Day of Confession Part 16

"Yes."

Harry lifted his gla.s.s and took half the vodka in one swallow. Then he finished it and set the gla.s.s on the table in front of Eaton.

"Mr. Eaton, I am innocent. I believe my brother is innocent.... And I am scared to death of the Italian police. What can the emba.s.sy do to help? There has has to be to be something something."

Eaton looked at Harry for a long moment, as if he were thinking. Finally he stood and picked up Harry's gla.s.s. Crossing to the cabinet, he poured them each a second drink.

"By rights, Mr. Addison, I should have informed the consul general the moment Adrianna called. But then he would have been obliged to notify the Italian authorities. I would have betrayed a trust, and you would have been in the jail, or worse.... And that wouldn't have done either of us much good."

Harry looked at him, puzzled. "What does that mean?"

"We are in the information business, Mr. Addison, not law enforcement.... The job of the counselor for Political Affairs is to know the political climate of the country to which he or she is a.s.signed. In our case that applies not only to Italy but the Vatican.... The killing of the cardinal vicar of Rome and the sabotage of the a.s.sisi bus, which I know the police believe are somehow interconnected, involve both.

"As private secretary to Cardinal Marsciano, your brother was in a privileged position within the Church. If he did a.s.sa.s.sinate the cardinal vicar, it's more than probable he wasn't acting alone. If so, there's every reason to believe that the murder was not an isolated incident but part of a larger intrigue taking place at the highest levels of the Holy See...." Eaton came back and handed Harry his gla.s.s. "That's where our interest is, Mr. Addison, inside the Vatican."

"What if my brother didn't do it? What if he wasn't involved at all?"

"I have to believe what the police do, that the a.s.sisi bus was bombed for one reason, to kill your brother. Whoever did it thought he was dead, but now they doubt it and are very fearful of what he knows and what he can tell. And they will do anything to find him and shut him up."

"What he knows. What he can tell..." Suddenly Harry understood. "You want to find him, too."

"That's right," Eaton said quietly.

"No, I mean you you. Not the emba.s.sy. Not even your boss. You, yourself. That's why you're here."

"I'm fifty-one years old and still a secretary, Mr. Addison. I have been pa.s.sed over for promotion more times than you would want to know.... I don't want to retire as a secretary. Therefore I need to do something that will make it impossible for them not to raise my standing. Uncovering something going on deep inside the Vatican would do that very well."

"And you want me to help you-" Harry was incredulous.

"Not just me, Mr. Addison. Yourself. What your brother knows-he's the only one who can get you off the hook. You know that as well as I do."

Harry said nothing, just stared.

"If he is alive and in fear of his life. How would he know the video is fake? All he knows is that you want him to come in-and when he gets desperate enough, he's going to have to trust someone. Who better than you?"

"Maybe.... But it doesn't matter. Because he doesn't know where I am. And I don't know where he is. Neither does anybody else."

"Don't you think the police are meticulously backtracking through the people who were onboard the bus-both the living and the dead-to see what happened? Find out where he made the switch or where someone made it for him?"

"What good does that do me?"

"Adrianna..."

"Adrianna?"

"She is the ultimate professional. She knew about you the first day you came to Rome."

Harry's gaze drifted off. It was why she'd picked him up at the hotel. He'd even accused her of it and tried to walk away. But she'd turned him inside out and back again. The whole time she was setting him up for the story. Not so much then, but for where it might lead. Yes, she was the ultimate professional, the same as he was. And he should have been aware of it all along, because it was the place where they both lived their lives. There, and almost nowhere else.

"Why do you think she called me as soon as she got off the phone with you? She knew what she wanted and what I needed and what I could do for you. She knew that if she played it right, it would work to all our advantages."

"Jesus f.u.c.king Christ." Harry ran a hand through his hair and walked away. Then he turned back.

"You've thought it all out. Except for one thing. Even if we did find out where he is, he can't come to me, and I can't go to him."

Eaton took a sip of his drink. "You could as someone else.... New name. Pa.s.sport. Driver's license. If you were careful, you could go anywhere you wanted..."

