Vatican Assassin (3 page)

He ducks out of the wooded section and heads for the Men’s store. There are a few people around, but most don’t notice him or try not to notice him.

I haven’t been here long enough for anyone to know me yet, thank God. Most of these
people seem pretty calm, too... I wonder if the job is done? Should be by now. Should be mass
pandemonium, people running crazy... well, maybe not, but some kind of reaction, anyway. Maybe
they’re just keeping it quiet for now.

BC makes it into the men’s clothing store without incident. The sales assistant eyes him warily as he walks in. He’s young, impeccably dressed. He arches an eyebrow as he tries to look down his nose at BC. His nose wrinkles as he begins to smell him.

“Can I help you?” His voice virtually drips with disdain.

“I need a new suit. I’d like to have these clothes I’m wearing incinerated in your recycler, too.”

“Our fitter is down, should be back up later on. Why don’t you come back later?”

I don’t have time for this...

“I thought you asked if you could help me?”

“Well, I...”

“...Didn’t really mean it. I see. Tell you what, you help me out with something off the rack, burn these clothes, and I won’t lose my temper. How about it?”

The sales guy tries to says something but just stammers. BC continues.

“You don’t want me to lose my temper here, do you? Not dressed like this. What if I lose it and run all over the store, rubbing myself all over these nice clean pretty suits of yours?”

“Uh, look, sir, uh, wah...”

BC stares him down, then tries to reassure him somewhat.

“Look, I’m gonna pay for everything, so just sit back, I’ll find what I need, you take care of my old stuff, and I’ll be gone. And then you can forget all about me...”

...And you’d better. I’d hate to have to come back and tie you off as a loose end. Or maybe
I wouldn’t hate it so much, little prick... Just doing the Lord’s work... You’d rather not find out...
This is already taking way too long, and I’m losing patience fast.
The sales assistant weasels out of the confrontation, “You just go ahead. I’ll help with those clothes of yours when you’re done.” He wrinkles his nose again at BC and his soiled suit. BC finds a dark suit. Not black, but close enough for off the rack. He pays for the suit with an OPO secured credit card, untraceable. He changes in the store after cleaning himself up in the store’s refresher. The sales assistant incinerates the remnants of his sewer crawl in the store’s molecular recycler and doesn’t speak to BC again.

Fine by me. See ya.

BC walks out of the store a new man.

Much better! Mmmm, clean clothes... Just wish I could do some mind trick and make that
little prick forget I was ever in there.

Not the right clothes, though. This suit won’t pass. I still gotta get into dress blacks.
And get back to the auditorium.

He heads for the center of the dome, crossing over one of the walkways to get to the dome’s other side. He steps nonchalantly out of the Main Dome, but then gingerly runs down the corridor towards the Vatican’s Lunar Holdings, still favoring his left ankle.
Slight modification of plans...

He gets to his room. As the door closes behind him, he kicks off his shoes and rips off the new suit. The tie almost chokes him as he pulls it over his head.

He grabs a suit off his rack, the traditional black, an identical suit to the one he wore earlier. He pulls on the pants, the shirt, fixes the collar... he looks at the clock. Time is ticking away, and he’s way off plan.

Time pressure. Got to get back to the reception hall. Gotta cover tracks, too.
BC dumps suit he just bought through the waste panel in his room and incinerates his brand new clothes.

Some tracks covered....
As long as that sales guy forgets. Figures I’d find one of the few
places on Reagan Station with a human attendant. Too bad I couldn’t have killed him right off.
Would’ve look suspicious. His lucky day.

BC runs back down the corridor, still limping a little. . He saunters briskly out of the Vatican holdings, through the Main Dome again, then up a level to the reception hall, whose doors are blocked by Lunar Security Cops
.
A crowd is forming outside the hall.
Good signs. It must have worked.

He makes his way to the front of the crowd. A guard blocks his way when he tries to walk past and into the hall.

“I’m sorry, Father, I can’t let you in there.”

“What?” BC plays dumb.

“Nobody’s allowed to enter or leave the reception hall for right now.”

“Oh, but I’m supposed to be in there. I just left to go to the bathroom.”

