“Oh?” Father Harper asked, intrigued.
“Aye, and he was by no means Scottish either. He had an English accent with something else,” George described.
“Something else like what?” the priest pried further.
“Well,” the boy frowned, “he has this German vibe to his English. I know it must sound daft, but it is like he is a German who grew up in London. That kinda thing.”
George was frustrated with his ineptitude at rightly describing it, but the priest nodded calmly. “No, I totally catch that, Georgie. No worries. Tell me, he did not drop a name or introduce himself?”
“No, sir. But he looked really evil and fucked up…” George stopped abruptly at his inadvertent cussing. “Sorry, Father.”
Father Harper, however, was more interested in information than enforcing social propriety. To George’s amazement, the priest acted as if he had not sworn at all. “In what way?”
“Excuse me, Father?” George asked in bewilderment.
“How… in what way was he… fucked up?” Father Harper asked casually.
“Father?” the astonished boy gasped, but the mean-looking priest only waited patiently for him to give the answer with a countenance so serene that it was scary. “Um, I mean, he was burned or maybe got cut.” George gave it some thought and then suddenly exclaimed eagerly, “It looks like his head was caught in razor wire and someone pulled him out of it by his legs. Chopped up, you know?”
“I see,” Father Harper replied, returning to his contemplative position as before. “Alright, is that all, then?”
“Aye, Father,” George answered. “Please just get out before he finds you, because he knows where St. Columbanus is now.”
“Georgie, he could have found that on any map. My itch is that he was trying to debase my name in my own town,” Father Harper explained. “Don’t you worry. God does not sleep.”
“Well, neither will I, Father,” the boy said as he started toward the door with the priest. “That bloke was up to no good and I really, really don’t want to hear about you in the news tomorrow. You should call the coppers. Let them patrol here and stuff.”
“Thank you, Georgie, for your concern,” Father Harper soothed with sincerity. “And many thanks for warning me. I promise, I will take your warning to heart and I shall be very careful until Satan backs off, alright? Alright?” He had to reiterate for the teenager to calm down sufficiently.
He ushered the boy he had christened years before out of the church, walking alongside him with wisdom and authority until they stepped out into the daylight. From the top of the steps the priest winked and waved at George as he jogged off back in the direction of his home. Drizzles of cool, broken clouds descended over the park and darkened the tar of the road as the boy disappeared into the ghostly haze.
Father Harper nodded cordially to some passers by before he returned to the lobby inside the church. Ignoring the still stunned people in the pews, the tall priest hastened back to his office. He had sincerely taken the boy’s warning to heart. In fact, he had been expecting it all the while. There was never any doubt that retaliation would come for what he and Dr. Beach had done in Fallin when they saved David Purdue from the modern day Nazi cult.
He walked briskly into the half-light of the small hallway of his office, closing the door a little too loudly. He locked it and drew the curtains. His laptop was the sole illumination in the study, its screen waiting patiently for the priest to use it. Father Harper sat down and typed in several keywords before the LED screen revealed what he was looking for — a picture of Clive Muller, a long-serving operative and well-known double agent from the Cold War.
“I knew it had to be you,” Father Harper muttered in the dusty solitude of his office. About him, the furniture and books, lamps and plants had been reduced to mere shadows and silhouettes, but the atmosphere changed from its static and tranquil air to a tension-riddled area of subliminal negativity. In the olden days, the superstitious may have called it a presence, but Father Harper knew that it was the apprehension of an inevitable clash. The latter explanation did, however, not lighten the seriousness of what was to come if he dared drop his guard.
The man on the photograph Father Harper had called up was the likeness of a grotesque looking monster. Clive Muller had been in the news in 1986 for the assassination of a Russian Ambassador in front of 10 Downing Street, but by some legal loophole, had been deported to Austria and escaped while awaiting trial.
“Looks like you’re on the wrong side of the fence, Clive,” Father Harper said as he scrolled over the scant information the internet had on the killer. “Kept a nice and low profile all this time, didn’t we? And now you take out civilians for dinner money? That must be hard on the ego.”
Outside, the weather was growing wetter and the rain was pattering against the office window on the other side of the drawn drapes as the priest closed the search and switched off his laptop. “I know you’re here already. Are you too scared to show yourself to a humble man of God?”
As the laptop died the room was almost completely dark, and just as the last flicker of the screen faded, Father Harper saw an imposing black figure move from behind his bookcase. Instead of an attack, as he had expected, Father Harper received an oral confrontation. “You? A man of God?” The man scoffed.
His shrill voice masked his accent at first, but there was no denying the heavy guttural consonants as he spoke in a solid Brit way — a perfect balance of German and English — that gave away his identity.
22
Alter Course
“What did he say?” Nina frowned, frantically trying to find out why they were changing course in mid-flight. She nudged Sam, who was trying to listen to what Patrick was relaying to the pilot.
“Hang on, let him finish,” Sam told her, himself straining to ascertain what the reason was for the sudden change in plan. As a veteran investigative journalist, Sam had learned not to trust such rapid alterations to itineraries and therefore understood Nina’s concern.
Patrick stumbled back into the belly of the plane, regarding Sam, Nina, Adjo, and Purdue as they silently waited in anticipation for him to explain. “Nothing to worry about, people,” Patrick consoled.
“Did the Colonel order a change in course to land us in the desert for Nina’s insolence?” Sam asked. Nina sneered at him and dealt him a solid slap on the arm. “Seriously, Paddy. Why are we turning? I’m not comfortable with this.”
“Me neither, mate,” Purdue chipped in.
“Really, guys, it’s not a bad thing. I just got a patch through from one of the facilitators of the expedition, Prof. Imru,” Patrick reported.
“He was at the tribunal,” Purdue remarked. “What does he want?”
“Actually, he asked if we could help him with a… more personal matter, before we attend to the legal priorities. Apparently he got in touch with Col. Yimenu and advised him that we would be arriving a day later than planned, so that side is taken care of,” Patrick informed.
“What the hell could he possibly want from me on a personal front?” Purdue wondered aloud. The billionaire looked less than trusting about this new turn of events, and his concerns were equally present in the faces of his expedition party.
“Can we refuse?” Nina asked.
“You can,” Patrick replied. “And Sam can, but Mr. Kira and David are pretty much in the vice grip of the Archaeological Crimes people, and Prof. Imru is one of the heads of the organization.”
“So we have no choice but to assist him,” Purdue sighed, looking uncharacteristically frazzled by the twist in the plan. Patrick sat down opposite Purdue and Nina, with Sam and Adjo beside him.