“The blonde?”
“No, the one in the gray jacket, carrying the folders in her hand. Go over to her and tell her you want to sign up for their cellular service. In less than half an hour they’ll have you in their database.”
Andrea did as she was told. She went up to the woman and mumbled all of her pertinent information in Italian. The girl asked her for her press card and typed her cell phone number into an electronic agenda.
“You are now connected to the main data bank.” The young woman had a high opinion of the technology, but her smile was forced. “In about fifty minutes you will be given the service upgrade. I just need you to sign this form, if you would be so kind, authorizing us to send you the information.”
The journalist scrawled her name at the bottom of the page the young woman had taken out of her file. She quickly scanned the fine print, thanked the girl, and said good-bye.
Otero went back to where she had been standing and tried to read more about Balcells, until a rumor circulated that he was about to arrive. Andrea focused on the main door, but the Spaniard had slipped in by an entrance hidden behind the stage he was now climbing. He calmly pretended to be organizing his notes, which gave the cameramen a second to frame their shots and the journalists time to sit down.
Andrea cursed her luck and once again elbowed her way to the front, this time as far as the stage, where the Vatican spokesman stood behind the dais. She had to push her way forward. While everyone else was taking their seat, Andrea got as close as she could to Balcells.
“Mr. Balcells, I’m Andrea Otero from El Globo, the daily paper. I have tried to get in touch with you all week without any luck—”
“Later.”
The spokesman did not so much as glance at her.
“But, Mr. Balcells, you don’t understand. I need to verify some information—”
“Miss, I already told you: later. Let’s get started.”
Andrea was knocked for a loop. He had never even looked at her once, which infuriated her. She had gotten very used to having men do what she wanted with just a beam from her blue searchlights.
“But, Mr. Balcells, I remind you that I represent an important Spanish newspaper.” She was trying to gain traction by mentioning that she represented the Spanish media, without the slightest success. Balcells shot her an icy look.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Andrea Otero.
“From which paper?”
“El Globo.”
“And where is Paloma?”
Paloma, the regular correspondent for Vatican assignments. Who had casually planned a trip to Spain for a few days and had had the extremely unfortunate circumstance of falling and breaking her leg before she got there, thereby giving her place to Andrea. A bad piece of luck that Balcells asked after her. Very bad.
“She couldn’t come; she had a problem.”
Balcells furrowed his brow as only a longtime member of Opus Dei is physically capable of doing. Andrea was caught off guard. She took a short step backward.
“Young lady, please take a look at the people behind you, if you would,” Balcells said, gesturing to the packed rows of seats. “Those are your colleagues from CNN, the BBC, Reuters, and another hundred or so media outlets. Some of them were already accredited journalists here at the Vatican before you were born. And all of them would like to get this press conference under way. Please do us the favor of taking your seat right now.”
Andrea spun around, ashamed and very flustered. The journalists in the front row chuckled at her expense. A few of them did indeed look about as old as Bernini’s damn Colonnade. As she pushed her way to the back of the room, to the spot where she had left her bag with her laptop, she overheard Balcells joking in Italian with those ancient scribblers in the front row. Guffaws, hollow and nearly inhuman, were audible behind her back and she had no doubt the joke was on her. More people were turning around to look at her, while Andrea was turning red as far up as her ears. With her head down and her arms extended so she could make her way through the narrow passage to the door, she felt as if she were swimming through an ocean of bodies. When she finally got back to her spot, she didn’t merely pick up her bag with the laptop and turn back around, she made a beeline for the door. The woman who had written down her information walked over and placed her hand on her arm.
“Just remember, if you go you won’t be able to come back in until after the press conference. The door is locked. That’s the way it works.”
Like a theater, Andrea thought to herself. Just like in a theater.
She slipped out of the woman’s grasp and exited the pressroom without a word. The door swung closed on her as she went out, slamming shut in a way that did nothing to diminish her overwhelming embarrassment. She felt a little better now that she was outside. She needed a smoke desperately, and she rummaged through all the pockets on her jacket, until her fingers found a pack of mints. Her consolation when she was out of her old pal nicotine.
“What a fucking time to give it up.”
She opened the pack of mints and popped three in her mouth. Their taste was no better than fresh vomit, but at least they kept her mouth busy. They didn’t help with the habit, but so what.
Andrea Otero would remember this moment many times in the future. She would remember standing in that doorway, leaning against the stones framing the entrance; she would remember trying to calm herself down at the same time she cursed herself for being so stupid, for embarrassing herself like a child.
But she wouldn’t remember it for all that. She would remember it on account of the terrible discovery that nearly cost her her life, and which finally put her in touch with the man who would change her life, who she ran into thanks to the fact that she decided to wait for the mints to dissolve in her mouth before she hurried away, just so she could calm down a bit. How long does it take for a mint to dissolve? Not very long. For Andrea it was an eternity. Every inch of her body was begging to go back to the hotel and slide as far between the bedsheets as possible. She forced herself to stay where she was, if only because she could not bear to watch herself fleeing through the streets like a beaten dog, her tail between her legs.
