End of Days, page 3
Like the other two women, all he’d wanted was what she had offered. A chance to connect with her. Someone who wouldn’t care about his deficiencies.
Everything had gone well, right up until she’d pulled his pants down. He couldn’t get an erection. She’d worked furiously, and he’d encouraged her on and on, and then she’d tried to cup his testicles. Located his shame.
“You got no balls? What is this?” she said.
And then the rage had struck. A red level of violence he had lived with for four years, which cost the woman her life.
He knelt down and recited the Lord’s Prayer, then glanced at the body, a niggling bit of his subconscious realizing that he was growing used to the killing. Scarier still, he was growing to like it, wanting to inflict pain in an attempt to release his own.
This time he was in a decrepit Airstream trailer on the outskirts of a greenspace in the center of the same neighborhood he’d killed the other two. Called Esposizione Universale Roma, or EUR, it was south of the city center of Rome, Italy.
Built by Benito Mussolini in preparation for the world’s fair in 1942, it was designed as a new urban hub celebrating fascism and his rule. World War II put a stop to that fantasy, and now it had the ignominy of being known as the red-light district of Rome. While the city looked away from the street walkers in the area, it still didn’t allow actual brothels, which meant the men and women had to get creative to ply their trade. In this case, a trailer on the edge of a park.
He rose from his knees and leaned over the soiled mattress where the woman lay. Ignoring her open eyes, he kissed her cheek, whispering, “I’m sorry.”
He glanced at his watch, seeing it was almost seven a.m. He’d been unconscious for nearly six hours, making him late for the meeting with his men at the Priory. Even worse, making him late for the command of the next attack.
He hurriedly searched the room for any traces he’d left, using his cell phone to call his men, not worried about anyone tracking him through the cell towers because he was calling through the Wi-Fi in the woman’s trailer. She’d paid for the service with a portable Mi-Fi device to show porn videos to prospective clients. But it hadn’t helped his mood. In fact, it did nothing but elevate the rage when he saw the virile men.
Using an app called Zello, he connected and said, “Hey, I’m running a little late, but I’ll be there soon. Are we good for today?”
“Yes. He’s headed south just like he’s done every single weekend.”
“We can’t make a mistake here. The PMU in Iraq needs to be blamed. Keta’ib Hezbollah.”
“They will be. We have the note ready to go.”
“What’s the timeline?”
“Probably an hour. Maybe more.”
“And Paris? What’s happening there?”
“I’m waiting on the news now. Nothing yet.”
He said, “Okay, I’m headed to the Priory. See you soon.”
He opened the trailer door, peering out the grimy window first to make sure he wasn’t seen, then jogged to his vehicle.
Driving north out of the neighborhood, he knew it would take him a good thirty minutes to get to the Priory in Rome’s city center, and every second was precious. He traveled as fast as he dared without drawing attention, eventually circling around the Colosseum, the crowds much sparser than they would ordinarily be on a June morning before the pandemic, but coming back to life. Reaching Via Sistina, he miraculously found a parking spot adjacent to the top of the famed Spanish Steps—a luxury even considering the lack of traffic due to COVID.
He leapt out of the car, not even bothering to lock it. He bounded down the wide steps like he was running from the police, ignoring the small smattering of tourists taking selfies on the ledges. Still wearing masks, they reminded him of sprouts of flowers after a horrendous winter—the first beginnings of new life in Rome.
He hit the lower level, reaching the Piazza de Spagna and the fountain there, then raced to the narrow alley of Via Dei Condotti. Full of expensive stores, it was the high-end shopping district of Rome. Most were closed still because of the pandemic, but a few were open, and the slowly recuperating tourist industry was helping that along, with more and more people coming to shop. He ignored them. While many were drawn here to buy the latest in fashion, he was going to a building that had been bequeathed to his organization almost two hundred years before.
He reached a stone archway leading to a courtyard, sandwiched between a store selling Hermès on the left and Jimmy Choo on the right. He went forward to a small security checkpoint and presented his credentials. A man checked his identification and let him through without issue, but he could tell the attendant wondered about the sweat cloaking his body from his jog in the cloying June heat.
He speed-walked across the courtyard to the main door of the Magisterial Palace of the Knights of Malta. Known formally as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, it was an organization that had been around since the First Crusade in the eleventh century, and was one of the last papal sovereign orders of chivalry.
Formed initially by a Benedictine monk to help the faithful on their path to the promised land, it had morphed much in its history. First, a hospital to help the pious on their quest to Jerusalem, then, when the faithful were attacked, as an army to defend them, and finally, when they were defeated in the defense of the Holy Land, they became a sea power protecting the Catholic empire, first on the island of Rhodes, and finally Malta.
As with most of the papal benedictions of the day, the order eventually lost favor as it grew in power—perceived as a threat to the Holy See. But the Knights of Malta were cunning. They’d learned early on who the true authority was. When the famed Knights Templar were burned at the stake as heretics, even as they did the bidding of the Holy Roman Empire, the Knights of Malta knew it was because they had become too powerful. The Grand Master of the Knights of Malta had learned a valuable lesson: It doesn’t pay to be the king. Better to be the court jester.
