Reaching a flight of steps, he climbed them with the crowd and then stopped. In front of him several hundred more people were massed, waiting for the doors to the basilica to open. It was now eight-fifty-five. The doors would be opened at nine. Two hours exactly before the work engine came. Head down, praying someone wouldn’t suddenly look over and recognize him, Harry took a deep breath and waited.
142
HERCULES CROUCHED IN THE BATTLEMENTS of the ancient fortified wall abutting the Tower of San Giovanni. He was at the rampart’s far end, right at the tower itself and maybe twenty feet beneath its tiled, circular roof.
It had taken nearly three hours to work his way up the far side of the wall, handhold to handhold, using the morning shadows to hide him. But then he’d made the top and scrambled to where he was now, cramped and thirsty, but precisely where he was supposed to be and when he was supposed to be.
Below, he could see two of Farel’s black-suited men hidden in bushes near the tower entrance. Two more waited behind the cover of a high hedge across the narrow roadway. The main door, directly beneath him, appeared unprotected. How many more black-suited men were inside the tower he had no way of knowing. One, two, twenty, none? What was clear was what Danny had predicted: the black suits would stay back and out of sight, spiders hoping their prey would unwittingly lurch into their web.
Danny! Hercules grinned. He liked that, calling a priest by his first name, the way Mr. Harry had. It made him feel like part of the family, one in which he somehow wished he belonged. And for now, for today at least, he decided he did belong. It was that important. The stalwart dwarf who’d been abandoned by his family shortly after his birth and who had made his own way ever since, taking life as it came, all the while refusing to be its victim, suddenly found himself longing to belong. It surprised him because the pain and want were much more acute than he could have imagined. It told him one thing: he was much more human than he supposed, no matter what he looked like. Harry and Danny had included him because they needed him for what he could do, and that, in itself, gave him purpose and dignity for the first time in his life. They had entrusted him with their lives, and Elena’s life, and that of a cardinal of the Church. Whatever happened, at whatever cost to himself, he would not let them down.
Squinting against the glare of the sun, he looked down the narrow road toward the railroad station, the way they would go later. Almost directly across, beyond the bushes where the second group of black suits were secreted, he could see the landing pad for the papal heliport. In the other direction, to his right and beyond the trees, was another tower building, Vatican Radio. He looked at his watch.
9:07 A.M.
Danny and Elena came in through the main entrance to the Vatican museums with the three other wheelchair couples who had been on the shuttle bus with them: a retirement-age American couple—the man in an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap who kept staring at Danny and his New York Yankees cap, as if he either recognized him or had had enough of museums and touring and simply wanted to talk baseball; his wife, plump and smiling pleasantly, pushing him in the wheelchair; a father and his son, probably twelve, wearing leg braces, seemingly French; a middle-aged woman caring for an elderly white-haired woman, apparently her mother, and apparently English, though it was hard to tell because the older woman was so abrupt with the younger.
One by one they went through the line to buy museum tickets and then were instructed to wait for the elevator that would take them all to the second floor.
“Stop over there. Closer to the door,” the white-haired English woman snapped at her daughter. “Why you insisted on wearing that dress when you know I don’t like it is beyond me.”
Elena adjusted the camera bag over her shoulder, glancing at Danny’s as she did. They were nondescript black nylon camera bags any tourist might carry, but inside them, instead of cameras and film, were cigarettes and matchbooks; the olive oil and rum-soaked rags rolled up and packed in the plastic Ziploc bags; and the four Moretti beer bottles—two in each case—plugged and wicked, with the same incendiary fluid.
There was a dinging sound, a light came on, and the elevator door opened. They waited while a few people got out, and then entered, squeezing in together, with the white-haired woman pushing ahead.
“We will be first, if you don’t mind.”
And she was, and in the order of things, this made Elena and Danny last, forcing them to press in against the others, with the doors closing against their backs. Had they been first, or even second or third, and turned around like the others, Danny might have seen Eaton, with Adrianna. Seen him turn from the ticket window and glimpse them inside the elevator just as the doors closed.
