The Road to Gandolfo (39 page)

Zio Francesco called out.

“Lunch, everybody! The
speciale di giorno
is
fantastico
!”

“I’m hungry as a horse!” roared back the Hawk as he patted his mount. “What’ve you got, Zio?”

Francesco raised his voice to the Alpine hills. And there was music in his words.

“My dear friends. It’s
Linguini Bombalini
!”

MacKenzie Hawkins, pleasantly surfeited with Zio’s linguini and the splendid
chianti classico
that Francesco had had his cousin, Frescobaldi, ship to the railroad station in Zermatt, wandered across the Alpine pasture to the edge of the field, its glorious view of the majestic mountains as always moving him. It was another ritual that had become part of his day. A few minutes alone, really alone, without even his horse beneath him, or the sound of human voices, only the rustle of the tall grass caressed by the gentle Alpine breezes. He needed these moments, for a man had to face both his accomplishments and his failures by himself, accepting the results without regret as long as he knew he had done his best with what was in him.

Regarding Zio, he had both lost and won. He had hardly reached the four hundred million dollars he envisioned, but what was left of the forty million capitalization wasn’t exactly C rations. Yet he had won something else, something far more important, a restored, healthy,
vital
Pope Francesco I, the pontiff who wanted more than anything else to finish the job started by John XXIII. To blow the cobwebs out of the catacombs and bring his church into the twenty-first century, Zio would have to go back—without telling the others, they both had agreed to that—sometime soon, somehow. They could work it out. Somehow.

Well, that was just goddamned
fine
for Uncle Zio, but
what about
him
, what about the Hawk? What the hell was
he
supposed to do? Sit on his ass in edelweiss and let the world pass by while he
vegetated?

“Find another cause, Mac, perhaps a somewhat more earthly one,” Francesco had suggested. “The world abounds with them, and you have extraordinary talents, my son—”

“Cut the ‘my son’ crap, Zio.”

“Sorry, it goes with the office. If I had so many ‘sons,’ I’d make an extraordinary mockery of celibacy—which I intend to bring up one day. It’s really so unnatural, so foolish, and there’s nothing explicit in the Scriptures.”

“Maybe I should just keep you here so they don’t hang you in St. Peter’s Square.”

“No, no, I must go back … But what about you, my friend? What
will
you do?”

The Hawk had not replied, for he had had no answer then. He thought about it now, gazing at the breathtaking skyline of the snow-capped Alps, when suddenly an eagle swooped down from some unseen high-altitude perch, in search of ground-bound prey that would sustain it.

An
eagle
. A lone eagle, soaring in splendor and splendid freedom, the master of the air and the earth, its wingspread incredible and mesmerizing. The magnificent bird circled in the winds, descending lower and lower, then abruptly dove with marvelous speed into a field far below.… Something
happened
! The eagle’s massive wings were flapping furiously—it was caught, something had snared it, binding it to the ground! Then, after agonizing moments, the bird broke free, its movements frantic until it found the unencumbered air and soared aloft.

MacKenzie stared across at the would-be killing field, wondering what had caused the near tragedy. The answer came in seconds: Two men were racing out of a nearby cluster of brush, obviously angry that their decoyed trap had malfunctioned. They picked up the lethal animal-covered instrument, one man throwing it into the grass in disgust.

The incident brought back memories to the Hawk, images from long ago when he was a young officer posted to a Ranger training base somewhere in the hills of Nebraska or Iowa—or was it Kansas? No, it was Nebraska. The eagle itself was not the sole prodder of these memories, but the
great bird was a large part of it, because of what it historically stood for in pictures and symbols, even in name. Full headdresses crowning the heads of once powerful chiefs, the single, double, and triple feathers earned by deeds of bravery performed by the young tribal males.

The American Indian.

There had been an Indian reservation perhaps twenty miles from the secret training base, certainly no secret to the Indians who pathetically came to beg whatever they could from the strapping, well-fed troops. So pathetic were these pilgrimages that many of the young Rangers, the Hawk among them, trekked over to the reservation to get a clearer understanding. It was a
disgrace
! These original inhabitants, the
owners
of the land, lived in abject poverty, scandalously shafted by the white invader! Naturally the Rangers stole the quartermaster bare, and until the soldiers left for scaling cliffs on D day, the Indians lived better than any of them could remember.

The
American Indian
—screwed by the same kind of pricky-shits who threw General MacKenzie Hawkins out of the army! That noble savage would be his
cause
! It might take months, even years, but
goddamn
, it was a quest worth serving.

The Hawk turned and raced back across the field, the tall grass whipped by his gathering speed. He saw Francesco by the vegetable garden, watering his precious herbs. “Zio,
Zio
, I’ve
got
it!”

“What have you got, my son—forgive me, I mean Mac?”

“I’m going to free our American Indians, I mean
really
set them
free
!”

“They are in
chains
?” asked the bewildered Francesco, his watering can drenching his lederhosen.

“Worse, they’re in economic bondage, shafted by the white pricky-shits!”

“Sometimes you can be obtuse, MacKenzie—”

“Don’t you
see
, Zio? It’s my grail, my quest, my
cause
! Hell, it may take me a long time, maybe even a few years, but the right
shaftees
are there, I know it, I
feel
it!”

“May this humble country priest bless in advance those you would free from this bondage?… In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, pray to your Maker, my children. The Hawk is on your horizon.”

