He saw Gianni Pio, his friend and partner and godfather to his children, as he was taken from his car, drenched in his own blood, his face shot away. Saw the bullet-riddled body of the cardinal vicar of Rome, and the burned hulk of the Assisi bus. Remembered the butchery done by Thomas Kind in Pescara and Bellagio. And wondered what justice meant.
Yes, the crimes had been committed on Italian soil where he had the power to do something about them. But inside the Vatican walls he had no authority at all. And once his fugitives were behind them, there would be nothing he could do but turn his evidence over to Gruppo Cardinale’s prosecutor, Marcello Taglia. Once he did, justice would no longer be his. Instead, it would belong to the politicians. And, in the long run, that would be the end of it. He remembered well Taglia’s words about their investigation into the assassination of the cardinal vicar, warning of “the delicate nature of the whole thing and the diplomatic implications that could rise between Italy and the Vatican.”
In other words, if it so chose, the Vatican could get away with murder.
121
HARRY’S FIRST IMPULSE HAD BEEN TO GO back to where he’d left the Mercedes, break the window and retrieve the keys, and get Danny and Elena out of the apartment on Via Nicolò V.
“He’s dead. They mutilated him,” he told Danny over the cell phone. “Who the hell knows what he told them? They could be on the way there now!” Harry was half walking, half running, trying not to draw attention to himself as he came out of the alley behind Father Bardoni’s apartment and turned down the street. Heading back the way he’d come.
“Harry,” Danny said quietly. “Just come in. Father Bardoni would have told them nothing.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“—I just do…”
LESS THAN THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Harry came into the building. Carefully checking the entryway, he looked at the elevator, then took the front stairs, feeling they were safer than the little elevator box where he could be trapped.
Danny and Elena were in the living room when he came in. He could feel the tension and the electricity. For a moment no one said anything. Then Danny motioned toward the window.
“I want you to take a look, Harry.”
Harry glanced at Elena, then went to the window.
“Look to the left, follow the wall,” Danny said. “Far down is the top of a round brick tower. It’s the Tower of San Giovanni, where Cardinal Marsciano is being held. He’s in the center room halfway up on the far side. It has a glass door that goes out to a small terrace. It’s the only opening in the wall.”
The tower was perhaps a quarter of a mile away, and Harry could see the top of it clearly—a high, circular tower, turreted on top, made of the same ancient brick as the wall inside which it stood.
“We’re the only ones left to do it,” Danny said quietly.
Harry turned slowly.
“You and me and Sister Elena.”
“Do—what?”
“Get Cardinal Marsciano out…” Whatever emotion Danny had shown earlier, when he couldn’t reach Father Bardoni, he’d put away. Father Bardoni was dead; they had to move on.
Harry shook his head. “Uh-uh, not Elena…”
“I want to, Harry.” Elena was looking directly at him. There was no doubt at all she meant it.
“Of course you do. Why wouldn’t you?” Harry looked from Elena to Danny. “She’s as crazy as you are.”
“There’s no one else, Harry… ,” Elena said softly.
Abruptly Harry looked to Danny. “Why are you so certain we’re safe here… that Father Bardoni didn’t tell them?—I saw him, Danny. If it was me, I would have told them anything they wanted to know.”
“You have to believe me, Harry…”
“It’s not you. It’s Father Bardoni. I don’t have that much trust.”
Danny looked at his brother for a long moment in silence; when he finally spoke it was in a way that tried to make Harry understand there was more to what he was saying than simply the words he was using.
“This apartment building belongs to the owner of one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in Italy. All he had to know was that Cardinal Marsciano requested a private place for a few days and it was done with no questions…”
“What’s that got to do with Father Bardoni?”
“Harry, the cardinal is one of the most beloved men in Italy…. Look who helped him, and at what risk to themselves. I…”—Danny hesitated, then went on—“I became a priest because I was as lost and confused after I came out of the marines as I was before I went in…. By the time I came to Rome, I was just as lost…. Then I met the cardinal, and he showed me a life that was inside me that I never knew existed. Over the years he guided me, encouraged me to find my own convictions, spiritual and otherwise…. The Church, Harry, became my family… and the cardinal I loved like a father…. It was the same for Father Bardoni. It’s why he would have told them nothing…”
The image of Father Bardoni in the bathtub was too strong: a man being tortured yet saying nothing. Shaken and moved, Harry ran a hand through his hair and had to look away. When he did, his eyes found Elena’s. They were tender and loving and told him she understood what Danny had said—and knew he was right.
