Day of Confession (44 page)

131

10:50
P.M
.

THEY SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, LISTENING to Danny, his hand-drawn map of Vatican City in front of them, surrounded by coffee cups and bottles of mineral water and the remains of the pizza Elena had gone out alone to get.

“Here is the goal. Here is the mission,” Danny said for the twentieth time, walking them through it again, as Harry had told Roscani he would, talking not as a priest but as a highly trained marine.

“The tower is here, the railroad station here.”

Once more Danny jabbed his finger at his diagram of Vatican City, looking up from his wheelchair at Harry, Elena, and Hercules in turn, making certain they were watching, understanding each step. As if this were the first time he had gone over it.

“A high wall here,” he continued, “runs southeast along a narrow paved road leading from the tower for maybe sixty yards. Then it ends. On the right is the main wall”— abruptly, Danny pointed off—“the one we can see from the window.” Now he looked back to the faces at the table.

“At the end of the wall, there’s a gravel path through the trees that will bring you to Viale del Collegio Etiopico, the boulevard of the Ethiopian College. A right there and you are at a low wall and almost on top of the station.

“Everything keys to the timing. We can’t try to get Marsciano out too soon, or we’ll give them time to swarm the place. But we have to be out of the tower and inside the railroad car
before
they open the gates at eleven to let the engine in. That means he has to be out of the tower at ten-forty-five and inside the railroad car by ten-fifty-five, no later, because by then the stationmaster or one or two of his men will be coming out to make sure the gates are opening properly.

“Now”—Danny’s index finger went back to the drawing—“you come out of the tower and for some reason—Farel’s men, Thomas Kind, an act of God, who knows, but for some reason—you can’t follow the wall? Take the road directly in front of you through the Vatican gardens. Several hundred yards down, you’ll see another tower building, which is Vatican Radio. As soon as you see it, turn right. The cut across will bring you back to the Viale del Collegio Etiopico and then the wall above the station. Follow the road along the wall for maybe thirty yards. By then you’ll be at track level. The freight car will be right there, between the station and the turn-around tunnel at the end. Cross the tracks to the far side of the car, away from the boulevard. All that’s there is another set of tracks and then the wall. Pull open the doors—and they may take some work because they’re old and rusted—then climb in. Close the doors. And wait for the engine…. Any questions?”

Once again Danny looked around the table, and Harry had to marvel at his attitude, his precision, focus. Whatever melancholy he had had before had been pushed aside completely. He might as well have had “The Few, The Proud” stenciled on his forehead.

“I have to pee,” Hercules said, and standing, gathered his crutches and swung off out of the room.

This was hardly a time to smile, but Harry did. It was Hercules’ way. Brusque, funny, and all business, whatever that business was. Earlier, the moment the police had gone, Hercules had looked to Harry, totally perplexed, and said, “What the hell is this?”

And soberly, in front of Danny and Elena, Harry had explained how Cardinal Marsciano was being held against his will inside the Vatican as part of a secret coup and that he would be killed if they didn’t get him out. They needed an inside man, someone who could get to the tower unseen. That man, they hoped, was Hercules, and that was the reason for the climbing rope. Harry had ended it by telling him that if he went along he would be risking his life.

For the longest moment Hercules had remained stone-faced, staring at nothing. And then his eyes had gone around the room. Looking from one to the other to the other. Finally his face slowly twisted into an enormous grin.

“What life?” he’d said loudly, his eyes gleaming. And in that moment, he’d become one of them.

132

11:30
P.M
.

SCALA CAME OUT OF HIS APARTMENT, GLANCED briefly around, then crossed to an unmarked white Fiat. Looking around once more, he got in, started the engine, and drove off.

A moment later a dark green Ford pulled away from the curb a half block down. Eaton was behind the wheel, Adrianna Hall beside him. Turning left onto Via Marmorata, they followed Scala through light traffic to Piazza dell’Emporio and then across the Tiber on Ponte Sublicio. Then, dropping back in traffic, they followed him north, along the river’s western bank. A few minutes later Scala turned west through the Gianicolo section, only to go north again on Viale delle Mura Aurelie.

