by Steve Richer
Emma thought about the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and the work she had done all over the world. For an instant, she felt ashamed for no longer being a part of it. People like Colm continued to serve God while she had moved away from that life at the first sign of struggle. Maybe she should never have left.
“How have you been?” she asked. “I always meant to stay in touch with everyone, but you know…”
“Yes, life often gets in the way.”
For a few minutes, they reminisced about India and teaching kids. They chatted about him working at the Vatican, her choosing police work, asked about so-and-so and how they were doing.
“So you saw me on television?” Emma ventured.
“On the news, yes. There was a police operation?”
“Oh yes. It’s about what happened to the Holy Father. They got me involved because I was a nun.”
“And this is what I’m calling about, Sister Emma. I have information that I think you need in your investigation. When I saw you on the telly, I realized it was a sign from God, that I had to reach out to you.”
Emma froze. “You know something?”
“I’m not sure, but I believe it’s relevant, yes. It’s something called the San Marino letter.”
She knew that San Marino was a microscopic enclaved nation located in northeastern Italy. She had read somewhere that it was the only country where cars outnumber inhabitants. Flipping through her notebook, she remembered that someone from the Papal Household had mentioned this document dismissively before.
“What is that letter?”
Colm was about to speak, but then paused. “You have to know that I’m betraying my country by telling you this.”
“I understand. But you called me, remember? I promise to be careful with this information.”
“From what I was able to gather, there was a meeting a month ago in San Marino. Pope Callixtus met with a few of the senior prelates to discuss the future of the Church and its international relations. The talks were private, everyone being sworn to secrecy.”
“But you know what it was about, Colm?”
“A few days after returning to Vatican City, the Pope himself wrote a letter to summarize the conclusions. He sent copies of this letter to only a handful of cardinals, people he judged important in the Holy See.”
“What was the letter about?”
“The Pope made his intention clear that he wanted to pay off the national debt of some of the poorest countries, or as much as possible anyway. He wanted to use the vast fortunes of the Vatican to do so.”
Emma whistled. “Wow…”
“It was his opinion that without the burden of a national debt, these countries could finally climb out of poverty. They wouldn’t be enslaved by corporations, IMF loans, and international treaties that keep them in a constant state of hardship. These countries could then direct what money they have to healthcare, education, and infrastructure.”
She knew that the Institute for the Works of Religion – the Vatican Bank – had over $8 billion in assets and invested in corporations all over the world. The Church owned so much international real estate across the globe that it equaled the size of Texas. The American Catholic Church alone spent $170 billion annually, mostly on healthcare and education. It made her head spin to think about so much money.
And then she started thinking as a cop.
Hadn’t she learned that money was the supreme motivation for criminal activity? With such a gigantic economy, some of the people who depended on the Vatican for their industries would stand to lose a lot. How many bankers and lawyers and accountants did they keep in business?
“As you can imagine,” Colm went on, “some people here at the Vatican are thinking that this will make the Church extremely weak. They think it’s going to crush us, destroy the Holy See forever. Even worse…”
“What?”
“It’s one thing to lose money, but if the Vatican loses influence, some people will lose power. That’s why I’m afraid that this is linked to the Pope’s assassination. As we get closer to the conclave, there are many people who want to make sure that the San Marino letter never sees the light of day. It’s a lot easier to do now that the Holy Father is dead.”
“You really think there are people at the Vatican would go to these lengths? They would kill the Pope to remain in power?”
“I don’t know, Emma. It’s been done before. Popes Stephen VI, John XII, Benedict VI, Gregory V, they have all been assassinated. And that’s just the ones I remember. Power corrupts, I have seen it.”
Emma’s mind was reeling. She wasn’t a detective, she didn’t know what to do with this information. What would Donnie do?
“Do you have any proof, Colm?”
“I don’t, but…”
“But what?”
“I…” There was a pause and she could hear him breathe. “I will get some proof. I used to be conflicted about this, but not anymore. It feels like the easiest decision now. I’ll get you some proof, Emma.”
~ ~ ~ ~
In Rome, the man in the blue jacket watched the Irish priest hang up and put away his phone. At the same time, he looked in his direction. Had he discovered him?
Shit.
Discreetly, he pulled out his own mobile and dialed an unfamiliar number.
~ ~ ~ ~
Cardinal Blanchet was entertaining a new group of visitors on the grounds of the Palace of the Governorate. This time, it was a delegation from a Brazilian investment bank.
He enjoyed this gathering much more than the previous one which had been populated with bishops and cardinals. There was something about laypeople that was liberating, like he didn’t have to watch his every word. He had stopped counting how many pastries and drinks he’d had. He felt truly free.
He was speaking with a gorgeous young woman with bronze skin. Was she a secretary, a lawyer? He forgot. Actually, he didn’t care. He was looking at her smooth legs, the curvature of her flawless hips.
