by Gregg Loomis
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Lake Red Cloud, Minnesota
Mugwanee County Courthouse
The next morning
Charlie Clough used a wrinkled handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his face. Only fifty-five degrees outside, but the effort of hauling his three hundred pounds-plus across the square was real effort. So far, though, things were working out better than he had anticipated. First-class ticket to… where? Sioux City, South Dakota. Or was it North Dakota? Charlie was fairly certain he didn't really believe North, Dakota existed anyplace but on maps, so it must have been South Dakota. He had gotten a real rental car, not one of those fuckin' compacts he could hardly get into. The drive had taken about three hours, including one stop for gas and two more for snacks.
He'd been lucky, arriving at the Holiday Inn, the town's only accommodation, just before the dining room closed for dinner. According to the desk clerk, he'd gotten the very last super-king-sized bed. Good thing. A queen simply wasn't big enough. His arms draped over the side. Charlie figured the world was configured to fit the little people, folks who barely tipped the scales at two fifty. Some even less. It was tough making your way in a universe where you were already super-sized.
This morning, he had pretty well decimated the breakfast buffet before driving the mile or so into town. Town was too big; village was a better word. All tricked up like some fuckin' Alpine hamlet, even though the highest ground he'd seen so far was a speed bump across from the school.
He slapped at an insistent buzzing. Fuckin' mosquitoes! He'd suffered from gnats in South Georgia, every kind of biting insect in Florida, but he'd never known mosquitoes grew this large. These babies could stand flatfooted in the road and fuck a turkey!
The inside of the courthouse looked like something out of an installment of In the Heat of the Night. Only thing missing was that actor, Carroll O'Connor, same one who played Archie Bunker. He took the stairs down to where a sign indicated he would find records.
After an hour, he hadn't even come close to what he was looking for. Puffing with exertion, he climbed back up the stairs to the clerk's office and went in.
A red-cheeked young woman put down her copy of People magazine and came up to the desk-where Charlie stood, again mopping his face.
"The records," he said in response to her polite inquiry. "I can't seem to find any records, births, deaths, before 1950."
She looked at him quizzically. "Those are on computers, the ones in the record room." He shook his head. "I know, but I want to see the actual records, the physical pieces of paper."
She looked at him again, this time as though he wasn't quite right in the head, potentially dangerous. "Those are archived, sir. They're not here."
Charlie looked around, found a secretary's chair, and eased his bulk onto it gingerly. He had been standing for an hour down in the fuckin' record room, and now he was standing here, jawing with this nitwit who seemed not to understand the difference between electronic copies and the real thing. His feet hurt. They weren't made to hold up as much weight as he put on them.
"Where are they?"
She pointed as though the documents were just across the room. "Follow Main Street to the city-limit sign, take your first left. There's a warehouse where we keep the archives."
He stood, turning to go. "Thanks."
"Sir! Wait a minute. That warehouse isn't open all the time. I'll call to see when you can get in."
Swell.
Well, at least he could take time for an early lunch at the cafe he had seen across the square. "Thanks. I'll be back in a few minutes." Forty minutes later, Charlie paid the tab and walked out onto the sidewalk. He'd had better chow, but he'd had worse, too. A lot worse. At the corner, he looked both ways before stepping into the street toward the square. He was no more than a few paces from the curb when he heard the growl of a large engine. He looked up straight into the grille of the biggest fuckin' truck he had ever seen.
His last thought was that there wasn't going to be time to stop.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Rome
Santa Maria della Concezione, Via Veneto 27
The next afternoon
Lang had intentionally waited until the church was about to close for the midday siesta..The narthex was empty, and the nave and single aisle were empty except for an older woman in a nun's habit whose lips moved in what Lang supposed was prayer as she ticked off the beads of her rosary. Voices from the apse and transept behind the altar told him that a smattering of tourists had paid to see the macabre crypt displays of bones for which the church was noted. Arranged in rosette patterns, bones of equal or different sizes were displayed in varying designs featuring femurs, ribs, vertebrae, and other skeletal parts Lang could not identify.
Art is truly in the eye of the beholder. Some beholders' anyway.
The chapel of St. Michael was little more than a small room to his right just inside the nave. There was room for only three rows of five uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs each. The side chapel was empty of worshipers, but a brown paper shopping bag occupied a corner seat on the right front. If someone was watching, they were either invisible or the Agency had exempted the nun from its already liberal retirement age.
He picked up the bag and left.
It was when he was about to descend the twin staircase to the street that he saw her: a young Gypsy woman squatting just at the foot of the steps. When Lang had entered less than two or three minutes earlier, there had been a wrinkled crone crying out in the most pitiful tones imaginable. Entrances to churches were prime real estate in the begging business, spots not to be given up without a fight. Yet the old woman was gone, replaced. Stranger still, the bowl in front of the newcomer had a number of coins already in it. She had either seeded the dish or was one of the city's more accomplished beggars, a mendicant whose attention was fixed on the front of the church, not passersby. Her clothes, though far from fashionable, were neat and clean, not the soiled and torn attire he was used to seeing. Unless he was seriously mistaken, her fingernails were evenly trimmed and polished.
