“What you did today was monstrous,” Jack finally said.
Cristos leaned forward, becoming more attentive.
“In the last twenty-four hours,” Jack continued, “you took three lives.”
“And how many did I save in the process?”
“Save?” Jack asked with a raised brow.
“How many people would have died at the order of the general just in the next month?”
“So your defense is that you killed three to save more?” Dorran said, trying to reenter and resume control of the conversation. “Well, that’s not how it works.”
Cristos ignored Dorran and spoke directly to Jack. “When a soldier, a military man, kills another man, when a fighter jet drops a bomb destroying a village, it’s for honor and country. But when an individual kills, it is called murder. Why is that?”
“Don’t equate war with this,” Jack said.
“We’re all at war in some way or another. Some people use their words to fight, to tear the opposition apart emotionally. Others”-Cristos tilted his head at Jack and Peter-“use their legal system of laws, to take down and destroy their opponents’ freedom and security. And others forgo destroying the character, choosing just to eliminate the individual altogether.”
“Did the Bonsleys deserve to die?”
“Do the people in a poor village where an errant bomb was dropped deserve to die? Dispatching death in a war, when a country deems it necessary to success, is understood by humanity, but when it deals in eliminating a single man, when the public doesn’t understand its purpose, it’s horrific, shocking, evil.”
“Did you kill those three people today?” Jack asked.
Cristos smiled. “You’re going to have to do at least a little work here, Jack. Let me ask you a question. Are you the type who is more interested in justice, truth, or an eye for an eye?”
Jack said nothing.
“Could you look me in the eye and kill me so others might live? Put your lawyerly self aside. Could you be the hangman? Hold the pistol to my head and pull the trigger to save lives?” Cristos paused, waiting for Jack to answer. “I didn’t think so. It’s always so much easier from behind the curtain, pulling other people’s strings to do your bidding. Well… I just think you should know, if you asked me the same question, I’d have no problem laying that pistol right up against your temple and pulling the trigger.”
“Too bad you’ll never get that chance. You no longer have control of any strings.”
“You think you’re in control here.” Cristos smiled. “But are you?”
Jack stared at him.
“Do you know whom to trust? You don’t think I’ve been captured before? You don’t think I have ever escaped?” Cristos smiled again. “Always remember, control is tenuous at best.”
“I’ll remember that,” Jack said with a placating tone as he looked at Cristos’s chains.
The two men studied each other, the moment drawing out.
“OK,” Dorran said. “I think-”
“I was in love once.” Cristos ignored Dorran, cutting him off.
“And she loved you in return?” Jack asked.
“She died before I ever knew the truth.”
“Is that supposed to make me sympathetic?”
“No, just a reminder.” Cristos looked at Jack’s wedding ring. “We never know how long we have with the ones we love.”
Anger flowed into Jack’s face, wiping his calm away as he realized that he had let Cristos lead the conversation. “We’re done,” Jack said as he stood up. Dorran and Peter followed his lead.
“Are we going to finish our conversation?” Cristos said.
“You are being charged with the murder of three individuals,” Jack said as he looked into Cristos’s dark eyes. “We have every intention to try, convict, and see you executed for the deeds you have done. Your smugness, your overconfidence, will only help me make this happen quicker.”
Jack turned and headed for the door.
“I’d hold tight to your wife and kids,” Cristos said. “God knows what might happen if a monster like me ever got hold of them.”
Jack, Peter, and Dorran silently walked through the grand mansion, past the library and the parlor; this time, the rooms didn’t even register.
“What do you think?” Peter asked.
“This guy is far more than I or anyone thinks,” Jack said.
“Meaning?”
“Hired gun, very cool, and very experienced. He has a resume we probably couldn’t even fathom.” Jack looked at Dorran “Think we can tie him to anything else?”
“No. Not yet, at least,” Dorran said. “The fact that we caught him is pure luck.”
“Then let’s get him formally charged and on trial,” Peter said.
“State or fed?” Dorran asked.
“State will be quicker,” Peter said to Jack. “If we get him convicted, the fed can wave off. Do you think your office can get a conviction?”
“Yeah, and I’ll make sure he hangs.”
Six months later, Jack was sitting in the viewing theater at Cronos Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Although the state had reinstituted the death penalty two years before, not a single execution had been carried out.
But this matter was different. Convicted after a three-week trail, Cristos waived his right to appeal, demanding that his sentence of death by injection be carried out immediately. Although the liberal left had cried out to spare his life, he spat in their faces and railed against anyone who stood in the way of his execution. Cristos did have a final request: he wished to speak to Jack Keeler alone.
Against the advice of all, against the advice of Peter, Carter Dorran, Mia, Frank and everyone else he trusted, Jack walked out of the viewing room and was escorted down to death row, which was in a dark, windowless basement.
There had been no one to come forth for Cristos, no family, no friends; in fact, not a single person in the world stood up and said they even knew the man. He requested no priest, rabbi, monk. In fact, like everything about him, no one knew if he even had a religion.
As vile a man as Jack thought him to be, as dangerous as this man without a soul was, everyone deserved a last request, a final statement before dying.
Jack entered the basement cell to find Cristos sitting on the bed, his legs and arms chained. He was dressed in a deep blue suit, no tie or belt, and wore a pair of black Gucci loafers, looking as if he was about to go out for a fancy dinner. While the condemned were usually put to death in their prison uniform, Cristos had asked and was granted the right to die in his favorite suit.
He made no move as Jack sat in the chair across from him, their eyes settling on each other. The silent moment held; each could hear the other’s breathing, the committer and the committed.
“How’s the weather today?” Cristos asked in his low, accented voice.
Jack was surprised at the question. “Sunny, clear, a warm fall day.”
Cristos nodded. “Did it occur to you what is happening here today?”
Jack said nothing, letting the condemned man say his last words.
“Jack, you accused me of murder, of ending lives, yet you are doing the same.”
“This is your sentence for the lives you have taken.”
“I asked you before, could you pull the trigger, Jack?”
Jack remained silent.
“I understand many years ago, your partner died and that you killed two people, children, I believe.”
Jack felt his heart fall in his chest.
“Were you condemned for that? Did anyone hold you accountable for their deaths?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Jack hated that he was explaining himself to this man.
“Was it more like collateral damage in doing your job?”
“The Bonsleys weren’t collateral damage.”
“Oh, yes, they were. In order to stop a very wicked man. Even you have to admit after learning about that general that he deserved to die, that his death saved countless others. I bet you would have loved to put him on trial in your courts after all of the murders he committed.”