Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [73]
Kind glanced at his watch.
7:25
Suddenly he looked up. A man had turned the corner across the street and was walking down the block. Thomas Kind watched him carefully, then smiled. Ettore Caputo was four and a half minutes early.
47
THE PHOTOGRAPH ON THE PASSPORT IN FRONT of him was Harry’s, showing him bearded, as he still was. The passport itself was worn, its stiff cardboard covers bent, softened as if it had been carried around for years. It had been issued by the U.S. Passport Agency, New York. The inside pages showed the entry stamps of British, French, and U.S. immigration authorities, but beyond that there was nothing to indicate the course of the traveler’s movements because few western European countries stamped passports anymore.
The name beside his photograph was JONATHAN ARTHUR ROE—born 18/SEP/65—New York, U.S.A.
On the table next to the passport was a District of Columbia driver’s license and a faculty membership card for Georgetown University. The driver’s license listed his residence as the Mulledy Building, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Both pieces carried his photograph.
In fact, all three photos were different. With Harry wearing either one or the other of Eaton’s shirts or his sweater. None looked as if it could have been taken at the same place as another—the room in which he now stood—or at the same time, yesterday evening.
“That’s the rest of it.” Adrianna Hall slid a letter-sized envelope across the coffee table in front of her. “There’s cash there, too. Two million lire, about twelve hundred dollars. We can get more if you need it. But Eaton said to warn you—priests do not have money, so don’t spend it like you do.”
Harry looked at her, then opened the envelope and took out its contents—the two million in Italian lire, in fifty-thousand lire notes, and the lone sheet of paper with its three neatly typed, single-spaced paragraphs.
“It tells you who you are, where you work, what you do, all of it,” Adrianna said. “Or enough for you to fake your way through if someone asks. The instructions are to memorize what’s there, then destroy it.”
Harry Addison was now Father Jonathan Arthur Roe, a Jesuit priest and associate professor of Law at Georgetown University. He lived in a Jesuit residence on the campus and had taught there since 1994. He had grown up an only child in Ithaca, New York. Both his parents were deceased. The rest gave his background: the schools he had attended, when and where he had joined the seminary, a physical description of Georgetown University and its environs, the Georgetown section of Washington, down to the detail that he could see the Potomac River from his bedroom, but only in fall and winter when the leaves were off the trees.
And then there was the last, and he looked up at Adrianna. “It seems as a Jesuit, I’ve taken a vow of poverty.”
“Probably why he didn’t give you a credit card…”
“Probably.”
Harry turned and walked across the room. Eaton had promised and delivered, giving him everything he needed. All Harry had to do was the rest.
“It’s kind of like Charades, isn’t it?” He turned back. “You totally become someone else…”
“You don’t have much choice.”
Harry studied her. Here was a woman, like many, one he’d slept with but hardly knew. And except for that one moment in the dark when he’d sensed that some part of her feared her own mortality and was genuinely afraid—not so much to die as to no longer live—he realized he almost knew her better from seeing her on television than he did standing in a room with her.
“You’re how old, Adrianna? Thirty-four?”
“I’m thirty-seven.”
“All right, thirty-seven. If you could be someone else,” he asked seriously, “who would you choose?”
“I never thought about it…”
“Take a stab at it, go on. Who?”
Suddenly she crossed her arms in front of her. “I wouldn’t be anyone else. I like who I am and what I do. And I’ve worked like hell to get there.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“A mother? A wife?”
“Are you kidding?” Her half laugh