Day of Confession

  Five paces later he saw it. It was on the edge of the road, under an overhanging bush that kept last night’s rain from soaking it through. A flat manila envelope with the impression of a tire tread on it.

  Tossing away his cigarette, Roscani bent over and picked it up. More ragged than it had first appeared, it looked as if a wet tire had run over it, caught it up and turned it several revolutions before speed had thrown it off. There was an impression in its surface, as if something stiff and hard had once been inside.

  Going back to the house, Roscani went inside and found Veronique Vaccaro—still incensed from her long night and the continued presence of the police—sitting in her kitchen in a bathrobe, one hand around a cup of coffee, the other drumming fingers on the table as if that in itself would make the authorities leave once and for all. Politely he asked for a hair dryer.

  “It’s in the bathroom,” she said in Italian. “Why not use the bath, too, and take a nap in my bed.”

  With a half smile at Castelletti as he passed him, Roscani went into Veronique’s bathroom, took down the hair dryer and played it over the envelope until it dried.

  Castelletti came in and stood behind him, watching as Roscani smoothed the envelope on the edge of the sink, and pushed a pencil back and forth across it, as one might do in the creation of a rubbing. Little by little the image of what had been inside appeared.

  “Jesus Christ.” Suddenly Roscani stopped.

  Raised on the envelope in front of them were the highly select letters and number of a diplomatic license plate.

  SCV 13

  “Vatican City,” Castelletti said.

  “Yeah,” Roscani looked at him. “Vatican City.”

  118

  Rome.

  IT WAS JUST BEFORE FIVE IN THE MORNING and still dark when Danny signaled Harry to stop in front of Via Nicolò V, 22, an old, well-kept three-story apartment complex on a tree-lined street. Locking the Mercedes, Harry and Elena took Danny in his wheelchair up the small elevator to the top floor, where Danny took a set of keys from an envelope Father Bardoni had given him in Lugano. Choosing one, he opened the door to Piano 3a, a spacious rear apartment.

  Once they were inside, Danny, visibly wearied from the long drive, had gone to bed. Then Harry, taking brief stock of the surroundings and warning Elena to let no one in but himself, left.

  Following Danny’s instructions, he drove the Mercedes to a street several blocks away, where he removed the Vatican City license plates and replaced them with the original ones. Then, locking the keys inside, he walked off, the Vatican plates hidden inside his jacket. Fifteen minutes later, he was back at number 22 Via Nicolò V, taking the elevator up to the apartment. It was almost six o’clock in the morning, little more than half an hour before Father Bardoni was to meet them there.

  Harry liked none of it. The idea that Danny, in his condition, and Father Bardoni could succeed in freeing Marsciano from wherever he was being held inside the Vatican was insane. But Danny was determined and so, evidently, was Father Bardoni. What that meant to Harry was one thing alone: Danny would try and Danny would be killed—which was obviously Palestrina’s plan.

  Furthermore, if Farel had framed Danny for the murder of the cardinal vicar, and if Farel was working for Palestrina, then Palestrina himself had to have orchestrated the killing. And Marsciano knew about it or he wouldn’t be Palestrina’s prisoner now. All of which made it obvious the confession had been Marsciano’s. So, by killing Danny, Palestrina would wipe out the only trail that could lead back to him.

  And whom could Harry tell—Roscani? Adrianna? Eaton? Tell them what? What he had was nothing more than conjecture. Moreover, even if he had proof, the Vatican was a sovereign country and not bound by the laws of Italy. Meaning, that outside the Vatican itself, no one had the legal authority to do anything. Still—and this was Danny’s agony—if they did nothing, Marsciano would be killed. And Danny was going to do everything he could to prevent that, even if it cost him his own life.

  “Shit,” Harry said to himself as he came into the apartment and locked the door behind him. He was in as much damn trouble as Danny. Not just because he was his brother, but because he’d promised Danny he wouldn’t lose him to anyone the way he’d lost Madeline to the ice. Why did he do that? Why the hell did he keep making these kinds of promises to his brother?

