“What you did had to be done. I had not the courage…. He was, as he said, a street urchin, a scugnizzo… nothing more.”
“No,” Marsciano said. “He was a man and a cardinal of the Church.”
159
10:58 A.M.
EATON STOOD NEAR THE BACK CORNER OF the railroad station, breathless and sweating, trying to stifle a coughing fit from the inhaling of smoke. The scant breeze that had come helped some but not enough, except that it had cleared the air just a little, enough for him to see what he saw now—Harry Addison coming down the grassy slope to his right, carrying the dwarf he’d left the apartment on Via Nicolò V with in his arms. He was half walking, half running, using a stand of trees that lined the roadway to the rail station for cover.
Fifty feet in front of him, Eaton saw the green engine inch toward an old and rusting freight car, which, he was certain, had to be the escape wagon. Glancing back he saw the rusty tracks leading out through the open gates in the Vatican wall. Now he looked back, searching for Father Daniel. If he could find him, that opening was the way he would take him, one way or another, even if he had to carry him.
Crossing behind the station, Eaton came onto the tracks with his back to the open gate. In front of him he saw the white-haired, white-shirted stationmaster standing on the platform watching the work engine near the freight car. The man was a problem, as was the two-man crew he’d seen on the engine. But none of them were half the problem he saw now. Adrianna, suddenly, and from nowhere, was crossing the grassy hill toward Harry Addison and the dwarf.
He saw Harry stop when he saw her. Then heard him yell something, as if to tell her to go away. But it made no difference. She kept coming, and now she reached them and was moving alongside, looking at the dwarf in Harry’s arms then back to Harry himself. Whatever she said or was saying, Harry Addison kept going, heading downhill, toward the tracks.
“Dammit,” Eaton swore under his breath, his eyes moving off again, searching for Father Daniel.
“ADRIANNA, GET OUT OF HERE! You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing!” Harry yelled, half stumbling with Hercules in his arms.
“I’m going with you, that’s what the fuck I’m doing.”
They were almost at the bottom of the hill. Almost to the tracks. Harry could see the green work engine nose to nose with the freight car, its engineer and brakeman with their backs to them working at the couplings. Saw the white-haired stationmaster turn and go back inside.
“Your brother’s in the freight car, isn’t he? The trainmen don’t know it, but that’s where he is.”
Harry ignored her. Kept walking, praying the trainmen wouldn’t look up and see them. Hercules grunted and Harry looked down at him. The dwarf smiled feebly.
“The Gypsies are going to meet the train when it stops…. Don’t let the police have me, Mr. Harry…. The Gypsies will bury me…”
“Nobody’s going to bury you.”
Suddenly the trainmen were walking away from the coupling, moving toward the engine.
“They’re getting ready to leave!” Immediately Harry was pulling Hercules tight to his chest. Starting to run the short distance to the tracks. Adrianna stayed right with him.
Ten seconds later they were there. Crossing the tracks behind the freight car, running alongside it, out of sight of the trainmen.
Harry’s eyes watered, his lungs on fire from the smoke and exertion of carrying Hercules. Where the hell were Danny and Elena? What had happened to Roscani? Then they were at the freight car door and he stopped. It was open.
“Danny. Elena—“
No reply.
Suddenly the train whistle sounded. They heard the engine’s diesel rev up. A puff of brown-black exhaust rising from its smokestack.
“Danny—,” Harry called again. Nothing.
Again the train whistle. Harry glanced at his watch.
11:00 A.M. exactly.
No time, they had to get into the car and do it now.
“Get in.” Harry looked quickly to Adrianna. “I’ll hand him up.”
“All right—“
Putting both hands on the freight car’s floor, Adrianna pulled herself up and in. Then she turned and Harry set Hercules in her arms.
The dwarf coughed, grimacing as she strained to lift him. Then she had him up, and Harry was coming into the dimly lit car behind her. Suddenly he froze.
Thomas Kind stood directly in front of him. Elena was with him, eyes wide with fright, an ugly machine pistol to her head.
