Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [179]
141
EATON RACED ON FOR TWO SHORT BLOCKS, then turned a quick left and then left again onto Via della Conciliazione. Accelerating past a tour bus, he cut sharply into the right lane and brought the Ford to an abrupt stop in a taxi zone directly across from St. Peter’s.
In an instant he and Adrianna were out of the car, ignoring the angry shouts of a cab driver for leaving the Ford in the taxi zone, and dodging traffic as they ran toward the crowded square. Reaching it, they pressed desperately through the mass of tourists, looking for a woman pushing a wheelchair. Suddenly a loud claxton horn signaled a warning. They looked up to see a small shuttle bus bearing down on them, leaving the square. Lettering on the shuttle’s front read Musei Vaticani—Vatican Museums. Beneath it was the familiar blue logo with the white wheelchair that was the international symbol for the handicapped. Quickly they stepped out of the way, letting it pass. As it did, Adrianna caught the briefest glimpse of Father Daniel seated at a window near the front. Then the shuttle turned onto the street and crossed the piazza where they had left the car.
FIFTY YARDS AWAY, Harry traversed the square in a crowd heading for the basilica, Scala’s pistol in his waistband, the black beret pulled almost rakishly over his forehead, and the papers Eaton had provided in his pocket identifying him as Father Jonathan Roe of Georgetown University, just in case. Unseen beneath the priest’s clothing, he wore chinos and a work shirt. Clothes Father Bardoni had left in the apartment on Via Nicolò V.
Reaching a flight of steps, he climbed them with the crowd and then stopped. In front of him several hundred more people were massed, waiting for the doors to the basilica to open. It was now eight-fifty-five. The doors would be opened at nine. Two hours exactly before the work engine came. Head down, praying someone wouldn’t suddenly look over and recognize him, Harry took a deep breath and waited.
142
HERCULES CROUCHED IN THE BATTLEMENTS of the ancient fortified wall abutting the Tower of San Giovanni. He was at the rampart’s far end, right at the tower itself and maybe twenty feet beneath its tiled, circular roof.
It had taken nearly three hours to work his way up the far side of the wall, handhold to handhold, using the morning shadows to hide him. But then he’d made the top and scrambled to where he was now, cramped and thirsty, but precisely where he was supposed to be and when he was supposed to be.
Below, he could see two of Farel’s black-suited men hidden in bushes near the tower entrance. Two more waited behind the cover of a high hedge across the narrow roadway. The main door, directly beneath him, appeared unprotected. How many more black-suited men were inside the tower he had no way of knowing. One, two, twenty, none? What was clear was what Danny had predicted: the black suits would stay back and out of sight, spiders hoping their prey would unwittingly lurch into their web.
Danny! Hercules grinned. He liked that, calling a priest by his first name, the way Mr. Harry had. It made him feel like part of the family, one in which he somehow wished he belonged. And for now, for today at least, he decided he did belong. It was that important. The stalwart dwarf who’d been abandoned by his family shortly after his birth and who had made his own way ever since, taking life as it came, all the while refusing to be its victim, suddenly found himself longing to belong. It surprised him because the pain and want were much more acute than he could have imagined. It told him one thing: he was much more human than he supposed, no matter what he looked like. Harry and Danny had included him because they needed him for what he could do, and that, in itself, gave him purpose and dignity for the first time in his life. They had entrusted him with their lives, and Elena’s life, and that of a cardinal of the Church. Whatever happened, at whatever cost to himself, he would not let them down.
Squinting against the glare of the