The Italian Mission (3 page)

“You sure that’s not just Texans?”

“That is exactly the kind of Northeast-centric, crypto liberal attitude that makes it hard for the agency to be influential these days. Good thing I’m around to straighten you guys out.”

“Yeah, good thing.” Jill picked up the afternoon intelligence report and acted like she was concentrating. But when she looked up McCullough was still there, leaning against the doorjamb, popping pumpkin seeds.

“I hear the Chinese are whipped up about somethin’,” he drawled between chews.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Little birdie.”

McCulloch spent his time wandering the halls, chatting up secretaries and low-level officers, charming them into saying things they shouldn’t.

“Something about one of their folks turning up dead in Rome.”

Jill squinted as though she were checking her memory banks. “Oh, yes, now that you mention it, the Italian police found a body not too far from our Vatican Embassy. One of their agents. Nothing to do with us. We’ll keep an eye on it.”

McCulloch straightened and turned toward the hall, then looked back over his shoulder. “Uh huh. Well, anything that happens involvin’ our Asian friends has to do with us. And I need to know about it pronto. That’s all anyone on the Hill wants to talk about: China, China, goddamn China. You’d think they owned a piece of the country.” He laughed, “an’ maybe they do.” His shiny black Ferragamos clicked noisily on the linoleum tile as he strolled down the hall.

4.

The Vatican, Rome, Sunday Morning

Conti picked his way through a large Japanese tourist group clogging the main doorway of St. Peter
’
s, finally pushed through by the insistent shoving of a stout Latin American nun. As always, he marveled at the splendor of the interior. Leo X had financed the new Basilica in the sixteenth century by selling indulgences. Whatever the virtue of his theology, his taste had been impeccable. Some would say that Martin Luther’s revolt was a small price to pay for such beauty. Conti wrenched his gaze away from the sparkling canopy of the Bernini altarpiece and crossed the nave to the west aisle, where Cadiz had told him he would find the Vatican’s
Officium Peregrinationum
, the Office of Pilgrimage.

He located the right door and walked down a hallway past the Vatican Treasury until a red velvet rope blocked his progress. A small group of German tourists waited behind it. Slim young people carrying backpacks, dressed in Lycra hiking clothes. One young man, a scallop shell hanging on a cord around his neck, turned toward him. In rudimentary German, Conti asked where the Pilgrimage office was.

The man responded in slightly accented English. “It’s just there,” pointing to a door ten yards down the hallway. “We’ve been told to wait and someone will come to help us. It’s been half an hour now. But that is not so long after walking a thousand miles.” The man smiled and gestured at his worn hiking boots.

“Have you walked the
Via Francigena
?”

“Yes. Three months to get here.”

“You are religious pilgrims then?”

“We’re from the Bonn gay-lesbian alliance. I suppose you would say we are spiritual pilgrims.”

As Conti digested this, he watched two men in black nylon jackets approach. The taller one issued a brusque greeting to the group in South African-accented English.

“Have you people come from the trail, the
Francigena
?” He pronounced it “Frankie-Gina.” Without waiting for an answer, he continued in a peremptory tone. “I have a few questions for you.” Conti, who had been about to ask the pilgrims his own questions, turned his face away as if to gaze down the empty hallway beyond the rope, but stayed close enough to hear the exchange.

A tall, willowy young woman with cropped blonde hair and a self-possessed air stepped forward. Frowning, she addressed the inquisitor. “And who are you?”

The jacketed man was briefly taken aback, then growled at her. “Interpol. Investigating a possible crime. You would be wise to cooperate.” After a short pause, he added, “We know how to deal with your type.”

The woman stiffened. “Our type? We are German citizens. We’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Give me your passports.”

Instead of responding to this demand, the woman turned to her companions, fire in her eyes. “Don’t do it.”

Conti turned his head slightly back toward the woman and whispered out of the side of his mouth. “Ask for identification.” The woman smiled tightly and spun back to confront the black jackets.

“You will show me your identification, please.”

The two men stared angrily at her for a long moment. She met their stares without flinching. Finally, the leader reached inside his jacket, pulled out a leather folder, flashed it open and, just as quickly, snapped it shut again and stuffed it back inside his pocket. “Enough of this nonsense. Answer my question. Did you see an Oriental monk on the trail heading north?”

Conti, who’d been craning his neck around the tall young man, was about to speak again when the woman said what he would have.

“I did not see clearly what was in your folder. If you wish us to cooperate, I must examine it more closely.”

The man flushed with anger. “I am giving you one last chance.”

She spat back, “Authenticate your authority properly or leave.”

Conti watched with admiration. In his experience, few civilians had the
cojones
to stand up to a bully flashing a badge.

The man turned and whispered something to his comrade who nodded, then spoke. “We must go now to continue our investigation. If we find that you are in any way complicit, you will … be made to pay.” His voice trailed off as his chest deflated.

The men scowled one last time, then wheeled and stalked back toward the interior of St. Peter
’
s. The woman turned to Conti.

“Thank you. I knew I should challenge them — they did not seem to be real policemen — but I wasn’t sure what to say.”

