The Lost Apostles (21 page)

Chapter 27

I knew I had to make the attempt, no matter the odds against success, and no matter what it cost me in terms of my career, or my life. No force on earth could have kept me away from Rome.

—Zack Markwether

He hadn’t expected Rome to be warm at this time of year, so it surprised Zack Markwether when he stepped off the plane and found the air sweltering. As quickly as he could he removed his uniform coat and strapped it to the outside of his leather carry-on luggage, the only bag he had brought in his rush to leave Washington, DC. He wore a khaki uniform shirt (thankfully it was short-sleeved), puffy jodhpurs, spit-polished black shoes, and rakish aviator glasses.

Zack needed to find Lori, and had made advance contacts, looking for her. The private detective he hired in Rome, Trig Arnold, was supposed to leave a message for him at the hotel, and they were scheduled to have dinner together that evening. Arnold, retired from military intelligence, lived in Italy now and did freelance investigations for high-level clients. The two of them had served in the army together more than ten years ago, when Zack was his commanding officer.

The airport bristled with security, much more than Zack had seen the year before when he visited Rome with a congressional delegation. Uniformed soldiers toting machine guns eyed every person in the terminal suspiciously, sizing them up, watching for indications of trouble. The illumination inside the terminal was an eerie pink, from wall and ceiling-mounted scanners washing over the crowds, looking for known criminals and other suspects. In this atmosphere of tension and fear, he hoped that NATO didn’t have to attack the Vatican. That could have disastrous results, spilling out into Rome, making the entire city a war zone.

With almost no knowledge of the Italian language, Zack picked up only a few words he had learned from a pamphlet the stewardess had given him. As he wandered through the crowded terminal building trying to interpret signs, a rotund man in a black tee-shirt appeared. “You are looking for a taxi, mister?” the man inquired, in a thick accent.

“Yes, I am.”

“You are in luck,
signore
, because I am a driver. I take your luggage to the taxi.” Grabbing the leather bag, he began to walk toward one of the terminal exits, and said, “Follow me.”

The American considered this peculiar, but reminded himself he was in a different country after all, where it might be customary. On his previous visit he’d been transported in a private limousine. He felt isolated now, without the power and influence of the White House. They couldn’t help him here.

He followed the man outside, just as it was beginning to grow dark. Some vehicles on the street had their headlights on. Horns honked as aggressive drivers darted in and out of traffic. At the curb the man said, “My taxi is just down the street. You wait here, and I’ll be right back.”

Carrying the luggage, the man disappeared into a crowd.

Zack’s thoughts drifted. He wondered if Lori would even consent to see him, or if she would turn him away. She probably had a lot of security around her, having become such an important public personality.

Minutes passed, and with a sense of mounting dread it occurred to Zack that he had been taken for a ride without ever having gotten into the taxi. Despite his own knowledge and naturally suspicious nature, he had been more concerned about finding his daughter than anything. Cursing his own stupidity, he looked around for a police officer, and soon spotted a pair of them, toting black machine guns. They were busy arresting a man at gunpoint, so he didn’t approach them.

A loud horn honked, and looking to his right, he saw the taxi driver pulling up to the curb. Zack breathed a sigh of relief.

The man was laughing. “I bet you thought I stole your luggage, eh, mister? I’m sorry, the traffic is terrible these days.”

The American climbed into the back seat.

“Where to, mister?”

“The Hotel Lucrino, just off Via degli Scipioni.”

“Oh, I can’t take you there, mister. It is too close to the Vatican, where there is so much trouble. The streets are blocked off, but you might be able to get in on foot.”

“The hotel didn’t say anything about that when I made the reservation.”

“They just want your credit card number,
signore,
to put a charge on your account. Now, if you do not show up, they will charge you anyway.”

“That’s the least of my problems. OK, get me as close as you can.”

The driver made the sign of the cross on his chest and forehead, then pointed to a photograph of Pope Rodrigo taped to the dashboard. “We all pray for His Holiness, that those crazy women will let him go.”

“How close can you get me?”

“Maybe ten blocks. You’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”

“Let’s go.”

* * *

When Zack walked to the hotel that evening, following the driver’s directions, he had to pass through two checkpoints, each one a machine gun nest set up on a corner with sandbags around it. He had to show his identification, which they scanned into a data system, along with his retina prints, fingerprints, and a snip of his hair. Rome had become a war zone.

Like a lost tourist in a foreign city, he turned the wrong way on a side street, except this had potentially more serious consequences, because it forced him back to one of the same checkpoints. But an Italian soldier was helpful this time, and he finally got the right directions.

The Hotel Lucrino, with flower boxes in every window, would have been perfect if Zack really had been a tourist, but he wasn’t here for that. He barely checked into the room and then went down to the bar in the lobby, where he met the detective he’d hired, Trig Arnold, a tall man in a suit and black shirt, with no tie.

“Did you find her yet?” Zack asked anxiously, as they sipped glasses of white Tuscano wine.

He shook his head. “No, but I have some interesting leads to tell you about.” The detective excused himself for a moment to use the restroom.

The wine had a sour, rough taste to Zack. Not that he was a wine snob; he wasn’t. But he had hoped to calm his frayed nerves with something that went down smoothly. Maybe the taste had to do with how upset he was by the whole situation, how worried he was about the safety of the young woman he thought was his daughter. He pushed the glass away.

