New Rome Rising

by Rene Fomby

  “Like a giant mousetrap, with Andy’s bracelet as the cheese,” Gavin suggested.

  “And you were the obviously the fat little mouse they were trying to trap,” Dez added. “The one bullet I took to the chest was a nine-millimeter, so they clearly held back the big stuff just for you. And then, once you got hit with two fifties at point-blank range, they ran for the exits, not bothering to pay any further attention to either Ramon or me. Any idea why they might have it out for you so badly?”

  Gavin stared at the ceiling of the bell tower stretching well above his head, thinking. “This has got to be the work of Tulley. Andy and I—we must have rattled him, getting so close with the Labarum investigation. And Boucher, too. So this is some kind of payback, or maybe just a way of taking us both off the game board at the same time. Two knights who were getting way too close to their king.” He tried to sit up again and failed. “Okay, I’ll call uncle on looking around for now. You win. But Dez—” He nodded painfully toward the chapel. “Don’t leave a single speck of dirt unturned, okay? We’re getting close, I can feel it. And I’m pretty sure this isn’t the last mousetrap they’re going to try and spring on me before this is all over. I mean, after all, who sets just one trap when you’re dealing with a truly pesky little mouse, right? But—you know, we got a little lucky tonight, but the next time our luck might wind up swinging the other way, so—”

  Dez nodded slightly toward the paramedics, who were standing impatiently off to the side with a stretcher. “I’ll take care of it, Gavin, you can count on that.” She stood up and gave the medics some space as they carefully slipped the stretcher underneath him, Gavin grimacing fiercely all the while but obstinately refusing to cry out from the pain. “And we still have one or more of the gunmen at large, not to mention a larger group of conspirators who played us like fools down at the wharfs. All of whom are probably convinced you’re dead right about now. And that’s a good thing, when you think about it. So … I’ll have the paramedics take you under a heavy police escort to the morgue, very visible to anyone who wants to check up on you. You’ll be a dead man as far as anyone else out there is concerned. From the morgue we’ll sneak you out to the hospital under a fake identity, where I’ll have some of my best people standing guard outside of your room until you’re released. In the meantime, we’ll try and pull an ID on the dead shooter. And I have a certain fisherman friend running around down by the pier that is about to have the worst day of his entire worthless life.”

  18

  Marseille / Siena - Wednesday

  The next morning Gavin placed a call to Sam Tulley on the burner phone his nurse retrieved from his canvas bag. Sam answered immediately, whispering that she would call him back right away. A few minutes later his phone rang.

  “I take it you weren’t in a good place to talk?” Gavin asked, checking the doorway himself to make sure nobody was listening in.

  “Yeah,” Sam answered. “I’m beginning to think the walls inside the castle have grown ears, so I stepped outside for a stroll in the garden. After all, if someone has gone to all the trouble of bugging the bushes and trees out here, I’m a goner anyway.” She paused a second to look back over her shoulder. It seemed she was all alone. But you can never really be certain. “So, Gavin, you’ve kinda been off the grid the last day or so. The Embassy back in Rabat says you took off two nights ago like a scared jackrabbit and they haven’t heard from you since. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to reach you to find out if you’ve heard anything more about the pope. Is everything okay?”

  Quickly Gavin recounted everything that had happened since their last phone call.

  “Oh my gosh, Gavin! Are you all right?”

  “I’ll be fine, Sam, don’t worry about me. I wound up with a cracked rib and a knot the size of a grapefruit on the back of my head, but I should be out of this place by tomorrow morning. The docs just want to keep me under observation for another day for their concussion protocol. And seeing as how the froggy police still don’t have any leads on the shooters or their partners down near the wharf, a day of rest is probably a good idea right about now. I was still a little woozy when I got up to go to the bathroom this morning, so racing around running a full tilt investigation is not exactly a good life choice at the moment.”

  “Yeah, you need to take care of yourself, Gav,” she assured him. “We all need you way too much to let anything else happen to you. Especially if Tulley’s got his henchmen out on the streets gunning for you. And, most likely, gunning for me as well” She paused, considering whether she should burden him with anything more, given his condition.

