Also by Allan Folsom
The Day After Tomorrow
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by Allan R. Folsom
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
First eBook Edition: October 2009
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions, organizations, situations, and philosophies are the product of the author’s imagination, except for incidental references to public figures, institutions, or organizations that have been used fictitiously without any intent to describe or portray actual conduct.
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ISBN: 978-0-446-54876-2
Contents
Also by Allan Folsom
Copyright
The Characters
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Chapter 145
Chapter 146
Chapter 147
Chapter 148
Chapter 149
Chapter 150
Chapter 151
Chapter 152
Chapter 153
Chapter 154
Chapter 155
Chapter 156
Chapter 157
Chapter 158
Chapter 159
Chapter 160
Chapter 161
Chapter 162
Chapter 163
Epilogue
There Was One Other Thing—
Acknowledgments
for Karen and Riley,
and for Ellen
The Characters
Harry Addison
Father Daniel Addison — Harry’s younger brother, a priest in the Vatican and private secretary to Cardinal Marsciano
Nursing sister Elena Voso
Hercules, a dwarf
The Vatican
Giacomo Pecci, Pope Leo XIV
The pope’s Uomini di fiducia, “Men of trust”
Cardinal Umberto Palestrina
Cardinal Nicola Marsciano
Cardinal Joseph Matadi
Monsignor Fabio Capizzi
Cardinal Rosario Parma
Father Bardoni, an aide to Cardinal Marsciano
The Vatican Police
Jacov Farel, head of the Vatican Police
The Italian Police
Homicide Detective Otello Roscani
Homicide Detective Gianni Pio
Homicide Detective Scala
Homicide Detective Castelletti
Gruppo Cardinale—The special task force set up by decree of the Italian Ministry of the Interior to investigate the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome
Marcello Taglia, Gruppo Cardinale Chief Prosecutor
The Chinese
Li Wen, a state water-quality inspector
Chen Yin, a merchant of cut flowers
Yan Yeh, president of the People’s Bank of China
Jiang Youmei, Chinese ambassador to Italy
Zhou Yi, Jiang’s foreign minister
Wu Xian, general secretary of the Communist Party
The Freelancers
Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind, international terrorist
Adrianna Hall, World News Network correspondent
James Eaton, first secretary to the counselor for Political Affairs, United States Embassy, Rome
Pierre Weggen, Swiss investment banker
Miguel Valera, a Spanish communist
Prologue
Rome. Sunday, June 28.
TODAY HE CALLED HIMSELF S AND LOOKED startlingly like Miguel Valera, the thirty-seven-year-old Spaniard spinning in a light, drug-induced sleep across the room. The apartment they w
ere in was nothing, just two rooms with a tiny kitchen and bath, the fifth floor up from the street. The furnishings were worn and inexpensive, common in a place rented by the week. The most prominent pieces were the faded velvet couch on which the Spaniard reclined and the small drop leaf table under the front window, where S stood looking out.
So the apartment was nothing. What sold it was the view—the green of the Piazza San Giovanni and across it, the imposing medieval Basilica of St. John in the Lateran, the Cathedral of Rome and “mother of all churches,” founded by the Emperor Constantine in the year 313. Today the view from the window was even better than its promise. Inside the basilica, Giacomo Pecci, Pope Leo XIV, was celebrating mass on his seventy-fifth birthday, and an enormous crowd overflowed the piazza, making it seem as if all Rome were celebrating with him.
Running a hand through his dyed-black hair, S glanced at Valera. In ten minutes his eyes would open. In twenty he would be alert and functional. Abruptly S turned and let his gaze fall on an ancient black-and-white television in the corner. On its screen was a live broadcast from the mass inside the basilica.
The pope, in white liturgical vestments, watched the faces of the worshipers in front of him as he spoke, his eyes meeting theirs energetically, hopefully, spiritually. He loved and they loved in return, and it seemed to give him a youthful renewal despite his age and slowly declining health.
Now the television cameras cut away, finding familiar faces of politicians, celebrities, and business leaders among those inside the packed basilica. Then the cameras moved on, fixing briefly on five clergymen seated behind the pontiff. These were his longtime advisers. His uomini di fiducia. Men of trust. As a group, probably the most influential authority within the Roman Catholic Church.
