Amid the Shadows (25 page)

47

Benecke walked into the
large office and stood before Carolina Flores who was on the phone.
 
She was tall with straight hair and motioned
him to a seat in front of her desk.
 
After
a few minutes, she hung up and shook her head.

“Hello Ron,” she said
with a sigh.
 
“Things are going downhill
fast.
 
The riots are spreading, and Italy
is losing control.”

Benecke knew what she
was referring to.
 
The first riots to
take to the streets were in Italy, not far from Vatican City.
 
They spread quickly through the other
European countries, then across to Mexico and Brazil.
 
If the number of rioters multiplied as
quickly as they did in Italy, the other governments would have little hope of
stopping them.

He looked at her for a long
moment, trying to think about the best way to tell her.
 
His drive over to CIA headquarters in Langley
was full of questions, and given their friendship, she was the first person he
needed to talk to, and fast.

She watched Benecke
curiously as he took a deep breath.
 
“What is it?”

“I need to tell you
something,” he said quietly.
 
“And then
we need to get everyone together.”

Flores leaned
forward.
 
“Okay.
 
And who is everyone?”

Benecke frowned.
 
“The Joint Chiefs…and probably the
President.”

Less than an hour
later, Flores and Benecke climbed out of the President’s Marine One helicopter
and descended the steps onto the green grass of the White House back lawn.
  
The high pitch of engines faded as they
ducked under the slowing rotors and were ushered toward the large glass doors,
where more of Flores’ agents stood waiting for them.

They were escorted
downstairs to the Cabinet Room where the others were waiting.
 
The Chief of Staff met them at the door and
waved them in.
 
Flores and Benecke looked
around the table and nodded to the others, all of whom they knew well.

As they sat down and
scooted forward, they were informed the President and Vice President were on
their way down.

Flores and Benecke
nodded to Marc Ha, the CIA Director, on the other side of the table, then to
the other seven men at the table, comprising the President’s Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
 
Sam Foley, the Secretary of
Defense, with his balding hair and hawkish eyes, was sitting next to Ha and
nodded back, peering out from under thick grey eyebrows.

Less than a minute
later, the President entered the room followed by the Vice President.
 
President Lee was tall and lean and had the
distinction of choosing the country’s first female Vice President.
 
Glena Ward, who followed him in and sat down
at the table next to him, was no puppet or figurehead for the VP position.
 
She was as tough as anyone in the room.

The President leaned
forward and put his elbows on the dark mahogany table.
 
“Okay, let’s hear it.”

Benecke glanced at
Flores, the only person who knew what he was about to say, and then back to the
President.
 
“I’ll make it short sir,” he
said.
 
“We have evidence that we believe
identifies the Pope’s murderer.”

Lee raised his eyebrows
in surprise.
 
“Really?
 
Who is it?”
 
With all that was going wrong at the moment, he was excited at the
prospect of removing at least some of the pressure he was under from the other
countries.
 
The case was not going
quickly enough for anyone.

Benecke didn’t reply
immediately.
 
“Mr. President, I think
it’s better if I share the evidence.”

The President looked
puzzled but gestured to continue.

Benecke reached into
his pocket and pulled out a small digital audio player.
 
“As you know, four of the Swiss Guard were
killed in the same room with the Pope.”
 
He paused and looked around the table.
 
“It appears that one of them managed to start a recording on his phone
before he died.”

Everyone gave a
surprised look as Benecke put a recorder gently on the table in front of
him.
 
“The recording is almost four
minutes long and ends with the final slaying of Pope Pius.”
 
Benecke waited a moment for questions, and
hearing none, he reached forward and pressed the play button.
 
The recording started abruptly, and a deep
voice could be heard clearly in mid-sentence.
 

“-you lay there on
the floor slowly bleeding to death, and asking yourself how in the world we
ever got past your security.
 
The reason
is because we were the security.”

There
was a long pause and everyone instinctively looked at Benecke’s device on the
table.

“Are you wondering
why yet?
 
Of course you are.
 
Let’s just say…this is payment for services
rendered.
 
A debt, if you will.”

“Listen to me.
 
Just keep him alive and unharmed.
 
If you keep him unharmed, they will give you
anything you ask.
 
Anything!”

“Oh, I know.”

Everyone in the room
jumped when they heard two successive gunshots, and a few seconds later two
more.
 

“Paid
in full.”

Benecke pressed the
button again, stopping the recording.
 
He
looked at the President whose face, like everyone else’s, looked ashen.
 
No one moved; they simply could not believe
what they had just heard.

“Is that,” Lee began,
with a whisper, “
Bill Zahn’s voice?!”

Benecke nodded.
 
“Yes, it is.”

The room was silent
again.
 
After a long wait, Ward spoke
up.
 
“Are you
sure
?”

“We analyzed the audio
multiple times and each time the characteristics were a perfect match.”

“There’s no possible
chance it’s someone else?” Ha asked from across the table.

Benecke shook his
head.
 
“Very little.”

“How little?”
 
President Lee said, raising his voice.

“As in practically
none, sir.”

“My god.”
 
Lee closed his eyes and leaned his face into
his hands.
 
“Where…is Zahn now?”

“His plane took off
almost two hours ago on a flight south.
 
