Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

The prospect of assassination lived in a pope’s shad ow. He was not foolish about this aspect of his office. Since the days of Peter, it was part of the job.

He accepted the risks.

A familiar two-beat knock sounded at the door.

The deputy chief of the Secretariat of State appeared.

“Apologies, Holiness. It is time to meet with the car dinals and others on the final preparations for the American trip.”

The pope took in a long breath, let it out slowly, then accompanied his trusted secretary, never tiring of the splendor of the Apostolic Palace as they walked along floors of sixteenth-century marble, lined by walls with ornate tapestries, gilding and Raphael frescoes.

The others, some two dozen in all, had been briefed by the deputy chief on the most pressing matter. The pope immediately raised his hand, the one with the Fisher man’s Ring, inviting those present to begin speaking freely.

“Your Eminence,” the first cardinal began, “the Americans are responsible for papal safety during the visit. They have provided us with intelligence suggest ing an assassination attempt is probable. But there’s nothing specific. And some U.S. church groups are growing vocal, openly urging the Vatican to abbreviate the visit. The U.S. Secret Service is asking us to make a decision on the visit’s final agenda.”

The pope acknowledged this as the cardinal continued.

“Eminence, to curtail matters now diminishes the importance of the papacy. It is out of the question.”

“It is simply too late,” another said.

And so it went from chair to chair to chair while the pope’s thoughts left the room for the photographs on his nightstand of the Buffalo Breaks in Montana. They were beautiful in conveying the vastness of what was known as “Big Sky Country.” Last week, he had re quested the Vatican library also fetch him the private journals kept by the Jesuits who first arrived there in advance of white settlers in the early 1800s.

He enjoyed reading the poetry of their descriptions at night before he fell asleep.

“This is a place like no other,” one had written, “where the earth meets heaven, where your relationship with God, your sense of self-importance, is either heightened, or diminished. I fear it is a place of reckoning.”

A place of reckoning.

Then there was the pope’s recurring dream.

He’d told no one.

It was more like a vision.

Sister Beatrice, incandescent, ascending above the prairie, telling him he must come, that his destiny was here.

Someone was speaking to him.

“Excellency?”

“Yes.”

“As the date of your visit to America draws near, we are requested to give a prompt response to Washington.”

The pope nodded thoughtfully.

In his own private assessment, he looked to the history of the church. In carrying out their work, priests and nuns had been murdered and had faced every threat and danger imaginable.

In many parts of the world, this remained true today.

And in many parts of the world it held true for the congregation as well.

The pope, above all, was a priest.

If God had decided these would be his final days, then he embraced the decision.

He was not afraid to die.

Your destiny is here. A place of reckoning.

“Your Excellency?”

The pope sighed.

“We need to examine this a bit more,” he said. “Meanwhile, original preparations should continue. We’ll provide our response to Washington by the end of the day.”

Washington, D.C.

Daniel Graham worked at his hotel-room desk mining Tarver’s files for a lead.

Anything.

He’d been up since dawn.

His hair was tousled. He wore a faded T-shirt, sweat pants, and downed stale coffee as he scoured the articles and reports Tarver had collected on immigration pol icies, terrorist sleeper cells and technology for building dirty bombs.

The file also had government records on civilian contract truckers in Iraq that Tarver had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Consequently, under national security and privacy legislation, most portions had been blacked out.

Whatever Tarver had been looking for, he’d been looking hard.

But Graham couldn’t find a link to Tarver’s last story and the tragedy in the Rockies.

The facts Graham knew firsthand gnawed at him:

The stranger. The missing laptop, Emily Tarver’s last words. Again, he reviewed the notebook he’d found at the Tarver campsite and Ray’s final handwritten entry on Blue Rose Creek.

Possibly in California.

What is Blue Rose Creek? He scratched his whiskers. What does it mean?

Is there a connection?

He hadn’t heard back from Walker. He asked Reg Novak and Carson, the FBI agent, to run the term through their systems. They’d found nothing. Graham had searched for it on the Internet but found nothing he could use, some obscure blogs, some poetry. Some results showed a suburb near Riverside County, Califor nia.

Maybe Ray’s father had found something. Graham glanced at the time, thinking that he needed to get cleaned up before their meeting, when the hotel phone rang.

“Nice work on keeping things low-key,” Inspector Mike Stotter said from Calgary. “Tell me why I shouldn’t haul your ass back here on the next plane?”

“I’ll explain what happened.”

“No, I’ll explain. The Secret Service called RCMP Headquarters in Ottawa. Ottawa called Edmonton, who called my boss, who had me spend much of yesterday defending you.”

“I can explain.”

“Tell me something, Dan. Why in the hell did you tell a senior Secret Service agent on the papal security detail that he’s a suspect in the Tarver case?”

“How is it that this agent is informed that the case, my case, has been officially cleared and closed?”

“That’s not the issue here.”

“It damn well is, sir. It’s not only a breach. I was betrayed by somebody feeding him BS.”

“Likely came from Ottawa bureaucrats, making an assumption and making nice.”

“Making nice? What’re you talking about?”

“Look, right now, every U.S. security agency is strained by the pope’s visit because they have to check every single burp by every nut job who makes a poten tial threat. Add to that the fact the president is scheduled to visit Canada in one month. Throw in the fact U.S. Canada relations are chilly right now, means every body’s tightly wound.”

“So? What’s that got to do with me looking into Ray Tarver’s background?”

“Ottawa does not want any tension with U.S. security people right now. Especially with the president coming to Canada and especially over this sort of thing.”

“I’m dealing with multiple deaths and you’re talking politics.”

“What happened to this family was terrible. But they died tragically while camping. You’ve followed your hunch. There’s nothing criminal or sinister here. Noth ing concrete. It’s got the hallmark of a tragic accident.”

“What?”

The long-distance line hissed before Stotter resumed.

“Dan, you know I’m right. And I’m sorry but I’m going to cut your trip short. We’ve got other cases and I need you back here.”

“Don’t do this, Mike. Let me have the time you gave me.”

“Dan, listen, I let you go down there because I

Six Seconds 239 thought it might help you. You’re one of our best inves tigators. You’ve been through a lot. I need you at full strength and I thought you needed to do this.”

“What’re you saying, Mike? That this was a pity assignment?”

“Dan.”

“I don’t believe this. Tell me, Mike, have we found Tarver’s body yet?”

“No.”

“Did we find his laptop yet?”