Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [15]
As president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, Cardinal Marsciano was a man in whose hands rested the ultimate financial decisions for the investment of the Vatican’s hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. And as such, he was one of the very few who knew exactly how much those assets were worth and where they were invested. It was a position of solemn responsibility and by its very nature open to those things men in high station are always heir to—the corruption of mind and spirit. Men who fell to such temptations usually suffered from greed or arrogance or both. Marsciano was afflicted by neither. His suffering came from a cruel intermingling of profound loyalty to the Church, grievously misplaced trust, and human love; made worse, if that were possible, by his own high position within the Vatican.
The tape recording—in light of the murder of Cardinal Parma and the timing of its delivery—only pushed him farther into darkness. More than simply threaten his own personal safety, by its very existence it raised other, more far-reaching questions: What else was known? Whom could he trust?
The only sound was that of the wheels passing over the rails as the train drew ever closer to Rome. Where was the call? What had happened? Something had to have gone wrong. He was certain now.
Abruptly the phone rang.
Marsciano was startled and for a moment did nothing. It rang again. Recovering, he picked up.
“Si.” His voice was hushed, apprehensive. Nodding almost imperceptibly, he listened. “Grazie,” he whispered finally and hung up.
8
Rome. Tuesday, July 7, 7:45 A.M.
JACOV FAREL WAS SWISS.
He was also Capo dell’Ufficio Centrale Vigilanza, the man in charge of the Vatican police, and had been for more than twenty years. He had called Harry at five minutes after seven, waking him from a deep sleep and telling him it was imperative they talk.
Harry had agreed to meet with him, and now, forty minutes later, was being driven across Rome by one of Farel’s men. Crossing the Tiber, they drove beside it for a few hundred yards, then turned down the colonnaded Via della Conciliazione, with the unmistakable dome of St. Peter’s in the distance. Harry was certain that was where he was being taken, to the Vatican and to Farel’s office somewhere deep inside it. Then abruptly the driver veered off to the right and through an arched portal in an ancient wall and into a neighborhood of narrow streets and old apartment buildings. Two blocks later he made a sharp left to stop in front of a small trattoria on Borgo Vittorio. Getting out, he opened the door for Harry and escorted him into the trattoria.
A lone man in a black suit stood at the bar as they came in. His back to them, his right hand rested beside a coffee cup. He was probably five foot eight or nine, heavy-set, and what little hair he might have had left had been shaved to the skull, leaving the top of his head shining in the overhead light.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Addison.” Jacov Farel’s English was colored by a French accent. His voice was husky, as if he’d chain-smoked for years. Slowly the hand pulled away from the coffee cup and he turned. Harry hadn’t been able to see the power of the man from the back, but he could now. The shaved head, the broad face with the flattened nose, the neck as thick as a man’s thigh, the burly chest tight against his white shirt. His hands, big and strong, looked as if they’d spent most of their fifty-odd years wrapped around the handle of a jackhammer. And then there were his eyes, deep-set, gray-green, unforgiving—abruptly they flashed toward the driver. Without a word, the man took a step backward and left, the click of the door sounding behind him as it closed. Then Farel’s eyes shifted to Harry.
“My responsibilities are different from those of the Italian police. They protect a city. The Vatican is its own state. A country inside Italy. Therefore I am accountable for the safety of