  Gavin didn’t give her a choice. “Look, you said you were trying to reach me yesterday. What’s up?”

  “It’s nothing, really. I was just thinking—Mehmed is on his own out there inside the Vatican, and bless his heart, he means well, but he wasn’t even aware that the pope had died, just ten stories above his head …”

  “So you’re thinking one of us needs to have boots on the ground in Rome right about now to watch over him and the Project,” Gavin suggested.

  “Yeah. It’s not that I don’t trust him, it’s just that I don’t trust any of the people at the Vatican right now. That place is nothing but one big nasty den of vipers. And Mehmed is just so naive—”

  “No, I get you, Sam. And especially with the conclave starting up in just about a week, that snake pit’s bound to get even more dangerous. But … I’m kind of off the table for at least the next week or so. Even after I get out of here, I really can’t focus on much of anything other than finding Andy—”

  “So that leaves little old me,” Sam concluded. “I’m way ahead of you on that, Gavin. I’ve still got some minor business to clear up here at the castle today, and Maddie’s grandmother has agreed to watch her for the next week or so while I’m in Rome. Helped out by all the nannies, of course. But my plan is to set up shop in my family’s apartment near the Spanish Steps by tomorrow afternoon. That way Mehmed and I can get to work on the second phase of your battle plan. Just in case.”

  “That makes a whole lot of sense,” Gavin agreed. “By the way, the CIA has heard rumors that there may be some kind of secret entrance to the Vatican, installed back in the day when Mussolini signed the treaty with the pope, or maybe even earlier. I’ll see if I can find out more, but you and Mehmed might want to try sneaking around down there on some of the lower floors of the library complex, particularly down on the fourteenth floor. You never know what you might find.”

  “But my clearance doesn’t go below the tenth floor,” Sam protested, albeit more than a little intrigued.

  “Sure it does. Who told you otherwise? I saw to it myself. The only person in the Vatican with a higher security clearance than you two is the pope himself, and he’s dead. So now you two are the top dogs.”

  Sam thought back on her training session with a member of the Swiss Guards. He hadn’t seemed all that happy with the idea of a Muslim Turk and an American Jew wandering around the Vatican grounds unescorted, so quite clearly he had taken more than a few liberties with the truth. Now, suddenly, she had an urge to check out the fourteenth floor more than ever. And maybe a few other secret corridors of the Vatican while she was at it.

  “Good to know, Gavin, good to know. So, look, in the meantime, take care of yourself, okay? I know as well as anyone what kind of evil William Tulley is capable of, from close personal experience. And a dead man can’t get Andy back—”

  “I’ll be careful, Sam, you can be sure of that. And I’ve got Andy’s boss, Bob Sanders, covering my backside, too. Along with a pretty capable team of gunslingers. But I get it, it only takes one bullet to ruin an otherwise beautiful day. In the meantime, even though I imagine I’m going to be pretty busy over the next week or so, don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything. Or if you find out something about what’s really happening inside the Vatican. I’ll tie you in with Sanders. He should be more than willing to help you out in my absence, just to take a load off
my shoulders.”

  “Thanks, Gavin. At the moment I can’t think of anything I’ll need, anything you haven’t already planned for, but you never know what kind of problems tomorrow might bring.” Sam hesitated before ending the call and walking back up toward the castle. “Oh, and Gavin—you’re going to find her, I know it. You’re going to find her and bring her back home, safe and sound. And if there’s anything I can do to help, I’ve got your burner phone on me at all times. Just call. After all, at the end of the day, William Tulley’s really my responsibility.”

  “No, Sam,” Gavin assured her. “He’s both of our responsibilities. That son of a bitch killed two of my agents, two of my best friends, and he did it right under my nose. So he’s overdue for a payback. Way overdue, I’d say.”

  “Well, I can understand why he wants you dead so badly. If I were in his shoes, the last person I’d want gunning for me would be Special Agent Gavin Larson. And a Special Agent Gavin Larson with a laser focus on saving his gal, at that. So go git’em, tiger. I got Rome covered for now.”

