Part 43 (1/2)
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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sa.s.sin 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.
Pa.s.sing 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 b.u.t.ton.
”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 b.u.t.ton, 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 b.u.t.tons, he turned it.
Elena watched the elevator pa.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton that read LOCK 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 ma.s.sive ventilating equipment.
10:10 A.M A.M.
147.
THE MARBLE FLOORS, THE SMALL COVERED wooden benches, the semicircular rose marble altar with its bronze crucifix, the bright stained-gla.s.s 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 pa.s.s.... 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 ma.s.sive 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.
So the Holy Father was mistaken, and the thing sitting perched on his shoulder was not the shadow of Palestrina's death but the emotional and spiritual infirmities of an old and fearful man.
148.
10:15 A.M A.M.
ROSCANI BIT DOWN RESTLESSLY ON A KNUCKLE and watched as the work engine came slowly down the track toward them. It was old and creaky with oily soot muddying most of the once bright green paint beneath.
”It's early,” Scala said from the backseat.
”Early, late. At least it's here,” Castelletti said, sitting in front with Roscani.
They were watching from Roscani's blue Alfa parked on the roadside halfway between the railroad spur to the gates in the Vatican wall and Stazione San Pietro. As the green engine drew closer, they could hear a grating of steel on steel as the engineer applied the brakes and the rumbling machine began to slow. A moment later it drifted past them, slowing even more. Then it stopped. A brakeman jumped from it and walked up the track to the spur. They saw him unlock a mechanical hand switch, then reach up and tug on a steel bar connecting it to the rail switches. A moment later he waved to the engine. There was a puff of brown diesel exhaust from the smokestack and it moved forward onto the spur. When it had gone far enough, the brakeman signaled, and it stopped. Then he threw the switch back the way it had been and climbed back onboard the engine.
Scala leaned forward against the front seat. ”They go in now, it's going to f.u.c.k up everyone's timetable inside.”
Castelletti shook his head. ”They won't. It's the Vatican. They'll sit there until precisely the time it takes to open the gates and go inside at eleven on the dot. No Italian trainman is going to risk p.i.s.sing off the pope by being early or late.”
Roscani glanced at Castelletti, then looked back to the work engine. He was increasingly troubled by what he had done. Maybe he had wanted justice too much and had let some part of him reason the Addisons could somehow deliver it to him. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized they were all crazy. And he most of all for letting it happen. The Addisons might think they were prepared for what they were getting into, but the truth was, they weren't, not when they were going up against Farel's black-suited secret service, never mind someone like Thomas Kind. The trouble was-and he knew it-his insight had come too late, the event had already begun.
10:17 A.M A.M.