Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [101]
“You have a passport?”
“Yes, of course.”
Harry reached into his jacket, felt his fingers touch Eaton’s passport. He hesitated.
“Passaporto.” The first policeman said, brusquely.
Slowly Harry took the passport out. Handed it to the policeman who spoke English. Then watched as one and then the other studied it. Across the street, almost within touching distance, was the hotel, the sidewalk café in front of it busy with nightlife.
“Sacco.”
The first officer nodded at his bag, and Harry gave it to him without hesitation. At the same time, he saw a police car pull up in front of the hotel and stop, the man at the wheel looking in their direction.
“Father Jonathan Roe.” The second policeman closed Harry’s passport and held it.
“Yes.”
“How long have you been in Italy?”
Harry hesitated. If he said he’d been in Rome or Milan or Florence or anywhere else in Italy, they would ask where he had stayed. Any place he named, if he could even think of one, could be easily checked.
“I came in by train from Switzerland this afternoon.”
Both policemen watched him carefully, but said nothing. He prayed they wouldn’t demand a ticket stub or ask where he had been in Switzerland.
Finally, the second spoke. “Why have you come to Bellagio?”
“I’m a tourist. I’ve wanted to come here for years…. Finally”—he smiled—“got the chance.”
“Where are you staying?”
“The Hotel Du Lac.”
“It’s late. Do you have a reservation?”
“One was made for me. I certainly hope so…”
The policemen continued to watch him, as if they weren’t certain. Behind them he could see the driver of the police car watching, too. The moment was excruciating, yet there was nothing for him to do but stand there and wait for them to make the next move.
Suddenly the second policeman handed him his passport.
“Sorry to have bothered you, Father.”
The first gave him his bag and then both stepped back, motioning for him to go on.
“Thank you,” Harry said. Then, sliding the passport into his jacket, he shouldered the bag and walked past them and up to the street. Waiting for a motor scooter to pass, he crossed to the hotel, knowing all too well the men in the police car were still watching him.
At the front desk, as the night clerk approached to register him, he took the chance and looked back. As he did, the police car pulled away.
70
A HANDSOME MAN WITH CLEAR BLUE EYES sat at a back table along the sidewalk café of the Hotel Du Lac. He was in his late thirties and wore loose-fitting jeans and a light denim shirt. He had been there for most of the evening, relaxing, occasionally taking a sip from his beer, and watching the people pass by in front of him.
A waiter in a white shirt and black trousers stopped and gestured at his nearly empty glass.
“Ja, “Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind said, and the waiter nodded and left.
Thomas Kind no longer looked as he had. His jet-black hair had been dyed strikingly blond as had his eyebrows. He seemed Scandinavian or an aging but still very fit California surfer. His passport, however, was Dutch. Frederick Voor, a computer software salesman who lived at 95 Bloemstraat, Amsterdam, was how he had registered at the Hotel Florence earlier that day.
Despite the Gruppo Cardinale’s announcement some three hours earlier that the fugitive American priest, Father Daniel Addison, was no longer being sought in Bellagio and that his reported sighting there had been deemed erroneous, the roads in and out of town were still being closely watched. It meant the police hadn’t given up entirely. Nor had Thomas Kind. He sat where he did out of experience, observing the people who came and went from the hydrofoils as they landed. It was a basic concept that went back to his days as a young revolutionary and assassin in South America. Know who you were looking for. Choose a place he would most probably have to pass through. Then, taking with you the arts of observation and patience, go there and wait. And tonight, like so many times before, it had worked.
Of all the people who had passed by in the hours he had been there, the