Day of Confession (16 page)

39

ROSCANI RAN ALONG THE TRACK, SCALA AND Castelletti right behind him. Work lights flooded the tunnel. Uniformed police in flak jackets and carrying submachine guns were everywhere. So were Metro officials and the driver of the train that had nearly hit the fugitive.

“There were two of them. The American and a small man with crutches. Maybe a midget.”

Roscani had taken the call as he was leaving the railroad terminal on his way back to the Questura. It had come late, nearly an hour after the men had been sighted. Rush hour, the driver complained. Fearing he’d hit the men, he’d stopped the train and come back but had seen nothing. He’d reported it and gone on. It wasn’t until he was taking a break and saw Harry’s picture on the cover of
II Messagero
that he made the connection with the man in the tunnel.

“You’re certain it was him,” Roscani pressed.

“He was only for the smallest moment in the train’s headlight. But yes, as sure as I can be. He had a bandage of some kind on his head.”

“Where could they have gone?” Roscani turned to a tall, mustached Metro official.

“Anywhere. In this section there are many original tunnels, for one reason or another no longer in use.”

Roscani hesitated. The stations at either end of this part of the tunnel had been shut down, passengers taken out and shifted to buses under the close eye of a phalanx of police. But it was only a matter of time before the entire Metro would begin to suffer from the closing.

“There are maps of these tunnels?”

“Yes.”

“Get them.” He looked to Scala. “Go to Mr. Addison’s hotel room. Find something he has worn recently, something not laundered. Bring it back here as quickly as you can.”

Scala looked back. He understood. “You want dogs.”

“Yes.”

HARRY MOVED QUICKLY along the sidewalk, already sweating with the July heat. Leaving the area of the café was one thing. His picture stared out from newspapers on every kiosk he passed. It was not only frightening, it was bizarre, as if he had been transported to another planet where everyone on it was looking for him. Suddenly he stopped, thunderstruck at the sound of his own voice. He was passing an electronics store. In the window was a bank of televisions. Large screen to small. And he was on every one of them, wearing dark glasses and sitting on a stool, dressed in the sport coat he had left behind with Hercules. His voice was coming from a small speaker just above the front door.

“
Danny, I’m asking you to come in…. To give yourself up…. They know everything…. Please, for me…. Come in… please…. Please…
”

Now the picture cut to an interior of a television station. A male broadcaster sat at a news desk speaking in Italian. He heard his name and Danny’s. Then there was a video clip of the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome. Police were everywhere, ambulances, a glimpse of Farel, a brief shot of the Holy Father’s car as it sped him from the scene.

Suddenly Harry was aware of other people standing on the sidewalk watching the televisions. Turning his head, he moved away. Dazed. Where had the video come from? Vaguely he remembered the business with the earphone, someone talking into it. Vaguely remembered repeating what was said, then thinking something was wrong and trying to do something about it. Then being hit and everything going black again. Now he realized what it was. He had been tortured to reveal Danny’s whereabouts, and when they realized he didn’t know, they’d forced him into making the video, then taken him away to kill him.

Stepping off a curb, he waited for a car to pass, then crossed the street. The photos in the newspapers had been bad enough, but now his face was on every television screen in the country. Maybe even worldwide. Thank God for the dark glasses. They had to have helped some in disguising him. At least a little.

Directly ahead was an arched portal in an ancient wall. It reminded him of a similar wall near the Vatican that Farel’s driver had taken him through on the way to meet the Vatican policeman. He wondered if this was the same wall, if he was close to the Vatican itself. He didn’t know Rome, he’d simply popped out of a subway station somewhere in the middle of it and started walking. It was no good; he could be going in circles for all he knew.

Abruptly he walked into the deep shade of the portal. For an instant the shade and cool were a relief from the bright sun and July heat. Then he reached the far side and stepped back into the sunlight again. As he did, and for the second time in minutes, he stopped dead.

Little more than a half block in front of him was a swarm of police vehicles near the entrance to a metro station. Mounted police on horseback kept a gathering crowd at bay. To one side were several ambulances and parked media cars, including two satellite trucks.

People were suddenly rushing past him toward what was happening, and he stepped back, trying to get some idea of where he was. It didn’t help. All he saw was a massive intersection of converging streets. Via La Spezia. Via Sannio. Via Magna Grecia. And Via Appia Nuova, where he stood.

