God's Spy (26 page)

‘Not good for much now.’
Dante smiled, flexing his shoulders and lowering his head. ‘You’re not much good for anything either, grandpa.’
‘Try me.’
Dante threw himself at the priest. Fowler took one step to the side and threw a punch at the superintendent. It just missed his face, hitting him on the arm. Dante threw a hard left, and Fowler tried to dodge it, only to run into Dante’s fist between his ribs. He fell down, gritting his teeth, out of breath.
‘You’re a little rusty, old man.’
Dante picked up what was left of the pistol and the clip of bullets. He didn’t have time to put it back in and find the trigger, but he wasn’t going to leave the weapon behind. Moving quickly, he forgot that Dicanti had a gun too, one that he could use. It was, at that moment, concealed between the rug on the floor and her body, but she was still unconscious.
Dante looked around the room, in the bathroom and the wardrobe. Andrea Otero wasn’t in any of them; nor was the disk that had been tossed out of his hand during the tussle. A drop of blood on the window ledge stopped him in his tracks, and for a second he considered the possibility that the journalist could walk on air as Christ had walked on water. Or, more likely, crawl like a cat on all fours.
He soon realised that the room was at the same height as the roof of the building next to it, which sheltered the beautiful cloister of the convent of Santa Maria de la Paz – a beautiful building, built by Bramante.
Andrea had no idea who had built the cloister; but she raced along the roof like a cat, over the red tiles glowing in the morning sun, trying as hard as she could not to draw the attention of the cloister’s early-morning tourists. She wanted to get across to the other side, where an open window held the promise of salvation. She was already halfway there. The cloister had two high peaks, and the roof tilted at a dangerous angle above the stone courtyard, thirty feet below.
Dante’s testicles were howling in pain, but he ignored them. He raised the window and climbed out after the journalist. She looked back, saw him land on the roof and took off, trying to go even faster.
Dante’s voice stopped her. ‘Don’t move.’
Andrea turned around. Dante was pointing his gun at her – a gun incapable of firing bullets, but she didn’t know that. She wondered if this bastard was so insane he’d be willing to fire his gun in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Because by now the tourists had noticed him, and they were standing transfixed by the scene unfolding above their heads, their numbers steadily growing. A pity Dicanti was still out cold, because she was missing a vivid demonstration of what is, in forensic psychology, called the Bystander Effect – a many-times-proven theory, which states that, as the number of bystanders watching a person in danger grows, the probability that anyone will help the victim diminishes, while the number of people pointing and telling others to watch increases.
Dante took a few short steps towards the journalist. As he got closer, he could see that she had only one disk in her hand. She must have been telling him the truth, but it had been a dumb mistake to throw the other ones away. That disk was now more important than ever.
‘Give me the disk and I’ll go. I swear. I don’t want to hurt you,’ Dante lied.
Andrea was scared to death, but she put on a show of being brave. ‘What shit! Get lost or I’ll throw it away.’
Dante stood in the middle of the roof, paralysed. Andrea’s arm was extended, her wrist bending back and forth. A simple flick and the disk would take off like a frisbee. Maybe it would break when it hit the ground, or maybe it would ride on a light morning breeze and one of the spectators would grab it, and then it would evaporate long before he got down to the cloister. And with that, so long and farewell.
Way too risky.
Checkmate. What could he do? Distract the enemy until the scales were balanced in his favour.
‘Signorina,’ Dante said in a loud voice, ‘don’t jump. I don’t know what’s driven you to this, but life is very beautiful. If you think about it, you’ll see you have many reasons to go on living.’
That’s the way to do it, Dante thought: get close enough to help the madwoman with the face bathed in blood who’d jumped on to the roof and was threatening suicide; try to hold her down without anyone noticing as I snatch the disk, and then as we’re rolling around on the roof, she slips. I can’t save her. A tragedy. The people in charge will take care of Dicanti and Fowler. They’ll know how to apply the pressure.
‘Don’t jump. Think about your family.’
‘What are you bellowing about, you prick?’ Andrea looked at him wide-eyed. ‘I´m not going to jump!’
The spectators down below were pointing at her. No one had called the police. There were a few scattered shouts of ‘Don’t jump, don’t jump’. No one seemed to think it strange that her rescuer was waving a gun. Perhaps they couldn’t make out what her intrepid saviour was holding in his right hand.
Dante silently rejoiced. He was getting closer and closer to the young reporter. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m an officer of the law!’
Andrea only now realised what her pursuer was up to. He was less than six feet away.
‘Don’t come any closer, you creep. I’ll throw it!’
The spectators below thought they heard her say she was going to throw herself off the roof and there were more cries of ‘No, No!’
Dante’s outstretched hand brushed Andrea’s heel. She stepped back, slipping a few inches down the roof. The crowd – there were about fifty people standing in the cloister now and hotel guests had begun to stick their heads out the windows of their rooms – held their breath.
Suddenly someone shouted, ‘Look, a priest!’
Dante turned round. Fowler had both feet on the roof, a roof tile in each hand.
‘Not here, Anthony!’ Dante yelled.
Fowler acted as if he hadn’t heard. He hurled one of the tiles, with devilishly good aim. Dante was lucky. There was just enough time to cover his face. If he hadn’t, the crunch he heard when the tile struck his arm might have been the sound of his skull cracking. He lost his balance, fell, and started to slide towards the edge of the roof. By some miracle he was able to grab hold of the gutter that jutted out from the edge. He was now dangling ten feet above the ground, his legs wrapped around one of Bramante’s priceless columns. Three people left the crowd of spectators to help Dante, more of a broken puppet than a man, slide the rest of the way down to the ground. He was busy thanking them as he lost consciousness.
Fowler stood facing Andrea on the roof.
‘Signorina Otero, please do us the favour of climbing back into your room before you hurt yourself.’

