A Pius Man is out and ready, everyone.
If you haven't bought it already, maybe this will intrigue you into buying it.
Also, I will just ask that you recall what I'm trying to do with this chapter. I want everyone to look at this and suspect everybody. Almost everybody at least. There are a handful I couldn't make look sinister enough.
Oh well, maybe next time.
...So, let me know if I make everyone look suspicious enough.
Enjoy.
If you like, you can order from Amazon.
And now, the final chapter to be released on the blog.
UNLEASH... THE FREEBIES.
Heh.
If you haven't bought it already, maybe this will intrigue you into buying it.
Also, I will just ask that you recall what I'm trying to do with this chapter. I want everyone to look at this and suspect everybody. Almost everybody at least. There are a handful I couldn't make look sinister enough.
Oh well, maybe next time.
...So, let me know if I make everyone look suspicious enough.
Enjoy.
If you like, you can order from Amazon.
And now, the final chapter to be released on the blog.
UNLEASH... THE FREEBIES.
Heh.
Chapter V:
A Pious Death
Maureen McGrail crouched over
the dead priest in Dublin. Father Harrington’s arms had been spread
out at his sides, deliberately posed as though he’d been crucified.
The old man had been shot first in both knees, and finally in the
heart. On his forehead was a precisely carved swastika. His silver
hair was spotted with black, crusted blood, and his pale blue eyes
were frozen open, staring at the ceiling.
McGrail sighed into her face
mask before rising. She always hated wearing the bright white
spacesuits at homicide scenes—meant for the protection of the
evidence—but then, except for the occasional public-service murder,
she just didn’t like homicides. Her green eyes scanned the room,
and the luggage on the bed.
“And where were you going,
Father?” she asked in a soft brogue. “And why?”
McGrail looked to the police
officer in the hallway. For some reason, she could clearly hear him
humming, “Come Out Ye Black and Tans.” “How old was he?” she
asked. “Where was he going?”
Her assistant, Peter Boyle,
looked up at her. “Almost ninety. He had booked a plane ticket to
Rome to give an affidavit in the canonization thing.”
McGrail smiled. “Which one?
Is it one of the local boys? One of the Belfast Martyrs?”
“Pius XII, Pope from 1939 to
1958.”
McGrail furrowed her milky
white brow. As a police officer, McGrail had never needed to know
much about history. The most she learned about history she read in
what she dubbed “Catholic Paranoid novels.” They were stories
about the Knights of Malta, Knights Templar, or the Church
suppressing the truth about everything that happened before the
Enlightenment.
As if the Church were ever
that organized.
They
were fun reads, but rubbish history.
“What about the Pope?” she
asked.
Peter smiled. “You have no
idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
She rolled her eyes and
patiently shook her head as she walked out of the room. It was true
that her fellow citizens might read ten times the per-capita average
for Europe. And yes, Dublin might have had one bookstore per block.
And she could get a fellow Irishman to argue about anything from
microcircuits to “the year of the French.” But the average Garda
precinct would never have enough people to keep up with omnivorous
Irish readers.
Boyle cleared his throat like
a professor beginning a lecture.
“Pius XII, born Eugenio Pacelli. Died 1958. There are books that
blamed him as emissary from the Vatican, as papal Secretary of State,
and as Pope, for aiding and assisting Hitler’s rise to power. Still
another tries to make a case that the Pope did nothing to save Jews
in Rome, and the only reason so many survived was due only to the
rank-and-file Catholic priests.”
McGrail raised an eyebrow at
him. “You’ve specialized in the subject?”
Boyle grinned. “No, but it’s
amazing what you can fake just by reading the backs of books.”
McGrail sighed. “So, our
dead man was to testify on the matter? He was summoned?”
“No, volunteered. We talked
to the maids about how he’s been the last week. Agitated beyond all
hell; he was annoying everyone, muttering that ‘the truth must come
out’.”
She grinned. Boyle had a
near-perfect memory, so everything he had just said was a near-quote.
“He was going to talk about death camps and such?”
“Not quite. You see, Father
Harrington was with Father Carroll-Abbing down in Rome when
Harrington was still in the seminary.”
McGrail cocked her head to one
side. “Father Carroll-Abbing?”
He nodded. “Ever read Susan
Zuccolti’s Under
His Very Windows?”
