The Seventh Commandment

by Tom Fox

  Despite his measured words, Ridolfo shared André’s impatience. The urge to break through the door and force their way to their targets’ location was strong. It posed, however, the practical potential of losing the man and woman altogether. Inside, Ridolfo imagined that the Archives were a maze of corridors, storage rooms and vaults. Seeking out two people inside would be a tricky challenge. Far better simply to wait until they fleshed themselves out.

  ‘Maybe there’s an exit you don’t know about,’ André protested. ‘Can we really be that sure they’re even still in there?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, André, you’ve got her signal on your tablet.’ Ridolfo pointed at the device strung to his partner’s hip. The small device was fed Angelina Calla’s location in real time by Vico’s team. Her phone had apparently gone into hibernation mode due to low battery sometime during the afternoon, but Vico had surprised Ridolfo by assuring him that the device being off didn’t hinder their ability to track it. ‘You can see her position for yourself.’

  André grunted. He grabbed the tablet from his waist and switched it on. The small green dot superimposed over the Google Maps rendering of the area continued to move, but only in the most fragmentary of ticks one direction or another, then back again, movements overlapping. She was clearly still in the structure before them, probably underground, where Vico had explained their tracking couldn’t monitor vertical motion, meaning that ascents and descents would look more like flutters than actual movement.

  Clucking in annoyance, he switched off the device and returned it to the clasp on his belt.

  Ridolfo could smell his friend’s frustration.

  ‘Calm yourself, André.’ He permitted his tone to grow a little more gentle. ‘They’ll come out soon enough. And when they do, we’ll take them down properly.’

  35

  Inside the Vatican Secret Archives

  It took time to ascend from the bunker back up to the ground level of the Archives. Precisely how long was something Angelina couldn’t be sure of. Seconds seemed like hours and minutes could have been weeks as she once again followed Ben, this time by the beam of his phone’s torch. They spoke little. His odd mood hadn’t passed even after they were free of the bunker’s concrete shell, and for her part, Angelina felt that silence better fit the air of apprehension that lingered palpably between them.

  The whole time, however, her mind was abuzz. The questions she had about the tablet they’d just left behind consumed her. Having held it in her hands she now knew it was composite clay. The historical significance of such an artefact was enormous, but it was hardly an item of extraordinary worldly value. It wasn’t inscribed on gold or precious stone or invitingly ornate. Lexical contents aside, it was a series of shallow indentations marked in a plate of what had once been mud. How much could something like that really be worth on the black market? A few hundred euros? Maybe a few thousand? Hardly enough to try to kill someone for.

  She shuddered, and her memories shifted. The bullets by the river had come within centimetres of her chest, feet and head. A different posture, a slightly repositioned stance, and she would have been left bleeding on the streets of Rome, a piece of lead torn through her flesh.

  ‘Watch your footing here,’ Ben’s voice sounded. Angelina peered down as he held the beam of light on a small dip in the flooring. She was grateful for his voice as much as for the guidance. Something familiar, something to snap her out of her suddenly morbid, terrifying thoughts.

  ‘It’s only a few metres further,’ Ben continued, his voice still tinged with self-reflection but stronger than before. ‘One more security door, and we’ll be back in the lobby.’

  Fewer than two minutes later he and Angelina emerged into the small space of the Vatican Secret Archives front lobby, ground level. Normally, the foyer at night-time would have been dimly illuminated by exterior rays beaming in from two windows set high into the courtyard-side walls. Beyond stood all the glories of Vatican City in its night-time splendour: fabulously illuminated domes, stone palaces, statues and courtyards – a vision as awesome by night as by day.

  But as they entered into the lobby, it was only marginally less dark than the stacks and corridors from which they’d emerged. Above them, the windows were a deep navy blue, barely a shade above blackness itself.