160
11:04 A.M.
SCALA LEANED ON THE HOOD OF ROSCANI’S blue Alfa, a set of binoculars trained on the distant gates. All he could see was the slight bend of the tracks as they curved inside the wall and a small part of the station but that was all. Behind it everything, despite the new breeze, was still thick smoke. Castelletti stood halfway down the tracks in front of him, staring at the same gape in the wall. Despite the wail of sirens, they had heard the gunshots, and as much as they knew their job was to wait for the train to come out and follow it to where it stopped, both had to work with all they had not to rush in after Roscani. But they couldn’t, and they knew it. All they could do was watch and wait.
“YOU HAVE A GUN, Mr. Addison. Please give it to me.”
Harry hesitated; Kind pushed the machine pistol up under Elena’s ear.
“You know who I am, Mr. Addison…. And what I will do…” Thomas Kind’s voice was calm, a slight smile crossing his lips.
Slowly Harry reached into his belt and lifted out the Calico.
“Put it on the floor.”
Harry did, then stood back.
“Where is your brother?”
“I wish I knew…” Harry’s eyes went to Elena.
“She doesn’t know either,” Thomas Kind said with the same calm. Elena had been alone, running to the freight car, when Kind suddenly came down over the edge of the wall and grabbed her, demanding to know where Father Daniel was. She had no idea, she told him defiantly. The father had gone one way, she another. She was a nurse, Father Daniel’s brother was bringing a wounded man to the train. And that was where she was headed, to give the service that was needed.
It was at that moment, when he had Elena by the arm and saw both the dread and the fiery resolve in her, that Thomas Kind felt the sudden savage rush of his addiction come back. He could taste it in his mouth and feel the arousal it gave him. In that instant he knew his retreat from it had ended.
“We are going to find your brother, Mr. Addison,” Thomas Kind said thinly, his calmness turned to ice.
Harry barely heard, his attention on Elena; he was staring at her, trying somehow to comfort her while at the same time find a way to get her out of Kind’s grasp. Then, out of nowhere, a man appeared in the freight car’s open doorway.
It was Eaton. “Vigili del fuoco!” Fire department, he said quickly and with authority.
“What are you doing here?” Eaton demanded in Italian. He was playing it very carefully, not looking at Thomas Kind at all, but addressing them as a group, as if the machine pistol in Kind’s hand didn’t exist.
“Taking a journey.” Kind smiled easily.
Eaton’s automatic appeared from nowhere. The move was professional, calculated, and controlled, going for a single shot between the terrorist’s eyes.
Thomas Kind barely blinked. A short burst from the machine pistol took Eaton just under his nose, blowing him out of the freight car doorway backward and across the tracks in a wash of blood and bone, and sending the automatic flying out of sight.
Elena stiffened in horror. Kind tightened his hand over her mouth.
Adrianna remained frozen where she was. She showed no expression at all. Hercules was on the floor in between Harry and Adrianna, Kind and Elena, his breath held, knowing what they all knew: another squeeze of Kind’s finger and any or all of them were dead.
161
“ADRIANNA—” SUDDENLY THE VOICE OF THE Skycam pilot came through Adrianna’s open p
hone line, the sound tinny and distant, coming from the cell phone in her jacket pocket.
“Adrianna—we’re holding just outside the Vatican wall at fifteen hundred feet. The train hasn’t moved. You still want us to stay on it?”
“Let the women go…. Let them take Hercules…,” Harry said again.
Suddenly Elena moved toward Hercules. Kind swung the gun.
“Elena!” Harry yelled.
Elena froze where she was. “He’s going to die if he doesn’t get help.”
“Adrianna—,” the Skycam came again.
“Tell him to get off the train and cover the crowds outside St. Peter’s,” Kind said quietly. “Tell him.”
Adrianna stared at Thomas Kind for a long moment, then lifted the telephone and did as she was told.
