THE MCJ

CRUSADERS

A new “Chris Johnson, Anglican Investigator” adventure

Chapter One - The Fellowship

I sat down at the desk of Room 219 of the Columbia, Missouri Motel 6, put my feet up and allowed myself a moment of relaxation. In front of me was my laptop, my Heckler-Koch, a bottle of Ten High bourbon that I‘d picked up at a truck stop twenty miles east, several plastic glasses and a bucket of ice.

I glanced at the bed behind me where I had thrown my case and some changes of clothes I had just purchased at the nearby Columbia Mall. Sleep, I thought, would not come easily tonight if it came at all.

So I opened the bottle, put some ice in a glass, poured in the bourbon and added a little water. I drank one after another of these (refilling the bucket twice and pretty soon skipping the water), desperately trying to drive away an increasingly terrifying thought.

Had my luck finally run out?

It came out of nowhere. Late that morning, Nicky and Paul had left to visit Nicky’s friend Linda. Linda was also the mother of Paul’s best friend Andrew and the four of them were going to spend the day at the St. Louis Zoo.

Twenty minutes after Nicky left, I got a phone call from Linda. “Chris, is Nicky okay?” she asked. “She hasn’t gotten here yet.” Linda only lived a few minutes away and it was a straight shot. I told Linda that I’d check into it and call her as soon as I knew anything.

I called Nicky’s cell. No answer. I called every special number we had in all of our phones. Still no answer.

I told myself that the Escalade’s battery was dead or that my wife had inadvertently let her phone’s battery run out but I knew those were extremely lame excuses for someone as together as Nicky is. I was starting to get nervous.

So I got in my car and drove to Linda’s house, looking for my wife’s car. There was no sign of it anywhere.

I took a quick spin around Linda’s neighborhood but didn’t see the Escalade. When I knocked on Linda‘s door, she told me that Nicky and Paul had never arrived.

Now I got more and more scared with each tenth of a mile I drove. I returned to the mansion, went into my office and tried locating my wife’s car on our GPS system. Nothing. I was just about to telephone the police when the phone rang.

It was Nicky. She had time to whisper two words. “Chris?!! Run!!” Then I heard someone clamp a hand over her mouth while a quiet voice told me, “Keep the authorities out of this, Mr. Johnson. For your family‘s own good.”

“Out of what?!! Who the hell are you?!!” I shouted. The line went dead. At that moment, I heard three men enter the mansion downstairs through the front door.

One of the advantages of designing your own home is that you know your way around better than anyone. I silently locked my office door, quickly picked up my Heckler-Koch, some ammo, my laptop and a disposable cell phone, stuffed everything into a backpack, left by the back door of the office and went down the stairs to the back yard.

Using the many trees as cover, I ran toward the park in back of my house. I wanted to make it to a 7-11 a few miles away. But the moment I climbed my back fence and stood on the other side, I heard a twig snap and the click of a gun being cocked.

In the park. Not thirty yards in front of me.

I dove into the brush to my right just as shots rang out from the mansion and from somewhere in the park. I jumped up, grabbed my Heckler-Koch, fired several rounds in both directions(shattering one of the mansion’s windows), took off through the underbrush and sprinted through about a hundred yards worth of forest, zigging and zagging as I ran.  Three or four shots followed me.

I made it to a road, crossed it and ran through about four hundred more yards of trees. Then I found myself at a St Louis County police station so I went inside and sat down on a bench by the front door to catch my breath.

I tried calling every Christian private investigator I knew and could find no one. Dale and Heather Price were nowhere to be found. Wannabe was gone. When I called Greg Griffith, a pleasant female voice told me, “We control CETU now, Mr. Johnson. And everyone who works for it.”

“Who are you?!!” I demanded but got no answer.

I opened up my laptop and tried to access my server. When I did, my heart sank. My system, which I had thought impregnable, displayed a white screen and the following thick, red letters:

WE CONTROL YOUR SERVER

I was completely alone.

I had very limited resources. Although they had access to most of my alternate identities, they didn’t know all of them; I was smart enough to keep a few off the system. But as good as these people seemed to be, I knew that would not hold them off for very long.

I walked into a bathroom to clean myself up as best I could. Then I crossed the street to a convenience store, got some cash from an ATM with one of my fake ID debit cards (which I regularly stock with psychotically liberal amounts of cash) and called a cab which was there in half an hour.

A rental car would be a bad idea; they were probably monitoring car rental places as I road the cab. So I had the cabbie pull into the first car dealership I saw, paid him with an excessive tip and wandered the lot for a while, looking all around me every few seconds.

I found a Ford Focus that looked good and that didn’t have too much mileage on it, quickly arranged to buy it and drove away. Hopefully, temp tags wouldn’t be as easy to trace. It took me a while to figure out just where I was. But I eventually found Interstate 64, got on it and drove west.

To what, I had no idea. Just the fact that I was in a car was a bit reassuring. I kept my practiced eye out for tails but noticed none. But the farther west I drove, the less reassured I became.

