Day of Confession (14 page)

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Authors: Allan Folsom

Tags: #Espionage, #Vatican City - Fiction, #Political fiction, #Brothers, #Adventure stories, #Italy, #Catholics, #Suspense, #Fiction, #Americans - Italy - Fiction, #Brothers - Fiction, #Legal, #Americans, #Cardinals - Fiction, #Thrillers, #Clergy, #Cardinals, #Vatican City

BOOK: Day of Confession
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32

Rome. Friday July 10, 7:00
A.M
.

THOMAS KIND WALKED ALONG THE PATHWAY above the Tiber, waiting impatiently for the cell phone in his pocket to ring. He was dressed in a beige seersucker suit and blue-striped shirt open at the throat. A white panama hat was tilted down over his face to protect him both from the early sun and the possible inquiring face, the one that might recognize him and alert the authorities.

Moving under an umbrella of shade trees, he walked another dozen paces to a place he had seen as he approached, a point where the flowing Tiber washed against the granite walls directly below him. Glancing around and seeing nothing but the rush of early traffic passing on the roadway beyond the trees, he opened his jacket and reached into his waistband, taking out an object wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. Leaning forward casually, he rested his elbows on the protective balustrade over the water, a tourist stopped to gaze out over the river, and let the object fall from the handkerchief. A moment later he heard the splash and slowly straightened up, absently wiping the handkerchief across the back of his neck. Then he walked on, the Spanish-made Llama pistol washing somewhere along with the current at the bottom of the river.

Ten minutes later he entered a small trattoria just off Piazza Farnese, ordered a cold espresso from the bar, and sat down at a table near the back, still waiting for the call and the information that yet had not come. Taking the phone from his jacket, he dialed a number, let it ring twice, then punched in a three-digit code and hung up. Sitting back, he picked up his glass and waited for the return call.

Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind had become famous in 1984 for killing four undercover French antiterrorist police in a botched raid in a Paris suburb and had been the darling of the media and the terrorist underground ever since. Becoming, as journalists liked to call him, a latter-day Carlos the Jackal, a terrorist of fortune, willing to serve the highest bidder. And through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he had served them all. From remnants of Italian Red Brigades to the French Action Directe. From Muammar al Qaddafi to Abu Nidal, and work for Iraqi intelligence in Belgium, France, Britain, and Italy. Then to Miami and New York as a debt payer for the master
traficantes
, the leaders of the Medellin drug cartel. And later, as if they needed help, coming back to Italy as a contractor for the Cosa Nostra, assassinating Mafia prosecutors in Calabria and Palermo.

All of which allowed him to echo publicly the words of Bonnot, the leader of a murderous gang operating in Paris in 1912, and later used by Carlos himself—“I am a celebrated man.” And he was. Over the years his face had graced not only the front pages of the world’s major newspapers, but also the covers of
Time, Newsweek
, even
Vanity Fair. 60 Minutes
had profiled him twice. All of which put him in a different class entirely from the long succession of other freelancers who had eagerly worked for him.

The trouble was he was increasingly certain he was mentally ill. At first he thought he had simply lost track. He had started out to become a revolutionary in the truest sense, traveling from Ecuador to Chile as an idealistic teenager in 1976 and taking up a rifle in the streets of Santiago to avenge the slaughter of Marxist students by the soldiers of fascist General Augusto Pinochet. Then came an ideological life in London with his mother’s family, attending exclusive British schools before studying politics and history at Oxford. Immediately afterward there had been a clandestine meeting with a KGB operative in London, followed by an offer to train him as a Soviet agent in Moscow. On the way there, he had stopped in France. And with it had come the business with the Paris police. And then, and all at once, fame.

But in the last months, he had begun to sense that he was not driven by ideology or revolution at all, but rather by the exploit of terror itself or, more explicitly, by the act of killing. It was more than something that gave him pleasure, it was sexually arousing. To the extent that it had replaced the sex act altogether. And each time—though he wanted to deny it—the feeling magnified in intensity and became ever more gratifying. A lover to be found, stalked, and then butchered in the most ingenious way that came to him at the time.

