Day of Confession (41 page)

122

Beijing, China. Zhongnanhai Compound.

Still Thursday, July 16. 3:05
P.M
.

YAN YEH SPENT THE DAY IN HORROR. THE FIRST reports had begun coming in from Wuxi just before ten that morning. A dozen serious cases of uncontrolled nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting had been reported to number 4 People’s Hospital within a fifteen-minute span. At nearly the same time, similar reports came in from the number 1 and number 2 People’s Hospitals. By eleven-thirty the Hospital of Chinese Medicine was coordinating an epidemic. Seven hundred cases reported, two hundred and seventy-one deaths.

Immediately the water supply had been shut down, and emergency service personnel along with police put on alert. The city was on the verge of panic.

By one in the afternoon there were twenty thousand poisoned. And eleven thousand four hundred and fifty of those were dead. Among them were Yan Yeh’s mother-in-law and two of her brothers. That much he had been able to find out. Where his wife and son were, or if they were dead or alive, he had no idea. Even the towering influence of Wu Xian, general secretary of the Communist Party, had proven ineffectual in trying to find out. But what had happened was enough. Pierre Weggen had been summoned to the Zhongnanhai Compound.

Now, just after three, with still no news of his family, a solemn, deeply shaken Yan Yeh sat down with his Swiss friend at a table with Wu Xian and ten other grim-faced ranking members of the Politburo. The conversation was brief and to the point. It had been agreed to let the Swiss investment banker bring together the consortium of companies he had earlier proposed to immediately begin a leviathan ten-year plan to thoroughly and completely rebuild China’s entire system of water and power delivery. Haste and efficiency were everything. China and the world must know Beijing was still in control and doing everything possible to protect the future health and well-being of its people.

“
Women shenme shihou neng nadao hetong?
” Wu Xian said to Weggen, finally and quietly.

When can we have the contract?

123

HARRY’S CALLS TO ADRIANNA AND EATON had been made from public phones on streets two blocks apart and had been short and crisp. Yes, Adrianna had told him, she knew the piece of news tape he was talking about. Yes, she could find the sequence. Yes, she could get a copy of the tape to Eaton. But why? What was in the footage that was so important? Harry didn’t respond, simply asked her to do it, saying that if Eaton wanted her to know, he would tell her. Then he’d said thank you and hung up, even as she was yelling, “Where the hell are you?”

Eaton had been a little more difficult, delaying Harry, talking around him, asking if he was with his brother and, if so, where they were. And Harry knew he was tracing the call.

“Just listen.” Harry had cut him off abruptly, then gone on to describe the piece of video as Danny had, telling him that there were three lakes in China to be poisoned; that the Chinese with the briefcase, in the sequence at the Hefei water-treatment plant, was their man; that Chinese Intelligence should be informed immediately; and that Adrianna was getting him the footage.

“How do you know this?—Who’s behind the poisoning?—What is the reason?” At the end Eaton’s questions had been direct and rapid-fire. And Harry had replied that he was only delivering a message.

And then, as he had with Adrianna, he had simply hung up and walked off and kept walking as he was now, turning down Via della Stazione Vaticana, a priest alone proceeding down a sidewalk beside the Vatican walls, nothing unusual in that. Above him were the arches of what looked like an ancient aqueduct that might have brought water to the Vatican sometime in the past. What were there now, what he hoped he would soon see, were railroad tracks that led from the main rail line in to massive gates, and then through them and into the Vatican railroad station.

“By train,” Danny had said when Harry asked how he and Father Bardoni had planned to get Marsciano out of the Vatican. The station and tracks were rarely used anymore. An Italian supply train used them to deliver heavy goods every once in a while, but that was all. In other days the tracks had provided the means for the pope to travel by train out of Vatican City and into Italy. But those days had long since ended. All that was left were the gates, the station, the tracks, and a rusting freight car sitting on a siding near the end of the line, which was a short concrete tunnel that went nowhere. Only God and the walls themselves knew how long the boxcar had been there.

Before he’d left Rome for Lugano, Father Bardoni had called the head of the railroad station and told him Cardinal Marsciano hated seeing the freight car and, ill or not, wanted it removed immediately. A short while later a call had come back from a subordinate to say that at eleven o’clock that Friday morning, a work engine would come for the old car.

