The Iscariot Agenda Read Free Page B

become what the government made me out to be—something without conscience, remorse, and without feeling. It was a label I was proud of until that very moment.”   
    “Perhaps the face of God came in the essence of enabling you to confront the truth about yourself by discovering your conscience. After all, the true design of God is not how we actually see Him, but how we imagine Him to be,” said the monsignor. “For it is said that God has many faces, but only one voice. In you, Kimball, your epiphany was God’s embracement of you, don’t you see? You did not see Him, but your soul heard Him.”
    Kimball didn’t answer.
    “Sometimes, Kimball, epiphanies come in the strangest ways. The killing of the children was the enlightenment to your true nature.”
    “Then tell me this,” said Kimball. “How can God condone the killing of children?”
    The monsignor stared back for a moment before answering. “Do you feel repentant for that action?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then that’s your answer. God forgives those who are truly repentant for their sins. And because of your true repentance, He embraced you on that night.”
    Kimball gnawed on his lower lip. It was amazing how such a heinous act could be so easily explained away and justified. It was no different than the mindset of suicide bombers. 
    “Kimball?”
    Hayden met the monsignor’s gaze.
    “Do you feel that saving the pope on your last mission was in the interest of the Catholic nation?”
    “I do.”
    “Do you feel that Pope Pius is a good man?”
    Kimball didn’t know where the monsignor was going. “Yes, of course.”
    “And those who took him, do you consider them to be good men?”
    “Not in my opinion.”
    The monsignor nodded. “So you took action against these men” —The monsignor lifted his hands with a cigarette still burning between the fingers of one hand, and with his middle and forefingers of both hands flexed the digits in a gesture of italics when emphasizing the word ‘these’— “to save the life of the pontiff who has nothing but peace as his primary goal, yes?”
    Kimball sighed. “Are you coming to a point?”
    “My point, Kimball, is a simple one. Before the incident in Iraq with the two shepherd boys, you killed men because it was obligatory and because you wanted to. Am I right so far, at least from what I know of your past as a government assassin?”
    Kimball hesitated, then, “So far.”
    “But in killing those men to save the pope’s life, was it because you wanted to? Or was it because you had to?”
    Kimball considered this for a moment as the monsignor honed in with careful study, his spectacled eyes reminiscent like the lenses of a microscope, his demeanor that of scientific appraisal.
    While working as a black-op assassin for a group attached to the CIA, Kimball killed out of commitment. In the sense of Vatican convention, however, he killed if a peaceful solution was not soluble and self defense his only option.
    “And there’s the difference,” the monsignor intuited. “You used to kill because you were amenable to the opportunity. But the moment you became an emissary of the Church as a Vatican Knight, and staying true to your epiphany and remaining repentant for past sins, you now take a life not because you want to . . . but because you have to. Saving the life of the pope can only be viewed as a necessity borne from goodness, despite the harsh methods taken to achieve the means. Even God sees the right of good men to champion the cause as savior for those who cannot defend themselves against uncontested evil.”
    For a brief moment Kimball’s emotions vacillated from gratefulness to subdued anger. Gratefulness because the monsignor justified Kimball’s actions as a necessity of the Church, if the actions were conducted in principled manner. And subdued anger because terrorists conduct their deadly missions under the same so-called principled banner of their God, easily justifying their