143
HARRY WALKED SLOWLY INSIDE THE BASILica, moving just behind a cascade of Canadian tourists, stopping, as they did, to look at Michelangelo’s Pietà, his impassioned statue of the Madonna with the dead Christ. Then he eased away from the Canadians to the center of the nave, casually studying the interior of the towering dome, finally bringing his gaze down to the papal altar and Bernini’s Baldacchino, the grand canopy over it.
Then, following Danny’s directions, he moved off alone.
Crossing to the right, passing the wooden confessionals, looking easily at the sculptures of the saints Michele Arcangelo and Petronilla, he reached the monument of Pope Clement XIII. Just past it, he found a protrusion of wall. Turning measuredly around it, he saw a decorative drapery that looked as though it hung from a solid wall.
Glancing back and seeing no one, he pushed quickly through it to a narrow hallway and walked to the door at the end of it. Opening it, he walked down a short stairway to another door at the bottom and went out, finding himself instantly out of doors and squinting in the bright sunshine of the Vatican gardens.
9:25 A.M.
9:32 A.M.
Elena pushed open the emergency exit door, carefully holding it with her foot, while she put a piece of clear plastic tape over the latch to make certain it wouldn’t lock behind her.
Satisfied, she stepped out into the daylight and let the door close behind her. Then she walked off, glancing up at the second floor of the building she had just come out of, where she had been moments before when she’d left Danny alone in a hallway outside a men’s rest room near the entrance to the Sistine Chapel—the same hallway to which she would return a few minutes later.
Adjusting the camera bag over her shoulder, she walked quickly across a small courtyard and out into a convergence of tended walkways, lawns, and ornamental hedges that was one of the many entrances to the Vatican gardens. Ahead, on her right, was the split stairway rising to the Fountain of the Sacrament.
She moved toward it quickly but carefully, looking around every so often as if unsure where she was going, knowing that if she was stopped she would say simply that she had taken a wrong door from the museums and was lost.
Climbing the stairs to the right, she entered the area of the fountain proper and turned right again to see a number of large planters near the base of a conifer. Again, she looked around, puzzled, as if she were indeed lost. Then, seeing no one, she took a black nylon waist pack from her camera case and tucked it carefully behind the planters at the base of the tree. Standing, she looked around once more, and went back the way she had come, passing through the courtyard, then pulling open the door and peeling the tape from the latch. Reentering the building, she let the door close behind her, and then took the stairs to the second floor.
144
9:40 A.M.
DANNY OPENED THE DOOR TO THE MEN’S room stall cautiously and peered out. Two men stood at urinals, another was picking his teeth in the mirror. Opening the stall door wider, he wheeled himself to the men’s room door and tried to push it open. It didn’t work. Someone was on the other side trying to come in. Danny looked back. The other men were still there. Neither was watching him.
“Hey!” A voice came from the far side of the door.
Danny moved back, not knowing wha
t to expect, his hand going to the camera bag to fling it if he had to.
The door swung open and another man in a wheelchair came through from the other side—the American from the shuttle bus, wearing the L.A. Dodgers cap. The man stopped dead in the doorway, the two of them chair to chair facing each other.
“You really a Yankees fan?” The man was looking at his baseball cap, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “You are, you’re crazy.”
Danny looked past him into the hallway. People moved back and forth in a steady stream. Where was Elena? They were on a tight clock. Harry would already be outside crossing the Vatican gardens looking for the waist pack.
“I just like baseball. I collect a lot of caps.” Danny moved his wheelchair back. “You come in. I’ll go out.”
“What teams you like?” The man didn’t budge. “Come on, talk the game. Tell me the teams. Which league, American or National?”
Suddenly Elena appeared in the hallway behind the Dodgers fan.
Danny looked at the man and shrugged. “Since we’re in the Vatican I guess I ought to pick the Padres as my favorite…. I’m sorry, I have to go.”
