Day of Confession Read online

  TURNING TO GO INSIDE, Marsciano caught a glimpse of a face at an upper window. Just a glimpse, then it was gone, pulled back quickly—Sister Maria-Louisa, his new housekeeper, or, rather, Palestrina’s new housekeeper, put there to let him know he was constantly watched, that no matter what he did, Palestrina sat on his shoulder.

  Back inside, Marsciano sat down wearily at his desk and began to go over the final draft of the minutes of the meeting of the day before, the new investment portfolio approved by the council of cardinals. Monday morning he would put it before Palestrina for his signature. And then it would become part of the permanent record.

  As Marsciano worked, an immeasurable darkness in the form of questions rose from the depths of his mind, one that lurked in the shadows of his soul as if it were a living thing, rising whenever there was a quiet moment to torment him—what they had allowed Palestrina to become and, more pointedly, his own deeply despised inability to do anything about it himself. Why had he not requested a private meeting with the Holy Father or sent a secretive memo to the College of Cardinals admitting what had happened and what was about to happen and begging for their help to stop it?

  The tragedy was that the answers were all too familiar because he had wrestled with them a hundred times before. The Holy Father was old and altogether devoted to his secretariat of state and therefore would be unswayable to anything said against him. And who presided over the College of Cardinals more than Palestrina himself? His esteem was enormous, his allies everywhere. A charge of this magnitude would either be laughed off or treated with outrage, as if it were heresy, or as if his accuser were deranged.

  Making it even more impossible was Palestrina’s threat to reveal him as the man who had ordered the murder of Cardinal Parma, the result of a sordid love affair. How could Marsciano defend against a lie like that to the pope or the cardinals? The answer was, he couldn’t, because Palestrina held all the cards and could manipulate them at will.

  Complicating things further was the fact that what had happened had originated entirely from the secrecy and sanctity of the pope’s inner circle, the follow-up to a papal request to find a way to expand the reach of the Church in the next century. Any number of studies had been done and proposals made before Palestrina presented his—deliberately and fully fleshed out. And when he had, Marsciano, like the others, had laughed, taking it as a joke. But it was not a joke. The secretariat was utterly serious.

  To Marsciano’s horror, only Cardinal Parma voiced opposition. The others—Monsignor Capizzi and Cardinal Matadi—had remained silent. In retrospect Marsciano should not have been surprised. Palestrina had obviously evaluated them all carefully beforehand. Parma, old school, staunchly conservative and unyielding, would never have gone along. But Capizzi, graduate of Oxford and Yale and chief of the Vatican Bank, and Matadi, prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, whose family was among the most prominent in Zaire, were altogether different. Both were highly ambitious political animals who had not reached the pinnacles they had by accident. Profoundly driven and exceedingly canny, each man had a huge following inside the Church. And, knowing full well that Palestrina had no desire for the office himself, each had his eye directly on the papacy, knowing that it was wholly within Palestrina’s whim and power to seat either one of them there.

  Marsciano was another creature altogether, a man who had achieved what he had because he was not only intelligent and decidedly unpolitical but at heart a simple priest who believed in his Church and in God. It made him truly a “man of trust,” an innocent who would find it impossible to conceive that a man like Palestrina could exist inside the modern Church, thereby making it easy to use his faith as an instrument to manipulate him.

  Suddenly Marsciano slammed his first down on the table in front of him, in the same instant damning himself for the thousandth time for his weakness and naivete, even his own godliness, in pursuit of the calling he had been drawn to his entire life. If his fury and self-realization had come earlier, he might have been able to do something, but by now it was far too late. Control of the Holy See had been all but relinquished to Palestrina by the Holy Father, and the only voice against him, Cardinal Parma’s, had been silenced. And Capizzi and Matadi had bowed to their leader and followed him. As had Marsciano himself, hopelessly trapped by the substance of his own character. In result, Palestrina had taken the reins, setting in motion a horror that could not, and would not, be called back. Leaving them all to wait only for the broiling heat of Chinese summer.

