Lucci drew another document from the interior of his cassock like a magician producing a bouquet of roses from thin air.
“These are blueprints for a mission to kill Prince el-Rayad and extract a CIA source from within his camp. The Americans developed them three years ago, but the recently elected President Shanahan refused to sign off, and the mission was shelved.”
“They are taking it off the shelf?”
“No, they are not. I am. Actually, we are.”
“We?”
“Yes, you and I, Marco.”
“I’m not following you.”
Lucci summarized the plans the Americans had given him. Marco wasn’t sure he had heard him right. Had the Secretary of State of Vatican City really asked him to take part in an assassination?
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to be on the second team.”
“With the sniper?”
“Yes. You’ll go in as a team of two, separate from the primary team, and establish a shooting position on a hill above the prince’s compound. Your job will be to coordinate with the primary team and act as a spotter for the sniper. It’s the primary team’s job to kill the prince; the second team is there to cover their withdrawal … and as a fail-safe.”
“Why me? Why not someone from the Security Office?”
“It will be many moons before I trust anyone from that office.”
“The Swiss Guard?”
“Out of the question; not in the charter.”
Marco’s mouth felt arid, as if he had just taken a long walk without water in a hot, dry place. “But I’m not qualified. I am a priest, that’s all.”
“You’ll be going as an observer, not an assassin.”
Marco was not wild about the idea; he had slept well last night for the first time since the beginning of this hellish series of events, and his appetite had returned with the morning dew.
“There’s another issue, as well.”
“Which is?”
“The pope.”
“You haven’t told him about your plan?”
“Of course I haven’t. We don’t see eye to eye on how we should respond. I am certain he would be dead set against the idea.”
Marco was certain of this as well—making him feel worse about violating the pontiff’s trust by going behind his back.
“I need you, Marco. I need you to make sure we are no longer under threat of nuclear annihilation. And once this is done, I need you to tell the pope what happened.”
“Can’t you do that?”
The glimmer in Lucci’s eyes dimmed a little, and his face darkened. Marco thought perhaps his body had shifted so that the sunlight wasn’t striking his face at the same angle.
“The pope doesn’t trust me. I could tell him, but he won’t believe me. But if it comes from you, that is a different story. The Holy Father believes you were brought to us by the Holy Spirit.”
“What do you believe, Eminence?”
“We both know the pope is infallible when it comes to these matters.”
“This is a matter of faith or morals?”
“This is a matter of our continued existence on the face of the earth, Father Venetti.” Lucci’s face took on the color of his sash. “And we have no further time to debate.”
He had never really had any choice in the matter, Marco realized. And for some reason, this realization made him feel better.
“When do I go?”
“Soon. I have made arrangements for your training.”
“Training? You said I was to be an observer, Eminence. How much training does an observer need?”
“Quite a bit, I should think. The proceedings will place you directly in harm’s way; I want you to be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?”
Lucci started pacing up and down the length of the room, with his fingers steepled together and head bent, as if he were processing behind the Eucharist during the feast of Corpus Christi.
“I’ll be frank. The other member of your team …”
“The sniper?”
“Her name is Sarah Messier. She’s American, ex-CIA. She came highly recommended. She insists that every member of her team—meaning you—is fully committed.”
“Fully committed?”
“It means exactly what you think it means.”
Machine-gun fire reverberated inside his skull; his hands vibrated from the recoil of his weapon; the satiny smell of blood engulfed his nostrils. He wasn’t sure if he was reliving the horrors of Somalia, the nightmare on the Bel Amica, or the torment on the island, but he was sure of one thing: he didn’t want to go back.
“The two of you will be traveling together, posing as a married couple on vacation in Austria. It’s August in Salzburg, the Mozart Festival is in full swing, and the city will be crawling with tourists. No one will pay any attention to you.”
Marco nodded, but in truth he had only half heard Lucci; dying men wailed in his ears.
“We have no intention of giving you a more active role, but things don’t often proceed as planned. In the event that they don’t, your orders are clear. Make sure the prince does not buy those weapons. By whatever means necessary.”
Twenty
Lucci sat in the back seat of the Mercedes sedan that had picked him up at Falcone Borsellino airport, staring at the rocky coastline of Palermo as the vehicle climbed the switchbacks of Monte Gallo. It was a steep pitch, and even the big engine of the Mercedes had to strain, its roar loud enough to cover up the pounding of the surf against the shore. Leaving the window open despite the oppressive heat, Lucci stuck his head out of the gap and took in the land of his birth. Vincenzo Lucci was Sicilian first, Italian second.
The whining of the engine faded as the sedan crested the top of the hill and pulled to a stop in front of a massive gate that looked better suited to a military base than a residence, waiting for the sheet of steel to slide open on silent hydraulic power. When the way was no longer barred, the car moved forward, climbing again, raising clouds of red Saharan dust dumped there by the sirocco blowing in from Libya. They weaved up the slopes covered with the pink blossoms of bougainvillea and oleander, and parked in front of a sprawling villa.
