Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [159]
“What about it?” Harry still didn’t understand.
“Adrianna Hall. James Eaton.”
Harry was both surprised and puzzled. “They were the people who helped me get to you. How the hell do you know them?”
“It doesn’t make any difference. What’s important is that you get in touch with them both as fast as you can.” Abruptly Danny moved his wheelchair toward his brother. “We have to stop what’s going on in China.”
“Stop what?” Harry didn’t understand.
“They’re poisoning the lakes, Harry…. One has already been done…. There are two more to go…”
“What? Who’s poisoning the lakes? From what little I know, it was an act of nature.”
“It’s not,” Danny said quickly, then glanced at Elena before looking back to Harry. “It’s part of Palestrina’s goal… for the Vatican to control China.”
Harry felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. “That was what the confession was about, wasn’t it?…”
“It was a part of the confession…”
Elena crossed herself, “Mother Mary…,” she said under her breath.
“A little while ago WNN ran a recap story on Hefei,” Danny kept on, pressing strongly. “At two minutes and twenty-odd seconds past eight, there was a clip from the Hefei water-filtration plant—I know the time because I looked at my watch. In that clip was the face of a man who, if he isn’t doing the poisoning, knows who is.”
“How do you know that?” Harry whispered.
“I saw him last summer at a private retreat outside Rome. He was there with another man, waiting to see Palestrina. Not many Chinese are invited to a Vatican retreat.” Danny was as intense as Harry had ever seen him.
“Adrianna Hall can roll the tape back to the second and find that picture. The man is short and standing to the left, and he’s got a briefcase in his hand. When she has it, have her get it to Eaton as fast as she can.”
“What is Eaton going to do with it? He’s a minor embassy official.”
“Harry, he’s Rome station chief of the CIA.”
“What?” Harry was dumbfounded.
Danny didn’t waver. “I’ve been in Rome a long time, Harry…. Where I work, there are levels of international diplomacy where things are known…. Cardinal Marsciano has guided me into rooms most people would never know existed…”
Both Harry and Elena could see Danny’s anguish. Bound by the Seal of Confession, he was jeopardizing his soul by revealing anything he had heard in it. Yet hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake, and he had to do something. And in doing it, he had to trust not in canon law, but in God.
Danny wheeled his chair back a little, never taking his eyes from Harry. “I want you to go out of the building now. Call Adrianna Hall first, and do it from a pay phone. Then go to another pay phone and call Eaton. Tell him what I told you and that Adrianna is getting him the footage. Tell him to inform Chinese Intelligence—tell him they have to find the man with the briefcase. Underline that speed is everything. Otherwise the people in Beijing are going to have a couple of hundred thousand more dead to answer for…”
Harry hesitated for the briefest moment, then his finger pointed off. “There’s a phone right there, Danny. Why not tell Eaton yourself?”
“He can’t know where I am or you are…”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still a U.S. citizen, and because a threat to China is a matter of national security. He’ll want more from me, and he’ll do whatever he has to do to get it…. Even if it means illegally taking all three of us into custody…. If he does”—Danny’s voice faded to a hoarse and exhausted whisper—“Cardinal Marsciano will die.”
Elena saw the look in Harry’s eyes. Saw him stare at his brother for a long time before he slowly nodded and said, “Okay.” She knew in her heart Harry felt what they were doing was wrong, even ill advised. But she had also seen him accept without a word Danny’s special reverence for Cardinal Marsciano, understanding why he would risk everything to save him.
By going along, Harry had not only shown his brother how much he loved