Day of Confession Part 32

"He collapsed here, in my office, early this evening after attending a meeting at the Chinese Emba.s.sy. The doctors believe it to be a simple case of exhaustion. But they are not certain. As a result he is being kept under observation."

"Where is he?"

"Here, on the Vatican grounds," Palestrina said. "The guest apartments in the Tower of San Giovanni."

"Why is he not in a hospital?" From the corner of his eye, Father Bardoni saw Farel step forward to stand near him.

"Because I chose to keep him here. Because of what I believe to be the reason for his 'exhaustion'..."

"Which is?"

"The ongoing dilemma of Father Daniel." Palestrina watched the priest carefully. So far he was showing no outward display of emotion, even now, at the mention of Father Daniel.

"I don't understand."

"Cardinal Marsciano has sworn he was dead. And perhaps he still does not believe, as the police do, that he is not. Moreover, new evidence suggests that Father Daniel not only lives but is well enough to continually avoid the authorities. All of which means that he is probably able to communicate in one way or another-"

Palestrina paused, looking at the priest directly, making certain there would be no confusion interpreting what he said next.

"How joyous it would make Cardinal Marsciano to see Father Daniel alive. But since he is under the care of physicians and unable to travel, it follows that Father Daniel should come, or be brought, if it is necessary, to visit him here, at the apartments of San Giovanni."

It was here that Father Bardoni faltered, casting a quick, furtive glance at Farel-a sudden, instinctive reaction, to see if Farel fully sided with Palestrina and backed Marsciano's imprisonment. And from his cold, impa.s.sive stare, there was no doubt whatsoever that he did. Recovering, he looked back to Palestrina, incensed.

"You are suggesting that I know where he is? And could get that message to him? That I could somehow engineer his coming to the Vatican?"

"A box is opened," Palestrina said easily. "A moth flies out.... Where does it go? Many people ask that same question and hunt for it. But it is never found because, at the last minute, it moves, and then moves again, and then again. Most difficult when it is either ill or injured. That is, unless it has help... from someone sympathetic, a famous writer perhaps, or someone in the clergy... and is attended to by a gentle hand schooled in such things. A nurse perhaps, or a nun, or one and the same... a nursing sister from Siena-Elena Voso."

Father Bardoni didn't react. Simply stared, vacantly, as if he had no idea what the secretariat of state was talking about. It was a deliberate orchestration to cover his earlier lapse, but it was too late, and he knew it.

Palestrina leaned forward. "Father Daniel is to come in silence. To speak with no one.... Should he be caught along the way, his answer-to the police, to the media, even to Taglia or Roscani-is that he simply does not remember what happened..."

Father Bardoni started to protest, but Palestrina held up a hand to silence him, and then he finished, his voice just loud enough to be heard.

"Understand-that for every day Father Daniel does not come, Cardinal Marsciano's mental outlook will worsen.... His health declining with his spirit, until there comes a point where"-he shrugged-"it no longer matters."

"Eminence." Father Bardoni was suddenly curt. "You are speaking to the wrong man. I have no more idea where Father Daniel is or how to reach him than you."

Palestrina stared for a moment, then made the sign of the cross. "Che Dio ti protegga, "he said. May G.o.d protect you.

Immediately Farel crossed to the door and opened it. Father Bardoni hesitated, then stood and walked past Farel and out into the darkness.

Palestrina watched the door as it closed. The wrong man? No, Father Bardoni was not. He was Marsciano's courier and had been all along. The one responsible for getting Father Daniel out of the hands of medical personnel and to Pescara after the bus explosion and guiding his movements ever since. Yes, they had suspected-followed him, had his phone line tapped, even suspected he was the man who had hired the hydrofoil in Milan. But they had been unable to prove anything. Except he had erred in glancing at Farel, and this had been enough. Palestrina knew Marsciano commanded strong loyalty. And if Marsciano had trusted enough in Father Daniel to confess to him, he would have trusted in Father Bardoni to help save the American's life. And Father Bardoni would have responded.

And so, he was not the wrong man, but the right one. And because of it, Palestrina was certain his message would be sent.

3:00 A.M A.M.