Saturday, 9 April 2005, 9.14 a.m.

Paola came back to the land of the living in the midst of a small miracle: Anthony Fowler was attentively placing a cold, wet towel across her forehead. But the bliss was short-lived and in a second she was sorry her body didn’t end at the shoulders as her head was pounding like a jackhammer. She pulled herself together just in time to deal with the two police officers who’d finally showed up at the hotel room, telling them they could go back outside, she had everything under control. Dicanti swore to them that no one had tried to commit suicide, and that the whole thing was nothing more than a big mistake. The two officers nosed around the carnage of the hotel room with wary looks, but did as they were told.

Fowler was trying to put Andrea’s forehead back together after her run-in with the mirror. Dicanti stuck her head into the bathroom just as Fowler was telling the journalist she was going to need stitches.

‘At least four on your forehead and two on the brow. But right now you don’t have time for that. I’ll tell what you need to do: you’re going to take a cab to Bolonia right away. It will take you four hours to get there. A doctor friend of mine will be waiting for you. He’ll stitch your forehead and then make sure you get to the airport. You can fly to Madrid via Milán. You’ll be safe there. See if you can avoid Italy for a few years.’

‘Wouldn’t it be faster for her to catch a plane out of Naples?’

Fowler scrutinised Dicanti, his face serious. ‘ Dottoressa, should you ever need to get out of these people’s clutches, don’t run in the direction of Naples whatever you do. The town is crawling with informants.’

‘I’d say they have eyes just about everywhere.’