“Do you have any plans after this meeting?” he asked her.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said with that charming accent that sounded like music to him.
“Perhaps I could show you my apartments. There’s a marble sculpture in my chambers I would love you to see.”
His phone rang and he almost cursed. He really had to stop drinking.
“Excuse me, my dear.” He answered, walking several yards away. “Yes?”
“It’s me.” The man in the blue jacket.
“What’s the status?”
“He just made a phone call. I couldn’t hear, but it sounded important. I think he’s truly suspicious. And I think he saw me.”
“Merde. Keep following him, but keep your distance. This is important, we’re so close to the endgame!”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
Blanchet lowered his voice. “And don’t take any chances. God will understand if Father O’Dwyer has an accident. If it’s necessary, God will understand.”
Chapter 47
Police instincts were kicking in. Whereas Donnie was used to being a detective and methodically going through clues and suspects, now the work was a lot more hands-on.
The room at the Comfort Inn posed no threat, but he couldn’t be sure of that. His family’s safety was the most important thing in the world and he was damned if he was going to take it lightly.
He checked the bathroom, the closet, made sure the windows were secure. He even checked under the beds. There was no one. He had rented the room in the name of the NYPD and had paid cash. They would be safe.
“You stay here, all right? I’ll get you guys some clothes and stuff from the house, but I don’t want either of you to go out, no matter what. Even if there’s an alien invasion, I want the two of you to stay in your room, okay? Even if little green men come out of spaceships asking hotel guests to get down to the parking lot for fresh lava cake and Funyuns, you stay here. Understood?”
Nicole nodded and he turned to Sierra
. She was dejected, but still nodded.
“Sure.”
“Good. Nobody is gonna find you here. Don’t make any calls and everything’s fine.”
Donnie scanned the room once more, needing to be extra sure that everything was indeed fine, and headed for the door. Right then, his daughter rushed to him, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“I’m so sorry, dad. This is all my fault.”
“Hey, we all do crazy stuff when we’re young, right? One time, when I was seventeen, I borrowed my mother’s car and drove to Philadelphia for a concert. And by borrowed I mean borrowed without asking permission.”
Sierra looked up, stunned. “Really?”
“It was a really important concert. It was New Kids on the Block.”
“New Kids on the Block, dad? That’s so lame.”
“First of all, New Kids on the Block isn’t lame, okay? It’s classic. Don’t ever say anything like that ever again. Second of all, I said that we all do crazy things when we’re young. Now you take care of your mother for me.”
He kissed the top of her head and let her go. As she backed away, he noticed that Nicole had come closer. They gazed at one another for several seconds as if they were each analyzing whether it was okay to act in a civilized manner.
“Thank you,” she said at long last, coming closer while Sierra began watching TV and surfing channels.
“There’s nothing to thank me for. You think I’m gonna abandon my family in a moment like this? Come on…”
“I know you would never abandon Sierra, I know that now. But you have every right to abandon me. I’m… I’m ashamed of what I’ve become, Donnie.”
“Nicole…”
She shook her head, cutting him off. “I couldn’t see it before. I’m really ashamed of having sunk so low as to… to cheat on you. I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t just saying this, he knew. He recognized the look in her eyes. He was uncomfortable for her. In fact, it was painful to watch. It was moving that she felt this way, he decided.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I guess we’ve hit the bottom of the barrel, right? It can only get better from here on end. I sure as hell gonna try anyway.” She smiled, hope surging through her. “I gotta go. Lock the door after I’m gone.”
He left and waited until he heard his wife putting on the safety chain before heading back to his car.
As he got behind the wheel, he wondered if it had been a mistake not to send people after this Zhirov guy. The plan was to lull him into a false sense of security, but he was also in a hurry to put the cuffs on him. What if he disappeared?
No, it wouldn’t happen. He knew these guys, young ambitious drug dealers. They thought they were invincible. They believed they could talk, bribe, or shoot their way out of getting arrested.
He pulled out Ridge’s phone and began browsing through it. It was filled with contacts, numbers. He went into the photo section and started to gag when he saw the slimy punk kissing his daughter.
He went back to the contacts. This was the key to taking down this whole Russian koala business. If he played his cards right, he could solve a few murders and get the drug off the streets.
His own phone rang and his heart beat faster. Was it Nicole calling him? Was something wrong? He looked out the window toward the hotel room. Everything was just as he’d left it.
He answered, noticing the call was from Emma. “Hey. What’s going on?”
“Hello, Donnie. I wanted to let you know that we received the list of everybody in the building and we’ve been sifting through it. I’m emailing you the list right now.”
“Look, Emma, it’s really awesome and everything. I’m sure you’re making great strides, but I have more important stuff going on right now with my family.”
He told her in more detail about Zhirov and that kid getting killed in his house.
“Oh, heavens! I’m so sorry. But your family is fine now?”
