Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [196]
Except that it was not. The Vaticano was under siege, part of it burning. The Holy Father had seen the darkness. The Eagle of the Borghese had given him nothing. He had been right about Father Daniel and his brother the first time. They had been sent by the spirits of the netherworld; the smoke they had created was filled with darkness and disease, the same that had killed Alexander before. So it was Palestrina and not the Holy Father who was mistaken: the thing perched on his shoulder was not the emotional and spiritual infirmities of an old and fearful man but indeed the shadow of death.
Suddenly Palestrina raised his head. He’d thought he was alone. He was not. There was no need to turn. He knew who it was.
“Pray with me, Eminence,” he said softly.
Marsciano stood behind him.
“Pray for what?”
Slowly Palestrina rose up and turned. Looking at Marsciano, he smiled gently. “Salvation.”
Marsciano stared.
“God has intervened. The poisoner has been caught and killed. There will be no third lake.”
“I know.”
Palestrina smiled once more and then slowly turned back to kneel again in front of the altar and make the sign of the cross. “Now that you know, pray with me.”
Palestrina felt Marsciano step behind him. Suddenly he grunted. And there was a piercing light brighter than any he had ever seen. He could feel the blade pierce the center of his neck. Between his shoulder blades. Feel the strength and rage in Marsciano’s hands as he pressed it down.
“There is no third lake,” Palestrina cried. His chest heaved, his massive hands and arms clawing, flailing behind him to reach Marsciano. But unable to.
“If not today, tomorrow. Tomorrow you would find a way to create another horror. And after that, another. And then another.” In his mind Marsciano saw only the anguish of a face seen in close-up on his television screen only moments before Harry Addison had come. It had been that of his friend Yan Yeh as the Chinese banker was led to a waiting car in the Beijing compound after having been informed of the deaths of his wife and son, poisoned by the water in Wuxi.
Staring blindly at the altar cross, over the white blaze of Palestrina’s hair in front of him, Marsciano felt the ornate letter opener in his hands as he pushed down, twisting slowly and with all his might as he did, driving it deeper into the neck and body that roiled and writhed like some monstrous serpent trying to escape.
Then he heard Palestrina cry out and felt his body shudder once against the blade, and then he was still. A huge breath escaped Marsciano and, letting go, he stumbled back. Bloodied hands before him. His heart pounding. Horrified at what he had done.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God”—his voice was a whisper—“pray for us sinners, now and at the moment of our death…”
Suddenly, he felt a presence and looked around.
Farel stood in the doorway behind him.
“You were right, Eminence,” he said softly, and closed the door behind him. “Tomorrow he would have found another lake…” Farel’s eyes went to Palestrina and he stared for a long moment before he looked back to Marsciano.
“What you did had to be done. I had not the courage…. He was, as he said, a street urchin, a scugnizzo… nothing more.”
“No,” Marsciano said. “He was a man and a cardinal of the Church.”
159
10:58 A.M.
EATON STOOD NEAR THE BACK CORNER OF the railroad station, breathless and sweating, trying to stifle a coughing fit from the inhaling of smoke. The scant breeze that had come helped some but not enough, except that it had cleared the air just a little, enough for him to see what he saw now—Harry Addison coming down the grassy slope to his right, carrying the dwarf he’d left the apartment on Via Nicolò V with in his arms. He was half walking, half running, using a stand of trees that lined the roadway to the rail station for cover.
Fifty feet in front of him, Eaton saw the green engine inch toward an old and rusting freight car, which, he was certain, had to be the escape wagon. Glancing back he saw the rusty tracks leading out through the open gates in