Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [186]
Now they were at the doorway.
“Scusi!Scusi!” Elena yelled at the crowd, forcing the wheelchair into their midst. Miraculously, enough of them moved out of the way for her to push through. And then they were inside. Pushing along an interior hallway, moving with a river of people going that way, Elena saw Father Daniel pull the cell phone from his shirt pocket and dial.
“Harry—where are you?”
“Top of the hill. Number two is burning.”
Harry was moving quickly through a heavy growth of conifers toward the northwest corner of the gardens, trying not to think that it was working and that only three of them were doing it. Planning, surprise, and determination of the individual, Danny had emphasized over and over, were at the heart of any successful guerrilla action, and so far he was right.
Fifty yards behind him he could see the towers of Vatican Radio. To his right, another fifty yards downhill, heavy smoke began to billow from behind a high hedge, where he had just been. Beyond that he could already see the smoke from his first fire rising slowly.
“No wind, Danny,” Harry said into the cell phone. “All this stuff’s going to hang around.”
“You should be near the shut-off valves.”
“Right.”
Harry pushed through an opening in a protective hedge to find the plumber’s Christmas tree, the low twist of piping that came up from underground and held the control valves for what appeared to be the main water shut-off. But, according to Danny, it wasn’t; it was only an intermediary shut-off, aged and almost never used. And unless the maintenance engineers on duty were old-timers, they probably had no idea of its existence. Still, if one shut it down, it turned off the water to all of the Vatican from that point out, which meant to all of the buildings below, including St. Peter’s, the museums, the Vatican palace, and the administrative buildings.
“I’m on top of them. Twin valves, one opposite the other.”
ELENA TILTED DANNY BACKWARD in the chair, taking them down a flight of stairs and deeper into the smoke.
“How badly rusted?” Danny coughed strongly against the smoke.
“Can’t tell.” Harry’s voice crackled through the phone.
Elena stopped at the bottom of the stairs and opened her own camera case. Coughing, wiping her tearing eyes, she took out two dampened handkerchiefs and spread them open. Pulling one over Danny’s nose and mouth, she tied it behind his head like a bandana. Then she did the same for herself and pushed them forward and into the Chiaramonti Gallery of Sculptures. The portrait busts of Cicero, Heracles with his son, the statue of Tiberius, the colossal head of Augustus, all were lost in the fog of smoke and mass confusion as people rushed both ways down the long, narrow gallery at the same time. All looking for a way out.
“Harry—” Danny hunched over into the phone.
“First one’s okay—The second’s—“
“Shut it down now!”
“As soon as I can, Danny—“
Harry grimaced, the second of the two wheels was rusted, and it took everything he had. Finally it gave all too fast, and he pitched sideways against the Christmas tree, ripping the skin from his knuckles and tossing the phone a dozen feet away.
“Shit.”
THEIR BANDANAS MAKING them look like Old West bandits, Elena turned Danny sideways and pulled him back, avoiding a half dozen Japanese tourists running hand in hand toward them like a train, yelling, choking, crying with the smoke like everyone else. As she did, she glanced out one of the narrow windows and saw a phalanx of blue-shirted men in berets and armed with rifles run into the courtyard outside.
“Father,” she said, alarmed.
Danny looked. “Swiss Guard,” he said, then turned back to the phone, as Elena moved them forward again.
“Harry