training.”
“So you were close?” asked Robert.
“You could say that. We had a good friendship.” Robert felt the 9mm Father Kong provided, since he couldn’t bring his own through customs, press against his side. I should plug you here and now. “Samuel looked a bit uncomfortable during mass that day,” he said.
“That’s nothing unusual,” said the priest. “We all get nervous. It’s normal.”
Robert remembered how confident Samuel could be, and his phone conversations with him about being an altar boy. “It’s a cinch, Uncle Robert! No problem at all!” Samuel had told him.
Father Tolbert cleared his throat again. “Now, you say Samuel may be here in Rome?”
“That’s what our sources tell us,” said Robert.
Father Tolbert looked back and forth between Robert and Thorne.
“Why would someone bring him here?”
“That’s a question we’re trying to answer,” said Robert, boring a hole in the priest’s forehead. “Got any ideas?”
“Why would I? I told you, I don’t know anything about it.” Robert, his patience thinning, stood, hands in his pockets, and paced back and forth in front of the priest. “Are you familiar with the stories, Father Tolbert?”
“Stories?” asked the priest.
“Yes, you know. Catholic priests, molestation.” The perspiration beading Father Tolbert’s face streamed down his cheeks. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Of course I’m familiar with the stories, who isn’t. It’s a shame, an embarrassment to the Church. Why do you ask?’
“Because we’ve heard rumors,” snapped Robert, unable to contain himself. Before he realized it, he towered over Father Tolbert, fists clenched. “Rumors you’re a child molester! That you molested my godson!”
Horror on his face, Father Tolbert recoiled. “I’ve done no such thing!” he bellowed.
Thorne grabbed Robert and pulled him back. “Pray to God that you haven’t, or I’ll send you to hell,” she growled.
“Get out of my room!” yelled Father Tolbert. “Get out!”
“What did you do to my boy?’ snarled Robert, foaming at the mouth.
“Robert, stop, let’s go,” barked Thorne, now in front of him, pushing him back. “This isn’t the time. We have to find Samuel. We’ll deal with this asshole later.”
Robert understood, but didn’t care. He wanted to beat Father Tolbert to within an inch of his life. Thorne grabbed him by the collar and stared into his eyes.
“Let’s go,” she said again.
Robert eased back, but pointed his finger at the priest. “If I find out its true, I’ll be back to kill you.”
Father Tolbert stood, tears in his eyes. “Get out and don’t dare come back! I didn’t do it,” he cried. “Now, please, leave me alone!” Robert snapped around and opened the door. A large priest, wide and muscular, stood outside the door. He looked past Robert and Thorne at Father Tolbert. “Is everything okay, Father?” he asked.
Robert didn’t wait to hear the answer. He and Thorne left the building and jumped in back of a waiting car. Father Kong and Sister Isabella, both in street clothes, looked back at them.
“How did it go?” asked Sister Isabella.
Robert looked out at Vatican City. “Let’s go,” he said. “Father Tolbert’s still alive, for now.”
31
E veryone at the diocese had gone home for the night. Only a small cleaning crew milled about the building, tending to overflowing wastepaper baskets, carpets that needed vacuuming, and wood that longed to be polished. Alone in his office, Cardinal Polletto contemplated the final preparations to ensure Samuel’s authenticity as The Order’s savior, known to most of the ecumenical world as the Anti-Christ, a term the cardinal detested.
Following in footsteps of those who led The Order before him, Cardinal Polletto had kept a keen eye out for any world development, scientific or otherwise, that would pave the way for the birth of the son of the King of Tyrus. Since the formation of The Order of Asmodeus, a fervent search for the one who would rule the earth had proved itself an arduous task, with a number of children being put through a ritual designed to substantiate them as The Order’s king.
To be judged as the one foretold in The Order’s ancient writings, the first, and most important, test was a death challenge no child had ever lived through. Since 1853, when The Order came into being, the ritual had been executed twenty-five times. Each time they were left empty handed.
On the day of the ritual, every member of The Order would assemble at a designated location somewhere in Italy. The children being tested, gathered up from around the world, would be bound, gagged and laid inside small, black coffins. After a brief ceremony and the blood sacrifice of the child’s host, each child would be dumped into the sea.
The Chosen One would survive unscathed. If more than one survived, they would be taken to a secure location for further observation and training. When the child they were looking for separated himself, he would be crowned king, and the remaining children, along with every member of The Order, would serve him with unquestioned allegiance.
The Order hadn’t performed the ritual for almost two decades, when cloning and genetic engineering made a giant leap with the birth of Dolly, the first cloned sheep, in Australia. Not long after that, Cardinal Polletto was bathed in a vision, and knew the time had come. Their God, their savior, had made a way.
The cardinal petitioned The Order’s ruling counsel to allow him to commission the first cloned human being, and bring into the world the one they had awaited for generations. The petition was unanimously accepted, and after numerous false starts and failures, four of the most renowned genetic scientists in the world created the impossible in a hidden compound just below the Himalayas; a human clone, and quite possibly, a leader who would forever change the world.
Cardinal Polletto leaned back and closed his eyes, remembering the day he came to The Order as a young, disillusioned priest back in Italy.
Four decades earlier, he’d trusted his childhood mentor and family priest, Father Orland Cipriani, back at Our Lady of Bracciano in Bracciano, Italy, where he grew up. The rugged, handsome, compassionate priest fascinated a young impressionably Giovanni Sarto Jonas, Cardinal Polletto’s given name, with stories of world travel and adventure.
Cardinal Polletto, who worked the fishing boats with his father catching eels in Lago di Bracciano, for which the town was named, could think of nothing else but serving the Church as Father Cipriani did, and spent every waking moment planning his move into the priesthood.
Against his father’s wishes, but to the delight of his mother, with whom he shared a deep affection for the Holy See, Cardinal Polletto set off for college to study philosophy and Latin in Milano. He received the tonsure, a partially shaved head, a patch on the crown, from then a promoted Bishop Cipriani, and a scholarship to the Diocese of Treviso in the seminary of Padua, where he finished his classical, philosophical and theological studies with distinction.
Soon after he finished school, Cardinal Polletto, now ordained, served as Chaplin at a small parish just outside Sardinia for nine years, having assumed most of the functions of parish priest, as the pastor was old and an invalid. Cardinal Polletto spent much of his time studying canon law, and quickly ascended to the office of Bishop, with his mentor now carrying the crown Cardinal Cipriani.
During those days, Cardinal Polletto’s closest friend was his younger sister, Rosa, with whom he shared and confided everything. Their love for one another was without question the deepest a brother and sister could share, and he would’ve gladly given his life for her without question. Through his many trials while ascending the priesthood, Rosa stood behind him as a strong driving force, encouraging and supportive.
Then Rosa came to him pregnant. Cardinal Polletto was quick to forgive and support. For months he kept her hidden in Nettuna, a small village outside of Rome, where he was then stationed. Rosa didn’t offer, and he never asked about the father. After the baby was born, she confessed to him that the father of the son she’d brought into the world was, to his dismay, Cardinal Cipriani.