  50

  Beijing, China. The Gloria Plaza Hotel.Sunday, July 12, 10:30 A.M.

  FORTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD LI WEN CAME OUT OF the elevator on the eighth floor and turned down the hallway, looking for room 886, where he was to meet James Hawley, a hydrobiological engineer from Walnut Creek, California. Outside, he could see the rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the overcast. The rest of day would be hot and oppressively humid as predicted, with the pattern to continue for several more days.

  Room 886 was halfway down the corridor, and the door to it partway open when Li Wen reached it.

  “Mr. Hawley?” he said. There was no reply.

  Li Wen raised his voice. “Mr. Hawley.” Still there was nothing. Pushing the door open, he entered.

  Inside, the color TV was on to a news broadcast, and a light gray business suit for a very tall man was laid out on the bed. Alongside it was a white short-sleeved shirt, a striped tie, and a pair of boxer shorts. To his left, the bathroom door was open and he could hear the sound of a shower running.

  “Mr. Hawley?”

  “Mr. Li.” James Hawley’s voice rose over the sound of the water. “Another apology. I’ve been called to an urgent meeting at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. About what, I don’t know. But it makes no difference—everything you need is in an envelope in the top dresser drawer. I know you have a train to catch. We’ll have tea or a drink the next time around.”

  Li Wen hesitated, then went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Inside was a hotel envelope with the initials L. W. handwritten on the front. Taking it out, he opened it, glanced quickly at its contents, then slid it into his jacket pocket and closed the drawer.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hawley,” he said at the steam coming from the bathroom door, then quickly left, closing the door behind him. The contents of the envelope were precisely as promised, and there was no need to stay longer. He had little more than seven minutes to leave the hotel, dodge the traffic on Jianguomennan Avenue, and get to his train.

  HAD LI WEN FORGOTTEN something and come back to retrieve it, he would have seen a short, stocky Chinese in a business suit exit the bathroom in James Hawley’s place. Stepping to the window, he looked out and saw Li Wen cross the street in front of the hotel and walk quickly toward the railroad station.

  Turning from the window, he took a suitcase from under the bed, put James Hawley’s carefully laid-out clothes into it, and then left, leaving the room key on the bed.

  Five minutes later he was at the wheel of his silver Opel, picking up his cell phone and turning onto Chongwenmendong Street. Chen Yin grinned. Publicly he was a successful merchant of cut flowers, but on quite another level he was a master of spoken language and dialect. One that he particularly delighted in using was American English—speaking the way a man like James Hawley, a polite, if harried, hydro-biological engineer from Walnut Creek, California, might, if he existed.

  51

  Cortona, Italy. Sunday, July 12, 5:10 A.M.11:10 A.M. in Beijing

  “THANK YOU, MY FRIEND,” THOMAS KIND SAID in English. Then, clicking off the cellular, he put it on the seat beside him. Chen Yin’s call had been within the allocated time window, and the news was as he had expected. Li Wen had the documents and was on his way home. There had been no face-to-face contact. Chen Yin was good. Dependable. And he had found Li Wen, not an easy thing to do—uncover the perfect all-too-accommodating pawn who had all the skills and reasons to do as asked, yet who, if circumstance required,
could be disavowed or simply liquidated at any time.

  Chen Yin had been paid beforehand, as a deposit in good faith, and once Li Wen had done his job, he would be paid the remainder of what he was owed. Then both would vanish: Li Wen because his usefulness would be over and they dared leave no trace back to them; Chen Yin, because it would be wise for him to leave the country for a time and because his money was out of China anyway, deposited in the Union Square branch of a Wells Fargo bank in downtown San Francisco.

  SOMEWHERE A ROOSTER CROWED, the sound bringing Thomas Kind immediately back to the task at hand. Ahead, in the predawn light, he could just see the house. It sat back from the road and behind a stone wall, a layer of mist hanging over the ploughed fields across from it.

  He could have gone in just after he’d arrived, at a little past midnight. He would have cut the power, and the night-vision goggles would have given him the advantage. But still the killing would have had to be done in the dark. And against three men in a house he did not know.