And that was the plan. When the car left, Cardinal Marsciano would be inside it. It was as simple as that. And since it had been a subordinate who had called, Father Bardoni was certain the matter had been treated merely as another duty in line with many. Security would be alerted, but only to expect the switch engine; again, a conversation between underlings, and something far too mundane to reach Farel’s office.

Now Harry was walking up the hill coming up toward the top level of the aqueduct. He kept moving, looking ahead.

Reaching the track level, he turned back and saw it—the main line curving to the left, the rails shiny from constant use, and the spur line to the right, its double set of rails rusted and leading directly toward the Vatican walls.

Harry turned and looked behind him, his gaze following the tracks down the main line toward Stazione San Pietro. He had ten minutes to get there and look around, make certain he wanted to go through with it. If he didn’t, if he changed his mind, he could leave before they got there. But he wouldn’t leave, he’d known that when he made the call. At ten-forty-five he was to meet Roscani inside the station.

124

The Vatican. The Tower of San Giovanni. Same time
.

“YOU ASKED TO SEE ME, EMINENCE.” PALESTRINA stood in the doorway of Marsciano’s cell, his massive body filling most of it.

“Yes.”

Marsciano stepped back, and Palestrina came into the room. As he did, one of his black suits stepped behind him, to close the door and stand beside it, guardlike. He was Anton Pilger, the young man with the perpetual smirk and eager face, who, only days earlier, had been Marsciano’s driver.

“I wanted to speak to you in private,” Marsciano said.

“As you wish.” Palestrina lifted a huge hand, and Pilger suddenly snapped to attention, then turned on his heel and left, a move not of a policeman, but of a soldier.

For a long moment Marsciano stared at Palestrina, as if trying to see behind his eyes, then slowly his hand moved out from his body and he pointed a finger toward the silent television nearby. The pictures on it, a horrible replay of those in Hefei—a convoy of trucks jammed with People’s Liberation Army troops. Hordes of people crowding the streets on either side of them as they passed. The camera cutting to a field reporter dressed much like the troops, his voice not heard because of the muted television, but obviously attempting to describe what was happening.

“Wuxi is the second lake.” Marsciano’s face was ashen. “I want it to be the last. I want you to stop the next.”

Palestrina smiled easily. “The Holy Father has been asking for you, Eminence. He wanted to visit. I told him you were very weak, and that it was best that for the time being you rested.”

“No more deaths, Umberto,” Marsciano whispered. “You already have me. Stop the horror in China. Stop it and I will give you what you have wanted from the beginning…”

“—Father Daniel?” Palestrina smiled again, this time benevolently. “You told me he was dead, Nicola…”

“He is not. If I ask him, he will come here. Call off the last lake and you can do with us as you wish…. The secret of your ‘Chinese Protocol’ passing with us.”

“Very noble, Eminence. But, unfortunately, too late on both counts…” Palestrina turned to glance for a moment at the television, then he looked back.

“The Chinese have capitulated and have already asked for the contracts…. Even so”—Palestrina added, smiling distantly—“in war there is no pulling back; the campaign must be concluded according to plan…” Palestrina hesistated long enough for Marsciano to know any further argument would be in vain, and then he continued. “As for Father Daniel. No need to summon him, he is on his way to see you. May even be in Rome as we speak.”

“Impossible!” Marsciano shouted. “How could he even know I was here?”

Again Palestrina smiled. “Father Bardoni told him.”

“No! Never!” Marsciano was flushed with anger and outrage. “He would never give up Father Daniel.”

“But he did, Eminence…. Ultimately he became convinced that I was right and that you and the cardinal vicar were wrong. That the future of the Church is worth more than the life of one single man, no matter who he is—Eminence…” Palestrina’s smile faded. “Have no doubt, Father Daniel will come.”

Marsciano had never hated in his life. But he hated now, with everything in him.

“I do not believe you.”

“Believe what you wish…”

Slowly Palestrina slipped his hand into the pocket of his priest’s jacket and took out a dark velvet drawstring purse. “Father Bardoni sends his ring to you as proof…”

Setting the purse on the writing table next to Marsciano, Palestrina fixed his eyes on the cardinal, then turned and walked to the door.

Marsciano did not see Palestrina leave. Did not hear the door open or close, or even the click of the lock as it was turned. His eyes were frozen on the dark velvet pouch in front of him. Slowly, his hand trembling, he picked it up and opened it.

