Neri looked at him with that world-weary face that seemed to say, Are you serious? And when he realized he was, he went very quiet.
Noah could almost read his mind: You get to go home tomorrow, I don't. All the crap we cause today is mine to swim in for the rest of my natural life. That's what Noah would have been thinking if he was in his place.
Gianni Abandonato was desperate. He almost ran every third step he was hurrying so quickly. Traffic was not in his favor. There wasn't a cab to be found on the streets. He ended up running the entire length of Via Del Circo Massimo with his cassock lifted to his knees. There was nothing gracious or glorious about his race. He stared straight ahead, sweat streaming down his face as he ran. His breathing was out of control. He wasn't a fit man. He lived in the stacks. His exercise was lifting a book down, turning a page. By the time he hit the Ponte Palatino he was on his knees, gasping and panting and struggling to push himself back to his feet and keep running.
Fear drove him.
He could have phoned the Corpo della Gendarmeria offices, but what was he going to say? I have poisoned the entire College of Cardinals? You have to stop the conclave? You have to get them out of the chapel? They wouldn't believe him, and he wouldn't have been able to convince them over the phone. He needed to be there. He needed them to see his face. Then they would unerstand.
But they still wouldn't interrupt the conclave.
He was on a fool's mission.
He knew that, but knowing it didn't stop him from trying.
He had to. If not to save them, to save himself.
"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis," he mumbled, the prayer comfortable on his lips. "Fratres, quia peccavi nimis, cogitatione, verbo, opere, et omissione: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum."I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do; and ask blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.
No confession would ever be enough if he couldn't stop them lighting the fire.
He couldn't think. Keeping his legs moving, staying on his feet, took all of his strength. By the time he reached Della Farnesina he was spent. Every new step came on trembling legs. His muscles burned. His lungs were on fire. He reached out to steady himself, stumbling against the walls of the houses set back off the street, and pushed himself on. And he was still so far from Bernini's piazza. He regretted running, but he couldn't stop. He knew what he must have looked like to passersby. He wasn't a hero running to save the day.
He stumbled on.
Dominico Neri walked up to the Swiss Guard's station and held out the badge that identified his as Carabinieri as though it would mysteriously lift the barrier for him. It didn't. The guard barely looked at it and shrugged as though to say, So what? That doesn't impress me.
There were four guards at the tation. None of them seemed particularly enamored with the combination of hot weather and their heavy uniforms.
It wasn't one of the main entrances. There was no point trying to get anywhere near the front of St. Peter's with the crowd. It would be a fight they wouldn't win. Neri wasn't big on fights he couldn't win. He led Noah to a side entrance. There was a sentry box, stern-faced boy-guards and a road beyond the barrier that opened up into a forecourt and beyond that splintered into a dozen paths between the cramped buildings.
"Get me the Inspector General," Neri demanded, staring straight at the youngest guard. It was simple bully-boy tactics and he knew it. But Noah was right; there was plenty of time to apologize later. Right now it was enough that the young guard snapped to attention.
"Your identification," one of the guards beside him demanded, a little older, a little less willing to be intimidated. He didn't just want a little flash of the badge, he held out his hand. Neri handed over his ID. The guard looked pointedly at Noah.
"I don't have any," he said. "I'm still going inside though, so why don't you just open up the barrier and save us all a lot of wasted time and energy."
His almost flippant attitude didn't amuse the soldier.
The guard who had taken Neri's ID disappeared into the guardhouse. No doubt he was going to call the Carabinieri offices to confirm he was who he said he was, then call his superiors and ask for a reason to turn them away. A few minutes later he emerged with a wireless phone in his hand and an expression on his face that said, You lose. He handed the phone across to Neri and moved to block his way.
They weren't getting in, Neri knew, even as he raised the phone to his ear.
Before he could begin to argue their case with the policeman on the other end of the line, Noah ducked under the barrier and sprinted off across the forecourt.
One of the guards drew his pistol and started to aim it at Noah's back as though he intended to shoot him dead in his tracks.
"Don't you dare, soldier!" Neri barked, slapping the man's arm aside. "That man's with the British Secret Service!" He had no idea what effect his words would have.
What he didn't expect was for the youngest soldier to look at him and say, "Like James Bond 007 Licensed to Kill?" all in one rushed breath, as he took off after Noah Larkin as though someone had just lit a fire under his ass.
For a moment Neri thought he was trying to stop him, and then he realized the young soldier intended to help any way he could. He shook his head. Sometimes there was no accounting for the stupidity of youth.
Noah didn't know where he was going.
He just ran.
The place was a warren of little paths, overhung alleys and twisting side
streets that wove a labyrinthine course through the chapels and apartments in this oddest of cities. He needed to get inside, which meant finding a door. As far as he was concerned any door would do. He knew it wasn't true, but he didn't know what else to do.
He tried to see over the rooftops to get a fix on the chimney above the
Sistine Chapel and orientate himself. It was pointless.