  Ben noticed the oddity of the surroundings more than Angelina, to whom they were foreign in any case. All she saw was the door, the exit to the outside world where she desperately wanted to be. She didn’t wait for Ben to guide her. With the door in sight she stepped forward and took the lead, depressing the lever on its wooden bulk and pushing. A moment later she and Ben emerged into the Belvedere Courtyard of the Vatican Palace, smack in the heart of God’s own city.

  ‘Thank God we’re out of there.’ Angelina didn’t stop, keeping her feet in motion towards the arched exit on the southern wall of the courtyard. ‘For a place I was once desperately hoping to get into, at this moment I’m thrilled to have it behind me.’

  It would have been a natural moment for Ben to smile or to offer some comforting remark or compassionate ‘I can relate to that’, but instead he was silent. Though his lips continued to move, something Angelina had noticed downstairs, no sound emerged.

  She also noticed, at this moment, his eyes. They darted between the principal objects of the exterior landscape: the few remaining cars parked on the tarmac. The fountain at the courtyard’s centre. The buildings themselves. With each, Ben’s face appeared more puzzled.

  It was only when Angelina turned to look in the same direction, focusing on the same sights, that she started to realise why.

  All around them, the darkness they had left below seemed to be following them.

  The usual courtyard lampposts were not lit, and as Angelina surveyed the windows of the other buildings lining the space, she noticed that none of them were illumined, either. Most striking of all, the immense dome of St Peter’s itself was dark. The massive structure, the central feature of the Roman skyline for five centuries and a monument recognisable the world over, was normally lit in brilliant display from the moment the sun went down over Vatican City. Angelina had heard once that it cost the Holy See upwards of 250,000 euros a year just to illumine the exterior of the capital of Catholic Christianity – a figure she revelled in quoting to her tour groups. It might not speak well for the eco-mindedness of the Holy See, but as far as Angelina was concerned it was entirely worth it. The sight drew visitors from every corner of the globe.

  Tonight it was a dark grey shadow on a black backdrop, haunting and silent. Angelina had never seen it like this before.

  ‘The power outage must be for the whole of Vatican City.’ She walked alongside Ben as they made their way towards the courtyard’s southernmost exit. He continued to glance around them, but said nothing.

  His behaviour’s starting to freak me the hell out, she muttered inwardly as they moved. It was time to be rid of the whole place.

  Under normal circumstances she would have vocalised her thoughts, perhaps; maybe tried to lighten her anxiety by making a jab at unpaid Vatican electricity bills. She would have said something witty. Would have said anything.

  But the opportunity never came. Instead, Angelina’s breath stopped abruptly in her chest as a sound so explosive it might as well have been the earth cracking in half broke through their relative silence.

  A millisecond later, and for the second time that day, a stone wall beside her shattered into a cloud of dust and debris.

  36

  In the heart of Vatican City

  The fact that the sound of gunfire was familiar to her would have struck Angelina as ironic if it weren’t for the fact that it meant she knew exactly what was happening. She was being shot at, again; and just as before, the bite of fragmented stone and concrete flying into her skin shocked her system to attention. All the panic from the afternoon’s attack at the bridge returned with an intensity impossible for anything other than the rush of genuine fear, and before
the shards of the stone wall had fully ricocheted off her body, Angelina had tensed to full alert, adrenaline once again spiking through her system.

  Her head spun towards Ben, who stood frozen where his legs had locked at the explosive sound. His face was pale, though on his features Angelina saw the signs of terrified recognition. He’d been shot at today, too, and was clearly even more traumatised than she was.

  The suggestion of vomit arrived at the back of her tongue, fear reaching a new intensity. Would the brusque men who had abducted her earlier return to save them again? Had it been a mistake to flee the confines of the Swiss Guard? The thoughts swarmed in her mind with instantaneous speed. She still wasn’t sure her captors and the attackers weren’t one and the same, she—

  Another gunshot tore through the night, and all Angelina’s thoughts stopped. Her impulses sprang to life.

