Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [78]
A prolonged spell of hot, humid weather across eastern China was what he was waiting for. With it, the sun-fed algae and its accompanying biological toxins would quickly begin to clot the surface of lakes, polluting the main water supplies of towns and cities along their shores. And when the conditions were right and the algae mass large enough, Palestrina would give the order and his “protocol” would begin. Poisoning the lakes in a way that would be undetectable, making the cause appear to be the algae and the inability of the aging municipal water-filtration systems to correct it.
People would die in huge numbers, and an enormous public outcry would follow. And government leaders would be secretly worried that the provinces might panic and sense Beijing was not capable of running the water system and threaten to pull away from the central government, thereby putting China on the brink of its greatest fear, collapse, in the same way the Soviet Union had collapsed. And these government leaders would respond to a strong, very private recommendation by a longtime trusted ally that a consortium of international construction companies, many already working on projects within China, be quickly brought together to immediately rebuild the country’s entire crumbling and near-archaic water-delivery/treatment infrastructure. From canals to reservoirs to filtration plants to dams and hydroelectric plants.
That longtime trusted ally would, of course, be Pierre Weggen. And the companies and corporations to do the work would, of course, be those silently controlled by the Vatican. It was the heart of Palestrina’s plan: control China’s water and you control China.
And to begin to control the water he needed hot weather, and today it was hot in Italy, and it was hot in eastern China. And Marsciano knew that, save an unlikely and abrupt change of weather over Asia, it was only a matter of days before Palestrina would send word and the horror would begin.
TURNING TO GO INSIDE, Marsciano caught a glimpse of a face at an upper window. Just a glimpse, then it was gone, pulled back quickly—Sister Maria-Louisa, his new housekeeper, or, rather, Palestrina’s new housekeeper, put there to let him know he was constantly watched, that no matter what he did, Palestrina sat on his shoulder.
Back inside, Marsciano sat down wearily at his desk and began to go over the final draft of the minutes of the meeting of the day before, the new investment portfolio approved by the council of cardinals. Monday morning he would put it before Palestrina for his signature. And then it would become part of the permanent record.
As Marsciano worked, an immeasurable darkness in the form of questions rose from the depths of his mind, one that lurked in the shadows of his soul as if it were a living thing, rising whenever there was a quiet moment to torment him—what they had allowed Palestrina to become and, more pointedly, his own deeply despised inability to do anything about it himself. Why had he not requested a private meeting with the Holy Father or sent a secretive memo to the College of Cardinals admitting what had happened and what was about to happen and begging for their help to stop it?
The tragedy was that the answers were all too familiar because he had wrestled with them a hundred times before. The Holy Father was old and altogether devoted to his secretariat of state and therefore would be unswayable to anything said against him. And who presided over the College of Cardinals more than Palestrina himself? His esteem was enormous, his allies everywhere.