Will drove for four hours on hill and mountain roads before he arrived at the place. It was nearly dark now, but the church before him had exterior lights illuminated, and they cast a dim glow over the area around the building. Beyond the place there was nothing but mountains and forest.
He turned off the ignition and stepped out into an icy Bosnian wind. Everywhere was thick with snow, and the wind blew snow dust into his face. He looked around. There was only one other vehicle near the church, and it was caked in ice. He wondered if it had been abandoned due to the weather. He could not imagine even the most devout person making the journey up to this isolated mountain church on this night. It seemed to him that God had momentarily abandoned the religious site and everything around it.
Will trudged through the snow with his head tilted low to try to protect his face from the needles of ice that were now shooting horizontally at him and to force his way through the power of the wind until he reached the church and the shelter its walls provided. He brushed off ice and water, then looked around again. The place did feel as if it were beyond life and normality.
He turned the handle of the church door and welcomed the warmth and silence that greeted him from within. He stepped forward, stamped his shoes to release them from clinging snow, and the noise of his doing so reverberated around the church’s inner walls. The place was small, and Will estimated that at full capacity it would be able to hold no more than fifty people in prayer. He shut the door and chafed his icy bare hands to restore some circulation. The space was quite dark, but there were some corner lamps that gave sufficient light for him to see the empty wooden pews, the altar, the religious icons, and little else. He removed his overcoat and walked a ways up the center aisle before stopping. Everything within the thick walls was quiet. He laid his coat over the back of one of the pews and stood still in his immaculate bespoke suit. He had dressed to show respect for this place and his presence here.
He breathed deeply and moved along a pew before sitting to face the icons. A statue of Mary Magdalene seemed to be staring at him. Her face looked sorrowful and scared.
A noise came from Will’s right, and he half turned to a light and a man. The light belonged to an oil lamp, and the man holding it was clearly this church’s priest. He approached Will and said something in Serbian. Will shrugged in a way that he hoped looked apologetic and said, “I am sorry, I don’t speak your language.”
The priest came nearer and frowned. He looked middle-aged and had a smooth face and lacquered hair. He smiled. “I have some English—enough English to advise you that you must be mad to have made this trip here tonight.”
Will also smiled. He wondered why this church had been built in such a harsh part of this country. He wondered if it had been done in order to test people’s commitment to their faith. He returned his gaze toward the figure of Mary.
The priest sat on the pew next to him, placed the lamp between them, and followed Will’s gaze. “She is in need of some new paint.” The priest’s voice echoed a little. “She carries a heavy burden and has grown tired. But her eyes still see and understand everything.”
Will nodded and looked back at the man. “Am I intruding here?”
The priest shook his head. “The doors to my church are open to everyone.” He smiled crookedly. “Even though most people choose not to come here anymore.”
“I cannot remember the last time I visited a church,” Will admitted.
“That matters not. What matters is that you are here now.” The priest touched Will’s shoulder. “Would you like me to make you a hot drink?”
Will rubbed his hands again and felt their coldness being replaced by pain as his circulation coursed through them. He nodded. “That would be very kind, provided that it’s not inappropriate?”
The priest chuckled. “You have made a journey that others could not or would not make. The very least you deserve is something to warm you through.” Then he walked away toward a dark recess.
Will wondered why he had made this journey. He tried to understand his thoughts. He tried to understand why being in this lonely, sacred place was so important to him. He recalled his own words:
I do my work. That’s all that matters to me.
And he recalled Alistair’s riposte:
I don’t believe you.
He closed his eyes and felt the vastness of the silence around him. It held him for a moment, and it seemed to Will that it did not want to let go. He opened his eyes and breathed loudly.
The priest came to him again and sat by the oil lamp. He gave Will a mug of hot tea, which Will gratefully gulped down.
Will gripped the mug between his freezing hands and said, “Sometimes it seems impossible to get rid of the coldness.”
The priest nodded slowly while keeping his gaze on Will. “I can see that this is not normally a place you would come to. I can see that you are trying to find something which has been lost, perhaps something inside you.” He gently placed a hand on Will’s forearm. “If you would like me to, I can help you with that quest.”
Will looked down and shook his head slightly. “I don’t know.”