“What’s goin’ on, Father?” The accent was young and New York.

Harry started. A teenager wearing a T-shirt with the words
END OF THE DEAD
over a likeness of Jerry Garcia had come up next to him, his round-faced girlfriend beside him. Both were staring at the mass of activity down the block.

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” he replied. Then he turned and started back the way he had come. He knew very well what was going on. The police were looking for him.

Heart pounding, he picked up his pace as more people hurried past him. Across the street to his left was a large expanse of green and beyond it a large and apparently very old church.

Quickly he crossed the street and started across the piazza toward it. As he did, two police cars flew past, bumper to bumper, in a wail of sirens. He kept on.

Ahead was the church. Huge, ancient, beckoning. A refuge from the turmoil behind him. Numbers of people—tourists, it looked like—were on the steps. Some were turned, looking in the direction he was coming from, drawn by what was going on. Still others were more intent on the church itself. This was a city, what did he expect? People were everywhere. He had to take the chance, for a short while at least, that he could lose himself among them and not be recognized.

Crossing the cobblestones he went up the steps and into the crowd. People barely noticed as he pushed between them to enter through an enormous set of open bronze doors.

Inside, despite the people, it was all but silent. And Harry stopped with others coming in to look, a tourist priest taken in by the spectacle. The central nave in front of him was a good fifty feet wide and probably five or six times that in length. Above him, the ornately carved and gilded ceiling rose ninety feet or more over the equally ornate polished marble floor. High windows just below ceiling level allowed an inpouring of dramatic, downward rays of light. Along the walls, ornate statuettes and frescoes surrounded twelve enormous statues of the Apostles. Harry’s refuge, it seemed, was not only a church but also a grand cathedral.

To his left a group of Australian tourists worked their way along the wall toward the massive altar at the far end. Quietly, he joined them, walking slowly, observing the artwork, continuing to play the out-of-towner, like any other. So far he had seen only one person look at him, and that was an elderly woman who seemed to be looking more at the bandage on his forehead than at him.

For the moment he was all right. Fearful, confused, exhausted, he let himself drift, feeling the breath of the cathedral’s centuries, wondering who had passed through, and under what circumstances.

Pulling himself back he saw they had reached the altar, and several of the Australians broke from the group to cross themselves and kneel on benches in front of it, bowing their heads in prayer.

Harry did the same. As he did, emotion swept him. Tears came to his eyes, and he had to fight to hold back a sob. Never had he felt as lost or frightened or alone as he did now. He had no idea where to go or what to do next.

Still kneeling, he turned and looked over his shoulder. The Australian group was filing out, but other people were coming in. With them came two security guards. Watching the crowds. Making their presence known. They wore white shirts with epaulets, and dark pants. It was hard to tell from the distance, but it looked as if they carried two-way radios on their belts.

Harry turned back. Stay where you are, he told himself. They won’t approach unless you give them reason. Take your time. Think it through. Where to go next. What to do.

Think.

40

Noon
.

THE DOGS SNIFFED AND STRAINED AGAINST their harnesses, leading their handlers forward—with Roscani, Scala, and Castelletti scrambling after them—through a series of dirty, dimly lit tunnels to finally stop at the end of an air shaft above Manzoni Station.

Castelletti, the smallest of the three detectives, pulled off his jacket and crawled into the air shaft. At the far end he found the cover loosened. Sliding it off, he stuck his head out and looked down onto a public walkway that led out of the station itself.

“He went out here.” Castelletti’s voice echoed as he inched his way backward on elbows and knees.

“Could he have come in that way?” Roscani yelled back.

“Not without a ladder.”

Roscani looked to the lead dog handler. “Let’s find where he came in.

Ten minutes later they were back in the main tunnel, following the path Harry had taken when he left Hercules’ encampment, the dogs following by the scent from a pullover sweater taken from Harry’s room at the Hotel Hassler.

“He’s in Rome for only four days—how the hell does he know his way around here?” Scala’s voice bounced off the walls, the harsh beam of his flashlight cutting a path behind the dogs and their keepers, whose own flashlights lit the way ahead for their animals.

Suddenly the lead dog stopped, its nose upward, sniffing. The others stopped behind it. Quickly, Roscani moved ahead.

