On the Fifth Day (27 page)

But what did "going underground" mean in a city he didn't know, where he didn't speak the language beyond ordering a glass of wine and a pizza? He had two allies remaining in the area, he thought. Deborah Miller, whom he barely knew and who would be leaving the country in a matter of days, and Fa

ther Giovanni, whose friendship and trust would take a signif

icant hit when the death of Pietro came out.

You have to get out of Naples.

And go where?

He hailed a cab and mimed tapping on a computer key

board.

"Internet?" said the driver, checking his watch. It was after ten.
"Si."

Thomas got in.

The Internet point he was driven to wasn't a cafe so much as an alcove in the corner of a sparsely populated bar. The com

puter was an ancient, bone-colored machine that seemed inca

pable of running anything produced in the last twenty-five years, the mouse a built-in orange tracking device the size of a billiard ball, the keyboard surrounded by large green lighted keys. It looked less like a computer than the representation of one from some sixties sci-fi show.

Astonishingly, it not only worked, it was fast and Thomas was soon online.

He was surprised to find a message from Deborah. It read simply, "Check this out. Intriguing, huh?" With it was a link to a
New York Times
story dated two days ago. Thomas read the headline, Evidence of early Christianity rocks Japan,"

and then stared openmouthed at the picture below it. It showed a beaming Japanese man holding a silver cross, studded with 197

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

precious stones, the center marked by a now-familiar fish with leglike fins. For a long moment he just looked, then he read:
Japanese anthropological science was today sent into as

tonished confusion by celebrity archaeologist Michihiro
Watanabe, who revealed the discovery of a Christian bur

ial site in a seventh-century Japanese tomb. If authentic, it
would not only demonstrate a previously unknown Christ

ian evangelism to East Asia, but would antedate the first
known presence of any Europeans in Japan by many cen

turies. "It's a breathtaking discovery," said Robert Levine
of the Center for Asian Studies at Stanford University. "It
will necessitate the complete rethinking of Japanese-Euro

pean relations in the medieval period." The burial site in
landlocked Yamanashi prefecture is structured in tradi

tional Kofun style but contains what has been preliminarily
identified as an early Italian crucifix amid what seem to be
the bones of European travelers . . .

Thomas sat back and blew out a long sigh. Not just Japan: Yamanashi, the very place where he and Kumi had met. Thomas read the text again. He knew his brother had been to Japan. Was this what took him there? Was this the Hercula

neum cross Ed was alleged to have possessed?

You knew it would come to this.

He pulled up a series of travel websites and began looking at flights to Japan. Then he wrote to Deborah, to Jim, and--on impulse--to Senator Devlin. All three messages contained the same text.

"In danger. Going after Ed. Will be in touch."

He needed another safety net. He stared at the three ad

dresses that would receive the e-mail, then separated them out and attached his complete itinerary to the message that would go to Jim.

CHAPTER 53

The Seal-breaker contained his rage with difficulty.

"How can you not know where he is?" he demanded.

"I was monitoring the hotel," said War. "He was initially with Pestilence, and then he was picked up by Famine."

"And he evaded them both," said the Seal-breaker.

"Yes, sir. A tracking device was planted in his luggage,"

said War, "but he appears to have abandoned everything at the Executive."

"Not very professional, is it," said the Seal-breaker, "your monitoring of this high school teacher."

"No, sir. Sorry, sir."

The Seal-breaker rubbed his forehead and scrunched his eyes shut.
Three of them on site, and Knight still walks away.

"And you think he may have left Naples?"

"Yes, sir."

"And there is reason to assume he knows?"

"Famine could not confirm what he got from the old priest, but his presence in the Fontanelle suggests that he was looking for something. We think it at least possible that the papers the priest destroyed were decoys designed to throw Knight off the scent."

"It's all a bit moot now, isn't it?" said the Seal-breaker. War had never heard him sound so irritated. "And Pestilence's cover is blown. What sort of shape is Famine in?"

"Cuts and bruises, nothing worse."

"I meant, mentally speaking."

War hesitated. How was anybody supposed to put the men

tal state of that lunatic into words?

"He's angry, sir," he said. "Vengeful."

"Good," said the Seal-breaker. "The moment you find Knight, let Famine off the leash. Pestilence too. I'm sure she's itching to prove her worth."

199

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

"Yes, sir," said War.

"And you?"

"Of course, sir."

"Is your team ready?"

War hesitated. "Isn't it a bit premature to bring them in, sir?"

"Not from where I'm sitting," said the Seal-breaker. "Just make sure they are ready."

"Yes, sir."

"So how do you plan to locate Knight?"

"We can continue to monitor his recent haunts," said War,

"but if he has left the area we may have to take our lead from the Italian police. We are monitoring radio traffic and staking out the local railway station and airport."

"These all sound a little desperate," said the Seal-breaker.

"And if the Italian police get to him first, that would be very bad indeed for us, would it not?"

"Yes, sir," said War. "There is one other option, though, sir."

"Which is?"

"Knight took Pestilence's cell phone."

"Is there anything he could learn from it?"

"No, it was clean."

"Is the GPS working?"

"Yes, sir. But he doesn't have it switched on right now. The moment he does, we'll have him."

"Make sure you do," said the Seal-breaker. "I don't need to explain to you--you of all people--the importance of ending this right away. Silencing Knight earlier would have attracted too much attention. But the decision to let him poke around at his own pace has proved . . . unsound. I don't care which of you does it, or how, but he must be terminated immediately. Clear?"

"Clear, sir."

So all they needed now was for Knight to make a call: any call to anyone, and they would have him. The Seal-breaker smiled to himself. It had a certain . . . what? Irony? No. Symmetry. That was it. He recalled as clearly as if it had 200

A. J. Hartley

been yesterday putting the very same model cell phone into Father Edward Knight's hand.

