Day of Confession Part 40

There was a long silence, then, "Fair," Danny whispered.

"Okay... ," Harry said and then, exhaustion overtaking him, turned to Elena. "Where do I sleep?"

128.

The Vatican. The Tower of San Giovanni. Same time.

CARDINAL MARSCIANO SAT IN A STRAIGHT-backed armchair, staring trancelike at the television screen five feet in front of him. Its sound was still turned off. A commercial played now. It was animated. Whatever was being sold did not penetrate.

Across the room was the velvet purse Palestrina had left him. The hideous thing inside it affirmation, as if more were needed, of the secretariat's descent into total madness. Barely able to look at it let alone touch it, Marsciano had tried to get them to take it away, but Anton Pilger had merely stood in the doorway and refused, saying nothing could be brought in or taken out without specific orders, and there were none. With that he had said he was sorry and closed the door, the sound of the bolted lock as it clicked into place, by now, almost ear shattering.

Abruptly a graphic flashed on the television screen in front of Marsciano. It played over a map of China that highlighted both Wuxi and Hefei.

As of 10:20 As of 10:20 P.M P.M. Beijing time:WUXI, CHINA-FATALITIES: 1,700HEFEI, CHINA-FATALITIES: 87,553 Immediately the picture cut to Beijing. A field reporter was standing in Tiananmen Square.

Marsciano picked up the remote: CLICK.

The sound came up. The reporter was speaking in Italian: A major announcement regarding the disasters in Hefei and Wuxi was imminent, he said. Speculation centered on an announcement to the provinces of an immediate and ma.s.sive rebuilding of China's entire water and power infrastructures.

CLICK.

The reporter spoke on in silence. Marsciano put down the remote. Palestrina had won. He had won, yet there was still to be a third city, another ma.s.s poisoning. What h.e.l.l was this?

Seeing what had already happened, knowing what was yet to come, Marsciano closed his eyes and wished Father Daniel had had died in the bus explosion, so that he never would have known of the horror caused by Marsciano's loathsome weakness and inaction against Palestrina. Wished he had died then rather than be killed here by Farel's thugs when he came looking for Marsciano-after China had already happened. died in the bus explosion, so that he never would have known of the horror caused by Marsciano's loathsome weakness and inaction against Palestrina. Wished he had died then rather than be killed here by Farel's thugs when he came looking for Marsciano-after China had already happened.

Turning from the cold cruelty of the television screen, Marsciano looked across the room. Early-afternoon sunlight radiated through the gla.s.s door, beckoning him toward it. Besides sleep and prayer, the door had been his only solace. From it, he could look out over the Vatican gardens and see a pastoral world of peace and beauty.

Going there now, he pulled aside the curtains to stand at the gla.s.s, watching the sunlight stream through the trees to make a grand chiaroscuro of the landscape beneath. In a moment he would turn from the doorway to kneel at his bed and beg-as he had so often in the last days and hours-G.o.d's forgiveness for the terror he had helped create.

His mind on his prayers, he was about to turn back when suddenly the beauty he looked upon vanished. What he saw in its place shook him to his soul. It was an image he had seen a hundred times before, but never had it filled him with the revulsion it did now.

Two men walked toward him along a gravel pathway. One was huge physically and wore black. The other was older and much smaller and dressed in white. The first was Palestrina. The other, the one in white, was the Holy Father, Giacomo Pecci, Pope Leo XIV.

Palestrina was animated as they walked. Chatting, gesturing with infectious energy. As if the world and everything in it were filled with joy. While the pope, beside him, was, as always, enamored by his charisma and utterly trusting. And because of it, wholly blind to the truth.

As they drew closer, Marsciano felt a chill creep across his shoulders and ease like frozen breath down his spine. For the first time, and with profound horror, he saw who this scugnizzo scugnizzo, this common street urchin from Naples, as Palestrina called himself, really was.

More than a grand, beloved, and all-persuasive politician. More than a man who had risen to the second most powerful position in the Roman Catholic Church. More, even, than a corrupt, increasingly mad, and paranoid being, prime architect of one of the most gruesome civilian ma.s.sacres in history. The smiling, ruddy-cheeked, white-haired giant who walked through Eden's dappled sunlight with the Holy Father ravished in his spell was darkness itself, a whole and complete incarnation of evil.

129.

8:35 P.M P.M.

"MR. HARRY!" HERCULES BLURTED AS HARRY opened the door to Piano 3a and Roscani gestured for him to enter. In complete surprise the dwarf swung into the apartment on his crutches, with Roscani, Scala, and Castelletti following.

Closing the door and locking it, Castelletti remained alongside it while Scala, with a glance at Danny and Elena, walked off and through the rest of the apartment.

"The climbing rope you asked for is in the hallway outside," Roscani said.

Harry nodded, then looked to Hercules hanging on his crutches in front of Castelletti, open-mouthed and totally baffled.

"Come in and sit down, please.... This is my brother, Father Daniel, and this is Sister Elena... ," he said to both Roscani and Hercules, introducing the priest in a wheelchair and an attractive young woman beside him as if both men had been invited there for dinner.

Hercules followed Harry across the room as bewildered as ever and with no idea at all of what was going on. All he knew was that he'd been suddenly hustled away from a work detail in the central jail and told he was being transferred to another prison. Fifteen minutes later he was being whisked across Rome in the backseat of a dark blue Alfa Romeo with the top cop of Gruppo Cardinale sitting next to him.

"n.o.body else," Scala said, coming back into the room, looking at Roscani. "One door through the kitchen to a rear stairway. Single-bolt lock on the door. Anybody tries to come in from the roof, he's going to have to break gla.s.s and make a lot of noise doing it."

