Richard Doetsch - Half-Past Dawn

“She died in the car accident,” Tierney growled. “You know it, and I know it.”

“What is the FBI so scared of? What’s in that box that you so desperately need?”

Tierney said nothing.

“Can I tell you a little secret?”

“Fuck you, you’re nuts.”

“I wanted to be caught. I knew full well where you would bring me.”

“What? That’s ridiculous.”

“You think so? You don’t think I’m fully aware of police protocol when it comes to the arrest of high-level people, when it comes to bringing in someone like a DA on charges that no one will believe? I knew I’d be brought up here to the psych ward.”

“Why would you do that? You wanted to be committed?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jack said. “You’re good; you had me convinced, using my friend to bear your false news. Talking about all of those dead people, trying to convince me it was all in my head.”

“So you think you’re not crazy?”

“I know I’m not crazy. Now, where is Cristos holding my wife?”

“Fuck you.”

“You know why I think you’re working with Cristos? Because once I was captured, once he got what he wanted, it would be far easier to pin it all on me, to kill my wife, dump her body where it would never be found, convince me and the world that I was crazy, no trial, just lock me up in a padded room until I succumbed to the cancer.”

“That sounds like a pretty good plan,” Frank said, half joking.

“But you know what? There is something in that box that Cristos was not expecting.”

Tierney’s eyes narrowed slightly, just enough for Jack to see.

Frank thumbed through Tierney’s phone, through the names of his last twenty calls, and passed the phone to Jack. “You know this guy?”

Jack looked at the phone log, the last eight calls all to the same number, the same person. Someone Jack knew and trusted above all. “Son of a bitch.”

Cristos sat in the passenger seat of the Suburban. Josh drove at a leisurely pace so as not to draw any more attention. Cristos had raced down the stairs, his prize in hand, and exited through the back of the unfinished structure. He’d cut through the alleyways and hidden in the shadows of a parking lot while police swarmed the area searching for him. He had lain motionless, the case tucked tightly against his body, blending with the shadows. He had avoided two cops who had taken up position not thirty feet away, watching the rear of the office building, keeping focus on the alleyway, never realizing their prey lay just feet away.

Cristos slowed his heart, focused his senses, and became motionless, his mind taking on a Zen quality. He had used the technique during countless situations in which he would take up a position ten hours before his mark was to arrive, patiently lying in wait until the precise moment of pulling the trigger. He would finally rise from his position, shake off the moment, and exit the area, without cramp or ache.

It was nearly an hour later when the cops were called off, and he slipped from the garage to arrive on 47th Street, where Josh lay in wait.

Josh told him the moment he got into the car: Jack Keeler was in the mental ward of the Tombs, preliminarily diagnosed as insane, with the slaughter in the evidence room blamed on him.

Cristos felt like a child with a wrapped gift in his lap. He had maintained such a singular focus on it that everything else in the world had become secondary. He had spent months tracking down his father, tracking down what he so desperately needed, secrets he was promised but in the end had to kill for.

As they turned onto Broadway, heading downtown, Cristos was actually only two blocks from where he last saw his father.

One month ago, Cristos had realized he was following him in Istanbul. He allowed it to continue through the Middle East into Africa. After a week of cat-and-mouse, he found his father in his hotel suite in Marrakech, sitting calmly on the floor, looking out the large living-room window at the Atlas Mountains in the distance.

“You survived,” Cristos said, with no hint of emotion as he laid his briefcase on the coffee table and sat on the couch.

“Come home with me,” his father said, continuing to look out the window.

“I’m no longer your son,” Cristos reminded him.

His father sat there a moment and finally turned to look at him. “I have foreseen your death… and it is soon.”

Cristos stared back. “You are so fond of reminding me of the inevitability of fate, of the difficulty in altering its path, and yet here you sit telling me this?”

“Our will, our love, is much stronger than fate. Surely you haven’t forgotten that.”

Cristos laughed. “Really? Love is what made me who I am.”

“Then allow my love for you, my son, to save you.”

“After all this time.” Cristos shook his head in disbelief. “After all that I have done over the last twenty years…”

“Your death is soon, Suresh. It will come from where and when you least expect it.”

“Then tell me,” Cristos said. “If you are my father, if I am truly your son, then you will tell me so I can save myself.”

His father remained silent.

Cristos stared at his father and for the briefest of moments remembered what it was like to be a son, to be part of the world, to be not alone. He finally stood. “I am going to get us something to eat.”

He went to the small kitchen and set out a tray of bread and cheese. He reached into the cabinet and withdrew his gun, tucking it into the back of his waistband. He picked up the tray and returned to the living room

But his father was gone. He knew his son too well.

Cristos turned to see his briefcase on the coffee table, wide open, his papers in disarray. And with shock, Cristos realized what his father had done.

He had taken his red prayer book, the book he gave to him when he was a child. Cristos had written everything in this book, his entire life, every job, the people he contracted with, the fees he was paid, a record of every assassination.

And so Cristos turned the table on his father; the hunted became the hunter. Cristos tried to capture his father on the train to the port city of Casablanca, only to find that he had eluded him by slipping out of the country before Cristos was even aware.

He had to get his prayer book back for obvious reason. But even that paled in comparison with the obsession he felt growing inside himself, the desire to know his own fate. By knowing, he would change it, would stop it from ever happening, killing anyone and everyone remotely connected to his demise before it arrived.

Cristos knew that his father had recorded it in his own prayer book, a place where he wrote his most important prophecies, his greatest secrets, wondrous things that were not meant to be shared with the world or any living soul.

It became like a game, a deadly game, for Cristos would go to any lengths to extract from his father not only his fate but also his secrets, the grand mysteries and objects that he possessed and always carried on his person.

It was well after midnight, the past Monday, when Cristos tracked his father to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue in New York City. The suite was large, four rooms with an elegant marble bathroom provided by the Cotis government to their respected diplomat.

Cristos opened the door to see his father sitting calmly on the couch, as if in wait.

“Come back home with me,” his father said, his words filled with emotion. “Leave this world behind. It has corrupted your heart.”

“I knew from the moment I killed you that you’d survive, you with all your tricks and magic. But with all that wisdom, all that power, you couldn’t stop me,” Cristos said.