  So he’d waited, parking the rented Mercedes on an out-of-the-way cul-de-sac a mile away. There he’d field-stripped and checked his weapons in the darkness—twin 9mm Walther MPKs, mascinen pistole kurz, machine pistols with thirty-round magazines—then rested, his mind flashing back to the unfortunate happening in Pescara when Ettore Caputo, owner of Servizio Ambulanza Pescara, and his wife had refused to talk to him about the Iveco ambulance that left Hospital St. Cecilia Thursday night for a destination unknown.

  Stubbornness was an unfortunate trait in all of them. The husband and wife would not talk, and Thomas Kind was determined to have answers and would not leave without them. His questions were simple: who were the people in the ambulance? and where had they gone?

  It had only been when Kind pressed a two-shot .44 magnum derringer against Signora Caputo’s forehead that Ettore suddenly had had the urge to talk. Who the patient or passengers were he had no idea. The driver was a man named Luca Fanari, a former carabiniere and licensed ambulance driver who worked for him from time to time. Luca had rented the ambulance from him earlier that week and for an unspecified period of time. Where he had gone with it, he did not know.

  Thomas Kind pressed the derringer a little more firmly against Signora Caputo’s head and asked again.

  “Call Fanari’s wife, for God’s sake!” the signora shouted.

  Ninety seconds later Caputo hung up the phone. Luca Fanari’s wife had given him a telephone number and an address where to reach her husband, warning him that neither was to be given out under any circumstance whatsoever.

  Luca Fanari, Caputo said, had driven his patient north. To a private home. Just outside the town of Cortona.

  STREAKS OF DAYLIGHT crossed the sky as Thomas Kind slipped over the wall and approached the house from behind. He wore tight gloves, steel-colored jeans, a dark sweater, and black running shoes. One of the Walther MPKs was in his hand, the other hung from a strap over his shoulder. Both were mounted with silencers. He looked like a commando; which, at this moment, he was.

  In front of him he could see the beige Iveco ambulance parked near the side door. Five minutes later he had searched the entire house. It was empty.

  52

  Rome. 7:00 A.M.

  HARRY HAD SEEN THE VIDEO CLIP ON AN English-language channel an hour earlier—a Hollywood trade paper photograph of Byron Willis, exterior shots of their Beverly Hills office building and of Byron’s home in Bel Air. His friend, boss, and mentor had been shot to death as he arrived at his home Thursday night. Because of his association with Harry and the events concurrent in Italy, the police had withheld the news pending further inquiry. The FBI was now involved, and investigators from Gruppo Cardinale were expected to arrive in Los Angeles later in the day.

  Stunned, horrified, Harry had taken the chance and called Adrianna’s office, leaving word to have her call Elmer Vasko immediately. And she had, from Athens an hour later. She’d just returned from the island of Cyprus, where she’d covered a major confrontation between Greek and Turkish politicians and had only just learned of the Willis piece herself and tried to find out more before she called him.

  “Did it have to do with me, with what the fuck is going on here in Italy?” Harry was angry and bitter and fighting to hold back tears.

  “Nobody knows yet. But—“

  “But what, for Chrissake?”

  “From what I understand, it looked like a professional hit.”

  “… God, why?” he whispered. “He didn’t know anything.”

  Pulling himself back, fighting off the dark swirl of emotion, Harry asked her what the status was in the hunt for his brother. Her response was that the police had no leads, that nothing had changed. It was why she hadn’t called.

  Harry’s world was collapsing around him in violence. He’d wanted to call Barbara Willis, Byron’s widow. To talk to her, to somehow touch her, try to comfort her and share her terrible pain. He’d wanted to call Willis’s senior partners Bill Rosenfeld and Penn Barry to find out what the hell happened. But he couldn’t. Not by phone or fax or even E-mail without fear it would be traced to where he was. But he couldn’t sit still either; if Danny was alive, it was only a matter of time before they got to him just as they got to Byron Willis. Instantly his thoughts shifted to Cardinal Marsciano and the stance he had taken at the funeral home, telling him to bury the charred remains as if they were his brother’s, then warning him forcefully afterward not to press further. Clearly the cardinal knew a great deal more than he was telling. If anyone knew where Danny was now, it would be he.