  She lunged towards Ben and grabbed his shoulder, her eyes boring directly into his and only a single word on her tongue.

  ‘Run!’

  Ridolfo wasn’t about to let André fuck this up a second time. This time around the woman would already be spooked, and a spooked target was always more unpredictable than one taken by surprise.

  Ridolfo would do the shooting himself.

  He’d never trained as a marksman or felt a strong draw towards weaponry, but he wasn’t a complete neophyte. A target range outside Mondragone had been a popular place of retreat over the years, and Ridolfo knew his way around a gun and a target. Though they usually weren’t moving, and they’d never before been human.

  Still, there was a first time for everything.

  His first shot had fallen wide, slamming into the wall beyond the woman in his sights. He cursed himself, and then again when his second round fared no better.

  He would do better to target the man, who’d frozen in evident terror before she had pulled him back into motion. Cogently alert was not a phrase Ridolfo would use to describe the woman’s petrified companion.

  He took a few breaths to line up his sights anew, then fired again. The shot was perfect, the sights square. But just as his finger gently squeezed the trigger to life, the woman grabbed her companion by the shoulder and yanked him out of range. Ridolfo’s third shot pursued its course, a line that would have gone straight through the man’s head, just as he’d intended. Instead it found itself, too, buried in the ancient stonework beyond.

  Fuck! Before the profanity had finished barrelling through his mind, Ridolfo saw his targets were on the move. That fucking woman! She was guiding him, as wily on her feet as she had been in the afternoon. They had to be stopped.

  But they were too swift. Before Ridolfo could line up another shot, they’d reached an archway that led out of the courtyard and rounded it sharply, taking them out of sight.

  Ridolfo lowered his gun and forced all his strength into his thighs as he rose from his crouch.

  ‘Damn it!’ he shouted at André, his body already in motion. ‘After them!’

  Behind Angelina, Ben’s race to keep up was all that prevented a flood of panicked confusion from consuming him. The exertion and his need for breath limited what flowed out of his lips, but even though he knew his panicked words were heard only by himself, he couldn’t stop them from coming.

  ‘The bright places shall become dark . . .’

  All around him, bullets slicing through the air with demonic intent, aimed at Angelina and himself, the prophecy was proving itself real. They were awash in blackness. The city-state that was called by Christ to be a ‘lamp on a hill’ had gone dark. A bleaker darkness than any he’d seen before had fallen . . . in a city filled with light.

  He followed Angelina on impulse. She ran out of the Vatican Palace structure into one of the narrow alleyways that led between ancient buildings. Her face was terrified, yet determined.

  But Ben’s heart beat with some other force. His two worlds had always been separate – the professional and the personal, the historical and the faithful. His work gazed ever into the past while his faith burned always for the future.

  Today, they were colliding.

  With the looming hulk of the Apostolic Palace behind them, there was a momentary lapse in the cracks of gunfire that had forced Angelina and Ben into their current sprint, but she was far from satisfied that they were safe. She hadn’t got a solid look at their pursuers – she was too concerned with getting away from them to stop for a careful identification – but as she’d glanced backwards in that first lunge for Ben she’d caught sight of two figures behind a low stone barrier across the internal square. She was as convinced as she needed to be that they were the same two who’d shot at her by the river.

  Her skin went even colder. Vatican City wasn’t like the neighbourhood she’d been in earlier – there were a few twists and turns around the sacred buildings of the Holy See, but nothing approaching the spider’s web of interconnecting alleys and streets that had helped her escape before. Here she and Ben were far more exposed, contained, and Angelina sensed their pursuers would use that to their advantage.

  No sooner had the thought formed in her mind than the cobblestone roadway between her and Ben burst apart and a new crack of gunfire tore through the air.

  Ridolfo couldn’t believe he’d actually missed them again. André was never going to let him live down the series of failed attempts, especially after the words he’d shot in the other man’s direction following his poor display of marksmanship earlier that afternoon. There would be ribbing and there would be insults.

