The Fifth Assassin (29 page)

“All four of them believed they were chosen by God,” I say.

“Exactly. They all thought they were chosen by God,” Nico says. “But here’s the real question: What if they were right?”

P
astor Frick, you there?” Tot called out, adding a quick knock against the hospital room door.

There was no answer. Shoving the door open, Tot peeked inside.

The hospital room was no different than any other hospital room—but from what Tot saw: no lights… no flowers… no writing on the wipe-off board. Even the bed was perfectly made. Whoever used to be here was long gone.

“You from the church?” a female voice called out.

Tot turned, tracing the voice back to the hallway, to a nurse with a gold cross around her neck, pushing a rolling blood pressure cart. “If you’re looking for Pastor Frick, they released him.”

“
Released
him?”

“Beautiful news, right? In fact…” She pointed toward the elevators. “If you hurry, they just wheeled him downstairs. He said he was stopping by the chapel first—to say goodbye to the chaplain.”

“Do you know if he’s headed home after that?” Tot asked, still determined to ask the pastor about yesterday’s attack.

“No idea. But if you want, ask Chaplain Stoughton…”

“Only if you think it wouldn’t be a bother.”

“Don’t be silly. She loves everyone. Even the President was impressed when he was here.”

Tot froze at the words. “What’d you just say?”

“The President. President Wallace.”

Sonuvabitch.
“President Wallace was in
this
hospital?”

“Don’t you remember? Back when he had his gallbladder out.”

“And he met with your chaplain?”

“Even said prayers with her—right before they put him under. Why? Is that—?” The nurse stopped, staring at Tot. “Is everything okay?”

“No, it’s just—” Tot spun around, rushing and limping back toward the elevators. “What floor’d you say the chaplain’s office is on again?”

S
o that’s what this killer thinks?” I ask. “That he’s been chosen by God?”

“Not just him. He said the same of me. He
told
me,” Nico says, his voice starting to pick up speed. “He told me that what I began—all those years ago… He said it was a revelation for him. That was his word.
Revelation
.”

“And that makes you
what
? His inspiration?”

“I see the way you look at me, Benjamin. You want to insist that I’m the cause of this. But what the Knight is doing… the path he’s on… This isn’t my creation. It’s existed for centuries.”

“I agree,” I say, nodding along with him. Nico isn’t just the grand poobah of kooky conspiracies and alternative history. He once shot the President to save the world from evil Freemasons. It’s not tough to figure out how to keep him talking. “We know about the Knights of the Golden Circle,” I tell him. “And we know how the first Knights—the sacred Knights—used the symbolism of playing cards to hide their commitment to the church.”

“Then you know how powerful their legacy is,” he says, his voice now at full gallop. “Back in 1994, a man named Francisco Martin Duran tried to kill President Bill Clinton by firing twenty-nine shots at the White House. But on his drive from Colorado to Washington, did you know he stopped in Dallas, Texas, passing the Book Depository… and that when he got to D.C., he even stayed at the Hilton Hotel where John Hinckley shot Reagan? The path is clear to those who see it,” he adds, still staring at Clementine and blinking faster than ever. “And when you see the map… Have you seen the map?”

She shakes her head and takes a small step backward. She knows what happens when Nico gets too excited.

“Look at a map… any map,” he continues, clutching the scarf on his neck. “John Wilkes Booth was born in Bel Air, Maryland. Guiteau in Freeport, Illinois. Czolgosz in Detroit, Michigan. And Oswald in New Orleans, Louisiana. If the next assassin were born in northern Florida, those five birthplaces—if you draw straight lines between them…”

From his back pocket, he pulls out… it’s not a wallet. It’s a fat stack of folded papers, all bound with a rubber band. Unwrapping the rubber band, Nico flips through the pile and holds up… “Those birthplaces form
this
!”

“You see it, Benjamin!? A pentagram—
a pentagram!
—across America!”

Next to me, Clementine takes another step back. Something’s wrong. Something I’m missing.

“Nico, were you born in Florida?” I ask.

Gritting his teeth to catch his breath, he looks in the distance, at the guard, then over at two squirrels chasing each other at the base of a nearby tree. They’re moving so fast, they don’t even leave paw prints in the snow.

“It doesn’t matter where I was born,” Nico growls. “It’s the Knight’s turn now. He knew all that I’d done. But to see what he’s shown me… With the maps alone… I only had the tip of it.”

“I’m confused,” Clementine jumps in. “If it’s the Knight who’s doing this—Is his mission different from yours?”

“Now you’re seeing it, aren’t you? Now you know why he can’t be stopped. Mine was a selfish mission—everything for my own purpose. But what the Knight is doing here—Did you see his first slain? To let Pastor Riis be the first lamb…”

My heart clenches as he says the name of our old pastor in Wisconsin. Marshall told me he was looking into Riis’s death. But back when we were little, I remember that night in the pastor’s basement. Within weeks, Riis was run out of town. And Marshall’s mother put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

“Nico, if you know that Marshall’s doing this…”

Nico wraps up his homemade map, stuffing it back into his pocket.

“If you’re protecting Marshall, or covering for him,” I add.

“I told you, Benjamin, I’ve never seen the Knight before. He knows better than to come in person. But I do know this: In the case of Pastor Riis, the Knight understands the value of doing for others. And proving one’s loyalty.”

“Loyalty to who?”

Without a word, Nico lowers his chin and drills me with a dark glare.

From behind us, a determined wind shoves against my back. “You asked the Knight to kill Pastor Riis, didn’t you? You pointed him to the first victim.”