When the Templars were destroyed, the benefactor had been the Knights of Malta. They were bequeathed the lands and treasures of that order. Having been kicked out of Jerusalem, then Rhodes, and finally Malta—from no less than Emperor Napoleon in the late eighteenth century, which was a legitimate black eye, as the Knights had literally saved the European continent from the Ottoman hordes in the sixteenth century—they had been given a plot of land in Rome. They had existed there ever since.
Now returning back to its roots of charity, the Knights of Malta worked worldwide to help the downtrodden. They were a weird anachronism of history. They had their own passports, produced their own currency and postal stamps, had observer status in the United Nations, but owned no terrain. In effect, they were a state entity without a state. Given its nonprofit work around the world, and the support of the Holy See, it still had its pedigree, but no longer had a martial bent. At least that’s what they said on official documents.
Garrett was the marshal side of the house. A devout Catholic, he had been contacted by the Knights when they went into Syria the first time, during the barrel bombings of the Assad regime in early 2013.
The Knights wanted to help the refugees there like they had been doing for hundreds of years the world over, but realized that they couldn’t do so without at least some protection. And they’d approached Garrett, a lowly Knight of Magisterial Grace from the United States Order of Malta. A former soldier of the United States Army’s Special Forces, he had contacts they wanted access to, both in Syria and from his past.
Having spent his formative years in Croatia, his life had been one war after another, first the hell of the Bosnian conflict, then the hell after 9/11. He’d fought in countries he couldn’t have even found on a map as a student. But after his life in the army, he did have contacts.
Garrett went through the large front door of the mansion, ignored the anteroom with the secretary, and took a left down a hallway, to a stairwell leading to the basement.
The Knights didn’t want to advertise his services—being a humanitarian organization—so he was relegated to the basement section of the mansion, to a group of hastily renovated closets that were once used solely for the cleaning crew.
Now the little rat warren was his office space.
He reached the bottom of the stairs, the faint odor of mildew creeping out, the ceiling at just seven feet causing him to duck his head even if he wasn’t going to hit it.
He walked down to his office and opened the door, finding Leonardo inside waiting.
In his late twenties, Leonardo had hard eyes, having seen much more of the hatred that mankind can bring than the locals in Rome would ever understand. He lived in a so-called civilized world, but at the edges, where the monsters roamed, it was still a vicious, brutal existence, which is why Garrett had recruited him.
All four of his team were former members of the Croatian Special Forces Command, a unit that had been formed after the horrific violence of the Bosnian war. They had been too young to understand the incredible trauma that war personified, but became old enough to see it inflicted elsewhere. They’d served their time, learning invaluable skills, and then had returned to civilian life only to find it wanting.
They’d lost the camaraderie and focus of the military, and all four were floundering, working dead-end jobs when Garrett had sought them out, one by one.
Born in Croatia, he was now a United States citizen, with one foot in both camps, and he had the same zeal that they had. He’d recruited them for a single mission in Syria, and they’d signed on. A good mission—protecting the Knights of Malta as they helped the victims from all sides of the conflict. At least it was a good mission on paper.
That mission had turned into a cauldron of violence, with all of them scarred—none more than Garrett—and because of it, they would now follow him into hell, convinced his new mission was the way to cleanse the world of the scourge they’d witnessed.
When he’d opened the door, Leonardo was sitting behind Garrett’s desk staring at a small flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. He’d leapt up, embarrassed to be taking Garrett’s seat. Garrett waved a hand, telling him it was nothing, and then pointed at the television.
“What’s happening?”
“It’s Paris.”
Chapter 6
Garrett turned up the sound, hearing a BBC report about an Israeli diplomat named Etyan Malka having been murdered in a street mugging. The report detailed that the perpetrators were Muslim refugees and still on the loose, with the focus on the “refugee” slant. What it didn’t say was that the man killed was no diplomat. He was the head of the European Protective Services division of Shin Bet, the Israeli security service responsible for shielding the homeland from threats.
Originally focused solely within the borders of Israel, after the killings of the Israeli athletes in 1972 its sphere went worldwide, with a mandate to protect Israeli interests all over the globe, to include El Al airlines and Israeli embassies on foreign soil.
He was a perfect target for the signal Garrett wanted to send. It showed that the man responsible for protecting Israeli assets in Europe couldn’t even protect himself.
The report also failed to mention the letter he knew his assets had left at the scene, but he had no doubt Israel had it. One more bit of gunpowder loaded in the shell he wanted to fire.
Garrett smiled and said, “I was beginning to worry those savages didn’t have it in them, but after Interlaken I suppose I should have had more confidence.”
His eyes still glued to the television, Leonardo barked a laugh, almost as if he was embarrassed by what was on the screen. By what he had facilitated.
Garrett sat down behind his desk and used the remote to cut off the TV, saying, “What about our own operation today?”
Glad for the reprieve, Leonardo put a map on the desk, pointing out a position near the coast and saying, “Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael are set. We expect the hit in the next hour.” He looked at his watch and corrected himself, “Actually within the next twenty minutes now. Raph is the trigger. Donnie and Mikey are the hit team.”
