Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [166]
Roscani hunched forward, his eyes on Harry. “We’ll do our best not to let that happen.”
“What does that mean?” Suddenly a red flag went up. Harry’s palms felt sticky, and there was sweat on his upper lip.
“It means, Mr. Addison, there is no evidence that what you’ve said is true. There is, however, substantial evidence to prosecute both you and your brother for the crimes of murder.”
Harry’s heart jumped for his throat. Roscani was going to arrest him right then. He couldn’t let it happen. “You are willing to let the prime witness be killed without any attempt to stop it?”
“There is nothing I can do, Mr. Addison. I have no authority to send people into Vatican territory. No power to arrest, if I did….” Roscani’s words, how he said them, at least showed Harry that he did believe his story. At least he wanted to.
“If we tried to extradite any of them,” Roscani continued, “Marsciano, Cardinal Palestrina, or Farel,… it wouldn’t work. In Italy it is the judge who must prove a suspect guilty ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ The investigator’s mandate, my mandate”—he gestured toward the front—“and that of Scala and Castelletti and the others of Gruppo Cardinale is to collect evidence for the prosecutor, for Marcello Taglia…. But there is no evidence, Mr. Addison, and therefore no grounds whatsoever…. And with no grounds, to accuse the Vatican?” Roscani’s voice trailed off. “You are a lawyer, you should understand.”
Roscani’s eyes had remained on Harry the entire time. And in them Harry saw volumes: anger, frustration, emasculation, a sense of personal failure. Roscani was fighting himself and his own position.
Slowly, Harry pulled away from Roscani to see Scala and Castelletti in pale silhouette to the glare of the midday Roman sun. He could feel the same emotion in them. They had come to the end of the line. Politics and law had overridden justice. The only thing they could do was what their jobs allowed. And that meant prosecuting him and Danny. As well as Elena.
In that moment Harry knew that it had come back to him. That somehow he had to turn it around or they were all lost. He and Danny and Elena and Marsciano.
Deliberately, he looked back to Roscani.
“Pio and the cardinal vicar…. The killings in Bellagio and the other places…. All the crimes were committed on Italian soil…”
“Yes,” Roscani nodded.
“If you had Cardinal Marsciano. And if he would talk to you and to the prosecutor about those crimes. If he named names and said why. Would you have enough for extradition?”
“It would still be very difficult.”
“But it might work.”
“Yes. Except that we don’t have him, Mr. Addison. And we can’t get him.”
“What if I could?”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Scala turned in his seat. Harry saw Castelletti find him in the mirror.
“At eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, a work engine is going into the Vatican to pick up an old freight car and bring it out…. Father Bardoni set it up as a way to try and get Marsciano out…. Maybe I can find a way to still make it happen. I would need your help. But it would be on this side of the Vatican walls.”
“What kind of help?”
“Protection for me and my brother and Sister Elena. By you three. Nobody else. I don’t want Farel finding out…. You give me your word nobody will be arrested until we’re through, and I’ll take you to where they are.”
“You are asking me to break the law, Mr. Addison.”
“You want the truth, Ispettore Capo. So do I…”
Roscani glanced at Scala, then looked back to Harry. “Continue, Mr. Addison…”
“Tomorrow, when the engine takes that freight car out of the Vatican, you follow it until it stops. If it works, Cardinal Marsciano and I will be inside it. You take us back to where Danny and Sister Elena are. Give Danny and the cardinal time together alone, whatever it takes, until he is ready to make a statement. Then you come in with your prosecutor.”
“What if he chooses to say nothing?”
“Then our agreement’s over and you do