He dug into a pocket and dropped a handful of change into her bowl. She was watching him, not the money. A dead giveaway.
"Grazie, signor, " she said.
Bending over so he could not be heard by other pedestrians, Lang replied in English. "Spend it on nail polish remover."
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Rome
Hotel Hassler
That evening
Lang had spent a good part of the afternoon acquainting himself with the contents of the package. He had learned the fluoroscope could make badly worn numbers and letters on old coins spring into legible relief. The infrared brought alive old floral patterns of painted over wallpaper perhaps best left forgotten.
The camera was digital. It had the advantage of being able to call up the pictures he had taken instantly and the disadvantage of his lack of knowledge of how to make it do that. After thirty or so frustrated minutes, he left his room in search of a photography store, finding one within a few blocks. With far more patience than Lang would have exhibited under similar circumstances, the English-speaking store clerk used the same type and model to demonstrate the simplicity of bringing up pictures for review.
The problem was that, for Lang, nothing digital was simple. Under Sara's tutelage, he had mastered the use of his office computer for composing letters and legal documents. It was when it came time to send them off into cyberspace that his worst fears became realities. A brief that had required a week to compose was devoured by malign electronics in a nanosecond. His machine mocked him with reminders of his own ineptness with messages like "Unable to send due to incomplete address" or "Account number incorrect" the few times he had tried to pay bills or buy an airline ticket online. Instruction manuals were useless. Written with the clear assumption the reader understood bytes, hard drives, and other arcana, the printed material served only to reinforce Lang's sense of being very alone in a cyber-shrunken worl
d.
He viewed with sad nostalgia the days when you simply put whatever you were going to send into a real envelope, licked a stamp, and sent it on its way without fear of incomplete addresses, balky if not downright malevolent electronics, and temperamental delivery systems. He never understood how anyone could master the esoteric series of keystrokes (or, in the case of the camera, buttons pushed) necessary to achieve one task rather than another.
It was, then, with the closest attention, that he watched the clerk demonstrate the use of the camera, limiting the lecture to turning it on and off, and displaying pictures.
He was reasonably confident he could figure out how to plug the charging mechanism in.
Back in his room, he waited for sunset, in Rome a distinct event that turns the cold marble monuments to gold and gives buildings' ocher a glow as though lighted from within. Tonight, he was less interested in colors than the job ahead. Donning the cassock, he filled an old-fashioned leather briefcase with equipment he had both purchased a few days earlier and had received from Reavers.
A few minutes later, he was just one more priest scurrying along the streets and alleys of Rome in a hurry to keep an appointment at the Vatican. He was, though, the only one that night who was actually rushing to make sure he could find a group with whom he could blend in. He was also the only one whose business was with a pagan emperor dead nearly two thousand years.
Before reaching the Tiber, his cell phone buzzed twice and went dead, the signal prearranged with Sara.
Distrustful of the security of his own, it took Lang only minutes to find a bank of pay phones. He was all too aware of RAPTOR, the satellite system shared by the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that intercepted any telephonic communication the world over. The idea had been brilliant in its conception if faulty in its execution. The English speaking nations had the ability to listen in but no means of ascertaining which conversations were of interest. The solution had been to program the system to flag conversations including certain key words.
Although Lang was certain any transatlantic chat with his secretary would be buried under thousands of other dialogues, he knew no system was immune to hacking or interception. Whoever had tried to kill him could, possibly, somehow sort through the surfeit of information and retrieve his words. Using a pay phone simply ensured that his anonymous enemy could not rely on a simple interception device. Unless, of course, his office line had also been invaded.
He punched in the code for the United States, area code, and the office number. After a series of the squeals and squeaks frequently accompanying international calls, Sara answered.
"Lang," she said, her voice quavering. "Charlie Clough is dead."
It took an instant to sink in. "Charlie? How?"
"I only know what I saw in the paper this morning, but he was in a place up north…" Pause as she reached for the newspaper. "Red Cloud Lake, Minnesota. Says he was there on business, killed by a hit-and-run eighteen wheeler. Lang, he was such a nice man…"
He wasn't, but Lang murmured the usual meaningless words of comfort before hanging up.
One final time, it seemed Charlie had found what he was looking for. Unfortunately, Lang had only the vaguest idea what.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Rome
St. Peter's Square
Twenty minutes later
This time Lang merged with an Italian boys choir he gathered were to perform at evensong at one of the Vatican's numerous chapels, perhaps for the Holy Father himself. Shepherded by two dour nuns and several priests, the noisy group passed by the Swiss Guard with little more than a cheery buona sera and a wave of credentials. Once again, Lang's Georgia driver's license passed muster. The shadows that were devouring the square by now provided ample cover for Lang to fall to the rear of the boisterous procession and, finally, drop off just before the door guarded by the television camera.
For a full five minutes he observed, making certain nothing had been altered. A change in timing of the camera, of the combination lock, anything, could mean his previous visit had been discovered and additional security measures taken, precautions of which he would be unaware.