  “Thanks, Sam. And don’t forget to keep your head down, too. Even inside the Vatican. Especially inside the Vatican. The last time I counted, Tulley is O-for-two on taking you off the playing field. Actually, O-for-three if you count the attempted kidnapping.”

  “Yeah,” she answered, staring down at the network of minute scars still visible on the palms of her hands, left over from the fire back in Blair County over a year in the past. And thinking about the dozens of scars scattered across her back and legs from the car bomb explosion in Akko. “I don’t think I’m going to be forgetting about any of that any time soon. You might say I have it all burned into my memory. Quite literally.”

  Gavin immediately regretted bringing any of that up. Suddenly his small injuries from the night before seemed pretty trivial. “Hey, Sam—” he started.

  “No, you’re right. Until we have William Tulley and his daughter in custody—or better than that, dead, from my point of view—none of us can relax. Not for one single minute.”

  “Yeah, I guess last night was a good reminder that I’m not Superman after all. Not even Batman, or Robin the Boy Wonder. But Sam—he’s bound to make a mistake some time, and when he does, we’ll get him. Something’s astir right now, something really big, but I just can’t seem to make out what it is. And I can’t seem to shake the idea that it all somehow ties into the whole Chi Rho thing …”

  “And now the Chi Rho wave has finally washed up on the eastern shore of the Atlantic Ocean in the southernmost part of Spain.” She hesitated, thinking. “You don’t suppose maybe the pope’s death may have had something to do with—”

  “I think absolutely there’s some kind of tie-in, Sam. An ancient Christian symbol popping up across Southern Europe at the exact same moment the leader of the biggest Christian church in the world is murdered right under the noses of the Vatican guard? It can’t be a coincidence, there has to be a link there. But for the death of me I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “And that makes protecting the Project even more critical, I suppose. So, you’ve got your assignment, and I’ve got mine. Last one to the finish line buys dinner. And, for Andy’s sake, I hope that’s me.”

  “Tell you what, Sam, I’ll fork over for dinner either way. Dinner for three, hopefully.”

  “Hmm. You know, Gav, I’ve gotta think they’re keeping her alive, if for no other reason than as an insurance policy until they can get you in the bag as well, an irresistible sort of bait to dangle out in front of you and use to reel you in. So don’t give up hope. Use it as fuel, use it to push yourself forward faster and harder until you can finally get to her side, then get her home safe. And when you do, dinner is on me, my friend. And the most expensive bottle of champagne I can find.”

  “I’m with you on that, Sam. I can taste the bubbly right now. Look, I’m texting you the number to Sander’s personal cell. If you need anything—and I mean anything—give him a call, day or night. And keep that burner phone close.”

  “I will, don’t worry. See ya in a few.” Hanging up the call, she immediately heard her phone ding and glanced down to see the number Gavin had sent. She saved it into the burner phone’s contacts, the second number on the list, then turned to trudge back up the hill toward the castle. She still had a few minor details left to dispose of, then she could start packing for her trip to Rome. Barley came bounding up from out of nowhere, and she paused for a moment to bend over and scratch his ears. Remembering the dog’s own injuries, left over from his efforts to foil the kidnapping attempt, Sam made a note to order an increased security detail for Maddie while she was away. One could never be too careful about these things, particularly since there was quite obviously a mole buried somewhere deep within the castle staff. A mole that could very easily grow a sharp set of teeth without notice.

  ※

  The voices outside startled her awake. Lieutenant Commander Andrea Patterson didn’t have the strength anymore to crawl across the urine-soaked floor to listen in, to try and learn more about what was happening out there, on the other side of the door. The inky blackness of her cell was almost surreal, and it was getting harder and harder to separate that strange reality from her increasingly vivid imagination. How long had it been since the last time she’d eaten? Days? Maybe a week? It was so hard to tell, but one thing Andy knew for certain, it wouldn’t be long now. Her kidneys would be the first to fail. She seemed to recall from survival training that she could go without food for three weeks or more, but that timeframe shrank to just four to seven days without water.

