Day of Confession

  “Harry—,” Danny said, “we’ve got air cover. I don’t know who it is. Go the other way, come down by Vatican Radio and in past the Ethiopian College. By then we’ll be closer, and I can see what the hell’s going on.”

  10:50 A.M.

  “Stay here!” Roscani yelled at Scala and Castelletti. Then, turning, he ran down the track after the little oily-green engine just as it chugged in through the open gates and vanished in the massive hang of smoke.

  For a moment Scala and Castelletti stood open-mouthed, watching him. Little by little Roscani had been walking down the track following the engine, but his move and the quickness of it had caught them by surprise. Suddenly they started to run after him. A dozen yards later they stopped as they saw him reach the opening in the wall and disappear into the gloom. From where they stood, it looked like the entire Vatican was either on fire or fully under siege.

  Suddenly an Italian Army helicopter roared in directly overhead. At the same time Farel’s voice crackled loudly over the radio, identifying himself and telling the WNN Skycam helicopter to vacate Vatican airspace immediately.

  “DAMMIT,” ADRIANNA SAID at the order. Then she heard the rotors overhead crank up and her Skycam pull away.

  “Keep south of the wall,” she shouted into the phone. “When that engine comes out, stay with it!”

  FOR SOME REASON THE WORK engine had stopped just outside the open gates, and Roscani crossed the tracks behind it quickly, moving to his right and past the station. Coughing, his eyes tearing with the smoke, he pulled open his jacket and slid a 9mm Beretta automatic from his belt. Straining to see, he went up the road in the direction of the tower. What he was doing was totally illegal, but he didn’t care. The law was fucked and could go to hell. He’d made the decision in an instant as he walked down the tracks after the work engine and saw the huge gates pull back for it. The open portal in the wall was all he needed, and he went for it just like that, all fire and emotion and the knowledge that he had to do something.

  And now, as he fought the smoke and tearing eyes and just tried to breathe, he prayed to God he wouldn’t lose his bearings and get lost, that he would somehow find the Addisons before Farel’s gunmen or Thomas Kind did.

  * * *

  THOMAS KIND RAN FORWARD, Walther mascinen pistole in hand, wiping his eyes, trying not to cough with the acrid smoke. It was already hard enough to see anything, and the physical act of coughing jarred and threw him off even more.

  Running across the lawn, jumping a low hedge, he suddenly lost his bearings and stopped. It was like being on a mountain on skis in a whiteout. Up, down, or sideways, everything was the same.

  He could hear emergency sirens far to his left. Above, and also to the left, was the heavy thud of rotors from what he assumed was the Italian Army jet helicopter circling to land on the roof of the papal palace. Pulling up his radio, he spoke into it in Italian.

  “This is S. Copy.”

  Silence.

  “This is S,” he said again. “Copy.”

  HERCULES SWUNG ALONGSIDE Harry and Marsciano as they made their way quickly along the narrow road toward Vatican Radio. The two-way radio in Hercules’ belt spat with Thomas Kind’s voice.

  “Who is that?” Marsciano asked.

  “I think someone we want nothing in the world to do with,” Harry said, knowing, without knowing, that it was Thomas Kind. Harry coughed, looking at his watch.

  10:53 A.M.

  “Eminence,” he said suddenly. “We have five minutes to get past the Ethiopian College to the tracks and into the railroa—“

  “Mr. Harry!” Hercules suddenly cried out.

  Harry looked up. A black suit stood directly in front of them, less than five feet away in the smoke. He had a huge pistol in either hand—revolvers. He stepped forward. He was tall and youthful and had wavy hair. He looked for all the world like a young Dirty Harry.

  “Put your gun on the ground,” he said to Harry in English with a thick French accent. “The waist pack, too.”

  Slowly Harry eased the Calico out and set it on the ground, then unclasped the waist pack and let that fall, too.

  “Harry—” Danny’s voice jumped out from the cell phone in his belt.

  “Harry!”

  At that moment something happened that startled them all. A light breeze wafted across, lifting the smoke ever so slightly. At the same time came the distant sound of the work engine’s whistle as it passed through the gates. The black suit suddenly smiled. The train was coming, the trio in front of him would never make it.

