The Shadow Priest Read online

  PLOT SUMMARY

  In the remote Four Corners region of Colorado, Special Agent Nathaniel Arkin, a disgraced former intelligence officer, investigates the killing of a bigoted, vitriolic preacher who was about to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In processing the murder scene, Arkin thinks he recognizes the modus operandi of a shadowy group he pursued and was on the verge of exposing years earlier, just before his abrupt fall from grace and exile from Washington, D.C. Rumored to be run by a self-righteous, lapsed Jesuit priest, it was a group Arkin long suspected of orchestrating an international assassination campaign targeting charismatic, fledgling fanatics—future Hitlers and bin Ladens—just as they emerged from obscurity, before they were capable of instigating mass murder. Reluctant, but aching for redemption, Arkin resumes the chase, setting in motion a chain of events that could lead to his salvation—or his doom. Along the way, he confronts a question that has troubled him for many years: What creates murderous fundamentalists and fanatics like Hitler and bin Laden in the first place?

  Copyright © 2015 by D.C. Alexander

  All right reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced, scanned, sold, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

  events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely and entirely coincidental.

  Cover image adapted from photo released under Create Commons CC0.

  ISBN-10: 1519356161

  ISBN-13: 978-1519356161

  Printed in the United States of America

  .

  For Holly and Haley

  .

  Help me to discover Thy truth, O Lord,

  and preserve me from those

  who have already found it.

  —Goethe

  .

  PART I

  RIO DE LAS ANIMAS PERDIDAS

  (River of the Lost Souls)

  ONE

  It was a clear autumn night, the dark sky full of stars, the crisp air smelling of fallen leaves. Special Agent Nathaniel Arkin and his partner, Special Agent Tom Killick, with faces painted and wearing ghillie suits, sat in an observation post surrounded by camouflage netting in the woods near Appomattox, Virginia. They wore radio headsets for communicating with two roadside surveillance teams and their command post down in Lynchburg. Killick watched a dilapidated single-wide trailer through a pair of high-powered spotter's binoculars mounted on a tripod, while Arkin, lying prone, watched through the scope of one of his own hunting rifles. He had agency-issued night vision binoculars as well. But while their subjects were clearly visible in the well-lit trailer, he preferred the higher power of his rifle scope.

  Their target was a middleweight methamphetamine dealer and white supremacist named Raylan McGill. McGill was the prime suspect in the murder of an Ethiopian Jew convenience store clerk in Richmond. He was also the de facto leader of a conspiracy known to be in the final stages of planning a car bomb attack on the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

  The directorate's teams had been watching McGill's trailer from this position—roughly 150 meters up the gentle slope of a forested hillside—in eight hour shifts for the past week and a half, looking out for any co-conspirators they hadn't already identified. But so far, there'd been nothing. No visitors—not even a relevant phone call or email. The only noteworthy thing they'd seen was McGill drinking too much and slapping his wife around every couple of days. Tonight was different.

  "Damn," Killick said. "He's really taking her apart."

  They'd watched McGill and his wife drink most of a liter of cheap whiskey—from disposable party cups and with a splash of warm, off-brand diet cola—in the four hours since sundown. A moment earlier, the couple had been smoking cigarettes at a dirty kitchen table when McGill suddenly punched his wife square in the mouth, knocking her to the floor. He'd then grabbed her by the hair and yanked her up against the wall. There, he now held her by the throat, punching her in the side of her head while she did her best to shield her face with her forearms. Blood was running down her face and neck, onto her white tank top.

  Arkin, who could hear Killick beginning to fidget, remained still as stone, though his abdomen was clenched as he watched through his scope.

  "Are we going to let this happen?" Killick asked. "Nate, he could kill her." A pause. "Nate."

  "Shit." Arkin keyed his microphone. "Harpoon One Actual, this is Harpoon Five. Over." Arkin waited. The radio remained silent. "Harpoon One Actual, Harpoon Five." All Arkin could hear was the rustling of dry leaves stirred by the breeze. "Harpoon One, how do you read? Over."

  "Sheffield go out for a smoke, or what?" Killick asked.

  "Harpoon Two, this is Harpoon Five. How do you read? Over."

  "Harpoon Five, Harpoon Two reads you loud and clear. Over."

  "Harpoon Two, interrogative. Can you make contact with Harpoon One Actual from your position? Over."

  "Stand by, Harpoon Five."

  McGill was now dragging his wife by her hair across the floor toward their bedroom as she held the top of her head with both hands as if trying to keep her scalp from being torn off her skull. Heat radiated from Arkin's face, fogging the edge of his scope lens. His pulse began to race. He did his best to counter his anger with controlled breathing exercises, with thoughts of the many lives they would save if they could roll up McGill's entire network, clearing a whole gang of potential terrorist bombers and murderers off the street in one fell swoop.

  But a familiar sense of despair surfaced and held fast in Arkin's mind. How much of their agency's resources had they already burned up on this operation, pursuing someone who was almost certainly an irredeemable psychopath? And even if they rolled up McGill and his whole group, there would always be another. How could they ever prevail against such uninhibited evil, restrained as they were by their sense of morality? How could they ever prevail over the dark, never-ending flood of people like McGill—people who were willing to do anything? It would save so much time and money and energy to just shoot him. And who would care? Who would ever be the wiser? His right hand moved up to the bolt lever of his rifle. He touched it with his fingertips, gingerly, as though expecting it to burn him.