He will reach international waters in a little over thirty minutes.”

“Why in god’s
name…”
 
Lee’s voice trailed off.
 
He looked up and back at Benecke and
Flores.
 
“Tell me you’re right about
this.
 
Tell me there is no way in hell
you’re wrong.”

“We’re right, sir.”

Ward cleared her voice
and spoke up with a more objective tone.
 
“This may be a dumb question, but exactly how much do we know about
Zahn?
 
I mean,
really
know.”

Benecke placed a thick
folder on the table and pulled out some papers.
 
“He’s held three other government positions of significance over the
last twenty-two years of service.
 
The
first was in the DOD for nine years as a nuclear and weapons inspector, then in
the NSA for six years running their data encryption department, and the rest of
his time in the State Department, as a political liaison and second in command.”

Ward shook her
head.
 
The man was plugged in.
 
“So, you’re saying that Zahn, a high ranking
member of the government, murdered the Pope.
 
Why in the world would he do that?”

“I cannot even begin to
imagine,” the President said shaking his head.

The Chief of the Army
spoke up.
 
“This just doesn’t make any
sense.
 
We’ve got to have something wrong
here.”
 
They all turned back to Benecke.

He cleared his throat
and went back to his folder.
 
This time
he pulled out several copies of paper and passed them around.
 
Everyone picked theirs up and studied
it.
 
They were pictures, small pictures,
that were arranged to fill the single page, and in each picture was a small
group of men at different angles and different locations.
 
“These are photos from the Cathedral of Saint
John.
 
As you all know, installing
security cameras where none are present is common procedure for this level of
protection.
 
The four men you see in
these images are the same men that we believe carried out the
assassination
 
If you look closely at the
tallest of them, it’s Zahn.”

Simultaneously everyone
stared harder at their picture.
 
“Jesus,”
whispered Foley.

“Okay, he was
there,”
 
Ha said.
 
“How do we know they were the ones that did
it?”

Benecke looked around
the room.
 
“Do you notice anything
strange about these pictures?”

Everyone continued to
peer at them.
 
Ha looked up.
 
“I recognize the man to Zahn’s left in
pictures four and five.”

“That is Kia Sarat,”
Flores spoke up.
 
“He is Zahn’s right
hand man and has been working with and for him for years.
 
He checks out.”

“What about the other
two?” asked the President.

Flores took a deep
breath.
 
“Their ID’s initially checked
out, but now that we’ve had some time to do some digging, we’re finding
discrepancies.”

“Discrepancies?” barked
the head of the Army.
 
General Hall was a
bear of a man.
 
Both tall and muscular,
he looked like he could still get into the ring with someone half his age.
 

Flores spoke up.
 
“One of the men we thought was named Ahmad,
but we now believe he is Ferran Kamal, the nephew of an Islamic terrorist by
the name of Malik.
 
The fourth man, Iman,
we believe also has a radical background.”

The Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs rolled his eyes.
 
“And these
guys just walked right by you?”

“We don’t have time,”
Flores shot back with a look of irritation, “to do an exhaustive background
check on every single person!”

Landeen, the Chairman,
did not back down.
 
“Well, why the hell
NOT?!
 
What the hell good is your check
if we can’t tell whether they’re friend or foe until the damn attack is over?”

Flores was not
intimidated.
 
“Because they weren’t
passing through security!
 
They were
security!”

Everyone at the table
froze.
 
“What was that?” asked Vice
President Ward.

Flores turned to
address her.
 
“What I’m saying is, these
were not normal clearance checks.
 
Those
are for people not on the security team.
 
But Zahn and his men
were
part of the security team.
 
Almost all major departments were.”
 
She motioned to the recorder.
 
“Zahn said it himself.”

“Why the hell was the
State Department part of the security team?
 
They have no military authority,” Foley said.

“Technically, they
didn’t have to sir,” Benecke answered.
 
“The passage of the Patriot Act was intended to improve communication by
breaking down walls between government departments.
 
The State Department does have some
international authority, but the Patriot Act, in an effort to force the
departments to exchange information more freely, essentially equalized them as
part of a larger cooperative system.
 
Security has been flattened, which means having Zahn and his team there
was completely acceptable.
 
This is why
Ms. Flores’ teams in the Secret Service had no reason to further investigate
them.”

Foley shook his
head.
 
“Christ!
 
You’re telling me that these bastards got
through because of a giant loophole in the law?”

“Yes, sir.”

Foley rolled his eyes
and looked back to the President.

“Several of my team saw
them there,” Flores continued.
 
“But they
never saw them again, even when my men were getting everyone out.”

“And there is also the
oddity in the pictures,”
 
reminded
Benecke.
 
Everyone remembered his
question and looked back at their sheets of paper.

Ha finally looked
up.
 
“I don’t see it.
 
What stands out?”

“They are the only ones
in the pictures wearing long coats.”
 
The
realization struck them all at once.
 
It
was clearly out of place and they could see it.
 
“Those coats are not just hot; they’re also long enough to hide AK-47s
beneath them.
 
And the AKs are another
item.
 
They’re old, but they’re extremely
reliable.
 
And Islamic freedom fighters
have tens of thousands of them.”