Day of Confession Page 12

  “Not anymore.”

  “But still on reserve….” Abruptly Marco turned toward the front. “Luca, Sister Elena wants to know where we’re going.”

  “North.”

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Marco leaned back and closed his eyes. “I’m going to sleep,” he said to Elena. “You sleep, too. We have a long way to go.”

  Elena watched him, then looked to Luca at the wheel and saw his features briefly as he lit a cigarette. She had seen the bulge under his jacket as he helped load her patient into the truck, verifying what she had suspected earlier, that he carried a gun as well. And though no one had mentioned it, she knew Pietro, the morning man, was following in his car behind them.

  Beside her Michael Roark had closed his eyes. She wondered if he was dreaming, and if so, what his dreams might be like. And where they were taking him. Or if he was simply going without knowing, as she was, down a darkened road toward a destination unknown, in the company of armed strangers.

  And she wondered, as she had before, who he was that he would need such men. She wondered who he was at all.

  29

  Rome. Same time.

  SUDDENLY THERE WAS THE SENSATION OF being walked on by hundreds of tiny feet. Light, nimble feet. Small. Like those of rodents. With what seemed like superhuman effort Harry opened one eye and saw them. Not mice.

  Rats.

  They were on his chest, his midsection, on both legs. Fully aware, he shouted. Screamed. Trying to shake them off. Some disappeared, but others clung there. Ears up. Watching him with tiny red eyes.

  Then he smelled the stench.

  And remembered the sewer.

  Everywhere was the sound of rushing water, and he felt the wet and realized he was in the water and it was washing past him. Raising himself up, he turned his head and with his one good eye saw more of them. Hundreds. Higher up on dry ground. Watching, waiting. It was why more hadn’t come. They were aware of the water, too. Only the bravest had ventured across the shallow flow where he was.

  Above him was the semicircle of ancient stone that made up the ceiling. And the same stone supplemented by worn concrete lined the walls of either side and the sluice where he lay. Here and there dim lightbulbs encased in wire provided the illumination for what little vision he had.

  Vision.

  He could see!

  At least a little.

  Lying back, he let his right eye close, and abruptly everything faded. For a moment he remained still, then, gathering himself, opened his left eye.

  Black. Nothing at all.

  Immediately he opened his right eye and the world came back. Dim lights. Stone. Concrete. Water.

  Rats.

  He saw the two closest to his right eye inch forward. Noses moving. Teeth bared. The bravest of the brave. As if they knew. Take out that eye and he would see nothing at all. He was theirs.

  “GET AWAY!” he screamed and tried to struggle up. He felt their claws dig and hold, staying where they were.

  “GET AWAY! GET AWAY! GET THE FUCK AWAY!”

  He thrashed from side to side, his voice echoing off the stone. Trying with everything to throw them off. Then he fell sideways into deeper water. He felt it rush over him, the force taking him with it. He was sure he felt them let go. Sure he heard their shrill squeaks as they tried to make higher ground without drowning. Sure he heard the hundreds of others shrieking in a terrible uproar of shared fear. He opened his mouth, bellowing against the sound, trying to get air. But it filled with water and he choked as he was swept away. The only thing clear in his mind was the taste of it; foul and filled with his own blood.

  30

  Friday, July 10, 1:00 A.M.

  A HAND TOUCHED HARRY’S FACE, AND HE GROANED, shivering. The hand retreated, a moment later to return with a damp cloth to wipe his face and again clean the wound on his forehead. Then moving a little to scrub gently the dried blood that matted his hair.

  Somewhere far off came a vague rumbling and the ground shook, and then both sound and movement stopped. Then he felt a tugging at his shoulders and he opened his eyes, or rather the one eye that could see. When he did, he started. An oversized head stared down at him, the eyes glistening in the dim light.

  “Parla Italiano?”A man was sitting on the ground beside Harry, his voice high-pitched and accented in a strange, singsong way.

