Blood of the Lamb (43 page)

For Peter Bramante made it
, Damiani’s acrostic had read. Upside down.

Simon Peter, the first Pope, the rock upon whom Jesus built his church, was martyred in Rome. Modern scholarship located the site of his death as, in fact, the ground on which Saint Peter’s now stood; but in Bramante’s day, and on through Mario Damiani’s, Peter was believed to have died on the Janiculum Hill. Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain commissioned Bramante to create a chapel on what was thought to be the very site. The site where Peter, sentenced to crucifixion and considering himself unworthy to share the fate of his Lord, made a final request, which was granted: that he be crucified upside down.

Livia entered the open gate and stepped into the cloister between San Pietro in Montorio and what had been its monastery, now the Spanish Academy. Crossing the courtyard, she reached the Tempietto and started up the steps, Thomas beside her. They stood for a moment in the faultless colonnade, then entered the single, circular room. Spare, with statuary in wall niches, soft light from high windows glowing off the polished marble floor, the perfect chapel invited contemplation and prayer. It offered proof that though men and women might be incurably flawed, their works occasionally rose to flawlessness; and suggested, therefore, that while sadly not perfectable, people had the power to rise also, to be better than they, until a moment ago, had been.

Perfection, however, Livia thought, gazing around, did not allow for change. For addition or subtraction. It did not, for example, suggest within itself a hiding place.

“Below,” Thomas said, as though in response. His voice was completely calm, completely sure. “The place itself.”

As soon as he said it she knew he was right. They went back out and around to the Tempietto’s far side, where two symmetrical staircases led down to a level below the upper chapel floor. At the bottom where the staircases joined again light slipped through a locked iron gate to glance off a wide glass disk in the floor at the precise center of the chapel above. The glass covered a brick cistern dug, legendarily, on the very spot where Peter’s cross had been driven into the earth.

This time when Livia picked the lock Thomas watched her eagerly. She pulled open the creaking gate and started through it, but he placed a gentle hand on her arm. “May I go?”

She stopped at once. “Of course.”

83

Hurrying up the steps, Jorge reached the hairpin above Via Garibaldi and started to make the turn. As he came around, his heart, already pounding, surged into another dimension. He whispered, “Anna.” Because Anna was here.

She stood just above him, slender and steady, her head cocked, her arms folded. Sunlight blazed in her long pale hair, outlined her slim hips, limned her hat like the dark halos edged in gold on the paintings of saints. Anna! She’d come to be with him in his moment of triumph, to share in the victory his cunning was about to bring them. Desire leapt desperately in him, all the more wild because the sight of her was unexpected. His skin longed for hers. His body ached with the need to enfold her, to surround her and have her enclose him in her heat, her ferocity. More than anything he’d ever wanted, Jorge wanted to touch her at this moment.

He didn’t. He forced his arms still, ordered his feet not to move. Discipline was critical for a revolutionary fighter. Their goal was near. The scents in the air told him the
professoressa
and the priest had just passed this way. They would follow, they would have them. He saw the scene, knew with certainty how it would be. He’d leap out in ambush, battle them both, and defeat them. The priest was nothing, the Noantri woman a challenge, but Jorge had no doubt of his success. He’d deliver up the notebook to his Anna. He’d planned to rush to her, bearing it victoriously through the streets. But she was here, standing in the sunlight on the rough stone steps. She was here to watch proudly while her Jorge slew dragons for her.

“
Buonasera
, Jorge.” She smiled.

Italian,
he thought, puzzled. She’d addressed him in Italian. Usually they spoke Spanish, their private language. Italian was the language she used for the others, sometimes English if she had to, but alone together, she and Jorge shared the melodic, flowing tones of his home. He didn’t know why she’d done it—maybe the excitement, she must feel it, too—but he answered in Spanish, as he’d always done.

“Anna. You’re so beautiful. Anna, it’s almost over.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know.”

A flash of movement on the steps far above caught his eye. The
professoressa
and the priest, arriving at the top. He turned to Anna, to tell her.

She was right there: she’d moved much, much closer. She was still smiling. Her teeth were bared.

“
Buenas tardes
, Jorge,” she whispered.
“Adiós.”

“Anna? They’re— Anna, what—”

He stopped as she embraced him. How could he speak? In the warmth of her arms he shivered in an all-consuming ecstasy. It drained away his will. Joyfully, he surrendered his ability to talk, to move, even to want to move. As always when Anna held him, rapture transported him, a bliss so overpowering it was almost pain.

Then it was pain. First, a tiny, tearing twinge, where a moment ago her velvet lips had been kissing his throat. Slowly, from there, a burn began to spread; he felt it reach his side, his stomach, across his hips, replacing with fiery agony the unfathomable joy he’d just known.

“Anna.” He wasn’t even sure if he’d really said it, if she could hear him.

“Adiós,”
she murmured again in his ear. “I’ll find them myself, Jorge. I can keep looking. Alone. I don’t need you.”

Find them? They’re very near. You don’t need to look. They’re just above . . .
He tried to tell her, but the fire inside him was unbearable and he couldn’t speak.

She stepped back. Blood smeared her smile, his blood.

The Lord had re-tasted the Disciple’s blood.

