Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [190]
Quickly, he turned back, glanced again at the door, and then started up the stairs.
He was halfway up when he heard them trying to get past his lock and in through the door. It would be only a matter of seconds before they would break the glass and come in after him.
He looked up. Another dozen steps and stairs turned abruptly to the right. Quickly he climbed them, stopping at the corner and easing around, Calico first, ready to fire. There was nothing. The stairs simply continued up to the next floor, maybe twenty steps higher.
Suddenly he heard the crash of glass below. Then the door slammed open, and he glimpsed two men in black suits come in and start up the stairs, guns drawn. Quickly he darted around the corner and stopped. Slipping the Calico into his belt, he opened the waist pack and took out the olive-oil-and rum-filled Moretti beer bottle. He could hear the footsteps as the men raced up the stairs behind him.
Lighting a match, he touched it to the wick in the bottle, counted—one, two. Suddenly he stepped out, flinging the bottle at the feet of the first man. The crash of glass and whoosh of flame were buried in a hail of gunshots. Bullets chewed up the stairs beside Harry, wanged off the ceiling and walls. Then the shooting stopped. In its place came the sound of the men below screaming.
“This time you’re out of luck,” a heavily accented voice barked from above.
Harry whirled, pulling the Calico free. A familiar figure was coming down the stairs toward him. Young, black suited, eager, deadly. Anton Pilger. A large gun was in his hand, and his finger closing on the trigger.
Harry was already firing, pulling the Calico’s trigger. He kept on pulling it, making Pilger’s body seem to dance on the stairs where it was, his own gun firing into the steps at his feet, his expression one of surprise and puzzlement.
Finally, his legs gave out and he slid backward against the stairs. There was a crackle from the radio in his jacket. But that was all. In the deathly silence that came next Harry knew that he had heard the voice before. Suddenly he understood what Pilger had said about luck. He had tried to kill Harry before and failed. It had been in the sewer, after he had been tortured and before Hercules found him.
Then Harry bent over, taking Pilger’s radio and moving on up the stairs in a daze, only now realizing the truth of why he was there, why he had done all of this. It was because he loved his brother and because his brother needed him. There was no other reason.
10:45 A.M.
154
MARSCIANO WAS PRESSED BACK AGAINST THE wall when he heard the lock turn in the door. He’d heard the gunshots outside in the hallway. The breaking glass and the screaming. His prayers were twofold. That Father Daniel was coming for him. And that he wasn’t.
Then the door banged open and Harry Addison stood there.
“It’s all right—,” he said quietly and closed the door behind him, locking it.
“Where is Father Daniel?”
“Waiting for you.”
“There are men outside.”
“We’re going out anyway.”
Glancing around, Harry saw the bathroom and went in. A moment later he came out carrying a wetted hand towel.
“Put this over your nose and mouth.” Harry handed Marsciano a towel, then went quickly to the glass doors and threw them open. Heavy smoke wafted in. At the same time, an apparition dropped from the sky.
Marsciano started. A tiny man with a huge head and larger chest stood on the balcony, a rope harness slung around him.
“Eminence.” Hercules smiled, bowing his head respectfully.
THOMAS KIND’S RADIO picked it up the same time it came over Adrianna’s cell phone, her open line patched into the radio communication between her crews.
“I don’t know if anybody cares in all this, but the railroad gates are open in the Vatican wall, and a work engine’s going toward it.”
“Skycam, are you sure?” Adrianna was talking to her helicopter