Palestrina sat at a small writing table in his bedroom. He was dressed in sandals and a silk scarlet robe that, with his physical poise and enormous size and his great mane of white hair, gave him the look of a Roman emperor. On the table in front of him were the early editions of a half dozen world newspapers. In each the lead story was the ongoing tragedy in China. To his right, a small television tuned to World News Network showed live coverage from Hefei, at the moment the picture was of truckloads of troops of the People's Liberation Army entering the city. They were dressed in coveralls, their hands gloved, their wrists and ankles taped, their faces hidden by bright orange filtration masks and clear protective goggles to safeguard-as a similarly dressed on-camera correspondent explained-against the transfer of bodily fluids and the spread of disease as they rushed to help manage the still-multiplying volumes of dead.

Glancing off, Palestrina looked at the bank of phones at his elbow. Pierre Weggen, he knew, was at this moment in Beijing in a friend-to-friend conversation with Yan Yeh. Solemnly-and with no hint whatsoever that the idea was any other than his alone-Weggen would be laying the early seeds of Palestrina's blueprint to rebuild all of China's water systems. He was trusting the Swiss investment banker's station and longtime a.s.sociation with the president of the People's Bank of China would be enough for the Chinese businessman to embrace the idea and take it directly to the general secretary of the Communist Party.

Whatever happened, when the meeting was ended and the proper courtesies had been said, Weggen would call and let him know. Palestrina glanced at his bed. He should sleep, but he knew it was impossible. Standing, he went to his dressing room and changed into his familiar black suit and white clerical collar. Moments later he left his private apartments.

Purposely taking a service elevator, he went unseen to the ground floor, and from there out a side door and into the dark of the formal gardens.

He walked for an hour, maybe more, lost in thought, doing little more than wandering. Along the Avenue of the Square Garden to the Central Avenue of the Forest and then back, pausing for some time at Giovanni Vasanzio's seventeenth-century sculpture Fontana dell' Aquilone Fontana dell' Aquilone, the Fountain of the Eagle. The eagle itself, the uppermost piece on the fountain-the heraldic symbol of the Borghese, the family of Pope Paul V-was, to Palestrina, something entirely different: symbolic, enormously personal and profound, it brought him to ancient Persia and the edge of his other life, touching his entire being in a way nothing else could. From it, he drew strength. And from that strength came power and conviction and the cert.i.tude that what he was doing was right. The eagle held him there for some time and then finally released him.

Vaguely, he drew away, moving off in the dark. In time, he pa.s.sed the two INTELSAT earth stations for Vatican Radio and then the tower building itself, and then continued on, across the endless green stage maintained by an army of full-time gardeners, through ancient groves and pathways, along the manicured lawns. Past the magnolias, the bougainvillaeas. Under the pines and palms, oaks and olives. Past seeming miles of carefully trimmed hedges. Surprised now and then by a shower of water thrown up by the b.o.o.by traps of nighttime sprinklers set on automatic timers with no mind but the inching of the clock.

And then a lone thought turned him back. In the faint light of day, Palestrina approached the entry to the yellow-brick building that was Vatican Radio. Opening the door, he climbed the interior steps to the upper tower and then stepped out onto its circular walkway.

Resting his ma.s.sive hands on the edge of the battlement, he stood and watched day begin to rise over the Roman hills. From there he could view the city, the Vatican Palace, St. Peter's, and much of the Vatican gardens. It was a favorite place and one that not so coincidentally provided physical security should he ever need it. The building itself was on a hill some distance from the Vatican proper and therefore easily defended. The exterior walkway where he stood encircled the entire building, putting anyone approaching in clear view; and gave him a vantage point from which he could direct his defenders.

It was a fanciful sentiment perhaps, but one he took increasingly to heart. Especially in light of the singular thought that had brought him there-Farel's observation that Father Daniel was like the cat that had not used up its lives, the one man alone who could make him lose China. Before, Father Daniel had been an unwelcome glitch, a festering sore to be eliminated. That he had been able to elude both Thomas Kind and all of Roscani's men, and continued to do so, touched a chord deep in Palestrina that terrified him-his secret belief in a dark and pagan netherworld and the mystic depraved spirits who dwelled there. These spirits, he was certain, were responsible for the sudden onslaught of crippling fever and his subsequent cruel death at the age of thirty-three when he lived as Alexander. If it were they who were guiding Father Daniel- "No!" Palestrina said out loud, then deliberately turned from his perch and left, walking back down the stairs and out into the gardens. He would not allow himself to think of the spirits, now or ever again. They were not real but rather of his own imagination, and he would not let his own imagination destroy him.

104.

Hefei, China. Wednesday, July 15, 11:40 A.M A.M.

