“Come on now,” he pleaded. “That’s not necessary.”
“Isn’t it?” the monsignor said. “Miss Wagner?” He waited until their eyes met. “Is it necessary?”
She paused. Brady half-expected her to spit on him. He was relieved when she shook her head tightly.
The monsignor nodded at the guard holding her. He let go.
Alicia pretended to shake him off. She rubbed her shoulder. Her lips were pressed together so hard, they were turning white. Brady knew she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“Agent Moore,” the monsignor said. “Did your informant provide you with a description of Father Randall? Did you get a . . . I believe it’s called a composite sketch?”
“No.”
“Get a description. Have a sketch artist render it, or whatever you do these days, with computers and all. Fax it to me here.” He produced a business card and held it out. Brady took it. “If there is any resemblance to our Father Randall, we will talk again. I will not hold my breath.”
After a beat, the monsignor said, “Can I trust you to find your own way out, or do you need an escort?”
“Monsignor Vretenar,” Brady said, “we came a long way. My son is in danger.”
“So you require an escort?”
Brady glared at the so-called man of God. How could Karen have been so warm and compassionate and this man be so heartless? Didn’t they serve the same God? He spun around and strode for the door at the end of the long corridor. The priest at the desk was still hunched over the newspaper, as if there had been no yells, no guards running past his post. He heard Alicia directly behind him, but before he hit the door, her footsteps stopped. He braked as well, knowing what was coming. He did not turn around but simply waited.
With the lungs of an opera diva, she bellowed the monsignor’s name and followed it with a long string of obscenities, words Brady imagined were new to the men and women and putti painted on the walls of the many rooms in earshot of her litany. Most likely, she was holding up a middle finger for good measure. Her voice was still resonating against the marble when she brushed past him and pushed through the door.
“Let’s go,” she said.
He paused. Did not hear the rush of booted feet. He pictured Monsignor Vretenar holding back the Swiss Guards with a touch, a shake of the head, and maybe a comment like, “A troubled young lady. Let her go.”
How gracious.
62
He caught up with her at the bottom of the outside stairs. She was glaring up at the immortalized countenance of Hippolytus because there was no one else around to glare at.
He reached her, said, “You all right?”
“No! No! ” She jerked her head down in frustration. “What a pompous . . . What haven’t I called him yet?”
“I think you pretty much covered it.”
She smiled thinly, rubbing her shoulder. “My right arm’s filleted and my left one gets wrenched out of the socket. I’m going to be a quadriplegic before we’re through.” She took him in. “You all right?”
“No,” he said honestly. Someone had poured lead into his body, just popped off his head and poured it in. His heart felt cloaked and heavy, his stomach compressed. If he didn’t move soon, his feet would meld into the stonework under them. He shuffled off toward the arched road from which they had reached this courtyard.
Alicia fell in beside him. “Let’s find a place to crash,” she said wearily. “We’ll come back at ’em tomorrow. There’s got to be somebody over that jerk we can talk to.”
“The pope,” Brady said.
“Somebody else. He said he was the vice prefect. We’ll get to the prefect. Or someone in personnel. Doesn’t the Vatican have its own police department? Maybe they’ll be helpful.”
“You’re an optimist.”
“And you’re a pessimist. So what? Let’s get this job done. Do you want to go back home empty-handed?”
He stopped. They were on the arched roadway, at an intersection. The way out was straight ahead. To Brady’s right was a road to points unknown. On his left were an alcove and a stone bench. He sat on it, letting his shoulders slump forward.
“We can’t go home. We have few clues and fewer resources. Whether he’s bold about it or sneaky, Gilbreath won’t let us go on with our careers. And as far as we know, somebody still wants us dead. Added up, it isn’t much of a life, being on the run.”
She sat beside him.
“All right,” she said. “So this is going to take a little longer than we planned. We’re investigators, Brady. This is an investigation. So we hit a brick wall. Let’s back up and come at it from another angle. Someone knows this Father Randall. We ask around. Get a description. We’ll go through the Vatican newspaper; I’ll search the Web. I bet we can get a photograph of this guy. Then we wait and watch. He has to come out sometime. Right?”
Brady was nodding. “We Malik him.”
“What?”
“Nab him, make him talk. Find someone like Apollo to string him out, loosen his tongue.”
“Something like that.”
He sat up straight. “Sure. Why not? These guys think they can do anything they want without consequence. I’m the consequence. Call me Mr. Consequence.” He grinned at her.
She didn’t return it. Just examined his face. She glanced around, up at the arched roof over the road. “Brady,” she said thoughtfully. “Lemme ask you a question.”
“What?”
“Back in New York, when Malik fell.”
“Yeah?”
“You had hold of him because I was hanging on to him, right?”
“I wasn’t going to let you fall, Alicia.”
“I know.” She smiled. “But you had hold of Malik’s wrist, to get him off my ankle. Then he fell.”
He nodded.
“Brady.” She paused. Eyes focused somewhere up the street in front of them, she said, “Did he slip? Or did you let him go?”
