“It is the number for the Banff Springs Hotel. Two calls were made to it from your office on Saturday morning, the eleventh. Another, that afternoon, from a cellular phone signed out to Father Bardoni. Your private secretary. The man who replaced the priest.”
Marsciano shrugged. “Many calls are made from my office, even on a Saturday. Father Bardoni works long hours, so do I, so do others…. I do not keep track of every telephone call…”
“You told me in the presence of Jacov Farel that the priest was dead.”
“He is…” Marsciano’s eyes came up and looked at Palestrina directly.
“Then who was brought to Bellagio, to Villa Lorenzi two days ago? On Sunday evening, the twelfth?”
Marsciano smiled. “You have been watching the television.”
“The calls to Banff were made Saturday, and the priest was brought to Villa Lorenzi on Sunday.” Palestrina leaned forward into the face of Nicola Marsciano, stretching the material of his jacket tight across his back.
“Villa Lorenzi is owned by the writer Eros Barbu. Eros Barbu is vacationing at the Banff Springs Hotel.”
“If you are asking if I know Eros Barbu, Eminence, you are right. We are old friends from Tuscany.”
Palestrina watched Marsciano carefully for a moment longer. Finally, he sat back. “Then you should be saddened to hear he has committed suicide.”
93
Lake Como. 4:30 P.M.
BANGING AND PITCHING, HALF SLIDING, Harry worked the farm truck down the rutted and overgrown forest road toward the inlet where he hoped Elena and Danny were. Two hours had passed since he’d climbed up from the lake looking for the truck, and much of the terrain was now in late-afternoon shadow, and this changed the look of everything.
The going was not only slow and difficult, but also dangerous; the old truck had bad brakes and nearly bald tires, making it hard to control as it rattled and bounced, pitched and slid over the road that was barely a road at all. Almost every turn was a hairpin switchback, and at each he was certain he was going over the side, to be sent plunging through heavy undergrowth into a steep ravine on one side, or dropping like a stone to the lake several hundred feet below on the other.
It was at a high point that he saw the flotilla to the north, maybe thirty or forty boats at anchor or cruising slowly back and forth, held offshore by three larger craft that looked like cutters or guard boats, and he knew the police had found the grotto. Then, as he was starting down, negotiating the hairpin, he saw a helicopter suddenly rise up to circle over the top of the cliff where he’d been less than twenty minutes earlier.
Abruptly the entire scene vanished as the truck slid forward on the loose gravel. Pumping the brakes wildly, Harry swung the wheel back toward the road. But it did no good. The truck continued to slide. The edge was coming up. After that there was nothing but air and the water below. And then the right front wheel caught in a rut. The steering wheel snapped out of his hand. And, as if it had suddenly been mounted on a track, the vehicle swung sharply back and followed the path of the road, dropping behind a steep ridge and in under an umbrella of trees.
For another five minutes Harry fought both the truck and road, and then he was at lake level, where the road went on for another twenty yards, then ended abruptly in a growth of brush and high trees at the water’s edge.
Parking on a hill behind a row of trees and making sure the truck couldn’t be seen from the lake, Harry got out and walked along the water’s edge, then pushed through the undergrowth to where he could see the dark shadow that was the entry to the cave. In the distance he could hear the helicopter circling. And he prayed that’s where it would stay.
94
The grotto. Same time.
ROSCANI STOOD ON THE LANDING, LOOKING into the motorboat. A man and woman lay dead inside it. The woman had been lucky he hadn’t used the razor—the way he’d used it on the man who lay beside her, or the way he’d used it on Edward Mooi, whose nearly headless body had been found floating in the inner channel.
Edward Mooi.
“Dammit!” he said out loud. “Dammit to hell!” He should have known he was the one who had hidden the priest. Should have gone back and pressured him the moment he’d found the engines on the outboard were still warm. But he hadn’t, because the call had come about the dead men in the lake and he’d gone there instead.
Turning from the landing, letting the tech people work, he walked back down the grotto’s main corridor past the ancient stone benches toward the room at the end where the priest had been kept, where Scala and Castelletti were now and where the body of a carabiniere had been brought from the maze of back passageways—another of the ice picker’s victims, the ice picker who they now knew was blond and had scratches down his cheek.
“Biondo,” the dying carabiniere had managed, his eyes glazed over, one hand grasping Scala’s, his other clawing feebly at his own cheek.
“Graffiato,” he’d coughed, his fingers still pulling at his cheek. Graffiato.
“Biondo. Graffiato.”
Blond. And strong. And quick. And, they surmised, the skin on his face scratched as well, most likely by the fingernails of the murdered woman, under which fragments of skin had been found. Fragments that would be sent to the lab for DNA analysis. New technology, Roscani thought. But useful only when they had a suspect, when they could take a blood sample and see if they had a match.
Entering the room, he moved past Scala and Castelletti and went again into the room where the nun’s personal belongings had been found.
Nursing sister Elena Voso, age twenty-seven, a member of the Congregation of Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart; home convent, the Hospital of St. Bernardine in the Tuscan city of Siena.