BUREAUCRACY AND CONFUSION AND HIS OWN position as water-quality inspector had delayed Li Wen from leaving the filtration plant. But finally he had done so by simply walking out of the angry turmoil of arguing politicians and scientists, and leaving. And now, heavy briefcase in one hand, the other pressing a handkerchief against his nose in a futile attempt to keep out the stench of decaying bodies, he worked his way up Changjiang Lu. Walking in the street one moment, on the sidewalk the next. Alternately moving between a flow of backed-up ambulances and emergency vehicles and the hordes of frightened, confused people desperate to find a way out of the city, or looking for relatives, or waiting in dread to feel the first chills and nausea that meant the water they had drunk earlier, that they had been told was safe, had poisoned them, too. And most were doing all three at the same time.

Another block and he pa.s.sed the Overseas Chinese Hotel, where he had stayed and left his suitcase and clothing. The hotel was no longer a hotel but now Anhui Province's Anti-Poisoning Headquarters; it had been taken over in a matter of hours, with guests abruptly thrown out of their rooms, their luggage hurriedly stacked near the front of the lobby, some of it spilling out onto the street. But even if he had time, Li Wen would not go back there anyway. There were too many people who might recognize him, stop to ask him questions, delay him further. And the one thing Li Wen could not afford was further delay.

Head down, doing his best to avoid looking at the horror-stricken faces of the people around him, he walked the few remaining blocks to the railroad station, where army trucks waited in long lines to pick up the hundreds of soldiers arriving by train.

Soaked with sweat, lugging his briefcase, he pushed around soldiers and dodged military police, each step becoming more laborious than the last, as his decidedly out-of-shape forty-six-year-old body battled the strain of the last days, the persistent heat, and the putrid, inescapable odor of rotting corpses, which, by now, permeated everything. Finally, he reached the jicun chu jicun chu, the left-luggage room, and collected the battered suitcase he'd checked early Monday when he'd first arrived; a suitcase containing the chemicals he would need to prepare more of his "s...o...b..a.l.l.s."

Doubly weighted now, he went back into the station, pushed through the platform entrance gate, and walked another fifty yards to the track area already jammed with refugees waiting for the next trains out. In fifteen minutes his train would come. The soldiers arriving on it would pile off, and he and the others would rush on. Because he was a government official, he would have a seat and for that he was extraordinarily grateful. After that, he could sit back and for a time relax. The trip to Wuhu would take nearly two hours, and then he would change trains for Nanjing, where he would spend the night at the Xuanwu Hotel on Zhongyang Lu as planned. It was there he would rest and let himself begin to feel his accomplishment and sense of retribution over the hated, dogmatic government that had so long ago killed his father and robbed him of his childhood.

Feel it and enjoy it, and wait to receive the order that would send him to his next objective.

105.

Bellagio. Gruppo Cardinale Headquarters, Villa Lorenzi. Wednesday, July 15, 6:50 A.M A.M.

SHIRT OPEN AT THE NECK, HIS JACKET OFF, Roscani looked out across the grand ballroom. A skeleton staff worked as they had in the hours since midnight, when, at the lack of any action at all, he had sent only the most critical of them off to the second floor to sleep in the cots brought in by the army. Personnel were still out in the field, and Castelletti had taken off in the helicopter at first light, while Scala had left before then to go back to the grotto with two of the Belgian Malinois and their handlers, still not convinced that they had searched all of it.

At two A.M A.M. Roscani had put in a call for an additional eight hundred Italian Army troops and then gone to bed himself. By three-fifteen he was up and showered and back in the same clothes he had worn for two days. By four he'd decided they'd all had enough.

At six A.M A.M. an announcement was broadcast over local radio and television and read in early parish ma.s.ses. In exactly two hours, at eight o'clock sharp, the Italian Army would stage a ma.s.sive door-to-door search of the entire area. The phrasing had been simple and direct: the fugitives were there and would be uncovered, and anyone found harboring them would be considered an accomplice and prosecuted accordingly.

Roscani's move was more than a threat, it was a ploy to make the fugitives think they might have a chance if they made their move before the deadline, and it was why Gruppo Cardinale police and army troops had moved into position a full thirty minutes before the announcement was made; silently watching and waiting, hoping one or all of them would cut from their hiding places and run.

6:57.

Roscani glanced at Eros Barbu's elaborate rococo clock on the wall over the silent bandstand, then looked to the men and women at the computer terminals and phone banks, sifting information, coordinating the Gruppo Cardinale personnel in the field. Finally, he took a sip of cold, sweet coffee and went outside, glancing again around the elaborate ballroom as he did.