  “I have not been to Rome often and so was not certain where this place was…”

  Harry’s introspection was cut short as Elena came eagerly toward him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Leading him into the living room, Elena took Harry to a large window on the far side of it. The pale of the early light revealed what they could not have seen in the dark when they arrived, a view that looked directly across a street toward a high, yellow-brick wall that ran as far as Harry could see in both directions. On the far side of it to the right, and deep in shadow, were a number of nondescript buildings, and to the left what looked like the tops of trees, as if the wall enclosed some kind of large park.

  “I don’t understand. . ,” Harry said, unsure of Elena’s interest.

  “It’s the Vatican, Mr. Addison… part of one side of it anyway.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I have toured the gardens just over the wall.”

  Harry looked back, trying to find a landmark he could recognize, get some sense of where they were in relation to the public front and St. Peter’s Square. Still, he couldn’t get his bearings. He was about to question her again when he looked up and a chill came over him; what he had taken for skyline was a huge building still in shadow, but its top was full in sunlight. He was looking directly at St. Peter’s itself.

  “Christ,” he said under his breath. Not only had they landed in Rome unmolested, they had also been given the keys to a piece of real estate barely a stone’s throw from Marciano’s prison.

  For the briefest moment Harry rested his head against the glass and closed his eyes.

  “You are tired, Harry…” Elena’s voice was hushed, comforting, in the way a mother might talk to her child.

  “Yes,” he nodded, then opened his eyes to look at her.

  She was still in the business suit the priests had found for her in Bellagio, still had her hair pulled back. Yet it struck Harry that this was the first time he was seeing her not as a nun but as a woman.

  “I slept during our drive here, you did not,” she said. “There is another bedroom here…. You should sleep… at least until Father Bardoni comes.”

  “Yes…,” Harry started to say. Then, out of nowhere, he realized that he had a major problem. Elena. The gravity of what Danny and Father Bardoni were planning had suddenly become dangerously real, and he couldn’t let Elena stay and be part of it.

  “—Your parents are alive… ,” he said cautiously.

  “What does that have to do with sleep?” Elena cocked her head, looking at him with the same caution.

  “Where do they live?”

  “Tuscany…”

  “How far is it from here?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s important…”

  “Roughly two hours by car. We passed through it on the Autostrada.”

  “And your father has a car. He drives?”

  “Why?”

  “Does he have a car?” Harry said again, harder and more directly. “Does he drive?”

  “Of course.”

  “I want you to call him and ask him to come to Rome.”

  Abruptly Elena felt fire shoot through her. She leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms defiantly in front of her.

  “I cannot do that.”

  “If he leaves now, Elena,” Harry said, emphasizing her name, as if to silence her protest, “he can be in Rome by nine. Nine-thirty at the latest. Tell him to pull up in front of the building and stay in the car. That when you see him, you’ll come down and get in and he is to drive away immediately. No one will ever k
now you were here.”

  Elena could feel the fire grow hotter, her indignation rise. How dare he? She had feelings and she had pride. And she was not about to call her father, of all people, to have herself be picked up like some red-faced schoolgirl left abandoned in the big city the morning after.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Addison,” she said, bristling, “but my duty is to care for Father Daniel. And I will stay with him until I am formally relieved of that duty.”

  “That is very easy, Sister Elena.” Harry glared at her. “You are hereby formally, reliev—“

  “By—my—mother—general!” The veins stood out in Elena’s neck.

  A shattering silence followed. The two staring at each other. Neither realizing this was their first lover’s quarrel—and that one of the lovers had just drawn a deep line in the sand. Yet who would blink first was never answered.

  CRASH!

  Suddenly the kitchen door flew open, slamming hard off the wall behind it.