  But neither of those irritations would compare to the anger of their boss, André’s father, if they failed in this assignment. Ridolfo knew the stakes they were playing, and though he didn’t fully understand the nature of the threat Angelina Calla and Ben Verdyx posed, he knew that Emil’s crew – of which he was an integral part – was going to get only one shot at their prize, and if Emil said this pair could potentially disrupt that, then Ridolfo had as much of a reason to stop them as his boss.

  Ironically, it was the current plague that was hindering him in his task. Without any electric illumination, Vatican City was a shadowland of dark lanes loomed over by hulking grey masses of stone. It was surprisingly difficult to see shape and motion in the darkness, and the duo they were chasing hadn’t stopped moving.

  But you take the circumstances you’re given, his father had always said to him, and make what you can of them. The pep talk may have been aimed at helping Ridolfo overcome his physical deformity and deal with an unpleasant lot in life, but over the years it had come back to him in various ways as a help.

  Today’s circumstances weren’t great, but he would make do.

  He raised his gun again, aligned the sights, and fired.

  Outside – throughout Rome

  The blackness that had overtaken the city was too much. Having borne the water’s strange discolouration and the attacks that had come along with it, tension and fear rising at the pairing, the population seemed unable to bear this new ‘coincidence’ without some degree of reaction.

  It came in bodies descending into streets and squares to examine just how far the darkness had swept through their city. When they saw it reached everywhere, that the only lights in the whole of Rome were those of torches held in hands and headlamps on moving traffic, tension began to turn to outright fear.

  What the hell was going on in Rome?

  Without phones – the vast majority of modern Romans having long ago ditched landlines and opted for mobiles, all of which were rendered defunct with the loss of power to the city’s cellular towers – and without Internet, the only way to confer and confirm their fear with others was to reach them physically.

  So Rome began to take to the streets. In the blackness, the thoroughfares and lanes that criss-crossed the city began to glow like veins illuminated in black flesh. Traffic slowed to a crawl, the anxiety of drivers causing them to pound on their horns with increased frequency, raising up a great howl over the city.

  Rome was losin
g her self-control. Fear had come with the darkness, with the guns, with the blood. And fear was a hard beast to tame.

  Inside Vatican City

  The bullet blew its way into masonry and stone with a crackling thud that was becoming far too familiar to Angelina. This time, though, it was accompanied by another sound, one she hadn’t heard before: a yelp, something resembling an abbreviated cry, caught in an incomplete breath. It took Angelina a full second to realise that the sound had come from her, and it was as she glanced down at her moving legs that the pain accompanying it hit.

  The bullet that had exploded into the wall in front of her hadn’t entirely missed its intended mark. The fabric of her trousers was torn just above her left knee, and the appearance of a bloom of blood beneath the frayed material was accompanied by a fire that tore its way through the nerves of her legs. Angelina had never felt a pain like it, and the unfamiliar sensation struck her in an assault that renewed itself with each pounding of her foot on the cobblestone lane.

  ‘Shit, you’re hit!’ Ben cried out, seeing the sudden change in her gait and lowering his eyes to the red patch forming above her knee. It was the first cogent thing he’d said since they’d emerged from the Archives. Angelina saw the look of horror on his face, as well as the terrified hesitation that overtook his pace.

  But though Ben was right, and though a gunshot wound was something Angelina had no idea how to digest, she sensed that she had to keep them moving. She hadn’t heard bone crunch, and though the wound was agonisingly painful, the blood coming from it didn’t look like the kind of flow that drained the life out of a person. She might live, but they’d both be dead if they stopped.

  ‘Don’t slow down,’ she shouted at Ben, forcing herself to resume her pace despite the sickening jolt that shot up her leg with each step. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Nothing!’ Ben was incredulous, though he scrambled back to his former speed to keep up with her. ‘You’ve just been shot! By, by . . .’ His shortness of breath overtook him.