Outside, Lake Como was still, as was the air. Walking toward the water, Roscani turned and looked back toward the imposing villa. How anyone could afford to live in such a place and in the style of Eros Barbu boggled the mind, especially the mind of a policeman. Still, he wondered, as he had earlier, what it would have been like to be part of it. Invited there to dance and listen to the music of a live orchestra and perhaps, he smiled, to be just a little bit decadent.

It was a contemplation that faded as he walked along the gravel that bordered the lake, and his thoughts again turned to the INTERPOL dossier that had provided him no information whatsoever on his blond ice picker/razor man. At almost the same moment, he became aware of a strong scent of wild flowers. The odor was far more pungent than pleasant, and instantly he was transported back four years to when he had been temporarily a.s.signed to a branch of the Ministero dell'Interno's Antimafia section working to break a series of mafia murders in Sicily. He was in a field outside Palermo with several other investigators examining a body a farmer had found facedown in a ditch. It was the same early morning as it was now, the air crisp and still, the peppery smell of the wild flowers dominating the senses as they did here. When they rolled the body over and saw that the throat had been cut from ear to ear, a shout went up from all of the investigators at once. To a man they knew who their killer was.

"Thomas Kind," Roscani said out loud, a chill punching through him from his head to his feet.

Thomas Kind. He'd never even thought of him. The terrorist had been out of the public eye for at least three years, maybe more, and thought to be ill or retired or both and living in the relative safety of Sudan.

"Christ!" Roscani was suddenly turning, running back toward the villa. It was seven-forty in the morning. Twenty minutes exactly before the door-to-door sweep was to begin.

106.

Bellagio. The car-ferry landing. Same time.

HARRY WATCHED THE HEAVILY ARMED CARAbinieri CARAbinieri questioning the man and woman in the dark Lancia in front of them. Immediately the police ordered the man out of the car and walked with him as he opened the trunk. Finding nothing, the police waved the couple on. Then as the Lancia drove across the ramp and onto the ferry, the police turned toward them. questioning the man and woman in the dark Lancia in front of them. Immediately the police ordered the man out of the car and walked with him as he opened the trunk. Finding nothing, the police waved the couple on. Then as the Lancia drove across the ramp and onto the ferry, the police turned toward them.

"Here we go," Harry said under his breath.

Five of them were in a white Ford van with Church of Santa Chiara neatly stenciled on the doors. Father Renato was at the wheel with Elena beside him. Harry, Danny, and a young, almost baby-faced priest, Father Natalini, sat in back. Elena was dressed in a business suit and wearing tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, her hair pulled back tightly and twisted in a bun. The priests were in their everyday black with white clerical collars. Danny wore gla.s.ses as well, and he and Harry, still bearded, were also in black. Long black coats b.u.t.toned to the throat with black zucchettos on their heads. They looked like rabbis, which was the idea.

"I know them," Father Renato said quietly in Italian as the carabinieri carabinieri came to either window. came to either window.

"Buon giorno, Alfonso. Ma.s.simo."

"Padre Renato! Buon giorno Buon giorno." Alfonso, the first carabiniere carabiniere, was tall and hulking and physically intimidating, but he smiled broadly as he recognized the van and Father Renato and then Father Natalini. "Buon giorno, Padre."

"Buon giorno." Father Natalini smiled from where he sat beside Danny.

For the next ninety seconds Harry felt as though his heart was coming to full arrest as Father Renato and the policemen chatted in Italian. Once in a while he caught a word or phrase he understood. "Rabbino." "Israele." "Conferenza Cristianolgiudea."

The rabbi business had been Harry's idea. It was straight out of the movies. Crazy and preposterous. And sitting there, breathless, terrified, waiting for the carabinieri carabinieri to suddenly stop talking and order them all out of the van the way they had the man in the Lancia, he wondered what the h.e.l.l he must have been thinking. Still, they'd had to do something, and quickly, after Elena had come hurriedly into his room before dawn with Father Renato, saying her mother general had arranged a place for them to stay just over the border in Switzerland. to suddenly stop talking and order them all out of the van the way they had the man in the Lancia, he wondered what the h.e.l.l he must have been thinking. Still, they'd had to do something, and quickly, after Elena had come hurriedly into his room before dawn with Father Renato, saying her mother general had arranged a place for them to stay just over the border in Switzerland.

With the approval of his superior, Father Renato had agreed to help get them there-but he had no idea how. It was while Harry was dressing that he'd absently looked in the mirror and seen his growth of beard and remembered Danny's. It was nuts, but it might work, considering they had bluffed their way through police checkpoints twice before; and because Father Renato and Father Natalini were not only clergy but also locals who knew everyone, including the police.