Walking back to the main tunnel, Roscani ran a hand through his hair and tried to get some sense of the place itself. Eros Barbu’s enormous wealth was everywhere, and yet the people who had hidden here, a nun and a priest, and the dead men who had protected them, were not wealthy. Why had Barbu allowed his property to be used as a hiding place?
It was a question Barbu himself would never answer. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were now investigating his apparent suicide on a mountain trail overlooking Lake Louise in Banff. Death by shotgun in the mouth. Except that Roscani knew it was no suicide, but murder, done, he was certain, by a colleague of the blond ice picker, who knew where Barbu was and how to find him and had killed him either in retaliation for helping Father Daniel escape or in an effort to find out where he was. Perhaps it was even the same colleague who killed Harry Addison’s boss in California. If that were so, the conspiracy was much broader and far-reaching than it first seemed.
In the distance, Roscani could hear the echo of the search dogs and their handlers leading the carabinieri teams probing the maze of tunnels for Elena Voso and the fugitive priest—and Harry Addison. He had no proof. It was a hunch and nothing else. But somehow Roscani sensed the American had been there and helped his brother to escape.
High above, a helicopter unit was coordinating Gruppo Cardinale teams on the ground combing the cliffs above the grotto. A clear set of footprints had been found outside the elevator shaft. And there were tire tracks of a vehicle driven in, parked, and then driven away. Whether any of it would lead them to the blond man or the fugitives it was too early to tell.
Whatever had happened, or would happen, one thing alone had become chillingly clear—Roscani was no longer dealing simply with a fugitive priest and his brother, but with people internationally connected, highly skilled, and with no reservation at all about killing. And anyone with even the slightest idea where the priest might be, or what he might know, had become a hard target seemingly reachable anywhere.
95
DANNY WAS ALONE AS HARRY CAME INTO THE cave, sitting just back from the entrance, his broken legs in their blue fiberglass casts twisted awkwardly in front of him. He wore Harry’s black jacket over the thin hospital gown he had had on when they put him into the skiff.
Immediately Harry looked around. Where was Elena? He looked back to find Danny staring at him, as if he weren’t quite sure who Harry was. And Harry knew the physical exhaustion caused by the brutal ride through the grotto’s sluices was taking its toll. Danny had regressed, and it frightened him because he didn’t know how far back he’d gone or if he would have the strength to come back.
“Danny, do you know who I am?”
Danny said nothing, just continued to stare. Unsure, uncertain.
“I’m your brother, Harry.”
Finally, hesitantly, Danny nodded.
“We are in a cave in the north of Italy.”
Danny nodded again. But the action was still vague, as if he understood the words but not what they meant.
“Do you know where the sister is?—the nun who is taking care of you. Where is she?”
For several seconds there was no reaction at all. Then slowly, deliberately, Danny’s eyes shifted to the left.
Harry followed the movement across the cave to a bright, sunlit opening near the back. Leaving Danny, he crossed to it, started through, then stopped. Elena was half dressed, her habit around her waist, her breasts exposed. Startled, she quickly covered herself.
“Sorry,” Harry said, then turned and went back inside.
A moment later and fully dressed, Elena followed him in, thoroughly embarrassed, trying to explain.
“I apologize, Mr. Addison. My clothing was still wet. I dried it out there on the rocks, as I did your jacket and your brother’s gown. He was sleeping when I… was… not dressed…”
“I understand…” Harry found a way to smile, and it put her at ease.
“You came with the truck?”
“Yes.”
“Harry—?” Danny cocked his head as Harry and Elena came closer.
Yes, it was Harry, he was sure. And Elena was with him, and that helped because she had been with him for a long time. And her presence gave him some kind of anchor to reality. Still, he felt weak. Thinking itself—where they were, how Harry came to be there—was a supreme effort. Abruptly the vision of Harry taking his hand and helping him out of the water came back. So, too, did the moment when they looked at each other and realized that after so much time they were together again.
“I…” Danny touched a hand to his head. “Not thinking… too… clear…”
“It’s okay, Danny,” Harry said gently. “It’s going to be okay…”
“It’s not unexpected, Mr. Addison,” Elena said deliberately, her eyes going to Danny. “And I don’t mind talking in front of the father, because he needs to understand it, too—he has been seriously hurt…. He was making progress, all this has set him back…. Physically I think he will be all right…. But he may have trouble with his words, his cognizance, or both…. How much will return, only time will tell.” Now she looked to Harry.
“How far is the truck, Mr. Addison?” She was suddenly concerned with time, with the lengthening shadows outside the cave. “How far do we have to go to reach it?”
Harry hesitated, then looked to Danny. Afraid of upsetting or frightening him, he took Elena by the arm and led her toward the cave’s entrance, telling her he’d show her the way from there.
Outside, he pointed to the rocks that kept the truck from being seen from the lake, then turned to face her.
“The police have found the grotto. They had a helicopter circling the top of the hill by the elevator shaft. Maybe that’s the way the blond man got out—who knows? But they’ll know Danny was there and that he was alive….” Harry hesitated. “You left your things behind, Elena. They’ll know who you are… and probably that I was there, too, because I wasn’t very careful about what I touched.