“Aren’t I happy to let
someone else fight out the whole thing and wake me when the last man
is standing?” she said with a smile. Boyle tried not to roll his
eyes at the way she asked questions for almost every sentence. It was
almost a regional dialect – if “Ireland” could be considered a
region. It wasn't a particularly urban way of speaking, but she
didn't quite sound like she was in county Kerry, as those folks
tended to not speak to people, but sing to them, their accents were
so lyrical. “She was a Catholic basher, ya?” McGrail asked.
“Not quite. Priests and nuns
were the heroes in her book; her main argument was that while the
rest of the Roman Catholic Church acted, Pius was asleep at the
switch, through either timidity or malice aforethought.”
He
smirked. “Google is your friend, ya?”
McGrail nodded, stepped out in
the hall, and then stripped off the hood of the suit, letting her
raven black hair fall over her shoulder blades. She breathed in fresh
air. “So this Carroll-Abbing is?”
“One of the hero
priests—Irish. He died in 2001, in Rome. Father Harrington here—on
the floor—was a seminarian in Rome in the forties—in his
mid-teens, if my math is right. Who knows, Harrington might have been
a footnote.”
McGrail sighed. “Well, he is
now, isn’t he?” She peeled the suit off her body. By the time she
was done, she wore only her black suit pants and loose white blouse;
throw in the running shoes and she was five-six. “Any sense to this
being a neo-Nazi thing?”
He cocked his head.
“Thought not. I was called
in because I’m Interpol, and someone wants me to fly to Rome,
wasn’t I?”
“Father Harrington was
killed late yesterday, early today, don’cha know? We left the body
in situ
so you could see everything before it was disturbed. We called Rome.
They’d be happy to help with our inquiries. Rome is expecting you
soon enough, about six o’clock their time.”
“Doesn’t that mean I’ll—”
“Be leaving almost
immediately? Definitely.”
McGrail headed for the door.
“If you need me, won’t I be home, packing?”
McGrail stepped out onto the
solid foundation of a Dublin street. She looked out over the early
morning emptiness of the sidewalks deeply, enjoying the quiet. All of
the doors on the buildings around her—in good old-fashioned
tradition—were bright, vivid colors, each different from the other,
in an assortment of greens and blues, purples and even the
occasional…was that brown?
She looked behind her at the
ugliest door on the block, which belonged to the Markist seminary she
had just left, a garish color that looked like it wanted to be either
brown or black, and only resulted in the color of mud.
“Aren’t they all
barbarians?” she
muttered.
McGrail was about to go about
her business when she stopped a moment. She turned and leapt up the
seminary stairs, taking them two at a time. “Boyle!”
Peter’s head peeked into
view over the top of the stairs. “What?”
“Did Father Harrington live
here?”
“No, he’s diocesan, over
in Kerry. He was invited. The Markists were having a symposium on the
Pius thing, and this guy was going to give a lecture tomorrow, then
be on a plane to Rome not long after.”
“Can I go to his place,
then? Or will the Captain not allow that?”
Peter Boyle shrugged. “Only
if you can be three places at once.”
She groaned. “Are the Kerry
boys at least searching it?”
He smiled. “Leave it to us
to worry about that. I’ll let you know when they get around to
finishing a report. Okay? Enjoy Italy.”
“Maybe.” She turned to
leave, and then stopped, looking at the Markist brochures for the
order and the seminary. She picked one up before heading out the
door. The cover read, “Markist Brothers, Founded Berlin, 1958.”
The year Pius XII died.
Hmm. Anyway, we’re off to see the Pontiff, the wonderful Pontiff of
Rome …
*
Giovanni Figlia took both
Hashim Abasi and Wilhelmina Goldberg into the basement of the Office
of the Swiss Guard, a building next to the colonnade around St.
Peter’s Square. The subterranean level looked somewhat new in
comparison with the rest of the city, with metal security doors that
Goldberg would have sworn she had seen on the vault containing the
Crown Jewels of England.
Commander Figlia used a hand
print, iris and retinal scan, as well as a nine-digit alphanumeric
readout combination panel.
“What is this place?”
Goldberg asked. “Where you keep old Nazi war criminals the Church
is protecting?”
