Брэд Мельтцер - The Fifth Assassin

“Dad, lookit,” Nessie announced, pointing back at the Knight. “That guy… he’s actually dressed like Abraha—”

President Orson Wallace turned. So did the mil aide.

The Knight reached into his jacket pocket, where his gun—

No. His gun was gone. How could that—?

Pffft.

Something with burning teeth bit into the Knight’s lower back.

Grabbing at his own back and clutching at the pain, his finger hit a hole. In his back. There was a hole in his lower back.

He looked down at his stomach. It was soaked… and red… Blood. His own blood, seeping and spreading down to his waist.

He’d been shot. Someone… someone…

“Why?” a barbed wire of a voice growled closely behind him.

The Knight teetered, spinning to face his shooter, who was holding the Knight’s gun. The man wore a bright red scarf that covered the lower half of his face. But under the scarf… there was something wrong with the shooter’s skin. Like it was melted.

Cocking his head, the Knight felt his eyesight go blurry, then come back again. He knew the man—the man with the melted skin—the man who had just shot him and saved the President’s life: That was Marshall.

“ Why did you kill Pastor Riis!? ” Marshall demanded, reaching for the Knight’s mask.

The answer never came.

People were screaming, scattering in every direction.

“ Shots fired! Shots fired! ” someone yelled.

In a blur, undercover agents plowed into Marshall and the Knight. Both men went limp, their heads snapping sideways and backwards as they plummeted like tackling dummies. Yet as Marshall fell—the Knight could see it on his face—he was calm, unconcerned. It’s what made Marshall so dangerous. He didn’t care about himself.

As he hit the floor face-first, the Knight’s mask shattered. Half its pieces skittered outward; the other half chewed into the Knight’s face, peeling away the fake beard, finding blood, and revealing a man with a dimpled chin and a boxer’s nose.

Chestdown next to him, Marshall knew him immediately—from the shooting at Foundry Church: the pastor. The pastor who was shot… who fell to the carpet… and who lived. The same pastor who took the Christmas photo with the rabbi and the imam… and who was in the hospital chapel when both the chaplain and Tot were attacked.

“I didn’t do anything!” Pastor Frick yelled as they tore through his pockets. “ He shot me !”

“ Knife! ” a Secret Service agent shouted from the dogpile that smothered Pastor Frick. From Frick’s pocket, he pulled out the hunting knife with the curly birch handle.

“ Go, go—move! ” an agent yelled across the chamber.

In the distance, a group of agents formed a human wall around the President, gripping him by the elbows, lifting his feet off the ground, and rushing him to the preselected saferoom. At the back of the statuary chamber was a door that led to the Park Police’s breakroom. Racing behind them, A.J. scooped Wallace’s daughter into his arms.

“Your dad’s fine. He’s fine,” A.J. whispered, following the group to the saferoom as, shaking, she sobbed into his chest.

Still pinned facedown, Pastor Frick let out a wordless howl as the Secret Service drilled their knees into his lower back—into his wound—and cuffed his hands behind him. They didn’t care that he’d been shot—or that he couldn’t feel his legs—or that unlike the wound he’d so carefully inflicted on himself in his office, this wasn’t the kind of attack he’d walk away from. Marshall had gone for vital organs.

Across from him, under his own dogpile and with his own hands cuffed behind his back, Marshall didn’t struggle… didn’t say a word. Chin to the ground, he simply stared at Pastor Frick—his gold eyes burning with that first question he’d asked: Why did you kill Pastor Riis?

Still on the ground, with his bloody cheek pressed against the bits and pieces of his mask, Frick could barely see anything. The world was still blurry, the edges of his vision ringed by a red circle that began to shrink and tighten, leaving only black. Frick tried to answer… he looked at Marshall and said the words: Nico told me to.

Nico told me to! he insisted.

But all that came out was a wet gurgle. It came up from Frick’s chest, up his throat, rattling like a bag of teeth.

Indeed, as the red circle continued to tighten and blackness filled his peripheral vision, Pastor Frick’s final thoughts were of the simple fact that, all this time, he had it all wrong.

For years now, Frick had heard the rumblings and rumors about the Knights and John Wilkes Booth. But it wasn’t until four months ago, when the church picked Associate Pastor Frick and put him here —right in Abraham Lincoln’s church—that he began to understand God’s message. Surely, this was fate.

And then, to get the call that President Wallace was coming to visit. Frick had known the President wasn’t a churchgoer. Wallace attended on Easter, on holidays… only when there was a camera around. But now, with the President coming, here it was. Every life exists for a reason. This would be Frick’s chance to bring faith to millions.

Yet what Wallace did on Christmas—using Frick’s church and Frick himself, bringing the rabbi and imam, then parading the three of them together like cheap interchangeable toys, as if one size would fit all. For the millions watching, and for Frick himself, it was a blasphemy.

During those days, Frick understood the real reason why God had sent him to Lincoln’s church. Here in D.C., he could feel the church’s greatest threat raising its head once again. Every President has power; so too does the church. But to Frick, it was now clear why the balance between the two was shifting. Rather than looking to the church for moral guidance, the world watched as the President trivialized the name of Christ and everything it stood for.

Was it any wonder that congregations were shrinking, members were disengaged, or that some refused to believe altogether? Today’s church was being reduced to a community center where people were bribed with Date Nights and fruit smoothies. It was time for the pollution to stop, for the sacrilege to end, and for the pure church, with its intended purpose, to make its return.

The President didn’t even hide his goal—he said it right to Frick’s face: He would bring all three voices… Christian, Jewish, Muslim… the President would do everything in his power to bring the country together. Like Lincoln! Like JFK! Like every king whose growing influence would challenge church power. The church had lost so much lately. It couldn’t afford to lose more.

Frick knew he’d need help. He knew he couldn’t do it alone. That’s what made him seek someone with experience and inspired him to reach out to Nico. And then to learn that one of his congregants—that Rupert—that Rupert worked with Nico… And to hear Nico’s stories and all that had gone before…

Centuries ago, Vignolles created the Knights to protect the Name of God. But even Vignolles knew that what he was really protecting was the church’s power. When that power shifted between church and state, Knights like Booth, Guiteau, Czolgosz, and Oswald stepped forward to restore a proper balance. Now it was Frick’s turn. Someone had to stop this civil war and end this blasphemy.

With Nico’s help, it was all so clear. How could this not be Frick’s mission? He thought he was chosen! Frick was the final Knight! But to look at it now, to look around and see the pieces that remained… No, now Frick understood: It was never he who was Chosen. From the start, he had it wrong. The Chosen One was always…