“You handled it perfectly. If they’re from Interpol, I’m from Mars.” Trying to sound nonchalant, he went on, “That was an odd question he asked, wasn’t it? Oriental monks on the trail. Did you see anything like that?”

“Yes, actually. Three monks, with cowls pulled over their heads, just in the suburbs outside Rome heading north. We greeted them but they just bowed and pushed on. They were going very fast, almost flying over the ground.” She laughed. “But I wouldn’t tell those bastards.”

5.

Roma Termini, Main Railway Station, Sunday Afternoon

The smog from thousands of humming automobile engines combined with a temperature inversion to paint the late afternoon sky above the city incandescent orange. Conti, shouldering his way through the press of people waiting for the Sunday afternoon train to Florence, didn’t notice. He was Italian enough to know that staying at the rear of the crowd was a bad idea. It would mean standing all the way to his destination, if he got aboard at all. The crowd, smelling of wool and garlic, chattered ceaselessly, probably not unlike their ancestors, who’d assembled on this very spot two thousand years before to enter the Baths of Diocletian, the
thermae
from which the railway station took its name. Only the cell phones and the tobacco smoke were new.

A teenage girl, dancing to a pop tune playing only in her head, trampled on his toes. Fortunately, he’d stopped at his apartment and donned hiking gear, complete with heavy boots. Heads swiveled to the right, and following them, he watched a train chug slowly out of the yard toward the platform. Only two cars. For a crowd large enough to fill twice that capacity. He braced for a struggle. After several minutes of sharp elbows and well-aimed hips, he collapsed sweating into a seat, dropping his backpack onto his lap. He briefly considered giving his place to a babushka’d grandmother standing in the aisle, but convinced himself it would be too awkward from his window seat.

Conti pulled out his phone. Too many people to risk a voice call. He punched in Jill’s secure number and hoped the Italians weren’t randomly monitoring text messages. He tried not to use any words that would trigger an intelligence-based filter.

‘Can u talk?’

‘Yes.’

‘On train to Tuscany. Have info monks headed that way on foot.’

‘On foot? Typo?’

‘On foot. On
Via Francigena
.’

‘Via what?’

‘Look it up.’

‘I will. Why Tuscany?’

‘No idea. But not only our Chinese friends interested.’

‘Who else?’

‘South Africans, professionals. Saw them at Vatican Pilgrimage Office.’

‘The what?’

‘Look it up.’

Conti enjoyed this. He could have explained things better, but texting gave him an excuse to be enigmatic. Jillian, stuck at headquarters, had always been jealous of his “exciting” undercover life. He was playing with her, and he knew her patience would wear thin.

‘Jerk. What’s really going on?’

‘Don’t know. Honest. Three monks hustling north on foot. Chinese in pursuit. South African somehow involved. Not sure who’s chasing whom, or why. I’m on it.’

‘O.K. I’ll check sources around here. Keep me posted.’

‘Right. Favor?’

‘Almost anything.’

‘Call Ambassador and make excuse. You need me to run an errand maybe?’

‘I’ll think of something. Good luck.’

‘Thx.’

Conti looked up from his phone and, startled, immediately jerked his head back down. Peeking through his fingers, he saw the South Africans standing on the platform between the cars, smoking and scanning the passengers inside. He hadn’t seen them in the crowd. Must have strong-armed their way aboard at the last minute. Their eyes passed over his seat without any change of expression. Good. He hoped he’d blended in with the Germans back at the Vatican and that they hadn’t noticed him.

Lulled by the rocking motion of the train, he slumped back into his seat and closed his eyes. When he opened them again it was six o’clock p.m. and the train was stationary. Immediately alert, he asked his seatmates, a young man listening to an iPod and the old woman who had been standing in the aisle, where they were. The young man took out one ear-bud, shrugged and shouted over the noise of the train, “Orvieto?”

“No, no, no!” the old woman wagged her finger. “
Questa e Chiusi
.”

Conti grabbed his pack and pushed his way toward the door as the train began to move slowly. Chiusi was where he had to change for the local train to the Tuscan hill towns, the way stations on the pilgrimage route. He tumbled down the steps, crossed the pavement steaming from a recent downpour, and, still only half
awake, climbed into an even smaller and more crowded train. Stepping up onto platform between cars, he bumped into one the South Africans, who glared at him without apparent recognition. He turned away quickly and threaded his way into the middle of the car, leaning against a seat to catch his breath.

As the train began to shudder, then roll slowly forward, Conti rummaged through his backpack for the book he’d bought on the
Via Francigena
. In the tenth century, he read, Sigeric the Serious, Archbishop of Canterbury, had chronicled his trip from England to Rome, the first good description of the pilgrimage route. Conti had to smile. Great name for an Archbishop. He studied the map in the book, reviewing his plans. The German pilgrims had seen the monks leaving Rome on Friday morning. This was Sunday afternoon. Even if they were traveling fast, they couldn’t do much more than twenty-five or thirty miles a day in the hilly terrain. He’d get off at Siena, a hundred and thirty-five miles north of Rome, and take the trail south. If they were still on the trail, he should run into them. He looked down the aisle and through the window at the South Africans on the platform. Apparently, they had something similar in mind.