  As if reading Arkin's thoughts, Killick spoke. "You got a bead on the son of a bitch?"

  Arkin continued to stare through the scope in silence, making a conscious effort to breathe through his nostrils, keeping his crosshairs lined up on McGill's skull through a flimsy trailer window. An easy shot.

  "Harpoon Five, Harpoon Two. We can't raise Harpoon One Actual. Over."

  "Copy that. Harpoon Five out. Damn it."

  Arkin took hold of the bolt lever, chambered a .308 round with a fluid, well-practiced movement, and realigned his sights on McGill's head. McGill had his wife on her back on the bed. He straddled her upper chest and arms so that she couldn't raise a hand to block his blows, which by now were coming down on her unprotected face with cold precision.

  "Ice the bastard," Killick said.

  "It's tempting."

  "You got the drop? Send it."

  Arkin huffed.

  "You think I'm joking? Drop the piece of shit. He must have a list of enemies 10 miles long. And that isn't even your service rifle. We'll dump it in the James River on the way home, and nobody on the outside will ever know or care. Shit, Sheffield would probably recommend you for an award."

  "We aren't at war."

  "Please."

  "Our orders—"

  "He's going to kill her, Nate. It's not part of our rules of engagement to stop a murder?"

 
"The bomb attack could kill hundreds if McGill or any of his people pull it off."

  "Come on. We've already ID'd the whole organization."

  "We don't know that."

  "We have teams on every one of his people. You think this dope is still hiding something? Still has secret operatives we haven't seen yet? That's Headquarters bullshit, and you know it."

  "Just stop talking."

  For a moment, Killick was quiet. Then, "You know what? We're never going to win against these sorts of assholes unless we can cross the line over to the same side where they operate. Think about it."

  Again, it was as if Killick were reading his mind. Arkin's surging rage and despair threatened to break his self-control. His index finger flexed over the trigger of his rifle. He felt the pressure of it against his skin. Felt the cold of its metal through the thin fabric of his glove. McGill had gone stationary. Arkin's crosshairs settled right over the man's ear hole. One shot would blow the contents of his head all over the Nazi flag on the bedroom wall behind him.

  "Do it."

  "Stop talking."

  McGill's wife's face was so covered in blood that it was hard to tell she was Caucasian.

  "Damn, Nate. This is fucked up."

  Half a minute later, a long-barrel revolver appeared in McGill's hand. Arkin hadn't even seen where it came from. Maybe under a pillow. McGill was waving it back and forth over his wife's head, as though wagging a reprimanding finger."

  "Nate."

  "I see it."

  McGill froze, staring down at his wife, an evil grin stretching across his face. He jammed the gun barrel into her mouth and cocked the hammer with his thumb.

  "Nate!"

  As it had on so many of his sniper missions, the world around Arkin seemed to go utterly silent as the decision point came. He would only have one chance. He exhaled slowly through his nose as his finger applied steadily increasing pressure to the trigger. Smooth. Smooth. Almost there.

  Before the rifle fired, McGill pulled the revolver barrel back out of his wife's mouth and, to Arkin's immense relief, dismounted from her. He lurched back to the kitchen, got himself a can of beer from the refrigerator, and sat back down at the dirty kitchen table. Arkin kept his crosshairs trained on McGill's head for another moment, studying the man's impassive face and dead eyes, before finally taking his finger off the trigger. In his peripheral vision he could see Killick shaking his head, frustrated and disgusted.

  "You should have taken that shot, Nate. You should have taken that damned shot."

  Arkin felt ill.

  .

  SIX YEARS LATER

  TWO

  A dusting of new snow on the high peaks of the San Juan Range shone brilliant white in the midmorning sun, a lone red-tailed hawk circled in the deep blue sky overhead, and a gentle breeze carried the scent of dry sagebrush across the high Colorado Plateau in what was, even by Four Corners standards, a postcard of an October day. But for the next two minutes, nothing would draw Arkin's attention away from the small lump of brain tissue adhered to the wall in front of him.

  He stood on a high wraparound porch on the north side of a cheaply constructed clapboard house, a few miles east-northeast of the small town of Cortez, Colorado, his back to the wide, wooden front stairwell as he examined the fragment—glazed, blood-speckled, and pale gray, no bigger than a dime—with a flat magnifying glass taken from the breast pocket of his dark wool suit. He wondered what it might have held only ninety minutes earlier when it was still part of an intact and functioning mind. Perhaps the cherished memory of a first kiss, or a wedding day, or the birth of a child. Perhaps some component of the victim's personality—part of the essence of who he was. Maybe it compelled the heart to beat or the lungs to draw breath.

  Whatever purpose it served, it was now just dead tissue. An inanimate cluster of nonfunctional cells that would soon disassociate, reverting to simple, unorganized molecules. Atoms, particles, and the empty spaces between them. And Arkin couldn't help but wonder whether people were nothing more than molecules and particles in the end. Not the product of miracles or supernatural design. Lacking an immortal component. Lacking anything that would fly off to Heaven when all was said and done. The thought made his chest tighten. Made it harder for him to breathe.