“They’ll search the tunnels and corridors, and when they don’t find anything, they’ll saturate this whole area looking for us.
“The road up out of here is impossible, but if we can get out before they come this far, and do it before dark, before I need to use headlights, we might make it. At least to the main road where we can mix in with other traffic. Hoping that when it does get dark, we can slip through their checkpoints like we did this morning.”
“To go where, Mr. Addison?”
“With luck, the Autostrada at Como and then north to the Swiss border at Chiasso.”
Elena studied him for the briefest moment. “And then where, Mr. Addison?”
“—I’m not sure…” Suddenly Harry was aware of Danny watching them intently from inside the cave. For the first time Harry saw him at a distance, and for the first time saw what he had become. Emaciated, broken. But still with fight, the same way Harry had always remembered him. Bullheaded sometimes, but always tough. Nonetheless, right now he was all but helpless.
Abruptly, Harry turned back to Elena. There were things she needed to understand before they went anywhere.
“You know that I am wanted for killing an Italian policeman. And that Danny is a prime suspect in the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome.”
“Yes.”
Harry’s eyes were suddenly intense and filled with strength. “It’s important you understand that I did not kill the policeman…. What my brother did or didn’t do, I don’t know and won’t until his mind is clear enough for me to ask him…. And even then, I don’t know what he’ll say, or won’t…. But whatever happened, someone wants him dead…. Because of what he knows, for what he might tell…. That’s why the blond man, maybe even the police…. And now they know he’s alive, they’ll not only come after him again, they will assume he’s passed on whatever he knows to the people with him.”
“You mean you and me, Mr. Addison…”
“Yes.”
“Whether he has told us anything or not—“
“They won’t ask.” Harry finished the thought for her.
Suddenly, and out of nowhere, came the chunky thud of a jet helicopter’s rotor blades slicing air. Taking Elena by the arm, Harry pulled her back into the cave’s overhang just as the machine swept over the ridge above them. Moving out over the lake, it made a wide turn, then swung back the way it had come, disappearing over the treetops. Its sound vanishing with it.
Instantly Elena’s eyes came back to Harry.
“I understand the situation, Mr. Addison, and I am prepared for whatever happens…”
Harry stared at her for the briefest moment.
“Okay,” he said, then turned back into the cave for Danny.
96
ROSCANI SAW THE LAKE AND THEN THE TREEtops as the helicopter swung in over the cliffs, taking one last careful look for himself, his father’s way of doing things, as if because of it, he would succeed where everyone else had failed. But he didn’t. He saw nothing but rock and trees and the water off to the left.
“Damn,” he swore under his breath. They were down there somewhere, all of them. Father Daniel, the nun, the blond ice picker/razor man, and Harry Addison. Roscani’s earlier hunch had been right: the American had been in the grotto. Fingerprints lifted from a medicine case in the room where Father Daniel had been confirmed it.
Roscani wouldn’t allow himself to imagine how the American had slipped from them all and found the water caves before they did, or how he and the others had managed to avoid the blond man, which, it seemed, they had. On the positive side, a manhunt across all of Italy had narrowed down to an area of a few square miles. On the negative, he had two sets of fugitives—the Addison group and the blond killer—each with either extraordinary skill at avoidance, third-party help, or just plain luck. Roscani’s job was to stop it all, pinch off any possible route of escape, and end it here as quickly as possible.
Ahead, as the pilot brought them north in growing twilight, he could see the buildup of the huge Gruppo Cardinale force he was putting in place to do it—hundreds of Italian Army, carabinieri, local police personnel—arriving at the tactical staging area on top of the cliffs above the grotto.
Abruptly, Roscani ordered the helicopter back to strategic headquarters set up hou
rs earlier at Villa Lorenzi, his mind shifting to the next. Gruppo Cardinale was hunting two separate entities. The Americans and the nun he knew, but he had no idea who his murderous blond ice picker was. At this point, it was imperative he find out.
97
THE STEERING WHEEL CHATTERED UNMERcifully in Harry’s hands. The truck shook, and the tires spun in the gravel against the steep pitch of the hill, the truck inching upward but at the same time sliding sideways, bringing them perilously close to the edge and the lake how many hundred feet below. Then they were out of the gravel and onto solid ground, the truck gained purchase, and Harry guided it back toward the center of the road.
“So far, so good…” He half smiled and saw Elena pressed against the far door, trying not to show her fear. And Danny, jammed in between them, wholly exhausted, was staring off at nothing, seemingly unaware of any of it. Immediately Harry glanced at the truck’s primitive instrument panel. Fuel. They had little more than a quarter of a tank, and how far that would take them he didn’t know.
“Mr. Addison, your brother needs fluids and food as quickly as we can possibly get them.”
By now, it was all but dark, and in the distance they could see the lights of traffic on the Bellagio road. The highway south would take them along the lake and back toward Como, where Harry wanted to go. How far it was or how many towns there were in between, he didn’t know and neither did Elena.
“Does the Church here still practice sanctuary?” Harry asked suddenly, remembering that places of worship had provided asylum and safe haven for refugees and fugitives for centuries.