— Cardinal Umberto Palestrina, 62. A Naples street urchin and orphan become Vatican secretariat of state. Enormously popular within the Church and carried in the same high regard by the secular international diplomatic community. Massive physically, six foot seven and 270 pounds.
— Rosario Parma, 67. Cardinal vicar of Rome, tall, severe, conservative prelate from Florence in whose diocese and church the mass was being celebrated.
— Cardinal Joseph Matadi, 57, prefect of the Congregation of Bishops. Native of Zaire. Broad shouldered, jovial, widely traveled, multilingual, diplomatically astute.
— Monsignor Fabio Capizzi, 62, director general of the Vatican Bank. Native of Milan. Graduate of Oxford and Yale, self-made millionaire before joining the seminary at age thirty.
— Cardinal Nicola Marsciano, 60, eldest son of a Tuscan farmer, educated in Switzerland and Rome, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See; as such, chief overseer of the Vatican’s investments.
CLICK.
The gloved hand of S turned off the television, and he stepped again to the table in front of the window. Behind him Miguel Valera coughed and moved involuntarily on the sofa. S glanced at him, then looked back out the window. Police barricades had been set up to keep the crowd from the cobblestones directly in front of the basilica, and now mounted police on horseback took up positions on either side of its bronze central entrance gate. Behind them and to the left, out of sight of the crowd, S could see a dozen dark blue vans. In front of them stood a phalanx of riot police, also out of sight, but ready if needed. Abruptly four dark Lancias, unmarked cars of the Polizia di Stato, the police force protecting the pope and his cardinals outside the Vatican, pulled up and stopped at the foot of the basilica’s steps, waiting to take the pope and his cardinals back to the Vatican.
Suddenly the bronze gates swung open and there was a roar from the crowd. At the same time seemingly every church bell in Rome began to ring. For a moment nothing happened. Then, above the din of the bells, S heard a second roar as the pope appeared, the white of his cassock standing out clearly against a sea of red as his men of trust walked close behind him—the group surrounded tightly by security men wearing black suits and sunglasses.
Valera groaned, his eyes flickered, and he tried to roll over. S glanced at him, but only for an instant. Then he turned and lifted something covered with an ordinary bath towel from the shadows beside the window. Setting it on the table, he took away the towel and put his eye to the scope of a Finnish sniper rifle. Instantly his view of the basilica magnified a hundredfold. In the same moment, Cardinal Palestrina stepped forward and fully into its circular frame, its crosshairs meeting directly over his broad grin. S took a breath and held it, letting his gloved forefinger ease against the trigger.
Abruptly Palestrina stepped aside, and the rifle’s scope came tight on Cardinal Marsciano’s chest. S heard Valera grunt behind him. Ignoring him, he swung the rifle left through a blur of cardinal red until he saw the white of Leo XIV’s cassock. A split second later the crosshairs centered between his eyes just above the bridge of his nose.
Behind him Valera yelled something out loud. Again, S ignored him. His finger tightened against the trigger as the pope lurched forward, past a security man, smiling and waving at the crowd. Then, abruptly, S swung the rifle right, bringing the mesh of crosshairs full on the gold pectoral cross of Rosario Parma, the cardinal vicar of Rome. S gave no expression, simply squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, rocking the room with thundering discharge and, two hundred yards away, showering Pope Leo XIV, Giacomo Pecci, and those around him with the blood of a man of trust.
1
Los Angeles. Thursday, July 2, 9:00 P.M.
THE VOICE ON THE ANSWERING MACHINE resonated with fear.
“Harry, it’s your brother, Danny…. I… don’t mean to call you like this… after so much time…. But… there’s… no one else I can talk to…. I’m scared, Harry…. I don’t know what to do… or… what will happen next. God help me. If you’re there, please pick up—Harry, are you there?—I guess not…. I’ll try to call you back.”
“Dammit.”
Harry Addison hung up the car phone, kept his hand on it, then picked it up again and pushed REDIAL. He heard the digital tones as the numbers redialed automatically. Then there was silence, and then the measured “buzz, buzz,” “buzz, buzz” of the Italian phone system as the call rang through.