Read on for an excerpt from Robert Ludlum’s

The Bourne Identity

The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp. The waves rose to goliathan heights, crashing into the hull with the power of raw tonnage; the white sprays caught in the night sky cascaded downward over the deck under the force of the night wind. Everywhere there were the sounds of inanimate pain, wood straining against wood, ropes twisting, stretched to the breaking point. The animal was dying.

Two abrupt explosions pierced the sounds of the sea and the wind and the vessel’s pain. They came from the dimly lit cabin that rose and fell with its host body. A man lunged out of the door grasping the railing with one hand, holding his stomach with the other.

A second man followed, the pursuit cautious, his intent violent. He stood bracing himself in the cabin door; he raised a gun and fired again. And again.

The man at the railing whipped both his hands up to his head, arching backward under the impact of the fourth bullet. The trawler’s bow dipped suddenly into the valley of two
giant waves, lifting the wounded man off his feet; he twisted to his left, unable to take his hands away from his head. The boat surged upward, bow and midships more out of the water than in it, sweeping the figure in the doorway back into the cabin; a fifth gunshot fired wildly. The wounded man screamed, his hands now lashing out at anything he could grasp, his eyes blinded by blood and the unceasing spray of the sea. There was nothing he could grab, so he grabbed at nothing; his legs buckled as his body lurched forward. The boat rolled violently leeward and the man whose skull was ripped open plunged over the side into the madness of the darkness below.

He felt rushing cold water envelop him, swallowing him, sucking him under, and twisting him in circles, then propelling him up to the surface—only to gasp a single breath of air. A gasp and he was under again.

And there was heat, a strange moist heat at his temple that seared through the freezing water that kept swallowing him, a fire where no fire should burn. There was ice, too; an ice-like throbbing in his stomach and his legs and his chest, oddly warmed by the cold sea around him. He felt these things, acknowledging his own panic as he felt them. He could see his own body turning and twisting, arms and feet working frantically against the pressures of the whirlpool. He could feel, think, see, perceive panic and struggle—yet strangely there was peace. It was the calm of the observer, the uninvolved observer, separated from the events, knowing of them but not essentially involved.

Then another form of panic spread through him, surging through the heat and the ice and the uninvolved recognition. He could not submit to peace! Not yet! It would happen any second now; he was not sure what it was, but it would happen. He had to
be
there!

He kicked furiously, clawing at the heavy walls of water above, his chest burning. He broke surface, thrashing to stay on top of the black swells. Climb up!
Climb up!

A monstrous rolling wave accommodated; he was on the
crest, surrounded by pockets of foam and darkness. Nothing. Turn!
Turn!

It happened. The explosion was massive; he could hear it through the clashing waters and the wind, the sight and the sound somehow his doorway to peace. The sky lit up like a fiery diadem and within that crown of fire, objects of all shapes and sizes were blown through the light into the outer shadows.

He had won. Whatever it was, he had won.

Suddenly he was plummeting downward again, into an abyss again. He could feel the rushing waters crash over his shoulders, cooling the white-hot heat at his temple, warming the ice-cold incisions in his stomach and his legs and.…

His chest. His chest was in agony! He had been struck—the blow crushing, the impact sudden and intolerable. It happened again!
Let me alone. Give me peace
.

And again!

And he clawed again, and kicked again … until he felt it. A thick, oily object that moved only with the movements of the sea. He could not tell what it was, but it was there and he could feel it, hold it.

Hold it! It will ride you to peace. To the silence of darkness … and peace.

The rays of the early sun broke through the mists of the eastern sky, lending glitter to the calm waters of the Mediterranean. The skipper of the small fishing boat, his eyes bloodshot, his hands marked with rope burns, sat on the stern gunnel smoking a Gauloise, grateful for the sight of the smooth sea. He glanced over at the open wheelhouse; his younger brother was easing the throttle forward to make better time, the single other crewman checking a net several feet away. They were laughing at something and that was good; there had been nothing to laugh about last night. Where had the storm come from? The weather reports from Marseilles had indicated nothing; if they had he would have stayed in the shelter of the coastline. He wanted to reach the fishing grounds eighty kilometers south of La Seyne-sur-Mer by
daybreak, but not at the expense of costly repairs, and what repairs were not costly these days?

Or at the expense of his life, and there were moments last night when that was a distinct consideration.

“Tu es fatigué, hein, mon frère?”
his brother shouted, grinning at him.
“Va te coucher maintenant. Laisse-moi faire.”

“D’accord,”
the brother answered, throwing his cigarette over the side and sliding down to the deck on top of a net. “A little sleep won’t hurt.”

It was good to have a brother at the wheel. A member of the family should always be the pilot on a family boat; the eyes were sharper. Even a brother who spoke with the smooth tongue of a literate man as opposed to his own coarse words. Crazy! One year at the university and his brother wished to start a
compagnie
. With a single boat that had seen better days many years ago. Crazy. What good did his books do last night? When his
compagnie
was about to capsize.

He closed his eyes, letting his hands soak in the rolling water on the deck. The salt of the sea would be good for the rope burns. Burns received while lashing equipment that did not care to stay put in the storm.

“Look! Over there!”

It was his brother, apparently sleep was to be denied by sharp family eyes.

“What is it?” he yelled.

“Port bow! There’s a man in the water! He’s holding on to something! A piece of debris, a plank of some sort.”

The skipper took the wheel, angling the boat to the right of the figure in the water, cutting the engines to reduce the wake. The man looked as though the slightest motion would send him sliding off the fragment of wood he clung to; his hands were white, gripped around the edge like claws, but the rest of his body was limp—as limp as a man fully drowned, passed from this world.