to be him, and women . . . well, whoever coined the phrase “God's gift to women” must have had Luco Scaramuzzi in mind.

Randall smiled inwardly at the gaudiness of his description. You'd think he was the man's press agent instead of his theologian. But he offered no apologies. It was all true; bless him, it was.

Randall supposed Luco required every one of his superior genes to achieve the goals he had set for himself. And that reminded him of another of Luco's qualities: he was a hard worker. He never seemed to sleep. When he wasn't tending to his duties as ambassador of Italy to Israel, he was planning world domination . . . really. Or toning his muscles in his workout room, scuba diving off the Lipari Islands, skiing on St. Moritz . . . or doing whatever seemed strenuous and fun.

So with all that going for him, it was a shame the man was also the embodiment of pure evil. His history of bad deeds included the deflowering of young girls, sexual affairs for the sole purpose of breaking a husband's heart, robbery, embezzlement, extortion, arson, battery. And murder; don't forget murder.

In fact, it was his assassination of a politician five years ago in the Asia House—the very building from which he now conducted his own politicking—that secured his position as ambassador.

If someone asked Randall what he was doing with such a despicable person, he'd lie. But he had his reasons, and he was able to look at himself in the mirror at night. Most nights.

“Father, you want something to drink?” Luco asked. He pulled a bottle of springwater from the limo's small refrigerator for himself.

“Wine, please.”

Luco slid a bottle out enough to read the label.

“Brunello di Montalcino?”

“Splendid.”

Luco uncorked the bottle, poured a taste into a Riedel Vinum wineglass, and offered it to Randall.

He held up his hand. “I'm sure it's fine.”

Luco poured half a glass and handed it to him.

“Pip?”

Luco's assistant raised his hand to decline. He was staring out the window, lost in some problem. Randall thought he knew what it was.

Luco stretched out his legs, checked the crease in his trousers, sipped his water. At last he said, “You ready, Father?”

Father Randall smiled, his thin lips turning the color of his skin. “I have your bombshell.”

“I can't stress enough how important this meeting is.”

“I understand.”

“Then what are we babbling for?” Luco laughed.

Every six to twelve months, Luco's board of directors—that's how Randall thought of the Council—met with Luco in Jerusalem to review activities and progress, to strategize, and, if warranted, to grant Luco more control over the empire that awaited him. Randall's duty was to continually confirm Luco's status as rightful heir. It was a job like none other in the world, for these meetings and these directors were like none other in the world.

Each meeting was a battle of wits: Luco making every attempt to win over the board, detractors doing their best to knock him down. Today's meeting was particularly crucial. Not only did Luco intend to wrest more power from the board's grasp, but the outcome also would either encourage or dampen the faith of his worldwide followers. Next Sunday night, a select number of these believers—who were not as influential as the Council but nevertheless important to Luco's ascension—would meet in Jerusalem for what Randall thought of as a pep rally. Equal parts mass, reception, and ceremony, the event was officially and enigmatically called the Gathering.

He turned to the window and watched the landscape stream past. They were approaching Sha'ar Hagai, where the corpses of armor-plated vehicles from the War of Independence rusted among the mimosas. The land here was vegetative and green, hemmed in by the Judean hills, which were actually mountains, in their own scruffy way as beautiful as any Italy had to offer. Except the Alps. Nothing compared to them.

Luco watched something approaching on his side of the car. He pushed a button on his armrest. The glass partition that separated the cab from the passenger compartment slid down into the driver's seat back.

“Sir?” the driver said.

“Pull over here, Tullio.”

Pip spun to look out his side of the limousine, instantly alert for danger. Seeing nothing but countryside, he fell to his knees and leaned toward Luco's window. “What is it?”

“Children. Down in the meadow.”

“The stone throwers? But if we just keep going—”

“Shhhhh.” Luco opened the door, letting dust and heat billow in. He stepped out. Just beyond the shoulder, the ground sloped steeply for a dozen feet, then sailed off in a rolling meadow toward the mountains. Bushes and trees cast splotchy shadows, tricking the eye into seeing more than was there, and less. A perfect place to hide—unless you were naive enough to wear white T-shirts. There were six of them, all boys, huddled behind a large shrub fifty yards away. They were talking to one another and glancing up at the vehicles going by on the highway. Probably waiting for a nice, window-lined bus to come around the bend. They were unaware of the stopped limousine. Luco ducked his head under the door frame. “Pip, give me your gun.”

“My gun?”

Randall leaned forward. “Luco . . . ?”

Luco snapped his fingers impatiently. Pip pulled his semiautomatic pistol from a shoulder holster, hesitated, and then placed it in Luco's hand.

“Luco!” Randall said sharply. “What are you doing? This is not—”

“Hush!” Luco snapped. He stepped away from the car to the edge of the shoulder.

“Hey!” he yelled.

The little faces turned his way. The youngest about ten, the oldest maybe fourteen. They dropped out of sight behind the bush.

Luco reached inside his jacket for a handkerchief. He wiped the entire pistol, ejected the magazine, and rubbed it down. Randall knew that the gun was untraceable; that was Luco's way.

Luco looked up to see the kids eyeing him again. He waited for a beat-up Peugeot minivan to pass. Then, with no other cars in sight, he held the pistol high above his head, waggling it. He tossed it down the embankment toward the gawking boys.

