The Templar Salvation (2010) (8 page)

“I said easy, damn it,” his passenger barked.

Fuck you
, Reilly seethed inwardly—and saw it, a small, landscaped clearing that was mercifully deserted and sat there, calling out to him in the glorious sunshine, at the end of a small pathway just before the turn.

He lifted off, feigning a slowdown for the turn, then blipped the throttle and threw the car in the opposite direction. It flew off the road and rumbled down the gravel path, slewing all over the place before Reilly jerked the wheel hard to the left and yanked the handbrake. The car spun around angrily, the tires pushing hard against the mounds of gravel that built up against them—and Reilly used its sideways momentum to launch himself onto the bomber, lifting up his elbow, jacking it in place, and aiming it right at his target’s face as he flew out of his seat.

The man was lightning quick—raising the big, heavy codex up as a shield to block him. It took the brunt of Reilly’s weight, deflecting the hit. Reilly still had some advantage as he crushed the bomber against his car door. The man’s hand lashed out and flicked the door open. Reilly put one arm around the book and used the other to throw a punch at him. The man bent away to avoid it, leaning precariously far out of the car now—which Reilly was quick to capitalize on, wrenching the book out of his grasp just as he shoved him out.

The bomber tumbled to the ground. Reilly clambered right out of the car after him, but the man recovered fast and scurried back, putting a margin of ten yards or so between him and the FBI agent. Time slowed to a crawl as they stood there in silence, facing off under the hot Roman sun, taking stock of each other in the empty clearing. It was eerily quiet, especially after the pandemonium they’d been through, with only choruses of cicadas and the occasional tweet of a starling cutting the silence.

“Settle down,” the bomber told Reilly, holding up his cell phone with one hand while his other wagged a stern, warning finger. “One twitch from me and she’s gone.”

Reilly glared at him, clutching the book tight.

They studied each other as they tentatively inched sideways, moving in unison, keeping the same buffer between them.

“Where is she?” Reilly asked.

“Everything in its time.”

“You’re not walking away from this.” Reilly’s eyes were locked on him, his senses alert, processing every morsel of information at hand, looking for an edge.

“I disagree,” the bomber countered. “We’ve established that you care a great deal for this woman. You wouldn’t have flown halfway across the world and taken me into the Vatican if you didn’t. Which means you won’t stop me from walking away from here if that gets her killed. Which it would. Unquestionably.”

“But then again, I’ve got this book. And we’ve established that it’s pretty important to you, right?”

The man conceded Reilly’s remark with a small nod.

“So here’s what we’ll do,” Reilly said. “You want the book. I want Tess. In one piece. So we trade. Take me to her, show me she’s alive and well, and you can have the book.”

The bomber shook his head, a mock apology on his face. “Can’t do that. I’m not sure it’s safe for me to go down there right now, you know what I mean? No, you’ll have to go get her yourself. So how about this instead. The book, for her location. And my word that she’s safe and healthy.”

His word
. Reilly mashed his teeth. He knew he had no choice. “And that phone you’re holding,” he added.

The bomber thought about it for a brief moment, then shrugged. “Sounds fair.”

The sick fuck’s talking about fair
, Reilly bristled. He fought to keep his fury in check and see this through.

“Okay, here’s how we’ll play this,” Reilly said. “You put the phone down on the ground and tell me what car she’s in and where it’s parked. I’ll put the book down too. Then we’ll each move sideways, one step at a time, as if we’re going around an imaginary circle. Slowly. You get the book, I get the phone.”

“And then?”

“Then maybe you get away—for a while. But sooner or later, make no mistake, your ass is mine.” Reilly’s concentration was lasered on him, memorizing every pore, every wrinkle, every detail about him.

The bomber watched him, as if putting his plan through a final stress test. “She’s in a BMW.”

Reilly’s pulse spiked.

The man held up some car keys and dangled them, taunting Reilly. They were like a bloodred rag to a rabid bull. “A five-series. Dark blue. Brindisi plates. It’s parked by the Petriano entrance.”

Which made sense, Reilly thought. Insurance—to use the bomber’s callous word—in case they exited the Vatican from its other gate.

The man held the keys there for a moment, then he turned and tossed them behind him, slightly off to one side. They landed in a small stretch of lawn. He eyed Reilly, an icy smirk just cracking the surface of the hermetic expression on his face. “You’re going to want this too,” he added as he held up his phone—before turning around and tossing it too.

Reilly’s chest seized up as he watched the phone spin in the air several times before it landed on the same grassy patch, by a couple of benches. He just froze there, every muscle in his body knotted to the breaking point, his ears cranked up to eleven, dreading a telltale, distant boom—but he heard nothing.

“Drop the book and go get them,” the man barked, pointing an angry finger toward the lawn.

Reilly hesitated, his feet nailed to the ground—he couldn’t hang on to the heavy book and go around the bomber to retrieve the phone. The man would have no trouble tackling him. His legs twitched, getting conflicting signals about staying put or sprinting off—then he made his move. He turned and hurled the codex as far as he could, shot-putting it behind him, away from the bomber, then tore off toward the phone.

The bomber sprang forward at the same instant. The two men raced for their prizes, eyeing each other while angling away for safety as they rushed past each other, with Reilly harnessing all of his willpower to resist veering off his trajectory and taking the man down—which he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk it—failure meant condemning Tess to a certain death. So he stuck to his heading and was on the grassy patch within seconds. He spotted the phone and plucked it off the ground, staring at it in disbelief, hoping the fact that he hadn’t heard an explosion in the city below meant that it hadn’t triggered one, his pulse throbbing wildly—then he spun around.

The bomber was gone.