Staying silent, Nico stares straight at me. “In my experience, Benjamin, you can’t make a man do what he doesn’t already want to.”

As I turn away, my brain tries to fill in the rest. Riis was practice. Then when the copycat murders started… first the rector from St. John’s… then Pastor Frick from Foundry Church. Both of them spent time with the President—but both also studied under Riis. For it all to be tied together… “Nico, is that how the Knight found his other victims? What started with Riis then led to—”

“You keep focusing on the lambs. But look at their locations too: Look at the temples—look what he’s working toward. His is an act of God.”

“Why? Because he thinks he’s protecting the church?”

“You keep saying that. You keep insisting that in the playing cards, they’re protecting the church. But you’re forgetting the real mission of Vignolles and his sacred Knights. From the start, the Knights weren’t just protecting the church. They were protecting the church’s greatest
secret
.”

“And what secret is that?”

Nico tilts his head, looking at me like I’m still arguing that the world is flat. “Isn’t it obvious, Benjamin? They protect the real Name of God.”

I
n the beginning, the Knight had doubts too. How could he not?

Even now, as he walked slowly down the hospital hallway, toward the chapel at the far end, he thought back to those moments when he first heard the story, about the true Name of God. There was no arguing with what really happened. Or that it happened over and over throughout history.

For Jews, the true Name of God was said only once each year, by the high priest in the Temple. To protect it, the Hebrews used
YHWH
—the four consonants of the Hebrew name for
God
—saying that the vowels should be hidden and the real Name should never be pronounced. To protect it even further, they later replaced it with
Adonai
, which meant
Lord
. In the Christian Bible, God gave Jesus the “Name above all Names,” which began as
The Anointed One
, then
The Christ
, then
Jesus Christ
, then
Lord
and
YHWH
. And in the Muslim religion, where God is known as
Allah
, God is said to have ninety-nine names, and that those who know all of God’s Names will enter Paradise.

Indeed, the issue remained such a potent one throughout history that as recently as 2008, the Vatican issued a directive that said, when it came to the Name of God, the name
Yahweh
could no longer be “used or pronounced” in any songs or prayers.

It was this essential question that the Knight could not let go of: What power could the Name of God really hold that all three religions still treat it with such reverence, even to this day?

Over the centuries, dozens of theories developed. Ancient healers supposedly used God’s real Name to cure the sick. Early grimoires said that the Name of God unlocked untold power. And
exorcists and mystics insisted that those who controlled the Name of God could control God Himself.

Even the Knight knew that was crazy. Just as his predecessor in the fifteenth century—Étienne de Vignolles… the Chosen Knight… the Sacred Knight—knew that the true Name of God had nothing to do with magic powers or mystical exaggerations.

Still, century after century, religion after religion, there were always those who sought power by claiming to know God’s real Name. But as Vignolles found out when he was trusted by both church and king, great power didn’t come from
knowing
the Name of God.

Great power came from
hiding
it.

Over the course of centuries, so many religious answers have been lost. But as for the true Name of God, those answers were purposely hidden.

For thousands of years, so much good has been done in the Name of God. But also, the First Knight was asked, how much harm has been done—by Christians, by Jews, by Muslims alike—because of their assumption of exclusiveness? How many throats have been slit? How many innocents slaughtered? Religions have built empires, launched crusades, and fought some of the world’s bloodiest wars based on the
differences
in how they viewed God.

But what if there was
no
difference? How would the followers of Jesus, or Allah, or Adonai react if the real secret of secrets—the greatest secret of all—was simply this: that for every religion, the true Name of God was
exactly the same
? Forget Christian God, Muslim God, or Hebrew God. Think of the power that would be lost if there were just…

One God.

Vignolles was shaken too when he first heard the story. He didn’t want to believe it. No one would believe it. But to hear the rumblings from the king’s court… from someone so respected… how could it be ignored? Unsure of what to do, Vignolles did the only thing he always did before a battle.

He prayed.

In no time, he had his answer. The story of
One God
was a blasphemy—a lie!—and if the king were to ever bring it to light…

Luckily, Vignolles didn’t have to pull his sword. King Charles VII never reached the heights of power that would let him challenge the church.

Still, Vignolles knew this was a problem that would rise again. When it did, a new Knight would be needed. From there, the secret army took shape. Preparations were made. Instructions written. And the symbols—of hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs—were incorporated into the one place no one would ever think to notice.

For centuries, Vignolles’s playing cards would carry his warning of how the king could destroy the church. And for centuries, the chosen Knights would lie in wait, taking on chancellors, emperors, monarchs, tsars, and anyone else whose growing influence and claim of unity might interfere with the primacy of church power. Including, even, a President.

Six centuries later, the current Knight—the Knight of the fifth and final symbol—reached the end of the hospital’s long hallway and approached the Interfaith Chapel. A place that treated every religion the same. How perfect.

The plaster Abraham Lincoln mask was hidden inside his jacket. So was his Iver Johnson revolver. Behind him, the slowed-down version of “Little Red Corvette” still echoed on the piano.

From his pants pocket, the Knight pulled out a white linen handkerchief and, like Czolgosz, the third assassin, folded the handkerchief, then unfolded it again, then folded it, and unfolded it again, finally using it to hide the revolver as he tugged it—so carefully—from his jacket pocket.

He checked the hallway one last time. It was quiet back by the chapel. Grabbing the door-pull with his left hand, he held his right hand out, like he was offering a handshake, just like Czolgosz did over a hundred years ago.

Every generation has its Knight. And every Knight knows his sacred mission.