“What is it?”

“They’ve lost the scent.”

“How? They got this far. We’re in the middle of a tunnel. How could they—?”

The lead handler moved past his animal, sniffing the air himself.

“What is it?” Roscani came up beside him.

“Smell.”

Roscani sniffed. Then sniffed again.

“Tea. Bitter tea.”

Stepping forward, he flashed his light on the tunnel floor. There it was, scattered over the ground for fifty or sixty feet. Tea leaves. Hundreds, thousands of them. As if they had been broadcast by the handful for the very purpose of throwing the dogs off.

Roscani picked a few from the floor and brought them to his nose. Then let them fall in disgust.

“Gypsies.”

41

The Vatican. Same time
.

MARSCIANO LISTENED PATIENTLY AS JEAN Tremblay, cardinal of Montreal, read from the thick dossier on the table before him.

“Energy, steel, shipping, engineering and construction, energy, earth-moving equipment, construction and mining, engineering equipment, transportation, heavy-duty cranes, excavators.” Tremblay turned the dossier’s pages slowly, skipping over the names of corporations listed, emphasizing instead the businesses in which they were engaged. “Heavy equipment, construction, construction, construction.” Finally he closed the document and looked up. “The Holy See is now in the construction business.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Marsciano answered Cardinal Tremblay directly, fighting the dryness in his mouth, trying not to hear the echo of his own voice inside his head as he spoke. Knowing that to show weakness would be to lose. And if he lost, Father Daniel would be lost too.

Cardinal Mazetti of Italy, Cardinal Rosales of Argentina, Cardinal Boothe of Australia—like members of a high court, each man sat with his hands folded on top of the now-closed dossiers, staring at Marsciano across from them.

MAZETTI
: Why have we gone from a balanced portfolio to this?

BOOTHE:
It’s too heavily weighted and ungainly. A world recession would leave us and every one of these companies literally stuck in the mud. Factories frozen, equipment parked like so many multiton sculptures, useless, except to look at and marvel at the expense.

MARSCIANO
: True.

Cardinal Rosales smiled and raised his elbows to lean on his chin. “Emerging economies and politics.”

Marsciano lifted a glass of water and drank, then set the glass down. “Correct,” he said.

ROSALES
: And the guiding hand of Palestrina.

MARSCIANO:
His Holiness believes the Church should extend, in both spirit and manner, encouragement to less fortunate countries.

Help them take their place in the expanding world marketplace.

ROSALES:
His Holiness or Palestrina?

MARSCIANO:
Both.

TREMBLAY:
We are to encourage world leaders to bring the emerging nations up to speed in the new century, while at the same time profiting from it?

MARSCIANO:
Another way to look at it, Eminence, is that we are following our own beliefs, and in doing so, attempting to enrich them.

The meeting was running long. It was nearly one-thirty and time to break. And Marsciano did not want to report to Palestrina that a vote had not yet been taken. Moreover, he knew that if he let them go now without a positive consensus, they would talk about it among themselves at lunch. The more they talked, the more, he knew, they would begin to dislike the entire plan. Maybe even sense there was something intangibly wrong with it, maybe suspect they were being asked to approve something that had other purposes than what was apparent.

Palestrina had purposely kept himself out of it, wanting none to sense his influence over something he ostensibly had no part in. And as much as Marsciano despised him, he knew the power of his name and the respect and fear that came with it.

Pushing back from the table, Marsciano stood. “It is time to break. In all fairness I should tell you I am meeting with Cardinal Palestrina over lunch. He will ask me about your reaction to what has been discussed here this morning. I would like to tell him that in general your response has been positive. That you like what we have done and—with a few minor changes—will approve it by the end of the day.”

The cardinals stared back in silence. Marsciano had taken them by surprise and knew it. In essence he had said, “Give me what I want now or risk dealing with Palestrina yourselves.”

“Well—?”

Cardinal Boothe raised his hands as if in prayer and stared at the table.

“Yes,” he murmured.

CARDINAL TREMBLAY:
—Yes.

CARDINAL MAZETTL:
—Yes.

Rosales was the last. Finally he looked up at Marsciano. “Yes,” he said sharply, then stood and walked angrily from the room.

Marsciano looked to the others and nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”