Those three small mints would change her life—and very likely the history of the Western world—by the simple fact of being found in the right place at the right time.
There was just a little bit left of one of the mints, a thin sliver perched on her taste buds, when a messenger came barging around the corner. He was wearing a bright orange monkey suit and a baseball cap, and he had a bag slung over his shoulder. He was in a hurry. He walked right up to Andrea.
“Excuse me, but is this where they hold the press conferences?”
“It is.”
“I have an urgent package for the following persons: Michael Williams of CNN, Bertie Hegrend of RTL—”
Andrea interrupted him, her voice reeking with contempt.
“Don’t kill yourself, buddy. The press conference has already started and you will have to wait at least an hour.”
The messenger looked at her as if she were an incomprehensible hallucination.
“No way. They told me that—”
The Spanish journalist found a kind of malignant satisfaction in piling her problems onto someone else.
“You understand. That’s the way it works.”
The messenger’s hand covered his face. He really was desperate.
“You don’t understand, signora. I’ve already missed a few deadlines this month. The urgent deliveries have to get to the intended parties inside of an hour, or they don’t pay. There are ten manila envelopes here at thirty Euros each. I’m late on this job, my agency’s gonna lose the Vatican route and I’ll get kicked to the curb, no doubt about that.”
Andrea softened up. She was a decent person. Impulsive, acting without thinking about it very much, and capricious, for sure. At times she achieved her goals with lies and a heavy dose of luck. But she was a good person. She read t
he messenger’s name printed on the ID card hanging from a pocket of his one-piece. Another of Andrea’s traits: she always remembered people by their names.
“Listen, Giuseppe, I’m sorry, but you couldn’t open that door even if you wanted to. It only opens from the inside. See for yourself. There’s no lock and no door handle.”
Arms akimbo, one on each side of the growing belly visible even through his work clothes, the messenger grunted in despair. He was trying to think. He stared down at Andrea. She was sure he was stealing a look at her breasts—she’d gone through that disagreeable experience almost every day since puberty—but then she saw that his eyes were concentrating on the press badge dangling from her neck.
“Listen, I’ve got it. I’m going to leave the envelopes with you and we’re done.”
Her badge had the Vatican shield on it, and he must have thought she worked there.
“Look, Giuseppe—”
“Enough with the Giuseppe. Call me Beppo,” the messenger said, rooting around in his bag.
“Beppo, I really can’t—”
“Look, just do me this favor. Don’t worry about signing, I’ll sign the delivery slips. I make a different squiggle on each line and we’re done. You just have to promise you’ll deliver the envelopes as soon as they open the door.”
“It’s just that—”
But Beppo already had his hand on the ten envelopes in question.
“Each one has the name of the appropriate journalist. The client was sure they would all be here, so don’t worry. OK, I’m taking off, I have just one more delivery to make, at the Corpo di Vigilanza, and another on Via Lamarmora. Ciao, bella, and thanks.”
And before Andrea could say a word, this intriguing individual spun around and took off.
Andrea was left standing there, staring at the ten envelopes. She couldn’t quite make sense of it. The envelopes were addressed to the ten most important media outlets in the world. Andrea knew four of them by reputation and had recognized at least two of them inside the pressroom.
The envelopes were half the size of a normal page, all of them identical except for the addressee. The thing that awakened her journalist’s instinct, and then shortly set off all her alarms, was the phrase that appeared on all of them. In the upper left corner, written by hand:
Andrea’s moral dilemma lasted all of five seconds. She resolved it with a new mint, looking to the left and the right. The street was deserted; no sign of any witnesses to possible postal fraud. She picked one of the envelopes randomly and opened it, doing as little damage as she could.
“Simple curiosity.”
There were two items inside the envelope. One was a Blusensbrand DVD, with the same phrase as on the envelope written in Magic Marker on the sleeve. The other was a note, written in English.
Andrea acknowledged the possibility that it was a joke, but there was only one way to find out. She slipped her laptop out of her bag, turned it on, and pushed the disc in. She cursed the operating system in every language she knew—Spanish, English, and the banal Italian of her guidebook—and when it had finally booted up, she saw that her DVD was a film.
Forty seconds into the film and she was overwhelmed by the urgent need to vomit.
UACV HEADQUARTERS
Via Lamarmora, 3 Saturday, April 9, 2005, 1:05 A.M.
Paola had been looking everywhere for Fowler. Still, it was hardly a surprise when she found him in the basement, a pistol in his hand, his dark jacket neatly folded on a chair, his clergyman’s collar hanging from a peg on the wall, sleeves rolled up. He was wearing headphones to cushion his ears, so Paola waited for him to finish a round before walking up to him. His utter concentration fascinated her, the way his body completely assumed the firing position. His hands were strong, in spite of the fact that he was fifty years old. The barrel of the gun pointed straight ahead without wavering so much as an eighth of an inch.
She watched him empty not one but three rounds. He took his time firing, didn’t hurry in the slightest, his eyes bearing down, his head tilted just so to the side. He finally noticed she was standing in the training room, which consisted of five booths separated by heavy wood, from which projected the cables holding the targets. The targets could be set at a maximum distance of forty yards by advancing them through a system of pulleys.
