The Third Revelation (2 page)

 

 

With the guard's pistol on his hip, and the guard's uniform making him anonymous, Anatoly stood in the Bernini Colonnade as if on duty. He waited for his moment. When the young Swiss Guard stood alone at the door while his companion was occupied answering the questions of a little band of tourists, Anatoly strode toward the entrance, saluted the guard, and continued inside. He projected the flat, calm look of a man doing his usual, boring business, just like the Swiss Guard he passed. His whole back seemed to have become one of those disks that pick up signals from satellites far out in space. But the guard had not even returned his salute, and simply waved him on into the building. Anatoly marched steadily on, reviewing in his head the plan of the palace he had memorized.

He was inside. And he knew just where to go.

Up a staircase worthy of a czar, along a corridor whose walls were lined with Flemish tapestries, he made his way to the office of the Vatican's secretary of state. In the reception area, at a desk that seemed miniature in the huge salon, sat a young priest plinking away at the keyboard of a computer. He looked up at Anatoly, his gaze inquiring, but not wary.

Odd how a uniform chased away thoughts that this was an intrusion.

Which it wasn't.

It was something far more dangerous.

“I have been ordered to check the cardinal's office,” Anatoly said.

The priest started to rise.

“Don't trouble yourself,” Anatoly said. “It is most likely a nuisance call. This will only take a minute.”

It took three minutes.

The Vatican secretary of state sat in his desk chair, resplendent in his cardinal's robes. The chair was turned so that the light from an open window fell on the breviary he was reading. He might have been a painting by Goya—except for the modern leather desk chair. His lips moved in prayer. Like Hamlet before his praying uncle, Anatoly hesitated.

The chair turned and the secretary of state looked up at him. Again, the uniform seemed to be a perfect disguise.

“Yes?”

The pistol or the knife?
He hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. Hesitation. That was bad.

Doubt appeared in the cardinal's eyes.

Time to act,
Anatoly thought.

“I've been asked to check your office for possible security violations.”

The cardinal sighed, waved permission, and returned his attention to his book.

Anatoly circled the desk, gripped the back of the chair, and pushed it rapidly to the window.

How frail the old man was.

Even as the startled prelate began to struggle in Anatoly's arms, Anatoly lifted him easily from the chair. He ignored the cardinal's outraged glare and threw him out the window. The cardinal was too startled even to scream as he fluttered through the air and formed a broken scarlet flower on the pavement below.

“Where is the cardinal?” the priest from the outer office asked Anatoly upon entering the room.

Anatoly turned to look at the man. “He stepped out.”

“Stepped out? That's not possible. I was sitting at my desk. He never went past me.” The confused priest looked around the office for his superior.

“Truly, he left the building. But come close, I have something interesting I'd like you to see.” Anatoly beckoned the priest to the window. The man, still uncertain, came up beside him. Anatoly pointed down at the pavement. Just as the priest stiffened in horror at what he beheld, Anatoly grabbed his cassock and lifted. A moment later, the priest joined his superior on the pavement below.

Now, Anatoly had to move swiftly.

In an armoire in the corner, he found a plain black cassock and a little round box of Roman collars. The cassock was short, so he rolled up his trousers. He decided against taking the pistol with him. Instead, he hung the uniform and the weapon in the armoire and hurried away, looking at his watch.

Ahead of schedule,
he thought, and smiled.

 

 

There was no peace to be found in the roof garden today, Maguire thought, even though Chekovsky did not react angrily as he had the time Cardinal Maguire had turned the ambassador over to Brendan Crowe.

“Father Crowe knows as much as I do, Excellency,” Maguire had said before leaving the ambassador.

“Or as little,” Chekovsky muttered. The Russian's little eyes seemed to be imagining how a certain cardinal would look in a Treblinka cell. He shuddered with outrage but controlled it. “Thank you, Your Excellency,” he said finally.

Maguire left the area. He knew he could trust Crowe to get rid of the Russian.

Chekovsky watched Maguire leave, then turned to Crowe. He studied the younger man for a long minute. Brendan could feel the sting of his anger in the glance.

“Are things ever stolen from the archives, Father?”

It was a strange line of questioning. But Brendan was too well disciplined to let that thought show on his face. He could answer a thousand such questions without ever once letting unnecessary information, or a lie, cross his lips. “Would we admit it if that ever did happen?” he asked.

“I suppose bribery could be effective even here.”

“I wouldn't advise it.”

“What would you advise?”

“Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“We say much the same thing in Russia.”

“I know.” Crowe rattled off the phrase in Russian. The ambassador's eyes lit up. He studied Crowe closely.

“Is it you, or must we wait for another?”

“Another devil quoting Scripture?”

The Russian gave a slow smile. “You know your New Testament better than that.”

“
Are
you waiting for someone?”

The ambassador's flat face became expressionless again. He stood. “I am wasting your time, Father.”

Crowe escorted Chekovsky to the elevator. When it arrived, an odd-looking priest emerged from it and hurried past them. Brendan saw the Russian safely into the elevator and out of this level of the building. As the elevator doors closed on the Russian ambassador, Crowe turned around to look for the strange priest. He hadn't recognized him, which was unusual. But there was no sign of the man.

At his desk, Brendan returned to the task that had been interrupted when Maguire fetched him, but he found it hard to concentrate. He sat back, wishing for peace, envying Maguire his little aerie on the roof. Maguire usually found the solace he needed there.

Just as he thought he had his concentration back, a very tall Swiss Guard suddenly burst into the office. The young man's usually cool and calm expression was distraught.

