Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [6]
And then Saturday evening as he’d been in the Warners New York offices celebrating the huge numbers Dog on the Moon was realizing—nineteen million dollars with Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday still to come, making a projected weekend gross of thirty-eight to forty-two million—Byron Willis had called from Los Angeles. The Catholic archdiocese had been trying to reach Harry and was reluctant to leave word at his hotel. They’d traced Willis through Harry’s office, and Byron himself had chosen to make the call. Danny was dead, he’d said quietly, killed in what appeared to be a terrorist bombing of a tour bus on the way to Assisi.
In the emotional gyration immediately afterward, Harry canceled his plans to return to L.A. and booked himself on a Sunday-evening flight to Italy. He would go there and bring Danny home personally. It was the last and only thing he could do.
Then, on Sunday morning, he’d contacted the State Department, requesting the U.S. Embassy in Rome arrange a meeting between himself and the people investigating the bombing of the bus. Danny had been frightened and distraught; maybe what he had said might help shed some light on what had happened and who had been responsible. Afterward, and for the first time in as long as Harry could remember, he had gone to church. And prayed and wept.
BENEATH HIM, HARRY HEARD the sound of the landing gear being lowered. Looking out, he saw the runway come up and the Italian countryside fly past. Open fields, drainage ditches, more open fields. Then there was a bump and they were down. Slowing, turning, taxiing back toward the long, low sunlit buildings of Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci.
THE UNIFORMED WOMAN behind the glass at Passport Control asked him to wait and picked up the telephone. Harry saw himself reflected in the glass as he waited. He was still in his dark blue Armani suit and white shirt, the way he was described in the Variety article. There was another suit and shirt in his suitcase, along with a light sweater, workout gear, polo shirt, jeans, and running shoes. The same bag he had packed for New York.
The woman hung up and looked at him. A moment later two policemen with Uzi submachine guns slung over their shoulders walked up to her. One stepped into the booth and looked at his passport, then glanced at Harry and motioned him through.
“Would you come with us, please?”
“Of course.”
As they walked off, Harry saw the first policeman ease the Uzi around, his right hand sliding to its grip. Immediately two more uniformed police moved in to walk with them as they crossed the terminal. Passengers moved aside quickly, then turned to look back when they were safely out of the way.
At the far side of the terminal they stopped at a security door. One of the policeman punched a code into a chrome keypad. A buzzer sounded, and the man opened the door. Then they went up a flight of stairs and turned down a corridor. A moment later they stopped at another door. The first policeman knocked, and they entered a windowless room where two men in suits waited. Harry’s passport was handed to one of them, and the uniforms left, closing the door behind them.
“You are Harry Addison—“
“Yes.”
“The brother of the Vatican priest Father Daniel Addison.”
Harry nodded. “Thank you for meeting me…”
The man who held his passport was probably forty-five, tall and tanned, and very fit. He wore a blue suit, over a lighter blue shirt with a carefully knotted maroon tie. His English was accented but understandable. The other man was a little older and almost as