‘You’ve got that right. And I fear that crossing the Vigilanza will have unpleasant consequences for both of us.’
‘Let’s go and see Troi. He’ll take our side.’
At first, Fowler didn’t respond. Then: ‘He might. Nevertheless, our priority right now is to get Miss Otero out of Rome.’
The conversation that Andrea was listening to did nothing to take the pained look off her face. The cuts on her forehead were still throbbing, even if, thanks to Fowler, they were bleeding a good deal less. Ten minutes before, she’d witnessed Dante plunge over the edge of the roof and had felt an overwhelming surge of relief. She’d run towards Fowler and put her arms around his neck, running the risk of making them both tumble over the edge. Fowler had quickly filled her in on the situation: a very powerful element in the Vatican hierarchy didn’t want this incident to come to light, which was why her life was under threat. The priest had glossed over the minor detail of her deplorable theft of the envelopes, something for which she was grateful. But now he was imposing his conditions, and the journalist wasn’t pleased. She was thankful for her opportune rescue at the hands of the priest and the inspector, but she wasn’t disposed to give in to blackmail.
‘I’m not thinking of going anywhere. I am an accredited journalist, and my paper trusts me to deliver news of the Conclave. And I want them to know that I have uncovered a conspiracy, operating at the highest levels, to hide the death of three cardinals and an Italian police officer. El Globo, and possibly several other papers, are going to publish this information, alongside some powerful photos, and all of it is going to carry my name.’
Fowler listened patiently before he answered: ‘Miss Otero, I admire your courage. You have more of it than many of the soldiers I’ve known. But in this game, you need a good deal more than courage.’
Andrea pressed the bandage that covered her forehead with her hand and gritted her teeth. ‘Once the report is published, they wouldn’t dare touch me.’
‘Maybe yes, and maybe no. But I don’t want them to publish the report either. It’s not helpful right now.’
Andrea looked at him, stupefied. ‘What did you just say?’ ‘Let’s make it simple: give me the disk.’
Andrea got to her feet unsteadily. She was indignant, and held the disk tightly against her chest. ‘I didn’t realise that you were one of those fanatics, too – ready to kill to preserve their secrets. I’m getting out of here.’
Fowler pushed her back down on to the toilet.
‘Personally, for me, the most illuminating phrase in the Gospels is, “The truth shall make you free.” And if it were up to me, you could take off and tell everyone that a priest with a long history of abusing young boys had gone mad and was walking around knifing cardinals. Perhaps then the Church would realise once and for all that priests are, always and only, men. But that has little to do with you or me. I don’t want this to get out because Karosky wants it to get out. When a little time has gone by and he sees no results, he’ll make a move. Then we can catch him, and in the process save lives.’
Andrea crumbled. It was a combination of exhaustion, pain, stress and a feeling she found absolutely impossible to put into words – a sentiment composed of equal parts of fragility and self-pity that welled up in her from time to time, when she realised just how small she was in relation to the larger universe. She handed the disk to Fowler and cradled her head. She started to cry.
‘I’ll lose my job.’
The priest took pity on her. ‘No you won’t. I’ll see to that personally.’

Three hours later, the US ambassador to Italy called the editor-inchief of El Globo. He sent his apologies for the accident that had taken place between one of the embassy’s official cars and the newspaper’s special correspondent in Rome. As he told it, the accident had taken place the day before when his car had been en route to the airport. Luckily, the driver had slammed on the brakes in time to avoid a catastrophe, and except for the journalist’s small wound to the head, everyone was all right. It seemed that the journalist had insisted repeatedly that she had to continue with her work, but the doctors at the embassy had ordered two weeks of rest, and they were offering to send her to Madrid on the embassy’s tab. Of course, because of the great professional injury she had suffered, they were disposed to compensate her. One of the people in the car had taken an interest in her and wanted to arrange an interview. They would get in touch in two weeks’ time to finalise the details.

El Globo ’s editor-in-chief was a bit perplexed after he hung up. He had no idea how that rebellious, difficult young reporter had managed to snag what was probably the most difficult interview on the planet to get for their paper. He attributed it to a tremendous piece of luck. He felt a pang of jealousy and wanted to crawl back into his skin.

He’d always wanted to visit the Oval Office.

Saturday, 9 April 2005, 1.25 p.m.

Paola burst into Troi’s office without knocking, but she didn’t like what she saw, or rather who she saw when she got there. Cirin sat facing the UACV’s director and as Paola came in, he stood up and walked out of the office, without even giving Dicanti so much as a glance. She did her best to block his exit.