Kind took a step toward the door and looked up. Saw the Skycam helicopter break its holding pattern, fly east and then swing north to hover over St. Peter’s. Thomas Kind looked back. “Now, we’re going to get out of the train car and go into the station.”
“He can’t be moved…” Elena was looking up at Kind, pleading for Hercules.
“Then leave him.”
“He’ll die.”
Harry saw Kind’s finger dance nervously over the machine pistol’s trigger.
“Elena, do as he says.”
THEY MOVED ALONG the tracks quickly, Kind keeping Elena close, then Harry and Adrianna. Suddenly there was movement at the front of the engine. Two sets of feet were suddenly turning and running away.
Thomas Kind took a half step forward. The train’s engineer and brakeman were dashing toward the open gate in the Vatican wall. Kind’s eyes swung back to freeze on Harry in a deadly warning not to move, then he simply skewed the machine pistol sideways, turned to look, and fired two short bursts. The brakeman and then the engineer went down like suddenly dropped sacks of flour.
“Mother of God!” Elena crossed herself.
“Move,” Kind commanded, and they crossed in front of the engine. “In there,” he said next, indicating a painted door leading into the station itself.
As they moved, Harry saw the wide open gate in the Vatican wall, and, at the far end of the overpass, where the old tracks met the main line, a parked car with two men standing outside it, looking toward them.
Scala. Castelletti.
Roscani was still somewhere inside. Where?
THE PAIN IN HIS leg excruciating, Roscani alternately walked, then stopped to rest, then walked on again, his right hand pushing hard, as a pressure point against the wound in his thigh. He thought he was moving toward the railroad station, but he was no longer sure, the smoke and the trauma of his wound working to disorient everything. Still, with the Beretta in his free hand, he stumbled determinedly on.
“Halt! Hands up!” a voice suddenly barked out of the smoke in Italian.
Roscani froze where he was. Then he saw a half dozen men with rifles step out of the gloom in front of him. They had blue shirts and wore berets. They were Swiss Guards.
“I am a policeman!” Roscani yelled back. He had no idea whether they were under Farel’s direct orders or not, but he had to take the chance they were not in the same group as the black suits.
“I am a policeman!”
“Hands up! Hands up!”
Roscani stared, then slowly raised his hands. A moment later the Beretta was jerked away. Then he heard one guard speak into a two-way radio.
“Ambulanza!”the man ordered urgently. “Ambulanza!”
THOMAS KIND shut the railroad station door behind them, and suddenly they were inside the cavernous building that had once been the pope’s marble-walled gateway to the world. Daylight streamed in from the windows above, sending a cascade of brightness like theater spotlights along the center of the floor. But other than that and the dim light coming from the window looking out to the tracks, the inside was dark and cool. And, if it mattered, preciously free from the smoke.
“Now.” Kind released his grip on Elena and stepped back, looking at Harry. “Your brother was coming for the train. Since it’s still here, we will assume he is still coming.”
Harry’s eyes traveled over Kind slowly, as if he were trying to find a spot where he was most vulnerable. Then, behind Kind and through an open door, he saw a white shirt suddenly move out of sight. The trouble was he gave it too much attention.
“So?” Kind said sharply. “Perhaps your Father Daniel is here already….” Abruptly he raised his voice. “You, in the office, come out!”
Nothing happened.
Slowly Adrianna shifted position, moving a step closer to Kind. Harry looked at her, wondering what she was doing. She looked back and shook her head.
“Come out!” Kind commanded again, “Or I will come in.”
Time froze, and then a shock of white hair slowly appeared. And then they saw the rest of the stationmaster. White shirt, black trousers. A man easily in his late sixties. Kind motioned him forward. The man came out slowly. Frightened, staring, confused.
“Who else is here?”
“—No one…”
“Who opened the gates?”
The man raised a hand and pointed to himself.
Harry could see Kind’s eyes move back in his head and he knew he was going to shoot. “Don’t!”
Kind looked at him. “Where is your brother?”
“Don’t kill him, please…”
“Where is your brother?”
“—Don’t know…,” Harry whispered.
