The Hand of Christ (48 page)

Jimmy downshifted, to Michael’s relief, from 5
^th
to 3
^rd
gear as they approached a sharp curve. The engine’s revolutions instantly jumped from three thousand to five thousand rpm’s and let out a happy, high-pitched scream as the down-shifted engine forced the car to slow preparing it to take on the bend ahead.

Michael raised his voice a few decibels above the level of those that came from the motor, he had to nearly shout to be heard, “How long until we get to the safe house?”

Michael was ready to stop the endless need to be in unnecessarily fast moving vehicles and get on his own two feet; he was growing tired of the world speeding by him.

“
Not long, we should be to Rome in fifteen minutes,” Jimmy screamed back.

Nine minutes later Jimmy penetrated the narrow stone streets of the holy city; the twenty-inch wheels melted effortlessly onto the road as the active suspension gobbled up the imperfections of the centuries old basalt sampietrini cobblestones. It was nearly blasphemous that the little stones would all soon be gone, replaced by cheaper and easier to maintain asphalt.

As if the Porsche were clamped firmly onto hidden rails, the car seemed almost bored by the attacking centrifugal forces as the two men whipped easily around the playful Fontana delle Rane – the Fountain of the Frogs – in the center of Piazza Mincio, and at a speed well beyond what was necessary.

Without first slowing down, like a normal person would, Jimmy slammed on the breaks. Jimmy wasn’t normal. Instantly the ceramic composite pads clamped onto the monobloc aluminum calipers and stopped the $200,000 vehicle – not including its aftermarket extras – in moments.

Michael was thrown painfully forward into the four point harness strapped across his chest, and Jimmy shouted, “Now that’s what I call stopping on a dime!”

“
Son of a bitch! What the hell did you do that for?” Michael painfully, and with difficulty, blurted out his question. The pressure from the straps had forced out most of the air remaining in his lungs.

With a wicked grin, Jimmy’s pithy response was to the point, “We’re here.”

The two men stepped out of the car; Michael was happy to be on terra firma and enjoyed a long, overdue stretch. Scanning the Piazza, he was confused by the eclectic nature of the hidden neighborhood.

It didn’t seem patently Roman.

Jimmy had parked the car underneath a large, overhead arch that connected the two buildings on either side of the street. Standing under the arch, Michael looked up, and was met with an obviously out of place and unusual iron chandelier that hung from the center of the arch and precariously over the street.

The Piazza was filled with fine automobiles: Mercedes, Porsches, BMW’s, and a couple of Bentleys. It was no wonder Jimmy hadn’t worried about sticking out in the GT2, the car barely warranted the flip of an eyelash in this clearly upper class and, by all appearances, bourgeois neighborhood.

Michael couldn’t remove his eyes from the enormous and asymmetric arch under which the car was now relaxing; it contained a plethora of artwork: abundant fading frescoes; sculptures of figures over windows and under balconies; and abstractly jutting lions' heads. Michael walked under the arch and looked back and forth at the buildings to which it was connected.

Odd,
he thought.

Odd indeed, there were bees everywhere. Not the annoying honey or bumble type, but carvings; carved into the stone of the facades that surrounded him were bees. Something about them seemed familiar, but Michael couldn’t place it.

Sensing his friend’s contemplation of the unusual Piazza, Jimmy announced, “Coppede.”

“
Huh? What’s that, Jimmy?”

Jimmy repeated it, “Coppede. The architect of all that you see here was Gino Coppede.” Jimmy was tapping on a carved column at the base of the arch; there the architect’s name could be seen etched into the stone.

“
One guy did all of this?”

“
Yep, it was just one guy, except for a few minor things done years later: all of this was just one man’s design. Says a lot about the man doesn’t it?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Think about it, Michael, you are standing in Rome, one of the holiest cities in all of Christianity. Over there you have Byzantine influences, and there medieval,” Jimmy had pointed to two very distinct structures and was now looking opposite of them, “You see those ones on the other side of the Piazza?”

“
Yeah?”

“
That one has floreale influences of stuffed baskets of fruit, and that one over there,” he was motioning to a five story building that stuck out like a really big, fat sore thumb in the Piazza, “that is the Palazzo of the Spider. This guy did things outside of normal Roman convention, things that directly opposed the Church’s influence.”

“
It must have been before Mussolini and the Lateran Accords otherwise the Church would have held him in check.”

“
Not bad, Michael, and I thought you were just some meat-head that’s good with guns. Coppede did most of his work in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s; when the Pope still considered himself a prisoner in the Vatican.”

The building that Jimmy had motioned to was quite busy to the eyes: twisted columns, checkered tiling, brickwork on the higher floors, and travertine blocks at the base. The building was a testament to confusion, and didn’t really tell the beholder where to begin or to end their stare. The ornamentation on the building that caught Michael’s eye the most was the unusual gold mosaic spider web above the building’s entrance; it was the building’s namesake.

“
Amazing isn’t it?” Jimmy was walking toward the Pallazo.

Michael raced to catch up, “Is that where we are going?”

“
You got it, my home away from home.”

“
Jimmy, how do you know so much about this place?”

“
Michael, you ain’t the only Special Ops guy with brains, besides I spend a lot of time here.”

The two men walked into the foyer of the Palazzo of the Spider, and Jimmy walked across its majestic large-tiled floor toward a heavy, gold encrusted door – not gilded, but what looked like actual gold. Michael reached it first and touched it half expecting it to be faux; it wasn’t.

Michael whistled admiringly and then said, “Some place you got here, this door would probably pay off my house back home.”

“
I don’t know about that, but it certainly might pay off a few gambling debts, Michael.”

