“You don’t get it, do you, bitch? All you have to do is to hand me the shitty discs and you’ll be on your way home with a nice big strawberry on your face. But no, you think you’re smarter than Mrs. Dante’s kid, and that’s not possible. So now we are going to get serious. Your chance to get out of this still breathing has just passed.”
Dante straddled her, pinning her down. He took out his pistol and pointed it at her head. Andrea was terrified, but even so she looked straight back at him. This bastard would do just about anything.
“You’re not going to shoot. You’d make too much noise.” She said it with less conviction than the last time.
“You know what, you little cunt? Once again, you’re right.”
And he took a silencer out of his pocket, which he then screwed onto the barrel of his gun. Andrea was now face to face with certain death. But this time, it would be a little less noisy.
“Drop it, Fabio.”
Dante spun around. He was caught off guard, and his face looked it. Dicanti and Fowler were standing in the doorway. Paola had her pistol out, and Fowler held the electronic key that had gotten them in the room. Dicanti’s badge and Fowler’s collar had played a crucial part in getting it. It had taken a while for them to arrive at the hotel because first they tracked down one of the four other journalists on their list. They arranged them by age, beginning with the youngest, who turned out to be a gofer for a television crew, with brown hair, as the very talkative receptionist at the front desk informed them. As talkative as the receptionist at Andrea Otero’s hotel.
Dante stared at Dicanti’s pistol, dumbstruck. His body was turned toward Dicanti and Fowler, but he hadn’t lowered his weapon. It was still pointing at Andrea’s head.
“Come on, Dicanti, you won’t do it.”
“You’re attacking a member of the community on Italian soil, Dante. I’m a police officer. You’re not about to tell me what I can and cannot do. Drop the gun or I’ll find myself obligated to shoot.”
“Dicanti, you don’t understand. This woman’s a criminal. She stole confidential information, property of the Vatican. She won’t listen to reason and seems intent on throwing everything away. It’s nothing personal.”
“You said that to me before. And I’ve noticed you’re very deeply involved in many ‘nothing personal’ assignments.”
That was more than Dante could take, and it showed. He changed tactics.
“You’re right. Let me take the girl to the Vatican, just so we can find out what she did with the envelopes she stole. I will be personally responsible for her safety.”
Andrea knew what that meant. She had no intention of spending another minute with this cretin. She started to move her legs very slowly, getting them into position.
“No way,” said Paola.
Dante’s voice took on a steely edge. He directed his words to Fowler.
“Anthony, you can’t let this happen. We can’t let her throw everything out in the open. For the cross and the sword.”
The priest stared back at Dante.
“Those are not my symbols anymore, Dante. And even less so if you tarnish them with innocent blood.”
“But she’s not innocent. She stole the envelopes.”
Dante was still talking when Andrea finally got into position. She chose her moment and kicked with her foot. She didn’t use all her strength, not because she didn’t want to but because she wanted to hit her target exactly. She wanted to hit the son of bitch square in the balls. And she did.
Three things happened at once.
Dante let go of the disc as he grabbed his testicles with his left hand. With his right hand he cocked the pistol, his finger pressing against the trigger. His mouth was open, like a fish out of water.
Dicanti jumped across the room in three steps and rammed into Dante’s stomach.
Fowler reacted a half second after Paola—either because his reflexes were a bit slower or because he was sizing up the situation— and beat a quick path to the pistol, which was still pointing at Andrea. He grabbed Dante’s right wrist at almost the same time that Dicanti’s shoulder barreled into Dante’s chest. The pistol fired at the ceiling.
The three of them fell into a confused heap beneath a rain of falling plaster. Fowler, without letting go of Dante’s wrist, pressed both thumbs down on the wrist joint. Dante let go of the pistol. He still managed to butt Dicanti in the face with his knee. She rolled over. She was out cold.
