by Rene Fomby
The pope sucked in a deep breath to try and calm himself, letting a long, fervent pause hang in the air before he finally resumed. “So, no, my children, we cannot forgive this act. We cannot turn the other cheek once again, like lambs being led to slaughter. As Jesus himself once said, ‘Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whosoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of eternal sin.’ And so, I remind all of you standing here today, I remind all of you watching and listening around the world. God has been patient with Ishmael’s children. God has been tolerant, giving them time and then even more time to turn from Satan’s lustful embrace, to accept His eternal Grace instead. But now the time is upon us when all of God’s children must be counted. We who stand on the side of our Lord, we who are the army of our Lord can no longer be patient, can no longer forgive this eternal sin against God. The abomination that is Islam can no longer be allowed to deface this Earth. God’s Earth. And—” The pope paused for a moment to let the import of his words sink in, and when he began speaking again, it was in a softer but more ominous voice. “And, for those of you who will still defend Islam, who will still defend its abiding wickedness, I remind you of the immortal words of our Lord, Jesus Christ, rebuking none other than Saint Peter, the Rock of His Church: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but instead mere human concerns!’”
And with one last glance at the smoldering chapel, he turned abruptly and strode forcefully back through the door and into St. Peter’s.
47
Fatebenefratelli Hospital, Rome
Sam was standing beside Mehmed’s bed when he finally woke up.
“Hey, Rip Van Winkle! Nice of you to finally join us here.”
“What? Where am I?” he asked, glancing around the room with half-lidded eyes.
“You’re in Fatebenefratelli Hospital, on an island in the middle of the Tiber River in Rome.” She reached over to the side table and buzzed for a nurse. “It seems you got into an argument with another car bomb of a sorts.”
“Car bomb?” The cobwebs slowly began to clear from his brain. “Oh. Yeah. Our friends—”
“From the Vatican Guard. It appears they’re not nearly so Christian after all. How are you feeling?”
“Like I just had another argument with a car bomb, like you said. How long have I been out?”
“You’ve been here about a day and a half. And you can add another day and a half after they nabbed you. You were shut down completely when we finally got to you, so I can’t tell you any more than that.”
The nurse appeared and fussed over him for ten minutes, checking his vitals and scribbling into an old-fashioned paper chart. When she was finished, she smiled up at him sweetly. “Everything looks pretty good, all in all. The doctor will be by sometime in the next hour or so to give you a better going-over. In the meantime, just try to take it easy. Someone worked you over pretty well, and it will take a little time for everything to heal. Is there anything I can get you at the moment?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine,” he said wincing as he tried to shift positions in the bed.
After the nurse left, Sam pulled up a chair to talk. “What do you remember about what happened down there?”
Mehmed painfully raised his right hand to rub his brow, then thought twice about it, his arm feeling like someone had driven nails into it. “There’s not a whole lot to tell. I was down in the lab, working on the sixth amphora, when I heard a loud noise coming from up above, on the surface, and then what felt like a minor earthquake. But it all settled down pretty quickly, so I decided I could ignore it, thinking, whatever the heck it was, I’d find out eventually. Then, several hours later, the guards, the same goons we saw earlier, they came bursting through the door into the lab without warning, screaming all kinds of crazy stuff about a plane and me being a terrorist, and a lot of other stuff, all of it really nasty. Then, before I could even react to any of that, they had me in handcuffs and tossed me in the elevator. Next thing I knew, I was locked up in some kind of prison—I have no idea where—and they started trying to interrogate me. Said I was the point person for some bunch of Muslims, that it was my job to guide the plane in, and then demanded I tell them everything I know. When I didn’t—couldn’t—give them any answers, when I said I didn’t know what they were blabbing on about, that’s when they started to get rough. After a while, I guess I must have passed out.”
“Hmm. Pretty much what we figured had happened. Now I’m feeling kind of sorry I told Gavin’s assault team to go easy on them.”
“Assault team? Gavin?” Mehmed’s brow wrinkled as his brain started to catch up with the events of the past few days. “Is that how you got me out of there? And just what in the hell was all that about, anyway? The sound I heard, was that a plane crash of some sort?”
Sam quickly filled him in on everything that had happened, from the Turkish 747, to their breaking into the lab, and finally what little she knew about his rescue.
“Wow! All that in less than two days? I really do need to get out more, I suppose.” He leaned back on his pillow, deciding that sitting up was not doing his throbbing head any good. “So where are we now with all of this? Where are the jars?”
“I put them on one of my yachts, packed away in the owner’s cabin and pointed straight to Venice, where I’ll have everything safely locked away in my bank’s vault until we can build a new lab. My original plan was to offload everything onto a plane at Naples, then on to Venice, but you being locked up and tortured kind of messed all that up.”
“Okay, well, I think your first instinct was the right one. As much as I appreciate all the love, those jars are a whole lot more important to this world than one low-ranking itinerant Turkish religious scholar. And there’s not really anything you can do here to make me heal any faster, I think the doctors have all that covered, so you—”
“Need to catch the next flight out of here to meet up with my yacht. Yep, I think you’re right. But I was worried sick about you, and I didn’t want you to wake up and wonder about what had happened and how everything was shaking out.”
