Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
S ALISBURY , E NGLAND
12:15 P.M.
T HOMAS D EWBERRY DROVE HIS SILVER-GRAY M ERCEDES AT AN unhurried pace, enjoying the mental release he always felt with being out in the countryside. He savored any escape from London’s hurriedness and its microscope, where nosy eyes and ears seemed everywhere. That apprehension all came from leading a solitary life, one devoted only to God, church, and his work, in that order.
The motorway ahead seemed a 110-kilometer-an-hour traffic jam steadily snaking its way west across southern England. Thoughts speckled through his brain like insects darting across water. More and more of late he’d found himself thinking introspectively. Analyzing. Wanting to fully understand himself. But always seeming to fail.
When had it all started?
That was easy.
As a child, when he tortured and killed stray cats and dogs. He’d come to learn that he did not commit those atrocities because he was born bad, or was inherently evil. Instead, as his former psychologist said, he was the product of systematic violentization.
“Experiences that make people dangerous happen over a long period of time. They do not occur all at once. They come gradually, like water over sandstone, and slowly change the shape of things.”
Yes, they did.
He now fully understood the five-step process.
It started with brutalization—when a child routinely witnessed and experienced violence. For him that came from his father, a fearsomely violent Welshman who beat his two sons, eventually killing one of them. He could still see his little brother lying in a pine box, not understanding why he wasn’t waking up. He’d begged him to get up, since his brother was the only other person he had, the only one who knew what it felt like to be him.
And he lost that.
Violent coaching by an authority figure came next. His started the day he was severely beaten in the neighborhood and came home bloodied and bruised. His father slapped him across the face and made him go back and fight.
He did and nearly beat a boy to death.
Belligerency followed, the conscious decision to use violence to protect yourself. For him that happened at Catholic school. When he acted out the nuns would rap him across the knuckles with a metal-edged ruler. One day he told the nun that if she hit him one more time he’d smash her head.
She did. So he did.
The fourth stage was violent performances.
That came when you asked yourself if you’d be able to hurt someone bad enough to keep them down, make them bleed, and do great bodily harm. He’d known exactly what the therapist meant, since he had no reservations about any of those. As a young man people began to view him differently. Some called him mentally unstable. Others dangerous. Most gave him a wide berth. And as he willingly accepted that newfound status, he quickly drifted into the final stage.
Virulency.
A commitment to act violently.
To hurt at will. Without regret or remorse.
He’d experienced all five stages by age seventeen. That’s when he first killed, beating a local bully to death with a cricket bat. He then tossed the body in a car he stole, drove it two hours to a bridge, and threw the corpse into a river. That was the moment he became what he’d hated most.
His father.
One of his biggest regrets was not killing that man before he died of a heart attack.
He exited the highway and navigated a series of back roads to his destination, which lay outside Salisbury on a broad, grassy plain.
Stonehenge.
Some say it came from the Neolithic Age. Others called it a Druid place of worship. An important burial site. Or something else entirely. On a midsummer’s day the sun definitely rose in a direct line with the avenue of stones. Did that make it a calendar? Was it some sort of religious site for sun worshipers? Nobody knew.
He parked in the public lot and stepped out into a warm summer afternoon. Physically he was unassuming. He had a friendly-looking face, a bit on the fleshy side, with pale-colored eyes. With his generous physical build, he dressed in a casual style that suggested not a lot of thought had gone into it. He looked like someone you might be happy to know, a contradiction that never hinted at his true self. He was not one to tell jokes or make comments that anyone would find unsettling. Nor was he a person with no interests, likes, or desires, someone who responded like a machine to the pulling of levers. Not at all. He was well read and enjoyed movies, especially the black-and-white classics. He thought of himself as curious of all things, especially nature. Years of therapy had taught him one sobering fact. He possessed no conscience, few moral values, and little to no emotional structure. Which all made his job so much easier.
He paid his admission fee and headed for the shuttle bus, which would take him and the other visitors over to the two horseshoe-shaped rows of rock. Thirty-five stones stood upright, some supporting huge carved lintels. The innermost circle was of smaller rocks, one even dubbed the altar stone. The whole structure was surrounded by ancient grassy earthworks. But he’d not come for the mystery or history or even the special tour. On the bus he’d noticed one of the other visitors. Coarse features, cob nose, satchel mouth, and a scrubby salt-and-pepper beard that dusted the cheeks, chin, and neck of coffee-colored skin. Another one of those unassuming individuals, the kind of person no one gave a second glance toward.