  Harry turned his head slowly to look at him.

  “Inglese?”

  “Yes… ,” Harry whispered.

  “American?”

  “Yes…,” Harry whispered again.

  “Me, too, once. Pittsburgh. I came to Rome to be in a Fellini movie. I never was. And I never left.”

  Harry could hear the sound of his own breathing. “Where am I…?”

  The face smiled. “With Hercules.”

  Suddenly another face appeared, looking down at him, too. It was that of a woman. Dark skinned, maybe forty, her hair turned up in a bright bandana. Kneeling down, she touched his head, then reached across and lifted his left hand. It was bandaged heavily. Her eyes went to the man with the enlarged head, and she said something in a language Harry had never heard. The man nodded. The woman glanced back at Harry, then stood abruptly and left. After a moment there was a sound like a heavy door opening and then closing.

  “You have the use of only one eye…. But soon the other will come back. She has said so.” Hercules smiled again. “I am to wash your wounds twice every day and to change the bandage on your hand tomorrow. The one on your head can remain for a time…. She has told me that, too.”

  Again came the rumbling and again the ground shook.

  “This my house. Where I live,” Hercules said. “A boarded-up part of the Metro, an old work tunnel. I have existed here for five years—and no one knows. Well, except for a few such as her…. Pretty good, eh?” He laughed and then reached out and pulled himself up with an aluminum crutch. “I have no use of my legs. But my shoulders are huge and I am very strong.”

  Hercules was a dwarf. Three and half feet, four feet tall at most. His head was large, almost egg shaped. And his shoulders were huge, as were his arms. But that was most all of him. His waist was tiny, his legs little more than spindles.

  Limping to a darkened wall behind him, Hercules plucked something from it. When he turned back, he had a second crutch.

  “You were shot…”

  Harry stared blankly. He remembered none of it.

  “Very lucky. The gun was small caliber. The bullet hit your hand and bounced off your head…. You were in the sewer. I fished you out.

  Harry stared at him with his one good eye, uncomprehending, his mind straining to adjust, as if fighting to come out of a deep sleep, to move from an endless dream to reality. For some reason his thoughts went to Madeline, and he saw her, arms and legs askew, her hair floating out from her head in the black water under the ice, and he wondered if this was what it had been like for her—moving from some kind of terrifying reality to a dreamlike state, shifting back and forth between one and the other until she went finally into her last deep sleep.

  “You do not feel pain?”

  “No…”

  Hercules grinned. “Because of her medicine. She is a Gypsy who knows healing. I am not Gypsy, but I get along with them. They give me things, I give them things. We do favors. That way we respect and do not steal from each other….” A giggle erupted, and he let it run, then became serious again. “Nor I from you, Father.”

  “Father…?” Harry looked at him blankly.

  “Your papers were in your jacket, Father Addison…” Hercules leaned on his crutches and swept his hand to the side.

  Nearby, Harry’s clothes hung on a makeshift rack to dry. On the ground next to them, carefully laid out to dry as well, was the envelope Gasparri had given him. Next to it were Danny’s personal effects—his scorched watch, his broken glasses, his charred, Vatican identification, and his passport.

  Like an acrobat Hercules suddenly dropped the length of his
crutches to sit on the ground next to Harry, face-to-face as before. As if he had abruptly pulled up a chair.

  “We have a problem, Father. Decidedly you would want me to tell someone of your condition. Most probably the police. But you are not ready to walk, and I can tell no one you are here because then my home would be found out. Understand?”

  “Yes…”

  “Best you rest anyway. With good fortune, as early as tomorrow you will be able to stand and then go where you wish.”

  Suddenly Hercules reversed his earlier motion and abruptly pulled himself up on his crutches.

  “I am leaving for a time. Sleep without fear. You will be safe.”

  With that he swung off and disappeared in the darkness, the sound of him echoing until there was the creak of wood, the same as when the woman left—a heavy door opening and closing.