The guard thinks for a second. “I still can’t let you in there, even
back
in there. Orders.”

“Why not? I’m with The Cardinal. He may need me.”

The guard thinks again. Hard.

Straining with the effort. C’mon, buddy.

“C’mon, Buddy. You help a priest, you go to heaven...”

“Aw, Father, I’m Jewish. I’m not sure we even have the same heaven.”

“Same God, same heaven... Jesus was Jewish! You still get credit.”

The guard laughs, “Hold on a sec, Father.” He opens the doors to the hall and ducks half inside. BC can hear him talking to someone. The guard leans back through the door and looks at BC.

“Okay, Father, you’re in, but you might not wanna be.”

“What?”

“Go ahead in. You’ll see.”

BC walks through the doors into some of the chaos he’s been expecting. People running around. Other people, important-looking people, milling about. Med techs all over the stage. The Cardinal is being escorted back down from the dais.

BC makes his way through the crowd, to The Cardinal. The Cardinal looks up as BC

approaches.

“Well, Father Campion, you picked a fine time to heed nature’s call. Just as the Governor began her speech, she collapsed. She passed away on the spot, poor thing. I offered last rites but her husband seemed almost offended. Said they weren’t Catholic, ‘not even new catholic with a small “c”’. He was distraught, of course.

“You should have been here. They’re younger, he might have responded better to you.”

“Of course, sir. My apologies.”

Mission complete.

BC stares out the window of the Cardinal’s office, zoning out on the sharp contrasts of light and shadow in the monochrome gray lunar landscape as The Cardinal drones on. He sees the lights of several ships streak up and away from the surface into the stars. UIN ships by the look of them, their diplomats leaving Lunar Prime. The peace conference is over before it began. The governor is dead. So far, BC has pulled off the assassination without detection despite setbacks. So far.

So far the most hazardous part of this job is avoiding being bored to death by the
Cardinal. I guess the sewerage ranks a close second, though...

“The Governor’s death could jeopardize our entire mission...”

The Governor’s death
was
my entire “mission”, Cardinal, but I do enjoy the double
meaning. I suppose I’m a mission-ary of a different sort...

“Are you listening to me, Father?”

BC turns to face The Cardinal.

Cardinal Andersen glares up at BC from behind his ludicrously large, fakewood desk. Everything about the Vatican Mission on the Moon is sort of large and ludicrous and fake. The entire enclave of Vatican staterooms and offices on the Moon is bedecked in a rich gold and red color scheme. Ornate iconography decorates most of the walls, a mishmash of images and relics from all the different Christian strains now unified in the NcC, from Eastern icons to the New Risen Lord of the NcC and every revisionist view in between. The Cardinal’s own decorator touch, BC had been told when he’d cracked a joke about it just after arriving. The Cardinal, though not large, certainly was, in BC’s opinion, fairly ludicrous in his own right, and usually bedecked in red and gold himself.

“Well, are you listening to me, Father?”

“Absolutely, your holiness. How is our mission jeopardized? The Vatican Mission here is fairly well established by now. You’ve been here, what, five years yourself, right?”

“Almost five. And we were starting to get somewhere here, Father Campion. The Vatican Mission just being here is in itself testimony to that. We had been discussing a new alliance between the UTZ and Luna...”

“Don’t you think it was natural causes?” BC asks.

The Cardinal shakes his head.

“She was so young, just a few years older than you, Father Campion. Does it seem natural to you?” The Cardinal looks down and briefly distracts himself in some of the scattered sheets on his desk. BC presses on.

“Who would want her dead?”

The Cardinal, agitated, looks back up at BC and continues.

“Well, she was negotiating with both the UTZ and the UIN. And she allowed us to beef up our mission here. The UIN might see that as a threat.”

“Really? Are we that threatening?”

The Cardinal stops. He looks down his nose at BC.

“Some of us are.”

Dangerous ground you’re on, Cardinal. There’s stuff you really don’t want to know
anything about. Guess it’s time for some of my famous spin...