  It wasn’t much, just a tiny moment, and what Hercules had been looking for. In a single motion he shifted his weight to his left crutch and flung the right.

  The black suit cried out in surprise as the crutch struck his right hand sending one gun flying off. Recovering, he swung the other gun toward Harry, his finger closing on the trigger. At the same instant Hercules threw himself forward. Harry saw the gun buck in the black suit’s hand, heard its heavy report just as Hercules crashed into him, knocking them both to the ground.

  Harry’s fingers found the Calico. What happened next was in flashes. Split seconds. Pieces. Bits. Passion. Fury. Harry was across the ground and on the black suit. Arm around his neck. Tearing him off Hercules. Then suddenly the black suit wrenched free.

  In an instant he had Harry by the hair with both hands and was jerking him forward, slamming his forehead hard into Harry’s with a vicious head butt. Harry saw a stabbing bolt of light and then blackness. A split second later, his vision returned to see the Calico in the black suit’s hand inches from his face.

  “Fuck you!” the black suit screamed, his finger squeezing the trigger.

  Immediately there was a thundering gunshot. Followed in lightning succession by three more horrendous blasts. Harry saw the black suit’s entire head explode in what seemed like slow motion. Then his body arched and he fell back, the Calico dropping to the grass beside him.

  Harry whirled, looking up.

  Roscani was coming down the hill toward them, his Beretta pointed directly at the dead black suit, as if there were some chance the man might actually get up again.

  “Harry, the engine!” Danny’s voice came out of a fog from the cell phone at Harry’s waist.

  Harry got to his feet, picking up the Calico as Roscani came nearer. He started to say something, then froze, staring up the hill behind him.

  “Look out!” Harry yelled.

  Roscani spun. The two black suits Hercules had sent running toward the helicopter pad were rushing toward them. They were thirty yards away, coming through the smoke.

  Roscani glanced at Hercules. His face was ashen, his hand over his stomach, a circle of blood widening from it.

  “Get out of here!” Roscani yelled, turning and dropping to one knee. His first shot hit the lead black suit in the shoulder, spinning him around, the second kept coming.

  Behind him Harry heard a barrage of gunshots. He could feel bullets whizz by inches away as he bent to pick Hercules from the ground. As he did, he suddenly remembered Marsciano.

  “Eminence—,” he said, looking up.

  There was no one. Marsciano was gone.

  157

  ROSCANI LAY PRONE IN THE GRASS. THE FIRST black suit was fifteen yards away sprawled on his back and moaning, the second was facedown in the grass not more than ten feet from Roscani, his eyes open but lifeless, blood slowly oozing from a hole between his eyes.

  Taking a chance there had been only the two, Roscani rolled over and looked down the hill in the direction Harry had carried Hercules. He could see only the swirl of smoke that instead of dissipating was becoming thicker.

  Getting up cautiously, he glanced around for more black suits, then went to the dead man in front of him. Taking the man’s gun, Roscani slipped it in his belt, then moved off toward the black suit still lying moaning on the ground ahead.

  10:55 A.M.

  “Danny.” Harry’s urgent voice came over the open phone line.
“Where are you?”

  “Close to the station.”

  “Get on the freight car. I’ve got Hercules, he’s been shot.”

  Elena stopped. They were at the edge of the trees and behind a hedge across from the Vatican City Hall and the Mosaic Studio.

  Directly ahead was the railroad station, and to the right of it she could see a part of the freight car. Then came the blast of an air horn, and a dirty, bright green work engine chugged slowly into view. Abruptly it stopped, and a lone man with white hair walked out from the station, a clipboard in his hand. Stopping at the track he seemed to note the number painted on the engine, then moved to it and climbed aboard.

  “I don’t know if Hercules is going to make it.”

  Elena glanced at Danny. They could both hear the fear, the desperation in Harry’s voice.

  “Danny.” Harry’s voice came again. “Marsciano’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know where, he went off on his own.”

  “Where were you when he did?”