Arnold had been the top sergeant in an Army unit commanded by Zack. They’d served together in the Fourth Iraq War, where Arnold had been wounded and was sent home. He still had a scar on his chin from shrapnel, and Zack knew he had even more evidence of past wounds beneath the clothing. He was lucky to have survived them. Now he was a private investigator, working in Rome and Milan. His name was not Italian, but he always said he was of that ethnicity anyway, and that someone had gotten it wrong on his birth certificate.

“My parents said I was Irish but I never believed them,” he used to say when they served together. And then—invariably after a couple of drinks—he would go off on a wildly humorous tangent, making up his own life history, relatives, and all sorts of details that never actually happened. In the past it had been entertaining, but now Zack didn’t want to hear any of that. He needed hard facts, and hoped his old friend was as good as his professional reputation. If not, Zack would need to take someone else into his confidence.

Trig Arnold returned and sat down. He leaned across the table, and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “A couple of nights ago, three bound women were dumped in an alley near the Vatican, a strange incident in which no one was hurt. The women, all Americans, refused to press charges, said it was just a practical joke.”

“What does that have to do with Lori? She wasn’t one of them?”

“No. I’m getting to that. From my contacts at the police, I have a videotaped incident report, and I discovered that one of the women is a member of the UWW council.”

“Dumped on a street?”

“Right. The police didn’t make the connection and released her along the other two women. I have good sources, though, with access to the most advanced facial recognition technology; they tell me the councilwoman’s name is Wendy Zepeda. And get this: I found out that Zepeda was aboard one of three helicopters and a VTOL plane that escaped from a military attack in Greece. Dixie Lou Jackson was aboard the lead helicopter in the group, and Zepeda was on the same helicopter as your daughter.”

“Where is Zepeda? Have you been able to question her?”

The detective shook his head. “No one knows where she is.”

“So this is a dead-end?”

“I don’t know. I’m still working on it.”

They ate dinner in the bar, but Zack hardly touched his. When they parted that evening, the detective seemed remarkably sober, even though he had consumed almost two bottles of wine. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be on this first thing in the morning.”

But Zack did worry. He worried a lot.

* * *

A surprise lay behind Mrs. Bonham’s tidy little bungalow, a secret English garden with fragrant lavender and thyme shrubs, and vines of ivy and wisteria snaking over a high stone wall. In bright sunlight the old lady shuffled with her walker along a crushed shell path, just behind Styx Tertullian. In his hands he carried a length of heavy chain connected to his ankles, so that he could only take short steps. He also carried a copy of the
Holy Women’s Bible
. At a wrought iron bench, with elegant fern patterns in the metal work, she commanded him to sit.

He did so, grumbling and clanking.

“Now secure the chain,” she commanded. “Just like yesterday.” She wore a floppy straw hat, shielding her sensitive facial skin from the sun. From the pocket of her daisy-print house dress she brought out a padlock, which she tossed to him. It landed on the path.

He leaned over and picked it up, then completed the familiar routine she had forced on him, looping the chain through the ironwork of the bench and securing it in place with the lock. Behind him loomed a twisted, drooping willow tree with an antique birdhouse perched on a lower branch.

As before, she sat on a bench at the opposite side of the path, where she could watch him from a safe distance. Her aluminum-framed walker stood in front of her, on the path. From a pocket she brought forth a .25 caliber automatic pistol, which she set on the bench beside her.

In a dark mood, Styx stared at the white, leather-bound book on his lap.

“Open it,” she commanded.

Reluctantly, he complied. “Which passage today?”

“I want you to select a verse that best reflects the error of your ways, and memorize it.”

Exasperated, he began flipping through the pages, searching, taking deep, anguished breaths. The paper rustled and crackled.

“Show more respect for the holy word,” she cautioned. “Don’t bend or tear the pages, or you’ll be in big trouble.”

“Bigger than now?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, young man. I’m trying to rehabilitate you.”

Styx found a passage that he thought she would like, and began memorizing it, mouthing the heretical words with great distaste, making whispers of sound.

Within a few minutes Mrs. Bonham’s eyelids grew heavy and she fell asleep in the warmth of the sun. Her head tilted to one side, and the floppy hat seemed about to fall off, but somehow it didn’t.

Carefully, trying not to rattle his chains or make any other noticeable noises, Styx rose to his feet and began dragging his bench across the path toward the old woman, a few centimeters at a time. Having been waiting for this opportunity, he didn’t take his eyes off her.

She shifted on the bench. Her veiny eyelids flickered.

He held his breath.

Mrs. Bonham began snoring, her head still slumped to one side, the gun beside her.

The desperate man dragged the bench closer, finally getting to the middle of the shell path. Only a few minutes had transpired, but it seemed like much longer, and sweat ran down his face, stinging his eyes. Stretching to the limit of his chain, he thought he could almost reach the weapon now, but first he needed to move her walker out of the way.

Slowly, watching the chain all the while, he reached out and grabbed hold of the top bar of the walker. The aluminum frame wasn’t heavy, and he lifted it easily.

Suddenly he heard screeching from behind him. Turning, he saw a white Persian cat and an orange tabby facing off, claws bared, tails erect. Several feet above them, atop the birdhouse in the tree, a black crow looked down and cawed, as if refereeing the fight between the felines. The cats separated, ran off in different directions.

When Styx looked back at Mrs. Bonham, she was sitting straight up, and had the gun pointed at him. She shook her head sadly. “I’ve tried to be nice to you,” she said. “Really, I’ve gone out of my way to give you every consideration. But you’re an impossible man.”

“I’ll try to do better,” he promised.

“Read the sacred word and feel the holy She-Spirit!” the old lady commanded. “Read, and ye shall be saved!”

It was the absolute worst time of his entire life.