And then there was the L.A. thing. Harry might have been Catholic, but one didn't move far in the entertainment business without having Jewish friends and clients. He'd been invited to Pa.s.sover seders for years, had shared uncountable breakfasts at Nate and Al's deli in Beverly Hills, an oasis for Jewish writers and comedians; gone regularly with clients visiting relatives to the ethnic neighborhoods around Fairfax and Beverly, Pico and Robertson. More than once he'd marveled at the similarity of the yarmulke to the Catholic skullcap, the zucchetto, the black coats of the rabbis to those of bishops and priests. And now, for better or worse, he and Danny had become visiting rabbis from Israel, touring Italy as part of an ongoing discourse between Christians and Jews. Elena had become an Italian guide and translator from Rome, traveling with them. Though G.o.d forbid anyone should ask her, or them, to speak Hebrew.

"Fuggitivo," one of the carabinieri carabinieri said sharply. Bringing Harry back with a rush. said sharply. Bringing Harry back with a rush.

"Fuggitivo, "Father Renato nodded, adding a succinct, fiery reply in Italian. Obviously both carabinieri carabinieri agreed with what he said, because they suddenly stepped back, saluted, and waved the van forward. agreed with what he said, because they suddenly stepped back, saluted, and waved the van forward.

Harry looked to Elena, then saw Father Renato shift into gear. Felt the van move forward. Up onto the ramp and across it into the hold of the ferry. Turning back, he saw the policemen advance on the next vehicle in line. Saw the occupants made to get out, show identification, while the vehicle itself was aggressively searched.

None in the van dared look at another. Just waited in silence for an agonizing ten minutes before the last car came on board, the gangway doors closed, and the ferry got under way.

Harry felt the sweat run down his neck, trickle from his armpits. How many more of these could they get away with? How long would their luck, if that's what it was, hold?

THE FERRY HAD BEEN STEP ONE, sailing for Mennagio at seven fifty-six, exactly four minutes before the Italian Army sweep of the entire peninsula would begin, and fifteen minutes after Salvatore Belsito's farm truck had been found parked on a street a half mile from Santa Chiara. Father Natalini had left it there just before six, carefully wiping the steering wheel and gearshift clean of his fingerprints, then walking quickly back to Santa Chiara.

Step two, the crossing of the border from Italy into Switzerland, would have been more difficult, if not impossible, because neither Father Renato nor Father Natalini knew Gruppo Cardinale personnel at the border checkpoint. What saved them was that Father Natalini had grown up in Porlezza, a small town inland from Mennagio, and knew as only a native could know, the narrow country roads that wound and twisted through the hills and rose up into the Alps; roads that enabled them to bypa.s.s the Gruppo Cardinale checkpoint at Oria and brought them into Switzerland unmolested at ten twenty-two in the morning.

107.

The Vatican. The Tower of San Giovanni. 11:00 A.M A.M.

MARSCIANO STOOD AT THE GLa.s.s DOOR, THE only opening in the room to admit daylight; and, other than the locked and guarded entry door from the hallway outside, its only exit. Behind him, the television screen he could no longer bear to watch glowed like an all-seeing eye.

He could turn the TV off, of course, but he hadn't and wouldn't. It was a trait of character Palestrina understood all too well in Marsciano, which was why he'd ordered the twenty-inch Nokia left behind when he'd had the formerly luxurious one-room apartment stripped of all but its essentials-bed, writing table, chair-and ordered the apartment itself shut off from the rest of the building.

"The death toll in Hefei has reached sixty thousand, six hundred and is still rising. There remains no estimation where the number will end."

The field correspondent's voice was crisp behind him. Marsciano did not need to see the screen. It would be the same color graphic they used every hour to project the number of deaths, as if they were doing exit polls projecting votes in an election.

Finally, Marsciano pulled the door open and stepped out onto the tiny balcony. Fresh air touched him, and, mercifully, the resonance of the television diminished.

Grasping the iron safety railing, he closed his eyes. As if not seeing would somehow lessen the awfulness. In his darkness he saw another vision-the cold, conspiratorial faces of Cardinal Matadi and Monsignor Capizzi watching him dispa.s.sionately from their seats inside the limousine on the drive back to the Vatican from the Chinese Emba.s.sy. Then he saw Palestrina pick up the car phone and quietly ask for Farel, the secretariat's gaze rising up to hold on Marsciano's as he waited for the Vatican policeman to come on the line. And then came the secretariat's soft-spoken words- "Cardinal Marsciano has been taken ill in the car. Prepare a room for him in the Tower of San Giovanni."