Lucci let himself out of the car and passed underneath a stone archway into a grass courtyard filled with lemon trees, Italian cypresses, and red palms. Having been to his sister’s house many times before, he navigated expertly past the long rows of white-flowered pomelia, inhaling their vanilla aroma, and entered the kitchen through the back door.
Maria was standing at the stove, white apron covering her peach sundress, frying sardines in a cast-iron skillet. The oily scent of the fish evoked a hundred memories; every one of them involved his sister, head bent over the pan, long black hair falling around her face.
“You’ll be staying for dinner?”
“Of course.”
She made no move to turn around; her only movement was a slight flick of her right wrist, expertly stirring the sardines with a wooden spoon.
“Pasta with sardines.”
“Yes, I can smell them.”
A staple of his youth, pasta and sardines was his favorite.
“You’ll be seeing Pietro?”
“I brought him communion.”
A nod of her head was her only response. Something brushed against his leg; Romulus had arrived. He scooped up the cat, stroking the fur behind its ears.
“There’s something I want to tell you.”
“Eduardo is waiting for you …”
“Maria, we need to talk.”
She walked over to the pantry without so much as glancing in his direction, her peach sundress billowing in the wind, returning with a handful of spices.
“We’ll eat in twenty minutes.”
“Maria …”
“He’s on the porch.”
Lucci remained where he was.
“Don’t bring the cat. Eduardo hates him.”
Lucci set Romulus down
and exited the kitchen into the pool area, around which the villa had been centered. A pair of chaise longues awaited occupants; a table with an emerald green sun umbrella beckoned. The porch was on the north end of the property, with excellent views of the Monte Gallo massif to the west and the Gulf of Palermo to the east. In strictly technical terms, the villa was situated on property belonging to the Riserva Naturale di Capo Gallo, but a man like Eduardo Ferraro had never been limited by such things as strictly technical terms.
Ferraro was standing against the railing, dressed in white cotton pants and a light blue short-sleeved shirt open at the neck. A creature of habit, he stood there every evening, smoking the same type of cigars that he gave to Lucci for his birthday every year, sipping a glass of Minella Bianca from the vineyard he controlled on the southern slopes of Mount Etna. Now he pointed to a second glass, resting on top of the railing not far from where he stood.
“You had a good trip, Vincenzo?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“It was good of you to come. Maria appreciates it. I poured a glass of wine for you. Try it; it’s quite good.”
Lucci didn’t feel like trying the wine; he had come here for a reason, and that reason was not wine tasting. But a man like Ferraro was impossible to refuse. He sipped the straw-colored wine, letting the taste of mineral and fruit linger on his tongue. He would have preferred to get straight down to business, but pleasantries were obligatory at the Villa Ferraro. They discussed the suffocating heat—it had been hot even by Sicilian standards—the poor play of the Azzurri, the Italian national football team, and the scourge of weevils laying waste to the island’s precious red palms. Ferraro had gone so far as to hire an extra gardener to pick the weevils from the more than two hundred palms on the estate.
“So, Vincenzo, you did not come all the way to Palermo to hear about my pest problems.”
“Sì, Eduardo, it turns out I have pest problems of my own.”
“Pests, in the Vatican?”
“We’re inundated with them.”
Ferraro set his wine down and used his hand to smooth his thinning hair.
“And you’re looking for some advice on how to eradicate them?”
“Not just advice. We’re looking for eradicators as well.”
Despite having left school before the sixth grade to work in the sulfur mines of the island’s interior, Ferraro was one of the brightest people Lucci had ever met, and certainly the most ruthless.
“Eradicators?” He sipped his wine. “I might know where to get some.”
“Good, because that is why I came to see you.”
“They are going to cost you.”
“I wouldn’t have come if I weren’t willing to pay the price.”
“You know what I want?”
Lucci nodded. “I’ve already made the arrangements.”
Ferraro’s face remained impassive; he rubbed his wide brow with fingers that had grown thick carrying baskets of sulfur crystals inside the narrow shafts of Tallarita, the infamous sulfur mine in Riesi.
“You wouldn’t fuck with an old man, Vincenzo?”
“No, never about something like this. But I warn you, there will be a price to pay.”
“Have I not paid enough of a price already?”
“Isn’t Pietro the one paying?”
“Sì, sì, but his father as well. There is a part of me incarcerated there with him.”
Pietro Ferraro, the oldest of Eduardo Ferraro’s three children and his only son, had—despite Lucci’s stringent objections—joined the family business after his honorable discharge from the 4th Alpini Paratroopers, a specialized mountain combat regiment in service since World War I. Three years after that, the former military hero—who also happened to be Lucci’s godson—passed from fame to notoriety and disgrace after murdering magistrate Roberto Caruso. Convicted to life imprisonment, he was serving his sentence not more than fifteen kilometers away, in the ill-famed Casa Circondariale Pagliarelli outside of Palermo.
“That judge, you know he was in the Corleones’ pocket?”
“That doesn’t change anything, Eduardo.”
“No, maybe not for you, but to me it makes all the difference.”