“Yes, thank you for that. I’d have been worried even sicker than I am today about what had happened to all the amphorae if I had woken up completely in the dark about all that. I would have just assumed they were still holed up back in the lab. Or even destroyed by the Swiss Guard.” He glanced around the room. “Say, what is this place? Fraten benny what?”
“Fatebenefratelli Hospital. It’s evidently a pretty famous hospital, going back at least a thousand years or so. It’s currently being run by the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, but it’s really most famous these days for having provided emergency shelter to a group of about a hundred Jewish refugees who managed to escape a Nazi raid back in the early Forties. The hospital gave them refuge, and then claimed that these new ‘patients’ had been diagnosed with a highly contagious, fatal disease they called K Syndrome. Eventually the Nazis caught on to the scam and raided the hospital, but they ended up capturing only five of the Jews. Meanwhile the friars that ran the hospital had also set up an illegal radio in the basement and used it to provide critical information on what was happening around Rome to the Italian Royal Air Force.”
“Man. I’m impressed! And you know all of that because you’re Jewish?”
Sam laughed. “Nah. I had a lot of time on my hands while you were conked out, so I Googled it. But the one thing I did know when we brought you here was that the new pope was treated here as well, after he passed out at the conclave.”
“New pope? Sam, I tell you, this whole thing just keeps getting weirder and weirder. How in the world did all that happen?”
As Sam filled him in on what she knew about the Miracle pope, she noticed his eyes starting to droop. The nurse must have slipped him something in his IV for the pain. Sam decided to hang around until he woke up again so she could say her proper goodbyes, the
n she needed to catch up with the yacht and its priceless cargo of one hundred eight ancient jars. Thirty-six of the original one hundred forty-four jars had already been pilfered, and she was bound and determined not to allow a repeat of that particular mistake to happen on her watch. Or trust anyone else right now with that particular secret.
48
Rabat
Gavin had done pretty much everything he could think of to broadcast the fact that he had survived the attack in Marseille, and he even had Dez spreading the good word around the docks. Now he was stuck wandering around Rabat, impatiently cooling his heels until word of his not-so-premature death made its way to William Tulley. Or Peter Boucher, or whoever it was that had been assigned the unenviable task of removing him from this mortal coil.
In the meantime, he was even more bored than he had been before Andy was kidnapped. Being on loan to Bob Sanders meant he didn’t even have the trivial little nonsense tasks the FBI sent him from time to time to soak up the long, miserable hours of his day, and one could only play so many games of solitaire without going cross-eyed. He tried binge watching shows on Hulu and Netflix, but even that grew monotonous over time. In the meantime, he couldn’t manage to shake the feeling that Andy was squirreled away somewhere being tortured—or worse. But until he got more info on that, his search was effectively dead in the water.
He checked his watch. Almost time for another moonlight stroll through the streets of Rabat. Or, more accurately, a moonlight troll. And maybe, just maybe, he might get lucky tonight and catch a big fish in the net he had spent the past few days preparing. Unless he somehow wandered into a net himself. That was the problem with baiting a trap—one small slip-up and suddenly the trap can snap shut on you, instead.
49
Cappadocia, Turkey
Peter Boucher had finally made it back to the Palace from Marseille, after being detoured off in Barcelona for a full week, handling several ridiculously minor issues that had popped up between the Spanish priests and their counterparts from Catalan. But with all that nonsense and Gavin Larson’s death finally behind him, he looked forward eagerly to his next assignment: dealing with the Andy Patterson problem in the slow, delicious way only he could fully enjoy.
Unpacking his suitcase, he opened a cabinet in his private bedroom and pulled out a few toys, along with several bottles of pills. Screwing open an empty pill bottle, he carefully dropped an assortment of the more interesting drugs into it, then sealed the bottle and placed it in his pocket. Normally he might have waited until early the next morning to begin, but the week-long delay was already wearing at his nerves, and he desperately needed something that could help him relax. Playtime with Andy Patterson would be the perfect tonic for that.
He was just about to head downstairs into the dungeon when his phone buzzed. Constantine. What now?
50
Houston
Harry tapped away at his computer, sending off a routine request for medical records along with an accompanying letter to an insurance company for yet another minor fender bender—the third such case he had dealt with already that morning, and the day was still very young. It all amounted to good money, money that paid the seemingly endless trickle of bills for the law practice, but it just wasn’t all that exciting. He would do just about anything right about now for a good old double homicide. Or even assault with intent to kill.
Sam was offline for the time being, so he couldn’t brighten up his day by calling her. She had texted that she would be at sea for a few days, and there just weren’t any good cell towers out in the middle of the Mediterranean. All that money, and she couldn’t afford a decent satellite phone?
He drummed his fingers on his desk. Lunch. He had enough stuff in his fridge to put together a sandwich or two, plus a bag of chips in the pantry, but as he clicked send on the insurance letter, he decided that fresh air sounded a great deal more enticing at the moment. Or maybe a dog. Sam’s dog Barley had always been lying around underfoot that summer he had interned for her, and Barley always found a way to fill a room. So, yeah. A dog. He pulled up a website on dog breeds on his computer screen.