He did not move, did not speak. Slowly, he lowered himself so his forearms rested on his thighs, his hands dangling between his knees. Footfalls came from around a bend in the road. His eyes came up to see a priest with a briefcase. The man nodded a greeting. Brady nodded back, then watched him walk the rest of the roadway to the courtyard and disappear around a corner.
He turned to her. “I don’t know,” he said.
She touched his knee. “I mean, I would have tossed him out that window without thinking twice. But that’s me, Brady. That’s not—”
“Look,” he said.
She followed his gaze across the road and down the intersecting street. At the apex of a lazy curve was a small chapel, its few ornamental carvings almost obliterated by time and weather. The stone had a porous appearance, as though it was turning back into sand and would crumble away at any moment. One of its tall double doors was open, and in the darkened entryway stood a man looking at them. He was dressed all in black and hunched over with age. He raised a hand and gestured for them to come. Then he faded back into the shadows of the chapel interior.
She stood.
“Coming?”
He lifted himself off the bench.
“If this guy tries to sell us a Jesus bobble-head doll, I’m going to punch him,” he said.
They reached the chapel together and stepped in. Blackness after the brightness of the day. A row of candles flickered on a stone altar. A patch of diluted sunlight from the door fell against the wall behind the altar, faintly illuminating a large rough cross. Its beams appeared hacked into shape by an imprecise tool—an ax, Brady thought.
As their eyes slowly adjusted, the rest of the interior architecture and furnishings coalesced out of the shadows. Ten rows of pews on each side of a center aisle. Arched recesses for stained-glass windows, whose art was indistinct because no light shone through them; since the chapel’s construction, the Vatican must have grown up around it, sealing it between larger structures. The floor and walls were blocks of stone, most likely granite by their dull gray
ness. There were no ornate carvings, no florid cornices, no sinistrorse vines or columns for them to climb. The chapel was incongruous with its setting and somehow absolutely perfect.
“Hello?” Alicia called.
“Come in, please.”
The voice was strong, unhampered by age. Brady wondered if it came from the old man who had beckoned them or someone else. Shadows stirred. The old man appeared, standing in the second pew from the front. He gestured for them to sit in the pew behind his.
As they walked, he hoisted his butt onto the back of the first pew and stabilized himself by planting his black oxfords on the planked seat of the second. Brady thought it was the old man’s long-preferred way of sitting and he was determined to do it that way until he could sit no more. He seemed frail, like a bird. But his head was large, equine. Sunlight caught his eyes. They were blue and alive.
He stared at them each in turn, a grim expression pulling down the corners of his mouth and his eyes. His hand fumbled in his breast pocket, pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette. At least that’s what Brady thought it was; it might have been a joint. His hands were shaking—from age or fear, Brady couldn’t tell—and it took him a good fifteen seconds to push the cigarette between his lips. From the same pocket, he fished out a lighter. Thinking of the time it took for the cigarette to find home, Brady reached out and took the lighter from him. He lit the tip.
Alicia had found the cigarette she’d been denied in the Archives, so he lit that one too. He dropped the lighter back into the pocket. The cherry flared bright as the old man pulled on it. He blew out a billow of smoke. Tobacco. Brady smiled, thinking about the old man toking up on the other stuff.
The old man waved away the cloud and said, “You’re in too deep. You don’t know how deep.”
Alicia shot a stream of smoke out the side of her mouth. “Deep into what?” she said.
He plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it as if to see how fast it was burning. Holding it between his thumb and index finger, he waggled it at them. “This thing you’re here for,” he said. “Randall. Malik.”
Alicia coughed convulsively. Her cigarette fell into her lap, and she swatted at it as she coughed.
Brady shot forward, clutching the pew back in front of him. “How do you know about Malik?” They had not mentioned his name.
Through coughs, Alicia managed, “Are you Randall?”
The old man spared a few seconds to get the cigarette back between his lips, then spoke around it.
“I am Cardinal Ambrosi, prefect of the Secret Archives.”
“Cardinal?” Brady said.
“Oh, don’t let titles trip you up, son. Old Man Ambrosi fits me just as well. And before we continue, I must apologize for Monsignor Vretenar. You scared the bejesus out of him. He didn’t know how to handle your accusations. Nice fellow, normally.”
Alicia ground out her cigarette under her toe and said, “We didn’t accuse—”
“Sure you did, and rightly so. Correct?”
She nodded.
“You’ll pick that up, won’t you, when you leave?” He gestured at the butt her foot was still grinding into the floor. He scanned the room around them. “This is my favorite place in the world. Oldest Christian house of worship in Rome. Built shortly after St. Peter’s crucifixion in AD 64, 250 years before Constantine built his basilica over St. Peter’s tomb. Records indicate the structure was hidden by a wooden outer shell until Constantine legalized Christianity. A miracle it survived to shed its skin and show the world what it really was.” He closed his eyes and pulled on his smoke. “Lot of Christians like that,” he continued. “Hiding what they got inside, waiting for someone to come along and tell ’em it’s okay.”
He sighed contentedly, gazing around as someone else might take in the trees and birds and clouds from the vantage point of a park bench. Slowly his eyes swung back to Brady and Alicia. The grim expression had returned.
“I understand you are with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, here about some murders?”
