The Iscariot Agenda Read Free Page A

him. For the moment the Knight conceded. “Please accept my apology, Monsignor. I guess you don’t want to be here anymore than I do,” he answered.
    “It’s not a matter of what I want,” he returned. “It’s a matter of you finding what it is you seek, which is the truth of faith versus fate . . . You’re no different from anybody else who walks through my door.” 
    Kimball closed his eyes in resignation, his once obstinate will bleeding off by the inches, a promising sign to the monsignor.
    So the cleric led the Knight into conversation. “Several months ago you aided in a mission to save the pope’s life, yes?”
    Kimball opened his eyes, nodded.
    “And in the process of engagement with opposing forces you had to kill, yes?”
    Another nod—a small tilt of his chin in affirmation.
    The monsignor leaned closer. “So now you’re in conflict with yourself because what you did is inconsistent with Church doctrine regarding the killing of another, yes?”
    Kimble hesitated.  
    “ And now you are afraid that what you did for your government so many years ago as an assassin and what you do now for the Church, bears no difference and that the Lord has already condemned you with no chance for salvation, yes?” 
    A nerve had been struck. Kimball’s line of sight made a slow and downward trajectory to the floor.
    The monsignor grabbed the burning cigarette and wedged it between his fingers, the smoke rising in tight, corkscrewing trails. “I know you seek salvation for past actions,” he told him. “And I know the redemption you seek seems impossible to obtain with your current actions contradictory to what the Church calls for, which is to be the salvation for others when, for this to happen, you sometimes have to kill so that others may live. Therefore, in your mind’s eye, if you go on killing, then how is it possible for you to gain deliverance and passage into Heaven? Are these not the questions?”
    The monsignor hit another mark in Hayden’s view.
    “Are these not the questions?” he repeated.
    Kimball nodded.
    “Then why do you do it?”
    Kimball sat in reflection as his eyes took on a detached gaze and stared at an imaginary point beyond the cleric, his mind clearly focusing on a mental illustration of something past. “I’m sure what I’m about to say you probably already know, since I’m sure you read my file. But I’m going to tell you anyway.” There was a brief hesitation, his focus turning back to the reality of the moment with cerulean blue eyes so clear it enabled the monsignor to see secrets in their depths. What he saw was the constant warring between solemn regret and subdued rage, one emotion trying to best the other. 
    “Several years ago,” Kimball said with sorrowful inflection, “while on a covert mission for the United States government, I was dispatched to Iraq to eradicate a top official within the Iraqi government . . .”
    The monsignor didn’t press him. He simply waited for Kimball to choose his moment.
    And for that moment Kimball seemed to have difficulty trying to articulate his thoughts to words, but ultimately continued, his eyes moving toward the ceiling as if his memories were somehow scribed there in text, a written aid to refer upon. “While in Iraq I came upon two young boys herding goats,” he said. “And they saw me . . . So I took the only available action to keep them from compromising my position.”
    “So you killed them.” This was not a question, but a confirmation of what the monsignor already knew.  
    “That night after I buried them, I looked into the sky and saw so many stars, something I never did before, and wondered if there was something beyond this.” He then raised his hands in indication of his surroundings. “And then I looked for the face of God, looking for any sign or suggestions that He truly existed. The only thing I saw was the stardust glitter of designs and constellations. And then it occurred to me that I had