It was awful. He hated it. The idea terrified him. Yet, at the same time, he craved it. That he might be ill was a thought he desperately tried to refute. He wanted to think he was only tired, or, more realistically, having the thoughts of a person approaching middle age. But he knew it wasn’t true and something was wrong, because progressively he felt off balance, as if some part of him was weighted more heavily than the rest. It was a situation made all the worse because there was absolutely no one he could talk to about it without fear of being caught or turned in or compromised in some other way.

The abrupt chirp of the phone at his elbow jolted him back to the present. Instantly he picked up.


Oui
.” Yes, he said, speaking in French, nodding several times in response. It was news he had been waiting for, and it came in two parts: the first was confirmation that a potential problem in the U.S. had been tidied up—If Harry Addison had purposely or inadvertently passed on troublesome information to Byron Willis, it no longer made a difference. The subject had been eliminated.

The second was more difficult because it had involved extensive telephone research and the results had taken far longer to get than he anticipated. But, late or not, they were here and they were welcome.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Pescara. I’m leaving now.”

33

7:50
A.M
.

“WARM TEA,” HERCULES SAID. “CAN YOU SWALLOW?”

“Yes…,” Harry nodded.

“Put your hands around it.”

Hercules guided the cup to him and helped Harry grasp it, the bandage on his left hand, like an oversized mitten, making what should have been a simple process awkward.

Harry drank and gagged.

“Terrible, isn’t it? Gypsy tea. Strong and bitter. Drink it anyway. It will help you heal and bring back your sight.”

Harry hesitated, then took the tea down in a series of long gulps, trying not to taste it. Hercules watched him carefully as he drank, moving from side to side and then back again as an artist might while studying a subject. When he was finished, Hercules snatched the cup away.

“You are not you.”

“What?”

“You are not Father Daniel but his brother.”

Harry put an elbow under himself and raised up. “How do you know that?”

“First, from the picture on the passport. Second, because the police are looking for you.”

Harry started. “The police?”

“It was on the radio. You are wanted for murder—not the one your brother is wanted for. The cardinal vicar, that’s a big one. But yours is big enough.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The policeman, Mr. Harry Addison. The police detective named Pio.”

“Pio is dead?”

“You did a good job.”


I
did a—?”

In an instant it came back. Pio glancing in the mirror of the Alfa Romeo. Then sliding his gun onto the seat. At the same time Harry saw the truck directly in front of them. Heard his own voice scream for Pio to
look out!

And now another part of it returned too. Something he hadn’t remembered until this moment. It was a
sound
. Terribly loud. A thunderous boom that repeated quickly. A gun being fired.

And then he remembered the face. There and then gone, like a flashbulb illuminating something for a millisecond. It had been pale and cruel. With a half smile. And then, for some reason, although he didn’t know why, he remembered the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen.

“No…,” Harry said, his voice barely audible. Stunned, his eyes found Hercules.

“I didn’t do it.”

“It makes no difference, Mr. Harry, if you did or you didn’t…. All that matters is the authorities think you did. Italy has no capital punishment, but the police will find a way to kill you anyhow.”

Suddenly Hercules pulled himself up. Leaning on his crutch, he looked down at Harry. “They say you are a lawyer. From California. You make money from movie stars and are very rich.”

Harry lay back. So that was it. Hercules wanted money and was going to extort it from him, threatening him with the police. And why not? Hercules was a common criminal living in filth under the Metro, and Harry had fallen into his lap. And whatever reason he had had for saving his life, with the new turn of events, he suddenly found he had saved a golden goose.

“I have some money, yes. But I can’t get it without the police knowing where I am. So, even if I wanted to give it to you, I couldn’t.”

“It does not matter.” Hercules leaned closer and grinned. “You have a price on you.”

“Price?”

“The police have offered a reward. One hundred million lire. About sixty thousand dollars, U.S. A lot of money, Mr. Harry—especially to those who have none.”