Figlia cringed, remembering
the scolding he had received for joking about something similar once.
The metal vault began to swing
open, very slowly. “Here, in fact, is our weapons vault.”
The wall of the vault was
lined with bullet-resistant glass cases of futuristic weapons, as
well as some old-fashioned guns, in addition to the obvious gas
canisters, rubber bullets, and beanbags launched from muzzles the
size of baseballs. And there were a few normal fragmentation grenades
and flash-bangs. The entire weapons collection consisted of chrome
and Plexiglas. Figlia stepped inside, and presented it like Tony
Stark in the first Iron
Man film. His
black suit and polo shirt meshed so well with the chrome and glass
finish, it was almost as though he had dressed to match the décor.
Goldberg gaped and took
several steps inside. She tried to see directly into some of the
cases, but eventually gave in, and grabbed a step ladder so she could
see inside.
Abasi stayed at the door and
looked around at the equipment. “I didn’t know you could afford
weapons like this,” he began.
“We can’t, really.”
Figlia stepped into the vault, leaning up against the wall opposite
Godlberg. “The older guns, the lethal ones, all … come
se dice? Ah, yes,
they ‘fell
off the back of a CIA truck’ during the 1980s. After the Pope was
shot, and because il
Papa
was working with the CIA on the Solidarity crisis in Poland, the head
of the CIA then, Bill Casey, delivered these. The latest assault
rifles we have are all M16A2s—though I would prefer the M8, or more
M4s. The rest are non-lethal weaponry we test for the companies that
make them. As a result of testing their product, we are given free
samples.”
Hashim Abasi laughed. “I
almost thought you had paid for all of this yourself, like the
Saudis’ Wahhabi mutaw’een
–
religious police. The ones that drive American SUVs.”
Figlia shook his head. “Our
budget is … nonexistent, since we are given this for free, which is
odd, because I think we should be the second-biggest market for
nonlethal weapons.”
Figlia quickly opened a case,
picking out a boxy, rectangular weapon that looked like an art-deco
version of a Stinger missile launcher. “This is from the Air Force
Research Laboratory, a directed energy cannon … a microwave gun. It
doesn’t burn flesh. It only feels like it, very painful.”
Figlia gently placed it on his
shoulder to demonstrate how to hold it, then placed it gently back in
its case. He removed another weapon, which looked like a glorified
water rifle.
“Anti-traction gel
gun—anyone who tries to drive or walk on this will not be able to.
Nontoxic, biodegradable, and dries up in twelve ore
… hours,
depending on conditions. We’ve also malodorants, stink bombs so bad
they are limited by chemical-weapons treaties… which Vatican City
never signed, so it doesn’t matter.”
Abasi chuckled. “You haven’t
thought of the U.N.’s ways of doing things, have you?”
Figlia shrugged, putting away
the weapon. “They are useful third parties, but in terms of making
international law, they think they’re God, but without the sense.
Some say John Paul II was unable to deal with the West because they
gave his homeland to the Soviets. I think this pope cannot tolerate
the U.N. because they put Sudan on the Human Rights Commission, which
is like putting Hitler in charge of the committee on Zionism.”
Figlia shook his head. “Anyway, we’ve also the new soft bullets,
as well as the WebShot Kevlar nets from Falls Church. This is the one
I’m particularly fond of …”
He pulled out what looked like
a flashlight. “It basically uses ultraviolet laser light to
transmit an electric current—a Taser beam that works at a range of
two kilometers.”
At this point, Goldberg
coughed firmly so she could get his attention – and she stayed on
the stepladder so she could see eye-to-eye with him. “Excuse me,
but before you even tell me what your tactics are, what are you doing
with all this weaponry? The range of an MP5 is about the length of
Vatican City. Right now, you got more than enough artillery to tangle
with a small army. Is the Pope expecting an invasion of the Vatican?”
Figlia’s eyes went flat and
his voice serious. “No. Why?”
“Where I come from, you need
enough firepower to keep the shooter’s head down. With the MP5s,
you got that. With the M16s, you got that squared. I guess you got
sniper rifles too. But you can get the same effect by attaching the
beam thingy to a telescopic sight. Hell, it could be made into a
medium-sized handgun and you can call it a phaser. What am I
missing?”
“Nothing,” he said flatly.