“Good evening, Dottoressa.”
“Kind of a strange hour for target practice, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t want to go back to my hotel. I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep tonight.”
Paola understood him perfectly. Being on your feet throughout the funeral was bad enough, but the night was guaranteed to give them no rest. Paola was going crazy trying to think of something useful to do.
“Where is my beloved Deputy Inspector?”
“Ah, he got an urgent call. We were going over the report on Cardoso’s autopsy when he ran out, leaving me in the middle of a sentence.”
“Very like him.”
“Sure. But let’s not talk about it. Let’s see what the Army taught you.”
Paola pressed the button that brought the paper target, the silhouette of a man in black, closer to her. The crude image had a white circle in the center of his chest. It took a while for the target to come back within range; Fowler had moved it as far away as possible. She wasn’t in the least surprised to see that almost all the holes were inside the circle. What surprised her was that the last one had missed. That not all the shots were neatly inside the circle like a protagonist in an action film disappointed her.
But he’s not an action hero, she thought, he’s flesh and bone. Sharp-witted, cultivated, and a good shot. In some ways, the one shot he missed makes him more human.
Fowler kept his eyes on the target while he laughed, amused by his own failure.
“I am a little out of practice but I still like to shoot. It is an unusual sport.”
“As long as it remains a sport.”
“Still don’t trust me?”
Paola didn’t respond. She liked watching Fowler, without the collar, dressed only in his shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his black slacks. But the photos Dante had shown her of El Aguacate were still kicking around inside her head, splashing about like drunken monkeys in a bathtub.
“No, Padre. Not completely. But I want to. Is that enough for you?”
“It will have to do.”
“Where did you get the gun? The depository is closed at this hour.”
“Troi lent me his. It’s his. He told me it had been a long time since he had used it.”
“It’s true, sadly enough. You should have known the guy three years ago. A real pro, the best sort of evidence analyst. He still is, but then his eyes were full of curiosity, and now that look is gone, replaced by the anxiety of the office manager.”
“Is that bitterness or nostalgia in your voice, Dottoressa?”
“A little of both.”
“Did it take you long to forget him?”
Paola looked as if she were taken aback.
“What did you just say?”
“Come on, don’t be offended. I’ve seen the way he creates walls of solid air between the two of you. Troi is an expert at keeping his distance.”
“It’s a drag, but it’s something he does very well.”
Dicanti hesitated a moment before she went on. She again felt that emptiness in the pit of her stomach that looking at Fowler sometimes gave her. The feeling that she was on the top of the Ferris wheel. Should she trust him? She thought, with a sad, fleeting irony, that when all was said and done he was a priest and he was accustomed to seeing people at their worst. As was she, it might be remarked in passing.
“Troi and I had a fling. A quickie. I don’t know if he stopped liking me or his mania about being promoted got the upper hand.”
“But you prefer the second choice.”
“I like to fool myself—in that and other things. I always say to myself that I live with my mother in order to protect her, but in reality
I’m the one who needs protection. I suppose that is why I’m attracted to strong but inadequate personality types. Men with whom I will never share my life.”
Fowler didn’t respond. She had made herself very clear. They were standing quite close, looking at each other. The minutes ticked by in silence.
Paola read what Fowler was thinking as she stared into his penetrating green eyes. She thought she heard a quiet hum, an insistent noise, which she ignored. It was Fowler who pointed it out.
“You had better answer your phone.”
And then Paola realized that it was the sound of her phone, which was now ringing furiously. She picked it up and became instantly enraged. She hung up without saying good-bye.
“Let’s go, Padre. That was the laboratory. This afternoon someone sent us a package by messenger service. The envelope says it was sent by Maurizio Pontiero.”
UACV HEADQUARTERS
Via Lamarmora, 3 Saturday, April 9, 2005, 1:25 A.M.
“The envelope arrived almost four hours ago. Can anyone tell me why we didn’t find out what was in it until now?”
Troi looked at her, patient but burned out. It was very late in the day to put up with a subordinate’s nonsense. Nevertheless, he kept a tight grip on himself as he put the pistol that Fowler had borrowed back in its drawer.
“The envelope arrived with your name on it, Paola, and when it arrived you were at the morgue. The girl in reception put it in with my mail, and I only saw it later. When I realized who had sent it, I went looking for people, and at this time of the night that takes a while. The first thing to do was to call the bomb squad. Nothing suspicious in the envelope, as far as they were concerned. When I found out what was in there, I called both you and Dante. He showed neither hide nor hair. And Cirin never answered the phone.”
“They are asleep. It is the middle of the night, for God’s sake.”
They were sitting in the fingerprint lab, a narrow space replete with lamps and large bulbs. The smell of the powder used to recover prints was everywhere. There were technicians who claimed to love the smell—one even swore he sniffed it before going to see his girl-friend because it was an aphrodisiac—but Paola found it unappetizing. The smell made her want to sneeze, and the dust stuck to her dark clothes and was hard to wash off.