“
We do the Lord’s work, Cardinal Andersen, even the OPO. The Holy Father sends us as his personal emissaries into the world. Do you find the OPO... dangerous, Cardinal? We but serve God’s representative on Earth, Pope Peter the Second. We are only ‘dangerous’ in our devotion to The Lord.”

“So was the Inquisition, Father. Torquemada said much the same thing as you, you know.”

Better watch yourself, Cardinal. You don’t want to be on the wrong side here...

“We’re on the same side here, Cardinal. Please don’t forget that. Pope Peter assigned you to Luna personally, didn’t he? Aren’t we all the Pope’s men?”

The Cardinal nods. “We are at that, Father Campion. Maybe some more than others, though, eh?”

Careful there, Cardinal...

“There are those who could view your assignment here as my new Public Relations Officer from the OPO as, well... a threat. You know they spread rumors about the OPO. Those people could have very well reacted to your arrival with this possible assassination.”

“ I really don’t think my arrival would have even drawn their attention, much less their anger. I’m not nearly so important. I’d be surprised if they even noticed. And, still, it’s only
possible
foul play
,
your eminence. We must trust in God. Maybe it was just her time.”

“Perhaps. But I don’t know whether God had anything to do with this. I’m also not the only one thinking there may be more to this, Campion. Governor Edwards and his people are very suspicious. It did look like a heart attack to me at first, but you never know. They do let those
Muslims
wander the halls here, still, even with the war. The price of neutrality, I suppose. Maybe you should watch
your
back, Father Campion.”

“I will, trust me, sir. We should all be alert. It is a time of war. After all.”

“The UIN may very well have killed McEntyre to derail our negotiations. If they’ll kill her, they’ll not hesitate to remove those they find threatening who are
less
visible. Be careful. I don’t trust them. Bad enough we have to live among them here on the moon. They’re naturally violent, and they seem to hate absolutely everyone else.”

BC nods.

Jeesh, the guy’s almost rabid.

The intercom dings.

“Cardinal?” His secretary on the com.

“Yes?”

“Governor Edwards is here to see you.”

“Send him in.”

The door opens. Edwards enters.

“Hello Cardinal.”

Luna’s new governor is visibly nervous as he walks in and shakes hands with the Cardinal and BC. His handshake is quick and uncertain. BC takes quick stock of him.
In his forties
,
probably.
Stocky, about 6’2”, short dark hair... looks military, or at least
recently ex-military. Maybe he was Lunar Security, a cop, before moving up. Have to do some
digging.

He looks like a man suddenly in over his head... like I was in that tunnel, I suppose.

“I would guess you’re Father Campion?”

“Yes... or you can call me BC.”

“Father Campion is New Unified Reform,” The Cardinal interjects, explaining BC’s informality.

“And also a ranking Vatican official, I understand,” Edwards said.

Hmmm, maybe he’s sharper than he looks.

“Nice to meet you, Governor Edwards”

Edwards flinches.

“I’m not used to that, yet. Sorry. The ‘governor’ thing, I mean...”

Edwards looks down for a moment then comes back to himself.

“I, uh, have some news that may concern you.”

Uh oh.

“UIN warships have been detected just a short distance from us here on Luna. We’ve never seen them get this close, even before...” He stops, thinks a moment.

...Before, when they were attacking us back on Earth. Right, Mr. Edwards?
Still, I didn’t
expect that that was his news.

“What I mean is, before, they stayed pretty far from us when they hit Earth targets. They have people here, too.”

I wonder how many of them are still here? No wonder they were so keen on getting out of
here after the shit went down.

“Would that really stop them from attacking?” the Cardinal sneers.

Edwards seems surprised by the Cardinal’s bitter contempt for the UIN. BC is as well, though less so after their earlier exchange.

“I don’t think they’d risk their own people’s lives...” Edwards says. The Cardinal stands, visibly shaking.

“Of course they would! All glory to Allah and all that! They’d just be martyrs and celebrated back on Mars, like killing them did them a favor! And they’ll twist it so it sounds like we killed them, you’ll see.”

Edwards is taken aback by the Cardinal’s vitriol. He stares at The Cardinal as if seeing him for the first time. BC watches Edwards, watches his reactions.