THE JUDAS HIT Read online

  “You—you’re an exorcist?” The cop’s eyes were unbelieving, but the emotion was at war with what he had just seen.

  Simon shrugged. “I’ve faced a few demons in my time, most of them my own, eh eh.” He stared into the cop’s eyes. “There’s more to this story than just sadism, Jerry.”

  Vandenberg blanched. “That’s what you meant by archdiocese business?”

  “Let’s say I’m sure we’ll be in touch, okay? But let’s keep this between us.”

  The cop nodded. The push of the movie poster had taken hold. “All right, how can I get in touch with you?”

  Simon smiled. “I’ll call you.”

  They shook hands and Vandenberg headed back to the scene.

  Bet on it, Simon thought.

  Chapter 4

  Midtown Manhattan

  New York City

  There was another one at the end of the bar who keyed on him as soon as he entered. He was used to it. Her striking eyes followed him all the way to his usual seat, but she was good at hiding her interest.

  “Tony, nice to see you,” he called out, approaching the waiting bartender with his right hand extended.

  They shook solemnly. “Mr. Pound, the pleasure is always mine.” Tony was tall with the look of an ex-boxer about him. His ebony skin and bulging muscles glistened in the track lighting.

  Simon slid onto the leather stool with a lithe movement that belied his own muscular bulk. In fact their musculatures were similar.

  “Still hanging out at Joey’s on 45th?” Simon addressed Tony, but his peripheral gaze settled on the woman whose eyes were still searching him out. Several patrons at the bar between them might as well have been made of clear glass. She was still staring but pretending to examine the untouched martini in front of her.

  Tony smiled widely. “You know it. Everybody’s switching to these corporate gyms taking over, but I’m old school. Medicine balls and cracked leather and the stench of stale sweat ’stead of spandex and hairspray.”

  “Old school indeed,” Simon grinned. “It’s working—you look good. Very good.”

  “Spar sometime?”

  “Soon, Tony. Call me.”

  The big man cocked his head slightly toward the end of the bar. “The usual?”

  “Why tamper with perfection?” Simon said.

  The woman was swirling her martini, licking the glass rim and eyeing him surreptitiously. She wasn’t the redhead from earlier, she was more stunning. Her chestnut hair cascaded over strong shoulders and neck. High cheekbones, haughty nose, full lips and wide, expressive mouth. She was the most attractive woman in the place and he gazed briefly at the male oglers. He chuckled. They didn’t stand a chance. He eliminated them one by one, this one too bald, that one too hairy, the other one too fat. Simon knew he was just right.

  “One bourbon Manhattan, splash of Campari, orange bitters, well shaken and with orange twist,” said Tony as he put the cocktail on the bar. “Nice combination, but I could do without the Kalamata olive myself.”

  “Thanks, Tony. The olive makes it more…interesting.” Simon smiled, mostly for her benefit.

  She raised an eyebrow and sipped her drink seductively, openly watching him now.

  “You make it the best,” Simon added.

  “Better than you?”

  “Well, let’s say you’re closest to the way I make it.” He paused. “Let’s have two more, why don’t we, Tony?”

  “Coming right up, man.” He picked up the shaker with practiced ease.

  Simon tasted his first drink and let the contrasting sweet and bitter notes play on his palate. Two thousand years and he’d learned to enjoy both the simpler and the finer things. The drink was one of the finer and the woman was one of the simpler. Maybe later he would flip them.

  When Tony returned with the new drinks, Simon handed him a hundred dollar bill with a wink. “One of these is for the lady, with my compliments.”

  Tony returned the wink and took the drink over to the seductive woman. They spoke softly for a moment and looked back at him, then Tony ambled back. He set the glass in front of Simon.

  “Lady says she’s particular about her...drinks.” The big man grinned.

  “Ah well,” Simon said with a theatrical sigh. “Her loss.”

  He turned away to survey the half-filled bar and taste his drink again. He smiled when he heard a rustle behind him.

  “I really told him to bring it back because I didn’t want to drink it alone,” she said from behind him. He felt her breath on his ear.

  He turned and beheld her as she tasted the drink he had bought her. She was even better from this close.

  She made an appraising face. “Interesting flavors. A little more complex than the usual cocktail.”

  “I’m never interested in the usual,” Simon said. At the till, Tony was grinning.

  “No, I can see that,” she said, looking deeply into his eyes.

  Or maybe my soul, he thought, if I had one.

  He introduced himself.

  “Michelle Monet,” she said, extending a slim hand with fire-red nails. “Like the painter, but not nearly as accomplished.”

  “Accomplished at what?”

  “Art, of course.”

  “What kind of art?”

  “Art dealership,” she said, grinning. Her smile was both innocent and seductive. Simon was smitten. It happened once or twice a week.

  They drank and chatted over their glasses for a half hour, and when Simon left the bar she was on his arm, laughing at a joke he’d made.

  “My loft is this way,” he said, steering her to the right when they were on the sidewalk.

  “Mmmm, I’d love to see it, Simon,” she said, purring a little.

  The evening was looking up.

  Simon turned away for a moment, suddenly sad.