‘Listen, Cirin –’

The chief of the Vatican Vigilanza deftly stepped around her and disappeared down the hall.
‘Sit down, Dicanti,’ Troi said, still seated at his desk.
‘But I want to tell that man about the criminal actions of one of his subordinates—’
‘Enough, ispettore. The inspector general has already given me a useful summary of the events that transpired at the Hotel Raphael.’
Paola’s jaw dropped. As soon as she and Fowler had put the Spanish journalist into a taxi headed for Bolonia, they’d gone directly to the UACV headquarters to give their side of the story to Troi. The situation was no doubt complicated, but Paola still believed that Troi would back them up over the rescue of the journalist. She’d decided to talk to him alone, though naturally the last thing she’d expected was that her boss wouldn’t want to hear her version of the story.
‘He must have told you that Dante attacked an unarmed journalist.’
‘What he told me was that there was a difference of opinion, which has been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. It seems that Inspector Dante was trying to reassure a potential witness who was a bit nervous when you two attacked him. Dante is in hospital as we speak.’
‘That’s absurd! It’s not what happened at all.’
‘Cirin also informed me that he was no longer going to work with us on this case.’ Troi raised his voice several notches. ‘He was very disappointed by your attitude, which was hostile and aggressive towards Dante and towards the sovereignty of our neighbouring country – something which I have witnessed myself, albeit in passing. You will go back to your usual assignments, and Fowler will return to Washington. From this moment on, the Corpo di Vigilanza will be solely responsible for protecting the cardinals. We must hand over the disk that Karosky sent us immediately, as well as the one we recovered from the journalist, to the Vatican. And then we will forget it ever existed.’
‘And Pontiero – what about him? I still remember the look on your face during the autopsy. Was that faked too? Who’ll see that justice is done for him?’
‘That’s no longer our responsibility.’
Dicanti was so disappointed, so disgusted, that she felt physically sick. She couldn’t recognise the man sitting in front of her, and whatever small ties of affection she might have felt for him were long gone. She asked herself, with some sadness, if this was why he had withdrawn his support so quickly. Perhaps it was the bitter finale to last night’s confrontation.
‘It’s because of me, isn’t it, Carlo?’
‘Sorry?
‘Because of what happened last night. But I never thought you’d be capable of this.’
‘Please,ispettore, don’t give yourself delusions of grandeur. My only interest in this case is in collaborating with the Vatican as efficiently as possible – something I’ve observed you seem to be unable to do.’
Thirty-four years of life so far, and Paola had never witnessed such a discrepancy between a person’s words and the look on their face. She couldn’t hold back.
‘You’re a useless pig, Carlo. Seriously. It doesn’t surprise me that everyone laughs at you behind your back. How did you end up like this?’
Troi turned red to the tips of his ears, but he managed to repress an explosion of anger. Instead, he abruptly channelled his rage into a cold, measured verbal slap.
‘At least I ended up somewhere,ispettore. Be so kind as to leave your badge and your gun on my desk. You are suspended from duty for one month, until I’ve had the opportunity to review your case. Go home.’
Paola opened her mouth, but nothing came out. In films, the hero always responds with a crushing phrase that foreshadows their triumphant return when they are stripped of the symbols of their authority by a tyrannical boss. But in real life, Paola didn’t say a word. She dropped her badge and her pistol on the desk and stormed out of Troi’s office without looking back.
Fowler was waiting for her in the hallway. He had escorts: two policemen. Paola guessed he had already received his fateful phone call.
‘So this is how it ends,’ Dicanti said.
A smile lit up the priest’s face. ‘It’s been a pleasure knowing you, dottoressa. Unfortunately, these gentleman have the duty of accompanying me to my hotel so I can collect my belongings before heading out to the airport.’
Paola grabbed his arm, her fingers pressing the sleeve. ‘Padre, can’t you call someone? At least get them to delay this?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ Fowler shook his head. ‘But I hope that one day I can take you out for a good cup of coffee.’
Without saying another word, he got up and walked down the hallway, followed by the two policemen.
Paola didn’t cry until she reached her apartment.