51
Cappadocia, Turkey
Boucher couldn’t believe what Constantine was telling him.
“What do you mean he’s still alive? I saw the pictures myself, front page of the Marseille newspaper. ‘FBI Agent Killed in Shootout.’ And my own agent verified it. There’s no way—”
“And yet apparently you were wrong.” Constantine’s raspy voice over the phone left Boucher thankful he didn’t have to face his emperor in person. “Apparently you screwed up. And you know very well what I think about screwups.”
“But—alive? Back in Rabat? It can’t be.”
“The evidence is unmistakable. The FBI agent is still very much alive, General. And still very much a threat to us, to our project. You know I can’t let that threat continue.”
“I—okay. I’ll—handle it. Myself, this time.”
“You do that.” Constantine hesitated so long Boucher had to check to make sure he hadn’t dropped the call. When he spoke again, his voice was low and menacing. “Boucher, I’m beginning to think I made a mistake appointing you to head up our army. My army. Maybe I need to rethink that.”
“No, no, Your Grace. I—I don’t know how he managed to survive the ambush, but I will leave for Rabat this evening. I’ll direct the next attack myself. Personally. Larson will not escape my grasp this time. I promise you, this time I will bring his blood-soaked head to you on a platter.”
“Like John the Baptist.” Again, Constantine hesitated. “Very well. Bring me his head, and all will be forgiven. But General—”
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“If you fail me again, do not bother returning. This time, it will be either his head—or yours. Do you understand?”
Boucher gulped as an involuntary shudder ran through his body. Constantine’s anger, the punishment Boucher had seen the emperor mete out at even the slightest hint of failure made his own brutal methods seem like child’s play.
“I understand, my Emperor. I will not fail you ever again.”
“No, you will not. And I promise you, I will be watching. I am many things, Boucher, but patient and understanding is not one of them. Get it done. Now.”
Boucher heard the soft click that signaled Constantine had finally hung up. He stared down at his phone for a moment, fully aware of everything that now hung in the balance, the price that would be paid for the success or failure of his next assignment. Larson’s head—or his.
52
Polignano a Mare, Italy - Saturday
Sam pulled off her shoes to skip across the rocks and sand of the Lama Monachile, the beautiful natural beach sitting at the base of the cave-pitted rocky horseshoe that forms a small bay in the very heart of Polignano a Mare. Sam’s yacht was moored out just beyond the mouth of the bay and had already launched a Zodiac inflatable dinghy to pick her up at the waterline.
“Tell me again why you decided to rendezvous here and not at the harbor at Bari?” she asked her companion, the first mate from the crew of the Isabella, the Ricciardelli family yacht named after her late husband’s grandmother.
“Yes, well, Bari would have been easier, for sure,” he explained. “You could have just climbed right on board, instead of taking the Zodiac. But mooring at Bari might have led to an inspection, and then an unavoidable explanation of what was being stored in the guest cabin. At best, that would have created an official record of our cargo, which you had indicated—”
“Was to be avoided at all costs. Okay, I get it now. Good thinking.” Sam and the first mate arrived at the water’s edge just as the inflatable dinghy pulled up on the shoreline. The young man in charge of the boat jumped out to try and pull it further out of the water, but she waved him off. “Here, just grab my shoes so they don’t get wet, and I’ll roll up my pants legs …”
Moments later she was settled in near the transom and they pushed off the bea
ch, motoring out briskly toward the yacht. The water here was so pristine she could see all the way to the bottom, and once again Sam cursed her luck. Surrounded by the endless, intoxicating beauty of Italy and blessed with almost unlimited funds in the bank, and still she had next to no time in her schedule to even pause for an hour or two to enjoy the sun and play in the blue waves of the Adriatic.
The captain was waiting for her as she stepped up onto the swim platform, the teak deck shining golden in the late afternoon sun. “Ms. Tulley! I am so glad to finally meet you. I have your cabin already prepared for your convenience, and the steward will be with you in a moment with some refreshments. I take it your trip was uneventful?”
“Yes, and thank goodness it was. If I have another interesting day anytime soon I think I’ll scream. But you said my cabin was prepared. Isn’t that where the—artifacts—are being stored?”
“No, actually, we placed all of that in a guest cabin nearer the center of the boat. It had more than enough space, and it is much better protected from the elements and the ship’s motion. Your cabin is located at the prow of the boat to take advantage of the views, but I was told by your crew back at Ostia Antica that sunlight would likely be damaging to the cargo. Plus, all of those windows present a major security concern, so we locked everything up in the middle cabin and sealed it with a padlock and security tape. Here’s the key, by the way.”
He reached into his right front pocket and fished out a small key hanging from a bright red lanyard.
“Good thinking, Captain …”
“Leon, ma’am. Captain Marcus Leon, at your service.”
“Nice to meet you, Captain Leon. And I think I’ll take you up on settling into my cabin for a while. The last few days have been very taxing, to say the least.”