As was the book.

Chapter 8

R
eilly moved with androidlike purpose, as if he weren’t in control of his body anymore. He had to do one thing, and one thing only—and nothing could be allowed to interfere.

He stormed up the hill and cut across the hotel’s grounds, shocking its refined guests with his haggard appearance. He didn’t even notice them. He just sprinted across to the hotel’s entrance, zeroed in on a taxi that was picking up an elegantly dressed couple, charged past them, and stormed into it.

“The Vatican, Petriano entrance,” Reilly ordered him. The man, incensed by Reilly’s move, started to mouth off in Italian, but he barely got a few words out before Reilly shoved his FBI ID in the man’s face and, with his other hand pointing ahead angrily, roared, “
Vaticano
. Now. Move.”

They got to as far as maybe half a mile from St. Peter’s Square before the traffic ground to a halt.

The whole area was crippled by pandemonium as a result of the blast. Police cordons were spreading out protectively on the roads leading up to the Vatican, while hordes of frightened tourists were being herded away from the site. On the roads, taxis and convoys of tour buses were fighting their way out of the snarl under a pall of black smoke that hovered over the cathedral’s dome.

Reilly exited the taxi and battled his way through the onslaught of cars and people. He spotted a sign for the “
Cancello Petriano
” that directed him to a narrow street that was choked by fleeing tourists. He hugged the facade of a building that fronted the street and fought his way through the human torrent, heading toward the back of the curved colonnade of St. Peter’s Square. Through the swarm of people, he spotted another sign for the gate, this one pointing left.

He cleared the building and turned left, breathing hard as he emerged from the throng. The gate was less than a hundred yards ahead of him now, with a parking area for a few dozen cars leading up to it. Reilly’s pulse sped.

A dark blue BMW with Brindisi plates
.

It had to be here somewhere.

He had started toward the parked cars when a cop who was shepherding the evacuation cut across him and tried to block him. The cop was rambling something incomprehensible in Italian, his sweaty face bristling with stress. Reilly brushed him aside without breaking pace and kept moving. The cop recovered and caught back up to him and grabbed him by the arm, hard this time, yelling at him, his other hand waving a steel baton angrily and gesturing with it for Reilly to turn around and join the exodus. Reilly reached into his pocket for his creds—then remembered he couldn’t use them, not there. He was probably on their most-wanted list right now. He met the cop’s gaze, and the cop seemed to read his hesitation.

No choice.

Reilly raised his hands defensively with a sheepish half grin—”
Prego, signore
,” Please, sir—then decided this would take too long and just sucker punched the cop in the gut, then followed through with another to the jaw.

The cop dropped.

Reilly was on the move again, his eyes scanning the rows of cars, desperately looking for the BMW. He thought of using the remote control to trigger the door locks and let the alarm’s beeps announce the car’s location to him, but he didn’t want to risk it, worried that the bomber might have booby-trapped the car with just that in mind.

A whistle broke through his concentration. The punched cop was pushing himself back to his feet and calling in backup. Within seconds, cops were rushing at Reilly, converging at him from the gate and from behind—and just as the first of them reached him, he spotted it: navy blue, white plates with the BR provincial code that had to stand for Brindisi.

A cop was yelling “
Alt
“—Stop—at Reilly and moved in to block him. Reilly shoved him aside and kept going, now only a few feet from the car. Another cop joined in, the two of them now screaming furiously, arms spread and weapons drawn, ordering him to stop moving. Reilly spread his arms wide with evident frustration, motioning for them to stay calm—while still inching his way closer to the BMW.

“The car,” he fired back, his voice hoarse with tension. “There’s a woman in that BMW.” He was jabbing his finger toward it, his face contorted with rage. “In the goddamn car,” he repeated. “She’s in there.” He put his wrists together, miming someone with tied hands.

The cops’ faced clouded with confusion as they moved with him, their arms wide, trying to corral him, but he stared them down and kept moving until he got to the BMW.

He gestured again to them, using his hands and the desperate expression on his face to implore them to give him a second as he eyed the back of the car, his mind buzzing with questions.

Was Tess in there? Was she still alive? Was there a bomb in there with her? Was the bomber watching from somewhere nearby, waiting to take them all out any second now with a second remote trigger? Or did he even need to? What if that sick son of a bitch had booby-trapped the trunk lid?

The carabinieri soon cut short his torment. One of them lunged to hit him with his steel baton—setting Reilly off. He grabbed the cop’s hand with both of his own, blocking the hit and twisting the man’s arm to wrest the stick from his grip before spinning him around and shoving him back onto his colleague. Now armed with the baton, he dashed around to the driver’s side of the car and tried the door. It was locked. He swung the baton and smashed the window, and the car’s alarm started blaring just as the cops reached Reilly. They couldn’t stop him from leaning in, and with a silent prayer flashing across his mind, his instincts taking over, hoping as hard as he could that he wasn’t making a gargantuan mistake, he reached down to the base of the driver’s seat and tugged the trunk’s release lever. He spun around, willing away the explosion that would rip him to shreds, and glimpsed the trunk lid pop open and glide upward harmlessly just as the cops slammed him against the car—hard—winding him as more cops piled in to join them.

He yelled at them as they pinned him down, pressing his face against the roof of the car, crushing his cheek and ear, Reilly fighting back, desperate to lift his head up and see what was inside the trunk of the car. And then he heard it—a cop who’d moved back for a look went ballistic and started shouting wildly.

Tess
.

Reilly stiffened as fear and hope ripped through him, his mind scrambling to understand what the man was blurting out. “English,” he shouted. “Say it in English, damn it. Is she in there? Is she okay?”