Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [128]
Harry had seen the lights and knew what it was even before the traffic in front of him began to slow. They’d been more than lucky the first time, when it had been just he and Elena going through the other way. Now, there were three of them, and he held his breath, expecting the worst.
“Mr. Addison—” Elena was looking directly ahead.
Harry saw the car in front of them move off. Abruptly, an armed carabiniere waved them forward. Harry felt his heart pound, and suddenly there was sweat under his palms as his hands gripped the wheel. Again the carabiniere waved them forward.
Breathing deeply, Harry eased the clutch out. The truck moved ahead, then the policeman motioned him to stop. He did. Then two carabinieri came toward them in the purple-white of the checkpoint lights, one from either side. Both carried heavy flashlights.
“Christ!” Harry’s breath went out of him with a rush.
“What is it?” Elena asked quickly.
“The same guy.”
The carabiniere saw Harry, too. How could he forget? The old truck with the priest who had nearly run him over earlier that same morning.
“Buona sera,” the carabiniere said carefully.
“Buona sera,”Harry acknowledged.
The carabiniere lifted his flashlight and played it over the inside of the truck. Danny was still sleeping, still wearing Harry’s black priest’s jacket, slumped against Elena.
The other carabiniere was at Elena’s window. Motioned her to roll it down.
Ignoring him, Elena looked to the carabiniere beside Harry.
“We went to a funeral. You remember?” she said in Italian.
“Yes.”
“Now we are coming back. Father Dolgetta,” she gestured at Danny, then lowered her voice as if trying not to wake him, “came from Milan to say the mass. You see how thin he is. He’s been ill. He should never have come, but he insisted. And then what? A relapse. Look at him. We are trying to get him back and into bed before something worse happens.”
For a long moment the carabiniere stared, his light playing over Harry again and then Danny.
“What would you like us to do? Get out and walk around? Wake him up? Make him walk, too?” Elena’s eyes flashed angrily. “How long does it take for you to let people you already know pass?”
Behind them came a honking of horns. People impatient, waiting in line. Traffic backing up. Finally, the carabiniere snapped off his flashlight, nodded to his partner, then stepped back and waved them through.
100
ROSCANI BROKE OFF A PIECE OF CHOCOLATE, bit into it, then closed the INTERPOL file.
Section one, fifty-nine pages, detailed twenty-seven men and nine women as active terrorists with histories of Europe as a workplace. Section two was twenty-eight pages of murderers still at large and thought to be in Europe: fourteen altogether, all men.
Any of them could have blown up the Assisi bus. And any of the men could be the charred body misidentified as Father Daniel, the person who carried the Spanish Llama pistol. But in Roscani’s estimation, none of them had the same ingenious, erotic, and purely sadistic feel of his blond, scratch-faced, ice picker/razor man.
Frustrated—damning himself for ever having quit smoking—he stood and opened the door of the tiny office he’d retreated to and went back into Villa Lorenzi’s grand ballroom. Walking through the tumult, looking around, he realized he had been wrong earlier. Yes, Gruppo Cardinale was an army. It was too big. Too unwieldy. Called too much attention to itself. Made mistakes. But considering the situation, he was glad to have it. This was not a game he would like to have played alone, leading the search personally with the attitude of his father, as if he and he alone were capable of finding a solution. This was an arena where you needed a saturation force, a thousand eyes, open, alert, crawling over every inch of land. It was the only way to snap closed the trap and guarantee your quarry would not slip away again.
Bellagio. The Church of Santa Chiara. 10:15 P.M.
Harry sat with Danny in the dark of