At Wentzville, Interstate 64 joined Interstate 70 and the traffic thinned considerably. This was good as it would make anyone trying to follow me that much easier to spot. But that fact didn’t do anything to quench the gnawing feeling in my stomach.

What in the world was happening?

I continued west for a couple of hours, partially to make sure I wasn’t being followed and partially because I didn’t know what else to do. At Kingdom City, I gassed up, bought the Ten High and continued on to Columbia, stopping at the Columbia Mall for some clothes and a few computer peripherals.

Although I had no idea if they, whoever they were, had planned that extensively, I figured that Columbia’s finer hotels might be watched so I opted for the Motel 6 which wasn‘t. Dumping my stuff on the bed and putting my gun and the bourbon on the desk, I sat down and started drinking.

Then I installed some dial-up software on my laptop and got out on the Internet. It was a total shot in the dark but maybe the news would tell me something. I called up Google News and was staggered by what I saw.  There in giant letters across the entire top of the page were two words:

POPE MISSING

I frantically examined as many news stories on the subject as I could get to but none of them told me very much. Apparently, the Vatican had only made the official announcement twenty minutes before.

The Associated Press story mentioned that sources within the US government said that Washington was trying to contact me, thus far, unsuccessfully. That was comforting; if the feds had a hard time finding me, maybe whoever was behind all this would have a hard time as well.

The New York Times noted that famed Catholic private investigators Dale Price, Heather Price and Amy Welborn couldn‘t be located while, according to his staff, Presbyterian private investigation superstar David Fischler had vanished.

Something was definitely going on. But what?

I was hungry so I drove to a nearby McDonald’s to get some dinner. When I got back, I started eating and unsuccessfully resumed searching the Web for any information that might hint at what was going on. The blogs I read were obsessed with the Pope story but were just as clueless as everyone else.

I had just finished reading the Washington Post coverage and was about to shut things down for a while when I saw a small story at the very bottom of the front page:

DC POLICE INVESTIGATE CHANE DISAPPEARANCE

District of Columbia police are investigating the disappearance of Washington Episcopal Bishop John Chane. Family members reported Chane missing yesterday. Thus far, police have no leads and diocesan officials told the Post that…

I stared at the story for a while and then played a hunch. Going back to Google News, I typed “George Wayne Smith” in the Search box. A story on the KSDK television station web site started out:

St. Louis police are looking into the disappearance of Missouri Episcopal Bishop George Wayne Smith. Smith’s wife reported him missing yesterday and diocesan officials have had no contact from him at all. Chief Joe Mokwa said that the Major Case Squad has been called in to assist St. Louis police who will not speculate…

The hell?!!

I searched for as many Episcopal bishops as I could think of. Most of the names I checked had been reported missing, a few hadn’t been, and there didn‘t seem to be any pattern to it. Most of the missing bishops were liberals although most of the Network bishops seemed to be missing as well.

Then I called 815. “Bishop Schori, please,” I said.

The woman on the other end of the line replied tentatively, “One…one…one moment.”

I had to listen to a few moments of a contemporary version of “The Church’s One Foundation,” which grated on my ears. Then a male voice answered, “Bishop Schori’s office. Who may I, may I, may I say is calling?” he stammered. What in the world, I wondered, are they so nervous about?

“I’m a reporter with the Mutual Broadcasting System. I just wanted to see if she could give me a quick statement about the Pope’s disappearance.”

“Uh…Bishop Schori was due back from a conference two days ago. We…uh…haven’t heard from her yet. Can I take your, um, your name and number and have her…you know…call you?”

“No, please don’t go to the trouble. She’s probably not feeling well or something. I’ll call back in a day or two,” I replied and hung up the phone.

I started to pour myself another bourbon until I decided that I needed to stay as sharp as possible. So I poured out the rest of the bottle, threw it in the trash and put on a pot of coffee. For the duration of whatever this was, I was on the wagon.

Because something was way off. If this was an ECUSA set-up, it was the most overly elaborate set-up they had ever attempted. And the thing about overly elaborate set-ups is that unless everyone plays their parts and plays them to absolute perfection, they can very easily and very quickly go very wrong.

ECUSA wasn’t that good. ECUSA wasn’t anywhere near that good. Even the Jesuits weren’t that good.

All of a sudden, I was aware that someone had approached my room, stopped at my door and was still there. I slowly reached over a hand and gave the doorknob a quick and violent turn which caused him to scurry away.

But he came back a few moments later. Was this it? Would I never see my wife and son again?  Only one way to find out. With my Heckler-Koch in one hand, I very slowly unlocked the door and hesitated for at least a minute.

Then I gripped the doorknob, suddenly pulled open the door, pointed my gun at whoever was standing there and got the shock of my life.

It was Jim Naughton.

What he said when he saw me made everything officially surreal. “Thank God I found you!”

I reached out, grabbed him by the collar, threw him in the room and shut the door. “Sit down!” I hissed, pointing my gun at him.