  “Near Vatican Radio. We’re passing the Ethiopian College now.…

  Elena, Hercules is going to need you.”

  Elena leaned into the phone. “I’ll meet you, Harry. Just be careful…”

  “Danny—Roscani’s here, so is Thomas Kind. I’m sure he knows about the train. Watch it.”

  “DON’T MOVE!” Roscani commanded, his Beretta held military style in both hands and pointed at the moaning black suit.

  As he drew closer, Roscani could see the man on his back. One leg was twisted under him, and his eyes were closed. Now he could see a bloodied hand limp across his chest; the other was out of sight beneath him. The man was going nowhere. In the distance came the sound of the train whistle. It was the second blast within seconds. Roscani turned quickly, looking through the smoke in its direction. Harry and Hercules had to be going toward it. Maybe Marsciano, too, and Father Daniel and Elena Voso. That meant there was every chance Thomas Kind was going there as well.

  Instinct made Roscani turn back. The black suit was raised up on an elbow, an automatic in his hand. Both men fired at the same time. Roscani felt a jolt. His right leg collapsed under him, and he went down. Rolling over, he came up on his stomach firing. There was no need, the black suit was dead, the top of his skull blown away. Grimacing, Roscani struggled to his feet, then, crying out, slumped back down. A patch of red spread across the beige material of his upper pant leg. He’d been shot in his right thigh.

  THERE WAS A deafening roar, and the whole building shook.

  “Va bene,”—Okay—crackled through Farel’s radio.

  Farel nodded and two jumpsuited Swiss Guards carrying automatic rifles pushed open the rooftop door. And they went out into smoky daylight, the guards first and then Farel, holding firmly onto the Holy Father’s arm, guiding the white-clad old man out.

  A dozen more heavily armed Swiss Guards were on the ancient rooftop as they crossed it, moving hastily toward the Italian Army helicopter balanced on the edge of the terrace wall, its rotors slowly turning. Two army officers waited in its open doorway, two of Farel’s black suits with them.

  “Where is Palestrina?” the pope asked Farel, looking around, fully expecting his secretariat of state to be waiting to leave with him.

  “He said to tell you he would join you later, Holiness,” Farel lied. He had no idea where Palestrina was. Had not communicated with him in the last half hour at all.

  “No.” The Holy Father suddenly stopped at the helicopter’s open door, his eyes fixed on Farel’s.

  “No,” he said again. “He will not join me. I know it, and he knows it.”

  With that, Giacomo Pecci, Pope Leo XIV, turned away from Farel and let the black-suited Vigilanza help him into the helicopter. Then they and the Italian Army officers followed him onboard. The door closed, and Farel moved back, waving to the pilot.

  A thundering roar was followed by an immense blast of wind, and Farel and the Swiss Guards ducked away as the machine lifted skyward. Five seconds, ten. And then it was gone.

  158

  MARSCIANO HAD SEEN THE TOWERING FIGure through the smoke at the same moment Hercules had thrown his crutch at the black suit. Seen him come up the hill on the far side of the Vatican Radio tower, moving steadily toward it. In that instant Marsciano knew he would not be on the train when it left. Father Daniel or not, Harry Addison and the curious, miraculous dwarf or not, there were other things here. Things that he, and he alone, had to deal with.

  PALESTRINA NO LONGER wore the simple black suit with its humble clerical collar; instead, he was dressed in the vestments of a cardinal of the Church. A black cassock with red piping and red buttons, a red sash at his waist, a red zucchetto on his head. A gold pectoral cross that hung from a gold chain around his neck.

  He had paused at the Fountain of the Eagle on his way there, finding it easily, even in the dense smoke. But for the first time ever, the aura of the great heraldic symbol of the Borgheses, which had always touched him so deeply and so personally, from which he had drawn strength and courage and certitude, failed him. What he gazed upon was not magic, did not feed the secret warrior-king in him, as it always had. What he gazed upon was the ancient statue of an eagle. A sculpture. An adornment atop a fountain. Nothing.