Alicia said, “We’re not here officially. We’re on our own.”
The old man’s eyes flared in surprise. “How is that?”
“A long story. We should be supported . . . but we aren’t.”
“So it’s just you two?” He sized them up, apparently unimpressed. He closed his eyes briefly. When they opened, it seemed to Brady some issue had been resolved.
“You must tell me how you came to be seeking Father Randall. The details. You must trust that my knowledge of your story is important.”
Brady cleared his throat. “Cardinal Ambrosi—”
“Roberto. Please.”
Brady inclined his head. “Roberto, when can we speak to Father Randall?”
“I am afraid that is impossible. He is away on business.”
“Wait a minute. Your business,” Alicia said, her tone sharply accusatory. “Father Randall works for you.”
He nodded. “He does, but not in a capacity that has ever affected you.” He took a final pull on the cigarette, removed it from his mouth, and pinched the cherry between his finger and thumb. He appeared to feel nothing of the hot coal. “You see,” he said, “Father Randall serves two earthly masters. The Holy See and our antithesis, if you will. He does not realize I know about the other.”
“Antithesis?” Brady said. “I’m sorry, sir, but what are you talking about?”
“Your story first, please.”
Brady studied the old man for a minute, trying to know him better by his body language. He made eye contact with Alicia and found her glaring at him. Her jaw was set, and she shook her head no.
“Cardinal . . . uh . . . Roberto,” he said, “would you excuse us for a moment?”
“Of course.”
Brady rose and gestured for Alicia to follow him. He led her into a shadowy back corner, feeling her eyes between his shoulder blades. When he turned around, she cocked her head stubbornly.
“I think we can trust this guy,” he said quietly.
“No.” Not quietly at all. Ambrosi was looking up at the ceiling and pretended not to hear.
“He could be the break we were hoping for.”
“And he could be the person who wants us dead. He mentioned Malik; we didn’t.”
“If he wanted us dead, we’d be bleeding out on this chapel floor by now.” He took a deep breath, rolled his head on his neck. “Look, somebody is already after us. What would it hurt to tell him what we’ve been through? If there’s even the slightest possibility he can help in some way—maybe shed some light on some of the . . . weirdness—we need to risk it. We have nowhere else to go and nothing to lose.”
Her face softened. She looked over her shoulder at the cardinal. He was now staring at his hands, clasped in this lap. She faced Brady and said, “You’re the psych guy here, Brady. You deconstruct people for a living. Is it your professional opinion that he’s on the up-and-up?”
He spread his arms as if to say, I don’t know. “I can’t psychoanalyze someone I just met, but there’s something about him that inspired my trust. He’s relaxed and direct. His posture implies openness, honesty. So yes, that’s my professional opinion.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
They returned to the pew. Cardinal Ambrosi watched them earnestly.
“Everything in order?” he asked.
“We think so,” Brady said. Then, together, they explained their purpose in visiting the Pelletier crime scenes, the clues they found, and Alicia’s reluctance to let the case go when the Bureau officially came on board with a full-fledged investigative team. Brady described going home, spending time with Zach, and the attack they only barely survived.
“Where is your son now?” asked Ambrosi.
“Safe. I think.”
Ambrosi stared at him as though he knew something about Zach’s safety Brady didn’t. Or was Brady just being paranoid? He considered prodding the old man when Alicia spoke up. She described her meeting with
Father McAfee, his research into hellish near-death experiences, Father Randall’s request for his files, and the subsequent theft of them.
“Hmm,” Father Ambrosi said, rubbing his chin.
“What?” inquired Alicia.
“I’m just wondering why Father Randall requested the files if he had the inclination and means to steal them.”
“To avoid the risk of an investigation, of getting caught, especially if he expected Father McAfee to happily turn them over. He implied it’s supposed to be an honor to have your private papers archived here.”
“It is, and quite rare. But if, as you suspect, the files were used to create a hit list, why would anyone want to be known as the person who requested and received them?”
Brady realized there was something familiar and enjoyable about Ambrosi’s fielding of ideas. It was the very thing division chiefs did to kick-start stalled investigations. Even large investigative teams occasionally needed a fresh perspective. He crossed his legs and put an elbow over the back of the pew. He thought of an answer to Ambrosi’s question.
“Maybe he didn’t know what it would be used for,” he said.
“Or he didn’t make the request at all,” added Alicia. “Someone used his name, either to frame him specifically or simply to deflect attention from themselves.”
Ambrosi nodded. “You said Malik hung around to torment the priest. Perhaps his orders were to kill him, to keep him quiet about Father Randall’s request for the files. Malik was taking his time doing it, because he was evil and sadistic. It would not be the first time an underling stretched his authority in performing a duty and caused grief for his superior because of it.”
Alicia said, “It’s a common mistake of investigators, assuming everything that happened was planned. In the Pelletier case, for example. If he strikes one or two victims who never had a near-death experience, of course we would have to reconsider the possible targeting criteria and that maybe we’re dealing with a perp who is intentionally trying to throw us off. But also we would have to be open to the possibility that he made a mistake. We tend to give criminals more credit than they deserve.”