The man grinned broadly. “Why, sure, pal, go ahead.” Abruptly he pushed into the men’s room and Danny went out.
Elena took the wheelchair and they started off. Then suddenly Danny put his hand on the wheels, slowing the chair.
“Stop,” he said.
Eaton and Adrianna Hall were crossing at the far end of the hallway in a crowd, alert, moving quickly, looking for someone.
Danny looked over his shoulder at Elena. “Turn around, go the other way.”
145
IF THERE HAD BEEN A PHONE BOOTH HARRY would have felt like Superman. There was no phone booth, just a low wall with dense shrubbery behind it across the roadway from St. Peter’s where he’d come out. It was here he ducked out of sight and stripped off the beret and priest’s clothing, revealing the chinos and work shirt underneath.
Then, burying the priest’s outfit in the thick of the bushes, he scooped up a handful of the powdery dirt at his feet and dusted it over his chest, rubbing the remainder off on his thighs. Then he moved from the bushes, waited for a small black Fiat to pass on the narrow roadway and stepped out, hoping to hell he looked enough like a gardener to pass if anyone saw him.
Resolutely, he walked down the short sweep of manicured lawn and crossed the road to the Fountain of the Sacrament. Getting his bearings, he took the short stairway to the right. At the top he stopped and looked quickly around. He saw no one. Directly before him were the planters and pine tree Danny had designated. As he moved toward them his coolness left. Suddenly he was aware of his own breathing, felt the awkward press of the Calico automatic in the waistband under his shirt, felt his pulse begin to race.
Now he was at the planters at the base of the tree. Anxiously, he glanced around, then knelt. His hand touched nylon and he could feel the breath go out of him in relief. It meant not only that Danny and Elena were there, but also that the bulky package he’d decided not to wear at the last minute, for fear it might raise the suspicion of security guards inside St. Peter’s, had been safely delivered.
Glancing around once more, he stood and slipped into the tree’s shadow. Loosening his shirt, he fastened the waist pack underneath at his waist and repositioned the Calico inside the pull of its strap. Then, tucking his shirt back in, letting it fall loosely at his waist to cover the pack’s bulge, he walked off and back down the steps. The whole thing had taken no more than thirty seconds.
9:57 P.M.The Tower of San Giovanni. Same time.
There was the cruel sound of the lock turning and then the door to Marsciano’s apartment opened and Thomas Kind entered. Anton Pilger was in the hallway behind him, hands crossed in front of him, staring in. He stayed there as Kind crossed the room.
“Buon giorno, Eminence,” he said. “If I may.”
Marsciano stood back silently as Kind looked carefully around the room, then went into the bathroom. A moment later he came out and crossed to the glass doorway. Opening the doors, he stepped out onto the tiny balcony. Putting his hands on the railing, he looked down at the gardens below and then up, overhead, at the sheer brick wall leading to the roof.
Satisfied, he came back in and closed the glass doors and for a moment studied Marsciano.
“Thank you, Eminence,” he said, finally. Crossing the room, he went out immediately, pulling the door closed behind him. Marsciano shuddered at the sound of the lock turning. By now it was a grating that had become almost unbearable.
Turning away, he wondered why the assassin had visited him for the third time in the last twenty-four hours, and each time had gone through the exact same motions.
146
“WHEN YOU REACH THE FAR DOORWAY, TURN right,” Danny said as Elena pushed him through the Room of the Popes, the last of the rooms of Borgia Apartments.
There was a rush and anxiousness to Father Daniel that Elena hadn’t seen before. The abrupt turning in the hallway outside the men’s rest room, the urgency in his voice now. It was more than concentration on what they were doing. It was fear.
Passing through the doorway, she turned him right, as he had said, moving him down a long corridor. Halfway down on the left was an elevator.
“Stop there,” Danny said.
Reaching it, they stopped and Elena pushed the button.