Jimmy faced the door, withdrew a key from his pocket – the key was gold too – and put it in the keyhole and turned it; the entryway hissed open.

A small elevator, barely large enough for the two of them, took the men to the fifth floor, to Jimmy’s safe house. Once inside and the lights turned on, a large apartment was illuminated and looked as if it were decorated in the Victorian era. The walls of the long and wide hallway ran the length of the safe house and were painted a somber gray. Michael could see that a handful of rooms were bifurcated by the apartment’s hallway.

The two men traversed the corridor passing different rooms of the apartment and were nearing the end of it. The last room they walked by had a large arched and ornate entry, on the other side of which was clearly the parlor. Michael gazed in and could see that the parlor’s walls were marbleized and every inch of the room seemed to be filled with some ornament, statue, or wall hanging. Although not an expert in artwork, Michael did have enough knowledge to be admirably dangerous during cocktail party conversations. Some of the pieces they walked by bore the familiar strokes and styling of Picasso, Raphael, and Renoir.

As they passed the numerous works, Michael suddenly froze in his tracks, what the hell?

Michael was staring at a blood red and simple sketch that hung on the wall. Almost blending in with the others, he had nearly walked past it without giving it a second thought before realizing what it was.

“
Jimmy, is that what I think it is?”

Jimmy looked at the sketch for a moment and then, as if remembering, said, “It is nothing Michael, just some cheap artwork. I picked it up off the street from one of those vendors that sell stuff to tourists. I have no idea what it is, do you?”

Michael replied, “Yeah, I do. It looks like a rare drawing by Michelangelo, a pretty good one, too.”

The sketch was of the dome for St. Peter’s Basilica, and, Michael was right, it was one of the most rare items by Michelangelo. Near his death, the famed artist ordered most of his sketches destroyed making such a find monumental. This one had been lost for years and its disposition unknown. A stroke of recent luck allowed a Vatican office worker to stumble across its unknown resting place in one of the Basilica’s offices; the sketch had no reason to be there.

“
Listen buddy, I know you academia types love all this artsy shit, but we’ve got some work to do. What do you say we get started?”

Jimmy turned and led Michael to the end of the hallway. There was no additional room, just a window that overlooked Piazza Mincio. The walls on either side of the window had decorative paneling that were partitioned into square sections. Jimmy reached up to a small painting that was in the middle of one of the panels and slid it to the side; he revealed an electronic panel and punched in a code.

“
Michael, this place is set up to blend in with any other apartment in the building. Should it ever be compromised there is nothing in the place that would reveal its true nature. That is, nothing except for what is behind this wall.”

Hitting the final button and then placing his hand on a pad so that his palm print could be read, the wall slid ten inches backward on a hidden rail system. The room was climate controlled and pressurized; the difference in pressure blasted slightly dank and musty air onto their faces. Once the wall was fully recessed it slid two feet to the left exposing a small room that was dimly lit by numerous panels of small blinking lights and LCD screens.

“
Now that’s more like it, Jimmy, you were beginning to worry me with all this fancy furniture and lessons on Italian architecture.”

“
After you my good man,” Jimmy said, and motioned Michael inside.

Michael stepped into the room, his weight signaled the floor sensors to turn on the lights. In an instant, the operation center of the safe house was bathed in bright fluorescent lights. Jimmy walked in and headed toward the central control panel. He punched a few buttons and fired up the central computer system; without hesitation, the system sprung to life.

After a few moments Jimmy was comfortable that everything was up and running and said, “Alright, Michael, where should we begin? How do you propose we find this guy?”

Michael pulled up a chair next to Jimmy and said, “The assassin’s last known location was in Tehran, at the home of the Ayatollah. To get here, the only means of effective transportation would be by air and it would have to be commercial. Iran flies directly into Rome from Tehran. Let’s start there. Check all the flights from Tehran from the approximate time the Ayatollah was killed. Can you get a flight manifest?”

“
Just watch me work my magic, Michael,” Jimmy furiously tapped away at the keyboard. Soon, he had cracked into the airport’s database. Multiple lists of passengers were flooding the screen.

“
There were only two flights, Michael.”

Michael stared intently at the manifests, “That one is too close to when the Ayatollah was killed. There is no way he got to the airport with enough time.”

Jimmy pushed that manifest aside and was now focusing on Flight 217 from Tehran, “One hundred and ninety-six names, Michael.”

“
Get rid of the names of the crew.”

“
Now were down to one-eighty-nine.”

“
Okay, now filter the list for only men.”

It only took a few strokes of the keys; the long list was cut by only a quarter. One hundred and forty-two names were left; most of the passengers had been men.

“
What now?”

“
Show me all of those that boarded with an Iranian passport, get rid of the tourists and those traveling through Iran.” Another quarter of names dropped from the list, ninety-eight were left.

“
Get rid of anyone under the age of twenty-five and over fifty.”

“
Fourteen names left, Michael.”

“
The guy is strong, smart, and experienced. Scrub those fourteen for names that are between the ages of thirty and forty.”

Only three names remained.

“
That’s where we’ll start, put those names into Interpol, Jimmy. See what you come up with.”

Jimmy did as he was told. The first name came back belonging to a Persian carpet salesman, “Michael, this guy has been flying to and from Rome once each month for the past eleven years, he’s listed at 5’3 and 215 pounds. Doubtful he’s our man.”

The second name came back with no pertinent Interpol data. He was average height and weight and was traveling with his wife and two kids; there was nothing that indicated anything peculiar about him.

The third name, however, caused Jimmy to jump in his chair; “Check this out, Michael!”

Michael leaned in closer and smiled at what he saw; he slapped Jimmy on the back and said “Well hello, Mr. Hami, I see that it’s been awhile since you’ve been out of the house.”