Through the excruciating anguish that engulfed him now, Jorge understood. He felt Anna lift him, knew the moment she threw his agonized body over the railing down to Via Garibaldi far below. The pain didn’t stop, no, it amplified beyond bearing, but Jorge found himself feeling something else, something that drew his attention away from his agony. As he fell he was suffused with joy, a bliss to match, to far outshine, both the pain, and even the ecstasy, of moments before. Of any of his time with Anna, since their first, transcendent night. His Anna had given him a gift. She’d bestowed on him a final blessing, one that exceeded all the Noantri Blessings he’d ever had. Into his mind flashed the face of the old monk, the man he’d killed in the church, that man’s joy and relief, and Jorge understood this gift was one he’d hoped for, yearned for, but never dared admit even to himself. But his Anna knew, and because she loved him, she’d sacrificed her own need for him, given up the dream of a life together on the broad boulevards of Buenos Aires. She’d put her own desires aside to grant Jorge’s unspoken, barely imagined, wish.

Anna had re-infected him, and soon, now, now, he was going to die.

84

“If this is wrong,” Giulio huffed, “and I’m running up the Janiculum for no reason—”

“I’m running right with you,” Raffaele Orsini threw back. “And I smoke more.”

“You’re fifteen years younger. And,” Giulio added, “three steps behind.”

Despite burning lungs and aching legs Giulio had to smile as Raffaele shot past him. No one could say his partner wasn’t competitive. They’d trailed Jorge Ocampo and Anna Jagiellon through Trastevere, getting enough confirmation on the photos they were showing to determine that, though not together, both were heading up the Janiculum Hill. Giulio had already sent a car to the top, but because there were places to turn off before you got there, Giulio had decided he and Raffaele would follow.

All right, no more talk. Giulio put his head down, got a rhythm, and kept it going, afraid if he slowed he’d stop and never get started again. Step pump step pump step—

“Wait!”

That shout sounded like it came from Raffaele’s last breath. Giulio called on a reserve he hadn’t known he had and pushed on up, to come even with the sergeant. Raffaele had stopped at a place where the curve of the roadway below became visible. Panting, he pointed over the railing. Jorge Ocampo, eyes open and staring, lay in a lake of blood.

“I guess we can stop running,” Raffaele wheezed. “Or one of us can.” He grinned, then said, “I’ll go check. He may still be alive. He might be able to tell us something.”

Giulio, peering down at the broken body, clutched Raffaele’s arm as the sergeant turned to head back down the steps. “Raffaele. Don’t go near him. Go up above and stop traffic. No one comes down this road.”

“What—”

“Go!” Giulio himself turned and jogged down the steps, stopping where they crossed the road below the place where Ocampo lay. He pulled out his cell phone as he ran and called Dispatch. “I need Hazmat,” he said. “On Via Garibaldi where it hits Via Mameli, near where the steps go up the Janiculum. Close the road up and down, the staircase, too. Anyone at the top, make them stay. Contact the American Academy, the Spanish Academy, everyone else. No one goes up or down until this is cleared.”

“Understood,
Ispettore
,” came the cool voice. “Details on the threat? Do you need the Bomb Squad?”

“No. Hemorrhagic fever.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hazmat will know.”

He positioned himself in the roadway below the body, ready to wave off traffic. He hadn’t been there thirty seconds when his phone rang.

“Raffaele,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Where the hell do you think? Up the damn hill, stopping traffic. What the hell’s going on?”

“Did you go near the body?”

“Did you tell me not to?”

“Do you always do what I tell you? He could be highly contagious, Raffaele.”

“Contagious? With what?”

Giulio repeated himself. “Hemorrhagic fever. Can you see him from where you are?”

“Yes.”

“Then look. He’s bleeding. From every orifice. Eyes, ears, mouth. Asshole. He didn’t get those injuries in a fall. Look at his skin.”

A pause. “Looks like someone beat the crap out of him.”

“No. Subcutaneous bleeding. Every cell in his body’s ruptured. We saw this in Zaire. He probably threw himself over the wall. The pain must have driven him mad.”

Another pause, longer. “And it’s contagious?”

“There are half a dozen types, maybe more. They’re all contagious. Some are virulent. You’ve heard of Ebola?”

“Shit! Are you serious? This guy has Ebola?”

“There are others.” Giulio tried to sound reassuring. “Not nearly so bad. But until we know which one this is . . .” He trailed off when he heard sirens in the distance. They grew louder as they neared.

“Giulio,” Raffaele said, “could he— You said the pain drove him mad. Could all this, what he’s been doing all day . . .”

“I don’t know. Whether it affects the brain like that—I don’t know how these things progress.”

“What about all the people he came into contact with?”

Giulio just shook his head. The potential public health crisis was enormous, but he didn’t see any reason to say that. “Hazmat’s on the way,” he told Raffaele. “They’ll wrap him up and get him out of here. You and I will have to go with them, to . . . get checked out.” Listening to the sirens down below, there was another thing Giulio didn’t see any reason to say: that while most of the hemorrhagic fevers weren’t fatal, this one clearly was; and that though some of them would pass on their own after a time, none of them could be cured.

85