Part 29 (1/2)
Marsciano looked purposely out the window as the green gate closed behind them and they turned onto Via Bruxelles-knowing, with the investments already in place, his actions inside had all but sealed his fate.
Once again he thought of the three lakes Palestrina had promised. Which two were to come after Hefei, and when, only the secretariat knew. Palestrina's sickness and cruelty were beyond comprehension. His just-witnessed act of self-deception, incredible. When and how had an intelligent and respectable man turned? Or had the monster always been there and only sleeping?
Now the driver turned onto Via Salaria and slowed to a crawl in heavy afternoon traffic. Marsciano could feel Palestrina's presence beside him, and the eyes of Capizzi and Matadi as they sat opposite watching him, but he acknowledged none of it. Instead his thoughts went to the Chinese banking head, Yan Yeh, remembering him not as an astute businessman who was, at the same time, an autocratic lifelong member of the Chinese Communist Party and prominent adviser to the party chairman, but rather as a friend and humanitarian, a man who could produce a cursory political diatribe one minute and in the next, talk about his personal concerns for health care and education and the well-being of the poor around the world; and then in the next, smile warmly and laugh and make small talk about Italian wine makers coming to the People's Republic to show them how it was done.
”-Do you often make telephone calls to North America?” Palestrina's voice echoed suddenly and sharply behind him.
Marsciano turned from the window to see Palestrina staring at him, his huge frame taking up most of the seat between them.
”I don't understand.”
”Canada, in particular.” Palestrina kept his eyes on Marsciano. ”The province of Alberta.”
”I still don't understand...”
”1011 403 555 2211,” Palestrina said from memory. ”You don't recognize the number?”
”Should I?”
Marsciano could feel the lean of the car as they turned onto Via Pinciana. Outside was the familiar green of the Villa Borghese. Abruptly, the Mercedes accelerated. Moving toward the Tiber. Soon they would be across it, turning onto Lungotevere Mellini, going toward the Vatican. Somewhere not far behind them was Marsciano's apartment on Via Carissimi, and he knew that he had seen it for the last time.
”It is the number for the Banff Springs Hotel. Two calls were made to it from your office on Sat.u.r.day morning, the eleventh. Another, that afternoon, from a cellular phone signed out to Father Bardoni. Your private secretary. The man who replaced the priest.”
Marsciano shrugged. ”Many calls are made from my office, even on a Sat.u.r.day. Father Bardoni works long hours, so do I, so do others.... I do not keep track of every telephone call...”
”You told me in the presence of Jacov Farel that the priest was dead.”
”He is...” Marsciano's eyes came up and looked at Palestrina directly.
”Then who was brought to Bellagio, to Villa Lorenzi two days ago? On Sunday evening, the twelfth?”
Marsciano smiled. ”You have been watching the television.”
”The calls to Banff were made Sat.u.r.day, and the priest was brought to Villa Lorenzi on Sunday.” Palestrina leaned forward into the face of Nicola Marsciano, stretching the material of his jacket tight across his back.
”Villa Lorenzi is owned by the writer Eros Barbu. Eros Barbu is vacationing at the Banff Springs Hotel.”
”If you are asking if I know Eros Barbu, Eminence, you are right. We are old friends from Tuscany.”
Palestrina watched Marsciano carefully for a moment longer. Finally, he sat back. ”Then you should be saddened to hear he has committed suicide.”
93.
Lake Como. 4:30 P.M P.M.
BANGING AND PITCHING, HALF SLIDING, Harry worked the farm truck down the rutted and overgrown forest road toward the inlet where he hoped Elena and Danny were. Two hours had pa.s.sed since he'd climbed up from the lake looking for the truck, and much of the terrain was now in late-afternoon shadow, and this changed the look of everything.
The going was not only slow and difficult, but also dangerous; the old truck had bad brakes and nearly bald tires, making it hard to control as it rattled and bounced, pitched and slid over the road that was barely a road at all. Almost every turn was a hairpin switchback, and at each he was certain he was going over the side, to be sent plunging through heavy undergrowth into a steep ravine on one side, or dropping like a stone to the lake several hundred feet below on the other.
It was at a high point that he saw the flotilla to the north, maybe thirty or forty boats at anchor or cruising slowly back and forth, held offsh.o.r.e by three larger craft that looked like cutters or guard boats, and he knew the police had found the grotto. Then, as he was starting down, negotiating the hairpin, he saw a helicopter suddenly rise up to circle over the top of the cliff where he'd been less than twenty minutes earlier.
