Silver (45 page)

Gianni Abandonato was
desperate. He almost ran every third step he was hurrying so quickly. Traffic was not in his favor. There wasn’t a cab to be found on the streets. He ended up running the entire length of Via Del Circo Massimo with his cassock lifted to his knees. There was nothing gracious or glorious about his race. He stared straight ahead, sweat streaming down his face as he ran. His breathing was out of control. He wasn’t a fit man. He lived in the stacks. His exercise was lifting a book down, turning a page. By the time he hit the Ponte Palatino he was on his knees, gasping and panting and struggling to push himself back to his feet and keep running.

Fear drove him.

He could have phoned the Corpo della Gendarmeria offices, but what was he going to say? I have poisoned the entire College of Cardinals? You have to stop the conclave? You have to get them out of the chapel? They wouldn’t believe him, and he wouldn’t have been able to convince them over the phone. He needed to be there. He needed them to see his face. Then they would unerstand.

But they still wouldn’t interrupt the conclave.

He was on a fool’s mission.

He knew that, but knowing it didn’t stop him from trying.

He had to. If not to save them, to save himself.

“Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis,”
he mumbled, the prayer comfortable on his lips.
“Fratres, quia peccavi nimis, cogitatione, verbo, opere, et omissióne: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Vírginem, omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.”
I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do; and ask blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

No confession would ever be enough if he couldn’t stop them lighting the fire.

He couldn’t think. Keeping his legs moving, staying on his feet, took all of his strength. By the time he reached Della Farnesina he was spent. Every new step came on trembling legs. His muscles burned. His lungs were on fire. He reached out to steady himself, stumbling against the walls of the houses set back off the street, and pushed himself on. And he was still so far from Bernini’s piazza. He regretted running, but he couldn’t stop. He knew what he must have looked like to passersby. He wasn’t a hero running to save the day.

He stumbled on.

Dominico Neri walked
up to the Swiss Guard’s station and held out the badge that identified his as Carabinieri as though it would mysteriously lift the barrier for him. It didn’t. The guard barely looked at it and shrugged as though to say,
So what? That doesn’t impress me
.

There were four guards at the tation.

None of them seemed particularly enamored with the combination of hot weather and their heavy uniforms.

It wasn’t one of the main entrances. There was no point trying to get anywhere near the front of St. Peter’s with the crowd. It would be a fight they wouldn’t win. Neri wasn’t big on fights he couldn’t win. He led Noah to a side entrance. There was a sentry box, stern-faced boy-guards and a road beyond the barrier that opened up into a forecourt and beyond that splintered into a dozen paths between the cramped buildings.

“Get me the Inspector General,” Neri demanded, staring straight at the youngest guard. It was simple bully-boy tactics and he knew it. But Noah was right; there was plenty of time to apologize later. Right now it was enough that the young guard snapped to attention.

“Your identification,” one of the guards beside him demanded, a little older, a little less willing to be intimidated. He didn’t just want a little flash of the badge, he held out his hand. Neri handed over his ID. The guard looked pointedly at Noah.

“I don’t have any,” he said. “I’m still going inside though, so why don’t you just open up the barrier and save us all a lot of wasted time and energy.”

His almost flippant attitude didn’t amuse the soldier.

The guard who had taken Neri’s ID disappeared into the guardhouse. No doubt he was going to call the Carabinieri offices to confirm he was who he said he was, then call his superiors and ask for a reason to turn them away. A few minutes later he emerged with a wireless phone in his hand
and an expression on his face that said, Y
ou lose
. He handed
the phone across to Neri and moved to block his way.

They weren’t getting in, Neri knew, even as he raised the phone to his ear.

Before he could begin to argue their case with the policeman on the other end of the line, Noah ducked under the barrier and sprinted off across the forecourt.

One of the guards drew his pistol and started to aim it at Noah’s back as though he intended to shoot him dead in his tracks.

“Don’t you dare, soldier!” Neri barked, slapping the man’s arm aside. “That man’s with the British Secret Service!”
He had no idea what effect his words would have.

What he didn’t expect was for the youngest soldier to look at him and say, “Like James Bond 007 Licensed to Kill?” all in one rushed breath, as he took off after Noah Larkin as though someone had just lit a fire under his ass.

For a moment Neri thought he was trying to stop him, and then he realized the young soldier intended to help any way he could. He shook his head. Sometimes there was no accounting for the stupidity of youth.

Noah didn’t know
where he was going.

He just ran.

The place was a warren of little paths, overhung alleys and twisting side streets that wove a labyrinthine course through the chapels and apartments in this oddest of cities. He needed to get inside, which meant finding a door. As far as he was concerned any door would do. He knew it wasn’t true, but he didn’t know what else to do.

He tried to see over the rooftops to get a fix on the chimney above the Sistine Chapel and orientate himself. It was pointless.