“Harry—“
The sharpness of Danny’s voice brought him around and back to his brother. It was only then he saw the television was on in the background.
“There is something else…. If I didn’t believe it before, Father Bardoni’s murder confirmed it…. Do you know what is going on in China?”
“A catastrophe, a lot of people dead. I don’t know. I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to watch the TV. What the hell are you talking about?”
“In Bellagio, Harry. When we were waiting in the truck for Sister Elena to come for us. You got a call on a cell phone…. It woke me…. I heard you say two names, Adrianna and Eaton.”
“What about it?” Harry still didn’t understand.
“Adrianna Hall. James Eaton.”
Harry was both surprised and puzzled. “They were the people who helped me get to you. How the hell do you know them?”
“It doesn’t make any difference. What’s important is that you get in touch with them both as fast as you can.” Abruptly Danny moved his wheelchair toward his brother. “We have to stop what’s going on in China.”
“Stop what?” Harry didn’t understand.
“They’re poisoning the lakes, Harry…. One has already been done…. There are two more to go…”
“What? Who’s poisoning the lakes? From what little I know, it was an act of nature.”
“It’s not,” Danny said quickly, then glanced at Elena before looking back to Harry. “It’s part of Palestrina’s goal… for the Vatican to control China.”
Harry felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. “That was what the confession was about, wasn’t it?…”
“It was a part of the confession…”
Elena crossed herself, “Mother Mary…,” she said under her breath.
“A little while ago WNN ran a recap story on Hefei,” Danny kept on, pressing strongly. “At two minutes and twenty-odd seconds past eight, there was a clip from the Hefei water-filtration plant—I know the time because I looked at my watch. In that clip was the face of a man who, if he isn’t doing the poisoning, knows who is.”
“How do you know that?” Harry whispered.
“I saw him last summer at a private retreat outside Rome. He was there with another man, waiting to see Palestrina. Not many Chinese are invited to a Vatican retreat.” Danny was as intense as Harry had ever seen him.
“Adrianna Hall can roll the tape back to the second and find that picture. The man is short and standing to the left, and he’s got a briefcase in his hand. When she has it, have her get it to Eaton as fast as she can.”
“What is Eaton going to do with it? He’s a minor embassy official.”
“Harry, he’s Rome station chief of the CIA.”
/>
“What?” Harry was dumbfounded.
Danny didn’t waver. “I’ve been in Rome a long time, Harry…. Where I work, there are levels of international diplomacy where things are known…. Cardinal Marsciano has guided me into rooms most people would never know existed…”
Both Harry and Elena could see Danny’s anguish. Bound by the Seal of Confession, he was jeopardizing his soul by revealing anything he had heard in it. Yet hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake, and he had to do something. And in doing it, he had to trust not in canon law, but in God.
Danny wheeled his chair back a little, never taking his eyes from Harry. “I want you to go out of the building now. Call Adrianna Hall first, and do it from a pay phone. Then go to another pay phone and call Eaton. Tell him what I told you and that Adrianna is getting him the footage. Tell him to inform Chinese Intelligence—tell him they have to find the man with the briefcase. Underline that speed is everything. Otherwise the people in Beijing are going to have a couple of hundred thousand more dead to answer for…”
Harry hesitated for the briefest moment, then his finger pointed off. “There’s a phone right there, Danny. Why not tell Eaton yourself?”
“He can’t know where I am or you are…”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still a U.S. citizen, and because a threat to China is a matter of national security. He’ll want more from me, and he’ll do whatever he has to do to get it…. Even if it means illegally taking all three of us into custody…. If he does”—Danny’s voice faded to a hoarse and exhausted whisper—“Cardinal Marsciano will die.”
Elena saw the look in Harry’s eyes. Saw him stare at his brother for a long time before he slowly nodded and said, “Okay.” She knew in her heart Harry felt what they were doing was wrong, even ill advised. But she had also seen him accept without a word Danny’s special reverence for Cardinal Marsciano, understanding why he would risk everything to save him.
By going along, Harry had not only shown his brother how much he loved him, but in doing so had made—possibly for the first time in their adult lives—their mission the same: slip into the venerable city, free the prince imprisoned in the tower, and then escape alive. It was gallant, medieval, foolhardy, and would have been difficult enough even with Father Bardoni’s help. But Father Bardoni was dead, and so his part of the burden rested solely on Harry. And Elena could feel him trying to work it out, to determine where they were now, where they could go from here. Suddenly Harry glanced at her, holding her eyes for a moment, then opened the door and left, still dressed the way he had been most all the time she’d known him, as a priest.
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.