Kind half smiled, his finger squeezed the trigger and there was the muffled sound of a jackhammer.
Elena watched in horror as the stationmaster’s white shirt exploded in red. The old man held his stance for a moment then staggered backward, and, turning, fell sideways into the doorway of his office.
Abruptly Harry pulled Elena to him, turning her away from the terror.
Again Adrianna moved her position, another step closer to Thomas Kind.
“You want my brother, I’ll take you to him.” Harry said abruptly. There was no doubt at all that Thomas Kind was altogether insane, and if Danny suddenly showed up, he’d kill them all in a blink.
“Where is he?” Thomas Kind slid a fresh clip into the machine pistol.
“Outside—near the gate. The train was going to stop to pick him up…
“You’re lying.”
“No.”
“Yes. The gates open and close into the wall. There’s nothing there. No place to wait.”
Suddenly Kind was aware of Adrianna’s drawing closer and he turned toward her.
“Careful—,” Harry warned.
“What are you doing?” Kind said.
“Nothing…” She moved closer still, a half step, no more. Her eyes were locked on Kind’s.
“Adrianna, don’t.” Again Harry warned her.
Adrianna stopped. She was five feet from Kind, no more. “You are the one who killed the cardinal vicar of Rome.”
“Yes.”
“In the last few minutes you killed four more people…”
“Yes.”
“And when you find Father Daniel you’ll do the same to him… and then us…”
“Perhaps…” Thomas Kind smiled, and Harry could tell he was enjoying every moment of it.
“Why?” Adrianna said sharply. “What does it all have to do with the Vatican and the poisoning of the lakes in China?”
Harry looked at her, wondering what she was doing. Why she was pressing Kind when he had the gun and she had nothing at all to gain.
Then he realized. The same instant Kind did.
“You’re taping this, aren’t you? You’re wearing a lipstick camera, you’ve got a video rolling…” Kind smiled, wholly amused, amazed at his own revelation.
Adrianna smiled. “Why don’t you answer the question and then we’ll talk about it…”
The next happened in a nanosecond. Thomas Kind lifted the machine pistol. There was the sound of the dull jackhammer. A look of complete surpris
e swept over Adrianna. She half stumbled, then fell backward.
Elena froze in horror. Thomas Kind moved forward, lost in his own actions. Harry could see the veins bulge in his neck and forehead as he stepped over Adrianna’s body. Firing at it, no longer in bursts but a single shot at a time. Dropping down to a squatting position he smiled and shot her again, then again, almost as if he were making love to her.
It was all too fast. Too violent, too perverse. No time for Harry to react. It was just he, Elena, and Thomas Kind. In the center of the floor of an enormous room. Void of furniture. No place to run. To hide at all.
Then Harry did move. Directly for Kind. Kind saw him and stepped around, bringing the machine pistol up as he did.
“HARRY!”
Danny’s voice suddenly echoed across the empty station. Harry froze.
So did Kind, his eyes searching the empty depot.
Abruptly Harry stepped into the line of fire, directly between Kind and Elena and the door behind them.
“Elena, get out. Now!”
Harry’s eyes were locked on Kind’s. His voice full of urgency.
Elena turned, slowly, reluctantly.
“GET OUT!!!”
Suddenly, she broke. Running for the door. In a moment she was across the room and through it.
“THOMAS KIND!” Once again Danny’s voice echoed. “LET MY BROTHER GO!”
Kind felt the touch of his palm against the machine pistol’s grip. His eyes continued to search. Dark, to the bright spots of sunlight in the center of the floor, back to the dark of the room.
“SHE’S GONE, KIND. YOU’RE DONE ANYWAY. YOU KILL MY BROTHER YOU GAIN NOTHING. I’M THE ONE YOU WANT.”
“Show yourself!”
“LET HIM GO, FIRST.”
“I count to three, Father. Then I start to take him apart in pieces. One—”
Through the window Harry could see Elena climb the stairs to the engine. He wondered what the hell she was doing.
“Two—”