"You can do that..."

"Yes."

Harry stared at him. Angry, manipulated, amazed.

"If I were you, Mr. Addison, I would be jubilant. After everything, you actually have two people who want to help you. And can."

Harry continued to stare. "Eaton, you are one G.o.dd.a.m.ned son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"No, Mr. Addison. I'm a G.o.dd.a.m.ned civil servant."

45.

11:00 P.M P.M.

HARRY LAY IN BED IN EATON'S APARTMENT trying to sleep, the door locked, a chair propped under the k.n.o.b, just in case. Trying to tell himself that it was all right. And that Eaton had been right. Up until now he had been alone in an impossible situation. Suddenly he had a place to stay and two people willing to help him.

Eaton had gone out, saying he would get Harry something to eat, suggesting that in the meantime Harry shower and wash his healing wounds as best he could. But not shave. For the moment the new beard was protecting him, making him someone else.

But he wanted Harry to think who he wanted to become. Something he might know if questioned, a law school professor or perhaps a journalist who wrote about the entertainment industry on holiday in Italy, or an aspiring screenwriter or novelist doing research on ancient Rome.

"I'll remain what I was, a priest," Harry had said when Eaton came back with pizza and a bottle of red wine and some bread and coffee for the morning.

"An American priest is who they are looking for."

"There are priests everywhere. And I would a.s.sume more than one is American."

Eaton had hesitated, then simply nodded and gone into the bedroom and brought out two of his shirts and a sweater. Then, pulling a 35mm camera from a drawer, he'd loaded it with film and positioned Harry against a blank wall. He took eighteen photographs. Six with Harry wearing one shirt, six with the other, six with the sweater.

After that he'd left, telling Harry to go nowhere. That either he or Adrianna would be back by noon the next day.

Why?

Why had he chosen to remain a priest? Had he thought it out? Yes Yes. As a priest, he could become a civilian at will by a simple change of clothes. And, as he had suggested, how unusual would it be to find any number who were American? Hercules had said, Hide in plain sight. Right next to them. He had, and it had worked. Any number of times. Once right under the nose of the carabinieri carabinieri.

On the other hand Eaton had been right, the police were looking for Danny. And Danny was an American priest. A priest who spoke English with an American dialect would be a natural suspect. People would look at him and wonder if, despite the beard, the face wasn't familiar. And don't forget the reward. A hundred million lire. Some sixty thousand U.S. dollars. Who wouldn't risk a little embarra.s.sment by taking a chance and calling the police, even if it turned out to be the wrong person?

Moreover, what did he know about the priesthood? What if another clergyman engaged him in talk? What if someone asked him for help? Still, the decision had been made, the photos taken, with Eaton certain to give him a background along with his papers.

A priest.

Outside, Harry heard the sounds of Rome at night. Via di Montoro was a side street and a great deal quieter than the din outside his hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps. But still the noise was there. Traffic. The incessant putt of motor scooters. People walking by outside.

Little by little it all became background, drifting into a distant symphony of nothingness. The shower, the clean bed, the whole of the ordeal carried Harry toward sleep, gently forcing him to accept his true exhaustion. Perhaps that was why he had chosen to stay a priest. Simply because it was easy. And because it had worked. And not at all for another reason... that he wished in some curious way to understand who Danny really was. To do as Hercules had offhandedly suggested. To, for a while at least, become his brother.

Closing his eyes, he began to drift off. As he did, he saw the Christmas card once more: the decorated tree behind the posed faces smiling from under Santa Claus hats-his mother and father, himself, Madeline, and Danny.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS from the Addisons"

Then the vision faded, and in the dark he heard Pio's voice. It whispered again the thing he had said in the car on the way back to Rome-"You know what I would be thinking if I were you.... Is my brother still alive? And if he is, where is he?"

