Steven Savile - Silver

He looked at the woman across the table from him. “Do you think this is over?”

She didn’t answer him for a long moment. She genuinely seemed to be thinking about her answer rather than glibly saying yes. “We have no reason to suspect more attacks,” she said finally, like she was parroting the official press release.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “You have very good reason to expect more attacks, because they told you they were coming. Forty days and forty nights of terror in every city in the West. Wasn’t that what they said? Something like that. Not just Berlin and Rome.”

“But the threats in Rome and Berlin were different.”

She was right. Lethe had pointed that out. They were. “So that’s what you’ve decided? The threats were all about assassinating Peter II?”

“We have no reason to suspect otherwise.”

“Until they give you a reason.”

“They won’t,” she said, with surprising certainty.

“What about the promise to destroy the faith of the world? Are you just discounting that?”

“How do you destroy someone’s faith?” she asked in all seriousness. “There are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, 2.1 billion Christians. How could you possibly shatter the beliefs of a third of the world’s population?”

“Not by killing one man,” Konstantin said, trying to force home the point.

“No, and every scientist who stands up to decry there is no god and has evidence to support his claim doesn’t change the fact that these people believe. Evolutionary biologists can call them stupid for believing, they don’t care. They still believe. So how do you do it?”

“You prove it wrong.”

“But that’s what the scientists are doing, isn’t it?”

“Then how do you do it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I am not worried about it. That’s why I am much more interested in much more mundane questions like who you work for and who you are working with.”

“I’ve told you, I work for Sir Charles Wyndham. The project is codenamed Ogmios. Ask him,” he said again, willing her to just go and track down the old man herself.

The next time she came into the interrogation room she brought something for him. It wasn’t a cup of coffee. She put the silver dagger on the table between them and said, “What’s this?”

He looked at it. It was the first time he had seen it properly. It was obviously old. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

“Try me.”

He shrugged. “It’s a dagger.”

“I can see that, so that hardly counts as unbelievable. So tell me, what’s so special about it?”

“It’s two thousand years old for a start,” Konstantin said. He didn’t want to say more, saying more meant he knew more. Knowing more only implicated him further. He breathed deeply. What did it matter? He wasn’t walking away from this. He might as well tell her what he knew, if for no other reason tha talking to her kept her partner away. The man’s constant badgering and boorishness as boring.

“Go on.”

“It’s silver.”

“I can see that.”

“Silver’s not usually the stuff of weapons. Too soft. It’d break, maybe not the first time it’s used, maybe not the second, but it would break. And no fighter wants to go to war knowing his weapon could fail him at any time.”

“Makes sense.”

“Because it is sense. Common sense.

“So it’s ceremonial?”

“You’d think, but no. I think it is more accurate to say it is commemorative.”

“That’s an odd choice of words, don’t you think? Are you saying the dagger used to murder the Pope was a commemorative dagger? So what, it was made for a King’s Jubilee? Something like that?”

He did like this woman. She was sharp. “Something exactly like that. A king two thousand years ago.” If he said two thousand years often enough she’d make the intuitive leap. He knew she would. “That’s one thing that makes this dagger special-it’s silver, it’s two thousand years old. What kings do you remember from two thousand years ago?”

She spread her arms wide.

“Think,” Konstantin said. “King of the Jews, two thousand years ago?”

“Jesus? You’re telling me this dagger was made to commemorate the life of Jesus?” She didn’t laugh, but he could see she wanted to.

“How does silver fit into the story?” he guided her. “Think.”

“Silver?”

“Come on. You know this. Every one learns the story when they’re kids. Thirty pieces of silver.”

She shook her head. “No bloody way. Not possible. I don’t believe you.”

“You asked me. I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You didn’t say I wouldn’t believe, because it was ludicrous though, did you? So, tell me, how did you get your hands on a dagger forged from Judas’ silver? Hell, I can’t even believe I am asking a question like that. Jesus, Judas, we just wandered off into criminally insane territory. Is that what this is? Are you fashioning your defense? Going to plead the Devil made you do it? That you heard the voice of Judas telling you to strike back? To punish the unfaithful for treating him so badly?”

“No,” Konstantin said.

“Then what? Talk me through it, Konstantin. Help me understand, because right now I’ve got a murder weapon, a murderer, and a truckload of evidence, but something doesn’t fit when I think about it. It’s a niggle. The old cop instinct, if you like. I want to say I don’t think you did it, but I’ve watched the footage a thousand times; you’re as guilty as sin. So I don’t know why I keep coming back to the fact that I want to believe you.”

So Konstantin told her everything-Masada, Mabus, the two Akim Caspis, the prophecies and the threats, and his involvement in it. He told her about the gun in the apartment and the timer and the birdseed in the trees meant to cause a distraction. He told her about trying to fight his way through the crowd to save the Holy Father and being too late. He told her about the Swiss Guard and begged her to put his face out across the wire, to warn people. Because he was still out there, and the body in the Moselle proved someone else had witnessed the murder and he’d silenced them before they could talk. He told her about Humanity Capital trading on tragedy, about Miles Devere, about the hostages in England. He told her everything.

It felt good to confess it, to put the burden onto someone else, because it wasn’t over yet. He knew that as surely as he knew the sun was going to rise on the ninth day and the College of the Cardinals would enter conclave to elect the next Pope. It wasn’t over.

“What are you going to do with the dagger?” he asked her.

She looked at him. He couldn’t read her face. He didn’t know whether she believed a word he had said. What she couldn’t argue with was how it all hung together. He couldn’t have made up a story like that while they had him trapped in the interrogation room. “It’s a murder weapon. It’s evidence.”

“When it’s over?”

“Why?”

“Like you said, it’s evidence, but not just of murder. In a weird kind of way it’s proof, isn’t it? Proof that Jesus and Judas existed, proof in the stuff they want us to believe. It’s the kind of treasure the Vatican will want, no matter how tainted it might be.”

He lost track of the time between visits. He was beyond tired. But they wouldn’t let him sleep. Not properly. Only snatches here and there. That told him they had cameras on him and someone watching him at all times. Whenever he started to doze they returned, like clockwork.

They kept coming back, working away at him. Softly from the woman, great hammer blows from the guy. He kept trying to tell them they were wasting their time, that the real assassin was out there, still safe in his position inside the inner ring of the papal guard, but they refused to believe him.