The chilling remembrance made Marsciano suddenly open his eyes to where he was now. Below, a Vatican gardener was looking up at him. The man stared for a moment and then turned back to what he had been doing.

How many hundreds of times, Marsciano thought, had he come to the tower to visit foreign dignitaries staying in its ornate apartments? How many times had he looked up from the gardens below, as the worker had, to see this curious little platform on which he stood, never giving a thought to how darkly sinister it was?

Hanging like a diver's platform forty feet off the ground, it was the only opening in the cylindrical wall from top to bottom. An exit that led nowhere. Surrounded by a thin, iron safety railing, the platform was hardly wider than the door itself and no more than two feet across. The sheer wall above it rose another thirty feet to the point where the windows of the other apartments jutted sharply out. Looking upward, one could not see past those windows, but Marsciano knew they were near the top, and above them was a circular walkway and then the tower's turreted crown.

In other words, there was no way up or down or to the sides, making no reason for the platform at all. Except as a place to stand and breathe the air of Rome and marvel at the green of the Vatican gardens below. After that there was nothing. The rest of this distant corner of the Vaticano Vaticano was surrounded by a high, fortified wall built in the ninth century to keep barbarians out and at other times, as now, serving to keep people in. was surrounded by a high, fortified wall built in the ninth century to keep barbarians out and at other times, as now, serving to keep people in.

Slowly, Marsciano slid his hands from the rail and went back inside to the confines of his room and the television screen that was the center of it. On it he saw what the world saw: Hefei, China-a live helicopter shot of Chao Lake and then, in a cavalcade of horror, an aerial view of a series of huge circus-like tents, one after the other, erected in city parks, alongside factories, on open land outside the city proper; and the offscreen correspondent explaining what they were-makeshift morgues for the dead.

Abruptly, Marsciano turned off the sound. He would watch but he could listen no longer; the running commentary had become unbearable. It was a scorecard on which his personal crimes-done, he reminded himself over and over, as if in some desperate attempt to save his sanity, because Palestrina had held him hostage to his love of G.o.d and the Church-were tallied, one after the other in minute-by-minute detail.

Yes, he was guilty. So were Matadi and Capizzi. They had all let Palestrina loose to commit this outrage. What was worse, if anything could be worse than what he was seeing now, was that he knew Pierre Weggen was well into his work on Yan Yeh. And the Chinese banker, sensitive and caring as Marsciano personally knew he was, would be truly horrified by what appeared to be an act of nature gone amuck in human hands, and would pressure his superiors in the Communist Party, with all he had, to listen to Weggen's proposal to immediately rebuild China's entire water-delivery and -filtration infrastructure. But even if they agreed to meet with Weggen, the politics would take time. Time. When there was none. When Palestrina was already moving his saboteurs to the second lake.

108.

Lugano, Switzerland.

Still Wednesday, July 15. Noon.

ELENA HAD NOT REALLY LOOKED AT HARRY since she'd helped him dress Danny and get him into the van. He wondered if she'd been embarra.s.sed by coming to him the way she had and telling what she did and now didn't know what to do about it. What surprised him was the extent to which the whole thing had affected him, and continued to affect him. Elena was a bright, beautiful, b.a.l.l.sy, and caring woman who had suddenly found herself and wanted the freedom to express it. And from the way she'd presented herself-coming barefoot into his room in the dark and talking in the intimate way she had-in his mind there was no doubt she'd wanted him to be the one to help her do it. The trouble was, as he'd told himself then, this was not the time, and he had to stop thinking about it-other things were far too pressing. So now-as they wound down out of the hills from the north and turned along Lake Lugano to drive into Lugano itself, Viale Castagnola, across the Ca.s.sarate River, and up Via Serafino Balestra to the small, storied, private home at Via Monte Ceneri, 87-he deliberately turned his attention to what had to be done next.

It was a given that they couldn't keep traveling as hunted criminals from one place to another, trusting that somehow someone would help them. Danny needed a place safe enough and secure enough to rest and recover to the point where he could talk to Harry in a thoughtful, coherent manner about the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome. Moreover, and as important, they needed to acquire powerful legal representation. And those two things, Harry knew, had to be his only priorities.

"WE HERE?" Danny asked weakly as Father Renato set the hand brake and turned off the engine.