Finding his other crutch, Hercules abruptly turned his back and pushed off as he had earlier, swinging away into the darkness.

“I didn’t kill him!” Harry shouted.

“The police will kill you anyway!” Hercules’ voice echoed until it was lost in the distant rumbling of a Metro train passing at the end of his private tunnel. Afterward came the sound of the great door as it opened and thudded closed.

And then there was silence.

34

Cortona, Italy
.

THE PLACE WHERE THEY BROUGHT MICHAEL Roark was not a hospital but a private home—Casa Alberti, a restored, three-story stone farmhouse, named for an ancient Florentine family. Sister Elena saw it through the early mist as they drove through the iron gate and started up the long gravel drive.

Leaving Pescara they had circumvented the A14 Autostrada, taken the A24, and then rejoined the A14 to the north. Driving along the Adriatic coast to San Benedetto and then Civitanova Marche, they turned west sometime after midnight, later passing Foligno, Assisi, and Perugia before climbing into the hills to find Casa Alberti just east of the ancient Tuscan city of Cortona at daybreak.

Marco had unlocked the gate and opened it, walking up the drive in front of the van as Luca drove toward the house. Pietro, following in his car, had locked the gate behind them, then gone into the house first, checking it carefully before turning on the lights and letting them in.

Elena had watched without a word as, a few moments later, Marco and Luca carried the gurney up the steps and into the house and then up to the large second-floor suite that was to become Michael Roark’s hospital room. Opening the shuttered window, she had seen see the red globe of the sun just beginning to rise over the farmland in the distance.

Now, below her, Pietro came out of the house and moved his car to the front of the van so that it blocked the driveway, as if to make it all but impossible for another vehicle to get past and up to the house. Then she heard the engine stop and saw Pietro walk to the trunk and take out a shotgun. A moment later, he yawned and got back in the car with the door open, then folded his arms over his chest and went to sleep.

“Do you need anything?”

Marco stood in the doorway behind her.

“No.” She smiled.

“Luca will sleep in the room upstairs. I will be down in the kitchen if you need me.”

“Thank you…”

Marco looked at her and then left, closing the door behind him. Almost at once, Elena felt her own weariness. She had dozed off and on during most the trip, but her senses and thoughts had kept her on edge. Now they were here at the Casa, and the thought of sleep was suddenly and overwhelmingly seductive.

To her right was a large bathroom with a tub and separate shower. To the left was a small nook with a bed and closet and a room divider for privacy.

In front of her Michael Roark was in a deep sleep. The trip, she knew, had exhausted him. He’d remained awake for a good deal of it. His eyes going from her to the men in the van and then back to her, as if he were trying to understand where he was and what was happening. If he’d been afraid, she hadn’t seen it, but perhaps it was because of her constant reassurance, telling him her name and his, over and over, and the names of the men who were with them, friends taking him to a place where he could rest and recover. And then an hour or two before they’d arrived at the farmhouse, he’d fallen into the sound sleep he was in now.

Opening the medicine kit Marco had brought up and set on the chair, she took out the arm wrap with its pump and gauge and took his blood pressure, studying him as she did. His face beneath the bandages covering his head was gaunt, and she knew he had lost weight. She wondered what he had looked like before. What he might look like again when he began to recover and take solid food and rebuild his strength.

Finishing, she stood, and put the blood pressure gauge away. His blood pressure was the same as it had been that afternoon, the same as it had been when she’d first arrived in Pescara. Not better. Not worse. Simply unchanged. She marked it on his chart, then took off her habit, pulled on the light cotton sleeping gown, and got into bed, hoping to close her eyes for forty-five minutes or at most an hour. As she did, she looked at her watch.

It was eight-twenty in the morning, Friday, July 10.

35

Rome. Same time
.

CARDINAL MARSCIANO WATCHED THE PRESS conference on a small television in his library. It was live, impromptu, and filled with anger. Marcello Taglia, the man in charge of Gruppo Cardinale, had been cornered as his car entered police headquarters, and he had stepped out to confront the mass of reporters and respond to their questions head on.