  Harry lay back and for the first time was aware of a pillow under his head and a blanket covering him. “Thank you,” he whispered. Again he heard the vague rumbling and felt the ground shake as a Metro train passed in the distance. Then exhaustion overtook him and he closed his eyes and thoughts of Hercules and everything else faded away.

  31

  Beverly Hills, California. Thursday, July 9, dusk.

  BYRON WILLIS LET OUT A DEEP BREATH AND hung up the phone. Turning off Sunset and onto Stone Canyon Road, he switched on the Lexus’s headlights and saw them illuminate the ivy-covered walls guarding the massive, elegant estates he wound past. What had happened was impossible. Harry Addison, his Harry Addison, the guy whom he brought into the firm and loved like a brother and who had an office down the hall, was suddenly on the run in Italy, wanted for the murder of a Rome detective. And Harry’s brother was accused of the assassination of the cardinal vicar of Rome. And it had happened bang, bang. Like an auto accident. Already the media were tying up the office switchboard, trying to get a statement from him and the other partners.

  “Son of a bitch!” he said out loud.

  Whatever the hell had happened, Harry was going to need all the help he could get, and so was the firm. The night was going to be spent fending off the media and making certain their clients knew what had happened and telling them to say nothing when the reporters pounced. At the same time he would be trying to find Harry and get him the best legal representation in Italy.

  Slowing, Byron Willis saw the satellite trucks and the gaggle of media gathered in front of the security gates of his home at 1500 Stone Canyon Road. Pressing the remote that opened the gates, he waited for people to clear, then drove through, waving politely, doing his best to ignore them. On the far side he stopped, making certain no one slipped past as the gates closed. Then he drove on, his headlights cutting an easy path through the darkness, illuminating the long, familiar drive up to his house.

  “Dammit,” he breathed.

  In an instant a friend’s world was turned upside down. It made him realize his own situation only more. Another late meeting, another coming home after dark. His wife and two young sons were away at the family vacation house in Sun Valley. A wife and two young sons whom, even when they were home, he barely saw, even on weekends. God only knew what lay around any corner. Life was rich and to be lived thoroughly, and the demands of work should not be allowed to take up so much of it. And in that moment he made a resolve that once the business with Harry had been worked through—and it would be worked through—he would cut his time at the office and begin to enjoy the rewards life had presented him.

  Another push of the remote, and the door to his garage swung open. Usually the garage lights came on when the door opened, but for some reason this time they didn’t, and he didn’t know why. Opening the car door, he stepped out.

  “Byron—,” a male voice said in the dark.

  Byron Willis started and swung around to see the vaguest outline of a figure coming toward him.

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend of Harry Addison.”

  Harry? What the hell did that mean? Suddenly, fear stabbed through him. “How did you get in here? What do you want?”

  “Not much.”

  There was a dance of flame and the smallest sound, as if someone had spit. Willis felt something hit him hard in the chest. Instinctively he looked down, wondering what it was. Then he felt his knees begin to buckle. The sound came again. Twice. The man stood right in front of him.

  Byron Willis looked up. “I don’t understand…”

  They were the last words he ever said.

  32

  Rome. Friday July 10, 7:00 A.M.

  THOMAS KIND WALKED ALONG THE PATHWAY above the Tiber, waiting impatiently for the cell phone in his pocket to ring. He was dressed in a beige seersucker suit and blue-striped shirt open at the throat. A white panama hat was tilted down over his face to protect him both from the early sun and the possible inquiring face, the one that might recognize him and alert the authorities.

  Moving under an umbrella of shade trees, he walked another dozen paces to a place he had seen as he approached, a point where the flowing Tiber washed against the granite walls directly below him. Glancing around and seeing nothing but the rush of early traffic passing on the roadway beyond the trees, he opened his jacket and reached into his waistband, taking out an object wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. Leaning forward casually, he rested his elbows on the protective balustrade over the water, a tourist stopped to gaze out over the river, and let the object fall from the handkerchief. A moment later he heard the splash and slowly straightened up, absently wiping the handkerchief across the back of his neck. Then he walked on, the Spanish-made Llama pistol washing somewhere along with the current at the bottom of the river.

