Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [4]
A movement down the aisle in front of him shook him from his muse. A man was walking toward him. He was in his early forties, clean shaven, and dressed in a light sport coat and khaki trousers. The man had gotten on the bus at the last moment, just as it was pulling out of the terminal in Rome. For a moment Father Daniel thought he might pass and go into the lavatory behind him. Instead, he stopped at his side.
“You’re American, aren’t you?” he said with a British accent.
Father Daniel glanced past him. The other passengers were riding as they had been, looking out, talking, relaxing. The nearest, a half dozen seats away.
”—Yes…”
“I thought so.” The man grinned broadly. He was pleasant, even jovial. “My name is Livermore. I’m English if you can’t tell. Do you mind if I sit down?” Without waiting for a reply, he slid into the seat next to Father Daniel.
“I’m a civil engineer. On vacation. Two weeks in Italy. Next year it’s the States. Never been there before. Been kind of asking Yanks as I meet them where I should visit.” He was talky, even pushy, but pleasant about it, and that seemed to be his manner. “Mind if I ask what part of the country you’re from?”
“—Maine…” Something was wrong, but Father Daniel wasn’t sure what it was.
“That would be up the map a bit from New York, yes?”
“Quite a bit…” Again Father Daniel looked toward the front of the bus. Passengers the same as before. Busy with what they were doing. None looking back. His eyes came back to Livermore in time to see him glance at the emergency exit in the seat in front of them.
“You live in Rome?” Livermore smiled amiably.
Why had he looked at the emergency exit? What was that for? “You asked if I was American. Why would you think I lived in Rome?”
“I’ve been there off and on. You look familiar, that’s all.” Livermore’s right hand was in his lap, but his left was out of sight. “What do you do?”
The conversation was innocent, but it wasn’t. “I’m a writer…”
“What do you write?”
“For American television…”
“No, you don’t.” Abruptly Livermore’s demeanor changed. His eyes hardened, and he leaned in, pressing against Father Daniel. “You’re a priest.”
“What?”
“I said you’re a priest. You work at the Vatican. For Cardinal Marsciano.”
Father Daniel stared at him. “Who are you?”
Livermore’s left hand came up. A small automatic in it. A silencer squirreled to the barrel. “Your executioner.”
At the same instant a digital timer beneath the bus clicked to 00:00. A split second later there was a thundering explosion. Liver-more vanished. Windows blew out. Seats and bodies flew. A scything piece of razor-sharp steel decapitated the driver, sending the bus careening right, crushing a white Ford against the guardrail. Bouncing off it, the bus came crashing back through traffic, a screaming, whirling, twenty-ton fireball of burning steel and rubber. A motorcycle rider disappeared under its wheels. Then it clipped the rear of a big-rig truck and spun sideways. Slamming into a silver-gray Lancia, the bus carried it full force through the center divider, throwing it directly into the path of an oncoming gasoline tanker.
Reacting violently, the tanker driver jammed on his brakes, jerking the wheel right. Wheels locked, tires shrieking, the enormous truck slid forward and sideways, at the same time knocking the Lancia off the bus like a billiard ball and sending the burning coach plunging off the highway and down a steep hill. Tilting up on two wheels, it held for a second, then rolled over, ejecting the bodies of its passengers, many of them dismembered and on fire, across the summer landscape. Fifty yards later it came to a rest, igniting the dry grass in a crackling rush around it.
Seconds afterward its fuel tank exploded, sending flame and smoke roaring heavenward in a fire storm that raged until there was nothing left but a molten, burned-out shell and a small, insignificant wisp of smoke.
3
Delta Airlines