MARSCIANO WAS ALONE in his library, his desktop computer dark. The books, which filled every open s.p.a.ce floor to ceiling, seemed, in his mood, little more than decorations. The only illumination was from a halogen lamp sitting near the back of his wooden desk. On top of it, and in the lamp's glow, was the envelope that had been delivered to him in Geneva in the package marked URGENTE URGENTE. The same envelope he had brought back with him on the train. Inside it was the audio-ca.s.sette he had heard that once but never played again. Why he wanted to hear it now, he didn't know. But he was drawn to it nonetheless.

Opening a drawer, he set a palm-sized tape player on the desk, then opened the envelope and slid the ca.s.sette into it. For a moment he hesitated, then deliberately he pressed the PLAY PLAY b.u.t.ton. There was a dull whirring as the tape came to speed. Then he heard the voice, hushed but perfectly clear. b.u.t.ton. There was a dull whirring as the tape came to speed. Then he heard the voice, hushed but perfectly clear.

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May G.o.d, who has enlightened every heart, help you to know your sins and trust in His mercy."

Then came the other voice: "Amen.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," the other voice continued. "It has been many days since my last confession. These are my sins-"

Abruptly Marsciano's thumb pushed the STOP STOP b.u.t.ton and he sat there, unable to go on, to hear any more. b.u.t.ton and he sat there, unable to go on, to hear any more.

A confession had been recorded without the knowledge of either the penitent or the priest. The penitent, the confessor, was himself. The priest, Father Daniel.

Filled with horror and revulsion, pushed to the darkest edges of his soul by Palestrina, he had turned to the only place he could. Father Daniel was not only an honorable co-worker and as devoted a friend as he had had in his life, he was a. priest given to G.o.d, and whatever was said would be protected by the Seal of Confession and would go no farther than the confessional.

Except that it had.

Because Palestrina had recorded it. And he no doubt had had Farel implant electronic devices in other places, private or otherwise-any place Marsciano or the others might go.

Increasingly paranoid, the secretariat was protecting himself on all fronts, playing the stirring military leader he had years earlier told Marsciano he was certain he was. He had been drunk, but in all seriousness and with great pride, he had boasted that from the day he was old enough to know such things, he believed he was the reincarnation of Alexander of Macedon, ancient conqueror of the Persian empire. It was how he had lived his life from then on, and why he had risen to become who he was and in the place he was. Whether anyone else believed it made no difference, because he did. And little by little Marsciano could see him taking on the mantle of a general at war.

How quickly and brutally he had acted after hearing the recording! Marsciano had given his confession late Thursday night, and early Friday morning Father Daniel had left for a.s.sisi, no doubt as horrified as Marsciano and seeking his own solace. There had never been a question in Marsciano's mind who had reached out to stop Danny, blowing up the bus and killing how many innocents in the process. It was the same ruthless disregard for humanity as his stratagem for China, the same cold-blooded paranoia that made him distrust not only those around him but the Seal of Confession, and in that, the canon law of the Church.

It was something Marsciano should have expected. Because, by then, he had seen the true horror of Palestrina unveiled. The specter of it frozen in his memory as if it had been stamped from steel.

ON THE MORNING FOLLOWING the immense public funeral for the cardinal vicar of Rome, the secretariat had called the still deeply shaken remaining members of the cabal-himself; prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, Joseph Matadi; and director general of the Vatican Bank, Fabio Capizzi-to a conference at a private villa in Grottaferata, outside Rome, a retreat Palestrina often used for "introspective" gatherings and the place where he had first presented his "Chinese Protocol."

On arrival, they had been taken to a small, formal courtyard nestled among manicured foliage away from the main house where Palestrina waited at a wrought-iron table, sipping coffee and making entries into a laptop computer. Farel was with him, standing behind his chair like some iron-fisted majordomo. A third person was there as well-a quietly handsome man, not yet forty. Slim and of medium height, he had jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes and was dressed-Marsciano remembered-in a double-breasted navy blazer, white shirt, dark tie, and gray slacks.

"You have not met Thomas Kind," Palestrina said as they sat down, sweeping his hand as if he were introducing a new member of a private club.

