The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [45]
"God, I wonder if he ever did a small painting?" Ryan muttered. Adler chuckled.
"He did know how to capture a face and a look and a moment, didn't he? Ready?"
"Yeah," Ryan said. He felt oddly confident.
"Gentlemen!" O'Toole said from the open door. "Will you come this way, please?" They walked through yet another anteroom. This one had two secretarial desks, both unoccupied, and another set of doors that looked fourteen feet tall.
The office of Giovanni Cardinal D'Antonio would have been used in America for balls or formal occasions of state. The ceiling was frescoed, the walls covered with blue silk, and the floor in ancient hardwood accented with rugs large enough for an average living room. The furniture was probably the most recent in manufacture, and that looked to be at least two hundred years old, brocaded fabric taut over the cushions and gold leaf on the curved wooden legs. A silver coffee service told Ryan where to sit.
The cardinal came towards them from his desk, smiling in the way that a king might have done a few centuries earlier to greet a favored minister. D'Antonio was a man of short stature, and clearly one who enjoyed good food. He must have been a good forty pounds overweight. The room air reported that he was a man who smoked, something he ought to have stopped, since he was rapidly approaching seventy years of age. The old, pudgy face had an earthy dignity to it. The son of a Sicilian fisherman, D'Antonio had mischievous brown eyes to suggest a roughness of character that fifty years of service to the church had not wholly erased. Ryan knew his background and could easily see him pulling in nets at his father's side, back a very long time ago. The earthiness was also a useful disguise for a diplomat, and that's what D'Antonio was by profession, whatever his vocation might have been. A linguist like many Vatican officials, he was a man who had spent thirty years practicing his trade, and the lack of military power that had crippled his efforts at making the world change had merely taught him craftiness. In intelligence parlance he was an agent of influence, welcome in many settings, always ready to listen or offer advice. Of course, he greeted Adler first.
"So good to see you again, Scott."
"Eminence, a pleasure as always." Adler took the offered hand and smiled his diplomat's smile.
"And you are Dr Ryan. We have heard so many things about you."
"Thank you, Your Eminence."
"Please, please." D'Antonio waved both men to a sofa so beautiful that Ryan flinched at resting his weight on it. "Coffee?"
"Yes, thank you," Adler said for both of them. Bishop O'Toole did the pouring, then sat down to take notes. "So good of you to allow us in at such short notice."
"Nonsense." Ryan watched in no small amazement as the cardinal reached inside his cassock and pulled out a cigar holder. A tool that looked like silver, but was probably stainless steel, performed the appropriate surgery on the largish brown tube, then D'Antonio lit it with a gold lighter. There wasn't even an apology about the sins of the flesh. It was as though the cardinal had quietly flipped off the 'dignity' switch to put his guests at ease. More likely, Ryan thought, he merely worked better with a cigar in his hand. Bismarck had felt the same way.
"You are familiar with the rough outlines of our concept," Adler opened.
"Si. I must say that I find it very interesting. You know, of course, that the Holy Father proposed something along similar