Outside, a gardener looked up sharply at the sound of a hideous scream.

125

10:42
A.M
.

ROSCANI WALKED ALONE DOWN VIA INNOcenzo III. It was hot, and getting hotter as the sun moved higher overhead. In front of him was Stazione San Pietro. He’d stepped from the car a half block back, leaving Scala and Castelletti to go on to the station. They were to come in separately from either side, one arriving before Roscani, the other just afterward. They would be looking for Harry Addison, but doing nothing to apprehend him unless he ran. The idea was to give Roscani room to operate comfortably one on one with the fugitive, to keep the thing as easy and relaxed as it could be; but at the same time to position themselves in such a way that if he did bolt, one or the other would be in his path. There were no other police, no backups. It was what Roscani had promised.

Harry Addison had been good. His call had come into the Questura switchboard at ten-twenty. He’d said simply:

“My name is Harry Addison. Roscani is looking for me.”

Then he’d given his cell-phone number and hung up. No time to trace. Nothing at all.

Five minutes later Roscani called him from where he had been since his plane had touched down in Rome and he and Scala and Castelletti had rushed there—the crime scene in Father Bardoni’s apartment.

ROSCANI
: This is Roscani.

HARRY ADDISON
: We should talk.

ROSCANI
: Where are you?

HARRY ADDISON
: The train station at St. Peter’s.

ROSCANI
: Stay there. I’ll meet you.

HARRY ADDISON
: Roscani, come alone. You won’t know me, I look different. If I see any police, I’ll leave.

ROSCANI
: Where in the station?

HARRY ADDISON
: I’ll find you.

ROSCANI CROSSED THE street, closing in on the station. He remembered how he’d first planned to come upon Harry Addison. Alone, with a gun. To kill him for murdering Gianni Pio. But things had turned wildly, and with a complexity he could never have imagined.

If Harry Addison was here, in the station as promised, he was still outside Vatican territory. So, Roscani hoped, was Father Daniel. Perhaps he had a chance yet, before the whole thing crumbled into the hands of Taglia and the politicians.

HARRY SAW ROSCANI come in and cross the lobby, then walk out to stand near the tracks. Stazione San Pietro was small, a depot serving a small circuitous route through Rome. There were few people. Looking around, he saw a man in a sport coat and tie who might be a plainclothes policeman. But he had noticed the man a few moments earlier, before Roscani had come in, and that made it hard to tell.

Leaving the station by another door, he walked around to the side, and came down the platform from another angle, slowly, without energy. A priest waiting for his train; a priest who had purposely left his false identification tucked under the bottom of the refrigerator in the kitchen of the apartment on Via Nicolò V.

Through an open door, he saw another man come into the station. His shirt was open at the throat, but he wore a sport coat like the first man.

Now Roscani saw him, watched him approach.

Harry stopped, a dozen feet away. “You were supposed to come alone.”

“I did.”

“No, there are two men with you.” Harry was guessing, but he thought he was guessing correctly. One man was still in the station, the other had come out onto the platform and was watching them.

“Keep your hands where I can see them.” Roscani’s eyes were frozen on Harry’s.

“I’m not armed.”

“Do as I say.”

Harry moved his hands out from his waist. It felt awkward and uncomfortable.

“Where is your brother?” Roscani’s voice was flat. No emotion at all.

“He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s—someplace else…. In a wheelchair. His legs are broken.”

“Other than that, he’s all right?”

“Mostly.”

“The nurse is still with him? Sister Elena Voso?”

“Yes…”

Harry felt a thud of emotion as Roscani said Elena’s name. He’d been right when he’d said they would identify her from what she’d left behind in the grotto. And now he knew they were treating her as a willing accomplice. He didn’t want her to be this involved, but she was anyway, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Abruptly, he glanced behind him. The second man had come out onto the platform, keeping his distance, the same as the first. Beyond him, a group of teenagers waited for a train, chattering, laughing. But it was the police who were closest.

“You don’t want to take me in, Roscani, not now, anyway.”

“Why did you call me?” The policeman continued to stare at him. He was strong and very focused. The same as Harry remembered.

“I told you, we need to talk.”

“About what?”

“Getting Cardinal Marsciano out of the Vatican.”