He heard the heavy slap of running feet behind him and glanced over his
shoulder. The young guard from the barrier was running with his Beretta held
out in front of him as though it might bite. For a moment Noah thought he was
going to try and stop him, and he started to turn back, figuring the soldier's
training wouldn't be enough to stay his hand if it came down to shooting him in
the back or letting him get away. Then the young soldier surprised him and
shouted in terrible fractured English, "I help you, James Bond!"
It took Noah a moment to realize what the hell he meant, and that he
wasn't about to get himself shot in the back. "The Sistine Chapel? Where is it?" "I help you, James Bond!" the guard repeated. "Follow me!" He didn't exactly have a lot of choice. He could have r around like a blind
mouse in the maze for a month of Sundays without getting any closer to the
chapel if he was left to his own devices.
Abandonato closed his eyes. His entire face was flushed, his hair was plastered down across his scalp. He was shaking. He was walking awkwardly, favoring his right side because a stitch burned there. He was panting.
The guard looked at him as he approached. He felt sure the guard was going to stop him, to challenge him to prove his right to be there. He had every right, of course, his apartment was beyond the wall. This was where he lived. There were only one hundred and ten guards sworn in the service of the Holy See. He knew them all by sight. Likewise they knew him by sight. If they were looking for him, now was when he would find out. They didn't stop him. The guard nodded slightly, then stepped back, allowing Abandonato through. It was ludicrously simple. Even after the assassination, they trusted the outfit. It was a costume, clothes, the familiarity of his fac
e. He wanted to scream in the man's face. It didn't make him good! He might have had the olive-white complexion of the Mediterranean, but he was every bit as vile a terrorist as any Middle Eastern suicide bomber. The only difference was he was too much of a coward. His "bomb" was already in place, just waiting for the flame that would shrivel the plastic and release the toxic gas.
He shuffled along quickly, heading for the Sistine Chapel.
He didn't know how he was going to stop the conclave.
He hadn't thought that far ahead.
The washed-out colors of the murals and the corridors seemed so much
more alive to Abandonato. It was almost as though knowing it was all going to end heightened his senses and made everything so much brighter and more vivid. He saw the paintings of Michelangelo's apprentices and Bernini's journeymen as though looking at them through new eyes. Every brush stroke was rendered exquisitely. He wanted to linger, to run his fingers over the colors as though he might soak up their brilliance and absorb it into his skin. But that was the Devil talking, trying to delay him while his evil work was done.
He cursed himself and hurried on, following the path his feet knew so well, praying the Lord still believed in him. Give me the strength, he thought, coming around the final corner.
He had made it. A surge of relief broke over him. He thought he was going to collapse under it. He stumbled into the antechamber. He was consumed by a single thought: get inside the chapel before they lit the coals.
Six guards stood at the door of the Pope Sixtus' chapel, the same six who had stood on the stage with Peter the Roman in Germany, the inner ring, the six most loyal. Five stared eyes front. The sixth looked at Abandonato as he buckled. For a moment he thought he was going collapse and go sprawling across the floor. He didn't. The only collapse was internal, hope caving in to despair. It is always the most loyal, Abandonato thought, locking eyes with the man whose silver blade had slain the Holy Father. That had always been the Sicarii way.
He was so close.
One door away.
But that door wasn't merely chained and guarded, it was chained and
guarded by Peter's murderer, the last Sicarii assassin. The assassin had one final task: to see that the conclave's seal would not be broken until the new Vicar of Christ had been chosen--by which time the College of Cardinal's would be dead, murdered not by the assassin, but by Abandonato's hand.
He knew it was useless.
He knew he had failed.
Still he had to try.
"I have to speak with the Cardinal Dean," he demanded, breathless. There
was no conviction behind his words, as though he expected to be denied. He barely had the air in his lungs to fuel the words. He was a broken man. "The conclave is sealed, Monsignor," the assassin said. "It cannot be broken. That is the law of the conclave. Whatever your message, it must wait."
"No," Abandonato pleaded. "It cannot. I must speak with the Cardinal Dean." He stepped forward, reaching out to grab the guard's uniform and shake him to make him understand--but of course he understood. He had engineered it. The man was Solomon's left hand. Abandonato hesitated at the thought of "most loyal." It seemed foul when he applied it to the murderer's cause. The priest didn't even know what his real name was. He wasn't Swiss; his entire identity was a lie, though he did bare a passing resemblance to the young man whose life he had stolen. When the fire was lit he would leave the Holy See and return to his master, his job here done. Abandonato stopped himself from clutching the man's double His hand just hung there between them, reaching out, while the guard stared at him. Abandonato could see the black hatred smoldering in his eyes.
"Control yourself, Monsignor. Conclave will not be broken."
"You don't understand," he said. "You have to open the doors. You have to let me in. Please," Abandonato begged. He didn't know what else to say. All the way here he had thought about nothing more than reaching the doors, as though God would see them break open before him, like the waves of the Red Sea for Moses. He hadn't expected the assassin to bar his way. He had thought he would simply throw himself on their mercy. He was so close. One door was all that stood between him and redemption. He couldn't bear it. He reached out for the chains, but two of the guards beside him closed ranks and took hold of his arms, restraining him physically. They weren't gentle. "There is a traitor," he said, barely able to say the words. "The conclave is breached. . . ."