  It didn't help that Arkin found a number of things about the crime scene acutely unsettling. It wasn't the blood and death. Experience had long ago given him a sadly high tolerance for such things. What troubled him was an improbable confidence in his familiarity with what he was seeing. A confidence that he'd encountered the same distinguishing evidence—the general context and modus operandi—more than once before. And he couldn't help but feel that an obscure and shadowed figure from his past was reaching out, from somewhere far away, as if to drag him back to a place and time he wished never to revisit. Dark memories of frustration, failure, disgrace, and exile surged into his mind.

  Lost in thought, Arkin barely registered the crunch of gravel as an unmarked SUV kicked up a cloud of dust and roared to a stop in the unpaved drive at the base of the stairway. What did catch his attention was an untimely gust of north wind that blew the end of his tie so that it grazed the tacky oval spatter of drying cerebrospinal fluid and bits of human debris surrounding two large, dark bullet holes in the wall. Oh—Oh, shit. Snapped from his trance, Arkin noticed that at least a dozen flies were now buzzing around the scene, frenzied, their ancient instincts awakened by the smell of blood.

  Doors slammed as two men emerged from the vehicle.

  "Look at him there, Pratt," he heard Special Agent Bill Morrison mutter in the singsong, Mississippi-accented voice that tended to make him sound like he was always on the verge of laughing. "He's in his Dale Cooper trance." Then, louder, "Hey, douche bag. How'd you beat us here?"

  "A good morning to you too, Bill," Arkin said, still facing the wall, his own voice as modulated as ever. "I didn't see the short bus pull up, or I would have been there to extend a glad hand."

  "Shocking political incorrectness for a Yankee."

  "Just trying to speak your language."

  "What language is that?"

  "Whatever they taught you at University of Larry the Cable Guy."

  "Now that's just plain mean," Morrison said, smiling. "What's eating you?"

  Arkin sighed. "Nothing. Except that I got brain on my tie."

  "Your Andover tie?"

  "Exeter."

  "Whatever."

  "Anyway, how did they motivate you to get out of bed this early? I didn't hear anyone say anything about free crawdaddies and cornpone."

  "Nate, one of the secrets of being funny is not trying so hard. And I'm from Mississippi, not Louisiana. It's shrimp and grits that get me out of bed. But back to my question. The Company loan you a black helicopter? For that matter, why are you here at all?"

  "I was already at McCready's picking up roasted chilies,"

  "They open this early?"

  "A patrolman in front of me in line got the radio call."

  "And you just couldn't help yourself."

  Arkin shrugged.

  "And you just happened to be wearing a $1,200 suit to a dusty little dry goods store."

  "I always wear a suit."

  Morrison's smile broadened. "Yeah. And you're the only man within a 100 miles of here who does, not counting funeral directors. But then you are a bit of an odd bird, truth be told. For example, most people don't drive 45 miles to get roasted chilies when there are half a dozen sources closer to home."

  "McCready's are Hannah's favorite. I wanted to surprise her."

  "That's sweet."

  "She might give you a plate of her chile rellenos if you play your cards right."

  "Oh, shit yeah."

  Arkin broke into a smile of his own and at last turned to face Morrison. "Shit yeah? Is that you're way of expressing approval of one of my wife's culinary masterpieces?"

  "Shit yeah."

  "Bill, you're what they call a paragon of crassitude." />
  Morrison spat chew tobacco juice out of the corner of his mouth. "Crassitude? That really a word? They teach you that at Andover?"

  "Exeter, you backwoods hick. You would have been calling me out here about 30 seconds from now anyway. Come take a look at this."

  "At what?"

  "The big holes in this wall. The ballistic trauma to the victim's head," he said, gesturing down toward the body of Allan Charles Egan chalked out and lying on its side at his feet.

  Hands jammed into his pockets, Morrison climbed the steps to the porch in a lazy gait that largely disguised his strength and dexterity. His brown hair was unkempt and his square jaw bore 36-hour stubble. He wore threadbare jeans, an un-tucked flannel shirt, and dusty old leather harness boots—a tarnished badge attached to his belt the only indication of his status as a sworn law enforcement officer. The one overt sign of his true hardness and experience in mortal arts was to be found in his penetrating, steel blue predator's eyes.

  Side-by-side with Morrison, Arkin looked like a poster boy of federal law enforcement—the perfect fit of his suit matching his tight, neatly trimmed black hair, clean shave, and perfectly polished shoes. His taut posture exuded quickness and ready power, while the sheer gravity of his facial expression left little doubt that he was not someone to be trifled with. Yet he and Morrison did share one notable similarity of appearance: the fundamental quality of their eyes. While Arkin's were a dark brown, they had the same measuring, calculating, potentially ferocious look that Morrison's did. And even the most oblivious of passers-by would find it hard to miss that they smoldered with an anger or bitterness born of God only knew what. That they were the eyes of someone who had, perhaps more than once, descended into the abyss and seen the lake of fire.