The Source - Michael Cordy [41]
Fortunately Pesci had. A big one. He hadn't unfolded the plastic before he'd dropped it on to the floor. Bazin picked it up and threw it out in front of him. It billowed like an opaque sail, momentarily screening him from Pesci. In that instant Bazin leapt low and hard at the other man. Before Pesci could get off a shot Bazin had located his solar plexus with his left hand and his windpipe with the right. The blow to the solar plexus incapacitated him. The one to the windpipe killed him.
Standing over Pesci's body, Bazin felt no elation. Not only was he in more need of absolution than ever now but he knew Gambini would send another Vinnie Pesci to hunt him down, then another, until sooner or later he would be wrapped in black plastic and buried. If he wanted to live long enough for absolution he'd have to find somewhere on Earth where Gambini and his other enemies from his old life couldn't find him.
One of the two phones by his bed began to ring. He wondered who could be calling him. Then he realized it was the phone Torino had given him. Only the priest knew the number.
'Are you watching?' His half-brother sounded breathless with excitement.
Bazin glanced at the laptop. 'I can see Kelly talking to his wife.'
'You haven't been listening?'
'I've been kinda busy.'
'Listen to what they're saying, then go back over the recordings but tell no one what you hear. After that I need you to do something. And if you do this right I promise you that the Holy Father himself will absolve you of your sins.'
Bazin gazed down at Pesci's still twitching corpse. 'What do I have to do?'
'Kelly and the false nun who visited him yesterday are leaving the country. They're taking someone with them – an academic called Quinn. I have matters to arrange in the Vatican, but I want you to follow them and not let them out of your sight.'
'Where are they going?'
'Listen to what Ross is telling his wife. It explains everything. Stay with him and the nun wherever they lead you. They'll be going off the beaten track, into the jungle. Can you handle that?'
Bazin thought of Gambini's people and the countless others who would be hunting for him. He thought of disappearing into the jungle. Then he thought of the Holy Father offering him redemption. He smiled. 'Yes,' he said. 'That works for me.'
PART TWO
Terra Incognita
24
Peru
South America's third largest country lies just south of the equator, on the north-west coast of South America, and is divided into three main areas: the narrow Pacific coastal strip to the west, which includes the capital, Lima; the central mighty Andes mountain range, which runs like a distorted spine down the western side of the continent; and the eastern section, which covers more than half of the country and forms the western part of the fabled Amazon basin.
Overlapping the borders of nine countries and covering a significant proportion of South America, the Amazon basin dwarfs even a relatively large country like Peru. Its legendary river cuts across the entire continent, from the Peruvian Andes in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east, a distance of more than four thousand miles. The Amazon, including its tributaries, holds an astonishing fifth of the world's fresh water – more than the next six largest rivers combined – and its flow is so powerful that it dilutes the salt water of the Atlantic more than a hundred miles from the shoreline. Manau, an island in the river's mouth, is as large as Denmark.
The Amazon jungle is no less awe-inspiring. It extends over 1.2 billion acres – of which only a fraction has been explored – and accounts for more than half of all the rainforest in the world. Teeming with life, it hosts a diversity of organisms found nowhere else on Earth: more than two million insect species, a hundred thousand plant, two thousand fish and six hundred mammal – and these