  Ten minutes later he entered a small trattoria just off Piazza Farnese, ordered a cold espresso from the bar, and sat down at a table near the back, still waiting for the call and the information that yet had not come. Taking the phone from his jacket, he dialed a number, let it ring twice, then punched in a three-digit code and hung up. Sitting back, he picked up his glass and waited for the return call.

  Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind had become famous in 1984 for killing four undercover French antiterrorist police in a botched raid in a Paris suburb and had been the darling of the media and the terrorist underground ever since. Becoming, as journalists liked to call him, a latter-day Carlos the Jackal, a terrorist of fortune, willing to serve the highest bidder. And through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he had served them all. From remnants of Italian Red Brigades to the French Action Directe. From Muammar al Qaddafi to Abu Nidal, and work for Iraqi intelligence in Belgium, France, Britain, and Italy. Then to Miami and New York as a debt payer for the master traficantes, the leaders of the Medellin drug cartel. And later, as if they needed help, coming back to Italy as a contractor for the Cosa Nostra, assassinating Mafia prosecutors in Calabria and Palermo.

  All of which allowed him to echo publicly the words of Bonnot, the leader of a murderous gang operating in Paris in 1912, and later used by Carlos himself—“I am a celebrated man.” And he was. Over the years his face had graced not only the front pages of the world’s major newspapers, but also the covers of Time, Newsweek, even Vanity Fair. 60 Minutes had profiled him twice. All of which put him in a different class entirely from the long succession of other freelancers who had eagerly worked for him.

  The trouble was he was increasingly certain he was mentally ill. At first he thought he had simply lost track. He had started out to become a revolutionary in the truest sense, traveling from Ecuador to Chile as an idealistic teenager in 1976 and taking up a rifle in the streets of Santiago to avenge the slaughter of Marxist students by the soldiers of fascist General Augusto Pinochet. Then came an ideological life in London with his mother’s family, attending exclusive British schools before studying politics and history at Oxford. Immediately afterward there had been a clandestine meeting with a KGB operative in London, followed by an offer to train him as a Soviet agent in Moscow. On the way there, he had stopped in France.
And with it had come the business with the Paris police. And then, and all at once, fame.

  But in the last months, he had begun to sense that he was not driven by ideology or revolution at all, but rather by the exploit of terror itself or, more explicitly, by the act of killing. It was more than something that gave him pleasure, it was sexually arousing. To the extent that it had replaced the sex act altogether. And each time—though he wanted to deny it—the feeling magnified in intensity and became ever more gratifying. A lover to be found, stalked, and then butchered in the most ingenious way that came to him at the time.

  It was awful. He hated it. The idea terrified him. Yet, at the same time, he craved it. That he might be ill was a thought he desperately tried to refute. He wanted to think he was only tired, or, more realistically, having the thoughts of a person approaching middle age. But he knew it wasn’t true and something was wrong, because progressively he felt off balance, as if some part of him was weighted more heavily than the rest. It was a situation made all the worse because there was absolutely no one he could talk to about it without fear of being caught or turned in or compromised in some other way.

  The abrupt chirp of the phone at his elbow jolted him back to the present. Instantly he picked up.

  “Oui.” Yes, he said, speaking in French, nodding several times in response. It was news he had been waiting for, and it came in two parts: the first was confirmation that a potential problem in the U.S. had been tidied up—If Harry Addison had purposely or inadvertently passed on troublesome information to Byron Willis, it no longer made a difference. The subject had been eliminated.

  The second was more difficult because it had involved extensive telephone research and the results had taken far longer to get than he anticipated. But, late or not, they were here and they were welcome.