  “Harry!—“

  Danny came through the doorway fiercely. Thrumping the wheels of his wheelchair with both hands, his eyes wide with alarm, a cell phone in his lap.

  “I can’t reach Father Bardoni. I have three numbers for him. One’s a cell phone he always has with him. I’ve tried them all! No answer!”

  “Danny, take it easy.”

  “Harry, he was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago! If he was on his way, he’d at least be picking up the cell!”

  119

  HARRY TURNED THE CORNER ONTO VIA DEL Parione and started down the block. By his watch it was now seven-twenty-five, nearly an hour after Father Bardoni was to have met them at the apartment. As he walked, he tried the cell number again with the phone Adrianna had given him.

  Still nothing.

  Common sense told him that for one reason or another Father Bardoni had simply been delayed. It was no more complicated than that.

  Ahead was number 17, Father Bardoni’s building. Behind it, Danny had said, was an alley and, off it, an old wooden gate to the rear entrance of the building itself. To the left of that entrance, and under a potted red geranium, he’d find the key.

  Turning down the alley, Harry walked twenty yards and then saw the gate. Opening it, he crossed a small gravel courtyard. The pot was where it was supposed to be. Under it was the key.

  FATHER BARDONI’S FLAT, like the one they were staying in, was on the top floor, and Harry took the back stairs to it quickly. Outwardly, he was still thinking nothing unusual had happened and that there was a simple explanation for Father Bardoni’s tardiness. But inwardly, he felt the same as Danny had when he’d burst through the kitchen door.

  Dread.

  Then Harry was at the top of the stairs and turning down a narrow hallway, stopping as he reached Father Bardoni’s door. Taking a breath, he put the key in the lock and started to turn it. It wasn’t necessary. The door was unlocked, and swung open.

  “Father—?”

  There was no reply.

  “Father Bardoni—” Harry stepped into a darkened hallway. In front of him was a small living room. Like the one in Danny’s apartment, little more than utilitarian.

  “Father—?”

  Still nothing.

  To his right was a narrow hallway. There was a door halfway down and one at the end. Both were closed. Taking a breath, he put his hand on the knob to the first door and turned it.

  “Father?”

  The door swung open to a bedroom. It was little and cramped, with a small window at the back. The bed was made. A phone was on a small table beside it. That was all.

  Turning, Harry started out, then he saw a cell phone on the floor next to the bed. The phone Father Bardoni “always has with him”?

  Suddenly Harry was aware of his own presence. Something felt very wrong, as if he didn’t belong there. Stepping out of the room, he turned ever so slowly to the other door. What was there? Everything in him told him to leave right then. Walk away. Do anything but open that door.

  But he couldn’t.

  “Father Bardoni,” he said again.

  Silence.

  Reaching for his handkerchief, he put it around the knob.

  “Father Bardoni,” he said loud enough to be heard on the far side of the door.

  No reply.

  Harry could feel the sweat on his upper lip. The pound of his heart. Slowly he turned the knob. There was a click at the latch and then it opened. He saw the worn white tile of a bathroom floor and then the sink and a corner of the bathtub. Reaching up with his elbow, he pushed the door open the rest of the way.

  Father Bardoni sat in the tub. He was naked. His eyes open, staring.

  “Father?”

  Harry stepped forward. His foot touched something. The priest’s black-rimmed glasses were on the floor. Harry’s eyes came back to the tub.

  There was no water in it.

  “Father?” he said under his breath, as if he hoped for a response of some kind. All he could think of was that the priest had started to take a bath and had had a heart attack or seizure of some kind before he’d had a chance to run the water.

  One more step forward.

  “OH, GOD!”

  Harry’s heart shot into his mouth, and he backed away quickly, staring wide-eyed in horror. Father Bardoni’s left hand had been cut off at the wrist. There was hardly any blood at all. Just a stump where the hand used to be.

  120

  Milan. Same time.