"You'll need that, where you're going," he had said to the
priest, grinning.

And he had, in a manner of speaking. Without the phone, they would never have gotten his coordinates so precisely, would never have gotten him at all. And now his brother . . .
Cell phones,
he thought, smiling wistfully.
What would we
do without them?

CHAPTER 54

There was nothing direct from Naples, and nothing that would get him to Milan in time for the next day's Tokyo flights. Thomas didn't want to spend two more days in Italy. It was no longer safe. His best option was a flight from Frankfurt. It was no faster than the Milan flights, but it would allow him to get out of Italy a day sooner. He looked at options to Frankfurt and found that the cut-price carrier Ryan Air flew from Bari to Frankfurt Hahn for the absurdly low price of thirty-five dol

lars U.S. Bari was on the eastern coast, almost directly across from Naples. There were trains that could get him there in about five hours. He confirmed the booking, hoping that no one was watching activity on his credit card too closely right now.

The cabdriver had waited as asked, and in another ten min

utes Thomas was getting out at the Garibaldi railway station. He hadn't been there after dark and the place lived up to its checkered reputation, but he found an information counter and was pointed to a magazine shop where, for reasons he couldn't decipher, tickets for the Bari line were sold. He took a local train to Caserta and then killed forty-five minutes wait

ing for the overnight express.

201

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

While he was waiting he found the station's restaurant, a grim and smoky affair buzzing with fat flies, and ordered a plate of pasta with mussels from a big man who seemed much put out by the presence of a customer. The waiter or cook, he might have been both, offered him wine, which Thomas con

sidered for a second, then declined. He needed a level head. The food was remarkably good--given the place, unrea

sonably so--and it could have absorbed all of Thomas's atten

tion if he hadn't taken this moment to finally look through the papers he had retrieved from the Fontanelle.

They consisted, for the most part, of a single dog-eared journal, supplemented by maps and charts of the coast around Naples, photographs, museum guides, and a sheaf of stapled pages torn from a stained yellow legal pad. The journal pro

vided a kind of narrative written in daily extracts dated through two weeks of Ed's stay in the Naples area, stopping abruptly on the twentieth of February: a month before he died. They enacted a version of Thomas's own visit, featuring many of the same locations, documenting the same oddities and half-discoveries, raising the same questions, so that it was un

nervingly like reading about himself. There was more detail, more clutter, more abandoned leads than Thomas had found, but the basic trajectory seemed the same: Ed had been re

searching the curious legged-fish symbol, a feature of almost a thousand years of the religious iconography of the Naples area, in its pagan and Christian forms.

Ed had clearly visited places as far afield as Rome, Flo

rence, Bologna, Milan, and various towns in Sicily, but his notes made one point quite clear. Though the Christian fish (and its pagan forebears) appeared throughout Italy and the surrounding region, the legged variant had never been found more than seventy miles from Naples. Like the Hera/Mary pomegranate, the legged fish was a peculiar local variant, and it was this that had apparently excited his brother. Ed had in

cluded countless biblical references to fish and water, reserving special annotation for those that might be read allegorically, suggesting a passage beyond death.

202

A. J. Hartley

Christ's walking on water,
Thomas read,
is not merely a
miracle of power. It shows His control over the natural world
and all that is in it, including death. Walking on water affirms
His corporeality and transcends it."

Other passages applied the fish image as much to Chris

tians as to Christ himself. One read:

But we little fish, according to our IKTHUS Jesus
Christ, are born in water, and we are saved in no other
manner than by remaining in the water.
Tertullian, AD 200. Another was labeled "on the agape or sacred meal which became the Eucharist," and read:

I see the congregated people so arranged in order on the
couches and all so filled with abundant food, that before
my eyes arises the richness of the evangelical benediction
and the image of the people whom Christ fed with five
loaves and two fishes, Himself the true bread and fish of
the living water.
Paulinus of Nola, AD 396. Thomas remembered the Paestum tomb paintings, the young men feasting, the legged fish emerging from the red water.

He paid for his meal and reached the platform as the train, the sleekest he had seen so far, pulled into the station and the PA system came to life in Italian and English. Thomas, luggageless, climbed aboard and took a seat by the window, though it was too dark to see much of anything outside. He was deeply tired, and as the train pulled out of the sta

tion and picked up speed, he felt himself relax for the first time since his visit to Paestum.

But sleep wouldn't come, so for the first hour of the jour

ney he stared out the window determined to see something in the darkness. The carriages cast a bluish light in windowshaped stripes so that between the tunnels he could glimpse 203

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

rugged grasslands, trees, and a meandering river that con

stantly reappeared beside the track. From time to time he re

turned to Ed's notes, unfolding the charts with their detailed mapping of the undersea contours of the bays of Naples and Salerno.

Thomas rubbed his eyes and fished for Roberta's phone. Giovanni weighed on his conscience. He wanted to call the priest, explain what had happened, at the very least break the news of Pietro's death gently, offer sympathy that--he hoped--

would also be taken as proof of his innocence. But it was very late, and he should probably let the man sleep. Tomorrow would be a rough day.

His desire to call Deborah was less easy to pinpoint, but no less easy to squash. He liked her,
admired
her, was perhaps a better way of putting it, he decided, and he didn't want her to think badly of him. But she would also be sleeping, and his explanations could wait till morning.

Actually they can wait longer. You've done nothing but get
her into trouble, so she'll probably be glad to see the back of
you.

He frowned, wondering what part of him was wary of his interest in her, and why. Unbidden, the image of Kumi came to mind.

Not still carrying that torch, I hope.

He stared out the window and tried to think of nothing. He slept shallowly for two hours, waking when the train came to rest in Foggia. The delay began to unsettle him, and when the train began moving in the opposite direction he pan