"Impossible," the assassin said, reasonably. His black eyes burned into Abandonato. "We have been on duty since the doors were sealed. No one has entered. No one has left. That is the law of conclave. You are mistaken. There is no traitor here. If you insist on trying to force your way in to the chapel, we will have no choice but to think you are the one with treachery in your heart, and we would have to stop you. I take no pleasure in this, Monsignor, but the law is the law."
Abandonato felt every ounce of strength drain out of him. "Have mercy," he pleaded. But there was no mercy here, and no redemption. His sins would find him out.
The assassin stepped in close, his lips no more than a few inches away from Abandonato's ear and said, "Return to your chambers, Monsignor. Let God's will be done. I will come to look in on you when my duty is done. I will see you are taken care of. I understand your grief and pain, but you must abide by the will of Our Father, just as we all must."
Abandonato slumped.
"Go with God, Monsignor," the assassin said, and from his tone Abandonato knew he was mocking him.
He wanted to scream, but all he could do was turn his back. He wasn't a fighter. He didn't have a gun and even if he had, he would not have been able to wield it. Force went against everything he believed in. But there was so little left for him to believe. He wanted to believe he had been seduced, like Eve, tempted into the path of evil. He had chosen his path. He had set his foot on it. It was his choice. There was a serpent, but the choice was his. The Lord had given him free will and he used it to betray Him.
There was nothing Abandonato could do to force them to break the seal and pull back the chains. This was his punishment. He had brought death into the House of the Lord, and death would not be appeased by begging, prayers or guilt. Its hunger was rapacious. It would only be sated by the inevitable. More than one hundred souls would find the glory of God ahead of their time. That is my doing, he told himself.
The two guards who held his arms escorted him to the end of the passageway, then crossed their halberds across the entry, barring any possible return.
He looked at them each in turn. "You have to break the conclave," he pleaded. "They can't be allowed to vote. They will all die." He knew he sounded like a crazed man. He was desperate. That stripped him of his reason.
Their gazes didn't waver. It was as though he had already become a ghost.
Finally he had no choice but to walk away. There was no second way into the chamber. The assassin was right when he said it was a fortress. If he couldn't get past them, there was no way he could stop the vote. And if he couldn't stop the vote, he couldn't stop the fire.
He was damned.
He had failed the living.
He would inevitably fail the dead.
Names had power. He was named true. Gianni Abandonato, Gianni the Forsaken.
There would be no place at the Lord's side for him. Not with their blood still fresh on his hands. How apt that he had fallen for the silver tongue of Solomon and the so-called truth of Judas. He laughed bitterly. The sound chased him through the Holy See.
He knew then how Iscariot must have felt, trapped into the only possible course of action left to him at the end.
Abandonato shuffled through the corridors, lost in grief, his head down, hands clutched together in prayer, but those prayers failed to reach his lips. He resolved to kill himself, not that his one death would sate the beast he had loosed within the Holy See.
"Fater, forgive me," he said, doubting that even the Almighty's capacity for forgiveness could be so vast as to accommoda
te his crime.
And then someone shouted his name.
He looked up.
Noah couldn't believe his eyes.
It took him a moment and a double-take to recognize that the man shuffling quickly towards them down the narrow passage was Gianni Abandonato. He had walked out of one of the smaller passageways that fed into this one. Abandonato had his head down, his fingers laced in front of him as though in prayer, but when Noah called out his name his head snapped up and he stopped dead in his tracks. There was no mistaking the man.
"Abandonato!" His voice swelled to fill the hand-painted chamber. The Monsignor looked like a startled rabbit, trapped, and he backed up a step. Noah saw the sweat, the nervous twitches, the almost robotic walk--they were all classic signs of a suicide bomber. He had a split second to think. His hands were hidden in his cassock. They could be holding a detonator; they could be empty. He didn't have the luxury of being able to make a mistake.
Abandonato's robes were bulky enough to hide a vest under. A bomb didn't have to be a complex thing. If he got into the chapel, even the least sophisticated ball bearings and nails sewn into a stockade of dynamite would take out everyone in the blast radius. And it would be messy. There was no way for Noah to tell whether the priest was wired to blow. He was walking unevenly. He seemed to be favoring one side, his right over his left. That could mean he was packing something heavy, something that changed his walk. He had a split second to weigh it all up.
"On your knees! Now!" he yelled. When Abandonato didn't go down, he didn't yell again. He couldn't risk what would happen if he insisted on taking the martyr's way out.
Abandonato seemed trapped in indecision for a moment, then turned and bolted.
That one desperate action told Noah all he needed to know.
He drew and fired in a single smooth motion.
Beside him, the man who wanted to be best friends with James Bond put three shots into the Monsignor as his body jerked and jived and fell. He put another one in him as he hit the floor. Abandonato twitched once, a violent spasm, then lay utterly still.
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