The priest squeezed Will’s forearm. “You are safe here. You have nothing to fear.”
Will looked at the man’s hand and then his face. “I fear myself,” he said quietly.
“And yet you have come here, on tonight of all nights.” The priest exuded a kindness that Will had not seen for a very long time.
“I came here to face one of my demons.”
“Then you have conquered some of your inner fear.” The priest removed his hand from Will’s arm. “But perhaps you would prefer that I left you alone.”
Will glanced around the church. “I did not know if this place would be open.” He looked at the priest. “And I certainly did not expect to find someone else here.”
The priest nodded sympathetically. “You need to be alone.”
Will shook his head. “It’s okay. It would be nice if you have time to stay with me a little longer.” He frowned. “But this must be a lonely place to do your work. Do you have help?”
“I like the solitude,” the priest replied. “I have no need for support. But I have every need to give support.”
Will looked again at the figure of Mary. “Maybe I was hoping that you would be here.”
“Maybe.”
Will turned slowly back to face the priest. He felt no surprise when he saw that the man was now holding a CZ 99 pistol, which was pointed directly at Will’s head. He’d known that the man had retrieved his weapon when he went to make the mug of tea. He’d known that the cleric had simply been waiting for the right moment to withdraw the pistol. He’d known that no amount of self-projected humility or anguish could disguise the fact that a man like Will would never be in a place like this unless bad things were within it.
Will smiled a little. “I came here to face a demon.”
The priest nodded and narrowed his eyes. “Who sent you?”
Will glanced at the altar and muttered, “I answer to no one.” He looked back at the priest.
A bead of sweat was trickling down one side of the man’s face. “What do you want?”
Will smiled fully. “Your life.”
Anger flashed in the priest’s eyes before he grinned. “I’m sorry that I am going to have to disappoint you.”
Will’s face grew cold. “Did you expect to go unpunished? Did you expect that your crimes of two decades ago would be forgotten?”
The man sneered. “You know nothing about me.”
Will stared at him. “I know that you were once a captain in a Bosnian Serb paramilitary unit called the Panthers and that you led your men on killing sprees that involved rape and mutilation of your victims before you murdered them. You personally slaughtered hundreds of women and children and threw them into unmarked mass graves. You cut unborn babies out of living wombs and then strangled them with your bare hands. You degraded their good in favor of your evil.” He gestured at the church. “Hiding in a place like this was meaningless. Its fortified walls and sacred grounds could never protect a man like you from a man like me. But for all your abhorrent crimes, I am here to prosecute you for one crime and one crime alone.”
The priest sniggered. “Too bad, because I am the one holding the gun.”
Will nodded. “True.”
The man pressed the barrel against Will’s head. “Which crime?”
“You and four of your men raped an honorable woman a few kilometers outside Sarajevo while it was besieged by your compatriots.”
“A single rape?” The man sniggered again. “There are too many to remember.”
“A Muslim woman. You took her coat because you knew that in doing so she would likely freeze to death. The four men with you later died in the war, but that does not matter to me, because it was you who gave them their instructions.”
The priest frowned thoughtfully, then brightened. “Yes, now I remember. A peasant, a woman asleep in the woods. We woke her and brutalized her.” He laughed loudly, and the noise filled the church. “You represent that woman?”
“I represent the need for justice.”
The man leaned close to Will and pressed the gun harder against him. “Then it is a shame that justice could not find a better representative.”
“So it seems.”
In a movement that was quicker than any man’s trigger finger, Will grabbed the priest’s gun hand and twisted his arm to lock the muscles. With his other hand, he seized the back of the priest’s head and punched it down at the oil lamp. Glass from the lamp’s flame shield shattered and splintered into the man’s face and exposed the lamp’s flame to his head. Will stood and yanked the head with tremendous force, so that the priest flew from the pew to the church’s central aisle. Then Will walked up to his writhing body and punched him very hard on the side of the face.
He looked down at the man. “I know why I came here. While demons still exist, I have to take a stand against their evil. And I have been given the ultimate power to stop creatures like you.”
He withdrew his handgun and pointed it at the man’s head. “I did not lie to you. I came here for your life.”
He pulled the trigger.