Redemption



The group of men laughed with one another, in a private camradrie alien to everyone around them. There were five, cockily huddled together at the end of the alleyway in plain view, but seperated. The yellow tape pointedly commanding "Police Line Do Not Cross" did no more to seperate them from the mass of pressing bodies curious and held further held back by the police officers the tape was made for than if the men had been in the middle of a crowd on Broadway. These five men took nor part in the swarm of police officer's, detectives, coroners, and crime scene investigators; it swirled around them, never touching them, but always at their command.

They wore custom tailored suits with expensive coats that anyone else would have found to be out of place with the uncomfortably warm temperature of that mid-July night. Their ties were silk and all but one's were red while their leather shoes shined reflections of police cruisers siren lights. And if their demeanor wasn't enough to tell you who they were - the oppresive air or authority, their casual discarding of the world around them - they wore a ring so even the slow and inept could identify them, it was always displayed even wearing on the outside of their gloves and it always told you who they were: Inquisitors. And once you knew who they were you could defer to them with the proper respect: Fear. Always fear.

One man ended his conversation with the CSI team and stepped forward just outside the Inquisitor's circle to catch their attention; a small, thin tendril of the swarm inching forward to be touched, but Lt. Daniel Webb always felt more like he was grabbed, arrested by their eyes boring into him. "You have something for us, Daniel?" The blond-haired man in the center of thier group asked.

"Just the usual, Johnathan." Lt. Webb couldn't remember when or how he and Inquisitor Johnathan Strainer had come to talking on a first-name basis, but the man was always there, at every heresy that Webb had responded to, the man was there. Webb knew some of the other faces in the huddle - William Nevski and Martin Morales - but they were never consistent. Only Strainer was a constant. "The scene's secure and CSI have finished wiping and photographing everything. You gentlemen are free to conduct your investigation and, as always, you will be notified upon completion of the CSI team's full report."

"Thanks Daniel, a smooth operation as always." Strainer responded. Webb had to admit, Strainer was the only Inquisitor with enough human qualities to make the small talk. Enough human qualities to almost make him human, but once you became an Inquisitor, you stopped being human. As the five men brushed past the detective, Johnathan Strainer wondered, as he always did, if Daniel would ever remember that the two of them had spent 3rd grade through college as inseperable best friends, their lives diverging wildly and with finality when they had persued their own careers. But Webb would never remember. Strainer's own mother would never remember that she had had a son.

The group made their way down the alley to the door at the end that had once stood rusted over and ignored for who knows how long. Far too long. There was a single room inside, chairs were arranded in a circle in the center with shelves containing pamphlets and literature lining the walls. There was no sign of a rushed retreat, no personal belonging left on the floor, none of the chairs were overturned. As was expected. The suspects, the quarry, had had long centuries of practice and never took any personal affects to any of their meetings and any one member of their congregation had probably hastily abandoned so many sites, that they had the escape down to a calm, unhurried exit. Strainer could see them in his mind's eye, the heretics standing up and moving in single file to the exit as placidly as school children conducting a fire drill.

The secrect exit. All the church's had one but the grunts didn't always find it. It was okay, Strainer knew his men were up to the task, each having conducting dozens of investigations prior to that night. Now they were reading the literature and pamphlets, cross-referencing the material in their minds with material found at other church's, determining if the congregation was isolated in it's ideology, or part of a much larger organization.

"They're Lutherans." Nevski called out. Strainer wasn't so sure, all the pamphlets and literature identified this group as being an independent organization, just a small handful secretly rebelling against the world around them, isolated and afraid. Nevski continued, "They have a letter here from Nathan Votello."

Strainer walked over took the letter from Nevski. Nathan Votello was the prime symbol of the Lutheran church these days. The Lutherans didn't have the same monoauthoritan structure as the proper Catholic Church, but Votello had migrated to the fore of his blasphemous bunch with words of inspiration and encouragement to Lutherans everywhere. The letter at first offered no support of Nevski's claim. It was the usual speach of encouragement and preaching of the general Protestant beliefs: The debasement of the Holy Father in Rome, stripping the Priests, Bishops, and Cardinals of their divine authorities and rights, eliminating confession. At least the Lutherans were passive, forgoing the militant stance many - small - groups had taken against the Church.

But then Strainer saw what was not in the words, but in the tone: The letter was a response. Immediately Strainer began scanning the letter for the code phrases he might find. So far, the Lutherans hadn't caught on that their secret phrases and word sequences, all seeming like harmless, commonly used language, had been cracked. Due largely in part to a captured Lutheran who had himself cracked.

They had friends not four blocks from where Strainer was standing.

Strainer looked up to see Nevski's sharp blue eyes drilling into his own. He had been waiting for his superior to confirm what he already knew.

"Tell the blue shirts to lock down a grid from 19th to 23rd and Eisenhower Av. to the 410 Loop. I want it cordoned, completely sealed, in twenty minutes!" Nevski had already walked out the door before Strainer even finished speaking. Strainers and the others walked at a brisk pace to the two black sedans waiting for them at the curb.

"You there!" Strainer barked at a patrolman. "I want everything in that room packed up in boxes and moved to the warehouse on 27th in 3 hours." The patrolman wouldn't need the full address. Everyone knew where to find the storage complex used by the Inquisitors and other officers of the Church With Nevski, they got into the cars and pulled out into traffic. Who knew how big the catch would be this time.

---

Forty. Forty instigators. Forty malcontents. Forty 'christians'. Forty criminals.

Black bags pulled over their heads and cinched shut, hands cuffed behind their backs the heretics shuffled in line into the two wagons brought down to transport them to jail. Here in the US they would be given a fair trial, but Strainer already knew the conclusion: Conviction. These people may call themselves Christians, but he viewed them as no different from the Muslims and Jews, the Buddhists and Hinuds and Taos and Animists and Wiccans and far too many other groups that Strainer had the mispleasure of knowing their names. Heretical filth spreading their message of lies; misleading God's children from his Divine Grace and hope for Redemption.

Strainer struck a match and lit his cigarrete as he watched the blind fools stumble into the police vans. Smoke swirled in the air around him as his eyes glinted from the satisfaction of a job well done.