Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [70]
Except that it had.
Because Palestrina had recorded it. And he no doubt had had Farel implant electronic devices in other places, private or otherwise—any place Marsciano or the others might go.
Increasingly paranoid, the secretariat was protecting himself on all fronts, playing the stirring military leader he had years earlier told Marsciano he was certain he was. He had been drunk, but in all seriousness and with great pride, he had boasted that from the day he was old enough to know such things, he believed he was the reincarnation of Alexander of Macedon, ancient conqueror of the Persian empire. It was how he had lived his life from then on, and why he had risen to become who he was and in the place he was. Whether anyone else believed it made no difference, because he did. And little by little Marsciano could see him taking on the mantle of a general at war.
How quickly and brutally he had acted after hearing the recording! Marsciano had given his confession late Thursday night, and early Friday morning Father Daniel had left for Assisi, no doubt as horrified as Marsciano and seeking his own solace. There had never been a question in Marsciano’s mind who had reached out to stop Danny, blowing up the bus and killing how many innocents in the process. It was the same ruthless disregard for humanity as his stratagem for China, the same cold-blooded paranoia that made him distrust not only those around him but the Seal of Confession, and in that, the canon law of the Church.
It was something Marsciano should have expected. Because, by then, he had seen the true horror of Palestrina unveiled. The specter of it frozen in his memory as if it had been stamped from steel.
ON THE MORNING FOLLOWING the immense public funeral for the cardinal vicar of Rome, the secretariat had called the still deeply shaken remaining members of the cabal—himself; prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, Joseph Matadi; and director general of the Vatican Bank, Fabio Capizzi—to a conference at a private villa in Grottaferata, outside Rome, a retreat Palestrina often used for “introspective” gatherings and the place where he had first presented his “Chinese Protocol.”
On arrival, they had been taken to a small, formal courtyard nestled among manicured foliage away from the main house where Palestrina waited at a wrought-iron table, sipping coffee and making entries into a laptop computer. Farel was with him, standing behind his chair like some iron-fisted majordomo. A third person was there as well—a quietly handsome man, not yet forty. Slim and of medium height, he had jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes and was dressed—Marsciano remembered—in a double-breasted navy blazer, white shirt, dark tie, and gray slacks.
“You have not met Thomas Kind,” Palestrina said as they sat down, sweeping his hand as if he were introducing a new member of a private club.
“He is helping coordinate our ‘situation’ in China.”
Marsciano could still feel the rush of horror and disbelief and saw the same in the others as well—the sudden, involuntary inward twist of Capizzi’s tight, thin lips; the immediate and grave apprehension in the once humor-filled eyes of Joseph Matadi—as Thomas Kind stood up and politely greeted them by name, his eyes fixing on each as he did.
“Buon giorno, Monsignor Capizzi.
“—Cardinal Matadi.
“—Cardinal Marsciano.”
MARSCIANO HAD REMEMBERED seeing Kind there a year earlier in the company of a short middle-aged Chinese, but only at a distance, when he and Father Daniel had come for a business meeting with Pierre Weggen. At the time he’d had no idea who he was and hadn’t given it much thought, except for the China connection. But now, seeing him this close and being told who he was, and realizing who he was as he looked at you and said your name, was a horrifying experience.
And Palestrina’s quiet delight in their not-well-concealed reactions told them, as clearly as if he had announced it, who murdered the cardinal vicar and at whose order. Their summons to the villa had been simply a warning that