  A great breath was expelled from within him, and, hand over nose and mouth against the horrid, acrid smoke, he moved on toward the only refuge he knew.

  He could feel the thrust of his giant body as he moved up the hill. Feel it even more as he threw open the door and started up the steep, narrow marble stairway toward Vatican Radio’s upper floors. More still as he pushed, heart pounding, lungs bursting, to kneel finally on the black marble floor before the altar of Christ in the tiny chapel just off the empty and vacant broadcast rooms.

  Empty. Vacant.

  Like the eagle.

  Vatican Radio was his spire. Self-chosen. The place from which to command the defenses of the kingdom. The place from which to broadcast to the world the greatness of the Holy See. A Holy See more exalted than ever—one that controlled the appointment of bishops, rules for the behavior of priests, the sacraments, including marriage, the establishment of new churches, seminaries, universities. One that over the next century would be joined, little by little—hamlet to town to city—by a new flock representing one-quarter of the world’s population, making Rome again the centerpiece of the most powerful religious denomination on earth. To say nothing of the enormous financial leverage to be garnered through control of that country’s water and power, which in turn would govern when and where and what could be built or grown, and by whom. In a very short time a once-powerful saying would become the new and lasting one—and all because Palestrina had had the keenness to foresee and create it. Roma locuta est; causa finita est. “Rome has spoken,” it translated; “the matter is settled.”

  Except that it was not. The Vaticano was under siege, part of it burning. The Holy Father had seen the darkness. The Eagle of the Borghese had given him nothing. He had been right about Father Daniel and his brother the first time. They had been sent by the spirits of the netherworld; the smoke they had created was filled with darkness and disease, the same that had killed Alexander before. So it was Palestrina and not the Holy Father who was mistaken: the thing perched on his shoulder was not the emotional and spiritual infirmities of an old and fearful man but indeed the shadow of death.

  Suddenly Palestrina raised his head. He’d thought he was alone. He was not. There was no need to turn. He knew who it was.

  “Pray with me, Eminence,” he said softly.

  Marsciano stood behind him.

  “Pray for what?”

  Slowly Palestrina rose up and turned. Looking at Marsciano, he smiled gently. “Salvation.”

  Marsciano stared.

  “God has intervened. The poisoner has been caught and killed. There will be no third lake.”

  “I know.”

  Palestrina smiled once more and the
n slowly turned back to kneel again in front of the altar and make the sign of the cross. “Now that you know, pray with me.”

  Palestrina felt Marsciano step behind him. Suddenly he grunted. And there was a piercing light brighter than any he had ever seen. He could feel the blade pierce the center of his neck. Between his shoulder blades. Feel the strength and rage in Marsciano’s hands as he pressed it down.

  “There is no third lake,” Palestrina cried. His chest heaved, his massive hands and arms clawing, flailing behind him to reach Marsciano. But unable to.

  “If not today, tomorrow. Tomorrow you would find a way to create another horror. And after that, another. And then another.” In his mind Marsciano saw only the anguish of a face seen in close-up on his television screen only moments before Harry Addison had come. It had been that of his friend Yan Yeh as the Chinese banker was led to a waiting car in the Beijing compound after having been informed of the deaths of his wife and son, poisoned by the water in Wuxi.

  Staring blindly at the altar cross, over the white blaze of Palestrina’s hair in front of him, Marsciano felt the ornate letter opener in his hands as he pushed down, twisting slowly and with all his might as he did, driving it deeper into the neck and body that roiled and writhed like some monstrous serpent trying to escape.

  Then he heard Palestrina cry out and felt his body shudder once against the blade, and then he was still. A huge breath escaped Marsciano and, letting go, he stumbled back. Bloodied hands before him. His heart pounding. Horrified at what he had done.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God”—his voice was a whisper—“pray for us sinners, now and at the moment of our death…”

  Suddenly, he felt a presence and looked around.

  Farel stood in the doorway behind him.

  “You were right, Eminence,” he said softly, and closed the door behind him. “Tomorrow he would have found another lake…” Farel’s eyes went to Palestrina and he stared for a long moment before he looked back to Marsciano.