Abruptly the entire scene vanished as the truck slid forward on the loose gravel. Pumping the brakes wildly, Harry swung the wheel back toward the road. But it did no good. The truck continued to slide. The edge was coming up. After that there was nothing but air and the water below. And then the right front wheel caught in a rut. The steering wheel snapped out of his hand. And, as if it had suddenly been mounted on a track, the vehicle swung sharply back and followed the path of the road, dropping behind a steep ridge and in under an umbrella of trees.
For another five minutes Harry fought both the truck and road, and then he was at lake level, where the road went on for another twenty yards, then ended abruptly in a growth of brush and high trees at the water's edge.
Parking on a hill behind a row of trees and making sure the truck couldn't be seen from the lake, Harry got out and walked along the water's edge, then pushed through the undergrowth to where he could see the dark shadow that was the entry to the cave. In the distance he could hear the helicopter circling. And he prayed that's where it would stay.
94.
The grotto. Same time.
ROSCANI STOOD ON THE LANDING, LOOKING into the motorboat. A man and woman lay dead inside it. The woman had been lucky he hadn't used the razor-the way he'd used it on the man who lay beside her, or the way he'd used it on Edward Mooi, whose nearly headless body had been found floating in the inner channel.
Edward Mooi.
”Dammit!” he said out loud. ”Dammit to h.e.l.l!” He should have known he was the one who had hidden the priest. Should have gone back and pressured him the moment he'd found the engines on the outboard were still warm. But he hadn't, because the call had come about the dead men in the lake and he'd gone there instead.
Turning from the landing, letting the tech people work, he walked back down the grotto's main corridor past the ancient stone benches toward the room at the end where the priest had been kept, where Scala and Castelletti were now and where the body of a carabiniere carabiniere had been brought from the maze of back pa.s.sageways-another of the ice picker's victims, the ice picker who they now knew was blond and had scratches down his cheek. had been brought from the maze of back pa.s.sageways-another of the ice picker's victims, the ice picker who they now knew was blond and had scratches down his cheek.
”Biondo,” the dying carabiniere carabiniere had managed, his eyes glazed over, one hand grasping Scala's, his other clawing feebly at his own cheek. had managed, his eyes glazed over, one hand grasping Scala's, his other clawing feebly at his own cheek.
”Graffiato,” he'd coughed, his fingers still pulling at his cheek. Graffiato Graffiato.
”Biondo. Graffiato.”
Blond. And strong. And quick. And, they surmised, the skin on his face scratched as well, most likely by the fingernails of the murdered woman, under which fragments of skin had been found. Fragments that would be sent to the lab for DNA a.n.a.lysis. New technology, Roscani thought. But useful only when they had a suspect, when they could take a blood sample and see if they had a match.
Entering the room, he moved past Scala and Castelletti and went again into the room where the nun's personal belongings had been found.
Nursing sister Elena Voso, age twenty-seven, a member of the Congregation of Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart; home convent, the Hospital of St. Bernardine in the Tuscan city of Siena.
Walking back to the main tunnel, Roscani ran a hand through his hair and tried to get some sense of the place itself. Eros Barbu's enormous wealth was everywhere, and yet the people who had hidden here, a nun and a priest, and the dead men who had protected them, were not wealthy. Why had Barbu allowed his property to be used as a hiding place?
It was a question Barbu himself would never answer. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were now investigating his apparent suicide on a mountain trail overlooking Lake Louise in Banff. Death by shotgun in the mouth. Except that Roscani knew it was no suicide, but murder, done, he was certain, by a colleague of the blond ice picker, who knew where Barbu was and how to find him and had killed him either in retaliation for helping Father Daniel escape or in an effort to find out where he was. Perhaps it was even the same colleague who killed Harry Addison's boss in California. If that were so, the conspiracy was much broader and far-reaching than it first seemed.
In the distance, Roscani could hear the echo of the search dogs and their handlers leading the carabinieri carabinieri teams probing the maze of tunnels for Elena Voso and the fugitive priest-and Harry Addison. He had no proof. It was a hunch and nothing else. But somehow Roscani sensed the American had been there and helped his brother to escape. teams probing the maze of tunnels for Elena Voso and the fugitive priest-and Harry Addison. He had no proof. It was a hunch and nothing else. But somehow Roscani sensed the American had been there and helped his brother to escape.
High above, a helicopter unit was coordinating Gruppo Cardinale teams on the ground combing the cliffs above the grotto. A clear set of footprints had been found outside the elevator shaft. And there were tire tracks of a vehicle driven in, parked, and then driven away. Whether any of it would lead them to the blond man or the fugitives it was too early to tell.
Whatever had happened, or would happen, one thing alone had become chillingly clear-Roscani was no longer dealing simply with a fugitive priest and his brother, but with people internationally connected, highly skilled, and with no reservation at all about killing. And anyone with even the slightest idea where the priest might be, or what he might know, had become a hard target seemingly reachable anywhere.