Eighty
Colin Kavanaugh gradually regained awareness. McCauley’s rock had only dazed him.
He groped for a flashlight. First forward, then side-to-side. Without it he feared he’d never find his way out. Suddenly, he heard something roll toward him. Metal on rock. He struck his hand out as the flashlight reached him. He turned it on and scanned about for his gun.
“Looking for this?”
The voice came from the side. It was as cold as the cavern, but more chilling because he recognized it.
He turned to the direction of the voice. All he saw was a flashlight beam shining on a handgun aimed directly at him.
“I believe this is yours.” The gunman tilted the flashlight up to his face — a sneering, angry face; the last man in the world Colin Kavanaugh ever imagined he’d see again: the man with the umbrella.
Quinn and Katrina stood ten feet from a row of gunmen armed with semi-automatics. The afternoon sun created something of a halo around them. Given their weapons McCauley determined it was totally undeserved.
“You’re to stay right where you are,” a man in the middle of some twenty others emphatically ordered.
Quinn thought the instruction sounded secondhand, delivered by someone awaiting final instructions. The breathing he heard in the cave?
“Mind if we sit down?” Katrina was serious. She was exhausted.
“Be my guest.”
“Mr. Gruber, apparently your death preceded you.”
Gruber shined the light onto his prey.
“I had to be certain you were ready,” Gruber said.
“So this has all been another test?”
“Oh no, young man. Not just another test. Your final, as it were.” The voice behind the light sounded all the more cruel. “You failed.”
“Mr. Gruber,” Kavanaugh pleaded, “I was only following protocol. Find, research, review, contain. Just as you always instructed.”
“You bungled your research. You let emotion rule your decisions. You ordered an attack on an individual when none was warranted, thus raising increased suspicion. You brought chaos to our organization and created opportunity for disunity, which is not permitted.”
“But!”
“Secretum! Did you not understand anything I taught? Obviously not. You ultimately risked it all by killing a priest, no less. You. With your own hand. It’s sure to bring an investigation from the church, potentially exposing Autem Semita. I cannot recall such ineptitude in our history. You, Mr. Kavanaugh, shall be a brand new lesson for all future candidates.”
Of all the words he could have used, candidates was the most damning. Candidates, not successor. Kavanaugh read it like a death sentence. He struggled to find a way to defend himself.
“It’s a new day, Mr. Gruber. Social media spreads word in seconds. A tweet from an explorer’s cell can produce viral recognition for his discovery and trouble for us. Try to contain that. Impossible. So we must intervene at the earliest possible opportunity. That’s what I did. I acted in time; appropriate for this new age. Swiftly, efficiently.”
Kavanaugh was gaining strength and a renewed sense of his own purpose
“We can no longer merely hide behind a research publication. We must be more aggressive; more pro-active. Ours is a holy mission. A priest who digs too deeply is as much a threat as a teacher.”
“Right now, you, Mr. Kavanaugh, you are the biggest threat to our ongoing success.”
“No, I am the future.”
“You failed to understand the past. How can you possibly see the future?”
Kavanaugh wondered if Gruber would actually pull the trigger. No, not like I did, without prejudice. He loves talking. Time to talk.
“Mr. Gruber, we can fix this. I can make it better. Obviously I have more to learn.”
“Appealing to my paternal side? Remember, I have no children.”
“Sir, I am deferring to the man I most admire and have obviously disappointed.” Keep this going. “I’m happy that you’re alive.” What a lie. “I wasn’t ready to take over.” Bullshit. “This test has proven that to me as well. You were correct to do it.” Lower the fucking gun.
“You are a danger to all that we have built. If you had truly understood our purpose over the power you sought, you could have been a deserving leader. I had hope, even though I harbored doubt. Yet, you disappointed me and I’m troubled I misjudged you so.”
Kavanaugh could no longer contain himself. “Damn you and your endless lectures. Your incessant rants, your antiquated approaches. All so formal and so meaningless. I listened until I heard enough. Do you want to know the truth?”
“Ah, the truth. That would be enlightening.”
“I perfected the art of tuning you out while fully being in your presence.”
“And thus, your true self. A charlatan posing as a believer,” Gruber declared as he took a wide berth around Kavanaugh. He finished by tapping his umbrella on the cavern floor. First slowly, then faster. It was an unnerving sound. Suddenly he stopped.
“How could I have so misjudged you?”
“I am a believer!” Kavanaugh rubbed his scalp, the unconscious sign of his anxiety that Gruber read all too well. “But I finally had to see for myself if the secrets were real.”
“They are!” Gruber shouted. He paused and lowered his voice. “My boy, my impertinent boy. If you had any doubt, you had merely to ask.”
The response startled Kavanaugh. He looked up at his mentor, who didn’t seem like a sickly old man in the partial light and shadows.
“You would have shown me?”
Gruber simply smiled.
“You would have?” Kavanaugh asked again, struggling with his words, trying to get to his knees…to beg.
“Had you asked and had you proven yourself. In time, yes.”
McCauley sized up the guards flanked in front of them and now to the sides. He gauged they were all roughly age 40. Ex-military or certainly with military training. They wore khaki pants and shirts with no insignias or identification, matching tan caps and boots. Besides handguns they were equipped with an array of rifles, some with scopes, others that looked like they’d be ready for a full-on assault.
McCauley sat next to Katrina to hold her, believing the worst was yet to come.
“Move apart!”
“Come on,” McCauley complained.
“Apart now!” The man backed his demand with the a steely-eyed look and his gun coming up, first aiming at McCauley, then shifting to Katrina. “Farther!”
McCauley moved to the side but held Katrina’s hand. They waited in the sun, perspiring as much out of fear as the heat.
“You faked your death!”
“Only to lessen my misgivings,” Gruber admitted. “After all, I think we can both now agree they were well-founded.”
“You spent all those years investing in me. All your lessons. Now take a look at yourself. Go ahead look at your reflection in the water. You’re a failure as a teacher. It’s you who haven’t passed the test your own mentors set for you. Without me, you have no one to take over. There is no one else!” He defiantly stared at the old man.
Gruber took the three steps closer. He used the tip of his umbrella to lift up the young man’s chin, so he would not only hear, but see him more clearly.