“We’re just cautious.”
Goldberg looked at Abasi. “You
don’t believe him? Do you?”
Abasi held up both hands
before him, and took a step back. “It
would be rude to say so.”
“That’s what I thought.”
To Figlia: “For God’s sake, you expect me to believe that a
Church as anti-science as this
one will suddenly
turn to devices like this? I mean, come on, you only just cleared
Galileo two decades ago, and you threatened to cook him.”
A soft, polite cough sounded
behind them. Goldberg looked over her shoulder, and spotted the
priest from the bomb site, evident from the silver hair, young face,
and bright violet eyes. “If I may answer,” he said in a soft,
gentle voice. “There are a few problems with your statements. The
Church is not anti-Science For example, Nicholas Orsme penned the
concept of impetus and inertia over 300 years before Isaac Newton
made it his first law of physics. St. Augustine invented psychology
in the confessional 1500 years before Freud was conceived and is so
listed in the better history-of-psychiatry texts.
“Galileo formed his
heliocentric theory using the astronomical devices in his cathedral,
and partially plagiarized a theory from Polish Archbishop Kupernick,
generally known as Copernicus.. Galileo’s theories wouldn’t be
proven until two hundred years after he died, and he was told to
teach his theories as if they were theories, instead of fact. At the
time, there was no evidence that it was
true, so even by
today’s standards, Galileo would have been laughed out of the
scientific community.”
The priest shrugged. “Thus
ends the sermon.”
Abasi looked down at the
priest from his six-foot height.
“You go by Father… doesn’t
that mean you walk around in a suit and tie?”
Father Frank laughed. “You’ve
been to America! How nice. First, this is as much my uniform as a
police officer’s; besides, women simply go crazy
over the collar.” He laughed and waved it away. “They used to say
back in the seminary that if a broomstick wore a Roman collar, women
would chase after it.”
Abasi grinned broadly. “You’re
very odd for an American priest.”
“That’s because I’m a
Roman Catholic American, not an American Catholic.”
Abasi laughed. “Thank
you. When I went to America last, I visited Georgetown, run by your
Jesuits. They had taken down crucifixes because they accepted money
from the government. I do not worship Jesus as you do, but even I
have more respect than to take down his image for money.”
He said the last with disdain.
Father Frank smiled. “I used
to be a Jesuit. I and many Jesuits of the old school have gone over
to the Opus Dei … unofficially.”
Agent Goldberg looked on
curiously. “Funny, you don’t seem to be a right-wing fascist.”
Abasi and Father Frank glanced
at her. Then, suddenly, Goldberg laughed. “That was a joke,
fellas.” She rolled her eyes. “So, you routinely go around
lecturing random VIPs?” she asked Father Frank.
“Not as a rule, no.”
“Whew, good to know…”
She frowned. “I’m going to regret this, but what was Galileo
jailed for, anyway? Being an arrogant prick?”
Father Frank hesitated. “He
had started as being friends with the Pope. Maybe frenemies. That,
and malpractice as a science professor. But, he kept all of his
church pensions and kept up all his communications with other
scientists around Europe. Was it smart to disobey a direct order from
the Church, and make
fun of the Pope during the Protestant Revolutions? No. But, because
the Church sentenced him to house arrest for teaching a theory like
it was the Truth, it has been labeled as ‘anti-progress’;
nowadays it’s just good science. Some have even charged that Newton
was prosecuted by the Church—which is difficult, as he was
Anglican. Contrary to the claims of some best-selling novels, the
church has never suppressed a scientist. Although I can think of a
few novelists who’d fit the stake better…”
The priest smiled. “The fact
is the Church has been a fan of science, especially with the
development of the anthropic principle in 1974, which states that,
scientifically, the universe seems to be made for mankind. As a
cardinal contemporary of Galileo said: ‘the Bible tells us how to
go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.’ The Jesuits even run the
Vatican observatory out in the American desert. No other religion has
one.”
She glanced at Father Frank.
“Can we help you, Father?”
“Yes,” he said, as soft as
ever. “I was sent to assist Commandatore Figlia in showing you
around. He knows the technology, but I know the history.” He tapped
his collar and smiled. “Besides, a collar can open many a door
here. You might say I could even get away with murder.”
And, if you've done that....
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