He quickly did so. “You’re probably wondering how I found you. I got lucky. I saw you coming out of the McDonald’s and I followed you back to…”

“Shut up!! What do you want?!!”

Naughton looked at his shoes. “This is going to sound weird. This is going to sound like the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard but I was wondering if…”

“Snap it up!!”

“You’re not going to believe this and you have every right not to. But something bad is happening and not just to us. I’ve heard back-channel from the Network bishops and from orthodox sources here and there. There’s some kind of…threat…against all of us.”

I dropped my tone but not my gun. “What kind of threat?”

“That’s just it. Nobody knows. Or nobody’s telling. But it’s got everybody I’ve talked to more terrified than I’ve ever heard any of them.

“Before he disappeared, Bishop Chane told me that I had to find you, I had to convince you to be part of a…temporary alliance. Or this threat would destroy us all. You included.”

I forced a smile and casually waved my gun in Naughton‘s general direction. “Let’s examine that suggestion, shall we, Jim lad? For the last several years, you guys have spent every waking moment trying to destroy me, destroy any and all forms of orthodox Christianity and/or turn my family against me.

“You’ve kidnapped my friends and members of my family twice. And now you’d like me to work with you?! Jimmy, are you people out of your FREAKING MINDS?!!” How freaking STUPID do you people think I am?!!

Jim sounded desperate. “Look, I know it’s weird. But how about if I call Bishop Iker? He’ll tell you that I’m telling the truth.”

“You do that.” I scribbled my disposable phone’s number on a piece of paper and held it up in front of Jim‘s face. “Memorize that number and have him call me.”

I stuffed the paper in my pocket. “But before you do that, go someplace where you have access to a computer and get me copies of all Chane’s personal files.”

“Why?”

“I want to know what’s scaring him.”

“I doubt I’ll be able to do that.”

“You’d better. Or this alliance of yours ends right now.”

Jim took out his Blackberry, called up a message and handed the unit to me. “I can give you these. This was forwarded to me just before Bishop Chane was reported missing.

John,

You and I both know that Johnson’s our only chance.

Dick McBrien

“Then there’s this.”

Jim,

Please make Johnson understand.

+John

A forwarded message immediately below that read:

Bishop Chane,

Do not attempt to remove DEMOLAY again. This is your last warning.

Militum Christi

My blood ran cold.

“What is that?” Jim asked. “Some kind of right-wing fanatic group?”

“We should be so lucky,” I replied. I walked over to the window, pulled the curtains apart about half an inch with my gun barrel and glanced out the window. A car stopped in the parking lot, let two men out and then sped away.

I watched the men walk toward the office, turned to Jim and said intensely, “You and I are going to walk out this door, hang a left, run, not walk, to the stairway on the other side and go about halfway down. Right now.”

“Why? I think we should start…”

I pointed my Heckler-Koch at his mouth. “What did I freaking say that made this sound even REMOTELY optional, lefty?!!”

“Uh…nothing,” said Jim.

“Get moving!!”

Naughton and I left the room, hurried to the opposite end of the hall and hid halfway down the stairs. Peering over the steps, my hand on my gun, I saw two men in hooded black robes stand before my room.

Then they took AK-47’s from their robes and opened up on the door and the window with round after round. I could hear screams of terror from almost all the rooms on the floor.

They kicked the door in (didn’t take much effort as it was basically kindling by then) and ran inside. I heard one of them yell, “Son of a bitch, we missed both of them!!”

“Doesn’t matter,” said the other one. “We’ve got Johnson’s lapper and Naughton’s car. Let’s get out of here.” As sirens began descending on the hotel, I could see them hurry down the stairs, get into Jim’s car and speed away, squealing the tires as they went.

“That was your rental, wasn’t it?” I asked. Naughton silently nodded. “Nice work, idiot,” I muttered. “They followed you here.”

“My…my God.“ Jim was badly shaken by what he‘d just seen. “What do we…what do we do now?”

“You’re the Director of Intelligence for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. You tell me.”

“How did…how did you know that?”

“It’s my job to know Anglican stuff. Make the call.”

“We go east. We need to get back to familiar ground.”

“Good idea. Except that these people are probably watching all the familiar ground both of us have right now since they control my server and they found you.

“We’re going to Kansas. We can see them coming easier there. We’ll switch off every two hours. I‘ll take the first shift."

As we pulled away, turned on to 1-70 and headed west, Naughton said, “You know, don’t you? You know who we’re up against.”

I stared at the highway. “Yeah,” I told him. “But I don’t know why.”

“Who is it? Who‘s doing this?” Jim nervously asked, his voice shaking.

“What‘s the matter, Jim? Are you frightened?”

Jim stared out the passenger’s side window into the Missouri night for a very long time. He eventually said in a voice I could barely hear, “Yes.”

“Know something, Jim?” I replied. “It’s like Aragorn told Frodo in the movie. 'You’re not frightened enough. I know what hunts you.'”

Next week - Nazgûl