Cars whizzed by, the sensation of speed increased by the narrow confines of the road between basilica and the colonnades, but fast enough to be dangerous to the unwary crossing the road. He stepped deeper into the shadows to avoid headlights. The timing of the surveillance cameras was identical. Minimizing exposure to both the light provided by streetlights and by passing motorists, he stepped in front of the door, risking playing the beam of his flashlight over the locking mechanism. It seemed the same. The doorframe bore no indications of the work necessary to install alarms.
He took a deep breath, as though about to dive into bottomless water, and punched in the series of numbers.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Rome
St. Peter's Square
April 30, 1944
Sturmbahnfuhrer Otto Skorzeny crossed St. Peter's Square with purposeful strides. Behind him eight SS troops, Schmiesser machine guns slung across their chests, marched as though on parade. At the rear of the small procession, two Wehrmacht privates carried a wooden box larger than even a coffin. Skorzeny watched the Swiss Guard as they watched him. Hopefully, the young men in medieval costume would not be foolhardy. The SS man had seen more than enough slaughter of young men.
As the black-clad detachment reached the point where the colonnade joined the basilica, two Swiss Guards crossed halberds, barring the path.
Thankful most Swiss spoke at least a form of German, Skorzeny snapped to attention and saluted. "Am Morgen, meinen Herren! We have business inside. Please be good fellows and let us pass without trouble."
One of the young men – Skorzeny would have bet he was under twenty – spoke. ''You have the proper authorization?"
The German officer sighed. "My authorization, lad, is in those machine guns you see. Now, please let us pass."
There was no fear, no indecision in the boy's eyes, only hatred. It was the same look Skorzeny had seen in Russian partisans as they stood in front of open graves waiting to be shot.
Skorzeny sighed and gave the order. As one, eight machine guns were unslung. With a single click, eight bolts were cocked. He both admired and was saddened by the complete lack of reaction by the Swiss Guards. Bravery transcends nationality. It is a commodity to be treasured, not wasted.
An older Swiss Guard, perhaps twenty-five, stepped out of the shadows and conducted a conversation in Swisse Deutsch, the dialect of the German-speaking Swiss cantons. Skorzeny only got about half of it. The two younger guards lowered their weapons and took two steps backward, resentment twisting the corners of their mouths.
"That's good fellows," Skorzeny said, motioning to two of his men. "Now, if you'll just stack those axes and come along, all will be fine."
Leaving a single man to watch over the disarmed and unhappy Swiss Guards, the Germans entered through an unmarked side door of the basilica. Skorzeny produced a flashlight from his uniform, as did each of the SS men.
Now came the tricky part, the SS commander thought. He had to remember exactly the tour the priest Kaas had given him yesterday. Opening an unmarked door, Skorzeny was greeted by darkness, an absence of light so complete as to suggest light did not exist. A breeze of cool air drifted over the men, bringing the dusty smell of crushed rock and damp earth.
Ignoring the reluctance he sensed in the men, Skorzeny stepped into the night.
At first, the beam of his flashlight revealed little but clouds of dust motes, swirling like miniature cosmos in some dark universe of their own. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom even his light could not entirely dispel, he saw what resembled a narrow street edged with the dim forms of houses. The way sloped gently upward.
"Careful," he warned his men. "The way is littered with rubble, so step carefully."
For a few minutes the small troupe walked up the slight incline, edging around mounds of
clay, rock, and soil. Out of the gloom appeared empty doors and windows, some with just the hint of inscriptions. Others showed dirt-clouded paintings of animals and humans. Between many of the structures were mounds of unexcavated earth. At last they stopped in front of a large circular area ringed with mounds of loose dirt. Picks and shovels were neatly stacked. A rope with buckets attached stretched off into the darkness, a means of removing rubble. They had reached the site of present excavations.
Skorzeny directed the beam of his flashlight upward to a point where it reflected from dull stone overhead, the floor of the Vatican's basement or grotto. Part of the hill they had been climbing actually touched the stone overhead. A small hole had been dug into otherwise undisturbed earth.
That was the place the priest had pointed out to him yesterday. Motioning to the two men carrying the box to follow, he started up the side of the hill, surprised at how firm the surface was. But then, why shouldn't it be? This part of the hill hadn't been touched since the present papal palace was completed over three hundred years ago.
He turned to make sure the men with the box were close at hand before he turned the light into the shallow hole in front of him. At first, all he saw was stone, part of the foundation of the massive building overhead. He played the light back and forth, discerning regularly placed vertical stone piers, each about four feet wide and caked with the soil in which they had been embedded. Closer inspection revealed a slight discoloration at the base of one. Skorzeny stooped to bring the full power of his light to bear. Sure enough, the part of this one column was a slightly different color than the rest of the pillar.
Reaching into a pocket, he produced a whisk brush and began to remove the obscuring dirt. Within minutes, he could see an almost invisible line forming a rectangle where a section of the base of the support had been replaced. There were traces of lettering on the new part, letters that had been chiseled away.