“Sure, I’m working on it. Anyway, work it out with Cox and the task force, okay? I’m off the Pope case, there’s nothing I can do to help you. Even if I did, nobody wants to see me back at headquarters.”
“I understand, Donnie. I don’t want to bother you with this, trust me, but I think we have something.”
He rolled his eyes. “Emma…”
“Look at the file I sent you. Go to the second page, on top.”
With a groan, deciding to humor her just so it would make her hang up sooner, he put the call on speaker and checked his email. He pulled up the file and scrolled down until the section she mentioned.
“Okay, I’m looking at it.”
“Do you see it? That name, I highlighted it.”
Michael Knuth, paralegal.
“Listen, I… Wait, it does sound familiar.”
That last name was uncommon enough that he remembered having encountered it recently. Without another word, he opened another file on his phone. It was the list of everyone who was on the task force investigating the Pope’s assassination.
There it was. Sergeant Bobby Knuth of the NYPD Transit Bureau.
“It can’t be a coincidence, right?” she said with excitement in her voice.
He didn’t want to jump to conclusions. There were twenty million people in and around New York City and the odds of finding people with similar names were not that weak. Then again, he couldn’t ignore the connection.
Since the killer – Wallenberg – had stolen the evidence and killed his friend before he got there, that meant there was a mole on the task force. They had somebody named Knuth. It had to be him!
“Listen carefully,” Donnie began. “Here’s what I want you to do…”
Chapter 48
Emma was running down the hallway at One Police Plaza. She got a few strange looks, but it didn’t matter because she had something important to do.
She burst into the task force conference room and went to JoAnn the assistant.
“Yes?”
“I just had an anonymous tip, somebody called me. You have to tell the entire task force about this.”
The woman gasped and found a notebook and pencil. “Go on…”
“Because of my ties to the Vatican, someone contacted me to say that they want to make a confession about something called the San Marino letter.”
As she spoke, Inspector Galfy came over, having obviously heard what she’d said.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, hi,” Emma said. “They want to meet at seven tonight, at Dockside Ironworks in Long Island City. The person said they will tell us everything, give us the reason why the Pope was killed and who is really pulling the strings. JoAnn, you have to tell everyone on the task force, but also make sure they keep this quiet. This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”
Galfy exhaled, placing his hands on his hips. “This is credible, Officer?”
“I think so, yes.”
“All right, thank you. We’ll take it from here.”
“But there’s one thing, Inspector. The person said they would only speak to me and Detective Beecher.”
“I don’t know, he’s off the investigation.”
Emma came closer to him. “It’s the only chance we have, sir.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Zhirov called this a safe house. It was a small apartment in Greenwich Village and it was actually well-maintained.
It wasn’t really a safe house though. The apartment belonged to one of the girls he was seeing. He’d given her a thousand bucks to take off to Atlantic City for a couple of days. He could have let her stay and enjoy her company in the bedroom, but he wasn’t in the mood.
“Give me some of that,” he told Boomer.
Boomer looked at him and nodded before returning to cutting lines of cocaine on the coffee table. They had each snorted four so far and, in between, Zhirov had swallowed two doses of Rush-K.
“I need it, I need it, I need it!”
>
“It’s coming, boss,” Boomer said, also in dire need of more drugs for the agonizing pain from his burnt skin.
Zhirov pushed him out of the way and finished himself, wrenching the credit card out of his hands and stretching the white powder into a line twelve inches long. Without missing a beat, he sniffed it all in one breath.
“Oh, fuck!” he said, throwing his head back as the effect took hold.
It dripped down his throat and he didn’t mind the unpleasant taste. The energizing effect was all that mattered.
“What’s the next move?” Boomer said, snorting some coke.
“What we have is a problem, buddy. And what do we do with problems?”
“We take care of them.”
“That’s right. That’s right, that’s what we do. We solve this shit. You have trouble, you get rid of the source of your troubles. It’s math, it’s logic. It’s so fucking simple.”
“So simple, boss!”
“And our problem right now is that little bitch and her mom.”
Boomer nodded, closing his eyes to savor the high. “Little bitch.”
“We kill them. No talking, no grandstanding, we don’t have time for this. Bang bang, one bullet each in the head. You take the mother and I’ll do the daughter.”
“Yeah, I want to see their heads explode,” Boomer said, tapping his foot so fast that it was a blur.
“I want to paint the walls with their blood!”
Zhirov snarled as he pictured the scene. He wanted to have this teenage girl on her knees in front of him, her innocent face streaked with tears. He wanted her to beg and he would even make her believe that it could work.
He wondered who should die first. The mom would do anything to save her child and it could be fun to kill Sierra first. That old bitch would totally freak out. On the other hand, if he kept the daughter for last, she would beg even more. She would be petrified.
It would be fucking beautiful!
“But how are we gonna find them, boss?”
“You’re pussing out?”
Boomer shook his head. “No, of course not. But they’re not at the house no more. We need to find them if we wanna shoot them.”