"He is helping coordinate our 'situation' in China."

Marsciano could still feel the rush of horror and disbelief and saw the same in the others as well-the sudden, involuntary inward twist of Capizzi's tight, thin lips; the immediate and grave apprehension in the once humor-filled eyes of Joseph Matadi-as Thomas Kind stood up and politely greeted them by name, his eyes fixing on each as he did.

"Buon giorno, Monsignor Capizzi.

"-Cardinal Matadi.

"-Cardinal Marsciano."

MARSCIANO HAD REMEMBERED seeing Kind there a year earlier in the company of a short middle-aged Chinese, but only at a distance, when he and Father Daniel had come for a business meeting with Pierre Weggen. At the time he'd had no idea who he was and hadn't given it much thought, except for the China connection. But now, seeing him this close and being told who he was, and realizing who he was as he looked at you and said your name, was a horrifying experience.

And Palestrina's quiet delight in their not-well-concealed reactions told them, as clearly as if he had announced it, who murdered the cardinal vicar and at whose order. Their summons to the villa had been simply a warning that if any of them secretly harbored the late cardinal's views, disagreed with Palestrina's plan for China and had thoughts of going to the Holy Father or the College of Cardinals about it, they would have Thomas Kind to deal with. It was pure and terrifying Palestrina gall, a theatrical sideshow to his ever-increasing circus of horror. Moreover, it was a clear signal that his war to control China was about to begin.

And afterward, as if it were possible to be more audacious, Palestrina had simply pushed a huge hand through his great white mane and dismissed them.

MARSCIANO'S EYES CAME BACK to the dim light of his study and the tiny recorder on his desk. With his confession he had told Father Daniel of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Cardinal Parma and of his own complicity in Palestrina's master plan for the expansion of the Church into China-one that would involve not only the surrept.i.tious maneuvering of Vatican investments but, more horrifically, the deaths of untold numbers of innocent Chinese citizens.

With his confession, and wholly unknowingly, he had condemned Father Daniel to death. The first time, G.o.d or perhaps fate had intervened. But once they knew for certain he was still alive, Thomas Kind would take up the hunt. And to escape someone like Kind would be all but undoable. Palestrina would not fail twice.

46.

Pescara. Via Arapietra. Sat.u.r.day, July 11, 7:10 A.M A.M.

THOMAS KIND SAT BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A rented white Lancia and waited for someone to open the door to number 1217, the private ambulance company across the street.

Glancing in the mirror, he smoothed his hair, then looked back to the storefront. The shop opened at seven-thirty. Just because he was early, why should he expect anyone else to be, especially on a Sat.u.r.day morning? So he would wait. Patience was everything.

7:15.

A male jogger pa.s.sed on the sidewalk in front of number 1217. Seventeen seconds later, a boy on a bicycle went by in the opposite direction. Then nothing.

Patience.

7:20.

Abruptly two policemen on motorcycles appeared in his rearview mirror. Thomas Kind did not flinch. They approached slowly and then pa.s.sed. The door across the street remained closed.

Leaning back against the leather seat, Thomas Kind thought about what he knew so far-that a late-model beige Iveco van with the Italian license plate number PE 343552 had left Hospital St. Cecilia at exactly ten-eighteen Thursday night. It had carried a male patient, a nun who was apparently a nurse as well, and two men thought to be male nurses.

The information he had requested and received, finally, from Farel had shown that Hospital St. Cecilia was one of only eight hospitals in all of Italy that, in the last week, had admitted an anonymous patient. More specifically, it was the only hospital whose patient had been male and in his early to mid-thirties. And that patient had been discharged shortly after ten the evening before.

Arriving just after noon yesterday, he had gone directly to St. Cecilia's. A brief look around confirmed what he had suspected and prepared for; that the private hospital had in place a system of security cameras covering not only the hallways and public rooms but also the exits and entrances. It was, he hoped, as extensive as it appeared.

Directed to the administrative offices, he produced a business card identifying him as a sales representative for a security systems company based in Milan and asked to see the hospital's chief of security.