So the Holy Father was mistaken, and the thing sitting perched on his shoulder was not the shadow of Palestrina’s death but the emotional and spiritual infirmities of an old and fearful man.
148
10:15 A.M.
ROSCANI BIT DOWN RESTLESSLY ON A KNUCKLE and watched as the work engine came slowly down the track toward them. It was old and creaky with oily soot muddying most of the once bright green paint beneath.
“It’s early,” Scala said from the backseat.
“Early, late. At least it’s here,” Castelletti said, sitting in front with Roscani.
They were watching from Roscani’s blue Alfa parked on the roadside halfway between the railroad spur to the gates in the Vatican wall and Stazione San Pietro. As the green engine drew closer, they could hear a grating of steel on steel as the engineer applied the brakes and the rumbling machine began to slow. A moment later it drifted past them, slowing even more. Then it stopped. A brakeman jumped from it and walked up the track to the spur. They saw him unlock a mechanical hand switch, then reach up and tug on a steel bar connecting it to the rail switches. A moment later he waved to the engine. There was a puff of brown diesel exhaust from the smokestack and it moved forward onto the spur. When it had gone far enough, the brakeman signaled, and it stopped. Then he threw the switch back the way it had been and climbed back onboard the engine.
Scala leaned forward against the front seat. “They go in now, it’s going to fuck up everyone’s timetable inside.”
Castelletti shook his head. “They won’t. It’s the Vatican. They’ll sit there until precisely the time it takes to open the gates and go inside at eleven on the dot. No Italian trainman is going to risk pissing off the pope by being early or late.”
Roscani glanced at Castelletti, then looked back to the work engine. He was increasingly troubled by what he had done. Maybe he had wanted justice too much and had let some part of him reason the Addisons could somehow deliver it to him. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized they were all crazy. And he most of all for letting it happen. The Addisons might think they were prepared for what they were getting into, but the truth was, they weren’t, not when they were going up against Farel’s black-suited secret service, never mind someone like Thomas Kind. The trouble was—and he knew it—his insight had come too late, the event had already begun.
10:17 A.M.
Danny was out of his wheelchair and on the floor, his legs in the blue fiberglass casts twisted out awkwardly from his body. In front of him was a large blanket of crumpled newspaper. On top of it, he placed the last of eight of the rolled olive-oil-and-rum-soaked rags, setting them side by side and approximately eight inches apart and directly in front of the main air intake for the Vatican museums’ central ventilating system.
“Oorah!” Danny said to himself. “Oorah!” Ready to kill! The ancient Celtic battle cry the marines had taken as their own. It was both arousing and chilling and came from the soul. Everything to now had been the setup, here and now was where it all began. Emotionally he had shifted gears, working himself up to where he needed to be, his mind-set become that of a warrior.
“Oorah!” he said again under his breath as he finished, then looked over his shoulder to Elena standing at a work sink behind him, waiting with a battered galvanized bucket containing a dozen water-soaked equipment-maintenance towels.
“Ready?”
She nodded.
“Okay.”
With a glance at his watch, Danny lit a match and touched it in turn to the rags. Instantly they caught, throwing up a cloud of oily brown smoke and igniting the newspapers. Twisting abruptly left, Danny picked up more of the crumpled newspapers and fed them on top of those already burning. In seconds he had a roaring inferno.
“Now!” he said.
Elena came in a rush. Wincing against the heat and flame, they took the wet towels from the bucket, laying them one by one across the top of the fire.
Almost instantly the flames died away. In their stead was a thick billow of heavy brown-and-white smoke, all of it drawn, not into the room, but into the ventilating system. Satisfied, Danny pushed back, and Elena helped him into the wheelchair. As she did, he looked up at her.
“Next,” he said.
149
10:25 A.M.
HARRY STOOD IN THE DEEP SHADE OF PINE trees just east and north of the Carriage Museum, waiting until a gardener’s electric cart passed. When it did, he stepped out, cursing and fumbling with the stuck zipper on the waist pack inside his shirt. Finally, it came open and he reached in to take out a Ziploc bag. Opening it, he pulled out one of the rolled, oily rags, then closed the bag again and put it back in the waist pack.
In the distance near St. Peter’s he could see two white-shirted Vigilanza patrolmen walking along the road away from him and toward the Ufficio Centrale di Vigilanza, the Vatican police station, a building that he now realized was probably no more than a hundred yards from the railroad station.
Harry watched for a half second more, then, quickly kneeling, he pulled together a large mound of pine needles, placed the rolled oily rag near the bottom and lit it. Immediately it flared up, igniting the tinder-dry needles around it. Counting to five, he smothered the fire with more pine needles. Instantly the flames turned to smoke. Then, as the flames flared again, he piled on several heavy armloads of soaking leaves gathered from beneath a freshly watered hedgerow nearby.
It was then he heard the first wail of warning sirens coming from the direction of the Vatican museums. Dumping a final armload of wet leaves onto the fire and seeing the smoke billow up, he glanced around, then walked quickly up the hill toward the Central Avenue of the Forest.