“What’s wrong, Father? Something happened—what is it?”
For a second Danny watched people move past, going from one gallery to another, then he looked up at her sharply. “Eaton and Adrianna Hall are in the museum looking for us. We can’t be found by either of them.”
Abruptly the elevator door opened. Elena started to push him in when they heard an all-too-familiar voice behind them.
“We will be first, if you don’t mind.”
Looking, they saw the pushy white-haired woman in the wheelchair and her dutiful middle-aged daughter from the shuttle bus. For the second time they were face-to-face with a couple from that bunch. And Danny wondered if it was a curse.
“Not this time, madam. I’m sorry.” Danny looked at her with a glare and Elena pushed him into the elevator.
“Well, I never—,” the woman ranted. “I shall not ride in same lift with you at all, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Danny leaned forward and punched a button, and the door slid closed in the woman’s face. As the elevator started down, Danny reached in his pocket and took out the set of keys Father Bardoni had given him in Lugano. Sliding one into a lock underneath the panel of elevator buttons, he turned it.
Elena watched the elevator pass the ground floor and continue down. When it stopped, the door opened onto a dimly lit service corridor. Danny took the key out and pushed a button that read LOCK.
“Okay. Out and to the left and then to the corridor immediately to the right.”
Fifteen seconds later they were moving into a large mechanical room housing the museum’s massive ventilating equipment.
10:10 A.M.
147
THE MARBLE FLOORS, THE SMALL COVERED wooden benches, the semicircular rose marble altar with its bronze crucifix, the bright stained-glass ceiling. The Holy Father’s private chapel.
How many times had Palestrina been here before? To pray alone with the pope or with the few select guests who might have been invited to join them. Kings, presidents, statesmen.
But this was the first time he had been summoned on the spur of the moment to pray alone with the Holy Father. And now as he came in, he found the pope seated in his bronze chair in front of the altar, head bent in prayer.
He looked up as Palestrina approached. Outstretching his hands, he took Palestrina’s in his and studied him, his eyes intense and filled with worry.
“What is it?” Palestrina asked.
“This is not a good day, Eminence.” The pope’s voice was barely audible. “There is a sense of foreboding. And dread and fearfulness in my heart. It was there
on arising and has sat perched on my shoulder ever since. I don’t know what it is, but you are a part of it, Eminence… a part of whatever this darkness is….” The pope hesitated and his eyes probed Palestrina’s. “Tell me what it is…”
“I do not know, Holiness. To me the day seems bright, and warm with the summer sun.”
“Then pray with me that I am wrong, that it is only a feeling and will pass…. Pray for the salvation of the spirit…”
The pope stood from his chair and both men knelt before the altar. Palestrina bowed his head as Pope Leo XIV led them in prayer, knowing that whatever the Holy Father felt, he was wrong.
The forbidding horror that had begun in the early morning hours as Palestrina had waked from his nightmare of the disease-bringing spirits, even as Thomas Kind was calling to tell him of the situation with Li Wen, had turned suddenly and inconceivably to good fortune.
Less than an hour earlier, Pierre Weggen had called to tell him that despite the revelation that the lakes had been deliberately poisoned—by, in the official words of the Chinese, “a mentally ill co-worker and water-quality engineer”—Beijing had decided to go ahead with the massive plan to rebuild the country’s entire water-delivery system. It was a gesture designed to comfort and unite a traumatized, still-fearful, and unsettled nation, and at the same time show the world the central government remained in control. It meant that despite everything Palestrina’s “Chinese Protocol” was in place and would not be turned back. In addition, what Thomas Kind had promised he had delivered—with the deaths of Li Wen and Chen Yin, any chance that a road might be discovered that would lead from China to Rome was closed forever. And under Thomas Kind’s sure hand, the final chapter removing the last possible connection would soon be written here, inside the Vatican, as the moth comes to the flame—neither Father Daniel nor his brother were Death sent by the spirits, but simply a worry that had only to be eliminated.