  ROSCANI SAW THE RUNWAYS OF LINATE AIRPORT below them and at the same moment felt the helicopter begin to descend. Information had come at him in a rush even as he had left Lugano; more was coming in now. Castelletti and Scala, in the seats behind him, were alternately talking over the radio and compiling notes.

  Curled in Roscani’s hand was the piece he’d been waiting for, a brief but very telling fax from INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France. It read:

  French Intelligence has determined Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind is not in Khartoum, Sudan, as previously believed. Current whereabouts unknown.

  Immediately Roscani had an ARREST AND DETAIN order sent out from Gruppo Cardinale headquarters in Rome to all police agencies throughout Europe. Additionally, Thomas Kind’s most recent photograph had been rushed to the worldwide media along with a brief, declaring Kind as a fugitive wanted by Gruppo Cardinale in connection with both the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome and the bombing of the Assisi bus. The part about the bus had come to Roscani the moment he’d suspected Kind. It was his trademark, known to police and intelligence agencies worldwide, which he used time and again when he was in a position of employing trigger men instead of doing the job himself. It was simply “kill the killer”—let the man or woman do the job and then get rid of him or her as expeditiously as possible, leaving no channel back to Kind himself or to those who had hired him.

  It was the reason for the Spanish Llama pistol found at the scene of the burned bus. Kind had put a killer onboard to get rid of Father Daniel and then he’d blown up the bus to eliminate the killer and leave no trace back. The trouble was the gunman’s timing was off and it hadn’t worked. But the gun and the blown bus together pointed right at Thomas Kind.

  And now, with information Castelletti and Scala were getting from Milan, the police there were bringing things to a fast closure. Aldo Cianetti, the fashion designer found murdered on the Como-to-Milan section of the Autostrada, had been onboard the last hydrofoil from Bellagio and seen talking with a woman wearing a large straw hat—a woman a young Bellagio policeman recalled as having both an American passport and accent—and had left the boat with her when it had docked in Como.

  Meanwhile, investigators in Milan had moved out in a grid pattern from the street near the Palace Hotel where Cianetti’s dark green BMW had been found. A short distance away was Milano Centrale, Milan’s main railroad station. Time of death had been estimated at sometime between two and three in the morning. And police canvassing ticket sellers on duty at the station between two a
nd five A.M. had found an outspoken middle-aged female railroad employee who had sold a ticket to a woman in a large straw hat just before four in the morning. The woman’s destination had been Rome.

  Woman? It had been no woman, it had been Thomas Kind.

  There was a roar and light bump as the helicopter touched down. And then the doors were opened, and the three policemen were ducking under the rotor blades and running across the tarmac toward the chartered jet that would take them to Rome.

  “The SCV 13 diplomatic plates are what we thought,” Castelletti shouted as they ran. “One of the low-numbered plates assigned to cars chauffeuring the pope or high-level cardinals. No one plate is designated to any person in particular. SCV 13 is currently assigned to a Mercedes which is away from the Vatican grounds being serviced.”

  The Church.

  The Vatican.

  Rome.

  The words pierced Roscani’s mind. He heard the roar of jet engines and felt himself pushed back into his seat as the aircraft hurtled down the runway. In twenty seconds they were up and airborne, with the sound of the landing gear closing into the fuselage beneath them. What had begun with an investigation into the assassination of the cardinal vicar of Rome was returning there, full circle.

  Loosening his seat belt, Roscani plucked the last cigarette from its tattered pack, put the empty pack back in his jacket pocket, then stuck the cigarette in his mouth and looked out. Here and there the sun glinted off something on the ground, a lake or a building, as all of Italy seemed to bask under a cloudless sky. It was an ancient land. Beautiful and serene, yet trampled endlessly by scandal and intrigue that operated on every level. Was any land or history free of it? He doubted it. But he was Italian, and the country beneath him his. And he was a policeman, charged with enforcing its laws and seeing justice done.