ELENA STARED BLANKLY ahead, waiting for the elevator to stop. She tried not to hear the sirens or think of the mass anxiety of the people or the damage the smoke might do to the priceless art—“little, if any,” Father Daniel had told her. Then she realized the elevator had stopped and the doors were opening. As they did, the smell of smoke mixed with a clang of warning bells and shrieking fire alarms.
“Let’s go!” Danny urged, and she pushed the wheelchair out into the corridor in front of them. Suddenly they were in a rush of frenzied tourists being urged on by white-shirted Vigilanza.
“The doors at the far end,” Danny said.
“All right,” Elena said. She could feel the adrenaline pump through her as she moved the wheelchair forward through the clamor and thickening smoke. Abruptly, and for no reason, her thoughts went to Harry and how he had looked at her without saying a word just as he and Hercules were leaving the apartment in the early-morning darkness. It was a look not of concern or even fear, but of love. Deep, even profound, there was no real way to describe it, except that it had been there and it had been for her, and it would stay with her for the rest of her life, wherever she was and no matter what happened.
“Out here,” Danny said suddenly.
The urgency in his voice brought her back to the instant. She was following his direction, pushing him forcefully through a rush of people into an outer courtyard, the screaming sirens drowning out the yells of people pouring out the myriad of doors right along with them. She could see Danny opening the camera bag—taking out three of the oiled rags, then three matchbooks whose covers had been inserted with nonfiltered cigarettes that would act as fuses, and then the covers tucked back in again to hold the cigarettes tight.
“Over there.” He was indicating the first of three large trash receptacles, each twenty yards apart.
Smoke was now drifting out from every open window and doorway. And everywhere people rushed and shoved to get out, afraid, yelling, uncertain.
Taking the matchbooks between oily fingers, Danny inserted them separately into the rags.
“Slow it up,” he said as they neared the first trash container. Elena did. Danny lit a match to the first cigarette fuse, made certain it caught, then glancing around, dropped it into the receptacle.
“Okay.”
They moved on to the second and did the same. And then again at the third.
Behind them the first cigarette burned down to the match pack. With a tiny whoosh it ignited, and, in turn, set fire to the oil-and-rum rag, setting the mess of collected refuse aflame.
“Back inside,” Danny yelled over the shriek of sirens and blaring alarms.
Elena wheeled the chair toward the nearest open doorway, where mountains of people continued to pour out with the smoke that was now heavier than ever.
They could see a half dozen helmeted, ax-carrying, and rubber-jacketed vigili del fuoco—Vatican firemen—running along the edge of the roof above them looking for flames. It meant that as yet they had not discovered the source of the smoke. Now one of them stopped and pointed and yelled something. They saw others stop, too, and look in the same direction. And they knew the other trash containers were burning as well.
Now they were at the doorway.
“Scusi!Scusi!” Elena yelled at the crowd, forcing the wheelchair into their midst. Miraculously, enough of them moved out of the way for her to push through. And then they were inside. Pushing along an interior hallway, moving with a river of people going that way, Elena saw Father Daniel pull the cell phone from his shirt pocket and dial.
“Harry—where are you?”
“Top of the hill. Number two is burning.”
Harry was moving quickly through a heavy growth of conifers toward the northwest corner of the gardens, trying not to think that it was working and that only three of them were doing it. Planning, surprise, and determination of the individual, Danny had emphasized over and over, were at the heart of any successful guerrilla action, and so far he was right.
Fifty yards behind him he could see the towers of Vatican Radio. To his right, another fifty yards downhill, heavy smoke began to billow from behind a high hedge, where he had just been. Beyond that he could already see the smoke from his first fire rising slowly.
“No wind, Danny,” Harry said into the cell phone. “All this stuff’s going to hang around.”
“You should be near the shut-off valves.”
“Right.”
Harry pushed through an opening in a protective hedge to find the plumber’s Christmas tree, the low twist of piping that came up from underground and held the control valves for what appeared to be the main water shut-off. But, according to Danny, it wasn’t; it was only an intermediary shut-off, aged and almost never used. And unless the maintenance engineers on duty were old-timers, they probably had no idea of its existence. Still, if one shut it down, it turned off the water to all of the Vatican from that point out, which meant to all of the buildings below, including St. Peter’s, the museums, the Vatican palace, and the administrative buildings.
“I’m on top of them. Twin valves, one opposite the other.”
ELENA TILTED DANNY BACKWARD in the chair, taking them down a flight of stairs and deeper into the smoke.
“How badly rusted?” Danny coughed strongly against the smoke.
“Can’t tell.” Harry’s voice crackled through the phone.
Elena stopped at the bottom of the stairs and opened her own camera case. Coughing, wiping her tearing eyes, she took out two dampened handkerchiefs and spread them open. Pulling one over Danny’s nose and mouth, she tied it behind his head like a bandana. Then she did the same for herself and pushed them forward and into the Chiaramonti Gallery of Sculptures. The portrait busts of Cicero, Heracles with his son, the statue of Tiberius, the colossal head of Augustus, all were lost in the fog of smoke and mass confusion as people rushed both ways down the long, narrow gallery at the same time. All looking for a way out.