Fowler and Dante stood up. Fowler held the gun by the barrel, in his left hand. With his right hand he undid the latch and let the clip fall out. It made a loud noise as it bounced onto the floor. With his other hand he took a bullet out of the firing chamber. Two more rapid movements, and the firing pin was in his hand. He threw it across the room and let the rest of the pistol fall to the floor, where it came to rest at Dante’s feet.
“Not good for much now.”
Dante smiled, flexing his shoulders and dropping his head down.
“You’re not much good for anything, either, Grandpa.”
“Try me.”
Dante threw himself at the priest. Fowler took one step to the side and threw a punch at the Vatican cop. It just missed his face, hitting him on the arm. Dante threw a hard left, and Fowler tried to dodge it, only to run into Dante’s fist between his ribs. He fell down, gritting his teeth, out of air.
“You’re a little rusty, old man.”
Dante picked up what was left of the pistol and the clip of bullets. He had no time to find the trigger and put it back in, but he was not about to leave the weapon behind. Moving quickly, he forgot that Dicanti had a gun too, one that he could use. It was, at that moment, concealed between the rug on the floor and her body. She was still unconscious.
Dante looked around the room, in the bathroom and the closet. Andrea Otero wasn’t in any of them and neither was the disc which had been tossed around during the tussle. A drop of blood on the window stopped him in his tracks, and for a second he considered the possibility that the journalist could walk on air as Christ had done on water. Or, more likely, crawl like a cat on all fours.
He soon realized that the room was at the same height as the roof of the building next to it. That building stood alongside the Convent of Santa Maria de la Paz. A beautiful cloister, built by Bramante.
Andrea had no idea who had built the cloister. But she raced like a cat over the red tiles glowing in the morning sun, trying as hard as she could not to draw the attention of the cloister’s first morning tourists. She wanted to get across to the other side, where an open window held the promise of salvation. She was already halfway there. The cloister had two high peaks, and the roof was tilted at a dangerous angle above the stones in the patio, thirty feet below.
Dante’s testicles were howling in pain but he ignored them, raised the window, and climbed out after the journalist. She looked back, saw him land on his feet on the roof, and took off, trying to get away even faster. Dante’s voice stopped her.
“Don’t move.”
Andrea turned around. Dante was pointing the gun at her. A gun incapable of firing bullets, something of which she was unaware. She wondered if this jerk were crazy enough to fire his gun in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Because tourists had seen him now, and they rapturously watched the scene unfolding above their heads. Their numbers were slowly growing. A pity Dicanti was still out cold, because she was missing a vivid demonstration of what is, in forensic psychology, called the Bystander Effect. A many-times-proven theory which states that as the number of bystanders watching a person in danger grows, the probability that anyone will help the victim diminishes, while the number of people pointing with their fingers and telling others to watch increases.
Out of sight of the bystanders, Dante took short, slow steps toward the journalist. As he got closer, he could see that she had one of the discs in her hand. So she must have been telling him the truth, but it had been a dumb mistake to throw the other ones away. That disc was much mor
e important now.
“Give me the disc and I’ll leave. I swear. I don’t want to hurt you,” Dante lied.
Andrea was scared to death, but she put on a show of being brave and full of herself that would have shamed a Marine sergeant.
“What shit! Get lost or I toss it.”
Dante stood in the middle of the roof, paralyzed. Andrea’s arm was extended, her wrist bending back and forth. A simple flick and the disc would take off like a Frisbee. Maybe it would break when it hit the ground, or maybe it would ride on a light morning breeze and one of the spectators would grab it, and then it would evaporate long before he got down to the cloister. And with that, so long and farewell.
Way too risky.
Checkmate! What to do? Distract the enemy until the scales are balanced in your favor.
“Signorina,” Dante said in a loud voice. “Don’t jump. I don’t know what has driven you to take this action but life is very beautiful. If you think about it, you’ll see you have many reasons to go on living.”