Roscani nodded, then, with a studied glance at Danny as if he were trying to get the measure of him, looked to Harry. "Hercules is signed out in a transfer from one jail to another. The paperwork got mixed up on the way.... This time tomorrow, I want him back."

"This time tomorrow you may have all of us," Harry said. "What about the handgun?"

Roscani hesitated, then abruptly looked to Scala and nodded. Opening his jacket, Scala took a semiautomatic pistol from his waistband and gave it to Harry.

"Nine-millimeter Calico parabellum. Sixteen-shot magazine," he said in heavily accented English. Then he pulled a second clip from his pocket and gave it to Harry as well.

"The serial numbers have been filed off," Roscani said flatly. "If you get caught, you don't remember where you got it. If you say anything about what's gone on here, it will be denied completely and your trial will become more difficult than you could ever imagine."

"We've only met once, Ispettore Capo," Harry said. "The day you picked me up at the airport.... The others here have never seen you...

Roscani's eyes crossed the room. He looked at Hercules. At Elena. Then at Danny and, finally, at Harry.

"Tomorrow," he said, "the freight car is to be taken from the Vatican to a siding between Stazione Trastevere and Stazione Ostiense, where it will be left to be picked up later. We will follow it the entire way. When the work engine leaves, we will come in.

"As for the rest.... My advice is to avoid Farel's men at all cost.... There are too many and they have too much communication..."

Roscani slipped a 5 7 color photograph from his inside jacket pocket and gave it to Harry.

"This is Thomas Kind, as of three years ago. I don't know if it will help, because he changes his appearance as often as most of us change clothes. Dark hair, blond, man, woman-he speaks a half dozen languages. If you see him-"

"Roscani." Harry cut him off. He was staring at the photograph the policeman had given him, remembering the face, where he had seen it before. It had been illuminated for a split second just after the ear-shattering roar of gunshots. Pale and cruel with the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen. "It was him," he said, looking up to Roscani. "It was Thomas Kind who shot Pio."

For the longest moment Roscani was silent, then he finished what he had started to say before. "If you see him, don't even think, just pull the trigger. And keep pulling it until he's dead. Then walk away. Let Farel take credit for it." Roscani paused and glanced around the room. "One of us will be outside all night if you need us."

Harry nodded. "Thank you," he said and meant it.

Roscani glanced once more at the others. "Buona fortuna, "he said, then looked to Scala and Castelletti.

A moment later the door closed behind them and they were gone.

Buona fortuna. Good luck.

130.

Wuxi, China. Friday, July 17, 3:20 A.M A.M.

FLAs.h.!.+.

Li Wen grimaced in the brilliant pop of the strobe light, trying to look away. A hand pushed him back.

FLAs.h.!.+ FLAs.h.!.+ FLAs.h.!.+.

He had no idea who these people were. Or where he was. Or how they had found him in the shoving, terrified ma.s.s on Chezhan Lu as he made his way toward the railroad station. He'd merely been trying to leave Wuxi, after a frenzied discussion with officials at Water Treatment Plant number 2. The water he'd tested just after daybreak that morning had shown alarming levels of blue-green algae toxin, the same as Hefei. And he'd said so. But the only result of his warning was a rush of local politicians and safety inspectors to the scene. By the time the arguments were done and the city's water-treatment plants along with the water intake systems from Taihu Lake, the Grand Ca.n.a.l, and Liangxi River were shut down, a full-scale emergency was in process.

"Confess," a voice commanded in Chinese.

Li Wen's head was jerked back and he looked into the face of an officer of the People's Liberation Army, but instantly Li Wen knew he was more than that. He belonged to the Guojia Anquan Bu Guojia Anquan Bu, the Ministry of State Security.

"Confess," he said once again.

Suddenly Li Wen was shoved face forward toward papers spread out on a table before him. He stared at them. They were the pages of formulas, received in the Beijing hotel from the American hydrobiologist James Hawley, and had been in his briefcase when he had been caught and arrested.

"The recipes for ma.s.s murder," the voice said again.

Slowly Li Wen looked up. "I have done nothing," he said.

Rome. Thursday, July 16, 9:30 P.M P.M.

Scala sat in a chair, watching his wife and mother-in-law play cards. His children-ages one, three, five, and eight-were asleep. He was home for the first time in what seemed like months and wanted to stay there. If for no other reason than to hear the women talk and smell the smell of the apartment and know his children were as close as the next room. But he couldn't. He was to relieve Castelletti outside the apartment on Via Nicol V at midnight, taking the watch until Castelletti came back with Roscani at seven. Then he would have three hours to sleep before he met them again at ten-thirty and they waited for the work engine to go into-and then come out of-the Vatican through the monstrous iron doorway in its immense walls.

Scala was starting to get up, to go into the kitchen and make fresh coffee, when the phone rang.

"Si, "he said, picking up quickly.

"Harry Addison is in Rome..." It was Adrianna Hall.

"I know..."

"His brother is with him."

"I..."

"Where are they, Sandro?"

"I don't know..."

"You do know, Sandro, don't lie. Not on this one, not after all these years."

All these years-Scala flashed back to the time when Adrianna was a young reporter newly a.s.signed to the Rome bureau. She was about to break a story that would have rocketed her career forward but would have greatly jeopardized a murder case he was about to close. He'd asked her to hold her story back, and with great reluctance she had. But because of it she had become fidarsi di fidarsi di, someone to trust. And he had trusted her, secretly slipping her privileged information over the years, and she had responded with information of her own that helped the police. But this time it was different. What was happening here was much too dangerous, with too much at stake. G.o.d help him if the media learned the police were helping the Addison brothers.

"I'm sorry. I have no information.... It's late, you understand...," Scala said quietly and hung up.

131.

10:50 P.M 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 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. 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 G.o.d, 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 att.i.tude, 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 h.e.l.l 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 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 Emba.s.sy 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.