“He’s not taking any chances about being followed…” Eaton dropped the Ford behind a silver Opel, keeping a guarded distance between himself and Scala’s Fiat.

For the Italian detective to suddenly refuse Adrianna information was a cue in itself that something major and highly secret was going on. It was out of character for Scala to shut her out—it had been Scala himself who tipped Adrianna to Father Daniel’s suspected presence in Bellagio hours before it was announced, meaning just days ago he was still including her. His deliberately evasive maneuvers now only added to a series of rapid-fire happenings that suggested whatever was going on inside the Vatican was fast coming to a head.

Eaton and Adrianna reviewed all of it: The sudden and mysterious illness of Cardinal Marsciano, last seen Tuesday leaving the Chinese Embassy seemingly in good health. Even their combined efforts provided little more information than the formal Vatican press release announcing his sickness and saying he was under the care of Vatican physicians.

The abrupt return of Roscani, Scala, and Castelletti to Rome from Milan.

The murder early this morning of Marsciano’s personal aide, Father Bardoni. Not yet announced by the police.

Also this morning—Harry Addison’s terse calls, traced to public telephones near the Vatican, alerting them to the situation in China. To which they had responded immediately, and which within hours resulted in the clandestine arrest and interrogation of a government water-quality inspector named Li Wen.

And again this morning—the surprising announcement of the suspected reemergence in Italy of the long-silent celebrated terrorist Thomas Kind, and the all-points arrest-and-detain order put out for him by Gruppo Cardinale.

Suddenly Scala took a sharp left ahead of them, turning right after a half block, and then making a quick left and accelerating off. Adrianna could see Eaton smile slightly as he kept up with him. Changing gears, accelerating, then dropping back, using the skill and training demanded of the professional spy he was. Up until tonight both he and Adrianna had had to sit back and wait, hoping Harry Addison would lead them to Father Daniel. Now the police were doing it. Why and what was unfolding, they didn’t know, but with the disaster in China now seemingly interconnected with the Vatican intrigue, they were certain they were on the edge of monumental, breaking history.

“The police are going to make it difficult.” Eaton slowed. Ahead of them Scala made a sharp right down a darkened residential street.

Adrianna said nothing. She knew that at another time and in another situation Eaton would have called in two or three of his Italian operatives and had Father Daniel kidnapped. But not now, not in the presence of the police and not with a clumsy post–Cold War CIA under the stony-cold microscope of both Washington and the world. No, they could only do what they’d been doing all along, wait and watch and see what happened. And hope that something would happen, and that they could get Father Daniel alone.

133

Friday, July 17, 12:10
A.M
.

PALESTRINA WOKE FROM HIS SLEEP WITH A cry. He was soaked with sweat, his arms out in front of him in the darkness, still trying to push the thing away. This had been the second night in a row when shadowy spirits had come toward him in a dream. There were many of them and they carried a heavy, unclean blanket to cover him, a blanket he knew was filled with disease, the same disease that had caused the fever that killed him before, when he was Alexander.

It was a moment before he realized that what had waked him was not only the terror of his dream but the ringing of the phone at his bedside. Abruptly the ringing stopped, then started again, the multiline phone lighting up a private number only one person had, Thomas Kind. Quickly he picked up.

“
Si…
”

“There has been a setback in China,” Kind said evenly in French, deliberately trying not to alarm Palestrina. “Li Wen has been detained. I have taken care of the situation. There is nothing to concern yourself with other than the business of the coming day.”

“
Merci
,” Palestrina said, aghast, and hung up. Suddenly he shivered, the coldness real and reaching deep inside him. The spirits were not a dream, they were real and getting closer. What if something happened and Thomas Kind failed to “take care of the situation” and the Chinese found out? It was not impossible—after all, it was Thomas Kind who had failed to kill Father Daniel.

Suddenly a new horror stabbed through him—that Father Daniel was still alive not because of luck but because the spirits had sent him, and sent his brother as well. They were Death and their appointment was with Palestrina. Not only that, as the moth comes to the flame, Palestrina was bringing them right into his own lair.

12:35
A.M
.