That’s the way to go, Dante thought. Get close enough to help the madwoman with the face bathed in blood who jumped onto the roof and was threatening suicide, try to hold her down without anyone noticing how I snatch the disc, and then as we’re rolling around on the roof she slips away. I can’t save her. A tragedy. The people in charge will take care of Dicanti and Fowler. They’ll know how to apply the pressure.
“Don’t jump. Think about your family.”
“What are you bellowing, you mastodon?” Andrea looked at him wide-eyed. “I’m not about to jump!”
The spectators down below were pointing at her. No one had called the police. There were a few scattered shouts of “Don’t jump, don’t jump.” No one seemed to think it strange that her rescuer was waving a pistol. Or more likely, they couldn’t make out what her intrepid savior was holding in his right hand. Dante silently rejoiced. He was getting closer and closer to the young reporter.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m an officer of the law!”
Andrea only now realized what her pursuer was up to. He was less than six feet away.
“Don’t come any closer, you creep. I’ll throw it away!”
The spectators below thought they heard her say she was going to throw herself off the roof, since they barely noticed the disc she held in her hand. There were more cries of “No! No!” and a few tourists even went so far to declare eternal love for Andrea if she came down from the roof in one piece.
Dante’s outstretched hand brushed Andrea’s heel. She turned around to face him and then stepped back, slipping a few inches down the roof. The crowd—there were about fifty people standing in the cloister now, and hotel guests had begun to stick their heads out the windows of their rooms—held their breath.
Suddenly someone shouted, “Look, a priest!”
Dante turned around. Fowler had both feet on the roof, a roof tile in each hand.
“Not here, Anthony!” Dante yelled.
Fowler did not seem to be listening. He hurled one of the tiles, with devilishly good aim. Dante was lucky. There was just enough time to cover his face. If he hadn’t, perhaps the crunch he heard when the tile struck his arm would have been the sound of his skull cracking. He lost his balance, fell onto the roof and started to roll all the way to the edge. By some miracle he was able to grab hold of the rain gutter that jutted out from the roof. He was dangling ten feet above the ground, his legs wrapped around one of Bramante’s priceless columns. Three people left the crowd of useless spectators to help Dante, more of a broken puppet than a man, slide the rest of the way down to the ground. He was thanking them as he lost consciousness.
Fowler stood facing Andrea on the roof.
“Signorina Otero, do us the favor of climbing back into your room before you hurt yourself.”
HOTEL RAPHAEL
Largo Febo, 2 Saturday, April 9, 2005, 9:14 A.M.
Paola came back to the land of the living in the midst of a small miracle: Anthony Fowler was attentively placing a cold, wet towel across her forehead. But that bliss was short-lived, and in a second she was sorry her body didn’t end at the shoulders. Her head was pounding like a jackhammer. She pulled herself together just in time to deal with the two cops who finally showed up at the hotel room, telling them they could go back outside, she had everything under control. Dicanti swore to them, and lied too: no one had tried to commit suicide; the whole thing was nothing more than a big mistake. The two cops nosed around the train wreck of a hotel room with wary looks, but they did as they were told.
Fowler was trying to put Andrea’s forehead back together after her run-in with the mirror. Dicanti sent the two cops out the door and stuck her head into the bathroom just as Fowler was telling the journalist she was going to need stitches.
“At least four on your forehead and two on the brow. But right now you have no time to lose lying in a hospital. I’ll tell you what we will do: you are going to take a cab to Bolonia right away. You will need four hours to get there. A doctor friend of mine will be waiting for you. He’ll sew the stitches on your forehead and then make sure you get to the airport. You can fly to Madrid via Milan. You’ll be safe there. See if you can avoid Italy for a few years.”
“It would be faster for her to catch a plane out of Naples, wouldn’t it?”
Fowler scrutinized Dicanti with utter seriousness.
“Dottoressa, should you ever need to get out of these people’s clutches, avoid Naples whatever you do. The town is crawling with informants.”
“I would say they have eyes just about everywhere.”