“Come on, Danny, answer…”
After the twelfth ring Harry set the receiver back in its cradle and looked off, the lights of oncoming traffic dancing over his face, making him lose track of where he was—in a limousine with his driver on a race to the airport to make the ten-o’clock red-eye to New York.
It was nine at night in L.A., six in the morning in Rome. Where would a priest be at six in the morning? An early mass? Maybe that’s where he was and why he wasn’t answering.
“Harry, it’s your brother, Danny…. I’m scared…. I don’t know what to do…. God help me.”
“Jesus Christ.” Harry felt helplessness and panic at the same time. Not a word or a note between them in years, and then there was Danny’s voice on Harry’s answering machine, jumping out suddenly among a string of others. And not just a voice, but someone in grave trouble.
Harry had heard a rustling as though Danny was starting to hang up, but then he had come back on the line and left his phone number, asking Harry to please call if he got in soon. For Harry, soon was moments ago, when he’d picked up the calls from his home machine. But Danny’s call had come two hours earlier, at a little after seven California time, just after four in the morning in Rome—what the hell had soon meant to him at that time of day?
Picking up the phone again, Harry dialed his law office in Beverly Hills. There had been an important partners’ meeting. People might still be there.
“Joyce, it’s Harry. Is Byron—?”
“He just left, Mr. Addison. You want me to try his car?”
“Please.”
Harry heard the static as Byron Willis’s secretary tried to connect with his car phone.
“I’m sorry, he’s not picking up. He said something about dinner. Should I leave word at the house?”
There was a blur of lights, and Harry felt the limo lean as the driver took the cloverleaf off the Ventura Freeway and accelerated into traffic on the San Diego, heading south toward LAX. Take it easy, he thought. Danny could be at mass or at work or out for a walk. Don’t start driving yourself or other people crazy when you don’t even know what’s going on.
“No, never mind. I’m on my way to New York. I’ll get him in the morning. Thanks.”
Clicking off, Harry hesitated, then tried Rome once more. He heard the same digital sounds, the same silence, and then the now-familiar “buzz, buzz,” “buzz, buzz” as the phone rang through. There was still no answer.
2
Italy. Friday, July 3, 10:20 A.M.
FATHER DANIEL ADDISON DOZED LIGHTLY in a window seat near the back of the tour bus, his senses purposefully concentrated on the soft whine of the diesel and hum of the tires as the coach moved north along the Autostrada toward Assisi.
Dressed in civilian clothes, he had his clerical garments and toiletries in a small bag on the overhead rack above, his glasses and identification papers tucked into the inside pocket of the nylon windbreaker he wore over jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Father Daniel was thirty-three and looked like a graduate student, an everyday tourist traveling alone. Which was what he wanted.
An American priest assigned to the Vatican, he had been living in Rome for nine years and going to Assisi for almost as long. Birthplace of the humble priest who became a saint, the ancient town in the Umbrian hills had given him a sense of cleansing and grace that put him more in touch with his own spiritual journey than any place he’d ever been. But now that journey was in shambles, his faith all but destroyed. Confusion, dread, and fear overrode everything. Keeping any shred of sanity at all was a major psychological struggle. Still, he was on the bus and going. But with no idea what he would do or say when he got there.
In front of him, the twenty or so other passengers chatted or read or rested as he did, enjoying the cool of the coach’s air-conditioning. Outside, the summer heat shimmered in waves across the rural landscape, ripening crops, sweetening vineyards, and, little by little, decaying the few ancient walls and fortresses that still existed here and there and were visible in the distance as the bus passed.
Letting himself drift, Father Daniel’s thoughts went to Harry and the call he’d left on his answering machine in the hours just before dawn. He wondered if Harry had even picked up the message. Or, if he had, if he’d been resentful of it and had not called back on purpose. It was a chance he had taken. He and Harry had been estranged since they were teenagers. It had been eight years since they’d spoken, ten since they’d seen each other. And that had been only briefly, when they’d gone back to Maine for the funeral of their mother. Harry had been twenty-six then, and Danny twenty-three. It was not unreasonable to assume that by now Harry had written his younger brother off and simply no longer gave a damn.