  “Adrianna,” he said forcefully, “I want Cardinal Marsciano’s home phone number. Not the main number, the private one that hopefully only he answers.”

  “I don’t know if I can get it.”

  “Try.”

  53

  Still Sunday, July 12.

  VIA CARISSIMI WAS A STREET OF STYLISH APARTments and town houses bordered on one end by the sprawling gardens of the Villa Borghese, and the elegant, tree-lined Via Pinciana, on the other.

  Harry had been watching the ivy-covered, four-story building at number 46 off and on since nine-thirty. Twice he’d dialed Cardinal Marsciano’s private number. Twice an answering machine had started to pick up. Twice he’d clicked off the cellular. Either Marsciano wasn’t there or he was screening his calls. Harry wanted neither. He couldn’t leave a message or give Marsciano the opportunity to leave him hanging while someone put a trace on his call. The best thing was to be patient, at least for a time. Try later and hope the cardinal himself answered.

  At noon he dialed again with the same result. Frustrated, he went for a walk in the Villa Borghese. At one o’clock he took a seat on a park bench on the edge of the Villa grounds where he could see the cardinal’s residence clearly.

  Finally, at two-fifteen, a dark gray Mercedes pulled up in front and stopped. The driver stepped out and opened the rear door. A moment later Marsciano appeared, followed by Father Bardoni. Together the clergymen walked up the steps and went into Marsciano’s building. Immediately the driver got behind the wheel and drove off.

  Glancing at his watch, Harry took the cellular from his pocket, waited for a young couple to pass by, then hit REDIAL and waited.

  “Pronto,”—Hello—the cardinal’s voice came back strongly.

  “My name is Father Roe, Cardinal Marsciano. I’m from Georgetown University in—“

  “How did you get this number?”

  “I’d like to speak to you about a medical problem…”

  “What?”

  “A third breast. It’s called a supernumerary nipple.”

  There was a sudden pause—and then another voice came on.

  “This is Father Bardoni. I work for the cardinal. What can I do for you?”

  “Monsignor Grayson at Georgetown School of Law was kind enough to give me the cardinal’s number before I left. He said that if I should need help, His Eminence would be more than willing to give it.”

  HAR
RY WAITED ON THE BENCH until he saw Father Bardoni come down the steps and start down the block toward him. Getting up, he walked slowly toward a large fountain and the crowd clustered around it, people vainly attempting to escape the oppressive heat and humidity of this July Sunday afternoon. Harry was simply one among them, a priest, young and bearded, doing the same.

  Looking back, he watched the young, tall priest with the dark, curly hair cross into the park. He walked casually, as if he were out for a stroll. Yet Harry could see him looking in his direction, trying to find him in the crowd around the fountain. It was the manner of a man not wanting to draw attention to himself or what he was doing, of someone on the spot and uncomfortable. Still, he was coming, and that was enough to tell Harry he’d been right. Danny was alive. And Marsciano knew where he was.

  54

  HARRY STOOD WATCHING, HALF HIDDEN BY the children splashing in the fountain in front of him, letting Father Bardoni find him in the crowd. Finally he did.

  “You look different…” Father Bardoni came up to stand next to him, his eyes not on Harry but on the children shrieking and splashing in the fountain. Harry was indeed thinner, the beard helped, and so did the priest’s clothing and the black beret angled over his forehead.

  “I want to meet with His Eminence.”

  Both men talked quietly, watching the children, smiling when appropriate, enjoying their antics.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “Why?”

  “It just is…. His schedule is full…”

  Harry turned to look at him. “Bullshit.”

  Father Bardoni let his eyes wander past Harry. “On the hill behind you, Mr. Addison, are several carabinieri on horse patrol. A little closer and to your right are two more on motorcycles.” His eyes came back to Harry. “You are one of the two most wanted men in Italy…. By simply moving toward the police and waving my arms…. Do you understand?”