Where the videotape of the American attorney Harry Addison had come from he did not know, Taglia said. Nor did he have any idea who had leaked it to the press. Nor did he know who had leaked the photograph and speculation surrounding Addison’s brother, Father Daniel Addison, a prime suspect in the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome and thought killed in the bombing of the Assisi bus, but now possibly alive and in hiding somewhere in Italy. And, yes, it was true, a reward of one hundred million lire had been offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of either of the American brothers.

Abruptly the cameras cut away from Taglia and went to the television studio, where an attractive anchorwoman behind a glass desk introduced the video of Harry. When it was over, photographs of both brothers were put on the screen and a telephone number given that anyone seeing either man could call.

CLICK

Marsciano turned off the television and stared at the empty screen, his world darker yet. It was a world that in the following hours could become even more impossible, if not unbearable.

Shortly he would sit before the four other cardinals who made up the commission overseeing the investments of the Holy See and present the new, and intentionally misleading, investment portfolio for ratification.

At one-thirty the meeting would break, and Marsciano would take the ten-minute walk from Vatican City to Armari, a small family-run trattoria on Viale Angelico. There, in a private upstairs room, he would meet with Palestrina to report on the outcome. It was an outcome upon which rested not only Palestrina’s “Chinese Protocol” but also Marsciano’s own life, and with it, the life of Father Daniel.

Purposefully he had fought to keep the thought from his mind for fear it would weaken him and show him as desperate when he went before the cardinals. But, as the clock ticked forward, and as much as he battled to keep it locked away, the memory crept forward, chillingly, almost as if Palestrina had willed it.

And then, with a rush, it was there, and he saw himself in Pierre Weggen’s office in Geneva the evening of the day that the Assisi bus had exploded. The phone had rung, and the call was for him. It was Palestrina informing him, in one breath, that Father Daniel had been on the bus and was presumed dead; and, in the next—Father in heaven! Marsciano could still feel the awful stab of Palestrina’s words delivered in a voice so calm they were like the brush of silk—“the police have found sufficient evidence to prove Father Daniel guilty of the assassination of Cardinal Parma.”

Marsciano remembered his own shout of outrage and then seeing Weggen’s quiet grin in response, as if the investment banker knew full well the content of Palestrina’s call, and then the continuing voice of Palestrina as he went on unmoved.

“Moreover, Eminence, if your presentation to the council of cardinals should fail, resulting in the investment proposal voted down, the police will soon discover that the road from Parma’s murder does not end with Father Daniel but leads directly to you. And I can safely surmise that the first question the investigators will ask is if you and the cardinal vicar were lovers. A denial, of course, would be futile, because there would be sufficient evidence—notes, letters of a lurid and very personal sort, found in the private computer files of you both…. Think then, Eminence, of seeing your face and his on the cover of every newspaper and magazine, on every television screen around the globe…. Think of the repercussions throughout the Holy See, and the utter disgrace it would bring to the Holy Church.”

Trembling and horrified, and certain without doubt who had been responsible for the bombing of the bus, Marciano had simply hung up. Palestrina was everywhere. Twisting the screw, tightening his hold. Efficient, controlled, ruthless. Larger, more terrifying and detestable than Marsciano could ever have imagined.

TURNING IN HIS CHAIR, Marsciano looked out the window. Across the street he could see the gray Mercedes waiting to take him from his apartment to the Vatican. His driver was new and a favorite of Farel’s, the baby-faced plainclothes member of the Vatican police, Anton Pilger. His housekeeper, Sister Maria-Louisa, was new as well. As were his secretaries and office manager. Of his original staff only Father Bardoni remained, and only because he knew how to access computer files and understood the shared database with Weggen’s Geneva office. Once the new portfolio was accepted, Marsciano was certain Father Bardoni would be gone, too. He was the last of the truly loyal, and his going would leave Marsciano wholly alone in the nest of Palestrina’s vipers.

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