Randall shook his head. He pulled a battered silver cigarette case from his breast pocket, extracted a hand-rolled cigarette, and pushed it between his lips. He summoned a flame from an old Zippo. He leaned toward the open car door, blew out a stream of smoke, and glanced at Luco—his back to the car, hands on his hips, waiting to see what the children would do. Turning, he saw that Pip was looking the other way, out the window again.

Pip's left leg was shorter than his right, the result of a tragic boyhood accident. The shorter leg was crossed over the other, and Randall squinted at what looked like two paperback books taped to the bottom of his left shoe.

Randall quietly said, “Pip?”

No response.

Randall reached out and touched Pip's shoe.

Still no response.

Randall sighed and sat back. Over the past few months, he and Pip had become friends. Their conversations, however, had turned to Luco's servile treatment of Pip, who had been Luco's “friend” for three decades. Randall had encouraged Pip—as recently as that very morning over the phone—to come out from Luco's shadow. It was clear Pip was struggling with painful memories and difficult decisions.

“Pip?” Luco called from outside.

Pip swung around, avoiding Randall's gaze. “Yes?”

“What was that, a nine?”

“A Llama—9mm, yes.”

“Gimme a box.”

Pip pulled a box from a cubby under the armrest and handed it to him. Luco tossed it down the embankment. When it hit the ground, bullets scattered everywhere. He pointed at the small treasure he was leaving, nodded at the boys, and climbed back into the limo.

He scowled at Randall's cigarette and said, “Father,
please
.”

Randall pulled deeply on the smoke and then tossed it out the door, into the dirt.

Luco shut the door. To his driver he said, “Let's move it, Tullio.” He showed Pip a big grin. “Graduation day for the rock throwers!”

Pip nodded ambivalently. As they rode away, Randall craned to look out the dark glass. The first of the boys was just breaking cover and running toward Luco's gift. The others followed, then the limo arced away between two hills, and the boys disappeared from view.

Luco crossed a leg and began wiping the dust off his shoe with a handkerchief, smiling smugly.

“One of those boys is going to shoot you dead,” Randall said.

The smile faded. Luco's eyes caught Randall's, and the old man chuckled dryly.

“No, Luco, that is not a prophecy. Only sarcasm.”

“Your jokes aren't funny.”

“Nor are yours,” he said. “You are destined for bigger things. Why piddle with juvenile pranks?” His tone was fatherly.

Luco shrugged. “Amusement.” He turned to Pip. “Maybe we should take the Mevo Modi'in road home.” He grinned. “I hear Route 1 just got more dangerous.”

He snapped the handkerchief at his clean shoe, then switched legs and started wiping its mate. After a few breaths, he said, “So, Father, how long can you stay this time?”

“I fly out this evening.”

Concern flashed across Luco's face. “What about . . . ?”

“I'll return for the Gathering, never fear.” Father Randall took a swig of wine. He closed his eyes and put his head back. It was going to be a long week.

11

T
wo years ago, Brady would have skipped the 6:40 flight out of Dulles to Colorado Springs and taken the next one. The FBI required him to wear his pistol whenever on duty, which included Bureau-related travel. The Federal Aviation Administration understood the need for certain law enforcement officers (LEOs in cop-talk) to carry weapons on board and accommodated that need—provided the LEO completed an FAA class on the subject and adhered to strict guidelines. One of the guidelines prohibited “boarding an aircraft armed within eight hours of consuming alcohol.” Best Brady could figure, he'd stopped drinking—the term
passed out
never occurred to him—around midnight. Despite feeling sober and alert, technically he violated a federal law when he boarded at 6:25 a.m. Technically.

He envied Alicia's expediency. She never let something as trivial as the law hinder her pursuit of a felon. If the irony of that ever bothered her, she kept it to herself. Certainly, she wouldn't kill without provocation or steal for her own gain. Stomping on the civil rights of a perp was, however, less problematic. So was conveniently forgetting protocol, the accumulation of which Alicia thought of as weights on her ankles in the race for justice—and of which Brady thought of as a wall that delineated cop from crook.

He had never made a show of following proper procedure or pointed out when others didn't; he'd done his puritanical best silently, believing that acts of virtue were done for oneself or for God, not for others.

Brady had always been the kind of person who paid separately at hotels for in-room movies, though they were always as innocuous as, say,
The Lord of the Rings
or
Remember the Titans
, so they wouldn't be charged to his Bureau MasterCard. He wondered now why he'd been so fastidious. Since Karen's death, he'd found himself increasingly willing to initiate or overlook lapses in protocol. While he had never believed good behavior should earn him special consideration in the blessings department, he had thought it should count for something when it came time for the Big Guy to pick who got needlessly slaughtered by a drunk driver and whose life would be ripped apart by the event.

The realization that bad things happen to good people did not give him a feeling of being a kindred spirit to fellow sanctimonious saps as much as it got him thinking the opposite was equally true: good things happen to bad people. Not that white lies and small vices made people bad, but he had become aware of how many of his colleagues—mostly hardworking, decent agents with excellent reputations for closing cases—did let the government pick up the tab for their hotel movies and room service, and did stretch truths to secure search warrants, and did apply intimidation tactics to uncooperative witnesses. Essentially, they breached all sorts of ethical, legal, and moral principles, to varying degrees. Some claimed that in the current climate of “criminal rights,” it was the only way to get bad people, truly bad people, off the streets.