  Chapter 5

  Westview Mall Construction Site

  Queens, New York

  He was unremarkable in clothing and appearance, wearing the uniform of scuffed boots, faded jeans, plaid shirt and yellow helmet. He stepped into the first Port-a-John in the row leaning against the rear of the trailer that housed the construction crew’s office.

  A police squad car and a plainclothes detective’s Ford were pulled up near the steps at the front of the elevated trailer. Cops were taking statements from the workers who had been on the scene the previous day.

  He had counted two uniformed cops, a detective, and five construction workers and their supervisor. They were all shaken by the bizarre find, and what had happened to their coworker.

  He stood in the tiny space, oblivious to the stench coming from the stained seat and hole. He unbuttoned the loose cotton shirt and fiddled with the wires, extending the tiny unit and cradling it loosely in his hand. He exited the plastic shed, saw no one else nearby, and stepped around to the front.

  He mouthed some words, then made the sign of the inverted cross.

  When he opened the trailer door, everyone turned to look at him.

  “Welcome to hell!” he said, smiling widely.

  And he released the dead-man trigger.

  The trailer exploded in a fireball, spewing debris and bloody body parts in a ragged circle that included the two mangled vehicles, which blew up sequentially only seconds later.

  Somewhere a car alarm screamed uselessly.

  Chapter 6

  Edificio Nuovo, Comitato per Interventi

  Vatican City, Rome

  The intimidated young Jesuit surveyed his new cubicle. One side looked like every other cubicle in the world, with a comfortable chair in front of a flat monitor and keyboard. Not very intimidating at all.

  But on the other side of the cubicle an aluminum frame cradled an array of six flat monitors, three color-coded keyboards, several sets of headphones and microphones units, and an array of high-tech video-game-style mice and joysticks.

  None of the equipment was intended for game-playing, however.

  The young Jesuit was a recent gr
aduate of a secret school held on a different floor of this same nondescript building and did not wear a collar. He was not trained to minister to the sick, or to teach at one of the great Jesuit universities. Instead, he was trained in the tradition of historical warrior monks—to wage war for the Holy See.

  Father Giustino Ferro was a Vatican drone pilot.

  Taking a deep breath and straightening his jumpsuit, he sat in the control chair, swiveled to face the screens and adjusted their angles. His fingers curled around the rubber grip on the largest joystick.

  Excitement coursed through his veins.

  He wasn’t piloting a weapon—the XRP-UAS8 was a surveillance drone, one of the newest unmanned aerial vehicles, and he was an expert driver. The seminarian cadets called themselves drivers, almost as if drones were race cars.

  He would learn of his assignment from the squadron commander—a former Swiss Air Force pilot and drone jockey.

  Right now Ferro’s job was to acquaint himself with the hardware.

  He sighed. His Mamma would be proud, but very surprised at the sort of priest her youngest son had become.

  If he were allowed to tell her.

  Chapter 7

  Midtown Manhattan

  New York City

  They used every square inch of his king-size bed.

  Simon hadn’t shown her the entire loft, only the foyer and the long hallway that led to the master bedroom, where the floor to ceiling windows framed the twinkling lights of Midtown Manhattan without blinds or draperies.

  She had undressed by the light of the city, shadows hiding parts of her body. Sitting in the leather armchair at the foot of the bed, he soaked in his private show.

  Michelle was amazing, even more so than he had realized. Her clothes, while stylish, had hidden much of her curves and angles, covering the very same features that later he would nuzzle.

  For her part, her seductive smile showed she enjoyed performing the strip-tease for him, slowly approaching his chair. She leaned down and their lips met, allowing him to feel some of the heat inside her. Rising heat. Their mouths still locked together, tongues jousting, he stared into her open eyes and blinked.

  She pulled him onto the bed. Soon they were entangled on the wide satin sheets, their skin and muscles hot to the touch and dappled with a sheen of sweet sweat.

  For two hours they tangled and untangled, rolled over and found different points of purchase on the bed and on each other, flowing together and apart as if they’d choreographed the exquisite dance their entire lives.

  And when it was all over and they were both spent, satisfied, their skin cooling in the subtle draft from the registers, she pointed the silenced semi-automatic pistol she had left on the floor at his head.

  Then her expression changed from regret to surprise, and then to pain.

  Simon also held a silenced pistol, a vintage Colt Woodsman he kept in a secret compartment of the bed’s headboard. The .22 caliber bullet entered her brain through the center of her forehead, rattled around like a heated marble, then settled into the soft tissue, its damage done. Her eyes froze open, her hand dropped the gun she had planned to kill him with, and she sagged onto him. Her nipples were still erect.

  Simon gently maneuvered her sideways and got out of bed, real sadness overtaking him as he rolled her into the satin sheets. There was little blood from the low-velocity bullet’s entry wound.

  He sighed. Two thousand years, give or take a century or two, and he still hated to destroy beauty.

  But sometimes it was part of the job.