He heard the heavy slap of running feet behind him and glanced over his shoulder. The young guard from the barrier was running with his Beretta held out in front of him as though it might bite. For a moment Noah thought he was going to try and stop him, and he started to turn back, figuring the soldier’s training wouldn’t be enough to stay his hand if it came down to shooting him in the back or letting him get away. Then the young soldier surprised him and shouted in terrible fractured English, “I help you, James Bond!”

It took Noah a moment to realize what the hell he meant, and that he wasn’t about to get himself shot in the back. “The Sistine Chapel? Where is it?”

“I help you, James Bond!” the guard repeated. “Follow me!”

He didn’t exactly have a lot of choice. He could have r around like a blind mouse in the maze for a month of Sundays without getting any closer to the chapel if he was left to his own devices.

Abandonato closed his
eyes. His entire face was flushed, his hair was plastered down across his scalp. He was shaking. He was walking awkwardly, favoring his right side because a stitch burned there. He was panting.

The guard looked at him as he approached. He felt sure the guard was going to stop him, to challenge him to prove his right to be there. He had every right, of course, his apartment was beyond the wall. This was where he lived. There were only one hundred and ten guards sworn in the service of the Holy See. He knew them all by sight. Likewise they knew him by sight. If they were looking for him, now was when he would find out. They didn’t stop him. The guard nodded slightly, then stepped back, allowing Abandonato through. It was ludicrously simple. Even after the assassination, they trusted the outfit. It was a costume, clothes, the familiarity of his face. He wanted to scream in the man’s face. It didn’t make him good! He might have had the olive-white complexion of the Mediterranean, but he was every bit as vile a terrorist as any Middle Eastern suicide bomber. The only difference was he was too much of a coward. His “bomb” was already in place, just waiting for the flame that would shrivel the plastic and release the toxic gas.

He shuffled along quickly, heading for the Sistine Chapel.

He didn’t know how he was going to stop the conclave.

He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

The washed-out colors of the murals and the corridors seemed so much more alive to Abandonato. It was almost as though knowing it was all going to end heightened his senses and made everything so much brighter and more vivid. He saw the paintings of Michelangelo’s apprentices and Bernini’s journeymen as though looking at them through new eyes. Every brush stroke was rendered exquisitely. He wanted to linger, to run his fingers over the colors as though he might soak up their brilliance and absorb it into his skin. But that was the Devil talking, trying to delay him while his evil work was done.

He cursed himself and hurried on, following the path his feet knew so well, praying the Lord still believed in him. Give me the strength, he thought, coming around the final corner.

He had made it. A surge of relief broke over him. He thought he was going to collapse under it. He stumbled into the antechamber. He was consumed by a single thought: get inside the chapel before they lit the coals.

Six guards stood at the door of the Pope Sixtus’ chapel, the same six who had stood on the stage with Peter the Roman in Germany, the inner ring, the six most loyal. Five stared eyes front. The sixth looked at Abandonato as he buckled. For a moment he thought he was going collapse and go sprawling across the floor. He didn’t. The only collapse was internal, hope caving in to despair. It is always the most loyal, Abandonato thought, locking eyes with the man whose silver blade had slain the Holy Father. That had always been the Sicarii way.

He was so close.

One door away.

But that door wasn’t merely chained and guarded, it was chained and guarded by Peter’s murderer, the last Sicarii assassin. The assassin had one final task: to see that the conclave’s seal would not be broken until the new Vicar of Christ had been chosen—by which time the College of Cardinal’s would be dead, murdered not by the assassin, but by Abandonato’s hand.

He knew it was useless.

He knew he had failed.

Still he had to try.

“I have to speak with the Cardinal Dean,” he demanded, breathless. There was no conviction behind his words, as though he expected to be denied. He barely had the air in his lungs to fuel the words. He was a broken man.

“The conclave is sealed, Monsignor,” the assassin said. “It cannot be broken. That is the law of the conclave. Whatever your message, it must wait.”

“No,” Abandonato pleaded. “It cannot. I must speak with the Cardinal Dean.” He stepped forward, reaching out to grab the guard’s uniform and shake him to make him understand—but of course he understood. He had engineered it. The man was Solomon’s left hand. Abandonato hesitated at the thought of “most loyal.” It seemed foul when he applied it to the murderer’s cause. The priest didn’t even know what his real name was. He wasn’t Swiss; his entire identity was a lie, though he did bare a passing resemblance to the young man whose life he had stolen. When the fire was lit he would leave the Holy See and return to his master, his job here done. Abandonato stopped himself from clutching the man’s double His hand just hung there between them, reaching out, while the guard stared at him. Abandonato could see the black hatred smoldering in his eyes.

“Control yourself, Monsignor. Conclave will not be broken.”