Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [152]
116
HARRY WATCHED IN THE MIRROR, FEELING the response of the Mercedes’ acceleration as they left the checkpoint. Behind him he could see the glow of the mercury-vapor lamps, the taillights of cars moving north as they slowed to a stop, the mass of Italian Army vehicles and carabinieri armored cars. This had been a major checkpoint, two hours south of Milan. Unlike the roadblock at Chiasso, where they’d just been waved through, barely slowing, here they had been slowed to a stop with heavily armed soldiers approaching the car from both sides. That was until an army officer had suddenly pointed to the license plates, glanced at the priests in the front seat, and quickly waved them past.
“Wise ass.” Danny grinned at him as darkness enveloped the car and they were safely away.
“Just because I waved the guy a thanks?”
“Yeah, just because you waved the guy a thanks. What if he hadn’t liked it and decided to pull us over? Then what?”
Harry glanced in the mirror at Elena, then looked to his brother. “Then you could have explained to him what the hell was going on and why we had to get to Rome. Maybe he would have even sent the army with us…”
“The army wouldn’t go into the Vatican, Harry…. Not the Italian Army, not any army…”
“No, just you… and Father Bardoni…” Harry’s voice had a decided edge.
Danny nodded. “Just me and Father Bardoni.”
Rome. The Church of San Crisogno,
Trastevere section. Thursday, July 16, 5:30 A.M.
Palestrina stepped from the back of the Mercedes and into the mist of early-morning light. Glancing around protectively at the deserted street, one of Farel’s black-suited men moved ahead of him, crossing the sidewalk to open the door to the eighteenth-century church. Then he stepped back, and the Vatican secretariat of state entered alone.
Palestrina’s footsteps echoed as he approached the altar and then, crossing himself, knelt to pray beside the only other person there—a woman in black, a rosary in her hand.
“It has been a long time since my last confession, Father,” she said without looking at him. “Could I confess to you?”
“Of course.” Palestrina crossed himself again and stood. And then he and Thomas Kind walked away toward the dark singularity of the confessional.
117
Lugano, Switzerland. The house at Via Monte Ceneri, 87.
Still Thursday, July 16. Same time.
A clear morning after the rain.
ROSCANI WALKED DOWN THE STEPS AND BACK into the street. His suit was more than wrinkled, he had a stubble beard, and he was tired. Almost too tired to think the way he needed to think. But more than that, he was angry and tired of being lied to, especially by women who, on the outside at least, should have been respectable. Mother Fenti for one, and, here in Lugano, the sculptor and painter Signora Veronique Vaccaro, an iconoclast in middle age who swore through the night and into the early morning hours that she knew nothing of the fugitives and refused to waver from her story. Then she had abruptly and indignantly gone to bed, leaving the police to worry among themselves. And worry they did, especially Roscani, who insisted the chief Swiss investigator who had first interviewed Veronique Vaccaro go over his entire findings again.
Exhaustively he had, saying the Swiss police had found nothing to indicate the house had been occupied during Signora Vaccaro’s short absence. However, neighbors had reported seeing a white van with lettering on the doors parked in front of the entrance for a short time at midday the day before. And two young boys taking their dog for a walk in the rain after dinner that night had said they’d seen a big car, a Mercedes, the older boy proudly swore, parked in front as they’d left their house. But it had not been there when they’d come back. And Signora Vaccaro’s alibi, one impossible to corroborate, was that she had come home only moments before the police arrived, returning from a camping/sketching trip alone in the Alps.
It was no better with Castelletti