  Chapter 8

  Edificio Nuovo, Comitato per Interventi

  Vatican City, Rome

  It was a “new” building in name only, dating back to the late 1960s, with a blond brick façade that was as bland as most offices built throughout Rome during that time. It had housed various bureaucratic sub-agencies of the Vatican, but in the last ten years it had been gutted and refurbished even though the exterior remained as bland as ever. The blandness helped conceal its new function.

  The sign said it housed the Committee for Interventions, which was a euphemism. In reality it was the headquarters of the Vatican Secret Service, guarded by all the latest gear and a special brigade of the commando-trained Swiss Guard.

  Inside, the space was filled with offices, computer labs, conference rooms, library, archives, and rows of cubicles from which the small fleet of new surveillance drones was piloted.

  Father Martin Xavier Voltano sat in his office on the secure top floor of the building and awaited word that his guests had arrived in the small conference room next door. The secret elevator ferried visitors up to this level only when the requisite identity checks were cleared.

  Father Martin surveyed his uncluttered but stylish office. The head of the VSS could allow himself a few indulgences. He was a Jesuit, as were most of the VSS’s upper echelon. Jesuits were originally known as the company of Jesus and considered the elite troops among missionaries. It followed that most of the leadership positions in the VSS would be Jesuits, and that more than a few should be exorcists. Martin Voltano had been an exorcist for thirty-two years, longer than anyone else in the VSS. He had been the recipient of the Sacred Directive that outlined the agency’s secret duties and assigned him power over life and death.

  And the Sacred Directive had also introduced him to Simon Pound.

  Martin remembered the day as if were only last week, but it had been thirty-two years now.

  His predecessor, Father Taglieri, a man bent by age and experience and perhaps more by enemy action, had begun explaining Martin’s duties as the new head of operations. But he had seemed nervous as he handed young Father Martin a manila folder marked with the VSS cross and sword logo and red SEGRETISSIMO stamp: Most Secret.

  “This will be your best weapon in the war against our enemies,” said Taglieri, raising an eyebrow as he slid the folder over his successor’s desk. “And you will need to keep an open mind as you read this.”

  Martin scanned the first sheet, the second, then started shaking his head. “This can’t be possible…”

  “Oh, but it is,” said Taglieri.

  And he went on to explain to his wide-eyed young successor the story of Judas Iscariot, who took his infamous thirty silver coins to a field where the voices in his head drove him to the brink of madness. There he hanged himself and when the rope snapped he fell and his bowels burst forth from his body.

  “That is what many scholars believe may actually have occurred,” Taglieri said. “But we now know that something else happened between the moment that rope snapped and when Judas landed on the cursed soil and his body burst open.”

  “What could that have been?” asked Martin incredulously. “It would have been mere seconds.”

  “Fractions of seconds. The traitor of Christ was offered a deal.”

  “A deal? What the hell—” He stopped, chagrined. “Sorry, Father, must be my Irish side.”

  Taglieri waved it off. “Yes, being Italian-Irish must have its…challenges.”

  “You can’t imagine. But seriously, Father, what do you mean a deal? With whom? Who else was there?”

  “Well, God, of course. God was there. Or some representative of God, the source is unclear.”

  “The source?”

  “Yes, as I said. A deal was offered, and in the time it took the body to fall it was accepted, and a sort of cover story was born. I don’t know what those first couple centuries must have been like, and he himself won’t talk about it.”

  Martin chuckled. “This is all very…” But he shuffled the sheets from the folder and peered ahead in the dossier. “You can’t possibly…” He read further and his voice faded to silence.

  “Yes,” said Taglieri presently. “He accepted the deal and so the man who betrayed Jesus was given the chance to turn protector. He was tasked with protecting the church and later on the papacy itself by becoming a weapon, a secret weapon that could be employed at the cost of a symbolic fee. I imagi
ne he was very busy for a while. He was given more than one gift that first day, but of course the most important was near-immortality. Although there are some conditions on it we’ll discuss later.”

  “I find it hard to believe…”

  “Why? We routinely take all kinds of mysteries on faith. Why not this one, Father Martin?”

  Martin hung his head. “You are right, of course. Who am I to question?”

  “It’s human to doubt. But there is more to everything if we dig deeply enough, eh?”

  “The symbolic fee you mentioned, it was thirty pieces of silver?”

  “You must adjust for inflation, of course. But yes, he is for sale for a sum that looks like the thirty so-called pieces, as it were, and my own predecessor showed me the very documents you now hold. I have given Judas many assignments over the years, and he has fulfilled all of them admirably. Although he’s become a bit arrogant.”

  “What kind of assignments?” Martin asked, but he thought he already knew. The documents alluded to it.

  “Why, assassinations mostly, Father Martin. He was both gifted and cursed on that day, you see. He is the world’s most experienced assassin.”

  “A hit man for the Vatican?” Martin could not hide his surprise.

  “We don’t like such crass terms. We aren’t the Mafia, for God’s sake!”

  “No,” said Martin softly. “We are not.”

  “But there is messy work to be done in every noble quest, is there not? Judas simply allows us to have it done while leaving—”

  “Our hands clean?” Martin finished. “Like Pontius Pilate?”

  “Yes. We understand each other. Would you like to meet him?”

  Father Martin cleared his throat and glanced at the door. “He’s here?”