“May I help?” Brendan asked.

“An assassin is loose!”

“What?”

“I tell you, someone is on a rampage. The secretary of state and his assistant have been murdered. I would advise you to leave at once and seek a place of safety.”

And then he was gone.

Crowe was on his feet. And then he was running to the stairway that led to the roof.

When he came through the door and onto the roof, he stopped and looked around. For a moment the peacefulness of the place reassured him. And then he saw Maguire, sitting in a chair on the patio he had turned into a garden. He approached his superior cautiously.

“Your Excellency? We need to seek shelter. I've just been told a killer is on the loose.”

It seemed a shame to wake the cardinal, but the situation was urgent. He placed his hand on Maguire's shoulder, ready to shake him into consciousness. And then he saw the knife buried in the cardinal's chest.

No blood was visible, revealing its presence only as a damp spot on the red robes.

But the pall of death was unmistakable.

Brendan's first thought was a priestly one. He murmured the formula of absolution over the body of Cardinal Maguire.

Only when he had finished did he take a careful look at the scene. A briefcase lay on its side on the floor by the body, its contents spilled across beautiful tiles. Then he heard the slam of the stairway door.

The killer?

He ran toward the sound, not at all sure what he would do if he found someone. But the stairway door was locked.

He could hear footsteps thundering down the stairs.

He ran across the rooftop to his superior's dead body as he punched numbers on his cell phone.

PART I

Chapter ONE

“I'll want to talk to him first.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When former CIA agent Vincent Traeger arrived in Rome, he avoided both the consulate and the embassy, located on the Via Veneto, and went directly to a restaurant in Trastevere. He was unhappy to be here at all, unhappy to have his peaceful retirement interrupted, and very unhappy about what had brought him here.

He'd been instructed to make contact with the Vatican representative at the restaurant. One of the agency's top field agents for decades, Traeger was used to clandestine meets, but he still hated going in without knowing his target. No name for the Holy See's rep had been given him. Still, it was the function, not the person, that was important. Traeger took an outside table. After a moment, he began slapping a rolled up copy of
Le Figaro
against his leg as he studied the street. A minute later, a man took the other chair at his table.

“Ah, you speak French.”

“As little as possible.”

“I noticed your newspaper.”

Traeger looked directly at the man. Of middle size, hair shot with gray, a meaty nose.

The man made a little sibilant noise, then asked, “What is left when ‘Ciao' has a vowel movement?”

“CIA.”

The man nodded. “I have a table reserved inside.”

“Do you have a name?”

In answer, the stranger who'd approached Traeger took out his wallet and opened it enough to show his Vatican City identity card.

“Llano?”

“Rodriguez. Llano was my mother's name.”

They went inside to a table in a secluded corner.

“It is good of your government to lend us your services,” Rodriguez said.

Traeger shrugged. Only a handful in Washington knew he was here. But then only a handful knew who he was. He'd spent most of his adult life in deep undercover.

“So, Mr. Rodriguez, what do we do now?” he asked the Vatican rep.

“We find a cunning killer,” Rodriguez said softly. “And we stop him.”

“And what have you done so far?”

“What we could,” the man replied.

And so they discussed the four brutal murders in Vatican City: two cardinals, a priest, and a basilica guard.

“Why isn't the Vatican in an uproar?” Traeger had spent enough time in the Holy See to know that four murders there, and in a single day, would have brought the Vatican to its knees. And media flocking to its gates.

“Only the news about the murder of the guard has been made public,” Rodriguez replied. “We've ascribed the other deaths to natural causes and spaced out the funerals.”

“I caught some coverage of the secretary of state's funeral. Quite a send-off, the full state ceremony,” Traeger said.

“Yes. There is much to be said for a great pontifical funeral. It can cover even a murder with obscuring clouds of incense. Cardinal Maguire was said to have died quietly of heart failure, which was true enough in its way—his heart failed instantly when someone plunged a knife into it. His body was sent home to Ennis for burial. The secretary of state's young assistant received quieter obsequies a few days later that elicited little curiosity. The basilica guard was declared to be the victim of a demented tourist—a common enough form of street crime. The police are seeking him.”

“Do you really believe this is the work of some fanatic?” Traeger asked.

“It is possible. If only one had been killed, perhaps that might even be true. The secretary of state was a lightning rod, drawing on himself all the anger of malcontents who would not want to criticize the Holy Father directly. And the guard's death was incidental, merely a way to gain entrance to areas within the Vatican that are off-limits to the public. But the other deaths make this into something far more sinister.”

“Was there only one killer?”

“Certainly only one who participated in these killings. He killed the guard and stripped him of his uniform. That got him past the Swiss Guards into the papal palace. He threw the secretary of state out a window and did the same to his assistant, a young priest. There he left the guard's uniform in an armoire from which he took a collar and cassock. He was wearing those when he showed up at the Vatican Library.”

“He seems to have known his way around the Holy City quite well.”

“Indeed. Too well. The only living person who saw him is a priest who worked for the head of the Vatican Library and Archives.”

“For Cardinal Maguire.” Traeger considered the sequence of crimes. Except for the living witness, they were fast, well-executed, and deadly. Worthy of Traeger himself. But the witness was a mistake.

“They were both from County Clare, the cardinal and Crowe. I'm told they were close.”

“I'll want to talk to him first,” Traeger said.

Rodriguez looked away, rubbed the tip of his nose, and again made that little sibilant noise. “He is not being cooperative.”

“Oh?”

“He was at first, but answering the same questions over and over again has tried his patience.”