  At least kidney failure would be an easy way to go. She’d heard that typically you just drifted off to sleep in the end. A very permanent kind of sleep. Kind of like she was doing now.

  She heard another sound, a scurrying of some sort, coming from the far corner near the bowl she had been using as a toilet when she first got there. Probably a mouse, trapped in here as well. Some part of her found that strangely comforting. At least she wouldn’t be alone at the end. And maybe even her decaying body could provide some small degree of nourishment for the little fellow. At least one of them might survive this.

  The voices were dimming. She wasn’t sure whether they were leaving or whether it was her own sense of hearing that was fading. But no, she could still hear the mouse in the corner. Her friend. She should give him a name. What’s a good name for a mouse? Mickey? Somehow that image seemed even more frightening than the idea of being trapped alone in this pitch-black cell with a mouse crawling around in the dark. She decided to think on it a little longer. Maybe take a nap first. Her eyes became heavy again, and her thoughts started to swim circles in the dark.

  the conclave

  19

  Vatican City - Thursday

  The conclave was scheduled to start on the afternoon of the Sabbath, now just three days away. Cardinal Orso sat facing away from the window, the morning sun warming his back as he carefully studied the five-paragraph text of the edict pope Benedict had issued back in 2007, De electione romani pontifices, an edict reversing the “reform” his predecessor John Paul II had pushed through allowing a simple majority vote for the new pope after the thirty-third ballot. With Benedict’s changes, election to the papacy once again required a two-thirds majority vote, although after the thirty-third ballot additional scrutinies would only include the two candidates with the greatest number of votes on that last ballot.

  Currently Orso could count fairly solidly on the votes of seventy-four of the one hundred fifteen cardinals who would be present at the conclave. That still left three more votes he needed to nail down over the next three days. He had tried the carrot approach up to now, but he had little faith that any more of his “enticements” would work on the remaining forty-four electors, and his bag full of “sticks” had been drained dry as well.

  He thought back on the look he had seen on his father’s face, staring out the window of his study on that dark day back in 1968 when pope Paul VI
abolished the offices of the Black Nobility with his apostolic letter motu proprio Pontificalis Domus. The Black Nobility had served the popes faithfully since the earliest days of the Church and stood beside the popes during the fifty-nine-year period of self-imposed exile that culminated in the Lateran Treaty of 1929. In recognition of that unwavering loyalty, members of the great houses of the Black Nobility had held some of the most prominent positions in the Papal Court, and one member of the nobility, Eugenio Pacelli, was himself later elected pope Pius XII.

  But the motu proprio changed that for all eternity. In one day, and with no advance warning, the proud remaining members of the noble families were stripped of their ranks and offices within the Vatican, stripped of their income, and relieved of all of their cherished papal privileges, even down to their Vatican City license plates. With one stroke of a pen the pope had ended two thousand years of history, two thousand years of faithful service to the Church.

  In one corner of Orso’s office was a framed reminder of that day, a simple “3-28-1968” written out in red flowing script. The 28th day of March, 1968. Three days before his father had taken his own life in this very same study, his spirit shattered by his disgrace and the pope’s heart wrenching disloyalty.

  At the funeral, kneeling in a slow and steady rain next to the sodden upturned soil of his father’s grave, his right hand buried deep in the fresh wet earth, the young boy who would become Cardinal Orso had vowed to never rest until he had wrought a just and lasting revenge upon the forces that had stolen the honor from his family name. The forces that had stolen his beloved father from his life.

  Orso stared across his study at the solemn framed reminder of everything he had lost. Everything his family had lost. Three days his father had agonized privately in this very place before putting a gun in his mouth and a bullet in his head. Now there were just three more days left before the opening of the conclave. And—three small votes that lay between him and the vengeance he had dedicated his entire life to meting out upon his enemies. Yes, he might now be out of carrots and sticks, but he wasn’t completely out of options. No, not quite yet. He picked up his cell phone and punched in the number for Peter Boucher.