“Sadly, you are right on that score. And I fear that crossing paths with the Vigilanza will have unpleasant consequences for both of us.”
“Let’s go see Troi. He’ll take our side.”
Fowler didn’t respond. And then: “He might. Nevertheless, our priority right now is getting Miss Otero out of Rome.”
The conversation Andrea was silently participating in did nothing to take the pained look off her face. The cuts on her forehead were still throbbing, even if, thanks to Fowler, they were bleeding a good deal less. Ten minutes before she had witnessed Dante plunge over the edge of the roof, and she had felt an overwhelming surge of relief. She had run toward Fowler and put her arms around his neck, taking the risk that both of them would tumble over the edge. Fowler had quickly sketched the situation for her: a very powerful element in the Vatican hierarchy didn’t want this incident to see the light of day, which was why her life was threatened. The priest had passed over the minor detail of her deplorable theft of the envelopes, something for which she was grateful.
But not now. Now he was imposing his conditions, and the journalist wasn’t pleased. She was thankful for her opportune rescue at the hands of the priest and the cop, but she wasn’t disposed to give in to blackmail.
“I’m not thinking about going anywhere. I am an accredited journalist, and my paper is trusting me to deliver news of the conclave. And I want them to know that I have uncovered a conspiracy, operating at the highest levels, to hide the death of three cardinals and an Italian cop at the hands of a pyschopath. El Globo and other papers are going to publish some very powerful photos along with this information, and all of it is going to carry my name.”
Fowler listened patiently before he answered.
“Signorina Otero, I admire your courage. You have more of it than many soldiers I’ve known. But in this game you need a good deal more than courage.”
With her hand Andrea was holding the bandage that covered her forehead. She was gritting her teeth.
“Once the report is published, they will never dare touch me.”
“Maybe yes and maybe no. But I don’t want you to publish the report, either. It’s not convenient.”
Andrea looked at him, stupefied.
“What did you just say?”
“To make it simple: give me the disc.”
Andrea got to her feet unsteadily. She was indignant, and held the disc pr
essed tightly against her chest.
“I had no idea you were one of those fanatics, ready to kill to preserve their secrets. I’m getting out of here right now.”
Fowler pushed her back down onto the toilet.
“Personally, for me the most illuminating phrase in the Gospels is, ‘The truth shall make you free.’ And if it were up to me, you could take off at a clip, telling everyone that a priest with a long history of pederasty had gone mad and was walking around knifing cardinals. Perhaps then the Church would realize once and for all that priests are, always and only, men. But that has little to do with you and me. I am opposed to this getting out because Karosky wants it out. When a little time passes and he sees that his method hasn’t shown results, he’ll make a move. Then we can grab him and in the process save a few lives.”
Andrea fell apart. It was a combination of exhaustion, pain, stress, and a feeling she found absolutely impossible to put into words. A sentiment composed of equal parts fragility and self-pity that welled up in her from time to time, when she realized just how small she was in relation to the larger universe. She handed the disc to Fowler, and her hands cradled her head. She started to cry.
“I’ll lose my job.”
The priest took pity on her.
“No you won’t. I’ll see to that personally.”
Three hours later, the U.S. ambassador to Italy called the editor in chief of El Globo. He sent his apologies for the accident that took place between one of the embassy’s official cars and the newspaper’s special correspondent in Rome. As he told it, it had taken place the day before when his car was en route to the airport at full speed. Luckily for them, the driver had jammed on the brakes in time to avoid a catastrophe, and except for a small wound to the head, everyone was all right. It seemed that the journalist had insisted repeatedly that she had to continue with her work, but the doctors at the embassy had ordered two weeks of rest, for which they were offering to send her to Madrid on the embassy’s tab. Of course, because of the great professional injury she had suffered, they were disposed to compensate her. One of the riders in the car had taken an interest in her and wanted to arrange an interview. They would get in touch in two weeks’ time to finalize the details.