Harry opened the door to the kitchen and turned on the light. Crossing to the counter, he double-checked the battery charger, making certain life was being pumped into the ultra-slim batteries of the cell phones. They had two of them, the one that had been in the apartment and the one Adrianna had given Harry. In the morning when they left for the Vatican, Danny would carry one, Harry the other. It was how they would communicate when they went in after Marsciano, trusting that between the masses of tourists and Vatican personnel, random conversations would be difficult, if not impossible, for Farel to monitor, even if he knew they were there.

Satisfied the charger was working, Harry turned out the light and started back into the hallway.

“You should sleep.” Elena stood in the open doorway of her room, directly across from the bedroom Harry was sharing with Danny. Her hair was brushed back and she wore a thin cotton nightshirt. Farther down the darkened hallway was the living room, and they could hear Hercules snoring loudly as he slept on the couch.

Harry moved closer. “I don’t want you to go with us,” Harry said, quietly. “Danny and I and Hercules can handle it alone.”

“Hercules has his own job, and someone has to take Father Daniel in the wheelchair, and you can’t be two places at once…”

“Elena…. It’s too unpredictable and too dangerous…”

The light from the beside lamp behind her shone through the material of her nightshirt. She was wearing nothing at all underneath. She moved closer, and Harry could see the rise and fall of her full breasts under the nightshirt as she breathed.

“Elena, I
don’t
want you to go,” Harry said definitively. “If something were to happen—“

Reaching up, Elena gently pressed her fingers to his mouth. Then, in almost the same motion, slid her fingers away and brushed her lips against his.

“We have now, Harry,” she whispered. “Whatever happens, we still have now…. Use it to love me…”

134

1:40
A.M
.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER THAN THE LAST time Danny had looked at his bedside clock. If he’d slept in those minutes, he didn’t know. Harry had come in only a few moments earlier and gone to bed. It had been more than an hour since he’d gone out to check the battery chargers. Where he had been or what he had been doing in the meantime he didn’t know, but he assumed he had been with Elena.

He had seen electricity building between them since Bellagio, and he knew that at some point it had to spark. It made little difference that she was a nun. Danny had known almost from the time she had come to care for him in Pescara that Elena was not the kind of woman who could continue to live the lifelong, cloistered, contemplative life required of her. That she should fall in love with his brother, of all people, was something he could never have foreseen under the wildest circumstances. And these—he half-grinned in the dark—were, far and away, the most turbulent circumstances that anyone could have ever foreseen. Turbulent and—the grin abruptly faded—terribly, terribly tragic. In his mind he saw the man with the gun on the bus to Assisi, felt again the explosion. Remembered the fire, the screaming, the confusion, the bus swinging wildly out of control. Remembered his reflex reaction of getting up, sticking as much of his identification as he could in the gunman’s jacket. Abruptly that vision left, and he saw Marsciano through the wire mesh of the confessional, heard the pained sound of his voice. “
Bless me Father, for I have sinned…
”

Abruptly Danny turned away, put his head to his pillow, trying to drown out the rest of it. But he couldn’t. He knew every word by heart.

ADRIANNA STIRRED at the sound and looked up. Eaton was getting out of the car, straightening his beige summer suit jacket, then walking off along the sidewalk toward where Scala was parked. She saw him sidestep the throw of a streetlight, all the while looking up at the dark loom of the apartment building partway down the street, then he disappeared in the darkness. Immediately her eyes went to the dull orange illumine of the dashboard clock and wondered how long she had been dozing.

2:17
A.M
.

Now Eaton came back, sliding into the seat beside her.

“Scala still there?” she asked.

“Sitting in the car, smoking…”

“No lights on in the apartment building?”

“No lights.” Eaton looked over at her. “Go back to sleep. You’ll know when something happens.”

Adrianna smiled lightly. “I used to think I loved you, James Eaton…”

“You loved the office, not the man…” Eaton looked back at the apartment building.

“The man, too, for a while.” Adrianna pulled her loose-fitting denim over-shirt around her, then curled up on the seat. For a long time she watched Eaton watch the building, then finally she drifted off.