Free Vatican Knights by Rick Jones Page A

Steele.
    Since no statement had been made
by the political brass, CNN offered baseless theories about her death gleaned
from “inside” sources, who informed the news media more out of speculation than
fact. The end result was a constant looping of assumptive news that became
monotonously redundant as she picked up books by Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose and
began to stack them into the bookcase.
    Gary Molin entered the room
wearing a cooking mitt on one hand and holding a two-pronged fork in the other.
He was tall and slender with olive-colored skin. His eyes were battleship gray,
a drab color that paralleled the dreariness of his humor. For months he and his
wife had been growing apart, each talking “at” each other instead of “to” each
other. When they hugged or kissed or expressed any type of physical affection,
it felt obligatory, insincere, even vulgar. But the true mystery was that
neither could remember when they started to drift apart. There was no specific
argument or event or act of lascivious impropriety that drove a wedge between
them. It was something quite simple, really. The romantic glow of infatuation
was simply going away, the once-burning flame barely a smoldering ember. Worse,
they both knew it. Nevertheless, each tried to hang on to the other with futile
gestures, such as cooking candlelit dinners with fancy French names, with
chilled bottles of wine sitting in an ornately-styled silver ice bucket. Then
they would sit in awkward silence as they ate, the conversation hard to come
by, their passion as elusive as the proper words to initiate a simple thread of
discussion.
    Tonight Gary was making Greek lamb
with spinach and orzo, a favorite of Shari’s during their honeymoon in the
Greek Isles several years earlier. It was an effort to bring back the times
when they were star-struck just to be in each other’s company, to hear each
other’s voice.
    He stepped further into the room,
the smell of baked meat wafting behind him. “Anything new?”
    “It’s still guesswork at this
point,” she said. Her tone was flat and withdrawn as she continued to place the
books onto the bookshelves.
    For a moment Gary’s eyes appeared
saddened. Her tone seemed to confirm that their marriage was as artificial as
their attempts to communicate.
    When breaking news from CNN
interrupted the current programming, the anchorwoman reported that a White
House spokesman was about to take the podium in the Brady Press Room.
    A balding man with Botox lips and
a soft appearance stepped to the podium and faced an audience of reporters.
Something about his demeanor evoked the impression of a troll, and he spoke in
a high-pitched whine. This was not the image Shari would have presented to a
world audience, a mistake on the part of the White House staff. But as Shari
expected, the first words spoken were of condemnation for the terrorist regime
and the obvious call for justice. Then the spokesperson slid neatly into what
everybody was waiting to hear—that the Soldiers of Islam were responsible, and
there was now an international effort to bring these terrorists to justice and
to acquire the safety of Pope Pius the XIII. Nothing was ever mentioned of the
terrorists’ identities.
    As the spokesperson elaborated,
the phone rang. Shari backed up with her eyes on the television and reached
blindly for the phone on the wall. After talking briefly in hushed tones, she
slowly placed the receiver back on the cradle. “That was the attorney general,”
she said. “He wants to see me right away.”
    Although Gary showed no emotion,
she could tell he was seething underneath.
    “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I know
it was important to you that we have dinner together tonight.”
    He shrugged. “Yeah . . . well,
whatever.”
    She appeared wounded; the tone of
his voice was deliberately biting. “Gary, this is my job. This is what I do. I
don’t have a choice in the matter.”
    In a quick display of warring
emotions, his face