“Harry—” Danny hunched over into the phone.
“First one’s okay—The second’s—“
“Shut it down now!”
“As soon as I can, Danny—“
Harry grimaced, the second of the two wheels was rusted, and it took everything he had. Finally it gave all too fast, and he pitched sideways against the Christmas tree, ripping the skin from his knuckles and tossing the phone a dozen feet away.
“Shit.”
THEIR BANDANAS MAKING them look like Old West bandits, Elena turned Danny sideways and pulled him back, avoiding a half dozen Japanese tourists running hand in hand toward them like a train, yelling, choking, crying with the smoke like everyone else. As she did, she glanced out one of the narrow windows and saw a phalanx of blue-shirted men in berets and armed with rifles run into the courtyard outside.
“Father,” she said, alarmed.
Danny looked. “Swiss Guard,” he said, then turned back to the phone, as Elena moved them forward again.
“Harry—”
“HARRY—”
“What?—”
Harry was bent over, recovering the tossed phone and at the same time sucking on his bloody knuckle.
“What’s wrong?”
“The fucking water’s off, okay?”
Danny put up a hand as they reached the far end of the gallery. Elena stopped the wheelchair. In front of them was a closed gate to the gallery beyond. The Galleria Lapidaria, the Gallery of Inscriptions. As far as they could tell, no one was inside.
For the first time they were alone, the crowd, the rush, the panic moving in the opposite direction.
“I’m going for fire three. Are you out of there?” Harry’s voice came through the phone.
“Two more stops.”
“Hurry the hell up.”
“The Swiss Guards are outside in force.”
“Forget the last two stops.”
“We do, you’ll have Farel and the Swiss Guards all over you.”
“Then stop talking and do it.”
“Harry.” Danny looked back. Through the window he could see the Swiss Guards pulling on gas masks, and firemen with breathing tanks and fire axes.
“Eaton is somewhere here. Adrianna Hall is with him.”
“How the hell did—?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus Christ, Danny, forget Eaton. Just get the hell out of there!”
150
“IT’S A DIVERSION.” THOMAS KIND STOOD ON the roadway just below the tower, watching the smoke from the Vatican museums billow up, talking into the two-way radio in his hand. In the distance he could hear the scream of emergency vehicles en route from various Rome City locations.
“What will you do?” Farel’s voice came back at him.
“My plans have not changed. Nor should yours either.” Suddenly Thomas Kind clicked off, and turned back for the tower.
HERCULES CROUCHED in his perch, tying the last of the heavy knots in the snout of his climbing rope, and watched Thomas Kind come back up the pathway toward the tower, radio in hand, talking into it as he came. Below, he saw the black suits on the far side of the hedge.
Hercules waited for Thomas Kind to pass the tower. Then, crutches tied together by a short length of rope and tossed over his shoulder, he moved up on the wall, hesitated briefly, and whirled a length of rope with its heavily knotted snout over head. Standing up fully, balancing almost on air, he flung the rope up and over the roof.
The knotted end settled around a heavy iron railing, then fell back. As the rope went slack Hercules glanced around once more. In the distance he could see the smoke from Vatican buildings, and over the hill beyond the trees in front of him, still more smoke rising.
Standing, he whirled the rope once more and let it fly. Again it came back slack and he cursed himself. And threw it again.
On the fifth toss it snagged, and he tested his weight on it. The tension held and he went up, grinning, straight up the side of the tower, crutches dangling from his back. Moments later he disappeared from sight over its red-and-white-tile roof.
151
“DAMMIT!” EATON CHOKED AGAINST THE smoke, handkerchief to his mouth, watery eyes searching the courtyard from the upper window of the Gallery of Tapestries, watching for wheelchairs in the mass exodus. He had already seen two of
the handicapped people and discounted them. Where the hell Father Daniel and the nurse were in this confusion was impossible to tell.
Smoke, coughing, tearing eyes, and the panic around them aside, none of it was keeping Adrianna from rattling into her cell phone. She had two camera crews outside, one in St. Peter’s square, the other at the entrance to the Vatican museums. Two more were on the way, and a Skycam helicopter pulled from the Adriatic coast, where it had been covering an Italian Navy exercise, was due any minute.
Suddenly Eaton was pulling her around, taking the phone from her, covering it with his hand.
“Tell them to watch for a bearded man in a wheelchair being cared for by a young woman,” he said urgently. “Tell them he’s suspected of starting the fire or whatever. Tell them if they spot him to keep him in sight and let you know right then. Thomas Kind gets to him first, it’s over.”
Adrianna nodded and Eaton gave her back the phone.
GRIMACING AT THE PAIN in his legs, Danny struggled up in his wheelchair and pressed his full weight against the window frame. For a moment nothing happened. Finally, there was a loud creak. The old casing gave and the window swung open just enough to see out and onto the Belvedere Courtyard. The fire department was directly across, and the throw at this angle, awkward. Still—