Ferraro walked over to the fridge built into the back of the house, trailing cigar smoke that hinted of honey, grabbed a new bottle of wine, and filled up both glasses.
“How did you do it?”
“The governor of the prison is an old friend. I asked him for a favor.”
“And he just granted it?”
“I am the Archbishop of Palermo, Eduardo. The governor comes from a pious family. I knew he would accommodate my request.”
Ferraro’s wide face curled into a snarl; his dark eyes smoldered like the molten lava flowing from the slopes of Mount Etna two hundred kilometers to the southeast.
“Your sister asked you to obtain her son’s freedom two years ago, and you refused. But now you want something in return, and you just snap your fingers, and Pietro is free?”
“Pietro isn’t free, Eduardo; he will never be free. He killed a magistrate; no one, not even the prime minister, would ever consider pardoning him.”
“I don’t understand. You said it was arranged.”
“I did. But I didn’t say what had been arranged.”
Lucci sipped his wine, letting his point sink in like the winter rains into the volcanic soil.
“The Corleone family has been trying to kill Pietro in retribution for murdering Roberto Caruso, who, as you pointed out, was on their payroll. A door gets left open … a knife is carelessly misplaced … and Pietro is dead. These things happen in Pagliarelli with regularity. Except that it won’t be Pietro who is killed.”
“The medical examiner …”
“Is a friend of mine. Have the body cremated and scatter the ashes over Monte Gallo.”
Down below, in the Gulf of Palermo, a knot of sailboats took advantage of the stiff breeze; a ferry steamed north toward Naples; hundreds of beachgoers walked the white sands of Mondello beach, looking at this distance like a line of marching ants.
“And now I will tell you why the governor agreed to do this.” Lucci stared at Eduardo, refusing to shrink from his surly gaze. “He didn’t do it so that Pietro could return to the family business.”
“Then why?”
“He did it because his godfather needs him; the Church needs him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to tell you a story, Eduardo. I hope I don’t need to tell you never to repeat it.”
Ferraro looked injured; his right hand fell over his heart.
“You know I can be trusted.”
Ferraro might be duplicitous, dishonest, and deceitful, but he could keep a secret. Lucci told him about the plot to kill the pope and destroy Vatican City, omitting only the smallest of details.
“I can see why you want Pietro for such a mission.”
“He is a world-class climber and a decorated paratrooper; he is the perfect man for the job.”
Pietro had learned to climb in grade school on the precipitous slopes of Monte Gallo, which was literally in his backyard, and had graduated to the steep inclines of Mount Etna by the time he had finished high school. Prior to enlisting in the Italian army at age twenty-two, he had summitted eight of the top ten highest peaks in the world.
“There are hundreds of climbers good enough for the job. That’s not why you want him.” Ferraro raised his index finger, wagging it back and forth as he stared at his brother-in-law. “You want him because you know it will mean that the men I provide for your Corsican Guard will be the best I have, because my son’s life depends on them. This is very clever of you, Vincenzo, and exactly what I would have done in your position.”
“And what else would you do in my position?”
“Use fewer men. Twelve is too many. They will only be tripping over one another.”
A bell clanged in the kitchen. Eduardo grabbed his glass in one hand and the bo
ttle in the other, and led Lucci back through the pool area into the dining room, which was situated under a low-hanging terracotta roof. The table had been set with blue and white Minton china, silver flatware, and Waterford crystal; large vases of roses adorned the center. Ferraro sat at the head of the table, Lucci next to him. Maria brought out the food but didn’t sit with them.
They ate in a silence only occasionally broken by the hoop-hoop of a Eurasian hoopoe looking for a mate. When they had finished, Maria cleared the dishes, depositing bowls of panna cotta with raspberry sauce and cups of espresso.
“What arrangements have you made?” Ferraro asked.
Lucci shrugged. “Other than for Pietro, none.”
“Good, leave them to me. I have only one request.”
There were few things Lucci enjoyed more than his sister’s panna cotta. He finished it before Ferraro could continue, lest his words spoil the taste of cream and raspberries.
“I want to see him before he leaves for Austria.”
It was a reasonable request, one that Lucci had been expecting. “He can’t come here; people will be watching for him.”
“No. I agree. He’ll know where to meet me.”
They drank their espressos; the male hoopoe cried out for company. Hoop-hoop. Hoop-hoop. The ceiling fan whirred, dispersing the scent of the roses, which swirled in the air like the vapor of honey.
“And afterward, what will become of him?”
“That will be up to him. I will see that he gets a new identity, but even with that, I don’t think it would be wise for him to return to Sicily.”
“Not for a while, certainly.”
“Not ever. There are too many people who would recognize him.”
“He is Sicilian. He belongs here.”
“Then let him stay at Pagliarelli.”
“Perhaps America, then.”
“So he can expand the family business across the Atlantic? I don’t think so.”
A green and brown Italian wall lizard appeared on the tabletop. It ran across the linen cloth and stopped beneath one of the large vases, feasting on a beetle that had fallen off the roses.
The Vatican Conspiracy: A completely gripping action thriller (A Marco Venetti Thriller Book 1) Page 13