This one went by the name Bartolomé.
Thomas kept his distance as the tour group stepped off the bus and fanned out with the guide. Once visitors could roam at will. Not anymore. That privilege now came only to those who paid for the VIP experience, which involved a guide. He’d been told to be on the 11:30 A.M. tour and here he was.
He stayed casual in his movements and kept his focus, like everyone else’s, on the monument. Finally, after a few minutes, he approached Bartolomé and quietly asked, “Did you know the Anglo-Saxon name for this place means ‘hanging stones’?”
Bartolomé scrutinized him with a pair of dark rheumy eyes. “That is not correct. Most antiquarians today believe it to mean ‘stone gallows.’”
The voice was deep and gravelly, and the reference to the hanging stones and gallows signaled the correct code words.
A necessary precaution.
If a different phrase had been uttered he would have known there was trouble and that this man, his personal envoy, had been compromised.
But all was good.
“There is an additional request,” Bartolomé finally whispered to him. “It came a short while ago.”
He was listening.
Bartolomé ambled toward the blue stones in the center of the horseshoe. The guide was rambling on about how they might not be native to England, perhaps coming from Wales or the continent.
He followed, staying close.
“There’s a tale,” Bartolomé said. “Legends recount that this monument was built by Merlin himself, the great blocks moved into position by magic powers without the aid of human engineering. These blue stones were supposedly brought here by magic from a quarry in the Preseli Mountains in Wales.”
He’d learned to indulge his intermediary.
Bartolomé could not be rushed.
They strolled around the stones, drifting even farther from the VIP tour and the guide. He’d actually been here before. Gray as the stones themselves seemed the lives at which they hinted. Some unknown race who liked to erect huge standing megaliths, most times in great rows or circles under an open sky. Similar monuments were found all over England. But this was the most impressive of all. Monstrous powers, born in half-lit minds, had been worshiped here, surely with great pomp and ceremony.
All pagan.
Heathen.
“You still have not mentioned the additional request,” he softly said.
“I’ve been doing some reading. In 1563, at the Ecumenical Council of Trent, headed by Pope Pius IV, it was written that nothing is more necessary to the church of God than the pope associating with himself, as cardinals, the most upright and competent shepherds. The words used then were clear. Our Lord Jesus Christ will require the blood of the evil government of shepherds who are negligent and forgetful of their office. Apparently, one has become a problem.”
That was a first.
He’d killed people, but it had always been in tough spots of the world. Retaliation for some previous violence. Message sending. He took his cue from the 1578 edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum , the standard Inquisitorial manual. Quoniam punitio non refertur primo, per se in correctionem, bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, a malis committendis avocentur. For punishment does not take place primarily, and per se, for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.
“They offer double the usual fee for this additional service,” Bartolomé said.
“This is different.”
“I agree.”
“When would this need to be done?” he asked.
“By the end of the week.”
Proper preparation was important to success. Speed was not his strong point. Creativity took time and required coordination and flexibility.
So he was hesitant. For a variety of reasons.
“I understand this is unusual,” Bartolomé said. “I question that too. But the situation itself is unusual and requires definitive action.”
“I have never killed a prelate before.”
“Do you accept the job?”
He looked deep into the eyes, shrewd and watchful. Their benefactor paid generously, which Bartolomé shared in. But it was also always his choice. “I do.”
“Here’s some additional information you may need.” And Bartolomé handed him a sealed white envelope. “There is also one special condition that is critical. It must be easily determined to be a suicide. No questions. And the original assignment remains. Keep proceeding there.”
His envoy walked off.
Their business concluded.
All communication came through Bartolomé, then money appeared in a Swiss account. The arrangement suited him. He had little curiosity to know more, since people with questions often wound up dead. So he did what was asked, went where sent, and left it to others to ponder its meaning.
But this was different.
He stood among the stones and gathered his thoughts, parading them in mental order as if unruly soldiers. A lot was apparently happening. Serious enough that the killing of a cardinal was required. Our Lord Jesus Christ will require the blood of the evil government of shepherds who are negligent and forgetful of their office.
Okay.
He would deliver.