Garrett insisted that they never use their true names, no matter what they did, as a protection of the reputation of the Knights if anything went wrong. He wanted to make it as hard as possible to put a link to his martial skill and the Knights’ charitable contribution. Which is why he was hired.
After recruiting them, he’d buried their names to the point that even he couldn’t remember what was on their birth certificates. They’d used false passports created by the Knights for years, but he had to keep them straight, so he’d devised nicknames, no matter the name on the passport.
He had anointed them with the names of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had all thought it funny originally, but the monikers had taken on a life of their own, with each man liking the tag he’d been given. He, of course, was Splinter. At least to his face. When he was out of earshot, they called him the Eunuch.
Because of his insistence on cloaking their names, they were known derisively as the Turtles to the hierarchy of the Knights of Malta, but the officials using the term had no idea of the violence they were capable of inflicting. They would learn that soon.
Garrett rubbed his face, the blackout sleep not giving him the rest he needed. He said, “Can they do it and project the hit on our partners?”
Leonardo said, “Yes. We have his route, and we’re going to use the same method that Israel does. It will send a signal, and when the car is disabled, we’ll execute him and his wife with a bullet to the head, then throw the letter in the front seat. It will work.”
“How sure are we he’s going to use that route?”
“He’s done it every weekend since Italy opened back up. He takes his wife on a day drive down the Amalfi coast. He eats at a different restaurant, but he takes the same route to get there. He’ll do it again.”
Garrett nodded and said, “Okay. Okay. Good.”
Leonardo nodded, then shuffled from foot to foot. Garrett said, “What?”
“Our contact says he needs more money. We have it, and he needs it for the next hit. The one in Bahrain.”
“We’ve already paid him. He knows that. Is he trying a play here? I know it’s not because he’s a true believer. If he was, he wouldn’t have taken our money to begin with.”
In Syria, before it had all gone bad, the majority of the Turtles’ actions had been paying off various rebel groups—in effect, buying the ability of the Knights to help the very people the groups were harming. To be sure, that in itself had involved significant danger, and when they had to go to the guns, they did, but money was something the Knights had, and it was much easier to pay with cash as opposed to blood. In so doing, they’d found a man who could interface with the various rebel groups, and that was the man they were using now.
Leonardo said, “I don’t think so. He’s scared. He says they’re going to kill him if he doesn’t deliver. I think he’s telling the truth. I think he needs the money to make it happen.”
“Why? We set the parameters before we paid him. If he’s playing us, I’ll cut his heart out.”
“He says Bahrain is more than they expected. More effort, more men, more everything. And we need that hit before we do the big one. We need to build the death count before we trip the final wire. If we don’t, we won’t get the reaction we want.”
Garrett rolled his head back onto his chair, staring at the ceiling and thinking. He didn’t like the choice of paying off a man who had already been a weasel in Syria, skimming off their money to enrich himself. But he had done what he’d said he’d do, protecting the Knights.
He said, “Okay. Pay him what he wants. But this is bullshit. If there’s one place Keta’ib Hezbollah can operate, it’s Bahrain. I mean, they can kill an old chief of Mossad in Switzerland, a Shin Bet head in Paris, but they need more money in Bahrain, a Shia state?”
“It’s because of the level of the target and the Sunni security apparatus. They say it makes it harder to operate than in a European country. And they might be right.”
Garrett rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. Use the cutout account, but this is the last time. We aren’t made of money, and we aren’t in Syria anymore. I can’t steal the money here in Rome like we did there, but I agree. We need that hit.”
Leonardo nodded and Garrett changed the subject. “What’s the status on Raphael? Do we have contact?”
Leonardo raised a cell phone and said, “He’s on Zello. We’ll hear as soon as he has the target.”
Zello was an application that basically turned the cell phone into a multiplex walkie-talkie, with everyone who was tuned to the channel able to listen instead of the usual point-to-point communications of a cell phone.
No sooner did he say that than the phone chirped, “Donnie, Donnie, this is Raph. Target just passed my location.”
Donatello came back, the sound crystal clear, “Roger that. We’re set. What’s the traffic status?”
“You’re clear. He’s a singleton. Light traffic, and they’re running slow.”
In the office, Leonardo smiled and said, “Told you.”
At the same time Garrett was hearing the radio traffic, the small trailer next to the park in the EUR neighborhood was being surrounded with crime scene tape, the body having been found, a small crowd forming outside.
Inspector Lia Vairo parked her car next to the perimeter and exited. She pushed past the tape outside the trailer, saying to the carabinieri at the entrance checkpoint, “Another one?”
“Looks that way.”
She entered the crime scene, thinking she was solving a murder. She had no idea of the threat the death represented.
Most of the people living in the neighborhood didn’t care about the murders happening. In fact, if asked, almost all would say they brought it upon themselves by littering the neighborhood with their trade. Just one more whore killed doing her job. But Lia did care. She was someone who didn’t look at the life of the victim, only the death.
