The large man moved closer. “Has it been that long that you don’t even recognize me?”
Hardwick cocked his head to one side and closed his eyes into narrow slits, focusing. Like taking a splash of ice cold water to his face his eyes suddenly flared with recognition, the whites the size of communion wafers. He slowly lowered his hand from behind and found a place on the countertop, as if to steady him.
“Kimball?”
The Knight nodded. “It’s been a long time, Jeff.”
Hardwick stepped around the filthy glass casing, his eyes remaining fixed. “You’re supposed to be dead — in Iraq. We held a ceremony for you.”
“Can’t believe everything you hear, right?”
“What happened?”
Kimball stared for a long moment before placing the manila envelope on top of the glass counter. “I ran,” he said simply. “I couldn’t do the job anymore.”
The muscles in the back of Hardwick’s jaw flexed. And Kimball could see something seething inside him.
“You ran.” It was not a question, but a statement of aversion. “You of all people,’ he said with contempt, “the biggest swinging dick in the unit, a coward?”
“It wasn’t like that at all.”
“You ran! Runners are cowards!”
“Jeff—”
“Kimball Hayden, the man without conscience, the killing machine we all wanted to be, a coward.”
Kimball sighed. This was not going to be easy.
“Why are you here? And what the hell is that around your neck? Now I know you didn’t get all religious on me,” he said. “God abandoned you like He did us for the choices we made as members of the Pieces of Eight. You think you’re going to be absolved of your sins by masquerading as a priest?”
“I’m not a priest.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” he said sarcastically. “To think you were a hypocrite as well as a coward.”
“I didn’t come here to ask you for acceptance.”
“Then why are you here? And why are you wearing that damned collar if you’re not a priest?”
Kimball raised a finger and brushed it lightly across the band. “I’m an emissary of the Church,” he answered.
“An emissary? I’m afraid that’s a ten-dollar word to me.”
“It means agent or representative of the Vatican.”
“The Vatican?” Hardwick couldn’t help himself as he stared at the man, and then at the collar, noting the genuine cast of truth radiating from the man’s blue eyes the same way a battery of heat shimmers off the desert floor. And then he noted the incongruous wear of black military pants and combat footwear. “From the waist up you’re a priest,” he said. “But from the waist down you’re dressed as a soldier.” Hardwick hesitated, and then: “What exactly do you do as an emissary from the Church?”
“Whatever needs to be done,” he answered.
“Are you here to save my soul? Is that — like — a priority in the eyes of God or something?” His smile took on something mischievous and cruel, something maliciously twisted. “Are you here to save the Hardwick boys?”
He pushed the envelope across the glass surface of the countertop towards Hardwick. “In a way I guess you can say that,” he said. “But not in the way you think.”
He opened the folder. Inside were a bundle of photos, black and white glossies. Lying on top was a photo of a legless Walker tied to a wooden table with the letter ‘I’ carved into his back.
“Let’s start with this one, shall we?” said kimball. “But first I think you’ll need to contact your brother.”
Hardwick’s jaw began to fall, his features slowly descending into awe.
“Call your brother,” Kimball stated firmly. “Now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Stanley Hardwick was just as amazed as his brother, and filled with the same inbred disdain for any measure of cowardice, as he stared at Kimball from across the counter, his hardcore features twisted into a leer and his arms folded defensively across his chest. “I should kick your ass.”
“You could try, but you wouldn’t get too far.”
“My brother tells me you’re a priest of some kind.”
“An emissary,” he corrected. “Or is that a ten-dollar word to you as well?”
“I know what it means.”
Stanley looked at the collar and gave off a chortle that sounded more like a single, snide bark of condescending amusement. “Here we are mourning your loss while you were sipping cognac in Italy.” He shook his head. “You cowardly son of a bitch.”
Jeff Hardwick pulled up next to his brother. They looked so much alike, thought Kimball. Not exactly twins, but close to it — same features and physiques with bully-like mindsets that were perhaps more of a learned trait rather than a genetic one.
“All right,” said Jeff, “you’re here, so now what?”
Stanley remained fixed with a hard stare as he remained unmoving behind the counter.
Sliding out the first photo, Kimball pointed out that Walker, the first of the Pieces of Eight to be targeted and killed by an unknown assassin, then continued with Arruti and Grenier in the posed sequence of the photo starting from the top row from left to right, then the bottom row, once again in the sequential order from left to right.
Stanley Hardwick seemed less hardened and more sober to the situation.
“We run an operation,” he told Kimball, “of selling hard-to-find wares.”
“You mean illegal weapons.”
Stanley held his hands out as a gesture to emphasize the store in general. “You think we actually opened this place up to sell this crap? Of course not. Our profit comes from selling arms. We were Arruti’s and Grenier’s top suppliers.”
Jeff Hardwick picked up the photos of Walker, Arruti and Grenier and held them in his hand like the splayed cards of a poker hand. “Now we know why they haven’t contacted us,” he said.
“How did you get these?” asked Stanley.
“Through contacts.”
“I know that. Are you doing this through the Church?”
Kimball remained silent as Jeff put down the photos and picked up the glossy of Victor Hawk, AKA ‘The Ghost,’ lying face down in red clay. The letter ‘R’ was carved into his back. “There ain’t anybody good enough on this planet to take out The Ghost,” he said.
“Apparently there is,” Kimball returned. “He could have killed me too, but he didn’t.”
“That would have been no big loss,” commented Stanley.
Kimball could almost feel the venom flowing from Stan Hardwick’s lips.
“The Ghost was old, brother — lost his edge. That’s what happens when you don’t train consistently. You lose your edge.”
“Really?” Jeff held up the photos of Arruti and Grenier. “Then what about these two?” he stated rhetorically. “We know they didn’t lose their edge. They were still at the top of their game and we both know that.”
Stan Hardwick refused to look at the photos. Instead, he kept his steely eyes on Kimball.
“This man, this assassin,” began Kimball, “is targeting us for whatever reason. He killed five skilled soldiers in such simple fashion it’s hard to believe that it’s just one man doing so.”
“And you’re sure it’s just one man?”
“There was only one set of prints at Hawk’s ranch.”
“That only means to me that it took one guy to take out Hawk.” Then: “Look, Hawk was nothing special. Not anymore. He let himself get fat and his skills suffered for it… He became nothing more than an old man living off the memories of a time long faded. A boy scout could have taken him out.”
Kimball could hardly dispute the claim, since one set of footprints could have meant that the assassin performed the mission solo. But assassin teams usually worked in unison with team concept essential to the movement of completing the task successfully. Man power was always critical in order to keep a solitary out of the crosshairs. If this assassin had backup, he found no evidence.